In 2026, U.S. inflation is projected to decline to 2.4%, ultimately remaining above the Fed’s target. Many European and Asian countries, meanwhile, are expected to see sub-2% increases in prices. Countries facing instability, like Venezuela and Sudan, will brace for significantly higher price pressures.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld, shows the 2026 inflation forecast for global economies, based on data from the International Monetary Fund.

Ranked: The 2026 Inflation Forecast

Below, we show inflation projections for 2026 across 190 economies:

Venezuela continues to face the highest inflation worldwide by a huge margin, with inflation set to increase 682.1% in 2026. (Note these forecasts were released before President Nicolas Maduro’s capture and U.S. plans to take over Venezuelan oil production).

Moreover, conflict-ridden countries including Sudan, Iran, and Myanmar, face inflation rates exceeding 25%.

In the U.S., inflation is expected to trend lower, though several risks could influence the outlook. While tariff front-loading muted inflationary effects in 2025, pass-through effects could meaningfully affect consumer prices in 2026.

Meanwhile, several economies, from Italy and Spain to Senegal and Saudi Arabia are expected to see inflation reach a 2% target.

In contrast, Switzerland and Liechtenstein are projected to see the lowest inflation globally, at 0.6%. For Switzerland, a strong Swiss franc has led import prices to drop, mirroring a trend seen in the past two years.

Additionally, consumer prices in Thailand and China are set to rise just 0.7% amid deflationary pressures.

To learn more about this topic, check out this graphic on interest rate projections across advanced economies.

Authored by Amin Haqshanas via CoinTelegraph.com,

The Ethereum Foundation has made post-quantum security a central focus of the network’s long-term roadmap, announcing the formation of a dedicated Post Quantum (PQ) team.

The new team will be led by Thomas Coratger, a cryptographic engineer at the Ethereum Foundation, with support from Emile, a cryptographer closely associated with leanVM, according to crypto researcher Justin Drake.

“After years of quiet R&D, EF management has officially declared PQ security a top strategic priority,” Drake said in a Saturday post on X. “It’s now 2026, timelines are accelerating. Time to go full PQ.”

The researcher described leanVM, a specialized, minimalist zero-knowledge proof virtual machine (zkVM), as a potential building block of Ethereum’s post-quantum strategy.

EF backs post-quantum push with developer sessions, funding

Drake outlined several near-term steps aimed at preparing the ecosystem. A biweekly developer session focused on post-quantum transactions is set to begin next month, led by Ethereum researcher Antonio Sanso. The sessions will concentrate on user-facing protections, including protocol-level cryptographic tools, account abstraction pathways and longer-term work on aggregating transaction signatures using leanVM.

The Ethereum Foundation is also backing its push with new funding. Drake announced a $1 million Poseidon Prize to strengthen the Poseidon hash function, alongside another $1 million initiative known as the Proximity Prize, both aimed at advancing post-quantum cryptography.

Ethereum prepares for quantum era. Source: Justin Drake

On the engineering front, Drake said multi-client post-quantum consensus development networks are already live, with multiple teams participating and coordinating through weekly interoperability calls.

Furthermore, the foundation will host a dedicated post-quantum event in October, followed by a post-quantum day in late March ahead of EthCC. Educational efforts, including video content and materials aimed at enterprises, are also underway.

Coinbase forms board to assess quantum risks

The announcement comes amid growing sensitivity in crypto markets to quantum risk. On Wednesday, Coinbase revealed that it has established an independent advisory board to evaluate how advances in quantum computing could impact the cryptography securing major blockchain networks, including Bitcoin and Ethereum.

The board brings together experts from academia and industry in quantum computing, cryptography, and blockchain security, and will publish public research and guidance for developers, organizations, and users. Its first position paper is expected in early 2027.

Despite living in the world’s largest economy, Americans have shorter life expectancies than residents of many other wealthy nations.

People in Japan – the world’s fourth-largest economy – live about five years longer on average.

Meanwhile, residents in countries like France and Italy outlive Americans by roughly four years.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld, shows life expectancy by country across the world’s 30 largest economies, based on data from the United Nations.

