Venezuela had already long been an embargoed country, akin to Cuba in many aspects. For example, direct commercial passenger and cargo flights between the US and Venezuela have been impossible, going back to a May 2019 suspension ordered during the first Trump administration.

But after the US military ouster of Maduro, President Trump said Thursday that he ordered the reopening of Venezuela’s commercial airspace. This move, and the fact that Washington will now be overseeing the country’s monthly budget, demonstrates how decisively the US now claims to be running affairs in the oil-rich South American state.

Trump told a televised cabinet meeting he has already “informed” interim president Delcy Rodríguez that US oil companies would soon be arriving to scout potential projects.

It was once documented that after the US-NATO overthrow of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, the oil executives made it to Tripoli before the diplomats, as their private jets were faster. This looks to be the case with Venezuela too, given the US Embassy has not even yet reopened. 

“American citizens will very shortly be able to go to Venezuela, and they will be safe there. It’s under very strong control,” Trump said at the White House.

Shortly after Trump’s remarks, American Airlines said it would move to resume flights to Venezuela, pending formal approval from the administration and assurances of “secure conditions”. Trump confirmed that he had directed the Transportation Department to lift the previous restrictions.

Trump also had some positive words in support of Maduro’s former Vice President, current interim leader Rodríguez:

The president said he had instructed the US transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, and Pentagon officials to implement the change before the day’s end. He characterized the security situation in Venezuela as being “under very strong control” after Rodríguez replaced Maduro.

She had days ago declared that she would stop taking orders from Washington, but this was clearly more for domestic consumption, where she has to pretend she’s asserting national sovereignty in decision-making.

But Venezuela is clearly a country that is anything but sovereign at this moment. More details on Washington’s role have been freshly revealed in the NY Times:

Venezuela’s interim government has agreed to submit a monthly “budget” to the Trump administration, which will release money from an account funded by the country’s oil sales and initially managed by Qatar, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday.

But the plan drew sharp questions from skeptical Democrats, and Mr. Rubio conceded that it was “novel” and hastily designed. The role of Qatar — a Middle Eastern country thousands of miles from Venezuela whose ruler has won President Trump’s favor — drew particular criticism from Democrats, who questioned its legality and transparency.

Mr. Rubio detailed the plan during an appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It was Mr. Rubio’s first public testimony to Congress since American forces captured Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, on Jan. 3, and an opportunity to clarify U.S. policy toward the country.

WOW.

Sen. Shaheen reveals $500M from Venezuelan oil sales.

$300M went to the Maduro government.

The other $200M?

Marco Rubio admits it’s just “sitting in an account.”

In Qatar.

So who controls it? Who benefits? And why is Congress being kept in the dark? pic.twitter.com/kTpMuLShtk

— Brian Allen (@allenanalysis) January 28, 2026

Qatar’s playing middleman is indeed interesting and ironic, given how suspicious conservatives have been of the tiny oil and gas rich Gulf country. Lately enemies of Tucker Carlson have blasted him for being influenced by Qatari funds, and yet here the Trump administration is quite openly and unapologetically embracing it.

Authored by Benjamin Weingarten via RealClearInvestigations,

Instead of the word of the Lord, worshippers at the Jan. 18 Sunday prayer service at Cities Church in St. Paul were met with chants such as “ICE out” and “Justice for Renee Good.” But that’s not all. Families in the pews were harangued as “pretend Christians” and “comfortable white people,” and even condemned as “Nazis,” who would “burn in hell” by at least one of the dozens of opponents of the Trump administration’s Twin Cities Immigration and Customs Enforcement surge who disrupted church services. 

The protestors participating in “Operation Pullup” said they targeted the church and hurled such invective at its congregants because one of the church’s eight pastors is a federal immigration officer.

Two days later, federal prosecutors lodged a criminal complaint accusing the demonstration’s leader, Nekima Levy Armstrong, and other protestors including Chauntyll Louisa Allen and William Kelly, of conspiring to violate the rights of the congregants to freely worship, under charges historically brought almost exclusively against anti-abortion protestors tied to the Freedom of Access to Clinics Entrances or FACE Act.

Conservatives have long complained that the federal government weaponized the law to target pro-life Christians praying outside abortion clinics – with the Biden-led Justice Department for the first time combining FACE Act charges with such “conspiracy against rights” charges under the Ku Klux Klan Act to dramatically increase jail sentences. Now, the Trump administration is seeking to employ these laws to defend faithful Christians – and other worshippers – and bring their opponents to justice, under a long-dormant provision of the FACE Act aimed at protecting religious liberty.

It is not clear how successful this effort will be. A magistrate judge struck the FACE Act charge against the three protestors not because the law did not apply in the case but because, he ruled, prosecutors lacked probable cause at that juncture. The judge did leave in place a conspiracy charge against the three connected to the First Amendment’s protection of religious rights.

Whether authorities ultimately substantiate the FACE Act charge before a judge with further evidence, or secure it before a grand jury, Attorney General Pam Bondi was adamant, in tweeting on the day of the arrests, “Listen loud and clear: WE DO NOT TOLERATE ATTACKS ON PLACES OF WORSHIP.”

