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President Reagan famously said that the closest thing to eternal life on this earth is a government agency. Surely that aphorism applies to the Federal RESERVE. And most especially when you put a Trumpian ALL CAPS focus on the “reserve” part of its title.

That is to say, the purpose of the 1913 act had nothing to do with the Fed’s present-day “goals” with respect to inflation, unemployment, economic growth, housing starts, business capex, or any other aspect of the ebb and flow of commerce on Main Street. Instead, the Federal Reserve Act’s far more modest remit was to fix the badly flawed “reserve” arrangements of the National Banking Act that good old Abe Lincoln and his Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase had put into place to finance the civil war.

What the latter actually did was to nearly tax out of existence the honest free enterprise state banks that had prevailed during America’s growth explosion prior to the Civil War in favor of a system of federally regulated “national banks”. But the latter were just thinly disguised servants of the US Treasury. In that capacity, they were required to hold US Treasury bonds as collateral to back the issuance of their own bank notes—the latter being the essence of the 19th-century banking business.

As it happened, during the 50 years after the Civil War, fiscal prudence prevailed in Washington—even as the proceeds from Uncle Sam’s “revenue tariffs” soared owing to America’s booming commerce with the world. The result was that nearly 80% of the Civil War Debt was paid down by 1913, and the remaining debt, at less than 3% of GDP, amounted to barely $10 per US citizen.

So at that point Abe Lincoln’s war debt monetization machine was no longer needed, and the Civil War inflation had also been long-extinguished after the US officially went on the gold standard in 1879. Still, the awkward cantilevered reserve-holding structure of the Civil War banking system had lingered on.

The latter required local or so-called “country” banks to retain roughly 15% of their demand deposits as cash reserves, of which 60% could be placed at a dozen or so regional “reserve city” banks. In turn, these regional reserve city banks were required to maintain an even higher reserve ratio (around 25%)—of which 50% could be deposited with a third tier of “central reserve city” banks located in St. Louis, Chicago, and New York City.

Needless to say, during ordinary times, the central reserve city banks, and most especially the New York money center banks, were awash in the cash that would flow in from the “country” banks of the hinterlands and build up through the pyramid of regional reserve city banks. That sea of cash cascading to Wall Street, Chicago, and St. Louis would then frequently be put to work as overnight margin loans to the nation’s original stock market speculators and “hedge funds”.

Of course, the problem was that at certain times of the year, like the fall harvest, or when business conditions changed due to droughts, trouble in export markets, over-investment in new technologies like railroads or mechanized farm equipment, etc., the cash flows in the cantilevered reserve structure would be thrown into reverse. To wit, country banks would draw down deposits at the regional reserve city banks to meet the withdrawal demands of their customers. In turn, the regional reserve city banks would drain deposits from the central reserve city banks, which would be forced to liquidate their margin loans, sending the stock markets into a periodic crash and tizzy of liquidation.

While these periodic “panics” were claimed to cause severe hardships down the line to Main Street and to subtract from national prosperity, present-day scholars like Professor Wicker of Ohio State have shown otherwise namely, that these 19th century panics were very short-lived and did not much interfere with the relentless rise of industrial production, economic wealth and living standards after the Civil War.

Most especially, these “panics” did not establish in any way, shape or form a case for a modern day “central bank” in the business of macro-management of the GDP and unemployment rates; and most certainly did not remotely suggest need for central bank administered 2% inflation target, which would have been pointless under the gold standard, anyway. The latter actually generated a net zero rise in the general price level in the US between 1879 and 1913.

Thus, the Congressional authors of the 1913 act merely sought to remove the reserve structure rigidities of Lincoln’s banking system and most especially its tendency to drain the nation’s banking reserves into the big central city reserve banks. That was, in fact, the first and foremost objective of the act’s intellectual architect and draftsman, Congressman Carter Glass, who was a financially literate small-town newspaper editor from Virginia.

In brief, Congressman Glass’ scheme centered on the creation of 12 equal regional “reserve banks” that would operate “discount windows” empowered to advance cash loans to member banks. Such discount loans were to be based on solid commercial loan collateral and would bear interest at market rates plus a penalty spread.

The implicit point of the scheme was to make the national bank system more liquid and “elastic” by providing “borrowed reserves” to meet customer withdrawal demands in lieu of liquidating cash balances within the tiered national banking system. This discount window-based mechanism was, in essence, a “money printing” scheme, but its purpose was merely to eliminate the cause of banking “panics” on the presumption that the gold standard and free market capitalism would handle growth, investment, inflation, and prosperity without any help from a monetary Sherpa in Washington.

Indeed, the heart of the system was the decentralized reserve banks spread from Boston to Kansas City, Dallas, and San Francisco. The Board of Governors in Washington, in fact, was more an honorific and largely powerless afterthought to give a “Federal” veneer to the scheme. But Carter Glass wanted the core discount loan-making function of the reserve banks to be domiciled as far from the big Wall Street banks as possible.

In short, the Glassian discount window-based money-printing system did not sever the dollar’s link to gold. Nor did it provide any kind of mandate whatsoever for macroeconomic management of the US economy.

And more crucially still, it did not even recognize US Treasury debt as a valid form of collateral to be used by member banks to obtain discount loans or what amounted to “borrowed reserves” at the 12 regionalized Reserve Banks.

Instead, it tethered the Reserve Bank printing presses to the ebb and flow of commerce on Main Street. That is, the reserve banks could print new central bank credit only after goods had been produced and then pledged as collateral for commercial bank credits, which in turn had been rehypothecated for cash advances at the Federal Reserve discount windows.

In short, there was a double barrier against the modern 20th-century form of peacetime “inflation”. To wit, the gold standard remained intact because dollars created by the banking system and the new Federal Reserve could be redeemed for gold without limit—even at the small denomination level of gold coins.

Secondly, under the Glassian monetary regime known as the “real bills doctrine,” supply always preceded demand per Say’s Law. Production of goods in the real economy came first, followed by spendable commercial bank credit and central bank money.

If we fast forward for a moment to March 2020, however, we get a scintillating glimpse of what the Gipper meant by the eternal life of Federal bureaucracies. To wit, in its capacity as the leading bank regulator in the US, the Fed actually abolished any and all “reserve” requirements in the US banking system, and therefore the entirety of its original reason for existence. The replacement regime based on capital and liquidity ratios has no need for central bank credit at all.

But, alas, the Fed did not put itself out of business in March 2020. To the contrary, in less than 26 months, it generated $4.8 trillion of new central bank credit–or more than it had issued during its first 106 years of operation. That’s because the original narrow liquidity purpose of the Federal Reserve banks had long been surpassed by sweeping mission creep that had finally resulted in today’s form of monetary central planning.

And this “mission creep” started almost from the day the Fed went into operation in November 1914. To wit, 30 months after the Fed opened its doors, Woodrow Wilson took America into a pointless war in Europe and needed massive amounts of cash to fund a two-million-man army that was being mobilized, trained, and deployed to France from scratch.

So he committed the greatest possible monetary sin. Namely, he untethered the Fed’s printing press from the ebb and flow of Main Street commerce, allowing US Treasury debt to become eligible collateral for Discount Window loans.

Needless to say, it was off to the races from there. Self-evidently, politicians have an infinite capacity to spend and borrow on the state’s credit when the discipline of rising yields and “crowding out” in the bond pits is short-circuited by central bank absorption of the government’s debt as “collateral” for printing press credits.

As it happened, financing America’s lurch into the Great War provided the playbook for funding the permanent Warfare State and Welfare State that emerged in the century to follow. But at the time it seemed simple and harmless enough: To wit, the US Treasury sold massive amounts of Liberty Bonds to everyday people in a kind of grand Red Cross blood drive, while the folks who bought the bonds were able to borrow most of the payment from their local national banks.

