Authored by Victoria Friedman via The Epoch Times,

The UK is turning into a “National Health State,” the Resolution Foundation has said, after Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced a £29 billion annual increase in NHS funding.

The think tank’s analysis of Reeves’s Spending Review estimates that by the end of financial year 2028–29, the health service will account for half (49 percent) of all day-to-day public services spending, up from 34 percent in 2009–10.

On Wednesday, the chancellor announced a record £29 billion funding injection, which the Treasury said will deliver on the government’s promise to cut waiting lists, improve patient care, and modernise services.

Resolution Foundation Chief Executive Ruth Curtice said in a statement, “Health accounted for 90 per cent of the extra public service spending, continuing a trend that is seeing the British state morph into a National Health State, with half of public service spending set to be on health by the end of the decade.”

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) noted in its initial response to the Spending Review that the funding increase for the NHS was substantial, but questioned whether it will be enough to get the health service back to meeting its 18-week target for hospital waiting times within this Parliament, something which the think tank said was “enormously ambitious.”

£6 Billion to Speed up Tests and Treatments

After the Spending Review, Reeves announced that £6 billion of the allocated funds will be used to deliver up to four million additional NHS tests, scans, and procedures over the next five years.

This will be spent on ambulances, new scanners, increasing diagnostic centre capacity, and more Urgent Treatment Centres.

The government will also invest £30 billion in day-to-day maintenance and repair of the NHS estate, with over £5 billion allocated for critical repairs over the next five years.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves meet staff in the outpatients department during a visit to St. Thomas’s Hospital in London, on June 11, 2025. Carl Court/PA Wire

Under the Plan for Change, the government has promised that 92 percent of treatments will be carried out within 18 weeks.

However, industry professionals have expressed scepticism that this target can be met.

Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said that while the funding boost is welcomed, “difficult decisions will still need to be made as this additional £29 billion won’t be enough to cover the increasing cost of new treatments, with staff pay likely to account for a large proportion of it.”

“So on its own, this won’t guarantee that waiting time targets are met,” he added.

Taylor said that NHS leaders will need continued backing from the government to balance budgets and redesign services, including moving more services into the community.

‘Confident’ Target Can Be Met

Sarah Woolnough, chief executive of the health care think tank The King’s Fund, said, “It is hard to see how all the things [Reeves] mentions—faster ambulance times, more GP appointments, adequate mental health services, and more—can be met by this settlement alone, particularly when large parts of this additional funding will be absorbed by rising costs, such as the higher cost of medicines which are currently being negotiated, and staff pay deals.”

After she announced the details of the review in the House of Commons, Reeves told Sky News she was confident the government could deliver on the 18-week pledge by the end of this Parliament.

She said: “We’ve already delivered around three-and-a-half million additional appointments since we came to office last July.

“Waiting lists are already down by 200,000, so we are confident that we can meet our Plan for Change commitments because of the 3 percent annual increase in funding for the National Health Service.”

NHS Waiting List Falls

The latest NHS data published on Thursday revealed that the waiting list for treatment has fallen to its lowest level in two years.

The number waiting has fallen to 7.39 million treatments at the end of April, down from 7.42 million at the end of March.

The health service said that patients are being seen faster owing to the NHS’s productivity drive, which has seen hospitals working differently, more evening and weekend appointments, and GPs and community services delivering more appointments.

The average patient waiting time for planned treatment has also fallen to the lowest level since July 2022 (13.3 weeks). This was despite services facing higher demand, with 2.3 percent more patients being added to the waiting list per working day on last year.

Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting said, “This is just the start.”

He said, “We are putting the NHS on the road to recovery after years of soaring waiting times, by providing record investment and fundamental NHS reform.”

“We’ve delivered millions of extra appointments since July, we are pushing on with our mission to get the NHS working for patients once again as we deliver our Plan for Change,” Streeting added.

Authored by Niall McCrae via Off-Guardian.org,

The past is another country, according to LP Hartley’s opening line of The Go-Between. Nowadays, we may say the same of the present, as the pace of technological and demographic change quickens.

As for the future, what confidence and certainties can we have for our children and grandchildren?

Countries might not exist in any recognisable form as a new world order is cemented. But it is not only borders that are being undrawn. When Francis Fukuyama declared the ‘end of history’ on the fall of communism, perhaps he was inadvertently priming for the globalists’ most dramatic impact on humanity: the erasure of time. As warned by David Fleming, whose philosophy of continuism offers a unifying rationale for preserving humanity against the technocratic onslaught, ‘chronocide’ is a strategy.

As social animals, human beings create society. Over generations, each community establishes and maintains its customs, beliefs, roles and relationships. While ideologically progressive humanists emphasise that we have more in common than our differences in race, religion or region, a person from one culture cannot simply move to a place of different culture and expect life to go on as normal.

The crucial component of society is time, measured in lifetimes of immersion. Indeed, human beings + time = culture.

In this equation, important factors may be understood as nature or nurture in the human-temporal complex, such as terrain, resources, climate, commerce, conflict and technology. Each society writes and curates its history.

