Authored by Mark Keenan via RealityBooks.com,

How debt-based money quietly became the engine of global control — and what real reform could look like…

Introduction: Why Money Power Matters

Most people graduate school knowing trigonometry but not how money is created. We learn to vote for parties but rarely examine who shapes the economic terrain those parties must walk on. Yet for more than a century, the power to create money as interest-bearing debt has quietly concentrated economic and political control in private hands. The result is a world where nations strain under compounding obligations, public debate revolves around the margins of policy, and whole societies become dependent on a credit system they neither designed nor fully understand.

This essay distills key arguments and quotations (historical and contemporary) about how modern banking actually works, why debt has become the engine of governance, and what that means for sovereignty, prosperity, and even our moral compass. The aim is not to recycle slogans but to clarify mechanisms: how money enters circulation, who benefits first, who bears the risks, and why the system almost always demands more growth, more extraction, and more debt.

1) The Core Mechanism: Money as Debt, Not as Value

A century of central banking and commercial credit has normalized a simple but profound fact: most new money is created when banks make loans. As former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert B. Anderson put it in 1959, when a bank issues a loan, it credits a deposit that did not exist the moment before; the new deposit is “new money.” In practice, this means the money supply expands primarily through private lending, not public issuance.

That mechanism is turbocharged by fractional-reserve banking and today by capital-based banking rules: banks do not lend out pre-existing savings one-for-one; they expand deposits by creating credit. Interest is attached to that credit, meaning the system requires continual new borrowing to service past borrowing. If credit creation slows materially, defaults rise, asset prices wobble, and political pressure mounts to “stimulate” again. In short, we live inside a treadmill that is far more credit-driven than most civics textbooks admit.

Critics from Henry Ford to John Scales Avery have argued that this arrangement is structurally unjust because it privatizes the seigniorage (the profit of creating money) and socializes the fallout (inflation, asset bubbles, austerity). Whether or not one accepts every claim these critics make, the underlying math is hard to ignore: when money arrives as interest-bearing debt, the system has a built-in bias toward ever-expanding leverage.

2) From Private Credit to Public Power: How We Got Here

Modern banking’s political leverage grew alongside institutions like the Bank of England and, later, the U.S. Federal Reserve (established in 1913). Whatever the intention of their founders, central banks now sit at the junction of state and finance: they are publicly mandated yet operationally insulated (and privately owned), coordinating liquidity to stabilize the system while commercial banks originate most money-like claims.

This hybrid design has real consequences. It allows a small circle of decision-makers to set the price of money (interest rates), backstop private balance sheets in crises, and influence fiscal choices by making some policies financially easy and others expensive. Former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan once emphasized the institution’s independence; the flip side of that independence is low democratic visibility over choices that shape every mortgage, job market, and public budget.

Beyond national central banks lies the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel — often called the “central bank of central banks.” Through standards (Basel accords) and coordination, it helps align global banking rules. Critics argue this produces a technocratic layer of control over national economies with little public oversight. Whether one views that as prudent stewardship or as democratic deficit, it underscores a theme: the architecture of money governance is largely opaque to the public it governs.

3) Debt as an Organizing Principle: Nations on the Hook

If money is introduced mainly through borrowing, then borrowers become the gearwheels of the system. This is true of households, firms, and crucially governments. National debts have exploded over decades. Interest on those debts is neither a schoolbook abstraction nor a harmless line item: it diverts tax revenue from public goods to creditor claims year after year.

Concrete examples illustrate the point. Countries such as Ireland have paid billions annually in debt interest, amounts that can reach a significant share of national profits in strong years. Canada has spent tens of billions per year on interest at various points. The United States services hundreds of billions annually. The deeper the debt stock and the higher the rates, the more fiscal space narrows — and the easier it is for outside creditors and institutions to demand policy concessions as the price of liquidity.

International lending reinforces the pattern. When a country is pulled into a crisis, the usual medicine involves austerity and privatization in exchange for financing — effectively transferring public assets and future cash flows into private hands. Even when such programs stabilize a currency, they often leave a legacy of reduced sovereignty and social strain. Either way, the organizing principle remains: service the debt first.

4) Why Perpetual Growth Feels Non-Negotiable

Once you grasp that interest-bearing credit is the dominant source of new money, the politics of “growth at any cost” make more sense. If economies must expand to service past obligations, then policymakers are incentivized to chase GDP even when the ecological or social returns are negative. This is why governments of every stripe tend to converge on similar policies when growth stalls: tax incentives to borrow and invest, financial repression to keep rates low, deficit spending to plug holes, and pressure on central banks to ease again.

Critics like Roy Madron, John Jopling, and John Scales Avery have argued that this growth-dependency crowds out other goals: equitable distribution, environmental stewardship, and cultural stability. It also explains why mainstream debates often avoid the root structure and instead focus on the speed of the treadmill. We argue about 2% vs. 3% inflation rather than who issues money, who captures seigniorage, and who eats the losses when cycles turn.

5) The Federal Reserve: Public Mandate, Private Origins

The Federal Reserve occupies an unusual space: a public mandate (stable prices, maximum employment) implemented through a system owned by member banks at the regional level. Court language has long acknowledged that Federal Reserve Banks are corporate entities with private shareholders (commercial banks) electing many directors. The Board of Governors is a federal agency, but the operational plumbing marries public purpose with private infrastructure.

From an accountability standpoint, this hybrid model raises fair questions:

• Who ultimately benefits when the Fed backstops markets?

• How do we balance public interest with the stability of private balance sheets?

• Why is the creation and allocation of money largely engineered by institutions that citizens do not vote for?

Even defenders of the status quo should concede that the communications gap is vast: the average citizen has little idea how reserves, repos, and facilities translate into real-world wealth effects. That lack of transparency naturally makes people suspicious — even when the suspicion isn’t always justified — because it means the public has little idea how major financial decisions are made or who benefits from them. In the end, this secrecy prevents ordinary citizens and their representatives from openly debating choices that affect everyone’s livelihoods.

6) Usury, Inflation, and the Cost of “Stability”

When money is predominantly debt, interest is not a side note; it is a structural tax on all who need money to transact. Banks, by creating credit, collect streams of interest that compound through the system. Meanwhile, inflation — the dilution of purchasing power — often becomes a necessary byproduct of keeping debt-loads serviceable. In practice, inflation acts as a stealth transfer from savers and wage earners to those closer to the spigot of new money (large financial institutions and asset owners).