In turn, they could pledge these Liberty Loans as collateral to obtain discount window advances from the Federal Reserve banks to fund their balance sheets; and, conveniently, at interest rates slightly below the yields on the Liberty Bonds, which were the underlying collateral.

Needless to say, this scheme worked for the short duration of the war because the excess demand created by monetizing the war loans was being dissipated in the bloody trenches of northern France. At length, in fact, the household debts to fund the Liberty Bonds were paid off after the war’s end, and the bloated level of Federal Reserve credit which had enabled them was paid down, as well.

But before long, the commercial banks had what amounted to a hissy fit over dividends from the Federal Reserve. The member banks technically owned the Federal Reserve system and had become accustomed to the dividend flow from the surge in discount window loans that had funded the Liberty Bonds.

When the latter had been liquidated after the war, of course, the dividends dried up. So immense pressure developed within the system to rebuild Federal Reserve balance sheets so that system profits and dividend-paying capacity might be restored. And, as post-war prosperity surged by 1923, a solution was found.

To wit, under the guidance of the newly formed FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee), the reserve banks began to buy bonds in the open market based on newly minted Federal Reserve credit, which in turn generated system profits and dividends.

Nevertheless, what started as a money-making side gig was progressively transformed into an instrument of “national policy”. This famously started at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York under the leadership of ex-JP Morgan Banker Benjamin Strong.

During the Benjamin Strong era, the national policy objective was mainly to help France and England recover from the fiscal calamity of the Great War, but the die had now been cast. Rather than operating the printing presses to service a passive discount window by issuing commerce-based advances to member banks, the printing presses were now taken over by an FOMC that was in the national policy business and able to operate with virtually unlimited discretionary power over the entire financial system and US economy.

It was only a short leap from there to Greenspanian monetary central planning, but two interim steps by Oval Office miscreants Franklin Roosevelt and Tricky Dick Nixon opened the door to today’s inflationary disaster.

In 1933, FDR decreed that citizens could not own or trade in gold to protect themselves from inflationary central bankers. And then in August 1971, Tricky Dick supplied the coup de grâce by closing the gold window to foreign central banks as well.

Now America’s money was all fiat, all the time. And, not surprisingly, since August 1971, the consumer’s dollar has also lost 87% of its purchasing power.

Reprinted with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.

The post How We Got Here: A Brief History of America’s Banking System appeared first on LewRockwell.

It is interesting how President Donald Trump keeps whining about the 20 alleged Israeli hostages that are reportedly still held by Hamas in Gaza, demanding that they be released immediately, while ignoring the hundreds of unarmed Palestinians that are being murdered daily by Israeli military and armed contractors as well as by deliberate starvation. Also, the thousands of Palestinians who had nothing to do with Hamas or Gaza and are nevertheless being held without charge in Israeli prisons under horrific conditions including torture are of no interest to the US president and his team. Trump is of course profoundly ignorant, demonstrated most recently during his 55 minute rambling speech to the United Nations General Assembly in which he attacked both the UN institutionally as well as nearly every delegate and nation represented in the room, minus the Palestinians, of course, for whom he had blocked the issuance of visas guaranteeing that they would have no voice or presence in New York. Trump’s recent performances have also reflected an increase in his demands to harden sanctions and isolate Russia economically, something which is in no one’s interest but the odious President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and the powerful Jewish lobby in the US and Europe.

Never satisfied with anything that he encounters where he is not kowtowed to or flattered, Trump is now having the US Secret Service investigate alleged United Nations sabotage behind three alleged personal insults experienced by him during his UN visit, including a non-functioning escalator stairway, a failure of the auditorium sound system, and a misfunction of the teleprompter (which was apparently being operated by a White House staffer). An always low-class Trump characteristically threatened the teleprompter operator personally by stopping his speech and announcing to the entire assembly “Whoever is operating this teleprompter is in big trouble.”

And Trump also goes well beyond that habitual mouthing off the first thoughts to appear in his large but dysfunctional head in that he lacks any real moral code and/or compassion apart from his cardinal rule, which appears to be “Give Israel whatever it wants!” Indeed, beyond that ongoing foreign policy disaster vis-à-vis Gaza, Trump has a viciousness that rises to the surface on a regular basis, including during his speech at the memorial service for Charlie Kirk, where he made clear that Kirk’s path of dialogue with critics was not his way, that he “hated” all his “opponents.”

And Trump’s team also makes sure that everyone understands that America is carrying the flag for the Jewish state. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, during his recent visit to Israel, said that a diplomatic solution to the Gaza war may not be possible because “Hamas is a terrorist group, a barbaric group, whose stated mission is the destruction of the Jewish State.” He thus confirmed, first of all, that he fails to understand that it is Israel that has been the terrorist state targeting all its neighbors for the past 80 years. He also confirmed the Trump administration’s full political and military support for the genocide and ethnic cleansing that Israel is engaged in while also providing money and weapons that enable the actual killing to implement “the final solution” for Palestine. Presumably the removal of Palestinians will permit the construction of the Trump Gaza Resort to begin while Jews from Brooklyn can settle an Arab-free West bank, eliminating the possibility of some kind of Palestinian state forever, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised while listing his accomplishments last week.

And there was more action in compliance with Israeli demands apart from the appalling Trump speech. On Friday September 19th, the United States vetoed a crucial United Nations Security Council resolution demanding a ceasefire in Gaza, even as Israel was expanding its final ground offensive on Gaza City. The resolution, had been approved by 14 of the 15 members of the council on the day before, calling for an “immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in Gaza respected by all parties”, as well as the release of all captives held by Hamas and the end of restrictions on food, medicine and other humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Drafted by the council’s 10 elected rather than its 5 permanent members, the resolution cited the “catastrophic” humanitarian situation in Gaza after nearly two years of unrelenting war, which has killed at least 65,141 people, according to Palestinian health officials, though the “official” number is disputed and the true total of deaths undoubtedly numbers in the hundreds of thousands, with most of the bodies still buried under the rubble or incinerated or torn about by the heavy US-provided ordnance being employed by Israel.

The United States predictably vetoed the effort, the sixth time it has done so to protect the Jewish state from the war crimes it is carrying out. Morgan Ortagus, US deputy special envoy to the Middle East, who is predictably Jewish, raised her arm to vote in something like a Nazi salute and announced that “US opposition to this resolution will come as no surprise. It fails to condemn Hamas or recognize Israel’s right to defend itself, and it wrongly legitimizes the false narratives benefitting Hamas, which have sadly found currency in this council.”

Ortagus also claimed that the starvation narrative is a fabrication, that the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification’s official declaration of famine in Gaza last month had employed “flawed methodology.” She instead chose to praise the work of the heavily militarized US and Israel backed GHF hubs, where, it has been demonstrated, hundreds of Palestinians have been deliberately targeted and killed while seeking food for their families.

How do the Jews and more particularly the Israeli Jews get away with it? Well, the Jewish billionaires who have corrupted the US political system and media have been able to control the narrative almost completely, though that advantage is beginning to fade as more ordinary Americans have come realize how completely awful the Gaza genocide is. Opinion polls reveal that disapproval of Israel is running at 60% among the American public. There is also a growing sense among the public that Israel and its Lobby in the United States have been manipulating and using the US ever since the founding of the Jewish state. Under Genocide Joe Biden and the feckless Donald Trump that manipulation has been wide out in the open and Israel is now in a position where it is even able to compel America to go to war on its behalf, admittedly a feat that it accomplished initially by way of a Jewish controlled Pentagon under George W Bush when Iraq was destroyed, killing as least half a million Iraqis based on lies generated to demonstrate how Baghdad was a threat potentially armed with “weapons of mass destruction.” Many observers now believe that Iran will be attacked by Israel before the end of the year and Donald Trump will jump right in under pressure from Netanyahu, another extreme case of the “tail wagging the dog!”

