Lew Rockwell Institute

The move can only exacerbate America’s debt crisis, particularly after it reached $35 trillion last year and is expected to go over $40 trillion next year. Experts are warning that the latest increase in military spending will likely add at least another trillion to the already rapidly growing debt and that budget cuts are yet to affect the Pentagon, adding that the US military “does precisely nothing to defend the USA” and that it “exclusively interferes in other countries”.

Remember when President Donald Trump promised to make the US military “far more powerful, but for much less money”? Remember when he pledged to end the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict in 24 hours? Well, me neither. In all seriousness, we can always say that Trump is a politician and that truth or consistency are not exactly the defining qualities of any politician.

On the other hand, the Messianic Complex among many Trumpists is certainly concerning, as there’s little questioning of Trump’s policies. He’s most definitely a very polarizing figure. The vast majority of people are either his staunch supporters or have TDS (Trump derangement syndrome). This prevents a more objective view of his performance, both at home and abroad.

Namely, Trump is exposed to numerous interest groups, many of which have very diverging views on how America should be. The old Deep State sees him as the greatest threat to “Pax Americana” and wants him out at all costs (including through physical removal), while other interest groups think extreme measures are unnecessary and that simply influencing Trump’s decision-making is more than enough.

The latter seem to be leading the charge, while the remnants of the previous administration are engaged in largely pointless protests. However, despite superficial enmity between them, there’s a quite solid continuity in many policies of the two administrations. This is particularly true when it comes to foreign policy and financing the US military.

In the case of the former, the Biden administration’s crawling economic warfare against the European Union (primarily through the destruction of its trade with Russia while the US continued to buy critical commodities from Moscow and even resell them to Europe) has been augmented by Trump’s trade wars.

In the case of the latter, there’s a robust continuity with virtually every US administration in the last 35 years (at the very least). Namely, the consistent increase in American military spending is a clear indicator that the same people are making the final decision on this issue, regardless of who’s in power. The Trump administration’s latest announcement regarding the US “defense” budget effectively proves this is precisely the case.

Namely, on April 7, President Trump and his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth revealed that the Pentagon will get its first $1 trillion. Interestingly, what should’ve been breaking news was sidelined by global panic regarding the impact of new tariffs. In his usual manner of using superlatives, Trump said that “nobody’s seen anything like it”, adding that “we have to build our military, and we’re very cost-conscious, but the military is something we have to build, and we have to be strong”. It’s certainly commendable to see a government exercise “cost-consciousness”, with Trump employing Musk’s DOGE to be “the ultimate auditing organization”. However, giving a trillion dollars to the unaudited US military sounds like anything but frugality.

On paper, the administration has been adamant about cutting excess government spending, so this move doesn’t make much sense (unless all the auditing was designed to help find the money for the Pentagon). The logical conclusion is that Trump is exposed to the influence of the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) just as much as any other president.

Hegseth was certainly happy with the arrangement, as evidenced by his announcement on Twitter/X where he thanked Trump and presented the development as something “fantastic for everyone”. It would be interesting to see what American taxpayers think about the fact that their money will be invested in more death and destruction instead of restoring America’s crumbling infrastructure.

As previously mentioned, the first official $1 trillion for the US military was only a matter of time, as the troubled Biden administration announced it two years ago, when it pledged to double the Pentagon’s budget. The latest increase is in line with this plan, as the actual US DoD spending has been well over $1 trillion for years (many of its expenses are distributed to other departments). In addition, the Biden administration’s 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was officially $895 billion, so the latest increase is nothing out of the ordinary and is in line with regular spikes in military spending with every US government in recent history. This certainly breaks the Trump administration’s attempts to present itself as “anti-establishment”.

In addition, the move can only exacerbate America’s debt crisis, particularly after it reached $35 trillion last year and is expected to go over $40 trillion next year. Experts are warning that the latest increase in military spending will likely add at least another trillion to the already rapidly growing debt and that budget cuts are yet to affect the Pentagon, adding that the US military “does precisely nothing to defend the USA” and that it “exclusively interferes in other countries”.

And indeed, Trump’s reshuffling at the Pentagon was largely political and never affected its financing. Worse yet, he also supports continued US aggression in the Middle East, where a war with Iran is looming. In addition, the new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff wants to expand the US nuclear sharing policy.

This originally appeared on InfoBrics.

The post Here We Go Again – $1 Trillion for US ‘Defense’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

Calculating How Long Your Food Stockpile Will Last

To get the total number of days your stockpile will last, you need to take the:

Total calories in your stockpile ÷ Calories your family needs per day

Let’s start with the top half of the equation.

Calculating How Many Calories You Have

Ideally, your pantry is well organized, making the process much faster.

But if it’s not…perhaps this will allow you to do so…?!?

Because you’re about to take inventory.

Yup. Just like ALL successful retail businesses do regularly.

Now you may ask, “Should I count EVERYTHING” on my shelves?

If it’s shelf stable and you replace it regularly, then YES, count it.

Sure, some items will fluctuate as you use them up and then buy more.

But a snapshot of the shelf life stable calories in your pantry is “close enough” …

Obviously count all freeze-dried foods, MREs, canned meats, and #10 Cans.

Also, don’t count ANY calories in your refrigerator or freezer.

Power outages make freezers highly vulnerable disaster appliances.

The only exception is if you have a robust backup energy plan or you are already living off the grid.

A robust backup energy plan means having a Power station (or a generator with a few weeks of fuel).

Otherwise, I DON’T count your refrigerated and frozen goods.

I used a simple spreadsheet for this to help make the calculations easy. Plus, I can sort and filter as needed later with a spreadsheet.

Start by making a few columns titled:

1. Food – Brand
2. Number of items (pouches, bags, containers)
3. Servings Per Container
4. Calories per Serving
5. Total Calories

Once you fill out an entire row with that info, multiply the “number of items” by the “servings per container” by the “calories per serving.”

This will give you the number of calories you have in your inventory for THAT specific food item.

Now, you need to be careful here.

I added the Brand to the first column because not ALL brands use the same servings/calorie info.

For example:

Separate Brands of canned beans may seem identical but often are not.

The difference can add up, especially if you have a lot of dried beans…

Now, IF the foods are the same, AND the info per serving is the same, you can put them in the same line.

Otherwise, if any of those numbers are different, add a new line item.

Now keep going and inventory everything that makes sense for you.

Once done, you should add up all the calories.

And now you know exactly how much non-perishable food you currently have.

This calorie number may seem massive if you’ve got a decent-sized stockpile.

Perhaps even a few hundred thousand calories, like 358,753 or something like that.

WOW. Massive, right? Not so fast…

Having your total calories may seem like an important number to know, but it’s not all that helpful…yet.

Why? Because it’s relative to the size of your family, right?

For example, 358,753 calories is a stellar long term food storage for a retired couple of 2.

But what about a growing family of 5? Not so much.

