Authored by Peter Earle via TheDailyEconomy.org,

As we mark five years since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, many headlines trumpet the resilience of the US economy: unemployment is low, GDP has returned to growth, and markets have rebounded. But beneath the surface-level indicators lies a more complicated and sobering picture. 

A close examination of key economic metrics reveals that in several important areas, the US economy has not fully recovered from the effects of both the virus and the extraordinary government interventions it prompted. Despite warnings from economists and policy experts in 2020, the country implemented sweeping lockdowns, business closures, and monetary and fiscal expansions at a scale never seen before. These efforts were often framed as a necessary tradeoff between public health and economic output — a false dichotomy that ignored the long-run consequence of suppressing economic activity at such a vast scale. 

Today, the costs of those tradeoffs are still being paid, and the full price may not be known for years to come.

(All images sourced from Bloomberg Finance, LP)

1. US Manufacturers New Orders for Nondefense Capital Goods Excluding Aircraft (Conference Board)

One key indicator is the Conference Board’s New Orders for Nondefense Capital Goods Excluding Aircraft, which serves as a proxy for business investment in equipment and durable inputs. From 2015 through early 2020, the metric showed steady growth, signaling strong confidence and ongoing capital formation. But in the wake of pandemic disruptions, new orders plummeted. Although recovery began in 2021 and was supported by historically low interest rates, the metric remains below its pre-pandemic trajectory. As of March 2025, a slight month-over-month decline (-0.1 percent ) suggests that firms remain cautious about long-term investment. The uneven rebound signals lingering uncertainty in the business environment and may point to structural concerns like reshoring, labor shortages, or geopolitical risk.

2. US CPI Ex Food & Energy, Year-Over-Year (US Bureau of Labor Statistics)

Core CPI, which strips out volatile food and energy prices to provide a clearer picture of underlying inflation, remained stable at around 2 percent from 2015 to early 2020. But pandemic-era policies — including trillions in federal stimulus and prolonged supply chain disruptions — led to a surge in price growth. Core inflation peaked in 2022 and has cooled since, but as of early 2025, it remains elevated at roughly 3.1 percent year-over-year. This persistent inflation has eroded consumer purchasing power, particularly for middle- and lower-income households. It also complicates the Federal Reserve’s ability to ease monetary policy, potentially dampening future growth.

3. Conference Board Consumer Consumer Confidence Present Situation (Conference Board)

Consumer confidence, as measured by the Conference Board’s Present Situation Index, offers insight into how Americans perceive current economic conditions. Between 2015 and early 2020, consumer sentiment was buoyant, driven by low unemployment and strong income growth. The pandemic caused a steep drop, and while confidence has partially rebounded, it has not returned to prior highs. In 2025, many households remain wary amid ongoing concerns over inflation, interest rates, and job security. This hesitancy is reflected in cautious spending patterns and a reluctance to take on new debt, both of which could suppress future economic dynamism.

4. Real Average Hourly Earnings (1982–1984 Dollars, Seasonally Adjusted) (US Bureau of Labor Statistics)

Real average hourly earnings (adjusted to 1982-1984 dollars) present a mixed picture. From 2015 to 2020, real wages rose modestly in line with productivity gains and low inflation. In 2020, as lower-wage workers were disproportionately affected by job losses, average real wages appeared to increase temporarily. But subsequent inflation wiped out those gains. By 2025, real wages have only slightly improved relative to pre-pandemic levels, indicating that nominal wage increases have not kept pace with the cost of living. This stagnation undermines household financial resilience and places greater pressure on public support programs.

5. US Average Hourly Earnings Private Nonfarm Payrolls (1982 Dollars) (US Bureau of Labor Statistics)

Similarly, real average hourly earnings in the private nonfarm sector have struggled to regain momentum. Prior to 2020, steady gains reflected a competitive labor market and healthy economic fundamentals. Post-pandemic, however, wage growth has been neutralized by rising prices, leaving many workers with stagnant or declining real incomes. While some sectors — such as tech and logistics — have fared better, much of the workforce remains in a holding pattern. This weak earnings recovery affects not just consumption but also savings, investment, and overall quality of life.

6. Total Net US Saving, All Sectors (Flow of Funds, NIPA) (US Bureau of Economic Analysis)

Net saving across all sectors, as measured by the Flow of Funds accounts, showed balance in the years leading up to the pandemic. In 2020, government transfers and reduced consumption pushed household savings to record highs. But that was a temporary artifact. As of 2025, net saving has returned to trend or even fallen below it, as households grapple with higher living costs and diminished purchasing power. This reversal undermines long-term capital accumulation and leaves families more exposed to economic shocks.

7. US Employment-Population Ratio, Total Labor Force (Seasonally and Not Seasonally Adjusted) (US Bureau of Labor Statistics)

The employment-population ratio offers a broad view of labor market health. From 2015 to 2020, it trended upward, reflecting robust employment gains across most demographics. The ratio collapsed in early 2020 due to mass layoffs and business shutdowns and has not fully recovered even five years later. Persistent shortfalls can be attributed to early retirements, long-term illness, childcare challenges, and shifting labor force preferences. A lower employment-population ratio means fewer workers supporting growing pool of retirees, with implications for productivity, tax revenues, social program solvency, and economic growth as a whole.

8. Food Price Indexes (Various Measures, US Bureau of Labor Statistics / USDA)

Food prices remained relatively stable for decades, with annual increases closely tracking general inflation. However, the combination of extraordinary fiscal and monetary expansion, global supply chain breakdowns, and labor dislocations during the pandemic triggered a sharp and sustained rise in food costs. Beginning in late 2020 and accelerating through 2022, food prices followed a classic “hockey stick” pattern, with steeper increases in staples such as meat, dairy, and grains. By 2025, although the rate of increase has moderated, prices remain significantly above pre-pandemic levels. For American households — particularly those with fixed or low incomes — this has created lasting pressure on household budgets and elevated food insecurity across communities.

9. Median Inflation Expectations (One-, Three-, and Five-Year Horizons) (Federal Reserve Bank of New York)

Inflation expectations are critical to economic decision-making, influencing wage negotiations, consumer spending, and business investment. Before the pandemic, one-, three-, and five-year inflation expectations were typically stable. Since 2020, however, these expectations have not only risen but become substantially more volatile. This shift reflects the uncertainty introduced by both the initial inflation spike and the policy responses that followed. Elevated and unstable inflation expectations increase the risk premium on investment, discourage long-term contracting, and diminish real wealth as households adjust their behavior to hedge against future price instability. For policymakers, regaining credibility around inflation targeting is now a central challenge.