To be sure, the Israel Lobby is aware that public opinion is running heavily against the Jewish state and they have now stepped-up efforts to obtain even greater control over the message that is coming out from the media. Their latest success has related to TikTok which has been under attack by groups like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and its hideous leader Jonathan Greenblatt during the past year for its allowing stories to appear critical of Israeli behavior.

Falling in line with Jewish demands, the White House has announced that the forced sale of TikTok will soon be finalized. To no one’s surprise, the new ownership is led by ultra-Zionist Jewish billionaire Larry Ellison – the largest individual donor to the Israel Defense Force – who will reportedly take full control of the US user data and the site algorithms which the White House says will be “retrained”. That means it will only include material that is positive on Israel.

Ellison, who made his fortune developing Oracle – a database system he originally built for the CIA – already controls CBS, Paramount, MTV, Comedy Central, Showtime, Nickelodeon (which makes kids shows) as well as Channel 10 in Australia and Channel 5 in the UK. Ellison is also expected to finalize control over Warner Bros. Discovery (including CNN, HBO and the Discovery channel) before the end of 2025.

Even before the forced sale is finalized, censorship of TikTok content critical of Israel has already begun. Fox – a Rupert Murdoch pro-Israel asset – is also seeking to join the Ellison consortium, a move that could further extend and solidify the Israeli-aligned information bubble.

The United States still has over three years of the Trump adventure left so more surprises are likely in store. Beyond the national and international news and entertainment media, Israeli-aligned Jewish billionaires already either own or control OpenAI, Google, Meta/Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp, Palantir, CBS, HBO, and most of Conde Nast (Reddit, Vogue, The New Yorker, Wired, GQ, Vanity Fair) as well as numerous Hollywood studios, regional papers and radio stations. The expansion into all these areas has been deliberate with the intention of using the control to support Israel and also keep the United States in the tight grip of the Jewish state and its domestic US lobby.

At this point my fellow Americans it is time to begin to fight back or surrender to the forces that will strip us of our free speech just for starters and which will create a United States which is controlled by a tiny little murderous fascist state in the Middle East that is willing to bribe and threaten its way to power and which does not in any way share the values upon which our nation was founded. Which way will we go?

Reprinted with permission from Unz Review.

The post As Israel Becomes a Global Pariah Trump Ramps Up Support appeared first on LewRockwell.

Are we wise enough to refuse politicians’ offer of “free money” to spend today that was stolen from our future, and from our future generations? Probably not.

Can Social Security be saved for future generations? Many have already concluded it’s hopeless, and if the current trajectory is left untouched, that is pretty much baked in. Only a radical reform of the program’s basic purpose, design and funding mechanisms could return the program to anything resembling sustainability and fairness.

Let’s start with a thought experiment: what if Social Security (SSA) had been an authentic pension plan rather than a pay-as-you-go social welfare program? The program’s accounting artifices obscure the reality that there is no “trust fund” of cash sitting in an account somewhere; all benefits are paid out of taxes collected from workers and employers today.

An authentic pension plan deducts a percentage from workers’ earned income and deposits these into a fund that earns income. The fund is in effect a savings account that accumulates the monthly deposits and interest until the worker retires, at which point the fund starts disbursing monthly retirement payments and continues to collect interest on the fund’s remaining balance.

In contrast, the SSA “trust fund” is an accounting gimmick that makes everyone feel warm and fuzzy, but it’s nothing more than self-serving delusion. The “trust fund” holds “non-marketable securities,” a nice way of masking the truth which is when SSA payroll tax revenues don’t cover SSA expenditures, the Treasury makes up the difference by selling Treasury bonds–the same way it pays for all other deficit spending.

When Social Security was launched in the late 1930s, the benefits were modest, and many people didn’t live long enough to collect benefits at age 65. The taxes collected from employers and employees were modest. The percentage of the populace who qualified to receive SSA benefits was also modest, while the population paying SSA taxes included every formally employed worker and their employee.

Fast-forward to 1970, the first year I paid SSA taxes as a 16-year old field worker in the summer before my senior year of high school. As the chart below notes, the US population in 1970 was 203 million, and the 25.7 million people who received SSA benefits were 12.6% of the total population. Total SSA program costs were $32 billion. For comparison’s sake, the Department of Defense (DoD) budget in 1970 was $80 billion.

In 2025, the situation has changed. The US population increased 67% to 340 million, the number of SSA beneficiaries has nearly tripled from 25.7 million to 74.5 million, and the program now costs about $1.6 trillion annually–almost double the 2025 DoD budget of $840 billion.

As noted on the chart below, SSA program costs have doubled from $800 billion in 2013, only 12 years ago, to $1.6 trillion today.

As is common when programs have essentially unlimited budgets and vast tax revenue streams, mission creep expanded those eligible to receive SSA benefits to include disability and Supplemental Security Income (SSI). These additional beneficiaries added to the program costs without increasing the tax rate collected from employers/employees, which has been unchanged at 12.4% (6.2% each from employer and employee) since 1990.

(The 2.9% Medicare payroll tax rate collected with SSA payroll taxes has been unchanged since 1986: 1.45% each for employer and employee.)

To answer this question–what if Social Security (SSA) had been an authentic pension plan rather than a pay-as-you-go social welfare program?–I did a deep dive into my own 55-year record of SSA contributions. This required some heavy lifting, as annual changes in inflation and the interest rate paid must be accounted for.

I used the BLS inflation calculator to adjust annual inflation, and the 10-year US Treasury bond yield as the benchmark for interest–in other words, as if my entire SSA payroll tax had been invested at the end of each year in 10-year US Treasury bonds. Yes, I know there are many quibbles with these benchmarks, but at least we can agree they are reasonable benchmarks.

The SSA calculates your benefit based on your highest 25 years of income, so the lowest-income 30 years of my 55 years of paying SSA and income taxes are dropped. The SSA also considers the average income of full-time workers: SSA National Average Wage Index. (On rare occasions, my income exceeded the average, but was generally sub-average.)

Adjusting your income for inflation and then organizing the adjusted number from highest to lowest offers interesting insights into the purchasing power of your wages over time. These reflect each decade’s broad-based standard of living, as the higher the purchasing power of one’s wages, the higher one’s standard of living.

Adjusted for inflation, my highest earnings years were: 1989, 1997, 1990, 1985, 1976 and 1977. Two in the 1970s, when I was 23 and 24 years old, two in the 1980s, and two in the 1990s, decades in which more of the economic expansion “trickled down” to wages, a trend that ceased by the turn of the century when the dot-com bubble burst.

It is a sobering reflection on the US economy that the purchasing power of my wages as an apprentice carpenter at age 23 were rarely equaled in the five decades since. In terms of what my wages could buy, my earnings have never gone as far as they did in the mid-1970s, which is close to the peak of labor’s share of the national income.

By pure happenstance, my monthly Social Security retirement benefit is within a few dollars of the national average, so my record happens to reflect the national average. (I started drawing my benefit at full retirement age 67. I continue to pay both employee and employer SSA payroll taxes on my self-employed income as a scribbler, ahem, “content creator.”)

By age 67, the total nestegg of my SSA payroll taxes (not Medicare, only SSA) collecting whatever yield was paid by 10-year Treasury bonds reached $382,000 at age 67. Assuming the bond yields stay around where they are today–which are historically rather average–my nestegg would fund my retirement benefits until age 87, which significantly exceeds the current average life expectancy of American males (78 years).

I understand that many would say investing the payroll taxes in Treasuries is effectively tossing the money on a bonfire, but consider the possibility that if the entire working populace had a stake in Treasuries surviving a financial bubble collapse, then they might start electing (and re-electing) politicians who wouldn’t stripmine everything within reach to get re-elected. That change in values and voting would change the course of the system.

The point of this exercise is to show that if SSA were converted to a true pension plan system, the average wage earner could accumulate a self-funding pension plan just by investing the payroll taxes in Treasury bonds. Yes, I know many would prefer to invest in gold or bitcoin or stocks, but nobody would be stopping anyone from investing their non-SSA savings however they wished.