That’s why we need to figure out how many calories YOUR family consumes each day…

How Many Calories Does Your Family Need Per Day?

At first, this may seem like a difficult task, but with the proper tools, it’s easy.

You must figure out how many replacement calories each family member needs daily.

1. And this is NOT the same for males and females.
2. It’s also NOT the same for babies, kids, young adults, adults, or mature adults.
3. And it’s NOT the same for those who live an active or sedentary lifestyle.

You need to consider ALL 3 of these variables to make an educated guess.

The good news is I created a simple chart to do just THAT.

You can use this chart to determine your sex, age, and activity level for each family member.

Then add up each number.

The TOTAL is how many calories you’re family needs per day.

Now, THIS is a very good number to know!

This is the number you need to figure out how long your food stockpile will last.

Your Final Calculation

Take your total calories and divide by your family’s daily calorie requirement.

Viola! THAT new number is a very good approximation of How Long Your Current Food Stockpile Will Last.

Perhaps your number is 58.63 days?

That means you’re very close to having 2 months’ worth of food in your emergency stockpile.

Now, of course, you may be able to ration those calories a bit in a longer-term emergency.

But I don’t recommend “rationing” your calculation.

Why? Because I’d rather underestimate the duration of my stockpile by a few days and NOT the other way around.

Said another way, I’d rather be pleasantly surprised…

You now know how long you have before starvation begins after the grocery store shelves go bare.

Read the Whole Article

The post How Much Emergency Food Should You Keep at Home? appeared first on LewRockwell.

In its effort to combat homelessness, Los Angeles County and the city itself and other cities in the county will spend more than $2 billion dollars this year on its 70,000 or so vagrants.

That works out to be about $30,000 per drooping head.

And that does not include the state’s direct funding of anti(?)-homelessness programs or the food stamp and Medicaid (called Medi-Cal in California) and direct cash and Social Security disability and other benefits that total up to about another $24,000 a year.

And that does not include the value of the free rent provided to hundreds of people in a number of “permanent supportive housing” facilities, including those that have been recently built at a cost of between $700,000 and, in Santa Monica,$1 million dollars per 600-square-foot studio apartment unit.

Amazingly, in LA and throughout the state, spending on solving homelessness has more than doubled over the past decade or so. What else pretty much doubled while all this money was being spent? The homeless population.

Obviously, no real dent has been made in the problem – the number of homeless people has only increased and, still, three or four homeless people die on the streets of LA every day.

The problem has only grown as the funding has grown – not in any way a coincidence and if you are wondering about the chicken and egg situation, don’t bother: the spending has essentially preceded the rise in the number of homeless people.

More homeless, more money…for the massive homelessness industry that has metastasized in California over the past decade.

The industry – made up of catastrophically, almost comically, inept theoretical non-profits that continue to fail miserably but pay staff very well, political cronies, and actual relatives of the government officials doling out the money – has done very well and made quite a bit of bank off of the suffering of others.

That, however, may finally be put under the microscope with the developments of the past week or so because people in a position to make changes have actually begun to notice the problem.

Well, it’s hard not to. An audit of the Los Angeles Homeless Service Authority (LAHSA) – a joint agency of the city and county that is rapidly crumbling – showed the agency really couldn’t explain explain where billions of dollars went.

It got spent, of course, but no one seems quite sure on what; an audit of the state’s homelessness programs found a similar issue, again ranging into the billions of dollars.

Well, at least one expenditure is a certainty: $2 million dollars to a “non-profit” operated by the husband of erstwhile LAHSA chief Va Lecia Adams Kellum.

Before resigning, Adams Kellum said she was not part of the expense’s approval, absolutely did not recall approving the expense, let alone signing the check. Trust me.

Adams Kellum – hired in 2023 as a “change agent’ – was a close ally of Mayor Karen Bass. She advised her directly before and after the election and Bass’s daughter worked at the non-profit Adams Kellum ran before being hired to run LAHSA.

From an LA Times story on the appointment:

Getting a Bass ally into this role does potentially signal a change in the city’s orientation and attitude toward LAHSA — one that views the agency less as an obstruction that should be circumvented and more as one that can aid and augment the resources that city government is already putting forward.

Public officials and services providers — even harsh critics of LAHSA — indicated broad excitement over the appointment, stemming mostly from Adams Kellum’s work in various communities on street homelessness.

“It seemed like the most hopeful time to make change because as all of us have said, the key is the city and county working together,” Adams Kellums said.

Last week, the county pulled out of LAHSA after which Adams Kellum resigned (rather embarrassingly, actually – in defending the agency she was not even recognized as a fellow government person but relegated to the “public comments” period when all the crazies speak…and she had her mic cut off.)

And the other funder of the agency – the city – is almost about to do the same thing and pull out.

Now, fewer levels of bureaucracy are always a good thing, but the idiots who have run LAHSA over the past years will almost certainly be picked to run the separate programs (doncha love civil service protections?) and do not have to worry about soon becoming a client of the city and/or county.

Another nightmare for the homelessness industry is Judge David Carter, who sits on the federal bench and has been trying to act as somewhat of an overseer of the programs since a lawsuit was filed about five years ago (fyi – back then, the homeless lobby loved him because he ordered more beds be created, options given, etc. Now, not so much.)

As part of this effort, he ordered an audit of LAHSA. It did not go well.

In fact, it was so bad that when he asked various and sundry LA area officials to show up in his courtroom to explain themselves, they didn’t turn up (Bass eventually wandered in but said essentially nothing.) As to LAHSA’s efforts, the judge said this:

“If they were going to do it, they should have done it, or they should have given you a road map now of … how they’re going to do it.”

In fact, the audit was even more worser – the judge openly wondered about whether he should put everything into receivership and essentially run everything himself.

But even more importantly worser than the implosion of LAHSA (by the way, it had an overhead budget of about $400 million alone) is the announcement from the new SoCal federal prosecutor Bill Essayli.

He has announced a federal criminal investigative task force to try to figure out the incestual rat’s nest that is LA’s (and California’s) anti(?)-homelessness funding systems.

Note – the question mark after “anti” has been intentional both times it has been used, because the people that pay their mortgages “fighting” homelessness would not be able to do that if they actually solved the problem.

“Taxpayers deserve answers for where and how their hard-earned money has been spent. If state and local officials cannot provide proper oversight and accountability, we will do it for them,” said Essayli, a Republican and former State Assemblymember who was appointed to his post by Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi last week.

The Homelessness Fraud and Corruption Task Force will “investigate crimes related to the misappropriation of federal tax dollars intended to alleviate homelessness” in the Central District of California, which covers an estimated 20 million people across seven counties.

Along with reviewing federal, state and local programs that receive federal grants and funding, the task force will “investigate fraud schemes involving the theft of private donations intended to provide support and services for the homeless population,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s office.

As the entire homelessness industry has been operating in the netherworld of political grease, outright graft, and devastating failure, Essayli’s new effort must have many poverty plutocrats shaking in their well-heeled boots.

