Jan 02

Today’s News 2nd January 2025

  • Escobar: 2025 – A Second Renaissance, Or Chaos?
    Escobar: 2025 – A Second Renaissance, Or Chaos?

    Authored by Pepe Escobar,

    It’s a dazzling Tuscan winter morning, and I am inside the legendary Dominican church of Santa Maria Novella, founded in the early 13th century and finally consecrated in 1420, in a very special place in History of Art: right in front of one of the monochrome frescos painted in 1447-1448 by master of perspective Paolo Uccello, depicting the Universal Deluge.

    Paolo Uccello: Universal Deluge. 1448 fresco at Santa Maria Novella, Florence. Photo by Pepe Escobar

    It’s as if Paolo Uccello was depicting us – in our current times of trouble. So inspired by neoplatonic superstar Marsilio Ficino – immortalized in a chic red robe by Ghirlandaio at the Cappella Tornabuoni – I tried to pull off a back to the future and ideally imagine who and what Paolo Uccello would feature in his depiction of our current deluge.

    Let’s start with the positives. 2024 was the Year of the BRICS – with the merit for all the accomplishments going for the tireless work of the Russian presidency.

    2024 was also the Year of the Axis of Resistance – until the serial blows suffered during the past few months, a serious challenge which will propel its rejuvenation.

    And 2024 was the year that defined the lineaments of the endgame in the proxy war in Ukraine: what remains to be seen is how deep the “rules-based international order” will be buried in the black soil of Novorossiya.

    Now let’s turn to the auspicious prospects ahead. 2025 will be the year of consolidation of China as the paramount geoeconomics force on the planet.

    It will be the year where the defining battle of the 21st century – Eurasia v. NATOstan – will be sharpened in an array of unpredictable vectors.

    And it will be the year of advancing, interlocking connectivity corridors – the defining factor in Eurasia integration.

    Not by accident Iran is central to this interlocking connectivity – from the Strait of Hormuz (through which transits, daily, at least 23% of the world’s oil) to the port of Chabahar, which links West Asia with South Asia.

    Connectivity corridors to watch are the return of one of the top Pipelineistan sagas, the 1,800 km-long Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline; the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), which links three BRICS (Russia-Iran-India) and several aspiring BRICS partners; the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the flagship Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) project; and last but not least, the fast advancing Northern Sea Route (or Northern Silk Road, as the Chinese call it), which will eventually become the cheapest and fastest alternative to the Suez canal.

    A few days before the start of Trump 2.0 in Washington, Russia and Iran will finally, officially sign a comprehensive strategic partnership deal in Moscow, over two years in the making: once again, a key deal between two top BRICS, with immense, cascading repercussions in Eurasia integration terms.

    A completely sealed channel of negotiation

    Dmitri Trenin, respected member of Russia’s Foreign and Defense Policy Council, has what is so far the most realist road map for an acceptable end of the proxy war in Ukraine.

    “Acceptable” does not even begin to describe it – because from the point of view of the collective West political “elites” which bet the farm and the bank on this war, nothing is acceptable except Russia’s strategic defeat, which will never happen.

    As it stands, President Putin is in fact containing elite sectors in Moscow who favor not only cutting off the head of the snake but the body as well.

    Trump for his part has less than zero incentive to be dragged into a further quagmire; leave that to the clueless European chihuahuas.

    So a possible drive towards a wobbly “peace” agreement also suits the Global Majority – not to mention China, which understands how war is bad for business (at least if you’re not in the weaponizing racket).

    When it comes to an always possible “existential” escalation, we’re not out of the woods yet; but there are still three weeks left for some major terror-fueled coup, as in a false flag.

    The first two months of 2025 will be absolutely decisive, when it comes to sketching a possible compromise.

    Elena Panina from RUSSTRAT has offered a concise, and sobering, strategic assessment of what may pan out.

    What Trump essentially craves, like a trashy McDonald’s burger, is to look like the ultimate Alpha Male. So Putin’s tactical negotiating strategy will not be focused on undermining Trump’s tough guy act. The problem is how to pull it off without undermining Trump’s pop star power – and without adding more fuel to the NATOstan warmongering pyre.

    Putin holds an array of trump cards close to his chest – related to Europe, the Brits, China, Ukraine itself and the Global South as a whole.

    Determining spheres of influence will be part of a possible agreement. The thing is no specific details should be leaked – and must be kept impermeable to Western intel.

    That means, as Panina notes, Trump needing a completely sealed channel of negotiation with Putin, which even the MI6 cannot crack.

    A tall order, as privileged Zio-con silos across the Deep State are dizzy with the latest Old Testament psycho-pathological victories in Lebanon and Syria, and the way they enfeebled Tehran. Yet that does not mean the Iran-Russia-China-BRICS link is in jeopardy.

    The dynamics are set; tread carefully

    Putin and the Security Council should be ready to implement a quite complex, step-by-step diplomatic game, as they know that the trifecta of defeated, supremely angry Democrats, Brits and Bankova will apply maximum pressure on Trump and turn him into “an enemy of America” or some similar crap.

    Moscow will accept no truce and no freeze: only a real solution.

    It that doesn’t work, the war will continue in the battlefield, and Moscow has no problems with that – or with more escalation. The final humiliation of the Empire of Chaos will then be total.

    Meanwhile, Cold War 2.0 between China and the U.S. will advance more on the pop sphere than in substance. The sharpest Chinese analysts know that the real competition is not over ideology – as in the original Cold War – but over technology, from AI to upgrading seamless supply chains.

    Moreover, Trump 2.0, at least in principle, has less than zero interest in unleashing a proxy war – Ukraine-style – on China in Taiwan and the South China Sea. China has way more geoeconomic resources than Russia.

    So it’s not exactly intriguing that Trump is floating the idea of a G2 between the U.S. and China. The Deep State blob will see it as the ultimate plague – and fight it to death. What’s already certain is assuming this goes ahead, the European poodles will be left drowning in a dirty swamp.

    Well, political “elites” that appoint braindead specimens like the Medusa von der Lying and the batshit crazy Estonian chick as top representatives of the EU; who start a war against their most important energy supplier; who fully support a genocide broadcast 24/7 to the whole planet; who are obsessed on eradicating the culture which has defined them; and who at best pay only lip service to democracy and freedom of speech, these “elites” do deserve to wallow in filth.

    On the Syrian tragedy, the fact is Putin knows who the real enemy is; certainly not a bunch of Salafi-jihadi head-chopping mercenaries. And the Sultan in Ankara is also not the enemy; from Moscow’s perspective, for all his lofty dreams of replacing “Central Asia” with “Turkestan” in Turkiye’s school textbooks, he is a minor geoeconomic and even geopolitical player.

    To paraphrase the inestimable Michael Hudson – perhaps our Marsilio Ficino dressed by Paolo Uccello as a writer in a chic red robe – it’s as if in this pre-deluge juncture American elites were saying, “The only solution is total war with Russia and China”; Russia is saying, “We hope there’s peace in Ukraine and West Asia”; and China is saying, “We want peace, not war.

    That may not be enough for reaching a compromise – any compromise. So the dynamics are set: the U.S. ruling class will keep imposing instances of chaos while Russia, China and BRICS will keep testing in the “BRICS lab” de-dollarization models, alternative set ups to the IMF and World Bank, and eventually even an alternative to NATO.

    An anarchy and War of Terror cornucopia on one side; cool-headed, coordinated realism on the other. Be prepared – for anything. From Renaissance Florence, one of the – few – peaks of humanity, now living in memory, tread carefully across this flame-filled 2025.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/01/2025 – 23:20

  • A U.S. Marine And An American Hero
    A U.S. Marine And An American Hero

    Authored by Breck Henderson via RealClearDefense,

    When I woke up on the morning of November 6, I felt that America had changed.  A new spirit was suddenly alive.  The day before I had been afraid my country would be forced to endure more years of living out the lies of “wokeism,” the ideology of the radical Left and the current government.  What’s bad about that?  The best and most concise description of wokeness I’ve found comes from professor of philosophy Edward Fesser who wrote:

    Wokeness is] a paranoid delusional hyper-egalitarian mindset that seems to see oppression and injustice where they do not exist or greatly exaggerate them where they do exist.

    In general, wokeness . . . is essentially about the radical subversion of normal human life in the name of a paranoid metaphysical delusion. It is fueled by a seething envy and resentment directed against the natural order of things.

    The repercussions of trying to live out a “paranoid delusion” are widespread.  For those who resist the delusions, it can mean alienation from family and friends or the destruction of one’s professional life.  Basically, becoming a victim of cancel culture.  A woke oligarchy in charge of American institutions brings a multitude of threats — from having gender dysphoric children taken away from parents to the destruction of our military’s morale and readiness.           

    But maintaining a paranoid delusion is strenuous.  It requires a great deal of mental energy, and as a nation I sense that we are exhausted from the effort.  Among the delusions have been that human gender is fluid and multifaceted, that we must adopt BLM’s racist ideology, that America is incurably racist, that Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is the solution to American racism, that masculinity is somehow toxic, and much more.  When something simply can’t go on any longer, it ends, and I’m beginning to sense that wokeism can’t go on.

    The decisiveness of Trump’s victory signaled a huge shift in American politics, a mass retreat from wokeism, and I believe a big factor in that shift was plain old exhaustion with the lies and delusions foisted upon us by the radical, woke Left. 

    When such a seismic shift occurs, it reverberates throughout America and then throughout the world.  It means it’s safe to acknowledge the truth again, and that goes right down to the local level.

    There is not a clearer example of this than Daniel Penny’s recent acquittal on manslaughter charges by a New York jury.  After living through a period during which courage has been defined as going public with one’s homosexuality or gender dysphoria, real courage has been vindicated in a very public way.

    The nature of the event that landed Penny in court was absolutely clear.  A courageous young man, a former U.S. Marine, protected people in a New York subway car from a dangerous, threatening psychotic.  Penny had no intention of killing that man — Jordan Neely — he only wanted to prevent him from carrying out the threats he was making. 

    Penny should never have been indicted.  Had this happened in Texas, or most other places outside of New York, no Grand Jury would have returned an indictment.  Had Neely been white, no indictment would have been brought.  Only in the supercharged racial atmosphere evoked by the paranoid delusions of BLM politics could such a charge have gained traction.  If you haven’t done so, I urge you to watch the interview with Penny streaming now on Fox Nation here.

    Penny recounts that Neely barged into the subway car and immediately began demanding things, then threatening to kill people, saying he was going to jail for life. Penny said that, in the subway car, there was a mother with a child in her arms, young school children, and others, and they were all scared.  He was scared as well.

    Penny said he removed his ear buds and handed them along with his cell phone to someone sitting next to him and then grabbed Neely, pulling the man down to the floor on top of himself.  They struggled there for several minutes.  Penny said Neely was extremely strong and had amazing endurance.

    Penny suspected Neely had been using a drug called K2.  According to information from American Addiction Centers, K2 is a synthetic cannabinoid, 660 times more potent than marijuana.  It is strongly associated with psychosis, agitation and irritability, and can lead to seizures, convulsions, stroke, elevated blood pressure, heart rhythm abnormalities, kidney failure, heart attack, and sometimes death.  The autopsy showed that Penny was correct, K2 was in his system and likely caused his death.

