Trump’s role in the staggering rise of the world’s oldest currency

Sell the dollar, buy gold. Few investment strategies have worked better than this over the first year of Donald Trump’s second presidency, and it looks set to continue that way.

In the past year, the dollar has undergone its worst overall devaluation since the 1970s. At the same time, the price of gold has surged nearly 75pc to record highs.

No commodity acts better than gold as insurance against inflation, financial instability and geopolitical turmoil.

Call it “Trump Derangement Syndrome” if you like, but financial markets are increasingly betting on all three.

Almost everything the Trump White House does seems deliberately designed to undermine the dollar, last weekend’s renewed attack on the independence of the Federal Reserve being only the latest example.

None of it makes any sense, including the almost certainly hollow promise to cap credit card charges.

Price controls? Milton Friedman will be turning in his grave.

Read the rest here.

Squatting Isn’t a Housing Policy. It’s Theft

In October last year, Absolum, age 18, finally got to visit the $115,000 home. But as he approached it, he realized something was wrong — someone was already living in the house.

Absolum called the police, who told him there was nothing they could do. The family living in the house had been scammed into believing they were renting it, and Absolum would have to go to court to evict the squatters.

“He was a victim once, and he’s a victim again,” his mother, Avril Absolum, told the Baltimore Banner in an article published this week. “He did the right thing. And there were people in his house.”

The case is pending in court, and Absolum still has not moved into his home.

Back in 2024, when “squatting” was having a moment, Republican governors such as Georgia’s Brian Kemp and Florida’s Ron DeSantis signed legislation making it much easier to evict people who took up residence either in people’s homes or in vacant buildings. Yet for around half the country, squatting is still only a civil matter; if a vacationing family returns home to find someone has moved into their residence, it could be months or years before they are able to expel the interlopers.

Read the rest here.

Some Thoughts on Greenland, Don-Roe and Trump's New Imperium

Today, Vice-President Vance is meeting with representatives of Denmark about Greenland. That's not encouraging as Vance has gone out of his way to assume to role of Donald Trump's attack dog. Some thoughts on where we are and the implications of Trump's revival of great power imperialism...

An armed attack by the United States on Denmark (which Greenland is a part of) would have earthquake level ramifications. It would instantly turn the United States into an international pariah, on the same level as Russia. It would effect not just trade and commerce, but also security. Europe would be forced to treat the US as an unfriendly, or even hostile foreign power. It would shatter the transatlantic relationship that has existed since World War II. NATO in its current form would effectively be dead. Most likely the Europeans would cease sharing intelligence with us. It is entirely possible that they would politely tell us to remove our troops from their soil. Beyond Europe, it is likely that pretty much the entire democratic world would look at America as just another predatory great power, not to be trusted, and against which  they need to guard themselves. 

For the moment, we are still living in a one superpower world. This is in large part because, unlike Russia and China, the US has a global military presence. We have bases all over the world that allow us to project power where and when we need to. This is almost entirely because the countries that are hosting our bases like and trust us. This is something unique in history. In the past, great powers with overseas bases almost always were colonial empires. The locals had no real choice about hosting their overlords' troops or ships. As far as I am aware, America is the first global superpower whose power is based on goodwill and a deep trust in our honor and benevolent intentions. The loss of that trust and good will would be catastrophic for global peace and security. But it would also have a devastating effect on our own ability to project military power. Imagine what would happen if the Europeans decide to evict us from the massive bases we operate there. That's the logistical nexus for our capabilities to operate in the Middle East, Africa and of course Europe. The Sixth Fleet is able to dominate the Mediterranean because of the bases we have in Italy and Spain and friendly port facilities in France, Greece and Turkey.  What if Japan, S. Korea and Australia suddenly started rethinking their relationship with us? Yes, we have Hawaii and Guam, but they can't replace the loss of of forward deployed troops and ships near potential hot spots. Guam can't absorb even a fraction of what we have in Japan and S. Korea. China would be able to swallow Taiwan at its leisure. The strategically vital base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean could also be lost. 