Read the Whole Article

The post Can Social Security Be Saved for Future Generations? appeared first on LewRockwell.

In the last few days, a significant number of countries have announced their decision to recognize a Palestinian state. At the same time, the leaders of these countries have repeatedly condemned the attacks of October 7. Can you see the problem here? The two positions are logically incompatible.

It makes no sense to repudiate the actions of a group like Hamas as “terrorism” and then cave in to their demands on statehood. And –despite what you might have read in the western media– the explicit goal of the October 7 attacks was the creation of a Palestinian state.(More on that later) So, yes, condemning Hamas’s methods while giving into its demands appears to be hypocritical.

But is that what’s really going on here or are many of these countries simply acknowledging that Hamas is not a terrorist organization at all but a national liberation movement that is justified in defending its land from foreign occupation? (According to Grok– As of September 23, 2025, only 10 countries have designated Hamas as a terrorist organization.The designation is basically a hoax to propagandize western populations) Aren’t these nations simply admitting what reasonable people have known from the beginning, that oppressed people have the right to self-determination (including armed resistance) in cases of colonial domination, foreign occupation, or alien subjugation. These rights are guaranteed under international law.

So, these leaders are not hypocrites; they’re just acknowledging the “rightness” of Hamas cause, which is why they are throwing their support behind an independent Palestinian state.

And in case there’s any dispute about “statehood” being Hamas’s primary objective, here’s a short video of Hamas’s former military chief Yahya Sinwar underscoring that very point:

“Within a limited period of months—which I estimate will not exceed one year—we will force the occupation to face two options: Either we force it to implement international law, respect international resolutions, withdraw from the West Bank and Jerusalem, dismantle the settlements, release the prisoners, and ensure the return of refugees, achieving the establishment of a Palestinian state on the lands occupied in 1967, including Jerusalem; or we place this occupation in a state of contradiction and collision with the entire international order, isolate it in an extreme and powerful manner, and end its integration in the region and the entire world, addressing the state of collapse that has occurred on all fronts of resistance over the past years.” SuppressedNews @SuppressedNws

Sinwar warned them, they should’ve listened pic.twitter.com/q1EvKoVaqd

— Suppressed News. (@SuppressedNws) July 20, 2024

There it is in black and white. The explicit goal of the October 7 attacks was the creation of a Palestinian state. So, if we consider the flurry of activity at the United Nations this week, (Note– Canada, the UK, Portugal, France, Australia, Belgium etc have all joined the “recognizers”. As of September 23, 2025, the State of Palestine is recognized by 156 out of 193 UN member states, representing about 80% of UN membership) we must conclude that –on a political level– Hamas is prevailing in its war with Israel. Of course, on the ground, the outcome is entirely different. Israel has obliterated most of the vital infrastructure and killed tens of thousands in a vengeful war of annihilation. Was that part of Sinwar’s plan as well?

It was. With Trump-Kushner’s sinister plan to “vanish” the Palestinian cause for good (The Abraham Accords) by “normalizing” relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors while ignoring progress on the Palestinian issue, Sinwar realized that he must do something truly explosive to capture the world’s attention and put Palestine atop the regional docket. And that is how he settled on October 7; not as a way to inflict military defeat on Israel (Hamas had no hope of that) but to lure Netanyahu into a violent overreaction that would garner the sympathy of people around the world while plunging Israel into deep and protracted isolation.

Did he succeed?

He did, beyond anyone’s wildest imagination, and even Israeli journalists are beginning to acknowledge the strategic foresight of Sinwar’s plan. Check out this blurb from Carolina Landsman at Haaretz just two days ago:

For Netanyahu, the penny has dropped – former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar checkmated him.

Our own avid chess player, Mr. Security, Mr. War on Terror – the man who devoted his life to preventing a formative Palestinian event – was dragged into playing a part in a scripted historical mega-event. Bibi thought he had besieged the Gaza Strip, but it turns out that Sinwar was the architect of a diplomatic siege on Israel.

The goal of Hamas’ October 7 attack wasn’t a military victory; Hamas lacks the tools to achieve that. The goal was to provoke an Israeli response. Hamas’ murderous attack, with enough documentation to fill three Yad Vashems, was planned to drive Israel out of its mind.

It’s not just the righteous man who knows the soul of his animal, as the biblical book of Proverbs says. A Palestinian who has been jailed in Israel also knows the souls of his jailors…. Sinwar knew that Jews had prepared all their lives for the next Holocaust. That’s why Israel stages flyovers of Auschwitz – to promise that in the event of another Holocaust, we will fight back rather than going like sheep to the slaughter.

This conditioning worked, even if it was only against “terrorists in flip-flops,” as Netanyahu once called them, rather than the Nazi war machine. Following Hamas’ attack, there was nobody to stop the gates of hell from opening. Tragically, Israel played the role Sinwar wrote for the country. It embarked on a campaign of vengeance that even the devil couldn’t have imagined.

And that’s what Sinwar was waiting for. He didn’t create a false facade of genocide; he planned a calculated move that involved exposing his entire people to a genocide that Israel would carry out. The Palestinian genocide was the bloody platter on which their state would be served up.

Sinwar, an expert on Zionism and Jews, pressed all the triggers of Jewish trauma . The note he left about taking “a calculated risk” can now be understood not just a risk, but a calculated genocide.

.... judging by what happened at the United Nations, the move seems to have worked. The world saw a genocide, identified Israel as the party responsible and is finally waking up and taking action (and Sinwar understood both the world and the amount of blood required to awaken it).

This time, the Holocaust isn’t the only historic injustice on the world’s mind as it seeks to advance a solution to the conflict. And just as the Holocaust gave birth to the state of Israel, this genocide will give birth to the Palestinian state. The violence Israel is employing in Gaza has rebounded on it like a diplomatic boomerang….

Bibi thought he had besieged the Gaza Strip, but it turns out that Sinwar was the architect of a diplomatic siege on Israel. In Its Vengeful War in Gaza, Israel Played the Tragic Role Hamas Had Scripted, Haaretz

Bottom line: Netanyahu’s malicious ignorance has helped to create the thing he always hated most, a Palestinian state. The question now is whether Hamas can transform this political victory into a distinct geographical entity with its own borders, independent governing body, and sovereign control over its own territory.

We hope they succeed.

Reprinted with permission from The Unz Review.

The post How Bibi Created a Palestinian State appeared first on LewRockwell.

The only real benefit to this latest western “recognition” of Palestine is that it drew out high-profile Israeli politicians to explain to western liberals in plain English that the entire state of Israel stands opposed to their vision of a two-state solution.

Former Israeli defense minister Benny Gantz has a new op-ed in The New York Times where he explicitly states that opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state is “the heart” of a national consensus among Israelis across the mainstream political spectrum, and that this isn’t an obstacle that will go away once Netanyahu is out of power.

“Too often, Western leaders view our policies in this war not through the lens of national security, but through the prism of individuals — and, in particular, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu,” Gantz writes. “The conversation is often framed as a question of what serves the prime minister, as if Israel’s national security begins and ends with one man. This view is mistaken and counterproductive to global stability, regional normalization and Israel’s own security.”

“I myself have been a vocal critic of Mr. Netanyahu,” says Gantz. “But the nation’s core security interests are not partisan property. Today more than ever, they are anchored by a national consensus that is rooted in the hard realities of our region. Opposition to the recognition of Palestinian statehood stands at the heart of that consensus.”

The dangerous & counterproductive mistake Western Leaders make about a Palestinian State & Israel’s security.