This originally appeared on The Point.

The post LAHSA Oopso appeared first on LewRockwell.

The following is the Introduction to my new book, At the Lost and Found (Clarity Press).

My dear mother, who had an artistic temperament that tended at times toward the sentimental, liked to call me a contrarian. She was right. I think she liked but feared this inclination of mine that started in childhood. It no doubt has many roots, some of which an artful reader may sense in the essays in this book, for while I have written about the lies and coverups of the ruling elites, I have tried to do so in a self-revelatory way, even in the writing where it is couched in pure artifice.

I have always felt that conventional life was a provocation because it hid more than it revealed; that it harbored secrets that could not be exposed or else the make-believe nature of normal life would collapse like a cardboard set. That people were performing for some invisible director that they couldn’t or wouldn’t recognize. I always wondered why.

There is nothing profound in this tendency of mine, except the powerful force of it throughout my life. Like everyone, I was ushered onto this Shakespearean stage and have acted out many roles assigned to me but always with the inner consciousness that something was amiss. Everyone seemed to be playing someone, but who was the player? Who was I?

Because I grew up in a large literate family where our sizable bookcase was filled with great literary classics, I have always loved to read. I noticed early on that the great writers focused on this performative nature of social life, and this strengthened my burgeoning artist’s eye. I particularly remember the family set of Mark Twain’s books that drew me in this direction, his humorous ways of puncturing social hypocrisy.

My writing was born within all my reading, including my grandparents’ large and colorfully illustrated volume of Arabian Nights that I would sneak a peek at from time to time. Then there was my father’s witty storytelling where he would regale me with his improvised tales drawn from the metaphoric well of Pinocchio’s theatrically duplicitous adventures.

By the time I was a young man, my mind was a vast store-house of words, phrases, metaphors, tunes, memorized lines of poetry, etc. that sometime I could consciously recall but that often would just pop up like jack-in-the boxes to startle and amuse me. This has continued throughout my life – even as I never tried to remember it all and even tried to forget much of it. My forgettery has always been my faithful servant.

I am telling you this for a few reasons. One is that I have noticed that many writers seem afraid to reveal who they are or what motivates them to write. They hide the personal side behind a false objectivity. This is especially true for writers whose focus is political and involves public and cultural affairs, as does much of mine.

I think of Thoreau’s words: “We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking.”

And that person, with all their hopes, dreams, desires, politics, ambitions, personal relationships, predilections, habits, faith, despair, etc., informs their work, no matter how seemingly authoritative and objective it may sound. What that person wants from writing or any art is a fair question, just as it is the core existential question for everyone: What do you want and why? What are you seeking by doing what you are doing? What is your goal?

Readers want and need to know something (not everything) about the person whose hand pens the words they are reading. It is a normal human response to ask, “Well, where is this person coming from; what’s in it for him?”

It is banal to say that one has learned so much from so many others, but it’s very true in my case. Not just the living but all those who have preceded me and whose words and creativity have become part of who I am, my memories, all that I have read, heard, seen, and forgotten but emerges when I write, in ways I realize or not.

It is mysterious; it happens through osmosis, but in the end one hopes the result is creative and new and that the writing is a place of epiphanies.

I admit that I am possessed by language and that it precedes the content of what I write. Maybe words possess me. I don’t know, nor do I care. I just know it’s so. So the mélange of the wide-ranging and free-wheeling essays that result, their multifarious styles and content, fits with my contrarian personality that seeks to do both astute political analyses and art in luminescent words and sentences that pulsate. I think of them as beyond a cage of categories and intertwined lovers.

I wrote the essays in this book between late summer 2019 and 2024. The topicality of many will be apparent, but I hope you will find in them more than contemporary relevance. I hope you will find me, Ed Curtin, one man who lived through these strange and disturbing years and responded in his own way. One man whose core concerns are essentially no different from the serious contrarian poets, writers, journalists, philosophers, musicians, painters, and artists throughout world history.

There are those who are trying to mechanize us all, to eliminate passion and will, to transmute love into a chemical and hate into a biological aberration. They seem to be succeeding, but they will fail. One reason I have written these essays is to oppose these scoundrels and their ilk who kill and wage endless wars against innocents around the world. Another is to try to create something that will delight and last a little while. I believe that writing is my vocation and that I am answering a call, and if there is any credit due, it is beyond me.

It is a very cruel world, as events over these last few years have confirmed. It is hard to wake up in the morning and hear the news. It leaves one with a sense of lostness that must be fought. The spirit of resistance can be found in many places, including poetry and song. I often remember the words of a poet that my mother had memorized and liked to recite, William Wordsworth, whose romanticism flows in my veins as well. He ended his great poem “Intimations of Immortality” thus: “Thanks to the human heart by which we live,/Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,/To me the meanest flower that blows can give/Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”

Nietzsche was right about writers when he said their work is a personal confession, “a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir.” No doubt this is true for me.

Finally, I hope that in reading this book you will find the words of Yuri Zhivago in the novel of death and resurrection, Doctor Zhivago, by the great Russian poet and novelist, Boris Pasternak, echoing in your mind. As he contemplates being possessed by the mystery of inspiration while writing poems, Yuri writes this: “Language, the home and dwelling of beauty and meaning, itself begins to think audible sounds but by virtue of the power and momentum of its inward flow.”

Since Zhivago means “living” in Russian, it is my wish that these essays live in your memory like the sound of music deeply felt, the same inward flow I felt when writing them.

Reprinted with the author’s permission.

The post At the Lost and Found appeared first on LewRockwell.

Apparently sound money has no meaning for those controlling the money supply, which is purported to be in the hands of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) of the Federal Reserve System.  Sound money and states don’t get along, neither do sound money and banks.  About the only people who would benefit from sound money are people who use it to buy groceries or pay for their kids’ education.  And those who save for rainy days and expect it to be there and worth something when they need it.

But if we don’t have sound money what is it we’re using?  It goes by the name of fiat money — paper or digits without economic value in themselves.  Gold has various non-monetary uses, such as jewelry, technology and medicine.  Fiat money?  In some cases it’s been a source of poignant  creativity.  Photos from the German hyperinflation of 1923, such as a lady wearing a dress made from nearly worthless currency, entertains onlookers while trying to remind them of a tragedy.  (At one point 4.2 trillion marks equaled one American dollar.)  Insanity at this level is only possible when the state shows up with legal tender laws, thereby forcing market participants to accept its depreciating currency. If money holds the potential to control resources or acquire property, then fiat money, even if it loses value by the hour, qualifies as a medium of exchange.

Aside from occasional excesses such as in Weimar Germany, should we care whether money is sound or not?  People who sit on the FOMC are well-qualified academically and many have banking and investment experience which in some cases is global.  Surely they know what’s best for the economy and whether interest rates need adjusting — notwithstanding their Smith-Hayek “conceit” and generations of evidence to the contrary.  In past years one of them has even been sympathetic to a gold standard — Alan Greenspan, author of the insightful 1966 article “Gold and Economic Freedom,” who served as Fed chairman from 1987 to 2006.