Echoing previous complaints from pro-life advocates, progressives are now complaining that the Trump administration is weaponizing the law against its political opponents. The NAACP, whose Minneapolis chapter Armstrong formerly headed, issued a press release calling the administration’s actions unconstitutional, and asserting that “The only reason the FBI and DHS arrested them is that they didn’t like what they had to say.”

FACE in Trump’s Crosshairs

While progressives have seen the FACE Act as essential to protecting abortion rights since it was passed in 1993, many conservatives have seen it as a cudgel to punish the exercise of religious freedom. 

In one of the first acts of his second term, President Trump pardoned nearly two-dozen pro-life protestors prosecuted by the Biden administration, many convicted on dual FACE Act and conspiracy against rights charges.

One day later, on Jan. 24, 2025, the Justice Department’s chief of staff issued a memorandum altering the department’s FACE Act charging policy. It directed that “future abortion-related FACE Act prosecutions and civil actions will be permitted only in extraordinary circumstances, or in cases presenting significant aggravating factors, such as death, serious bodily harm, or serious property damage.”

Going forward, the assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division would have to approve all abortion-related FACE Act actions, the memo stated. The department would also dismiss several pending cases with prejudice. 

The prosecution of the Minnesota church protestors represents part of a new legal front opened by the Justice Department to protect worshippers and houses of worship using long-ignored provisions of the 32-year-old law.

FACE Act’s Forgotten Provisions

Citing evidence of growing “anti-abortion violence and blockades,” Sen. Edward M. Kennedy introduced the FACE Act in 1993, claiming it would protect abortion providers facing an “unacceptable reign of terror.” The law initially prohibited individuals from engaging in violence, threats of violence, obstruction, intimidation, or interference solely against those seeking abortions or facilitating them and associated medical facilities.

Kennedy urged that Congress enact the law “before another doctor dies, or another clinic is blockaded or burned to the ground.” Peaceful protestors, the longtime “liberal lion” of the Senate assured, would “have nothing to fear from this legislation.”

One of Kennedy’s Republican colleagues was not so sure. Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch offered an amendment extending the bill’s protections to those exercising or seeking to exercise their right to pray at a house of worship, as well as the houses of worship themselves. In introducing the amendment, Hatch asserted that it “would ensure that the First Amendment right of religious liberty receives the same protection from interference that…[the bill] would give abortion.”

“Simply put, anyone who votes against this amendment or who attempts to dilute it values religious freedom far less than abortion,” Hatch added.

Ted Kennedy accepted the amendment without objection. Congress would concur, adopting the provision and, among other things, expanding the bill’s protections to encompass not only abortion centers, but all reproductive health service facilities. 

In 1994, the FACE Act became law. The signing ceremony foreshadowed how the Justice Department would apply the law, with then-Attorney General Janet Reno emphasizing that the bill achieved the Justice Department’s goal of protecting women’s “constitutional right to choose to have an abortion.” 

In the ensuing decades, nearly every FACE Act prosecution brought under Democrat and Republican administrations alike targeted protestors at abortion facilities.

According to data obtained by Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy, between 1994 and 2024, the Justice Department brought 211 FACE Act cases, 205 of which came against pro-life activists.

Roy obtained the statistics in probing the Biden administration, which he and other conservatives and Christian organizations allege selectively deployed the law to target pro-life protestors, while ignoring attacks on pro-life activists, reproductive facilities, and churches – particularly in the wake of the Dobbs Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. 

The Biden Justice Department brought 24 FACE Act cases against 55 defendants. Only two of the two-dozen cases, covering five individuals, concerned attacks on pregnancy resource centers, despite testimony from former FBI Director Christopher Wray that in the wake of the leak of the Dobbs decision, “more of our abortion-related violent extremism investigations have focused on violence against pro-life facilities as opposed to the other way around.” 

The Biden administration’s critics noted that when it did apply the law, it tried to give it more bite. For the first time, its Justice Department tacked on felony “conspiracy against rights” charges in FACE Act cases, increasing prison sentences from no more than six months for a first-time nonviolent FACE Act offender to upwards of 10 years. In congressional hearings, Republican witnesses claimed the law was being weaponized to punish peaceful pro-life protestors.

Democrats challenged this view. In a June 2025 House Judiciary Committee hearing touching on the FACE Act, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the committee, cited evidence from the National Abortion Federation that the Dobbs decision had given rise to “an immediate spike in major incidents targeting abortion providers, including arson, burglaries, and death threats.” Raskin dismissed the claims of weaponization, asserting that “If more people have been convicted of attacking pro-choice abortion clinics than have been convicted of attacking pro-life pregnancy centers…it is because there have been vastly more people attacking abortion clinics than attacking pregnancy centers.”

Even as the debate around FACE focused on abortion, some said it should be applied more widely. In her 2023 congressional testimony, Arielle Del Turco, Director of the Center for Religious Liberty at the Family Research Council, reported that between January 2018 and April 2023 alone there were 565 attacks against churches across the U.S. Vandalism made up the lion’s share of recorded incidents, but there were also dozens of arson attacks or attempts, as well as gun-related incidents, bomb threats, and interruptions of religious services – many “directly tied to anti-religious animus related to the abortion issue” following the Dobbs leak and decision, Del Turco said.

“As long as the FACE Act remains law, it should be used as a tool to go after perpetrators of attacks such as th[e]se,” she said.