To my full New York Times Op-Ed: https://t.co/5q2yjmGoDk pic.twitter.com/a1vFufJ99n

— בני גנץ – Benny Gantz (@gantzbe) September 24, 2025

He’s spelling it out in black and white. The Bernie Sanders-style framing of the nightmare in Palestine as a Netanyahu problem which can be remedied in short order by a two-state solution is a fairy tale that western liberals tell each other so they don’t have to face the cold hard reality that the problem is the state of Israel itself.

This comes after Netanyahu publicly stated that “There will be no Palestinian state to the west of the Jordan River,” and after former Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant proclaimed that “There will never be a Palestinian state.”

Israel is the problem. Not Netanyahu. Not Hamas. Not that both sides have tragically failed to sit down and find common ground in good-faith negotiations. The problem is that the west established a state in the middle east which holds as its foundational ideology that the people who were living there before that state was created are less than human, and must never have access to the full spectrum of human rights.

The problem is Israel. A state which has always been a racist endeavor from its very inception. A state whose Jewish citizenry are indoctrinated from birth into accepting the hateful, supremacist worldview that is necessary for apartheid and abuse to be accepted as the status quo.

It’s so surreal how Israel can come right out and explicitly say there will never, ever be a Palestinian state and western officials will just keep babbling on about the possibility of Israel and Palestine negotiating a two-state solution as though it never happened. https://t.co/fdocleFU1D

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) September 23, 2025

No solutions are going to emerge until the west gets real about this. As long as western liberals are still buying into the fuzzbrained escapist fantasy that Israel is just an election away from a two-state solution if the US simply keeps funding the Iron Dome and making nice with Tel Aviv, we’re going to continue seeing Israel inflicting the nonstop violence and abuse that is necessary for it to exist in its present iteration as a state.

Any actual, reality-based solutions are not going to make liberal Zionists happy like their daydream about a two-state solution does. Israel simply cannot continue to exist as a Zionist entity. It needs to be disarmed, dramatically restructured, and comprehensively denazified as a society. This isn’t going to happen without force, and that necessary force isn’t going to be forthcoming from the western world as long as we are deluding ourselves with infantile fantasies.

The Israelis are telling us this is the case themselves, right to our faces. It’s time to wake up.

____________

The best way to make sure you see everything I write is to get on my free mailing list. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Click here for links for my social media, books, merch, and audio/video versions of each article. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

The post The Two-State Solution Is a Western Liberal Fairy Tale appeared first on LewRockwell.

Today a few independent journalists asked me if I agree with President Trump’s remarks about climate change in his recent address to the UN.

“This ‘climate change,’ it’s the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion,” Trump said. “All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong. They were made by stupid people that have cost their countries fortunes and given those same countries no chance for success. If you don’t get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail.”

Yes, I completely agree with President Trump’s assessment. I have been an ardent environmentalist since 1987, when I founded an environmental preservation club in my Texas high school—probably the first in Texas public school history. When I was in college in Boston I worked for Greenpeace.

As I have learned in over thirty years of observing the environmental movement and how it has been hijacked by large commercial interests, the global cult that has been erected around the proposition of human induced climate change is indeed one of the greatest con jobs ever perpetrated.

In recent years, we have heard a lot of chatter about “record heat” in Texas, which is attributed to global warming caused by human activity. This has prompted me to do a little research on record thermometer readings in Texas, and I found the following:

The hottest maximum temperature ever recorded in Texas occurred twice: First on August 12, 1936, in Seymour, northwest of Dallas, and again on June 28, 1994, in Monahans, a city near Odessa, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The recorded high that day was 120.°

The hottest summer in Texas history was 1980. According to NOAA records:

In Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas, high temperatures exceeded 100 °F (38 °C) a total of 69 times, including a record 42 consecutive days from June 23 to August 3,[of which 28 days were above 105, and five days above 110.

I suspect that none of these hot summers signify much apart from the fact that Texas has had hot summers since people started measuring and recording air temperatures during the latter half of the 19th century. It wasn’t until the year 1880 that weather data was compiled on a truly global scale, which means that the talk of “record temperatures” is in reference to only 143 years of weather records. Prior to the 17th Century, when the first reliable thermometers came into use, humans had no means of precisely measuring air temperature.

Nevertheless, from various natural phenomena such as tree rings, arctic ice core samples, radiocarbon dating of fossilized trees and plants, and the deposition of rocks and sediments from glaciers, scientists have determined that the earth’s has greatly fluctuated over time, with fairly regular periods of glaciation and inter-glaciation, as illustrated on this chart:

Nowadays one often comes across the assertion that we SHOULD be headed into another period of glaciation—that it, of glaciers extending from the Arctic Circle down into the Lower 48 States.

A recent article in The Guardian about the fossil record in northern Greenland got me curious about fluctuating temperatures in the northern latitudes, near the Arctic Circle. An old friend used to work as an engineer on an offshore oil platform in Prudhoe Bay on the North Slope of Alaska. The Prudhoe Bay field contains some of the largest hydrocarbon deposits on earth. If petroleum geologists are right, these hydrocarbons were once living algae, plants, and animals that were deposited in successive layers of sediment, under which they were subjected to pressure and heat that converted them into crude oil and natural gas.

Long ago I started pondering the question: What was the original source of the carbon dioxide that was used by algae and plants to photosynthesize and grow into such an immense biomass? Reviewing the geological history of the Prudhoe Bay field, I saw it was deposited during the Jurassic-Lower Cretaceous. This led to a bit of research on the Jurassic period (between 201-145 million years ago) whose climate is described as follows:

The climate of the Jurassic was generally warmer than that of the present, by around 5 °C to 10 °C, with atmospheric carbon dioxide likely four times higher.

The Jurassic ended 145 million years ago, but what about more recent times? My curiosity prompted me to look at some U.S. Geological Surveys of the North Slope of Alaska, and I came across a document published in 1992. I was immediately impressed by the paper’s abstract.

Between 3.0 and 0.85 million years ago the Arctic Ocean Borderland experienced two cycles of climatic deterioration, both of which ended in major Northern Hemisphere continental glaciation. The first cooling cycle ended 2.1 million years ago; continental ice extended down the Mississippi River Valley as far south as Iowa. The cooling cycle was followed by a collapse of glaciation and an extremely warm climate that extended to the northernmost land, almost to the North Pole. This warmth at the beginning of the second cooling cycle was greater than that known at the beginning of the first cycle and cooling began again 300,000 years later, during the Olduvai Normalpolarity Subchron and about 1.7 million years ago. The second cooling cycle culminated with the classic Ice Ages, beginning 850,000 years ago.

At the beginning of the first cooling cycle, forests, dominated by mixed conifers and including minor but moderately diverse deciduous broadleaf trees, bordered a warm-subfrigid Arctic Ocean. Treeline at lat 79’39’ N. indicated an arctic climate remarkably warm by comparison with today’s conditions but not so warm as the climate at the beginning of the second cooling cycle. Two successive terrestrial records in Siberian Beringia, four separate but sequential marginal-marine records in Alaskan Beringia and northern Canada, and core records from the Arctic Ocean indicate that between 3.0 and 2.4 million years ago the Arctic Ocean Borderland progressively changed to a conifer forest-tundra ecosystem, then to fully developed tundra. With these floral changes came the first record of permafrost and a frigid Arctic Ocean.

Especially notable to me are the following:

1). 3 million years is scarcely the blink of an eye in the geologic time scale.

2). In terms of their effect on the earth’s landscape and life, these are HUGE temperature swings, with glaciers extending as far south as present day Iowa, followed by warm weather extending all the way to the North Pole, and a warm sub-frigid Arctic Ocean bordered by forests at 79’39 N. which runs through northern Greenland.

3). Though the last Glacial Period ended 11,700 years ago (before any notable human activity), the Arctic is still considerably colder now than it was 2.4 million years ago.

To me, all of the above raises the following questions:

1). What are we to make of these gigantic fluctuations of the earth’s temperature in the last 3 million years as they relate to the issue of purportedly human-induced global warming?