    Daniel Penny is a talented, thoughtful, courageous, and highly moral young man.  He became a U.S. Marine because he wanted to serve his country, and he credits this decision for bringing out the best in himself.  He said: “I became who I am in the Marine Corps.  I met amazing people who brought out who I truly am.  “There’s this image of a Marine as a stone-faced jarhead, but you have to have compassion to be a competent Marine,” he said.

    I asked retired Marine Corps Major General Bob Hollingsworth if he would expect every Marine to act the way Daniel Penny did: “Marines are taught to analyze a situation and if there is danger to take action.  I pray that every Marine would do that.”

    Penny’s platoon sergeant testified at his trial, saying that all Marines are taught to uphold the Marine Corps values of “honor, courage and commitment.”  “If you don’t uphold those values, you don’t get promoted,” he said.  Penny was promoted to Sergeant (pay grade E-5) during his four-year service.

    General Hollingsworth mentioned that he was also proud back in 2015 of U.S. Air Force Airman First Class Spencer Stone, Oregon National Guard Specialist Alek Skarlatos and college senior Anthony Sadler, all friends from childhood, who subdued a radical Islamic terrorist on a train in France.  Read about it here.

    The three were on leave and taking a high-speed train from Amsterdam to Paris when they saw a man get on the train with an AK-47 and a handgun.  They immediately rushed to tackle him, disarmed him and prevented what could easily have been a massacre had they not acted.  Airman Stone was seriously injured by the terrorist who wielded a box cutter during the struggle.  In this case, the three plus a British man who assisted them, were hailed as heroes and congratulated by President Obama and European leaders.       

    Neither New York nor the mainstream media were so discerning or kind to Daniel Penny.  Since leaving the Marine Corps he has been studying to become an architect.  He has always lived in or near New York City and he said the buildings and skyline have inspired him to study architecture as a career.  What a tragedy it would have been had this young man been convicted and his life destroyed by a lie. 

    Penny said when asked why he chose to physically subdue Neely: 

    If I didn’t do something the guilt I would have felt if someone did get hurt, if he did what he was threatening to do — I would never be able to live with myself — and I’ll take a million court appearances, people calling me names, people hating me, just to keep one of those people from getting hurt or killed.

    General Hollingsworth praised that sentiment. “Daniel Penny has my respect,” he said.

    The facts surrounding Penny’s actions were obvious to any clear thinking American citizen from the start, but BLM delusions have been so vigorously enforced since the summer of 2020’s George Floyd riots, that the Manhattan jury apparently had a tough time reaching its verdict.  I don’t believe those jurors could have felt empowered to act on the truth had President Trump not won a decisive victory on November 5.

    In the end, Daniel Penny is an American hero — a man who could not sit by and let a psychotic man hurt others when it was within his power to prevent it.  The prosecutors denigrated his military training and experience.  In a rational society people should admire and encourage willingness to train and become a “compassionate warrior” — the world would be a far better place if every young man aspired to and trained for that ethic.

    Is Penny bitter because his good deed resulted in his life being disrupted for more than a year, and weeks in court with the threat of being sent to prison?  Not at all.

    People who were in the [subway] car remained on the platform and were thanking me.  Throughout the whole trial, I only cared about what those witnesses said.  I love America and that people have a right to protest, but they [protestors] didn’t have any of the facts.  They weren’t there.  The witnesses were there and they thanked me.  It’s disheartening that the prosecutor tried to discredit my military service and my awards.  I gave up four years of my life for no other reason than to serve my country.  It’s frustrating that there are people like this in our government, who do this [indict him for a good deed] who are supposed to be protecting people and our rights.

    Penny said he doesn’t want praise or fame.  “Friends and everyone I’ve met have been supportive of me.  It’s been very humbling and I’m grateful for that.  Throughout the whole process I had faith in the system and my team and in God.”

    I’m reminded of the famous poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling.  The first verse:

    If you can keep your head when all about you
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
    If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;
    If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
    Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

    Daniel Penny kept his head during a tense situation.  He trusted in himself and in God when it seemed everyone was against him.  He was patient, he told the truth, and he did not return the hate of those who hated him.  And he refuses to consider himself a hero.  As Kipling says in the final lines of the poem: 

    Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

    And — which is more — you’ll be a man, my son!

     Daniel Penny is a man in the best sense — we should all be proud of him.

    Breck Henderson is a retired Navy Reserve Officer, retired nuclear engineer for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and retired journalist for Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine.  He writes regularly on Substack, and crafts fiction in the form of short stories, plays and screenplays when he’s not enjoying being a grandfather to eight grandchildren.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/01/2025 – 22:40

  • Waste Of The Day: Highly Paid Boston Official Can't Afford Attorney
    Waste Of The Day: Highly Paid Boston Official Can’t Afford Attorney

    Authored by Jeremy Portnoy via RealClearInvestigations,

    Topline: When Boston City Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson faces trial on public corruption charges, she’ll have the help of a public defender meant for those who can’t afford an attorney, the Boston Herald reported.

    Anderson made $103,500 in 2023, according to payroll records at OpenTheBooks.com.

    Key facts: Anderson allegedly organized a kickback scheme that netted her thousands of dollars of federal and city funds. The FBI arrested her in December, charged with wire fraud and theft. She has denied all wrongdoing.

    Despite her decent public salary, Anderson said she is unable to pay for her own lawyer. 

    ourt filings noted her “personal financial difficulty … which included missing monthly rent and car payments, an impending $5,000 civil liability from the Ethics Commission, and incurring bank overdraft fees, which resulted from Fernandes Anderson maintaining low daily bank balances,” according to the Boston Herald.

    Attorneys appointed by the Federal Defender Program earn $172 per hour in non-capital cases. 

    Search all federal, state and local government salaries and vendor spending with the AI search bot, Benjamin, at OpenTheBooks.com.

    Critical quote: “It’s more than ironic that a woman who said she cared about the struggles of her constituents of limited means is taking money from the public coffers — money that could otherwise be used to help the very people she claimed to care about,” said Wendy Murphy, an attorney and columnist at the Boston Herald. “With such a good salary she should have to at least contribute.”

    Background: While not all public defenders work with high-profile clients, many rake in huge profits from taxpayers. That’s on top of the often lucrative salaries they can earn in their private practice.

    Federal defenders working on capital cases earn up to $220 per hour.

    Hourly rates vary at the state level. Court-appointed attorneys in Maryland can legally earn up to $164 per hour, more than any other state, though the Maryland Public Defender Office told OpenTheBooks their budget only allows them to pay $75 per hour.

    In New York, some lawyers are earning up to $428,000 per year from taxpayers while still earning a salary from their private firm, according to Buffalo News.

    Summary: If Fernandes Anderson is guilty, she’s already taken enough from taxpayers without billing them for her legal fees.

    The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/01/2025 – 22:00

  • Read Between The Lies: A Pattern Recognition Guide
    Read Between The Lies: A Pattern Recognition Guide

    Authored by Josh Stylman via The Brownstone Institute,

    When Avril Haines, Director of National Intelligence, announced during Event 201’s pandemic drill in 2019 that they would “flood the zone with trusted sources,” few understood this preview of coordinated narrative control. Within months, we watched it unfold in real time—unified messaging across all platforms, suppression of dissent, and coordinated narrative control that fooled much of the world.

    But not everyone stayed fooled forever. Some saw through it immediately, questioning every aspect from day one. Others thought it was just incompetent government trying to protect us. Many initially accepted the precautionary principle—better safe than sorry. But as each policy failure pointed in the same direction—toward more control and less human agency—the pattern became impossible to ignore. Anyone not completely subsumed by the system eventually had to confront its true purpose: not protecting health or safety, but expanding control.

    Once you recognize this pattern of deception, two questions should immediately arise whenever major stories dominate headlines: “What are they lying about?” and “What are they distracting us from?” The pattern of coordinated deception becomes unmistakable. Consider how media outlets spent three years pushing Russiagate conspiracies, driving unprecedented social division while laying the groundwork for what would become the greatest psychological operation in history. Today, while the media floods us with Ukraine coverage, BlackRock positions itself to profit from both the destruction and reconstruction. The pattern becomes unmistakable once you see it—manufactured crises driving pre-planned “solutions” that always expand institutional control.

    Mainstream media operates on twin deceptions: misdirection and manipulation. The same anchors who sold us WMDs in Iraq, promoted “Russia collusion,” and insisted Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation” still occupy prime time slots. Just as we see with RFK, Jr.’s HHS nomination, the pattern is consistent: coordinated attacks replace substantive debate, identical talking points appear across networks, and legitimate questions are dismissed through character assassination rather than evidence. Being consistently wrong isn’t a bug—it’s a feature. Their role isn’t to inform but to manufacture consent.

    The template is consistent: Saturate media with emotional spectacles while advancing institutional agendas with minimal scrutiny. Like learning to spot a fake smile or hearing a false note in music, you develop an instinct for the timing:

    Money and Power:

    Medical Control:

    Digital Control:

    As these deceptions become more obvious, different forms of resistance emerge. The truth-seeking takes different forms. Some become deep experts in specific deceptions—documenting early treatment successes with repurposed drugs, uncovering hospital protocol failures, or exploring the impact of vaccine injuries. Others develop a broader lens for seeing how narratives themselves are engineered.

    Walter Kirn’s brilliant pattern recognition cuts to the heart of our manufactured reality. His tweets dissecting the United CEO murder coverage expose how even violent crimes are now packaged as entertainment spectacles, complete with character arcs and narrative twists. Kirn’s insight highlights a critical dimension of media control: by turning every crisis into an entertainment narrative, they divert attention from deeper questions. Instead of asking why institutional safeguards fail or who benefits, audiences become captivated by carefully scripted outrage. This deliberate distraction ensures that institutional agendas move forward without scrutiny.

    His insight reveals how entertainment packaging serves the broader control system. While each investigation requires its own expertise, this pattern of narrative manipulation connects to a larger grid of deception. As I’ve explored in “The Information Factory” and “Engineering Reality,” everything from education to medicine to currency itself has been captured by systems designed to shape not just our choices, but our very perception of reality.

    Most revealing is what they don’t cover. Notice how quickly stories disappear when they threaten institutional interests. Remember the Epstein client list? The Maui land grab? The mounting vaccine injuries? The silence speaks volumes. 

    Consider the recent whistleblower testimonies revealing suppressed safety concerns at Boeing, a company long entangled with regulatory agencies and government contracts. Two whistleblowers—both former employees who raised alarms about safety issues—died under suspicious circumstances. Coverage of their deaths disappeared almost overnight, despite the profound implications for public safety and corporate accountability. This pattern repeats in countless cases where accountability would disrupt entrenched power structures, leaving crucial questions unanswered and narratives tightly controlled.

    These decisions aren’t accidental—they result from media ownership, advertiser influence, and government pressure, ensuring the narrative remains tightly controlled.

    But perhaps most striking isn’t the media’s deception itself, but how thoroughly it shapes its consumers’ reality. Watch how confidently they repeat phrases clearly engineered in think tanks. Listen as they parrot talking points with religious conviction: “January 6th was worse than 9/11,” “Trust The Science™,” “Democracy is on the ballot” and, perhaps the most consequential lie in modern history, “Safe and Effective.”