10. Housing Affordability Index, First-Time Buyers (National Association of Realtors)

A combination of factors, including a flight from urban centers facilitated by historically low interest rates and limited inventory drove home prices to unprecedented levels, especially in suburban and rural areas. As a result, first-time buyers — who often lack significant savings — have, since the pandemic, been priced out of the market at historic levels. Massively expansionary Fed policies also drove asset prices, which include home prices, up much faster than wages. Fiscal stimulus programs intended to mitigate economic damage inadvertently fueled demand for housing, intensifying growing price increases. Those dynamics, coupled with ongoing supply chain issues and delays in new housing construction, have deepened the affordability gap to record lows (since 1986), placing homeownership increasingly out of reach of many aspiring buyers.

Taken together, the post-COVID trends in these economic phenomena make clear that while some headline figures paint a rosy picture, the US economy remains structurally altered by the events of 2020. Pandemic-era policies, ostensibly aimed at preserving lives and livelihoods, imposed immense costs on economic activity, some of which were foreseeable and avoidable. By presenting the crisis as a binary choice between public health and economic output, policymakers created a narrative that neglected the possibility of more balanced, targeted interventions. And now, five years later, the economy bears the weight of those decisions. The consequences — lost earnings, reduced investment, lingering inflation, and lower labor force engagement — are still unfolding. As we look ahead, it is crucial to understand that the price of those tradeoffs is not only massive, but still growing and will be paid in ways both visible and hidden for many years to come.

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Nevada’s Secretary of State’s office is investigating more than 300 cases of possible double votes during the 2024 election, according to a recent report released by the office.

State elections officials received at least 303 complaints about individuals trying to vote twice in the November election, the report found. Each individual who allegedly attempted to vote twice in the election was caught before they cast their second vote.

Five of the cases have been closed, including one that was referred to an unspecified “outside agency,” and the four remaining cases were marked as “civil notice/no violation,” the office said in the March 21 report. The remaining possible cases, 298, are still marked as “open” in the report.

The 303 potential cases represent about 0.02 percent of the ballots cast in the Silver State during last year’s General Election, the office said.

“The Secretary of State’s Office takes every allegation of election integrity violations very seriously and investigates them to the full extent of the law,” the report said.

The office is now working “very closely with the Attorney General’s Office through the investigative process,” the report added. “Once a determination is made regarding the validity of any allegations, a report is prepared and cases are referred to outside investigatory agencies, including the Attorney General’s Office and county District Attorney offices.”

In the report, officials provided examples of double-vote complaints and investigations.

“A father and son with the same name who live in the same household both receive a ballot. The son votes in-person. The father mistakenly fills out his son’s ballot and mails it to his County Clerk or Registrar’s Office,” it said, adding that the registrar or clerk may detect a double vote for the son but doesn’t count the second ballot that was cast.

An investigation is then launched, and the secretary’s office sends a Civil Letter Notice to the father.

“The letter details the situation and outcome of the investigation, with a warning that attempting to vote twice is illegal, however, no intent was found and no further action will be taken unless more information is revealed. All civil notices are tracked by our office to monitor potential future irregularities,” the report said.

It’s not clear whether the example is based on a real-world incident or was one of the cases that were investigated during the 2024 election.

Then-presidential candidate Donald Trump defeated then-Vice President Kamala Harris in Nevada by about 46,000 votes, enough to secure the state and its six electoral votes. Trump also won every other speculated battleground state during that contest.

Trump and other Republicans have said they want to bolster election security, including voter ID laws; ensure more secure vote-by-mail procedures, including using paper ballots; and maintain more accurate voter rolls. Since 2020’s contest against Democrat Joe Biden, Trump has said he believes that the election was fraught with fraud that ultimately caused the election to be called in favor of his opponent.

After taking office more than two months ago, Trump has yet to sign an executive order on elections but appeared to preview a forthcoming decision during his first Cabinet meeting this month. Trump said in the meeting that he thinks the United States needs to have an “honest” election system, while making a call to “go back to paper ballots” and have elections be completed in one day.

Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong – a transplant surgeon-turned-biotech billionaire renowned for inventing the cancer drug Abraxane – has issued a startling warning in a new in-depth interview with Tucker Carlson.

Soon-Shiong, founder of ImmunityBio ($IBRX) and owner of the Los Angeles Times, claims that the COVID-19 pandemic, and the very vaccines developed to fight it, may be contributing to a global surge in “terrifyingly aggressive” cancers. In the nearly two-hour conversation, the Los Angeles Times owner leveraged his decades of clinical and scientific experience to outline why he suspects an unprecedented cancer epidemic is unfolding. This report examines Dr. Soon-Shiong’s background and assertions, the scientific responses for and against his claims, new data on post-COVID health trends, and the far-reaching implications if his alarming hypothesis proves true.

Dr. Soon-Shiong’s Claims

Soon-Shiong is a veteran surgeon and immunologist who has spent a career studying the human immune system’s fight against cancer. He pioneered novel immunotherapies and even worked on a T-cell based COVID vaccine booster during the pandemic. In the interview, he draws on this background to voice deep concern over rising cancer cases, especially among younger people – something he describes as a “non-infectious pandemic” of cancer. He tells Carlson that in 50 years of medical practice, it was extraordinarily rare to see cancers like pancreatic tumors in children or young adults, yet recently such cases are appearing. For instance, Soon-Shiong was alarmed by seeing a 13-year-old with metastatic pancreatic cancer, a scenario virtually unheard of in his prior experience. 

“I never saw pancreatic cancer in children… the greatest surprise to me was a 13-year-old with metastatic pancreatic cancer,” Soon-Shiong told Carlson, adding that he’s seen examples of very young patients (even children under 11 with colon cancer) and unusual surges in aggressive diseases like ovarian cancer in women in their 30s. These personal observations of more frequent, aggressive cancers in youth led him to probe what might have changed in recent years.

