Submitted by Huw Van Steenis,

Europe has a financial plumbing problem. 

Nothing illustrates this better than its securitisation markets. This is such a big issue that a seemingly exotic financial tool has shot up the agenda in Brussels lately.

Securitisation is the process of transforming a bunch of smaller loans or other cash-generating assets into larger, tradable securities. Despite the lingering bad smell from the damage this caused in the global financial crisis, a trio of landmark reports by Mario Draghi, Enrico Letta and Christian Noyer have all recommended European securitisation reforms to unclog the process and help credit flow to new projects. 

The scale of the challenge is huge. Just to take one example securitisation of US data centre debt has totalled $35bn since 2018, according to JPMorgan. The EU has yet to see a single transaction. Similarly, US solar securitisation has raised $23bn since 2018, whereas the EU saw its first and so far only residential solar securitisation in 2024, raising just €230mn. 

If Europe can’t even finance these so-called strategic assets, what hope is there for midsized businesses or a broader array of assets? 

That’s why the Draghi-Letta-Noyer triptych matter more than most European reports, work streams and white papers.

Already there is a sense that something might finally change. Late last year, the EU kick-started a short consultation process on how to make European securitisation great again. The comment letters are now in, and the EU will make recommendations before the summer.   

This is overdue. Almost a decade ago, Simon Potter, formerly the markets head of the New York Federal Reserve and now vice chair of fixed income at Millennium, argued that “too much research before the crisis put too much faith in market efficiency and spent too little time exploring the detailed plumbing of the financial system.” The consultation helps address that. 

However, the letters make clear that the EU probably needs to consider a system-wide response, much like a plumber would bleed every radiator to help warm a house. This won’t be easy, as individual agencies may not view the system-wide issues as their problem. 

Willingness to push through will be litmus test of Europe’s determination to recalibrate regulations for growth — and close the widening gap to the US. But the comment letters do highlight four important valves that could at least be jiggled to get things going. 

Valve 1: Life insurers, the missing EU lender 

Europe has straitjacketed insurers from playing a larger role in financing the real economy via buying senior tranches of securitisations. As Apollo’s comment letter puts it: 

Life insurers are particularly well-suited to finance the E.U.’s strategic, long-dated capital needs, but the European life sector currently holds only 0.33% of investment assets in securitizations vs. ~17% for U.S. life insurers despite similar industry sizes . . . The missing life insurer ‘bid’ dampens the broader E.U. securitisation market, reducing supply and demand at all points in offered securitisation tranches. 

Here’s a great chart from Apollo that highlights the stark difference. 

The absence of European insurers is largely driven by Solvency II capital rules, which impose punitive capital charges on securitisation — even those with investment-grade ratings that carry comparable or lower risks than corporate bonds. 

Addressing this gap is vital. By recalibrating Solvency II to better align capital charges with the true risks of securitisation, European regulators could incentivise insurers to invest in these assets. Doing so would unlock a massive pool of private capital, reduce the cost of financing for businesses and infrastructure projects, and help Europe meet its strategic economic objectives. 

As the Investment Company Institute argued in its submission: 

The current EU prudential framework does not properly reflect these different levels of risk in the securitisation market. In certain circumstances, 10-year duration non-STS bonds, regardless of seniority in the capital structure, have a 100% capital charge. These charges are also considerably higher than those imposed by other regulatory frameworks, placing EU market participants at a competitive disadvantage.  

Valve 2: STS criteria don’t work for many assets 

So what’s this “STS” referenced in the ICI’s comment letter? To revitalise the securitisation market, the EU created the “simple-transparent-standardised” label – STS for short – which came into effect at the start of 2019. 

This was meant to make things simpler, but many comment letters suggest it has inadvertently had the opposite effect. One of the strengths of securitisation is the breadth of stuff that can be financed, but the STS label was seemingly designed primarily for a very narrow set of bank-dominated assets. As BlackRock argued: 

The regulatory standards put in place following the Global Financial Crisis represented a significant prioritisation of risk management, governance and investor protection in securitisation markets. However, the securitisation market believes that while well intended the regulations ended up being overly prescriptive and rather than reviving the market have ended up restricting it. 

The optimal solution would be to streamline the STS categorisation all together via simplifying definitions, broadening STS criteria and ensuring that regulations reflect the economic risks rather than adding unnecessary complexity.  

A simpler option suggested by some of the comment letters would be to just carve out asset classes that are strategically important to long-term economic growth, have a low default rate history, address asymmetry of information, and represent transactions solely between sophisticated parties that already address these risks and inbuilt protections. That way, new assets like data centres and solar projects could be included.

Valve 3: Scale up true sale securitisation 

Another problem is “true sale securitisation.” This process converts illiquid assets into tradable securities and is a proven mechanism for mobilising capital. 

Unlike synthetic securitisation — or Europe’s €2.4tn covered bond market — this enables banks to offload loans completely, freeing up balance sheets to support further lending while connecting investors to a broader range of financing opportunities. 

The EU lags far behind the US in this critical area, with just €440bn in true sale securitisation outstanding, compared with approximately €2.8tn in the US — a 6.5-fold difference. The discrepancy underscores how underutilised this financial tool remains in Europe.

Closing this gap is essential to boosting Europe’s economic vim. With a better securitisation framework, the EU could potentially unlock over €1tn in additional financing, according to Apollo’s estimates. 

The irony is that as banks struggle to issue true sale securitisation in size, they instead end up creating more opaque “synthetic risk transfers”. Moreover, true sales are simpler, have a more direct impact on credit availability in the economy and at the same time reduce interconnected risk to the banking system.

Valve 4: Streamline paperwork and due diligence 

The current due diligence framework for securitisation is too costly and complex, discouraging investment, especially in the secondary market. The EU rule book shouldn’t require investors to verify regulatory compliance already handled by other regulated entities, the International Capital Markets Association argued in its response.  

This is a point European Cooperative Banks make too, arguing that the due diligence requirements are “too complex and involve many overlapping reporting requirements, creating a significant obstacle for the full development of the market” — particularly for smaller businesses. 

The European Fund and Asset Management Association argues the paperwork is also disproportionate and overly proscriptive: 

Many of our members have explained that, for certain types of securitisations such as CLOs and CMBS, the quarterly granular reporting templates mandated under the SECR are not fit for purpose. 

There are naturally a host of other suggested valves that could be adjusted, such as limits on mutual fund ownership, what is considered a liquid asset for a bank, and bank retention rules. 

But the above four seem to be the main ones Europe should focus on, judging by the comment letters. 

Where next? 

So will the Commission accept these recommendations? It’s hard to ignore the fact that Europe has been talking about “capital markets union” for over a decade, but periodic tweaks have failed to grasp the nettle. The comments certainly underscore how frustrated market participants are.

In the most recent review of securitisation in 2022 the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority argued that there was insufficient demand from insurers to merit change. 

However, the Association for Financial Markets in Europe, an umbrella trade group, suggested in its latest response that this is simply not true: 

We have had categoric feedback from insurers that there would be material interest in securitisation investments, across the capital structure if it were not for the elevated capital charges associated with securitisation positions vs vanilla credit (on a like-for-like rating basis). 

In fact, over 40 groups or institutions which responded to the Commission’s request for comment argued that the Solvency II rules are an impediment to the market.  

