The hypocrite:
Over the last decade, Musk's companies SpaceX and Tesla were awarded at least $18 billion in federal contracts, according to spending data -- with SpaceX winning more than $17 billion worth of contracts since 2015.
And don't forget the benefit of the government coin in the till for every Tesla purchased:
The art of the cave.
The art of the deal would drop NATO membership for a return of the occupied lands, but no, let's concede EVERYTHING for . . . what exactly?
A cessation of hostilities?
These people are a joke and a disgrace.
The average price of utility natural gas was $1.04 per therm 2017-2020.
In Jan 2025 it costs $1.55, 49% more.
Since about 10% of natural gas production is diverted to LNG export for big profits, most of the increase is related to diversion of natural gas from heating to electricity production because of the lunatic policy of retiring massive amounts of coal electric generation capacity.
It makes heating your home much more expensive, and keeping the lights on much more expensive at the same time.
Thanks for nothing, green energy assholes. It's 22 degrees F and snowing in Grand Rapids, MI.
Sorting for the 100 largest flocks of egg-layers affected by H5N1 bird flu since 2022 which have had to be destroyed, as of this morning I count in excess of 21 million chickens destroyed to stop the spread so far in 2025 alone.
Trump pardoned Bannon on the federal charges literally at the 11th hour in January 2021, but not Bannon's partners, who all went to the big house.
New York State went after Bannon separately.
... Saying she was going “scorched earth,” Mace detailed how, in November
2023, she says she “accidentally uncovered some of the most heinous
crimes against women imaginable. ..."
The prayer breakfast incident occurred in July 2023:
Nancy Mace tells prayer breakfast she told fiancé ‘we don’t got time for that this morning’
Maybe she'll change it to an "S" now?
Trump announces plan to stop making new pennies, citing production costs
In the U.S., discontinuing the penny entirely may require congressional approval.
Eliminating the penny would take only 28.6 years to pay for itself ha ha ha ha ha.
 |
| "The Amish have been galvanised to head to the polls and turn the battle ground red." |
The little guy voted for Trump, so naturally Trump is going to screw the little guy, the Amish in particular.
And not mentioned in the story below is the deep resistance to eliminating cash among the denizens of America's survivalist communities. They see this as a control issue, and a potential threat to freedom because you control the cash in your pocket, but not the digital currency in your account. Cross the authorities somehow, and your account can be wiped out with a keystroke.
We already have experienced lawful gun owners and gun businesses being de-banked over gun ownership, among other culture war issues contested by liberal elites using economic coercion.
Meanwhile The UniParty has devalued the 1913 dollar to three cents. If you've only got one, eliminating the penny means you've now got bupkis.
How does the observation go? It's always the Republicans who actually advance the liberalism which the people resist when the Democrats are in control.
Every. Damn. Time.
To the extent rounding up occurs more frequently than rounding down, cash consumers would be paying the price for the cost efficiency Trump and Musk are seeking, said Ajay Patel, a professor of finance at Wake Forest University School of Business. ...
. . . people at the bottom of the economic ladder will probably feel the penny pinch the most.
“The individuals paying for this benefit will be those who purchase products and services using cash and will continue to do so going forward because they are either unbanked or unable to access debit or credit cards or a digital wallet,” Patel said. ...
Laura Maike, of Burton, Ohio, notes that the Amish will feel the pinch right now.
“Here in Northeast Ohio’s Amish country, we still use pennies regularly,” Maike said of her area, which includes thousands of generally cash-using Amish. “How would this work for cash-only transactions? It would be impossible to give exact change as the purchaser or seller.”
More.
.png) |
| gold content: about $542 at today's high |
Gold prices jumped more than 1% on Monday to hit a record high, as safe-haven demand surged on fears of a global trade war after U.S. President Donald Trump announced new tariff plans.
Spot gold was up 1.3% to $2,897.99 per ounce after hitting a record high of $2,905.98 earlier in the session — its seventh record this year.
