Trump will appoint his political yes monkeys and make sure the Fed does what it is told to do. That will make America’s central bank more like those of Zimbabwe, Venezuela or Argentina.
Well then, if the country’s been growing at 2% instead of 4% and everyone’s real upset about it. I don’t know, two percent sounds pretty good to me. You know, if a doctor says, “your cancer is only growing at two percent” I’d probably say, “Well, that’s a relief.” And they say it’s all because of low interest rates. Yeah, yeah, they borrowed too much from the future. Which is funny because the future never asked for it. The future’s just sitting there like, “Hey, I didn’t order 30 trillion dollars of crap. I just wanted a hoverboard.”
The system is BUILT to slow down! You think the elites want you growing at 4%? Forget it! They want you fat, dumb, and filling out Federal Register Form #32-A about the “proper stacking height of cow shit.” So if you’ve got 107,000 pages of federal rules, that’s not governance, that’s a bad marriage, you know you’re screwed, you just don’t know what it’ll cost yet!
And let’s not talk about innovation.
We have the internet! We have AI! We had free trade! And what’d we do? We made Facebook so you can argue with your aunt about vaccines, (X) so the president can scream at 3 a.m., and Wall Street algorithms that can steal a trillion dollars while you’re still tryin’ to reset your Wi-Fi! So they’re not slowing GDP folks, they’re slowing us. We’re the product. We’re the cattle. And the elites? They own the slaughterhouse!
The whole economy’s just a Ponzi scheme run by old guys in suits who think lowering interest rates is an innovation. Like, “Hey, let’s borrow from the future so our grandkids can have the privilege of eating cat food in space!” And policies? Geez, we don’t need more policies, we need a policy torch. Every time a new one gets added, some poor bastard in Ohio has to hire a lawyer just to mow his lawn. And then we’re shocked! Shocked that GDP slowed down? It’s not a mystery, it’s math: debt plus bullshit equals America’s growth strategy. 🤩
Hiya, Gypt. You left one key part out - We Are The Carbon They Want To Reduce.
Yup - it's true. If you don't believe it, you're probably late for your latest Booster Shot. Get your skinny a** down to Walgreens or CVS - they're expecting you.
PS - Who is this Orange Dude cutting all those Regulations? Oh SH*T! Can't be!! Don't look now....
Sputter, cough, gag - Wut? DEMONSTRABLY FALSE STATEMENT - just scratch a TINY bit below the Lie. Maybe search "Are immigrants legal and/or illegal a net plus or minus to our Economy?" The answer is stunning, but not surprising if your not trying to plug The Narrative constantly (looking at you, Little Bill.) Alright, I guess since government "spending" is now counted as part of GDP, and welfare/free healthcare/free education/free food stamps/free rental assistance/free daycare/free re-fillable CASH CARDS/free O'hammed phones ARE part of government "spending", you might be able to only tell HALF A LIE and say that "immigrants" are a net plus to GDP. But you'd still be a disingenuous liar to do so.
Hmmmm. I can only call 'em like I see 'em, and based off of 5 years of Economic History with our ship being Captained by President Donald J. Trump, I say open the cage doors and let those monkeys get to work. The result will be free bananas all around, with a side of Freedom. Also note - thank GOD the Hyenas and Jackasses are being corralled and are no longer calling the shots. Based on 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙞𝙧 past performance they should probably be shipped to the Glue Factory. Surely we can all agree on that, eh libtardes?
Ya don't say. How interesting and duh. Tell me again WHICH PRESIDENT has enacted REGULATION-CUTTING Executive Orders in BOTH HIS TERMS (2-for-1 in first term, 𝟭𝟬-𝗳𝗼𝗿-𝟭 in second term)? 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗱𝗼𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 "𝗶𝗻𝘀𝗮𝗻𝗲" 𝗿𝘂𝗹𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝟭𝟬 𝗥𝗲𝗴𝘂𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗺𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝗖𝗨𝗧 𝘁𝗼 𝗲𝗻𝗮𝗰𝘁 𝗢𝗡𝗘 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝘀𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝘆𝗼𝘂, 𝗟𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗹𝗲 𝗕𝗶𝗹𝗹? Wait, it's Trump that has done this to great success - so no surprise you ignore him completely while you bitch about the Burden of Government Regulation. Your severe TDS is laughably obvious to anyone with a brain.
For the slower readers out there (Hi, Ed and Pat!)
Try to be a little more transparent tomorrow. It is entertaining to see how many morons gleefully support the most atrocious of the BS you put on your stack....
PS - On the "Honey" side - other than the above, great article. Right on target, um, except for the stuff I pointed out in this post....
