Some people claim Louis XV said it. Others attribute it to Madame de Pompadour, who was the King's mistress and close political advisor.

Either way, we inherit this phrase from mid-1700s France. Within years, the next King's head was in a basket and France had moved into its post-royal era.

Over time, the phrase "Après moi, le déluge" ("After me, the deluge") has come to cleanly capture reckless leadership and its short-sightedness, symbolizing selfish disregard for future consequences.

Anyway…

This is an odd time of year.

So much is going on.
So little is going on.
All at once.

Maybe we should lean into the latter, while we have the excuse of summer on our side.

In the meantime, here are a handful of things that are on my mind.

Making Sense of the Europe-U.S. “Trade Deal”

First off, let's be clear.

Deals are not required when it comes to international trade.

In the natural world, it's all functionally unilateral: the importing country has jurisdiction and decision rights. That's pretty much the one thing that you can count on.

If you want to tax things that are coming into your country, have at it. The other side doesn't have much leverage, other than making things worse for you in return. They call that retaliation. It's ugly.

Rationally speaking, you have to have a good reason to want to make things worse. Thus, any “deal” is predicated on making the best of a bad situation.

Since the beginning of this mess, I have been going back to what I learned from Earl A. Thompson at UCLA twenty-odd years ago.

Simply put, you cannot talk about modern global trade without talking about military power and the cost of defense.

If you want my fun Seinfeld-inspired version, it’s here​.

But to give credit where credit is due, I was in his office nearly every day when Earl was writing this piece: "What Globalization is Really All About."

Below is the crux of how Earl saw it.

→ An “open-your-markets-or-else” international stance, combined with taxes on lower-class domestic consumers, neatly completing the picture.

You can skip the next bit if that’s beyond what you have appetite for.

“We must realize that the only thing responsible for this middle-class revolution is that, following the Napoleonic Wars, the Western ruling classes suddenly had to compete for their populations.

(…) The end of the Cold War has meant the existence of an entirely new evolutionary direction, one in which the leaders of the world's most powerful country are now, almost inexorably, leading us back to the age of aristocracy, when there was no middle class to speak of.

The political economy of such governments imply that wages will always tend to settle at subsistence and stay there - not because of any Mathusian or Ricardian forces but - because this was the explicit intent of the aristocrats, who set tax rates accordingly.

We said "almost" inexorably for a reason. Sufficiently widely held insight can defeat evolutionary forces.

(…) In particular, the developed nations should commit themselves to allowing third-world countries to set their own economic policies without the interference of international economic agencies.

(…) Third-world countries would then no longer face the threat of a discriminatory tariff if they did not accede to a tariff reduction.

This would represent not only a substantial allocative improvement and a restored international reputation of the hegemon; it would also represent a restoration of competition of independent states for people, a competition that has been recently destroyed by the end of the Cold War (…).

A restoration of such competition is required to prevent the imminent disappearance of the world's now-fragile middle classes.”

So the Europe deal…

In the end, this is Europe being pragmatic — and making the best of a bad situation, indeed — by giving on trade terms to get military support from the United States on Russia.

Notice how the "trade deal" and the Russia aggression narrative have traveled together over the last few weeks, based on the public actions of the U.S. President.

With an immediately transactional American administration — one that expects payment for protection, thank you very much — Europe understood they could pay to rally the U.S. to the Ukrainian cause (read: the Western European cause).

In exchange for trade concessions (esp. opening the European market further to U.S. goods), Europe is getting America to pressure Russia into ending the aggression westward.

In fact, Europe is putting America’s interests squarely in conflict with Russia’s, by committing to buy American energy to replace the old Russian supply.

Presumably, the U.S. understands that the EU wouldn’t make much of a commercial outlet and consumer of American-made liquid natural gas if Europe became part of Putin’s Russia.

Long way around the block to say that Europe is buying time…

• Buying time relative to U.S. electoral cycles (though whatever our former president said about “fool me once” seems to apply at this point).

• Buying time against a tired regime trying to reclaim stature with the only card it’s got, sending young men to die in the bloodiest war on the European continent since World War II.

In the meantime, Europe gets to pay with reasonably strong Euros to secure U.S. weaponry, which should help her be more strategically independent for the long haul.

One should worry about what this means for the political cohesion of the European Union, given the responses from within. Accusations of ”submission” don’t sound great, coming from the sole nuclear power on the continent. Indeed, if the past year has taught us anything, it’s that it’s a lot easier to convince your constituency that you’re strong than it is to convince them that you’re smart.