U.S. gold futures rose 1.2% to $2,923.1.
“The precious metal is set to retain its upward bias, as long as President Trump’s policy threats continue to stoke fear and uncertainty through global financial markets,” said Exinity Group chief market analyst Han Tan.
More.
PM Update:
Spot gold surged 1.5% to $2,903.53 per ounce after hitting a record high of $2,911.30 earlier in the session.
Congress has the exclusive power to coin money and regulate its value, not the president, according to the US Constitution.
But since all coin and currency is worthless, thanks to Congress, does it really matter anymore?
The thieving Roman emperors infamously diluted the value of coinage from time to time by reducing the amount of gold and silver contained in the coins.
Since we had real money once upon a time, our founders didn't want one man potentially messing with the money, so they put Congress in charge, because they really did think a president could become a tyrant.
But our perfect, holy founders who supposedly thought of everything never anticipated that the Congress itself would become the thieving bastards, the naifs.
The 1913 dollar is now worth three measly cents, but even that Mad King Ludwig will now take away.
If we were a free people, we wouldn't put up with this.
The principle remains, even if the circumstances have changed.
Trump takes aim at ‘wasteful’ government spending by ordering end to penny production
But at least one analyst on Wall Street expects that the penny’s days are numbered. TD Cowen’s Jaret Seiberg said the halt will [be] likely to pass judicial review, leading to a shortage in the coin.
“We believe this order would survive judicial review, which is why this is likely to occur,” Seiberg wrote on Monday. “We worry about this leading to a shortage of pennies, which could force merchants to pay banks more for coins. It also adds legal risk for merchants and banks. That could create the crisis needed to force Congress to act.”
Relative to each other by duration, bond yields on average normalized at the beginning of December, and notes on average in mid-December.
Last week the spreads narrowed as bills on average rose a little bit in the aggregate and bond yields fell.
The 20-year bond was the yield leader at 4.75 while the 1-year bill was the yield laggard of all the issues at 4.25.
The fixed rate 30-year mortgage averaged 6.89 last Thursday.
China added nearly 31gw of new coal electric capacity in 2024 and India nearly 6gw while the US retired almost 5gw, according to the story:
. . . U.S. exports of coal have been rising steadily to satisfy growing global demand for the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel, even though its domestic consumption has decreased.
On top of that, the world’s coal capacity reached a new record high of nearly 2,175 gigawatts in 2024, data from Global Energy Monitor showed on Feb. 6. Coal capacity is the overall power output that can be generated from coal-fired power plants. ...
More.
According to Electric Power Annual for 2023 at the US Energy Information Administration, existing US coal electric capacity is down to 193gw, behind natural gas at 572gw and ahead of wind at 148gw. Nuclear is still a distant fourth at 100gw from 93 existing utility-scale generators.
Here:
Musk is viewed more negatively than positively overall. More than half of Americans (54%) express unfavorable views of the billionaire, while 42% view him favorably.
Really, Democrat leadership is looking at it all wrong.
Just shut it down and go home. That's what Democrat legislators have had to do in many states. Might as well try it in Washington.
In fact, put out a general call for all Democrats to refuse to cooperate everywhere in the country, like the communists do in Italy and France.
Don't go to work at the factory. Don't go to work at the school. Shut down all the government offices everywhere. Don't go to work anywhere. Snarl transportation on land, sea, and air. Empty the shelves at the grocery stores. Cancel all the doctor appointments. Let 911 ring and ring and ring.
Call a general strike.
Shut the whole goddamn country down until Trump agrees to play by the rules. Get mad as hell and refuse to take it anymore!
... House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and his Senate counterpart, Chuck Schumer, have been in talks about how best to use the funding deadline to counter Trump. But some top Democrats worry that even if they won policy concessions, Trump would only ignore the law — as they believe he has in some of his initial assaults on federal agencies — so a knockdown, drag-out battle and potential shutdown could be all for naught.