Mr. S.E., The first quote is what got me: "𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘺 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘧𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘪𝘮𝘮𝘪𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘴. 𝘌𝘢𝘤𝘩 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘢𝘥𝘥𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘢𝘭𝘦𝘴, 𝘰𝘶𝘵𝘱𝘶𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘎𝘋𝘗." What Bill doesn't point out is that these immigrants have overwhelming voted for the ever-growing government control of the private sector at the federal, state, & local level because that is the third-world, govt.-is-God mentality that a large majority have brought with them from their third-world hellholes. As late as the late 20th Century, when the U.S. was 80% white, we didn't have all the problems we have now that the U.S. is 66% white and the percentage is dropping each decade.
The GDP after World War 2 was because everybody worked hard and there was no Welfare State. Absolutely, none. Workman's compensation insurance did not exist. Unemployment insurance did not exist. Food stamps, free school lunhces did not exist. Work or starve. Work and succeed. Build a family. Build a safe community.
IllegalI imigration contributes to GDP? Please. Does welfare expense and crime fall to the GDP bottom line.
OH WOW! look at all the PHDs we've produced or imported. GDP should have exploded.
I had a driver once. Nice guy.. kinda of a weirdo.
He worked at Ohio state park time.I guess as a professor. I did not know that, and I had asked someone else about it.
He really has a PHD? What in. I never did find out, butthat the answer was pretty funny.... "PLENTY HIGHWAY DIRVING."
To be sure Trump did not set the stage for this economy, that was done by Nixon in August of 1971 at a time was scaping money together for my silver over black Datsun 240Z. The point here is that all of our illustrious presidents have used the slippery slope that Mr. Nixon provided to print our way out of trouble. To be sure they really had no viable options as the government had already printed more dollars than the gold it purportedly represented. So when the ship from France, sent by President de Gaulle, arrived in port carrying copious amounts of dollars, Nixon did not have the gold to make the trade, as promised, or he saw the gold reserves writing on the wall and percipitious closed the gold window. From there the printing began in earnest. The printing has been the way the government kept the lights on ever since. So the point here is why Trump the bad guy for continuing the printing lifestyle? Does Trump have any viable options? Yes he has two options: printing or default. This situation is not his doing. He has no alternative but to print with the consequence of the dollar losing more and more of its purchasing power, and then, behind the scenes, buy gold and get the country ready for the new financial system which shaping up very nicely.
The banksters are the problem, why should this country pay a bunch of crooks a trillion dollars a year in interest, we as a country don’t need to borrow money from anyone, the entire world financial system with the crooked central banks are such a scam, “The Creature From Jekyll Island “ read it, we the taxpayers have been screwed since 1913, paying the bankster clowns. WTFU
I agree. The Orange man just happens to be in the chair when the whole thing blows up. Then when the next election hits and all the people who thought Gold and Silver were Barbaric Relics are crying out for government to save us, well that’s when it will really get bad. The people always vote with their pocket book.
"Policies creep" That's another way of saying growth in government. "Growth in government" is another way of saying loss of freedom. The problem with so-called democracy is that it encourages governmental growth. Throw in a little side-action corruption, and pretty soon, democracy kills itself. Have a great day. Best always. PM
Am I wrong. Isn’t the Trump administration reducing rules and regulations. Making things easier for businesses to flourish. Printing has to stop. Our government needs to reduce spending by getting ALL departments to lower their budget by 10%. This is not lowering the ‘increase’ budget by 10%. If not the abyss is just around the corner. I am speaking as an American Independent Voter.
Our Congress, long the weak sister of the three branches of our government, could help redress the collapse of the dollar by charting a course of annual spending reductions that, over time, would result in a balanced budget
Our Executive Branch should establish life-cycles for its many rules. Unless reinstated, they would automatically expire at the end of a TBD term
To reduce the incentive to spend and to foster fresh solutions, establish term limits for all elected officials, local, state and Federal
This is why I'm a subscriber! Let's get back to this!
Bill Bonner sure has a way with words.
My daily read to get the brain working...
Responding to The New York Times…
By Bill Bonner, Chairman, Bonner & Partners
Invitation to Claptrap
Opening a newspaper is always an invitation to claptrap. The New York Times is probably no worse than any other. But it is the only one we had on our long trip from Berlin to Bermuda.
What gives over at the Times? Do the editors have tails and gills?
Hardly a single page manages to climb out of the primordial swamp of shallow, insipid thinking. Most of the “think pieces” show no signs of thinking at all; it is just desire.
David Brooks wants more community do-goodism.
Jo Piazza wants men to be more like women.
Reshma Saujani wants women to run the world.
Nicholas Kristof wants to do something about global warming.
Here, in the spirit of helpful mischief, we provide a little cynicism, a few question marks, and a path onto dry land.
At least David Brooks is right about one thing. Writing on education reform in South Carolina in the Friday international edition, the columnist noticed:
Our actual lives are influenced by millions of events that interact in mysterious ways.
That observation should make us pause. For every snake we see in the grass, there are dozens more in the bush, waiting to bite us on the derrière.
And it should open the door to a genuinely interesting discussion. If human society is shaped by things we don’t understand, can we really improve it by conscious (usually armed) intervention?