“We’re clearly seeing an increase in certain types of cancer, like pancreatic cancer, ovarian cancer… colon cancer… in younger people.”
— Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong

According Soon-Shiong, the COVID era is the obvious change – and suggests that both the SARS-CoV-2 virus infection and the widespread vaccination campaigns could be key drivers behind this cancer spike. He emphasizes the massive scale of human exposure to the virus and its spike protein (via infection or vaccination).

“I don’t know how to say that without saying it. It scares the pants off me because I think what we may be, I don’ think it’s virus versus man now, this is existential. I think when I talk about the largest non-infectious pandemic that we’re afraid of, this is it.”

“Billions of people – literally billions – had the COVID virus. Over a billion got the spike protein vaccine,” said Carlson, adding “So that’s like, we’re talking like a huge percentage of the Earth’s population, unless I’m missing something.”

“Now you understand what keeps you awake at night and kept me awake at night for two years, two and a half years,” Soon-Shiong replied, suggesting that exposure to both is silently undermining the immune system’s natural defenses against cancer on a global scale.

Soon-Shiong frames COVID-era cancers as potentially virally triggered or exacerbated. In the interview, he described cases of “virally induced cancers” in clinics during the pandemic – patients whose cancers may have been kicked into overdrive by the cascade of inflammation and immune stress associated with COVID-19 (Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong: You’re Being Lied to About Cancer, How It’s Caused, and How to Stop It). COVID infection causes a massive inflammatory response, and some cancers are known to exploit inflammation to grow.

TUCKER: “a lot people have pointed to both COVID, the virus, and to the mRNA COVID vaccines as potential causes. Do you think that they’re related?“

SOON-SHIONG: “The best way for me to answer that is to look at history. What we know about virally-induced cancers is well-established. We know that if you get hepatitis, you get liver cancer. Hepatitis is a virus infection. We know if you got human papillomavirus, HPV, you get cervical cancer.”

We know that certain viruses directly cause cancer (e.g. HPV, Epstein-Barr), so it’s not unprecedented for a virus to play a role in oncogenesis. While SARS-CoV-2 is not a known oncovirus, Soon-Shiong worries its indirect effects – chronic inflammation, immune exhaustion, or “suppressor cells” that emerge in the wake of infection/vaccination – could be accelerating tumor development. “The answer is to stop the inflammation…clear the virus from the body,” he argues, positing that until we eradicate lingering virus and restore immune balance, we may see mounting cancer cases.

*  *  *

Fight inflammation with IQ Biologix (super potent) Ultra Turmeric

In sum, Dr. Soon-Shiong’s claim is that the pandemic has set the stage for an explosion of aggressive cancers: the COVID virus itself (especially if it persists in survivors) might suppress immune surveillance, and the mRNA vaccines “that didn’t stop it” might inadvertently contribute to an immunosuppressive environment. These effects, in his theory, could be unleashing cancers that the immune system would ordinarily have kept in check.

Watch:

Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong is a surgeon who made billions inventing cancer drugs. He says that Covid, and the vaccines that didn’t stop it, are likely causing a global epidemic of terrifyingly aggressive cancers.

(0:00) Why Are Cancer Rates Rising in Young People?
(6:16) What Is… pic.twitter.com/5QO8AWLtXx

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) March 26, 2025

A number of clinicians and researchers have reported similar worrying observations, though these remain largely anecdotal at this stage. One prominent voice echoing Soon-Shiong’s concern is Dr. Angus Dalgleish, a veteran oncologist and professor at St. George’s, University of London. In late 2022, Dalgleish wrote to the BMJ’s editor after noticing that some cancer patients who had been stable for years experienced “rapid progression of their disease after a COVID-19 booster.” He cited cases of individuals who were doing well until shortly after vaccination – new leukemias, sudden appearance of Stage IV lymphomas, and explosive metastases in patients who had post-vaccine bouts of feeling unwell.

“I am experienced enough to know that these are not coincidental,” Dalgleish wrote, noting that colleagues in Germany, Australia and the U.S. were independently seeing the same pattern. This frontline testimony aligns with Soon-Shiong’s fear: something about the immune system post-vaccination might be removing restraints on latent cancers. Dalgleish specifically pointed to short-term innate immune suppression after mRNA vaccination (lasting for several weeks) as a plausible mechanism. Many of the cancers he saw were ones normally held in check by immune surveillance (melanomas and B-cell cancers), so a temporary post-vaccine drop in immune vigilance could allow a tumor growth spurt. He also alluded to “suppressor gene suppression by mRNA in laboratory experiments” – a reference to preliminary studies that found the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein might interfere with key DNA repair or tumor-suppressor proteins in cells. These lab findings (while not yet confirmed in living organisms) lend some biological plausibility to the idea that spike exposure could affect cancer-related pathways.

Beyond individual doctors, some research is probing links between COVID and cancer behavior. For example, a 2022 study in Frontiers in Oncology explored how SARS-CoV-2 proteins interact with cancer cells. It found that the virus’s membrane (M) protein can “induce the mobility, proliferation and in vivo metastasis” of triple-negative breast cancer cells in the lab (Frontiers | SARS-CoV-2 M Protein Facilitates Malignant Transformation of Breast Cancer Cells). In co-culture experiments, breast cancer cells exposed to the viral protein essentially became more aggressive and invasive. The researchers concluded that COVID-19 infection “might promote…aggressive [cancer] phenotypes” and warned that cancer patients who get COVID could face worse outcomes. 

While this is one specific context (breast cancer cells and one viral protein), it underpins Soon-Shiong’s general concern: the virus can directly alter the tumor microenvironment to the cancer’s advantage. 

Another line of evidence involves latent viruses and inflammation. Doctors have documented unusual reactivations of viruses like Epstein-Barr (which is linked to lymphomas and other malignancies) during both COVID-19 and post-vaccine immune reactions. Such reactivations hint at a period of immune dysregulation that might also let nascent cancer cells slip past defenses. 

Or course,fact-checkers and medical authorities argue that there is no credible evidence of vaccines causing meaningful immune suppression. “There isn’t evidence to date that COVID-19 vaccines cause cancer or lead to worsening cancer,” one infectious disease expert told FactCheck.org, though they do acknowledge rare side effects like myocarditis or blood clots were found, but not cancer.

