A recent WNYT/Survey USA poll has the Democratic candidate, Blake Gendebien, leading in the NY-21 congressional race, something we have not seen in these parts since Democrat Bill Owens held the seat from 2009 to 2015.

August 22, 2026 ~ Vol. 70

No one was more surprised than I was when a poll was published last week showing NY-21 Democratic congressional candidate Blake Gendebien ahead of the Trump-endorsed Republican candidate Anthony Constantino by four percentage points. The Albany Times Union interpreted the results:

Times Union Constantino condemns new poll showing Dem leading
Results reveal Gendebien ahead by four points in 21st district
By Alexander MacDougall ~ Staff Writer ~ August 15, 2026

ALBANY — A new poll indicates Democrat Blake Gendebien has a slight lead over Republican Anthony Constantino in the race for New York’s 21st Congressional District seat, a result that Constantino’s campaign has strongly disputed.

I say that no one was more surprised, but in truth I suspect that Gendebien was and I am sure that Constantino was. Predictably, Anthony Constantino, the firebrand Republican candidate and Sticker-Mule CEO from Amsterdam, called the numbers hogwash. More specifically he called on the Federal Communication Commission to investigate the poll sponsor’s “collusion with the Democratic Party”, which he also stated “should be illegal”. Constantino has never been described as being understated but his comments actually did not rise to the levels he has used in the recent past: referring to the news media as “scumbags” or calling his Republican primary opponent, Robert Smullen a “fucking coward” (notably, in a campaign video!) Isn’t it amazing how Trump has normalized this type of behavior? Alex DeGrasse, formerly Elise Stefanik’s spokesperson (or attack dog, depending upon who you are talking to), is now Constantino’s spokesman and chief campaign strategist. He called the poll fraudulent and a scam. Of course he did. I’m guessing that they were both displeased with the results.
One poll does not an election outcome make, but I am coming around to the possibility that it could happen. My Democratic friends in NY-21, on the other hand, are suddenly more optimistic than JETS fans in August.

Past posts on Blake Gendebien and NY-21:

The Race for NY-21 (March 2025)

NY-21 Voters have spoken. (June 2026)

I have covered the voter math and the recent election history of this district in prior essays, and the registration mountain that Gendebien has to climb to win in November is still very steep. In fact, many observers consider the lopsided Republican registration advantage too much to overcome which is why NY-21 is considered solidly “Red”. Unless….

According to the NYS Board of Elections’ most recent head count, as of February there were approximately 79,000 more active Republicans registered in the district than Democrats. (205,573, vs.126,514) Add nine thousand active Conservatives who will likely lean Republican. Unaffiliated voters total 125,614, including me, and swaying those voters is the object of the exercise for Gendebien. In the poll that was released last week, Gendebien was up 19 points (47% / 28%) among those independent voters. He does have a few other things trending in his favor at this writing.

Constantino is a self described Trump acolyte and has been since 2016. This is the guy who constructed a “Vote for Trump” sign on the roof of his office building, just to get the President’s attention. It worked. Trump endorsed Constantino in the NY-21 Republican primary during which he ousted the choice of the Republican committee establishment, conservative NYS Assemblyman Robert Smullen. This did not and does not sit well with many of my “political” Republican friends in NY-21, who knew Smullen personally and liked him. Add to that simmering resentment Trump’s current approval rating which is now lower than any President’s polls in recent history. Importantly for Democrats, Trump’s abysmal approval ratings are tied to the state of the economy, particularly tariffs and inflation, both of which are hitting particularly hard here in the north country. Canadian trade and Canadian tourism is nowhere more important than here along the border with Canada. Trump’s talk of Canada as a 51st state and his assessment of punitive tariffs have resulted in a decline of 25% in Canadian tourism to the US and retaliatory boycotts of US goods, most noticeably distilled products. Gendebien wants to see an end to the antagonism with our neighbors to the north, whereas Constantino supports the President’s tariffs and hard ball methods as good “negotiating tactics”. (If I were advising Gendebien, this—consumer prices, US - Canada relations and tariff “policy”, such as it is—would be my primary talking points over these last ten weeks until the election.)

Lastly, Gendebien benefits from the fact that his opponent is manifestly unqualified and unsuited to represent the district, with the temperament and tactics of a pit bull in a cage match, which, not surprisingly, is something that Constantino actually enjoys doing. (His CV includes a stint as a martial arts fighter.) I’m sure that Democrats have no illusions of convincing 40,000 mostly conservative Republicans to vote for a Democrat, even if he is a likable local farmer, but a Gendebien victory does not require that to happen. All they need to happen in November is for enough Republicans to be sufficiently upset with the candidate who was chosen for them by Donald J. Trump, that they stay home or pass by that race on the ballot. That is the Democrats’ game plan.

I have the same three criteria for supporting any candidate for office.

1. Are they qualified?

2. Do they share my values?

3. Are they an honorable person?

In case of a tie—which one would I rather have a beer with.

Sometimes the choice is hard. Sometimes it’s easy. There will be no need for a tie-breaker in this contest. Six months ago I would have given Gendebien a 10% (read, slim to none) chance of winning this election. Given the specific factors that are influencing NY-21 right now —gas and food prices, Canadian relations, coupled with Trump’s low approval rating, Constantino’s slavish loyalty to Trump—and Constantino’s distasteful gutter politics—I’ll raise the probability to 40%.

I do not get worked up over any one individual poll. On Thursday NYT-13 released another NY-21 poll, conducted by JL Partners, showing Constantino up by 10 points. That polling company is a right of center, British, political advisory group. Nate Silver gives them a B- rating for predictive accuracy.

Compared to the vicissitudes of polling surveys, I personally put more faith in the time honored practice of gauging voter sentiment by a much more accurate measure—campaign yard signs. I conducted my own survey last week, when my wife and I had occasion to drive from Schroon Lake to St. Lawrence University in Canton, two and a half hours away. We counted yard signs for the entire trip. We drove west from the town of Schroon through Minerva, and then Newcomb, northwest through Long Lake and then through Childwold and along the Raquette River through Colton and on to our destination in Canton, the NCPR studios near St. Lawrence University. We counted campaign yard signs all along the way, and then took a ten minute detour to Potsdam to check out last Friday’s Adirondack Auction at Blanchard’s.

I do not include “highway signs” in this survey, the clusters of campaign signs that you see at every Northway entrance. Yard signs displayed at someone’s home are different. It is a commitment. Yard signs require ownership—a personal endorsement—this is my candidate. Highway signs may get more exposure, but as a gauge of voter support yard signs are more closely correlated to votes.

During our trip it became immediately apparent that the tone and tenor of our partisan politics in our very red NY-21 have changed dramatically since the last election. Gone are the Trump banners hanging from houses or plastered to barn walls with clusters of tattered American flags. Also strikingly apparent was the dearth of any yard signs when compared to past election cycles. There were a few in each town, but a dozen, not a hundred. Are people disengaged, or despondent about their options? We counted Blake Gendebien campaign signs for the entire length of our journey—through three counties, scattered with candidates for local court races and town positions. The last leg of the trip was through St. Lawrence County, farm country and admittedly, Blake’s “home turf”, but the disparity in the sign count was striking. During the entire length of our 122 mile trip, we saw absolutely no Constantino yard signs. None. Zero. Nada.

Perhaps my 40% probability of a Gendebien victory is too low? We’ll know in 73 days.

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The three major cell phone service providers are rolling out a major new expansion in north country network coverage that will benefit all users.

August 8, 2026 ~ Vol. 69

North country residents have long endured very spotty cell phone coverage, owing in part to the Adirondack Park Agency’s restrictions on the construction of the requisite cell phone towers to transmit the calls. There are numerous “dead zones” throughout the park, where no cell phone towers are near enough to provide coverage. All of this is about to change as the three major service providers—Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile—have joined forces to launch a constellation of small low earth orbit (LEO) satellites to provide coverage in remote rural areas including the New York north country. They combined their resources to compete with similar services offered through Starlink, a wholly owned subsidiary of SpaceX. Over the next year, north country cell and internet customers will have new services, and new types of services to consider, and it is important to understand the pros and cons of each. Be prepared for a barrage of advertising and solicitations trumpeting the pros—but not the cons—of each of these services.

Providing internet and cell phone coverage to north country residents has been a decades long struggle, hampered by the the mountainous topography of the Adirondacks, a sparse population lacking the scale to attract providers, and Adirondack Park Agency (APA) restrictions on the construction of the towers that traditional cell coverage require. The introduction of “wi-fi calling” on many cell phones in 2015 gave north country cell phone users the opportunity to make calls over their wifi provider’s network, but only if they had a suitable broadband internet provider and the provider’s service was fast enough to handle the transmissions. Satellite internet service at the time was limited to GEO stationary satellite coverage from companies like HughesNet and ViaSat. Those satellites orbit in a fixed stationary location near the equator (0° latitude / 75° longitude). Calls using geostationary satellites have to travel to a satellite over the equator, 22,236 miles high—and back. The latency of that back and forth radio signal, traveling through and being degraded by the atmosphere, is the reason that satellite wifi calls using satellite service providers like HughesNet or ViaSat were less than perfect, and remain sketchy at best when compared to the alternative services. The issue is the latency in the signal that must travel - as a radio wave - to the equator and back. The location of the receiving device was often problematic as radio waves sent from satellites can be obstructed by things like trees and weather and mountains. Here in the Adirondacks, we have lots of trees and mountains. They are nice to look at, but sometimes they do get in the way of radio waves. Anyone trying to listen to SIRIUS Satellite radio as they drive between Keene Valley and St. Huberts on Route 73 knows about this satellite signal-but-mountain-in-the-way dynamic.

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Ten years ago, in 2016, SLIC Network Solutions rolled out their first fiber optic internet service in the town of Long Lake in the Adirondacks of northern New York. The new fiber optic broadband service utilized signals traveling at the speed of light, offering gigabit plus speeds and ultra-low latency (5-20 milliseconds compared to 25 to 600 ms for satellite.) All else being equal, any fiber optic service provides faster service than any satellite service. Fiber optic service in the Adirondacks is supported by a backbone of fiber optic communications cables that run along the Adirondack Northway (Route 87) from downstate up to Canada. Internet data transmitted through this cable is traveling faster, by orders of magnitude, than radio wave transmissions which are diffused and degraded in the atmosphere.

But all else is not always equal. To provide their service, fiber optic service internet providers like SLIC must install their own fiber optic cables along the existing networks of utility poles, alongside the already installed electric and telephone lines. This “last mile” of installation is enormously expensive to build. When SLIC built out the network of fiber optic cables in the town where I live, Schroon Lake, NY, the initial project cost exceeded $2.5 million, to provide service to only 457 homes. The cost per home was over $5,000. Obviously, with an original build out cost that high, it would take decades for a service provider to make back their original investment before they actually made the first penny of profit. New York State provided a grant for the majority of the money to build out a fiber optic network in Schroon Lake and eventually in most of rural New York. (Full disclosure - I served on the Town of Schroon Broadband Internet committee that supported the New York State grant to SLIC.) The New York State grant was actually a “re-grant” program, utilizing an old national FCC fund that had been used to ensure that remote rural residents were provided with residential phone service, from the days of the original rollout of landline phones. Since most people who wanted a land line phone had a phone at that point, the FCC re-purposed that fund from land line phone installations to broadband.

Most homeowners now have access to a fiber optic connection, but some people in remote areas, far from the last utility pole, still lack high speed internet service via a fiber optic connection. They continue to rely on satellites. Even those who have fiber optic service and wifi calling at their homes, lose the signal as soon as they walk beyond the coverage of the house wifi if there is not a cell phone tower nearby. (That wood be me.)

Enter Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite systems. In 2020, Elon Musk’s Starlink system was launched. These satellites, as the name suggests, orbit at a much lower altitude than geostationary satellites, usually at altitudes between 100 and 1200 miles, considerably closer than a GEO’s altitude of 22,000 plus miles. There are also thousands of LEO satellites in orbit so the time for a signal to get to one of them and back is considerably faster than with a geostationary system over the equator. All satellites still depend on a radio signal, so fiber optic systems are still much faster than satellite systems. Satellite systems also required a line of sight from the house to the satellite, so trees and mountains and weather are still issues that fiber optic does not have to contend with. LEO satellites have a slight location advantage over GEO’s, because the angle of transmission, the “elevation angle”, is lower for the Geo-stationary system aiming at the equator, whereas a LEO satellite will generally aim straight up, so trees and mountains are less of a problem. The weather still is.

The good news, and the current news, is that this week a new Verizon / AT&T / T-Mobile “AST SpaceMobile” partnership is scheduled to launch the first of their own constellation of low earth orbit satellites, called “Bluebird”. The consortium will compete directly with Starlink. Unlike Starlink, which requires a proprietary Starlink terminal to operate, these new services will be provided and included on existing phone equipment with satellite capability. Three satellites were scheduled to launch this week, with a total of forty five planned over the next year. The group plans to roll out their own “satellite to cellular” service throughout the continental United States, with an introduction of beta services targeted for late 2026, followed by a full rollout in 2027. If you have a relatively new Apple or Android phone that supports wi-fi calling, you probably already have access to Verizon’s messaging and Emergency SOS service through their existing satellite network. These existing emergency services require a line of sight “clear view of the sky” to function. This new expanded service will employ a new technology that will work indoors.

From PC Magazine:

AST SpaceMobile will work indoors by utilizing low-band cellular frequencies (like 850 MHz) leased from carriers like AT&T and Verizon. These low-band signals travel long distances and easily penetrate building materials and foliage, while massive space-based antennas amplify weak signals so standard indoor phones can connect.

Cell phone customers will soon have access to all phone services over the new Bluebird LEO satellite network to provide coverage when you are outside of traditional cell phone coverage. This improvement will provide a dramatic improvement in rural area cell phone service. For many residents in the Adirondacks, it will provide the first opportunity to have cell service.

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I am old enough to remember using my parents’ single, wall-mounted, land line phone in the kitchen, and having to wait for the people on the shared “party-line” to get off the phone so we could make a call. I remember the excitement of finally getting our own phone line. This will be better than that.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

AT&T’s announcement:

AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon Plan to Launch New Joint Venture that Helps End Dead Zones

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In review, fiber optic broadband is better than low earth orbit (LEO) satellite service, which is better than geostationary (GEO) satellite service, which is better than nothing.

As a general rule: Fiber Optic > LEO > GEO > Nothing.

All to frequently, I see social media posts where people will talk about their own personal cell phone or internet service provider and declare that their provider is the best, and recommend that everyone should subscribe to that particular service. All too often, their well meant recommendations are misinformed. Choosing which type of service you should subscribe to should depend on what you are doing with the service, your location, and your budget. If all that you are doing is checking your emails, satellite—LEO or even GEO—might be working fine for you. If you have people in your household who are into online gaming or they want to stream separate movies simultaneously or you need to download work projects that include managing large data sets or downloading massive graphics files — you want (read, need) a fiber optic connection—if that option is available in your location. Most of us are somewhere in between.

In the meantime, let us celebrate the introduction of this new service providing our most remote rural neighbors with cell phone service and an internet connection. Some of us will only use the new coverage to complement our existing service but for some this will be the first opportunity to use a cell phone or have an internet connection at their home or workplace in the north country. Great news indeed. Spread the word!

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July 25, 2026 ~ Vol. 60

Picking a topic to write about was exceptionally hard this week because there were far too many stories to comment on. I would start to collect some ideas about something that someone in the current administration had done - usually our President - and then a new story would make the headlines that made the first idea seem unimportant. Today you could be reading about how Trump glorified his dear departed friend, Senator Lindsey Graham, where we would explore the ebb and flow of their relationship over the last decade. Ten years ago, during Graham’s brief run for the presidency, he called Trump a “jackass” and a “race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot”. He famously suggested that if the GOP nominated Trump it would “destroy us (the Republican Party)—and we would deserve it.” Indeed. It was one of the very few times that I agreed wholeheartedly with the good Senator. In 2015 I had assured our office’s clients that there was absolutely no chance that the GOP would nominate this reality-show-celebrity-real-estate-huckster as their candidate, and everyone should just chill because there was a zero percent probability that it would ever happen. Prescient, eh?

I was then what came to be known as a Never-Trumper, an opinion forged not from political experiences, but from Trump’s business history and trail of law suits and bankruptcies and defaulted loans and failed investments. Senator Graham was also a Never-Trumper back then (for about a month, and then again for about one day after the Jan 6th insurrection), along with the likes of Ted Cruz and pretty much every other Republican until they were suddenly faced with the dictum of bending the knee—or facing the sword. Few would voluntarily wield their sword against Trump and his new MAGA horde. You can count those who did on one hand - Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney certainly did. Mitt Romney was the one and only Republican Senator that voted to impeach Trump in both 2020 and 2021. Lisa Murkowski did vote to impeach Trump in the post-insurrection 2021 impeachment trial. There were a few Representatives like Ben Sasse, who poked their heads up and said something before they exited the political stage, but for the most part the Republican Party just rolled over and accepted the new leader and new norms. No more balanced budgets, no more “U.S., leader of the free world” with a network of strong alliances. It amazes me that so many of these pols, literally hundreds, have pirouetted 180 degrees from their life long political beliefs and stances and “deeply held” convictions just to be able to stay on the political stage with Donald Trump. I would like to think that if faced with that choice I would have found a new party—or a new career. But that’s all too upsetting to write about so I’m not going to do that.

I thought I should write about Trump getting cropped out of the official FIFA photo of the World Cup Spanish championship team after FIFA President Gianni Infantino (he who awarded Trump the first ever FIFA World Peace Prize) ushered Trump from the set - and out of the shot. You can’t really write an article about that buffoonery, can you, even if it is the President of the United States in the photo—or not.

The photobombing episode wasn’t the President’s first foray into FIFA / World Cup affairs this month. He embarrassed himself and the US team and the country writ large by inserting himself and the office of the President of the United States into a disputed “red card” decision made by an official, which would have resulted in a star US player, Folarin Balogun, being benched in what turned out to be the US team’s last match, against Belgium. Trump insisted that FIFA review the penalty call, which they of course then reversed, which resulted in the un-red-carded striker then being allowed back on the pitch where he proceeded to score exactly as many goals as he would have scored from the bench - nil. And what would the world have thought if the US had actually won that match after the President of the United States intervened to overturn that official’s call and lift Balogun’s suspension? But that story was also just too sordid and embarrassing and upsetting to write about so I decided not to do it.

(If I did write about it I would have to mention that Balogun, the “beneficiary” of Trump’s intervention, is a US “birthright citizen” whose parents were in the US vacationing at the time, visiting from Nigeria - you know, one of Trump’s “S-Hole” countries.) For the most part, the World Cup was a welcome distraction from the headlines coming out of Iran and Ukraine and Washington.

Another headline that was hard to ignore was an update on the Trump family crypto empire, and the staggering amount of money that the Trumps have shoveled into the family coffers at the expense of their followers.

Nearly a Million Investors Lost a Total of $3.8 Billion on Trump Crypto Coin

This Trump-Crypto story is a real head-scratcher for me, particularly when viewed through the prism of my former occupation as an investment advisor. Is this actually happening? And no one is going to jail? Putting aside for the moment the fact that crypto currencies like Bitcoin have zero intrinsic value, or any unique utility when compared to other currency alternatives—other than the secrecy of ownership (popular with drug dealers and other ne’er-do- wells), but Trump-branded crypto-currencies add an entirely new dimension to the absurdity of this crypto marketplace. Astonishingly for me, his followers seem to still be blinded by the fantasy of the pitchman’s promised riches, all promoted from behind the seal of the President of the United States. There ought to be a law. Actually there is a law, and there is possibly going to be another one—the “Clarity Act”, currently bouncing around in Congress, which purports to prohibit government employees (or their spouses and employees) from issuing their own crypto currencies. Democrats object to the current draft of the legislation in part because it calls upon Trump’s Justice Department (read Acting AG Todd Blanche) to enforce the legislation, while the administration has redirected crypto currency oversight and enforcement priorities at the SEC and the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Southern District of NY. What could go wrong?

I object to anyone in government promoting crypto currencies because I have folders full of worthless currencies issued directly by actual banks prior to the establishment of our national Federal Reserve currency, backed by the full faith and credit of the United States following the banking crisis of 1933. I used the old bank notes to decorate my office walls. We have tried this before. It works until it doesn’t. I’ll pass, thank you.