2). Is there truly sufficient evidence to claim that human activity is now staving off the beginning of the next expected glaciation period?

3). Would it be more desirable to have glaciers begin advancing south, all the way to Iowa, pulverizing and burying everything in their path?

If you enjoyed reading this post, please consider becoming a paid Subscriber. For just $5.00 per month, you can support us in our ongoing effort to research and report what is going on in our complex and confusing world.

This article was originally published on Courageous Discourse.

The post Wide Swings of Warming and Cooling appeared first on LewRockwell.

What if the delusions of the dissidents are in fact real? What if their paranoid fantasies are not fantasies at all? In other words, what if it’s not the political dissidents who are crazy, but the politicians?

TRANSCRIPT AND SOURCES: https://www.corbettreport.com/dissent…

ARE YOU LOOKING FOR A COMPLETE TRANSCRIPT OF THIS DOCUMENTARY WITH LINKS TO ALL OF THE ARTICLES, VIDEOS AND WEBSITES MENTIONED? HOW ABOUT COMMENTS? THEY’RE AT THE CORBETT REPORT WEBSITE! JUST FOLLOW THE “TRANSCRIPT AND SOURCES” LINK ABOVE TO GO THERE DIRECTLY.

The post Dissent Into Madness appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Minds of Men | Official Documentary by Aaron & Melissa Dykes

The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade –Book by Alfred McCoy

The first book to prove CIA and U.S. government complicity in global drug trafficking, The Politics of Heroin includes meticulous documentation of dishonesty and dirty dealings at the highest levels from the Cold War until today. Maintaining a global perspective, this groundbreaking study details the mechanics of drug trafficking in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and South and Central America. New chapters detail U.S. involvement in the narcotics trade in Afghanistan and Pakistan before and after the fall of the Taliban, and how U.S. drug policy in Central America and Colombia has increased the global supply of illicit drugs. I have a signed edition of this classic.

American War Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection, and the Road to Afghanistan – Book by Peter Dale Scott

This provocative, thoroughly researched book explores the covert aspects of U.S. foreign policy. Prominent political analyst Peter Dale Scott marshals compelling evidence to expose the extensive growth of sanctioned but illicit violence in politics and state affairs, especially when related to America’s long-standing involvement with the global drug traffic. Beginning with Thailand in the 1950s, Americans have become inured to the CIA’s alliances with drug traffickers (and their bankers) to install and sustain right-wing governments. The pattern has repeated itself in Laos, Vietnam, Italy, Mexico, Thailand, Nigeria, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Panama, Honduras, Turkey, Pakistan, and now Afghanistan―to name only those countries dealt with in this book. Scott shows that the relationship of U.S. intelligence operators and agencies to the global drug traffic, and to other international criminal networks, deserves greater attention in the debate over the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. To date, America’s government and policies have done more to foster than to curtail the drug trade. The so-called war on terror, and in particular the war in Afghanistan, constitutes only the latest chapter in this disturbing story.

The post Your Government and Drugs appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Jesse Trentadue.

See here.

The post Operation PatCon: Arctic Frost EXPLAINED: FBI, CIA & Domestic Infiltration | 9/18/25 appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Jesse Trentadue.

The post Eric Hunley Podcast on Kenneth Trentadue and the Oklahoma City Bombing appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Jesse Trentadue.

The post An Incredible Documentary About My Brother’s Murder And The Oklahoma City Bombing. appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click Here:

See Video

The post Another video of assassin SMILING as he murders Charlie Kirk, vauts over the barrier, and pretends to help him appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Tim McGraw:

Hi Lew,

The video of Pope Leo’s warning to America is probably a fake. There is nothing about it on the Vatican website.

The Holy See

The post Pope Leo Warning to America appeared first on LewRockwell.

Sally Fallon-Morell, is the founder of the Weston A. Price Foundation and author of Nourishing Traditions, the ground breaking best-selling cookbook (with over 600,000 copies sold) that sparked a global movement starting in 1996.

Sally also knows all about the problems with germ “theory” and virology which is why she co-wrote The Contagion Myth with Tom Cowan. (Highly Recommended)

In this video interview by Dr Sam Bailey, Sally – who’s a font of knowledge about how to restore and maintain great health – shares many pearls of wisdom you’ll find valuable in your own quest for true health.

I recommend you watch at least the first 12 minutes of this excellent interview – and all 47 minutes if you have time – HERE.

ALSO…

Please consider attending the October 17-19 2025 Wise Traditions Conference sponsored by the WAP Foundation where Drs Sam & Mark Bailey are going to attend live and speak in person. This will be your one chance to meet them in person here in the USA….so don’t miss it! Registration is still open, HERE.

BUT…

If you cannot attend and would like to view the Conference via Live Stream you can obtain tickets for that, HERE.

Highly Recommended.

The post Eat Butter: An Interview with Sally Fallon-Morell appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes David Krall:

We do need to sometimes take a step back to remember there is still beauty in the world.   I recently found this piece of music on youtube.  It is new to me.   But I found it so enjoyable and uplifting I keep listening to it over and over again.  It makes me smile and I want to share it with you whether or not you choose to post it.

The post Day by day the news becomes more terrible and more frightening appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Johnny Kramer.

The College Fix

The post Large-scale syllabi study finds professors only teach left-wing side of controversial issues appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click here:

John Leake

The post A “Dangerous” Conversation About Crime, Conspiracy, Religion, and Stupidity appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Jerome Barber.

Activist Post

The post Bernie Sanders is a Ghoulish Zionist appeared first on LewRockwell.

The tariff stories that Americans have been told deserve to be questioned. First, we Americans are overwhelmingly paying for the tariffs. They are “slapped’ on us. Meanwhile, China is selling less to America, but they simply shifted to selling to the rest of the world, and they’re breaking records with trade surpluses. So China has not been “slapped,” while we Americans have. At the same time, America has lost 78,000 manufacturing jobs since the beginning of 2025. Something isn’t right here.

The post Trump Slaps More Tariffs on The American People — When Will It End? appeared first on LewRockwell.

di Francesco Simoncelli

(Versione audio dell'articolo disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/dove-mettere-i-propri-soldi)

Oggi ci prendiamo una pausa dalle solite analisi macroeconomiche e geopolitiche per concentrarci su qualcosa di specifico: cosa fare con i propri soldi ora.

Nel mondo degli asset fisici la preferenza dovrebbero sempre averla terreni o aziende private, ma non si può acquistare nessuna delle due a caso. Bisogna avere una ragione, un piano, uno scopo, un modo per gestirle e farle fruttare. E poiché tempo ed energie sono limitati e l'attenzione è costantemente impegnata altrove, spesso non è possibile farlo. Un'azienda è la soluzione migliore. Esse, sia private che pubbliche (quelle quotate in borsa), sono dove si trovano i veri soldi. Potete tenere un'oncia d'oro o un bitcoin da qui all'eternità; avrete sempre solo un'oncia d'oro o un bitcoin.

Una casa è molto peggio. Per avere ancora una casa tra 20, 50, o 100 anni, dovete mantenerla in buone condizioni: assicurazione, tasse, tetto nuovo, moquette nuova, ecc. Rappresenta un posto dove vivere, non un investimento.

Le aziende vi danno qualcosa in più. Combinano lavoro, competenza, fortuna e risorse – tutte cose che hanno un costo – e offrono un prodotto, o un servizio, che vale più degli ingredienti che lo compongono. Questo è il profitto, il quale è al centro del capitalismo e del progresso materiale. È anche il modo in cui la maggior parte delle persone si arricchisce. Immergono i loro bicchieri in quel flusso di profitti e riempiono le proprie riserve di ricchezza. A questo proposito, le aziende private sono molto meglio delle aziende pubbliche: si può godere personalmente del reddito, dei benefit aziendali e delle detrazioni fiscali.