Phinance Data Insights: Post-COVID Health Trends

While the scientific community debates mechanistic links between COVID and cancer, independent analysts have been parsing population-level data for unusual patterns. One notable effort is by Phinance Technologies, a research firm co-founded by former BlackRock portfolio manager Edward Dowd. Phinance has been analyzing excess mortality and disability data since the pandemic, looking for signals of broad health impacts in the aftermath of COVID and mass vaccination. Their findings reveal concerning trends, especially among younger, working-age populations, that lend some weight to Dr. Soon-Shiong’s general warning of a post-COVID health crisis (though not specific to cancer alone).

Phinance’s “Vaccine Damage Project” examined the U.S. population aged 16–64 (essentially the workforce) and stratified outcomes into four groups: no effect, mild injuries, severe injuries (disabilities), and death. Using official government databases (the CDC, Bureau of Labor Statistics, etc.), they estimated how each category changed starting in 2021 – when vaccines rolled out and COVID became widespread. The results are sobering. According to Phinance’s analysis, by the end of 2022 the U.S. had experienced approximately 310,000 excess deaths among adults aged 25-64 (a ~23% increase in mortality in that group over normal expectations). Notably, they argue that after mid-2021, with vaccines available and the virus itself becoming less deadly (due to immunity and milder variants), COVID-19 should not have been causing such high excess death rates. Therefore, those 310k “unexplained” deaths in 2021–2022 could represent an upper bound on vaccine-related fatalities or other pandemic collateral damage.

Even more striking is the data on new disabilities. Phinance found that from early 2021 through late 2022, about 1.36 million additional Americans (age 16–64) became disabled – a 24.6% rise in disability in that cohort, far above historical trend. This jump in disabilities among the workforce correlates in time with the vaccine rollout (and was disproportionately higher in the labor force than among those not working). The analysts note that the healthiest segment of the population (employed working-age adults) saw a greater relative increase in disabilities after Q1 2021 than the older or non-working groups. This is unusual, since typically health shocks hit the elderly hardest – but here something was impacting younger, healthy people to a significant degree. Phinance investigated further and found a tight relationship between the cumulative number of vaccine doses administered and the rise in disabilities in 2021-22. In fact, for the 16–64 population, they computed a ratio of about 4 new disabilities per excess death in that period, suggesting many survivors were left with lingering health issues even if they didn’t die.

Authored by Karl Denninger via Market-Ticker.org,

Oh boy….

President Donald Trump revealed that a staffer with national security advisor Mike Waltz’s office included the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic in a Signal group chat with senior Trump officials who were discussing plans for an upcoming strike on Houthi rebels in Yemen.

“It was one of Michael’s people on the phone. A staffer had his number on there,” Trump told NBC in a phone interview when asked how Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, was added to the high-profile chat.

Who was the person with zero IT security expertise that had people in the DOD and NatSec part of the government using anything other than their own infrastructure for such things?

There’s utterly no reason to ever trust any external system for sensitive information internal to the government.

Ever.

Let’s say, for example, I send you an email.  I typically “sign” them.  By doing this the email has included both an attestation that it has not been altered, as otherwise the signature will not validate, and my public key.

Now if your computer has a trust chain to verify that — and I publish that, by the way (so it can validate that public key is good) then you can now send me an encrypted message.  Once you do so not even you can read it — only I can, because I’m the only one with the other half of the key.

With me so far?

Now let’s say we start up a conversation and we have ten people in there.  I send an encrypted message to all ten. What I actually send is ten messages because each person’s public key is different and again, each of them are the only people with the other half of it.  So far so good.  They each get it, they can decode it, but not the copy sent to anyone else — and since I signed it if that signature verifies they know it hasn’t been tampered with in transit.

But in this case, since you care about the integrity of who can be a part of conversations generally, all transmissions go through the government’s infrastructure.  The government, incidentally, already has the PKI infrastructure (issuing certificates, attesting to them, etc. — this is part of, but not all of, how a CAC card works) to do all this.

Thus when you send the message the server — which is a DOD/NatSec server — is the machine that processes it.  Because a public key is in fact public it knows who the message is going to (all of the recipients) and whether the DOD/NatSec servers issued the certificates involved and to whom.

The server cannot see the unencrypted contents of the message as only the recipient of each transmission has the private key required to decode it — but it knows who its going to and their public certificate.  This means it can be set up to look at same and refuse to deliver a message if it is to someone who doesn’t have a DOD-issued certificate and, for example, the other people in the communication do; it could either embargo it (after all, there might be circumstances where this is legitimate) or alert someone that something hinky may be going on, throw it in the trash summarily, or some combination.

It can’t see the contents, but it can interdict the message before it ever leaves the DOD and identify who transmitted it because the machine that sent it is known.

In other words if you set things up properly, and run them properly, what happened can’t happen and if it is attempted, either by accident or malice, not only does it not work the person who did it gets busted if the transmission was not legitimate.

Yeah.

That.

Security of communications is supposed to be important…. right?

So why did CISA, which is an official government agency, recommend Signal specifically when it has no nexus within the government and thus, while it may be end-to-end encrypted (and not full of holes, which I can’t speak to since I’ve never looked at it in sufficient detail to have a valid opinion) it has no means of controlling who is in a chat nor to prevent anyone who might, whether through accident or malice, add someone unauthorized to a new or existing one and there is no means for the participants or organization to which they belong to vet who is in said chat.

You can have the best encryption on the planet — absolutely impossible to break — but if there is either someone foolish or malicious it is meaningless exactly as while you can have a fortified home or business if you leave the front door unlocked it matters not.

The entire reason you use a chain of trust and only allow entities known to have been authorized through that chain to be included in any sort of access regime is precisely this.  Humans are both fallible and, from time to time, corrupt.

Either is fatal to a security scheme and thus you must design in and insist on a control process to mitigate that risk.

We do not, at present, know if the breach here was due to stupidity (accident counts) or malice but what we do know is that CISA — an official government source — made a recommendation during the last Administration (so no, you can’t lay this one on Trump) to use infrastructure for allegedly “secure” communications that lacked any measure of control over human accident or malice in terms of recipient (and group) management.