In the course of a single year, Donald Trump has taken 80 years worth of good will that this country has accumulated, put it all in a big pile, pored gasoline on it and struck a match. It now remains to be seen if he is actually going to throw the match. All in the name of his ego and desire to put his name on a new American Empire. 

‘Sell America’ trade: Dollar drops, gold surges as Trump’s Fed pressure campaign raises fears about U.S. system

Precious metals are jumping to records. The U.S dollar is dropping. Stocks are choppy.

Monday is all about the “Sell America” trade after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s bombshell announcement that he’s under criminal investigation — which market participants see as a sign of President Donald Trump’s interest in stripping away the central bank’s political independence.

“This is unambiguously risk off,” said Krishna Guha, head of global policy and central bank strategy at Evercore ISI.

Guha said a so-called “Sell America” trade could play out similarly to what was seen in April, when the stock market cratered after Trump first announced his plan for broad and steep tariffs. Global investors will place a higher risk-premium on U.S. assets, while safe-haven trades like gold should take a leg up as a response to the turmoil, he said.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell nearly 500 points at one point in morning trading, while the U.S. dollar index shed 0.3%. But the popular safe-haven trades of gold and silver surged to all-time highs in the session.

“Clearly, the market doesn’t like it,” Ed Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research, told CNBC on Monday.

Read the rest here.

Hegseth pushes legal boundaries in feud with Kelly

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is forgoing a promised court-martialing and taking a behind-closed-doors track to attempt to punish Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.).

The administrative move — which seeks to reduce Kelly’s retirement rank and military pension — is the latest in the bitter back-and-forth between the Trump administration and the retired Navy captain after he joined five other Democratic lawmakers in a November video reminding service members that they were obligated to refuse illegal orders.

While Hegseth is taking Kelly into uncharted legal waters, using an action typically meant to scrutinize service members’ active-duty conduct, a Pentagon packed with President Trump loyalists could unfairly tip the scales against the Arizona Democrat, according to military law experts.  

“The bottom line is, this is not lawful,” Rachel VanLandingham, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and former judge advocate, said of Hegseth’s bid to reduce Kelly’s rank under the military code. “It’s just never been done.”

Hegseth on Monday issued a letter of censure to Kelly, claiming the senator’s actions were prejudicial to good order and discipline. The letter kicks off the proceedings against Kelly, with Navy Secretary John Phelan to make a recommendation to Hegseth within 45 days as to whether a reduction in retired grade is warranted. Hegseth will then decide if he will reduce Kelly’s grade.

Hegseth is basing the proceedings under 10 U.S. Code § 1370(f), which determines when a reduction in retirement grade is allowed. Under such law, Phelan is solely responsible for the grade reduction recommendation, with no board involved, according to Todd Huntley, a retired Navy captain and former judge advocate.

That gives the relatively new Navy secretary, a Trump loyalist, an oversized influence on how the saga may play out. The founder of the private investment firm Rugger Management LLC, Phelan was a major contributor to Trump’s presidential campaign in 2024, giving more than $800,000 to the then-candidate’s joint fundraising committee in April that year. 

Read the rest here.

Trump Threatens to Take Greenland ‘the Hard Way’

President Trump again threatened on Friday to forcibly annex Greenland, saying that he was “going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not.”

In a White House event discussing his plans to have American companies exploit Venezuela’s vast oil reserves under the threat of a military blockade, Mr. Trump advanced an imperialist vision of American foreign policy, where the U.S. must dominate strategically important neighboring countries because of the perceived possibility that rival powers might do so first.

“If we don’t do it, Russia or China will take over Greenland,” Mr. Trump said, falsely suggesting that Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark, was surrounded by Chinese and Russian warships. Russia and China are active in the Arctic Circle, but Greenland is not ringed by their ships, and the United States has a military base on Greenland.

Mr. Trump delivered an ominous warning to Danish and Greenlandic officials, who have consistently opposed the president’s plans to take the island: “I would like to make a deal the easy way, but if we don’t do it the easy way we’re going to do it the hard way.”

The United States’ taking Greenland by force would rip apart the central agreement that underpins the NATO military alliance, of which Denmark and the United States are both founding members.  Under that treaty, an attack on any member is treated as an attack on all members.