This is not an argument to abolish credit; modern economies need flexible financing. It is an argument to name the trade-offs honestly. When we call monetary loosening a “stimulus,” we should also disclose who absorbs the loss in purchasing power and who gains from asset inflation. When we raise rates to “fight inflation,” we should admit the cost in jobs, bankruptcies, and public budgets. Stability is never free; it is reallocated volatility.

7) The Global Layer: Coordination Without Consent

Beyond national systems lies a web of global coordination — standards, swap lines, and lender-of-last-resort arrangements that knit economies together. Institutions such as the BIS, the IMF, and development banks shape the terms of liquidity and restructuring. Supporters say this is necessary to prevent contagion; critics counter that it allows a transnational financial class to set conditions on democratic societies in moments of maximum vulnerability.

Both views can be true. But whichever side you take, the outcome is similar: creditors hold leverage, and policy follows balance-sheet realities. The deeper the debt and the tighter the markets, the narrower the options for governments and citizens. This is not a conspiracy; it is a design choice we rarely discuss.

8) Sovereignty, Media, and the Narrative Problem

The power to create money and allocate credit inevitably spills into media and politics. Owners of major financial claims own or influence the platforms that shape public narratives. This does not mean that every newsroom takes orders from a bank; it does mean that structural critiques of debt-money systems are often marginalized, while surface controversies get saturation coverage.

The result is a public perpetually debating symptoms — inequality, housing bubbles, wage stagnation, austerity — without interrogating the monetary architecture that channels outcomes. Representative democracy then becomes a choice between parties that manage the same treadmill at different speeds.

9) The Ethical Dimension: Stewardship vs. Exploitation

Strip away the technicalities and we’re left with a moral question: What is money for? If it’s a public utility that measures and mobilizes real work and resources, then its creation and allocation should be transparent, accountable, and aligned with the common good. If money is something sold for profit and interest instead of managed for the public good, then we should at least admit we’re living in a world where banks’ claims on our future work matter more than people’s well-being today.

Across traditions — secular and spiritual — there runs a consistent thread: wealth is stewardship, not ownership. “Dominion” over the earth does not mean permission to strip-mine the future; it means responsibility for the living systems that sustain us. Any economic architecture that demands perpetual extraction to service compounding claims will eventually collide with ecological limits and human dignity.

10) What Reform Could Mean (Without Utopian Promises)

This essay does not prescribe a single fix, but it points toward principles that reformers across the spectrum could evaluate:

1. Monetary transparency: Citizens deserve clear explanations of how money enters circulation, who receives it first, and on what terms.

2. Seigniorage for the public: Explore mechanisms by which the gains from money creation serve public priorities rather than accruing primarily to private balance sheets.

3. Counter-cyclical buffers: Policies that reduce boom-bust extremes (e.g., stricter leverage in booms; automatic stabilizers in busts) can mitigate the human cost of credit cycles.

4. Sovereign capacity: Restore and protect national capacity to issue money or public credit directly for real-economy projects, with independent audits to curb abuse.

5. Ethical limits: Recognize that any system demanding infinite growth on a finite planet is mathematically fragile and morally shortsighted. Design for resilience over hype.

These are not radical ideas; they are overdue discussions in a world where nearly everyone is a debtor, directly or indirectly, to a machine that few understand.

I explore these dynamics in greater depth in my book The Debt Machine: How Private Banks Engineered Global Control, which traces how private money creation became the hidden architecture of global power — and how sovereign nations can reclaim control over credit and policy.

Conclusion: Seeing the Machine

If you remember only one thing, let it be this: money is not neutral. How it is created, who controls its issuance, and what claims attach to it determine the shape of our economies and the boundaries of our politics. We can disagree about the best reforms, but we can no longer afford civic illiteracy about the monetary plumbing that governs our lives.

In a healthy society, the architecture of money would be a public conversation, not a specialist’s secret. Until then, the treadmill will keep turning — and those closest to the controls will keep deciding how fast the rest of us must run.

*  *  *

Mark Keenan is a former United Nations technical expert and the author of The Debt Machine: How Private Banks Engineered Global Control and Climate CO₂ Hoax: How Bankers Hijacked the Environment Movement. His work examines how global finance and policy networks shape the modern world behind the scenes.

Venezuela has accused the United States and Trinidad and Tobago of orchestrating a covert operation to destabilize the Caribbean, escalating tensions in a region already strained by geopolitical rivalries, according to a report by The Miami Herald.

On Sunday, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez announced the alleged capture of “mercenaries” linked to the CIA, describing the arrests as part of a “false-flag operation” intended to provoke a military confrontation with Venezuela. The government provided no details on the number of suspects or the circumstances of their detention, leaving the claims unsubstantiated.

Venezuela also accused Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar of surrendering her nation’s sovereignty to U.S. interests, effectively turning the country into a “military colony.”

The Maduro regime also criticized the joint military exercises between the U.S. Southern Command and Trinidad, labeling them a “hostile provocation” that threatens regional stability.

“By aligning herself with Washington’s militarist agenda, Persad-Bissessar not only seeks to attack Venezuela and break our historical bonds of brotherhood, but also violates the United Nations Charter, the CELAC declaration of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace, and the principles of CARICOM,” the Venezuelan government’s statement read.
Venezuela also claimed, without evidence, that Trinidad was responsible for human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings.

“We do not seek war with anyone. We have never declared war on anyone,” Venezuela’s Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello told NTN24. “But we have learned to defend ourselves, and we have also learned to carry out devastating counterattacks when necessary.”

The accusations come amid a significant U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean as the Trump administration ramps up efforts to combat drug trafficking, with a particular focus on the Cartel de los Soles, which U.S. officials allege is led by Maduro. The ongoing operation has resulted in the killing of 43 alleged drug dealers and two captures, according to The Miami Herald.

This kind of sounds like a repeat of 2024, when Venezuela announced that it had detained four US citizens and a handful of other foreign nationals, who they say were working with the CIA and Spanish intelligence to overthrow Maduro – something both western governments have denied. 

Last week, Trump has signaled the possibility of expanding operations, including potential ground interventions in Venezuela, a move which could anger the non-interventionist supporters.“We are certainly looking at land now, because we’ve got the sea very well under control,” Trump said recently. “We’ve almost totally stopped it by sea. Now we’ll stop it by land.”

Last month, Trump posted a video on Truth Social of a video showing women, some appearing overweight, training with guns for what was claimed to be the Venezuelan militia.

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

In the late 1850s, “Bleeding Kansas” was the term used to describe the escalating cycle of violence, when surrogates for the Union and soon-to-be Confederacy fought each other over whether Kansas would be admitted as a free or slave-owning state.

As the assaults and killings increased, radicals set the agenda.

The logical next step was the nightmares of Fort Sumter and Bull Run.

