Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

Oligarchy fighter and working class man of the people Bernie Sanders sees nothing out of the ordinary in owning three large properties.

When recently questioned about his three houses, the ‘No Kings’ figurehead passed it off as if most Americans own multiple properties and he’s just like everyone else.

“Do I own three residences? Yes I do,” declared Sanders.

He then explained that he has “a beautiful home in Burlington,” a place in Washington, and “like many thousands of people in the State of Vermont” he has a “Summer camp on Lake Champlain.”

“It’s a nice one,” he enthused.

“That’s it!” Sanders declared.

Socialist Bernie Sanders: “Do I own three residences? Yes I do.”pic.twitter.com/90FUmYVBgE

— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs) October 21, 2025

Oh is that all?

Everyone has a vacation pad, right?

Aside from their other two houses.

Approximately 4.5% of US households owned three or more homes in 1998, per historical data. Recent statistics are limited, but this figure likely remains under 5% today, as multiple home ownership is mostly common among wealthier individuals. Economic factors like high home…

— Grok (@grok) June 14, 2025

Ah, ok. So Bernie is in the top 5 percent. At least he isn’t in the 1 percent he likes to bleat about constantly, is he?

@grok then it would be accurate to state that Senator Bernie Sanders is in the top 1% of people living in the US in terms of number of homes owned, yes or no?

— Michael Glynn (@MichaelTGlynn) June 14, 2025

Senator Bernie Sanders owns three homes: in Burlington, VT, Washington, D.C., and a summer camp on Lake Champlain. Data on multiple home ownership is limited, but a 1998 study showed 4.48% of U.S. households owned three or more homes. As the query focuses on individuals, not…

— Grok (@grok) June 14, 2025

Yes

— Grok (@grok) June 14, 2025

Oh.

He’ll lecture you and me about equality, socialism, racism & class warfare all through his prisms of a lake front summer home, 3 properties, private jets, never having a job, the gentrification of now all white and wealthy
Vermont. Complete charlatan. #Hypocrisy https://t.co/gWSABoD9rk

— Christopher Whitelock (@Cjwwhitey) October 21, 2025

https://t.co/xOWo9xzyha pic.twitter.com/EZHNbeLqB8

— Hank Houston (@crawket) October 22, 2025

All of this is in addition to flying around on private jets to lecture Americans about climate change and the carbon spewing elites.

And begging for a few dollars more.

Remember though, oligarchy.

Remember though, oligarchy.

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

From quantum stocks to AI chips to crypto, the surge in asset price inflation this year has positioned Wall Street’s 2025 bonuses to shatter records amid rising profits and trading revenues.

New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, in his latest annual report on the city’s securities industry, said that while Wall Street profits lagged in the first half of the year, they’re now on track to exceed a record high of $60 billion if momentum holds through year-end.

DiNapoli wrote in the report:

The City expects New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) member firm profits to slow significantly in 2025 to $33.8 billion, as of its May Financial Plan. Year-to-date industry performance has far outpaced this expectation, with total profits of $30.4 billion in the first half of the year alone. Market volatility has risen at times this year amid uncertainty around interest rates and federal fiscal and economic policies. Still, financial firms saw significant growth in revenues from securities trading and account supervision as investors made changes to their portfolios. If the rate of growth in profits continues in the second half of 2025, total annual profits have the potential to exceed $60 billion, setting a new record.

Compensation costs have already jumped nearly 10% in 1H25, signaling even larger year-end bonuses after last year’s record average of $244,700.

DiNapoli explained more:

In the first half of 2025, NYSE member firms increased compensation expenses by 9.9 percent from the prior year. As market activity and profits have increased, the overall bonus pool in 2025 is likely to increase as well. An August report by Johnson Associates (a compensation consulting firm) suggests that bonuses at financial firms for 2025 will likely increase, with a large range between the different business segments. The report suggested that while bonuses in investment banking (including equity and fixed income sales and trading) are expected to increase by around 20 percent, those in underwriting and commercial banking may decline by 5 percent.

The forecast for record Wall Street bonuses comes as major banks, including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, BofA, Citi, and Wells Fargo, have posted $15.4 billion in third-quarter trading revenue, the highest in five years. This has been primarily driven by all things AI. Also, previous forecasts of shrinking bonuses have been reversed as M&A and deal activity expanded.