The Biden Justice Department did not heed this advice. It failed to prosecute a single case concerning an attack on a house of worship pursuant to the FACE Act.

Changing Face of FACE

The Trump administration has worked to change the often one-sided and exclusively pregnancy-related focus of federal law enforcement under the FACE Act – although its initial case concerned a synagogue, not a Christian church. 

Last September, amid a rise in antisemitic attacks in the U.S. following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, the Justice Department brought what it billed as its first-ever FACE Act case aimed at defending a house of worship.

The complaint concerned various incidents occurring during what the department characterized as a “violent protest” at a suburban New Jersey synagogue. 

The department alleged that defendants, including several individuals, the Party for Socialism and Liberation-New Jersey, and American Muslims for Palestine-New Jersey, “engaged in a coordinated effort to intimidate and disrupt Jewish worshipers at a religious event held at the synagogue,” including “physical assaults” on, among others, the event’s organizer, Dr. Moshe Glick, “anti-Semitic and threatening chants, and defiance of police orders.”

Dr. Glick held the event, which included an Israel real estate fair at the synagogue, after shifting it from his home following alleged threats from one of the defendants, and on pro-Palestinian social media accounts publicizing his home address and indicating protestors would target it. 

Approximately 50 anti-Israel protestors, lacking a permit to protest, mobbed the gathering in violation of police orders, allegedly obstructing Jewish worshippers from accessing it and attempting to intimidate and disrupt the service. Demonstrators reportedly chanted slogans such as “Zionists are Nazis,” “Intifada, Intifada,” and “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free” in protest of an event they claimed promoted the sale of “stolen land.”

According to the complaint, one defendant participating in such activities, Altaf Sharif, a Muslim who marched on the synagogue’s property, allegedly blared a vuvuzela in Glick’s ear. The doctor swatted the vuvuzela away, and Sharif charged at him. In defending Glick, a fellow worshipper, David Silberberg, pepper-sprayed Sharif in the eyes. Another protester responded by yelling, “The Jew is here!” pointing at Silberberg. Sharif put Silberberg in a headlock, threw him to the ground, and allegedly dragged him down a hill outside the synagogue, and “drilled…[his] head into the ground.” With local police officers failing to quickly respond, the doctor intervened, hitting Sharif on the head with his flashlight. This caused Sharif to let go of Silberberg, enabling him to escape.

The Justice Department’s civil suit seeks to prohibit the defendants from threatening the synagogue or any other house of worship in New Jersey, as well as Dr. Glick’s residence. 

The suit came months after Garden State local prosecutors alleged that Glick and Silberberg were the aggressors, charging the two with bias intimidation, aggravated assault, possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose, and unlawful possession of a weapon. The investigation and prosecution would reportedly suffer from myriad deficiencies, including withholding of exculpatory evidence, coaching a witness, and soliciting false testimony. Prosecutors dropped their original indictment, but not the case. That prosecution suffered a blow when, on Jan. 20, in his waning hours in office, outgoing Gov. Phil Murphy pardoned Glick. (The case against Silberberg remains pending.)

Glick issued a statement expressing his gratitude to the governor, as well as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon and the Trump Justice Department for “having the fortitude to protect religious freedom and bias motivated violence utilizing the FACE Act,” in apparent recognition of the civil case the department brought.

Dhillon told RCI that “Moshe Glick was unfairly targeted for defending a member of his congregation from violent, antisemitic protestors outside of their synagogue. Governor Murphy was right to end this outrageous prosecution, and this Department of Justice will continue to vigorously enforce the right of every American to worship in peace and without fear.”

The Council on American Islamic Relations, which had supported the prosecution of Glick and Silberberg, panned the pardon, with its New Jersey chapter executive director writing in a press release, “Selective accountability, especially in cases touching public safety, weakens confidence in our justice system.” 

Just days after the pardon, the Justice Department sought FACE Act charges in defense of congregants of St. Paul’s Cities Church.

Armstrong said that the Trump administration’s efforts to bring the activists to justice are “how you continue to move us towards authoritarianism, when you weaponize the investigative powers that you have and the departments that you have.”

“This is fascism right at work right now where you go to jail and prison because you exercise your First Amendment right to criticize the government,” her lawyer charged.

In response, a Justice Department spokesperson told RCI that: “Political violence has no place in this country, and this Department of Justice will investigate, identify, and root out any individual or violent extremist group attempting to commit or promote this heinous activity.”

Meanwhile, Justice Department officials have indicated in public remarks that they may be probing incidents at other houses of worship.

The skyrocketing value of rare Pokémon trading cards has turned what was once a childhood pastime into a target for increasingly bold criminals, with armed robberies and burglaries hitting collectors and specialty stores across the U.S. in recent months, The New York Post reports.

In one of the most recent high-profile cases, three masked suspects stormed Poké Court in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District on January 15 during a community event attended by more than 40 people. The robbers brandished firearms, smashed display cases with hammers, and fled with more than $100,000 worth of cards and cash, including a first-edition Charizard valued at around $15,000, according to CBS News.