Trump was once a crypto skeptic, but he came around to the new “opportunities” that cryptocurrencies offer, especially if your forte is branding and marketing. The extent of Trump’s fondness for the opportunities in Trump branded crypto coins ($TRUMP) was disclosed this month in his annual financial disclosure statement filing, which revealed that his family has pocketed hundreds of millions of dollars from issuing their own branded coins, along with their ownership interest in a crypto exchange (World Liberty Financial), which brought the family’s take to over $1 billion last year—all businesses that the President promoted on his own social media platform, Truth Social. Investors in the coins lost over $3.8 billion, as the price of the Trump coins plummeted from $75 to $1.76. Trump introduced his first branded crypto-coin exactly three days before his inauguration, to memorialize the event, no doubt, but primarily to capitalize on it. The story is much too upsetting to write about again, but I did write about it when Trump first introduced this scam, err, “investment opportunity” to his followers. At the time I also predicted that this particular grift will be Article One in the Articles of Impeachment that will surely follow any midterm change in Congressional leadership.

There were so many other headlines this week, any one of which would have dominated a news cycle for days in years past. Now they last as long as it takes to read the headline, because a bigger story, about an even bigger scam, is already making news. One such headline lasted for a few hours of the news cycle this week—the announcement that Trump - via his media platform, Truth Social—was going to charge premium pricing to select individuals and companies who would be given advance notice about his White House edicts, via advance Truth Social posts, before the uninformed rest of us were notified of said edicts. Not only is Trump not ashamed of his intentions to disclose insider information, he is announcing the fact that he is going to sell it on the President’s own social media platform! Of course he is. Obviously, this is just another story too upsetting to write about this week.

Canadian wildfires are once again flaring up and impacting our weather patterns in the lower 48. Climate change is a major driver, although science does distinguish between broad trends and individual fires, which may have other localized contributing factors. Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney are back at it, with Trump pointing to Canada’s land management practices as the culprit, citing forest fuel buildup (Trump wants the first floors swept regularly). Climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that climate change has loaded the dice to create the conditions increasing the likelihood of extreme fire weather in Canada.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This week NCPR’s Catherine Wheeler examined how climate change is impacting the north woods right here in the Adirondacks:

How should the Adirondacks prepare for wildfires as the climate changes?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It might be worth reminding folks at this point that one of the players in this Canadian climate change / wildfire story believes the science of climate change (that would be Mark Carney) and one of them thinks that climate change is a hoax (guess who). Trump’s response was as predictable as the sun rising, punishing Canada for their bad behavior by assessing a new 50% tariff on some specific Canadian exports. When the tariffs were imposed, the stated reason given for the tariff was a retaliation for unfair trading practices by the Canadians. But - on July 17, Trump had threatened these tariffs specifically over wildfire smoke, posting that the US had been “invaded” by dirty air from Canadian wildfires and that pollution costs “must of necessity be added” to Canada’s tariffs, blaming what he called Canada’s “willful negligence” on forest management.

But when the actual 50% tariff proclamations were signed three days later on July 20, administration officials told reporters that those tariffs were not related to the wildfires — the official justification was now trade discrimination over autos, dairy, and alcohol. My guess is that someone reminded Trump that the Supreme Court had already declared his prior arbitrary tariff policy unconstitutional and that he might want to find an actual “trade” reason for the new one. In the meantime, that new Canadian hockey stick that you have been eyeing will probably cost you about 50% more.

Headlines updating recent events in Iran are, more often than not, the most difficult to read, and to process. According to the White House, we have already won, or we will win imminently because “the Iranians are begging to negotiate”, or we are continuing to bomb Iran until their nuclear capabilities—the same capabilities that we have already obliterated, twice—are actually obliterated. One story this week disclosed an Israeli Intelligence report stating that Iran had moved centrifuges and part of its stockpile of enhanced uranium, One would have to assume this is the same stockpile that we had already totally obliterated, according to Trump.

Oil tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz was still at a standstill as Iranian drones continued targeting tankers attempting to navigate the channel. The price of oil eclipsed $100 per barrel on Thursday as Houthi rebels allied with Iran targeted two Saudi tankers transiting the Red Sea, an alternative route for shipping Middle East oil.

As the unresolved war in Iran continues to spread beyond Iran with little movement towards resolution, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spoke to the press for the first time in months. At the briefing, Hegseth introduced a new initiative to enhance the capabilities of our fighting forces—testosterone screening. Seriously. This was the purpose of the briefing.

According to NPR:

When asked about what conditions Hegseth was looking to address with the new policy, the Pentagon referred to Hegseth’s remarks in the video that mentioned keeping troops “strong, resilient and capable” and that the rigors of the modern battlefield demand “maximum psychological and mental readiness.”

You can’t make it up.

I suspect that at this point most of us will be happy to see a settlement with Iran that comes close to the JCPOA Agreement that had already been negotiated by the Obama administration in 2015. Trump tore up that agreement in May of 2018, because… Obama. At that point in time the Strait of Hormuz was open, Iran was subject to regular inspections of their nuclear facilities, and a gallon of gasoline was $2.90.

Fourteen weeks until the midterms.

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More reading about our relationship with Iran:

It ain’t over till it’s over.

One Battle After Another

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July 11, 2026 ~ Vol. 59

The Supreme Court just threw gasoline onto the political fire.

In my last Substack post, I lamented the general state of our country’s politics, and the specific mechanics of our current political system. In the last line of that essay, I wrote:

“The current system no longer works, and it is tearing us apart as a nation. Introducing ranked choice voting and open primaries, along with eliminating dark money from politics, are among the remedies that we must consider.”

No sooner had the proverbial ink dried on that comment, when the Supreme Court weighed in with their decision in the case of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) against the Federal Election Commission (FEC), striking down the currently imposed limits on coordinated party expenditures—spending by party committees like the NRSC or the RNC with the personal campaigns of active political candidates. In a surprise to absolutely no one, the court split 6-3. Justice Kavanaugh wrote the opinion for the majority.

The three liberal justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson — dissented, with Kagan writing the dissenting opinion. According to NPR,

“the core of Kagan’s argument was that removing the coordination limits reopens the door to the kind of corruption the base contribution limits were designed to prevent. Her central image was that without a cap on coordinated spending, a political party essentially becomes a “checking account” a candidate can draw on — meaning wealthy donors who are barred from giving large sums directly to a candidate could instead route unlimited money through the party, which could then coordinate that spending directly with the candidate’s campaign, effectively erasing the distinction the individual contribution limits were meant to preserve.”

This decision didn’t change the rules for PACs generally; independent-expenditure PACs and super PACs could already spend unlimited amounts, they just couldn’t…ahem…coordinate with the actual campaigns. What changed is that the fig leaf ostensibly prohibiting the coordination of spending between supporting PACs and the campaigns themselves has now been removed. Let the dark money flow.

The all too predictable opinion pieces also flowed with conservatives praising the removal of these “unconstitutional” spending limits and liberals labeling the decision as the end of democracy as we know it. One of my favorite comments came from Marc Elias at Democracy Docket, bless his heart. Elias’s email arrived in my inbox:

“Why the Supreme Court says JD Vance is running for Senate in 2028”.

Vance running for Senate? Well, that’s absurd, but why should it matter? (If we’re going too deep into the weeds here, just stay with me for a while more—if you weren’t of the opinion that the Supreme Court is in the tank for Republicans yet, you will be when you finish reading this.)

As a general rule, the Supreme Court will only weigh in on active cases between active litigants. They cannot just pick a topic and weigh in on the merits of an argument. One of the litigants in this particular case was none other than JD Vance, who had filed the suit when he was running for Senate in 2022.

Elias’s email continued:

Why would a sitting vice president and a potential 2028 GOP presidential candidate opt to run for Senate again? He wouldn’t — and the Supreme Court very well knows that. But without that “fact,” the Court would likely have had to dismiss the Republican Party’s lawsuit.

It was then-Senate candidate Vance who sued to challenge campaign coordination limits back in 2022, so without Vance as an active candidate, the Court would have lacked jurisdiction to hear the case at all.

And the conservative justices were not about to let that happen.

Dismissal would have wiped out a case Republicans had spent four years litigating. More practically, it would have denied the GOP a sizable war chest to aid its candidates in the 2026 midterms.

The conservative majority clearly wanted to decide this case now — so it simply declared Vance an active Senate candidate, a race he plainly has no intention of running.

To get around this, the Court seized on paperwork Vance had filed before he became Trump’s running mate. As the majority put it, “Vance still maintains an active ‘Statement of Candidacy’ on file with the FEC indicating his intent to run for Senate in 2028, as well as a principal campaign committee (JD Vance for Senate) that has raised money for a Senate race.”

According to the Court, that does the trick: “The statement of candidacy and the extant campaign committee cannot be ignored for justiciability purposes, and they establish that the case is not moot.”

Courts are supposed to hear only actual cases and controversies, and to avoid deciding constitutional questions when they can. Federal candidates, for their part, are supposed to update their FEC paperwork rather than let it sit as a placeholder for offices they have no intention of seeking.

Bending the rules might be tempting in any one instance. In this instance, it was irresistible. The result is a gaping hole in our campaign finance system — one that both Vance and the Supreme Court majority happen to favor.

A genuinely conservative Court, confronted with this problem, would have dismissed the case for want of jurisdiction. It might even have called out Vance for failing to correct his federal filings. But that is not the Court we have.

Instead, the Court searched for a way to keep the case alive. It wanted to strike down a 50-year-old statute and overturn precedent — and it wanted to do so while the GOP could still cash in on a spending advantage for 2026.

You might ask (I know that I asked)—are there any other reasons that Vance would not have deactivated his Senate Campaign Committee—other than to give the court a reason to accept this case? As it turns out, there are, and all (surprise!) benefit Vance financially.

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According to my assistant, Claude, the benefits of keeping an active “Statement of Candidacy” would be the following:

Fundraising capacity stays “on,” not “exploratory.” An active Statement of Candidacy lets a committee raise money under normal contribution limits ($3,500/individual per election as of recent cycles) without being treated as merely “testing the waters,” which comes with more restrictive rules. A live committee can solicit and bank money continuously.

Funds can be transferred, not just spent or refunded. Under FEC rules, a federal candidate can transfer unlimited funds between his own authorized committees (e.g., a Senate committee to a future presidential or different federal committee). Winding the Senate committee down would force him to either spend the money on the stated purpose, refund donors, or give it away to a party/other candidates — options that lose him direct control of the cash. Keeping it open preserves optionality to redeploy that money toward whatever office he does eventually seek.

No obligation to disband. Federal committees can sit dormant-but-technically-active indefinitely, filing routine reports, without forcing a decision about winding down. This avoids triggering the accounting and disposal-of-funds requirements that come with formally terminating a committee.

Donor list and joint fundraising infrastructure stay intact. An active committee can keep operating a joint fundraising committee with party committees, maintaining email/donor lists and bundling arrangements — a durable political asset regardless of which race he ultimately runs.

Now, post-ruling, added leverage. Since coordinated party spending is unlimited for candidates with live committees, keeping the Senate committee open means the NRSC or RNC could, in principle, coordinate spending with it — building infrastructure, polling, or ad capacity tied to that committee — rather than that door being closed to him.

Of course, Vance has no intention of running for Senate; he is already measuring for drapes in the White House residence. Recent polling has him running ahead of Marco Rubio in Republican circles, but that lead has diminished over the last few months—no doubt in sync with Trump’s declining approval ratings. Last month’s Big Data Polling had him at 35% among Republican voters with Marco Rubio in second place with 17%. Vance topped the recent CPAC straw poll with 53% of the vote. In May, an Emerson College poll had him tied with Rubio at 35%.

In hypothetical general election polling the results are a lot more interesting, especially if your loyalties lie with the Democrats.

Hold on to those KAMALA T-shirts; several polls have Vance trailing Kamala Harris by high single digits to low double digits (e.g., Zogby: Harris 48.5% to Vance 42.1%; Public Sentiment Institute: Harris ~49% to Vance ~38%).

Against Gavin Newsom, results vary by pollster — some show Vance with a slim lead (Center Square: 36–33%; Zogby: Vance ahead of Newsom), others show Newsom ahead by a few points (Overton Insights: Newsom +3; Public Sentiment Institute: Newsom 45% to Vance 39%; Morning Consult had it essentially tied).

But here is my favorite: against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, recent polling (Public Sentiment Institute, June 2026) showed her leading Vance by roughly 9 points.

The current partisan extremism is evidencing itself in the polling, with closed party primaries stifling the voices, and prospects, of more moderate candidates.

Vance v. AOC in 28? Hey, it could happen.

Ranked choice voting looking better now isn’t it?

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June 27, 2026 ~ Vol 58

I used to look forward to political primaries. We—and by “we” I mean the political animals that actually look forward to voting in primaries—would cast our votes and our lot with the candidate(s) that had convinced us that they were best qualified, and had earned the right to carry the party banner. If all of the stars had aligned, the winning candidate would meet my three criteria for supporting any candidate: they were qualified, they shared my values, and they were an honorable person. Being qualified meant more than having the necessary experience to perform the duties of the position. Experience is important, of course, but is the candidate also temperamentally qualified, do they have the humility to seek guidance from advisors who disagree with them, or are more knowledgeable than they are about a topic? Do they have the courage to make the tough choices, even when all of the choices are bad? Can they admit to mistakes and take corrective action before the problem balloons into a quagmire (See: Trump / tariffs, deficits, Iran)? A prerequisite for all of these attributes is that the office seeker does not insist that they are the smartest person in the room, and everyone he disagrees with is “low-IQ”. But I digress.

There was a time when the Republican Party—the party that I belonged to (past tense) for forty years— embraced a platform that was decidedly and consistently pro-business, pro-economic growth, with a focus on responsible budgeting, advocating for free international trade, strong international alliances, and abhorred deficit spending except in national emergencies. Republicans believed that government should, #1, be small, and #2, keep their noses out of everyone’s business. Those were the core of the party’s beliefs, but like any large group there were factions that thought some issues should be highlighted more than others. Some of us wanted to expand the party platform to include some social justice and environmental initiatives that were outside of traditional conservative orthodoxy. This faction, and I counted myself among this group—were known as New England Republicans or Northeast Republicans or Rockefeller Republicans, but we were still Republicans, albeit “liberal” Republicans, and we were proud of it. Today there is no such thing as a liberal Republican. An argument can also be made that there is no longer any such thing as a traditional Republican, period, because Donald Trump’s MAGA coalition makes a mockery of much of what Republicans stood for: small government, (tariff) free trade, strong global alliances, and balanced budgets. The Republican party that would have shut down the government before they would pass a budget that increased the national debt, now thinks nothing of adding trillions of dollars to that debt, while Trump insists on the US government taking ownership positions in corporations like he is using Mao Tse-Tung’s “Little Red Book” as his economic playbook. In the last two years, at Trump’s insistence, the US government has taken equity interests in IBM, Global Foundries, Intel, US Steel, L3 Harris, Westinghouse, and numerous others—and our sycophantic “Republican” controlled Congress goes along with this like it is perfectly normal. I do chuckle when Trump refers to New York Mayor Zohran Momdani as the communist.

All of this is why I also chuckle and scratch my head when I read political media reports referring to various states or Congressional districts as ‘reliably Republican”. If the current leadership of the Republican party has disavowed most everything that the Republican party has stood for, what is the definition of a Republican? Which brings us to this week’s primaries, and the upcoming elections.

Here in New York, including northern New York’s 21st Congressional District, we have a closed primary (only registered party members get to cast a vote in their party primary). On Tuesday, Democrats nominated Blake Gendebien, who runs a dairy farm near the Canadian border, as their candidate. Gendebien had been running since 2025, when the incumbent Representative, Elise Stefanik, had been nominated by Trump to be US Ambassador to the United Nations, which would have necessitated a snap election to replace her in Congress. Trump then decided that he did not want to risk losing a Republican seat in the closely divided Congress, so he withdrew Stefanik’s nomination, leaving the election in suspension when Stefanik then decided not to stand for reelection in 2026. Gendebien re-started his campaign and won the Democratic primary handily on Tuesday.

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The Republican primary had much more drama. The district’s Republican leadership had already voted to support NY State Assemblyman Robert Smullen in the primary, but that did not dissuade Amsterdam businessman Anthony Constantino from tossing his hat in the ring—while seeking the endorsement of President Trump. His method for seeking said endorsement included the construction of a sign on the roof of his Sticker-Mule office building in praise of Donald J. Trump. This, of course, caught the President’s attention. The firebrand ran on a MAGA platform with Trump’s enthusiastic support, along with additional endorsements from the likes of Mike Flynn, Rudy Giuliani, and Roger Stone. I’ll just briefly point out that the aforementioned “Law & Order” Republican Constantino endorsers are either convicted felons (Trump, Roger Stone), plead guilty to felonies (Mike Flynn) or were pardoned but still disbarred (Rudy Giuliani), but the net effect was still a decisive trouncing of Robert Smullen, leaving him to pick up the pieces on Tuesday night. Go figure. NY-21’s Republicans want to trade in their pugilistic firebrand Congressperson for an actual firebrand pugilist. (Constantino has fought in the MMA / mixed martial arts arena.)

Smullen’s options do include one interesting fragment of a chance to continue the fight, since Smullen had also secured the Conservative Party endorsement on the ballot, and if he so chooses he could continue to pursue that path to the seat. After his Republican primary loss on Tuesday, Smullen noted that he was still on the ballot on the Conservative line, but said he would assess his path forward and announce his intentions “soon”. As of Friday morning, Smullen had not made any announcement. I imagine that the local Republican leadership will put on a full court press to attempt to persuade him to abandon the race. The New York State Board of Elections’ official 2026 political calendar lists August 17, 2026 as the last day to decline a nomination (under Election Law §6-158(7).

Democratic candidate Blake Gendebien would, no doubt, love for Smullen to stay in the race, as the two Republicans would then split the conservative leaning vote leaving a cleaner but not necessarily clearer path to victory for the Democrat. One quarter of the district’s voters are registered independents, and they will probably decide the election.

I explored the history of NY-21’s recent election outcomes and party registration here on Substack in March of 2025, when Gendebien had first announced his intention to run for the seat.

NY-21 is considered one of New York’s safest districts to run as a Republican. Party registration leans heavily Republican. Stefanik won in 2024 with over 62% of the vote. Current party registration lines up with 41% of voters as Republicans, 26% Democrats, and almost as many independents at 25%. Working Families Party registrants, Conservatives and “other” make up the balance.

It has been a long time since NY-21 has sent a Democrat to Congress. The last one, Bill Owens, a Plattsburg attorney, declined to run for reelection in 2010 when the district lines were redrawn after the 2010 census, leaving the registration heavily lopsided in favor of Republicans. That advantage has only increased over the years, especially after the 2020 census and subsequent redistricting. Democratic congressional candidates have had to deal with the reality of that handicap for the last fifteen years, with predictable results. Democratic nominee, Paula Collins, lost in 2024 by over 80,000 votes, 215,996 v. 132,447. In 2022 Matt Castelli came up short 52,000 votes, 168,579 v. 116,421. No one knocked on more doors, met more voters, or shook more hands than 2018 and 2020 candidate Tedra Cobb, who still came up short by 32,000 votes in 2018 and 56,000 votes in the next election (a presidential election year with a much heavier turnout). Over the last five elections, the average loss margin for the Democratic candidate has been 63,800 votes, but hope springs eternal.

As noted earlier, the difference this time could be the third party candidate, Robert Smullen, if he decides to continue his campaign on the Conservative line. Another issue that could plague Constantino is that Trump’s approval rating, particularly with regard to economic policy and inflation, is hovering around 30%.

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In my mind, what should matter the most is that my Republican neighbors in NY-21 are harboring an allegiance to a Republican party that no longer exists. The traditional Republican party’s principles of small government, free trade, strong international alliances, and responsible fiscal management have been replaced by a party that condones and even endorses positions that would be anathema to any traditional Republican. For some reason, that reality is failing to impress most of my Republican friends.

I can only hope that the electorate will take the time to actually study the policy positions of the candidates. Will they address the inequality in income tax policies like the carried interest exemption? What policy positions will help bring down inflation? How will we remedy the federal deficit? How will we remedy the Social Security Trust Fund shortfall?

The candidates’ answers to these questions are far more important than the color of their hat.

Repeating for emphasis:

Is the candidate qualified for the position?

Does the candidate share your values?

Is the candidate an honorable person?

If the current primary system continues to produce candidates whose views are so extreme that the best we can come up with is two out of three (qualifications / values / ethics), hold-your-nose-and-vote, I will suggest that the time has come for ranked choice voting and open primaries. I do understand the drawbacks, but both would reduce the pandering of candidates to the most extreme factions of their party, allowing more moderate candidates representing consensus views to rise to the top.

I believe the time has come for a change. The founders did not envision the rise of two parties to dominate our politics. Washington warned against political parties in his farewell address, and James Madison did the same in the Federalist Papers. Political parties are not mentioned at all in the Constitution, in fact the document called for the second place Electoral College vote finisher in a presidential election to become the vice president. The founders assumed we would vote for candidates based on their individual merits, not their party affiliation. The practice was abandoned in 1804 with the passing of the 12th amendment which calls for separate ballots for presidential and vice-presidential candidates. (The Election Crisis of 1800 was central to the plot of the Broadway musical, Hamilton.)