Train Your Husband
We’ll come back to Mr. Brooks in a minute…
Instead, let’s move on to Jo Piazza. “How I Trained My Husband to Be a Dad,” is the headline. That alone calls forth a nest of viperous questions.
Is this a joke? How would she know (better than he) how to be a dad? She is, after all, a mom.
What is wrong with her husband? Wasn’t his role shaped by millions of years of trial and error? Isn’t that training now embedded in his genes, instincts, and traditions?
Will the Times run a follow-up from him?: “How I Beat My Wife Into Being a Decent Mother”…
Ms. Piazza insisted that they share the burden of baby care equally. Is that a good idea?
In our experience, babies want their mommas, perhaps for purely anatomical reasons. But what do we know?
Ms. Piazza doesn’t know, either… and has no interest in finding out. Instead, she left her three-month-old with her husband so she could work on her novel!
And now, her tone of self-satisfied triumphalism suggests that she believes she has just crawled out of the muck and learned to walk on two legs.
But what kind of progress is this? The earliest and most basic form of the division of labor is the cooperation between men and women. One hunts. The other gathers. One is a mother. The other is a father. One remembers the children’s birthdays. The other remembers Boog Powell’s batting average.
By specializing, rather than by both doing the same thing, nature made it possible for them to do something neither could do on his own – have children.
Further specialization and cooperation led to the advances we take for granted as “civilization.”
And today, cooperation – between specialist metallurgists, financiers, salesmen, engineers, assemblers, machinists, chemists, and so forth – produces top-of-the-line Mercedes autos, for example… which wouldn’t be possible in a less-differentiated, hunter-gatherer society.
Maybe nature knows something Mr. and Ms. Piazza don’t… like the theory of competitive advantage! When a man (or woman) turns his attention to gathering up dirty diapers, he has less time to hunt for deals in the outside world.
Not that he can’t still earn a living… But he will be at a competitive disadvantage to guys whose wives take care of the baby, leaving them to work 12 hours a day in the outside world.
He will be less specialized… and less productive. The world will be less rich. And with fewer resources to work with, people will have fewer choices.
Is that good or bad? It’s none of our business how couples organize themselves. And there are surely lots of different ways to do it.
But if The New York Times is going to put it in the public record, you’d think it would at least mention the trade-offs.
Also worthy of mention is research that suggests that couples that share household chores equally – rather than specializing – are more likely to get divorced.
Why? We don’t know. That’s why we have question marks.
Antediluvian Trivia
Meanwhile, over on page 10 is another exercise in antediluvian trivia, in which Reshma Saujani suggests that “Maybe Girls Will Save Us.”
“From what?” is the first question. But she doesn’t bother with that. All over the country, she says, girls are getting turned on to politics. The author is, of course, an activist herself.
She is trying to get more girls to “code” – that is, to enter the world of computer technology. Why is it such a good idea for girls to code? We never had any interest in coding. It seems like dreary work; why try to get girls to do it?
And since we found the question mark key on our computer, we’ll hammer on it a bit more…
Ms. Saujani says girls have “eclipsed boys in political participation and shown incredible moral clarity.” And, oh yes, they have an “instinct for inclusiveness.”
Oh yeah?
We recall our daughter coming home from school in tears because a clique of girls did not include her. That never happened to our boys. In our experience, girls can be as mean as boys and just as selfish… though perhaps cleverer about it.
And moral clarity? Smithsonian provides an illustration:
In January of 1692 [in Salem, Massachusetts], Reverend Parris’ daughter Elizabeth, age 9, and niece Abigail Williams, age 11, started having “fits.” They screamed, threw things, uttered peculiar sounds, and contorted themselves into strange positions, and a local doctor blamed the supernatural. Another girl, Ann Putnam, age 11, experienced similar episodes. On February 29, under pressure from magistrates Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne, the girls blamed three women for afflicting them: Tituba, the Parris’ Caribbean slave; Sarah Good, a homeless beggar; and Sarah Osborne, an elderly impoverished woman.
The result: 19 people were hung for witchcraft. And a 71-year-old man was “pressed to death” by heavy rocks placed upon him.
Girls will be girls, and boys will be boys, bless their hearts. But moral clarity is a fraud.
Do Something
Over on page 12, the drivel goes on. There, Nicholas Kristof tells us that “denying climate change doesn’t stop its devastating effects.”
Of course, he’s right. Nature doesn’t care what we think. Kristof prompts a couple of lame climatologists to tell us that there might be a link between your driving to work in the morning and the hurricane that just washed over the Bible Belt.
Yes, there might be. Or there might not be. And maybe someday, scientists will have a better understanding of it.
But today, we don’t know what’s going on with the world’s weather. We don’t know whether it’s good or bad. We don’t know if we could do something to change it. And we don’t know if the costs would be greater than the rewards.
But Kristof can’t wait. He wants “us” to do something now. And as soon as you hear someone say, “We need to…,” you can stop listening. What follows is invariably idiotic, because it always ignores those millions of inscrutable influences. The activist is always a scalawag. And the activist with moral clarity is dangerous.
