Saving is suspect. Scrooge saved his money. Jesus tells of a master, who berated his servant, for saving his money rather than investing it. And King Midas, turning everything into gold, starved.
Another "unprecdented Trump innovation" that turns out to have many precedents. A summary for the ahistorical:
The United States began to “weaponize” the financial payments system in a recognizable modern sense during the Second World War and early Cold War, then transformed it into a central instrument of power with post‑1970s sanctions law and, after 9/11, with dollar‑ and SWIFT‑centric financial controls that now reach the entire global banking network. What began as wartime asset freezes and trade embargoes has evolved into a dense, permanent machinery of primary and secondary sanctions that can cut states, firms, and individuals off from the dollar and from cross‑border payments altogether.
Early foundations (1917–1950s)
In 1917 Congress passed the Trading with the Enemy Act (TWEA), giving the president power to regulate or prohibit financial transactions with foreign enemies in wartime, laying the core legal basis for asset freezes and payment controls.
During the Great Depression and World War II, Franklin Roosevelt used TWEA’s section 5(b) to shut banks in 1933 and then to freeze European assets, creating a precedent for peacetime and pre‑war financial blocking as a tool of foreign policy.
Institutionalization of sanctions (Cold War era)
After 1945, the United States created specialized bureaucratic machinery, culminating in the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), to administer trade and financial sanctions as routine policy instruments rather than ad hoc wartime measures.
The Cold War saw long‑running sanctions regimes against countries like Cuba and Vietnam that combined trade restrictions with broad blocking of financial transactions and dollar payments, foreshadowing later, more targeted financial warfare.
From trade embargoes to financial leverage (1970s–1990s)
In the 1970s and 1980s, Congress embedded automatic sanctions triggers into laws such as amendments to the Foreign Assistance Act and Trade Act, mandating economic and financial penalties for human‑rights abuses, terrorism, and narcotics, thereby expanding the situations in which financial tools had to be used.
The Reagan administration’s attempts to apply “secondary sanctions” extraterritorially—such as restricting re‑exports of U.S. technology to the Soviet Union and pressuring European firms over the Soviet gas pipeline—marked an early effort to extend control beyond U.S. territory into allied financial and commercial decisions.
Post‑9/11 financial weaponization
After the attacks of 11 September 2001, the U.S. built a new model of financial warfare: instead of only blocking specific accounts or trade, it designated individuals, banks, and entities on Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) lists and threatened any bank that dealt with them, effectively turning the global banking system into an enforcement arm.
Because most global trade and finance is invoiced or cleared in dollars through U.S.‑linked banks, these measures allow Washington to make foreign banks and firms choose between access to the U.S. financial system and dealings with sanctioned parties, giving sanctions the character of a precision coercive tool with global reach.
SWIFT, secondary sanctions, and today’s system
The United States has leveraged both dollar clearing and the SWIFT messaging network—whose infrastructure and data flows are partially exposed to U.S. legal and regulatory authority—to amplify its ability to monitor and interrupt cross‑border payments, even when no U.S. party is directly involved.
Since at least the 2010s, Washington has repeatedly threatened or used sanctions that target foreign banks and infrastructures (e.g., over Iranian banking and later Russian banks), making access to the dollar payments system and SWIFT contingent on alignment with U.S. geopolitical aims and prompting widespread discussion of “weaponization of the dollar.”
Trump is the current occupant of the POTUS "hot seat" so in one sense it IS "all Trumps credit or fault" when circumstances go up or down. On the same basis it's "All the fault of a useless Congress" (worked for Truman in 1948), and the unelected Administrative State (our "4th" branch of government grown out of touch and control through the Great Wars of the 20th century (1st, 2nd. and Cold) That's the political reality. To assess what's going on overall, the context of history helps. Why is Congress "useless" now, and why is whoever occupies to Oval Office hot seat pressed to take increasingly extreme and desperate measures to hold the country together? Apparently, BB thinks his intended audience needs a greater dose of Trump deconstruction than other players in the Public Performative Pageant, though he does focus on Congress and the unelected Administrative State as well. Weighting these critiques is a matter of taste, and I'm still inclined to cut BB some slack because in the past I've found his framing of our collective and individual (family) circumstances and outlook so helpful.
beats me, but I'm assuming there are difficult times ahead and preparing accordingly. The decades of papering over problems to maintain the illusion of "good times" will probably make these hard time harder than usual, but how much harders? Shrug.