The current system no longer works, and it is tearing us apart as a nation. Introducing ranked choice voting and open primaries, along with eliminating dark money from politics, are among the remedies that we must consider.

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June 13, 2026 ~ Vol. 57

I have been hearing warnings about our mounting US federal debt crisis for as long as I can remember. Curiously, I have not heard a peep about the looming insolvency of the Social Security Trust Fund from any of my Congressional representatives in years. Former House Speaker Paul Ryan spent most of his twenty years in Congress warning that government spending was about to upend the country’s finances, and drag our economy into a fiscal death spiral. Thanks in part to the recently passed Big Beautiful Bill, our debt service today is double what it was just four years ago. According to the Congressional Budget Office debt-service costs attributable to the bill would total $551 billion over the 2025–2034 period. This is on top of a primary deficit increase of $2.4 trillion (from $3.7 trillion in revenue reductions offset by $1.3 trillion in spending cuts), bringing the total cumulative deficit impact to $3.0 trillion. But this bubble has yet to burst.

The US dollar is still the world’s “reserve currency”, even though there are a dozen countries whose credit rating is now higher than ours. I suspect that many people do not remember that the credit rating on US debt was first lowered by S&P fifteen years ago, in 2011. At the time, the reason given by Standard and Poor’s for lowering their credit assessment was the irresponsibility of the US Congress which was refusing to raise the debt ceiling to fund the budget because it had a deficit. Oh, for the good old days of the Tea Party Republicans who threatened to shut down the government and default on our sovereign debt, rather than increase the federal deficit. How times have changed! Moody’s and Fitch Rating Services have both since lowered their own US credit assessment, Fitch in 2023, and Moody’s last year. Currently, there are eleven remaining AAA countries with credit ratings higher than ours, including Australia, Canada, and Switzerland. The only reason that US dollar remains the preferred currency for international trading is simply that there is enough of it to go around and people still believe that we will honor our debts. Importantly, there are not enough Australian or Canadian dollars or Swiss francs to provide the liquidity necessary to accommodate the world’s financial transactions. This all works until it doesn’t, and it will not work when people start to wonder if we have the capacity to continue to finance our debts. Part of the problem is simply that no one really knows how much is too much. It will be when investors hesitate to buy US Treasuries because the perceived risk of a timely repayment is too great—and when that happens it’s too late to fix the problem.

I can’t help noticing that quite a few fiscal wizards, people that I pay attention to like Bridgewater Associates’ founder, Ray Dalio, have now joined the chorus warning that the end is nigh. Dalio is warning that America is heading toward a “debt death spiral” — a phase of the debt cycle where the government must borrow money simply to pay its existing debt service, which accelerates the problem. Speaking at the Forbes “Disruptors Summit” earlier this month, he indicated that the U.S. has crossed a critical debt threshold that may compel the Federal Reserve to implement policies similar to those of the 1930s to maintain artificially low interest rates, pointing to federal expenditures of $7 trillion against revenues of only $5 trillion. Dalio believes the crisis won’t necessarily manifest itself as an outright default, but rather through public spending being squeezed out as ever-growing interest payments crowd out other programs.

A companion crisis is also looming in the bond markets, fueled by accelerating inflation exacerbated by recent tariff policy and by the war in Iran. Historically, the prescription for rising inflation is for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates. Raising rates, which is the “cost of money”, will slow spending, which should decelerate demand—and temper inflationary price increases. The flip side of that, unfortunately, is raising rates will also hamper economic growth which can manifest itself in a recession. If the Fed is forced to choose between containing inflation or fostering economic growth, containing inflation will win out—it always does— and the Fed will be forced to raise rates. That eventuality has been talked about a lot lately by another fiscal wizard whom I pay attention to—JP Morgan Chase CEO, Jamie Dimon—who warns of an impending bond crisis. In his mind the question is not “if”, but only “when”.

Dimon has been candid in predicting that “there will be a bond crisis, and then we’ll have to deal with it,” arguing the debt problem needs to be resolved and that unresolved tectonic pressures could cause real problems down the road. His primary concern is a market reckoning: as the debt pile grows, bond investors will begin to view the U.S. Treasury as a riskier borrower and raise their rates accordingly. Interest payments on the national debt already hit $970 billion in 2025 — roughly double what was paid in 2022 — and are now the second-largest line item in the entire federal budget, just behind Social Security. (More on this in a moment.) The CBO projects those annual interest payments will reach $2.1 trillion by 2036.

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Dimon is certainly not alone in thinking that push is about to come to shove. Citadel Capital’s Ken Griffin (the guy who owns the penthouse that NYC Mayor Momdani really wants to levy his proposed pied-à-terre tax on). Griffin has said that America was sent an “explicit warning” from the bond market, and that it’s time to get the national debt in order. His concern centers on the bond market’s role as an early signal system — when bond investors lose confidence in the government’s fiscal path, they demand higher yields, which raises borrowing costs for the entire economy. The interest rate on US treasuries is used to price all other debt. If the Treasury pays 5% to borrow money, then commercial and retail borrowers pay 6%, or 7% or 10% depending on their credit rating. The ten year treasury rate is used by banks to calculate mortgage rates. The impact of rising rates on treasuries spreads far beyond the treasury market, which is why the White House is always laser focused on rates, for better or worse.

At the same time that the soaring federal deficit is threatening to upend treasury borrowing and the US economy, the Social Security Trust Fund is also racing towards insolvency. Earlier this week, the trustees of the Social Security Trust Fund moved up their projected date for the fund’s insolvency to 2032, just six years from now.

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I first wrote about this impending crisis last year: Social Security is on the Brink

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Currently, the Social Security Trust Fund provides 22% of the payments that Social Security recipients receive each month. 78% of each payment is funded by the SSI taxes that are collected from workers who are currently employed, and their employers. When the trust fund is depleted, the only source of revenue will be funds provided from current workers and employers, so SSI recipients would see their benefits drop immediately by 22%. I believe that the probability of that happening is zero. Something must be done to close the gap, and something will be done to close the gap, but the choices are getting more expensive each passing day, and our elected representatives - both Republican and Democrats - are doing absolutely nothing to resolve the issue.

There are a number of ways to resolve the shortfall, but each of them will cost something. Doing nothing is not an option. “Keep your hands off my SSI” is not a strategy. Doing nothing will result in a 22% reduction in everyone’s benefit, starting in six years. One option would be to simply raise the amount of money that is collected from current workers. There are two different ways to make that happen. One is to raise the current rate of tax from 6.2% to a higher rate. Currently employees and their employers each pay 6.2% of current earnings 12.4% in total, on earnings up to $184,500. There is no tax on earnings above that number, and that is part of possible fix #2: taxing earnings above $184,500. People who earn up to $184,500 pay 6.2% in tax, a maximum of $11,439, but people who earn $1 million dollars pay the same $11,439, which is only 1.14% of their income. Most folks who do not earn $1 million annually feel that those folks should pay more. I agree. The last potential fix would simply be to push back the age when people can elect to start taking their benefits. Pushing back the full benefit age from 66/67 to 70 would bring the benefit more in line with current retirement plans for most workers. There is no reason or necessity to alter any current benefits for current recipients. I know that the AARP feels the same way and they probably have more sway with Congress than I do.

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If any of these solutions had been implemented thirty years ago, the cost of fixing the problem would have been far less than what it will cost now, but Congress did not have the courage to act. As we approach ground zero on this matter, Congress will finally decide who will share the pain, and how, and likely each of these three fixes will be a part of the ultimate solution. I am absolutely certain that a solution will be worked out and passed - just in time. In the meantime - and this is the most tragic part of this story - people are being scared into making really bad, and very costly decisions about the timing of their personal SSI payments. For many if not most people, the best time to start collecting your social security benefit is at age 70. Yes, there are situations when this is not true and an earlier date will be appropriate, but in most situations—for recipients who live to their life expectancy and have a cash flow that does not require immediate SSI payments to make the math work in retirement— delaying benefits until age 70 is usually recommended. For most recipients, payments started at age 70 are 32% higher than payments started at 66. In our current situation, many people, afraid that their benefits “will not be there” are electing to take an earlier—and lower— payment immediately, which is then locked in for the rest of their life. Many retirees are afraid that their social security benefit will not be there when they are seventy, and that to me is a criminal offense on the part of Congress. Their constituents are being frightened into making terrible decisions that could cost them thousands of dollars annually in retirement income, and all because our Congressional representatives are afraid to make the hard but necessary decisions to fix the problem now.

There are many positions that I want to hear about from our congressional candidates in the upcoming elections, but among the most important are the candidates’ recommendations for addressing the SSI shortfall and curtailing our unsustainable federal debt. In an ideal world, this should not be a partisan discussion, but the reality is that a resolution is grounded in deciding who will bear the brunt of funding the shortfall—businesses or their employees, or wealthy taxpayers who have had most of their income go untaxed—or SSI recipients will receive less than promised. Congress has to find the courage to call for the tab and let everyone know how the bill is going to be paid. Each constituency has its own partisan agenda, and each has a political party that best represents those interests. Who do we want to have in office to best represent our own interests? The next Congress will (hopefully) be tasked with finding the solution. The thirty three senators elected in this cycle will most certainly have to vote on a solution in the next six years. The window of opportunity to solve these problems is closing fast. If Congressional candidates do not have policy positions with recommendations and solutions and the courage to stand by them, they have no business running for Congress.

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The Peter G Peterson Foundation issued a white paper on Wednesday with their takeaways from the Social Security Trust Fund Trustees report issued this week.

You can read their comments here.

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May 30, 2026 ~ Vol. 56

In 2020, NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, was replaced by the USMCA, a new trilateral trade agreement between the US, Mexico, and Canada. At the time the primary argument made for abandoning NAFTA was that it treated the US auto manufacturing unfairly. (Also Trump wanted to tear up one last agreement on his way out the door.) The USMCA attempted to correct the NAFTA imbalances by requiring that 75% of an auto’s parts must be made in North America to qualify for zero tariffs. It also sought to level the labor playing field (with Mexico) by requiring that 45% of these component auto parts must be made by employees earning at least $16 per hour.

Importantly, the new trade pact also contained a sunset provision, requiring the treaty to be approved again every six years to remain in effect. That review period ends on July 1, which is why you will be reading many headlines about this trade pact over the next five weeks. Much if not most of what you hear from the White House about this trade relationship will, err, be less than accurate.

To help construct a timeline of our history of trade with our northern neighbor, I asked my new favorite assistant, Claude (Anthropic’s AI platform), for some help with an analysis of the relationship. I was most impressed.

Political posturing vs. economic reality.

As the USMCA heads toward its mandatory review deadline in July, the United States, Mexico, and Canada must agree to extend the agreement for 16 years, approve a revised deal, or allow a ten-year annual-review sunset countdown to begin. Washington has leaned heavily on the US / Canadian “trade deficit” rhetoric to position our northern neighbor as an unfair trading partner, suggesting that Canada has been taking advantage of the US for years. To listen to this President’s version of the story, the $46 billion (goods) trade deficit that we ran with Canada last year meant that we “subsidized” Canada to the tune of $46 billion. Trump has used this bogus interpretation of the situation in dozens of speeches, and most economists argue this framing fundamentally misunderstands and misstates what a trade deficit is, and how it impacts the individual trading partners—or not.

Most non-economists reason that if a country sells more than it buys, it is winning; similarly, a country that buys more than it sells is losing. So trade surpluses are good, and trade deficits are bad. Economists, however, part ways with this view entirely. Here is why.

Trade Deficits Have No Reliable Relationship to Economic Performance

According to the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank with conservative leanings on economic matters, the most basic empirical challenge to the “deficit = losing” thesis is that the data simply doesn’t support it. Examining 50 years of quarterly U.S. data, the correlation between the trade balance and GDP growth is 0.01 — statistically indistinguishable from zero. There is no evidence that higher trade surpluses accompany higher economic growth. Cato Institute

History reinforces this. For most years of the nineteenth century, U.S. imports exceeded exports and the economy ran a trade deficit. Yet this string of deficits did not hold back the economy at all. Instead, it contributed to strong economic growth that gave the U.S. the highest per capita GDP in the world by around 1900. Lumen Learning

More recently, in 2000 under President Clinton, the United States achieved a federal budget surplus and an unemployment rate of around 4 percent despite a trade deficit that was 3.7 percent of GDP — higher than the 3.1 percent of GDP deficit in 2024. PIIE

A Trade Deficit Is a Capital Surplus in Disguise

For readers looking to wade into the weeds a bit, an examination of the fiscal conditions produced by a trade deficit can get a little wonky. Trade deficits don’t exist in isolation — they have a mirror image. When a country imports more than it exports, it is, by definition, attracting more foreign investment and capital than it sends abroad. Trade deficits and/or surpluses are nothing more nor less than borrowing and lending between countries. Borrowing to buy a home or run a business is not for “losers” only, and neither are trade deficits. What matters are the terms of the loan and the use to which it is put.

The Congressional Research Service notes that “most economists conclude the trade deficit stems largely from U.S. macroeconomic policies and an imbalance between saving and investment in the economy,” adding that “trade creates both economic benefits and costs, but that the long-run net effect on the economy as a whole is positive.” World Economic Forum

In the case of Canada specifically, Canadian investors made $700 billion worth of low-interest loans to the U.S., fully offsetting the bilateral trade deficit over the past decade. Despite that, Canada incurs a large net deficit in investment income — meaning the U.S. earns more from its investments in Canada than Canada earns from its investments in the U.S. Ubc

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For a deeper dive into the trade deficits and capital surpluses, read this Canadian perspective from the University of British Columbia:

Canada Subsidizes the U.S., not the Other Way Around

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The U.S.-Canada Deficit Is Overwhelmingly an Energy Story

Perhaps the most compelling empirical argument against treating the U.S.-Canada deficit as evidence of unfair trade is its composition. The deficit is not driven by Canadian manufacturers undercutting American workers — it is driven by the United States buying Canadian oil and gas.

Energy accounts for about 60% of America’s total bilateral merchandise trade deficit with Canada — a share that rose to 72% in 2022 when global oil prices spiked after the invasion of Ukraine. Centreforfuturework

Canada is the largest supplier of U.S. energy imports, including crude oil, natural gas, and electricity. Canada’s share of U.S. crude oil imports by quantity increased from 41% in 2015 to 64% in 2025. The United States is not being exploited by this arrangement — it is securing a reliable, geographically proximate energy supply at competitive prices. Canada is the only large net oil-exporting country without a state-owned oil producer, and U.S. companies own $55 billion worth of its oil and gas sector. Americans are, in a very real sense, profiting from the “deficit.” Congress.govUbc

The U.S. would probably have a trade surplus with Canada if these energy exports didn’t exist. The impact of that reality is worth more than you might think, but the net amount of the benefit is hard to quantify. Having all of our energy needs produced here in North America, instead of remaining dependent on imports from Middle East suppliers who have been known to cut us off at a moment’s notice, stabilizes pricing, allows companies to budget with more certainty, and in the aggregate allows for more predictable US economic growth.

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The U.S. Runs a Services Surplus With Canada

The goods trade deficit — the number most often cited in political debate — gives an incomplete picture, because it excludes services, where the U.S. consistently comes out ahead. The totality of US economic output—GDP—includes the production of goods and services, and that services number is growing faster than manufactured goods. In the `1970’s the services sector represented approximately 40% of GDP. Services now account for 75% of the US economy. That services trade, including financial services and tourism, is particularly robust, with the United States generally running a services trade surplus with Canada. Canada imports large volumes of services from the U.S. — including streaming, data, and platform services from companies like Amazon, Meta, Google, and Uber — many of which are weakly regulated, underreported, and largely untaxed. These represent a substantial American advantage that the raw goods-deficit number simply doesn’t capture. Here in the north county of upstate New York, cross border trade—especially in tourism—has been particularly impacted by these squabbles between DC and Ottawa.

Most Canadian Exports Are Inputs That Help U.S. Businesses Compete

Another dimension that gets lost in the “deficit = losing” framing is that the composition of what Canada exports to the U.S. is heavily weighted toward industrial inputs, not finished consumer goods. Most Canadian exports to the U.S. are unfinished inputs that American businesses use in their own production — more so than with other trading partners. Tariffs on these imports would increase costs for U.S. firms, including in export markets, reducing their competitiveness. Ubc

This is why the relationship is better described as deep integration than as competition. Canada and the U.S. enjoy the world’s most comprehensive trading relationship, which supports millions of jobs in each country. Nearly $2.6 billion (U.S.) worth of goods and services crossed the border each day in 2024, with much of it involving co-investment and co-development. Global Affairs Canada

Bilateral Deficits Are Particularly Misleading

Even if one believed overall trade deficits were meaningful, bilateral deficits — between two specific countries — are even less so. The U.S. might run a deficit with Canada and a surplus with, say, the UK, and both relationships could be entirely rational and mutually beneficial. Countries specialize. Many economists and trade experts warn against trying to “win” the trade relationship with particular countries. No household expects to balance its accounts individually with every store it shops at. Council on Foreign Relations

The Bottom Line

The U.S.-Canada goods trade deficit in 2025 was approximately $46 billion — less than one-eighth of one percent of U.S. GDP. It is driven primarily by American purchases of Canadian energy at competitive prices, partially owned by U.S. investors, offset by a U.S. services surplus and massive Canadian investment in U.S. financial assets. Trade deficits allow countries to consume more than they produce, which can increase economic activity and boost living standards. The word “deficit” carries negative connotations borrowed from accounting and personal finance that simply don’t translate cleanly to national trade flows. USImportDataWorld Economic Forum

As the USMCA review proceeds, framing Canada as a bad actor because of a bilateral goods deficit — one that largely reflects America’s own appetite for Canadian oil — is, in the view of most economists, a significant misreading of how trade actually works.

This reality will certainly not stop President Trump from firing off midnight social media posts next month on Truth Social, trumpeting the fiction that Canada has been “ripping us off” and therefore we have been subsidizing the Canadian economy for years. I honestly do not know if he believes it, or if it is all performative and he spews this bluster just to fit his personal narrative: we, and he, are (always) the victims, and everyone else is the enemy. This is also a consequence of Trump surrounding himself with yes-men who will not offer an objective analysis of current conditions—including when he is making a mistake. (See also: Iran, immigration, Cuba, tariff policy, et al.)

On the plus side, if he is thinking about Canada, he is not thinking about Cuba, at least for the moment. This, unfortunately, is where we find ourselves right now. Buckle up.

I explored our relationship with our Canadian neighbors on Substack last year:

All we need is their friendship?

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May 23, 2026 ~ Vol 55

I’ll have to admit, even I was impressed—and totally surprised—that anyone would attempt an act of such brazen corruption—in full public view—as this White House pulled off this week. Richard Nixon, in his darkest moments, never demanded to be paid for his felonies, which is basically what Trump is doing by setting up a billion dollar slush fund to pay off his supporters, including, according to Congressional testimony, the J-6 insurrectionists that he pardoned earlier in his term. The fund is actually over $1 billion; it is $1.776 billion. Get it—1776? How patriotic of Trump. What a wonderful way to honor the Founding Fathers! You really do have to wonder if our political system is not irreparably broken.

Even after all that this President has perpetrated on the American people, the majority of Republicans would still vote for him. A New York Times/Siena poll released in May found Trump’s overall approval at just 37% — a new second-term low — driven heavily by economic discontent, particularly over inflation and the fallout from the Iran war. About 64% of voters disapprove of his handling of the economy.

Yet within the Republican Party, the story is more nuanced. A CNN/SSRS poll from March 2026 found Trump at 80% approval among Republicans — down from 87% in January. A Pew Research Center poll from April found him at 68% approval among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. An AP-NORC poll similarly found 68% approval among Republicans, down from 81% in January. CNN

On the question of voting behavior specifically, a Fox News poll found that 85% of self-identified Republicans view their own party favorably — and Democrats who were surveyed said they would “almost universally vote for their party,” with independents also favoring Democrats. The implication is that tribal partisan voting remains the dominant force on both sides even amid declining enthusiasm.

And therein lies the rub. For most of us, our politics are so ingrained in our psyche that any argument from “the opposition” has little if any chance of breaking through. Democratic Congressional candidates have found a wall of Republican opposition here in the New York north country for years—since NY-21 district lines were redrawn to favor Republican candidates after the 2010 census.

A CNN poll found that 74% of Republicans said they were extremely or very motivated to vote in the 2026 midterms — lower than Democrats’ 80%, but still a large majority expressing intent to show up.