Greenspan, in fact, was more than sympathetic.  In discussing the Fed’s monetary policy of the 1920s, he slammed the “paper reserves” the Fed used to augment gold deposits, which “nearly destroyed the economies of the world.”  His article was brilliant and original in many respects, condemning deficit spending as “a scheme for the confiscation of wealth” and that without “the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation.”  But his comments on the banks’ practice of fractional reserve banking leaves me wondering if he actually understood it:

Individual owners of gold are induced, by payments of interest, to deposit their gold in a bank (against which they can draw checks). But since it is rarely the case that all depositors want to withdraw all their gold at the same time, the banker need keep only a fraction of his total deposits in gold as reserves.

Lost in his explanation is any distinction between demand deposits and time deposits, though he could hardly be faulted for not mentioning it.  Thanks to a series of rulings beginning with Carr v. Carr 1811 UK a banker was no longer considered a custodian or bailee in any deposit contract, obligated to return the funds deposited on demand.  The law made the banker a debtor, and though required to “repay the principal” the deposited money was his “to do with as he pleases.” (Foley v Hill and Others 1848).

The distinction between a warehouse bank and a loan bank was thus discarded over time.  Banks own the money you deposit and it immediately becomes subject to bank-lending multiplication.  As with any debtor they may or may not have it when you claim it, though the public counts on it being there at all times.

In the UK, MP Douglas Carswell introduced a bill in 2010 aimed at ending fractional reserve banking by declaring there would “henceforth be two categories of bank account: deposit-taking accounts for investment purposes, and deposit-taking accounts for storage purposes.”  If enforced, this transformation would eliminate the maturity mismatch between assets and liabilities and force credit expansion from real savings only.  The public would need to be aware that a time deposit was a loan to a bank, with the usual risks it entails.  Banks would operate without legal privileges, the one thing they have sought to avoid through a fiat system of central banking and deposit insurance.  The Carswell bill, of course, did not progress beyond its first read and lapsed soon after.

(The bill had an innocent-sounding title: To prohibit banks from “lending on the basis of demand deposits without the permission of the account holder.”  Banks could argue that the bill would force them to charge a fee that account holders could avoid by granting permission to lend their deposits in exchange for “free” banking,  Banks could promote their spotless records in recent times and claim depositors had nothing to gain and something to lose by withholding permission.  To the public whose money would constitute the deposits, granting permission would seem a no-brainer — though the British public might know better.)

Tricks of the (government) trade

Article IX of the Articles of Confederation says

The united states, in congress assembled, shall also have the sole and exclusive right and power of regulating the alloy and value of coin struck by their own authority, or by that of the respective states . . .

Nowhere is there a mention of paper money, the abuses of which led to Shay’s Rebellion and helped excite interest in a Constitutional Convention.  One might hope the Constitution would clear up the matter.  James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 44: “The power to make any thing but gold and silver a tender in payment of debts, is withdrawn from the states, on the same principle with that of striking of paper currency.”

The Constitution, following Madison’s comments, says in Article 1, Section 10: “No State shall… coin Money;  emit Bills of Credit;  make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts…”. States, therefore, could not print their own money or make anything other than gold and silver coin legal tender.  But the door was open for Congress to authorize or forbid issuing paper money.  Subsequent court cases (particularly Knox v. Lee, 1871) settled the matter, giving Congress the power to issue fiat money even in peacetime.

Conclusion

Is sound money today a political possibility?  Mises defined sound money in chapter 21 of his Theory of Money and Credit:

The sound-money principle has two aspects. It is affirmative in approving the market’s choice of a commonly used medium of exchange. It is negative in obstructing the government’s propensity to meddle with the currency system.

Franz Oppenheimer defined the constitutional State this way:

Let us give the mechanics and kinetics of the modern state a moment’s time.  In principle, it is the same entity as the primitive robber state or the developed feudal state. (p. 124)

Both Mises and Oppenheimer are right. We are ruled by thieves, and sound money is no advantage to these looters.  The road to a true sound money economy will require a collapse of the political institutions obstructing it.

The post Is Sound Money Politically Impossible? appeared first on LewRockwell.

In 1997, a group of future members of George W. Bush’s administration co-signed onto the “Project for the New American Century.“ The statement of its core principles declared:

“we need to accept responsibility for America’s unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.“

In the following years, the Bush administration in the Middle East occupied Iraq using fabricated allegations of its development of weapons of mass destruction and in the following years attacked other Middle Eastern countries.

In 2023, the U.S. Republican Party published a book titled “Project 2025,” outlining its policy agenda for the 2024 presidential election. The 922-page book mentioned China 483 times. It stated:

By far, the greatest danger to the security, freedom, and prosperity of Americans is China… China seeks to achieve a dominant position in Asia and, based on that position, global dominance. If Beijing succeeds in this goal, it could dramatically undermine America’s most fundamental interests, including restricting U.S. access to the world’s most important markets. Preventing this from happening must be the highest priority of U.S. foreign and defense policy… It is no longer certain that America holds an information and technological advantage. China’s progress and intense focus on emerging technologies have, in some areas, shifted it from a near-peer competitor to likely surpassing the U.S… The United States must ensure that China does not succeed… U.S. defense strategy must clearly identify China as the top priority for American defense planning.

The Chinese threat to American global dominance was undoubtedly on President Joe Biden’s mind already when he insisted on rejecting Russia’s demand for Western guarantees that Ukraine would not join NATO. He was fully aware that this would provoke Russia into attacking Ukraine, dragging it into a war where the U.S. and its allies could support Ukraine and strip Russia of its status as a world power. In doing so, he completely disregarded the fact that parts of Ukraine identified with Russia and have no desire to join the EU or NATO.

The Russia-China alliance had been obstructing the U.S. from completing its domination of the Middle East and its oil reserves, which were vital to much of the industrial world— if the USA controlled those reserves, they would control as well the countries importing them for their industry. To finalize this plan and weaken the Russo-Chinese bloc, the U.S. needed Russia’s defeat in Ukraine to pave the way. That’s why Joe Biden rejected Moscow’s demands for Western assurances against NATO expansion, which would have prevented NATO nuclear weapons from being stationed within a 10-minute flight from Moscow.

He knew this would push the world to the brink of global war, but he gambled on the hope that, after weakening Russia, the U.S. could eventually subdue China as well. However, Russia-China cooperation has severely complicated this American ambition. Russia began gaining the upper hand in the Ukraine war, and the hope of a U.S. (and EU-backed) victory over the Russo-Chinese bloc has been fading.

