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“In spite of all the rhetoric, we will go deeper in debt, the Fed will print more money, and the value of the dollar will continue to plummet.” – Ron Paul

Never in history have the economic and political structures been so manipulated by those who are responsible for their safekeeping; never has so much been at stake, in so many countries, and facing collapse, all at the same time.

The great majority of people in the First World recognise that the world is passing through an economic crisis. However, most are under the impression that there are some pretty smart fellows running the show and all they need to do is tweak the system a bit more and we’ll return to happy days.

Not so. The “smart fellows” who are in charge of fixing the problem are in fact the very same people who created it.

Understandably, this a hard concept for most people to even consider, let alone accept, as the very idea that those in charge of the system might consciously collapse it seems preposterous. So, we might wish to back up a bit here and present a very brief history of the system itself, in order to understand that the eventual collapse of the economic system was baked in the cake from the very beginning.

Creating a Central Bank

From the very earliest days of the formation of the American republic, bankers (along with inside help from George Washington’s secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton) sought to create a banking monopoly that would create the country’s currency and become the central banking system.

The first attempt at a central bank was a failure, and strong opponents, including Thomas Jefferson, prevented a second central bank for a time. Later, further attempts were made by bankers and their political cronies, and each central bank was either short-lived or defeated in its planning stages.

Then, in 1913, the heads of the largest banks met clandestinely on Jekyll Island, Georgia, to make another try. Having recently lost yet another bid to create a central bank, due to the public’s understandable concern that the big bankers were already too powerful, a new spin was placed on the idea. This time, they decided to present the idea as a government body that would be decentralised and would have the responsibility of restricting the power of the banks.

However, the new bill was in fact the same old bill, with a new title and some minor changes in wording. But this time, it would be presented by the new president, who was a liberal.

The president, Woodrow Wilson, had in fact been handpicked by the banks. The banks then scuttled their own conservative party’s candidate, got the Democrat Wilson elected, then installed a secretary of the Treasury whose job it would be to ensure that the Federal Reserve was created.

The bill was widely supported by the public, even though, in truth, it was not a federal agency, but a privately owned conglomerate, controlled by the banks. Neither was it a reserve. It was never intended to store money; it was intended to give the biggest bankers control of the economy. They followed the central principle of uber-banker Mayer Rothschild: “Let me issue and control a nation’s money and I care not who writes the laws.”

From the start, the new institution peddled itself as the protector of the people’s interests, but it was quite the opposite. Its purpose from its inception was to control the economy and the government by controlling the issuance of the currency. In addition, it was to be a system of taxation.

Typically, a population accepts a certain amount of direct taxation but has its limits of tolerance. Yet, the bankers understood that a less direct method of taxation was infinitely more profitable and infinitely safer from criticism.

Inflation as a Profit System

Inflation was not always the norm. At one time, prices were relatively static from one generation to the next. But the Federal Reserve touted the idea that “controlled” inflation was in fact necessary for a prosperous economy.

Of course, the greater the debasement of the currency through inflation, the more the central bankers profited. But at some point, the currency would have lost virtually all its value and it would be time for a reset. The currency would need to collapse and a new one created.

And so, the Fed set about its hundred-year programme of continuous inflation. Although there have been periods of lower inflation (and even deflation), the programme stayed more or less on course, and now, its hundred-year life has all but ended: the dollar has been devalued almost 100%.

And so, we find ourselves at the day of reckoning. The economic crisis we are now facing (not only in the US; it will be felt, to a greater or lesser extent, worldwide) is not a mere anomaly that we need to “push past”. It’s a systemic crisis. It’s been created by design and the system must collapse.

Of course, the central banks are in the process of protecting their interests, to make sure that, whilst this will be a major economic calamity, they themselves will continue to profit. The damage will be borne by the general public.

This began in earnest in 1999, with the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, allowing banks to create a massive, reckless mortgage spree. It was backed by the government’s “too big to fail” policy that guaranteed that, when the banks predictably became insolvent as a result of the loans, government would bail them out. (And by “government” we mean “the taxpayer”; it was he who picked up the bill for the banks’ recklessness.)

The next step in getting ready for the collapse is an all-out effort to confiscate the wealth of the public. This can be seen in the effort to push investors away from solid forms of wealth protection such as gold and silver and into stocks, bonds and bank deposits. More recently, we’ve seen the emergence of an effort to end the use of safe deposit boxes and a push to end the use of paper currency in making transactions.

The end objective is to force as much money as possible into deposits in banks, then take it. The US, EU and a few other countries have passed confiscation legislation, allowing the banks carte blanche to confiscate and/or refuse to release deposits.

Of course a reset of these proportions will not be without its fallout. The public will be horrified at the outcome, at the realisation that the very institutions they thought had been created to protect them had never been intended to serve their interests at all.

Once they realise that the world’s greatest Ponzi scheme has been foisted on them, they will be hopping mad and justifiably so. Those who had not had the foresight to internationalise themselves, to remove themselves as much as possible from the system, will most certainly want to get even in some way.

And this makes clear why governments, particularly that of the US, are working so hard to create a police state. Unless a totalitarian state can be created, those who are presently taking the wealth may not be able to fully realise their objectives.

The coming train wreck is no accident. It has long been planned. That the “smart fellows in charge” will somehow save the day is therefore a vain hope indeed.

It’s still possible to back out of the system, but it’s getting more difficult every day. The window is closing.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

The post When a Train Wreck Is No Accident appeared first on LewRockwell.

Last week U.S. President Donald Trump published a confused tweet about nuclear testing:

…  Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis.  …

Some media panicky wrote that Trump had ordered to detonate nuclear warheads.

I disagreed with that interpretation:

All nuclear warheads the U.S. has are under the control of the Department of Energy. It is the sole agency that can do test explosions of nuclear warheads. The nuclear delivery vehicles which are used to deploy the war heads are under the control of the Department of Defense (or ‘Department of War’ as Trump calls it).