GDP data was drawn from the International Monetary Fund.

A Closer Look at Life Expectancy by Country

Below, we rank countries based on GDP in 2025, including their life expectancies at birth:

With an average life expectancy of 80 years, Americans live shorter lives than those in many other major economies. This gap is driven by several factors, including limited access to healthcare, high obesity rates, and elevated homicide rates.

Notably, the U.S. is the only G10 country without universal healthcare. It also has some of the highest healthcare costs among wealthy nations, at $14,885 per person, roughly double the OECD average.

China, the world’s second-largest economy, has an average life expectancy of 79 years, up from 68 in 1990. In recent years, national policies have focused on improving disease prevention and expanding medical insurance coverage.

India’s life expectancy stands at 73 years, among the lowest of the top 30 economies by GDP. Life expectancy also varies significantly by caste, with lower-caste individuals shown to live about four years fewer on average than those in higher castes.

However, India has recorded some of the largest gains in life expectancy globally over the past six decades. Since 1965, the average lifespan has increased by 27 years. In particular, this reflects growing advancements in healthcare, child mortality, and enhanced nutrition, further aided by strong economic growth.

To learn more about this topic, check out this graphic on the countries with the longest life expectancies.

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

Brussels and Berlin are increasing regulatory pressure on European industry. With the tightening of the EU Industrial Emissions Directive, agriculture is now moving even further into the crosshairs of climate regulation. That the EU is increasingly isolating itself on the international stage seems to concern no one.

If this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos delivered one clear message, it was this: the U.S. delegation led by President Donald Trump gave Europe’s climate-socialist economic transformation a red card. In stark terms, the U.S. President made it clear that the European path—the regulatory attempt at a net-zero economy with zero CO₂ emissions—has already failed in American eyes, and they have hit the brakes.

Now that the German cabinet is transposing the EU-mandated tightening of the Industrial Emissions Directive into national law, extending it to agricultural operations after parliamentary approval (Apollo News reported), the impression solidifies: the politically induced crisis of European industry—the slow deindustrialization of Europe’s key industrial hubs—is still treated in the political leadership’s economic models as a minor issue, a collateral damage on the road to the green utopia.

Artificial state demand is now being used to try to refill freed industrial capacities—whether through military production or subsidized eco-projects, which fail under cost pressures or simply go unrequested.

Regulatory Pressure by Design

Specifically, the new EU directive will place roughly 30 percent of poultry and pig farms under industrial emissions regulation. As if the sector were not already on the brink of collapse under existing regulatory pressure, the next attack on these operations is now being orchestrated.

Across the EU, about 50,000 operations will be required to implement binding environmental management systems, audited on cycles of one to three years. In Germany alone, 13,000 facilities are subject to EU compliance. Farms with at least 1,200 fattening pigs or 700 breeding sows, as well as poultry operations with around 40,000 broilers or 21,400 laying hens, will now be direct targets of the tightened rules.

Under the threat of heavy fines of at least three percent of EU-generated annual revenue for violations, the European Union is attempting to enforce the Green Deal by brute force. The goal is to ensure the reduction of harmful emissions in air, water, and soil, while promoting resource efficiency and a decarbonized circular economy by 2050.

For German Environment Minister Carsten Schneider (SPD), the directive’s tightening is a cause for celebration. He cited the policy’s successes over the past decade, which have already led to significant CO₂ reductions and fostered greener production in Europe. That technological progress primarily arises from competition and market-driven dynamics hardly factors into today’s political central planning.

High ideological fortresses have been erected, completely obscuring the view of economic reality.

For affected farms, the implementation means one thing above all: a massive increase in documentation, approval, and compliance obligations. They will now be subject to regular emission measurements and detailed reporting, which will be submitted to state environmental authorities and fed into EU-wide registers and public portals—suddenly, transparency matters. This transparency requirement creates intense public pressure on farms to comply swiftly and fully, regardless of how the additional costs will be financed.

Industry experts estimate compliance costs—for example, ammonia emission reductions—between €100,000 and €500,000 per barn, depending on size and technology. If BAT requirements (“Best Available Techniques”) must be retrofitted annually, these burdens can quickly escalate into millions.