Will something actually change this time? Who knows, but for the first time in a long time there seems to be some guarded optimism. 

At Davos this year, Nicolai Tangen, the head of the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund, went around saying that the restoration of Notre-Dame was Europe’s greatest success story of the past five years — and it happened simply because almost all regulation and rules were negated for the rebuild. “It is unbelievable what Europe can achieve if they are allowed to,” Tangen argued. 

Europe needs a more flexible financial market to finance innovation and growth. Closing the gap to a buoyant and deregulating US won’t be easy.   But unclogging the securitisation market would be a great to start.

Poland is reviving the idea of creating a large military base called “Fort Trump” as European allies walk a diplomatic tightrope with the Trump administration as he pushes for Ukraine peace without their representation.

The country’s President Andrzej Duda on Tuesday revealed that assurances have been communicated from the Trump White House over the future of America’s troop presence in Poland. There are no plans for a US troop reduction along NATO’s ‘eastern flank’ – he was told.

Trump and his top national security officials have been pushing hard for Europe to do more to bolster its own security, instead of relying on Washington dollars and deployments.

Duda addressed this in Tuesday comments as follows: “There are no concerns that the U.S. would reduce the level of its presence in our country, that the U.S. would in any way withdraw from its responsibility or co-responsibility for the security of this part of Europe.”

“On the contrary, I hope that thanks to the efforts that President Trump is currently making, the war in Ukraine will end,” he continued, immediately following a meeting in Warsaw with Gen. Keith Kellogg, the U.S. special envoy for Ukraine and Russia.

“I will say that in my personal opinion, America has entered the game very strongly when it comes to ending the war in Ukraine. I know President Donald Trump, I know that he is an extremely decisive man and when he acts, he acts in a very determined and usually effective way,” Duda said, praising the longtime friend of his. The two appeared to be close during Trump’s first administration.

Washington initially deployed and bolstered Pentagon forces in Poland following Crimea being annexed by Russia in 2014, which was the result of a popular referendum among the population.

International reports commonly estimate there are some 10,000 American troops in Poland. The Associated Press quoted Duda as expressing hope for an increase in troops, especially if Poland follows through on the prior Fort Trump idea:

Duda said Hegseth told him “that we can rather expect a strengthening of the American presence here. We even talked about the fact that I hope that Fort Trump, which we talked about during the first term of President Donald Trump, will really be established.”

Duda had first spoken publicly on this when he visited the White House in 2018, though the military outpost was never established.

I love how the media has gone full “How dare the US and Russia talk to each other about Ukraine without inviting Kiev?”

…when 8 months ago, the West held a summit in Switzerland where they invited everyone EXCEPT RUSSIA, and acted like they were going to solve the Ukraine war

— Rachel Blevins (@RachBlevins) February 18, 2025

As for more of what Duda thinks of current direct US engagement with Russia, he also struck a cautious tone on this. “We have told both the Secretary of Defense and General Kellogg clearly and distinctly that it is obvious to us that this war cannot end in a victory for Russia,” the Polish leader said.

Authored by Conor Gallagher via nakedcapitalism.com,

Trump’s February 7 executive order “Addressing Egregious Actions Of The Republic Of South Africa” cuts off aid or assistance to the country and “promote[s] the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees.” The stated reasons for the administration’s actions are a new law that, according to White House, will “enable the government of South Africa to seize ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation. There are also “aggressive positions” towards the US and its allies, namely Israel, which the administration refers to with regards to South Africa’s genocide case at the International Court of Justice.

More broadly, the executive order states that South Africa is “undermining United States foreign policy, which poses national security threats to our Nation, our allies, our African partners, and our interests.”

While the charge of anti-white racism fits neatly with the empire’s new brand of identity politics, and the retribution for the ICC case against Israel is to be expected from any US administration, what of the other “undermining” of US foreign policy and “threats” to the US and its interests?

As the recent news surrounding the Panama Canal, Greenland, and other areas show, the US is doubling its efforts to control global shipping lanes — likely in preparation for a conflict with China — but this has gone unmentioned in connection to the pressure campaign against South Africa. I’ll explore that here after quickly looking at the plight of the Afrikaners.

Serfs Vs. the “Rising Neo-Feudalism of Silicon Valley”?

The new Expropriation Act allows the South African government to expropriate land from private parties, but only if it’s in the public interest and under certain conditions. More from the AP:

[Trump] said South Africa’s government was doing “terrible things” and claimed land was being confiscated from “certain classes.” That’s not true, and even groups in South Africa who are challenging the law say no land has been confiscated. The South African government says private property rights are protected and Trump’s description of the law includes misinformation and “distortions.”

However, the law has prompted concern in South Africa, especially from groups representing parts of the white minority, who say it will target them and their land even though race is not mentioned in the law.

The law is tied to the legacy of the racist apartheid system, and colonialism before that, and is part of South Africa’s efforts over decades to try and find a way to right historic wrongs.

Under apartheid, Black people had land taken away from them and were forced to live in designated areas for non-whites. Now, whites make up around 7% of South Africa’s population of 62 million but own approximately 70% of the private farming land, and the government says that inequality needs to be addressed.

In reality, the law will likely do little to address it. Here’s TRT World:

In an article titled ‘Land seizure and South Africa’s new expropriation law: scholar weighs up the act’, law professor Zsa-Zsa Temmers Boggenpoel explained that the new law governs the compulsory acquisition of private property by the state for public purposes or in the public interest. It aims to align expropriation procedures with the Constitution and provide clear guidelines on compensation.

She said “expropriation of property is a potential tool to reduce land inequality. This has become a matter of increasing urgency. South Africans have expressed impatience with the slow pace of land reform.”

So far, she said, expropriation has not been used effectively to redistribute land more equitably, as part of land reform. “I am not convinced that the act, in its current form, is the silver bullet to effect large-scale land reform – at least not the type of radical land reform that South Africa urgently needs,” said the law professor.

So the Trump administration’s order will largely punish South Africans with HIV — ostensibly over land reform law that does little land reforming. The US is cutting off aid, which includes about $440 million last year and funds 17 percent of the country’s HIV program, which is the largest in the world, helping many of the 8 million people in the country living with HIV.

South Africa also benefits from preferential access to the US market for its exports under the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which the US could use to apply more pressure on the country.

I’m not all that familiar with South Africa’s political scene (hopefully we have some readers who can add some more domestic insight), but the connection to the Silicon Valley crazies is worth a mention here.

The ruling African National Congress (ANC) now appears to be under pressure on the expropriations act from its right — both domestically and abroad — as well as on its left where the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) criticize the law for not going far enough.

I’ve seen the EFF described as a “race-centric” program that overlooks the main source of oppression in post apartheid South Africa (capitalism), as well as the following:

🇿🇦 It is the South African Economic Freedom Fighters which should be credited for reintroducing the property question – the fundamental premise of Communist politics – in the 21st century.

Land represents fundamental economic security and dignity, without which a people become… pic.twitter.com/zcLUzlALqL

— Haz Al-Din 🇷🇺 (@InfraHaz) February 16, 2025

According to Al-Din, this pits the EFF against the “rising neo-feudalism of Silicon Valley,” which has a particular interest in South Africa.