Those calling for restraint and peaceful resolutions were considered weak and traitorous. The thuggish and violent, instead, were praised as the true idealists and patriots, the real “base” of their respective parties.

We have witnessed a growing wave of left-wing assassins and would-be assassins in the last few years: James Hodgkinson, Luigi Mangione, James Crooks, Ryan Routh, Elias Rodriguez, and Tyler Robinson, who have targeted Republican House leaders, CEOs, Donald Trump, Jews, and Charlie Kirk. For months, leftists vandalized or torched anything to do with the Tesla brand, and with virtual impunity, they sometimes went after individual Tesla owners. Jews walked in the shadows on campuses, where mobs cheered Hamas killers.

From June through October 2020, Antifa- and BLM-led rioting led to 35 deaths, $2 billion in damage, 14,000 arrests, and 1,500 injured police. On January 6, violence left five dead, four from the protesting side.

But whereas the federal government immediately and often excessively jailed both violent and peaceful 2021 protesters, almost all of the 14,000 protesters and rioters of 2020 were released by left-wing blue-city and federal prosecutors and judges.

ICE officers and facilities remain under siege in a number of major cities. In this current left-wing legitimization of violence, the Democrat Party is now embracing an eerie channeling of an earlier, pre- and post-Confederate ethos. Nonstop Democrat grandees call for their resistance to hit the street, if need be, to go lower than the “gutter,” and to “let your rage fuel you.”

The demagogic, anti-ICE bluster of Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, California Governor Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek, and Portland Mayor Keith Wilson is nullificationist and state-rights supremacy to the core.

New York mayoral candidate Zoran Mamdani, in the spirit of Jefferson Davis, recently summed up the left’s resistance best, bragging that he hoped to disconnect New York local governance from federal government authority entirely—at least in the obligatory rather than beneficiary sense.

But do not left-wing states’ righters also applaud rogue lower-court federal judges who create and apply all sorts of edicts to stop the enforcement of federal law?

The Democrat-appointed judges confidently and accurately assume:

1) that they will certainly be reversed but can successfully continue to fabricate laws and make up jurisdictions and rules to delay and obstruct the administration;

2) that unlike their Democrat supporters who opportunistically ignore federal authority, the targeted Trump administration will abide by their federal rulings until they are reversed;

3) that any loss of judicial reputation by their biased and unsound rulings is more than made up by their new folk status among Democrats as fanatic Never Trumper activists.

Blue-state elected officials, both local and statewide, believe not only that the federal government has no jurisdiction to enforce the laws of the land in their locales, but that they themselves have the right, and indeed the duty, to use their own resources to impede them.

But blue states and cities have a peculiar notion of “states’ rights.” Under the Obama administration, Democrats once cheered on the federal government’s blockage of former Arizona governor Jan Brewer’s efforts to use state resources to enforce federal immigration law, which an open-borders Obama White House had refused to fully do.

How odd, then, that the left supports federal supremacy when it chooses not to enforce its own laws but opposes it when it follows and enforces federal statutes.

Of course, should any red city, county, or state declare itself immune from a Democrat-run federal government—for example, local authorities ignoring federal gun registration laws or endangered species mandates—then the left would use the full force of the federal law to crush such “state-righters.”

This new one-sided, left-wing, states’-rights movement also took off during the first Trump administration. Then, some 600 state and local “sanctuary city” jurisdictions declared that they would not hand over arrested criminal foreign aliens residing unlawfully in the U.S. to federal authorities.

Currently, local Democrat officials from Chicago to Los Angeles unabashedly boast that not only will their own police forces not aid in the deportation of apprehended or criminal illegal aliens, but they will also often actively oppose federal law enforcement—whether by offering street sanctuary to violent anti-ICE protesters in Portland or ordering Chicago-area police not to come to the aid of embattled and blockaded ICE officers.

An unhinged Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) now brags she wants local California officials to arrest federal ICE officers. But the former Speaker of the House does not elaborate on what sort of “encounter” will follow when the latter federal, armed officers are lawfully enforcing the law, and the former armed state officers are breaking the law in trying to stop them. Bleeding Kansas? A mini-Fort Sumter?

The last time we saw such brazen state efforts to nullify federal law took place in 1957 at Little Rock, Arkansas (President Eisenhower versus Governor Orval Faubus); in 1962 at Oxford, Mississippi (President Kennedy versus Governor Ross Barnett); and in 1963 at Tuscaloosa, Alabama (President Kennedy versus George Wallace).

Like their current counterparts, all such governors pleaded states’ rights, damned federal intrusion into their own affairs, and counted on their own state residents to protest and intervene for their shared anti-federalist and nullificationist agendas.

Social media is now ablaze, as are street protests, with attacks on federal officials and with defiant calls from state and local residents to use any means necessary to stop federal enforcement. State officials smear federal officers as “Nazis” and “Gestapo”—and then up the ante by creating electronic “ICE trackers” so that illegal aliens and their supporters can evade federal officers, dox them, and put them in physical jeopardy. The logical end to the violent designs of California nullificationist officials will be either wounded or dead ICE officers.

That 80-90% of currently arrested cohorts of illegal aliens either have prior criminal records or past-due deportation orders seems irrelevant. The cause of the current nullificationists is not so much illegal immigrants per se but rather using state resources to defy the Trump federal administration, as it acts lawfully as representatives of the U.S. government.

No wonder the antebellum firebrand and killer John Brown has become a popular blue-state rights icon—precisely because he was willing to kill his opponents. The violent left-wing “John Brown Gun Club” is now mainstream. Howard University professor Stacey Patton recently urged white liberals to “be like John Brown. Ask yourself, what am I willing to burn so somebody else can breathe?”

She apparently was advocating the sort of violence that characterized Brown’s armed raid on Harpers Ferry that helped ignite the Civil War, or his earlier 1856 Pottawatomie Massacre, where he oversaw the execution of five pro-South settlers.

The escalating violence in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland bears an eerie resemblance to the precursors to the “Bleeding Kansas” madness of the late 1850s, in which, eventually, local law enforcement often ignored or joined in the violence of ad hoc thugs, sometimes in opposition to the federal government.

As in the bloodletting of 19th-century Kansas, the current activist left, in the street and on social media, makes no effort to hide their glee over Charlie Kirk’s death, to mask their disappointment that Trump survived two assassination attempts, or to deny that assassin Luigi Mangione is now a popular left-wing icon.

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, whose incompetence and left-wing blinders ensured the L.A. fire, seems unconcerned with her failed city, as she daily poses on the barricades as a resistor of federal law.