And now, let’s go back to David Brooks. Having set forth an observation worthy of Shakespeare – that there’s more going on to influence our lives than we find in our philosophy – Brooks proceeds to treat it like a smelly panhandler, doing his best to stay out of reach.
He tells us that he went to Spartanburg, South Carolina and saw the do-gooders working together to improve the world. But do they do any real good?
Does the investment pay off? What happens to the things that can’t be done because the time and money have gone into these worthy projects? No one knows.
“Building working relationships across a community is an intrinsically good thing,” he writes.
Is it? We don’t know that, either.
But here’s another question: Has a community ever actually been improved by busybodies who say they’re working for the good of others?
Or, as Adam Smith suggested, are communities really improved as a byproduct of people looking out for themselves… making millions and millions of win-win deals, compromises, gifts, and bargains… trading, working, marrying one another, exchanging small talk and smiles in the course of business… giving and getting with no intention of forcing their moral clarity on others?
Our guess: Human life is far too subtle and too complicated… and subject to far too many baroque, mysterious influences. It can’t be straightened out on an anvil by simple-minded jackasses with ball-peen hammers.
But what an inspiration it must have been… So many activists, community organizers, world-improvers, and politicians working together.
If they were all laid end to end… wouldn’t that be beautiful?!
Here in the UK, under the loons of Labour are very keen on regulating private enterprise out of business. The latest today is to further reduce the sugar in Ribena and Lucozade, formerly considered healthy drinks, by 0.5% from 5% to 4.5%. For the health of the nations children. It's always for the sake of the kiddies.
The Japanese owners of the brands are threatening to withdraw from the UK as they have just finished redesigning all their manufacturing processes to meet the previous reduction.
Juan Perón, the guy who transformed Argentina from the sixth richest country in the world into its laughingstock, actually had more common sense and less experience creating bankruptcies than our “Big Guy”. So get prepared for a dollar that is even worth less than an Argentine peso of the day.
Ed-I lived under Juan Peron until I was 11 y/o, socialist to his core. Between he and Evita they raped the country from its natural resources and yearly took the funds to a Swiss bank account. They gave the poor 10% (they got 10% more than anyone else gave them-they were happy) and kept 90% on their yearly trip to visit the Pope and Switzerland. Unfortunately, Milei may not last as the Peronistas are knocking at the door with tremendous force. Freebies are hard to give up. America is on the way. AP
Wow! Abe, excellent reportage! You don't know how relieved I am to learn that Peron and Little Eva were paying their tithes! The point you make is this: government, irrespective of stripe or persuasion, is a losing proposition. Smart people everywhere should do all they can to ensure that there is as little of it as possible. Why is this lesson so hard to learn? Because it's unpleasant. Thank you for your participation here. Best always. PM
It's not at all unpleasant if you are among the millions leeching the largesse from the PRODUCERS - and at the direction, participation and approval of the left side of the aisle.
Keep voting Blue No Matter Who - the Golden Goose is taking her last gasps.....
"Since 1971, America has had an artificial currency that can be readily manipulated for political purposes." Mr. Bonner - can you please speculate on this hypothetical alternative historical scenario: Let's say that Nixon HAD NOT closed the "gold window" when France came calling that year to cash out it's greenbacks ... as a practical matter, could we have stayed on the gold standard even after we had no gold at Fort Knox?
What was the beginning date for our $31 trillion+ US debt? By 1971 was there a better choice the adminstration should taken to save the economy? "Enjoy today for the next generation will pay!"
Well then, if the country’s been growing at 2% instead of 4% and everyone’s real upset about it. I don’t know, two percent sounds pretty good to me. You know, if a doctor says, “your cancer is only growing at two percent” I’d probably say, “Well, that’s a relief.” And they say it’s all because of low interest rates. Yeah, yeah, they borrowed too much from the future. Which is funny because the future never asked for it. The future’s just sitting there like, “Hey, I didn’t order 30 trillion dollars of crap. I just wanted a hoverboard.”
The system is BUILT to slow down! You think the elites want you growing at 4%? Forget it! They want you fat, dumb, and filling out Federal Register Form #32-A about the “proper stacking height of cow shit.” So if you’ve got 107,000 pages of federal rules, that’s not governance, that’s a bad marriage, you know you’re screwed, you just don’t know what it’ll cost yet!
And let’s not talk about innovation.
We have the internet! We have AI! We had free trade! And what’d we do? We made Facebook so you can argue with your aunt about vaccines, (X) so the president can scream at 3 a.m., and Wall Street algorithms that can steal a trillion dollars while you’re still tryin’ to reset your Wi-Fi! So they’re not slowing GDP folks, they’re slowing us. We’re the product. We’re the cattle. And the elites? They own the slaughterhouse!