Bill, enjoyed your cogent comments today. The printing of dollars kicks the can farther down the road and makes us all poorer in the long run, as well polluting other industrialized economies given the hegemony of the dollar. The result of this less than perseient behavior has been the rise of BRICS and the Chinese Belt and Road initiative. The Great Reset is in motion and it will not be good for Americans.
Tom, fully agree. Putin gets it as does those not in a trance. Weaponizing the US$ is the HUGE mistake. No one likes being bullied or forced to follow the wishes of another. No one! So what happens, others look for alternatives and in today's world that is happening at a rapid rate. America at the end of WWII was the manufacturing capital of the world but gave that away to Asia (primarily China) and today relies on the sweat of others. This is America's Achilles' heel. While many still believe America's military is the strongest in the world, others see its Achilles' heel - logistics - that makes it unable to sustain itself. It can hit hard but has no staying power. How this all plays out is anybody's guess but it isn't going to be good for us peons.
“How this all plays out is anybody's guess but it isn't going to be good for us peons.”…on this, we agree, sir. IMO, you’re just off a year.
My prediction: Election year. 2026 will be a continuation of the bull run. Trump will strong-arm the new Fed guy, get another rate cut or three, print/spend like a drunk Democrat, and drive the melt-up (and the dollar down) further. Record Indexes and gold through November-December. The piper starts collecting payment in 2027.
And thus does Mr. Bonner expose the fraud of the "service" economy. There is no value-add, and therefore, no increase in capital. There can be, and sometimes is, velocity of money, but there is no wealth creation. $38 trillion and counting in deficits to "make up" the shortfall. All of it is pretense. Best always. PM
Over the past decades I've listened to "elites" sniff that "ours is a service economy now". The implication being that only the most highly educated (such as themselves) will thrive in the future. I would ask them to describe what defines "services" and would always get a response that sounded like a DNC donor mailing list.
By implication if not by explicit acknowledgement, those on the "outs" would be Blue-collar trades people. Regardless of whether these abandoned workers were union or non-union, skilled or unskilled.
I would observe that "service providers" can also describe healthcare workers emptying bedpans and would get no argument. Seemed that wealth creation was not part of the approved plan - outside of an ascendancy for their own White-collar clique.
This was the rationale that saw our industrial base shipped to Asia. At times, even involving crating up factory floor machinery and shipping it overseas. We drove energy and basic chemical manufacture out of the country. This would come to include bulk chemicals used in pharmaceutical manufacture and critical defense related commodities as well. There were no controls, no central oversight over what was to be lost.
Those untouched (or so they thought) by all of this were government worker drones, their political leadership (mostly Lawyers) and Wall Street (campaign) financiers, who, in my observation, quickly formed a tight circle, eventually formulating policies that established a society of haves (themselves) and have-nots (average working people).
The latter group, now in steep decline, being steadily ushered into government "entitlement programs", with no coherent plan for monitoring either the budgetary performance of these programs, nor applicant qualification, or the fraud that steadily crept in.
Meanwhile, those American "service workers" involved in hi-tech industries such as Silicon Valley programmers began to see their jobs evaporate as well. Either shipped overseas or by importing H1B workers now yoked to a sponsoring employer while working for bargain basement wages. This, even as the core elitists continued to thrive.
Open borders assured a steady stream of housekeepers, healthcare workers, construction crews and even more recently Long-haul CDL licensed truck drivers to keep the supermarket shelves stocked. But then, things began to break.
Trades requiring specialized training and licensing such as Electricians and Plumbers, ranks began to shrink. Government schemes, hatched by "K street" corrupted politicos, working with Wall Street banks gave the nation the "Subprime crisis" and open borders, a flood of crime and government sponsored fraudsters.
We now see diseases once thought to be eradicated in the USA, like measles, leprosy and even bubonic plague, spring back to life while new classes of manmade disease, such as Covid, not simply imported, but actually developed by our own government, in foreign lands.