Previously, the EU directive applied mainly to sectors such as chemicals, steel, cement, refineries, and energy facilities, targeting primarily large installations with high emissions and throughput. Government officials repeatedly stress that the tightened regulatory pressure applies only to large operations. In reality, both the Supply Chain Act and the new directive create significant pressure along entire supply chains. Large companies are forced to pass their environmental obligations onto smaller suppliers, extending inspection and compliance mechanisms across the entire value chain.

Political Paralysis

Remarkably, European politics remains unfazed by the ongoing deindustrialization of its economic base, stubbornly defending its course. As the industrial foundation erodes, so too does the EU’s geopolitical influence. Every industrial operation that succumbs to regulatory pressure and rising energy costs and relocates takes valuable know-how with it. Value chains destabilize, high factor incomes vanish, and the state faces growing fiscal pressure.

The response to this visible disaster—which led to around 24,000 corporate insolvencies last year—remains predictable: a transparent media performance delivered by government representatives. The Chancellor’s well-meaning calls for bureaucracy reduction are repeated with increasing emphasis, not least in view of five upcoming state elections this year. Bureaucracy reduction has become a standard political phrase with no real consequences.

The underlying strategy becomes clear: publicly, the government positions itself as problem-solver, buying time while steadfastly pursuing the set goal of green transformation.

German policymakers could easily reverse this destructive course. Germany is the EU’s largest net contributor, and key levers of power are held by Christian Democrats in Berlin, Brussels, and the European Parliament.

The only way out of this self-imposed trap would be a return to a fully deregulated free market economy—combined with a political rapprochement with Russian energy flows. Yet the spirit of central planning and presumed industrial control continues to dominate.

Ever-Increasing Bureaucracy

Growing regulation inevitably demands an expanding administrative apparatus. Over the past five years, public sector employment has risen by about two percent annually—roughly 100,000 additional positions. Against this backdrop, the Chancellor’s repeated calls for bureaucracy reduction appear a media tactic farce.

Documentation, proof, and auditing obligations in German industry have taken on Kafkaesque dimensions. In the past three years alone, some 325,000 additional positions had to be created in companies to handle the growing administrative burden flowing from Brussels and Berlin. In effect, the state is outsourcing its own bureaucracy to the private sector.

These political decisions exert tangible pressure on companies. Berlin and Brussels are responding to international competition and U.S. deregulation with policies that intensify existing industrial challenges rather than solving them.

* * *

About the author: Thomas Kolbe, born in 1978 in Neuss/ Germany, is a graduate economist. For over 25 years, he has worked as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.

Authored by Jack Bergman via RealClearPolitics.com,

If the past few years taught us anything, it’s that national security no longer stops at the water’s edge or the factory gate. It runs through the mines, mills, refineries, and logistics networks that supply the metals inside our jets, ships, satellites, power grid, and the next generation of energy technologies.

Copper, nickel, cobalt, and other critical minerals aren’t just components of consumer gadgets; they are the sinews of American strength. And yet, for far too long, we have treated domestic mineral production like an afterthought, outsourcing supply to geopolitical rivals and fragile supply chains while hoping global markets will behave.

That is a strategic gamble we cannot afford.

Consider copper and nickel. Copper is the metal of electrification, essential to everything from radar systems to transformers to the wiring that hardens our bases and powers missile-defense sites. Nickel strengthens steel and is vital for advanced batteries and armor. Demand is climbing as our military modernizes and our economy electrifies. Meanwhile, a handful of countries dominate key stages of mining and processing, creating single points of failure that adversaries can exploit and crises can choke. We wouldn’t outsource fighter jet production to a rival power; why would we outsource the metals that make those jets possible?

A national strategy to close that vulnerability must include responsible American mining. Fortunately, this administration understands the importance of a reliable supply chain and domestic mineral production. In just a few days, Congress is expected to consider legislation to reverse a ban on exploration and mining in an area of northeastern Minnesota rich in natural resources, including copper and nickel. This region contains 95% of our nation’s nickel resources, nearly 90% of our cobalt, and about a third of our copper. Bottom line: This bill is key to unlocking the power of American domestic production to secure our national security.