The whole economy’s just a Ponzi scheme run by old guys in suits who think lowering interest rates is an innovation. Like, “Hey, let’s borrow from the future so our grandkids can have the privilege of eating cat food in space!” And policies? Geez, we don’t need more policies, we need a policy torch. Every time a new one gets added, some poor bastard in Ohio has to hire a lawyer just to mow his lawn. And then we’re shocked! Shocked that GDP slowed down? It’s not a mystery, it’s math: debt plus bullshit equals America’s growth strategy. 🤩
Hiya, Gypt. You left one key part out - We Are The Carbon They Want To Reduce.
Yup - it's true. If you don't believe it, you're probably late for your latest Booster Shot. Get your skinny a** down to Walgreens or CVS - they're expecting you.
PS - Who is this Orange Dude cutting all those Regulations? Oh SH*T! Can't be!! Don't look now....
https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/01/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-launches-massive-10-to-1-deregulation-initiative/
Ho boy, where to begin. Ok - just spit-balling here:
"𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘺 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘧𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘪𝘮𝘮𝘪𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘴. 𝘌𝘢𝘤𝘩 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘢𝘥𝘥𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘢𝘭𝘦𝘴, 𝘰𝘶𝘵𝘱𝘶𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘎𝘋𝘗."
Sputter, cough, gag - Wut? DEMONSTRABLY FALSE STATEMENT - just scratch a TINY bit below the Lie. Maybe search "Are immigrants legal and/or illegal a net plus or minus to our Economy?" The answer is stunning, but not surprising if your not trying to plug The Narrative constantly (looking at you, Little Bill.) Alright, I guess since government "spending" is now counted as part of GDP, and welfare/free healthcare/free education/free food stamps/free rental assistance/free daycare/free re-fillable CASH CARDS/free O'hammed phones ARE part of government "spending", you might be able to only tell HALF A LIE and say that "immigrants" are a net plus to GDP. But you'd still be a disingenuous liar to do so.
"𝘛𝘳𝘶𝘮𝘱 𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘰𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘤𝘶𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘴 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘵 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘱𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘺𝘦𝘴 𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘬𝘦𝘺𝘴..."
Hmmmm. I can only call 'em like I see 'em, and based off of 5 years of Economic History with our ship being Captained by President Donald J. Trump, I say open the cage doors and let those monkeys get to work. The result will be free bananas all around, with a side of Freedom. Also note - thank GOD the Hyenas and Jackasses are being corralled and are no longer calling the shots. Based on 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙞𝙧 past performance they should probably be shipped to the Glue Factory. Surely we can all agree on that, eh libtardes?
"𝘜𝘚 𝘧𝘦𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘭 𝘱𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘣𝘢𝘳𝘰𝘲𝘶𝘦 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘯𝘰 𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘧𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘰𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘯 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯...𝘰𝘳 𝘴𝘪𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘺 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘪𝘵 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘧𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘷𝘦. 𝘛𝘺𝘱𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺, 𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘰𝘮𝘪𝘤 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘴𝘭𝘰𝘸𝘴."
Ya don't say. How interesting and duh. Tell me again WHICH PRESIDENT has enacted REGULATION-CUTTING Executive Orders in BOTH HIS TERMS (2-for-1 in first term, 𝟭𝟬-𝗳𝗼𝗿-𝟭 in second term)? 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗱𝗼𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 "𝗶𝗻𝘀𝗮𝗻𝗲" 𝗿𝘂𝗹𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝟭𝟬 𝗥𝗲𝗴𝘂𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗺𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝗖𝗨𝗧 𝘁𝗼 𝗲𝗻𝗮𝗰𝘁 𝗢𝗡𝗘 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝘀𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝘆𝗼𝘂, 𝗟𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗹𝗲 𝗕𝗶𝗹𝗹? Wait, it's Trump that has done this to great success - so no surprise you ignore him completely while you bitch about the Burden of Government Regulation. Your severe TDS is laughably obvious to anyone with a brain.
For the slower readers out there (Hi, Ed and Pat!)
This term:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/01/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-launches-massive-10-to-1-deregulation-initiative/
First term:
https://www.agencyiq.com/blog/trump-reintroduces-revamped-deregulatory-executive-order-one-in-10-out-and-a-bigger-role-for-the-unified-agenda/
Try to be a little more transparent tomorrow. It is entertaining to see how many morons gleefully support the most atrocious of the BS you put on your stack....
PS - On the "Honey" side - other than the above, great article. Right on target, um, except for the stuff I pointed out in this post....
Mr. S.E., The first quote is what got me: "𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘺 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘧𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘪𝘮𝘮𝘪𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘴. 𝘌𝘢𝘤𝘩 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘢𝘥𝘥𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘢𝘭𝘦𝘴, 𝘰𝘶𝘵𝘱𝘶𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘎𝘋𝘗." What Bill doesn't point out is that these immigrants have overwhelming voted for the ever-growing government control of the private sector at the federal, state, & local level because that is the third-world, govt.-is-God mentality that a large majority have brought with them from their third-world hellholes. As late as the late 20th Century, when the U.S. was 80% white, we didn't have all the problems we have now that the U.S. is 66% white and the percentage is dropping each decade.