“If the foundational role of Congress is the power of the purse, why would we ever believe them again on an appropriations deal?” said Sen. Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware. “It’s going to be harder for us to work together because it’s harder for us to trust each other.” ...
“We’re not going to keep on bailing him out,” added Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, who is among a growing faction of Democrats who are ready to stare down Trump in a shutdown fight. “We’re not a cheap date.” ...
“If Senate Democrats don’t have the gumption to do what is
necessary in this moment, I believe that House Democrats will,” Rep.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York said. Asked whether the
confrontation could lead to a shutdown, she insisted her party wouldn’t
be to blame and the price of Democratic votes should be “very high.”
More.
Meanwhile at ICE, Vitello told agents in January to
aim to meet a daily quota of 1,200-1,400 arrests. According to numbers
ICE has posted on X, the highest single day total since Trump was
inaugurated was just 1,100, and the number has fallen since that day. On
Tuesday of this week, arrests of immigrants were over 800, according to
a source familiar with the numbers. But last weekend, there were only
about 300 arrests, another source told NBC News.
In order to fulfill Trump’s Inauguration Day promise of “millions and millions” of deportations, the Trump administration would have to be deporting over 2,700 immigrants every day to reach 1 million in a year.
And, as NBC News has reported, arrests do not always equal immediate detentions, much less deportations. Of the more than 8,000 immigrants arrested in the first two weeks of the Trump administration, 461 were released, according to the White House.
More.
They were supposed to end catch and release on day one. They can't do even that.
A federal judge in New York temporarily restricted the ability of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to access the Treasury Department payment system, saying that doing so was necessary to prevent the potential disclosure of sensitive and confidential information.
The early Saturday order by Judge Paul Engelmayer, an Obama appointee, precludes officials without proper background checks and security clearances from accessing the payment system through at least next Friday, including political appointees and special government appointees. It also orders any prohibited person who has had access to the records since President Trump’s inauguration to destroy them. The judge set a hearing for Friday.
Some 19 blue-state attorneys general filed the case Friday evening, saying that Musk’s DOGE initiative risks interference with the payment of funds appropriated by Congress.
Engelmayer said the states were likely to win on arguments that the Trump administration exceeded its authority in allowing broader access to the payment system. He also said the states faced irreparable harm without court intervention for now, including “the heightened risk that the systems in question will be more vulnerable than before to hacking.” ...
Well thank God.
None of these people have security clearances. The say so of President Trump is not a security clearance.
“What is the urgency of this?” the judge asked.
“The President has decided there is corruption and fraud at USAID,” Shumate replied.
I'll say.
Buying co-president Elon Musk's Starlink terminals and funding Melania Trump's and Ivanka Trump's pet projects is corruption of the highest order.
What is the world coming to?
Kennedy’s credit card balances range between $610,000 to $1.2 million in accounts that carry interest rates of 23.24% to 23.49%, the filing shows.
Financial experts interviewed by CNBC said balances that high are unusual.
“That’s a truly massive amount of credit card debt,” said Ted Rossman, senior industry analyst at Bankrate.
Maybe he can borrow some fashion money at lower rates from Kash Ap Patel at the FBI, if they ever confirm him.
A bunch of phony baloney plastic banana good time rock 'n rollas, but I repeat myself.
Melania and Ivanka Trump used thousands of dollars from USAID to fund pet projects during Trump's first term it's been revealed as the agency's spending comes under scrutiny from the president.
The president has gone scorched-earth against the USAID this week, berating its use of tax-payer dollars and saying it had to be 'corrupt' in its spending.
But despite Donald's disdain for the aid agency, it has maintained close ties with his wife and daughter for years by investing in their government ventures.
USAID helped fund Melania Trump's Be Best program and Ivanka Trump's Women's Global Development and Prosperity Initiative during the first Trump term.
And each woman traveled with the agency on separate trips to Africa, where they praised the investments it was making on the continent.