Trump said “Because of other countries testing programs” and “start testing … on an equal basis” both in reference of nuclear delivery vehicle tests of other countries.

Trump thereby likely meant to order the DoD to test its nuclear delivery vehicles, just like Russia has recently done. He did not order the DoE to test nuclear war heads.

The testing of nuclear delivery vehicles, like intercontinental missiles, is a routine that has been done every year since those exist.

It is nothing to panic about.

On Sunday the Energy Secretary confirms that no nuclear explosions are involved (archived):

The nuclear testing ordered by President Trump will not involve nuclear explosions, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on Sunday, adding that the testing would involve “the other parts of a nuclear weapon” to ensure they are working properly.

Mr. Wright’s comments came four days after Mr. Trump made the declaration that he was ordering the U.S. military to resume nuclear testing “on an equal basis” with other countries, raising the specter of a return to the worst days of the Cold War.

“I think the tests we’re talking about right now are systems tests,” Mr. Wright said in an interview on the Fox News show “The Sunday Briefing.” “These are not nuclear explosions. These are what we call noncritical explosions.”

Noncritical or subcritical explosion test are those where, for example, the chemical explosives which, within a nuclear warhead, are supposed to initiate the nuclear fission are tested for their stability. That is, like testing the wiring of a warhead detonator, routine stuff which every country that has nuclear weapons does on a regular basis.

The Los Alamos National Laboratory is where the U.S. is doing these tests:

Subcritical experiments allow researchers to evaluate the behavior of nuclear materials (usually plutonium) in combination with high explosives. This configuration mimics the fission stage of a modern nuclear weapon. However, subcrits remain below the threshold of reaching criticality. No critical mass is formed, and no self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction occurs—there is no nuclear explosion.
…
Although subcrits don’t create self-sustaining nuclear reactions, in many ways, they harken back to the days of full-scale nuclear testing. Since the 1992 moratorium on full-scale nuclear testing, subcrits have provided valuable data related to weapons design, safety, materials, aging, and more. This information helps scientists determine if America’s nuclear weapons will work as intended.

These experiments are legit even under the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. They are, just as I had said, no need to panic.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

The post Trump’s Nuclear Weapon Tests Won’t Include Nuke Explosions appeared first on LewRockwell.

Even if an AI program advises selling everything and walking away from the market for five years, how many of us would take this advice?

Only those who experienced the heady euphoria of the late 1990s dot-com bubble in tech stocks know what the shift from “can’t lose” confidence to “can’t win” surrender feels like. The chart below illustrates this emotional cycle of confidence rising and fading as bubbles inflate and deflate.

Though we like to tell ourselves we’re rational investors, animal spirits are the driving force in euphoric bubbles where our beliefs direct our decisions: we come to believe that we’re smarter than the cautious dummies, that the technological revolution underway has plenty more room to run, that policies supportive of stocks have been refined and institutionalized to the point they’re rock-solid foundations, and so on.

Though the chart doesn’t go back to the 1870s bust or the 1930s Great Depression, the cycle played out in those eras, too. The process of confidence fading is painfully long, as the rewards of “buying the dip” have been so generous and reliable that we naturally assume any decline will be brief.

When the recovery we anticipated rolls over and reaches new lows, we’re sure the authorities will “do whatever it takes” to reinflate the markets, but authorities don’t actually have god-like powers; their powers only appeared god-like because conditions favored their interventions.

Every new low hurts, but we’re still confident that the market fundamentals are intact, authorities have plenty of policy bazookas they can launch, and the recommendations of Wall Street analysts to “buy the dip” are encouraging.

(Those trading in the 2000-2002 era recall Wall Street analysts touting dot-com stocks that had fallen from $80 to $40 as “strong buys,” meanwhile the stock finally bottom at $4. Following the “buy” recommendation yielded a 90% loss.)

We attribute any run of bad luck to over-confidence rather than misjudgment of the entire market and economy: OK, we blew the last few trades, but we can get our mojo back.

In the years this process takes to exhaust itself, inflation is eating away at nominal stock prices. As the third chart illustrates, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) finally returned to its 1966 peak above 1,000 in 1973, that didn’t mean investors were made whole; inflation had consumed 37% of the value of their stock holdings. To be made whole, DJIA would have to reach 1,370, not 1,000.

The real losses were even bleaker the next time the DJIA again closed above 1,000 on October 12,1982. Investors who held their index portfolios from the peak in 1966 to 1982 lost two-thirds of the purchasing power of their investment. They would not be made whole until the DJIA rose well above 3,000.

The trend that pops out of this long-term chart is that each new peak of household assets invested in stocks is higher than the previous peak. What will the nominal valuation of stock indices be when the percentage of household assets invested in stocks falls from 45% to 15%? What will the purchasing power of the money invested be (i.e. adjusted for real-world inflation) at that point?

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The post The Inevitable Drift Down from ‘Can’t Lose’ Owning Stocks to ‘Can’t Win’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

A new study in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that nearly 5% of U.S. physicians left clinical practice in 2019, representing a 40% increase in just six years.

It confirms what every practicing doctor already knows: America’s physicians are burning out, checking out, and getting out, with female physicians and those in rural areas being the most likely to exit.

The study, conducted by Rotenstein and colleagues from Yale, UCLA, and UCSF, examined over 700,000 physicians who treated Medicare patients and found that doctors caring for older, sicker, and poorer patients were more likely to leave the profession. Although the paper is descriptive rather than prescriptive, the message is clear — the medical profession is hemorrhaging.

Medicine has become the only profession where the customer isn’t the patient, the boss isn’t the doctor, and the computer always wins.

The reasons for this mass departure aren’t mysterious; they’re baked into the system.