In the classic dystopian novels of Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World, the past was deleted by design. Winston’s job is to revise records of events to comply with the current narrative, as it evolves. In Aldous Huxley’s futurism, babies are born by machine, and the idea of a woman giving birth is disturbing.

As the Marxists of the Frankfurt School realised in the 1920s, and as every management consultant knows, nothing really changes unless the culture changes. Social bonds and traditions are bulwarks against radical plans imposed from above. Piecemeal, incremental policies are prone to regression to norms, but major restructuring or other shocks to the system break social connections and shatter stability. The more dramatic and sudden the change, the more readily resistance is overcome.

Year Zero wipes the slate of our human story clean. For uncompromising totalitarians such as Pol Pot in Cambodia, this was a necessary means of shifting the people from a traditional agrarian existence to a communist order. Anyone harbouring relics or attitudes of the past was exterminated. While schoolchildren are taught (uncritically) about the Holocaust, generally they are uninformed on the trauma of extreme collectivisation.

Chronocide is the deliberate slashing and burning of everything in our culture – both the visible stem and branches above ground, and the underlying roots. We are being deprived of our continuity as families and fraternities, because such human connections are an obstacle to the technocratic mission. An atomised society is literally taking time out, in the following ways.

1. An Orwellian information war is being waged against the ordinary people. Facts derived from experience, common sense or critical thinking become ‘misinformation’ or ‘hate’. Knowledge handed down through generations is denigrated as unscientific old wives’ tales or prejudice from an intolerant past. The young, most heavily targeted by propaganda, are encouraged to reject time-honoured truths.

2. State-led behavioural psychology operations (‘psy-ops’) bewilder and frighten people, detaching them from settled knowledge and understanding. Placing the populace in uncharted territory, as in the Covid-19 pseudo-pandemic, puts them at the mercy of the powers-that-be. A worldwide deadly contagion could not be remembered by any living person, as the Spanish influenza outbreak was over a hundred years ago. In emergencies the authorities take control, and life is never the same again afterwards.

3. Safetyism suffocates culture, by replacing festivities steeped in heritage with managed events. Bonfire nights are cancelled if there’s any wind blowing, village fetes are stopped if there’s a risk of someone having an allergic reaction to homemade jam, and vigorous children’s games such as ‘British Bulldog’ are banished from the school playground. The insurance industry, through high cost of cover, helps to curtail activities that displease the authorities.

4. Dehumanising architecture proliferates on the skyline. On a scale much greater than in the social engineering of the 1960s, when swaths of terraced housing were replaced by concrete blocks and communities were moved en masse to new towns, construction is ever-upward. The physical landscape may retain remnants of the past, but churches, banks and pubs have closed, and the high street is in creeping desolation. Lessons from the recent past about the problems of high-rise living have been discarded. Smart Cities are being developed, with forests of steel-and-glass apartment blocks.

5. Expropriation of people’s property and assets is transferring all wealth to the elite. The World Economic Forum tells us that ‘you will own nothing and be happy’, but someone must own the capital. Generational inheritance will end, as shown by the extortionate tax on farms that have stayed in family ownership for centuries, forcing landowners to sell.

6. Mass migration has led to many people of the host country feeling marginalised and alienated. Despite the platitudes about multiculturalism, social cohesion has declined as the identity and loyalty of recent incomers is tied to their kith and kin, with little sense of shared belonging. That’s what our rulers want. Rootless cosmopolitans (the ‘Anywheres’ described by David Goodhart) always prefer things foreign or exotic to the predictable and homely, but now shire folk and the indigenous working class (‘Somewheres’) are finding themselves in a timeless Nowhere.

7. Rapid technological development is displacing people from physical to virtual reality. While the present is most visibly changing in demographic transformation, the near future poses an existential threat to humanity, making inter cultural tensions seem like a picnic in the park. The future, if the technocrats get their way, is transhumanism.

The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) defines genocide as the killing of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. But there is also the concept of cultural genocide, as devised by Raphael Lemkin, entailing ‘systematic and organized destruction of the cultural heritage’.

A culture can be wiped out without a shot being fired. The technocrats have been playing a long game, preparing for a post-cultural, post-temporal future. Chronocide is a crime against humanity.

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

Well, the tensions over mass illegal immigration in the US are finally coming to a boil after 4 years of open borders under the Biden Administration and six months of obstruction by Democrat politicians and judges interfering with deportations.

The progressive establishment position on illegals is clear: Make it as easy as possible for anyone to enter the country and make it as difficult as possible to kick them out.

I published a comprehensive overview on the riots in California last week, but I also want to examine how we got here in the first place and why many foreign governments are so intrusive when it comes to US immigration policies.

Think about it for a moment and ask yourself: Why is the rest of the world in our business? Why do they care if we have tighter controls on borders and stricter vetting for immigration? Why don’t foreign governments also complain about Chinese immigration standards, or Saudi Arabia’s standards, or even Australia’s standards? Why does everyone else think they have a say in how America handles immigration?