    The professional-managerial class proves especially susceptible to this programming. Their expertise becomes a prison of status—the more they’ve invested in institutional approval, the more fervently they defend institutional narratives. Watch how quickly a doctor who questions vaccine safety loses his license, how swiftly a professor questioning gender ideology faces review, how rapidly a journalist stepping out of line gets blacklisted.

    The system ensures compliance through economic capture: your mortgage becomes your leash, your professional status your prison guard. The same lawyers who prides themselves on critical thinking will aggressively shut down any questioning of official narratives. The professor who teaches “questioning power structures” becomes apoplectic when students question pharmaceutical companies.

    The circular validation makes the programming nearly impenetrable:

    • Media cites “experts”
    • Experts cite peer-reviewed studies
    • Studies are funded by industry
    • Industry shapes media coverage
    • “Fact-checkers” cite media consensus
    • Academia enforces approved conclusions

    This self-reinforcing system forms a perfect closed loop:

    Each component validates the others while excluding outside information. Try finding the entry point for actual truth in this closed system. The professional class’s pride in their critical thinking becomes darkly ironic—they’ve simply outsourced their opinions to “authoritative sources.”

    Most disturbing is how willingly they’ve surrendered their sovereignty. Watch them defer:

    • “I follow the science” (translation: I wait for approved conclusions)
    • “According to experts” (translation: I don’t think for myself)
    • “Fact-checkers say” (translation: I let others determine truth)
    • “The consensus is” (translation: I align with power)

    Their empathy becomes a weapon used against them. Question lockdowns? You’re killing grandma. Doubt transition surgery for minors? You’re causing suicides. Resist equity initiatives? You’re perpetuating oppression. The programming works by making resistance feel like cruelty.

    Something remarkable is happening beneath the surface noise: a genuine awakening that defies traditional political boundaries. You see it in the subtle exchanges between colleagues when official narratives strain credibility. In the growing silence at dinner parties as propaganda talking points fall flat. In the knowing looks between strangers when public health theatre reaches new heights of absurdity.

    This isn’t a movement in the traditional sense—it can’t be, since traditional movement structures are vulnerable to infiltration, subversion, and capture. Instead, it’s more like a spontaneous emergence of pattern recognition. A distributed awakening without central leadership or formal organization. Those who see through the patterns recognize the mass formation for what it is, while its subjects project their own programming onto others, dismissing pattern recognition as “conspiracy theories,” “anti-science,” or other reflexive labels designed to prevent genuine examination.

    The hardest truth isn’t recognizing the programming—it’s confronting what it means for human consciousness and society itself. We’re watching real-time evidence that most human minds can be captured and redirected through sophisticated psychological operations. Their thoughts aren’t their own, yet they’d die defending what they’ve been programmed to believe.

    This isn’t just media criticism anymore—it’s an existential question about human consciousness and free will. What does it mean when a species’ capacity for independent thought can be so thoroughly hijacked? When natural empathy and moral instincts become weapons of control? When education and expertise actually decrease resistance to programming?

    The programming works because it hijacks core human drives:

    • The need for social acceptance (e.g., masking as a visible symbol of conformity)
    • The desire to be seen as good/moral (e.g., adopting performative stances on social issues without deeper understanding)
    • The instinct to trust authority (e.g., faith in public health officials despite repeated policy reversals)
    • The fear of ostracism (e.g., avoiding dissent to maintain social harmony)
    • The comfort of conformity (e.g., parroting narratives to avoid cognitive dissonance)
    • The addiction to status (e.g., signaling compliance to maintain professional or social standing)

    Each natural human trait becomes a vulnerability to be exploited. The most educated become the most programmable because their status addiction runs deepest. Their “critical thinking” becomes a script running on corrupted hardware.

    This is the core challenge of our time: Can human consciousness evolve faster than the systems designed to hijack it? Can pattern recognition and awareness spread faster than manufactured consensus? Can enough people learn to read between the lies before the programming becomes complete?

    The stakes could not be higher. This isn’t just about politics or media literacy—it’s about the future of human consciousness itself. Whether our species maintains the capacity for independent thought may depend on those who can still access it helping others break free from the spell.

    The matrix of control deepens daily, but so does the awakening. The question is: Which spreads faster—the programming or the awareness of it? Our future as a species may depend on the answer.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/01/2025 – 21:20

  • "What Is The Biggest Risk For 2025" And 13 Other Highlights From DB's 2025 Market Survey
    “What Is The Biggest Risk For 2025” And 13 Other Highlights From DB’s 2025 Market Survey

    The Deutche Bank 2025 global financial market survey had 471 responses from around the world, and was conducted between the 10th and 13th of December 2024. Here are the 14 main highlights:

    1. Only 2% believe US growth will be below 1% in 2025, whereas that’s the average expected for Europe. The average expected for the US in 2.5%, no respondents think Europe will be at or above this level.

    2. A global trade war is seen as the biggest observable risk for 2025, followed by a tech stock plunge and concerns over inflation and bond yields

    3. Investors think Trump means business on tariffs but an average score of 5 means that they don’t think he’ll be as aggressive as the campaign pledges. Only 6.4% think he’ll be more extreme (8 and above)

    4. The overwhelming majority (90%) believe the German debt brake will be reformed. However, only 12% believe the change will be significant.

    5. German respondents were much more confident that there will be reform of some description, with only 2% thinking the debt brake will remain in its current form.

    6. DB asked this question 3 times in both 2021 and 2024. Less think there’s a US tech bubble in 2024 than in 2021 but the overall number is still high. There’s been no real increase in the bubble score for the Mag-7 through 2024, even with a 72.5% climb YTD. Bitcoin sees the highest bubble risk and European equities are seen furthest away from this…

    7. For the Mag-7 in 2025 while 33% believe they’ll decline and 22% think by more than 10%, 67% think they’ll be higher with an average overall gain of 6.8% expected, albeit down from the 12.9% expected in 2024

    8. YE 2025 Treasury yield expectations (average 4.2%) are a bit lower than current levels with only 4% believing we’ll end 2025 >5%

    9. Germany yields are seen steady in 2025 on average but with 50% expecting 10yr yields to end the year less than 2%

    10. The S&P is expected to be +5.2% higher in 2025, with 23% believing it will be lower and 23% believing up >10%. The overwhelming consensus (35%) think between 5% to 10% and much more concentrated than in prior years.

    11. Bitcoin and Nvidia are seen as more likely to halve than double, especially Bitcoin. However, 24% and 28%, respectively, believe they’ll double. We first asked in 2021, and both have doubled since but did halve into 2022 first

    12. AI is increasingly infiltrating the office, but extensive use hasn’t increased in the last 5 months…

    13. The US and Europe are clearly diverging in expected inflation, with US picking up again through 2024 but European expectations sharply lower since the summer and below 2% for the first time since Q4 2021.

    14. Home Alone is your favorite Xmas movie. Let’s hope your house doesn’t end up the same as that one did this Xmas and that Die Hard isn’t your Xmas template either.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/01/2025 – 20:40

  • The Senselessness Of Certain Wars: Reflections From Vietnam To Ukraine
    The Senselessness Of Certain Wars: Reflections From Vietnam To Ukraine

    Authored by Hans Mahncke via Truth Over News,

    I have been a huge fan of Vietnam and its people ever since my first visit 25 years ago. It is a truly special place, which is why I recently returned for the first time since the Covid pandemic. While Vietnam’s charm and uniqueness remain unchanged, this visit felt different. I have explored the Cu Chi Tunnels, the War Remnants Museum, and observed daily life in Vietnam many times before, but this time felt different. Perhaps because Trump had just been re-elected, offering a renewed possibility for change and peace, I found myself repeatedly reflecting on the Vietnam War—especially on the lessons it should have taught us about the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.

    War Remnants Museum, Saigon (credit: Hans Mahncke)

    The War Remnants Museum in Saigon, in particular—filled with military equipment left behind by the United States—is a place that everyone should try to visit at least once. It stands as a powerful testament not only to the immense human cost of war—something all war museums convey—but also to the particular senselessness of the Vietnam War.

    The centerpiece of the War Remnants Museum is its collection of abandoned American military equipment, and for good reason. These relics powerfully convey the museum’s core message: the folly of intervening in a distant conflict with inadequate understanding, engaging in extensive bombing, and then retreating when plans fail, leaving chaos behind. Yet, there’s no sense of triumph or gloating. The abandoned equipment speaks for itself. If blame is assigned at all, it points to the corrupt South Vietnamese leadership, while the United States is portrayed more as a misguided participant—entangled in a conflict it neither understood nor should have joined in the first place.

    War Remnants Museum, Saigon (credit: Hans Mahncke)

    In the same vein, what struck me most during my visit, and not for the first time, was the remarkable warmth and kindness that the Vietnamese people extend toward foreigners, particularly Americans. This contrast between past conflict and present-day hospitality not only highlights the resilience and forgiveness of the Vietnamese people but also underscores the profound tragedy of the conflict. The pain and suffering endured appear even more tragic when contrasted with the reality that these two nations never needed to have confronted each other at all.

    The Vietnam War was, at its core, a struggle for independence and self-determination. From the American perspective, however, it became a quagmire of fundamental misunderstandings and strategic missteps. Often overlooked amidst conflicting narratives is the fact that, after enduring a century of French colonial rule, the Vietnamese people’s foremost priority was achieving independence. Foreign intervention, regardless of intent, was unlikely to succeed in such a context. The United States’ failure to grasp this reality led to its involvement in a conflict that was both senseless and unwinnable. But, driven by exaggerated Cold War fears, much like media narratives shaping discussions of the ongoing war in Ukraine, the United States chose to intervene.

    War Remnants Museum, Saigon (credit: Hans Mahncke)

    Indeed, the sense of futility surrounding the Vietnam War is not confined to history. The parallels with the current situation in Ukraine are striking. Once again, a regional dispute has been escalated by external powers, particularly the United States, under the banner of ideological or strategic imperatives. In both cases, local tensions were amplified, turning what might have remained contained conflicts into international crises with profound global repercussions.

    What’s particularly tragic in both wars is the role of miscalculated intervention. In Vietnam, American involvement intensified a civil war, transforming it into a Cold War battleground at the cost of millions of lives. In Ukraine, while the stated motivations focus on defending sovereignty and democracy, the consequences are just as dire: countless dead, displaced populations, and a precarious drift toward World War III.

    In both instances, U.S. involvement was framed as pursuing noble goals—whether fighting communism or upholding the international order—but the outcomes reveal a different reality, marked by immense human suffering and global instability.

    The origins of the Ukraine war are more complex than often portrayed in legacy media narratives. It did not begin with Putin’s invasion in February 2022 but can be traced back to the political upheaval of February 2014, when then-Vice President Joe Biden approved a coup d’état that resulted in the ousting of Ukraine’s democratically elected government. This event ignited a decade-long civil conflict between the country’s Russian-speaking and Ukrainian-speaking regions.

    Setting aside that Biden foolishly revived centuries-old ethnic tensions, what interest does the United States have in this situation? And how is American involvement going to resolve these deep-seated feuds?

    But it’s even worse than that. American involvement in Ukraine is, in at least one key respect, even more problematic than its involvement in the Vietnam War. While Vietnam was already embroiled in a civil war before the U.S. became involved, in Ukraine, external intervention—specifically by Joe Biden—was instrumental in igniting the civil war in the first place. This distinction underscores the profound and far-reaching consequences of foreign intervention in local disputes, even when well-intentioned.