For many doctors, it’s death by a thousand clicks. The modern doctor’s day is no longer defined by caring for patients but about feeding the bureaucratic beast. Electronic health records were promoted as time-savers, but they quickly became time thieves.

For every hour of patient care, physicians spend nearly two hours on documentation and desk work. None of it enhances health care, but all of it keeps lawyers and administrators satisfied. Sacrificed are evenings with family, replaced by late-night charting marathons to satisfy billing requirements.

Then there’s malpractice anxiety, the ever-present sword of Damocles. Roughly one in three physicians has faced a lawsuit at some point in their career. Even in states with tort reform, a single bad outcome or an opportunistic attorney can bring years of stress and financial burden.

The result is “defensive medicine,” where tests and referrals are ordered not because patients need them but because lawyers might. There is also the psychological stress. Any physician who has been sued, whether the case had merit or not, carries that scar forward. Every future patient becomes a potential plaintiff.

Add to that decreasing reimbursements and increasing costs. Medicare physician payments have fallen 33% since 2001 after adjusting for inflation, while practice expenses have risen 59% during the same period.

Insurers set payment rates that barely cover overhead, while inflation, staffing shortages, and mandatory technology upgrades push expenses higher. Independent physicians, those who still see medicine as a calling rather than a corporate job, are selling out to hospitals.

According to the AMA, “The share of physicians working in private practices in 2024 was 42.2 percent, a decline of 18 percentage points from 60.1 percent in 2012.” In other words, less than half of doctors remain in private practice.

Private equity’s involvement in medicine has surged. Their approach is straightforward: Acquire practices, increase productivity, cut expenses, and sell for profit. For doctors, this translates to more metrics, less independence, and ongoing pressure to see more patients in less time. The outcome isn’t about efficiency — it’s corporatized medicine, where healing becomes a profit center and burnout a rounding error.

Blue Cross Blue Shield now uses AI algorithms to cut payments to doctors they believe are overcharging for their most complex patients. Yet politicians face no such “adjustments” for their own ongoing fiscal malpractice.

Surveys reveal that approximately 45% of U.S. physicians currently report symptoms of burnout, and 1 in 5 doctors plan to leave clinical medicine within the next two years.

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The post The Great Physician Exodus: How Bureaucracy, Burnout, and Bean Counters Are Driving Doctors Away appeared first on LewRockwell.

Stories about killer robots, machine-augmented heroes, laser weapons and battles in space – outer or cyber – have always been good for filling cinema seats, but now they have started to liven up sober academic journals and government white papers.

However, war is about much more than combat or how we fight. Is the sensationalism of high-tech weaponry blinding us to technology’s impact on the broader social, political and cultural context that determines why, where and when war happens, what makes it more or less likely, and who wins?

Consider artificial intelligence (AI). The potential for developing lethal autonomous weapons systems grabs headlines (“killer robots!”), but the greatest impact of AI on conflict may be socially mediated. Algorithmically-driven social media connections funnel individuals into trans-national but culturally enclosed echo-chambers, radicalising their world-view.

As robots relieve humans of their jobs, some societies will prove better prepared than others in their use of education and infrastructures for transitioning workers into new, socially sustainable and economically productive ways to make a living. Less prepared nations could see increasingly stark inequality, with economically-excluded young people undermining social stability, losing faith with technocratic governance, and spurring the rise of leaders who aim popular anger at an external enemy.

Looking beyond individual technologies allows us to focus on the broader and deeper dimensions of the transformation coming our way. Professor Klaus Schwab, chairman and founder of the World Economic Forum, argues that the collapse of barriers between digital and physical, and between synthetic and organic, constitutes a Fourth Industrial Revolution, promising a level of change comparable to that brought about by steam power, electricity and computing.

Something that makes this revolution fundamentally different is how it challenges ideas about what it means to be human. For instance, neuroscience is teaching us more about our own fallibility, and also just how ‘hackable’ humans are. As science continues to uncover difficult truths about how we really operate, we will have to confront basic assumptions about the nature of human beings. Whether this deep transformation will reinforce or undermine a shared sense of human dignity, and what effects it will have on our relationship with organized violence, remain open to question.

The experience of past industrial revolutions can help us begin to search for answers about how this will transform the wider context of international security. In the first industrial revolution, deposits of coal and iron ore were one factor determining the “winners” in terms of economic and geopolitical power.

Today, new modes and artefacts of industrial production will also change demand patterns, empowering countries controlling supply and transit, and disempowering others. Progress in energy production and storage efficiency, for instance, is likely to have profound consequences for the petro economies and the security challenges of their regions. Although the set of natural resources critical to strategic industries will change, their use as a geo-economic tool will probably be repeated.

For instance, this is widely thought to have happened when, in the midst of a maritime dispute with Japan in 2010, China restricted export of “rare earths” that are critical for computing, sensors, permanent magnets and energy storage. With ever more commercial and military value embedded in the technology sector, such key materials will be deemed “critical” or “strategic” in terms of national security, and be subject to political as well as market forces.

The 19th Century Industrial Revolution showed how technological asymmetry can translate into geopolitical inequality – in the words of Hilaire Belloc’s poem ‘The modern traveller’, spoken by a European about Africa: “Whatever happens, we have got the Maxim Gun, and they have not”. (The Maxim Gun was the first recoil-operated machine gun).

What will be the Maxim Gun of our time? Who will have it, and who will not? In the 20th Century, the “haves and have-nots” of the nuclear weapons club membership became the major determinant of the post-war global order, and – as seen in the cases of Iran and North Korea today – this continues to be relevant. Stealth technology and precision guided missiles used to impose a “new world order” in the early 1990s showed how the gap in military capability separated the United States from others, sustaining its leadership of a “unipolar” order.

According to the current US deputy secretary of defence Robert Work, “There’s no question that US military technological superiority is beginning to erode”.