I would call you a Rayciss - except that I long ago decided to stand on the FACT that Reality Cannot Be Racist....
Diversity is not our strength.
The GDP after World War 2 was because everybody worked hard and there was no Welfare State. Absolutely, none. Workman's compensation insurance did not exist. Unemployment insurance did not exist. Food stamps, free school lunhces did not exist. Work or starve. Work and succeed. Build a family. Build a safe community.
IllegalI imigration contributes to GDP? Please. Does welfare expense and crime fall to the GDP bottom line.
OH WOW! look at all the PHDs we've produced or imported. GDP should have exploded.
I had a driver once. Nice guy.. kinda of a weirdo.
He worked at Ohio state park time.I guess as a professor. I did not know that, and I had asked someone else about it.
He really has a PHD? What in. I never did find out, butthat the answer was pretty funny.... "PLENTY HIGHWAY DIRVING."
I guess that does contribute to the gdp....😁
Yes Bill, when the country still ran on biblical values and principles. Not a bad idea!
To be sure Trump did not set the stage for this economy, that was done by Nixon in August of 1971 at a time was scaping money together for my silver over black Datsun 240Z. The point here is that all of our illustrious presidents have used the slippery slope that Mr. Nixon provided to print our way out of trouble. To be sure they really had no viable options as the government had already printed more dollars than the gold it purportedly represented. So when the ship from France, sent by President de Gaulle, arrived in port carrying copious amounts of dollars, Nixon did not have the gold to make the trade, as promised, or he saw the gold reserves writing on the wall and percipitious closed the gold window. From there the printing began in earnest. The printing has been the way the government kept the lights on ever since. So the point here is why Trump the bad guy for continuing the printing lifestyle? Does Trump have any viable options? Yes he has two options: printing or default. This situation is not his doing. He has no alternative but to print with the consequence of the dollar losing more and more of its purchasing power, and then, behind the scenes, buy gold and get the country ready for the new financial system which shaping up very nicely.
But Trump IS the one who denied Mr. Bonner's application for Mar-a-Lago membership lo those many years ago.
So....
SE, did you just say that part out loud?!?! 🤣😝
This HAS to be it, the source of all the BB butt-hurt re. Trump!!
The banksters are the problem, why should this country pay a bunch of crooks a trillion dollars a year in interest, we as a country don’t need to borrow money from anyone, the entire world financial system with the crooked central banks are such a scam, “The Creature From Jekyll Island “ read it, we the taxpayers have been screwed since 1913, paying the bankster clowns. WTFU
I agree. The Orange man just happens to be in the chair when the whole thing blows up. Then when the next election hits and all the people who thought Gold and Silver were Barbaric Relics are crying out for government to save us, well that’s when it will really get bad. The people always vote with their pocket book.
"Policies creep" That's another way of saying growth in government. "Growth in government" is another way of saying loss of freedom. The problem with so-called democracy is that it encourages governmental growth. Throw in a little side-action corruption, and pretty soon, democracy kills itself. Have a great day. Best always. PM
Am I wrong. Isn’t the Trump administration reducing rules and regulations. Making things easier for businesses to flourish. Printing has to stop. Our government needs to reduce spending by getting ALL departments to lower their budget by 10%. This is not lowering the ‘increase’ budget by 10%. If not the abyss is just around the corner. I am speaking as an American Independent Voter.
Three suggestions
Our Congress, long the weak sister of the three branches of our government, could help redress the collapse of the dollar by charting a course of annual spending reductions that, over time, would result in a balanced budget
Our Executive Branch should establish life-cycles for its many rules. Unless reinstated, they would automatically expire at the end of a TBD term
To reduce the incentive to spend and to foster fresh solutions, establish term limits for all elected officials, local, state and Federal
Three great ideas (I mean that sincerely), which is why none will ever happen.
Just came across this in my fb memories.
This is why I'm a subscriber! Let's get back to this!
Bill Bonner sure has a way with words.
My daily read to get the brain working...
Responding to The New York Times…
By Bill Bonner, Chairman, Bonner & Partners
Invitation to Claptrap
Opening a newspaper is always an invitation to claptrap. The New York Times is probably no worse than any other. But it is the only one we had on our long trip from Berlin to Bermuda.
What gives over at the Times? Do the editors have tails and gills?
Hardly a single page manages to climb out of the primordial swamp of shallow, insipid thinking. Most of the “think pieces” show no signs of thinking at all; it is just desire.
David Brooks wants more community do-goodism.
Jo Piazza wants men to be more like women.
Reshma Saujani wants women to run the world.
Nicholas Kristof wants to do something about global warming.
Here, in the spirit of helpful mischief, we provide a little cynicism, a few question marks, and a path onto dry land.
At least David Brooks is right about one thing. Writing on education reform in South Carolina in the Friday international edition, the columnist noticed:
Our actual lives are influenced by millions of events that interact in mysterious ways.