Days earlier, a collector leaving RWT Collective in West Los Angeles was held at gunpoint in an underground parking lot and relieved of approximately $300,000 in rare Pokémon cards, ABC7 reports. That incident was part of a broader wave of strikes in Southern California over that weekend, including a power-tool break-in at Simi Sportscards in Simi Valley that resulted in losses estimated between $10,000 and $50,000, as well as earlier burglaries at stores in Burbank—where four suspects were arrested after a December 2025 theft valued in six figures—Glendale, and other locations, according to NBC Los Angeles.

Additionally, Tag Collects in Carrollton, Georgia, lost nearly $100,000 on Christmas Eve, while multiple metro Atlanta shops saw combined losses exceeding six figures, FOX 5 reports. An armed robbery at a Wilmington, North Carolina, store yielded $20,000 in stolen goods and led to an arrest in January 2026. Scattered incidents have also been reported in states including Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, and Fargo, North Dakota, according to The Post.

“The cards are fungible and unregistered,” collector Charlie Hurlocker told The Post. “You don’t need a black market.”

The Pokémon card craze is so hot that even celebrities are getting in on the action.

YouTuber Logan Paul is currently auctioning his one-of-a-kind PSA 10 Pikachu Illustrator card through Goldin Auctions. Paul originally acquired it for $5.275 million, and bidding—set to close on February 15—has already reached $5.1 million, or $6.324 million including the buyer’s premium.

“I just gotta bring a security team to move it with me,” Paul reportedly told auction house head Ken Goldin.

“I’ve got a bunch of armed guards here,” Goldin, who stars in “King of Collectibles: The Golden Touch” on Netflix, said he told Paul. “We can meet you.”

So what’s really behind the surge in value? Goldin told The Post that he believes nostalgia is the culprit.

Fellas, it might be time to put down the pictures of cartoon creatures and touch grass.

Via VigilantFox.com,

Tucker Carlson warns that Tim Walz and Mayor Frey are deliberately fueling chaos to spark a “color revolution.”

He asks:

“Why would a state refuse to protect American citizens from murder, refuse to give the names or whereabouts of murderers and child molesters, and refuse to use its own cops to keep riots under control?

What could possibly be the answer?”

“Because they want riots, that’s why,” Carlson answered.

Tucker Carlson warns that Tim Walz and Mayor Frey are deliberately fueling chaos to spark a “color revolution.”

He asks: “Why would a state refuse to protect American citizens from murder, refuse to give the names or whereabouts of murderers and child molesters, and refuse to… pic.twitter.com/yWu9OgWREa

— Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) January 28, 2026

Carlson calls out Democratic party officials’ actions directly:

“What you’re watching are the beginnings of a color revolution, of a kind of insurrection against federal authority. And what you have to ask yourself…

Can you live with that?

Can you live in a country of 50 states that don’t agree on what the federal law should be and that allow Americans to get murdered in their cities because they have the wrong politics or they work for a politician they disapprove of?”

The drops the hammer:

“And if you are okay with that, have you thought through its implications? The number one implication is the country will fall apart. That’s civil war. It’s the definition of it.”

“You have regions and internal government states that don’t recognize federal authority, the authority of a government over them all, of Washington.

“And at that point, what you have is warring nations within the same borders. And then you have widespread violence, then you have killing at scale, then you have civil war.”

Is this really what they want?

In an effort to crack down on violent rioters in Minneapolis, MN, federal authorities have arrested 16 people identified as alleged participants who assaulted ICE agents in order to obstruct them from carrying out deportation arrests.  

One of the suspects is Nasra Ahmed, 23, of Minnesota, who rose to national notoriety after remarks she made during a Jan. 21 news conference comparing Somali American identity to a cultural mix she described as “bananas and rice,” a phrase that quickly spread across social media. 

A child of Somali migrants, Ahmed claimed during a press conference that she had been wrongly detained (kidnapped) by ICE agents simply for being Somali in the vicinity of an ICE operation.  She also claimed that she had been held for two days without reason and that agents “brutalized” her and called her “racial slurs” during interrogation.  Democrats and the far-left media seized on the story as evidence that ICE was “out of control” and using random “racial profiling” in Minneapolis.

Critics noted that there was no evidence to back Ahmed’s claims of abuse and that she seemed to be very excited to become the center of media attention, suggesting that she was going to “go down in history” for standing up to ICE.  Immigration officials stated that Ahmed was not an innocent bystander and she was, in fact, detained for trying to interfere with an ICE arrest.

Ahmed took to the media stage to wax philosophical about her courageous fight against ICE and what it means to be a Somali in America.  “It’s kind of like bananas and rice,” Ahmed said. “People don’t think you can eat bananas with rice, but that’s what it’s like to be Somali and American.”

Her bizarre “bananas and rice” analogy went viral as another example of the low-end IQ standards associated with Somali migrants, coupled with their now legendary overconfidence.    

Today, the activist’s bananas and rice are back in hot water after she was arrested again by DHS for alleged participation in violent riots.  Nasra Ahmed is charged with spitting on agents, throwing eggs at them and resisting arrest.

Rice and Bananas pic.twitter.com/du8oojETE8

— Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) January 28, 2026

Attorney General Pam Bondi was on the ground in Minneapolis this week to oversee the arrests, largely based on video footage of identified activists engaging in attacks on agents.  

