Core Durable Goods Orders Rise For 8th Straight Month

US Durable Goods Orders soared 5.3% MoM in (admittedly very lagged due to the shutdown) preliminary November data (significantly exceeding the 4.0% MoM expected and a major rebound from October's 2.1% MoM decline), boosted by bookings for commercial aircraft and other capital equipment.

Source: Bloomberg

That big jump (the biggest in six months) pushed durable goods orders up 10.5% YoY - the 3rd biggest increase since June 2022.

Under the hood, non-defense aircraft spend soared, defense spending dipped and motor vehicle orders were flatish...

Source: Bloomberg

Meanwhile, Core Orders (ex Transportation) rose 0.5% MoM (also better than expected)...

Source: Bloomberg

This was the 8th straight month of increases, leading to a 4.4% YoY rise in orders - the best since October 2022.

The data out Monday also showed the value of core capital goods orders, a proxy for investment in equipment that excludes aircraft and military hardware, increased a larger-than-forecast 0.7%.

 

 

Tyler Durden Mon, 01/26/2026 - 08:42

Pentagon Releases New Defense Strategy: 4 Things To Know

Authored by Ryan Morgan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Pentagon released its new National Defense Strategy late on Jan. 23, placing the homeland and a surrounding sphere of influence as the top priority for the U.S. military.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks during the POW/MIA National Recognition Day Ceremony at the Pentagon, Friday, Sept. 19, 2025, in Washington. AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson

Nearly two months after the White House released President Donald Trump’s National Security Strategy, the new 34-page Pentagon document provides specifics regarding how the U.S. military will support the president’s strategy. In particular, it describes four specific lines of effort for military planners going forward.

“No longer will the Department be distracted by interventionism, endless wars, regime change, and nation building. Instead, we will put our people’s practical, concrete interests first,” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth wrote in a memorandum accompanying the new strategy document.

Here are the four key lines of effort outlined in the new National Defense Strategy and how they fit into Trump’s security and foreign policy framework.

1. Sphere of Influence

The Pentagon describes defending the U.S. homeland as the “foremost priority” Trump has given the military.

“The Department will therefore prioritize doing just that, including by defending America’s interests throughout the Western Hemisphere,” the document states.

As part of this first priority, the Pentagon noted U.S. military efforts to secure the United States’ borders and to combat drug trafficking throughout the Western Hemisphere.

U.S. forces began amassing near Latin America in August 2025 and carried out strikes on drug boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific for months. They also seized sanctioned oil tankers sailing to and from Venezuela.

Those moves preceded an operation into Venezuela, during which U.S. forces apprehended the country’s wanted leader, Nicolás Maduro, to face federal charges for an alleged drug trafficking conspiracy.

President James Monroe articulated a U.S. pledge to oppose European colonial efforts in the Western Hemisphere in an address to Congress in December 1823 that later came to be known as the Monroe Doctrine.

In the weeks leading up to Maduro’s capture, the Trump administration began increasingly referring to a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine.

In a press conference following Maduro’s capture, Trump explicitly referenced Monroe’s 1823 doctrine and said, “Under our new national security strategy, American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.”

Since ordering Maduro’s capture, Trump has also ramped up talk of a U.S. acquisition of Greenland, which is currently a semiautonomous territory of Denmark. Trump has said the island territory is key to U.S. national security.

Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores (rear), are escorted by federal agents after landing at a Manhattan helipad, as they make their way into an armored car en route to a federal courthouse in New York City on Jan. 5, 2026. XNY/Star Max/GC Images

The new strategy document states that the Pentagon will “provide the President with credible options to guarantee U.S. military and commercial access to key terrain from the Arctic to South America, especially Greenland, the Gulf of America, and the Panama Canal.”

The document further declared the Pentagon’s intent to support Trump’s Golden Dome missile defense initiative.

U.S. nuclear force modernization and cybersecurity are also listed under the first line of effort, as is countering Islamic terrorism.

“The Department will maintain a resource-sustainable approach to countering Islamic terrorists, focused on organizations that possess the capability and intent to strike the U.S. Homeland,” the document states.

2. China and Indo-Pacific Deterrence

As the U.S. military adjusts its global strategy, the Pentagon is charged with finding ways to deter China while seeking to avoid confrontation with the nuclear-armed power.

The Pentagon said it will follow Trump’s lead in engaging with Chinese counterparts and supporting deconfliction efforts.

The strategy document does not mention any intent to be in direct conflict with China, but it states that the responsibility of the military is “to ensure that President Trump is always able to negotiate from a position of strength in order to sustain peace in the Indo-Pacific.”

Under this priority, the U.S. military “will build, posture, and sustain a strong denial defense” along what’s known as the first island chain.

The first island chain includes mainland Japan, the Ryukyu Islands, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Borneo.

“We will also work closely with our allies and partners in the region to incentivize and enable them to do more for our collective defense, especially in ways that are relevant to an effective denial defense,” the new National Defense Strategy states.

A U.S. Air Force F-35A Lightning II conducts aerial refueling with a KC-135 Stratotanker assigned to the 909th Air Refueling Squadron during a local exercise over the Pacific Ocean on Nov. 17, 2025. Airman 1st Class Arnet Tamayo/U.S. Air Force via DVIDS

One effort to bolster regional allies involves a trilateral security partnership among Australia, the UK, and the United States, known as AUKUS. The partnership began in 2021 during President Joe Biden’s administration.

In June 2025, the Pentagon placed the AUKUS partnership under review. In October, Trump suggested the partnership might be unnecessary.

The Trump administration has since expressed support for the group, and in December 2025, Hegseth said, “We are strengthening AUKUS so that it works for America, for Australia, and for the UK.”

3. Burden-Sharing

As with the alliance-building in the Indo-Pacific, the new National Defense Strategy emphasizes a need for allies and partners across the globe.

The strategy document describes a “simultaneity problem” wherein multiple adversaries of the United States might act in concert to stretch U.S. military resources.

“Such a scenario would be less of a concern if our allies and partners had spent recent decades investing adequately in their defenses. But they did not,” the document states.

“Instead, with rare exceptions, they were too often content to allow the United States to defend them, while they cut defense spending and invested instead in things like public welfare and other domestic programs.”

The document states that the United States will push for partners in Europe, the Middle East, and the Korean Peninsula to take primary responsibility for their defenses, “with critical but limited support from U.S. forces.”

According to the strategy document, Mexico and Canada will have a role to play in the Western Hemisphere, helping prevent drug trafficking and illegal immigration into the United States.