That observation should make us pause. For every snake we see in the grass, there are dozens more in the bush, waiting to bite us on the derrière.
And it should open the door to a genuinely interesting discussion. If human society is shaped by things we don’t understand, can we really improve it by conscious (usually armed) intervention?
Train Your Husband
We’ll come back to Mr. Brooks in a minute…
Instead, let’s move on to Jo Piazza. “How I Trained My Husband to Be a Dad,” is the headline. That alone calls forth a nest of viperous questions.
Is this a joke? How would she know (better than he) how to be a dad? She is, after all, a mom.
What is wrong with her husband? Wasn’t his role shaped by millions of years of trial and error? Isn’t that training now embedded in his genes, instincts, and traditions?
Will the Times run a follow-up from him?: “How I Beat My Wife Into Being a Decent Mother”…
Ms. Piazza insisted that they share the burden of baby care equally. Is that a good idea?
In our experience, babies want their mommas, perhaps for purely anatomical reasons. But what do we know?
Ms. Piazza doesn’t know, either… and has no interest in finding out. Instead, she left her three-month-old with her husband so she could work on her novel!
And now, her tone of self-satisfied triumphalism suggests that she believes she has just crawled out of the muck and learned to walk on two legs.
But what kind of progress is this? The earliest and most basic form of the division of labor is the cooperation between men and women. One hunts. The other gathers. One is a mother. The other is a father. One remembers the children’s birthdays. The other remembers Boog Powell’s batting average.
By specializing, rather than by both doing the same thing, nature made it possible for them to do something neither could do on his own – have children.
Further specialization and cooperation led to the advances we take for granted as “civilization.”
And today, cooperation – between specialist metallurgists, financiers, salesmen, engineers, assemblers, machinists, chemists, and so forth – produces top-of-the-line Mercedes autos, for example… which wouldn’t be possible in a less-differentiated, hunter-gatherer society.
Maybe nature knows something Mr. and Ms. Piazza don’t… like the theory of competitive advantage! When a man (or woman) turns his attention to gathering up dirty diapers, he has less time to hunt for deals in the outside world.
Not that he can’t still earn a living… But he will be at a competitive disadvantage to guys whose wives take care of the baby, leaving them to work 12 hours a day in the outside world.
He will be less specialized… and less productive. The world will be less rich. And with fewer resources to work with, people will have fewer choices.
Is that good or bad? It’s none of our business how couples organize themselves. And there are surely lots of different ways to do it.
But if The New York Times is going to put it in the public record, you’d think it would at least mention the trade-offs.
Also worthy of mention is research that suggests that couples that share household chores equally – rather than specializing – are more likely to get divorced.
Why? We don’t know. That’s why we have question marks.
Antediluvian Trivia
Meanwhile, over on page 10 is another exercise in antediluvian trivia, in which Reshma Saujani suggests that “Maybe Girls Will Save Us.”
“From what?” is the first question. But she doesn’t bother with that. All over the country, she says, girls are getting turned on to politics. The author is, of course, an activist herself.
She is trying to get more girls to “code” – that is, to enter the world of computer technology. Why is it such a good idea for girls to code? We never had any interest in coding. It seems like dreary work; why try to get girls to do it?
And since we found the question mark key on our computer, we’ll hammer on it a bit more…
Ms. Saujani says girls have “eclipsed boys in political participation and shown incredible moral clarity.” And, oh yes, they have an “instinct for inclusiveness.”
Oh yeah?
We recall our daughter coming home from school in tears because a clique of girls did not include her. That never happened to our boys. In our experience, girls can be as mean as boys and just as selfish… though perhaps cleverer about it.
And moral clarity? Smithsonian provides an illustration:
In January of 1692 [in Salem, Massachusetts], Reverend Parris’ daughter Elizabeth, age 9, and niece Abigail Williams, age 11, started having “fits.” They screamed, threw things, uttered peculiar sounds, and contorted themselves into strange positions, and a local doctor blamed the supernatural. Another girl, Ann Putnam, age 11, experienced similar episodes. On February 29, under pressure from magistrates Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne, the girls blamed three women for afflicting them: Tituba, the Parris’ Caribbean slave; Sarah Good, a homeless beggar; and Sarah Osborne, an elderly impoverished woman.
The result: 19 people were hung for witchcraft. And a 71-year-old man was “pressed to death” by heavy rocks placed upon him.
Girls will be girls, and boys will be boys, bless their hearts. But moral clarity is a fraud.
Do Something
Over on page 12, the drivel goes on. There, Nicholas Kristof tells us that “denying climate change doesn’t stop its devastating effects.”
Of course, he’s right. Nature doesn’t care what we think. Kristof prompts a couple of lame climatologists to tell us that there might be a link between your driving to work in the morning and the hurricane that just washed over the Bible Belt.