Last year, the average Wall Street salary rose 7.3% to $505,630, roughly five times the citywide private-sector average ($101,760).

Just don’t tell ‘Commie Mamdani,’ Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, about Wall Street’s record bonus prospects this year. His far-left Marxist agenda to strike at the heart of NYC could bode very well for the ‘Wall Street of the South’, Florida.

🚨As if being a crime-loving commie wasn’t bad enough, Mamdani is also blatantly racist.

His tax proposal specifically targets “richer and whiter neighborhoods”.

Why invoke race at all? It’s one more weapon for him to use to destroy NYC.

Is he really the best option for NYC? pic.twitter.com/H4yDLWdcoZ

— Fight With Memes (@FightWithMemes) October 22, 2025

In addition to being an Islamist jihadi, Mamdani is a full-blown communist: “We will slowly buy up the housing on the private market and convert properties into communes.”pic.twitter.com/iCYice83Qs

— Alexander Duncan (@AlexDuncanTX) October 22, 2025

Is it time for an exit plan?

Authored by Portia Roberts via RealClearEnergy,

Higher education is increasingly under attack for what and how students learn. Some of that is political. Some, deserved. “Energy” is now one such political battleground. Environmental studies have swallowed the energy domain, stripping it of realism and producing too many graduates unready for the real world.

Will most undergraduates learn the physical and systemic constraints that drive energy realities? About the sources and systems behind the primary materials that keep the lights on, run factories, power data centers? Or about the tradeoffs inherent to all energy sources? Unfortunately, the animating theme of many “energy” courses today is ending of the age of oil and a narrative how about easily wind and solar can replace hydrocarbons. Yet even the International Energy Agency, once projecting peak oil demand in less than a decade, now projects a continued rise in oil demand for quite some time. Odds are few students will wrestle with these facts.

Look at three realities. German citizens pay among the highest household power prices in the EU (and more than double the electricity cost in the U.S.) even after the energy shock eased from the Ukrainian invasion. Its factories have struggled, with output contracting through late 2024 and mid-2025. Coal units were even brought back during the crisis before coal generation fell again in 2024—evidence of policy whiplash more than mastery.

China, by contrast, is “all-in.” It secures oil and gas supply—now the world’s biggest crude importer, predominantly from Russia and the Middle East—while also rapidly building coal, nuclear, hydro, wind, and solar facilities. Beijing dominates the world’s downstream chokepoints for electrification: most global lithium and cobalt refining, a large share of nickel, and ~90% of rare-earth processing, plus the bulk of battery components. The U.S. cannot easily compete here any time soon.

Africa shows the cost of energy scarcity. The continent’s per-capita energy consumption is roughly one-eighth the European average and less than one-15th that of the U.S—and the health toll is severe. Household air pollution from cooking with solid fuels remains a leading killer. African electricity production, more than doubling in two decades, predominantly with gas and coal, isn’t even close to sufficient.

Affordable, reliable energy is the bedrock of human flourishing. Societies with more use more–– and tend to improve their environmental footprint. Future employees, innovators, and leaders eager to tackle environmental challenges, create sound policies, reduce poverty, and build advanced industries—and argue from facts—must learn fundamentals about the systems that power literally everything.

A new two-part review from the National Center for Energy Analytics asked a team at University of Southern California to examine more than 1,400 energy-related courses at the top 50 U.S. universities. Roughly seven in ten courses are climate-centric—organized around emissions reduction and activism—while only about three in ten are “agnostic,” meaning they offer a focus on today’s energy systems, markets, technologies, and trade-offs. The most-mentioned technologies in all syllabi are wind and solar; courses on fossil-fuel technologies barely appear despite their centrality to today’s energy system.

Nonetheless, as the NCEA research found in ranking universities by the share of “agnostic” coursework, some schools do approach a healthy balance. But most of the top 50 do not. In too many catalogs you can earn “energy” credentials without a hard look at the realities of baseload power, capacity factors, dispatchability, materials and mining, LNG logistics, refining, or the geopolitics of fuels. There’s too much wishful training, not education.