The new U.S. President, Donald Trump, therefore decided to shift America’s strategy—turning the U.S. war against Russia and China into a U.S. and Russia alliance against China. However, the only chance for this strategy to succeed was to cede at least the Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine to Russia, block NATO’s expansion to Russia’s borders with Ukraine, and thus eliminate the threat of Russia losing a nuclear war with the West. In other words, it meant preserving Russia’s status as a global power—a status the U.S. had been undermining through its actions in Ukraine. With this goal in mind, Donald Trump initiated negotiations with Russia.

Russia, likely weary of the conditions China had imposed in exchange for its support, entered the talks with a dual risk: it could lose Chinese backing but also held out hope that China might unconditionally increase its support. If Russia were to lose China’s support, it would become an easy prey for the U.S.

Vladimir Putin announced on April 1, 2025 that his most esteemed guest at the celebrations for the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II would be Xi Jinping. He invited him to the celebrations, stating that he would prepare for him a “nice and rich” program and that he would be “our main guest,” and that he planned to discuss mutual relations and cooperation in international organizations, including the UN, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and BRICS.  This indicated to both Trump and Xi Jinping that Putin could still return to an alliance with China. The continuation of the conflict between the alliance of Russia with China against the alliance of the USA with the EU posed a dangerous threat of a world war.

Ukrainian army captured two Chinese soldiers on April 8, 2025, who were fighting in the Russian army. In the face of such an alliance, the EU, in conjunction with the USA, and possibly Great Britain and Australia, has no hope. A global conventional and subsequently nuclear war between these factions could only destroy life on this planet.

The ideal solution for all parties involved would be to reach an agreement, instead of a world war, to end the struggle for global power by creating a democratic United Nations, where decisions regarding potential military interventions against aggressors would be made by a majority vote of states, and military organizations like NATO, which attempt to seize global power for one state or a group of states, would be abolished.

The original source of this article is Global Research.

The post America’s War Against China appeared first on LewRockwell.

Nick Eberstadt is a political economist and Harvard grad with lots of accolades and many academic accomplishments. He has also written a number of excellent books, one of which I was delighted to learn confirms my long held views about America’s flight from work. The book is called Men Without Work, and it was first published in 2016 when Nick first began to see a shocking number of healthy men in their prime working years, exit the workforce. Today, the number of able-bodied men who have affirmatively elected to not work is north of 7.2 million. These are not men who can afford to support themselves. Many are addicted to pain medication. Very few—according to their own responses in exhaustive surveys—contribute to their household or to their community. They do not attend church, and they do not participate in civic organizations. They do not exercise. What they do, mostly, is play. As Nick explains in this episode, these men spend an average of 2,000 hours a year on screens.  

I was fascinated by our conversation…and troubled. We have nearly 7.6 million open jobs in this county, and no one seems willing to do them. Nick has the courage to spell it all out, and I encourage you to watch. It’s worth your time.

#podcast #usa #work mikeroweWORKS—My foundation is giving away $2.5 million in trade scholarships. Apply by April 17:

https://mikeroweworks.org/scholarship/

The post Why Are Healthy Men Exiting The Workforce? | Nick Eberstadt #274 | The Way I Heard It, with Mike Rowe appeared first on LewRockwell.

Tulsi Gabbard says the long-suppressed RFK and MLK Jr. files are “ready to release,” igniting a new wave of interest in the intelligence community’s secrets.

Join Mark Groubert and Eric Hunley on this Free-form Friday episode of America’s Untold Stories as they dig into what might be revealed, and how Gabbard’s “hunters” are putting pressure on the FBI and CIA for more.

Plus, Trump orders the DOJ to investigate former DHS official and “Anonymous” op-ed writer Miles Taylor, calling him guilty of “treason.” Will the deep state finally get exposed?

We also break down the bizarre case of a Catholic school teacher who admitted to sleeping with a student—then blamed her husband for “neglect.”

And in a fiery update to the Seth Rich saga, attorney Ty Clevenger files to hold the FBI in contempt for ignoring court orders to release records.

From celebrity scandals to government secrecy and everything in between, this is one Friday you don’t want to miss.

The post America’s Untold Stories – Gabbard Drops Bomb: RFK, MLK Records Coming in Days appeared first on LewRockwell.

“I, Pencil.”

The post Elon Musk Tweets Milton Friedman Explaining Leonard Read’s Famous Essay, appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Jay Stephenson. 

Doug Murray presented himself as if he’s a superior member of society during this debate and was extremely condescending to both Joe Rogan and Dave Smith. And every time he got cornered, he resorted to the William F. Buckley debate tactic of using big words and overemphasizing his English accent. Rogan has mostly avoided the Israel issue on his show, but I predict that will change after this debate.

The post Neocon flops during debate on Rogan appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

Antiwar.com 

The post Another Failed 20-Year War: America vs. Somalia appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

Huff Post

The post White House Confirms Trump Is Exploring Ways To ‘Deport’ U.S. Citizens appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click Here:

The Vigilant Fox

The post Yale Study Quietly Confirms COVID Vaccine Nightmare appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, W. T. White.

The post Deep State Customer Service appeared first on LewRockwell.

Said Donald Trump, happy as a child with his new favorite Christmas toy, celebrating the bloating of the federal bureaucracy with even more money taken from the pockets of American consumers through tariff taxation.  No wonder Elon Musk thinks Peter Navarro, Trump’s mercantilist tariff advisor, is “an idiot.”

The post “We’re Taking in $2 Billion a Day!” appeared first on LewRockwell.

International Man: President Trump recently imposed sweeping tariffs on much of the world, dubbing it Liberation Day.

Trump declared: “It will forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn, the day America’s destiny was reclaimed, and the day we began to make America wealthy again.”

What’s your take?

Doug Casey: The left constantly calls Trump a liar. And frankly, things like this are why. It’s not that he lies more than a typical politician, or even lies intentionally. It’s that his use of words is so hyperbolic, so estranged from reality, that it makes him seem like a liar. It’s intellectually dishonest—dishonest, period—to falsely label something. It’s bizarre that Trump thinks his potentially catastrophic tariffs should be called Liberation Day.

The fact is that tariffs are taxes paid by the importer of goods. The money mostly goes out of the pockets of the buyers and, perhaps, to some limited degree, the sellers. It’s 100% certain that tariffs are a tax, and the money goes 100% into the pocket of the State.

Supply chains between countries have become so complex that there are very few items that are—or even could be—manufactured completely within any one country. Production of everything will drop worldwide.

Trump’s tariffs will both increase prices and cause shortages. They don’t, however, cause inflation. Inflation is caused strictly by an increase in the money supply. Tariffs don’t increase the money supply, but they do cause higher prices and a lower standard of living for both the buyer and the seller. Just as bad, as a tax, tariffs result in more dollars in the hands of the State.

The US imports something on the order of $3 trillion annually. Perhaps Trump thinks that a 10% tax will result in $300 billion of revenue for the government, and a 20% tariff will yield $600 billion. But this is incorrect because the higher costs will reduce the amount of trade proportionately. Not only can’t tariffs solve the government’s deficit problem, they’ll make it worse.