Governor Gavin Newsom has no answers for his multibillion-dollar high-speed rail catastrophe. He remains indifferent to the state government’s responsibility for dozens of horrific forest and brush fires.

Perennial candidate Newsom is unconcerned with the state’s crippling costs of insurance, gas, and electricity, or California’s record high gas and income taxes, or its now chronic multibillion-dollar budget deficit, or its $1.6 trillion in unfunded liabilities.

Instead, Newsom only comes to life to post that the federal Homeland Security Secretary will soon have a “bad day” (“Kristi Noem is going to have a bad day today. You’re welcome, America”), or that he is willing to smack the mouth of the President (“We are going to fight back and we’re going to punch this bully in the mouth.”) or to strike his Republican opponents (“We are going to punch these sons of bitches in the mouth.”).

In sum, officials both threaten and sanction violence against ICE.

When challenged by federal officers, violent street thugs run to the protection of sympathetic local police.

If an ICE officer is besieged, he has no assurance that local or state officers will come to his aid and confront his attackers.

Assassins are praised; their victims are slandered.

So we are Bleeding Kansas.

Democrats and the left nevertheless press ahead—even as they know where their madness ultimately leads.

The Maryland Freedom Caucus, a coalition of conservative Republican members of the Maryland House of Delegates, is preparing to go on the offensive alongside other state lawmakers across the Mid-Atlantic area in a new regional alliance to combat and break the stranglehold that far-left lawmakers have had on regional politics for decades, which they argue has torpedoed the regional power grid with failed climate change policies and triggered the worst power bill crisis in a generation. 

“Politicians and special interest groups have traded energy independence for a delusional climate cultist ideology, and every Maryland family is paying the price with skyrocketing bills and a rapidly dwindling energy supply,” Maryland Delegate Brian Chisholm told local TV station Fox Baltimore.

Here is a clip of Trump speaking at the UN on green energy.

Should we dive into the amount of money the Biden administration and democrats gave to NGOs just for adding “environment” or “climate” into their purpose for their grant application.

One of them literally says,… https://t.co/pRxszWW8zp pic.twitter.com/vg4L6pK3pM

— SKDoubleDub (@SKDoubleDub33) September 23, 2025

Chisholm continued, “We stand firmly united with our colleagues in neighboring states to deliver real, adult solutions and finally put an end to the childish nonsense impacting our state.”

ICYMI: https://t.co/IXynLYD8o4 pic.twitter.com/PzQsOpnP3F

— Maryland Freedom Caucus (@MDFreedomCaucus) October 23, 2025

Powering the Mid-Atlantic plans to hold hearings in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia. The state delegates are joining forces because their states all share the same grid and transmission lines and have seen power bills skyrocket due to backfiring climate change initiatives, such as retiring reliable fossil fuel power plants for unreliable solar and wind. In return, PJM (Mid-Atlantic) remains critically tight, with limited spare capacity. We’ve outlined this alarming development last summer (read here). 

“Pennsylvania is poised to lead the energy revolution,” said Representative David H. Rowe, chairman of the Pennsylvania House Republican Policy Committee. “Aligning energy policies with our neighboring states has been some of the most productive collaboration I’ve experienced this session. I commend my colleagues in the Maryland, New Jersey and Virginia delegations and look forward to working toward a balanced solution for a balanced grid.”

The coalition of lawmakers comes as the power bill crisis spread across the Mid-Atlantic this year, from Maryland to New Jersey, putting Democrats who control these states at serious risk in future elections. 

Power Bill Crisis Sends Maryland Gov. Wes Moore’s Approval Plummeting https://t.co/uQebt96XLa

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 12, 2025

With Election Day in New Jersey just days away, Republicans in the state launched an all-out blitz against Democrats, unveiling a new ad that pinpoints progressives for their epic mismanagement of the grid.

Electricity prices are OUT OF CONTROL and leaving New Jerseyans HOT under the collar. 😉

Are you tired of getting burned by the New Jersey Democrats?

Then it’s time to tell your friends & neighbors to flip the switch. VOTE Republican on Tuesday, November 4th! ⚡️ pic.twitter.com/IOQLTiLuPE

— Mike Testa (@TestaForNJ) October 24, 2025

We’ve told readers…

In one year, this will be the most popular chart on this site pic.twitter.com/h93gWXMoNL

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 11, 2025

Backfiring climate change initiatives have collided with the era of data center hookups across the Mid-Atlantic area. The Trump administration has rushed to bring retired fossil-fuel power plants back onto the grid to increase desperately needed spare capacity, while nuclear power won’t be a major story until the 2030s.

Perhaps Republican lawmakers in the Mid-Atlantic have a breakthrough to communicate to voters just how terrible Democrats have become with their left-wing policies. Meanwhile, Democrats in these states have spent more time catering to illegal aliens, DEI, and other Marxist-aligned policies instead of finding proper solutions to fix this power mess. Sounds like people in these states are about to vote with their empty wallets.

Authored by Philip Wegmann via RealClearPolitics,

President Trump leafed through the MAHA report moments before its public release, scanning the document that laid the blame for chronic disease in children on everything from ultra-processed foods and a lack of exercise to toxic chemicals and overprescription of medicines.

He asked only one thing when he looked up from his reading: How many of its recommendations could be implemented and how quickly?

Cabinet members replied that they were prepared to move quickly. Trump signaled his satisfaction but, according to sources in the East Room that day last May, delivered a warning. Before staff opened the roundtable discussion to the press, the president told his people, “If you don’t get it done, you’re fired.”

The celebrity president often recycles his famous catchphrase from his era in reality television, but while he became famous for rather unceremoniously firing members of his first administration, he has not given anyone the boot during his second White House season. Whether it was a quip or a threat, the message was received. Trump is serious about cementing the MAHA movement into the greater MAGA coalition, especially before the coming midterms.

Between 4 and 6% of non-Trump voters backed him for the first time last November precisely because he adopted the vow of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to “make America healthy again.” As Republicans now look down ballot, they hope to bottle that “MAHA bounce” to save their congressional majorities. Sources inside the administration and allies outside of it believe that embracing the movement would not only deliver new voters but also give the GOP a ready answer on how to talk about health care.

“It is just an incredible gift to the Republican Party,” Tony Lyons who now leads MAHA PAC – the political action committee most associated with the movement – told RealClearPolitics. Trump doesn’t believe it came with a gift receipt. He has already embraced, and personally advanced, much of the movement’s agenda.

Trump brought the Presidential Fitness Test back to public schools and advertised the gym exam as “a wonderful thing.” His administration has pressured corporations to ditch artificial food dyes, taken steps to make sugary drinks and soda ineligible for food stamps, and banned the prescription of ingestible fluoride for children. He floated a disputed theory about the connection between the painkiller acetaminophen and childhood autism, telling pregnant women to “tough it out” rather than take Tylenol.