One problem is that these polls survey self identified Republicans (27%-28% of voters) and self identified Democrats (27%-28%), but the number of people who now self identify as a party member are now exceeded by self identified “Independents”. (45% / Gallup). This would be the “pox on both your houses” vote, mine included.

A bigger problem is that approximately one third of eligible voters do not even bother to cast a ballot. It is hard to decipher why someone could just take a pass, given the urgency of the current headlines, but many people feel that their vote doesn’t count, or that the candidates—all of the candidates on the ballot—are too flawed to support. (My friends in Maine are now facing this dilemma.) I suspect that a goodly percentage of the population is also just uninformed or ill informed, given the current partisan state of our media. It would be hard to identify a truly nonpartisan national media platform. I think of FOX and NEWSMAX as being on the hard right, and MSNBC—now MS NOW on the left, with CNN someplace closer to the middle but “leaning left”. Local network stations tend to be more focused on local news with little to no national political coverage, which helps us evade the partisan bickering but leaves us ignorant of the daily shenanigans in Washington. To get a truly balanced view you have to work at it, reading both “progressive” publications like the Atlantic and the New York Times, and “conservative” publications like the Wall Street Journal and National Review. Taking them all in on a regular basis requires a lot of time and no small amount of money to subscribe to them all. (I use Apple News for most of what I read regularly— including The Albany Time Union, the WS Journal, the Atlantic, New York Magazine, which are all included in the package). Only 36% of Americans consider themselves to be actively engaged with the news on a daily basis. Alarmingly, only 10% of Americans say they get their news from local newspapers, undoubtedly because of the number of local newspapers that have been shuttered. Here in the north country, my friends at NCPR / North Country Public Radio News Department offer excellent coverage of local issues.

Approximately one third say they get “most of their news” from television. In the aggregate, according to Gemini AI, the majority of Americans—64%— do not follow the news on a “daily or near daily basis”. While that sinks in, consider the data that suggest that 54%—most Americans—read at a sixth grade reading level or less. We can only hope that they are all the same people.

I asked Anthropic’s, Claude, to help explain, and he (she? it?) offered this:

Why Republicans Still Back Trump Despite Low Overall Approval

Several well-documented factors explain this:

1. Negative Partisanship For many Republicans, the motivation isn’t enthusiasm for Trump so much as fear or dislike of Democrats. Polling consistently suggests that Democrats’ current advantage is largely due to frustration with Trump rather than a belief that Democratic policies would be better. On issues like border security, crime, immigration, and national security, voters continue to prefer Republicans. The Hill

2. The Democratic Party’s Own Problems Democrats aren’t faring much better in terms of internal satisfaction — about 44% of Democratic voters say they aren’t satisfied with their party, while just 26% are. Only 23% of Republicans say the same about the GOP. In other words, Republicans remain more unified around their party than Democrats are around theirs. Axios

3. Cultural and Identity Attachment Trump has commanded a level of loyalty and devotion in the GOP that Biden never came close to matching in the Democratic Party — and that identity-based attachment persists even as policy approval softens. Many Republican voters see Trump as a cultural and political avatar, not just a politician. CNN. (Italics mine)

4. Weakening but Still Present Loyalty A Pew survey found that 61% of Republicans now say Republican lawmakers have no obligation to support Trump’s policies simply because he is a Republican president — up from 55% last year. This signals Republicans are carving out more space for dissent, but it doesn’t translate to voting Democratic. Newsweek

5. Inflation and Dissatisfaction Cut Both Ways A Fox News poll found that a majority of Republicans now rate the economy (56%) and their personal financial situation (52%) negatively — yet economic frustration with the incumbent doesn’t automatically push voters toward the other party if they distrust that party’s solutions even more. The Hill

The bottom line is that Republican approval of Trump has eroded meaningfully since January 2025, but the gap between “disapproving of Trump” and “voting Democratic” remains wide — kept open by party identity, distrust of Democrats, and the lack of a compelling alternative figure on the right. In my mind, all of the above stats simply confirm that party members, Republican and Democratic, are not about to vote for the other party’s candidate regardless of how upset they are with their own party. In a nutshell, this confirms to me that the election will be decided by independent voters, who have no allegiance to either party.

Which brings us full circle and back to my opening observation: This week the President of the United States announced what many observers are describing as the most egregious ethical breach in the history of the White House. He proposed setting up a reimbursement fund to compensate what Trump called “victims” of government political prosecutions—including the J-6 insurrectionists!

There appear to be few formal constraints on who can submit a claim. Trump has broadly stated that his allies were politically targeted by the justice system, from the “Russia collusion” investigation to the nearly 1,600 seditionists charged in connection with the January 6 Capitol insurrection. Trump stated they’re getting reimbursed for their legal fees and “the other things that they had to suffer.” CNN

Anyone paying attention believes this planned restitution account amounts to blatant corruption, allowing the president to enrich allies using our taxpayer money over what they describe as unfounded claims of political prosecution by the Biden administration. The fund is likely to face immediate legal challenges from Democrats and watchdog organizations. CNN.

The first suit in my inbox was this (free gift Washington Post Article):

Police officers at Capitol on Jan. 6 sue to block DOJ payout fund

It’s worth noting that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche — who previously served as Trump’s personal criminal defense attorney — signed the “settlement” agreement, which has drawn additional scrutiny given the obvious conflict of interest. Twenty four hours after floating the slush fund proposals, a follow up was added to state that as part of this agreement, the IRS would be barred from investigating or auditing the President, or any one in the President’s family, or any business owned by the President or the President’s family. In other words, anything that is submitted on any Trump-related tax return must be accepted as presented, and precluded from challenge by the Treasury and the IRS. What could go wrong? On the day of this announcement, Brian Morrissey, the General Counsel and top lawyer in the Treasury Department —who had been nominated by President Trump—resigned from his office. (The IRS is an agency of the Treasury Department.)

Nothing that Trump does should surprise us at this point, but the audacity of this week’s proclamations should send a shudder down our collective spines. I would feel more hopeful about the future if our Congress and our Supreme Court actually had spines, but their recent behavior suggests that this is not the case. Pardoning the J-6 insurrectionists was bad enough, but now paying them as a reward for their treasonous behavior - which we all saw live on TV but Trump now describes as a “Day of Love”— is beyond the pale. And this Congress will do nothing about it.

From Wednesday’s New York Times (A free gift article):

Prison to Pardons to Payouts: Jan. 6 Rioters
Are Elated at Trump’s $1.8 Billion Fund

For a decade Trump has gaslit all of us about an ongoing IRS audit being the reason that he could not release his tax returns. Remember when Presidential candidates would disclose their finances by releasing their tax returns? Now he has proclaimed himself audit proof and immune from future challenge or prosecution. The brazen self dealing and scale of his self aggrandizement is staggering. He is without a doubt the most corrupt person to ever be in the White House (and I do not just suggest that he is the most corrupt person to hold the office of President, he is probably the most corrupt person to ever step inside the building). And we elected him. Twice.

This should be a watershed moment for my Republican friends. It should not matter how you feel about any one candidate’s views on trade, or deficits, or women’s rights, or gay rights or health care. In this election cycle only one thing counts, and I have only one set of related questions for any Republican candidate:

Do you support Donald Trump, and if the answer is yes, how do you feel about January 6th, pardoning the insurrectionists, rewarding those seditionists and other supporters with a $1.8 billion slush fund, while exempting himself and his family from any and all IRS oversight. Any answer in the affirmative supporting any of these should be disqualifying. Period, full stop. I will be greatly surprised if any Republican candidate actually answers any of those questions during the campaign—because they cannot. Any candidate who does not parrot Trump’s lies can expect to be primaried by a pro-Trump candidate endorsed by the President.

The warning lights are no longer flashing yellow. This is a government in crisis and a democracy in peril. If Congress will not do their job and represent and protect US citizens, then we must replace Congress with Representatives who will stand up and counter his lies, speak truth to power, and block his corrupt initiatives . We cannot afford to wait for the next Presidential election.

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What I am reading: Two of my favorite Substack columnists, Paul Krugman and Paul Mrocka, wrote on a similar topic this week. One author is a Nobel laureate in Economics and former NY Times columnist, and Mrocka owns our local brewery, Paradox Brewery. (Guess which one I see more often?)

Paul’s Substack

Is this the most corrupt administration ever? You decide.

Is this the most corrupt administration ever? You decide…

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4 months ago · 8 likes · 1 comment · Paul Mrocka

From Paul Mrocka’s Substack:

History has shown this pattern before. Corrupt governments often survive by keeping people angry, divided, distracted, and loyal to personalities instead of principles. Leaders wrap themselves in patriotism while enriching themselves and their allies. Citizens are told the media is the enemy, political opponents are evil, institutions cannot be trusted, and eventually people become numb to behavior that once would have outraged the country. That is where America feels like it is heading now.

Paul Krugman

The Looting of America

Reuters…

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4 months ago · 3858 likes · 784 comments · Paul Krugman

From Paul Krugman’s Substack:

Granted, we already knew that Trump was, by orders of magnitude, the most corrupt president in U.S. history. But now Trump is the most explicitly corrupt leader in today’s world. After all, Vladimir Putin has obviously stolen billions, but never this brazenly. Even Third World dictators normally try to mask their corruption.

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May 16, 2026 ~ Vol 54

If I have a choice, I prefer to read the transcript of a Trump or Hegseth press conference rather than listening to it live. I welcome the annotation and commentary from the author of the article, but primarily it’s just that I really can’t stand the sound of their voices. I am not sure which one aggravates me more, but probably Trump solely because he is behind the mic more often than Hegseth. If the President doesn’t like the question, or the tone of the question, or the reporter asking the question, he just shoots the messenger. “That was a dumb question!” Trump will retort, or “you are a dumb reporter!”, or something along those lines. And the conversation and the questions just move on from there, as if this is all normal. I prefer to read about it the next day. Every once in a while I am caught unawares and find myself listening to a press gaggle live or to a Pentagon press conference at which Secretary of Defense, Peter Hegseth is fielding questions from the media. Should anyone have the temerity to actually suggest that the war in Iran is not going quite as well as the administration had planned, or was not really as successful as he had suggested in his prior comment, Hegseth will let burst a tirade of facts and statistics that prove, in the Secretary’s mind, that the conflict in Iran is the most successful conflict in the history of conflicts. X-thousand targets have been bombed. The Iranian regime had been wiped out. The next generation of Iranian leadership had also been wiped out. The Iranian stores of enriched uranium have been “obliterated”. And the Iranian Navy “is at the bottom of the sea.” Woe to the reporter who follows up with a question to clarify the meaning of “obliterated”, as the administration has in the past assured the American public that the aforementioned uranium stockpiles had already been obliterated—so why are we even having this conversation again?

How did we even get here? The US was party to the original Iran Nuclear Agreement, the 2015 JCPOA, which had been signed by Iran and all members of the UN Security Council, including the United States. In 2018, President Trump withdrew from the agreement that the Obama administration had taken years to negotiate, with participation of the UN Security Council members. Trump reinstituted economic sanctions against Iran, which were kept in place by the newly elected Biden Administration after the 2020 election.

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On June 13, 2025, Israel conducted a major operation against Iran. The attack targeted nuclear facilities, military sites, and regime infrastructure, following nearly two years of war between Israel and Iran-backed “proxy” militants Hezbollah, in Lebanon, and Hamas, in Gaza. Additional Iranian proxy militants included the former Assad regime in Syria, Shia militias in Iraq, and the Houthis in Yemen, all armed to the teeth with Iranian weaponry.

During this war, Israel sought to counter the existential threat of Iran imminently developing a nuclear weapon, as well as its ramped-up production of ballistic missiles. Israel’s strategic goal was specific— destroying nuclear and missile infrastructure.

As fighting increased, the United States got involved, targeting the most critical and fortified sites in Iran’s nuclear program, which Israel was unable to destroy with its own arsenal. Following the US bombings of Iranian nuclear facilities in June, 2025, President Trump announced that Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities had been completely and totally obliterated utilizing US bunker-busting bombs. A ceasefire was reached—but— the nuclear program was not fully eliminated; the International Atomic Energy Agency later reported that Iran had stored highly enriched uranium in an underground facility undamaged by the bombings. In September, 2025, the UN reimposed sanctions on Iran. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent labeled the collapse of the Iranian currency in December 2025 as the strategy’s “grand culmination.” At least he didn't say “obliterated”.

In the aftermath of the 12-Day 2025 war, Iran’s currency entered a free fall, exacerbated by new international sanctions. The economic spiral led to the outbreak of protests in December, 2025, which spread across Iran in January 2026. Security forces unleashed a brutal crackdown, killing at least 30,000 people.

At the outset of the current 2026 conflict, code-named Operation Epic Fury, the Trump administration set out a number of strategic objectives: the elimination of imminent threats from the Iranian regime, to prevent Iran from ever producing a nuclear weapon, to destroy its Navy, and to encourage Iranian citizens to overthrow its government (regime change). This last objective was a drastic strategic pivot — from degrading nuclear infrastructure to executing a “decapitation” strike against the Iranian leadership — and shattered the previous rules of engagement, dragging the region into an open-ended war of attrition with no obvious diplomatic off-ramps. To prevent Iran from ever obtaining nuclear capabilities, Trump promised (once again) to destroy Iran’s nuclear program including their current stocks of enriched uranium and the infrastructure necessary to fully refine weapons grade enriched uranium.

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Operation Epic Fury is currently stuck in the mud of a stalemate, with both Iran and the US administration claiming victory. Both the Pentagon and the White House will offer a long list of accomplishments - targets destroyed, Iranian leadership assassinated, and they count these accomplishments as a “mission accomplished”. Both Trump and Hegseth have declared, on numerous occasions, that we have already won. Unfortunately, Iran feels the same way.

In planning for any operation, be it a war or a corporate product launch, there are five components in a strategic plan that must be mapped out before proceeding. First, an analysis of the organisation’s strengths and weaknesses for both you and your adversary. Sometimes called a SWOT analysis, it examines strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The second step is preparing a list of strategic goals and the action plans to achieve each goal. Next comes projected outputs—targets that must be destroyed, product components that must be procured or produced. The next, and most important, and the one that the Administration forgot about is “outcomes”, what are the consequences of the outputs? Outputs are static, but outcomes are dynamic; they change in real time. How will your competition or adversary react? How will the output being examined impact the market? How will your adversary / competitor react to your introduction? This is where the administration dropped the ball. Their planning, to the extent that there was any, stopped at outputs and did not consider the outcomes. At his press conferences, Hegseth scrolls down a list of targets destroyed, but does not even mention the ultimate outcome of the actions. You can destroy thousands of buildings, but if the reaction to your output is Iran holding the global energy markets hostage by closing down shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, your output was useless. The outcome is all that is important.

After the 2025 bombing, in a national address Trump spoke of his “spectacular military success”, and went on to assure the nation that the Iranian stockpiles of nuclear material had been “completely and totally obliterated”. There’s that word again. It was not his biggest misstatement that day. Apparently thinking that this would be a Venezuela like overnight success, he warned the Iranians in a post on Truth Social.

“ANY RETALIATION BY IRAN AGAINST THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WILL BE MET WITH FORCE FAR GREATER THAN WHAT WAS WITNESSED TONIGHT.”

“THANK YOU! DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES”

Trump assumed that Iran would….. do nothing?

There are many more outcomes that the Trump administration did not anticipate. Obviously he did not anticipate gasoline prices at $5.00 and inflation approaching 4%, double the Fed’s targeted rate of 2%. He did not anticipate the rise in oil prices lining Moscow’s coffers with the bonanza they are reaping from oil exports. He did not anticipate the burst of manufacturing in green energy products, from electric vehicles to windmills to solar panels. None of that surge in production is benefiting the United States because Trump has done his best to scuttle any projects that utilize clean energy like windmills and solar. EV auto production has been sidelined in the United States while China increases its lead in global production.

From Thursday’s Semaphore:

EV sales are surging worldwide amid soaring gasoline prices, with some analysts forecasting global fossil fuel demand could be permanently lower after the Iran war. EV sales in Europe jumped by 27% year-on-year in April; sales in Italy almost doubled thanks to government incentives. Purchases worldwide have also been lifted by a surge in Chinese exports, and the country’s EV shipments surpassed those of fossil fuel-powered cars for the first time ever last month. Though EV sales have fallen in the US, where gasoline prices are at their highest level in years, the Iran war could nonetheless lead to a considerable destruction of global oil demand, both OPEC and the IEA said.

Even if the Strait of Hormuz is reopened next week the constriction in energy supplies will last for months, and probably into next year. Earlier this week, CNBC’s Carl Quinanilla posted the following quote from Saudi Aramco’s CEO:

‪Carl Quintanilla‬

‪@carlquintanilla.bsky.social‬· 9h

* SAUDI ARAMCO CEO NASSER: ENERGY SUPPLY SHOCK THAT BEGAN IN Q1 IS THE LARGEST THE WORLD HAS EVER EXPERIENCED

* SAUDI ARAMCO CEO NASSER: IF HORMUZ DISRUPTION CONTINUES FOR A FEW MORE WEEKS, NORMALIZATION WON’T HAPPEN UNTIL INTO 2027

@reuters.com

The largest impact from this disruption in the oil markets is not in the United States because we are net exporters of oil. We may be paying through the nose for gas, but at least we do not have lines at the pumps. We have ample supply. That is not the case in Europe and especially in Asia, where fuel shortages are causing factory closings and shortened work weeks. Alternative energy sources are there for the asking, and are increasing their market share, but thanks to Trump we are no longer the country offering the solutions. That would be China, which has done absolutely nothing to help resolve Trump’s debacle in the middle east. Never interrupt your adversary when they are making a mistake. The outcomes of our mistakes in Iran will far exceed anything that this administration foresaw, and will impact our international relations for years to come. We are the biggest loser—and China will be the biggest beneficiary. They can thank President Trump for this opportunity.

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May 2, 2026, Vol. # 53

I would like to buy Jerome Powell a drink. No, seriously. If anyone deserves a drink, it is the soon to be former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell. If anyone needs a drink it is no doubt the soon to be former Chair (but not the soon to be former member of the board of governors) of the Federal Reserve Bank. Powell’s term as chair and his term as a Fed Governor do not end at the same time. It is tradition, but nowhere codified in law or regulation, that the immediate past chair of the board also retire from the board of governors. On this or any other board, it usually makes sense for the retiring chair to ride off into the sunset and let the incoming chair steer the ship without the last chair looking over their shoulder. But these are strange times we live in and Mr. Powell has decided that these times warrant a break from tradition. He has declared his intention to keep his seat as a Governor on the Fed’s board until his Governor’s term expires on January 31, 2028. His term as Fed Chair expires this month, on the 15th of May. I’m quite sure that Powell’s announcement landed like a wet sloppy thud in the President’s inbox, as Trump has used any and all means available to him to force Powell out the door.

I’m sure that Trump’s pick and the presumptive new chair, Kevin Warsh, had also hoped that he would be free to steer the ship without Powell still in the picture, albeit in a diminished role. I give Powell an enormous amount of credit for agreeing to submit to Trump’s slings and arrows for another twenty months, because Powell believes strongly in preserving the independence of the Fed and worries that giving up his seat would bring Trump one vote closer to having his way with the board. Even though Powell will no longer be chair, Fed policy—most importantly setting the level of interest rates—is set by the board collectively, not at the direction of the Board Chair. Having control over the level of interest rates— influencing the discount rate and the Fed Funds rate—influences the prime rate which dictates how much large credit worthy customers pay to borrow money. The Fed’s open market operations - buying and selling bonds in the open market, influences bond prices, which influences all current bond yields, (bond prices go up, bond yields go down) which influences the yield on the ten year treasury, which is the primary metric used in how banks then set current rates on mortgages. So most of us have a stake in the ebb and flow of the interest rate cycle—the hip bone’s connected to the thigh bone, so to speak. The Fed adjusts the level of interest rates based upon objective, measurable, quantitative economic data. Trump wants interest rates lowered - because he says so.

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If any one organization has their “hand on the tiller” of a nation’s economy, it is the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Bank. Reserve Banks operate independently of government—and political— interference, something that Trump has a most difficult time coming to terms with. He wants interest rates to be lower, much lower, always lower, regardless of the economic circumstances, and Powell—and the Fed Board of Governors—have refused to follow his instructions and have set rates as economic circumstances dictate. The circumstances that the Fed cares most about are the level of economic growth, and prices. One of the Fed’s mandates is to keep inflation contained—ideally at or below the Fed’s long standing target rate of 2%. The Fed will raise rates to contain inflation, but raising them too much could constrain economic growth. These two metrics—inflation and economic growth— are of equal importance, and the yin and yang of an economic cycle can make steering rates in the right direction decidedly difficult. Allowing economic growth to slow can lead to a recession. Allowing the economy to advance at too strong a rate can also allow prices to escalate which can lead to an inflationary spiral that becomes embedded in the economy. If inflation becomes embedded, lasting for many years, labor assumes that inflation is here to stay, and will demand wage increases to offset the anticipated rise in prices. Those negotiated wage gains are in-and-of-themselves inflationary, as labor costs are part of the cost of production. Thus begins a vicious cycle of systemic inflation, and the only way to stop it is to strangle the economy with an induced recession by raising rates to unaffordable levels. The double digit mortgage rates of the early 80’s were the result of exactly that phenomena.