History can only tell us only so much. There is a need for fresh thinking about the implications of the Fourth Industrial Revolution for international security.

Strategic de-stabilisation

1. Waging war may seem “easier”. If increased reliance on machines for remote killing makes combat more abstract from our everyday experience, could that make it more tolerable for our societies, and therefore make war more likely? Those who operate lethal systems are ever more distant from the battlefield and insulated from physical danger, but this sense of advantage may prove illusory. Those on the receiving end of technological asymmetries have a stronger incentive to find other ways to strike back: when you cannot compete on a traditional battlefield, you look to where your adversary is vulnerable, such as through opportunistic attacks on civilians.

2. Speed kills. “The speed at which machines can make decisions in the far future is likely to challenge our ability to cope, demanding a new relationship between man and machine.” This was the assessment of US Major General William Hix at a conference on the future of the Army in October 2016. The speed of technological innovation also makes it hard to keep abreast of new military capabilities, easier to be misled on the actual balance of power, and to fall victim to a strategic miscalculation. The fact that some capabilities are deliberately hidden just makes it harder. Because offensive cyber capability relies so much on exploiting one-off vulnerabilities, it is difficult to simultaneously demonstrate and maintain a capability. Once a particular vulnerability has been exploited, the victim is alerted and will take steps to fix it. General Hix again: “A conventional conflict in the near future will be extremely lethal and fast, And we will not own the stopwatch.”

3. Fear and uncertainty increase risk. The expectation that asymmetries could change quickly – as may be the case with new strategic capabilities in areas like artificial intelligence, space, deep sea and cyber – could incentivise risk-taking and aggressive behaviour. If you are confident that you have a lead in a strategically-significant but highly dynamic field of technology, but you are not confident that the lead will last, you might be more tempted to use it before a rival catches up. Enhanced capacity to operate at speed puts security actors into a constant state of high alert, incentivises investment in resilience, and forces us to live with uncertainty. Under these conditions, war by mistake – either through over-confidence in your ability to win, or because of exaggerated threat perception – becomes more likely.

4. Deterrence and pre-emption. When new capabilities cause a shift in the balance between offensive and defensive advantage – or even the perception of such a shift -, it could increase the incentives for aggression. For example, one of the pillars of nuclear deterrence is the “second strike” capability, which puts the following thought into the mind of an actor contemplating a nuclear attack: “even if I destroy my opponent’s country totally, their submarines will still be around to take revenge”. But suppose swarms of undersea drones were able to track and neutralize the submarines that launch nuclear missiles? Long-range aerial drones can already navigate freely across the oceans, and will be able to fly under the radar deep into enemy territory. Such capabilities make it possible in theory for an actor to escape the fear of second-strike retaliation, and feel safer in launching a pre-emptive strike against aircraft in their hangars, ships in port, and critical infrastructure, with practically no chance of early warning. Indeed, cyberattacks on banks, power stations and government institutions have demonstrated that it is no longer necessary to fly bombers around the world to reach a distant enemy’s critical infrastructure without early warning. The idea of striking a `knockout blow` may come to seem feasible once more.

5. The new arms race is harder to control. One of the mechanisms for strategic stability is arms control agreements, which have served to limit the use of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. When it comes to the multiple combinations of technology we see as a hallmark of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, one of the obstacles to international agreement is caused by uncertainty about how strategic benefits will be distributed. For instance, the international community is currently debating both the ethics and practicality of a ban on the development of lethal autonomous weapons systems. One of the factors holding this debate back from a conclusion is a lack of consensus among experts about whether such systems would give an advantage to the defender or the attacker, and hence be more likely to deter or incentivize the escalation of conflict. Where you stand on the issue may depend on whether you see yourself as a master of the technology, or a victim. Another obstacle to imposing control is the wider cast of players –

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With last November’s election, the conservative Right in this country secured a massive victory. Donald Trump won the presidency handily, the GOP gained control of both the House and the Senate, and the Democratic Party was in disarray, with no one to bring them back to prominence. It appeared clear that the nation could look forward to years of Republican dominance.

That’s not so clear anymore, because a schism threatens to tear apart the Right, one whose epicenter lies not in America but in Israel.

This rift has been brewing for years, especially since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel; the latest flashpoint occurred last week when Tucker Carlson interviewed provocateur Nick Fuentes. The actual content of the interview became irrelevant; the real argument was over Carlson giving a “platform” to a man many on the Right consider a neo-Nazi antisemite. But what escalated the internal fight was a video by Kevin Roberts, president of the conservative Heritage Foundation (which is known to be pro-Israel). In it, he did not condemn Carlson, although he made clear that he rejected antisemitism and abhorred many of the views expressed by Fuentes over the years. Roberts encouraged discussion of the issues rather than fostering a cancel culture on the Right. It was a reasonable and balanced statement, so of course people online freaked out.

And when I say “freaked out,” I’m not exaggerating. People were literally comparing Roberts’s video to the early days of Nazi Germany, saying statements like his (which, remember, explicitly condemned antisemitism) were the first steps to a new Holocaust. Pro-Israel conservatives tripped over themselves to condemn Roberts—and, most importantly, made sure to be seen condemning him.

The standard argument one hears whenever anyone criticizes Israel—or even allows criticism to be made without condemnation—is “this is how the Holocaust began.” To permit even the slightest criticism is to invite mass evil. Now, because it’s necessary these days in these debates, let me make something explicit: I do believe the Holocaust happened and was one of the worst evils ever perpetrated by man. Millions of innocent Jews were slaughtered in the most cruel and evil ways. Faithful Catholics of the time, such as Dietrich von Hildebrand, Servant of God Therese Neumann, and St. Maximilian Kolbe understood this in the moment and rightly resisted the Nazi regime. We absolutely don’t want to go back, as the saying goes.