To be clear, this bill doesn’t greenlight any mine. It simply lifts an unnecessary and harmful ban and allows projects in the area to pursue federal and state permitting once they have the proper permissions to even pursue that path. Due to the many safeguards in place to ensure that mining is done safely and securely, the process is appropriately complicated.

Minnesota’s Iron Range has helped arm and build America for more than 140 years. The region sits atop the world’s largest known undeveloped deposits of copper-nickel resources, which are fundamental to bolstering our nation’s security into the future. If we don’t develop them responsibly here, we will end up buying the same metals from places with weaker protections for workers, communities, and the environment – and with far less regard for U.S. security.

From a security standpoint, domestic mining does three critical things at once.

1. It reduces exposure to geopolitical blackmail. When access to a critical input can be throttled by one chokepoint abroad, you don’t have a market; you have a vulnerability. Bringing supplies home or to trusted allies closes those gaps.

2. It also shortens and hardens supply chains. Fewer ocean crossings and fewer handoffs mean fewer opportunities for disruption, whether from war, piracy, sanctions, or natural disasters.

3. And lastly, it improves traceability. Our military and manufacturers need to know where materials come from and under what conditions. U.S. standards deliver that confidence. Domestic production lets us audit, certify, and, if necessary, intervene.

None of this dismisses local concerns from some. Residents in northern Minnesota cherish clean water and public lands, and so do miners and manufacturers who live there. The answer is not to walk away; it is to show, with data and enforcement, that projects will protect watersheds, honor community input, and deliver transparent, measurable results.

At stake is more than the price of copper or nickel. It’s whether the United States can control the foundations of its own power in an era when control matters again.

We can either keep betting that global supply chains will always bend to our needs, or we can do the work of securing them here at home. Projects in northeastern Minnesota are not just economic opportunities; they are strategic assets.

Let’s treat them that way by permitting responsibility, producing cleanly, and building an American metals base worthy of the nation it defends.

Congressman Jack Bergman represents the First District of Michigan and is a retired U.S. Marine Corps lieutenant general.

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

On Saturday morning the world woke up to news that China’s most senior military officer, who is second only to Xi Jinping, has been put under investigation over alleged “grave violations of discipline and the law.”  The detained Gen. Zhang Youxia is a vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, the Communist Party body that controls China’s armed forces, and this was a major shock given he is widely regarded as President Xi’s closest ally within the military, until now.

Another shock is just what he is being investigated for. While all the initial speculation focused on corruption, The Wall Street Journal on Sunday reveals the top general is accused of leaking information about the country’s nuclear-weapons program the United States. However, this has not yet been confirmed through official Chinese statements or sources.

He is also accused of taking bribes in exchange for official actions, including elevating an officer to the post of defense minister, according to individuals familiar with a senior-level briefing on the allegations cited in this latest Wall Street Journal report.

The accusation of passing Chinese nuclear secrets to the United States is alone quite the bombshell, obviously rising to the level of treason, which could elicit the death penalty – as this represents the most severe crime against national security.

Below are some key lines from the WSJ report, which cites its unnamed exclusive sources:

But the people familiar with the briefing—which hasn’t been reported until now—said Zhang is under investigation for allegedly forming political cliques, a phrase describing efforts to build networks of influence that undermine party unity, and abusing his authority within the Communist Party’s top military decision-making body, known as the Central Military Commission.

Authorities are also scrutinizing his oversight of a powerful agency responsible for the research, development and procurement of military hardware. Those familiar with the briefing said Zhang was alleged to have accepted huge sums of money in exchange for official promotions in this big-budget procurement system. 

The most shocking allegation disclosed during the closed-door briefing, the people said, was that Zhang had leaked core technical data on China’s nuclear weapons to the U.S.

The reference to “undermining party unity” has by now become familiar in President Xi’s ongoing purge of CCP sectors seen as potentially disloyal, or networks of power which present a challenge. In October this was largely the basis for the expulsion of nine senior generals, which marked one of the largest such crackdowns of top military officials in decades. 

