Vladimir Putin violates Trump’s temporary winter truce, killing 5 Ukrainians in overnight airstrikes
Tuesday, February 3, 2026
The biggest number in this story is $293.6 million
Wake me when the New York Post writes a story entitled:
Trump's $75 billion ICE Police State rammed through right-wing Congress at taxpayer expense under phony reconciliation rules
The New York Times on the global economy had me and then it lost me
Because it, like too many commentators, uses an obsolete dollar index in DXY, which measures dollar strength or weakness relative to just SIX currencies: EUR, JPY (!), GBP (!), CAD (!), SEK (!), CHF (!).
The Federal Reserve has developed broader indices weighted to the countries the U.S. trades with the most.
U.S. GDP is $31.1 trillion.
EURO ZONE GDP: $16.5 trillion.
Japan: $4.3 trillion.
Great Britain: $3.6 trillion.
Canada: $2.3 trillion.
Sweden: $0.6 trillion.
Switzerland: $1 trillion.
Global GDP: $117 trillion.
... It’s as if cars, instead of slowing down at a flashing yellow light as expected, started speeding up. ...
The traditional connection between the American economy’s performance and the value of the dollar has also been snapped. Uncertainty tends to increase the dollar’s value compared with other currencies as investors seek a safe haven in risky times. But the dollar has sunk to its lowest level in years. ...
Analysts backed down on their predictions that Mr. Trump’s tariff blitz last spring would cause higher prices ...
Even by DXY standards, the dollar is not weak at 97, well within its long term average range between 95 and 105.
And The New York Times is ignoring that wholesale prices increased at a higher rate in 2025 than in either 2024 or 2023.
Traffic fatalities surged during the COVID-19
pandemic. This research highlights the fact that disadvantaged
communities bore the brunt of the increase and calls for holistic
solutions to promote equitable access to safe transportation.
Yes, the dollar weakened in January 2026, but within a big picture environment of a strong dollar not a weak dollar
The nominal broad U.S. Dollar Index last averaged below 120 in December 2023.
Gold and silver climbed to all time highs in January 2026, defying the standard narrative that precious metals are the haven of choice when the dollar is weak.
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| 117.89 on Jan 30th |
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| 119.22 average in Jan 2026 |
Average yields on 20s and 30s are higher in January 2026 than when Trump was elected in November 2024, voting Nay Nay on what's going on
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| Yield on the 10Y is still lower but is saying Me Too |
Gold and silver rebound but remain well off their highs, about -12% for gold, almost -29% for silver
Gold and silver bugs view it as a buying opportunity.
Gold and silver rebound, pulling global mining stocks and precious metal ETFs higher
... Spot gold was last up about 5.5% to $4,921.29 per ounce. Gold futures in New York gained more than 6%, hovering at around $4,936.60 as of 4:48 a.m. ET.
Spot silver rose over 9% to settle at around $86.70 per ounce. Silver futures in New York were up 12% at $86.49. ...
Gold had hit a record high of $5,594.82 on Thursday January 29th, silver
hit a record high of $121.64 the same day.
Monday, February 2, 2026
American Greatness confidently tells us that the American and French revolutions had nothing whatsover to do with one another when French financial support of the American one lead to theirs
Seen here:
... The two revolutions had nothing whatsoever to do with one another ...
They had more to do with one another than not.
Louis XVI unwisely spent literally billions of dollars he did not have supporting the American revolution. His motivation for support was revenge against Britain. Most of it was piled up as high interest debt which the rich of the French aristocracy and of the Church refused to pay but the peasantry could not. Add famine into the mix after trying to squeeze blood out of that turnip and boom.
Donald Trump is spending $75 billion we don't have to round up illegal aliens in the streets using militarized police, but he refuses to punish the employers who get rich off their labor. He got elected promising to cut food and energy costs but here we are one year later and those things still cost a fortune.
Two Americans have been murdered in the streets by government agents.
You can see where this could go, but American Greatness can't.
American Greatness doesn't think too highly of New York Mayor in 1969 John Lindsay of whom it is ignorant, Thomas Jefferson who somehow got elected president, and Thomas Paine whom George Washington found very useful in 1776
Seen here:
... they insist that “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism,” that “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants,” and that we should all be given liberty or given death. It doesn’t seem to matter much to them that the first of these proclamations is entirely made up; that the second was written by a “gentleman-farmer” who spent the American Revolution on a diplomatic mission in France and then, mindlessly, supported the French Revolution, even after it turned bloody; and that the third was uttered by a simpleton who was never really an American and who actually served in the French Revolutionary government. ...