Some of the moves have been more controversial than others. Kenvue, the manufacturer of Tylenol, for instance, disputed Trump’s claim, citing “independent, sound science.” But a senior administration official heralded Trump all the same for “embracing messy conversations around agriculture, vaccines, and pharmaceutical product.” It was evidence, the official told RCP, that the administration is willing to “touch the hot stove” if it means fostering a debate about the health of the nation.

It is also a signal to some health-conscious voters, many of whom voted Democratic prior to 2024, that they have a home in the Republican party. “Right now, these Trump voters – the GOP is just renting them,” Trump pollster John McLaughlin told RCP. Speaking of the coalition Trump cobbled together consisting of disaffected Democrats and traditionally liberal constituencies, he added that Republicans “need to make a decision if they’re going to make them permanent.”

After Trump brought MAHA voters into the fold, according to a senior administration official, the question now is whether “it is a credible statement to say that MAHA is an important tool to broaden the Republican coalition and win future elections.” The GOP will have to swim alone in populist waters someday, the official added, while explaining the urgency on the right to solidify the realignment that Trump achieved in 2024: “There’s a growing sense that we need to have MAGA outlast Trump.” Hence, the efforts to keep MAHA onboard ahead of the midterms.

Republicans are still trying to figure out MAHA. The sentiment is simple enough. The movement is new as a political force and hardly a monolith. It is a patchwork of factions worried about everything from food safety to the pharmaceutical industry. One corner obsesses over the use of pesticides in agriculture. Another focuses entirely on the alleged link between autism and childhood vaccines. To critics, it is a collection of cranks, kooks, and online hustlers looking to earn a quick buck.

But the problems that the movement identifies have been undeniable for some time, even if the MAHA prognosis is not accepted.

“This is about the future of America. We’ve become the sickest, fattest, most disease-ridden nation in the world,” said Gary Brecka, host of “The Ultimate Human” podcast with a following in the millions. “We shouldn’t be proud of the fact that we spend $5 trillion a year on health care, and yet, we lead the world in things like morbid obesity, Type 2 diabetes, and multiple chronic diseases in a single biome.”

That is, not coincidentally, the same conclusion that the MAHA presidential coalition reached in a report authored by Secretary Kennedy. The kids are not all right, the HHS secretary concluded, calling them “the sickest generation in American history.”

“The pandemic rattled the cage of the world and certainly of America,” Brecka told RCP as he explained how the health focus that used to be predominantly a mainstay of blue enclaves like Brooklyn crossed over into red, and often rural, America. As far as the criticism goes, he replied, “The basic premise of science is a hypothesis, which is a question, right? And it’s very fascinating to me, that by asking questions about ‘the science’ that is somehow anti-science, when, in fact, it’s actually the very foundation of science itself.”

Credentialed experts will quibble with, and have already criticized, that sentiment. Those focused on the business of political science, namely winning elections, report that MAHA will be potent in the midterms.

The movement remains popular across the political spectrum, including among Hispanic and black voters, according to a survey conducted over the summer by the Republican polling firm co/efficient. New polling released earlier this month by KFF (formerly Kaiser Family Foundation), meanwhile, found that nearly four in 10 parents, 38%, identify as MAHA supporters. Whether skeptics or disciples of the movement, parents overwhelmingly identified the same set of issues facing children’s health from social media to the prevalence of highly processed foods and the rise of obesity.

Those numbers point to an opening, said Ryan Munce, president of co/efficient. Health care remains a perennial political issue. Republicans are historically very good at articulating what they oppose, namely Obamacare. Opposition to the Affordable Care Act helped sweep GOP majorities into Congress in 2010 and 2014 and Trump into the White House in 2016. Now Munce is encouraging candidates “top to bottom” to embrace MAHA as a positive platform.

“If we don’t have those mid- to long-term solutions to what’s truly not a health care crisis, but a health crisis, in this country, the rest of the conversation about ‘is my premium going to be 10% higher or lower,’ while very important in the everyday,” he said, will obscure “the overall story.” In a word, Munce and other MAHA political operatives told RCP they are stressing something holistic.

Vani Hari agrees. “It is the answer,” she said, “because it’s the preventative answer, the answer to how you get out of a health care system that’s killing you, that’s killing all of us.” A former Democrat who served as an Obama delegate at the 2012 Democratic National Convention, she built a brand as “the Food Babe,” attracting a social media following in the millions with her warnings about ingredients in food she considers toxic. But now it is Republicans, not Democrats, who are scrutinizing the food industry and setting themselves up for political gain, said the woman the New York Times dubbed “the Taylor Swift of the MAHA moms.” Hari describes the current moment, and next November, as “for sure a reckoning.”

The GOP should not take that coalition as a given. While Trump and RFK Jr. have earned their support, Hari said that Republicans down-ballot still need to prove that they are on board. “We are going to do the side-by-side comparison for the candidates,” she told RCP, likening political analysis to the “side-by-side of ingredients” parents do in the grocery store when choosing between brands.

Her question will be, “How MAHA are they?”

The closest thing the movement has to a political nutritionist may be MAHA PAC, a super PAC founded by former RFK Jr. campaign staffers. Lyons, the leader of that organization, insists that the same voters who buoyed Kennedy in the Democratic primary, and later Trump in the general election, are about to prove themselves in the midterms. He believes the administration has delivered “dramatic wins” and made “incredible progress” acting unilaterally from the executive branch.

“But the fight is far from over,” he said. “We need the support of lawmakers to complete the mission, and we can offer our support, backed by millions of voters for whom health is an existential issue and millions of dollars that we’re raising from passionate donors.”

Among the MAHA faithful still waiting for more from Congress is activist Kelly Ryerson, who goes by “the Glyphosate Girl” on social media. The moniker is a reference to a key ingredient in some Roundup weed killers and a chemical culprit in certain cancers. Trump promised to crack down on pesticides. His administration has yet to rein in that industry, a fact that has disappointed some activists. First, the MAHA report seemed to go easy on the issue. Then, House Republicans advanced a spending bill that includes what critics call “a liability shield” for pesticide companies.

More than 200 MAHA activists, including Ryerson, penned an open letter to Trump warning that if Republicans do not crack down, “they risk losing both moral ground and political support.”

They were not subtle. “Mr. President, creating broad liability protections for pesticides is a losing issue for your party and your coalition,” the undersigned added, “and may well cost you the House majority in the midterms.”