He says that the main object of the tariffs is to force investment in the US. And, of course, that may happen to some degree. He’s forgotten that when the US was prosperous before 1971, it never needed foreign investment. But it’s as if we trade Cadillacs to Guatemala in exchange for their bananas. Since they sell more bananas to us than we sell Cadillacs to them, it causes a huge deficit in their favor.

So let’s put a 100% duty on bananas. Problem solved. Guatemalans sell many fewer bananas, but now they can’t afford to buy any Cadillacs at all. Everybody gets hurt—banana producers, Cadillac producers, and most particularly, the people who use those products.

Trumpers will counter: “Well, the tariffs that we threatened to put on Colombian coffee forced their government to accept some refugees.” True, that worked. You can push around a small country, but you can’t push the world around. You can’t even push China around because China is the producer, and the US is the consumer. In the real world, those who produce things are in the driver’s seat, not a country that prints up fiat currency to enable its consumption.

I can’t be sure what Trump is really trying to do. He says things one week, then contradicts himself the next. And he does it constantly. Perhaps he wants to see the whole world go to zero tariffs, but I doubt it. He’s essentially a mercantilist; he seems to believe he can force the whole world to run a trade deficit with the US. He thinks trade is a “win-lose” proposition, and the whole world is “ripping off” the US. He must feel the Guatemalans are ripping off the US on bananas, for sure.

If his object is to get the world to zero tariffs, that would be great. But that’s not his object. And it won’t solve the huge and growing trade deficits that the US has had since about 1980. He might ask himself why the US had huge trade surpluses in the decades before 1980 when, coincidentally, the dollar was very strong. But he won’t. He’s not an introspective guy.

More likely, as the world’s economy declines, burdened by government debt, currency debasement, regulations, and taxes, Trump’s gigantic tariffs will make things much worse. The Smoot-Hawley Tariffs of 1929 made things much worse, causing unemployment both here and abroad. Trump’s tariffs are much higher, and trade is vastly more important than it was in the 1930s. They’re very, very bad news.

International Man: The Trump administration views the dollar as dangerously overvalued, blaming it for America’s deepening economic imbalances.

Is weakening the US dollar a path to prosperity?

Doug Casey: This is further proof of Trump’s economic ignorance. Although I hasten to add that whatever he does, it’s almost certainly not as bad as what would’ve happened if Kamala had been elected.

Since 1971, the German mark, which basically was transformed into the Euro, has risen from 25 cents to 1.25 to the dollar and Germany’s trade surplus increased even as their currency quintupled in value. The same thing happened with the Yen, which increased in value from 360 to about 100 to the dollar. So much for “currency manipulation.”

The immediate and direct effect of devaluing your currency is that it reduces prices to foreigners so they can buy more. The profit of manufacturers, therefore, seems to go up. But it’s an illusion since profits only go up in terms of devalued currency.

Every country should want a strong currency. A strong currency allows it to buy foreign technology and raw materials, which it can’t do with a weak currency. A strong currency encourages saving, and the building of capital. A strong currency makes for a stable country, which makes for the confidence you need to invest domestically. It also allows foreign investment on advantageous terms.

A weak currency is not worth saving. It hurts domestic savers, makes capital accumulation difficult, makes the import of foreign tech unaffordable, leads to social instability, and discourages business and investment. A weak currency encourages debt and speculation. Keynesian and Marxist economists have these things completely backward.

Trump says he wants a weak dollar. One reason why is that the US is buried under many trillions of debt, and a weak dollar might appear to help the situation. But it won’t. Trying to inflate it away subtly amounts to theft. If a weak currency led to prosperity, then Zimbabwe and Argentina would be the most prosperous countries in the world.

International Man: What lessons can the US draw from Argentina’s experience with tariffs, protectionism, and a weakened currency?

Doug Casey: It’s well known that Argentina went from being one of the most prosperous and wealthiest countries in the world a hundred years ago, to turning into a total economic disaster with Peronist policies—which prominently included a weak currency and high tariffs.

The Argentine government put on tariffs to protect domestic industries. The result was that domestic industries were able to get away with crappy and overpriced products that were uncompetitive in the world market. Argentines suffered a much lower standard of living for many years as a result of the tariffs put on by their government. They put themselves under embargo with high tariffs, and that’s what Trump is promising to do with the US.

Furthermore, investors tend to stay away from countries where the rules can change arbitrarily, which was a major reason why Argentina got little investment. The same could happen to the US. The US has historically been better than most countries, but Trump’s protectionist and weak dollar policies could change that. Worse, if the economy goes sideways, the Democrats could be re-elected. That’s a scary but real prospect. Hopefully, Trump’s efforts at domestic deregulation will succeed as a counterbalance.

International Man: If Trump truly wanted to revive American industry and boost the economy, what could he actually do?

Doug Casey: Trump would radically and permanently reduce the size of the State. DOGE is great, but you don’t want to just make government more efficient. DOGE needs to pull most of it out by the roots and sow Agent Orange where it grew.

He would radically cut taxes, but that can only be done if he radically cuts spending—which seems unlikely. He would radically cut government borrowing because when the government borrows in the market, it only drives interest rates higher or sells its debt to the Fed, which debases the currency. But since spending is unlikely to be cut—especially as the Greater Depression unfolds—neither will borrowing.

A gold currency would kill inflation—but that’s impossible unless gold reprices to $30,000 or more.

He should stop threatening foreigners. Trump has this strange idea that foreigners are ripping off America. Saying and believing things like that only creates antagonism. He’d do well to follow Thomas Jefferson’s dictum—be a friend to all but an ally of none. It doesn’t matter if Israel wants the US to bomb the Houthis and Iran; it’s not in our interest.

Trump has said, “We are going to charge countries for doing business in our country, taking our jobs, wealth, and a lot of things that they have been taking over the years.”

It’s just factually untrue and goes a long way toward turning the world into an antagonist or even an enemy.

International Man: The stock market has tanked since Trump introduced his tariffs. What are the investment implications of what comes next?

Doug Casey: Small countries selling to the US can be intimidated and will do as they’re told. But large countries like China will put on counter tariffs. He can expect that the shelves of Walmart and other retailers in the US will be emptied as Chinese goods no longer enter the US.

The funny thing about this is that at the same time as Trump is creating more distortions by putting on tariffs, which always make things worse, DOGE is getting rid of distortions. While DOGE is excellent, it will necessarily hurt businesses that were profiting from those distortions.  So businesses can expect bad news coming and going, as it were.

I can’t help but be very pessimistic about the stock market as the Trump regime creates chaos. Some of that chaos is wonderful and intentional, like destroying DEI, ESG, Wokism, and the WEF-approved world order. Other things will be collateral damage. What things? Those are what Donald Rumsfeld—if anyone remembers him—called unknown unknowns.

And two things that markets don’t like are chaos and lots of unknown unknowns, which is why I continue holding gold.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

The post Trump’s Tariffs and the Coming Economic Fallout appeared first on LewRockwell.