    War Remnants Museum, Saigon (credit: Hans Mahncke)

    As I traveled through Vietnam, I felt the weight of these connections. A war fought decades ago in the name of ideology now serves as a stark lesson in unintended consequences, yet similar mistakes are being repeated today. The remnants of the Vietnam War—rusting tanks, poignant photographs of victims, and harrowing stories of suffering—stand as haunting reminders of the devastation wrought when foreign powers escalate regional disputes into proxy wars.

    What makes this situation even more tragic is how avoidable such conflicts are. The Vietnam War did not have to unfold as it did. The United States did not have to assume the role it played. The lessons learned from Vietnam should inform our understanding of Ukraine: wars waged far from home, under the pretense of noble ideals, often cause more harm than good to those they purport to protect.

    This visit to Vietnam left me with a profound sense of sorrow—more so than any previous trip. It was not only for the lives lost and futures shattered but also for the cyclical nature of human folly. Perhaps by acknowledging the senselessness of one war, we can prevent the unnecessary escalation of another.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/01/2025 – 20:00

  • Musk Confirms "Large Fireworks &/Or Bomb" Exploded Cybertruck At Trump Vegas Hotel
    Musk Confirms “Large Fireworks &/Or Bomb” Exploded Cybertruck At Trump Vegas Hotel

    Update (1941ET):

    “The evil knuckleheads picked the wrong vehicle for a terrorist attack. Cybertruck actually contained the explosion and directed the blast upwards. Not even the glass doors of the lobby were broken,” Elon Muks wrote on X. 

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    Update (1901ET):

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    Update (1723ET):

    “We have now confirmed that the explosion was caused by very large fireworks and/or a bomb carried in the bed of the rented Cybertruck and is unrelated to the vehicle itself,” Tesla’s Elon Musk wrote on X, “All vehicle telemetry was positive at the time of the explosion.” 

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    Update (1534ET):

    Government officials told ABC News that the Tesla Cybertruck explosion on Wednesday outside the Trump Las Vegas hotel in Nevada is being investigated as a “possible act of terror.”

    Here’s more from ABC:

    Investigators do not know what caused the blast, such as whether something was wrong with the vehicle or whether something external prompted it. Determining what was behind the explosion is the key focus of the probe.

    An official briefed on the probe told ABC News that the Tesla Cybertruck had a load of fireworks-style mortars onboard. Investigators are urgently working to determine a motive and whether the driver intended to set off an explosion and why.

    Until a motive is determined and other possibilities are ruled out, police are treating the explosion like a possible criminal act and a possible act of terror. Evidence collection and investigation are ongoing.

    Tesla’s Elon Musk responded:

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    With everyone on edge after the New Orleans ‘terrorist attack‘ on Bourbon Street early this morning, reports flooded X moments ago of a ‘boom’ and/or a ‘vehicle fire’ in Las Vegas. 

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    It turns out the ‘boom’ was caused by a Tesla Cybertruck ablaze in front of the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas, possibly due to a lithium battery fire.

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    Wow. 

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    What are the odds?

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/01/2025 – 19:41

  • Former CIA Officer Warns: 1,000 Al-Qaeda Fighters In US For Next Homeland Attack 
    Former CIA Officer Warns: 1,000 Al-Qaeda Fighters In US For Next Homeland Attack 

    In a recent discussion on the Shawn Ryan Show, former CIA targeting officer Sarah Adams warned of a potentially devastating attack planned by Al-Qaeda terrorists on American soil.

    The interview offers significant insights into what may be unfolding, as Al-Qaeda sleeper cells could be activating in the wake of the New Orleans terrorist attack and a possible vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED) in the rear of a rented Tesla Cybertruck that exploded outside Trump’s hotel in Las Vegas just hours later.

    Ryan asked Adams: “I just want to clarify. You are 100% certain that there are 1,000 plus Al-Qaeda-trained fighters within the US borders?”

    Adams, currently a global threat advisor with extensive experience in Middle Eastern affairs, responded: “Well, Al-Qaeda says they trained and deployed a thousand for this attack. First off, I think there are more than a thousand Al-Qaeda members in the United States, but for the Homeland Attack, that number is based on what Al-Qaeda is saying, so they could exaggerate it; however, they did have about 1,400 in the Hamas Attack so the number is not off from what they did in the first round of attacks.” 

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    Adams provided more details on a potential 2025 homeland attack. 

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    The terrorist attack on Bourbon Street, along with the postponement of the Sugar Bowl at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, suggests that something larger is unfolding.

    “There’s far too much of this happening—and when an attack on our homeland emanating from Afghanistan occurs, the resulting moral injury will be catastrophic. Those who served deserve far better than this!” Adams wrote hours before the attack on Tuesday night. 

    Meanwhile, General Mike Flynn, who served as national security adviser in the Trump administration 1.0, wrote on X:

    Again, it is not what you call it in the end that matters. What matters is if there was intelligence prior in some agency or department and it wasn’t acted upon. A failure of decision makers not a failure of intelligence.

    Prevention is what we shoot for, that is what the hard work of intelligence does. If you don’t follow it and hunt down every lead, then you end up in a reactive, after the fact mode. This, tragically, is where we are for what should have been a very joyous occasion. Members of my family were walking along bourbon street last night at midnight.

    Another big question, what’s next and are the people with knowledge rapidly cross leveling intelligence to prevent the next attack?

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    According to a federal source close to the counter-terrorism community, some of the latest intelligence briefings have indicated that pre-trained al-Qaeda terrorists have entered the US through the Biden-Harris administration’s open southern border. The source warned that this raises the risk of further attacks.

    The Biden-Harris administration’s disastrous exit from Afghanistan gave rise to al-Qaeda’s global jihad push (read: “Al Qaida Is Winning – The New Caliphate In Syria“). One wonders if these alleged terror cells operating within the US would still be active had Kamala Harris won the presidential election…

    Anyways… Could the Bourbon Street massacre be Al-Qaeda’s opening act of the coordinated attack on the homeland described by Sarah? Or are the public pre-emptive warnings an attempt to fearmonger more aggressive domestic surveillance (and ensure funding is maintained under DOGE)?

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/01/2025 – 19:15

  • Top DOJ Officials Leaked Non-Public Info To Media "Days Before An Election": Inspector General
    Top DOJ Officials Leaked Non-Public Info To Media “Days Before An Election”: Inspector General

    Not content to The Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) revealed this week that three senior DOJ officials violated internal policies and engaged in misconduct by leaking non-public investigative details to the media “days before an election.”

    The OIG, led by Michael Horowitz since 2012, conducted the investigation following a complaint alleging politically motivated disclosures related to ongoing DOJ matters.

    “The OIG investigation found that three then Senior DOJ Officials violated DOJ’s Confidentiality and Media Contacts Policy by leaking to select reporters, days before an election, non-public DOJ investigative information regarding ongoing DOJ investigative matters, resulting in the publication of two news articles that included the non-public DOJ investigative information,” the OIG stated in a brief investigative summary.

    The summary further noted that one of the officials compounded the misconduct by using a DOJ social media account to share links to the resulting news articles, a violation of both the Confidentiality and Media Contacts Policy and the DOJ’s Social Media Policy.

    Of course, in typical Horowitz fashion – we have no clue who leaked what to whom…

    The investigation faced limitations as the three implicated officials were no longer employed by the DOJ at the time of the probe, and either declined or failed to respond to interview requests. The OIG does not have the authority to compel testimony from former employees.

    Horowitz’s office confirmed that the findings have been referred to the Office of the Deputy Attorney General and the Professional Misconduct Review Unit for appropriate action. Additionally, the report has been shared with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel for further investigation into potential violations of the Hatch Act, which restricts political activities by federal employees.

    Unspecified Investigation at the Heart of the Leak

    The nature of the investigation leaked by the former officials remains unclear. However, similar concerns have been raised in other high-profile cases involving DOJ leaks. In September, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray, as well as Horowitz, accusing the DOJ and FBI of leaking information about a now-closed investigation into President-elect Donald Trump.

    The investigation in question involved allegations that Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi attempted to bolster Trump’s 2016 campaign with $10 million in cash. Initially handled by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team, the probe was closed in June 2020 due to insufficient evidence, but details of the case were reported by The Washington Post in August 2024. The newspaper’s reporting cited “people familiar with the case” and “thousands of pages of government records, including sealed court filings.”

    Broader Pattern of DOJ Leaks and Misconduct

    Leaks have been a recurring issue within the DOJ. Trump, while campaigning for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, accused Special Counsel Jack Smith of having “illegally leaked” information about the classified documents investigation against him. This included allegations that Smith leaked an audio recording of Trump discussing a classified document related to Iran, which was later included in a now-dismissed indictment.

    During Trump’s first term, leaks about the FBI’s investigation into alleged collusion between Russia and his 2016 campaign led to scathing reports by the OIG and subsequent investigations by Mueller and Special Counsel John Durham. Notably, former FBI Director James Comey was referred for prosecution in 2019 for leaking internal memos to the media, though the DOJ ultimately declined to press charges.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/01/2025 – 18:00

  • A Roadmap For DOGE's 30 Percent Budget Cut
    A Roadmap For DOGE’s 30 Percent Budget Cut

    Authored by Nikolai Wenzel via the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER)

    In a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy laid out their vision for the new “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) they will head within the Trump White House. They don’t yet have details (part of the plan involves identifying personnel, and then inefficiencies). But the vision has a three-part approach: ”regulatory recissions, administrative reductions, and cost savings.”

    With politicians it’s often hard to know what is solid conviction and what is bluster for future bargaining. With Donald Trump, it’s always hard to know. He wants to renew the 2017 tax cuts, which lowered income and corporate taxes until 2025… but he also wants to tax imports at 10 percent to 20 percent (and 60 percent for China), which is the equivalent of a consumption tax on an American economy that is hungry for imported goods. Mr. Trump wants to cut red tape and federal spending… but he also wants to increase spending on defense and mass deportations.

    Amidst all this, Messrs. Musk and Ramaswamy have bruited the lofty goal of a 30 percent cut in federal spending.

    The federal budget was $6.2 trillion for FY23 (which I use here for accounting simplicity, rather than FY24). This represents almost 23 percent of GDP, to which we can add 13 percent spent by states and local governments. To this, we can also add the 10 percent of GDP in annual compliance cost with federal regulations, as estimated by the Competitive Enterprise Institute. This total means that, for every dollar of economic activity, fully 46 cents are controlled, directly or indirectly, by politicians and bureaucrats. And only 54 cents of each economic dollar are in the hands of American consumers, families, and entrepreneurs. As of November 2024, the national debt is at 120 percent+ of GDP, and interest on the debt is the fourth biggest budget item (at $659 billion/year, or about 11 percent of federal spending). Clearly, America has a fiscal problem.

    Before we examine possible budget cuts, let us see where that whopping $6,200,000,000,000 is going. First, we must distinguish between mandatory spending and discretionary spending. Mandatory spending has been set in motion by Congress, without the need for annual negotiation or reauthorization. Discretionary spending must be legislated, in political jockeying between the Congress and the President.

    Mandatory Spending (71.7 percent of total federal budget). AIER

    Discretionary Spending (28.3 percent of total federal budget). AIER

    I propose three options for budget cuts, from the bold (and probably politically impossible) to the marginal.