Adding politics to the decision-making process is a recipe for nothing good, and Powell, and all of his predecessors, have stood firm in keeping politics —and the White House—out of the decision making process. The rising energy prices caused by the war in Iran which we are currently experiencing complicates the calculus immensely, since the textbook response to rising prices is to raise rates, but if the Fed did that, it would slow economic growth, which is already decelerating. Also - Trump’s head would explode. Powell’s response to the current state of affairs is to study the data and act accordingly. Trump’s response is to try to indict Powell. This is the reason for the standoff. Since a Fed governor can only be removed “for cause”, the White House had Trumped-up (pun intended) charges against Powell, alleging that construction cost overruns on a Fed building project were all Powell’s fault, and reason for dismissal. Most legal analysts did not see the alleged infraction as a breach of Powell’s fiduciary duties, even if they were true.

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The President’s Art of the Deal methodology is to bully his adversaries, and absolutely everyone is potentially an adversary. All relationships are transactional. You are important to Trump for as long as you are useful, and when you no longer are, you are fired, or sued, or indicted. Sometimes all three. Sometimes he incites a lynch mob to come hang you. And then he pardons the seditionists. It doesn’t matter if you are a political adversary (see FBI Director James Comey, NY AG Leticia James, Senator Mark Kelly, or an ally (see Vice President Pence, former Attorney General Bill Barr, Chief of Staff John Kelly, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, or former Representative Marjorie Taylor Green.)

A recurring legal firefight was recently rekindled when his (accent on his) Justice Department found a grand jury willing to indict former FBI Director James Comey. The alleged offense - posting a photo of seashells on social media that spelled out 86-47. Seriously. Comey has been living rent free in Trump’s head since Comey left the FBI. Compounding the Comey vendetta, any affiliation with the man is enough to trigger an attack from the White House. If you were a line FBI agent assigned to investigate Russian interference in the presidential election, you were just doing your job, you were just following orders, but you were targeted with termination at the direction of the Oval Office. Comey’s daughter, a highly regarded federal prosecutor at the Manhattan US Attorney’s office, was terminated for absolutely no apparent reason other than being Jim Comey’s daughter. Apparently you can literally ransack the capital and threaten to lynch the Vice President of the United States and you will be pardoned, but post a picture of sea shells spelling out “86-47” on social media and Trump has you indicted. Like most prior Trump related litigation, they are all performative, and all a sham. All of these “prosecutions as retribution” are nothing more than that - revenge. And we are paying the bill, literally.

In his pre-White House past, real estate developer Trump would sue someone he viewed as an adversary (his contractors, his partners, his lenders) into submission —and then stiff the lawyer he had hired to argue the case. Now he does not even need to find a lawyer willing to chance getting paid, he has weaponized the Justice Department to do his bidding and the taxpayers are paying the bill. It is worth pointing out that the defendants in all of these cases, Powell, Comey, et al, are responsible for paying for their own defense.

Comey’s beach seashells photo is just another pretense. “86” is a restaurant term which began as a code to tell the staff that you ran out of something. “86 - Tuna” scribbled on the back of a restaurant check taped up in the kitchen means no more tuna sandwiches. That definition was expanded to “86-ing” a customer who had been “over-served” at the bar. In no one’s dictionary does it mean to shoot the tuna, or to assassinate the drunk. This case should have zero chance of proceeding, but we all will have to pay to watch. Your tax dollars at work. And that is the reason that I would like to buy Jim Comey a drink too. He’s an ex-cop so he will probably be more fun than Jerome Powell. And I need a drink too.

This is now the world we live in, but we voted for him. Twice. Actually I didn’t, but perhaps you did. Shame on us all for letting it come to this.

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April 18, 2026 ~ Vol. 52

The required precepts for a “just war” were laid down in the fourth century by St. Augustine of Hippo. Pope Leo, who led the Catholic Order of St. Augustine before ascending to the papacy, has opined recently about the war in Iran, calling for peace. Someone thinks Pope Leo is all wrong, and also soft on crime. My mother would like a word.

I start my day early, typically very yearly by most folk’s measure. It is partly a holdover from my working days when I needed to prepare for the stock market’s opening by reading way too many newspapers, but mostly simply because I am a morning person. I much prefer sunrises to sunsets. I still try to get anything done that needs to be done by lunch. Any tasks on the calendar after noon are most unwelcome and the outcomes always suspect. But I digress.

This Wednesday, after rising early to read the papers and catch up on overnight emails, I turned on the kitchen radio to be greeted by a speaker addressing the media, whom he was categorizing as “Pharisees”. Now “Pharisees” is a term that I had not heard since second grade catechism class, and my vague recollection of Sister Mary something-or-other’s spiel was that Pharisees (not to be confused with the moneychangers, which the Trump administration would understand) were very bad people who were opposed to this whole “New Testament” thing in general and Jesus in particular (and to always bow your head when you said the name, Jesus). After listening for a while I was not surprised to learn that the person conducting this current religious studies class was Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, or the Secretary of War as he likes to be called, and the objects of his ire were the assemblage of reporters at the press conference. “Not all of you” are Pharisees, he assured them (at least the NewsMax and FOX News reporters, I assume) but the rest of them. Hegseth has been on an anti-press tirade for the entirety of his tenure at the Pentagon, going back and forth banning reporters from the Pentagon offices and then some judge unbanning the reporters so I am not entirely sure of who was actually in the room Wednesday morning and who was standing outside listening from an open window, but he was obviously pretty upset about the recent tone of the reporting about the administration’s conduct of the war in Iran. I am also not sure if the powers that be have declared President Trump’s latest “excursion” in the Middle East to be an actual war, in which case the “War in Iran” would be capitalized I think, so apologies for the spelling, or maybe not.

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Referring to the “legacy Trump-hating media”, Hegseth stated “Sometimes it’s hard to figure out which side you guys are really on!”—and therein lies the rub. Hegseth joined the Trump team directly from his central casting perch as an anchor at that bastion of journalistic integrity, FOX News. His projection in this instance, accusing the media of being “unpatriotic” for covering any negative stories from the war, belies his feelings about what the news media should be about—not to report the facts, but to cheerlead for our side. Listeners were tasked with a double dose of reality distortion in that morning’s commentary from the Secretary, not only lambasting the journalists for just doing what they are supposed to be doing, but then phrasing the chastisement in overtly religious terms, casting the battle as a religious war, harkening back to the days of the Crusades. Someone should remind the Secretary that the Crusades lasted two hundred years.

Later in the day, Hegseth continued this religious studies class when he led a Pentagon worship service in Washington. Using a biblical reference to cast the current war as a “just war”, he quoted Ezekiel 25-17. Or maybe not.

Instead of the actual biblical Ezekiel passage: “and I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them” Hegseth used a variation of a movie script that could have been written in Hollywood. Actually it was a script written in Hollywood. Hegseth quoted a prayer that he stated is used by the CSAR (Combat Search and Rescue) teams, which is based upon Samuel L Jackson’s tirade in the movie Pulp Fiction:

“The path of the downed aviator is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of camaraderie and duty, shepherd the lost through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to capture and destroy my brother. And you will know my call sign is Sandy 1 when I lay my vengeance upon thee.”

In Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, Samuel L. Jackson’s character said this (before emptying his gun into the other guy):

“The path of righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you.”

Samuel L. Jackson’s performance was pretty much played on loop on MS-NOW for the next 48 hours. You really can’t make this stuff up.

Hegseth’s invocation of what he sees as biblical support for prosecuting the war employs an argument that has bled over into this week’s headlines, drawing in none other than Pope Leo, and Donald Trump, and inevitably Pope Leo v. Donald Trump, with support from Hegseth, and MAGA heir apparent and Vice President, JD Vance. The entire discussion of “just war” was usually, in the past, limited to philosophy majors, except for the rest of us who limited the argument to “they started it”, or clear inarguable examples like Hitler. This week’s reporting has gone much further down the “just war” rabbit hole to include the original premise offered by St. Augustine in the 4th century: Justa Causa a “just cause”, i.e.: to defend against aggression, and Intentio Recta, the right intention with an ultimate goal of establishing a lasting peace. St. Augustine’s premises for prosecuting a war also required that the innocent - the non-combatants - must be protected at all costs. Wiping out an entire civilization of 93 million people, as Trump and Hegseth keep threatening to do, would seem to violate that principle. Just a tad. Also schools.

It is worth noting that Pope Leo is a member of the Order of St. Augustine, the first to ascend to the papacy, and has immersed himself in Augustine’s teachings since his ordination in 1977, almost half a century ago. Pope Leo has stated that he considers Augustine to be his spiritual father, devoting his life to the Augustinian principles of unitas, veritas, and caritas —truth, unity, and love. Probably not the guy you want to debate Augustinian philosophy with, but hey, why not?

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Much to President Trump’s chagrin, but to the surprise of nobody else, Pope Leo has opined that this war is decidedly not a “just war”, and has taken the administration to task for their prosecution of the war. President Trump’s threats to “end the Iranian civilization” if they did not reopen the Strait of Hormuz, including the bombing of electric and water infrastructure, has been cited as particularly egregious, and would constitute a war crime under international humanitarian law.

Pope Leo, along with most of the rest of humanity including the leadership of our (former?) allies in NATO, have a problem with that. Not surprisingly, President Trump disagrees. Trump also thinks that “Leo is weak on crime”, a catchphrase that Trump usually reserves for every living (“radical left”, “open border”) Democratic politician. Roman Catholic convert JD Vance, with seven whole years of Catholicism under his belt, advised the Pontiff to stay in his lane, and “be careful when talking about theology”. I think maybe JD skipped a catechism class.

I don’t know about you, but when I am looking for insights into the proper application of moral philosophy in my daily life, the absolutely last people I would look to would be Donald Trump or JD Vance. Or Pete Hegseth.

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April 4, 2026 ~ Vol 51

So…it turns out disrupting the world’s oil and gas supply is not good for the US economy. Or anyone else’s.

Of all the economic maladies that can be inflicted upon a national economy, stagnation, in which rising prices occur simultaneously with a recession, is probably the most problematic for policy makers. An inflationary spike in prices is usually addressed by the Federal Reserve by raising interest rates. Making borrowing more expensive has the ancillary effect of slowing both consumer and business spending, which reduces pressure on prices, which then (hopefully) reduces inflation. On the other hand, one of the primary antidotes for a recession is to reduce interest rates, which hopefully increases spending, which revives the economy. This ebb and flow of supply and demand is nudged along with a little help from the Fed when needed, usually by bolstering demand by lowering rates, or reducing demand by raising rates. As long as nothing goes awry, the economy continues to grow. External shocks to the ebb and flow—more often than not in the form of a shock to the supply side of the equation—can cause things to go awry. Cutting off 20% of the world’s oil supply is one such example. When the economy slows significantly and lapses into recession—usually defined by two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth—at the same time that prices are rising (inflation), policy makers are caught between a rock and a hard place. They must then decide which is the greater evil, and history suggests that inflation is the more troublesome of the two. Unfortunately, inflation is also the more problematic of the two to address.

A slowing economy is usually sparked back to life by lowering interest rates, something that President Trump has been urging the Federal Reserve to do. On the other hand, the textbook cure for inflation is to raise interest rates, which Fed Chair, Jerome Powell has been focusing on during his tenure, much to President Trump’s chagrin. Trump has cajoled, threatened and even attempted to indict Powell along with other sitting Federal Reserve Board members in unsuccessful attempts to force them to acquiesce. He has tried pretty much everything but stomping his feet, all in an attempt to get the Fed to lower rates. But Powell and the Board have stood fast. At least for the moment, we still have an independent Fed.

As strange as the circumstances may appear, we have actually seen this movie before, and unfortunately we seem to be following the same script. I am old enough to remember sitting in line at the gas station in my red Volkswagen beetle, creeping up the street with all of the other drivers whose license plate number ended in the correct number or letter, allowing them to purchase gas on that day of the week. The year was 1973, and America was on the receiving end of an oil embargo orchestrated by OPEC as punishment for our support of Israel during the Yom Kippur War.

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In the current version of this story, center stage is now in the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran is holding 20% of the world’s oil supply hostage, as President Trump assures us that we are not dependent on middle east oil supplies and the the rest of the world needs to man up and help protect ships transiting the Strait. There is so much to unpack here that it is difficult to pick a place to start. Prices at the pump continue to escalate, irrespective of the fact that the gasoline at a pump in New York was probably refined from oil that was pumped out of a well in the Appalachian Basin of Pennsylvania, North Dakota, New Mexico or Texas. More importantly, the product and price at the local gas station is only a very small part of this inflation story. The price of most consumer products that we purchase includes a component that is petroleum based. The food at the market was shipped by a truck that is now costing 45% to 50% more to fill up with diesel fuel. Shipping costs are directly correlated to fuel prices and most of what we buy is made someplace else. It might have been made on the other side of the state or the other side of the world, but there is a transportation component in the pricing. The plastics in the packaging are all made from oil, as are the tires on the trucks. Oil is a component in asphalt, in fertilizers, in pharmaceuticals, and synthetic fabrics. The plane ticket for next month’s vacation is going to cost a lot more than you thought. This current spike in prices, as severe as it looks right now, is about to get a lot worse. Oil and gas supplies in Europe and Asia are about to evaporate, as oil tankers that transited the Hormoz Strait prior to commencement of hostilities arrive at their destinations over the next few weeks. Then what? Oil has spiked past the magic $100 per barrel, but I am now reading estimates that could double that number in the months ahead.

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Trying to project a price necessitates projecting a supply, which requires projecting a resolution to Trump’s “excursion” in Iran. How the Strait is reopened, and when fuel supplies start flowing again is anyone’s guess, and it is truly completely a guess, because no one knows what Trump will say or do tomorrow. I honestly don’t think he does either. As an example, per ABC NEWS:

On March 21, Trump wrote on social media that if Iran didn’t “FULLY OPEN” the strait in 48 hours, the U.S. would hit the country’s power plants. That deadline was extended twice after Trump said that negotiations were ongoing.

That was ten days ago, and he continues to make the threat, and then extend the deadline, perhaps when someone on his staff reminds him that destroying Iran’s civilian power grid would be a war crime under the Geneva Convention.

While we are supposedly negotiating with our enemies (something Tehran denies), Trump continues to alienate our (former?) NATO allies, and is now (again) actually threatening to abandon the NATO alliance. Their alleged indiscretion? Not joining him in his excursion in Iran, specifically to protect the Strait. He did not consult NATO or the UN Security Council before attacking Iran, disrupting the majority of their imported oil and gas supplies, and now Trump wonders why they are upset. Wreckingballs are great for destroying things, but are of little utility in building anything.

Our current inflationary spike will continue for the foreseeable future, even if this war were to end tomorrow, which it will not. The President tells us that we have already won the war, and we will be done in Iran “in a few weeks”. He thinks that because he has destroyed 90% of their military assets, that he can declare victory and go home. The reality is that Iran will still control the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz. They do not need a navy to enforce that embargo. Privately owned and privately insured oil tankers are not going to transit waters where they can be targeted by a fishing boat ferrying combatants with shoulder mounted rocket launchers or a $500 drone. This is asymmetric warfare and Trump does not get to decide when it is “over”.

The uncertainty that the economy must endure is being reflected in the wild gyrations of the stock markets as investors grasp at any suggestion that this will be resolved soon—or not. When the White House announced that the President would address the nation on Wednesday night, the markets—anticipating a potential resolution—advanced over 2% that day. After the President spoke, and said absolutely nothing new, market futures collapsed in frustration and oil spiked an additional 13%. The following morning, the DJIA opened down over 600 points.

The goals of the administration in this venture are as nebulous as the planning. It is true that if you do not know where you are going then any road will do. At the outset of hostilities the administration celebrated the potential for a regime change in Iran when we learned of the death of the Ayatollah Khamenei in a targeted bombing. When his son was appointed successor, we were told that regime change was not really our mission after all. This week the White House flipped stories again—now replacing Khamenei Senior with a younger, more hard line Khamenei Junior counted as regime change. (Be careful what you wish for?) Last week’s story of demanding the Iranians re-open the Strait or we will blow up their electric grid infrastructure, has been replaced with “The United States does not need Iranian oil, we do not need to use the Strait of Hormuz. It is not our job to open or protect the Strait. If Europe needs the oil they should protect shipping themselves.” Turn the page, the story changes - but still worth mentioning is that the Strait was open to shipping and the oil was flowing just fine before we started dropping bombs.

Markets do not like uncertainty, and neither do Fortune 500 CEO’s or small business owners. If you do not know what something will cost, you do not order it. You would not expand your business, or build new factories, or hire more employees. These conditions are the makings of a recession. Under these circumstances, the Fed would usually lower rates. Now add to this debacle the trillions of debt that we took on with the passage of Trump’s Great Big Beautiful Bill. Just the interest on our federal debt now exceeds a mind boggling $1.25 trillion annually. (And we have the Republicans to thank for this milestone achievement, not the Democrats.) Add to this the ticking time bond of the Social Security Trust Fund which everyone in Washington, Democrats included, are conspicuously ignoring. All of this, in the aggregate, makes US investments in general and US sovereign debt in particular much less appealing—which means interest rates will need to go higher to attract investors. Therein lies the paradox, and the puzzle for the Fed to solve.

(Higher Rates) + (Economic Slowdown) = Stagflation.

When this happened a half century ago, in 1979, Paul Volker was brought in as Fed Chair with a mandate to wrestle inflation down to 2%. His prescription was to ratchet up rates to levels never seen before—or since. (The rate on the mortgage for my first house, in 1980, was 13.9%. Ouch.) Given the choice of combating inflation by raising rates or stimulating the economy with lower rates, inflation will win the competition for the Fed’s attention. History may not repeat itself, but it does often rhyme. It won’t be pretty, but Trump will be apoplectic.

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There are eerie and unfortunate similarities in the early chapters of the US-Cuba and the US-Iran stories. As the latest chapter in each is being written, we should remember how we got here.

March 21, 2026 ~ Vol 50

It has been a good month for Rosneft, Russia’s largest state-controlled oil company. In one of last week’s most surprising announcements, President Trump temporarily dropped sanctions prohibiting the purchase of Russian oil. Couple that with the additional profit that Russia is accruing from the run up in oil prices attributable to the Iran war, er… excursion. Last week, both the Guardian and Barron’s reported that Russia earned over $6 billion just during the first two weeks of the war. It is worthy of note that the most vocal objectors to the announcement of dropping sanctions were our NATO allies in Europe, who were (past tense) the largest purchasers of Russian oil and gas. Their objection was rooted in the monetary benefit for Russia from this windfall, which Russia will now use to help fund their invasion of Ukraine.

In the same news cycle we started hearing about Kharg Island, a small island off the coast of Iran, which houses Iran’s primary oil export facility. Bret Stephens, the current occupant of the “Conservative” seat on the NY Times Opinion desk, suggested that seizing the Kharg Island facility would be the quickest way to bring the Iranian regime to its knees. A few days later, missile facilities also located on the island were bombed and destroyed, but the oil processing facility was notably spared in the attack. Taking the facility, as opposed to destroying the facility, will require “boots on the ground” which changes the tenor of the discussion markedly. Anticipating the necessity of using troops to take control of the facilities on the island, White House proxies are twisting themselves into linguistic pretzels trying to explain why using troops to take Kharg would not actually be “boots on the ground”.

Trump made mention of this fact when he announced the bombing, and suggested that the processing facility was left standing for the good of the Iranian people, who will need an intact oil processing infrastructure to support the economy when this is all over. It was a nuance not often heard from this President, which left me wondering—why now? What prompted this epiphany? Why could he appreciate the difference between the Iranian regime and the Iranian people, a subtlety glaring absent in his dealings with Venezuela, or Russia, or Cuba.

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At the same time that the US and Israel are still dropping bombs on Iran, Trump is already looking forward to his next “excursion”, in Cuba.