Currently there are reports that mobile devices have been confiscated within military ranks and among officials seen as close or under the influence of Gen. Zhang.

The WSJ report is receiving significant pushback from Chinese pundits and sources:

“China’s top General accused of giving nuclear secrets to US”

ACCORDING to People familiar with a high-level briefing on the allegations.

Translation: Trust me bro.🥱It goes without saying WSJ is just adding their own little spices over this incident.

For the record. Zhang… pic.twitter.com/D4n5IvI1su

— Zhao DaShuai 东北进修🇨🇳 (@zhao_dashuai) January 25, 2026

WSJ’s chief China’s correspondent Lingling Wei describes, “And this is far from the end. With thousands of officers having risen through the ranks under Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, these individuals now recognize they are primary targets for a systemic purge.” She reports that “Mobile devices have been seized across ranks and all units are now on high alert.”

Analyst Christopher Johnson, head of China Strategies Group, has meanwhile told WSJ of Zhang’s rapid fall, “This move is unprecedented in the history of the Chinese military and represents the total annihilation of the high command.”

Authored by ‘sundance’ via The Last Refuge,

Last week CPB commander Greg Bovino was asked what makes Minneapolis different from other cities where ICE enforcement operations have taken place. Bovino noted in the Minneapolis region there is no separation between the extremists on the ground and the people in local government.

Today, Vice President JD Vance concurs and expands on that sentiment:

[Source]

What Vice-President Vance says here is very important. 

The regional government is a stakeholder in maintaining the chaos on the streets. 

Why? 

Because for two decades a cancer of rampant financial fraud has been permitted to spread throughout the Minneapolis region and has now reached the stage of visible metastasis.

Shortly after the George Floyd shooting, some of us started looking into a background issue where it seemed like local police and Floyd had a knowledgeable relationship with each other prior to the encounter on the street.  The initial contact between Floyd and police was about Floyd passing off a counterfeit $20 bill to a business that was not part of the approved money laundering operation.

When you follow that trail, you end up in a really weird place where it seemed like millions of counterfeit dollars were entering the country through Mexico, going by rail into the U.S. mainland and then transitioning through the Minneapolis region. I stopped researching it {SEE HERE} when I discovered that Floyd and police officer Chauvin were friends, and worked together at one of the laundry businesses; a nightclub.

ICYMI: CBP officers discovered $900,000 in counterfeit US currency in a commercial rail shipment in International Falls, MN. The counterfeit currency was seized and will be turned over to @SecretService. Details: https://t.co/2xX7nd34Xx pic.twitter.com/eCi8WjN1so

— CBP (@CBP) January 28, 2020

The corrupt activity in the Minneapolis area has been going on for around two decades.  There are two basic components, local financial fraud and govt financial fraud. 

• The local fraud represented millions and involved counterfeit goods/money and laundering operations. 

• The government assisted financial fraud represents billions and involves abuses of federal tax monies.

After 20 years of this activity almost all elements of the economic and social structure are now compromised.  As we have seen in the last several weeks, the HHS/CMS fraud is extensive and that illegal activity is impossible to exist without the knowledge, aid and assistance of the regional and municipal government officials.

Fraudulent day cares, fraudulent healthcare services, fraudulent transport companies, fraudulent “Health Outreach Workers” and various governmental offices all involved in bilking taxpayers for billions upon billions.  At the same time there is a massive money laundering operation in the underground economy.

After two decades of this unchecked corruption, there’s no way to guess how much of the regional economic activity is actually dependent on the financial fraud.  My best estimate is that over fifty percent of all economic activity -in the entire region- is based on fraud.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions are the surface level issue for the regional and state government.  However, it is the widespread financial fraud that turns the activity of the leftist agitators on the street into a useful tool for the regional officials to manipulate in order to hide the true financial fraud that surrounds the area.

The “local authorities” are working with the “far left agitators” because the Minneapolis region is a network of codependent fraud.

The police are compromised. The judges and courts are compromised. The local municipal officials are compromised. The mayor’s office is compromised, and the corruption issue spreads out to the state level when Governor Tim Walz previously shut down audits of the financial crimes and then state officials ignored whistleblowers.