“Federal agents have arrested 16 Minnesota rioters for allegedly assaulting federal law enforcement – people who have been resisting and impeding our federal law enforcement rights.”

“We expect more arrests to come,” Bondi added. “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: NOTHING will stop President Trump and this Department of Justice from enforcing the law.”

The crackdown comes after the death of Anti-ICE activist Alex Pretti, who was also misrepresented as a “peaceful protester” by the media, only to be later exposed in video footage participating in violent attacks on ICE agents in the days leading up to the confrontation that ended in his shooting.

The pattern is becoming rather obvious:  Activists and paid agitators interfere with ICE arrests (often violently).  Activists face consequences.  Journalists and Democrats cry foul and claim they were poor innocent victims.  Then, new information comes to light which ultimately reveals the activists were not innocent at all.  

The political left jumps on the headlines to spread anti-deportation sentiment, then retracts quietly when these headlines prove to be false.  They know that a large percentage of the Democrat base does not independently investigate information and sources and will continue to believe the first media claims they see as if they are a proven fact.   

It’s the reason why debating the political left has become a superfluous exercise – They live in an entirely separate and delusional universe based on completely fabricated conclusions. 

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

This is why a recession will catalyze a collapse of the credit-asset bubble-dependent economy down to its foundations.

Narrative control works by having a pat answer for every skepticism and every doubt. Boiled down, the dominant narrative holds that the Federal Reserve (central banking) and the central government have the tools to quickly reverse any dip in GDP, a.k.a. recession, and return the economy to expansion.

The unstated foundation of this narrative is that recessions are bad, as only permanent expansion is good. That this isn’t “free market capitalism” doesn’t bother anyone, because the whole point of central banking and government is to eliminate the rough edges of “free market capitalism” with the sandpaper of “state capitalism,” which creates or borrows as much money as needed to smooth over any spots of bother, a.k.a. recessions.

That recessions are essential market dynamics is not part of the narrative, which is conveniently binary: recessions bad, expansion good. Markets reflect human emotions, famously fear and greed, which manifest as debt and speculation, a.k.a. animal spirits: when we’re confident and feeding off an expansion that appears to have no limit, then we borrow more money (debt expands) and “allocate the capital” (i.e. place it at risk to reap a future gain) to increasingly risky speculative investments.

This allocation of borrowed money into speculative assets pushes the price of those assets higher, increasing the collateral to support further borrowing to fund more speculation. In this manner, debt, asset valuations, collateral and speculation all fuel one another in a seemingly endless expansion that makes every participant richer.

This pyramiding of debt and “wealth” generates two self-liquidating dynamics: interest and risk. All debt comes with interest, the compensation due those who put their money at risk by lending it to the borrower. This debt service rises as debt expands, and also as risk increases: the riskier the speculation and the borrower, the higher the interest rate paid by the borrower.

Central banks can play games to reduce interest rates even as risk and interest payment rise, but since central banks own only a fraction of the total outstanding debt, their ability to “corner the market” is nil.

Their gaming the system to enable further expansion of debt and speculation functions not by actually buying up the majority of the new debt, it functions as a signal: the Federal Reserve has our back, they will bail out / recapitalize any lender losses while suppressing interest rates below what the unfettered market would demand, and so the pyramiding of debt, speculation and “wealth” can continue, apparently indefinitely.

But signaling has intrinsic limits, for it doesn’t increase the income needed to service additional debt or guarantee speculations will pay off. These are the Achilles Heels of the central banking perpetual motion machine: for the vast majority of borrowers, both private and public, income doesn’t automatically increase as debt increases. Income is influenced by market factors (supply and demand), technologies, state interventions (subsidies, stimulus spending, etc.) and the expansion or contraction of debt, interest rates and speculative investments.

In the total-economy context, what matters are total factor productivity gains and the distribution of those gains to wage earners, enterprises, owners of assets and the state, which collects taxes from all three of the private-sector classes. This distribution changes with social, political and financial tides.

The past 50 years have seen productivity gains flow to capital (corporations and owners of assets) at the expense of wage-earners. This means households and small businesses must service debt from a shrinking share of the economy. As a result, borrowing more becomes increasingly risky for both borrower and lender.

As more of the output goes to corporations and owners of assets, their collateral, income and creditworthiness rise, meaning they can borrow more at lower rates of interest than wage earners and small enterprises. The more they can borrow, the more they can own and the more they can earn.

These are the core engines of extreme wealth and income inequality. The rich get richer because they have the means to borrow more income-generating assets at lower rates than wage earners. And unlike wages, this asset-generated income rises as assets increasing in value support additional borrowing as they serve as collateral.

On the most fundamental level, if economic expansion no longer increases the income of household borrowers enough to service more debt, the entire structure of expanding debt, collateral and speculation is destabilized. Ultimately, assets generate income from either 1) issuing more debt, 2) investing more in risk assets or 3) consumer spending. All three are interconnected, i.e. tightly bound, as any decline in the expansion of debt, investing or spending eventually bleeds through to reduced ability to service more debt and the end of the expansion of debt.

Since debt is inherently risky–borrowers can default, i.e. stop paying interest and principal on the debt–then depending on expanding debt for economic expansion is also increasing risk, especially if household earnings are stagnating while debt and interest payments are increasing.