Yet the way many seek to avoid another Holocaust is too simplistic and may even be counterproductive. It’s true that the Holocaust happened because the Jews were historically scapegoated and unfairly criticized and attacked. Few in early 1930’s Germany defended them as the scapegoating was intensified. But does that mean that no criticism of modern Israel, no matter how mild, should be allowed? I see three possible outcomes of such a policy.

The first possibility is that stifling any and all criticism of Israel prevents another Holocaust, just as supposedly intended. Criticism could escalate to attacks and full-fledged scapegoating, so by nipping the problem in the bud, the ultimate tragedy is averted. But that’s not the only possible outcome of this strategy.

A second, and more likely, possibility is that by refusing to allow even legitimate criticism of Israel, resentment grows against its protected status, leading to more, not less, antisemitism. People begin to wonder why Israel—and Jews in general—are considered off-limits, and frustration caused by this artificial boundary becomes fuel for antisemitic conspiracies. This, in fact, is exactly what is happening now.

A third possibility, which can happen in conjunction with the second, is that due to its impunity, Israel has license to commit gravely evil acts without fear of consequences. If Israel truly has unconditional support from America, then any and all limits are removed in its efforts to achieve its political goals. And since Israel, like every nation, is ruled by sinful men, it’s likely those men will cross moral lines if given free reign to do so. And this also is happening now, as all objective observers acknowledge.

Thus, by awarding Israel with a protected status in order to prevent another Holocaust, pro-Israel conservatives excuse current evils and increase the likelihood of causing what they purportedly seeks to prevent.

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The post The Growing Conservative Schism and How To Avoid It appeared first on LewRockwell.

In Wednesday’s episode of The Peter Schiff Show, Peter responds to the Fed’s latest rate cut, laying out why the Fed’s attempts to normalize policy have failed and how that failure ripples across markets, housing, and wages. He walks listeners through the permanence of the Fed’s bloated balance sheet, what that means for mortgage-backed securities and rate expectations, why gold still matters as a sanity check, and how market concentration and inflation interact with workers’ hopes for higher pay.

He opens by returning to an argument he made years ago about the Fed’s inability to unwind its interventions, calling out past assurances that now look impossible to keep in 2025:

Back then I said there’s no way that the Fed is going to reverse this, that this is a monetary roach motel the Fed checked in, and it ain’t never checking out. Well here we are now in 2025 and the balance sheet is 6.7 trillion, and the Fed says we’re not making it any smaller. Which proves that Ben Bernanke lied or just was completely incompetent if he actually believed what he was saying. I at least was smart enough to know that what he was saying was impossible.

Peter then explains one technical but consequential detail about how the Fed is handling its holdings, and why that nuance matters for the housing market rather than being a small bookkeeping change:

Also what the Fed mentioned is that to the extent that bonds mature they will continue to roll over the principal. But if it is a mortgage backed security that matures the Fed won’t roll that over into more mortgage backed securities. It will roll it into treasuries. And so this instead of helping the housing market a lot of people thought that hey if we stop quantitative tightening it’s going to really help the mortgage market because the Fed won’t be selling mortgage backed securities. Well they’re not going to be buying them either.

He also breaks down the market’s reaction and what Jerome Powell’s comments mean for rate-cut expectations, noting how quickly investor bets can shift and why many still cling to hopes for a December cut:

Now before today’s announcement a December cut was virtually a lock. And so now the odds have gone down considerably, although it’s still favored. Now it’s a bit surprising that the markets didn’t react even more negatively to Powell basically rug pulling a December rate cut when the markets are pretty much banking on that. So I think maybe a lot of people believe that we’re still going to get a cut in December. I would put myself in that camp.

To show how distorted market prices can become when policy is loose, Peter points to the extreme concentration in today’s stock market and the absurdity of a single company approaching the total value of entire national exchanges:

Especially considering that today, Nvidia not only hit a new all-time record high, Nvidia now has a market cap of over $5 trillion, $5 trillion. To put that into perspective, there are only three countries in the world that have a total stock market capitalization. That means all the publicly traded stocks in the entire country. There’s only three countries where the whole stock market is worth $5 trillion, the United States and China, and the third one is Japan.

Finally, Peter tackles the perennial hope that policymakers can engineer higher wages to catch up with past price inflation, explaining why you can’t reliably inflate your way to prosperity without creating a self-defeating cycle:

So in other words, he wants more inflation so that people can get higher wages to afford the higher prices that resulted from the inflation of the past. But of course, the policies that he is pursuing to increase wages will also increase prices. So it’s going to be like a dog trying to catch his own tail. It’s never going to happen.

This article was originally published on SchiffGold.com.

The post Dog Chasing His Own Tail appeared first on LewRockwell.

President Donald Trump announced that he is preparing the U.S. military to potentially “wipe out” Islamic terrorists who are killing and kidnapping thousands of Christians each year.

“If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing,’ to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities,” Trump wrote Saturday on Truth Social.

“I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action. If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians!”

Asked Sunday whether he might use military force in the country, the most populous in Africa, Trump affirmed he was not ruling out the possibility.

“Could be, I mean, a lot of things — I envisage a lot of things,” he told journalists. “They’re killing the Christians and killing them in very large numbers. We’re not going to allow that to happen.”

Trump raised the alarm on Friday about the “mass slaughter” of Christians in Nigeria, declaring it a “country of particular concern,” a designation reserved for governments who perpetrate or tolerate “particularly severe violations of religious freedom,” such as that of China, Pakistan, and North Korea.

In his Friday Truth Social post, Trump announced he was tasking Congress with investigating the threat Christians face in Nigeria.

“The United States cannot stand by while such atrocities are happening in Nigeria, and numerous other Countries. We stand ready, willing, and able to save our Great Christian population around the World!

Best-selling rapper Nicki Minaj praised the message from Trump on Saturday, decrying religious persecution.

