NFL 2025 WEEK 15

 We start our post with some sad notes, remembering that we live in a violent and dangerous world. On Saturday two students were killed and several remained hospitalized, one in critical condition,  in the second shooting incident at Brown University. 

And in Australia, Jewish families who had gathered at a local beach in Sydney to celebrate Hannukah were attacked and multiple people were killed. Australia, which has the highest community of Holocaust survivors outside of Israel, has recently become a hot bed of antisemitism and anti-sematic violent attacks. The thought of families with children gathering to celebrate a joyous event only to be victims of a planned attack is not only sobering and so very sad, but it is a story that has been tragically occurring over and over these past few years- not that it has ever really stopped since the end of WWII. 

Take a moment and reflect that as John Kennedy said, "We all inhabit the same planet, breathe the same air, and we are all mortal."  When will learn to let all our brothers and sisters live in peace? 

Okay, here we go. 

A family member who is an NBA fanatic called us last night- we just had to take Jaylen Brunson of the Knicks to score more than 25 points ( he ended with 40) and then roll that money (a bet called If...then) on  a parlay: the Spurs money line over OKC and  De'Aaron Fox over 2.5 three pointers (he got three of them).  So as we used to say over the phone to our dear departed friend and bookie 52nd Street Irwin :  "If Two dimes on Brunson over 25 then Spurs money line plus Fox over two and a half threes."  There was something romantic about making a surreptitious phone call and using lingo that the average person could not decode. It was much more exciting that tapping a stupid app. 

Ah, to go back to the days when we were a hustling law student roaming the halls of the local courthouse, ostensibly interning for a local criminal defense attorney legend, but in reality taking bets from judges, lawyers, and clerks for Irwin and getting 15% of the profits.  We carried rolls of quarters, medical wipes for the payphones, and a beeper, and competed with the local small-time drug dealers for the payphones:

 "Hey you want some weed or blow?"

"Nah. But we can get you the Jets plus five over the Dolphins tonight if you want. The rest of the books have it at plus four and a half." 

Judge us if you wish, but it not only paid for law school (it was A LOT cheaper back then), it also allowed us to pick up checks at the Palm and these new places that served something called sushi, for our struggling comrades in law school. 

Enough reminiscing. Here we go. There are some very interesting games today. 

Bengals at home over the fading Ravens and getting 2.5? Oh yeah, we like Cincy today. 

Browns at Bears in brutally Chicago cold weather. The under 38.5 looks so tempting, so we will go light on the over. And just a bit on Bears -7.5. This could be a last second FG win, or a 38-10 thumping. 

Here's the marquee matchup: Bills (-1.5) at the Cheaters. Buffalo has not had the season it wanted, but we see them as getting things together and getting hot at the right time. Take Buffalo over NE.  (But let's hope for NE running back Henderson to have a big day for one of Rumpole's FF team). 

A $25 parlay Bengals and Bills money line pays $105 on the Hardrock app- so we are placing this bet, but with more digits at risk.  

And finally THE game everyone will be watching. 74 (actually 44) year old Phillip Rivers starting for the Colts against perhaps the best defense in the NFL: Seattle. Apparently Dan Marino had a scheduling conflict, was not available, and Broadway Joe Namath wanted too much money. Seattle is going to win. BUT Rivers passing for over 155 yards? Yeah, sign us up to root for the old guy every time. 

We are enjoying our third Survivor championship and are sad to report that in our big Vegas contest, we had to pick two teams last week in an effort to narrow the field. One of our picks was Tampa Bay- the team that knocked out Dan Tibbet in our league, and 35% of the remaining players in our Vegas contest- and Rumpole is sadly out just on the bad side of the bubble and we are not cashing anything. Better luck next year. 

LAST GOOD WEEK OF THE YEAR TO TRY A CASE

 The last good week of the year to try a case is next week. Everyone, including jurors, are in a holiday mood.  Answer ready for trial. 

The prior post answer to the quiz (RCA 1929 report) also yielded the nugget that Rumpole is reading Andrew Ross Sorkin's bestseller 1929 on the 1929 crash. The book reads like a mystery thriller. And this is the perfect subject for our Financial Thursday ( (c) Rumpole & REGJB Blog 2025) blog post. 

Want to make money? Be a contrarian. Go left when everyone goes right and remember Warren Buffet's great lines about his philosophy: When people are greedy, be fearful. When people are fearful, be greedy.

We are NOT in 1929 with the AI stocks. We are looking at this time with Nvidia, AVGO (Broadcom), Marvel, Taiwan Semi Conductor, and AMD, similar to the time of Microsoft and Apple circa 1995. We are on the cusp of a revolution that will change everything from how you practice law, to how McDonalds gets you your Big Mac, fries, and coke, and everything in between.  Heart surgery; creation of movies; travel; house cleaning; investing; restaurant reservations; medical decisions; schooling- you name it- AI will change it. 