Yes, there might be. Or there might not be. And maybe someday, scientists will have a better understanding of it.
But today, we don’t know what’s going on with the world’s weather. We don’t know whether it’s good or bad. We don’t know if we could do something to change it. And we don’t know if the costs would be greater than the rewards.
But Kristof can’t wait. He wants “us” to do something now. And as soon as you hear someone say, “We need to…,” you can stop listening. What follows is invariably idiotic, because it always ignores those millions of inscrutable influences. The activist is always a scalawag. And the activist with moral clarity is dangerous.
And now, let’s go back to David Brooks. Having set forth an observation worthy of Shakespeare – that there’s more going on to influence our lives than we find in our philosophy – Brooks proceeds to treat it like a smelly panhandler, doing his best to stay out of reach.
He tells us that he went to Spartanburg, South Carolina and saw the do-gooders working together to improve the world. But do they do any real good?
Does the investment pay off? What happens to the things that can’t be done because the time and money have gone into these worthy projects? No one knows.
“Building working relationships across a community is an intrinsically good thing,” he writes.
Is it? We don’t know that, either.
But here’s another question: Has a community ever actually been improved by busybodies who say they’re working for the good of others?
Or, as Adam Smith suggested, are communities really improved as a byproduct of people looking out for themselves… making millions and millions of win-win deals, compromises, gifts, and bargains… trading, working, marrying one another, exchanging small talk and smiles in the course of business… giving and getting with no intention of forcing their moral clarity on others?
Our guess: Human life is far too subtle and too complicated… and subject to far too many baroque, mysterious influences. It can’t be straightened out on an anvil by simple-minded jackasses with ball-peen hammers.
But what an inspiration it must have been… So many activists, community organizers, world-improvers, and politicians working together.
If they were all laid end to end… wouldn’t that be beautiful?!
Regards,
Bill
2018
If you laid out all economists end for end they would all point in different directions.Mark Twain. (I think)
I am certain that you are aware of the Scottish Professor of 1781, Andrew Tytler !!!!
His quote about the time endurance of a Democracy is so true !
The US time has about run out !
Please print his quote in your newsletter !
Here in the UK, under the loons of Labour are very keen on regulating private enterprise out of business. The latest today is to further reduce the sugar in Ribena and Lucozade, formerly considered healthy drinks, by 0.5% from 5% to 4.5%. For the health of the nations children. It's always for the sake of the kiddies.
The Japanese owners of the brands are threatening to withdraw from the UK as they have just finished redesigning all their manufacturing processes to meet the previous reduction.
This is Labour growing the economy.
THIS is the left, WORLDWIDE, thinking they know better about everything and further insist we all implement their Stupidity.
Or they will shoot us....
One of your best column and note. Congratulations to both of you.
Juan Perón, the guy who transformed Argentina from the sixth richest country in the world into its laughingstock, actually had more common sense and less experience creating bankruptcies than our “Big Guy”. So get prepared for a dollar that is even worth less than an Argentine peso of the day.
Ed-I lived under Juan Peron until I was 11 y/o, socialist to his core. Between he and Evita they raped the country from its natural resources and yearly took the funds to a Swiss bank account. They gave the poor 10% (they got 10% more than anyone else gave them-they were happy) and kept 90% on their yearly trip to visit the Pope and Switzerland. Unfortunately, Milei may not last as the Peronistas are knocking at the door with tremendous force. Freebies are hard to give up. America is on the way. AP
Wow! Abe, excellent reportage! You don't know how relieved I am to learn that Peron and Little Eva were paying their tithes! The point you make is this: government, irrespective of stripe or persuasion, is a losing proposition. Smart people everywhere should do all they can to ensure that there is as little of it as possible. Why is this lesson so hard to learn? Because it's unpleasant. Thank you for your participation here. Best always. PM
It's not at all unpleasant if you are among the millions leeching the largesse from the PRODUCERS - and at the direction, participation and approval of the left side of the aisle.
Keep voting Blue No Matter Who - the Golden Goose is taking her last gasps.....
Haha, blitzed by own bias! Thanks for the chuckle. Best always. PM
The producers are getting killed by this administration: farmers, farm workers, small business, owners, etc.
Mr. Porter, Yes, Pres. Milei is unfortunately finding that out; i.e., "freebies are hard to give up."
What's a few rocks, bottles and eggs thrown at a motorcade among friends?
We just haven’t seen the full results of this administration’s insanity.
"Since 1971, America has had an artificial currency that can be readily manipulated for political purposes." Mr. Bonner - can you please speculate on this hypothetical alternative historical scenario: Let's say that Nixon HAD NOT closed the "gold window" when France came calling that year to cash out it's greenbacks ... as a practical matter, could we have stayed on the gold standard even after we had no gold at Fort Knox?
What was the beginning date for our $31 trillion+ US debt? By 1971 was there a better choice the adminstration should taken to save the economy? "Enjoy today for the next generation will pay!"
:Leonard Hartman