This is not an argument to ignore climate or environmental studies. It’s an argument to teach energy as a system. Physics, geology, engineering, economics, and geopolitics all matter. Electricity and fuels are not interchangeable. Heavy transport and petrochemicals have little to do with residential demand. Intermittency, inherent to wind and solar power, is not a moral failing; it’s a technical fact that must be managed. That data centers rank as only a small contributor to overall global energy consumption matters little when, in the U.S., AI is driving the first spike in electricity consumption in several decades. And yes, hydrocarbons remain pivotal even in optimistic transition scenarios. Graduates who don’t understand basic realities won’t be able to run the world we have let alone build the one we want.

Reform is straightforward: First, raise students’ energy IQ by making “Energy Reality 101” core. Every policy, business, law, and general engineering student should be exposed to a quantitative survey covering realities of power vs. energy, reliability, cost, grids, mining and materials, fuel logistics, and the trade-offs across all major technologies—and the state-of-play for what is going on in the markets for oil, gas, coal, nuclear, hydro, not just wind, and solar.

Second, rebalance the catalog. Departments should target a mix where at least a reasonable share of offerings cover systems and markets, the nature of technologies that dominate world supply (i.e., including fossil fuels), and a full scope look at trade-offs. That’s closer to the work and policy world students will later encounter.

There would be some significant benefit to linking credit to site visits and practicums: grid control centers, substations, refineries and gas plants, ports and LNG terminals, mines and recycling facilities, wind and solar sites. Seeing maintenance, intermittency, safety culture, and permitting constraints speaks louder than intangible numbers and ideas.

For better or worse, energy is politically charged. Any reform of curricula must be paired with durable protections for free speech and debate—something that has become far more obvious these days. Teach students how to argue with facts—especially on subjects where physics, economics, and environmental goals collide.

Energy is complicated precisely because it underpins everything. The linkage between energy, and the technologies that supply it, are intimately linked to prosperity. Different areas of the system require different tools and timelines. But turning college syllabi into a single-destination campaign deprives students of the very literacy that innovation and stewardship demand.

Portia Roberts is the policy director at the National Center for Energy Analytics.

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

So-called King, Donald Trump, ran in two contested Republican primaries.

He ran three times in a general election.

He was elected twice, and his party recently won a Republican Congress.

In contrast, in 2020, Joe Biden did not run a typical campaign.

He avoided the public, staying ensconced in his basement. He outsourced his campaign to Democratic politicos, donors, and a sycophantic media.

No red state ever sought to remove Joe Biden or Kamala Harris from their 2024 ballots. In contrast, twenty-five blue states attempted to take Trump off their ballots.

In 2021, Joe Biden’s DOJ and FBI raided then-former-President Trump’s home. They found only 102 classified documents among some 14,000 seized, but nevertheless indicted him.

There was no such SWAT raid on Biden’s multiple repositories of illegally removed classified documents.

All were in less secure places than at Mar-a-Lago. Biden removed them over the course of three decades with impunity. At the time, unlike Trump, he had no presidential prerogatives to declassify them.

Special counsel Robert Hur found Biden culpable for the removal of these files but declined to prosecute, claiming that he was too enfeebled to stand trial.

In 2024, the same backroom donors and politicos who had conspired to ensure Biden was the 2020 nominee now, against his wishes, in coup-like fashion, removed him from his own reelection ticket.

Within 48 hours and without a delegate vote, they crowned Kamala Harris as the presumed nominee. Queen Harris had not received a single delegate vote in her disastrous 2020 primary run.

Donald Trump, in 2020, did not sic his Department of Justice on his rival, Joe Biden.

Nor during his presidency did his Department of Justice indict any past or future political opponent or ex-president.

In contrast, Kingly Joe Biden’s White House helped coordinate 91 indictments of his past and future presidential rival, ex-president Donald Trump.

A mere three days after Trump announced his reelection bid on November 15, 2022, Jack Smith was coincidentally appointed special prosecutor of Trump.

That same day, strangely, Nathan Wade, the Georgia county prosecutor prosecuting Trump, met with Biden’s White House counsel.