Members of the National Guard march during the announcement of the new measures by the Mexican government to deter illegal crossings at the southern border with Guatemala, in Tuxtla Gutierrez, Mexico, on March 19, 2021. Jacob Garcia/Reuters

“Canada also has a vital role to play in helping to defend North America against other threats, including by strengthening defenses against air, missile, and undersea threats,” the document adds.

In Europe, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members are expected to “take primary responsibility for Europe’s conventional defense.”

Trump has already championed a pledge for the NATO members to each commit 5 percent of their annual gross domestic product to defense and national security spending, up from a goal of 2 percent in 2014.

4. Arms Manufacturing

The fourth area of focus detailed in the Pentagon’s new strategy document is to bolster the United States’ arms industry.

The document states that this reindustrialization effort “is vital to ensuring that U.S. forces have the weapons, equipment, and transportation and distribution capability needed” to implement the strategy.

“It is also critical to ensuring that the United States can help arm allies and partners as they take on a greater share of the burden of our collective defense, including by leading efforts to deter or defend against other, lesser threats,” it reads.

This month, Hegseth began touring U.S. arms manufacturing facilities in what he’s dubbed the “Arsenal of Freedom” tour.

Andrew Nuss (R), head of growth and strategy for Anduril Industry's maritime division, speaks with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth about the Dive-XL underwater autonomous vehicle program, during a tour of Anduril Industry's corporate campus in Costa Mesa, Calif., on Dec. 5, 2025. Ryan Morgan/The Epoch Times

Hegseth and Trump have taken other recent steps to reform the military’s arms acquisition process.

“We’re leaving the old failed process behind, and we’ll instead embrace a new agile and results-oriented approach,” Hegseth said in a speech to industry leaders at the National War College in Washington on Nov. 7, 2025.

In a series of social media posts on Jan. 7, Trump criticized Raytheon and other arms manufacturers for the compensation packages they are giving to corporate executives and for offering stock buybacks and paying out dividends to shareholders.

Along with working with established traditional vendors, the National Defense Strategy states that the Pentagon will also seek to bolster organic manufacturing capabilities and grow nontraditional vendors to grow the U.S. arms industry.

Tyler Durden Mon, 01/26/2026 - 08:25

The post Doing Well by Doing Good: Dump Your American Stocks appeared first on CEPR.

EU Launches New Probe Into Musk's AI Chatbot Grok

The European Commission has opened a new formal investigation into Elon Musk's X under the Digital Services Act (DSA) and expanded a separate probe launched in December 2023.

"The new investigation will assess whether the company properly assessed and mitigated risks associated with the deployment of Grok's functionalities into X in the EU," the European Commission wrote in a press release, adding, "This includes risks related to the dissemination of illegal content in the EU, such as manipulated sexually explicit images, including content that may amount to child sexual abuse material."

The Commission is examining whether X:

• Diligently assess and mitigate systemic risks, including of the dissemination of illegal content, negative effects in relation to gender-based violence, and serious negative consequences to physical and mental well-being stemming from deployments of Grok's functionalities into its platform.

• Conduct and transmit to the Commission an ad hoc risk assessment report for Grok's functionalities in the X service with a critical impact on X's risk profile prior to their deployment.

"Non-consensual sexual deepfakes of women and children are a violent, unacceptable form of degradation," EU tech commissioner Henna Virkkunen said, who was quoted by Bloomberg. This case falls under the DSA, which places strict guardrails on harmful and illegal material on the web. And it's up to Brussels to define what is illegal material...

X, a subsidiary of xAI, pointed Bloomberg to a previous statement that it actively removes illegal content where necessary: "We remain committed to making X a safe platform for everyone and continue to have zero tolerance for any forms of child sexual exploitation, non-consensual nudity, and unwanted sexual content."

The EU's Grok investigation comes shortly after a separate 120 million euro fine imposed on X under the DSA.

In that earlier case, EU regulators found that X's paid blue check system misled users, the company obstructed researchers' access to platform data, and it failed to properly establish an advertising transparency repository.

Vice President JD Vance criticized Brussels in an X post last month, saying, "The EU should be supporting free speech, not attacking American companies over garbage."

Our assessment is that the EU's move against Grok has little to do with safety. If it did, regulators would be scrutinizing every major social media platform and chatbot operating on the continent. Instead, Brussels appears unwilling to tolerate free speech or anything associated with Elon Musk.

Forcing xAI out of the EU would only confirm that the DSA functions less as a safety framework and more as a censorship weapon designed to crush free speech. If Europe chooses stagnation over freedom, the outcome here is very clear: the US becomes an even more attractive space for innovation and freedom.

We must note that the EU's Grok investigation comes shortly after Europe plans to launch its own X-like social media platform called "W," a subsidiary of Swedish climate media firm We Don't Have Time.

Tyler Durden Mon, 01/26/2026 - 07:45

Erosion Of Freedom In The EU: From Censorship To Centralized Power

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

The European Union has increasingly fallen on the defensive in foreign policy. Domestically, the Green Deal has significantly damaged the economic foundation. Together with its main pillars Berlin and Paris, the Brussels-based EU Commission is pushing forward the systematic construction of a censorship apparatus to suppress its own failures from public debate.

The heated discussion in recent days over the censorship of unpopular platforms like Nius is far more than just a warning sign. Schleswig-Holstein’s Minister-President Daniel Günther offered a deep insight into the strategic toolbox of current politics during Markus Lanz’s ZDF show. The politician’s subsequent, at times desperate, attempts—alongside the host and state-affiliated media—to retract his openly stated censorship demands toward critical platforms and media such as Nius illustrate the seriousness of the situation: Germany is slowly but steadily sliding toward a surveillance state.

The Vulgar Side of Censorship

The debate over controlling public opinion, particularly in the digital space, also has a vulgar, unrestrained side—as Apollo News experienced a few months ago. At that time, the local branch of the Left Party openly called for, if necessary, violent action against the newsroom to drive it out of its neighborhood. The statement was phrased as: one should “kick the journalists on their keys.” This is far more than a verbal lapse by radicalized ideologues. It marks a rupture in the political culture of the Federal Republic, in which repressive elements, faced with a simmering economic crisis and growing criticism of the political course, emerge plainly and unapologetically.

We are witnessing an attempt to delegitimize what is visible: the democratic right to freedom of speech and open discourse. The very nature of new digital media—their ability to create fragmented opinion clusters—makes them dangerous for a political system increasingly focused on control. Media like Apollo News contribute to genuine public discourse and thereby evade the interpretive authority of established apparatuses, making them a threat to the censor.

A Pattern at the EU Level

On the EU level, a media-tactical pattern emerges. Representatives in Brussels and their national proponents pursue a clear goal: when externally pressured—such as in the Greenland conflict with the United States—they present themselves in public discourse as victims. Domestically, however, they adopt precisely the position they accuse U.S. President Donald Trump of: acting with elbows, showing no regard for fair negotiation.