Trump Says He Will Have the ‘Honor’ of ‘Taking Cuba’

Cuba has struggled for decades under stifling US economic sanctions, with those screws being tightened or loosened depending on who was in the White House. President Obama tried easing sanctions and travel restrictions in the hope of enticing the Cuban government with the carrot of economic development. Those overtures were quickly reversed after Trump’s election in 2016, and sanctions have remained in place since then. The stranglehold became a crisis last year when Trump’s “excursion” with Venezuela included a total ban on Venezuela’s shipments of oil to Cuba. Venezuela was Cuba’s primary benefactor and economic lifeline, providing almost the entirety of their energy imports, along with the majority of their imported food supply. Cuba’s quid pro quo in the arrangement was Cuban medical and pharmaceutical exports to Venezuela, along with providing security for Maduro. (Apparently they are better at health care than security.)

The efficacy of economic sanctions has always been questionable. The Global Sanctions Database calculates that economic sanctions have a success rate of approximately 30% in achieving their stated aims. Crippling economic sanctions leveled on Russia by the Untied States and the EU has not changed Vladimir Putin’s behavior or tempered his attacks on Ukraine. Decades of sanctions against Cuba, have not changed —by any measure—the behavior of the dictatorship that rules over the populace with an iron fist. The lives that have been impacted are the lives of the residents, who had no part in the crimes of the regime. According to the Lancet, a non partisan medical journal based in the UK, the imposition of unilateral economic sanctions leveled by the US and the EU has resulted in the deaths of over 500,000 people annually over the past twenty years. In their calculation, 564,000 lives are lost every year because of economic sanctions, hoping to change the behavior of the country’s leaders. There is certainly a counterargument that the Russian government is using oil revenue to prosecute their invasion in Ukraine, but at the very least calculating the net impact of sanctions on that oil revenue should also include the societal impact on the Russian people.

This is the backdrop of the “excursions” we are now conducting in Iran and Venezuela and Cuba. The highest sanction induced mortality is among children, followed by people over sixty, none of whom are complicit in any of the offending behavior of their regimes. The mullah’s and Revolutionary Guard commanders are not starving; the Iranian people are. The military leadership in Cuba is probably still enjoying a cigar after dinner, and the net worth of Vladimir Putin and his band of oligarchs is trending right up there with our own billionaire oligarchs, Musk, Zuckerberg, Ellison(s), et al. To this catastrophe we must now add the human cost of Trump abandoning international USAID, and the annual mortality directly attributable to US action—or inaction—is calculated in millions. This is our legacy of interventions overseas, and the Trump administration is compounding this global catastrophe by orders of magnitude.

Cuba is now in crisis, and some suggest that the Cuban regime—the remnants of the Castro government and a military that is embedded throughout the Cuban economy—is on the brink of collapse. Then what?

Trump stated that he will “have the honor of taking Cuba” and went on to say: “Taking Cuba. I mean, whether I free it, take it. I think I can do anything I want with it,” he said. “They’re a very weakened nation right now.” When I first read Trump’s comments about Cuba the “I’s” jumped right off the page. “I” can free it. “I” can take it.” I” think “I” can do anything “I” want with it. The man has sped right past “autocrat” and gone full monarch. “Only I can fix it.”

Cuba has been broken for a long time and the Cuban people certainly more than deserve a reprieve. It would be most appropriate for the US to lead that effort, since we were complicit in bringing about their current plight with our support of Batista, the CIA backed dictator that ruled Cuba with an iron fist in the 1950’s—utilizing our money and our weapons. He had the singular attribute of being “anti-communist” which was all we required on a CV during the Cold War years. The Batista regime ended with the Cuban Revolution, and Castro, and ultimately—the current state of affairs.

You find an eerily similar story in Iran, which also begins in the 1950’s. The elected Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh was overthrown in a coup in 1953, with the backing of both the UK and the United States. Mosaddegh’s sin was singular, he had advocated for the nationalization of the oil industry, which had been co-opted by US and British Oil companies. Mosaddegh had attempted to audit the oil companies’ books in a dispute over revenue sharing. The companies took matters into their own hands with help from the CIA and MI6. Shah Pahlavi was awarded complete control of the Iranian government and the ensuing decades of his rule included tens of thousand of arrests, the imprisonment and torture of thousands of Iranian citizens, and the execution of political opponents of the regime by SAVAK, the Shah’s Secret Police Service. The 1979 Iranian Revolution was a direct result of those decades of repression. The promise of the Shah’s overthrow was quickly subsumed by the theocracy that was installed by Ayatollah Khomeini, who had originally promised to only serve temporarily as an interim leader after the revolution. During the transition, Khomeini had promised that his roll was only to lead a transitional government, and that the mullahs should not and would not be involved in Iran’s ultimate political leadership. But power corrupts absolutely, and it was all downhill from there.

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That history is the reason that when our President says that he wants to “have a say” in the future leadership of Iran (and Venezuela, and Cuba) I don’t know if we should laugh or cry. Trump is not a big reader or a student of history, but we are called “The Great Satan” by many Iranians for a reason. Iranian hard liners march in the streets shouting “Death to America” for a reason. We earned it. We (and the UK) have a legacy that probably precludes us from ever having a leadership position in the future of the Middle East, or Cuba, or pretty much anywhere in South America. The Maduro regime in Venezuela is still in place, sans Maduro, but we now have first dibs on their oil. Lucky them. We can talk about the1973 Nixon ordered, CIA-backed coup in Chile that brought Augusto Pinochet to power another time. As they say, our reputation precedes us.

But I do appreciate that Trump, for the moment, seems to be differentiating between the Iranian regime and the Iranian people. If winning this war to change the regime in Iran also means the destitution of 90 million Iranians, nothing good will come of that and the flames of anti-American hatred will only burn hotter.

Trump is finding out that unilateral decisions have global consequences, and when you start wars without first considering the impact on your allies, don’t be surprised when those allies tell you that you are on your own. You now need help policing the Strait of Hormuz? You broke it, you fix it. Maybe you should have thought about that before you started dropping bombs. Our allies and many in our own country are asking why we are in this war. Iran was not an imminent threat to the United States. You can make a legitimate argument that they were an imminent threat to Israel, one of our closest allies. The opposition would no doubt counter with - a plan would have been nice. Some consultation—with Congress, with our allies— would have been appropriate. An exit strategy would have been prudent. We obviously had none, and have none, of any of that.

Next up is Cuba, in all likelihood. Cuba is certainly not an imminent threat—to us or anybody else. Invading Cuba will have little if any US support except from Marco Rubio and the majority of voters in Florida’s 27th Congressional District, home of Little Havana. Cuba is another Trump White House showcase for the ends ostensibly justifying the means.

Removing a malicious, entrenched dictatorship is being used as justification for starving the Cuban population, 99% of whom were not alive for the Revolution and had no hand in installing the regime. Food shortages are now critical. The island is weeks away from running out of oil. Last week, Havana, the most beautiful city in the Caribbean, suffered a 29 hour blackout as hospitals and streetlights went dark. In the last five years over two million people—approximately 20% of the Cuban population —have left the island. The US southern border is their primary destination, and according to The Center for Engagement and Advocacy in the Americas (weareceda.org), the Trump administration paused all immigration applications for Cubans in early December. It has since gone further by terminating the Cuban Family Reunification Parole (CFRP) program, effectively eliminating the last remaining legal pathway created specifically for Cubans to enter the US.

When we ultimately read about how this chapter of the US-Cuba story unfolds, we must also remember how this story started.

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March 14, 2026 ~ Vol 49

Oil prices trended higher this week, influenced by the war in Iran and the bottleneck in the Strait of Hormuz. Approximately 20% of all global oil passes through the strait, a 20 mile wide passage between the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. Tankers carrying Mideast crude oil are afraid of drawing fire from Iranian missile batteries or armed drones if they tried to negotiate the passage.

Given that the United States is “energy independent” and a “net exporter” many people are asking why we are suffering from the chaos in the oil markets along with everybody else. Gasoline and natural gas prices have spiked in the US right along with the entire global marketplace. The paradox lies in the fact that a country’s reliance on oil and gas (how important is oil in their mix of energy sources?) is more important than how much oil is sourced domestically. Even though the United States produces as much oil as we use domestically, all oil is not the same. The fact is, the United States is more exposed to oil shocks than any other industrialized power. There are many reasons that it cost you 20% more to gas up your car this month compared to last month.

The first reason is that the volume of our oil reserves and the oil that we are pumping out of the ground does not matchup with our refining capacity. There are many categories of oil, ranging from the “sweet” low-sulfur crude of the Gulf of Mexico, the Bakken Formation in North Dakota and Permian Basin in Texas, which is very easy—and inexpensive— to refine, to “heavy oil”, a denser more viscous crude more like tar than oil, which is much more difficult, and expensive, to refine. Our refineries, mostly on the Gulf Coast, are designed for processing heavier grades of oil, like those from Alberta and Venezuela with smaller deposits in Alaska and California. It is often more efficient and less expensive for us to ship our lighter oils overseas to be refined, because the cost of retrofitting a refinery can exceed a billion dollars. Much heavy crude is transported to Gulf refineries from Alberta for the same reason. So yes, technically we produce as much oil and gas as we use, and from that standpoint alone we call ourselves “energy independent”, but in reality, we rely on the global marketplace to balance the inventory. If global prices rise, we feel the increase.

The second, and more important reason that we are feeling the upside pressure in prices, is that we are more dependent than most countries on oil and gas to power our energy grid. In the US, approximately three quarters of our energy comes from oil and gas. On the opposite extreme, some countries—like France—have transitioned away from fossil fuels. They are almost entirely dependent on imports for their oil supply, purchasing 98% of what they use annually, but – and this is the point, France produces only 7% of their energy from oil.

As you speed across the French countryside in a high-speed train at 200 mph, you see occasional flicks of white in the landscape that is screaming by your window. Some of the white blurs are sheep. Some are Charolais cattle. Many of the white blurs are windmills. Despite Trump’s insistence that windmills are a scam, they seem to work pretty well. Solar power is also in wide usage in France and supplies 23% of the country’s power. The largest component in France’s energy mix is nuclear, which supplies two thirds of the country’s energy. Another important component is hydro, supplying 14% of energy needs annually. As oil prices escalate, that scenario has measurably less impact in France on how much it costs to get to work, or heat your house. The measure your country’s dependency on oil is called… wait for it…. Energy Dependency, and is a much better measure of a country’s exposure to price hikes, as opposed to being “energy independent”, or “net exporter”, etc.)

Dr. Rosemary Kelanic of Defense Priorities wrote a much more detailed opinion piece on this subject in the NY Times last week. You can read that piece here, for free.

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China too is pulling ahead in this game of Energy Risk. For decades China depended primarily on coal, but they are transitioning rapidly away from it. China is already less dependent than the US on oil and gas because of the strides that they have made in green energy installations and converting their auto fleet to EVs. The United States economy is 40% more oil-dependent than China. Having said that, it is worth noting that China was (past tense) Venezuela’s largest oil customer, a relationship that was disrupted by the US blockade of Venezuelan shipping. A similar story is playing out in Cuba, which was totally dependent on Venezuelan food and energy supplies after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Cuba also relied greatly on China for infrastructure financing. The Trump administration is starving the Cuban population of food and energy supplies in an attempt to overthrow the government. These stories are all related and boiling on the back burner while Trump has his “diversion” in Iran (his words, not mine). Both will be headlines sometime very soon.

In the past, when we had temporary disruptions in our oil supply, (and let’s hope that this is temporary), the US could draw down on its “Strategic Reserve” stockpile. In the event of an extreme drawdown in supply, there is an international strategic reserve coordinated by the International Energy Agency and its thirty-one member countries.

We could ask?

When I read about circumstances like this, I grimace at the prospect of Donald Trump asking any of these people for help right now. International Energy Agency members include Canada and Mexico. I assume neither of those countries are going to be overly anxious to do him any favors. UK is a member, and Prime Minister Starmer is fighting with Trump over their (non) participation in offensive initiatives in Iran. Ditto Pedro Sanchez, the Prime Minister of Spain. Trump is definitely no longer on Emmanuel Macron’s Christmas card list. Have you heard Jonas Støre, the Prime Minister of Norway, talking about our President this week? And I’m wondering how he sneaks an oil release from Agency reserves into the conversation with Mette Frederiksen, the Prime Minister of Denmark, with that whole Greenland thingy still hanging out there. Trump doesn’t think we need any alliances. That works, until it doesn’t.

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This is where America First becomes America alone. No one argues the benefits of eliminating the theocratic dictatorship that is the Republic of Iran. But there is a process. There is a rule of law. The ends do not justify the means if the means introduce a new world rulebook that allows any world power to act on their own beliefs. That is a permission slip for China to annex Taiwan, and for Russia to annex Ukraine. You do not circumvent the rule of law and the UN by setting up your own UN – a “Board of Peace” with a $1 billion entry fee, and then start dropping bombs a week later without consulting your allies, or the UN, or even Congress.

I envision that sometime soon Trump will declare victory and go home. The same regime will be in charge, the same Ayatollahs, the same 160,000 ruthless Revolutionary Guards, armed to the teeth. The same hatred for the Sunnis and western culture, especially the US. Nothing will have changed. Iran’s 90 million citizens will still be under the autocracy’s foot, the overwhelming majority aching for change, but unarmed and unorganized, helpless to do anything but clean up the rubble and bury their dead.

This is the world we live in.

And we will be paying more for gas for the foreseeable future, because our own leader thought that he could win this war in a weekend by eliminating the leader – Madura style but with a missile. And we will be paying more for energy because he believes that clean coal is the future, so let’s re-open the coal mines. He believes that windmills are a scam, and that China isn’t really using them—that they just put some up for show. And that converting the auto fleet to EVs, like China and the rest of the world is doing, is a scam too, or a Democratic hoax, depending on his location and frame of mind, such as it is. Because oil is the future and climate change is a hoax.

How long until the midterms?

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February 28, 2026 ~ Vol 48

It was the end of a long, delightful day of touring the French countryside. We had started the day in Annecy, a resort village in the French Alps near the border with Italy—a few miles farther east of Annecy. Geneva, Switzerland was only thirty miles north. The Alpine mountain backdrop framing the photos of Lake Annecy looks just like the programming from the recently completed winter Olympics. The next winter Olympics will be held in this region of the French Alps.

Later that day, on the way back to our rental in Lyon, our guide suggested that we make a stop in the nearby medieval walled village of Perouges. The village dates from the 12^th century. A few dozen families sill live there, but it is primarily a living, ongoing historic restoration and popular tourist attraction. It is there that we met the Thibault family, which has owned the Hostellierie de Perouges off the central village square since 1912. Our visit with the Thibaults will most definitely make the highlight reel of our stay in France.

As we entered the lodge, we were greeted by the smiling forty-nine year old faces of Bill and Hillary Clinton, who were featured at the entrance in a spray of photographs taken during their visit to the region and to the family’s lodge during the G-7 meeting in Lyon in the summer of 1996. We were also greeted at the entrance to the dining room by Laurence Thibault, the owner of the hostellerie. Four generations of her family have run the business. As Laurence was pouring us a bottle of a local red wine, I asked her about the Clintons and her memories of the event. I should share that I was somewhat apprehensive to ask about the Clintons, as we had very purposefully attempted to avoid any discussion of politics or even our nationalities during our stay in France, for fear of finding ourselves in a conversation about US politics that we really did not want to have. Laurence smiled and excused herself, but came back minutes later with a gentlemen whom she introduced as her father, Georges Thibault. Georges is ninety-two years old. Georges happily told us the story of meeting the Clintons during that last week of June in 1996. I suspect that his daughter has come to appreciate that her father enjoys telling this story to curious American customers as much as we appreciated hearing it.

Georges’ earliest recollections of growing up in Perouges are from the period during the war and the German occupation of France. The area around Lyon, including Perouges, was the center of the French Resistance movement. The German Gestapo was also headquartered in Lyon, just nineteen miles away. Klaus Barbie, the notorious “Butcher of Lyon” was head of the local Gestapo. Our group of travelers, history buffs all, had spent a morning earlier in the week visiting the Historical Museum in Lyon, which focuses on the history of the French Resistance fighters, the French collaborators headquartered in the city of Vichy, and the Nazi occupation of the city during the war. The presentations at the museum include a video of the trial of Klaus Barbie, who had been found hiding in South América in 1983. Barbie was convicted of executing over 4,000 French citizens, in addition to deporting over 7500 Jews to concentration camps.

A few months after the Allied Normandy invasion on June 6, 1944, the 2^nd Battalion of the 179^th Infantry had arrived in Perouges and nearby Meximieux to battle the embedded German Panzer division that had occupied the area. The battle to liberate Perouges was part of the battle that has come to be know as the Battle of Meximieux, and had consumed the villages for days. Georges pointed to an archway in the dining room that was a few feet from where we were sitting. That is where my parents told me to stand, he told us – under the arch – in case a bomb brought the house down. Young Georges was ten years old at the time.

The commander of the US tank Division, Captain Fred Snyder was sleeping at the Hostellerie where his group was garrisoned. At one point during the skirmishes, the German Panzers had been driven out of the city, and it appeared that the Allied Forces were in control of Perouges. Captain Snyder had asked young Georges to wake him the next morning. “At 8 AM?” Georges recalled asking the Captain. Let’s make it 9, Captain Snyder responded. It had been a long week. Unbeknownst to the Allied Army, the Germans had doubled back and surrounded the US Infantry and were about to launch an assault to retake the village.

Captain Snyder never returned to the inn. He was killed that day fighting for the liberation of Perouges. This story, which a now 92-year-old Georges Thibault told us last Wednesday afternoon, was the same story that he told the Clintons in June of 1996. Georges asked President Clinton if he would sign the hotel register near where Captain Snyder had signed in—and never signed out. He said that the President wiped away a tear with his handkerchief as he signed the book. I love your country, Georges told us. I love the United Stated of America. And I am absolutely certain that Georges Thibault really does love our country.

As my friends and I immersed ourselves in the history of Europe over this past month, it has been difficult not to draw parallels with the current state of our politics. It is easy to compare the territorial ambitions of Vladimir Putin with the ambitions of Adolph Hitler. It is also easy to see similarities in the comments of Stephen Miller when he says that we live in a world where those with the power make the rules and everyone else must deal with that reality. It is easy for our European allies to also draw similar conclusions when we talk about our right to Greenland, because – we must; it is a strategic imperative. What exactly is the difference between that logic and Putin’s logic? Or Hitler’s?

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It was not the Nazi Gestapo who rounded up the Jews in Lyon during the war, or the Romas, or the homosexuals. It was the local French Gendarmerie – the local French police who knew who the local “others” were—the Jews, the Catholics, the gypsies, the gays—and those helping the resistance. The local police had access to the local population records as they collaborated with the Nazi occupiers. They knew who the “others” were. How can you not be concerned when you hear of our local sheriffs’ departments being asked to help in the round up of our own “others”. Yes, law enforcement should all work together, but when the federal homeland security agencies have been weaponized to terrorize our own “others”, when anyone whose skin is darker than ours is subject to detainment and interrogation, we should all be very concerned. We should be more than concerned.

Ours is now a government without oversight, without checks and balances, and without any moral compass. We have abandoned the alliances that were formed over years of cooperation and forged in the fires of wars against tyranny. And we are standing by and allowing it all to happen, and for those alliances and relationships to be squandered. Here in Perouges, Georges Thibault still remembers the America of eighty years ago when we were at our best—when “American values” meant something. We can only hope that there is enough time for the words of Winston Churchill to again be proven correct. “We can always count on the Americans to do the right thing—after they have tried everything else.”

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February 16, 2026 ~ Vol 47

The server arrived almost as soon as we were seated, carrying chilled gallon size bowls of saucissons—sausages, sliced and tossed in a vinaigrette dressing, and presented as a “Selection of Salads”. There were six bowls in all, from which we were expected to spoon out what we would call an appetizer, and the French call an “entrée”. It was the beginning of a memorable evening. In the States we celebrate restaurants that work with local farms, especially with kitchens that offer “nose to tail” dishes. Here in Lyon, the capital of French gastronomy, body parts and presentations from the kitchen’s charcutier are front and center on every menu, especially in restaurants that advertise themselves as “bouchons”, purveyors of working-class dishes popular with the Lyonnaise silk workers of years gone by. Many if not most of the hundreds of restaurants in Vieux (Old) Lyon call themselves bouchons, most to capitalize on the robust tourist industry in the region. A few are the real deal.

We were dining at Chez Chabert, a bouchon popular with the locals which does not cater to the throngs of visiting tourists. A walking tour guide had recommended the restaurant to us early in our stay. Our first “salad” bowl was a type of “sabodet” sausage fashioned from parboiled meat from the pig’s head—the museau, the snout, along with the ears and cheeks and tongue. The ingredients were not processed through a grinder and blended, but had been had chopped into (identifiable) pieces, “Toulouse style”, and stuffed into a pig’s intestine. We were offered various variations on this theme during the next 30 minutes, some finely ground, like our Lyonnaise Cervelas sausage, and some molded together in aspic and chilled. Some focused on just one body part. The first presented was a “snout salad”, which was followed by an additional offering of calf’s foot sausage salad. The salad offerings were a big hit, except with my wife, who was expecting an actual “salad”—as in lettuce or something green or at least tangentially related to a vegetable. A proffered bowl of lentils would have to do.