Le aziende grandi, sia private che pubbliche, raramente sono redditizie per gli investitori esterni: invece di ottenerne il 100% degli utili, si è fortunati se si ottiene un rendimento da dividendi del 3%. E forse il titolo salirà... o forse no. In una grande azienda è molto difficile contenere i costi e ai vertici la tentazione di spendere soldi per costruire imperi, nuove tecnologie, dipendenti superflui, incentivi, pensioni, acquisizioni, sedi centrali di lusso, jet aziendali e così via è opprimente. Ci sono anche gli inevitabili costi legali, contabili e delle pubbliche relazioni derivanti dall'essere quotati in borsa. A meno che il management non sia diligente e determinato, i costi aumenteranno per raggiungere il livello di reddito (o superarlo!) indicato dalle normative e i dipendenti avranno sempre una scusa per scioperare.

Tuttavia Archer Daniels Midland avrebbe trasformato un investimento da $1 nel 1925 in oltre $50.000 oggi e John Deere avrebbe tirato fuori più di $70.000 con un investimento da $1. Ciononostante una serie di professori di finanza dell'Arizona ha concluso che oltre il 50% delle azioni “ha avuto rendimenti cumulativi negativi” nel lungo periodo e gli studi dimostrano che pochissime aziende producono effettivamente guadagni che cambiano la vita degli investitori esterni. Oltre il 50% delle azioni perde denaro; meno del 4% è responsabile di tutti i guadagni delle azioni nel lungo periodo. Questa distribuzione asimmetrica dei rendimenti è nota come “asimmetria positiva”, in cui pochi titoli vincenti superano la media mentre la stragrande maggioranza dei titoli ha rendimenti negativi.

È quasi miracoloso che qualcuno di loro emerga come vincitore. La riserva di capitale privato, gestita da professionisti seri, è ampia quanto l'Atlantico. Gli azionisti quotano le loro aziende solo perché credono che gli investitori amatoriali pagheranno di più rispetto ai professionisti, quindi le azioni vengono spesso acquistate a prezzi superiori al loro valore reale.

A Wall Street si dice che “si guadagna quando si compra”. Il problema è che si perde anche quando si compra... soprattutto quando si paga troppo.

Tuttavia le aziende che generano profitto e aumentano la ricchezza si trovano ora dove vogliamo davvero che siano. Il trucco è comprarle a prezzi ragionevoli e per questo cerchiamo situazioni eccezionali in cui ulteriori ricerche su un settore scarsamente analizzato scoprono rare opportunità. Oppure, più in generale, ci possiamo affidare al modello Dow/Oro per sapere quando le azioni, in generale, sono abbastanza convenienti da poter essere acquistate. Dal punto di vista dell'allocazione super prudente è stato possibile rimanere in disparte per quasi tre decenni, osservando il rapporto Dow/Oro scendere da oltre 40 a 12,5. In quel periodo ci si è persi la coda della bolla delle dot.com, la bolla immobiliare del 2007/2008 e l'ultima bolla speculativa dopo la corsa degli stimoli fiscali durante i lockdown. Le azioni sono schizzate in su, sono scese e sono risalite di nuovo. “Comprate i ribassi”, dicevano gli speculatori. Gli investitori del mercato azionario, che hanno resistito nel bene e nel male, ora hanno asset che valgono circa quattro volte di più rispetto a quando hanno iniziato (nel 2000).

Ciò che è realmente accaduto, ovviamente, è che le valute fiat sono scese. In termini di beni e servizi offerti, le società quotate in borsa non valgono molto di più di quanto valessero nel 2000. L'oro è ancora al numero 79 della tavola periodica e non è nemmeno salito di prezzo... è tutto il resto che è sceso. E dobbiamo aspettare ancora che il rapporto Dow/Oro scenda intorno ai cinque, o che il prezzo dell'oro raddoppi da qui in poi, o che le azioni calino... oppure che si incontrino da qualche parte nel mezzo. Aspettare non è molto eccitante, dopotutto avreste potuto comprare Nvidia! Ciononostante si è stati ben ripagati per l'attesa, quindi poco importa: l'oro è salito di circa 13 volte sin dal 2000, più di tre volte rispetto alle azioni, e del 180% da quando questo blog l'ha consigliato ai lettori.

Nel frattempo dove investire nuovi capitali? Le azioni sono così costose che è probabile che i guadagni siano limitati, o addirittura negativi, nei prossimi cinque anni. E l'oro è già salito da circa $270 a $3.650 oggi. Sarebbe ingratitudine aspettarsi di più?

Nel mondo finanziario la vicinanza è sinonimo di prosperità: più si conosce un'azienda, e più ci si è vicini, più è probabile che si guadagni. Ma queste opportunità non sono accessibili a tutti e non sono accessibili sempre a chiunque. La maggior parte di noi non ha un amico che lavora nel garage dei genitori e che sta costruendo qualcosa che chiama “personal computer”. Di conseguenza dobbiamo entrare nei mercati “pubblici” e prendere decisioni riguardo la cosiddetta “allocazione”. In altre parole, dobbiamo scegliere tra un'ampia categoria di investimenti a cui noi, come investitori, possiamo partecipare. Azioni? Obbligazioni? Oro? Materie prime? Immobili?

Una delle preferenze che dovrebbe spiccare è per i terreni agricoli. Ma, ancora una volta, bisogna sapere cosa si sta facendo ed essere pronti a gestirli in modo che siano redditizi. Non è facile! In Italia i terreni coltivabili si vendono in media a circa €20.000-25.000 l'ettaro (€1-4,5 il metro quadro). Gli affitti sono relativamente bassi, a quanto si dice tra i €170 e i €3000 l'ettaro l'anno, lasciando al proprietario un piccolo ritorno sul suo capitale. Per ottenere risultati migliori bisognerebbe dedicarsi all'agricoltura, un settore notoriamente a basso rendimento e ad alto rischio... e per i dilettanti, quasi sempre un modo per perdere denaro.

“È l'occhio del padrone che ingrassa il cavallo”, dicono gli allevatori. Che investa in società minerarie, Iofferte pubbliche iniziali, o terreni agricoli è l'investitore presente sul posto, che ha anni di esperienza, i cui occhi raramente si staccano dal campo di gioco, che avrà successo. L'agricoltura, forse più di altri settori, è un “gioco per perdenti”. I dilettanti perdono perché non sanno cosa stanno facendo, ma il modo per vincere in agricoltura è semplicemente non perdere. È un'attività in cui lampi di genio e idee “fuori dagli schemi” difficilmente danno i loro frutti. Ci sono pochi “successi al botteghino” nei campi di grano. L'agricoltore di successo è quello che rimane nei suoi schemi, si attiene a ciò che è già stato sperimentato e non commette errori. Si prende cura delle sue attrezzature; si alza presto per occuparsi dei raccolti; non è mai in ritardo di un giorno... e non ha mai un soldo in meno. Poi, se è fortunato, i prezzi dei suoi prodotti salgono, appena prima di venderli.

E gli immobili commerciali?

Negli ultimi cinque anni gli edifici si sono svuotati e ce ne sono ancora molti vuoti come il cappello di un mendicante. Gli immobili commerciali nella maggior parte delle città sono ancora a buon mercato. I proprietari se ne stanno lì – se possono permetterselo – e sperano che il mercato cambi, ma il valore degli edifici commerciali dipende dagli affitti e questi ultimi sono destinati a calare, forse in modo permanente. Anche gli immobili commerciali, come i terreni agricoli, sono una questione strettamente locale. Se riuscite a trovare un buon immobile, in buone condizioni, con un inquilino affidabile e un flusso di cassa decente – e potete tenerlo d'occhio – potrebbe essere un buon posto per i vostri soldi.

E i bond?