The narrative created in this mode is largely carried by a media apparatus closely aligned with Brussels’ political lines. We have seen this in climate policy (Apollo News reported): first, the narrative of existential emergency is established, the story of a burning planet woven into public discourse over years. This is followed by the construction of a centrally planned, strictly regulated transformation economy. Criticism of this strategy has so far been marginalized through a form of soft censorship, placing critics near conspiracy theories in public media. The critic is ridiculed, publicly humiliated.

A similar pattern is evident in the EU’s treatment of countries like Hungary. Because Budapest has resisted open borders and mass migration for years, it is sanctioned in the style of a known bully: sometimes through funding cuts, sometimes via openly threatened penalties. It is always about money. The EU sanctions rather than negotiates. In essence, the EU applies Trump’s “dealmaker” strategy with precision domestically, against its own citizens.

Romania experienced similar treatment last year. During the presidential election, significant pressure was applied to the judicial apparatus to annul the unwanted election of a right-wing conservative president. The aim was not political competition over the country’s future, but institutional and legal intervention to control the outcome.

The explicit goal of EU policy is to centralize power within the Brussels Commission apparatus permanently. This can only succeed if dissenting forces—such as the strengthening right-wing opposition in Eastern Europe—are kept in check and growing criticism of the disastrous economic course of the Green Deal is systematically excluded from public debate.

The Decline of Germany

Since 2018, Germans have witnessed the gradual decline of their industry—and with it the erosion of the foundation of their prosperity. The idea of “Net Zero,” the forced restructuring of the economy toward a fully CO₂-free order, has so far led to a roughly 14% decline in industrial production in Germany, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. The German Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DIHK) reports that over 400,000 industrial jobs were lost in this period.

While industrial value creation and productivity shrink, the state apparatus expands. Bureaucracy and administration boom, creating hundreds of thousands of new positions where no market value is generated. At the same time, a stagnating or shrinking GDP—exacerbated by ongoing mass migration—is spread across a growing population. The result is a large-scale poverty program, which the government prefers not to discuss openly.

The Digital Services Act as a Censorship Tool

The debate over this process increasingly shifts to digital platforms. Leading the way are Elon Musk’s company X, as well as secondary arenas like Telegram or Reddit, offering forums for exchange, research, and counter-speech—places where information circulates that Brussels or Berlin will not accept unchallenged. This is exactly where the problem lies from the policymakers’ perspective: they want to buy time, convinced of the success of their social and economic transformation strategy, while reversal would mean a loss of power.

With the Digital Services Act (DSA), a comprehensive regulatory framework has come into force EU-wide. In simple terms, it obliges large online platforms to remove, restrict, or flag content classified under EU law as illegal, hateful, or socially harmful, including disinformation. Companies must also report on these actions in detail.

In practice, the DSA forces corporations like Meta, X, or TikTok—under threat of heavy fines—to systematically act against content deemed problematic, for example on climate policy, pandemic consequences, migration, or the Ukraine war. Measures include deletions, shadowbanning, warning labels, and deep interventions in recommendation algorithms.

Critics argue that the underlying criteria are often vague, placing political speech under preventive moderation pressure—even before open societal debate can occur.

The Perfidy of the DSA

The DSA’s perfidy lies in creating deliberately vague pseudo-legal grounds under terms like hate, incitement, and disinformation. Platform operators are pushed by economic incentives into preemptive censorship. Legal clarity is not the controlling factor; economic pressure via threat of fines is.

Combined with a growing network of so-called “trusted flaggers”—NGOs and private actors reporting potentially critical content to national authorities—a more constrained public discourse emerges. Brussels’ compliance rules are thus effectively enforced without formally naming a censorship regime.

In this context, it is understandable why a politician like Daniel Günther casually offers a glimpse behind the scenes in the safe space of public broadcasting. Where one believes oneself unobserved, one speaks what elsewhere is carefully concealed: unable or unwilling to make substantive course corrections in economic, climate, or migration policy—or in dealings with Moscow—critics are removed via the censorship stick.

The deliberately provoked dispute with the United States over the future of freedom of speech in Europe, and the threats toward American tech companies, are accepted. Political costs are externalized. Ultimately, the citizen pays the price—both as taxpayer, user, and censored participant in an increasingly narrow public discourse.

* * * 

About the author: Thomas Kolbe, born in 1978 in Neuss/ Germany, is a graduate economist. For over 25 years, he has worked as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.

Tyler Durden Mon, 01/26/2026 - 07:20

My back-to-work morning train WFH reads:

• Meme Stocks Turn 5. Will There Ever Be Another GameStop? Five years after GameStop shareholders launched a revolt, Wall Street has adapted and may have won the war. (Barron’s)

• UK Telegraph: Trump has crossed all lines: it is time to cut off his global credit card: America has lost its credibility. The only thing that can stop the president is the bond market. (Telegraph) see also The Greenland Fiasco Shows the Stock Market Is the Ultimate Check on Trump: Economic globalization and financial markets encourage the “Trump always chickens out” (TACO) cycle. If you like peace, that’s a good thing. (Reason)

• The Wall Street Star Betting His Reputation on Robots and Flying Cars: Morgan Stanley’s former autos analyst has big ideas in his new gig covering the robot economy. (Wall Street Journal)

• 2026 will be the year Cybertruck dies: Tesla CEO Elon Musk overpromised sales of 250,000 Cybertrucks annually by 2025. The company has reached barely 8% of that target. (Fast Company)

• Used Watch Prices Post Broad Gains For First Time In Years: As Secondary Market Strengthens: Morgan Stanley And WatchCharts. (Hodinkee) see also These Are the 100 Most Important Watches in the World Right Now: Nearly 1,000 pages long and weighing in at close to 25 pounds, Taschen’s new Ultimate Collector Watches is the final boss of horological coffee table books. (GQ)

• Who Owns TikTok in the U.S. Now? Several big companies and investment firms are part of the new American TikTok. Many have ties to one another and President Trump. (New York Times)

• Apple to Revamp Siri as a Built-In iPhone, Mac Chatbot to Fend Off OpenAI: The chatbot will be embedded deeply into the iPhone, iPad and Mac operating systems and replace the current Siri interface, allowing users to summon the new service by speaking the “Siri” command or holding down the side button. The new approach will go well beyond the abilities of the current Siri, with features such as searching the web, creating content, generating images, and analyzing uploaded files, and will be integrated into all of the company’s core apps. (Bloomberg)

• New York City’s Worst Highways Can Lead Somewhere Better: The expressways that Robert Moses carved into the city helped inspire the entire American highway system. Now they can be models for community-led reform. (CityLab)

• On Greenland, Europe stood up, Trump blinked, and the E.U. learned a lesson: For some in the often fractured E.U., Trump’s retreat on the Arctic territory proves that retaliation — not conciliation — is the answer to his hardball tactics. (Washington Post) see also ‘We Are Learning to Bully Back’ How Europe got Trump to cave on Greenland. (The Atlantic)

• Trump Declared a Space Race With China. The US Is Losing If you want to put people back on the moon, don’t gut the agency in charge of getting them there. (Wired)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business with Zach Buchwald, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Russell Investments. The global investment firm was founded in 1936, and today has ~$370 billion in AUM. Previously, he had a 15-year tenure at BlackRock, where he served as the head of its $2 trillion Institutional Business, leading the company’s Financial Institutions Group and helped establish its Retirement Solutions and Financial Markets Advisory platforms.