“Reading this made me feel a deep sense of gratitude,” Minaj posted to X. “We live in a country where we can freely worship God. No group should ever be persecuted for practicing their religion.”

“Numerous countries all around the world are being affected by this horror & it’s dangerous to pretend we don’t notice,” she continued. “Thank you to The President & his team for taking this seriously,” the rapper added. “God bless every persecuted Christian. Let’s remember to lift them up in prayer.”

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz thanked Minaj, who has a massive following, for speaking out in support of persecuted Christians and invited her to the U.S. Embassy in New York to discuss the matter, an invitation she said she would be “honored” to accept.

A 2025 Global Christian Relief (GCR) Red List report has found that Nigeria is the most dangerous place for Christians in the world. The report detailed how most of the killings in Nigeria occur in northern states governed by Islamic sharia law, where Christians “often live in remote villages in semi-arid landscapes, making them particularly vulnerable to attacks.”

The ongoing violence against Christians in the country has been so frequent that it has been denounced by international observers as a “genocide,” including by secular liberal Bill Maher.

“This is so much more of a genocide attempt than what is going on in Gaza. They are literally attempting to wipe out the Christian population of an entire country,” he recently said while talking with GOP Congresswoman Nancy Mace.

Violence against Christians in Nigeria intensified after 1999 when 12 northern states adopted Sharia law. The rise of the terrorist group Boko Haram in 2009 also intensified Christian persecution. The group famously kidnapped hundreds of schoolgirls in 2014; 87 of them are still listed as “missing.”

From 2009 to 2022, over 50,000 Christians had been killed in the country, an Open Doors report found, and the violence has since escalated. A 2024 report found that more than 8,000 Nigerian Christians were killed and thousands more were abducted in 2023, including dozens of priests, making it the bloodiest year on record for Islamic attacks against Christians in the country.

There were 3,100 Christians killed and 2,830 Christians kidnapped in Nigeria in 2024, far more than other countries in the same year, according to the latest Open Doors World Watch List. Attacks continue to spread southward from the Muslim-majority north, displacing families, destroying homes, and burning churches and schools.

Anja Hoffman, executive director of the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination Against Christians in Europe, told LifeSiteNews contributor Jonathon Van Maren that the Nigerian government’s inaction enables the epidemic of violence.

A key factor in this ongoing crisis is impunity,” Hoffman told Van Maren. “Government and security services frequently fail to respond. Although President Bola Tinubu’s 2023 election raised hopes for stronger protection, meaningful change has not materialized. Security forces remain under-resourced, prosecutions are rare, and many local authorities deny a religious motive, making justice elusive.”

Recent attacks in the country have seen the abduction and even murder of Catholic priests and seminarians. In a July press release, the Diocese of Auchi in Edo State reported that several gunmen attacked the Immaculate Conception Minor Seminary, killing one security guard and kidnapping three seminarians.

The incident marks the second time the seminary was attacked within a year. On October 27, 2024, assailants attacked the seminary and attempted to abduct two seminarians. In a courageous act, Father Thomas Oyode, the seminary’s rector, offered himself in their place. As a result, Oyode was held captive for a total of 11 days before being released.

This article was originally published on Lifesite News.

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Yesterday Blaze Media (relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey) reported the following:

Turning Point USA spokesman and executive producer of the “Charlie Kirk Show” Andrew Kolvet revealed new details about the shooting that even doctors are calling a miracle. According to Kolvet, the surgeon who operated on Kirk claimed that the high-velocity bullet was powerful enough to kill multiple large animals — and “should have gone through” his body. But for some reason, Kirk’s body was able to stop it.

“I want to address some of the discussion about the lack of an exit wound with Charlie,” Kolvet wrote in a post on X.

“The fact that there wasn’t an exit wound is probably another miracle, and I want people to know,” Kolvet continued, explaining that he had spoken with the surgeon who worked on Charlie in the hospital.

“He said the bullet ‘absolutely should have gone through, which is very very normal for a high powered, high velocity round. I’ve seen wounds from this caliber many times and they always just go through everything. This would have taken a moose or two down, an elk, etc,’” he recalled.

“But it didn’t go through. Charlie’s body stopped it,” he added.

When he mentioned to the doctor that there were “dozens of staff, students, and special guests standing directly behind Charlie” when he was shot, the doctor reportedly replied, “It was an absolute miracle that someone else didn’t get killed.”

“His bone was so healthy and the density was so so impressive that he’s like the man of steel,” Kolvet recalls the doctor saying.

This is not a credible statement, and it raises a number of concerns.

It strikes me as very perplexing that a “surgeon operated on Kirk,” because in the video of the shooting, Charlie reacted with a decorticate posture—that is, an abnormal body posture characterized by flexion of the upper limbs—caused by severe trauma to the central nervous system. This indicates that the bullet either directly struck his cervical spinal cord, or the shock wave of the supersonic bullet passing near his spinal cord traumatized it.

A 150-grain, .30-06 bullet’s energy at 150 yards from the muzzle varies by ammunition, but a common hunting cartridge has an estimated value of approximately 1,800-2,000 foot-pounds (with the bullet traveling at about 2500 feet per second). In other words, the .30 caliber (.30 inch diameter) metal projectile struck his neck with sufficient kinetic energy to move a 2,000 pound mass a linear distance of one foot.

If the bullet that struck Charlie’s cervical spinal cord was a .30-06 fired from 150 yards away, it would have:

1). Severed his spinal cord, killing him instantly.

2). Passed through his neck.

Note that the cervical vertebrae are supported by strong muscles and have high compressive strength, but are far too delicate to stop a .30-06 bullet traveling at 2,500 feet per second.

If ALL of the kinetic energy of the bullet was absorbed by Charlie’s neck, it would have done spectacular trauma to his neck, as distinct from producing the clean bullet hole visible in the video footage that ruptured his Carotid artery.