This incident, beyond the actual person who added (or changed) the recipient so that reporter was in the list, is directly chargeable against CISA and their recommendation.  Since it is their job to put forward such standards for the government this is a fatal failure and every individual involved in that process, no matter how small their involvement, must be both publicly identified and expelled.  As there was apparently no classified data breached as a result of this criminal sanction is not appropriate — but permanent severance from any government employment now and in the future, along with summary and permanent revocation of any clearance held by said persons is not just advisable — it is mandatory.

Security is a process, not a product.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney gave a blistering speech on Thursday, declaring that the era of deep economic, security and military ties with the United States “is over,” after President Donald Trump announced steep auto tariffs of 25% on imports into the United States – which could affect an estimated 500,000 jobs in the Canadian auto industry.

“We will fight the U.S. tariffs with retaliatory trade actions of our own that will have maximum impact in the United States and minimum impacts here in Canada,” Carney said during a press conference that took him off the campaign trail ahead of the country’s April 28 general election, adding that “Nothing is off the table to defend our workers and our country.“

One option would be for Canada to impose excise duties on exports of oil, potash and other commodities – however the Canadian government says they will delay any sort of announcement until they see what the Trump administration does on April 2, Carney told reporters.

Carney called Trump’s auto tariffs “unjustified” and said they were in breach of existing trade deals, while also warning Candians that Trump had permanently altered relations to the point that regardless of any future deals, there would be “no turning back.”

Prime Minister Mark Carney says Canada “won’t back down” from President Donald Trump’s trade war and tariffs on the auto sector.

Mark Carney is the former chair of Bloomberg’s board of directors https://t.co/SYXhdGMOop pic.twitter.com/j1sPOHSy5a

— Bloomberg TV (@BloombergTV) March 27, 2025

“The old relationship we had with the United States based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation is over,” he said, adding that Canada’s response to the tariffs “is to fight, is to protect, is to build.”

“We will fight the US tariffs with retaliatory trade actions of our own that will have maximum impact in the United States and minimum impacts here in Canada,” Carney added.

Meanwhile, Ontario Premier Doug Ford spoke with US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and said Lutnick confirmed to him that Canada won’t be hit with an ‘immediate’ tariff, and that finished vehicles with US parts will face a rate lower than 25%. A car with US parts would instead be subject to a tariff of 12.5%.

Ford told reporters Lutnick did not give him any assurances there would be any easing or softening of the tariffs.

When Ford was asked whether Lutnick knows what Trump is planning to announce April 2, he said. “I think he has an idea.” Then the premier added: “Or maybe he doesn’t. That’s even scarier if he doesn’t. So let’s see what they come forward with on April 2, but we’re prepared, we’re ready.” –Bloomberg

“Americans need us. I told him,” said Ford of his call with Lutnick, adding that he’s “not sure” if the Trump administration fully understands the North American vehicle supply chain.

“They don’t have the people down there to fill the jobs.”

The White house, meanwhile, has reached out to schedule a call with Carney, which he says should happen in the “next day or two,” but that while he’ll talk to Trump – he will not participate in substantive trade negotiations with Washington until Trump shows Canada “respect,” which would include cutting out Trump’s repeated threats to annex Canada as America’s 51st state.

“For me, there are two conditions, not necessarily for a call, but a negotiation with the United States. First Respect, respect for our sovereignty as a country… apparently it’s a lot for him,” Carney said, adding “There has to be comprehensive discussion between the two of us, including with respect to our economy and our security.”

*  *  *

 Try IQ Biologix Astaxanthin – a super potent antioxidant (read more here).

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

At least 10 illegal immigrants who were recently deported by U.S. authorities to El Salvador were returned to the United States, according to new court filings.

Nine women on one of the planes that landed in El Salvador were kept on board the aircraft and ultimately transported back to America, a Venezuelan national with the initials S.Z.F.R. said in one of the documents that was filed with the federal court in Washington on March 24.

The woman said that after a refueling stop, the plane was said to have landed in El Salvador. The men were led off the plane, but the women were not.

“I was told that the President of El Salvador would not accept women. I was also told that we were going back to detention in the U.S.,” the woman said.

She said that all of the women on the plane were taken to Laredo, Texas, where they had been before departing for El Salvador.

The sworn declaration was entered in a legal case involving the use of the Alien Enemies Act by the Trump administration. After President Donald Trump signed an order declaring an invasion of the United States by the Venezuelan terrorist gang Tren de Aragua, U.S. authorities transported some illegal immigrants suspected of being part of the gang to El Salvador, which entered an agreement with the United States to accept criminal deportees for incarceration.

Venezuelans in immigration custody sued, alleging the proclamation was illegally being used against nationals of a country that is not at war with America.

 U.S. District Judge James Boasberg on March 15 blocked the administration from deporting alleged gang members solely under the Alien Enemies Act. A U.S. official said that two planes were already outside U.S. airspace when the judge’s order was released. A third plane did depart after the order but contained illegal immigrants who had been ordered removed by U.S. judges, the official said.

In a separate declaration, a Nicaraguan male whose name was redacted said he was placed on a plane on March 15 along with others, including Venezuelan and El Salvadoran nationals. He said the plane flew to El Salvador and that he was removed from the aircraft. After he answered questions about his citizenship, he was told to sit on the floor of one of the planes, he said.

“I overheard a Salvadoran official tell an ICE officer that the Salvadoran government would not detain someone from another Central American country because of the conflict it would cause. I also heard him say that they would not receive the females because the prison was not for females, and females were not mentioned in the agreement,” the man said.

The man said he was sent back to Texas, arriving on March 16.

“These declarations are submitted to refute the government’s contention that it was not ‘feasibl[e]’ for the planes to bring anyone back and that this Court did not account for practical considerations like whether the planes ‘had enough fuel’ to turn around,” lawyers for the illegal immigrants told Boasberg.

In a previous motion, government lawyers said the judge incorrectly suggested that a government attorney was able to divert the aircraft carrying the deportees.

“The comment betrayed a complete misunderstanding of the serious national security, safety, regulatory, and logistical problems presented by a fiat from the Court directed at pilots operating outside the United States and was made without regard to whether any such aircraft could feasibly be diverted or even had enough fuel to safely do so,” the government lawyers stated.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs say Boasberg should find that the illegal immigrants were illegally removed in violation of his order and that he should order those who were illegally deported to be returned to the United States.

In other developments in the case on Thursday, a federal court heard the Trump administration’s appeal of Boasberg’s order. The administration invoked a state secrets privilege, informing the judge that officials would not provide information about deportees.