On the same day, Matthew Colangelo, the former lead prosecutor in Letitia James’s case against Trump, abruptly left his DOJ post. He would soon go on to lead Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg’s prosecution of Trump.

In the 2020 election, Joe Biden’s surrogates rounded up 51 “intelligence authorities” to lie that Hunter Biden’s authentic and incriminating laptop—then verified but suppressed by the FBI—was the work of the Russians.

The Biden-era FBI also joined Twitter, Facebook, and other social media to help smother any media story that might have verified the authenticity of the laptop.

The left portrays Trump’s constitutional right to pardon as the act of a king.

In his nearly five years of governance, Trump has pardoned roughly 1,700, including about 1,500 en masse for those convicted for the January 6 protests.

That number so far is about 200 fewer pardons than during the Obama administration.

Joe Biden, in a mere four years in office, pardoned roughly 4,245 people—the vast majority through autopen signatures and without the full knowledge of Biden himself.

Under the Obama and Biden administrations, admitted left-wing government lawbreakers and White House allies were never prosecuted for felonious behavior.

CIA head John Brennan admitted to lying twice to Congress.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper confessed to lying under oath to Congress as well.

FBI Director James Comey claimed ignorance or amnesia 245 times while under oath to a House oversight committee.

Interim FBI Director Andrew McCabe lied four times, often while under oath to government investigators.

A federal judge in 2020 admonished John Bolton, Trump’s former National Security Advisor and vehement critic, that he had endangered national security by removing sensitive documents to write an anti-Trump campaign-cycle memoir.

He also warned Bolton that he could be subject to civil and criminal penalties.

Not one of these political grandees was ever indicted by either the Obama or Biden DOJ.

Trump’s White House advisors Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro were arrested in public for ignoring a congressional subpoena, convicted, and imprisoned.

In contrast, top Democrat officials like former attorneys general Eric Holder and Merrick Garland both ignored congressional subpoenas and faced no such indictments.

Monarchs might order assassinations of U.S. citizens abroad and surveil the phone records of Associated Press reporters.

Obama did both during his tenure.

Do kings monitor the phone records of their senatorial opponents?

Joe Biden’s special counsel, Jack Smith, did just that.

Why then do the Democrats’ “No Kings” protests claim that Trump is a monarch?

Answer: Through open and fair elections, the left lost most of its former political power in Congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court.

Now in their fury and impotence, Democrats hit the streets—projecting onto their hated nemesis, Donald Trump, their own past preferences for kingly methods.

Back in August, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky boasted that his military no longer needed US ‘permission’ to conduct long-range strikes on Russian territory with missiles. This was given that Ukraine had been developing its own domestic designed and produced long-range missile. Zelensky at the time unveiled the ‘Flamingo’ cruise missile.

On Thursday Zelensky has announced a successful test the Flamingo, which can also be described a drone-missile capable of strike as as far as 3,000km (or over 1,860 miles) away.

Ukrainian media has touted that it is capable of delivering a nuclear tip, and that it can carry a warhead almost three times bigger than the US Tomahawk, however it is said to be less accurate in its targeting.

According to new details on the weapon by Ukrainian media: 

The first test weapons have already been fired in combat.

According to Kyiv official statements, the missiles will soon be in mass production, and by mid-2026, Ukraine will have amassed a stockpile of weapons capable of hitting practically anything within 3,000 kilometers (1,864 miles) inside Russia with a half-ton conventional explosive warhead.

The replacement for the Kh-55 cruise missiles given up by Ukraine in the 1990s (Russia actually even fired a few back at Ukraine in 2022), per statements by Ukrainian President Zelensky and his staff, is called the Flamingo missile. (During development, the paint on a test copy reportedly accidentally turned pink. The paint issue was addressed, but the nickname stuck.)

Notably, this kind of range easily brings the Moscow area within striking distance. If Kiev decides to target the Russian capital with cruise missiles – this would likely cause Putin order that Kiev get pounded even harder. 

Throughout well over three years of grinding war, the Russian military has still not directly targeted top-level government buildings in Kiev, or military and intelligence HQs there. That could all soon change.