All of the private and public institutions -within the system of regional and state government- are connected to a statewide network of financial fraud, from counterfeit money laundering to exploitation of federal government benefits; it is all connected to the same network of fraud.

It was the ease and ability to conduct fraud that attracted the Somali migrants and the criminal aliens.  These people came for the money. ICE coming to arrest the aliens has put a spotlight on the reason why they aggregated in the Minneapolis region.

How this can be corrected is anyone’s guess.

Follow the money trail and you will discover this real reason for the state and local officials to support the anarchy in the streets.  They all want the federal government to leave.

Arrest Records Here…

Centrus Energy, which has long been one of our favorite stocks throughout 2025 and into 2026, is redirecting over 60% of the $900 million Department of Energy (DOE) funding award back into the economy to secure the US domestic nuclear fuel chain.

Centrus will invest $560 million into their Oak Ridge, Tennessee, centrifuge production facility to convert it to a high-rate manufacturing plant with the goal of quickly addressing the lack of domestic enrichment and get new centrifuge cascades online before 2029. The investment is expected to create over 400 jobs in Oak Ridge, and is likely only the first of many announcements.

Centrus has long differentiated itself from its competition in the uranium enrichment business by highlighting their all-American supply chain and production facility, which also enables them to produce the high-demand unobligated enriched uranium. This is often compared to the commercial-scale competition from Urenco, which has been operating for years out of New Mexico. Urenco uses European centrifuge technology developed by a consortium of the UK and Dutch governments, along with German utility companies.

The US still remains incapable of supporting even its current domestic commercial nuclear fleet, requiring imports of over 99% of raw uranium ore (U3O8) and about 75% of enrichment services.

Relying heavily on countries like Canada and Kazakhstan for U3O8, and a combination of Russia and Europe for enrichment services, this has led to the current table-pounding by Secretary Wright and President Trump to reinvigorate the nuclear fuel chain at every stage. The recent $2.7 billion enrichment award from the DOE is a major part of this effort.

As also noted by Goldman Sachs, the tightening of supply from Russia for U3O8 and conversion/enrichment services has sent prices almost straight up over the past few years since the start of the Ukraine-Russia war. 

The other two awardees of the recent enrichment contract, General Matter and Orano, have yet to provide explicit details as to where the $900 million will be spent.

Like USAR, which we learned had received a massive $1+ billion investment from the US government, Centrus (ticker LEU) is one of the most shorted names in the market, with 25% of its float shorted…

… and we expect to see a major squeeze when it opens for trading tomorrow, especially since it is one of the most popular retail-held stocks according to JPMorgan; in fact just on Friday we listed it as one of the 20 most likely stocks according to JPM to rip in a major short squeeze.

Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

I hate shopping. I hate crowds. I hate malls. I don’t believe I had entered a mall in over a decade, until Monday. My visit to the once vibrant Montgomery Mall in Montgomeryville, PA was a shocking confirmation of what I had been predicting about retail stores since 2008.

Next to the term Dead Mall in the dictionary should be a picture of the current version of the Montgomery Mall. If you need visual proof, here is brief video showing how it is deader than ever.

We didn’t go to the mall to shop. My wife bought me a watch from Macy’s (online purchase) for Christmas. I haven’t worn a watch in over a decade and now that I’m retired, have no need for a watch. So we were going to get a refund and then walk around the mall for some exercise, because the weather outside is bitterly cold. The Mall had three anchor stores: Macy’s, JC Penney, and Sears. The Sears closed in 2020. JC Penney declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2021, but still operates as a zombie like entity on the opposite end of the mall from Macy’s. Macy’s hasn’t declared bankruptcy yet, but their business plan appears to be closing 50 to 100 stores per year, until there are none left.

We arrived at the Macy’s at about 11:00 am on MLK day. Ghost town USA. The few employees we saw outnumbered the customers. A store filled with jewelry, clothes, shoes, and other useless crap had no customers.

It took us ten minutes to find someone who could process a return.