But Mr. Trump dismissed that central principle of the alliance as he explained why he wanted to annex Greenland, suggesting that he would defend the island only if the United States were to govern the territory directly.

“When we own it, we defend it,” Mr. Trump said. “You don’t defend leases the same way. You have to own it.”

Read the rest here.

Is the far right embracing imperialism?

The U.S. administration’s capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and President Donald Trump’s plans to open that country’s oil reserves to major energy companies has sparked a resurgence of pro-colonialist sentiment among some prominent figures inside the White House and the broader MAGA political movement.

“Not long after World War II the West dissolved its empires and colonies and began sending colossal sums of taxpayer-funded aid to these former territories (despite have already made them far wealthier and more successful),” White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, one of the aides Trump has tasked with overseeing the Venezuelan government, wrote on X the day after American forces raided Maduro’s compound and brought him to the U.S. for trial on a series of charges.

“The West opened its borders, a kind of reverse colonization, providing welfare and thus remittances, while extending to these newcomers and their families not only the full franchise but preferential legal and financial treatment over the native citizenry,” Miller wrote. “The neoliberal experiment, at its core, has been a long self-punishment of the places and peoples that built the modern world.”

The ode to colonialism, delivered by an aide who has been described as Trump’s id, comes as Venezuela’s stability is in question and Trump has cast his eyes on Colombia, Cuba and Greenland — two independent nations and one large territory that has long belonged to Denmark.

Miller’s take is at odds with most mainstream scholarship on the topic of colonialism, not to mention the ethos of political self-determination and economic independence that fueled the American revolution. In the journal Philosophy and Public Affairs, University of Arizona professors Ritwik Agrawal and Allen Buchanan wrote in February that the “fundamental wrong” at the heart of the “immorality of colonialism” is “colonizers regarded the colonized as incapable of managing their own affairs, in effect relegating them to the status of minors or mentally incompetent adults.”

Read the ret here.

Trump and Clausewitz vs Thomas Aquinas and the Post 1945 World Order

“War,” the Prussian military thinker Carl von Clausewitz wrote, “is a mere continuation of policy by other means.” If there is one line that virtually every Army officer learns from Clausewitz’s posthumously published 1832 book, “On War,” it’s that description of the purpose of armed conflict.

Those words were among the first that popped into my head when I woke up Saturday morning to the news that the American military had attacked Venezuela; seized its dictator, Nicolás Maduro; and brought him to the United States to face criminal charges.

The reason those words occurred to me was simple: The attack on Venezuela harks back to a different time, before the 19th-century world order unraveled, before two catastrophic world wars and before the creation of international legal and diplomatic structures designed to stop nations from doing exactly what the United States just did.

One of the most important questions any nation must decide is when — and how — to wage war. It’s a mistake, incidentally, to view Clausewitz as an amoral warmonger. He wasn’t inventing the notion he describes; he was describing the world as it was. His statement is a pithy explanation of how sovereign states have viewed warfare for much of human history.

When a strong state operates under the principle that war is just another extension of policy, it is tempted to operate a bit like a mob boss. Every interaction with a weaker nation is tinged in some way with the threat of force: Nice little country you have there — shame if something happened to it.

This is not fanciful. In a telephone conversation with The Atlantic’s Michael Scherer, President Trump threatened Venezuela’s new leader, Delcy Rodríguez, who served as Maduro’s vice president. “If she doesn’t do what’s right,” Trump said, “she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.”

Diplomacy and economic pressure are almost always still a first resort for powerful nations, but if they fail to achieve the intended results, well, you can watch footage from the American strike in Venezuela to know what can happen next.

But the Clausewitzian view isn’t the only option for nations and their leaders. There is a better model for international affairs, one that acknowledges the existence of evil and the reality of national interests but also draws lines designed to preserve peace and human life.

Carl von Clausewitz, meet Thomas Aquinas.

Read the rest here.

Greenland Next?

Donald Trump has set his sights on a US takeover of Greenland after capturing Nicolas Maduro and saying he would run Venezuela.

“We do need Greenland, absolutely,” the US president told The Atlantic magazine, adding that the Danish territory was “surrounded by Russian and Chinese ships”.