These headwinds will persist for the next decade or two.

The stock market is rallying hard after a brutal sell-off–not an uncommon occurrence. As we savor our winnings in the ship’s first-class casino, it’s not a bad idea to step out onto the deck and gauge the weather.

There are headwinds. Not zephyrs, not gusts, just steady, strong headwinds.

1. Presidents Trump and Xi view each other an as existential challenge to the future prosperity of the nation they lead. Neither can afford to lose face by caving in, and each has a global strategy with no middle ground.

2. Global trade / capital flows are all over the map. Uncertainty is the word of the moment, but perhaps the more prescient description is unpredictability: if enterprises have no visibility on the future costs of trade, commodities, labor and capital, they have little choice but to avoid big bets until visibility is restored.

3. The American consumer is tapped out. Credit card charge-offs are rising, auto loan defaults are rising, air travel is faltering–there are many sources of evidence that consumers–especially the top 20% households whose spending has propped up the economy–have reached financial and perhaps psychological limits.

4. The Reverse Wealth Effect is kicking in as stocks and other assets roll over into volatility and potential trend changes into declines rather than advances. The top 10% who own the majority of income-producing assets and risk assets are seeing $10 trillion of losses followed by recoveries of $5 trillion. Swings of such magnitude do not support confidence in the stability of current valuations or offer visibility on the odds of future capital gains.

Just as enterprises must respond to poor visibility by reducing risk, households respond to increasing volatility and unpredictability by reducing borrowing and spending. Stable gains in asset valuations fuel the Wealth Effect, encouraging consumers to borrow and spend more because their wealth has increased. The Reverse Wealth Effect triggered by losses, volatility and low visibility encourages reducing risk, borrowing and spending.

5. There will be no “save” by the Federal Reserve or massive new Federal fiscal largesse. Tariffs and reshoring manufacturing are inflationary, so the Fed no longer has the freedom to create a few trillion dollars out of thin air to juice risk assets. The federal government’s borrowing-and-spending spree threatens the integrity of the nation’s currency and economy, so the the unlimited checkbook has been put in the drawer.

6. The two decades of deflation generated by China has ended. Central banks could play in the Zero-Interest Rate Policy sandbox because inflationary forces were all offset by the sustained deflationary forces of China’s export machine and credit expansion. Now every economy, including China’s, faces inflationary tides from a number of sources.

7. The sums required to rebuild America’s industrial base will pinch speculative borrowing and consumer spending. Now that both the Fed and the federal government are restrained from borrowing and blowing additional trillions, private capital will have to be enticed into long-term investments in Treasury bonds and reshoring. The ways to incentivize long-term investing rather than consumption and speculation are recession and deflating asset bubbles. Both re-set expectations, risk appetites and incentives.

Everyone with direct experience of manufacturing and supply chain networks is telling us that reshoring will be a costly, long-term project, requiring the rebuilding of the entire ecosystem that’s been lost to hyper-globalization’s offshoring and hyper-financialization’s predation.

Read the Whole Article

The post A Decade of Headwinds appeared first on LewRockwell.

To bar Marine Le Pen from running for the French presidency, a lower court convicted her of “misappropriation of public funds,” not the other way around. It wasn’t the offense she is accused of that led to her being stripped of her right to ineligibility, but it was invented to justify the sentence.
Strangely, no one in the political class saw fit to point out that the presidency of the European Parliament has changed its understanding of the role of MEPs and now considers those who persist in practicing their original role as MEPs to be criminals.

Marine Le Pen was sentenced on March 31, 2025, for “misappropriation of public funds” to four years’ imprisonment, two of which were suspended, a €200,000 fine, and a five-year ban on election with provisional execution, i.e., before any possible appeal. Twenty-four other National Rally officials and the party itself were convicted.

The French political class was immediately divided between those who welcomed the presidential favorite being ousted from the race and those who deplored it. Naturally, no one dared to speak out directly, but all either insisted that they supported the “rule of law” or denounced the “tyranny of judges.”

Behind this reaction to a historic decision by three judges independent of political power, but who clearly understood the prosecution’s demands (i.e., the government’s point of view), no one dares to address the underlying issue of the dispute between France and the presidency of the European Parliament. The facts being prosecuted all predate 2015. However, it is impossible to understand why the elected members of the National Rally were convicted, when they were convinced they had not violated the law, without knowing about this dispute.

Here is the explanation:

Following the Second World War, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill developed a plan to pacify European differences by creating common institutions between states. There was no talk yet of a European Union, but rather of a body allowing European governments to meet and negotiate on a permanent basis, or of an organization bringing together parliamentarians from European states to debate together. Ultimately, ten states merged the two projects and created the Council of Europe. Today, there are 46 of them. The headquarters of this political institution was established in Strasbourg.

In practice, the Council of Europe was conceived as the civilian arm of NATO. Strasbourg was chosen as its headquarters because it is, culturally, a Franco-German city.

Independently of the Council of Europe, another project, this time an economic one, was born with the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), which became the European Economic Community and today, the European Union. Naturally, the seat of the European Parliament was also located in Strasbourg, which housed the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. However, given the rivalries between the member states, various institutions of this economic union were located in Brussels and Luxembourg (the Parliament’s General Secretariat in the Robert Schumann building). MEPs came to Strasbourg for one week a month and then returned to their countries. Since they were elected not in their own name, but in the name of their party, in a single national constituency (except between 2003 and 2018, when there were eight regional constituencies), they devoted the rest of their time to their political training.

In 1993, the European Parliament acquired a chamber in Brussels, the Paul-Henri Spaak building. Six years later, it opened its own chamber in Strasbourg, the Louise Weiss building. At that time, parliamentary sessions were split between the two cities. A gigantic caravan of trucks moved all the parliamentarians’ offices twice a month. Now with a private office in Brussels, the European parliamentarians were invited to reside there and only travel to Strasbourg for sessions held there. They returned to their countries only to meet their constituents and for party meetings.

The administration of the European Economic Community, which is based primarily in Brussels, intended both to distance itself from the Council of Europe and to move closer to the European Parliament, and will therefore do everything to ensure that the latter stops its back-and-forth operations and sits permanently in Brussels. This is also the will of NATO, whose main offices are also in Brussels (or more precisely, in Mons). NATO sets the standards that the Commission proposes to Parliament, which it approves. However, over time, Parliament plays an increasingly independent role, and NATO needs to constantly monitor it to ensure that none of its standards are rejected.

This is when the dispute began: the French refused to leave Strasbourg so as not to fall too visibly under the influence of the Anglo-Saxons. The presidency of the Parliament therefore demanded that, from now on, the elected representatives devote themselves exclusively to their activities in Brussels and no longer concern themselves with their parties in their countries.

Since then, all French political parties committed to their country’s independence—not just the National Rally—have been at odds with the presidency of the European Parliament. The court that convicted Marine Le Pen therefore chose the EP presidency’s theory, while the National Rally insisted that it had not misappropriated a single cent of public money and had acted like many other political parties.