Both Macy’s and JC Penney are clearly in an extend and pretend phase. The entire pitiful mall is pretending to be viable, when it is clearly deceased. What a far cry from its heyday – 1977 until approximately 2007. With three rambunctious boys, my wife spent many days at this mall trying to wear them out. When they were teenagers, I would drop them off on Friday nights so they could cruise around the mall with their friends. Those days are long gone.

The two story Montgomery Mall, with 1.1 million square feet of retail space, was built in 1977 by Kravco. Before smart phones, social media and online ordering, malls were the place to go for shopping mothers and teenagers escaping from their parents clutches. Malls were swarming with people, because they were convenient and accessible. They were the mecca of consumerism, enabled by the all powerful credit card. I have lived in Montgomery County since 1990, with three malls encircling me: The Plymouth Meeting Mall, where my employer’s first store in the U.S. (IKEA) and their headquarters were located; The Montgomery Mall; and the king of all malls in King of Prussia.

At its peak, the Montgomery Mall had over 90 stores/eateries. Major tenants, excluding their anchors, included: H&M, Disney Store, Uniqlo, Boscovs, Tweeter, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Strawbridge’s, and dozens of the usual smaller mall outlets. The bustling food court consisting of Chick-fil-a, McDonalds, Sbarro, Subway, and a Chinese place met all the healthy eating requirements. Yesterday, the number of occupied outlets totaled less than 15. It was a pitiful mixture of dynamite retail juggernauts like Cell Phone Care, Dilshal Halal Cuisine, Montgomery Dental, a pop-up Spirit Halloween store, and a mixture of wireless and jewelry repair stores. I think a store selling Vacancy signs would best suit this nearly dead mall.

The death of this now obsolete mecca of consumerism can be blamed on clueless corporate executives, devious developers, feckless bankers, and technology. The beginning of the downfall can be traced to the acquisition of the mall by Simon Property Group in 2003. These corporate raiders use the legal system to organize their holdings in such a way that they can take on massive leverage, pillage the asset, not repay the debt, and walk away virtually unscathed, like they did in 2021 when the mall was foreclosed upon with a $119 judgment against Simon. Simon Property Group is still a thriving entity, with their stock near an all-time high of $184 per share, because they gate off each of their mall entities so they can go bankrupt and not affect the parent company. Ain’t America great?

The bank sold the stinking, rotting carcass of this beached 1.1 million square foot retail whale to Kohan Retail Investment Group for $55 million in 2021. When you buy a mall for $50 per square foot and still can’t make a profit, you got yourself a dead mall. Kohan has been referred to as “the last owner a mall sees”, investing little in the malls it purchases and allowing mall facilities to deteriorate while trying to sell off out parcels to restaurants and grocery stores. Dead and deteriorating is the correct description of the Montgomery Mall. As we walked around this dank, depressing hulk of cement and glass, my “glass half full” wife suggested they only needed to get a few good tenants to start reviving the mall. I reacted like the clown in Seinfeld when George couldn’t believe he had never heard of Bozo. Malls are either dead or dying. There is no coming back.

I guess I should feel vindicated as I had written dozens of articles about the downfall of retailers and malls since I began writing in 2008, including: Ghost Malls: Coming to Your Town (2008), Extend and Pretend Coming to an End (2012), Available (2013),  Retail Death Rattle Grows Louder (2014), Will Sears Survive Until Christmas (2016). The Covid scamdemic put the final nail in the coffin of the Montgomery Mall, and the rise of Amazon and all online retailing put the coffin in the ground.

By purposely killing malls, they forced more retail online, with only electronic payment as an option. Wait until they institute their CBDCs and then can control your ability to purchase based upon your social credit score. Just observe what is happening in Davos to see your dystopian future. AI will tell you what to buy. Hell, it will buy it for you without asking whether you wanted it at all. No need to think, freedom to choose, or ability to say no.

I see the death of the Montgomery Mall and hundreds of other malls across this land of plenty (of debt) as a metaphor for the imminent death of this American Empire of Debt. The bigger things get, the worse they get. With or without physical malls, credit card debt has risen from $600 billion in 2000 to almost $1.3 trillion today. Meanwhile, the national debt grew from $5.6 trillion in 2000 to $38.5 trillion today. The average American goes deeper into debt each day, as the American empire adds $5 billion of debt each day.