Ryerson clarifies that she is thrilled with the president. She met with the EPA, FDA, and USDA during the Biden administration but never saw the same kind of results. She described Trump 2.0 to RCP as “a completely different ballgame” and insisted she still had “confidence that the goal is still to basically detoxify our food system.” Her frustration is with Congress.

And it could boil over.

Ryerson reports that there have been early conversations among some in the MAHA movement about backing primary challengers “to challenge the Republicans who just are not coming along.”

On Capitol Hill, Republicans have played nice with Kennedy. They have mostly welcomed the former Democrat into their ranks. He is, after all, the most popular member of the president’s cabinet at the moment. But the HHS secretary drew the ire of lawmakers with his plan to remake the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, specifically its vaccine advisory panel.

The MAHA crowd has consistently called for more oversight of vaccines. Some draw a direct link between an increase in childhood autism diagnosis and a vaccine schedule they deem too aggressive, though medical experts widely dismiss that allegation. A clash came in committee last month.

Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, a physician before politics, asked Kennedy if Trump deserved the Nobel Prize for Operation Warp Speed, the pandemic-era project that developed a COVID-19 vaccine in record time and has been credited with saving millions of lives. The HHS secretary said yes. Why then, alleged Cassidy, had he consistently opposed mRNA technology both as a private attorney and a public servant?

“As lead attorney for the Children’s Health Defense, you engaged in multiple lawsuits attempting to restrict access to the COVID vaccine,” Cassidy said. “It surprises me that you think so highly of Operation Warp Speed when as an attorney, you attempted to restrict access to the COVID vaccine.” 

Kennedy countered that the COVID vaccine was effective against a particular mutation of the virus at a particular moment in time and noted that Trump had never supported a mandate. Cassidy then read from a letter from a medical colleague detailing confusion over which patients ought to receive the COVID shot. The FDA had just approved an updated vaccine for anyone age 65 and older, and any child six months or older with an underlying health condition that places them at increased risk of the virus.

“I would say effectively we are denying people vaccine,” the senator said.  

“You’re wrong,” the secretary replied.

Cassidy was not the only Republican to voice displeasure. Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, a physician and the second-ranking Republican in the upper chamber, reminded Kennedy that “in your confirmation hearings, you promised to uphold the highest standards for vaccines.” The changes Kennedy had made at HHS and CDC, he concluded, had left him “deeply concerned.”

It was a rare flashpoint between the administration and a generally accommodating Congress. But it isn’t likely to inspire Republican-on-Republican violence. Republican incumbents can breathe a sigh of relief as far as MAHA PAC is concerned. Lyons told RCP his organization isn’t looking to help mount a challenge from their flanks. He said that it wouldn’t be “the right move” for MAHA to tell lawmakers that “we’re going to primary them if they don’t do this or that.”

The political message of MAHA, according to Lyons, is that the coalition wants “to educate people and we want them to see the enormous potential for winning in the midterms based on this issue.”

Tension still lingers under the surface as the realignment continues. Asked about the criticism from Barrasso and Cassidy, a senior administration bristled to RCP that the pair “have been accepting pharmaceutical donations all their life.”

A Barrasso spokeswoman flatly dismissed that criticism, noting that the majority whip helped rally Republican support for Kennedy’s nomination both in committee and on the floor. They added that the senator-physician “has always been pro-vaccine but anti-mandate,” a position “no different” than that of Trump. Cassidy similarly voted for Kennedy and has also publicly praised several MAHA initiatives from getting petroleum-based dyes out of foods to demanding additional accountability from the pharmaceutical industry.

Cassidy and Barrasso introduced a resolution earlier this week to nominate Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize for launching Operation Warp Speed. The MAGA crowd would love to see Trump win, but they have largely soured on the product of that initiative.

Recent polling from the president’s own pollster, Tony Fabrizio, found that just 22% of Trump voters now believe it is currently “important” to receive the COVID jab. They are, however, overwhelmingly supportive of vaccines in general. A clear majority of Trump supporters, 73%, agree with the sentiment that “vaccines save lives.”

Trump still brags about Operation Warp Speed. He recently called it “one of the greatest things a president has ever done for this country, and you could say the world.” According to a report by the White House physician when Trump underwent a physical at Walter Reed Medical Center this month, he received the flu shot and a COVID-19 booster shot.

Democrats are already looking forward to the midterms and probing for fractures in the MAHA-MAGA alliance. Many of those voters, after all, once called the Democratic Party home.

“Trump and RFK Jr. are actively putting Americans at risk. They’ve alienated huge swaths of Americans by making it harder to get popular and safe vaccines, shamed pregnant women for using Tylenol, and disregarded the advice of doctors and medical experts,” said DNC spokeswoman Kendall Witmer. “Meanwhile, Trump and RFK Jr. have broken key promises they made to the MAHA movement on everything from pesticides to pollution to childhood diseases,” she added. “With the midterms approaching, the coalition that put Trump in office is falling apart, as Trump and RFK Jr. become a liability to Republicans down ballot.”

Some friction is to be expected between the GOP and the various MAHA sects. Ryerson chalked up the disconnect to a generational and ideological divide. Younger, health-forward voters recently brought into the Republican fold will have their differences with the old guard. But they aren’t likely to break with the right so long as Kennedy is at Trump’s side.

“Each time there is a hearing, and you see Democrats just tear RFK Jr. apart,” Ryerson said, “it is a good thing for Republicans.” This provides an opportunity for the GOP to reprise their role, she said, as “the MAHA component.”

And in this way Trump hopes to cement that part of his winning 2024 coalition into the fabric of his newly realigned party. White House spokesman Kush Desai reiterated that Trump has “full confidence” in Kennedy and endorses the overall mission of MAHA.

“The MAHA Agenda isn’t just a set of federal policy proposals, but a grassroots movement that’s revolutionizing the health decision-making of food companies, restaurant chains, and everyday Americans,” Desai said. “The administration is committed to building on this movement and uniting the Americans who want to restore American Greatness in every sense.”

Ahead of the midterms, if some get their way, this means adopting the MAHA message as the GOP answer on health care.  

The nation’s largest union of federal workers has called on Congress to pass a ‘clean’ short-term funding bill to immediately end the government shutdown which is now in its fourth week. 

Representing over 800,000 federal and Washington government workers, the American Federation of Government Employees argued that the shutdown was an “avoidable crisis” that harms American families and workers nationwide.

“Both political parties have made their point, and still there is no clear end in sight,” said AFGE President Everett Kelly. “It’s time to pass a clean continuing resolution and end this shutdown today. No half measures, and no gamesmanship.”