Though I appreciate that some may find a supernatural explanation to be consoling, it seems to me that the investigation should not rest on the this explanation.

As I wrote a few weeks ago: If I were investigating the murder, I would consider the hypothesis that Charlie was shot with a weapon equipped with a suppressor and loaded with a subsonic cartridge to further reduce the sound. I have have fired a .308 caliber rifle with this setup, and the shot was amazingly quiet. The effective range of such a weapon is about 100 yards or less, and the shooter must be very skilled.

However, such a setup could fire a subsonic projectile that would penetrate a human neck without passing through it. In this scenario, the actual assassin (firing the suppressed rifle) hypothetically coordinated the timing of his shot with someone else firing a normal (supersonic and loud) rifle cartridge into the air at the same time to create a distraction or red herring.

In a functioning society in which the people trust their authorities—including their medical examiners—it would be easy to discover what happened and to disclose at least a preliminary report that would satisfy most reasonable people. The trouble our Republic is facing now is that so many of us no longer trust our federal and state authorities to tell us the truth.

For example, we have strong grounds for suspecting that medical examiners are not diligently investigating (with the proper analytic methods) unexpected, fatal cardiac arrests in young people to determine if they were caused by vaccine-induced myocarditis.

This article was originally published on Courageous Discourse.

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For two years, we in the West have been living in the myth that we will bring Russia to its knees and bring Ukraine into the European Union and the Atlantic Alliance. We will try Vladimir Putin and make Russia pay. Today, this myth is colliding with reality: Moscow now possesses devastating weapons, unparalleled in the West. They make any hope of victory for our coalitions impossible. We will have to acknowledge our mistake. This is not about apologizing for our errors, but about freeing ourselves from them.

On October 26, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chief of Staff, Valery Gerasimov, announced the completion of a project to miniaturize a nuclear reactor and install it on a missile. They reported conducting a test launch of the 9M730 Burevestnik missile, which traveled 14,000 kilometers. The unique feature of this nuclear-powered weapon (which has an unlimited range) is its ability to be guided in such a way as to bypass interceptor sites. This, according to Russian authorities, makes it an unstoppable missile.On October 29, President Putin tested a Status-6 Poseidon torpedo, a nuclear-powered weapon. Throughout the Soviet Union, Eurasian military researchers believed that underwater nuclear explosions could trigger massive tsunamis. To achieve this, they needed to be able to launch torpedoes much farther than was possible at the time, in order to avoid the cataclysms they intended to unleash. This has now been accomplished. Mega-tsunamis could devastate cities like Washington, D.C., or New York City, or even naval groups like those of the U.S. aircraft carriers. However, the Poseidon torpedo is significantly longer than others: 21 meters. It cannot be launched from operational submarines and required its own dedicated vessel for launch. Its ability to operate underwater almost indefinitely more than compensates for this limitation. In any case, this torpedo ensures that Russia can launch a second strike in the event of a US attack. Until now, the first to launch a nuclear strike was guaranteed to cripple its enemy’s main means of retaliation.No weapon is ever truly definitive. Each exists within a continuum of technological advancements; each is superseded by another; and each eventually encounters effective defenses or predators. But for the moment, there seems to be no answer to these weapons, any more than there is to Russian supersonic missiles.In about twenty years, Russia has acquired a whole host of new weapons that surpass all Western technologies.

I explained in “Under Our Eyes” that Russia agreed to come to Syria’s aid in 2012, but only established a presence there at the end of 2015. For nearly three years, it had been determined to develop new weapons and had come to test them in the Levant. I was able to observe that it possessed prodigious capabilities, far surpassing the prowess of the United States during the Cold War. Of course, these weapons, being only prototypes, were extremely rare, but everyone already understood that Western dominance was nothing more than an illusion.

For example, Russia possessed the capability to disconnect NATO orders from its own weapons. This wasn’t a form of jamming; the weapons simply stopped responding to commands. Since some observers doubted its effectiveness, Russia extended this system to all of Syria. And because it operated within a circular area, it partially extended it, for two days, to Lebanon, Iraq, and Turkey. No civilian aircraft were able to fly. Subsequently, they installed this weapon in Kaliningrad and in the Black Sea.

The Westerners were also testing numerous weapons, such as the tactical atomic bomb that later devastated the port of Beirut.

In 2018, once the Syrian war had ended, President Vladimir Putin presented his weapons program to parliament  [ 1 ] . This program comprised six advanced weapons: the Sarmatian (which leaves the atmosphere, orbits the Earth, and re-enters the atmosphere at will) and Kinzhal (dagger) missiles; the nuclear-powered 9M730 Burevestnik and Status-6 Poseidon launchers; the Avantgarde missiles, which combine the characteristics of the Sarmatian and Kinzhal missiles with added maneuverability; and finally, anti-missile lasers. Only the latter are not yet complete.

What were only prototypes in the 2010s became operational and were mass-produced during the war in Ukraine.

The Western response was almost inaudible. Only US President Donald Trump spoke out. He regretted that his Russian counterpart had seen fit to reveal his exploits because, in doing so, he was reigniting the arms race. Furthermore, he announced that the United States was resuming its nuclear tests. Donald Trump could hardly do otherwise: deploring Russia’s renewed arms race is a way of explaining that the Pentagon’s military research is lagging far behind and of asserting Washington’s peaceful stance. Announcing that he will resume nuclear tests is a way of shifting the focus, since none of the new Russian weapons represent an advance in nuclear terms, but only in terms of atomic bomb launchers. To say that he will do this to maintain parity with Russia and China is a blatant lie: Russia has not conducted nuclear tests since 1990 and China since 1996. Moreover, it will take at least two years to rebuild or rehabilitate Cold War-era facilities, and therefore to begin these tests. Until then, the United States is nothing more than a “paper tiger.”