Ivanka Trump travelled with then-USAID administrator Mark Green to Africa in April 2019, where they met with women entrepreneurs in Ethiopia and rural cocoa farmers on the Ivory Coast.
USAID oversaw $265 million per year in spending Ivanka Trump's women's business initiative and an associated antipoverty program.
Melania Trump partnered with the agency on her 2018 trip to Ghana, Malawi, Kenya and Egypt.
In Malawi, the first lady promoted USAID's national reading program, which was donating on Trump's behalf 1.4 million textbooks to the more than 5,600 primary schools in the poverty-stricken nation.
'I am so proud of the work this administration is doing through USAID and others,' the first lady said at the time, 'and look forward to the opportunity to take the message of my Be Best campaign to many of the countries, and children, throughout Africa.'
In his first term, Trump heavily cut funding for the aid agency but it still found money to invest into his family's government ventures.
Ivanka Trump used USAID for her program to promote women in business, claiming 12 million women around the world had been helped by it.
She travelled with the agency to Colombia in September 2019 to run a workshop for women entrepreneurs.
That same year, she also used over $11,000 from the agency to buy video recording and reproducing equipment for a White House event, its records show.
Meanwhile, USAID was one of the first agencies to name an ambassador to Melania Trump's Be Best initiative.
When Melania Trump first announced her signature program in May 2018, she asked government agencies to name a liaison to her group. USAID immediately did so.
At her one-year anniversary celebration in May, Melania acknowledged the agency and thanked it for naming the first Be Best ambassador.
'For the first time in history, the United States Agency for International Development has appointed a Be Best ambassador,' she said.
'On this one year anniversary of my initiative, I call on all of our partner agencies to appoint a be best ambassador who will serve as a liaison between my office and their respective agency to better highlight and promote the programs and services offered to parents and children on behalf of the US government,' she added.
Donald Trump was sitting in the audience listening.
Neither the East Wing, the West Wing, nor Ivanka Trump's office responded to DailyMail.com's request for comment.
USAID delivers billions of dollars in humanitarian aid overseas.
The Trump administration is threatening to shut it down or bring the independent agency under the umbrella of the State Department.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio is now acting director of the agency it's been announced this week.
Hundreds of USAID contractors were placed on unpaid leave and some were terminated. Elon Musk, who is running Trump's Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE program, said the agency would be eliminated.
Its Washington D.C. office is closed and employees were either put on leave or told to work from home.
Trump has said of the agency: 'It's been run by a bunch of radical lunatics, and we're getting them out.'
He also claims it 'had to be corrupt' to approve certain initiatives.
The president has berated the agency for its spending practices, including having a subscription to Politico Pro, a service that tracks legislation and other government news.
And his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, gave a blistering account of USAID's spending. Speaking to reporters at the White House last week, she held up a sheet of paper giving details of the astonishing ways in which taxpayers' money had been doled out.
It was an apparent reference to a story in Daily Mail, which first outlined the shocking expenditures related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), on which President Trump has ordered a crackdown.
'I don't know about you. But as an American taxpayer, I don't want my dollars going toward this crap. And I know the American people don't either. And that's exactly what Elon Musk has been tasked by President Trump to do. To get the fraud, waste and abuse out of the federal government,' Leavitt said.
It's a strange day when I find myself agreeing with Ed Markey.
. . . “The courts, if they interpret the Constitution correctly, are going to stop Musk, are going to stop Trump,” Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Ed Markey told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Thursday.
“Article One is the Congress. Article Two is the president, Article Three is the judiciary. There is not an Article 3.5 where Elon Musk gets to do whatever he wants to do,” Markey said. “They are trying to rewrite constitutional law in this country.” . . .
Three weeks in, the growing storm of lawsuits means some of this young administration’s most extraordinary applications of unilateral presidential power could be reined in. But the litigation also conjures a scenario that no one wants to think about: what would happen if the administration refused to recognize court rulings — even one handed down by the Supreme Court?
