This week, politics, memes, and protest movements kept colliding with the economy, turning everything from Black Friday shopping to stock charts into a referendum on power and attention.
Investors who spent the last couple of years riding AI and crypto gains are getting a reminder that gravity is still in charge, as once-screaming-up charts now introduce terms like “death cross” and “profit-taking.” Retailers are heading into the holidays knowing that some shoppers are planning not to spend at all, on purpose. And on the cultural front, a single insult from the president is now ricocheting around social networks, while a local New York election is being framed as a national story about socialism, faith, and economic justice.
Here is what actually moved the week in business.
Housing’s long plateau: Moody’s maps a decade of flat “real” home prices
Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi expects the U.S. housing market to spend the next decade slowly working off the excesses of the pandemic era, with prices rising roughly in line with inflation and no real gains once you adjust for it. After the massive run-up in prices and the mortgage rate shock, he sees existing home sales staying frozen for years as affordability gradually improves. Moody’s projects nominal home prices will climb about 23.5% between December 2025 and December 2035, with modest declines likely in parts of the South and West and more stability in the Northeast and Midwest. Zandi also points to long-term headwinds like restrictive immigration that could limit construction labor, and to higher Treasury yields that may keep mortgage rates closer to 6%.
“Quiet, Piggy” turns into a meme war the president cannot control
A clip of President Donald Trump saying “Quiet, Piggy” to Bloomberg reporter Catherine Lucey aboard Air Force One went viral and quickly turned into a memetic insult aimed right back at him. Users on Bluesky and X are now quote-posting Trump and his allies with the phrase, often pairing it with unflattering photos or AI-generated images of Trump as Miss Piggy or yelling at Miss Piggy. The reaction taps into Trump’s long record of calling women “pigs,” “dogs,” and “slobs,” and his years of attacking journalists in order to discredit negative coverage. That history makes this latest jab feel especially juvenile and very on brand, fueling frustration that fellow reporters did not push him harder in the moment.
XRP sinks as profit-taking and macro fears hit crypto again
XRP, the token tied to Ripple’s XRP Ledger, has dropped to around $2.13, more than 26% below where it was three months ago and well off its July peak of $3.65. The decline comes even after the launch of three XRP exchange-traded funds, including Canary Capital’s XRPC, which has already fallen about 11% as large holders reportedly sold 200 million XRP within two days. Analysts say the pullback is part of a broader risk-off mood as investors worry about a possible tech and AI bubble, economic uncertainty, and the odds of future rate cuts. Bitcoin is under similar pressure, recently flashing a “death cross” that has reinforced bearish sentiment and wiped out its gains for 2025.
Epstein’s “Bubba” email becomes NSFW merch and a headache for platforms
The release of more than 23,000 pages of Jeffrey Epstein’s estate documents has spawned a wave of NSFW Trump-and-Clinton-themed merchandise on Etsy and Amazon. Sellers are zeroing in on a 2018 email in which Epstein’s brother jokes about “photos of Trump blowing Bubba,” a line that has sparked online speculation about the two former presidents, even as both deny any wrongdoing and the documents do not explicitly implicate them. The email has become fodder for T-shirts, mugs, bumper stickers, and other items built around suggestive slogans and winks at “Big, Beautiful Bill.” A few designers have pushed into more creative or graphic territory, including artwork styled after the film Brokeback Mountain.
Netflix’s 10-for-1 stock split shocks casual chart watchers, not investors
Netflix shares appear to have fallen more than 90% on some charts, dropping from over $1,100 to around $111. But the move comes from a 10-for-1 stock split rather than an actual collapse in value. For existing shareholders, nothing fundamental has changed, since each old share was simply divided into 10, and holders received nine additional shares for every one they already owned. Netflix says the goal is to make shares more accessible to employees in stock purchase and option programs, where a four-digit price can be a psychological and financial barrier. Lower nominal prices can also make the stock more approachable to smaller retail investors who balk at four-figure tickets.
Holiday boycotts aim to turn non-spending into a political weapon
Two overlapping campaigns, “Mass Blackout” and “We Ain’t Buying It,” are calling on Americans to sit out Black Friday and the surrounding shopping days to protest Trump-era policies and corporate alignment with them. The Mass Blackout boycott urges people to stop shopping, streaming, and even working, if they can, from the Wednesday before Thanksgiving through the day after Cyber Monday—while still supporting small, local businesses with cash. The We Ain’t Buying It boycott focuses on Target, Home Depot, and Amazon, citing everything from DEI rollbacks to alleged cooperation with ICE and tax cut lobbying. Organizers frame the actions as economic noncooperation in an economy where the wealth gap keeps widening and the system “works” for the wealthy by design.
Bitcoin’s “death cross” deepens anxiety, makes token roughly flat for 2025
Bitcoin has fallen from October highs above $124,000 to around $94,000, giving back its year-to-date gains and putting the token firmly in bear market territory. The slide has been accompanied by a classic technical warning sign known as a “death cross,” when short-term moving averages drop below longer-term ones on a chart. That pattern has added to fears that the current downturn could deepen, even as some analysts note that previous death crosses have lined up with local bottoms rather than full-scale collapses. Other cryptocurrencies are following suit, with a major market index down in line with Bitcoin over the past week. The broader backdrop is a mix of profit-taking by long-term holders, institutional outflows, and macro worries that make speculative assets a tougher sell.
Zohran Mamdani becomes conservative media’s new favorite villain
New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has not taken office yet, but conservative media has already cast him as its latest symbol of everything wrong with the left. Commentators on Fox News, Newsmax, and elsewhere have called him a communist, a Marxist, and a “jihadist sympathizer,” often blurring the line between socialism and communism while attacking his membership in the Democratic Socialists of America and his Muslim faith. The New York Post ran a string of attention-grabbing covers about him ahead of the election and is now monetizing those images as merch, further cementing his role as a polarizing figure. Right-leaning outlets describe Mamdani’s agenda as fundamentally at odds with American values, while progressive watchdogs say he is being used much like Nancy Pelosi or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were before him, as a stand-in for the entire Democratic Party.
Verizon cuts 13,000 jobs to “reorient” around customers
Verizon is laying off more than 13,000 employees, roughly 20 percent of its non-union management workforce, as part of a major push to streamline operations and free up money to invest in customer experience. In a memo to staff, new CEO Dan Schulman said the company’s cost structure has become a drag, creating friction that slows Verizon down and frustrates customers. The carrier reported about $33.8 billion in third-quarter revenue and continued growth in prepaid wireless subscribers, but it is losing higher-value postpaid lines and facing intense competition from AT&T, T-Mobile, and others. Alongside the layoffs, Verizon plans to sharply reduce outsourced labor and has created a $20 million Reskilling and Career Transition Fund to support affected workers.
Tech’s roller-coaster week leaves investors dizzy
Thursday turned into a full roller coaster for tech investors. Nvidia’s blowout earnings pushed its stock up nearly 5% early in the day and briefly lifted the entire Magnificent Seven, thanks to better-than-expected revenue, strong profit, and a bullish fourth-quarter forecast. But fears of an AI bubble and fading confidence in a December Fed rate cut quickly erased those gains, sending the major tech names and the Nasdaq composite into sharp intraday swings. By Friday morning, rate-cut odds had risen again, and several of the big players were inching back into positive territory, even as Nvidia slipped.