Our cities and infrastructure deteriorate and decay (just like these dead malls), while financial wizards think up new ways to rape and pillage what remains of the national treasury. It’s all a Potemkin facade, propped up by never ending issuance of debt, ceaseless propaganda, increasing surveillance state authoritarianism, and no way out. Mall owners (with their bank partners) have been extending and pretending for over two decades. Our country has been doing the same since 2008. But, eventually the jig is up. The current faux foreign conflicts are designed by the powers that be to distract from the intractable domestic financial disaster coming down the track.

When Dick’s closed up shop in the Montgomery Mall last year, they replaced themselves with a perfectly named outlet which describes the mall and our country.

Trump made history last year as the first sitting president to attend a Super Bowl when he showed up at the game in New Orleans, but on Saturday, he announced he won’t be attending this year. 

Speaking from the Oval Office, Trump blasted the NFL for choosing Bad Bunny and Green Day as halftime performers. Trump told the New York Post that the halftime act represents “a terrible choice” that only serves to “sow hatred.” He confirmed his absence from the game at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, though he insisted the artists are not the reason. “It’s just too far away,” Trump said, adding that he would attend “if it was a little bit shorter.” 

The president made his feelings about the performers clear. “I’m anti-them. I think it’s a terrible choice. All it does is sow hatred. Terrible,” Trump declared. 

Trump blasted the NFL back in October when Bad Bunny was selected to headline the halftime show.

“The NFL just chose the Bad Bunny rabbit or whatever his name is,” Greg Kelly of NewsmaxTV told him. “This guy, who hates ICE, he doesn’t like you, he accuses everything he doesn’t like of racism.”

Kelly added, “This guy does not seem like a unifying entertainer, and a lot of folks don’t even know who he is.”

“I’ve never heard of him,” Trump said. “I don’t know who he is.”

He nevertheless criticized the selection. “I don’t know why they’re doing it. It’s crazy. And then they blame it on some promoter they hired to pick up entertainment— I think it’s absolutely ridiculous.”

According to Entertainment Weekly, Bad Bunny was “the most streamed artist on Spotify in 2025, but he said he avoided bringing his Debi Tirar Mas Fotos World Tour to the continental United States due to concerns that ICE would target his concerts.”

“There were many reasons why I didn’t show up in the U.S., and none of them were out of hate — I’ve performed there many times,” the musician said last year “All of [the shows] have been successful. All of them have been magnificent. I’ve enjoyed connecting with Latinos who have been living in the U.S. But there was the issue of, like, f—ing ICE could be outside [my concert]. And it’s something that we were talking about and very concerned about.”

Last year, a Cygnal poll showed support for Trump’s deportation of illegal immigrants surged with Hispanic voters.

“Among Hispanic voters, 50 percent supported deportations and 48 percent opposed,” Newsweek reported in July. “There was a seven percent increase in overall support since May among this demographic, with an 11 percent rise among those who said they ‘strongly support’ the policy.”

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced last year that ICE would blanket the Super Bowl. “We’re going to be all over that place,” Noem told Benny Johnson in October, declaring that only “law-abiding Americans who cherish this country” should attend. She added that agents would “enforce the law.” 

Green Day has made attacking Donald Trump a recurring feature of its performances for nearly a decade. Frontman Billie Joe Armstrong has altered lyrics in “American Idiot” to target “MAGA,” displayed a Trump mask labeled “IDIOT” at a 2024 Washington, D.C., concert, and led anti-Trump chants during televised award shows. Armstrong has also compared Trump to Adolf Hitler in interviews. 

Turning Point USA, the conservative group founded by Charlie Kirk, who was shot and killed in September 2025 during an event at Utah Valley University in September, announced it would stage an alternative “All-American Halftime Show” to counter Bad Bunny’s performance. Spokesperson Andrew Kolvet said in October that the counter-show would be “a real production” held in an arena.

The organization has not revealed any performers or details about its halftime show, despite the game taking place in less than three weeks. Public relations manager Aubrey Laitsch told TMZ in January that the show is confirmed, but fans must tune in during the Super Bowl to learn the lineup.