 

Over 75% of U.S. homes on the market are unaffordable to the typical household

Source: Axios

 

Sign up for our reads-only mailing list here.

 

 

The post 10 Monday AM Reads appeared first on The Big Picture.

Three Lessons From Venezuela's Economic Collapse

Authored by Matthew Mitchell via TheDailyEconomy.org,

President Trump has accepted the Nobel Peace Prize that was awarded to Venezuela’s opposition leader, María Corina Machado.

Unlike Machado, however, he does not accept the central lessons that can be gleaned from five decades of Venezuelan misrule.

There are three. 

Lesson 1: Past prosperity is no guarantee of future prosperity. 

In 1970, Venezuela was the wealthiest country in Latin America. Sitting atop the world’s largest proven oil reserve, it churned out more than 3.5 million barrels of oil a day. Using GDP per person as a metric, its citizens earned 2.7 times as much as the rest of Latin America — about the same as the average Finnish, Japanese, and Italian citizen. 

This prosperity bought Venezuelans better health, longer life, and more creature comforts — especially fancy foreign cars that poured into the country as oil poured out. And it wasn’t just the wealthy that benefited. Venezuela’s poverty rate was about a third of what it was in the rest of Latin America. 

The zenith was around 1977. Thanks to the global oil crisis of a few years earlier, crude prices had quadrupled. Amidst the boom, President Carlos Andrés Pérez made the fateful decision to nationalize the country’s oil industry, hoping to use its wealth to fund economic development and poverty relief. Instead, by combining public and private interests, the decision proved a boon for corruption, eventually turning the country into a petrostate. 

Almost immediately, incomes began to fall. By 1999, average Venezuelans were earning less than 90 percent of what they had three decades earlier. But the worst was yet to come. 

Which brings us to the second lesson. 

Lesson 2: Policy matters. 

Oil was not the only explanation for Venezuela’s 1970s prosperity. The government spent and taxed modestly. It left most industry in private hands. Inflation was low. And international trade was almost entirely free of tariffs and regulatory barriers to trade. 

In 1970, Venezuela scored a little less than 7 on the Fraser Institute’s 10-point Economic Freedom of the World index, making it the 13th most economically free country in the world, just ahead of Japan. 

But as the rest of the world liberalized in the 1980s and 1990s, Venezuela went in the opposite direction. The government ramped up transfers and subsidies and began to acquire more assets. Property rights grew less secure. Inflation reached 26 percent in 1980 and over 50 percent in 1995. By 2000, Venezuela had slipped to 116th in economic freedom. 

In 1999, as the economy faltered, a frustrated electorate turned to an outsider, Hugo Chávez. Chávez had risen to fame seven years earlier when he led an unsuccessful coup d’état against the democratically elected government (ironically led by Andrés Pérez, who had returned as president in 1989). 

Though left-of-center, he did not begin as a radical. Instead, he positioned himself as a populist reformer who could steer a “Third Way” between socialism and capitalism. But he grew more radical after a failed coup attempt against him in 2002. By 2005 he had fully embraced the socialist label, recasting his movement as “Socialism of the 21st Century.” 

It wasn’t just branding. He nearly doubled transfers and subsidies and more than doubled government investment. He tightened control over the government-owned oil company and nationalized other industries, including steel, iron, mining, cement, farming, food distribution, grocery chains, hotels, telecommunications, and banking. The government stopped respecting and protecting private property. Annual inflation bounced around from 20 to 60 per cent. At the time of his death in 2013, Venezuela’s overall economic freedom was close to 3 on the 10-point scale, making it the least economically free country in the world. 

But as the government took, nature gave. The country’s massive Orinoco Oil Belt continued to churn out about 2.5 million barrels of oil every day. As a result, GDP per person recovered. 

Many Western observers, from Senator Bernie Sanders to director Oliver Stone, saw this as a sign that socialism works. But the reality is that Venezuela’s oil-fueled boom had only managed to bring incomes back to 1970s levels. Moreover, careful econometric analyses comparing Venezuela’s performance to that of other similarly situated countries, found that Venezuela consistently under-performed. 

Chávez died in 2013, leaving the country in the hands of his Vice President, Nicolás Maduro. Maduro clung fast to Chávez’s policies, but as global oil prices plummeted, Socialism of the 21st Century began to look a lot like socialism in the 20th century: incomes collapsed, poverty exploded, and inflation became hyper (reaching over one million percent in 2018). 

Maduro responded predictably, imposing price controls that produced massive shortages of household necessities. About a quarter of the population fled the country. 

But the cost was not merely economic. Which brings us to the final lesson. 

Lesson 3: Economic and Personal Freedom are Deeply Intertwined. 

Socialism is typically imposed at the point of a gun. But notwithstanding his attempted 1992 coup, Chávez had come to power through free and mostly fair elections. This seems to have been one reason why Western observers were so taken in by the regime. Writing in her 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein claimed that Venezuelan “citizens had renewed their faith in the power of democracy to improve their lives.”   

But if she had looked closer, she would have seen the early signs of Venezuela’s anti-democratic turn. The Human Freedom Index, co-published by the Fraser Institute and the Cato Institute, builds on the Economic Freedom of the World index by adding 7 additional areas of personal freedom. As the figure below shows, the regime cracked down on personal freedoms just as it limited economic freedoms. By the time Klein wrote her book, Venezuela had already severely restricted freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom of association, freedom of movement, and the rule of law. 

This, unfortunately, is common. As we see in the final figure, most regimes that restrict economic freedom also tend to restrict personal freedom. It is easy to imagine why. People value their economic liberties, so regimes that seek to severely repress these liberties often cling to power by suppressing dissent. And because socialist regimes own the means of production — including media production like radio, print, and TV outlets — they have a handy tool at their disposal for suppression. 