Elon Musk lived in the country until he was 17 and has for years bemoaned what he calls the country’s anti-white policies and made unfounded claims of the government encouraging “genocide” against white landowners.

Billionaire venture capitalist and White House  AI and crypto czar David Sacks, left apartheid South Africa when he was five.

Billionaire vampire Peter Thiel spent part of his childhood in South Africa where his father was helping the apartheid regime mine uranium in a secret effort to obtain nuclear weapons. More from the Financial Times:

Southern Africa under apartheid offered an extreme version of some of the main themes of American life today. First, there was tremendous inequality. The mine where Thiel’s father worked was “known for conditions not far removed from indentured servitude”, writes Thiel’s biographer Max Chafkin. “White managers, like the Thiels, had access to a brand-new medical and dental centre in Swakopmund and membership in the company country club.” The mine’s black migrant workers lived in work camps.

To whites of a certain mindset, this inequality wasn’t due to apartheid. They thought it was inscribed in nature. Certain people were equipped to succeed in capitalism, while others weren’t. That was simply the way it was, and it was pointless to try to mess with nature. Two of Thiel’s contemporaries at Stanford in the 1980s recall him telling them that apartheid “works” and was “economically sound”.

Good to know what these techno-feudal lords are using as a template for their adopted home in the US. Due to their wealth and positions in/at the head of the US government, they now have an opportunity to atone for the failings of the fathers in South Africa while also helping drive the US rebrand from a “woke” empire to one decidedly not so. There are also wider strategic implications at play.

Shipping Lanes and China

South Africa has long been a supporter of Palestinians. It’s also a country with close ties to Russia due to Moscow’s help in fighting apartheid. And it’s a BRICS founding member. That’s three strikes in Washington. But the increased pressure from Trump can also be viewed in the context of the US’ renewed emphasis on shipping lanes, which has received a plenty of attention in the effort to purchase Greenland to muscle in on Arctic shipping routes and leaning on Panama for more control over its canal.

In South Africa this focus means a lot more attention for a small outpost in the Western Cape called Simon’s Town, which is home to the South African Navy’s largest base. 

Why would Simon’s Town help explain US pressure on South Africa? Here are Dr Frans Cronje, head of the Washington DC-based Yorktown Foundation for Freedom, and Rear Admiral Robert Higgs (Ret), who commanded the Fleet of South Africa from 2008-2010 and served as Chief of Naval Staff from 2011 to 2016 (he was also the first SA Navy officer to attend the US Naval War College), writing at Real Clear World: 

Simonstown’s contemporary importance is best understood as one of three points of a triangle that determines the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific.

That triangle is formed by drawing a 5,000 mile line northwards from Simonstown to Djibouti on the African east coast where the Bab al-Mandab Strait narrows the gateway into the Red Sea (and the Suez Canal beyond) to just 20 miles. The balance of power around that gateway shifted in 2016 when China was granted a lease on a naval base just more than a decade after the United States had secured a similar lease.

From Djibouti extend the line 8,000 miles eastward to the Solomon Islands off the east coast of Australia. The Japanese, after crippling the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, sought to occupy the islands to isolate Australia and their retaking was a key allied objective in the liberation of South-East Asia. However, in April of 2022, eight decades after the defeat of Japan, China signed a security pact with the Solomon Islands. As the islands lie east of the confines of the two major “island chains” around which John Foster Dulles’ Pacific containment strategy was conceived at the end of the Second World War the Chinese pact is the starkest challenge yet to the idea of the Pacific as “America’s lake”.

Extend the line from the Solomon Islands back to Simonstown to complete the triangle and territory within sees the passage of more than half of all sea-borne global trade with the triangle’s three points determining access to the Red Sea, the South Atlantic, and the Pacific.

A few maps to help illustrate their point:

More from Cronje and Higgs:

Exacerbating American vulnerability in the Indo-Pacific is that at the triangle’s center is the Chagos Islands archipelago which Britain sought to surrender to Mauritius in October 2024. The archipelago contains the island of Diego Garcia which houses a US naval base (leased from Britain). Flying from Diego Garcia nuclear armed American aircraft can reach Australia, the southern and eastern regions of China, the southern points of eastern Europe, and much of the Middle East.

Whilst the British government provided assurances that the US might strike terms to continue operating from Diego Garcia this is not at all assured and the Trump administration has therefore moved swiftly to force a British about-turn. Mauritius is a signatory to an African nuclear weapons ban which may be employed as a pretext to undermine American activities on the island.

The extent to which America achieves a Monroe Doctrine inspired sphere of hegemonic influence in the Western hemisphere will be determined in part by whether backdoors into that envisaged sphere are left unguarded. The vulnerability at the Solomon Islands might be addressed from Guam and Hawaii whereas the Mediterranean presents a hard obstacle to China’s aims of reaching the Atlantic. Diego Garcia might yet be saved. That leaves South Africa’s Simonstown as the key external vulnerability.

Joel Pollak, another South African native close to the Trump administration who is currently a senior editor-at-large at Breitbart News but is considered the frontrunner to become the US Ambassador to South Africa, recently echoed these claims in explaining why Simon’s Town is of such interest to Washington. From Business Tech, a South African business news website:

“The reason Simon’s Town is important globally is the same reason South Africa has been important for hundreds of years,” he told Biznews. He explained that Simon’s Town is situated near the point where the Atlantic and Indian oceans come together.

“It remains important. Although it is a small port, it can be expanded. It is an important naval station in the Indo-Pacific.”

“There is a real concern that South Africa’s closeness to China could lead to it taking over key strategic assets that are important to the local economy,” he said.

Another possibility is that China can take over military installations that are important to maintain peace worldwide. Pollak said the United States wants to create a peaceful global environment which favours economic growth and prosperity.

That’s one way of putting it. Another is that the US is interested in the ability to shut down shipping lanes in a conflict with China. Reuters reported in December of 2023 how oil tankers from the Middle East crossing the Indian Ocean, as well as other shipments headed to China from Africa and Brazil, would “lack protection in a naval theatre dominated by the U.S.” More:

A dozen military attaches and scholars say that vulnerability is now being scrutinised as Western military and academic strategists discreetly game scenarios about how a conflict with China over Taiwan, or elsewhere in East Asia, could evolve or escalate.

In a major war, Chinese oil tankers in the Indian Ocean “would find themselves very vulnerable”, said David Brewster, a security scholar at the Australian National University…Four envoys and eight analysts familiar with discussions in Western and Asian capitals, some speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic, said this enduring weakness gives China’s adversaries a ladder of escalatory options, especially in a drawn-out conflict, like Russia’s war on Ukraine. These scenarios range from harassment and interdiction operations against Chinese shipping that could divert Chinese naval vessels to the region, up to a blockade and beyond.

So the strategy is to initiate a conflict between China and Taiwan or a country in East Asia like the Philippines and then attempt to isolate Beijing. It worked so well against Russia, why not give it another go against China with its much larger and more interconnected economy?

It’s also a strategy that Beijing is well aware of and has been preparing for for years through its Belt and Road Initiative. By driving Moscow and Beijing even closer together with Project Ukraine, the US made any attempt at isolating China even more impossible — which is perhaps why we now see the Trump administration trying to dictate peace terms as the loser that include Russia scaling back its ties with Beijing.