Inflation may be the "shiny object" that everyone will point to today and that everyone will blame on the "other party" but we have far greater, more embedded problems to deal with. Problems that have crept in over decades.
Trump may seem to be proposing and executing radical moves as "solutions" but is he really any worse than what we've had in DC before him? Ignoring problems by merit of willful neglect is surely the road to ruin. Even a bad decision is generally better than no decision at all. A bad decision will put things in motion. will highlight problems that all can now discuss. Perhaps subsequent decisions are required. Ones that will slowly nudge the ship of state back into a more rational, coherent and purposeful path.
Whatever the nation decides to do moving forward, certainly no genuine solutions are to be found in simply reverting to what existed before Trump. That which created our current dissatisfaction with the nation's many political and economic failings. The trend that gave us Trump in the first place.
Excellent analysis. Hard to come back, though, when half of your population is third-worlders. The idea has always been control, and to do that, "Carthage" had to be destroyed. Thanks for taking the time. Best always. PM
I don’t mind taking in third worlders in controlled numbers that would encourage assimilation. But not simply waved in indiscriminately, like this last crew
As you know you totally missed the message of the parable of the talent's, it had nothing to do with money... everything to do with faith. GIIC, God is in control. Noodle on that for a while Big Man.
I'm curious here. God may be in control, but God-ordained human free agency is at work as well. A similar idea to GIIC is the dogma everything runs out according to God's Plan or God's Will. If so, then this is all scripted, all originating from God, and we should all gladly and rejoicingly accept it, right? Best always. PM
On a lighter note, or, at least a different tangent, I love this poem by Danielle Coffyn. It speaks to the egoism, hypocrisy, and the true “I don’t really know-ism of us all:
“If Adam Picked the Apple
There would be a parade,
a celebration,
a holiday to commemorate
the day he sought enlightenment.
We would not speak of
temptation by the devil, rather,
we would laud Adam’s curiosity,
his desire for adventure
and knowing.
We would feast
on apple-inspired fare:
tortes, chutneys, pancakes, pie’s.
There would plays and songs
reenacting his courage.
But it was Eve who grew bored,
weary of her captivity in Eden.
And a woman’s desire
for freedom is rarely a cause
for celebration.” by Danielle Coyyfn
We do have the right to individual choice. Where it leads only God, (or the gods), can determine. “Best always” to you.
OMG Bongo Bill! You actually wrote a decent column today. The only thing that is not only questionable but downright laughable is your random insertion of Donald Trump into your comments. TDS is eating away at your brain. But apparently, you've found a substitute hero - a bastion of individual rights and civility - Vladimir Putin!
Saving is highly recommended in both the Old and New Testimonies, with the proviso that one needs to be careful WHERE one saves. The Biblical framing is - - "seek FIRST the kingdom of God, and everything else will be added", and "store up your treasures in heaven", where the usual loss risks are completely filtered out (including the risk of forgetting where you buried it in the earth).
How that works out in practice is being "neighborly" not predatory< and making productive uses of whatever resources come into one's control. A lot of the Testimonies are gruesome summaries of what happens when "looking out for number one" spirit takes hold in an individual, family, extended family or community wide - - creating vulnerability to even more predatory neighbors when they see a great opportunity for plunder (Habakkuk the book, Hezekiah's short sighted experience showing off his wealth to the Babylonian visitors, and the events from the Divided Kingdom to the downfall of Israel (Ephfraim) and then Judah.
Thanks Bill, A great collection of thoughts. I wonder how long this took you to write? Did this come all at once, or accumulate slowly? I'm with you so far.
Here is a general theme I would love to hear some of your thoughts on. What if the central theme of economic activity or even man's evolution. What if we got paid according to how well (percent of mental & physical & spiritual assets) we used of our human facility we have? Would that equalize income? Would it be a better or worse result for society Advance mankind faster or slower?
Note on SAVINGS in America. In the 1950's & early sixties the US tax system allowed citizens to earn $500 in interest and $500 in dividends tax free. It was done to encourage the citizens to save and invest in the stock market. Then the democrats in the sixties deleted that benefit. Major mistake! Why was that scrubbed from the tax code? Now we have most everyone deeply in credit card debt and highly overpriced homes (at least in CA).