What now? 

As the Cato Institute’s Marcos Falcone recently explained, one Venezuelan who seems to have internalized these lessons is María Corina Machado. As a decades-long leader of the opposition, she has consistently championed both personal and economic liberty. She traces much of the country’s corruption, mismanagement, and stagnation to its 1976 nationalization of the oil industry. 

And she is wildly popular. In the unified opposition primary of 2024, she ran on a platform of complete oil privatization and won 90 percent of the vote. Maduro refused to let her run in the general election, so she backed Edmundo González Urrutia and he is estimated to have won 70 percent of the vote. But Maduro refused to recognize the result and clung to power. 

Now, apparently, President Trump is in charge. But like Maduro before him, Trump refuses to recognize the results of the last election. He claims that Machado lacks the “respect” and “support” to lead. Polls, meanwhile, indicate that she is favored by more than 70 percent of the country. While accepting her re-gifted Nobel Prize, Mr. Trump has decided to give the reins to Maduro’s Vice President, the socialist Delcy Rodriguez, calling her a “terrific person” and predicting a great Venezuelan renaissance. 

As for privatization, Trump instead says “we’re going to keep the oil.” He claims that Rodriquez will be “turning over” up to 50 million barrels to the US, the proceeds of which will be “controlled by me, as President of the United States of America.” 

Meanwhile, he is strong-arming US oil companies to invest in the country, telling them that if they want to recover their property that was seized by President Andrés Pérez in 1976, they’d better cooperate in rebuilding Venezuela’s infrastructure. For their part, the companies have been reluctant to do so, citing the country’s poor track record of protecting private property. 

Like Andrés Pérez, Chávez, and Maduro, Trump seems to imagine that the right central plan will unlock the country’s vast oil wealth. But history teaches a different lesson.

Tyler Durden Mon, 01/26/2026 - 06:30

Global Energy Transition Threatened By Critical Transformer Shortages

By Haley Zaremba of Oilprice.com

The global clean energy transition has passed a tipping point as renewable energies have simply become too cheap to fail. Worldwide, nations both rich and poor are rushing to install more and more wind and solar capacity to keep up with rising energy demand rates driven by global economic development and the age of AI. But while countries have been investing heavily into increased production capacity, investments in critical grid infrastructure have not kept pace, leading to a major energy transition bottleneck and a potential threat to energy security for an increasing number of countries.

The United States and Europe are both facing critical transformer shortages and aging and inadequate grid infrastructure, and the threat that this shortage poses to energy security is already being felt through historic blackouts such as last year’s cascading grid failure in Spain and Portugal. While these setbacks have raised the profile of infrastructure investing in European policy spheres, “ambition is not yet being matched by action from governments, policy-makers, investors and businesses,” according to a recent report from the World Economic Forum. 

In the United States, specialists foresee a yearslong transformer crunch, with little to no relief forthcoming. While companies have rushed to ramp up production of power transformers and distribution transformers, keeping up with skyrocketing demand is an impossibly tall order. Wood Mackenzie estimates that, since 2019, U.S. demand for power transformers has jumped by 116 percent, while demand for distribution transformers has shot up 41 percent. 

"This surging transformer demand has created a significant supply deficit, with domestic manufacturing capacity unable to keep pace," Wood Mackenzie Senior Analyst Ben Boucher. "Utilities are routinely turning to the import market to meet project timelines. In 2025, imports will account for an estimated 80% of US power transformer supply and 50% of the distribution transformer supply. This market imbalance is escalating costs and lead times and is delaying our ability to bring generating plants online in pace with the surging energy demand."

However, some experts disagree with this takeaway, arguing that the transformer “shortage” is overblown if not fabricated, and the issue lies in self-inflicted procurement problems. There’s room for debate because the issue is a complex one stretching over many different economic sectors and supply chains. Whether the problem is one of supply or one of procurement, however, the impact is the same – major bottlenecks for new electricity with potential pitfalls for national energy security. 

“Over the past few years, what started as a squeeze has gradually morphed into a crisis,” Power Magazine recently reported. The Power article contends that this growing crisis has been “furnished by years of underinvestment in domestic manufacturing, a sudden surge in post-pandemic construction and electrification, and volatility in grain-oriented electrical steel (GOES) and copper markets, which steadily pushed lead times for large power and generator step-up (GSU) transformers beyond historical norms.”

And those driving factors are showing little signs of changing, indicating that delay times for transformer delivery are going to continue to stretch on. Even though demand for these products is now growing exponentially, this spike is coming in the wake of years of lackluster demand, and would-be investors are still warming up to the idea that they’ll get a return on their investment in the sector. 

Hitachi, one major producer of such transformers, for example, has strategically only invested in transformer development when the purchase of those components is already guaranteed and buyer-backed.  “Nobody wants to overinvest” in new production facilities, according to Hitachi Energy CEO Andreas Schierenbeck.

Through these kinds of up-front deals, Hitachi has planned $1 billion in new manufacturing capacity across the United States. However, Schierenbeck told news outlet Semafor this week that these deals are “probably not enough to close the gap between supply and demand… There are still customers who are just in the old world with transactional behavior, and they’ll have to be lucky to get a slot.”

Tyler Durden Mon, 01/26/2026 - 06:30

Ethereum Prepares For Quantum Era With New Security Team And Funding

Authored by Amin Haqshanas via CoinTelegraph.com,

The Ethereum Foundation has made post-quantum security a central focus of the network’s long-term roadmap, announcing the formation of a dedicated Post Quantum (PQ) team.

The new team will be led by Thomas Coratger, a cryptographic engineer at the Ethereum Foundation, with support from Emile, a cryptographer closely associated with leanVM, according to crypto researcher Justin Drake.

“After years of quiet R&D, EF management has officially declared PQ security a top strategic priority,” Drake said in a Saturday post on X. “It's now 2026, timelines are accelerating. Time to go full PQ.”

The researcher described leanVM, a specialized, minimalist zero-knowledge proof virtual machine (zkVM), as a potential building block of Ethereum’s post-quantum strategy.

EF backs post-quantum push with developer sessions, funding

Drake outlined several near-term steps aimed at preparing the ecosystem. A biweekly developer session focused on post-quantum transactions is set to begin next month, led by Ethereum researcher Antonio Sanso. The sessions will concentrate on user-facing protections, including protocol-level cryptographic tools, account abstraction pathways and longer-term work on aggregating transaction signatures using leanVM.

The Ethereum Foundation is also backing its push with new funding. Drake announced a $1 million Poseidon Prize to strengthen the Poseidon hash function, alongside another $1 million initiative known as the Proximity Prize, both aimed at advancing post-quantum cryptography.