It deserves a mention that any US Blob dream of “isolating” Beijing would inevitably mean a collapse of the global economy and a contest of who could withstand the pain longer. China, which is striving for autarky and would, barring future developments, have direct land connections to Russia and Central Asia for minerals, natural resources, and other needs, might not get as hurt as some like to believe. The US, meanwhile, would face product shortages — including in a defense industry reliant on China — and inflation that would make recent years seem quaint by comparison.

Nevertheless, the quest for naval supremacy continues. We can see this at work in other Trump administration actions — from Greenland and Panama to others that have largely flown under the radar, such as pressure on India over the International North-South Transport Corridor and the sudden world-threatening emergence of ISIS in Somalia.

On Feb. 1, President Donald Trump ordered the first airstrike of his presidency, against alleged senior Islamic State commanders in northern Somalia. Soon after Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post was out with a story, “The Islamic State has regrouped in Somalia — and has global ambitions.”

Last year, the US signed a deal with the government of Somalia to construct up to five military bases for the Somali National Army in the name of bolstering the army’s capabilities in the ongoing fight against militant groups. According to the Quincy Institute for Responsible Stateraft, the bases are intended for the Danab (“Lightning”) Brigade, a U.S.-sponsored Special Ops Force that was established in 2014.

The US at first funded Danab from the State Department, which contracted with private security firm Bancroft Global. More recently, funding comes from the Pentagon’s proxy war fund called the 127e program, which bypasses congressional oversight by allowing US special operations forces to use foreign military units as surrogates in counterterrorism missions. Neat.

What this history and the supposed recent emergence of IS in Somalia tells us is, one, the result of US counterterrorism strategy is that terrorism continues to magically spread like wildfire in spots deemed important to the US, and two, Somalia will be getting more attention from Washington going forward. Samar Al-Bulushi and Dr. Ahmed Ibrahim on the why:

It is a clear indication of the growing geopolitical significance of the Horn of Africa, and comes at a time of mounting concerns (mostly attempts by Yemen’s Houthis to disrupt global shipping in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza) about securing the flow of international commerce via the Red Sea.

Elsewhere, the US is trying to get tough on the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), a land-and sea-based 7,200-km long network comprising rail, road and water routes that are aimed at reducing costs and travel time for freight transport in a bid to boost trade between Russia, Iran, Central Asia, and India.

Last year, India signed a 10-year deal to develop and operate the port of Chabahar on Iran’s southeastern coast. It did so after assurances from Washington that Chabahar would continue to be exempt from sanctions as it had been since 2018. Well, the non-agreement-capable US has now changed its tune as Trump instructs the State Department to “modify or rescind” the waiver for Chabahar as part of the “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran.

We’ll have to wait and see if all these moves are part of Trump’s famous bargaining skills or if they represent a continuation of American efforts at global supremacy. For now, it looks like that although some of the tactics and areas of focus are undergoing a transitional period, the goal remains the same.

Via OneLeggedParrot.com,

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) existed to fan America’s post-World War II brand as the guardian of democracy in the world. It was mostly an info-op euphemistically called soft power. 

The mission meant that it occasionally helped people, because that made America look good. The “AID” moniker was a rhetorical trick, though. USAID handled some of the dirtiest jobs of American hegemony, like union busting, censorship, and election fixing. 

Assassinations were left to the CIA, for the most part. 

Last week, USAID was shut down and everyone except a skeleton staff was laid off. Its employees emerged from the woodwork, quite offended. Shutting down the agency hit a lot of Washingtonians right in their “I’m important and the world needs me!” glass jaws.

If you are a certain kind of mediocrity who has known only the circle of money and influence Washington provides, there are oodles of self-regard when a great and grand wizard at the Department of State confers on you the title Doctor of Thinkology.

“Now go, therefore, and topple the government of Bangladesh!” – is a fair summary of the valedictory. That is not an exaggeration. Soft power did that recently.

Americans are marinated from their infancy in movies, media, and television. The foreign policy establishment occupies the Walter Mitty role in the American empire. Since at least 1948, Washington bureaucrats have been on a hero’s journey built around the conceit that the United States exercises power always and only to save the world. 

Having a steel desk in a stone building with discretionary control over a budget line item made you a Star Trooper wherever the Empire decided to strike back. Then 2016 happened. 

Trump won the presidency on the promise that he would destroy Washington’s permanent bureaucracy – calling it the deep state. Minor state functionaries responded by saying Vladimir Putin was behind him. 

In the clown cuckoo land of Washington, the Star Troopers needed to be fighting a diabolical mastermind with a Russian accent, or it was just not self-affirming. Getting mean-tweeted at by a reality show host with a wild haircut threatened their delusions of grandeur more than losing wars, which they had been doing regularly for 70 years.

The FBI officially launched Crossfire Hurricane on July 31, 2016. A few days later, the secret agent who opened the investigation texted his secret agent lover, “We’ll stop” Trump. Out of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, Trump and Putin had to walk into Peter Strzok and Lisa Paige’s. 

And, too, “It’s Putin and we’ll get him,” sounds better whispered over a pillow at the Fairmont Hotel in Gaithersburg, Maryland than, “people in mesh hats are exercising their democratic prerogative to stop funding our pretend world, and we may want to stay out of this one.”

At one point last week, Mike Benz – who has inhabited X for years as the bugle blowing Gunga Din of USAID’s mendacity – connected nepo baby turned playground mean girl Liz Cheney to USAID. Elon Musk retweeted Benz. 

To which Liz Cheney herself responded: 

Damn right, @Elon. I’m proud of what America did to win the Cold War, defeat Soviet communism, and defend democracy. Our nation stood for freedom. You may be unfamiliar with that part of our history since you weren’t yet an American citizen.

Uh-huh. After she graduated from college, Liz Cheney’s then Defense Secretary dad got her a job at USAID in Washington, and she thinks she ended the Cold War. 

She went from there to law school and then in 2002 her Vice President dad got her appointed deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, where she and her dad proceeded to wreak havoc. 

She now adorably thinks that starship lassoing Elon Musk lacks street cred because his daddy never got him a job where he stopped communism.

The fake world where Dick and Liz defend democracy, and Peter Strzok and Lisa Paige bang to Putin fantasies – the world of the Washington beltway – was hatched in the aftermath of World War II. 

It is an odd mix of propaganda, media, technology, and the storytelling method known as the hero’s journey. 

The info-op was run out of USAID and other federal agencies, and it was meant to convince the world that the United States is a force for good that opposes tyranny wherever it finds it. In some ways, it worked. 

For all anyone knows, Western Europe would have turned Communist if America did not present a “shining city on a hill” alternative. And, okay, fix elections and control information.

Meddling in other countries was only ever meant to win the peace, though. 

When the peace was finally won in 1991, the minor functionaries started hatching new villains, disputes, and even viruses just so they could fight them. 

Washington turned into a Cold War LARP.