May have something to do with the elimination of pensions in private industry but the preservation and even the strengthening of pensions (even for short-term gigs) in the three branches of DC government. States such as California or New Jersey with rapacious retirement pensions for even relatively low-level government employees.
Somehow the elites decided that "the great unwashed" are better off left on their own saving in 401k's, even as government workers retirement planning would need to be protected from themselves.
Saving is suspect? yeah I take the point about 'Jesus tells of a master, who berated his servant, for saving his money rather than investing it.' Back in Jesus day they didn't have fractional reserve banks, so I guess saving was stashing a few silver coins under a rock somewhere.
In spite of that I still disagree with what seems to be a commonly held misconception in society that saving somehow damages the economy. It is an illiquidity preference in current inflationary times as Bill suggests, but still necessary for liquidity management in the now. Optionality, dry powder, however you call it. Now days, most of what is saved is still being invested, by the banks. From the perspective of the economy I don't see why it matters, it is a really just an individual expression of time preference for consumption. One person saves today to defer consumption to the future. The person who saved in the past is spending today. As 'n' gets big it has to average out.
I think the people who castigate savers are those people who want you to spend all your savings today on stuff they would recommend. They know that when you do retire, they'll be long gone and therefore, blameless for your impoverished condition.
Bill's teaser makes me wonder if there's a connection between the debasement of the dollar and the closing of 4800 businesses in NYC during the last quarter of 2025.
That and the new Mayor of NYC putting in rent control, free "stuff" for everyone that businesses will pick up the tab for. I don't know if the businesses went out of business or just moved out of NYC. Could be a combination of dollar debasement, probably number 1 reason, and the new kid in town.
You do realize that the tariffs never did destroy anything? Not that I would blame you for not having been told that the tariff scare turned out to be a huge "nothingburger".
The explanations for why the warnings were wrong are nonexistent. The actual inflation data, perhaps too subtle for most to grasp, and constantly gaslit as well.
This current tame rate of inflation was entirely predictable. Our trading partners are not stupid. If their goal is to maintain access to our consumer markets, what sense would it make for them to simply add on a tariff and now be uncompetitive?
Once people understand that there are a number of other areas that can be trimmed back, such as VAT taxes and government subsidies to favored industry, it becomes logical that maintaining a competitive position in US consumer markets is the priority. VAT taxes and subsidies a more subtle area to trim and, when the tariff gets added, maintain a competitive price, regardless.
Case in point; recent McGraw Hill publication, ENR data (Building Cost Index) records end of 2025 as 0.5% in material inflation and 3.6% in Labor inflation.
For those unfamiliar with what this is saying - materials are imports and labor is entirely domestic. If the tariffs had the effect that was feared these data points, as realized, would have been reversed.
Domestic wages are now struggling to catch up with the near 20% inflation effect from the four years of Biden. Energy costs as the main the culprit here amongst other factors involving flooding the zone with government Covid subsidy.
By comparison the 2.6% current CPI inflation rate - IF we are able to project over the next three years left to Trump (hold on this thought), would be about half of Bidens inflation. Not great, but historically within limits.
I don't think capitalist is the right word. Before Adam Smith's insights were largely accepted, they called this kind of zero-sum worldview mercantilism. I think Donald Trump is mercantilist.
Since your headquarters are in the Baltimore area where I am now living I am looking for a reputable coin exchange in the environs. Can you recommend anyone? I would appreciate any help. Thank you. Joyce WILKS
You’re suffering again from too much TDS or Malbec. The coming dollar calamity is likely, but you’re spinning Putin’s statement of weaponizing the dollar against ‘Team Trump’ when he actually spoke about the huge mistake of Team Biden. The Trump admin and the rest of us must adjust to the downstream consequences.
Another "unprecdented Trump innovation" that turns out to have many precedents. A summary for the ahistorical:
The United States began to “weaponize” the financial payments system in a recognizable modern sense during the Second World War and early Cold War, then transformed it into a central instrument of power with post‑1970s sanctions law and, after 9/11, with dollar‑ and SWIFT‑centric financial controls that now reach the entire global banking network. What began as wartime asset freezes and trade embargoes has evolved into a dense, permanent machinery of primary and secondary sanctions that can cut states, firms, and individuals off from the dollar and from cross‑border payments altogether.