    1. The Constitution

    I hate having to repeat it, over and over again… But the American people and the political class seem to have forgotten that the U.S. Constitution is different. Most other constitutions of the world are documents of assumed powers: governments are allowed to do anything, except that which is prohibited by the constitution. The U.S. Constitution, however, is one of limited and enumerated powers: it may not do anything, except that which is authorized by the constitution. Article 1, section 8 grants a bit over a dozen legislative powers to Congress (beyond the military and international powers authorized to the President in Article 2, and the judiciary powers in Article 3).

    According to Article 1, section 8, the Congress has power over the following, only:

    • taxes and import duties

    • borrowing

    • regulation of commerce among the states and internationally

    • establish uniform laws of immigration and bankruptcy

    • coin money, fix standards of weights and measures, and grant patents

    • punish counterfeiting and piracy

    • establish post offices and postal roads

    • to constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court

    • declare war, and maintain and regulate armed forces

    • to control the District of Columbia and other federal properties

    Lest there be any doubt about enumeration and limitation, the 10th amendment reads as follows: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or the people.”

    It should be obvious, then, that the vast majority of federal expenditures are not authorized by the Constitution; as such, they are prohibited and unconstitutional. Only a small percentage of actual federal spending is authorized by the Constitution: defense, operating and retirement expenses for federal employees, support to veterans, international relations and justice (for a total of $1.46 trillion). If we squint very hard at the Constitution, we could conceivably see transportation ($115 billion), health ($100 billion), and the environment ($48 billion)… if we suppose generously that such expenditures are authorized under the commerce clause, as functions that cannot be handled by the individual states. Even then, we find ourselves at $1.72 trillion, or 27.7 percent of the current budget.

    This would represent savings of $4.48 trillion, or 72.3 percent of the budget that could be returned from the unconstitutional hands of politicians and bureaucrats, back to American families, consumers, and entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, the President lacks the authority to veto mandatory spending, and merely enjoys veto power over discretionary spending bills. And, for all his talk of reducing red tape, Mr. Trump has yet to show a libertarian or constitutional soul. It is thus unlikely that we will end up with a North American version of a chainsaw-wielding Javier Milei of Argentina.

    2. Big-Ticket Items

    A return to constitutional constraints would be lovely. But it is not in the realm of the politically possible. The second option would be to start with the low-hanging fruit of Social Security and Medicare. Social Security was born in 1935, as part of FDR’s New Deal, and Medicare came to be in 1965, as part of LBJ’s Great Society. Neither of these programs is means-tested (technically, the Social Security formula is redistributive, but participation in both programs is mandatory for all Americans).

    Social Security might have been necessary in 1935 (I am skeptical, as I have read David Beito’s book, “From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890–1967.” Civil Society was doing a fine job of providing welfare, before the New Dealers decided everything had to be nationalized). But financial markets have evolved drastically since 1935. Americans now have easy, low-cost, and convenient access to mutual funds, and especially index funds that track the market without investor savvy.  The federal government could easily get rid of the low-yield, pay-as-you-go Social Security pension scheme, and replace it with a high-yield, portable, individually funded retirement plan. The Chilean plan of mandatory 10 percent contributions to a private fund would be a simple start. Likewise, insurance markets (especially if they are deregulated, unsubsidized, and fixed) can take care of the majority of American retirees.

    Simply stated, most Americans don’t need Social Security and Medicare. These two big-ticket items eat about one third of the federal budget. They are unconstitutional. And they are unnecessary. Again, as a student of David Beito, Alexis de Tocqueville, Henry Hazlitt, Marvin Olasky, economics, and history, I have learned the superiority of private charity over government welfare. But, as a temporary solution, Social Security and Medicare could easily be privatized, with a portion replaced by means-test programs, with a much smaller cost. Currently, about 20 percent of Americans receive federal welfare or Medicaid. Setting aside details, we can easily imagine privatizing pensions and healthcare for the other 80 percent, with an 80 percent cut in Social Security ($1 trillion in savings) and Medicare ($671 in savings), for a total of $1.67 trillion in savings. This would still not be constitutionally authorized, but it would represent almost one third of the federal budget. As a bonus, a privately funded retirement plan would represent a surge in investment, and thus of economic activity and tax revenue; the lower expenses would mean the national debt would not increase as much, and pressure on interest payments would be relieved. The true savings would thus exceed one third.

    Unfortunately, all retirees, rich and poor, have their snout in the federal trough—this was the political genius, and the fiscal disaster, of universal programs (rather than targeted means-tested programs). Social Security and Medicare costs are politically dangerous, and Mr. Trump has already promised he would not touch the two biggest federal expenditures.

    3. Marginal Cuts

    Without pushing constitutional respect or cutting the low-hanging fruit of big and outdated universal programs, the federal government could still save at the margin.

    As mentioned above, the Competitive Enterprise Institute has calculated that 10 percent of GDP is spent each year on compliance with federal regulations. A Mercatus Center study estimates that, if regulations had stayed steady at the 1949 level, the American economy would be a whopping 3.5 times stronger (imagine, if you will, a GDP of $95 trillion instead of $27 trillion). What is more, regulation is regressive (it has a disparate impact on the poorest). Without attacking the budget directly, DOGE could take a serious ax to federal regulation, to great effect.

    Finally, the Cato Institute has proposed a collection of small cuts that would amount to a serious $1 trillion to $2 trillion in savings (or 16 percent to 32 percent of the current budget).

    It would be ideal, of course, to return to the constitution—for reasons of rule of law, as much as for fiscal prudence. More local responsibility, more market competition, less bureaucratic waste, more reliance on an efficient and human civil society over a wasteful and anonymous federal machine to help the poor—these would all be positive developments that would restore America’s fiscal health while actually tackling poverty. In the meantime, a 30 percent budget cut is within grasp—and it would represent a return to federal spending, not in some distant past… but as recently as 2001.

    Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/01/2025 – 17:20

  • Moscow Fumes, Vows Response, After State Media Telegram Channels Blocked In EU
    Moscow Fumes, Vows Response, After State Media Telegram Channels Blocked In EU

    Moscow is fuming after at the start of this week several Russian state media outlets were blocked for EU-based users of the messaging app Telegram. Starting Sunday the channels of RIA Novosti, Rossiya 1, Channel One, NTV, Izvestia and Rossiyskaya Gazeta were inaccessible in the European Union.

    Kremlin officials slammed the “act of censorship” – with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova describing “the systematic cleansing of all undesirable sources of information from the information space” as ongoing in the West.

    She further condemned the “constant campaign of repression against Russian media in nearly all European Union countries,” adding that “these attacks and similar ones against our media will not go unanswered.”

    “We reserve the right to respond in the same manner,” she said, but without specifying what form the retaliation will take. The EU had already since the Ukraine war’s start cracked down on the major Russian state television international networks.

    More recently the EU moved against RIA Novosti, Izvestia and Rossiyskaya Gazeta, accusing the outlets of spreading propaganda on behalf of the Kremlin.

    It remains unclear the degree to which Telegram and EU authorities are acting in coordination on this:

    The messaging app Telegram has blocked access to channels belonging to major Russian state-owned news outlets across much of Europe, including Poland, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Greece, Italy, and Latvia.

    When users based in the affected European countries attempt to access these channels, they see a notice saying the content is unavailable because it “violated local laws.”

    Neither Telegram nor European officials have publicly acknowledged the restrictions but Russian media outlets including RIA Novosti, Izvestia, NTV, Rossiya 1, and Rossiyskaya Gazeta all confirmed they had been blocked. 

    Late last summer Telegram CEO Pavel Durov was indicted in France for allegedly allowing criminal activity on the app. France’s arrest of him at a Paris airport when his private jet arrived was highly unusual, given they went straight after the CEO and founder.

    He has since vowed to cooperate on cracking down on criminal activity on the app, and be more responsive in providing data to law enforcement authorities.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/01/2025 – 16:40

  • Appeals Court Upholds Deal That Removes Death Penalty For Alleged 9/11 Mastermind
    Appeals Court Upholds Deal That Removes Death Penalty For Alleged 9/11 Mastermind

    Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The U.S. Department of Defense’s appeals court has turned down the Pentagon’s attempt to rescind the plea deals for the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and several alleged accomplices, paving the way for the men to avoid the death penalty.

    Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin attends a Rose Garden at the White House, on May 25, 2023. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

    U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin did not have the authority to rescind the deals, a panel of judges on the U.S. Court of Military Commission Review said in the Dec. 30 ruling.

    Even if Austin did have the authority, he waited too long to act as lawyers for the alleged attackers had already started meeting requirements in their pretrial plea agreements, the panel said.

    The Pentagon had announced on July 31 that Susan Escallier, the official whom Austin appointed to lead the military court that is handling the 9/11 trials, signed off on the agreements with Khalid Shaikh (Sheikh) Mohammad, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi. Mohammed is accused of masterminding the 9/11 attacks, which resulted in the deaths of nearly 3,000 in the United States, with help from the two others.

    “In exchange for the removal of the death penalty as a possible punishment, these three accused have agreed to plead guilty to all of the charged offenses, including the murder of the 2,976 people listed in the charge sheet,” a letter from military prosecutors to the families of victims of the attack said.

    Austin said on Aug. 2 that given the case’s significance, he would be in charge of it. He withdrew Escallier’s authority and the pretrial agreements.

    U.S. Air Force Col. Matthew McCall, a judge, ruled in November that Austin lacked the authority to withdraw the agreements. Even if he had the authority, it was too late to act, according to McCall.

    “If an accused begins performance of the terms of a PTA [pretrial agreement], the convening authority loses the right to withdraw from the deal,” the military judge wrote at the time.

    The Pentagon appealed the ruling, leading to Monday’s decision.

    The panel of judges said that Austin could replace Escallier as the convening authority for the case, even without taking all of her responsibilities. However, they said that the intervention in the current case “is without precedent” and that based on a ruling in a different case, Austin cannot order the withdrawal of the deals for Mohammad, Attash, and Hawsawi.

    Escallier could withdraw the agreements, but only until the men started to meet the requirements, according to the panel.

    Austin can withdraw Escallier’s authority to approve future agreements in the case, the judges said, in a partial victory for the military.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/01/2025 – 16:00

  • 10 Dead, At Least 30 Injured After Terrorist Plows ISIS-Flag-Waving Truck Into Crowd On Bourbon Street
    10 Dead, At Least 30 Injured After Terrorist Plows ISIS-Flag-Waving Truck Into Crowd On Bourbon Street

    Summary:

    • 10 dead, at least 30 injured after truck plowed through Bourbon Street, New Orleans

    • FBI confirmed investigating as a ‘terror’ attack

    • The white Ford F-150 Lightning (EV) truck used was rented

    • ISIS Flag posted on the vehicle

    • The suspect is confirmed as 42-year-old Shamsud Din Jabbar. US Citizen from Texas

    • The suspect opened fire on police, was shot and killed

    • Law enforcement is investigating at least two potential IEDs planted in the area

    • Sugar Bowl has been postponed until tomorrow

    • Louisiana Governor declares state of emergency 

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    Update (1530ET):

    Alethea Duncan, an assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s New Orleans field office, told reporters that Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, a US citizen and Army veteran from Texas and the suspected terrorist, did not act alone.

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    Duncan stated that intelligence officials are working to determine Jabbar’s potential associations and affiliations with terrorist organizations.