The result: 

• Ukraine is destroyed. 
• The Taliban is governing Afghanistan and ISIS has taken Syria. 
• The pipeline that supplies Germany’s energy supply has been blown up, tanking its economy. And you know what happened last time the West’s guardian of democracy project tanked the German economy. Just sayin’.
• Ancient Christianity has been expelled from every place in the Middle East where American soft power has meddled. They have set their sights on destroying Catholic-Lebanon (by law, the president of Lebanon must be Catholic – did you know that?) in a proxy war with Iran.
• Most wildly, perhaps, American bureaucrats are responsible for the greatest pandemic since the Spanish Flu. They will deny it, and say it came from a rando bat. But the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming that the virus emanated from gain of function research on Coronaviruses the American bureaucracy was funding at that very moment in the very lab in the very town where COVID originated.

Which provides a helpful metaphor. 

Creating a virus to fight that virus is the definition of gain of function research. Similarly, Peter Strzok fabricated Putin in the Trump campaign just so he could fight him. Washington is a gain of function experiment wrapped in hero’s journeys draped in delusions of grandeur. 

Too many in Trump-world think the problem will go away if the institutions are dismantled. 

Get rid of USAID and The Department of Education, and Liz Cheney gets a job at her local Walmart, where she belongs.

It is not an institutional problem, though, so much as thousands of individual pathologies. 

The problem is that Liz Cheney really thinks she is important. 

That is the tumor that needs to be excised.

Removing soft power’s influence on the American psyche is the most delicate surgery of all, because it slices into the sacred beliefs of everyone, including (maybe especially) Republicans. Surgery is only successful when enough people reach the conclusion, “I am being manipulated.” 

This moment was predicted.

In 1978, Soviet dissident in exile Alexander Solzhenitsyn addressed the graduating class of Harvard University. He was expected to provide a stemwinder against Communism and at least an implied tribute to America. 

Instead, he issued a criticism of the West, based on the narrative control exercised over people. He called it “fashion” and blamed the media: 

There is yet another surprise for someone coming from the East, where the press is rigorously unified. One gradually discovers a common trend of preferences within the Western press as a whole. It is a fashion; there are generally accepted patterns of judgment; there may be common corporate interests, the sum effect being not competition but unification. Enormous freedom exists for the press, but not for the readership because newspaper[s] mostly develop stress and emphasis to those opinions which do not too openly contradict their own and the general trend.

Without any censorship, in the West fashionable trends of thought and ideas are carefully separated from those which are not fashionable; nothing is forbidden, but what is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way into periodicals or books or be heard in colleges. Legally your researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day….This gives birth to strong mass prejudices, to blindness, which is most dangerous in our dynamic era…. It will only be broken by the pitiless crowbar of events.

Soviet Communism has fallen. Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia and lived happily under Putin’s rule. His books are required reading in Russian schools. The state paid tribute to him and other Russian writers in the closing ceremonies of the Winter Olympics held in Sochi, Russia.

America’s control of human behavior by fashion has not yet collapsed. 

Today the West is facing a “pitiless crowbar of events.” Public policy could not even be formulated for a pandemic without casting every prescription as a political choice, resulting in collective behavior that have less to do with rigorous causal connections than with tribal adherence.

Politics is no longer judged by whether it serves the greater good, but by how dutifully it bows to the information regime. It resembles 14-year-old girls in the schoolyard, requiring mimesis in manner of dress and behavior under threat of bullying. In Solzhenitsyn’s word, fashion.

The availability of information on the internet means the state cannot impose its approved narrative outside of America’s groupthink urban enclaves where status is highly staked to fashion. The only way to control non-status people is to control information itself, with censorship, prosecution, and entire bureaucracies dedicated to curbing “misinformation” – i.e., alternative views that do not agree with the state. 

Solzhenitsyn would eventually encounter reactions to his Harvard speech from ordinary Americans along the lines of “we know in our hearts he is right.” This led him to distinguish between what he called “the arrogant stance of the America of New York and Washington” and what he observed elsewhere:

Gradually another America began unfolding before my eyes, one that was small-town and robust, the heartland, the America I had envisioned as I was writing my speech, and to which my speech was addressed.

He expressed “a glimmer of hope” that opposition to the dictatorship of fashion could spring from the place he called “another America.” 

The needless wars will not go away until both Democrats and Republicans realize that some of what emanates from the American empire are soft power seeded lies. The truth is a greater medicine than any change in policy could ever be.

There are 7.3 million single mothers in the U.S., as well as 1.9 million single fathers. Single parents often face the dual challenge of being both the primary breadwinners and caregivers for their families.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti, represents the percentage of mothers in the U.S. who are single, by race/ethnicity, in 2023.

The data comes from the Center for American Progress.

21% of All Mothers Are Single

In 2023, single-mother families accounted for 1 in 5 families with children under 18.

• 47% of Black mothers were single mothers.

• 25% of Hispanic mothers were single mothers.

The majority of single mothers are in their 30s or 40s and do not have a college degree. Overall, single mothers face a 28% poverty rate.

Changes in Family Structure Over Time

According to the Center for American Progress, family structures in the U.S. have changed significantly over the past five decades.

• In 1970, 67% of adults (ages 25 to 49) lived with a spouse and at least one child.

• By 2021, that number had dropped to 37%.

Marriage rates have also declined:

• In 1970, 69% of adults were married, compared to 50% in 2021.

• Meanwhile, the percentage of adults who have never been married rose from 17% to 31% over the same period.

If you enjoyed this topic, check out this graphic that shows the distribution of wealth in the United States from 1990 to 2023 by generation.

Authored by Jason Ditz via AntiWar.com,

A major agreement has reportedly been reached between the Kurdish SDF and the post-Assad Syrian government, which will reportedly include the full integration of SDF fighters into the national army. The deal also is said to have included the civil leadership in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES).

Details are still emerging about a lot of exact specifics beyond the SDF integration into the military, which has been sought since the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) took over Syria and ousted the former Assad government. The deal is expected to increase the integration of AANES territory into national government institutions at least to some extent.

It is an open question, however, how much autonomy the Kurds in that territory might retain. Some of the HTS leaders have ruled out the idea of giving any autonomy to the Kurds, and suggested that any role in the national government requires them to first totally disarm and submit.

Integration into the Syrian Army seems well short of that position, and raises the question of how Turkey will respond to the announcement. Turkey has insisted they would invade if the SDF weren’t eliminated, and integration might be short enough of that goal that Turkey close partnership with the HTS could be impacted.

SDF leader Mazloum Abdi has made comments about the potential for a deal just a day prior to these announcements. Abdi said that he was hopeful for the new HTS-led government in Syria, and promised SDF support for national stability and unity.

Turkey isn’t the only potential objector here. The Kurdistan Syria Front (KSF) issued a statement very critical of SDF and the AANES deal, even though its exact terms still aren’t public.

They warned that the deal undermines the legitimate rights of Kurds in Syria, and complained of a “path of compromise” the SDF and their associates have been on since October.

The KSF was particularly critical of the lack of consensus with other Kurdish groups before making the deal, saying that they were undermining the appearance of a unified Kurdish stance in regional and international negotiations.

Welcome to the Syrian Republic

— Rojava Network (@RojavaNetwork) February 18, 2025

It’s also not certain what the US position on this SDF deal is. The US has long supported the SDF, but in recent weeks has talked of withdrawing from Syria. The SDF says they have not been informed about any planned US withdrawal, and the US stance toward the HTS government remains uncertain.

The U.S. is the world’s fourth-largest country by total area, third by land area, and is home to around 340 million people.