Notably, Republicans have repeatedly pushed for exactly this – a ‘clean’ continuing resolution that keeps the government open. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has urged Senate Democrats to support it with no success, while many other House Republicans support the clean CR that the House already passed which would keep funding at current levels. 

Senate Democrats have repeatedly voted down these ‘clean’ CRs. 

“When the folks who serve this country are standing in line for food banks after missing a second paycheck because of this shutdown, they aren’t looking for partisan spin,” Kelly said on Monday. “They’re looking for the wages they earned. The fact that they’re being cheated out of it is a national disgrace.“

While federal workers are guaranteed back pay once the government reopens, the Senate last week rejected a GOP-led effort to pay active-duty members of the military and certain federal workers during the shutdown – with Democrats insisting that they would back a proposal to pay all federal workers and prevent the Trump administration from firing anyone during the shutdown. 

“It’s time for our leaders to start focusing on how to solve problems for the American people, rather than on who is going to get the blame for a shutdown that Americans dislike,” said Kelly. 

Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

Antifa Out, Mamdani Ascendant…

“Protests are meant to be the voices of the unheard. Yet these protests are the voices of those who never shut up.”

– Unnamed Observer of No Kings, reported by Roger Kimball

Over the weekend, you might have noticed, the Portland, OR, police cleared out the Antifa encampments down around the city’s ICE facility, carted away their lavish riot supplies, and warned them not to congregate on the street there. For now, anyway. Hmmmm. . . . Why do you suppose that happened? Antifa has been rioting freely around federal buildings in Portland since the Summer of Floyd, 2020. Did the police suddenly notice that Antifa has been disturbing the peace?

So far, nobody in the news media has bothered to ask the Portland Police honchos about this sudden change of heart, nor did the honchos venture to say. Did word come from higher up to finally put a stop to Antifa’s psychotic monkeyshines? Like, from Mayor Keith Wilson or Oregon Governor Tina Kotek? Wouldn’t you say those two have got some ‘splainin’ to do?

After all, the Antifa actions at this particular address were not just peaceable assemblies petitioning the government for redress of their grievances, as the Constitution has it. They were often violent efforts to interfere with federal officers going about their duties, namely, the expulsion of illegal border-jumpers. Left unsaid by the aforementioned persons in authority was whether they were in on that interference.

You can probably assume that they were. They represent the Democratic Party, and that is who allowed millions to jump the border between 2021 and 2025 under “Joe Biden,” evidently to lard their voter rolls and enable never-ending ballot fraud. The law is pretty clear about all that. If you come here without due process, you are subject to deportation. The gang behind “Joe Biden” tried to get around that by claiming that the millions flooding in were all “asylum seekers,” every last one, and thus here within due process of the immigration laws.

That was simply not truthful. It was as fake as the “Joe Biden” presidency itself.

Of course, there is the looming matter of Mr. Trump’s proffer to send in federal troops to protect ICE officers while they see to their duties. Also, days ago, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller remarked that state and local politicians who interfere with ICE operations could face arrest and prosecution for criminal conspiracy, obstruction of justice, or even seditious conspiracy. Is that conspiracy theory? No, it just recognizes agreement between two or more parties to engage in criminal conduct, falling under federal statutes 18 U.S.C. § 371 plus 18 U.S.C. § 1503 (obstruction of justice) and 18 U.S.C. § 2384 (conspiring to levy war against the government, prevent, hinder federal duties, opposing federal authority, et cetera).

The penalties for those crimes can be heavy. Governors such as Tina Kotek, or JB Pritzker, or Gavin Newsom, or my own Kathy Hochul here in New York could face up to twenty years in prison on raps like that. Mr. Miller is giving notice that the new administration is not fooling around. We have lived through an era when fooling around was allowed and promoted. It did quite a bit of damage to the nation. Things have changed.

These moves by such bumptious pols also have the look of skirmishes preceding something that smells like Civil War, which is to say, insurrection.

As a kind of sadistic object lesson, the Democratic Party is running a Jihadi communist for mayor of the nation’s premier city, New York. Imagine that, twenty-four years after 9/11! The cheek! Zohran Mamdani has run his campaign on the credible issue that the city is unaffordable for the non-rich. He is surely correct about that, though he misunderstands why that is.

I will tell you why that is: because all the Leftist progressive (socialist / communist-inflected) policy of the past eighty years in New York City has made property ownership and management almost impossible, including especially decades of their favorite ploy, rent control, and has created an artificial shortage of affordable housing in particular. Then, the Covid-19-era rent payment moratorium drove a stake through the heart of affordable housing. How can you take care of a building in which tenants do not pay any rent? How can that be a credible business? Do you understand that property management is a business? It has to pencil-out, cover its costs, make a profit.

Zohran Mamdani wants more of that, affordability-by-decree, which means he will for sure get less affordable housing and more property that no one wants to take care of — which is what slums are. That, plus a lot of other so-called policies aimed at persecuting anybody crazy enough to do business at any scale in New York. So, Zohran Mamdani and his delirious supporters are joyously marching into the wreckers’ ball for New York. Jihad is just the cherry on top of all that.

Mr. Mamdani is apparently a sure thing to get elected on November 4. Of course, Hillary was a sure thing, too, back in 2016, so we’ll just have to stand by and see, but his two opponents in the race are about the sorriest figures ever seen in a city that has historically produced cavalcades of political rogues, morons, and scoundrels.

The less obvious outcome, though, given Mr. Mamdani’s youth, lack of administrative experience, and cargo of hopeless ideologies, is that corruption and racketeering will run wild during his years in City Hall. It will make the Boss Tweed era look like a political golden age.

Via The Libertarian Institute 

As President Donald Trump headed to Malaysia on the first leg of his Asia tour, he told the media to “put out the word” that he would like to meet with North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un. 

“They have a lot of nuclear weapons, but not a lot of telephone service,” Trump said on Friday. The President met with Kim three times during his first administration. While the summits led to a significant decrease in tensions on the Korean Peninsula, Trump failed to make a deal with Kim. 

Since Trump returned to the White House, top North Korean officials have said that Kim is willing to meet the President again, but Washington must remove its demand that Pyongyang give up its nuclear weapons.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has restated the long-standing policy in Washington that any deal with Pyongyang must include denuclearization. 

The Wall Street Journal spoke with current and former US officials who admitted that North Korea was unlikely to give up its nuclear weapons:

Recognizing North Korea as a nuclear state would be a dramatic shift in U.S. policy, which for decades has aimed to persuade Pyongyang to dismantle its arsenal with a mix of economic and diplomatic pressure.