There are, of course, ideological agendas at play here, but I believe the primary reason for foreign meddling is economic, specifically when it comes to Central America and South America.

I’ve covered these issues briefly in the past but I think it bears repeating that the US is widely considered a kind of global buffet or a wounded gazelle – The entire jungle shows up to take a bite. We’re the cash cow of the planet ready to be milked. The exposure of organizations like USAID proved beyond a doubt that Americans pay for the ENTIRE WORLD. Not only that, but we get to pay for the inflation that is created for every dollar printed and circulated to fill the pockets of foreign interests.

This is the enduring curse attached to any country “lucky” enough to maintain world reserve currency status. When the Bretton Woods agreement was put in place after World War II there was an unspoken but clear trade-off, a devil’s bargain attached to the dollar’s ascension.

First, Americans were going to have to pay the vast majority of defense spending in the new international order (which would ultimately become NATO). Second, America was gifted the ability to print dollars with wild abandon while mitigating hyperinflation by exporting dollars overseas to foreign banks and corporations. However, the expectation was that the US would have to spread the fiat wealth and feed the coffers of other countries through various subsidies, foreign aid and perhaps even open immigration.

The question is, how does mass immigration play into this arrangement?

The Economic And Social Steam Valve

Using Mexico as an example, we can see some obvious economic advantages for foreign governments if US immigration policies remain unenforced. Mexico has enjoyed an exceedingly low unemployment rate for several years, not just because untold numbers of US manufacturing jobs have been outsourced to the south, but because Mexico has the option of encouraging poverty stricken citizens who can’t get jobs to sneak into the US.

This serves a couple of purposes – It allows Mexico to maintain low unemployment stats. It saves them loads of cash when it comes to social welfare programs (they can send their poor to the US where American taxpayers foot the welfare bill). And, in terms of crime and civil unrest, Mexico is able to relocate their own discontented rabble over the border and let the US deal with those people instead.

The same goes for most of Central and South America. The benefits are just too numerous to ignore. The more open the US border is, the more every third world country near us has to gain.

Immigration Extortion

Most readers might not remember, but under the Biden Administration there was a concerted effort to spin the immigration crisis as a problem of financial instability and humanitarian response. Kamala Harris, the supposed “border czar”, spent years avoiding a visit to the southern border to witness the migrant surge first hand. Instead, she claimed that her energies were better spent on trips to other countries where she could “solve the problem at the source”.

This meant that the Biden Administration would not close the border, but they would pay off foreign governments with billions of dollars in subsidies that would theoretically trickle down to third world populations and keep them at home. These payoffs were also designed to make South American and Central American politicians stop encouraging their people to enter the US illegally.

Of course, Democrats didn’t really want the migrant caravans to stop, but this was a way for them to pretend as if they were taking action.  Meanwhile, foreign leaders were licking their chops; the more migrant mobs tried to force their way across the US border, the more subsidies they could extort from the progressive controlled US government. The incentives for them to continue sending migrant trains north were overwhelming.

The Golden River Of Remittances

While scrolling through Mexican news sources I came across the story that inspired this article: Last week Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum seemingly threatened the US over a proposed tax on “remittances”. If you are not familiar with remittances, they are basically any monies earned (or stolen) within the US by non-citizens and transferred to their home countries.

I have related my own experiences with this issue in past articles – As a construction worker and contractor in Florida in my early 20s I witnessed extensive hiring of illegals who were paid around 30% less than American workers. Most of those guys would end up at the local Winn-Dixie supermarket every payday to cash their checks and wire money to Mexico through Western Union. There would be a long line of them around the front of the store, all of them sending money outside the US.

Now imagine this is happening in every town in the US with illegals, and you’ll start to understand the sheer scale of remittances. The tax on remittances that is currently under review is only around 3%, but some law makers want to the tax closer to 15% or more.  In response Sheinbaum has turned hostile, arguing that Mexicans would “mobilize” in reaction to any fees.

“If necessary, we’ll mobilize. We don’t want taxes on remittances from our fellow countrymen. From the US to Mexico…”

The socialist president did not specify what she meant by “mobilize”, but many commentators assert that this is a threat to mobilize unrest among migrants already within US borders. As we have seen in Los Angeles in the past few days, the threat is not idle. It seems like madness, until we look at how much US cash is actually transferred outside the US by migrants.

Mexico alone received at least $65 billion in remittances from the US last year. In other words, the Mexican economy enjoys a yearly boost of around $65 billion just by encouraging illegals to cross the border. To put this in perspective, Mexico’s entire social welfare budget each year is around $30 billion; less than half of what the country gets through remittances from the US.  Mexico’s tourism industry generates around $32 billion annually; again, less than half of what remittances generate.

Total foreign remittances to Mexico make up around 5% of their annual GDP and it is the largest single source of income from foreign sources.