But nearly one-third of those people live in just three states: California, Texas, and New York.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao, reimagines the usual U.S. map with the states resized based on their populations. Data is from the Census Bureau, as of 2024.

Alaska Isn’t the Largest Anymore

If sized by population, Alaska would be the third-smallest state (fourth if counting D.C.) in the country.

This is a far cry from its top of the rankings as America’s largest state by area (665,284 sq. miles).

Note: Population figures are from July 1st, 2024.

On the other hand, a big gainer from putting people in perspective is Florida which is 22nd by size, but third by population.

The benefit of redrawing the map with population in mind, is that it’s easier to see where people actually live.

Several big states towards the west of the country, (Wyoming, the Dakotas, Montana) are actually home to less than four million people collectively. Most of the land is taken up by parks and farmland.

In fact New York City alone has more people (8.5 million) than 38 states.

Land Doesn’t Vote, People Do

This redrawing is also particularly useful in the context of the U.S. specifically.

Rural areas with low populations can sometimes have outsized political influence due to structures like the Electoral College or the Senate.

And when densely populated urban areas often lean one way politically, and sparsely populated rural regions lean another, then the gap between population-based representation and geographic-based influence is even more pronounced.

Not only is Texas the second-most populous state, it’s gaining people from the rest of the country. Check out: Net Migration Between States to see how many moved people to the Lone Star State in 2023.

Authored by David Feliba via CoinTelegraph.com,

While the Trump administration lays the preliminary groundwork for crypto industry regulations in the US — with the White House’s new crypto czar expected to set the course in the coming months—these digital assets are already thriving in emerging markets. For precisely the good reasons.

Pegged to fiat currencies, stablecoins are becoming an important financial tool for many in the developing world, fueling remittances and cross-border trade, bridging financial inclusion gaps, and offering a hedge against inflation in countries where traditional banking often falls short, and millions are left with little to no access to financial services.

Stablecoins — mostly pegged to the US dollar — have seen explosive growth in recent years, with real-world use cases expanding rapidly across Africa, Latin America, and parts of developing Asia. While the US is still figuring out how to apply this technology beyond the crypto space, emerging markets are already proving why stablecoins matter. 

In these regions, they’re not just a financial experiment — they’re a solution.

Stablecoins as a hedge against inflation in South America

In inflation-ridden economies like Argentina and Venezuela, stablecoins offer a dollar-pegged refuge from depreciating local currencies, especially where access to foreign currency exchanges is tightly controlled. Throughout Africa and Central America, they serve as a cost-effective tool for remittances and cross-border payments, while in places like Indonesia, they can provide a more accessible alternative to traditional USD banking, which can involve complex requirements.

While in richer, more advanced economies, stablecoins are primarily used in decentralized finance and as a bridge between traditional banking and DeFi, in emerging markets with limited financial infrastructure, their role is more fundamental yet essential, Cornell University Trade Policy professor Eswar Prasad said:

“In low and middle-income economies with underdeveloped financial systems, they can play a useful role in providing citizens and businesses easy and widespread access to a low-cost digital payment system.” 

Access to the US dollar — widely seen as a global store of value — has been a key driver of stablecoin adoption in emerging markets. Designed to offer stability in contrast to the volatility of early cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, most stablecoins are dollar-pegged, with Tether’s USDt leading at nearly 60% of the global market, followed by USD Coin, another dollar-backed asset.

Stablecoin supply by issuer. Source: Castle Island Ventures.

“There are problems in the world that need to be solved by a cryptocurrency that doesn’t constantly fluctuate in price,” Julián Colombo, senior director at Bitso, a Mexican crypto exchange with an official presence in Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia, said in an interview with Cointelegraph. 

“Stablecoins offer a way to bring all the benefits of crypto to real-world use cases—not just the potential to get rich off Bitcoin.”

Stablecoins are a priority for Trump’s crypto czar

Momentum is growing in the United States around stablecoins, as a bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation on Feb. 4 to establish a regulatory framework. In his first address to the industry, White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks emphasized that stablecoin regulation is a top priority for the administration, with the former venture capitalist leading a task force set to draft key policies over the next six months.

At any rate, stablecoin growth has been nothing short of spectacular. In the past year alone, they’ve tacked on a staggering $100 billion in market value, soaring to a total of $225 billion as of February 2025, according to DelfiLlama. USDt still reigns supreme, commanding over 60% of the market, but challengers — including those backed by financial powerhouses like PayPal— are rapidly gaining ground. 

“Stablecoins — tokenized representations of fiat currencies circulating on blockchains 1 — are unambiguously the “killer app” of crypto so far,” a report authored by Castle Island Ventures and sponsored by Visa mentioned. 

“We believe stablecoins represent a payment innovation that has the potential to expand access to secure, reliable, and convenient payments to more people in more places,” Cuy Sheffield, Global Head of Crypto at the US payments giant, said. 

“While they initially emerged as a crypto-native collateral type and settlement medium for traders and exchanges, they have crossed the chasm and have found wide adoption globally in the ordinary economy,“ it was argued in the report. 

“Based on the divergence between stablecoin activity and crypto market cycles, it is evident that stablecoin adoption has moved beyond merely serving crypto users and trading use cases.”

Spot crypto trading volume vs stablecoin monthly sending addresses. Source: Castle Island Ventures.

Seen as a store of value, a hedge against inflation, and a tool for cross-border transactions, stablecoins have gained significant traction in emerging markets. A recent Chainalysis report found that in regions like Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Asia, stablecoin adoption far outpaces that of Bitcoin, accounting for nearly half of all crypto transactions in some cases. 

In contrast, the US and North America have the lowest adoption rate for stablecoins in North America, though it still holds a notable share.

Share of regional transaction activity: stablecoin and Bitcoin. Source: Chainalysis.

In places like Brazil, a Latin American powerhouse with a population of 216 million and a $2.2 trillion GDP, the use of stablecoins has surged wildly in recent years, its central bank governor Gabriel Galipodo said. As much as 90% of the entire crypto flow is linked to stablecoins, the economist said while speaking at a Bank for International Settlements event in Mexico City on Feb. 6.

“Most of that is to buy things and to shop things from abroad,” said Galipolo, emphasizing that this novel trend brought with it intense oversight challenges regarding taxation.

But nowhere in Latin America have stablecoins found greater adoption than in Argentina, Julián Colombo, who leads the local operation at regional exchange Bitso, said. Amid the country’s chronic inflation and economic instability, they offer a vital financial refuge for citizens.

“In Argentina, as in other high-inflation countries, stablecoins have emerged as a solution to a very real and pressing problem,” Colombo told Cointelegraph.

“Argentines don’t trust the local currency and prefer to save in dollars, but government-imposed exchange controls and restrictions make access difficult. Stablecoins have filled that gap, providing a way to hold and transact in USD.” 

In Argentina, he says, roughly two out of every three crypto purchases through the exchange are made in dollar-pegged assets. While Argentina’s financial indicators have improved under pro-crypto President Javier Milei’s market-driven administration, inflation remains high at 84.5% year-over-year.

Though recent monthly data shows a downward trend, rebuilding trust in the local currency will take time in a country long plagued by triple-digit inflation and severe currency devaluations, ensuring sustained demand for stablecoins pegged to the US dollar.