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    Update (1508ET):

    Is ‘Twitter’ censorship back? 

    Yes, it is. The embed function in the tweet has been disabled…

    Come on, Musk…  

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    Update (1225ET):

    NOLA reports the suspected terrorist is 42-year-old Shamsud Din Jabbar. 

    The source said Jabbar was carrying an ISIS flag in the truck, and authorities have said he was dressed in military gear. -NOLA 

    Additional details about the suspected terrorist: 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    *   *   *

    Update (1157ET):

    The dead suspected terrorist was seen dressed in military fatigues.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Michael Flynn, who served as national security adviser in the Trump administration 1.0, wrote on X:

    Again, it is not what you call it in the end that matters. What matters is if there was intelligence prior in some agency or department and it wasn’t acted upon. A failure of decision makers not a failure of intelligence.

    Prevention is what we shoot for, that is what the hard work of intelligence does. If you don’t follow it and hunt down every lead, then you end up in a reactive, after the fact mode. This, tragically, is where we are for what should have been a very joyous occasion. Members of my family were walking along bourbon street last night at midnight.

    Another big question, what’s next and are the people with knowledge rapidly cross leveling intelligence to prevent the next attack?

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Readers should be reminded that just two weeks ago, we pointed out: “In the short term, the threats to the homeland are rising… Democrats have transformed America into a ‘terrorist playground’ with open borders.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    A massive scandal could erupt with the outgoing Biden administration, which likely did not act on critical intelligence about domestic threats. 

    *   *   * 

    Update (0750ET):

    New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell confirmed that the truck ramming attack on Bourbon Street was a “terrorist attack.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    “First of all, the city of New Orleans was impacted by a terrorist attack. I’ve been in direct contact with the White House, Governor Landry, and the unified command here.”   

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Police killed the terror attack suspect when he exited the truck with an assault rifle, per ABC News report. 

    Source: NYT

    Let’s not forget…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Two weeks ago… 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    *   *   * 

    Update (0730ET):

    Local media outlets have published an image of the truck involved in the mass casualty incident on Bourbon Street.

    The Ford F-150 Lightning truck has a Texas license plate reading “LZ 1575.” A flagpole hitch holder is visible with what appears to be a flag, although it seems covered. Additionally, there are four bullet holes in the rear cabin window of the truck.

    *   *   * 

    Update (0700ET):

    The New Orleans Police Department told ABC News that “the strike appeared to be intentional” and “the driver has not been taken into custody.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Witness tells CNN:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    *   *   * 

    Update (0640ET):

    The City of New Orleans has confirmed ten dead and 30 injured after a vehicle plowed into a large crowd on Canal and Bourbon Street.

    The New Orleans Police Department has yet to confirm whether the mass casualty incident was intentional. No details about the driver have been released. 

    Governor of Louisiana Jeff Landry writes on X: 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    A press conference is expected shortly.

    *   *   * 

    The New Orleans Police Department told local media outlet WGNO that multiple people are dead after a vehicle plowed into a crowd on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter. The area, a bar and restaurant district popular with tourists, was still very active just hours after New Year’s Eve celebrations.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jshttps://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    NOPD said the vehicle struck a group of people around 3:15 a.m. local time at the intersection of Bourbon Street and Iberville

    Witnesses told CBS News reporter Kati Weis that a truck crashed into the crowd at “high speeds,” adding that the driver exited the vehicle and started discharging a weapon, prompting police officers to return fire.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Unconfirmed video. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Weis reported that multiple people were on the ground with serious injuries.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jshttps://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    NOPD told CBS News that “initial reports show a car may have plowed into a group of people. Injuries are unknown but there are reported fatalities.”

    *Developing… 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/01/2025 – 15:30

  • Jack Be Gone: Special Counsel Withdraws From Classified Documents Case Against Trump Co-Defendants
    Jack Be Gone: Special Counsel Withdraws From Classified Documents Case Against Trump Co-Defendants

    Special Counsel Jack Smith has withdrawn from the classified documents case against two of Donald Trump’s co-defendants in the classified documents case, and has referred it to a local US attorney’s office.

    In a court filing, Smith announced that he’s moving to “withdraw” five attorneys from the case “associated with the special counsel’s office” against co-defendants Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira, who were charged along with Trump.

    “The special counsel has now referred this case to the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, which has separately entered an appearance,” reads the filing.

    Prosecutors accused Nauta – Trump’s valet, and Oliveira – the manager of Mar-a-Lago, of hiding boxes of records from federal investigators. They face charges of obstruction of justice as well as making false statements to investigators among various charges connected to concealing documents. Both have pleaded not guilty.

    As the Epoch Times notes further, after Trump’s election victory in November, Smith said he would not pursue an appeal of a federal judge’s decision in July to dismiss the classified documents case. At the same time, Smith’s office dropped its case against Trump brought in Washington that separately accused him of illegally trying to overturn the 2020 election.

    Smith said that he dropped his appeal and case against Trump because of a decades-long Department of Justice rule that prohibits prosecuting a sitting president.

    In the documents case, Trump pled not guilty on dozens of counts as prosecutors alleged that he mishandled classified documents after leaving the White House in 2021 and obstructed federal officials. FBI agents raided Mar-a-Lago in August 2022 and obtained boxes of documents.

    Trump has said that both federal cases against him were politically motivated and designed to harm his chances for reelection. In several media appearances during the campaign cycle, Trump said he would end the Smith cases and fire him.

    “I persevered, against all odds, and WON,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social last month after Smith moved to drop the cases.

    The president-elect also said, “These cases, like all of the other cases I have been forced to go through, are empty and lawless, and should never have been brought.”

    In court papers indicating he would drop the election case, Smith’s team wrote that the DOJ had found that the Office of Legal Counsel’s “opinions concerning the Constitution’s prohibition on federal indictment and prosecution of a sitting President apply to this situation and that as a result this prosecution must be dismissed before the defendant is inaugurated.”

    “That prohibition is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the Government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the Government stands fully behind,“ his filing said. ”Based on the Department’s interpretation of the Constitution, the Government moves for dismissal without prejudice.”

    U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, based in Washington, quickly granted Smith’s motion to dismiss the matter. In the classified documents appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit similarly complied by dropping Trump from the case.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/01/2025 – 15:20

  • Firefighters, Police Attacked In Diverse Areas Of Brussels During NYE Chaos
    Firefighters, Police Attacked In Diverse Areas Of Brussels During NYE Chaos

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Modernity.news,

    Firefighters and police officers were attacked with fireworks and more than 60 cars were torched during a night of chaos in diverse areas of Brussels, Belgium.

    “Once again New Year’s Eve in Brussels was the scene of acts of arson, wanton vandalism and violence against emergency service personnel,” reports VRT News.

    The last day of the year is routinely characterized by such attacks by migrant communities in major European cities, the worst example being New Year’s Eve in 2015, where over a thousand women were molested and raped by migrant gangs in Cologne, Germany.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    According to Walter Derieuw of the Brussels Fire Service there were, “Between 60 and 70 vehicles that have been burned out,” and there were a further 60 call outs to respond to “burning rubbish bins, benches, bushes and mattresses.”

    Marking a “very turbulent New Year’s Eve,” Derieuw said, “Several firefighters had bricks thrown at them and there were people that fired horizontal fireworks and threw Molotov cocktails.”

    The Belgian capital’s emergency services received at least 588 call outs to deal with the chaos during the course of the night while 64 people were detained for their role in the unrest.

    A video compilation shows emergency vehicles being pelted with fireworks and objects being dropped from a bridge by hooded youths in Molenbeek, while multiple vehicles were set on fire in Anderlecht, both heavily multicultural areas.

    Molenbeek, where two people were also stabbed on Christmas day, is widely known as Europe’s ‘jihadi central’, and was where Paris massacre terrorist Salah Abdeslam was able to hide out for months before being caught.

    In 2022, it was revealed that Islamic names make up 43 per cent of total registrations in Brussels, with the most popular name for newborn babies being Mohamed and its different spelling variations.

    The country contains numerous ‘no-go zones’ where migrant enclaves exist almost outside of the law.

    *  *  *

    Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

     

     

     

     

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/01/2025 – 14:40

  • Americans' Top New Year's Resolutions For 2025
    Americans’ Top New Year’s Resolutions For 2025

    Planning to save more money is once again top of mind for many Americans making resolutions for 2025.

    As Statista’;s Anna Fleck shows in the chart below, data from a recent survey by Statista shows that one in five U.S. adults are committing to the financial goal.

    Infographic: America's Top New Year's Resolutions for 2025 | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Vows to eat healthier, exercise more and lose weight were the next most commonly cited resolutions this year, picked by between 15-19 percent of respondents.

    Four in ten U.S. respondents said that they do not plan on making any resolutions for next year.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/01/2025 – 14:00

  • On The Way Out The Door, Biden Is Emptying The Coffers
    On The Way Out The Door, Biden Is Emptying The Coffers

    Authored by Lawrence McDonald via The Bear Traps Report,

    The Legendary “W” Games

    Over the last 250 years of American political gamesmanship, both parties have played year-end games into the arms of a new incoming administration. In early 2000, the incoming George Walker Bush team discovered that every keyboard in the White House and other administrative offices was missing the “W” key.

    The outgoing Clinton staff had removed all the “W” keys to annoy the new administration after an extremely contentious election.

    The damage was small, estimated at $15,000.

    But the bigger message here was that when the party that runs the White House changes, the outgoing administration will leave some proverbial “time bombs” for their successors.

    While the damaged keyboards were more like a bad joke, what Biden is doing to Trump now is serious business. The outgoing administration has opened the spigots table max to get every penny out the door while they can under the existing budget.

    It’s almost like they are looting the Treasury before they leave town.

    Biden is Opening the Floodgates with Spending

    Spending for 2025 is expected to exceed $2Tr by the time Biden leaves DC on January 20th. This is over 30% of the annual budget, and Trump will have to cut spending for the rest of the year to stay within the limits of the allocated budget. This could mean a notable slowdown in GDP growth in the first quarters of 2025.

    Bonds have taken Notice

    Ever since the Fed cut rates in September, U.S. 10-year bond yields are about 1% higher, and mortgage rates are following in lockstep. Hedge funds are selling short, betting on lower bond prices into colossal incoming bond sales from the U.S. Treasury. This is a highly unusual activity and has the fingerprints of the bond vigilantes everywhere; a revolt is in the works.

    Lunatics – as Usual – on Capitol Hill 

    Congress, in its usual fashion, has failed to agree on the next budget, so the government is currently operating under a “continuing resolution” (CR). This continuing resolution means the government is allowed to spend the same amount of money they spent last year, which is $6.75TR. The government’s fiscal year started on October 1st, and Biden is on a run rate to spend almost $2TR by the end of December and a deficit that may exceed $800bl (+60% y/y). So, when Trump comes in on January 20th, he has three quarters left of the government’s fiscal year, but by then, Biden has spent more than 30% of the total allocated budget. This forces Trump to cut spending right off the bat. We estimate spending could drop by $500bl quarter over quarter, or 25% from Q4 to Q1. This is an estimate, and the timing of spending can change. But the fact is that Biden is emptying the coffers before Trump gets in. Every week, more money and weapons are sent to Ukraine, more subsidies are given to semiconductor makers to build plants in the US, and more government employees are hired.