I grew up in the restaurant business and have spent a fair amount of time writing about it, so as we were enjoying our oversized platters of starters, I couldn’t help but wonder what the waitstaff would do with the inevitable leftovers. The bowls really did contain multiple pounds of meat in each one, and there was no way that our party of four was going to finish any one of them, no less all six. I waited to see what the server would do, and we got our answer in short order. When we signaled that we had had enough of our starters, the server picked up our unfinished salad bowls and simply passed to the next table of diners. In the States such a service would be forbidden—anything that gets served gets eaten or discarded, or at least restaurants try to make it look that way for the health department inspectors. Here, there was no pretense of bringing it back to the kitchen and “re-plating” anything. In Lyon, family style means FAMILY style—for the entire restaurant. Very French

As the evening progressed the bowls made their way around the entire dining room with regulars taking it upon themselves to share with their neighbors. Our neighboring table also offered us local guidance when we ordered a bottle of the local Côtes du Rhône wine. They told us that the regulars never order by the bottle, that a carafe of “house red” was just as good and half the price. Viva la France!

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Dining in France is a uniquely French experience, unlike dining anywhere else that I have had the opportunity to travel to. Dining in France, cooking in France—and food and wine in general—is a cultural touchstone. Food preparation— from a simple baguette or breakfast croissant to a ten-course Michelin starred kitchen’s dinner is given the attention and appreciation, that it deserves. The baguettes behind the counter at most gas stations in France will be better than the breads in most markets in any other country.

Here in Lyon, many restaurants open for a two-hour lunch service, from noon until 14 heures—2 PM. The table is yours for the two-hour seating. The affair is repeated for dinner, with most restaurants opening at 7 or 7:30 for a two-hour dinner service. Restaurants are open for five days - Tuesday through Saturday. Most restaurants close on Sunday and Monday. In France, there is no “turning tables” after ninety minutes, the table is yours for as long as you like. Take your time to enjoy a cheese course to accompany what is left of your wine, before ordering dessert and a cup of coffee. No one places a check on your table at the end of your meal to nudge you along— that would be rude. When you are finished you stop at the bar to settle your bill. There is no “suggested tip” added to the bill, in fact you are not even given the opportunity to add a gratuity to your credit card charge. Tips are left on the table, in cash, for the service staff. Locals round up or leave a few euros. 10% of the bill is considered very generous. Leaving a customary American 20% tip will bring your waiter out to the sidewalk to thank you personally—”Merci Beaucoup!”— bid you “Bonne Nuit!” and invite you back soon – À bientôt!

In planning for this trip we were concerned about how Americans would be treated by our friends in Europe, after a year of dealing with the Trump White House. French tourist traffic to America is down 7% in the past year, which is noticeable, but not as bad as Canadian tourism to the US, which fell 22% in 2025. We did actually ask some of the guides that we spent time with this month how they felt about the current state of American politics. There seemed to be two constant themes in their responses. One – all said that they appreciated that American politics and Americans were two different things, and that they realize that not everyone supports Trump’s policies. When we assured them that we were not supporters of Trump or his politics or policies, they responded with the second common theme among everyone we spoke to—they disliked French President Emmanuel Macron even more than Trump. (We offered to swap.)

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There was, however, one bilateral issue that everyone was in agreement about – US tariffs. We visited a number of wineries this month in the Beaujolais, in Burgundy and the Rhone Valley south of Lyon. When we asked about business or about how they were dealing with shipping costs and exporting, they were unanimous in their response: Tell us what Trump will do next month, and we will tell you what our shipping costs will be. We have no idea—so we no longer plan on exporting to the US. One winery owner in the Macon region of Burgundy told us that the US used to be their primary export market, but because of the tariff turmoil, Norway was now their biggest customer.

One of the most enjoyable parts of visiting France is their public transportation system, which is second to none. You can travel anywhere in a city by hopping on a trolley (tram), or the metro (subway). In Lyon, a 72 hour pass gives riders access to unlimited rides for €18 (about $21). Trains are spotless, and on time. We have never waited more than a few minutes for a train to arrive in a station. Longer distance train travel on high speed (TGV) trains will take you to most cities in France at up to 200 MPH. We traveled the 300 miles from Paris to Lyon in two hours, and to Avignon, just north of Marseille on the Mediterranean, in just over one hour. You really can get by without a car.

I was surprised to see that the political discourse here in France is just as vitriolic as ours in the States—perhaps even more so if that is possible. That might be attributable to our current location here in Lyon, which is the French epicenter of right-wing extremism. Lyon has a long history of political activism, going back to serving as the center of the French Resistance during World War II. Local elections will be held next month, and mayoral contests in Lyon and in Paris dominate the headlines. The electioneering has also included major infrastructure projects on vivid public display everywhere that you turn—or try to turn—no doubt because of elections being right around the corner. Major protests and marches are on the calendar in Lyon today, spurred by a confrontation last week between opposing factions of left and right wing coalitions, which resulted in one protester being killed in the melee.

The headlines here are probably similar to the headlines in the States. Supreme Court rules against Trump tariffs. (Surprise!) Trump sends naval armada to surround Iran. Trump enforces blockade to starve the people of Cuba. And the questions following the headlines are probably also the same. What exactly will be the end game in Iran? Has the US learned nothing from Iraq, or Libya? Who will feed the people of Cuba when their government collapses? What did the people of Cuba do to deserve this? And closer to home - how will we right the economy now that Trump’s signature economic initiative has been ruled unconstitutional. Trump has already stated that cancelling the tariff program would be devastating to the US economy. His point of course was to shift the blame, and that it would be the Court’s fault, not his, when he had to unwind his global economic misadventure.

Because Trump, of course, can do nothing wrong.

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January 31, 2026 ~ Vol. 46

The new year always brings lots of projections and prognostications about the economy and the markets, with our favorite pundits and prophets laying out bull cases and less bullish bull cases—but rarely bear cases. Woe is the analyst who suggests to the firm’s clients that the market is overbought and poised for a fall, which is why I can count on one hand the number of times I have seen a bear case in print anytime in the last forty-plus years of investing. Bearish forecasts are about as popular and just as treacherous as shorting the markets. If you project the Dow is going to break 50,000 you will, no doubt, be right sooner or later—maybe a lot later—but if you predict that we are headed down to 45,000 you could be wrong forever. The long term trend of the equity markets has always been up, albeit with lots of corrections along the way.

Former clients will recall that at the start of each year I could be counted on to suggest that I was comfortable that over the long term the markets would continue to double every nine or ten years, but that the shorter term was less certain, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see some shorter term downside volatility. That was simply an expectation of historical eight or nine percent returns over the long term, with some dips along the way, probably sooner than later. As a portfolio manager, there was no downside in taking this position. If you were right and the market corrected, you comforted the client with a reassuring: “We do not have any money in the market that we need this year. I told you that I was expecting this would happen. Don’t worry about temporary declines.”— which put their minds at ease. If you were wrong and the market advanced, no one cared, their portfolios participated in the rally. I was, and still am, a long-term bull, short term-bear, but the shorter term is looking more and more treacherous based strictly on market valuations, and the potential catalysts on the horizon that could trigger a pullback—starting with an escalation in the trade war, an adverse (for Trump) SCOTUS tariff ruling, or the approval process for the proposed new Federal Reserve Chair.

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The biggest issue surrounding the approval of Kevin Warsh, Trump’s selection to replace Powell, has been Trump’s attack on the traditional independence that the Fed has always enjoyed. A non-political, independent Federal Reserve Board, and Chair, is part of the foundation upon which our economy and financial system is structured. Make no mistake about it—politicizing the Fed by carrying out his threat to fire the current chair would have destroyed what is left of our credibility in the global markets. Look no further than how the US dollar has performed vis-à-vis our global trading partners since Trump took office to see how the world is reacting to Trump’s economic policies, particularly with regard to international trade.

The Euro has advanced over 15% against the dollar over the last 12 months

Giving Trump the keys to the Fed would send the dollar right off a cliff, in my opinion. If President Trump had his way, someone like My Pillow’s Mike Lindell would have been our next Fed Chair, but neither the Senate Banking Committee nor the required majority of the Senate would approve that appointment. (Probably.)

Unfortunately, there are numerous other potential catalysts for a market correction – record federal debt, Social Security running out of money, Trump’s tariff policy under review at SCOTUS, our global trading partners looking for new, more reliable, partners— even though none of these issues have proven to be overly impactful in the markets to date.

Picking a market top is not only hard, it is impossible. Alan Greenspan’s famous irrational exuberance speech is my favorite (and most often cited, I know) “missed” market call.

From my August 2, 2025 newsletter:

On December 5, 1996, the then Chair of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, was giving a televised speech to the American Enterprise Institute. Cautioning the audience about the current prices of many of the “Dot-Com” stocks that were stretching valuations in the markets, he suggested that market participants may be displaying “irrational exuberance”, a cautionary but very unusual assessment of investor behavior by a Fed Chair. US markets had closed for the day, but the Japanese markets were trading and were the first to reflect and react to Greenspan’s comments, and those markets promptly plummeted. When the U.S. markets opened the next day for trading, the DJIA fell 145 points in the first thirty minutes of trading, before recovering to close down 55 points for the day. Importantly, and the point of my telling this story, is that three years later on January 14 of 2000, the Dow closed at 11,722, up 5,341 points and 84% higher since the Greenspan warning. The moral of the story: if the Chair of the Federal Reserve cannot pick the top of the market, or even come remotely close, you probably can’t either.

That doesn’t stop people from projecting short term market performance, and this year’s offerings are in. Goldman Sachs and the majority of the street projections cluster around 8-9% forecasted gains (surprise!), with current stock market valuations such as metrics like price / earnings ratios currently at a lofty 28.5. The long term (100 year) average is around 20, which prices the market at approximately 40% above historical norms, strictly on a P/E basis. Something really good has to happen to earnings to justify the numbers. That something really good, in the forecast of firms like Oppenheimer, who is looking for a 15% advance, is the monetization of AI, meaning: productivity increases brought about by artificial intelligence applications in the workplace will accelerate and boost corporate earnings to the extent that the increase in earnings, the E in P/E, will bring down the multiple.

Past market peaks can be identified by peaks in P/E ratios. Those peaks can often be attributed to the earnings (the E in P/E) peaking—as the denominator in the equation declined, the resulting P/E ratio increased. Earnings evaporated during the 2008 financial crisis as financial industry profits disappeared, and during the pandemic in 2020 as customers disappeared. The current situation is closer to the tech bubble of 2000, where prices (the P in P/E) grew to levels not remotely tethered to earnings, or potential earnings in the near or intermediate term. Right now the market is pricing in potential future AI earnings that some think are still far over the horizon. We are about to find out. If the AI earnings do not materialize the market could correct, or at best the market projections of folks like Bank of America will prove to be correct. B of A / Merrill is forecasting a much more modest 3% return—less than a (much safer) bond yield.

Prior P/E Peaks stand out: 2000 (Tech Bubble), 2008 (Financial Crisis), 2020 (Pandemic)

Recently, equity market returns are being driven by technology companies and primarily those companies who are in the AI space – Nvidia, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, etc. When I started investing professionally, in 1977, we did not have today’s “Magnificent Seven”, we had “The Nifty-Fifty”, large cap growth companies like Polaroid, Eastman Kodak, Motorola, IT&T, Kresge, and Xerox. I am really dating myself in acknowledging that none of the Magnificent Seven stocks existed when I started investing, and many of the Nifty Fifty that I cut my teeth on are now gone, bankrupt or subsumed by rivals. As they say, history may not repeat, but it often rhymes.

When investors look at these “street forecasts” it is helpful to remember that they are all based on some educated guesses about the economy and then comparing those guesses to historical norms. All of them are predicated on averages—prices or some other metric and the resulting forecast is an extrapolation of those guesses. Will earnings be better or worse than average, and will investors be more or less optimistic about those numbers by year end? What will the future bring? No one knows. No one will ever know, until it happens.

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When looking at historical averages I always keep in mind my statistics 101 class, and the story that begins with—”Warren Buffet and Bill Gates walk into a bar.” There are a six construction guys sitting at the bar having lunch. Stop me if you’ve heard this. All of the construction guys at the bar make between $50,000 and $60,000 per year. The average salary, the “mean” – before Buffet and Gates joined the crowd—was about $55,000. Buffet and Gates each made a billion dollars last year. Adding their two salaries brings the mean salary for the group to $250 million.

The “median salary” (half the group makes less, half make more) will be around $55,000. Neither metric is meaningful, or useful, because neither is at all representative of reality. Nobody makes anything close to the average of $250 million, and the median salary of $55,000 does not recognize the fact that the two billionaires are having lunch. Even the “mode”—the most oft repeated number in the data set – somewhere between $50,000 and $60,000—is meaningless.

This is where we are now. Buffet and Gates didn’t walk into the bar, Trump did. I think that historical references are meaningless, and projections just based upon historical norms and variances from those historical norms are not at all useful. We are in totally uncharted territory. The Greenspan story reminds us that bubbles not only occur, but they can grow larger than last time, even larger than anyone—even really knowledgeable Fed Chairs—thought possible. The 2000 internet bubble reminds us that sometimes forecasted corporate earnings and productivity increases from new technologies take longer than forecasted to materialize—internet stocks then, AI stocks now. The 2008 financial meltdown illustrated how unregulated sectors of the financial markets can bring the global economy to its knees. How soon we forget. In 2008 it was derivatives of mortgage debt that had been securitized and sliced and diced into so many iterations that many investors did not even know what they were invested in.

President Trump is proud of the number of regulations that he has repealed, of the number of regulators and inspectors general that he has fired, the number of regulatory agencies that he has disbanded. That works until it doesn’t. I have seen the abyss—in 2008—and I remember how the laissez-faire / total lack of regulation story ends. I do not ever want to see that abyss again. We may not want to go there again, but we are certainly heading in that direction. I look for unregulated crypto currencies to be central to the story.

After the markets have plummeted into free-fall, we are reminded by talking heads like CNBC’s Jim Cramer that you should not have any money invested in stocks that you need in the next five years. It is advice that we should all keep in mind now, before the markets have their correction. At the very least, make sure that your portfolio’s asset allocation has not drifted to an equity overweight after last year’s advance. Raising cash when the markets are near their highs is a lot less painful than selling after prices have collapsed. The markets could very well have another double digit gain this year. They could also return to historical valuations and have a severe double-digit decline. No one knows—not Goldman, not Jim Cramer, not Oppenheimer, not Merrill. Certainly not me. Over the long-term stocks have returned roughly double the returns of fixed income investments, but you have to be invested for the long term to be comfortable that those returns will come to fruition.

Risk analysis has two components: what is the probability of an outcome, and importantly, what are the consequences of an adverse outcome. Long term investors have enjoyed superior returns in the equity markets and long term portfolios like 401k’s and IRA’s should have exposure to equities. But - prudent risk analysis is also why you should not have next month’s mortgage payment, or even next year’s tuition payment in the stock market—ever, but especially right now.

Our market gurus are predicting, as they do year after year after year, that we will enjoy positive eight to nine percent US stock market returns in 2026. I will be pleasantly surprised if that happens. But I will be very surprised it does.

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January 24, 2026 ~ Vol. 45

I guess we had all feared it was only a matter of time, but I would never have guessed it would be a spectacular belly-flop at the Davos World Economic Forum, of all places, with the ownership of Greenland— with one-quarter the population of Yonkers—being the issue that irreparably ruptured the Atlantic alliance.

The day preceding the Debacle at Davos, Trump set the table for the spectacle to come. “Dear Jonas,” President Trump began, in a message he sent (and shared publicly on Truth Social) to the Prime Minister of Norway, “Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.”

There is a lot to unpack there, too much to digest in one sitting, but let’s start with the fact that Norway’s name appears nowhere on the property deed for Greenland. Additionally, the Nobel Prizes are not awarded by the Prime Minister of Norway, but even if they did….. why would Trump publicize this insane exercise in petty vengeance for all to see?

I have come to expect that my morning headlines will contain some out-of-the-blue Trumpian missives from the bowels of his overnight Truth Social media feed, but this one caught my attention. Here I was expecting to read his usual broadsides against which Democrat (read: left wing, Marxist, liberal scum in Trump-speak) had the misfortune of crossing his line of sight on News Max the prior evening—but a salvo aimed at the Prime Minister of Norway was not on my bingo card.

Not that this story requires any additional complications to qualify it as absurd, but both Denmark and Norway are members of NATO, an organization pledged to defend the sovereignty and the borders of all other members. You can see why the rest of the free world was less than thrilled with any of this. And doesn’t threatening the sovereignty of a NATO ally qualify as “high crimes and misdemeanors” and as such, an impeachable offense? Or at least bat-shit crazy enough to invoke Article 25?

But the best (actually the worst) was yet to come.

You might have thought that AI had advanced to the point where it could be used to fact check Trump as he speaks? That would have been very helpful in Davos this week, where Trump used his keynote platform to spew his usual litany of fabrications and falsehoods for over an hour. I would have paid real money for the organizers to have placed a reader board on the front of his podium correcting him in real time. He regurgitated his usual stump speech of MAGA rally red meat, as if the assembled Davos A-list audience of globalist execs and billionaires might actually appreciate this schtick. He scolded the Europeans in the audience for having “used” the United States for decades to their advantage. He reminded them that climate change was a fraud and clean energy was a hoax. He peppered his misinformed opinions with a steady stream of incorrect “facts”. He repeated his oft-mentioned assertion that windmills and other green energy initiatives are a scam. He actually said that while China is manufacturing and exporting windmills, that they do not actually use them—they just keep a few on display for potential customers to see. (He actually said this. You can look it up!) He insisted that China focuses on coal production for its own national energy needs and sells its green energy manufactured products to the “woke” European customers. All of this is easily contradicted by actual production data.

China actually leads the world in total annual domestic installations of renewable energy – wind, solar and hydro—with approximately one third of worldwide installs. They also lead the world in the production of EV’s and EV batteries. 70% of all electric cars made were produced in China last year, along with over 80% of all EV batteries. How Trump can stand in front of an audience of global executives, all of whom know full well that the future of energy is not and cannot be carbon based and spew his nonsense about windmills causing cancer and China not using renewable energy is beyond me. Does he actually believe the lies that he shares from the podium?

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The rest of the day at Davos was equally as embarrassing for an American audience and no doubt infuriating for the Europeans, who were advised by our president that they would all be speaking German if not for our winning World War II for them. Trump’s speech was preceded by one from Mark Carney, the Prime Minister of Canada. His speech in a nutshell was—we have had enough, and that the world must move on to the new reality of a post Pax-Americana and the “rules-based international order” that the United States—in the past—had spearheaded. He spoke of the necessity for new economic and defense alliances of “middle powers” such as Canada, to join together because the United States has ceded its leadership role in world affairs. Nature abhors a vacuum. At Davos this year, one speaker brought the audience to its feet in thunderous applause. It was not Donald Trump. It was Prime Minister Carney.

No one was happier than Russia as they listened to NATO allies actively discussing the fissures in the alliance, and the necessity of plotting a new path forward that does not rely on United States leadership. There is no need to speculate about who might be a Russian asset. A “useful idiot’ can be just as helpful to the cause. No one was happier than China to hear Trump ceding the future of renewable energy manufacturing to them! On purpose! That eventuality was also underscored this week when Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney signed a bilateral trade agreement with Chinese Premier Xi Jinping promoting EV car and battery imports. This while Trump reopens abandoned coal mines because coal is the future of energy, in his mind. Canada and Mexico are – or were - our largest trading partners. Canada also secured a new investment and trade partnership with Qatar this month, and is currently in bi-lateral negotiations with the Philippines, Thailand and Saudi Arabia.

From Semafor this week:

China scored big trade wins as the US pushed ahead with its protectionist moves. Beijing reached agreements with the EU and Canada to allow more Chinese-made electric vehicles into both markets, while Britain’s prime minister will travel to China soon to revive business cooperation. Germany’s chancellor is also expected to visit next month. US President Donald Trump’s speech at Davos this week reiterated he would keep tariffs in place, affirming Washington’s retreat from the helm of a free-trade liberal order, The New York Times argued: Beijing is keen to assume that mantle, and despite its repressive surveillance state and military expansionism, it is “at least rhetorically” invested in the rules-based, multilateral model that Trump has denounced.