Also keep in mind that a dollar buys a lot more in Mexico than it does in the US. Want to buy a house in the US? The median price for a three bedroom home is $320,000. In Mexico, a three bedroom home goes for $100,000 (often less). This is yet another reason why illegals march across the border; even when working for 30% less wages they still earn triple the buying power or more in their own country by wiring dollars back home.

Sheinbaum understands full well that her country is highly dependent on the underground cash flows from the US through illegal workers. The same goes for numerous Central and South American countries.  The expectation attached to the current financial order is that Americans get the world reserve currency, but Americans must foot the bill for nearly every other allied nation. This dynamic is changing and the parasitic feeder nations don’t like it. They’ve become so dependent on easy cash from the US they don’t know how to function any other way.

Panic is certain. The economics of illegal immigration are ugly. Some progressives will argue that open borders are “good for America” because remittances and cash outflows help reduce inflation. Obviously that’s not the case, otherwise inflation would have been non-existent under the Biden Administration with its unprecedented migrant invasion.

Not only that, but the mere presence of millions of illegals creates a massive demand spike in goods, services and housing which drives up prices. Add to this the billions of dollars spent every year on subsides for migrants collecting welfare (around 60% of all migrants collect from one or more welfare programs upon entering the US), and you have am undeniable inflationary burden that does not need to be here.

Foreign governments want illegals here because they are yet another tool for bleeding the US for extra funds. They believe they are entitled to this money, but this methodology is about to change. They simply aren’t ready for what is about to happen.

*  *  *

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

By the end of this century, global demographics could look dramatically different than they do today. While some countries will be growing, others will be in the midst of long-term declines.

Using the latest data from the UN’s 2024 World Population Prospects, this infographic, via Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu, visualizes how the world’s most populous countries are expected to change by 2100.

Animated Chart: Population Projections to 2100

This graphic is also animated! Check out the video below to see how these demographic shifts will play out over time.

Data & Discussion

The data we used to create this graphic is listed in the table below. According to these projections, India will be the most populous country in 2100, followed by China, Pakistan, and Nigeria.

Data in millions

🇮🇳 India Population Projections

India recently overtook China to become the world’s most populous country, and it’s projected to continue growing until 2062, peaking at 1.7 billion people.

Birth rates in the country have actually been declining since the 1960s, but are currently at a relatively high 2 births per woman.

🇨🇳 China Population Projections

China held the title of the world’s most populous country for many decades, but is now shrinking due to its rapidly aging population and falling fertility rates.

Based on these projections, China’s population will be 639 million in 2100, which is 788 million lower from its 2021 peak.

🇺🇸 U.S. Population Projections

The U.S. is currently the world’s third biggest country, but is expected to fall to sixth place by 2100. Unlike many other developed countries, however, the U.S. should keep growing throughout this century.

Most of this growth will be due to immigration, rather than new births, as fertility rates in the U.S. are already below the replacement level.

If you enjoyed today’s post, check out The World’s Aging Population on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.

Authored by Helen Partz via CoinTelegraph.com,

US President Donald Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, filed an S-1 form with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to launch a dual exchange-traded fund (ETF) for Bitcoin and Ether.

Filed on Monday, the S-1 form proposes the issuance and trading of Truth Social Bitcoin and Ethereum ETF, sponsored by the asset management firm Yorkville America Digital.

Details from the title page of the Truth Social Bitcoin and Ethereum ETF. Source: SEC

The trust seeks to provide investors with exposure to both Bitcoin and Ether by offering shares backed by the crypto assets, removing the complexities stemming from direct investment.

The shares are backed by BTC and ETH held by the custodian on behalf of the trust, Foris DAX Trust Company, doing business as Crypto.com, the prospectus reads.

Ticker and cash custodian to be disclosed

The ETF shares are proposed to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange Arca (NYSE Arca), according to the filing.

While Truth Social has officially determined that Crypto.com will be its dedicated crypto custody provider, the company is yet to finalize the details of the upcoming ETF, such as the fund’s ticker and its cash custodian.

An excerpt from the proposed Truth Social Bitcoin and Ethereum ETF. Source: SEC

Truth Social also mentioned that it plans to file an amendment later with a summary of the terms of the prime execution agency agreement with Crypto.com.

SEC approves Trump Media’s Bitcoin treasury registration

The filing for the Truth Social Bitcoin and Ethereum ETF follows the approval of Trump Media and Technology Group’s $2.3 billion Bitcoin treasury deal by the SEC on Friday.

In the statement, the company said that it currently has “no immediate plans” to issue any securities under the deal.

TMTG previously confirmed a $2.5 billion capital raise to purchase Bitcoin in late May, after initially denying such reports.

CoinShares files for Solana spot ETF

Truth Social’s Bitcoin and Ether ETF filing arrived on the same day as a new S-1 filing by CoinShares, which proposed the issuance of a Solana spot ETF.

Already operating an exchange-traded product (ETP) called CoinShares Physical Solana Staked ETP in Europe, CoinShares is now seeking to launch a similar ETF product in the US.

According to Bloomberg’s senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas, there are now up to eight Solana spot filings under the SEC’s consideration.