Since the percentage of output flowing to wages has been declining for 50 years, households have funded spending by borrowing more money. Prior to the 2000s, college students borrowed very little to fund their education. Now student loan debt is measured in the trillion-dollar range. Auto loans and credit card debt has also soared, along with shadow-banking debt that isn’t even tracked: pay-in-installments, etc.

Speculative investments are also inherently risky: the investment can fail to pay off. If the speculation was funded by debt, then both the borrower and the lender go broke when the speculation fails.

Stagnating earnings, increasing debt to fund spending and increasingly risky debt-funded speculation generate a credit-asset bubble-dependent economy: economic expansion is now dependent on debt expanding to fund spending and the speculation that pushes asset valuations higher, increasing the collateral for even more borrowing.

Once income is no longer rising fast enough to service higher debt loads, defaults cascade throughout the system, triggering avalanches of declining income for both assets and wage earners as households default on rent, auto loans, student loans, credit cards and mortgages, collapsing consumer spending and laying waste to lenders and employers, who respond by reducing borrowing and laying off employees.

Speculations that looked sound in expansion go broke as lenders pull risky loans, household spending dries up and collateral collapses as risk assets are sold off to reduce risk by raising cash and paying down debt.

Credit-asset bubble-dependent economies are tightly bound systems: any drop in income and valuations, any tightening of credit, any rise in interest rates and any decline in collateral (i.e. the valuations of risk assets) feeds back into every other part of the system, creating a self-reinforcing feedback loop of defaults, layoffs and sagging asset valuations.

In an economy saturated with debt, stimulus doesn’t generate expansion, it generates inflation which limits central bank stimulus. Without that signal that “the Fed has our back,” speculation and the borrowing that funded it both dry up. Once the inflow of new credit-funded investment falters, asset valuations enter a self-reinforcing free-fall.

In a credit-asset bubble-dependent economy, this inevitable unwinding is viewed as an unexpected catastrophe:

In an economy that allowed recessions to clear bad debt and excessive speculation, credit-asset bubbles popping is viewed as inevitable and normal.

What few seem to understand is 1) the last “real recession” that cleared excesses of debt, leverage and speculation was 1980-82, 45 years ago and 2) the buffers that enabled the eventual recovery back then are gone. Where total debt was low in 1980–about 50% more than GDP–now it’s triple GDP. That means “borrowing our way to expansion” isn’t possible: borrowers are already unable to service existing debt, never mind more debt.

As for the Fed rescuing the debt bubble by dropping interest rates to zero: recall that the Fed isn’t buying more than a sliver of the $106 trillion debt; it’s only generating a false signal that risk is low. In the real world, risk is rising inexorably due to excessive debt, interest payments, leverage and speculation.

As for bailing the system out as in 2008, that is no longer possible, either. The system was “saved” by recapitalizing the financial sector–the source of new debt and speculation. But this time around, the economy is saturated with debt, income has stagnated and cannot support more borrowing, and the credit-asset bubbles in housing and financial assets has reached unprecedented heights of risk, i.e. fragility.

This is why a recession that clears the system of excessive debt, leverage and speculation leaves a devastated economy incapable of expansion: the system is now totally dependent on excesses of debt, leverage and speculation for its survival, never mind expansion, and once that collapses (as all bubbles do), the signaling, confidence and wealth that enabled the bubble will no longer exist.

As for saving the system by converting fiat money to precious metals or cryptocurrencies: the debt–and the income needed to service the debt–will also be converted, and that doesn’t change the inevitable collapse of credit-asset bubbles and all the economic activity that depended on the permanent expansion of that credit-asset bubble.

This is why a recession will catalyze a collapse of the credit-asset bubble-dependent economy down to its foundations. A re-inflation of a new credit-asset bubble will be viewed as the “solution,” but that unstable system will no longer be viable. The real solution will be re-arranging the economy to thrive not on credit-asset bubbles but on productivity gains that are widely distributed to all the productive elements, not just the wealthiest asset owners.

This process will be time-consuming and difficult, as all the “winners” in the current bubble economy will expect both a return to outsized gains and a continuation of their outsized share of the gains. Neither will be possible, as the changes will demand time, sacrifice and massive long-term investment in productive assets.

The systemic risks inherent to a credit-asset bubble-dependent economy cannot be extinguished, they can only be cloaked or transferred to others. These artifices enable the expansion of the bubble at a cost paid by everyone when the system’s self-liquidating dynamics pop the bubble.

*  *  *

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Russia says it has tapped Washington on the shoulder many times related the the last remaining nuclear treaty between to the well-armed superpowers, but there have been crickets.

Moscow on Thursday reaffirmed it hasn’t heard anything and is still eagerly awaiting a response from Washington to President Vladimir Putin’s proposal to informally extend New START for another year. Presumably even if Trump officials have publicly signaled their willingness, a firm bilateral commitment has to be reached, with clear and open communication. 

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned reporters that the impending expiration of the pact on February 5 could create a “serious gap” in the legal framework controlling strategic nuclear weapons.

With the clock ticking, Moscow’s proposal underscores growing fears that, absent an extension, the world could face a nuclear arms vacuum between the world’s two largest arsenals. Peskov’s statement expressed some growing frustration and impatience:

“We keep waiting, but the deadline is approaching. There was no response from the United States,” he said at a news briefing.