Early foundations (1917–1950s)
In 1917 Congress passed the Trading with the Enemy Act (TWEA), giving the president power to regulate or prohibit financial transactions with foreign enemies in wartime, laying the core legal basis for asset freezes and payment controls.
During the Great Depression and World War II, Franklin Roosevelt used TWEA’s section 5(b) to shut banks in 1933 and then to freeze European assets, creating a precedent for peacetime and pre‑war financial blocking as a tool of foreign policy.
Institutionalization of sanctions (Cold War era)
After 1945, the United States created specialized bureaucratic machinery, culminating in the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), to administer trade and financial sanctions as routine policy instruments rather than ad hoc wartime measures.
The Cold War saw long‑running sanctions regimes against countries like Cuba and Vietnam that combined trade restrictions with broad blocking of financial transactions and dollar payments, foreshadowing later, more targeted financial warfare.
From trade embargoes to financial leverage (1970s–1990s)
In the 1970s and 1980s, Congress embedded automatic sanctions triggers into laws such as amendments to the Foreign Assistance Act and Trade Act, mandating economic and financial penalties for human‑rights abuses, terrorism, and narcotics, thereby expanding the situations in which financial tools had to be used.
The Reagan administration’s attempts to apply “secondary sanctions” extraterritorially—such as restricting re‑exports of U.S. technology to the Soviet Union and pressuring European firms over the Soviet gas pipeline—marked an early effort to extend control beyond U.S. territory into allied financial and commercial decisions.
Post‑9/11 financial weaponization
After the attacks of 11 September 2001, the U.S. built a new model of financial warfare: instead of only blocking specific accounts or trade, it designated individuals, banks, and entities on Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) lists and threatened any bank that dealt with them, effectively turning the global banking system into an enforcement arm.
Because most global trade and finance is invoiced or cleared in dollars through U.S.‑linked banks, these measures allow Washington to make foreign banks and firms choose between access to the U.S. financial system and dealings with sanctioned parties, giving sanctions the character of a precision coercive tool with global reach.
SWIFT, secondary sanctions, and today’s system
The United States has leveraged both dollar clearing and the SWIFT messaging network—whose infrastructure and data flows are partially exposed to U.S. legal and regulatory authority—to amplify its ability to monitor and interrupt cross‑border payments, even when no U.S. party is directly involved.
Since at least the 2010s, Washington has repeatedly threatened or used sanctions that target foreign banks and infrastructures (e.g., over Iranian banking and later Russian banks), making access to the dollar payments system and SWIFT contingent on alignment with U.S. geopolitical aims and prompting widespread discussion of “weaponization of the dollar.”
I already know Bill's response....It's all Trumps fault!
Trump is the current occupant of the POTUS "hot seat" so in one sense it IS "all Trumps credit or fault" when circumstances go up or down. On the same basis it's "All the fault of a useless Congress" (worked for Truman in 1948), and the unelected Administrative State (our "4th" branch of government grown out of touch and control through the Great Wars of the 20th century (1st, 2nd. and Cold) That's the political reality. To assess what's going on overall, the context of history helps. Why is Congress "useless" now, and why is whoever occupies to Oval Office hot seat pressed to take increasingly extreme and desperate measures to hold the country together? Apparently, BB thinks his intended audience needs a greater dose of Trump deconstruction than other players in the Public Performative Pageant, though he does focus on Congress and the unelected Administrative State as well. Weighting these critiques is a matter of taste, and I'm still inclined to cut BB some slack because in the past I've found his framing of our collective and individual (family) circumstances and outlook so helpful.
Thanks for the great history lesson. This certainly explains how we got to this point in financial history. What happens now?
beats me, but I'm assuming there are difficult times ahead and preparing accordingly. The decades of papering over problems to maintain the illusion of "good times" will probably make these hard time harder than usual, but how much harders? Shrug.
Frank, did you read this? Or FVM?
Damn!
Bill, enjoyed your cogent comments today. The printing of dollars kicks the can farther down the road and makes us all poorer in the long run, as well polluting other industrialized economies given the hegemony of the dollar. The result of this less than perseient behavior has been the rise of BRICS and the Chinese Belt and Road initiative. The Great Reset is in motion and it will not be good for Americans.