    US Yields Surge While Others Languish

    Since September, US Yields have surged over 20% on Biden’s sugar high, while Canadian and German yields are down since then, Chinese yields have collapsed, and UK yields are only modestly above the September level.

    Government Job Growth Twice the Rate of the Private Sector

    Private sector job growth has lagged government job growth significantly in the last year as the government keeps hiring people.

    Why is this so Bad?

    We believe that this spending deluge by Biden on his way out is partially to blame for the surge in bond yields in Q4. Some may say it’s because of Trump and his promised tax cuts, but the Republican House majority is so slim that it’s unclear how much of a fiscal stimulus Trump is actually able to get through Congress. Also, the incoming Senate majority leader Thune (R, SD) has said he will only get one bill through reconciliation in FY 2025 and another one in FY2026. His priority is on immigration and energy legislation, so a fiscal spending bill might not come until late 2025 or early 2026 if anything. But if yields are being pushed up by all this spending in Q4, then what will happen if spending falls back in early 2025? And what will happen to GDP growth? A $500bl drop in government spending from Q4 to Q1 is the equivalent of 1.7ppt of growth. So, if Q4 nominal growth comes in at 5.7% annualized, this could drop to 4% in Q1 if government spending slows down accordingly.

    Treasury’s Reliance on Short-Term Debt Exploded in Recent Years

    Election Rigging? We are witnessing a Covid era like spending in 2024 without a pandemic. The Treasury Department has come to rely on short-term bills to fund the government. But with $36Tr of debt, the Treasury has to issue bills almost every day to keep funding the government and to refund maturing debt.

    Interest Payments on the Federal Debt Load

    • 2026: $2.1T?

    • 2025: $1.5T?

    • 2024: $910B

    • 2023: $658B

    • 2022: $475B

    • 2021: $352B

    • 2020: $224B

    *CBO data, Bloomberg. The average weighted coupon on the U.S. debt load is about 2.7% vs. over 4.5% for 10-year U.S. Treasuries. As bonds mature, they get refinanced at much higher yields.

    $10Tr of Debt Refinancing Next Year

    In 2024 Treasury faced around $10Tr of maturing debt. To refinance this debt, it issued a whopping $26Tr of bills and bonds. More than 84% of that paper was short-term bills with a maturity of 6 months or less. Treasury keeps re-issuing bills with a maturity of 4 to 8 weeks or 3,4 to 6 months, which are the most popular maturities in a continuing, ever-increasing roll down of the debt, day after day, month after month.

    Apple Long-Term Bonds and Interest Rates

    ALERT – By issuing nearly a colossal load of extremely short-term bills, Janet Yellen succeeded in suppressing bond volatility in an election year and, in our view, strategically placing that bond market volatility into 2025 after the election. You can “why” see above, she wanted LESS long-term paper in circulation markets in the election year. Now, in 2025 – this paper has to be rolled over and termed out into longer-dated bonds. The USA is behaving like a financially trapped emerging market country. Living on the “front-end” of the yield curve is a VERY dangerous game.  The Apple AAPL 2.55% bonds due 2060 are trading down at 57 cents on the dollar. If long-term bond yields go to 6%, take a guess where this bond will trade. Near 47 cents on the dollar? Now think of the trillions of USD loans issued in 2017-2021 on bank balance (commercial real estate, mortgages, corporate debt outstanding). Losses are in the trillions of dollars with higher incoming interest rates. 

    Interest Rates UP – Bond Prices DOWN

    Never, ever forget that 6% today is equivalent to the destructive capacity of 10% twenty years ago. Interest rates up, mean bond prices down. A 1% move in interest rates higher today is an entirely different, far more lethal equation.

    Incoming Stress Points

    In 2025 the U.S. Treasury faces $9.6Tr of maturities in their so-called publicly held debt. In Q1 alone — the government faces $5.58Tr of maturities (bonds coming due, redemption), but 86% of those are short-term bills that the Treasury department rolls over into new 4-week, 8-week, 3,4, or 6-month bills, among others. 

    As a result, almost daily bill auctions are coming to a theater near you, as the Treasury Department mindlessly keeps pushing new paper into the market to pay back the colossal amount of maturing debt.

    Is There Any Reason to Buy Treasuries?

    The new Treasury department under Scott Bessent may reduce bill issuance a bit and increase coupon paying issuance, just to alleviate some of the pressure on the bills market and extend the duration of outstanding US debt. Now that the big slush fund that bought all these bills, the so-called Reverse Repo Facility (RRP), is close to being depleted, it will be harder to sell all that short-term paper. In addition, Goldman Sachs expects that the Federal Reserve will stop the run-off of treasuries from its balance sheet by the end of January and begin buying treasuries again with the proceeds of the maturing MBS on its balance sheet. As such, the Fed becomes a modest buyer of treasuries next year, which allows the Treasury to increase coupon issuance without disrupting the long end.

    One big bullish catalyst for treasuries would be a regulatory change to exempt treasuries from the Supplemental Leverage Ratio (SLR). It is unclear if and when this would be implemented, although Bessent was hinting at regulatory relief for banks to boost banks’ treasury holdings. Exempting treasuries allows banks to hold more Treasuries on their balance sheets without needing to hold additional capital against them, freeing up the capacity for banks to participate more actively in the Treasury market. Its unclear how much treasury demand that would create, but in 2021, when the temporary SLR exemption was reinstated after COVID, prime dealers reduced their Treasury holdings from $250bl to $125bl in 2 months. A change in the SLR ratio may come but is going to take months before the rules are changed. A phase-out of QT for treasuries would be a more immediate, albeit more modest, relief for the bond market. According to this timeline, the Fed will end up buying $100bl of treasuries in 2025, a big change from the $500bl of treasury sales in 2024.

    The Fed has been Politicized

    We have been very critical of Yellen’s term at the Treasury, but upon some further reflection, we think it’s really the case that Yellen’s only real issue was acting in the short-term interests of her boss and her party as opposed to thinking longer-term about how the government finances itself on a sustainable basis.

    Her decision to fund the government with T-bills over duration securities and violate long-standing Treasury Department “norms” was incredibly short-sighted, but as someone who works for the President, ORDERS to follow.

    Many have been super critical of her for these decisions because she should know what they would lead to and how really what she (and Powell together) has done is favor asset owners and the wealthy over everyone else in America, exacerbating wealth inequality to precarious levels in this country while still not bringing inflation back down to target. So ultimately, her decisions got her team knocked out of office anyway.

    Looking forward, though, the issue is that there is no one in the government who is really thinking about and acting on behalf of the longer-term interests of the country when it comes to how much debt we are raising and how we are financing the government. The myopia about these decisions to get the existing political party in control through the next election is incredibly concerning.

    The Fed has said this is not their lane; however, they are elected to 14-year terms and are supposed to be above politics. There are things they could have done to offset the politicization of the Treasury. They chose not to, they continue to protect asset holders and the Treasury market, decisions that really just make them become political as well. They could have better neutralized Treasury’s political decisions through more active QT, actually selling securities instead of just rolling them off, not adding to their duration holdings such that the weighted average maturity (WAM) of their positions is longer than Treasury’s own WAM. Powell’s Fed needs to be getting way more criticism than they are currently about these decisions which have made it harder to bring inflation down for the average American.

    So if the Treasury is not going to think long term and the Fed is not going to either (the Fed actually is complicit because they don’t allow any real treasury market dysfunction to exist, which would be the way to deal with these long term issues by having the market / bond vigilantes do their thing), then who will? This is a problem, the bond market is starting to figure it out, term premiums are starting to normalize and the new administration will have to make some big decisions early on in their term.

    Maybe @elonmusk and @DOGE can look into this as well. Someone has to!

    *  *  *

    Pick up Larry’s new best-selling book — “When Markets Speak“ – On Amazon today.  

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/01/2025 – 13:20

  • End Of An Era: Ukraine Halts Transit Of Russian Gas To Europe
    End Of An Era: Ukraine Halts Transit Of Russian Gas To Europe

    An era came to a close in Europe on the first day of 2025.

    Russian gas exports via Soviet-era pipelines running through Ukraine came to a halt on New Year’s Day, marking the end of five decades of Moscow’s dominance over Europe’s energy markets, as well as cheap gas that kept Germany’s economy humming.

    The gas had kept flowing despite nearly three years of war, but Russia’s gas firm Gazprom said it had stopped at 0500 GMT after Ukraine refused to renew a transit agreement as we previously noted.

    According to Reuters, the widely expected stoppage is unlikely to impact prices for consumers in the European Union – unlike in 2022, when falling supplies from Russia sent prices to record highs, worsened a cost-of-living crisis and hit the bloc’s competitiveness – however, that is a rather naive statement since European nat gas prices have been rising all year and closed 2024 more than doubling from their February lows. They will only keep rising now.

    The last few European buyers of Russian gas via Ukraine, such as Slovakia and Austria, had already arranged alternative (and far more expensive) supply, while Hungary will keep receiving Russian gas via the TurkStream pipeline under the Black Sea. But Transdniestria, a breakaway pro-Russian region of Ukraine’s neighbor Moldova also reliant on the transit flows, cut off heating and hot water supplies to households early on Wednesday. Local energy company Tirasteploenergo urged residents to dress warmly, hang blankets or thick curtains over windows and balcony doors, and use electric heaters.

    The European Commission said the EU had prepared for the cut-off.

    Russia and the former Soviet Union spent half a century building up a major share of the European gas market, which at its peak stood at around 35%.

    But the EU has slashed its dependence on Russian energy since the start of the war in Ukraine by buying more piped gas from Norway and LNG from Qatar and the United States.

    “The European gas infrastructure is flexible enough to provide gas of non-Russian origin,” a spokesperson for the Commission said. “It has been reinforced with significant new LNG (liquefied natural gas) import capacities since 2022.”

    The biggest beneficiary of said LNG imports is, of course, the US which has seen its LNG exports to Europe soar since the Ukraine war and since the US blew up the Nordstream pipeline, making (expensive) US sourced LNG one of the few realistic alternatives for Europe. In other words, Europe has gone from relying entirely on cheap Russian gas to relying entirely on expensive US LNG.

    Source: EIA

    Ukraine, which refused to extend the transit deal under pressure from the vegetable in the White House (whose son was recently pardoned for any crimes starting around the time Hunter Biden was appointed to the board of Ukraine’s energy giant Burisma), said Europe had already made the decision to abandon Russian gas.

    Combined pipeline routes from Russia delivered a record high 201 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas to Europe in 2018. The number however ground to a halt after the Ukraine war; the Nord Stream route across the Baltic Sea to Germany was blown up by the US in 2022 and the Yamal-Europe pipeline via Belarus has also shut. Russia shipped about 15 bcm of gas via Ukraine in 2023, down from 65 bcm when the last five-year contract began in 2020.

    “We stopped the transit of Russian gas. This is a historic event. Russia is losing its markets, it will suffer financial losses,” Ukraine’s Energy Minister German Galushchenko said in a statement.

    While Ukraine’s propaganda is understandable – Russia long ago found alternative end markets – nobody will suffer as much as Germany.

    As Bloomberg’s Stephen Stapczynski wrote, “Cheap Russian gas was the backbone of some European economies for essentially half a century. That’s now ending. And Europe is set to face higher-for-longer gas prices.” One needs only to look at the ongoing collapse of Germany’s economy to observe this in real time.