Boasberg said on Friday that plaintiffs must respond to the invocation by March 31 if they want to be heard.

At the start of the week, multiple open-source intelligence accounts on X reported that U.S. stealth bombers were deployed to a strategic island in the Indian Ocean—often referred to as Washington’s “unsinkable aircraft carrier“—located between Africa and Indonesia, about 1,000 miles south of India. 

Fast forward to Wednesday: new Planet Labs satellite imagery, posted on X by the Indo-Pacific Watch Center (IPWC), shows “3 (or possibly 7) B-2 bombers and 9 KC-135s” at the U.S. military base on Diego Garcia—strongly suggesting a force buildup aimed at projecting power in the region and keeping Tehran in check. 

“Hardened shelters are essential for the security of US MIL assets. Strategic power display can work to deter enemies, but we must have adequate shelters, especially hardened shelters at Diego, Kadena, Andersen, etc,” IPWC said, adding, “Our nation’s enemies have ISR, so stop using “show/conceal” as the excuse to not protect aircraft from sun/rain/inbound PLARF warheads when the game begins.  Start building now.  Hey Anduril – can you pour concrete?” 

Diego Garcia, March 25 2025. 3 (or possibly 7) B-2 Bombers & 9 KC-135. Hardened shelters are essential for the security of US MIL assets. Strategic power display can work to deter enemies, but we must have adequate shelters, especially hardened shelters at Diego, Kadena,… pic.twitter.com/TccJxVXq2r

— IPWC (@IndoPacWatch) March 26, 2025

Most Americans have never heard of the tiny 38-mile-long island, nor has any journalist been allowed access in over three decades. The island features a runway long enough to accommodate B-52, B-1, and B-2 bombers and massive C-5M, C-17, and C-130 military cargo planes. The U.S. hosts upwards of 5,000 military personnel and civilian contractors on the secretive island, which is considered a lynchpin of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and across the Indo-Pacific. 

Counterpunch’s Conn Hallinan noted in 2019: “Diego Garcia is central to the U.S. war in Somalia, its air attacks in Iraq and Syria, and its control of the Persian Gulf, and would be essential in any conflict with Iran.” 

Meanwhile, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz recently confirmed that the Trump Administration demanded the “full dismantlement” of Iran’s nuclear program, including its capacity to enrich uranium for civilian use. Russia issued a statement rejecting U.S. demands, saying Tehran has the right to a peaceful nuclear program. 

Tehran is starting to understand that multiple U.S. stealth bombers are now within striking distance. 

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

The Democratic Party is polling about 27 percent approval—and sinking.

In 2024, it lost the White House, the House of Representatives, the Senate, and both the popular vote and the Electoral College, 312-226.

In 2024, Trump won over 46 percent of the Hispanic vote, including a majority of Hispanic men. Trump also likely captured 26 percent of the black male vote, doubling his 2020 total.

In 2024, Trump increased his 2020 vote total in every single state. And he won 89 percent of all the counties in the United States.

On every issue, Democrats sided with strident leftist movements rather than the majority of Americans.

They supported globalism over nationalism, high-priced green energy over lower gas and electricity prices, and an open border and 12 million unaudited illegal aliens over security and legal-only immigration.

They seem unconcerned with our $36 trillion debt or the deterrence lost abroad that led to two theater-wide existential wars.

Democrats stay mum about unfair trade and budget deficits. They prefer the Black Lives Matter fixation on the color of our skin rather than Martin Luther King’s emphasis on the content of our character.

They support allowing biological men to overpower women in female sports events—in opposition to 80 percent of the electorate.

Democrats faced choices after their catastrophic defeat last year.

One, they could have stopped the hemorrhaging of their base of 18-30-year-olds, black men, Hispanics, and Independents by moving toward the center.

They even could have worked with Trump and perhaps sought to take credit for joint successes.

Instead, they doubled down on “resistance” through street-theater terror-chic.

Democrat senators cut a group attack video, each echoing the potty word “sh*t.”

In a House ad, Democratic female members mimicked ninjas, kicking and punching at the camera, as if hitting their Republican opponents.

Former vice presidential candidate and Minnesota governor Tim Walz boasts about kicking the “ass” of Republicans.

“Assh*ole” is now the standard Democrat epithet for Musk, as voiced by Sen. Mark Kelly. “D*ck” is the preferred Musk slur from Sen. Tina Smith.

Xenophobia is also now Democratic chic.

Walz smears Musk, an American citizen, as a “South African nepo baby.”

Other Democrat representatives question Musk’s loyalty, asking, “Which country is he [Musk] loyal to?”

Or they further boast, “We’re [Democrats] going to send Elon back to South Africa.”

An unhinged Rep. Maxine Waters shouts that she wants First Lady Melania Trump deported, given she too is a naturalized citizen.

But those theatrics have now escalated into near overt support for violence.

Democrats are blocking the deportation of dangerous illegal aliens affiliated with the terrorist-designated Tren de Aragua.

They try to stop the deportation of resident alien Mahmoud Khalil—arch Hamas supporter, apologist for the murderers of October 7, and a spokesman for the most violent student group at Columbia.

To stop Elon Musk’s advisory Department of Government Efficiency and its identification of government waste, fraud, and abuse, leftist cabals are now terrorizing Musk’s Tesla brand nationwide.

They seek to destroy cars, dealerships, and charging stations. Individual Tesla owners are sometimes tailed, confronted, and threatened.

Democrats claim no formal role in such terror—but more or less seem to approve of its ends and means.

Left-wing comic Jimmy Kimmel winks and nods on national television about the current violent Tesla terrorist campaign.

Tim Walz celebrates the resulting drop in the Tesla stock price. As Minnesota’s governor overseeing his state’s sizable investment in Tesla, Walz could care less about trash-talking his own taxpayers’ investments.

Rep. Jasmine Crockett boasts that Musk “must be taken down.”

She brags she wants to physically assault Sen. Ted Cruz, who “has to be knocked over the head, like hard”—adding “I think you punch, I think you [sic] OK with punching.”

Crockett even mocked disabled and wheelchair-bound Texas governor Greg Abbott: “You all know we got Gov. Hot Wheels down there. … And the only thing hot about him is that he is a hot-ass mess, honey.”