Source: Eric Balchunas

As of Friday, seven issuers filed initial S-1 registration statements for Solana spot ETFs, including Fidelity Investments, 21Shares, Franklin Templeton, Grayscale Investments, Bitwise Investments, Canary Capital and VanEck.

According to Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart, a Solana ETF approval is unlikely to happen this week.

“This was a big mistake,” Trump told reporters Monday just ahead of the G7 meeting in Canada, in reference to booting Russia from what was then known as the Group of 8. “You wouldn’t have that war” – in reference to the over three-year long Ukraine war. 

He described that this action under the Obama administration likely greatly contributed to President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine. He not only pinned blame on Obama, but also on former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – in a rare direct swipe at Canadian foreign policy. Russia was booted in March 2014 following the annexation of Crimea.

“I’m not saying he should at this point [be a part of a Group of 8], because too much water has gone over the dam, maybe, but it was a big mistake,” Trump said. “Obama didn’t want him and the head of your country, the proud head of your country, didn’t want him.”

Trump described that being in the major global economic forum consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States (and the EU as a “non-enumerated member”) would have been a way to keep one’s enemy closer, and thus be able to better negotiate when a crisis arises.

“He wasn’t really an enemy at that time,” Trump pointed out. “If I were president, this war would have never happened. But likewise, if he were a member of what was called the G8 at that time – it was always the G8 – you wouldn’t have a war right now.”

Interestingly, he also said something similar when asked if the same might have held true with China, amid a US-China trade war.

“Well, it’s not a bad idea,” Trump responded. “I don’t mind that. If somebody wants to suggest China coming in, I think we suggest, but you want to have people that you can talk to, you know.”

Trump presented a general situation where Moscow has effectively cut off those G7 leaders who had first cut him off.

Trump both on the campaign trail and as president has repeatedly emphasized that the disastrous Ukraine war is a conflict that would have never happened had he been president.

This wasn’t the first time such statements have been made, as it was at the 2018 G7 summit in Charlevoix, Canada, President Trump called for Russia to be readmitted, clashing with other G7 leaders who opposed the idea. The summit, hosted by Prime Minister Trudeau, was marked by tensions over trade.

President Trump used the opening meeting at the G-7 to complain that the group no longer included Russia.

He criticized former US President Barack Obama and former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for the decision to expel Russia from the then-G-8 https://t.co/tbGJ5LxlIM pic.twitter.com/N5ezWVJiv7

— Bloomberg (@business) June 16, 2025

However, some critics have pointed out that aside from a very brief couple of days early in his presidency, American arms, ammo, and intelligence to Kiev has flowed largely without interruption.

Trump efforts to get the warring sides to the negotiating table hasn’t produced much, and each side is still locked in their uncompromising positions, and a frustrated US leader has expressed that he might be ready to just ‘let them fight it out’.

Authored by Matthew Piepenburg via vongreyerz.gold,

Is gold calling out a broken global financial system?

One Big…Lie?

Earlier this year, I was asked to give my most “heretic” opinion about the global financial system.

This was an unusual yet bold question, and after a brief pause, I answered that the entire system was…, well:

“A lie.”

This may seem like a sensational response in an industry sometimes prone to the sensational; however, if we look at stubborn facts, the answer is truer than it is extreme.

When it comes to a financial system rotting from within, the Botox-like beauty of our ballooning S&P and centralized credit market hides an aging and decrepit disease.

That is, policy lies, like Botox, can’t hide reality forever, and the evidence of a fatally debt-sick system hiding financial truths behind forked tongues and euphemistic lingo is literally all around us.

A Long List of Truth-Stretching…

From the very era of my birth, the list of lies is almost comical.

Nixon:

In 1971, for example, when Nixon decoupled the dollar from gold [thereby allowing his own and future administrations the unfettered luxury (and sickness) of expanding (debasing) the money supply], he promised the measure would be “temporary” and that “our dollar would be worth just as much tomorrow as it is today.”

Both statements, of course, were open lies.

54 years later, the dollar remains un-chaperoned to gold, and when measured against a milligram of that same precious metal, the USD (and other major Fiat currencies) has lost 99% of its purchasing power.

Meanwhile, gold is rising faster against the USD and other world currencies as their purchasing power is diluted by desperate policies to inflate away their debt with debased currencies.

Lying to Our Founding Fathers:

It’s also worth noting that our fiat paper Dollar, un-backed by gold, is a direct contradiction to our Constitution, and in my mind, is itself just another, well…Lie.

Wilson’s Fed:

But long before the lies of 1971, let us not forget the lie of 1913, when Wilson signed an equally unconstitutional Federal Reserve into law, a so-called “independent” bank which is anything but independent (it’s effectively a fourth branch of government) and is neither “Federal” nor a “Reserve.”

Larry Summers:

Fast forward to the great financial crisis of 2008, which was effectively a mortgage—backed-security credit implosion driven by an unregulated derivatives market, and we see even more staggering dishonesty.