Tom, fully agree. Putin gets it as does those not in a trance. Weaponizing the US$ is the HUGE mistake. No one likes being bullied or forced to follow the wishes of another. No one! So what happens, others look for alternatives and in today's world that is happening at a rapid rate. America at the end of WWII was the manufacturing capital of the world but gave that away to Asia (primarily China) and today relies on the sweat of others. This is America's Achilles' heel. While many still believe America's military is the strongest in the world, others see its Achilles' heel - logistics - that makes it unable to sustain itself. It can hit hard but has no staying power. How this all plays out is anybody's guess but it isn't going to be good for us peons.
“How this all plays out is anybody's guess but it isn't going to be good for us peons.”…on this, we agree, sir. IMO, you’re just off a year.
My prediction: Election year. 2026 will be a continuation of the bull run. Trump will strong-arm the new Fed guy, get another rate cut or three, print/spend like a drunk Democrat, and drive the melt-up (and the dollar down) further. Record Indexes and gold through November-December. The piper starts collecting payment in 2027.
Kinda have to agree 2026 will be a very interesting year. Not only in North America , but world wide. You know that buterfly effect.
Yup and yup, very good and insightful comment.
And thus does Mr. Bonner expose the fraud of the "service" economy. There is no value-add, and therefore, no increase in capital. There can be, and sometimes is, velocity of money, but there is no wealth creation. $38 trillion and counting in deficits to "make up" the shortfall. All of it is pretense. Best always. PM
Over the past decades I've listened to "elites" sniff that "ours is a service economy now". The implication being that only the most highly educated (such as themselves) will thrive in the future. I would ask them to describe what defines "services" and would always get a response that sounded like a DNC donor mailing list.
By implication if not by explicit acknowledgement, those on the "outs" would be Blue-collar trades people. Regardless of whether these abandoned workers were union or non-union, skilled or unskilled.
I would observe that "service providers" can also describe healthcare workers emptying bedpans and would get no argument. Seemed that wealth creation was not part of the approved plan - outside of an ascendancy for their own White-collar clique.
This was the rationale that saw our industrial base shipped to Asia. At times, even involving crating up factory floor machinery and shipping it overseas. We drove energy and basic chemical manufacture out of the country. This would come to include bulk chemicals used in pharmaceutical manufacture and critical defense related commodities as well. There were no controls, no central oversight over what was to be lost.
Those untouched (or so they thought) by all of this were government worker drones, their political leadership (mostly Lawyers) and Wall Street (campaign) financiers, who, in my observation, quickly formed a tight circle, eventually formulating policies that established a society of haves (themselves) and have-nots (average working people).
The latter group, now in steep decline, being steadily ushered into government "entitlement programs", with no coherent plan for monitoring either the budgetary performance of these programs, nor applicant qualification, or the fraud that steadily crept in.
Meanwhile, those American "service workers" involved in hi-tech industries such as Silicon Valley programmers began to see their jobs evaporate as well. Either shipped overseas or by importing H1B workers now yoked to a sponsoring employer while working for bargain basement wages. This, even as the core elitists continued to thrive.
Open borders assured a steady stream of housekeepers, healthcare workers, construction crews and even more recently Long-haul CDL licensed truck drivers to keep the supermarket shelves stocked. But then, things began to break.
Trades requiring specialized training and licensing such as Electricians and Plumbers, ranks began to shrink. Government schemes, hatched by "K street" corrupted politicos, working with Wall Street banks gave the nation the "Subprime crisis" and open borders, a flood of crime and government sponsored fraudsters.
We now see diseases once thought to be eradicated in the USA, like measles, leprosy and even bubonic plague, spring back to life while new classes of manmade disease, such as Covid, not simply imported, but actually developed by our own government, in foreign lands.
Inflation may be the "shiny object" that everyone will point to today and that everyone will blame on the "other party" but we have far greater, more embedded problems to deal with. Problems that have crept in over decades.