He said officials in his administration would decide what happened to Greenland, which Mr Trump has claimed the US must annex for its security.

“We need it for defence,” he said of Greenland.

Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister, urged Mr Trump to “stop the threats”, adding that Greenland is “not for sale”.

“The US has no right to annex any of the three nations in the Danish kingdom,” she said, pointing out that Denmark already has a defence agreement with America, which gives it access to Greenland, and that Copenhagen had boosted its investment in the Arctic region’s security.

“I would therefore strongly urge the United States to stop the threats against a historically close ally and against another country and another people who have very clearly said that they are not for sale,” she added.

Jens-Frederik Nielsen, the prime minister of Greenland, earlier on Sunday rebuked the Trump administration, calling it “disrespectful” and saying that the territory was “not for sale”.

He was referring to an image posted on social media by Katie Miller, the wife of Mr Trump’s deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, showing the map of Greenland painted with the US flag and captioned “SOON”.

Ulf Kirtsersson, the prime minister of Sweden, said on X: “It’s only Denmark and Greenland that have the right to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland. Sweden fully stands up for our neighbouring country.” 

The mission to capture Mr Maduro has triggered concerns about further US military operations in the Western hemisphere, which the Trump administration views as part of America’s sphere of influence.

A US invasion of Greenland is deemed unlikely by analysts who point out that the Danish territory is a part of the Nato alliance along with the United States.

However, the renewed threats are likely to alarm European leaders as the American split with the continent grows.

Read the rest here.

After Venezuela, Trump hints the entire hemisphere is in play

As President Donald Trump announced Saturday that the U.S. would “run” Venezuela for now, he and top aides made clear that the U.S. may not stop there — and demanded that the rest of the world take note.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said Venezuela’s long-time dictator, Nicolas Maduro, captured in an overnight raid and extradited to New York on Saturday to be indicted on narco-conspiracy charges, “had a chance” to leave on his own before becoming the latest example of a leader paying a high price for not responding to Trump’s pressure.

“He effed around and he found out,” Hegseth said of Maduro.

The menacing comments were interwoven with specific threats toward three other countries that could soon be in the administration’s sights: Colombia, Cuba and Mexico.

The rest of the hemisphere is paying attention, and attempting to push back on Trump through condemnations of the strike itself and warnings of what could come next.

“All nations of the region must remain alert, as the threat hangs over all,” the Cuban government said in a statement.

The administration’s warnings, meanwhile, are getting bolder and more definitive. Trump again accused Colombia’s president of “making cocaine” and reaffirmed his past threats that he “does need to watch his ass.” He predicted “we will be talking about Cuba.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered a more sinister threat of future American action.

“Look, if I lived in Havana and I worked in the government, I’d be concerned,” Rubio said.

Earlier during a phone interview with Fox News, Trump warned that “something will have to be done about Mexico,” stating that he’s asked President Claudia Sheinbaum if she wants the U.S. military’s “help” in rooting out drug cartels.

“American dominance in the Western hemisphere will never be questioned again,” Trump said.

Read the rest here.

As New York goes hard left, San Francisco edges back towards the center

...It’s a bicoastal split screen that speaks to a realignment of America’s progressive power base. In New York, Mamdani, a democratic socialist who took office on Thursday, was swept into power on promises of free buses, childcare and widespread rent freezes. In San Francisco, Mayor Daniel Lurie, an heir to the billion-dollar Levi Strauss fortune, has focused on austerity measures, beefing up policing, reviving a hollowed-out downtown core and supporting the booming artificial-intelligence industry.

San Francisco, once an incubator to a host of modern progressive ideas from the LGBTQ+-rights movement to ethnic studies in classrooms and protections for undocumented immigrants, has changed. Even progressives acknowledge it isn’t the liberal trendsetter of yesteryear.

That shift has already upended the national political narrative around the city. For decades a lefty caricature and punching bag for conservatives, pundits and politicians on the right are now racing to make Mamdani the face of the Democratic Party in the midterms. Meanwhile, moderates in San Francisco, while celebrating their victories, hold their city up as a warning sign for what they cast as the excesses of the left.