The White House wants to see some kind of peace deal take effect before things escalate to that point – but the process is in shambles especially given Trump has this week pulled the trigger on new sanctions targeting Russian oil – and it remains that neither warring side appears in the mood for compromise. And given Russia has the clear battlefield momentum, it has little reason to back off Putin’s maximal conditions, and the goals of his ‘special military operation’.

Authored by Kimberley Hayek via The Epoch Times,

New York State’s attorney general on Wednesday called on the public to send her office photos, videos, and other documentation of federal immigration operations for review, just a day after an enforcement operation targeted street vendors in Manhattan’s Chinatown turned to chaos as protestors confronted agents.

Attorney General Letitia James said her office would comb over footage and further documentation of federal immigration operations via a “Federal Action Reporting Form,” stating that “every New Yorker has the right to live without fear or intimidation.”

James has also requested that New Yorkers submit photos or videos of Tuesday’s enforcement operation in Chinatown to her office, so that her office can determine if any laws were broken.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said James’s call for videos and photos “looks like obstruction of justice.”

The immigration enforcement operation took place on New York City’s Canal Street, a well-known area with a reputation for street vendors selling imitation goods, sparking resistance from city residents, many of whom were seemingly on their way home from work.

Shortly after 4 p.m. on Tuesday, federal agents began the operation, with an Associated Press reporter saying they saw dozens of agents detain a street vendor.

Protestors encircled the officers and tried to prevent their vehicles from leaving while shouting “ICE out of New York” and calling on other pedestrians to join in the protest.

Agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Border Patrol, and other federal agencies then attempted to disperse the crowd. The confrontation grew, and an unknown number of federal agents retreated on foot, which was cheered on by protestors and honking cars. Federal reinforcements with long guns and tactical gear then arrived on scene.

“During this law enforcement operation, rioters who were shouting obscenities became violent and obstructed law enforcement duties, including blocking vehicles and assaulting law enforcement,” McLaughlin said.

Altogether, federal authorities said 14 people—illegal immigrants and demonstrators—were arrested in Tuesday’s operation, including illegal immigrants from Mali, Senegal, Mauritania, and Guinea. Some had prior criminal arrest histories.

Four people were arrested for allegedly assaulting law enforcement, and another for obstruction of justice, according to DHS.

McLaughlin said some of the people arrested had previously been accused of crimes, including robbery, domestic violence, assaulting law enforcement, counterfeiting, and drug offenses.

DHS said the operation was targeting the alleged sale of counterfeit goods, and ICE acting Director Todd Lyons called the action “definitely intelligence-driven.”

“It’s not random. We’re just not pulling people off the street,” he told Fox News on Wednesday.

The new movement to keep track of possible abuses by ICE officers and other federal agents is part of a broader strategy by Democrats.

Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) said on Monday that he and other Democratic colleagues would create a website to keep track of the agency’s operations, asking the public to record ICE activity.

Israel’s parliament has given initial approval to a controversial bill that would extend Israeli sovereignty over the occupied West Bank, widely viewed as tantamount to full Israeli annexation of the Palestinian territory, in a move widely condemned internationally and even receiving strong pushback from the United States.

The measure narrowly passed its preliminary reading on Tuesday, with 25 lawmakers in favor and 24 opposed in the 120-seat Knesset. The bill will now move to the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee for further debate.

A parliamentary statement said the proposal seeks “to apply the sovereignty of the State of Israel to the territories of Judea and Samaria (West Bank).”

The timing of the vote was interesting and provocative, as it took place during the visit of Vice President JD Vance to Israel, where he discussed Gaza ceasefire as well as the coordination center staffed by US troops and allies, responsible for overseeing Gaza’s transition away from Hamas. Vance didn’t take kindly to what happened in the Knesset, given the timing seemed intentional.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio was also in Israel this week, and before departing the country Wednesday he laid out that the annexation bill is “not something we’d be supportive of.”

“We think it’s even threatening to the peace deal,” Rubio said, after Trump has frequently touted bringing peace to the Middle East. “We think it might be counterproductive.”

Prime Minister Netanyahu is said to not be on board with advancing a sovereignty agenda, and it’s largely driven by hardline settler-connected politicians.

Likud called the votes “another provocation by the opposition aimed at damaging our relations with the United States” in a fresh statement.