Former Democratic House member and once-censured Rep. Jamaal Bowman claimed Musk was a “Nazi” and an “incompetent thief.”

Democrat Rep. Al Green was censured by the House for disrupting the Trump joint address to Congress—and led away screaming and shaking his cane at the President in failed efforts to shut down the speech.

Senator minority leader Chuck Schumer, who once issued threats to Supreme Court justices Neal Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh by name, now boasts, “We have people going to the Republican districts and going after these Republicans who are voting for this and forcing them to either change their vote or face the consequences.”

Furious at their own increasing impotence, these contemporary Democrat Jacobins are dabbling with their own version of a reign of smut terror.

They are probably too impotent to derail the country, but they are certainly destroying themselves.

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

A federal appeals court has temporarily blocked a discovery order from U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan that would have required Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to turn over documents and respond to written questions about their role in advising cuts in certain parts of the federal government.

In a ruling issued on March 26, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit granted an emergency stay of Chutkan’s March 12 order, which had largely granted limited, expedited discovery to a coalition of 13 Democratic-led states, requiring Musk and DOGE to produce documents and respond to questions within 21 days.

The appeals court ruled that Musk and DOGE had “satisfied the stringent requirements for a stay” and showed that they are likely to prevail in their claim that the lower court must resolve their motion to dismiss before allowing discovery to proceed.

“In particular, petitioners have shown a likelihood of success on their argument that the district court was required to decide their motion to dismiss before allowing discovery,” the three-judge panel wrote in its ruling.

Following the appellate court ruling, Chutkan entered a minute order acknowledging the decision. She has canceled a status hearing previously scheduled for March 27.

The case, brought by New Mexico and a coalition of 12 Democratic-led states, challenges the legality of DOGE’s sweeping cost-cutting efforts, which have included the cancellation of federal grants and mass terminations of government employees from jobs identified by DOGE as unneeded.

The plaintiffs argued in their original complaint that Musk is effectively running DOGE without Senate confirmation, allegedly in violation of the Constitution’s Appointments Clause.

“Oblivious to the threat this poses to the nation, President Trump has delegated virtually unchecked authority to Mr. Musk without proper legal authorization from Congress and without meaningful supervision of his activities,” the plaintiffs allege. 

“As a result, he has transformed a minor position that was formerly responsible for managing government websites into a designated agent of chaos without limitation and in violation of the separation of powers.”

In a subsequent motion for a temporary restraining order against Musk and DOGE, the states further accused Musk of unlawfully exercising sweeping executive power without Senate confirmation, directing federal agencies to fire employees, cancel contracts, dismantle programs, and access sensitive government data.

In response, government lawyers urged the court to reject the emergency motion. They argued that the states had failed to show any imminent or irreparable harm, and said the restraining order sought was overly broad, legally unsupported, and disconnected from core constitutional claims made by the plaintiffs. Even if Musk were improperly appointed, they argue, sharing data with him or others at DOGE does not, by itself, constitute an illegal exercise of government power. Musk also is not empowered to act without the president’s approval, they said.

Chutkan partially sided with the Democrat-led states on March 12, ordering Musk, DOGE, and related entities to turn over documents about firing federal workers and altering government databases. She also required DOGE to identify everyone who has led or worked at the agency since President Donald Trump took office, and list all agencies where DOGE or Musk canceled contracts, cut grants, or terminated employees.

Trump and Musk have both said that DOGE has been assisting various agencies that have fired or offered buyouts to tens of thousands of federal workers since Trump returned to office on Jan. 20, 2025.

Musk, as a special government employee, has been tasked by Trump to lead DOGE to help fulfill his campaign pledge of reducing waste, streamlining federal operations, and cutting red tape.

The DOGE team has taken quick action to audit and pursue reforms across federal agencies. It recently reported $130 billion in savings through canceled grants, asset sales, workforce reductions, and terminated contracts and leases.

Critics of DOGE have argued that its activities raise security and oversight issues, with a number of lawsuits filed challenging its operations.

Musk recently revealed that the DOGE team has been receiving death threats on a daily basis.

“The DOGE team is getting death threats every single day,” Musk said during a March 24 White House cabinet meeting. “They’re just trying to do the right thing for the American taxpayer and for the American people.”

Authored by Alex Younger via The Mises Institute,

So much has been written about why we should end the Federal Reserve, and with the recent public demand for an audit, the message has finally reached the masses. Hopefully, if such an audit manifests, it will be the first step toward ultimately dismantling the Federal Reserve. (We should start with the extremely shady Bank Term Funding Program). But very little has been written about how to end the Federal Reserve, and that is what I wish to address here.

The How

You may read through my proposed plan and disagree with me on the details. But we must agree on this point: The key objective is to minimize any fluctuations in the current money supply as best we can. This can be done in a delicate manner that might even go unnoticed by the market, outlined in 5 steps:

1. Revoke All Federal Reserve Monetary Policy Privileges

The Federal Reserve should no longer have the ability to directly manipulate the money supply. Repeal the Federal Reserve Act.

2. Lock Down All Debt Assets on the Federal Reserve Balance Sheet

This refers to all assets on the balance sheet with a contractual expiration, such as US Treasuries, mortgage-backed securities, and other loan types. These assets make up roughly 99 percent of the Fed’s balance sheet. Rather than selling them, they should be allowed to expire naturally over the next 30 years—the longest duration of USTs and MBSs. During this period, the Fed may still collect interest payments on these assets and reinvest them to prevent removing those funds from the monetary base.

3. Gradually Sell Off Non-Expiring Assets

Any assets on the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet that lack a contractual expiration should be sold off gradually over a period of 1 to 5 years. At present, I have been unable to find a reliable estimate of how much of this asset type exists, but I suspect it is relatively small—possibly less than a billion dollars.

4. The Federal Reserve Becomes a True Private Institution with No Special Legal Privileges

The Federal Reserve should operate as a fully private institution, stripped of any special legal banking privileges. Its only remaining advantages would be its established market position, its role in facilitating bank-to-bank lending, the interest payments from existing assets on its books, and its historical significance. This is far more than it deserves, but the primary objective must be to dismantle its power without triggering economic catastrophe.