Peskov added that “the Kremlin’s position is well known and it is consistent.”

The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty was signed in 2010 by Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev, and limits the number of deployed strategic warheads to 1,550 per side, and caps deployed delivery systems – including of missiles, bombers, and submarines – at 700.

The treaty is further designed to regulate targeting of each rival’s political and military centers in a potential nuclear conflict. The hope was that as Witkoff and Kushner have continued direct dialogue with Putin and top Kremlin officials, there would be a breakthrough on the nuclear issue, rapidly improving the bilateral relationship. 

This was certainly one of the high bars set for last August’s Alaska summit. Putin had stated just before meeting Trump in person that the “next stages” of discussions with the administrations could include reaching “agreements in the area of control over strategic offensive weapons.”

Both leaders have shown willingness to reach a breakthrough on this issue, but alas nothing has materialized, and Russia appears genuinely surprised the US hasn’t jumped at the offer to extend it another year, giving more time for longer negotiations for what the future of New START might hold.

In August 2023 the US accused Russia of violating the treaty in disallowing US on-site inspections under its stipulations. In response, Washington halted Russian inspectors’ ability to do the same on American soil. The fact that the Ukraine war has been raging without end has also put pressure on the treaty toward unraveling.

Ahead of today’s AAPL earnings report, we’ve had a very mixed picture from Mag 7 earnings so far: first, there was Microsoft, which crashed after its capex forecast unexpectedly jumped, then there was META, which soared after its capex forecast unexpectedly jumped (only in this case the company made up for it by pretending its ad revenue will also increase almost dollar for dollar with the new capex), and then there was TESLA which first dropped, then jumped, then dropped as the market digested the company’s complete conversion from an auto company (now without the S and X models) and into a robotaxi “story” stock. As such, many are looking to AAPL to break the tie when it reports at 3pm today.

But before we look at the numbers, here’s what Wall Street is expecting:

• Revenue estimate $138.4 billion 
• Products revenue estimate $107.69 billion
• Mac revenue estimate $9.13 billion
• IPad revenue estimate $8.18 billion
• Wearables, home and accessories estimate $12.13 billion
• Services revenue estimate $30.02 billion

Recall that during its fourth quarter conference call, Apple took the rare step of saying that it expects double-digit iPhone growth as well as 10-12% overall revenue growth. There was no way Apple would report such numbers unless it was 100% confident in that being the case. 

As Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman notes, Apple is projecting a monster quarter yet given the current climate around its AI crisis, the future of the company really hangs in the balance here, as it may be fair to say that if Apple beats estimates – or least meets expectations today – the current management of the company and way forward has some staying power. If, for some odd reason, the company misses expectations, we’re in for an extremely tough news cycle and the potential of real change in the months ahead. 

In retrospect, AAPL was not making it up, because the stock has moved higher (even if it has erased much of the gains) after the smartphone company reported earnings which beat many expectations, while the iPhone had its best ever quarter largely thanks to China.

Here are the details:

• EPS $2.84 vs. $2.40 y/y, beating estimates of $2.68
   
• Revenue $143.76 billion, +16% y/y, beating estimate $138.4 billion 
  • Products revenue $113.74 billion, +16% y/y, beating estimate $107.69 billion
    • IPhone revenue $85.27 billion, +23% y/y, beating estimate $78.31 billion
    • Mac revenue $8.39 billion, -6.7% y/y, missing estimate $9.13 billion
    • IPad revenue $8.60 billion, +6.3% y/y, beating estimate $8.18 billion
    • Wearables, home and accessories $11.49 billion, -2.2% y/y, missing estimate $12.13 billion
  • Services revenue $30.01 billion, +14% y/y, missing estimate $30.02 billion

Broken down by product…

… show that iPhone revenue – which hit a record high in Q1 thanks to China – was the most notable: 

Taking a closer look at the Geographic breakdown, one region stands out: 

• Americas rev. $58.53 billion, +11% y/y, missing estimate $59.06 billion
• Europe revenue $38.15 billion, +13% y/y, beating estimate $36.82 billion
• Japan revenue $9.41 billion, +4.7% y/y, beating estimate $9.24 billion
• Rest of Asia Pacific revenue $12.14 billion, +18% y/y, beating estimate $11.39 billion

and… 

• Greater China rev. $25.53 billion, +38% y/y, smashing estimate $21.82 billion

Yes: it was all about China, because while sales in the US actually missed, it was that country where no number is ever cooked – pardon the pun – where revenues (mostly iPhone revenues) grew a stunning 38% to $25.53bn, smashing estimates of a $21.82bn number…

… yet which in context seems very, very fishy, and makes one wonder if Cook cooked numbers with Xi’s help.

Going down the income statement: 

• Total operating expenses $18.38 billion, +19% y/y, above estimate $18.18 billion
• Research and development operating expenses $10.89 billion, +32% y/y, above estimate $10.14 billion
• SG&A operating expense $7.49 billion, +4.4% y/y, below estimate $8.03 billion
   
• Gross margin $69.23 billion, +19% y/y, beating estimate $65.5 billion
   
• Cash and cash equivalents $45.32 billion, +50% y/y, below estimate $49.73 billion

Some more details from the press release: 

• Installed Base Now Has More Than 2.5B Active Devices
• Declares A Cash Dividend of $0.26 Per Share
• Generated Nearly $54 Billion in Operating Cash Flow
• Declared A Cash Dividend of $0.26 Per Share

Yet while the stocks spiked sharply higher on the news of the massive iPhone revenue beat, it has since faded much of the move once again, perhaps as investors inquire what the revenue/margin hit to iphone will be from buying RAM memory which has triple in price in recent weeks.