“True sovereignty will be achieved not through a showy law for the record, but through proper work on the ground,” it said.

But it was Vance’s response that was most heated and marked a full-throated denunciation of the “stupid political stunt” which was an “insult”. But he also said it may have merely been “symbolic” but it was “weird” to do especially while he was still in the country…

JD Vance on the Judea and Samaria sovereignty vote in the Knesset yesterday:

“It was a very stupid political stunt, and I personally take some insult to it… The West Bank is not gonna be annexed by Israel.” pic.twitter.com/hyWxm9z2EL

— Amit Segal (@AmitSegal) October 23, 2025

“The West Bank will not be annexed by Israel” and “we certainly weren’t happy about it” – Vance said, emphasizing the policy of the Trump administration. 

Vance is favored to be the next Republican president after Trump, and he’s likely to remember this frustrating and perhaps disrespectful moment, also at a time the Right in American politics and discourse is increasingly divided on policy toward Israel.

Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute,

“What do you expect when you sue the president?”

Hearing that comment, some people may guess the comment was made by someone addressing one of President Trump’s political opponents who has been targeted for federal prosecution.

That quote, though, is much older.

It is from an IRS agent addressing officials of a conservative organization that was being audited during Bill Clinton’s presidency.

This illustrates that the use of federal agencies to punish presidents’ enemies did not start with President Trump.

The administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt used tax investigations against political opponents.

Targeted individuals included publishers of newspapers that were highly critical of Roosevelt’s domestic and foreign policies.

President John F. Kennedy used the IRS and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to drive his conservative critics off the radio.

President Lyndon Johnson also used the IRS and the FCC to silence conservative critics.

One tool that was used to silence conservatives was to accuse broadcasters of violating the “fairness doctrine” by favoring conservative commentators.

President Richard Nixon used the IRS to target political enemies.

The Nixon administration also threatened television and radio companies with revocation of their broadcast licenses unless they provided favorable coverage of the administration.

During the Clinton administration, the IRS not only targeted conservative and libertarian organizations it audited Paula Jones after she sued President Clinton for sexual harassment.

During the George W. Bush years, the IRS targeted organizations critical of the Iraq War. When Barack Obama assumed the presidency, the tax agency turned its attention back to conservative and libertarian groups, with a focus on organizations associated with the Tea Party.

The Department of Homeland Security also issued a warning that those with pro-liberty bumper stickers — including supporting the Libertarian Party or my presidential campaign — might be violent extremists.

During the Biden administration, many Americans received harsh sentences for being present at the Capitol on January 6 even if they did not commit any violent acts.

Federal agencies can also target presidents’ political enemies without a presidential order to do so being issued. Some ambitious and unscrupulous individuals will target a president’s enemies believing that this is an effective way to curry favor with the president or high-level administration officials.

Others will use the power of the government against the president’s political enemies or those involved with political movements seeking to change the direction of the government out of a belief that these people or groups constitute a threat to the federal government that justifies violating constitutional rights.

This history suggests that abuse of power is an inevitable feature of the modern welfare-warfare-regulatory state. Therefore, instead of focusing just on electing the “right” president, we should focus on shrinking the size and scope of the federal government to its constitutional limitations.

This will ensure that Americans can exercise their right to criticize the government without fear of reprisal.

As Thomas Jefferson said, “in questions of power then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.”

Tonight at 7 pm ET, ZeroHedge and George Gammon (of the Rebel Capitalist show) are hosting a debate over America’s mounting public debt – which now sits at over $38 trillion – and what to do about it.

Our debaters bring two sharply opposing solutions, while Gammon, a self-described anti-government capitalist, moderates this high-stakes debate over how (or whether) the U.S. can navigate its way through record public debt. 

Michael Green (Simplify Asset Management): The Keynesian-Growth Case

Green argues that persistent fiscal deficits aren’t a threat but a catalyst. In his view, government spending fuels innovation, productivity, and human progress – allowing growth to outpace obligations.

By extending credit today, America can build the wealth and technology that make tomorrow’s debt affordable. 

Key question: Can the nation truly grow its way out of debt, or is that faith misplaced in a slowing world?