Trump may seem to be proposing and executing radical moves as "solutions" but is he really any worse than what we've had in DC before him? Ignoring problems by merit of willful neglect is surely the road to ruin. Even a bad decision is generally better than no decision at all. A bad decision will put things in motion. will highlight problems that all can now discuss. Perhaps subsequent decisions are required. Ones that will slowly nudge the ship of state back into a more rational, coherent and purposeful path.
Whatever the nation decides to do moving forward, certainly no genuine solutions are to be found in simply reverting to what existed before Trump. That which created our current dissatisfaction with the nation's many political and economic failings. The trend that gave us Trump in the first place.
Excellent analysis. Hard to come back, though, when half of your population is third-worlders. The idea has always been control, and to do that, "Carthage" had to be destroyed. Thanks for taking the time. Best always. PM
I don’t mind taking in third worlders in controlled numbers that would encourage assimilation. But not simply waved in indiscriminately, like this last crew
As you know you totally missed the message of the parable of the talent's, it had nothing to do with money... everything to do with faith. GIIC, God is in control. Noodle on that for a while Big Man.
I'm curious here. God may be in control, but God-ordained human free agency is at work as well. A similar idea to GIIC is the dogma everything runs out according to God's Plan or God's Will. If so, then this is all scripted, all originating from God, and we should all gladly and rejoicingly accept it, right? Best always. PM
Yes and no Paul . Some things have to go beyond Yours and My thinking. Like I do not know the Mind Of God, But He sure does know mine!
Agreed. Same here. Best always. PM
On a lighter note, or, at least a different tangent, I love this poem by Danielle Coffyn. It speaks to the egoism, hypocrisy, and the true “I don’t really know-ism of us all:
“If Adam Picked the Apple
There would be a parade,
a celebration,
a holiday to commemorate
the day he sought enlightenment.
We would not speak of
temptation by the devil, rather,
we would laud Adam’s curiosity,
his desire for adventure
and knowing.
We would feast
on apple-inspired fare:
tortes, chutneys, pancakes, pie’s.
There would plays and songs
reenacting his courage.
But it was Eve who grew bored,
weary of her captivity in Eden.
And a woman’s desire
for freedom is rarely a cause
for celebration.” by Danielle Coyyfn
We do have the right to individual choice. Where it leads only God, (or the gods), can determine. “Best always” to you.
Oh, go back to France where you belong.
Not to worry; he'll get there. Best always. PM
OMG Bongo Bill! You actually wrote a decent column today. The only thing that is not only questionable but downright laughable is your random insertion of Donald Trump into your comments. TDS is eating away at your brain. But apparently, you've found a substitute hero - a bastion of individual rights and civility - Vladimir Putin!
Saving is highly recommended in both the Old and New Testimonies, with the proviso that one needs to be careful WHERE one saves. The Biblical framing is - - "seek FIRST the kingdom of God, and everything else will be added", and "store up your treasures in heaven", where the usual loss risks are completely filtered out (including the risk of forgetting where you buried it in the earth).
How that works out in practice is being "neighborly" not predatory< and making productive uses of whatever resources come into one's control. A lot of the Testimonies are gruesome summaries of what happens when "looking out for number one" spirit takes hold in an individual, family, extended family or community wide - - creating vulnerability to even more predatory neighbors when they see a great opportunity for plunder (Habakkuk the book, Hezekiah's short sighted experience showing off his wealth to the Babylonian visitors, and the events from the Divided Kingdom to the downfall of Israel (Ephfraim) and then Judah.
"So, what is it that he absolutely, positively cannot do?" uh...... put up with being heckled?
Stop printing dollars!
Thanks Bill, A great collection of thoughts. I wonder how long this took you to write? Did this come all at once, or accumulate slowly? I'm with you so far.
Here is a general theme I would love to hear some of your thoughts on. What if the central theme of economic activity or even man's evolution. What if we got paid according to how well (percent of mental & physical & spiritual assets) we used of our human facility we have? Would that equalize income? Would it be a better or worse result for society Advance mankind faster or slower?
Note on SAVINGS in America. In the 1950's & early sixties the US tax system allowed citizens to earn $500 in interest and $500 in dividends tax free. It was done to encourage the citizens to save and invest in the stock market. Then the democrats in the sixties deleted that benefit. Major mistake! Why was that scrubbed from the tax code? Now we have most everyone deeply in credit card debt and highly overpriced homes (at least in CA).