“The message is you can take things too far,” said Nancy Tung, chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party and a moderate who’s helped lead the city’s centrist shift. She added, “Don’t expect that voters won’t notice forever.”

Or as Chris Larsen, a billionaire crypto titan who has been pouring money into local elections, put it: “The cost issue was the overriding thing in New York. Whereas, in San Francisco, it was cleaning the mess that the far left created over the last decade … It was safe, clean streets and getting back our reputation, which I think we largely have now.”

Read the rest here

Trump says US will ‘run’ Venezuela, control oil production

President Trump said Saturday that the U.S. will “run” Venezuela until a transition takes place following the capture of the country’s President Nicholas Maduro. 

“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition,” Trump said during a news conference from his Mar-a-Lago resort.

“We don’t want to be involved with having somebody get in and we have the same situation that we had for the last long period of years,” he added.

When asked to clarify specifically who will run Venezuela, Trump said the U.S. will be running it with a team...

...The president went on to note that the U.S. would also take control of its oil production.

“As everyone knows, the oil business in Venezuela has been a bust, a total bust for a long period of time,” Trump said. “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country.” 

His remarks come hours after the U.S. arrested Maduro and his wife on narco-terrorism charges amid a strike on Venezuela overnight. The capture took place just days after the Venezuelan strongman said he was open to conducting negotiations with the U.S. regarding drug trafficking and oil. 

Read the rest here.

The Way We Were: Doylestown PA mid-1950s

2026

Being honest, 2025 is not a year I will look back on with much fondness. Wishing everyone a very happy and prosperous new year.

Russian Casualties Continue to Rise

Over the past 10 months, Russian losses in the war with Ukraine have been growing faster than any time since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022, BBC analysis suggests.

As peace efforts intensified in 2025 under pressure from US President Donald Trump's administration, 40% more obituaries of soldiers were published in Russian sources compared with the previous year.

Overall, the BBC has confirmed the names of almost 160,000 people killed fighting on Russia's side in Ukraine.

BBC News Russian has been counting Russian war losses together with independent outlet Mediazona and a group of volunteers since February 2022. We keep a list of named individuals whose deaths we were able to confirm using official reports, newspapers, social media, and new memorials and graves.

The real death toll is believed to be much higher, and military experts we have consulted believe our analysis of cemeteries, war memorials and obituaries might represent 45-65% of the total.

That would put the number of Russian deaths at between 243,000 and 352,000.

Read the rest here.

Lessons of the Heritage Foundation's Implosion

Over the last two days, there has been a massive wave of resignations and departures of scholars and staff from the Heritage Foundation, once one of the nation's most respected conservative think tanks. Those leaving include the leadership of Heritage's Meese Center for Legal and Judicial  Studies,  leading economic policy scholars, my former student and Volokh co-blogger Josh Blackman (editor of the Heritage Guide to the Constitution), and more. This wave of departures follows in the wake of others, such as that of Princeton Princeton professor and prominent conservative political theorist Robert George, who resigned from the Heritage Board last month. Many of the Heritage refugees have moved to Advancing American Freedom (AAF), an organization led by former Vice President Mike Pence.

The immediate cause of the exodus was Heritage President Kevin Roberts' defense of anti-Semitic "influencer" Tucker Carlson and his support of Nick Fuentes, an even more virulent anti-Semite. As it has become clear that Roberts refuses to break his ties with Carlson and unequivocally condemn right-wing anti-Semitism, and that the Heritage board won't remove Roberts,  more and more people have left Heritage.

Read the rest here.

Army chief says Switzerland can't defend itself from full-scale attack

ZURICH, Dec 27 (Reuters) - Switzerland cannot defend itself against a full-scale attack and must boost military spending given rising risks from Russia, the head of its armed forces said.

The country is prepared for attacks by "non-state actors" on critical infrastructure and for cyber attacks, but its military still faces major equipment gaps, Thomas Suessli told the NZZ newspaper.

"What we cannot do is defend against threats from a distance or even a full-scale attack on our country," said Suessli, who is stepping down at the end of the year.

"It's burdensome to know that in a real emergency, only a third of all soldiers would be fully equipped," he said in an interview published on Saturday.