A decade before this levered credit implosion, Assistant Treasury Secretary Larry Summers was called to Congress to answer Brooksley Born’s concerns (as head of the CFTC) that these derivative instruments, if left unregulated, would destabilize markets.

Summers publicly embarrassed Born and then told the world that the bankers in charge of these OTC instruments of levered destruction were more than sophisticated enough to manage the risks.

Of course, by the 2008 market implosion, we all knew that assertion was a lie.

Bernanke, Yellen & Powell:

We also know that when the markets tanked in 2008 (thanks largely to Mr. Summers’ deregulation fiasco), Bernanke’s subsequent promise that the money printing which followed (counterfeiting euphemistically called “Quantitative Easing”) would only be a “temporary” measure was just another lie.

QE1 was soon followed by QE 2,3,4 “Operation Twist” and then “Unlimited QE” by 2020.

But such lies are nothing new to central bankers. Remember Yellen?

And let us not forget Powell’s 2021 promise that the inflation (a direct result of the very money printing Bernanke promised would be “temporary” in 2010) facing the USA would only be “transitory.”

We knew then, as we still know today, that transitory inflation, like the very scale which measures CPI, were just more lies.

In fact, lies, like the euphemisms from on top, are almost standard policy from our so-called policy makers.

MMT:

“Modern Monetary Theory,” or “MMT,” for example, is neither modern, nor monetary, nor a theory.

The fantasy of believing a nation can solve a debt crisis via more debt, which is then monetized by creating fake money, has been tried from ancient Rome and 1789 France to 1990’s Yugoslavia.

But as history confirms, it has failed EVERY time.

Other Lies…

Other such lying euphemisms, from the “Patriot Act” and the “Department of Homeland Security” to the “safe and effective” of our now-pardoned “trust the science” leadership may be less economic, but they are no less dishonest—being far more about centralization than anything “patriotic” or “security” driven…

In sum, so many lies, so many examples.

And the fact that 99% of our nation’s now openly distrusted (by greater than 40% of the US population) media outlets are owned by just five mega-corporations, is it any wonder that such lies, as Mark Twain quipped, “can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes”?

But as introduced above, eventually the lies can no longer hide what our eyes, intuition, and wallets can see, touch or feel.

Gold: The Ultimate Lie Detector

Toward this end, we clearly know we are reaching an inflection point in the global financial system when even the liars have started to confess the truth, and much of this truth is golden.

As I noted elsewhere, a group of European Central Bank economists have just said the quiet part out loud.

In a recent report, they warned that rising demand for physical gold (over 2000 tons from London to NYC in 2025) could send the European Union into collapse.

Why?

Because the Eurozone, already teetering on skyrocketing debts and rising bond yields (and hence interest rates), doesn’t have the money nor the gold to meet their 100:1 levered gold derivative contracts hitherto floating on the London and NY Gold Exchanges with a gross exposure of over $1T.

Yes, One TRILLION.

Sadly, we’ve been warning of this derivative time bomb and Comex insanity for years, yet only now the ECB is confessing its trillion-dollar problem out loud.

These metals exchanges, which rolled over and extended paper gold contracts since the 1970s to artificially short (i.e., price control) the gold price, were basically credit exchanges, not gold storage providers…

But now they are seeing counterparties wanting the physical gold itself rather than just their extended paper contracts.

Unfortunately, the Eurozone doesn’t have the gold their contracts promised.

In short, they are caught in a lie.

The other lie is trying to “blame” this leverage trap on gold while failing to confess that counterparties are seeking actual gold delivery to cover their own past sins.

That is, they need the gold because they trust this hitherto “pet rock” analog asset as a far, far superior store of value and reserve asset than the sovereign bonds and paper currencies they’ve been destroying for decades—something we have also been forewarning for years.

In other words, gold is no longer just a hedge or matter of speculation, it’s THE emerging global Tier-1 asset which even those folks at the BIS and IMF (notorious for “bending” truths) now openly recognize as THE reserve asset in a world openly losing confidence in the debased paper money and distrusted IOUs from a world falling off a $300T global debt cliff.

In short: Gold is calling BS on an entire global financial system whose dishonest fantasy policies of thinking they could take sovereign debt levels to unprecedented/historical and drunken levels to buy time, votes and wealth inequality without a hangover.

Or stated more simply, gold is unmasking the lie of deficits without tears, money printing without currency debasement and debt without destruction.

When I think of such “leaders” and financial policies, I am again reminded of Mark Twain, who observed: “I sometimes wonder if the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it.”

No Surprise at All

But such imbecility (or dishonesty) is no surprise to those who understand math, history and sound money—i.e. those who understand gold.

For years, family offices, private wealth advisors at lofty bank X, Y&Z and even RIA A, B&C have been telling themselves (and you) that gold is just too “volatile.”

Gold has been less than a 1% allocation for most family offices and an even lesser allocation for all other investors for years and years.

But gold has outperformed the S&P (at even a total return basis) for TWENTY years, and is the highest performing asset of 2025.

Under NO stretch of the imagination (or even objective math) is this asset even close to being “too volatile” of late.

