How the State Is Buying the Economy and Reshaping the Global Monetary System “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”— John Adams A few weeks ago, I woke with thoughts about Trump that I…
How the Fed Bails Out the World With Your Savings “How did you go bankrupt? Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” — Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises The Man Who Downgraded America In August 2011, Deven Sharma did something unprecedented. As president of Standard & Poor’s—one of the three major…
Wars. Waste. Wall Street. Welfare. “The economy doesn’t work for you — it works to extract from you.” —Michael Hudson Financialization is a word you have probably heard in economic news, but its true meaning is rarely explained. The popular media treats it as the natural growth of finance in…
How the Law of Reversal Is Remaking the Middle East “The Middle East is no more. Welcome to West Asia.” —Mohammed Soliman The post-Cold War regional order has entered a period of systemic collapse. That’s the verdict from Mohammed Soliman, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and one…
“The difficulty lies not in the new ideas, but in escaping the old ones.” — John Maynard Keynes If you have a 401(k), buy gas, or wonder why your grocery and utility bills keep rising, look no further than the invisible machine running our global economy. For most of the…
Gold, yuan, and the end of dollar rule “He who owns the gold makes the rules.” — Anonymous A reader on Sunday’s post mentioned The Wizard of Oz. That single word—Oz—sent me back to an essay I wrote over two years ago called The Land of Ounces. I went back…
A Three-Part Mini-Series — Part Two “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens.” — Genesis 11:4 Every tower begins with a promise. People surrender tangible wealth—time, money, labor, health—in exchange for the promise of something greater. This essay traces one of…
From 2018 to the present “The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.” — Winston Churchill Sometimes it pays to go back and read things I’ve written before. It sheds new light. In my post Things Are Not as They Appear, I traced the long…
Three Forces & the 1983 Pattern That Explain It All “Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.” — Winston Churchill If you follow markets, you’ve probably seen the headlines: Gold down nearly 20% in two months. Bombs are falling in the Middle East. Oil is above $100 a…
“Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” — Albert Einstein My oldest son graduated with honors in mechanical engineering in May 2025—and still doesn’t have a full-time job. He moved back home and spends his days sending out applications between rebuilding…
“Outstanding, sophisticated, and mesmerizing…a spiritual intrigue similar to Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.” —ForeWord Reviews