    And some more context from the Bloomberg analyst who writes that Russia provided half of Germany’s gas in 2021. It’s now zero, and so “due in part to the loss of Russian energy and other factors, Germany’s economy is 5% smaller than it would have been if the pre-pandemic growth trend had been maintained.”

    Ukraine, of course, is also a loser: the country that has become a deep state testing bed for World War 3, will lose up to $1 billion a year in transit fees from Russia. To help offset the impact, it will quadruple gas transmission tariffs for domestic consumers from Wednesday, which could cost the country’s industry more than 1.6 billion hryvnias ($38.2 million) a year.

    The company halted supply to Austria’s OMV in mid-November over a contractual dispute but in recent weeks Russian gas has been reaching Austria via Slovakia at a rate of around 200 gigawatt hours (GWh) per day. For Jan. 1, only about 7 GWh per day is expected to flow from Slovakia to Austria, Austrian energy regulator E-Control said.

    Slovakia’s main gas buyer SPP said it would supply its customers mainly via pipelines from Germany and also Hungary, but would face additional transit costs.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/01/2025 – 12:15

  • Gold In 2025? Tragically Predictable
    Gold In 2025? Tragically Predictable

    Authored by Matthew Piepenburg via VonGreyerz.gold,

    Another year is ending, which means it’s time to look back in order to better look forward.

    For 2025, I see no other realistic option or scenario ahead other than a weaker dollar and rising gold.

    This is not “selling my book,” it’s just a common-sense approach to the realities of history, debt markets and the signals of my often-repeated mantra that can’t be repeated enough, namely: “The bond market is the thing.”

    Below, we see why.

    To some, of course, the bond market is boring, but let’s keep it simple, because if you understand government debt, you see things with an almost eerie clarity.

    So, let’s start with a brief, debt-based look back.

    Looking Back

    In my year-end report for 2023, we saw the coming events of 2024 fairly clearly.

    This was not the result of genius or tarot cards, but just a blunt understanding of debt.

    Predictable Rate Cuts

    I said Powell would cut rates in 2024. He did precisely that. How did I know? Did Powell tell me so?

    No, the bond market did.

    Predictably Failed War on Inflation

    Powell cut rates in 2024 because Uncle Sam (then at $34T in debt) would not and could not afford his failed yet admittedly dis-inflationary “higher for longer” rate policy to “beat” inflation—which I said he would never beat, and he never did.

    Period.

    Instead, Powell just took the CPI down in 2023 by gutting the middle class with a rate-hike-driven and hence demand-killing (dis-inflationary) recession that he then refused to call a recession.

    Predictable Recession Forces

    But I said the US would not be entering a recession in 2024, because it was ALREADY in a recession—and gave every proof of the same—from the blunt math of the Conference Board of Leading Indicators to the Oliver Anthony Indicator.

    Predictable Bond Dumping

    As for US government bonds, I said the world would dump rather than buy them, which is precisely what they’ve been doing all year—with its traditional best buyers (China and Japan) leading the way.

    Again, was this psychic genius?

    Hardly.

    It was just accepting the fact that the rest of the world no longer loves a weaponized IOU from an indebted issuer of bonds with a finite duration yet infinite supply.

    Predictable Gold Spike

    Instead, I said the smart investors, nations and central banks of 2024 would choose gold (a finite asset of infinite duration) as a far superior reserve asset than the UST (in infinite asset of finite duration).

    This, I said, would send gold (“the brightest star on the tree”) much higher.

    And that’s precisely what gold did in 2024—hitting record nominal highs in all currencies, including the USD.

    Predictable Stock Bubble

    I also said the unavoidable rate cuts to come would take the already grossly over-valued S&P higher in 2024, which is, again precisely what followed.

    I saw this not because of “insider knowledge” or brilliant market instincts, but sadly (and simply) because I knew that today’s pathetically centralized markets are as predictable as Pavlov’s dogs: They go up when the Fed is dovish (2024) and down when the Fed is hawkish (2022).

    In short, in that year-end article as well as subsequent early-year interviews, I had to plug my nose while simultaneously announcing “Risk on!”

    So, there we/you have it, when looking ahead into 2024 at the end of 2023, we could see with a common-sense understanding of debt and bond market forces that: 1) the Fed would cut rates, 2) the inflation war would be lost, 3) a recession was in hand, 4) nations would dump unloved USTs, and 5) gold would rise on central bank buying and 6) the stock bubble would fatten.

    Again, see this date-stamped “psychic power” for yourselves.

    Looking Forward

    Which brings us now to the year ahead. 2025.

    Once again, we need no crystal balls, direct lines to Wall Street insiders or romantic dinners with Jerome Powell to see the direction of market forces, economic realities or gold’s now secular direction.

    Instead, we only need to understand the debt market, because, and I’ll say it again: The bond market is the thing.

    Debt Rising, As Predicted…

    When I wrote last year’s “year-ahead” report, US public debt was $34T.

    As of now (and as expected), this appalling number is comfortably racing past $37T as Uncle Sam continues its fantasy (debt addiction) of spending far more than it takes in via tax receipts or GDP.

    Such debt numbers, in the backdrop of an embarrassingly fat $130T global bond market, makes things, well, predictable…

    History Rhymes—Weaker Dollar Predictable…

    History, I say over and over, is far more instructive and honest than politicos, pundits, bankers and market makers.

    And history confirms, without exception, that all debt-soaked nations (and power-hungry leaders) inevitably face a moment of reckoning when the only way to “solve” its self-created debt crisis (usually by excessive spending and grotesque military over-reach) is via the frog-boil debasement of the currency by which its citizens otherwise measure their wealth.

    This, of course, is bad for long-term bond holders, paper currency savers and those who misunderstand the difference between nominal and real (inflation-adjusted) returns—i.e., those who refuse to see what history makes clear, namely: Debt Destroys Nations.

    On the other hand, history is very kind to gold, and regardless of whether its spot price goes up or down in a period of months or quarters, it’s longer-term direction will go higher, much, much higher.

    Why?

    Let’s dig in…

    The Fed’s Real Mandate: The Bond Market

    When an unconstitutional central bank (created by a cabal of global bankers with a penchant for just embarrassing self-interest) becomes the unofficial fourth branch of government, you can be sure its real motives are not “employment and inflation” efficiency.

    The Fed’s real motive is banks, bankers, power and credit management.

    Or stated even more simply, the Fed’s real mandate is making sure the bond market, the rotten debt wind beneath our economic wings, does not die.

    The Fed’s Real Poison: Currency Debasement

    But how does a central bank keep its sovereign bond market alive, if less and less nations and investors trust or want those bonds, given the nation’s embarrassing bar tab?

    Well, it’s simple: The central bank can mouse-click its own inflationary money out of thin air to pay for its debt sins.

    It does this by magically printing trillions to buy its own unwanted bonds in order to keep bond yields down, because rising bond yields are the actual rates by which Uncle Sam must otherwise pay his criminally negligent debt.

    If you understand this, you understand more than most.

    And at current (fatal and unsustainable) debt levels, it is literally a matter of national survival to keep those yields compressed, which means it’s literally a matter of national survival to expand (i.e. debase) the M2 money supply to “inflate away” a now undeniable debt crisis.

    In other words, the bond market is “saved” at the expense of the purchasing power of the currency.

    Or even more to the point, those in power stay in power at the expense of their citizens’ wealth, as inflation is nothing more than an invisible tax.

    In short, and regardless of the DXY’s “relative strength,” 2025 will see a weaker dollar in order to monetize its debts and make a slow but needed dent in its 125% debt/GDP ratio.

    It’s just that, well predictable…

    And since gold is nature’s physical money rather than Powell’s paper money, its natural direction north is equally predictable.

    Trump: Making the Dollar Weak Again

    Trump wants a weaker dollar. Jake Sullivan wants a weaker dollar. Heck, Yellen has been wanting a weaker dollar even while Powell was taking it higher during his failed 2022-23 “higher for longer” ruse-war against inflation.

    Yet the DXY has been climbing since his election.

    Can the dollar be saved? Is the dollar stronger than the Fed, the US Treasury Department or the White House?

    Well, yes and no.

    Realpolitik & Who’s Really in Charge in DC?

    If one starts with what I believe is the correct premise that a currency will always be sacrificed to save the politically essential debt market, then its fairly safe to assume the USD will be no exception.

    The only question today is who really has the power in DC to sacrifice the greenback?

    Even the most true-blue democrat has to at least wonder out loud if Biden was ever really in charge of any policy or decision in the last four years.

    The fatal decision, for example, to weaponize the UST/USD during the Putin sanctions (love or hate him) was undoubtedly a decision directed by the Department of Defense and the ever more powerful, bloated and centralized (but not so intelligent) intel circles of the “swamp.”

    As Eisenhower so wisely warned in hisfarewell address, the military industrial complex has become more powerful than the democratic principles of our founding fathers, and thus it’s hard to imagine any significant cuts in military spending or military “freedom spreading.”

    But as I recently wrote at some length, when a nation’s interest expense exceeds its military budget, that nation is ipso facto in open decline.

    Given that debt levels and deficit spending are skyrocketing at the same time war drums and military spending is doing the same, it doesn’t require psychic powers to predict more war spending ahead, and hence more currency debasement to pay for it.

    What About DOGE?

    Whatever one thinks about Vivek, Trump or Musk, they are quite unlikely to ignore their promise to pink-slip large swaths of government jobs and bureaucratic over-spending in DC, ushering in possibly as much as $2T in otherwise needed spending cuts in the next 2 years.

    Ok, fine. Spending cuts help reduce the deficit to GDP cancer.

    But let’s not forget that 25% of US GDP comes from the Federal government.

    If DOGE starts killing jobs in DC, that’s a bullet to the head of GDP and a lot of unemployed workers with mortgages and car loans sliding into an over-levered nation.

    The Only Option is a Weaker Dollar

    In other words, spending cuts are gonna be expensive.

    They’re also gonna be inflationary. And more to the point, they’re gonna kill GDP, which means deficits will go up rather than down if DOGE gets into full gear with too strong a dollar.

    Stated more simply: The risks and costs associated, ironically, with cutting spending, will only succeed if the USD is weaker rather than stronger when the pink slips start flying.

    And what better way to weaken the USD then stapling interest rates to zero while simultaneously printing money to the moon?

    That, as I see it today, is the only card DOGE and the new administration has to play going forward.

    Anything less than a weaker dollar will kill any chance of Trump avoiding a lame duck status within his first 2 years, and Trump hates to be, well lame…

    But regardless of who is in the White House, the Fed, the Department of Treasury or the dark halls of the Department of Defense, the realities of math and history tell us all we need to know.

    Tragic Lessons, Tragic Predictions

    Again, and without exception, EVERY debt-soaked nation, empire and regime throughout history has been forced to debase its money and gut-punch its people in order to save its crown.

    Oh, and go to war…

    And that is where the USA and USD stands today: Out of options other than a debased currency.

    DC can cut spending, yes, but it can’t cut enough to put a dent that matters without expanding its money supply and debasing its purchasing power.

    It’s as tragically simple now as “inflate or die,” and sadly, gold therefore has nowhere to go but up simply because paper money has no choice but to go down.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/01/2025 – 11:40

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