Ethereum prepares for quantum era. Source: Justin Drake

On the engineering front, Drake said multi-client post-quantum consensus development networks are already live, with multiple teams participating and coordinating through weekly interoperability calls.

Furthermore, the foundation will host a dedicated post-quantum event in October, followed by a post-quantum day in late March ahead of EthCC. Educational efforts, including video content and materials aimed at enterprises, are also underway.

Coinbase forms board to assess quantum risks

The announcement comes amid growing sensitivity in crypto markets to quantum risk. On Wednesday, Coinbase revealed that it has established an independent advisory board to evaluate how advances in quantum computing could impact the cryptography securing major blockchain networks, including Bitcoin and Ethereum.

The board brings together experts from academia and industry in quantum computing, cryptography, and blockchain security, and will publish public research and guidance for developers, organizations, and users. Its first position paper is expected in early 2027.

Tyler Durden Mon, 01/26/2026 - 03:30

JD Vance Notes Something Very Important About Minneapolis Chaos

Authored by 'sundance' via The Last Refuge,

Last week CPB commander Greg Bovino was asked what makes Minneapolis different from other cities where ICE enforcement operations have taken place. Bovino noted in the Minneapolis region there is no separation between the extremists on the ground and the people in local government.

Today, Vice President JD Vance concurs and expands on that sentiment:

[Source]

What Vice-President Vance says here is very important. 

The regional government is a stakeholder in maintaining the chaos on the streets. 

Why? 

Because for two decades a cancer of rampant financial fraud has been permitted to spread throughout the Minneapolis region and has now reached the stage of visible metastasis.

Shortly after the George Floyd shooting, some of us started looking into a background issue where it seemed like local police and Floyd had a knowledgeable relationship with each other prior to the encounter on the street.  The initial contact between Floyd and police was about Floyd passing off a counterfeit $20 bill to a business that was not part of the approved money laundering operation.

When you follow that trail, you end up in a really weird place where it seemed like millions of counterfeit dollars were entering the country through Mexico, going by rail into the U.S. mainland and then transitioning through the Minneapolis region. I stopped researching it {SEE HERE} when I discovered that Floyd and police officer Chauvin were friends, and worked together at one of the laundry businesses; a nightclub.

ICYMI: CBP officers discovered $900,000 in counterfeit US currency in a commercial rail shipment in International Falls, MN. The counterfeit currency was seized and will be turned over to @SecretService. Details: https://t.co/2xX7nd34Xx pic.twitter.com/eCi8WjN1so

— CBP (@CBP) January 28, 2020

The corrupt activity in the Minneapolis area has been going on for around two decades.  There are two basic components, local financial fraud and govt financial fraud. 

• The local fraud represented millions and involved counterfeit goods/money and laundering operations. 

• The government assisted financial fraud represents billions and involves abuses of federal tax monies.

After 20 years of this activity almost all elements of the economic and social structure are now compromised.  As we have seen in the last several weeks, the HHS/CMS fraud is extensive and that illegal activity is impossible to exist without the knowledge, aid and assistance of the regional and municipal government officials.

Fraudulent day cares, fraudulent healthcare services, fraudulent transport companies, fraudulent “Health Outreach Workers” and various governmental offices all involved in bilking taxpayers for billions upon billions.  At the same time there is a massive money laundering operation in the underground economy.

After two decades of this unchecked corruption, there’s no way to guess how much of the regional economic activity is actually dependent on the financial fraud.  My best estimate is that over fifty percent of all economic activity -in the entire region- is based on fraud.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions are the surface level issue for the regional and state government.  However, it is the widespread financial fraud that turns the activity of the leftist agitators on the street into a useful tool for the regional officials to manipulate in order to hide the true financial fraud that surrounds the area.

The “local authorities” are working with the “far left agitators” because the Minneapolis region is a network of codependent fraud.

The police are compromised. The judges and courts are compromised. The local municipal officials are compromised. The mayor’s office is compromised, and the corruption issue spreads out to the state level when Governor Tim Walz previously shut down audits of the financial crimes and then state officials ignored whistleblowers.

All of the private and public institutions -within the system of regional and state government- are connected to a statewide network of financial fraud, from counterfeit money laundering to exploitation of federal government benefits; it is all connected to the same network of fraud.

It was the ease and ability to conduct fraud that attracted the Somali migrants and the criminal aliens.  These people came for the money. ICE coming to arrest the aliens has put a spotlight on the reason why they aggregated in the Minneapolis region.

How this can be corrected is anyone’s guess.

Follow the money trail and you will discover this real reason for the state and local officials to support the anarchy in the streets.  They all want the federal government to leave.

Arrest Records Here...

Tyler Durden Sun, 01/25/2026 - 22:10

Centrus To Invest $560 Million for High-Rate Manufacturing Plan

Centrus Energy, which has long been one of our favorite stocks throughout 2025 and into 2026, is redirecting over 60% of the $900 million Department of Energy (DOE) funding award back into the economy to secure the US domestic nuclear fuel chain.

Centrus will invest $560 million into their Oak Ridge, Tennessee, centrifuge production facility to convert it to a high-rate manufacturing plant with the goal of quickly addressing the lack of domestic enrichment and get new centrifuge cascades online before 2029. The investment is expected to create over 400 jobs in Oak Ridge, and is likely only the first of many announcements.

Centrus centrifuges

Centrus has long differentiated itself from its competition in the uranium enrichment business by highlighting their all-American supply chain and production facility, which also enables them to produce the high-demand unobligated enriched uranium. This is often compared to the commercial-scale competition from Urenco, which has been operating for years out of New Mexico. Urenco uses European centrifuge technology developed by a consortium of the UK and Dutch governments, along with German utility companies.

The US still remains incapable of supporting even its current domestic commercial nuclear fleet, requiring imports of over 99% of raw uranium ore (U3O8) and about 75% of enrichment services.

Relying heavily on countries like Canada and Kazakhstan for U3O8, and a combination of Russia and Europe for enrichment services, this has led to the current table-pounding by Secretary Wright and President Trump to reinvigorate the nuclear fuel chain at every stage. The recent $2.7 billion enrichment award from the DOE is a major part of this effort.

As also noted by Goldman Sachs, the tightening of supply from Russia for U3O8 and conversion/enrichment services has sent prices almost straight up over the past few years since the start of the Ukraine-Russia war. 

The other two awardees of the recent enrichment contract, General Matter and Orano, have yet to provide explicit details as to where the $900 million will be spent.

Like USAR, which we learned had received a massive $1+ billion investment from the US government, Centrus (ticker LEU) is one of the most shorted names in the market, with 25% of its float shorted...