May have something to do with the elimination of pensions in private industry but the preservation and even the strengthening of pensions (even for short-term gigs) in the three branches of DC government. States such as California or New Jersey with rapacious retirement pensions for even relatively low-level government employees.
Somehow the elites decided that "the great unwashed" are better off left on their own saving in 401k's, even as government workers retirement planning would need to be protected from themselves.
"Rules for thee but not for me".
Saving is suspect? yeah I take the point about 'Jesus tells of a master, who berated his servant, for saving his money rather than investing it.' Back in Jesus day they didn't have fractional reserve banks, so I guess saving was stashing a few silver coins under a rock somewhere.
In spite of that I still disagree with what seems to be a commonly held misconception in society that saving somehow damages the economy. It is an illiquidity preference in current inflationary times as Bill suggests, but still necessary for liquidity management in the now. Optionality, dry powder, however you call it. Now days, most of what is saved is still being invested, by the banks. From the perspective of the economy I don't see why it matters, it is a really just an individual expression of time preference for consumption. One person saves today to defer consumption to the future. The person who saved in the past is spending today. As 'n' gets big it has to average out.
I think the people who castigate savers are those people who want you to spend all your savings today on stuff they would recommend. They know that when you do retire, they'll be long gone and therefore, blameless for your impoverished condition.
Bill's teaser makes me wonder if there's a connection between the debasement of the dollar and the closing of 4800 businesses in NYC during the last quarter of 2025.
That and the new Mayor of NYC putting in rent control, free "stuff" for everyone that businesses will pick up the tab for. I don't know if the businesses went out of business or just moved out of NYC. Could be a combination of dollar debasement, probably number 1 reason, and the new kid in town.
Or it could be that tariffs, effectively a substantial tax on all imports, destroyed their profit margins.
You do realize that the tariffs never did destroy anything? Not that I would blame you for not having been told that the tariff scare turned out to be a huge "nothingburger".
The explanations for why the warnings were wrong are nonexistent. The actual inflation data, perhaps too subtle for most to grasp, and constantly gaslit as well.
This current tame rate of inflation was entirely predictable. Our trading partners are not stupid. If their goal is to maintain access to our consumer markets, what sense would it make for them to simply add on a tariff and now be uncompetitive?
Once people understand that there are a number of other areas that can be trimmed back, such as VAT taxes and government subsidies to favored industry, it becomes logical that maintaining a competitive position in US consumer markets is the priority. VAT taxes and subsidies a more subtle area to trim and, when the tariff gets added, maintain a competitive price, regardless.
Case in point; recent McGraw Hill publication, ENR data (Building Cost Index) records end of 2025 as 0.5% in material inflation and 3.6% in Labor inflation.
For those unfamiliar with what this is saying - materials are imports and labor is entirely domestic. If the tariffs had the effect that was feared these data points, as realized, would have been reversed.
Domestic wages are now struggling to catch up with the near 20% inflation effect from the four years of Biden. Energy costs as the main the culprit here amongst other factors involving flooding the zone with government Covid subsidy.
By comparison the 2.6% current CPI inflation rate - IF we are able to project over the next three years left to Trump (hold on this thought), would be about half of Bidens inflation. Not great, but historically within limits.
Probably crime rent and taxes. NYC isn't exactly bastion of manufacturing or local retail. Heck, they gave amazon the boot.
Another great one, Bill. thanks again. Can't wait to see what the republinuts have to say about it. PHN
I don't think capitalist is the right word. Before Adam Smith's insights were largely accepted, they called this kind of zero-sum worldview mercantilism. I think Donald Trump is mercantilist.
Since your headquarters are in the Baltimore area where I am now living I am looking for a reputable coin exchange in the environs. Can you recommend anyone? I would appreciate any help. Thank you. Joyce WILKS
Bill,
You’re suffering again from too much TDS or Malbec. The coming dollar calamity is likely, but you’re spinning Putin’s statement of weaponizing the dollar against ‘Team Trump’ when he actually spoke about the huge mistake of Team Biden. The Trump admin and the rest of us must adjust to the downstream consequences.