Switzerland is increasing defence spending, modernising artillery and ground systems and replacing ageing fighter jets with Lockheed Martin F-35As.

But the plan faces cost overruns, while critics question spending on artillery and munitions amid tight federal finances.

Suessli said attitudes towards the military had not shifted despite the war in Ukraine and Russian efforts to destabilise Europe.

He blamed Switzerland's distance from the conflict, its lack of recent war experience and the false belief that neutrality offered protection.

Read the rest here.

Argentina's Congress approves 2026 budget, first under Milei

BUENOS AIRES, Dec 26 - Argentina's Congress passed the 2026 budget on Friday, the first approved by legislators since President Javier Milei took office in late 2023.

The budget, passed 46 votes to 25 with one abstention, includes spending of $102 billion (148 billion Argentine pesos) and projects South America's second-biggest economy will grow 5% with inflation at 10.1%. The bill projects a primary budget surplus equivalent to 1.2% of the gross domestic product.

The 2023 budget was the last one passed by Congress. During the first two years of his term, Milei's government had extended the budget of the previous year without passing a bill in Congress, resulting in sectors being dramatically hit by inflation, which hit an annual rate of almost 300% in April 2024.

According to a report by the Civil Association for Equality and Justice, a Buenos Aires-based think tank, the new budget reflects a 7% increase in real terms from 2025 but a 24.6% drop in real terms compared to the 2023 Congress-approved budget. However, the think tank noted that some inflation projections are significantly higher than the executive branch's forecast.

Milei has ruled with sweeping austerity measures, which have often generated massive protests, and in 2024 Argentina had its first budget surplus in more than a decade. Congress this year overrode Milei's vetoes of bills boosting funding for public universities, pediatric health care and people with disabilities.

While the new budget boosts funding for social services -including health, social security and education - the bump does not compensate for sharp falls over the last several years, the ACIJ report said.

After a strong showing in midterm legislative elections in October, Milei's La Libertad Avanza party gained considerable power in the newly elected Congress, becoming the largest minority in the lower house and increasing its bloc in the Senate. The government hopes that will help it push forward a series of overhauls, including overhauls to the labor and tax systems, in the coming months.

Source

Military Folly: The Trump Class "Battleships"

Trump Announces New Class of Battleships Despite Century of Evidence Proving the Large Warships Are Obsolete

The ‘Trump-class’ battleship faces a large obstacle in its way: Reality

Wealth Tax Floated in California Has Billionaires Thinking of Leaving

Billionaires including Peter Thiel, the tech venture capitalist, and Larry Page, a co-founder of Google, are considering cutting or reducing their ties to California by the end of the year because of a proposed ballot measure that could tax the state’s wealthiest residents, according to five people familiar with their thinking.

Mr. Thiel, 58, who owns a home in the Hollywood Hills and operates a personal investment firm from Los Angeles, has explored opening an office for that firm, Thiel Capital, in another state and spending more time outside California, three of the people said.

Other billionaires who appear to be making moves to decrease their presence in California include Mr. Page, 52, a longtime resident of Palo Alto. He has discussed leaving the state by the end of the year, according to two people briefed on the talks. In mid-December, three limited liability companies associated with Mr. Page filed documents to incorporate in Florida, according to state records.

The moves are being driven by a potential California ballot measure from the health care union, Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, the people said. The proposal calls for California residents worth more than $1 billion to be taxed the equivalent of 5 percent of their assets.

If the measure gains enough signatures to reach the state ballot in November and wins approval, it will retroactively apply to anyone who lived in California as of Jan. 1, 2026. Those with $20 billion in assets who resided in the state on that date would face a one-time tax of $1 billion and have five years to pay it, according to the terms of the measure.

Whether the proposal will reach California’s ballot is far from certain, but some billionaires may be unwilling to take the risk. For Mr. Page, whose net worth is estimated at $258 billion, the measure could result in a one-time tax of more than $12 billion. The tax bill for Mr. Thiel, whose net worth is around $27.5 billion, could be more than $1.2 billion.

Read the rest here.

The History of the British Christmas Pudding

Christmas Liturgy