What’s in This Week’s Issue…

Good morning. There's a place in America where teachers can't afford to teach, nurses can't afford to heal, and police officers can't afford to protect the communities they serve.

It's not a war zone or a natural disaster area.

It's the Hamptons. A place where America's ultra-rich have perfected the art of turning money into a weapon against everyone else.

What happened there isn't just about expensive real estate. It's a blueprint for how extreme wealth captures entire communities, hollows them out, and rebuilds them as exclusion zones where only billionaires belong.

And that blueprint is spreading across America.

So this week…

• 🏆 The Big Play: How America's ultra-rich turned the Hamptons into a blueprint for economic exclusion

• 💪 The Power Move: What the Hamptons can teach you about the future of every American community

• 💵 Follow the Money: Is China creating a new world order?

-GEN

🏆 The Big Play

The biggest money power story of the week.

How America's Ultra-Rich Built Their Own Country

To understand the Hamptons today, you have to start with what it used to be.

Once a mix of fishing villages, family farms, and modest homes, it was a place where locals lived year-round and seasonal visitors brought life to the community without overwhelming it.

But when Wall Street fortunes exploded in the 1980s and 1990s, the Hamptons became something else entirely. Billionaires and hedge fund managers arrived with blank checks, and the market forces did the rest.

What happened next unfolded in three stages:

1. The Great Buyout

The first phase was about accumulation.

Homes that once sheltered families became investments, bought up by the wealthy as investment portfolios:

• Median home prices in East Hampton jumped from around $400,000 in 1995 to over $2 million today.

• In Sagaponack, the median price hit $3.9 million, making it America's most expensive ZIP code.

• Over 60% of Hamptons housing is now seasonal, sitting empty most of the year.

This is more than just rising prices. It’s a structural shift.

Housing in the Hamptons no longer functions as shelter. It functions as a financial instrument, and like every financial instrument, its value rises by excluding those without capital.

And this is where the Hamptons story becomes a masterclass in how money becomes political power.

2. The Affordability Crisis That Broke the Middle Class

When billionaires buy homes, they aren’t just changing neighborhoods, they’re changing who can live there at all:

• A teacher making $65,000 would need nearly $240,000 in income to afford an average home in the Hamptons. Nurses, firefighters, and restaurant workers are in the same impossible position.

• Renters fare no better. Many homes rent for $60,000–$100,000 for a single summer, leaving year-round workers unable to compete.

• Local data shows that one in four households spends over half their income on housing costs, far above the threshold considered sustainable.

This creates a devastating situation for the community there:

• Restaurants and shops can’t find staff because workers can’t afford to live nearby.

• Hospitals face shortages as nurses and doctors either commute for hours or leave altogether.

• Some workers sleep in vans or cars, while others drive nearly two hours each way just to keep schools, clinics, and small businesses running.

This is the paradox of the Hamptons: the richer it gets, the poorer it becomes for everyone who isn’t rich.

3. Politics as a Weapon of Exclusion

If this was just about market forces, the story might end there. But the final stage of the Hamptons’ transformation came from politics.

The ultra-rich didn’t just rely on money. They used it to build a political moat to ensure the system stays locked in their favor:

• Zoning laws were rewritten to require three-acre minimum lots in places like Sagaponack, effectively banning affordable housing.

• When a modest 50-unit housing project for veterans was proposed in Southampton, it was stalled and blocked after years of lawsuits, delays, and pressure from wealthy residents.

• Billionaires frame opposition as “environmental protection” or “preserving character,” but the result is always the same: keep working-class families out.

• On the campaign trail, private fundraisers hosted in Hamptons mansions ensure that local and national politicians remain aligned with the interests of their donors, not their constituents.

This is how you get a closed system:

Housing scarcity drives prices higher → politics locks out reform → and the Hamptons becomes more exclusive with every passing year.

This is no longer a community broken by accident.

It’s a system functioning exactly as designed: a fortress for the wealthy, permanently sealed off from everyone else.

💪 The Power Moves

Playbook for understanding the game of power.

What the Hamptons Teaches Us About the Future

The Hamptons is not just about the Hamptons. It’s a case study in how wealth remakes geography and politics until the rules of daily life are written for the rich and against everyone else.

Their playbook is simple:

1. Identify a desirable location.

2. Buy it out with cash and speculation.

3. Use politics to keep it locked up forever.

We’re already seeing the same dynamics play out elsewhere: Aspen, Martha’s Vineyard, coastal California, and even small towns being reshaped by remote wealth.

Once the process starts, reversing it is almost impossible.

The lesson isn’t to rage against the Hamptons. It’s to recognize the pattern early because once wealth captures a community, it doesn’t let go.

The Takeaway:

So, in today’s economy, every place can be financialized.

Your financial future depends on recognizing whether you are building a community or simply living inside someone else’s investment portfolio.

💵 Following the Money

Three of the wildest financial and corruption stories from around the world.

#1 - Is China planning a new global order: Xi, Putin, and Kim showcase power in Beijing 🇨🇳

#2 - Venezuela’s Maduro condemns US Naval buildup as regime change plot 🇻🇪

#3 - OpenAI strengthens ChatGPT protections after Florida teen’s suicide 🤖

✨ Poll time!

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