This is a particularly acute matter because it’s the Justice Department, which is now operating under Trump’s firm hand, that’s responsible for enforcing the law. The constitutional remedy for a president who breaks the law is impeachment, but Republicans have twice shown that they will not hold Trump to account in such trials, making moot this key check on power envisioned by the founders.
“That is the doomsday scenario,” Ryan Goodman, a former Defense Department special counsel and NYU law professor, told CNN’s Burnett. “So far, they are complying with all the court orders, but what happens come the day that they do lose at the Supreme Court?” Goodman asked.
“If they really want to push it, we are in a real constitutional crisis.”
From the story here.
What Trump is doing will be challenged all the way to the Supreme Court, which already ruled the 1996 version of the line item veto unconstitutional.
Trump is a renegade.
Imagine a Democrat president simply canceling programs Republicans passed and firing all the people in them. That's what this is. And that's what the future will bring if Trump gets away with any of this.
It's anarchy, and it's unconstitutional, however much you may agree with the cuts. The Court will set this straight or the federal government is finished as an institution.
During four months in 2021, real return since August 2000 briefly hit the 5s: 5.06% in August, 5.02% in September, 5.17% in November, and 5.15% in December.
Real return swooned after that, as low as 3.63% in October 2022, making it seem like 2021 might have been a secular turning point.
But by October 2024 real return since August 2000 had recovered to 5.11%, and 5.2% in November, and 5.24% in December.
Is this the new secular peak?
Return might suggest, No, seeing how low it still is.
Valuation might suggest, Yes.
The annual average of the S&P 500 divided by GDP in trillions hit 186 in 2024, a level not seen since 1930 (228) on an annualized basis.
That ratio never got above 139 (2000) between 1937 (165) and 2020 (151).
And this ratio was 180 in 2021, 158 in 2022, and 155 in 2023, all unprecedented for the post-war.
But 186 in 2024 really takes the cake.
The price of the market is really, really rich for the return you get.
... Spot gold was up 0.8% at $2,865.61 per ounce by 01:59 p.m. ET (1859
GMT), after hitting a record high of $2,882.16 earlier in the session. ... Spot silver rose 0.8% to $32.36 per ounce . . ..
-- CNBC
Spot gold gained 1.1% to $2,843.06 per ounce after hitting a record high of $2,845.14 earlier in the session. ... Spot silver rose 1.9% to $32.15 per ounce.
-- CNBC
The Fed started cutting the Federal Funds Rate last September (DFF 5.33 then, 4.33 now), and average yields for notes and bonds started climbing and haven't stopped lol.
White House says Elon Musk serving as a ‘special government employee’
There is nothing in this story indicating that Musk or his employees have undergone the standard background checks.
Unvetted individuals are working with the most sensitive personal data of hundreds of thousands of federal employees and contractors.
Reminds me of nothing so much as Bill and Hillary Clinton possessing the FBI's files on government employees.
Trump pauses tariffs on Canada imports for 30 days after doing the same for Mexico
... Trudeau said Canada had made new commitments “to appoint a Fentanyl Czar.” 😉😉
“Canada
is implementing our $1.3 billion border plan — reinforcing the border
with new choppers, technology and personnel, enhanced coordination with
our American partners, and increased resources to stop the flow of
fentanyl,” the prime minister wrote. “Nearly 10,000 frontline personnel
are and will be working on protecting the border.” ...
In 2024, more than 21,100 pounds of fentanyl was seized by U.S.
authorities on the border with Mexico, compared to only about 43 pounds
seized at the Canadian border. ...
As if the nine-dash line doesn't even exist.
Beattie is a total suck-up, just like Rubio.
Spot gold rose 0.6% to $2,816.53 per ounce by 09:38 a.m. ET, after hitting a record of $2,818.58 earlier in the session.
More.
Later in the day gold hit $2,830.49.