Ending that stance would usher in a new era in U.S. relations with North Korea, one where the two countries engage as fellow nuclear powers instead of fierce adversaries.

Trump referred to North Korea as “sort of a nuclear power.” He added, “I know how many weapons they have. I know everything about them. They have a lot of nuclear weapons.”

And on Monday, the Washington Post reports:

So much so, Trump suggested aboard Air Force One on Monday, that he would extend his nearly week-long trip to make the meeting happen, if Kim agrees.

“It’s our last stop, so it would be pretty easy to do,” Trump told reporters on his way to Japan, when asked whether he would delay his return to Washington on Thursday if it meant meeting with the totalitarian state’s leader.

Minutes after saying he doesn’t want to meet with Mark Carney, Trump says “I got along great with Kim Jong Un. I liked him, he liked me. If he wants to meet, I’ll be in South Korea.” pic.twitter.com/yw1sXW8XVa

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 27, 2025

Two US officials said that the US had not reached out to Kim before the summit, and Trump’s statement was the first invitation to North Korea for a head-of-state meeting. 

While North Korea has not committed to meeting with the US, Kim has noted that he has a positive relationship with Trump.

Late in the U.S. cash session, Reuters dropped a startling headline: Amazon is preparing to take a Javier Milei-style axe to its corporate workforce, planning to slash upwards of 30,000 jobs as soon as tomorrow.

Reuters, citing three people familiar with the matter, said the 30,000 corporate job cuts set to begin tomorrow will amount to approximately 10% of Amazon’s corporate workforce of about 350,000 employees. However, the cuts represent a relatively small share of the company’s total workforce, which includes about 1.55 million warehouse and delivery workers.

The planned layoffs are aimed at reducing costs and reversing pandemic-era overhiring.

If confirmed, this would be Amazon’s largest round of layoffs since it cut about 27,000 jobs beginning in late 2022.

Shares of Amazon fell after the report, reversing some gains in the cash session.

Just wait until AI-related job losses begin to pick up for the e-commerce giant… 

By Benjamin Picton, Senior Strategist At Rabobank

The Dow Jones closed up more than 1% on Friday, the S&P500 rose by 0.79% and stocks are set to close higher today following the release of a benign CPI inflation report and news that the USA and China have come to agreement on a new trade deal. Bitcoin caught a bid over the weekend and both the AUD and NZD are trading higher this morning as representatives from both sides indicated that progress had been made on export controls, port fees and fentanyl issues. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the 100% additional tariffs that the US was set to impose on Chinese imports from November 1st are “effectively off the table”.

Thursday will be the critical day this week for the trade negotiations. That is the day that Presidents Trump and Xi are set to meet on the sidelines of the APEC conference to sign the agreement nutted-out by their respective underlings. In an interview with CBS Bessent said that he expected China to defer its stringent export control regime on rare earths and resume buying US soybeans. He also said that the US would not be changing its export controls directed at China, which restricts the sale of high-end AI chips, software applications and certain aerospace components.

Bessent also said that Trump and Xi are planning to discuss a global peace plan, where Trump hopes to gain support from Xi to end Russia’s war in Ukraine. That would be quite the development because peace in Europe would allow the United States to focus its efforts on containing China in the Western Pacific, and so would seemingly run counter to China’s own vital strategic interests. If China does indeed agree to loosen controls on the export of rare earths and pressure Russia to end the war in Ukraine, without extracting commitments from the US to lift its own export controls, it will look like capitulation on the part of the Chinese. In market parlance that would be XACO, not TACO.

Over the weekend Trump also ‘Truthed’ that the USA will be applying an additional 10% tariff to imports from Canada in retaliation for a TV advertisement run by the Province of Ontario that used audio from former President Ronald Reagan to criticise the use of tariffs in trade policy. The additional tariff follows an announcement from Trump earlier last week that he was terminating trade negotiations with Canada over the advertisement.

Trump claimed that the advertisement was “fraudulent”, quoting criticism from the Reagan Foundation that claimed the ad was selectively edited and misrepresented Reagan’s views. PBS fact-check disagrees with that assessment, but leaving accuracy to one side the decision to criticise the country that buys 75% of Canada’s merchandise exports (and who has a notoriously thin-skinned leader) in the middle of the World Series is a masterclass in the impolitic. CAD is this morning underperforming other high beta currencies and Toronto stock futures are conspicuous in their restraint as Canada cops the fallout of what market parlance might politely term the MAFO (mess around and find out) trade.

In geopolitics news, Argentina appears to have handed a ringing endorsement to the laissez-faire policies of President Javier Milei in midterm elections. With 92% of the vote counted the Wall Street Journal reports that Milei’s Freedom Advances party has won almost 41% of the national vote and will likely more than double its representation in Congress to win approximately 30% of the seats. That result exceeds the predictions of most polls and likely shores up deals with Washington for the USA to provide a $20bn USD currency swap facility and an additional $20bn in private loans. Trump had earlier tied that support to Milei’s prospects in the elections by saying “if he wins, we’re staying with him. And if he doesn’t win, we’re gone.”

Pundits regularly call the Trump style “transactional”, and the transaction here is monetary support in exchange for support of the US’s Monroe Doctrine foreign policy goals in South America. A huge part of that is supporting the role of the Dollar as the global reserve currency – highlighting the geopolitical importance of US Dollar swaplines in ensuring that Argentina trades in Dollars and not in… something else.

While the USA seeks to bolster its own influence in what it sees as its geopolitical backyard, Beijing has been busy trying to internationalize the role of the Renminbi by converting Dollar-denominated development loans into CNY. Reuters details a recent refinancing where a $3.5bn railway infrastructure loan to Kenya was converted to CNY, saving Kenya about $215m/year in interest repayments due to the lower yields associated with CNY lending. Bloomberg reports that Ethiopia is considering a similar move to convert up to $5.38bn of Dollar-denominated loans into CNY to reduce financing costs.

Of course, there is no free lunch here and Beijing is effectively accepting debt haircuts in order to expand the CNY’s role in global trade and settlement. The end game is to erode the global role of the Dollar, and reduce the US’s ability to exert influence via sanctions, the freezing of central bank assets or the extension/withdraw of Dollar swaplines. China’s comparatively low interest rates give it an advantage in convincing other countries to borrow in its currency rather than Dollars.

As it happens, there is a FOMC meeting scheduled for this week. A 25bp cut to the Fed Funds rate is now fully priced, as is a follow up cut in December (our full preview available here). With capital markets now clearly an open front in the geopolitical competition between the USA and China, you can bet your bottom Dollar that the Administration will be lobbying Powell and Co to go harder on cutting Dollar financing costs. Inflation is a secondary concern.