The Golden Age . . . for business, not for you.
3Q2025, updated Jan 8, 2026:
Sunday, January 11, 2026
If Trump had any true populist balls, he'd push for permanent 10% credit card interest rate caps
... Independent U.S. Sen Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a fierce Trump critic, and Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, a Republican, have previously introduced bipartisan legislation to cap credit card interest rates at 10% for five years. This bill explicitly directs credit card companies to limit rates as part of broader consumer relief legislation.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida have also introduced a bill in the House to cap credit card interest rates at 10%, reflecting cross-aisle interest in addressing high rates. ...
ExxonMobil tells Trump that Venezuela is uninvestable [sic], Trump stiffs ConocoPhillips, Chevron, already there, is ready to go go go
What the Big Oil executives told Trump about investing in Venezuela
... “We’ve had our assets seized there twice, and so you can imagine to re-enter a third time would require some pretty significant changes from what we’ve historically seen here,” Woods told Trump at the White House. “If we look at the legal and commercial constructs and frameworks in place today in Venezuela today, it’s uninvestable.” ...
ConocoPhillips CEO Ryan Lance congratulated Trump on ousting former President Nicolás Maduro. He said the banking sector will need to help restructure Venezuela’s debt and provide billions of dollars in financing for the restore [sic] the country’s infrastructure. ... Trump told the Conoco CEO that the U.S. government is not looking at recovering the assets the company lost during the 2007 nationalization.
“We’re not going to look at what people lost in the past, because that was their fault,” Trump said. “That was a different president. You’re going to make a lot of money, but we’re not going to go back.” ...
Vice Chairman Mark Nelson said Chevron has a way forward to rapidly ramp up its production, which currently stands at about 240,000 barrels per day.
“We have a path forward here very shortly to be able to increase our liftings from those joint ventures 100% essentially effective immediately,” Nelson told Trump. “We are also able to increase our production within our own disciplined investment schemes by about 50% just in the next 18 to 24 months.” ...
Saturday, January 10, 2026
Trump said we're not going to have Russia as a neighbor lol
"Right now, we are going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not because if we don't do it Russia or China will take over Greenland, and we're not going to have Russia or China as a neighbour. Okay? I would like to make a deal, you know, the easy way. But if we don't do it the easy way, we're going to do it the hard way."
Here.
Who's going to tell him?
I hope this doesn't mean Alaska is . . . for sale.
ICE agent filmed his murder of Renee Good, shifted camera from his shooting hand to his left hand ten seconds before he pulled the trigger, showing he pre-meditated use of force before there was even a reason
Video taken by the ICE agent who shot Renee Good in Minnesota on Wednesday was apparently leaked to a right wing website, Alpha News, last night. The video clearly shows Good steering to drive around and away from him when she was shot, in direct contradiction to Trump and Vance's claims that she was deliberately trying to run him over. Interestingly, it also shows him changing his phone from his right hand to his left hand ten seconds before the fatal shots were fired, which freed up his right hand to draw the weapon.
Here.
The ICE agent premeditated his use of force at second 31 in this video he took, probably because of the nasty interchange between him and Renee Good's "husband":
David Brooks: When it comes to fueling rage, it's all on ICE because they are incendiary, unrestrained, acting like thugs
... As to the events of what actually happened, I'm not going to render a
judgment on what happened, because we're going to have an investigation.
I will leave it to them. And I hope Minnesota has full information to
do the investigation.
But what Jonathan said is absolutely correct, that the atmosphere that
ICE has created is incendiary, that people who have power and have guns
are supposed to exercise restraint, and they are doing the opposite. And
the crust of civilization is thin. And once people with guns and with
power begin acting like thugs, well, then things are going to spiral.
And that's what we have seen. ...
More.
Trump's mortgage bond proposal imitates his own "stupid" Jerome Powell on the financing side to reduce interest rates, which is what helped make homes 50% more unaffordable in the first place
The perfect storm of government MBS purchases and sub-3% mortgages through ZIRP in 2021 combined to rocket housing values by 50%.
Housing reached record low affordability a year later, falling to 17.22%.
Yeah, let's do more of that.
Back in the 1990s, before Bill Clinton and the Uniparty got a hold of it and turned it into a commodity, housing was stable and affordable as median income bought 25% of a home.
Trump hasn't gotta clue what to do.
... In the first two months of the Covid pandemic, as markets reeled, the Federal Reserve purchased $580 billion in agency MBS. It then continued buying more throughout the year. From March 2020 through June 2021, the Federal Reserve increased its agency MBS holdings from $1.4 trillion to $2.3 trillion, according to the Dallas Fed.
The Federal Reserve also lowered its own lending rate to zero. The combination brought the average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage to record lows, hitting just 2.75% at the start of 2021, according to Mortgage News Daily. ...
... But Zelman also points out that in the broader home market it’s not just the mortgage rate, but overall affordability that is keeping buyers sidelined. Consumers are stretched, and home prices are close to 50% higher than they were pre-pandemic, ironically because of those record-low mortgage rates brought on by MBS purchases. ...
Friday, January 9, 2026
Federal employment in Dec 2025 is about what it was in 2014 under Obama, despite 277,000 employees sent packing since January 2025
Trump has cut the federal workforce by about 9.2%, but federal employment has actually grown a little since October. Year over year in December federal employment is down 274,000.
Year over year in December local government employment in the United States has grown by 170,000, while state government employment nationwide is down 45,000.
The three categories yield a net cut in government employment at all levels nationwide year over year of 149,000.
Donald Trump has so far done nothing to boost manufacturing employment, which is down 208,000 since Feb 2023 through Dec 2025
Trump's peak average was 12.779 million manufacturing employees in 2019.
We're at 12.732 million on average in 2025.
The 2023 average was 12.873 million, the post-Great Recession peak.
More people than ever are NOT in the labor force under Donald Trump in Dec 2025, 104.094 million, worse than COVID!, and 37.57% on average in 2025 were eating but not working
 |
| The Rush Limbaugh-Donald Trump Dumb Ass Unemployment Rate Dec 2025 spiked to 37.87% |
The unemployment rate in 2025 averaged 4.26% for 11 months of data even as initial claims for unemployment averaged an historically low, if not the lowest, 224k per week
The low but rising unemployment rate on a monthly basis since 2023 seems out of whack with a relatively flat initial claims average on an annual basis since 2021.
Just 49.02% had a full time job in December 2025
The October data remains missing, so the average for 11 months of 2025 comes in at 49.3%, down from 49.65% in 2024.
Full time has been trending lower on a monthly basis since the recent period peak in Jun 2023 at 50.92%
Thursday, January 8, 2026
Why not both?
Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.
-- RFK
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