Far more importantly, gold’s real secular move has yet to even begin, despite over two (largely ignored) decades of outperforming traditional risk assets.

Meanwhile, the so-called “smart money” – from the Harvard Endowment to Family Office A, B&C–are stuck in private credit pools (what Jeffrey Gundlach described as the new “weapons of mass destruction”) and other non-marked-to-market PE timebombs whose hey days are about to become dark days in the illiquidity that defines all credit cycle implosions, toward which we are marching at top speed.

And in this very strange backdrop, the very central bankers who have downplayed, ignored, and intentionally misrepresented gold, are now buying it at record levels.

In short, even the liars are now stacking the hidden truth.

The ironies. They do abound.

In a bizarre twist of corporate warfare, Impossible Foods, the once-hyped darling of the alt-meat industry, appears to have squandered investor resources in misguided legal crusades with its valuation crashing from a $7.5 billion Series H peak in late 2021 to just $1.5 billion as of May, according to PM Insights.

With U.N. support, and an FDA “Climate-Friendly” fast-track, the ultra-processed alt-meat behemoth easily raised billions from backers such as Bill Gates, Hollywood elites, and Temasek. 

According to early reports, the company had been preparing for a public offering that could have valued it at $10 billion or more. 

Appearing unstoppable, the company began throwing its weight around. Doubling down on a potentially catastrophic miscalculation amid consumer rejection of ultra-processed meat alternatives, the company’s legal battles with Impossible X and prior food-tech rival Motif FoodWorks are turning stomachs.

First up is the trademark showdown with Impossible X, a scrappy fitness outfit founded by Joel Runyon in 2010. Impossible X – which held 18 federal trademarks for “Impossible” in the decade prior to Impossible Foods’ ultra-processed patties – filed a cease-and-desist after the company attempted to register “Impossible” trademarks across its expanding range of products.

Vegan ultra runner @richroll covers the lawsuit that “Impossible Foods” filed against my company @impossiblehq (https://t.co/9MHF3huPb2) pic.twitter.com/f1K64k2ZF8

— Joel Runyon (@joelrunyon) December 17, 2024

Beyond the traditional category of “plant-based meat substitutes,” Impossible Foods is claiming their trademark extends to all edible categories.

According to the U.S Patent Office, Impossible Foods has now filed nearly 50k trademarks in category 029 alone, “foodstuffs of animal origin.” While this category does not include plant-based food products, as one might expect, it speaks to the broad nature of the company’s trademark claims. 

Those claims became the company’s basis for trademark superiority, as the alt-meat giant clapped back with a declaratory judgment suit—taking aim at Runyon personally. 

Now, Impossible Foods is gunning for the fitness company’s pre-existing federal trademarks as well, in what some have said “comes across as an elitist asshole move.”

Covering the lawsuit, vegan influencer Rich Roll and co-host Adam Skolnick, equate the actions of Impossible Foods as bullying, while criticizing the company’s actions as being antithetical to winning hearts and minds. 

Runyon, taking to X, called it a “David vs. Goliath” fight, accusing the “multi-billion dollar processed foods company” of trying to “steal” his brand and bury his small business under legal fees. 

This legal saga is an example of an “ethical company” being really scummy behind the scenes. The fake meat bros tried to cancel a pre-existing trademark held by a small business owner and endurance athlete. Impossible Foods is run by lowlifes! https://t.co/v6MmwJNuKE

— Cernovich (@Cernovich) October 22, 2024

The 9th Circuit revived the case in 2023, and as of March 2025, it’s still grinding through the courts. X users like @Cernovich smell blood, labeling it a classic case of a corporate bully flexing its muscle to squash a minnow.

Then there was the patent brawl with Motif FoodWorks in 2022. Impossible Foods sued Motif in Delaware, alleging their HEMAMI ingredient—a heme protein mimicking meat’s flavor—infringed on Impossible’s prized patent. 

Motif fired back, claiming the patent was invalid and their product distinct, while slamming the suit as a “baseless attempt to stifle competition.” Allegations of using lawfare to monopolize the alt-meat sector – projected to hit $450 billion by 2040 – were waived off.

However, since the lawsuit ended with Impossible Foods acquiring the smaller start-up – taking both its intellectual property and expertise in producing HEMAMI – X has exploded with concerns over the corporate monopolization of the food industry.

Who is Motif Foodworks? Is there anything that Bill Gates does not have his hands in? Will there be anything we consume that is NOT synthesized?

In addition to the launch of Joyn Bio launched by Gingko Bioworks, they have also launched Motif Foodworks on its platform for cell… pic.twitter.com/PV1E6A8tvA

— QuestionIt (@Amy31129057) June 5, 2023

While Impossible X’s Runyon faces existential threats from legal costs, should Impossible Foods plow its way through Runyon, the case – set for trial this coming November – could have profound impacts on future trademark laws. 

Either way, the optics are brutal: a once $7.5 billion giant suing a small fitness brand and taking over a smaller rival as the result of litigation, all while losing billions amid a sector-wide downturn.  