Against all of that, believe it or not, for the time being, stock markets are hitting new highs — which goes to show that you really don’t know what happens next and that this whole wealth-management thing is centrally about managing risk and minimizing regrets best you can.

That was the point my conversation with Jason Zweig at The Wall Street Journal back in April. See below for my poorly drawn “pyramid of regrets.”

At the risk of stating the obvious, stress-testing your own comfort with the awkward juxtaposition between financial-market strength and exposed economic fault lines all over the place doesn’t seem like a bad idea at this point.

That's certainly where my attention is with clients these days. Once a risk manager, always a risk manager.

Charitable Giving under the “Big Beautiful Bill.”

Great, I feel a little dumber for having written those last three words… But what choice did I have? Also, I am not a tax accountant (not even a little bit) so talk to a tax professional, please.

All of that said, if charitable giving is a big part of your “money why,” you should be aware of the changes that are coming and see if you want to hurry up to revise plans based on the following.

Starting in 2026:

• Only charitable contributions exceeding 0.5% of a taxpayer's adjusted gross income (AGI) are deductible for those who itemize.

• Taxpayers in the highest tax bracket will see the deduction for charitable gifts capped at 35%, rather than being deductible at their highest marginal rate (previously 37%). This may reduce the (pecuniary) incentive for large, tax-driven gifts from high-net-worth individuals.

I repeat, consider this an encouragement to look into this further while you still have time, if this feels like it may have an impact on your plans.

Some Top Career Advice from Anna Paglia, Chief Business Officer at State Street.

They manage nearly $5 trillion dollars and Anna is in top management there, so you know… There probably are worse places to get career advice.

I’ve known Anna for years. She’s a fabulous professional and a great person.

I was thrilled to have her on TREUSSARD TALKS recently.

It was really great to hear her career journey and where she learned how to excel and set herself up for continued growth.

“If I think about the biggest mentor in my career, he is the owner of a restaurant in Rome where I used to serve tables when I was in law school because obviously I had to pay my rent. I remember one night there was a big chaos in the kitchen and next thing you know, the head chef left the kitchen and ran away. And then the owner of the restaurant came to me and he said, “Anna, go to the kitchen, you are the chef tonight.”

And I was scared like you wouldn't believe. My rent was $350 a month, and that job gave me around $300 a month, so it was incredibly important for me, and I thought, I'm gonna lose my job today.

As a matter of fact, I was a horrible chef. People were complaining, the food was coming back in the kitchen.

At the end of service, I thought that this is it. I'm gonna have to find another job. But I sat down with the owner of the restaurant and he gave me a check for $500, and I was shocked.

And he said, “Anna, I hope that tonight you learned one thing or two. So the first thing is everybody's helpful, nobody's irreplaceable, and the chef was rude to the staff, did not fit into our culture.

He was being disrespectful and disruptive, and I had to make a hard decision, and I decided for the sake of everybody else that I wanted to let him go. That's lesson number one. Lesson number two, in a time of crisis, you have to think quick on your feet.

If you detect that you are in a time of crisis and somebody asks you to do something, you do it. I came to you, I said, go to the kitchen. You didn't complain. You just did it because you realize that this is what I needed at that moment. “

I remember this as if it was yesterday. Because it really left a mark.

It taught me lessons that I'm just living and breathing every day when I manage people, when I deal with clients, or even when I push myself to do better every day.”

If I had to summarize: Be helpful. Be easy to work with. Be reliable in times of crisis.

I hope you’ll listen to my entire conversation with Anna Paglia and that you’ll subscribe to TREUSSARD TALKS.

YouTube: https://youtu.be/e6hO7JEgISE?si=x1N3eE8PUAe-PJUD

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/purpose-access-and-the-modern-investors-journey/id1811668602?i=1000718670772

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1BJHOxIiMZkc90GoUtIRr8?si=dc80e81b2c0d4788

Jean-Pierre Treussard (1951-2018)

I said goodbye to my father seven years ago this week. There is so much I wish I could tell you about him.

I will always remember the last conversation we had before he slipped away. “There is a tough spot ahead, but things will be ok on the other side of it.” I think he meant it for me and for him equally.

I suppose he was right.

But I still wake up in the middle of the night once in a while, hanging on to the dream that he beat the cancer and that we got to go for one more hike together.