Sunday, February 1, 2026
Monthly mean average temperature in Grand Rapids, Michigan has been below normal for three consecutive months
Actual monthly mean average temperature in Grand Rapids vs. average monthly mean since 1892:
November 2025: 38.7 F vs. 39.1
December 2025: 26.0 F vs. 28.5
January 2026: 20.2 F vs. 23.8
Totals: 84.9 vs. 91.4 = -6.5 degrees F or 7.1% colder.
On an annual basis just a handful of years since 1999 have been at or lower than average temperature of 48.1 F:
2000 48.1
2003 46.8
2009 48.0
2014 46.5.
Snowfall in 2025-2026 to date:
66.2 inches vs. 41.6 normal to date. Annual mean = 66.8 inches.
Saturday, January 31, 2026
Despite his denials last year, Trump's Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was friendly with Jeffrey Epstein in 2012 even though he claimed to have shunned him since 2005
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/us/howard-lutnick-epstein-island.html
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick Planned Trip to Epstein’s Island
Despite his denials, phony baloney plastic banana Elon Musk was very friendly with Jeffrey Epstein in 2012 and 2013
https://www.thedailybeast.com/exposed-musk-now-insists-epstein-files-dont-matter/
Exposed Musk Now Insists Epstein Files Don’t Matter:
Update: Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman all had dinner with Epstein in August 2015.
Friday, January 30, 2026
Core producer price inflation in 2025 under Trump was actually higher than under Biden in either 2024 or 2023
2025: 3.26%
2024: 2.86%
2023: 2.89%
Way to go, Brownie!
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| 2025 |
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| 2H2025 |
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| December 2025 |
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| You talkin' to me? |
Gold bug Peter Schiff's problem is that gold represented at best only about 18% of the value of total global international reserves, and that was yesterday before gold started this price plunge
"The dollar is going to collapse", he said.
"The dollar is going to be replaced by gold", he said.
Central banks "are getting rid of dollars", he said.
"They're getting rid of treasuries", he said.
None of that is true.
The nominal broad dollar index remains relatively strong.
Even foreign official ownership of treasuries is up slightly year over year, shifting slightly from long dated securities to short, while total foreign ownership is up solidly.
Meanwhile fiat currencies represented about 78% of the value of total global international reserves yesterday. The U.S. Dollar alone represented about 55% of the value, followed by the Euro close to 20%.
Gold is not going to replace the dollar.
But Peter will be happy to sell you some, especially today lol.
The wealth inequality of today's K-shaped economy goes back to the Reagan Revolution
They take vacations and buy luxury goods. You struggle to pay for food, shelter, and transportation.
K is not OK.
... A key measure of wealth concentration called the Gini coefficient sits at 60-year highs, according to a report from U.S. Bank published earlier this month. ... The net worth of America’s top 1% hit a record share of nearly 32% in the third quarter of 2025, the Federal Reserve reported. By comparison, the bottom 50% cumulatively held 2.5% of overall net wealth.
The portion of U.S. GDP heading to workers in the form of compensation tumbled to its lowest level in its more than 75-year history, per data tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That means the average nonfarm business worker is seeing an increasingly small slice of an economy that has largely boomed over the last 15 years. ...
Total relative “outlays” — a broad measure of spending and nonmortgage payments — by U.S. consumers in the top 20% hit multidecade highs last year, a data analysis conducted by Moody’s Analytics found. The other 80% tumbled to new lows, the data shows. ...
While the “K-shape” term became popularized as an explanation for the uneven economic recovery seen during the pandemic, economists say the origins of this breakaway can be traced back decades earlier.
This type of diverging economy stems from the economic reorganization seen during the Reagan administration, according to Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at tax firm RSM. About two decades later, the structural break that created the K-shaped economy, as it’s now understood, was more clearly observed in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis of the late 2000s, he said.
That was in part due to the loss of wealth tied to the historic housing market crash, Brusuelas said. On top of that, he said the jump in joblessness limited earnings potential for those without steady employment in their prime working years.
The Great Recession “created the conditions for the winner-take-all economy that emerged in its aftermath,” said Brusuelas, who first heard the K-shape term around 2008. “If you live, work and inhabit certain portions of the economy, you might as well live on the dark side of the moon compared to what goes on down-market.” ...
To make meaningful inroads, the U.S. would instead need to focus on tax reform and expanding social safety nets, according to RSM’s Brusuelas. ...
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