5. If the Federal Reserve Cannot Function as a Private Bank

If the Federal Reserve fails to maintain its market position—which is likely, given that it has never truly faced competition—then major banks will need to determine among themselves how to facilitate interbank lending. They may assign central banking functions to other private institutions, operating within the limits of private banking law. Alternatively, the market may simply deem the Federal Reserve obsolete, allowing it to wither away naturally. Either outcome would be entirely acceptable.

The Balance Sheet Details

As of this writing, the Federal Reserve holds $6.8 trillion on its balance sheet. This follows a sharp 25 percent reduction from its previous $8.9 trillion over the past two years—a decrease of $2.1 trillion. In other words, the Fed initially printed $8.9 trillion and used this newly-created money to purchase assets in the market.

What has the Federal Reserve been buying? Primarily US debt. Our financial system functions like an ouroboros, with the Federal Reserve acting as a perpetual buyer of new government debt—funded by printed money. As of this writing, the Fed holds approximately $5 trillion of the national debt and artificially inflates domestic demand for it. Ending the Federal Reserve would severely restrict the government’s ability to create new debt, forcing a fundamental shift in government spending policy:

Fed Balance Sheet Composition

Currently, $4.2 trillion of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet consists of US Treasury bonds (USTs), while another $2.2 trillion is made up of mortgage-backed securities (MBS). Together, these two asset classes account for $6.4 trillion, or about 94 percent of the total balance sheet. The remaining 6 percent is a mix of various other debt securities, including corporate debt, federal agency debt, and other loan types, all of which also have contractual expiration dates.

Natural Expiration of Debt Assets

Let’s consider the potential consequences of abandoning current monetary policy and requiring the Federal Reserve to let its debt assets naturally roll off the balance sheet. Debt contracts have expiration dates, meaning that once they reach maturity, they expire worthless and can simply be removed from the balance sheet without active intervention. This approach would gradually shrink the Fed’s holdings over time, reducing its influence on the financial system without the immediate shock of mass asset sales.

Here is a projection of the balance sheet over the next 30 years under this plan:

Projection of Assets Naturally Expiring on Fed Balance Sheet.

The debt expirations are front-loaded, meaning the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet would experience a sharp initial decline before tapering off over time. In the first year, we would see a significant 10 percent reduction, which would gradually level out to a 1.7 percent decrease per year. On average, the decline would be around 3.1 percent annually.

This projection assumes the Fed has purchased debt with an evenly distributed range of expiration dates across different maturity groups, which is likely accurate. In reality, the actual decline would be somewhat more volatile due to variations in the composition of the Fed’s holdings.

Not Quantitative Tightening

The key advantage of this approach is that it differs from traditional quantitative tightening. No funds would be actively removed from banks’ reserves—those reserves would remain at their current levels. Instead, the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet would shrink passively as debt assets naturally expire, avoiding the disruptive liquidity drain that comes with aggressive asset sales.

To fully understand this, a brief crash course in quantitative tightening (QT) is necessary. Admittedly, there is a certain genius to the way Federal Reserve monetary policy operates. When the Fed tightens, it sells assets from its balance sheet to primary dealers (large banks) on the open market. The Federal Reserve essentially functions as a “bank for big banks,” where major US banks store their reserves much like a savings account. These reserves not only remain at the Fed but also earn interest, just like a traditional savings account. This structure allows the Fed to influence liquidity in the financial system without directly impacting the day-to-day operations of commercial banks, making its monetary policy more indirect but highly effective.

When the Fed sells assets to primary dealers, it sells to banks that already have reserve accounts at the Fed. This means the money used to purchase these assets is already parked at the Federal Reserve. When the Fed either sells securities or allows them to mature without reinvesting, two things happen simultaneously: 1) the Fed’s assets decrease as the securities leave its balance sheet; 2) the bank’s reserve account at the Fed decreases by the same amount. These two changes cancel each other out, effectively removing that portion of the monetary base from circulation. This is how quantitative tightening (QT) functions—it contracts the money supply by destroying reserves, rather than directly pulling cash from the economy.

The key difference in my proposed approach is that the Fed would continue receiving interest payments on its remaining assets for the duration of their terms. The most realistic scenario is that these funds will be used to pay interest on reserves held by banks at the Fed, allowing normal banking operations to continue without disruption. However, unless the Fed finds an alternative revenue source, the interest on reserves rate can be expected to gradually decline over the next 30 years as assets roll off the balance sheet. This slow adjustment provides banks with ample time to determine how to manage their reserves in a post-Fed environment.

Inflationary vs. Deflationary Pressures

One likely outcome of this transition would be an increase in business investment by big banks. The interest on reserves paid by the Fed has historically discouraged banks from investing in the open market. From the bank’s perspective, why would I go make a risky investment into some startup, or some business which could hit rough waters and default, when I could just park my assets at the Fed and make a risk-free 4.4 percent? Basically, the Fed has been paying banks to not loan you money.

As the Fed’s ability to pay interest on reserves diminishes over time, banks would have a stronger incentive to deploy their capital elsewhere, likely fueling greater investment in businesses, loans, and other market-driven opportunities. This new pressure on banks to seek better investment opportunities within the first five years of this transition will create an inflationary counterbalance to the deflationary pressure that naturally comes with ending the Fed.

As banks shift their reserves into the market, increased lending and investment could stimulate economic activity, offsetting the contractionary effects of removing the Fed’s artificial demand for debt. This dynamic could help stabilize prices during the transition, preventing a sudden economic shock while still moving toward a more market-driven monetary system.

Conclusion

The ideal outcomes from this arrangement would be the following:

• The Fed loses its extra-legal authority, operating solely as a private institution;

• Direct central planning of interest rates ends, eliminating monetary supply manipulation;

• Minimal fluctuation in the money supply, as bank reserves remain unaffected and the Fed continues receiving interest payments on its debt assets, preventing a liquidity drain;

• Market stability, with little disruption to economic equilibrium;

• Slight dollar appreciation, as the deflationary effects of ending the Fed are counterbalanced by banks investing their reserves;

• No rush for banks to find alternative bank-to-bank lending solutions, ensuring a smooth transition;

• No need to rewrite ACH payment systems, which currently rely on the Federal Reserve;

• Greater urgency in reducing federal debt, as an appreciating currency increases the real debt burden;

• A shift toward more prudent and productive financial behavior, as stronger purchasing power encourages saving and discourages reckless debt accumulation.