As if we did not have enough Trump-news to digest this week, the White House continued in their quest to structure a “Board of Peace”, ostensibly to plan the future of Gaza. Trump’s offers of a seat at the table came with a $1 billion entry fee for a permanent seat. Invitations were sent to thirty-five countries, including Russia because…. war criminals such as Putin deserve a seat on the Board of Peace to plan the future of Gaza, right? The invitations were viewed with considerable skepticism in European capitals as recipients feared that the new body, chaired by President Trump, would usurp the existing peacekeeping portfolio of the United Nations. Trump will also have veto power over all decisions, according to Semafor—so why would anyone want to participate in this charade? France has already declined the invite, which prompted Trump to threaten a 200% tariff on champagne in retaliation. Putin’s response to Russia’s invitation (and enclosed $1 billion invoice) was that he would be happy to pay the tariff (pun intended) with Russian state funds that were seized and impounded in the United States already. Such a kidder, that crazy Russian.

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This week’s events did answer the question that we have all been asking: will Trump and “Trumpism” fade away when he exits the White House, or will his impact be longer lasting? We certainly have the answer. I don’t think that there is any doubt that the man has done irreparable damage to the “rules-based international order” that has served as economic and political guard rails since the end of World War II. A rules-based order requires that participants play by the rules, especially the leaders, and Trump most certainly does not play by the rules. A rules based order among allies also requires something that Trump is incapable of offering—trust. Our allies were already upset with Trump’s arbitrary assessment of punitive tariffs with no rhyme nor reason other than—“We were being treated very unfairly”. Tariff rates go from zero to 200% to 10% to 200% to 35%, all in a week, depending on what grievance moved the President that moment. Who can possibly plan in such a capricious environment that makes no economic sense. How do corporations formulate a business plan if they have no idea what their costs are going to be? How do our trading partners formulate budgets or forecast economic models?

Greenland was the last straw, even if the future of the island is far from established. Demanding that a NATO partner forfeit sovereign territory because Trump has decided that it is more strategically important to us than to Denmark has shown the world what they are dealing with. Canadian Prime minister Mark Carney spoke for the rest of the free world in response. He paraphrased White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller’s, screed from last week, during Miller’s interview with Jake Tapper on CNN:

“We live in a world – one that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.” ~ White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller

Carney said much the same—“The strong will do what they can. The weak will do what they must”, but then concluded that if this —might makes right—is what the United States now means by America First, the rest of the free world must find another path forward without them.

You can watch Prime Minister Carney’s speech here, and I highly recommend that you do. I believe that historians will look back on it as one of the most important and prophetic speeches of the era.

We are now in a new chapter of American history, as our nation’s former friends and allies formalize new strategic trade agreements and defense pacts without any dependence or even participation from the United States. Trump has voluntarily jumped off of this cliff into the abyss. He will refuse to acknowledge that he is falling and that he made a mistake. At the latest he will realize this was a mistake when someone reminds him that China has one billion more people than we do. 1 billion more workers. One billion more consumers. The US cannot compete individually. He will, no doubt, assure his followers that he is flying, not falling. It really does not matter if he actually believes that he is flying or if deep down he knows that he is falling. The story ends the same way.

And another thing: Tariff research from the Kiel Institute:

America’s own goal: Americans pay almost entirely for Trump’s tariffs

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January 17, 2026 ~ Vol. 44

Sometimes you just don’t even want to open the morning paper. You have no idea what the headlines will focus on today, but you know that they won’t be positive, or comforting, or bring you any joy. You can pretty much be assured that they will be about Trump, for today’s world and most everything in it is orchestrated from the White House or the weekend White House, Mar-a-Lago. The articles that do not tell us about his most recent edict, also known as Executive Orders, will focus on why that Executive Order is misguided, or probably illegal, but we won’t know for a year and half until the inevitable law suits have worked their way through the system until they reach the Supreme Court, and then we wait another few months holding our breath each Friday to see if this will be the week that they favor us with their decision. Or not.

The stories about the President’s misadventures are so voluminous that any one particular assault on our morality is lost in the waterfall of competing headlines, which of course, is the point of the exercise—flood the zone with a torrent of offensive initiatives so that it is not possible to focus on any one of them. Presidential advisor, Steve Bannon, announced the strategy in advance with his now infamous “floods the zone with sh*t” advice to right wing conservatives for dealing with the media. Boy, have they ever. There isn’t enough time, or stamina, or lawyers to deal with the onslaught.

Wednesday’s lead headline in the New York Times read “China announces record trade surplus as exports flood world markets” Seriously? After all of this? The legality of Trump’s assessment of tariffs on our trading partners is one of the cases currently being deliberated by the Supreme Court, but in the meantime, the international markets are making their own assessments. Last year Trump announced crushing tariffs on China with the intention of slowing China’s exports and, by extension, motivating domestic consumers to purchase US made products. He assessed punitive tariffs that whipsawed from 10% to 200% and currently average 47% with specific items like autos and electronics suffering additional penalties. The result? Late 2025—early 2026 US manufacturing data show continued contraction, with the ISM/PMI falling to 47.5% - the lowest in the last twelve months. (An Institute for Supply Management / Purchasing Managers Index reading below 50 signifies a reduction in domestic production.) While we were assessing penalties on Chinese exporters, Trump was also alienating our European allies – and trading partners – with their own sets of tariffs. The results so far? China’s exports to Europe are surging, especially in sectors like electric vehicles, which is a story in itself. As the US is cancelling EV and green power initiatives, China is quickly, and gleefully, capturing market share, as their exports move up the value chain from cheap goods to green technology. And Trump is applauding while this happens right in front of us as the White House cancels major offshore wind projects on the East Coast, withdraws (for the second time) from the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change while promising to re-open coal mines and drill, baby, drill.

Speaking of drilling, this morning’s headlines try to bring us up to date on Trump’s latest Venezuela adventures and his attempts to wrest the oil reserves of that country for our own exploitation. We can try to assess each of the components in the story to try and determine the legality of the action, but just an apolitical 30,000 foot view of the whole idea has to give you pause. Yes, Maduro is an evil character and rigged his re-election. He was the type of leader who sanctioned shooting someone three times in the face because they were being disrespectful. Oh, no, that was our guy. But another regime-change invasion? Have we learned nothing? To what end— control of Venezuela’s vast oil reserves?

I have so many questions about this fiasco that I don’t know where to begin. First and foremost – the “vast oil reserves” in Venezuela, estimated to exceed ours and Saudi Arabia’s and Canada’s, are not readily accessible, and importantly, are of a quality that is extremely expensive to produce, too expensive to refine profitably at today’s prices. The generic description for Venezuela’s oil reserves is “dirty oil”. It is high in sulfur and the thick viscosity of its “heavy crude” requires additional refining that is not required with “sweet” (low sulfur) crude oil from places like Texas. The vast reserves in Canada’s tar sands are equally unappealing to most refiners, which do not have the necessary refining technology to process heavy crude. That is why Alberta ships its own “heavy-oil” to our US Gulf Coast refineries for processing. Canada does not have the type of refining capacity to process all of Alberta’s heavy crude.

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It will take years, if not decades, to build out—through the jungle— the infrastructure necessary to drill, transport, and refine the reserves in Venezuela—and when that happens, if that happens, producers want to know that oil prices will be at a level that justifies the expense of refining the crude. That uncertain eventuality, coupled with the fact that a future Venezuelan government might very well nationalize the oil industry—once again— are the reason that you did not hear a rousing chorus of support for taking over the Venezuelan oil fields from the industry executives who were herded into the White House last week. In the best of circumstances, there is nothing in the Venezuela oil story that will have any near or intermediate term impact on US oil and gas prices.

Lastly, and most importantly, it’s not our oil. It belongs to Venezuela. If we say that we are justified in commandeering ownership of the resource because the White House feels it is strategically important, then the same argument holds true for annexing Greenland, a self governing territory of Denmark, a founding NATO member. Greenland is arguably more important to our strategic interests than Venezuela. We already have Greenland’s permission to use it for strategic defensive purposes, but our NATO allies are actually discussing the catastrophic possibility of Trump following through on the threat.

Invading Venezuela absolves Putin for his incursion into Ukraine, and it gives Xi Jinping a free pass to invade Taiwan. We have no moral leg to stand on here, but morality is not Trump’s strong suit. His henchman, Stephen Miller, put it succinctly earlier this week in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper: “We live in the real world”, Miller schooled Tapper, “that is governed by strength…force…power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.” Couple that insightful administration argument with Trump’s assessment of restraints on his own power. In an interview with the New York Times this week, our commander in chief stated that he was constrained “only by his own morality”. International rules of law do not apply. “Yeah”, he said, “There is one thing—my own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.” Those of us who debate whether Trump is immoral or amoral shudder at those words.

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Last week Trump resurrected his old, debunked conspiracy theory that Venezuela had aided President Biden to switch votes on hacked voting machines. He actually stated that he regrets not seizing voting machines after losing the 2020 election, something that is legally not possible, but why would he let that stop him now? (I doubt that he actually wanted to; it would have proven that he was lying.)

Trump continues to allege that “hundreds of thousands” of votes were switched. When the media report these stories, they usually say something like “Trump still believes that he won the 2020 election.” I don’t believe that to be the case at all. He knows full well that he lost. It has been over five years since the 2020 election. No one has been able to show that one single solitary vote was maliciously switched from Trump to President Biden. Not one - but I will not be surprised if “proof” of the voter fraud is miraculously discovered in Venezuela. Trump knows perfectly well that he lost the election; he just continues to lie about it because he cannot (bring himself to) publicly admit that he lost. His regime’s existence depends on continuing the Big Lie. It justifies – in his mind – the actions of the insurgents who ransacked the capital. It justifies – in his mind – pardoning the seditionists who were prosecuted and convicted. He will not and cannot admit to losing – at anything, for all of the same reasons that he will not admit that he was wrong about something – about anything, ever— and for the same reason that he states he has never asked God for forgiveness – “because he has never done anything wrong that would require forgiveness.” He assures us that he knows more than—and is smarter than—his generals. His mendacity and vindictiveness are superseded only by his sophomoric pettiness. Anyone who makes him look bad should expect to be sued, or fired, or indicted. Ask former FBI Directors Chris Wray or James Comey, or NY Attorney General Letetia James, or Federal Reserve Bank Chair, Jerome Powell, Senator Mark Kelly, or late-night TV host (pick one, any one).

It was telling that President Trump has installed former Venezuelan Vice President, Delcy Rodriguez as Interim President. While installing this member of the corrupt Maduro regime as a puppet interim President, he overlooked the person that up until last month he had been insisting was the legitimate winner of the last Presidential election in Venezuela, Noble Peace Prize recipient, Maria Corina Machado. Notice anything in particular about her background? In addition to actually winning the majority of votes in the presidential election, she also won the Nobel Peace Prize which Trump had shamelessly campaigned for. But here’s the best part, Machado, in a magnanimous gesture, offered to give her newly won Nobel to Trump, a transfer which thankfully was shot down by the Nobel Prize Committee. Trump had said that he “would be honored” to accept her Nobel. (I am not making this up.) If not for the prize committee’s intervention, Trump would, no doubt, have had to re-engineer the White House East Wing renovations—yet again—this time with an altar, to house his Nobel. This is a very disturbed person—and he is the President of the United States, because we elected him—twice.

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December 31, 2025 ~ Vol. 43

The National Endowment for the Arts, gone. The National Endowment for the Humanities, gone. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, gone. Foreign Aid, Immigration Advocacy and the National Immigration Law Center, Reproductive Rights, Public Education and Academia, Environmental Protection and Climate Change Initiatives, Public Health and Research funding cancelled. The list goes on. At the beginning of 2025, I didn’t think that my outlook was particularly unique, at least among my circle of friends. After the election, I think most of us were just hoping to get through the year unscathed, without losing our jobs or our health care or our sanity. Some of us fared better than others. If you are – or were – a government employee or a health care researcher or a nonprofit director working in the arts and humanities you probably fared poorly, or the person that used to be in the next office certainly feels that way. Trump will attest that the economy is booming and happy days are here again, but in a recent New York Times Opinion piece, Steve Rattner assessed Trump’s impact on the nation’s employment thusly:

Job creation has slowed significantly. In the first 11 months of Mr. Trump’s second term the country created a monthly average of just 55,000 jobs, compared with 192,000 jobs a month in the last two years of Mr. Biden’s term. The number of manufacturing jobs — a centerpiece of Mr. Trump’s agenda — also fell.

You would never know any of this if you only listened to Fox News and the White House. Some feel more strongly about it than others, and some of us completely disagree. President Trump would certainly not agree with my observations as he apparently feels that the first year of his second term was the best in the history of presidencies (and rated the economy A+++ in a recent interview.) He crows that he has subdued President Biden’s inflation death spiral, boosting the flagging economy by prescribing tariffs against any and all countries whom he thought “were not treating us fairly” and, of course, ostensibly ending eight wars including the war in Gaza, which surely qualifies him for the Nobel Peace Prize. He actually says this, but I suspect the families of the 414 people that have been killed and the 1145 people wounded in Gaza since the Oct 10 ceasefire would disagree. This is the same man who assured us he could stop the Russian invasion of Ukraine “on day one” of his second presidency. Fast forward to December 2025: The UN reports a 27% increase in civilian casualties since Trump took office. Ukrainian civilian casualties now totally 53,000. Incredibly Russian casualties are estimated to be over 700,000, with over 150,000 soldiers killed.

Trump’s approval ratings started the year averaging 47% but most recently have fallen below 40% with some polls as low as 36%. Trump still insists that he is the most popular President in the history of polling, which has to make you wonder if his staff is only showing him the News Max polls, or if he is completely delusional, or — he knows exactly how much his poll numbers are cratering and he is just lying through his teeth. (I choose door #3.) Maybe the rest of the country is finally starting to get it?

Analysis: Donald Trump’s top 25 lies of 2025

Certainly, the results of recent elections around the country have to be concerning for Republicans. The governors’ races in both New Jersey and Virginia were carried handily by Democrats, with over 56% of the vote in both cases. In New York City, Democratic Socialist Zorhan Mamdani trounced former NY Governor Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa in the mayoralty race, by building a coalition of younger voters and immigrants (and voters who had had enough of Cuomo). The most entertaining part of Mamdani’s victory for me was his subsequent meeting with Trump in the Oval Office, where he and the President appeared to be the best of friends, with Trump proclaiming him a “very rational person” and that he would do “a very good job” as Mayor. Trump’s budding bromance with Mamdani had the ancillary effect of cutting gubernatorial candidate, Congresswoman Elise Stefanik off at the knees, as she had been referring to Mamdani as the second coming of Che Guevara—only with more Marxist proclivities. The icing on the cake (for Democratic observers) was the fact that Trump would not endorse her candidacy in her quest to unseat New York Governor Kathy Hochul in next year’s election. Stefanik was arguably his biggest and most vocal supporter, even during his impeachments, but when Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman threw his hat in the gubernatorial ring, Trump resorted to his standby – “good people on both sides”, leaving the Congresswoman twisting in the primary winds. Stefanik quickly reversed her recently announced entry into the governor’s race, and as an added bonus for NY-21 residents, she said she would not run for her own seat in Congress next year. That story would have been my favorite “Trump turns on MAGA acolyte” story of the year, but for the sad surprise ending to the Trump / Marjorie Taylor Greene lovefest. Trump threw MTG under the bus—actually rescinding his endorsement and calling her a traitor—for her insistence that Congress release the Epstein files, forcing him to cave on his opposition to making them public. Who could have imagined that Trump really, really, did not want to release those files? MTG, we were just getting to like y…..nah, just kidding.

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Traditionally, the midterm elections have favored the party not in power regardless of party label. Voters will blame the incumbent party for the mess that the country is in, and you can usually count on a mess and lots of opposition ads pointing out who made it. The White House has been seeking to stem that political tide by orchestrating off cycle mid-decade redistricting efforts in Republican states to gerrymander a few extra Republican Congressional Districts. Even many Republican stalwarts found this initiative distasteful if not illegal, and some states – like Indiana – have refused to participate. (Trump was not amused.) Some large blue states, California first and foremost - are countering with their own mid-cycle redistricting threats, joining in the race to the political bottom. Many pundits are predicting a blue wave if the elections were held today, but a lot can happen between now and November.

My biggest disappointment this year is a repeat from 2024, and many years before that. Why haven’t more people figured out what Trump is all about, i.e.: himself. Period. Full stop. I have to give him credit for persistence. His policy objectives amount to nothing more than whatever will make him look good right now (and damn the long term consequences), what can he accomplished in the fastest, most expeditious way (and damn the legality) and how can he put some money in his pocket while all of this is happening (and anyone who has a problem with that can go pound salt).

I fully understand that many if not most voters do not spend hours every day reading or watching the news. I understand that for many if not most people their primary if not singular concern is—how am I going to pay this fuel bill and feed the kids tonight, and I guess the rent will have to be paid next week, late again. They do not have the time or the inclination to contemplate how the rising federal deficit is going to debase the US dollar and impact the confidence that our trading partners have in holding our debt. People are not fixated on the fact that the Social Security system is about to implode. (They should be. I wrote about this in an earlier post.)

People vote their pocketbooks, but – I cannot point to any economic initiative that Trump has introduced that benefited anyone other than himself and his fellow billionaires. Working class families saw little if any benefit from any legislation passed, and there was very little legislation passed. (61 bills, the least amount in decades) The all encompassing “Big Beautiful Bill” gave the overwhelming majority of the tax relief to billionaire taxpayers, and paid the bill by adding trillions of dollars to the national debt. It’s easy to lose perspective when talking about billions and trillions, but by way of refresher, one billion is equal to one thousand million dollars. One trillion dollars is equal to one million million dollars. Recall what the pre-MAGA Republican party stood for: responsible government and balanced budgets, free trade and the elimination of tariffs, strong international alliances and national defense. Everyone understood that excess debt was a bad thing, to be utilized only in emergencies like recessions and wars. Tariffs were a bad thing and an impediment to trade and to be avoided at all costs. What happened to that Republican Party? Every Republican in Congress suddenly came to the conclusion that all of that was bunk? Hardly. They now swear that up is down and down is up because the Red Queen has the keys to the kingdom. Climate change is a hoax, windmills cause cancer and let’s abandon electric vehicles and reopen the coal mines because that is the future according to the White House. And Congress goes along with each and every one of Trump’s harebrained ideas—as the oil companies applaud from the gallery.

Trump decided to recast the income statement of the United States by imposing tariffs on our trading partners (and eliminating income tax. Ha!) He erroneously states that our trading partners would pay these tariffs; that they were in fact a penalty for “treating us unfairly” in the past. Both premises are false. The exporting country does not pay for the tariff any more than Mexico is paying for the wall. The importer pays the tariff — and either eats it (reducing corporate profits) , or passes it along to customers, exacerbating inflation. Importantly, I (and many pundits smarter that I am) think they are illegal and expect the Supreme Court (even this conservative leaning, executive empowering court) to rule shortly that he has overstepped his executive authority by imposing them. Let the games begin – the lawsuits are already queued up demanding restitution for Trump’s magical – and faulty, and illegal – trade policy. I also predict that Trump will blame the Supreme Court for the resulting economic chaos. The fault is all his, and is primarily attributable to his penchant for utilizing “Executive Orders” instead of doing the work—and the research and the negotiating and the compromising that results in an actual negotiated piece of thoughtful legislation. And Congress lets him get away with it. In his second term Trump has issued more executive orders than any president in history—in fact, three times as many. This last Congress, on the other hand, has been the least productive Congress in my lifetime, passing sixty-one actual pieces of legislation (and not one of them will help bolster the Social Security Trust Fund, which both parties continue to ignore at our peril.)

I suspect that history will look least kindly, and if and when we have a new Democratic Congress the inevitable next impeachment inquiry, will focus on the Trump family crypto businesses—which I mentioned in a prior newsletter, but they have expanded by orders of magnitude. How can the Trump family get away with such blatant and obvious conflicts of interest, bringing them millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains? Easy – fire all of the watchdog Inspectors General covering cryptocurrency trading. Which he did. And this Congress does nothing.

To pay too close attention to all of these national crises on a day-by-day basis can be exhausting, and demoralizing, and depressing. It is easy to shut down completely and avoid watching the news and political programming and try to lose yourself in a book about anything else. I find myself doing that more lately than I probably should. But with the New Year comes hope, and possibilities, and new opportunities to make positive change. Start small. Focus on community. Focus on local. When someone is in trouble, or has lost their job, or their house is on fire, or their business has burned to the ground, nobody asks and nobody cares who they voted for. You help. That’s why we are here. Everyone is just trying to get to the other side and hopefully leave the next generation with a leg up and some better ideas than we had when we were their age. As Ram Dass most eloquently observed, “We are all just walking each other home.”

Happy New Year.

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