Without anyone knowing, we have sprinkled our posts these last few months with those created entirely by AI. Chat GBT is given this blog address and then asked to create a post on farming in our voice, and it does such a good job, even we were fooled. 

So here is the thing. Find your AI stock. A chip stock, a software stock for AI, a switch stock like Arista Networks, an energy company or a construction company that is constructing the buildings housing the AI centers. Slowly accumulate a nice position and then email us in 2030 thanking us for helping you make your first ten million.  Buying Apple or Amazon in 1999 would not have made you tens of millions in 2002, but it would have done so by now, and even earlier- like 2015. So pick your horse and get on and ride. 

FYI Here's your AI generated post on farming in our voice: 

Ah, farming, dear reader — that ancient profession far more honest than anything occurring on the ninth floor of the Justice Building. While we lawyers till our briefs and sow our motions in the stony soil of judicial temperament, the humble farmer rises with the sun, not to face a docket of squabbling counsel, but to coax life itself from the earth. No discovery disputes, no surprise witnesses, no ASA claiming “Your Honor, the victim wants the max.” Only weather, soil, sweat, and the eternal hope that this year’s crop will fare better than last term’s trial schedule. And between you and me, if judges possessed half the patience of a man waiting for his corn to grow, we’d all get out of hearings in time for a Cafecito. 

A SHORT BLOG MEDIA QUIZ

AND THE ANSWER IS: RADIO! RCA's annual report 1929. 

And you can find that and read a truly thrilling historical account of the 1929 crash that reads like a novel in Andrew Ross Sorkin's bestseller 1929. If you want to read what Rumpole reads, grab this book for your holiday reading, and you can thank us on January 1.

 Which company's annual report stated the following? 

" Radio/Television/Facebook/Instagram/Tik Tok/ (pick one) has helped create a vast new audience of a magnitude which was never dreamed off...this audience, invisible but attentive, differs not only in size but in kind from any audience the world has ever known, a linking up of millions of homes and people."

A. RCA's annual report in 1929;

B. Colombia Broadcast Systems' (CBS) annual report 1950.

C. Facebook's annual report 2013;

D. Meta's (owns Instagram) annual report 2014;

E. ByteDance's (Chinese Company that owns Tik Tok) annual report 2022;

IMAGINE

 Imagine if this "unspeakable tragedy" had not occurred forty-five years ago this Monday night- as announced by Howard Cosell on Monday Night Football as a college freshman Rumpole watched in shock and sadness.  

NFL WEEK 14 2025

UPDATE:  👑 We have a winner in the 2025 award winning, famous REGJB Survivor Pool, and for the third (?) time, it is your humble blogger 👑 Rumpole. And we are a bit sad. Dan Tibbet played a very strategic game. He went 14 games deep into a difficult season, and he would have been a worthy champion. But maybe in what is shaping up to be Rumpole's swan song season in football/blog related activities, this was bound to happen. It was a good win against a deep field of experienced players. We hope the new blog operators continue what is now a twenty-plus year blog and REGJB tradition.  👑 We shut down our iconic email FBpool12@gmail.com for maybe the last time, and say maybe we will see you next year, and maybe we won't. Adventure beyond the confines of Miami and the REGJB awaits! 👑 

We are feeling very good this football Sunday. Early in 2024 someone whispered "Indiana" in our ear, and we have been riding the Hoosiers football team like our investment in Nvidia circa 2015. Last night we had the Hoosiers with the money line over Ohio State. While we still think the Buckeyes are the best college football tram in the nation, we cashed on the Hoosiers and ordered the king crab legs in a late-night repast. 

Survivor Pool: Ace Appellate Lawyer Dan Tibbett refuses to lose, as does Rumpole, so on we go into week 14. DT picks the Bucs at home, and Rumpole picks the Broncos to bounce back in Las Vegas. 

Today we like the Seahawks - 6.5 at the reeling Atlanta Falcons. 

We also like the J E T S Jets Jets Jets at home over your Miami Dolphins. We were at the Fins last week and watched them do just about everything they could to throw away the game to the Saints (and they costs us money, blowing a 4th Q 9 point lead, only to pull out a 4 point win when we were laying 5). The Jets are having a bit of resurgence, so we will take them, at a cold Meadowlands in New Jersey +2.5 over Miami. 

We are also going to do a $20 parlay Seattle & Jets. 

For our longshot today, Bengals +225 money line at Buffalo. Cincy is not out of the playoff race yet, and Joe Burrough is back with his two all pro wide receivers. Buffalo...? We cannot explain why they are up and down this year, when they should have run away with the AFC. But they are. So we are going with Who Dey? today.

The weather in Buffalo (snow ❄) and Jax (rain ⛆) has us taking Under 54.5 Bills/Bengals and under 45.5 Indy/Jax. 