Runyon’s X posts, dripping with defiance, resonate with those who have grown disillusioned by big food monopolies—viewed as eliminating consumer transparency, trust, and ultimately choice.   

Now, as the alt-meat bubble deflates – just look at Beyond Meat’s market capitalization collapse – …

… Impossible Foods’ legal fiasco stands as a cautionary tale of overreach. However, the question still remains: will this merely be remembered as a strategic blunder, or the final nail in the coffin for the “eat ze bugs” frankenfood revolution?

Our bet is that clean, back-to-basics food (MAHA) isn’t just a trend — it’s a national effort for surviving the 2030s. 

By Pam Radtke of Floodlight

Republicans and Democrats alike are less likely to support renewable energy than they were five years ago, according to a survey released last week by the Pew Research Center.

The results mirror growing pockets of opposition to solar farms, reignited political support for coal plants, and moves by President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans to kill federally funded clean energy projects.

This shift in opinion dates back to when Democratic President Joe Biden took office, said Brian Kennedy, Pew senior researcher and one of the study’s authors. ​“This isn’t a new trend,” he said.

Still, Kenneth Gillingham, professor of environmental and energy economics at the Yale School of the Environment, was surprised.

“I see this shift … as a successful effort to link climate change and renewable energy to broader culture war issues,” Gillingham said. He added that in the past, ​“prominent” Republicans supported renewables and sought solutions to climate change, but those stances could now be seen as ​“disloyal” to Trump.

The survey of 5,085 U.S. adults taken April 28 to May 4 revealed that while 79% of Americans favored expanding wind and solar production in 2020, that number has dropped to 60%. And 39% of Americans today support expansion of oil, coal, and natural gas — almost double the 20% that supported it in 2020.

Combustion of fossil fuels — in transportation, energy generation, and industrial production — is the No. 1 cause of climate change.

Much of the change in opinion is driven by Republicans, whose support of oil and gas grew from 35% in 2020 to 67% today. But Democrats also indicated less support for renewable energy and more for fossil fuels than five years ago.

While many results reflect Trump’s policies opposing most renewables and boosting fossil fuels, Pew found a few notable exceptions: 69% of all respondents favor offshore wind — a technology Trump has specifically targeted.

Both Democrats and Republicans indicated stronger support for nuclear power, with Republicans’ favorable opinions increasing from 53% in 2020 to 69% in 2025. Democrats’ support rose from 37% to 52%. The Trump administration has signaled support for a nuclear renaissance, despite its high cost.

There were wide partisan splits on several topics. In March, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced it would scale back environmental regulations. Pew asked whether it was possible to do that and still protect air and water quality: 77% of Republicans said yes, and 67% of Democrats said no.

Pew didn’t ask the respondents why their attitudes have shifted. But Kennedy said in Pew’s past surveys, Republicans have expressed concern about the economic impacts of climate change policies and transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources.

Mike Murphy, a Republican consultant and electric vehicle backer, said when the environmental benefits of clean technologies are touted, it polarizes Republicans. Instead, Murphy said messages should be about pocketbook issues — like lower fuel costs — and jobs.

“It’s hard for pro-climate people to understand,” said Murphy, who has advised dozens of state and national GOP campaigns, including John McCain’s 2008 presidential bid. “[They think] we just need to shout louder and hit people over the head about climate, climate, climate. The key is you want to talk about jobs and national security and other events that naturally resonate a lot more with right-of-center people.”

That’s what Murphy’s groups, the EV Politics Project and the American EV Jobs Alliance, are trying to do to depoliticize electric vehicles. ​“Whenever electric cars are seen through a climate lens,” Murphy said, ​“their appeal narrows.”

It’s a strategy also being used by the Electrification Coalition, a left-of-center pro-EV group. Ben Prochazka, the coalition’s executive director, echoed Murphy’s strategy, adding that EVs have ​“become overly politicized and caught in the culture wars, impacting markets and ultimately hurting our ability to realize their many benefits for all Americans.”

Prochazka noted that once introduced to EVs, consumers support them: ​“EV drivers love their vehicles, with more than eight out of 10 reporting that their next car will also be electric.”

Perhaps those practical messages are getting through. In the Pew survey, electric vehicles were the one item that saw an uptick in support — 4 percentage points in the past year.

But popular support might not be enough to stop Congress from killing a $7,500 electric vehicle credit, which Murphy said would be ​“policy disaster.” 

Republicans, he said, are in a ​“real squeeze,” because ​“they don’t have enough money for the tax cuts the president has promised.” 

Said Murphy: ​“It’s easier for Republicans to cut Biden electric cars … than it is for them to cut more Medicaid.” 

Gillingham is still optimistic that solar, wind and other greenhouse gas-reducing technologies will move forward — because they are the cheapest.

“The continued decline in the price of renewable energy and battery technologies, as well as other new technologies, is a reason to continue to have hope that the worst impacts of climate change can be addressed,” he said.