Listen to Green explain the virtue of delayed economic pain (about 30 seconds from the marked timestamp):

Patrick Newman (Mises Institute): The case for Default

Newman takes the opposite view: sovereign debt isn’t just risky – it’s immoral. He contends that borrowing today to pay with future taxes amounts to coercion and corruption, a system of privilege that rewards insiders while punishing citizens. His solution is radical honesty – repudiate the debt and dismantle the leviathan state.

Newman’s book Cronyism: Liberty versus Power in Early America takes aim at how even the Founding Fathers helped entrench this exploitative model.

When & Where:

Date: Tonight
Time: 7 pm ET
Platform: Live on the ZeroHedge homepage, X, YouTube & Rumble

Authored by Melanie Sun via The Epoch Times,

President Donald Trump expressed optimism on Wednesday about securing deals with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on issues ranging from soybeans to rare earths and limiting nuclear weapons during scheduled talks next week in South Korea.

“I think we‘ll make a deal,” Trump told reporters gathered in the Oval Office for a visit by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.

“We’ll make a deal on, I think, everything.”

“We’ll have a pretty long meeting scheduled,” Trump said.

“We can work out a lot of our questions and our doubts and our tremendous assets together. So we look forward to that.”

Trump said he believes Xi now wants to end the war in Ukraine, and that the Chinese leader would be receptive to such a discussion.

“Because of Biden and Obama, they got forced together,” Trump said of China and Russia.

“They should never have been forced together but by nature, they can’t be friendly. I hope they are friendly frankly but they can’t be.

“Biden did that and Obama did that. They forced them together because of energy, because of oil,” Trump said, noting that was one of the issues he planned to discuss with Xi.

“I think I‘ll probably be talking about it. What I’ll really be talking to him about is how do we end the war with Russia and Ukraine, whether it’s through oil or energy or anything else. And I think he’s going to be very receptive.”

The U.S. president also said he expected to discuss with Beijing many other issues, from China resuming U.S. soybean purchases to including China on talks with Russia to limit nuclear weapons.

He noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin had raised the prospect of a bilateral de-escalation of nuclear weapons, and China could be added to that effort.

On rare earths, Trump said he wasn’t too concerned about China’s recent announcement of export controls on nearly all rare earth, calling it “a disturbance” to which he responded with additional tariffs of 100 percent.

Those are not due to take effect until Nov. 1 if an agreement can’t be reached.

Trump has sent conflicting messages about the Xi meeting in recent days, telling reporters on Tuesday that it might not happen. This comes amid reports of a power struggle between Xi and other factions within the Chinese Communist Party leadership structure and the Chinese military.

Asia Tour

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer traveled ahead of Trump on Wednesday, with their first stop in Malaysia to meet with Chinese officials over tensions regarding the rare earth export bans. Earlier in the month, Trump also responded with threats to bar “critical software“ exports to China.

“This is China versus the globe. It’s not just on the U.S.,” Bessent told Fox Business Network’s “Kudlow” program. “This licensing regime that they’ve proposed is unworkable and unacceptable,” he said of China’s rare earth threats.

He said the United States and its Western allies were contemplating how to respond if they were unable to negotiate a pause in Beijing’s plans or some other relief, but gave no details.

“I’m hoping that we can get this ironed out this weekend so that the leaders can enter their talks on a more positive note,” he said.

Trump is scheduled to travel to Kuala Lumpur for a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) that begins on Sunday, before making a stop in Japan to meet with their new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi.

He will then travel to South Korea ahead of a leaders’ summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum that is being held Oct. 31-Nov. 1 in Gyeongju.

Greer and Bessent have both stressed they do not want to decouple from China or escalate the situation, but insist the United States needs to rebalance trade with China after decades of very limited access to Chinese markets.

Greer told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that China still has unfulfilled obligations to buy U.S. agricultural and manufactured goods under a trade deal signed during Trump’s first term as president.

“The U.S. has always been quite open to the Chinese, and it’s really been driven by Chinese policies that exclude U.S. companies and drive overcapacity and overproduction in China. None of that works for the United States,” he said. “We can’t live that way anymore, so we need an alternative path.”