For Monday night we are watching the Eagles /Chargers line. Philly is -2.5 on the road. We think the smart money will go on Philly, so if the line moves, we will start taking the Eagles. 

Who's traveling for the holidays? 

THE CARRY TRADE

 Our readers asked for more financial/investment content. You ask/we deliver.* 

To explain a Carry Trade, we need to define terms. 1) Selling short. A stock or bond goes up or down. An experienced investor who thinks the stock/bond is going to go down can sell it without owning it. Really. It's called selling short. If you think XYZ that has a price of 100 is going down, you sell it at 100 and get the hundred bucks. That's a good part. Let's say you're right and the stock falls to 90. You buy it at 90 and the ten dollars is your profit. Sold at 100 & bought at 90. The downside is let's say you're wrong and the stock goes to 110, then you have lost 10 dollars. The risk in this trade is that your potential loss is unlimited as the stock can just keep going up. Selling short is for experienced traders only. We do it very rarely. Global Crossing way back in the 90's. Snap about ten years ago. 

Okay, still with us? 

There's a group of traders controlling a large amount of money- as much as 100 billion dollars. For almost all of 2010-2025, the Bank Of Japan (BOJ- Japan's equivalent of our fed) kept Japan's interest rate very low- around 1%. During that time the rate of a standard US Treasury Bond was between 4-6%. 

SO, the traders SOLD the Japanese bond at 1% and got the cash. They BOUGHT the US Treasury at say 4% and the difference in the price (called arbitrage) was profit. For example. Sell a thousand-dollar Japanese bond at 1% and pay ten dollars a year in 1% interest. Buy a US Treasury bond for the thousand dollars you got from the Japanese bond at 4% and collect 4% interest/ forty dollars a year. A thirty dollar a year profit!  Now do that for 50 billion dollars and you are making some Rumpole type money.  This is called The Carry Trade. 

BUT what happens when the BOJ decides to raise rates? As Scooby Doo would say "ruup ro!"  The sharp traders bopping along making their 3% arbitrage profit while sipping margaritas in Cabo and looking for their next Lambo have a problem. They need to raise cash to unwind the trade. They have to buy back those billions in Japanese bonds they have sold short. So they SELL their US stocks where they have put their profits (it's complicated why they can't sell their US bonds- they can, but the price will be falling, and they don't want to take another loss) so what happens when a few large firms start dumping billions of US equities? The stock market falls. No Santa Claus rally. 😢

This last happened in January of this year, causing the stock market to rapidly fall for no discernable reason after the Yen strengthened in December 2024.  And it may happen again as Japan's new prime minister (their first female PM) takes bold steps to energize the Japanese economy. 

What to do? Not much. What you need to understand is that there is an external force (unwinding the Japanese Carry Trade) causing stocks to fall. Nothing is wrong with the companies whose stock is being sold by the traders who need to close out their positions in Japan. An external and unrelated issue is causing their price to fall. But people who have their money in those stocks get scared and they start selling as well, and the price falls even more. It usually takes about a week for everything to stabilize. 

So what to do(2)? Remember the wise words of the best investor our generation -Warren Buffet. When people are greedy, be fearful. When people are fearful, be greedy. 

Will all of this happen? Maybe. Watch what the BOJ does on interest rates in December. And then watch the market, and if possible, channel your inner Warren Buffet and be greedy.

We may call these our "Financial Thursdays" because "Financial Fridays" is just too obvious. 

*Except when we don't feel like it. 

LEADING BY EXAMPLE

 President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863 in the President's Office. 

President Truman signed Executive Order 9981 on July 26, 1948, which integrated the US Armed Forces. 

President Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne to Little Rock Arkansas to enforce Brown v. Board of Education and integrate Central High School over Governor Faubus's refusal to comply with Brown. 

President Kennedy proposed a Civil Rights Bill which President Johnson signed into law as the 1964 Civil Rights Act. 

Martin Luther King dreamed of a world where his children were judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. 

President Reagan said "Our nation is a nation of immigrants. More than any other country, our strength comes from our own immigrant heritage and our capacity to welcome those from other lands."

On December 2, 2025, the current president of the United States, during a Cabinet Meeting, called US Representative Ilhan Omar "Garbage" (she is of Somali descent) and then said about the Somali population: "They contribute nothing. I don't want them in our country. Their country is no good for a reason, and I don't want them in our country." 

So much for judging a person as an individual instead of as a class of people. 

Somalis are garbage. 

Irish are drunks. 

Italians are thieves. 

Jews are money hungry. 

Asians are sneaky.

Civil lawyers are pernicious, and people from Hialeah are weird. (Ok, some depictions are truer than not). 

We have a president who is spouting racist tropes as his way of leading by example. America 2025.