... and we expect to see a major squeeze when it opens for trading tomorrow, especially since it is one of the most popular retail-held stocks according to JPMorgan; in fact just on Friday we listed it as one of the 20 most likely stocks according to JPM to rip in a major short squeeze.

Tyler Durden Sun, 01/25/2026 - 21:35

Peter Schiff: Printing Money Is Not the Cure for Cononavirus



In his most recent podcast, Peter Schiff talked about coronavirus and the impact that it is having on the markets. Earlier this month, Peter said he thought the virus was just an excuse for stock market woes. At the time he believed the market was poised to fall anyway. But as it turns out, coronavirus has actually helped the US stock market because it has led central banks to pump even more liquidity into the world financial system. All this means more liquidity — central banks easing. In fact, that is exactly what has already happened, except the new easing is taking place, for now, outside the United States, particularly in China.” Although the new money is primarily being created in China, it is flowing into dollars — the dollar index is up — and into US stocks. Last week, US stock markets once again made all-time record highs. In fact, I think but for the coronavirus, the US stock market would still be selling off. But because of the central bank stimulus that has been the result of fears over the coronavirus, that actually benefitted not only the US dollar, but the US stock market.” In the midst of all this, Peter raises a really good question. The primary economic concern is that coronavirus will slow down output and ultimately stunt economic growth. Practically speaking, the world would produce less stuff. If the virus continues to spread, there would be fewer goods and services produced in a market that is hunkered down. Why would the Federal Reserve respond, or why would any central bank respond to that by printing money? How does printing more money solve that problem? It doesn’t. In fact, it actually exacerbates it. But you know, everybody looks at central bankers as if they’ve got the solution to every problem. They don’t. They don’t have the magic wand. They just have a printing press. And all that creates is inflation.” Sometimes the illusion inflation creates can look like a magic wand. Printing money can paper over problems. But none of this is going to fundamentally fix the economy. In fact, if central bankers were really going to do the right thing, the appropriate response would be to drain liquidity from the markets, not supply even more.” Peter explained how the Fed was originally intended to create an “elastic” money supply that would expand or contract along with economic output. Today, the money supply only goes in one direction — that’s up. The economy is strong, print money. The economy is weak, print even more money.” Of course, the asset that’s doing the best right now is gold. The yellow metal pushed above $1,600 yesterday. Gold is up 5.5% on the year in dollar terms and has set record highs in other currencies. Because gold is rising even in an environment where the dollar is strengthening against other fiat currencies, that shows you that there is an underlying weakness in the dollar that is right now not being reflected in the Forex markets, but is being reflected in the gold markets. Because after all, why are people buying gold more aggressively than they’re buying dollars or more aggressively than they’re buying US Treasuries? Because they know that things are not as good for the dollar or the US economy as everybody likes to believe. So, more people are seeking out refuge in a better safe-haven and that is gold.” Peter also talked about the debate between Trump and Obama over who gets credit for the booming economy – which of course, is not booming.