The post What Was Marine Le Pen Found ‘Guilty’ Of? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Yesterday’s piece had warned about the curious drop in Treasurys and rise of interest rates. It was a dire sign that the global economy and markets far beyond Wall Street were going bad.

The Trump administration recognized the danger and, just fifteen minutes after I had published my post, pulled back (archived):

The economic turmoil, particularly a rapid rise in government bond yields, caused Mr. Trump to blink on Wednesday afternoon and pause his “reciprocal” tariffs for most countries for the next 90 days, according to four people with direct knowledge of the president’s decision.

Asked to explain the decision, Mr. Trump told reporters: “Well, I thought that people were jumping a little bit out of line. They were getting yippy, you know, they were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid.”

Behind the scenes, senior members of Mr. Trump’s team had feared a financial panic that could spiral out of control and potentially devastate the economy. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and others on the president’s team, including Vice President JD Vance, had been pushing for a more structured approach to the trade conflict that would focus on isolating China as the worst actor while still sending a broader message that Mr. Trump was serious.

This does not mean that the trouble has ended.

Who is going to invest, into what, while any day, at any moment, the most basic economic conditions may change in completely unpredictable directions:

Asked on Wednesday how he would decide on any further exemptions, Mr. Trump said: “Instinctively, more than anything else. I mean, you almost can’t take a pencil to paper. It’s really more of an instinct, I think, than anything else.”

By admitting that Trump acknowledges that he is the real problem.

How can I decide to invest in a new car when by delivery date the tariffs and interests involved might have changed in unforeseeable directions? On what basis can I trust Trump’s instincts? I can’t and won’t. The same will hold for much bigger investment decisions.

For once the Washington Post editorial is getting it right (archived):

The bond markets forced Trump’s hand. By moving their money out of dollars and selling U.S. Treasury bonds, investors told Trump what his closest advisers would not about the perils of starting trade wars with all other countries at once. Trillions in value were wiped out in equity markets, and the financial system blinked red with indicators of contagion.

Finally, bond yields began to forecast calamity — especially the alarming sell-off of 10-year Treasurys. In times of panic, these bonds usually attract investors. Their failure to do so this time reflected declining confidence that the U.S. government would repay its debts.
…
After Trump finally announced the tariff pause, the S&P 500 closed up 9.5 percent and the tech-heavy Nasdaq gained 12 percent. The news is indeed worth rejoicing. But keep in mind that the 90-day pause will last only until July 8, and in the meantime the trade war with China might continue to escalate. In other words, investors, business and consumers will still be living with uncertainty. For the long term, Trump and his team are well advised to come up with a less volatile economic strategy.

Until Trump settles on a predictable course the global carnage will continue.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

The post Trump’s Market Whiplash Continues appeared first on LewRockwell.

A new Pew survey has found that a majority of Americans now have a negative view of Israel, with 53 percent of respondents now holding an unfavorable view of the Zionist state — up from 42 percent just three years ago.

This comes as Benjamin Netanyahu announces after his latest meeting with Donald Trump that negotiations with Iran will necessarily have to include a “Libyan-style” dismantling of the nation’s civilian nuclear infrastructure in order to avoid the war that the US is openly preparing to wage. This, naturally, is a complete non-starter condition for Iran.

It also comes as Trump’s US Citizenship and Immigration Services announces that it’s going to be screening the social media posts of immigrants for “antisemitic” speech, which of course in practice means criticism of Israel and its atrocities. This is just the latest in the Trump administration’s relentless efforts to prevent Americans from seeing or hearing any political speech which goes against Washington’s official position on Israel.

If you’re wondering why the empire is working so frantically to stomp out all speech that is critical of Israel, here’s why. https://t.co/2RPUEqm39j

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) April 9, 2025

Developments like these can be expected to assist the rise of the far right in the west. US public opinion is turning hard against Israel as both parties bend over backward to send it expensive weapons and silence its critics — and US public opinion is seldom good at making subtle distinctions.

“Antisemitism” is fast becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. As westerners tire of having their speech rights taken away by their government to protect the interests of a state that’s committing genocide under a Star of David banner, a lot of them are going to blame Jews for this. As western governments bend over backwards to help murder Israel’s enemies in the middle east, a lot of westerners are going to blame Jews. As the drums for war with Iran beat louder and louder and parents fear their children will be sent off to die for Israel, many will blame this on the Jews.

I am not saying this is a good thing. It’s a very bad thing. But it’s also reality.

As more and more westerners grow disgusted with Israel and their government’s support for its depravity, the far left is going to talk to the public about the difference between Zionism and Judaism, about the western empire and its interests in the middle east — and meanwhile the far right is going to blame it all on Jews.

Which of these sounds like the easier argument to make? Which is simpler? Which is more digestible? Which is less challenging to the cognitive biases of a population that’s already been propagandized to view their nation as inherently virtuous: a perspective which highlights the west’s culpability for the atrocities we’re backing in the middle east, or a cartoonish perspective which blames it all on the subversive manipulations of a sinister religious minority?

Actually, what fuels antisemitism is murdering children by the thousands under the banner of the Star of David while adamantly insisting that your actions are inseparable from all Jews and the totality of Judaism.

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) December 26, 2023

Those of us who oppose the criminality of Israel and its western allies from the left will do all we can to keep the far right’s arguments from gaining traction, but it won’t be our fault when we fail. It will be the fault of the western governments who’ve spent all this time stomping out the civil liberties of their citizenry in the name of fighting “antisemitism” while raining military explosives on the middle east and backing the slaughter of tens of thousands of children under a Star of David flag.

We can expect to see some nasty hate crimes against Jews in the future, which the Zionists will be all too happy about because then they can point to those incidents and say “This is why we need Israel! This is why we need a Jewish state to protect us!”

But of course this won’t just affect Jews. Immigrants, racial minorities, LGBTQ people and other marginalized communities will all be harmed by the rise of white nationalist factions whose popularity benefits from an increase of anti-Jewish sentiment in our society. The mainstream “MAGA” movement, as ugly as that’s been, is still far less dangerous to these groups than the overtly Hitlerite factions will be if they come into significant power in the future.

This does seem to be where things could be headed, especially if the economic situation gets as dire as it looks like it might get, and even more so if there’s a war with Iran. It can all be easily avoided by simply ceasing to stomp out free speech to protect Israel, ceasing western warmongering in places like Iran and Yemen, and ceasing to back Israel’s genocidal atrocities against Palestinians.

But it looks like our rulers are bound and determined to drag us into a very dark direction instead.

____________

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. Go here to find video versions of my articles. If you’d prefer to listen to audio of these articles, you can subscribe to them on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or YouTube. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. 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. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

The post The Backlash Against Israel’s Western-Backed Crimes Will Fuel the Far Right appeared first on LewRockwell.