Senior Saudi and Israeli defense and intelligence officials are converging on Washington this week as the Trump administration weighs potential US strikes on Iran, according to Axios. This as the same report also observes:

“A ‘limited strike’ is an illusion. Any military action by ‌the U.S. — from any origin and at any level — will be considered an act of war and the response will be immediate, ‌all out⁩, and unprecedented, targeting the heart of ‌Tel Aviv⁩ and all those supporting the aggressor,” Ali Shamkhani, a top adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, wrote on X.

Israeli officials, including IDF Intelligence Directorate chief Maj. Gen. Shlomi Binder, are reportedly presenting intelligence on Iranian targets to Pentagon, CIA, and White House officials, while Saudi counterparts are attempting to slow-walk Washington away from outright war. The Saudis lately joined the Emirates in barring the Pentagon for using airspace for any strikes.

Gen. Binder met with senior US defense and intelligence officials on Tuesday and Wednesday, while Saudi Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman – brother of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman – is expected to hold talks with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump envoy Steve Witkoff later this week.

Behind closed doors, Trump is said to be considering targeted strikes on Iranian security forces and leadership figures in a bid to trigger internal unrest, Reuters has reported. Secretary Rubio yesterday floated before a Senate hearing the idea that the US must “preemptively prevent” Iran from attacking American forces already in the region, in an interesting display of war logic.

But CNN says stalled US-Iran talks over Tehran’s nuclear and missile programs have only hardened Washington’s appetite for escalation – raising the odds that diplomacy is giving way to force once again, or rather, placing the diplomatic bar so high that it would be next to impossible for Iran to comply.

Currently, Trump officials are reportedly insisting that Iran be stripped of any missile capability capable of striking Israel. Israel, meanwhile, would retain its full missile arsenal – including the undeclared nuclear weapons that everyone in the world knows about – capable of hitting Iran. According to CNN:

The biggest sticking point, sources said, has been the US demand that Iran agree to put limits on the range of its ballistic missiles — an acute concern for Israel, which expended much of its missile interceptor stockpile shooting down Iranian ballistic missiles during last June’s 12-day war. Iran has balked at that and told the US it would only discuss its nuclear program. The US has not replied, leaving both sides at a dead end, the sources said.

Which leaves the so-called “sticking point” glaringly obvious: Washington is demanding that Tehran agree to unilateral disarmament, rendering itself defenseless against Israeli air and missile strikes. In other words, total capitulation – or else.

And about that supposedly “obliterated” Iranian nuclear program?

It’s not clear why Trump has since shifted his focus back to Iran’s nuclear program, which he said last summer had been “obliterated” by US strikes. But Iran has been trying to rebuild its nuclear sites even deeper underground, according to a person familiar with recent US intelligence on the issue, and has long resisted US pressure to halt its uranium enrichment. The regime has also barred the UN’s nuclear watchdog from inspecting its nuclear sites.

Like with Venezuela before – or even hearkening all the way back to Bush’s Iraq invasion – the justifications for war will keep on shifting, until something sticks in a thinly veiled effort to manufacture consent.

Tucker Carlson has revealed that during the brief Iran-Israel war earlier this year, Israeli soldiers were barging into U.S. military meetings at the Pentagon, issuing demands, and telling American officers what to do.

He says Pentagon officials stood by in silence and is… pic.twitter.com/u5vhYwaOwI

— Shadow of Ezra (@ShadowofEzra) October 2, 2025

…And then the pretext will soon after be forgotten about when the bombs fall.

As one commenter pointed out related the several regime change conflicts of the last couple decades: “Free Iran” means exactly what “Free Iraq,” “Free Libya,” and “Free Syria” meant. That is the material reality, however you try to spin it. Either you’re calling for another US-engineered destruction, or you’re so politically naive your opinion can be automatically disregarded.

After a solid 2Y, and a dismal 5Y auction, moments ago the Treasury completed the sale of the week’s final coupon, and today’s sale of $44BN in 7Y paper was appropriately enough, mediocre at best, not terrible, not great, in the parlance of our times.

The auction priced at a high yield of 4.018%, the first 4%+ yield since July, and up from 3.930% in December. It also tailed then 4.014% When Issued by 0.4bps. This was the 5th tail in the last 6 auctions.

The bid to cover of 2.454 dropped from 2.509 in December, and was the lowest since September; it was also well below the six auction average of 2.516.

The internals were a fraction better: Indirects took down 66.9%, up from 59.04% and above the six auction average of 61.8%. And with Directs awarded 22.2%, down sharply from 31.6% last month, Dealers were left holding 10.9%, up from 9.3% last month and above the recent average of 10.2%.

Overall this was a mediocre, tailing auction and while it could have been worse (foreign demand for example was still quite solid), it certainly could have been better.