Similarly, the adoption of such digital assets has been significant as well in Venezuela, which suffers from chronicle inflation as well as a myriad of regulations that make access to foreign currency like the USD highly convoluted. In emerging markets with somewhat more stable currencies like Brazil or Mexico, they can serve a different but equally important purpose: enabling fast, low-cost money transfers without the volatility of traditional cryptocurrencies. 

Businesses use them to pay for international services, hire remote employees, send dividends, and facilitate remittances, making cross-border transactions more efficient and accessible.

“In contrast to other crypto assets, stablecoins come with a promise of stability,” the Bank of International Settlements said in a report about stablecoins. “Due to this potential, they are increasingly entering mainstream finance, and a number of jurisdictions have developed regulatory approaches for issuers of stablecoins pegged to a single fiat currency.”

Stablecoins fuel remittances in Central America and Africa

One of stablecoins’ most powerful use cases comes in the form of cross-border transfer and remittances, particularly in Central America and Africa, with these digital assets providing an alternative for cheaper and faster money flows across international borders. Migrants working in the United States have often found in stablecoins a vehicle for more convenient transfers to families back home, 

“Stablecoins are getting some traction for both domestic and cross-border payments,” Prasad, who teaches Trade Policy at US Cornell University, said to Cointelegraph. “They are already playing a particularly useful role in overcoming the inefficiencies, high costs, and slow processing times for cross-border transactions conducted through traditional payment channels.”

Referencing the popularity of stablecoin use in remittances, Colombo said:

“Before crypto, remittance services could charge up to 10% in fees just to send money from one country to another. With crypto, you might have some extra money to send to Mexico, and the transfer could cost just a cent—arriving in minutes instead of hours or days.”

Cases for non-crypto use of stablecoins grow

In the Visa-sponsored report, researchers conducted a survey of approximately 500 crypto user individuals in Nigeria, Indonesia, Turkey, Brazil, and India for a total sample of 2,541 adults. While access to crypto remains the most popular motivation to use them, non-crypto uses such as access to dollars, generating yield or transactional purposes are highly popular.

Stablecoin questionnaire results. Source: Castle Island Ventures.

The survey revealed that Nigerian users have the strongest affinity for stablecoins compared to other countries surveyed. Nigerians transact with stablecoins the most frequently, have the largest share of stablecoins in their portfolios, use them for the widest range of non-crypto purposes, and report the highest self-reported knowledge of stablecoins. Saving money in dollars was their top priority.

Across Africa, stablecoins have become the “holy grail” for cross-border trade, international remittances, and value transfer across the continent, according to Zekarias Dubale, co-founder of the Africa Fintech Summit. He argued that these digital assets could offer the necessary financial infrastructure to facilitate global trade.

The case for stablecoins, however, is not without risks. While the most widely used stablecoins have largely maintained their peg to the strong fiat currencies they are designed to mirror, the market is expanding rapidly, with hundreds of digital assets now in circulation. Many of these assets, however, lack transparency about the reserves backing them, and instances of stablecoins depegging and, in some cases, collapsing have occurred.

Despite this, stablecoins are gaining momentum in the United States under the Trump administration and across emerging markets, where they are proving to be powerful tools that can help citizens overcome challenges related to financial inclusion and underdeveloped infrastructure.

Billionaire Elon Musk said on Feb. 18 that he will discuss with President Donald Trump a proposal to send U.S. taxpayers rebate checks representing a portion of the money saved by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Musk is spearheading the Trump administration’s efforts to reshape the federal government and reduce wasteful spending.

The DOGE leader took to his social media platform, X, to say he would check with Trump regarding the possibility of introducing a “DOGE Dividend.”

The SpaceX and Tesla founder made the remarks in response to a suggestion from James Fishback, CEO of investment firm Azoria, that a “tax refund check” be sent out to Americans after DOGE completes its work in July 2026.

The refund would be funded “exclusively with a portion of the total savings delivered by DOGE,” according to Fishback’s proposal.

As Katabella Roberts reports for The Epoch Times, DOGE aims to deliver $2 trillion in federal spending cuts during its 18-month lifespan.

Fishback’s proposal calls for 20 percent of the $2 trillion in savings—approximately $400 billion—to be returned to 79 million tax-paying households via direct payments.

That would amount to roughly $5,000 being returned to each of those 79 million households, according to Fishback.

He said the rebate “compensates American taxpayers for the egregious misuse and abuse of their hard-earned tax dollars that DOGE has uncovered,” and encourages them to report “instances of waste, fraud, and abuse” to DOGE, thereby increasing the total amount that DOGE saves.

In addition, Fishback said the rebate would help “restore public trust between taxpayers and their government” and increase “tax morale.”

It would also incentivize labor force participation, the investor said, noting that the rebate would be available only to net payers of federal income tax in 2025.

Musk responded to Fishback’s proposal, saying he “will check with the president.”

The entrepreneur also responded to another post on X regarding the potential tax refund, writing: “Obviously, the President is the Commander-in-Chief, so this is entirely up to him.”

DOGE Says Billions Saved Amid Cost-Cutting Efforts

DOGE said its cost-cutting efforts across several federal agencies had saved an estimated $55 billion as of Feb. 17.

The savings came from a combination of fraud detection and deletion, contract and lease cancellations and renegotiations, asset sales, grant cancellations, workforce reductions, programmatic changes, and regulatory savings that have been implemented across federal agencies, according to DOGE’s official website.

DOGE stated that contract cancellations alone accounted for approximately 20 percent of the overall savings amassed since the department was established by Trump in January.

The top 10 agencies with the highest total contract savings include the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), responsible for administering U.S. foreign aid and development assistance; the Department of Education; the Office of Personnel Management; the Department of Health and Human Services; and the Department of Agriculture, according to the DOGE website.

Many Republicans have long seen many of the agencies currently targeted by DOGE as pushing liberal agendas that are detrimental to U.S. interests.

However, the agencies account for just a small fraction of the overall federal budget, which is projected to reach $7 trillion this fiscal year, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

For example, USAID disbursed about $72 billion in aid in fiscal year 2023, Reuters reported, citing government figures. That amounted to about 1 percent of total federal outlays, according to the news agency.

Musk is also facing criticism from Democrats and other groups over his role with DOGE and possible conflicts of interest.

The White House has previously said that the Space X and Tesla founder is a “special government employee” under the Trump administration and acts as an adviser only.

While speaking to reporters alongside Trump in the Oval Office on Feb. 11, Musk defended his position as an unelected official while vowing to remain transparent with the American public.

“You can’t have an autonomous federal bureaucracy,” Musk said. “You have to have one that’s responsive to the people.”

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

For many years alternative economists and “conspiracy theorists” have argued that, according to the evidence, there has been an organized criminal cabal operating a long running agenda to exploit and eventually destroy western culture. We have suggested that much of this agenda was being funded with our own tax dollar while using government institutions and NGOs as vehicles for social engineering.

In the 20 years since I started work in the liberty movement (or patriot movement), I have seen corruption beyond imagining and it all culminated in 2020-2023 when many of us battled against the imposition of total medical tyranny and mass woke indoctrination. Even after that startling Orwellian period we were still called conspiracy theorists, but public awareness is changing rapidly.