We are living in crazy times. I have a hard time believing that most of the general public is not awake, but in reality, they are. We've never seen anything like this; I mean not even under Obama during the worst part of the Great Recession." Now the Fed is desperately trying to keep interest rates from rising. The problem is that it's a much bigger debt bubble this time around , and the Fed is going to have to blow a lot more air into it to keep it inflated. The difference is this time it's not going to work." It looks like the Fed did another $104.15 billion of Not Q.E. in a single day. The Fed claims it's only temporary. But that is precisely what Bernanke claimed when the Fed started QE1. Milton Freedman once said, "Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program." The same applies to Q.E., or whatever the Fed wants to pretend it's doing. Except this is not QE4, according to Powell. Right. Pumping so much money out, and they are accusing China of currency manipulation ? Wow! Seriously! Amazing! Dump the U.S. dollar while you still have a chance. Welcome to The Atlantis Report. And it is even worse than that, In addition to the $104.15 billion of "Not Q.E." this past Thursday; the FED added another $56.65 billion in liquidity to financial markets the next day on Friday. That's $160.8 billion in two days!!!! in just 48 hours. That is more than 2 TIMES the highest amount the FED has ever injected on a monthly basis under a Q.E. program (which was $80 billion per month) Since this isn't QE....it will be really scary on what they are going to call Q.E. Will it twice, three times, four times, five times what this injection per month ! It is going to be explosive since it takes about 60 to 90 days for prices to react to this, January should see significant inflation as prices soak up the excess liquidity. The question is, where will the inflation occur first . The spike in the repo rate might have a technical explanation: a misjudgment was made in the Fed's money market operations. Even so, two conclusions can be drawn: managing the money markets is becoming harder, and from now on, banks will be studying each other's creditworthiness to a greater degree than before. Those people, who struggle with the minutiae of money markets, and that includes most professionals, should focus on the causes and not the symptoms. Financial markets have recovered from each downturn since 1980 because interest rates have been cut to new lows. Post-2008, they were cut to near zero or below zero in all major economies. In response to a new financial crisis, they cannot go any lower. Central banks will look for new ways to replicate or broaden Q.E. (At some point, governments will simply see repression as an easier option). Then there is the problem of 'risk-free' assets becoming risky assets. Financial markets assume that the probability of major governments such as the U.S. or U.K. defaulting is zero. These governments are entering the next downturn with debt roughly twice the levels proportionate to GDP that was seen in 2008. The belief that the policy worked was completely predicated on the fact that it was temporary and that it was reversible, that the Fed was going to be able to normalize interest rates and shrink its balance sheet back down to pre-crisis levels. Well, when the balance sheet is five-trillion, six-trillion, seven-trillion when we're back at zero, when we're back in a recession, nobody is going to believe it is temporary. Nobody is going to believe that the Fed has this under control, that they can reverse this policy. And the dollar is going to crash. And when the dollar crashes, it's going to take the bond market with it, and we're going to have stagflation. We're going to have a deep recession with rising interest rates, and this whole thing is going to come imploding down. everything is temporary with the fed including remaining off the gold standard temporary in the Fed's eyes could mean at least 50 years This liquidity problem is a signal that trading desks are loaded up on inventory and can't get rid of it. Repo is done out of a need for cash. If you own all of your securities (i.e., a long-only, no leverage mutual fund) you have no need to "repo" your securities - you're earning interest every night so why would you want to 'repo' your securities where you are paying interest for that overnight loan (securities lending is another animal). So, it is those that 'lever-up' and need the cash for settlement purposes on securities they've bought with borrowed money that needs to utilize the repo desk. With this in mind, as we continue to see this need to obtain cash (again, needed to settle other securities purchases), it shows these firms don't have the capital to add more inventory to, what appears to be, a bloated inventory. Now comes the fun part: the Treasury is about to auction 3's, 10's, and 30-year bonds. If I am correct (again, I could be wrong), the Fed realizes securities firms don't have the shelf space to take down a good portion of these auctions. If there isn't enough retail/institutional demand, it will lead to not only a crappy sale but major concerns to the street that there is now no backstop, at all, to any sell-off. At which point, everyone will want to be the first one through the door and sell immediately, but to whom? If there isn't enough liquidity in the repo market to finance their positions, the firms would be unable to increase their inventory. We all saw repo shut down on the 2008 crisis. Wall St runs on money. . OVERNIGHT money. They lever up to inventory securities for trading. If they can't get overnight money, they can't purchase securities. And if they can't unload what they have, it means the buy-side isn't taking on more either. Accounts settle overnight. This includes things like payrolls and bill pay settlements. If a bank doesn't have enough cash to payout what its customers need to pay out, it borrows. At least one and probably more than one banks are insolvent. That's what's going on. First, it can't be one or two banks that are short. They'd simply call around until they found someone to lend. But they did that, and even at markedly elevated rates, still, NO ONE would lend them the money. That tells me that it's not a problem of a couple of borrowers, it's a problem of no lenders. And that means that there's no bank in the world left with any real liquidity. They are ALL maxed out. But as bad as that is, and that alone could be catastrophic, what it really signals is even worse. The lending rates are just the flip side of the coin of the value of the assets lent against. If the rates go up, the value goes down. And with rates spiking to 10%, how far does the value fall? Enormously! And if banks had to actually mark down the value of the assets to reflect 10% interest rates, then my god, every bank in the world is insolvent overnight. Everyone's capital ratios are in the toilet, and they'd have to liquidate. We're talking about the simultaneous insolvency of every bank on the planet. Bank runs. No money in ATMs, Branches closed. Safe deposit boxes confiscated. The whole nine yards, It's actually here. The scenario has tended to guide toward for years and years is actually happening RIGHT NOW! And people are still trying to say it's under control. Every bank in the world is currently insolvent. The only thing keeping it going is printing billions of dollars every day. Financial Armageddon isn't some far off future risk. It's here. Prepare accordingly. This fiat system has reached the end of the line, and it's not correct that fiat currencies fail by design. The problem is corruption and manipulation. It is corruption and cheating that erodes trust and faith until the entire system becomes a gigantic fraud. Banks and governments everywhere ARE the problem and simply have to be removed. They have lost all trust and respect, and all they have left is war and mayhem. As long as we continue to have a majority of braindead asleep imbeciles following orders from these psychopaths, nothing will change. Fiat currency is not just thievery. Fiat currency is SLAVERY. Ultimately the most harmful effect of using debt of undefined value as money (i.e., fiat currencies) is the de facto legalization of a caste system based on voluntary slavery. The bankers have a charter, or the legal *right*, to create money out of nothing. You, you don't. Therefore you and the bankers do not have the same standing before the law. The law of the land says that you will go to jail if you do the same thing (creating money out of thin air) that the banker does in full legality. You and the banker are not equal before the law. ALL the countries of the world; Islamic or secular, Jewish or Arab, democracy or dictatorship; all of them place the bankers ABOVE you. And all of you accept that only whining about fiat money going down in exchange value over time (price inflation which is not the same as monetary inflation). Actually, price inflation itself is mainly due to the greed and stupidity of the bankers who could keep fiat money's exchange value reasonably stable, only if they wanted to. Witness the crash of silver and gold prices which the bankers of the world; Russian, American, Chinese, Jewish, Indian, Arab, all of them collaborated to engineer through the suppression and stagnation of precious metals' prices to levels around the metals' production costs, or what it costs to dig gold and silver out of the ground. The bankers of the world could also collaborate to keep nominal prices steady (as they do in the case of the suppression of precious metals prices). After all, the ability to create fiat money and force its usage is a far more excellent source of power and wealth than that which is afforded simply by stealing it through inflation. The bankers' greed and stupidity blind them to this fact. They want it all, and they want it now. In conclusion, The bankers can create money out of nothing and buy your goods and services with this worthless fiat money, effectively for free. You, you can't. You, you have to lead miserable existences for the most of you and WORK in order to obtain that effectively nonexistent, worthless credit money (whose purchasing/exchange value is not even DEFINED thus rendering all contracts based on the null and void!) that the banker effortlessly creates out of thin air with a few strokes of the computer keyboard, and which he doesn't even bother to print on paper anymore, electing to keep it in its pure quantum uncertain form instead, as electrons whizzing about inside computer chips which will become mute and turn silent refusing to tell you how many fiat dollars or euros there are in which account, in the absence of electricity. No electricity, no fiat, nor crypto money. It would appear that trust is deteriorating as it did when Lehman blew up . Something really big happened that set off this chain reaction in the repo markets. Whatever that something is, we aren't be informed. They're trying to cover it up, paper it over with conjured cash injections, play it cool in front of the cameras while sweating profusely under the 5 thousands dollar suits. I'm guessing that the final high-speed plunge into global economic collapse has begun. All we see here is the ripples and whitewater churning the surface, but beneath the surface, there is an enormous beast thrashing desperately in its death throws. Now is probably the time to start tying up loose ends with the long-running prep projects, just saying. In other words, prepare accordingly, and Get your money out of the banks. I don't care if you don't believe me about Bitcoin. Get your money out of the banks. Don't keep any more money in a bank than you need to pay your bills and can afford to lose.











The Financial Armageddon Economic Collapse Blog tracks trends and forecasts , futurists , visionaries , free investigative journalists , researchers , Whistelblowers , truthers and many more













The Financial Armageddon Economic Collapse Blog tracks trends and forecasts , futurists , visionaries , free investigative journalists , researchers , Whistelblowers , truthers and many more

The FBI released a summary of its file from the Hillary Clinton email investigation on Friday, showing details of Clinton's explanation of her use of a private email server to handle classified communications. The release comes nearly two months after FBI Director James Comey announced that although Clinton's handling of classified information was "extremely careless," it did not rise to the level of a prosecutable offense. Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced the next day that she would not pursue charges in the matter. "We are making these materials available to the public in the interest of transparency and in response to numerous Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests," the FBI noted in a statement sent to reporters with links to the documents. The documents include notes from Clinton's July 2 interview with agents, as well as a "factual summary of the FBI's investigation into this matter," according to the FBI release. Throughout her interview with agents, Clinton repeatedly said she relied on the career professionals she worked with to handle classified information correctly. The agents asked about a series of specific emails, and in each case Clinton said she wasn't worried about the particular material being discussed on a nonclassified channel.