Beh, qui il discorso si fa interessante perché il panorama obbligazionario non è assolutamente tutto uguale. Da quando gli USA hanno iniziato ad aggiustare l'equazione monetaria/fiscale della nazione hanno mostrato quanto fossero disfunzionali tutte le altre economie. Questo ha inevitabilmente attratto i capitali negli Stati Uniti, perché i suoi mercati sono profondi e liquidi, e la sua infrastruttura finanziaria e legale è migliore insieme a una miriade di altre cose. Gli Stati Uniti, quindi, stanno aggiustando le cose in patria mentre l'UE sta raddoppiando gli sforzi sulla propria disfunzionalità perché è consapevole che non può percorrere lo stesso percorso intrapreso dagli USA. E questo è mostrato dal mercato obbligazionario e dai differenziali di rendimento dei titoli sovrani. Sono questi ultimi che contano, non tanto i valori assoluti dei titoli sovrani. La forchetta tra il trentennale americano e tedesco, ad esempio, ha continuato a chiudersi sempre di più negli ultimi mesi. Il differenziale tra gli USA e UK si sta espandendo, mentre quello tra USA e Germania si sta restringendo. Stesso discorso con quello francese. Indovinate quale invece sta andando contro corrente? Quello italiano. Per quanto paradossale possa sembrare, l'Italia sta diventando il “porto sicuro” in Europa grazie alla vicinanza con gli USA.

E tra tassi alti e dollaro debole, è solo una questione di tempo prima che questo processo porti suddette disfunzionalità europee a un livello critico da far affondare non solo i vari governi, ma soprattutto l'euro.

L'UE ha bisogno della guerra, sia ai risparmiatori che cinetica, per sopravvivere e coprire i propri “difetti di fabbrica” (emersi platealmente sin dalla crisi greca 15 anni fa). Se non ci sarà, e una dopo l'altra le tessere del domino europeo inizieranno a cadere, i fondi pensione saranno i primi a saltare. Quando nel 2014 la BCE ha avviato la NIRP ha praticamente prosciugato di equity banche e fondi pensione. Questi ultimi “sono costretti” a detenere bond sovrani europei per il 70% del loro bilancio. I tassi negativi hanno spazzati via i loro bilanci, letteralmente. Adesso si tratta di non far scappare i buoi dalla stalla prima che realizzino di essere loro a dover andare al macello. Tra l'altro dalla crisi greca nessuno ha imparato niente, nemmeno come funziona il sistema stesso dell'UE. Data la pletora di bond sovrani europei che le banche sono costrette a detenere, il contagio tra di esse è assicurato in caso di stress finanziario. E questo chiarisce ulteriormente il motivo per cui l'UE vuole la guerra, sia cinetica che ai risparmiatori, in modo da creare attraverso di essa l'utopia di un ente fiscale unico con cui emettere debito unico, schivando (temporaneamente) il proiettile d'argento della bancarotta.

Gli Stati Uniti devono ancora risolvere un sacco di problemi che sono piovuti loro addosso sin dal 2020 e non possono essere risolti durante un solo ciclo monetario. Infatti non è possibile sistemare i danni che sono stati causati durante “l'emergenza sanitaria” in un solo ciclo monetario. Il Paese si sta riorganizzando: sta cambiando il modo in cui si finanzia e il modo in cui la politica monetaria viene trasmessa all'economia più ampia. Tutti quegli strumenti che la FED ha impiegato dopo il 2008 (pronti contro termine inversi, ecc.) vengono smantellati. Ad esempio, a Jackson Hole Powell ha praticamente cestinato la regola del “2% d'inflazione come obiettivo” (flexible targeting). Quello che ha fatto finora è stato tenere i tassi alti e restringere il differenziale di debito degli USA rispetto a quello di tutti gli altri, mentre il resto del mondo ha tagliato insistentemente i tassi. Infatti  le altre economie del mondo sono in guai seri, peggiori di quelli degli USA.

Ciò che c'è ora è un ambiente inflazionistico per le commodity e deflazionistico per il credito. Questo è il tipo di stagflazione in essere, non il ciarpame come determinato dalla Phillips Curve. La liquidità sta scorrendo fuori dagli asset finanziari fino agli strati più bassi della piramide del capitale, laddove le supply chain ne hanno più bisogno per rimarginarsi. La base di suddetta piramide è caratterizzata dai fattori di produzione di grandezza inferiore (es. materie prime, ecc.), mentre l'apice è caratterizzata da fattori di produzione di ordine superiore (es. beni intermedi, semi-lavorati, fino ai beni di consumo finiti). Affinché i produttori si muovano dal basso verso l'alto nel modo più corretto possibile, ci deve essere una determinazione onesta del rischio e questo a sua volta significa tassi d'interesse che riflettono la condizione di credito reale dell'economia. I cicli si susseguono andando su e giù lungo la sopraccitata piramide. Un ambiente stagflazionistico significa che c'è troppo credito in giro e deve essere contratto (rallentamento dell'attività economica, riorganizzazione, disoccupazione, ecc.) in modo che si possa iniziare un nuovo ciclo.

Quello che finora ha fatto la FED è stato restringere quanto più possibile tutto quel credito che è stato creato in eccesso durante i lockdown. Ancora non ha terminato tale compito e non può terminarlo in un solo ciclo del credito senza “rompere” qualcosa. Ecco perché Powell ha tagliato i tassi nell'ultima riunione del FOMC (non necessariamente significa più denaro, bensì denaro che costa un po' di meno rispetto a ieri), in modo da aiutare le piccole/medie banche che hanno ancora grossi buchi nei loro bilanci. Questo, oltre alla dismissione della Supplemental Leverage Ratio, permetterà loro di far scorrere meglio il credito nel Paese per dare sollievo anche alle piccole/medie imprese, aiutate anche da un politica fiscale più lasca e una deregolamentazione (si spera) quanto più libera dalle intromissioni dei giudici. A proposito della prima, poi, ci sono due notizie che ne confermano la presenza: le aste per i titoli sovrani americani continuano a far segnare delle ottime sessioni, alla faccia degli “spacciatori di catastrofi” secondo cui questa estate avrebbe segnato un disastro per le finanze statunitensi (le ultime aste per i titoli a 3, 5, 20 e 30 anni sono andate alla grande, questo accade quando non si ha idea del processo in corso, o non la si vuole avere, e si commentano a sproposito i singoli fatti); diversamente da quello che avete ascoltato dai media generalisti, e che invece avete letto su queste pagine, la legge di bilancio non era affatto così terribile come veniva raffigurata PRIMA della sua approvazione... anzi...

Pessimo giorno per gli "smemorati". Dopo essersi strappati i capelli per la "catastrofe" del rollover del debito americano, si stracciavano le vesti per i deficit della BBB che avrebbero mandato in bancarotta il Paese. Indovinate un po'? La revisione del CBO segna un surplus. https://t.co/jSHk6JD1dM

Menzione finale per il comparto energetico. Fin dal 2020 abbiamo vissuto in un ambiente economico in cui la componente energetica ha trainato principalmente i prezzi al consumo (commodity push inflation), infatti i futures sulla benzina e l'indice dei prezzi al consumo a 4 mesi si muovevano in sincronia. Adesso qualcosa pare essere cambiato visto che i due stanno divergendo (soprattutto nell'ultima lettura dove i futures sopraccitati sono scesi, mentre l'IPC è salito). Ciò che è salito invece è l'elettricità e questo mi fa pensare che l'economia statunitense, in particolare, si sta spostando in un ambiente in cui i prezzi saranno determinati principalmente dall'energia elettrica (demand push inflation). In sintesi, fame di credito al consumo (e non più di natura finanziaria), spese in conto capitale e spinta industriale. Tutto ciò è una manna per commodities come argento e rame, ad esempio.

Per maggiori approfondimenti, dettagli e suggerimenti pratici su questi aspetti finora discussi, vi invito a usare il servizio di consulenza messo a disposizione dal blog usando l'app di prenotazione Calendly: https://calendly.com/fsimoncelli/consulenze

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