I’ve see enough to know that what is happening today is truly unprecedented. We have entered a crossroads; a time when reality is no longer discarded for the sake of collective comfort and “conspiracy” becomes historic fact. It’s an exciting time to be alive, but also potentially hazardous.

My running theory has always been that once the house of cards came crashing down and the truth was revealed to the wider public, a whole lot of skeptics that used to call us “fringe crazies” and “tinfoil hatters” would suddenly claim they “saw it coming all along”. Yes, the conspiracy theorists were right, about EVERYTHING. The truth is coming to light in a big way, but what does this mean for the future?

Can America Handle The Truth?

The recent dismantling of USAID and the open investigations into numerous federal agencies has opened a Pandora’s Box; the covert funding that these institutions are involved in (including millions in pay-offs to various news media outlets and propaganda platforms) is, I believe, just the tip of a massive iceberg that could very well sink the US system faster than the Titanic.

Elon Musk’s DOGE group has only just begun dipping their toes into the dark waters of the Treasury, Medicaid, Social Security and the Defense Department. We all know there are some horrifying monsters lurking in those depths. This doesn’t even take into account the hidden activities of the controllers of the Federal Reserve.

The establishment media argues that USAID represents only 1% of the total federal budget, as if that makes the budget waste acceptable. But if there is that much mismanagement and gerrymandering in a smaller organization like USAID, imaging how much fraud there is in the rest of the federal government? .

Over the years many of us in alternative economics have wondered if our nation would be able to handle the revelation that almost everything about our system is fake. Half the country has suspected as much, but what would happen if we had hard proof – A smoking gun?

USAID is that smoking gun, the proof of death, but it’s only one of many buried bodies that are about to be uncovered. The real revelations will come when DOGE discovers how much US policy is directed and controlled by entities OUTSIDE our own country.

What happens when they investigate the numerous financial and political networks connected to the WEF, DAVOS, World Bank, the IMF, the BIS, and international think tanks like the CFR, Tavistock, the Atlantic Council, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and Open Society Foundations? What about the investment influences of Black Rock,Vanguard, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, etc.?

When the globalist hand behind the revolving door of cash is revealed, when the shadow government becomes a concrete and undeniable fact, is the public going freak out?

The political left is an enemy of freedom and morality, yes, but the greater issue is that they are a useful tool for more powerful elitist interests. It’s a cartel, an oligarchy working together to bring down the west from within and replace it with something new. A new ideology and a new economy that would effectively turn the majority of the population into unwitting serfs.

Only four years ago the WEF was boasting about the coming of the “4th Industrial Revolution”, the rise of the “cashless society”, the “Fifteen Minute City” and the “Sharing Economy”. And, as we now know, many of those projects were being paid for with our tax dollars. The globalists were so convinced that they had the populace dead to rights. They thought they had won.

It was only through the tireless efforts of liberty movement activists and conservatives around the world that the plan was disrupted and the globalists were sent into retreat. However, the fight is far from over. There are some important problems that need to be addressed as we enter the era of transparency. Here’s what will probably happen next…

Rabid Sabotage By The Political Left

The government is effectively being audited by the Trump Administration, and the Democrats are enraged. Why? Because they (and a handful of Neo-Cons) know full well what that audit is going to find. Activist judges and progressive politicians are going to obstruct and interfere with the process as much as they can. Their entire power structure depends on the steady embezzlement of tax dollars and the constant churning of the fiat printing press.

For those people who don’t understand what the big deal is with USAID, I suggest they research ESG programs and what they do. USAID was basically a vehicle for global ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance; a meaningless acronym designed to hide a program for global socialism) and it was spending incredible sums of money to spread woke propaganda into every facet of our society.

Leftist legal actions won’t make much difference in the long run, but they’ll still try to delay. These delays will be used to buy time for media spin. They’re going full force to misrepresent DOGE as some kind of totalitarian entity “destroying democracy”, however, authoritarians have never and will never pursue government transparency; this is not a thing.  Authoritarians ALWAYS pursue obscurity and occult secrecy around their activities. The leftists, by their own actions, are exposed as the true totalitarians.

Democrats and establishment NGOs will continue trying to foment civil unrest and they will use woke dupes as cannon fodder in this fight. Anything to distract the public from the evidence of their criminality.  Violence and terrorism should be expected.

Economic Downturn Is Inevitable – Trump Will Be Blamed

Broad budget cuts are essential to saving the economy in the long term, but they are also a double-edged sword in the short term. For example, US GDP stats rely greatly on government spending in their calculations (they shouldn’t, but they do). Government spending accounts for around 36% of our nation’s GDP – It’s a methodology used in recent decades to make our economic health look stronger than it really is.

As Trump executes extensive cuts to government spending, this will in turn make it look as if GDP is plummeting. Leftists will claim that Trump’s policies are crashing the financial system.

On top of this, I’ve been warning for some time that the Biden Administration has been engaging in complex data manipulation. Now that Biden is gone the real data is already coming out and it’s not good. Inflation numbers and employment numbers from the Biden era are being “adjusted”, as I predicted, showing a much weaker economy than originally reported. Retail stats and GDP are next.

The American public will need a crash-course in how the economy works and who is behind the downturn, or the leftist media will have a field day with the revised stats.

Can The Investment World Handle The Truth?

When the level of fraud within the US system is fully exposed, will the investment world panic? Will they pull their money out of US markets that have long been supported artificially by government funds and central bank intervention? These are valid questions we need to consider. The truth needs to come out regardless; nothing can be fixed until the source of the rot is uncovered. That said, the mantra “ignorance is bliss” is one that America has been living by for a long time.

I think Americans are desperate for the truth and desperate for reform, but change on the scale we are facing always brings chaos with it. I suggest that conservatives and patriots prepare accordingly.

Cutting Ties With Globalist Run Governments

As the process of transparency moves forward in the US we have to take into account that Europe, the UK, Australia and Canada are all still well under the hypnosis of the cabal. Things are changing overseas; the UK, Germany and France are starting to see conservative movements blossom, but globalists are determined to stop them from gaining political traction.

I suspect we will see strained or broken ties with many former allies in the coming years as they crack down on their own citizens and show their true authoritarian colors. We’re already seeing this happening in the UK, Germany, France and Romania among others.

The Most Dangerous Time Is When You Think You Are Winning

Establishment elites are like vampires. In fact, I suspect the whole mythology of vampires from centuries ago is actually based on the very real and evil crimes of the elites of the past. They use their wealth and influence to gain a foothold in your country, city or village. They use subterfuge to gain trust and exert authority. They spread darkness and corruption like a cancer, then they feed on the population at will while pretending to be benevolent leaders.

But these parasites must be invited in by the people. The public has to, in some ways, give consent to their own victimization. We have to willfully ignore their activities; our apathy is seen as consent. Sunlight is the primary remedy and the vampires flee when it’s unleashed. Finally, if all else fails a stake through the heart is required to end them. It could be a proverbial stake, or a very real one.

Audits of the corrupt system are the sunlight. Independent patriot rebellion is the stake through the heart if all else fails.

Just because the evil is exposed does not necessarily mean it will stop or disappear. Often these cornered creatures fight even harder and their mission is to take you down with them. Great truth often precedes the darkest of days and the collapse of epochs. As the shadow government faces uncertainty for perhaps the first time ever, who knows how the leviathan will react?

*  *  *

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