We are now reaching the end of hostilities in Ukraine. The Russian army is on the verge of a decisive victory in the Donbas. It will not only capture Pokrovsk, but will also inflict a third defeat on the White Führer, Andriy Biletsky, whose 10,000 men are surrounded. He was in command at the Battle of Mariupol with the Azov Regiment, the spearhead of the “integral nationalists.” He also commanded the Battle of Bakhmut, at the head of the 3rd Assault Brigade. And he was still directing the fighting in the Donbas with the 3rd Army Corps. It is unlikely that the Ukrainians will continue to follow him after this succession of massacres and defeats.

However, the primary objective of the special operation remains the elimination of neo-Nazis. Furthermore, on October 20th, Russia informed the United States that it had no intention of yielding on territorial concessions, the reduction of the Ukrainian armed forces, or guarantees that Ukraine would never join NATO.

Whether the West likes it or not, it no longer has a choice. It simply cannot afford to continue supplying weapons to Russia in Ukraine on its own. The EU’s plan to eventually confiscate Russian assets frozen in Belgium and spend them immediately could spell the end of the Union. In any case, neither Belgium, nor Slovakia, nor Hungary will participate in this theft, which even the Soviets, the staunch opponents of private property, never perpetrated.

The EU’s grandiose ambitions are about to collide with reality: it can only continue this war by betraying the very ideals it claims to uphold. Moreover, it has already descended into delusion by feigning ignorance of the fact that the Russian special operation is not a war of invasion against Ukraine, but the implementation of Security Council Resolution 2202. It has convinced itself that it will make Russia pay for the crimes committed or provoked by the West in Ukraine and that it will try and convict Vladimir Putin. Similarly, in the 2010s, it convinced itself that it would force Syria to capitulate and try and convict President Bashar al-Assad and the entire Ba’ath Party  [ 2 ] .

All of this is coming to an end, otherwise the EU will be directly drawn into the war against the Slavs that the UK and Germany instigated in 1933: the Second World War. And the EU’s armies, stripped of their arsenals, have no hope of resisting for more than two days. This is not about bowing down to a new master, Russia, but simply about acknowledging our mistakes before it’s too late.

—

[ 1 ]  “  The new Russian nuclear arsenal restores the bipolarity of the world  ”, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network , March 6, 2018.

[ 2 ]  The fifty-page document, written by the team of the German Volker Perthes on behalf of the Straussian Jeffrey Feltman (number 2 of the UN), will soon be published on this site.

The post The Moment of Truth: The West Confronts Russian Military Advances appeared first on LewRockwell.

51.7 to 47.9. Wow. So you can now say that you wish to see your opponent and his children brutally killed, and still win an election on the Dem side for the state office of attorney general. Scary. But just keep on funding those Marxist-Leninist government schools, conservatives. It’s doing the cause of civilized society real well.

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As of 8:30 PM ET:

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Donald Trump will host Al Qaeda linked terrorist Ahmed al-Sharaa at the White House next week.  After decades of effort, the US national security state finally facilitated the fall of the Arab nationalist Syrian government last year, which was replaced by a Salafist regime headed by al-Sharaa.

In 2012, the US intelligence community welcomed the rise of ISIS in eastern Syria because they could use ISIS to undermine the Syrian government.  The US used the presence of ISIS as a pretext to illegally occupy Syria and plunder its oil.  The CIA also armed Al Qaeda and ISIS terrorists so they could fight against the Syrian government.

Since taking power, the new Salafist regime has carried out pogroms against religious minorities such as Alawites and Christians and has positioned itself in opposition to Iran and Hezbollah, which are enemies of the US and its key allies such as Saudi Arabia and Israel.

If Al Qaeda attacked the United States on 9/11 because they hated freedom, then why does the US national security state support Salafist terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS, while overthrowing secular Arab nationalist regimes in Iraq, Syria, and Libya that are diametrically opposed to Salafism?

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As of 5 PM Eastern Time.  If these are accurate, Pox News viewers are really going to be disappointed about Ciattarelli, as the network has him pegged as a likely winner.  Jay Jones winning would be bizarre.  Wishing out loud that an opponent would get shot and his two children killed and still winning would be a first, but not a huge surprise in the land of government employees, Virginia.

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The national debt increased by $1 trillion during a 72-day period this year. Republicans have only themselves to blame. They control the House, Senate, and the presidency. They spend money just as fast as Democrats. The government has no money for food stamps but sent billions to Israel and Ukraine. Cursed be Republicans, as I have said for years.

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This is what 77,303,568 people voted for a year ago as opposed to what we

have today.

The Meaning of MAGA

To Robert F. Kennedy Jr., MAGA means aligning his political and health agenda with Donald Trump’s movement, which he has embraced by taking on a key cabinet role in the “Make America Great Again” MAGA / “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) coalition. His approach frames MAGA as a vehicle for his health-focused policies, which include combating chronic disease through dietary changes and opposing what he views as harmful corporate influence in the food and pharmaceutical industries.

Make America Healthy Again (MAHA): Kennedy has adopted the slogan “Make America Healthy Again” as a health-focused reinterpretation of Trump’s MAGA slogan.

Health-centered agenda: He is the chair of the “Make America Healthy Again” commission, which aims to tackle chronic diseases and reform the food and drug industries.

Alliance with Trump: Kennedy has embraced the MAGA movement and is a powerful figure in the Trump administration, overseeing controversial actions related to public health and policy.

Policy focus: His policies include using the power of his commission to investigate the links between processed foods, pesticides, and chronic disease, and pushing for legislative changes to ensure food companies negotiate with him.

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Click Here:

Eugyppius

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It is the insanity of US foreign policy in a nutshell that self-styled Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa is to be welcomed to the White House. Just before his (US-aided) rise to power in Syria last year he was head of the local al-Qaeda branch in Syria. Before that he worked with al-Qaeda in Iraq and is responsible for the death of numerous US service members.

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