Sunday, February 22, 2026
I keep hearing what a smart guy Jeffrey Epstein was, but his explanation for the housing crisis and the Great Recession doesn't hold up
In a nutshell, Epstein blamed the whole debacle on Bill Clinton, saying Clinton did what he did for votes.
Unfortunately for Epstein, Fannie Mae eased credit requirements to encourage banks to lend to people with lower credit scores starting in 1999. Clinton didn't need any votes in 1999.
Nor did he in 1997 when Clinton signed the Taxpayer Relief Act w/ its $500k home sale exclusion & 2-yr rule, turning homes into commodities.
But of course Epstein wasn't smart enough even to understand the role of the latter, and never mentioned it.
Clinton deserves blame for making the mistakes he made, and so does the Congress for voting for it all, but Clinton most certainly didn't make them to get votes.
A person who thinks that is just a political hack.
How many millions do you need in Jan 2026 to be a Jan 1913 millionaire?
33.19
AI estimates between 208-225k Americans had net worth of $30 million or more in 2025.
For WHAT?
Congress Could Get Healthy Pay Raise...
... In private, many members suggest they deserve higher pay ...
Meanwhile the story never mentions insider trading, which is how the net worth of your average member of Congress becomes about 100 times that of your average American.
Congress doesn't get rich by making $174k, let alone $250k, a year.
Not talking about the real problem seems to be the mission of Congress, and of the press.
Friday, February 20, 2026
Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Supremes rule 6-3 that IEEPA law does not permit Trump's tariffs on the world, Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh dissenting
Supreme Court strikes down Trump tariffs, rebuking president’s signature policy
... Many of those tariffs were invoked using a novel reading of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA. They include Trump’s near-global “reciprocal” tariffs, and separate duties related to the alleged trafficking of deadly drugs into the U.S.
The IEEPA does not explicitly mention tariffs, as the Supreme Court noted Friday. Instead, it allows the president to “regulate … importation” of foreign property transactions after declaring a national emergency in order to deal with certain “unusual and extraordinary” threats.
The Trump administration has argued that language empowers the president to impose tariffs on foreign goods.
Critics charged that the law does not permit the president to unilaterally impose levies of any size on any country at any time. A federal trade court and a federal appeals court both found Trump’s IEEPA tariffs illegal before the Supreme Court took up the case. ...
GDP in 2025 would be double what it is had economic growth continued after 1984 at the 1929-1984 compound annual rate of 6.869%
Nominal GDP in 2025 would be $61.524 trillion instead of $30.778 trillion had economic growth continued at the 55-year 1929-1984 compound annual rate of 6.869%.
That's the difference the 26% reduction in the growth rate to 5.079% has made in the 41 years since 1984.
The compound annual growth rate since the Trump tax reform from 2017 has been slightly, but not a lot, better at 5.795% on an annual basis. Measured 4Q on 4Q over the 8 years the compound annual rate is a little better still at 5.814%.
Meanwhile the seasonally adjusted annual rate of real GDP growth fell from 4.4% in 3Q2025 to 1.4% in 4Q2025 in today's report:
American leadership continues to avoid the elephant in the living room of economic growth.
1984 marked the turn, contrary to Ronald Reagan, when America's best days truly were behind her, and economic growth then hit the big brick wall after 2007 and nothing anyone has done has fixed it.
In the 78 years to 2007 nominal GDP (GDPA) grew at a compound annual rate of 6.525%, but only at 4.281% in the 18 years since then.
The corresponding real values are 3.448%, and . . . just 1.982%.
Yes, that's right. Real GDP (GDPCA) has been growing at sub-2% since 2007.
Politicians who talk up economic growth aspire to better days but do not deliver.
The first step to authentic economic recovery means admitting that you have a problem.
Core pce inflation, the Fed's key inflation indicator, went to 2.996% year over year in December 2025, the highest reading since April 2024, 2025 comes in at 2.8%, 65% elevated above the 2000-2020 average of 1.7%
Does anyone in leadership really care about what this persistent high inflation is doing to America?
Thursday, February 19, 2026
Lawmakers could spare us a lot of Sturm und Drang simply by raising the full retirement age gradually from 67 to 69 and upping the payroll tax by two points, just like we did in the 1980s
The payroll tax went from almost 10% to 12.4% between 1977 and 1990, where it has been the whole time until now (except in 2011 and 2012 under that damn fool Obama).
The full retirement age was also raised in 1983 from 65 to 67, on a schedule starting in 2000 and just concluding this year.
Time to do it again.
AI agrees that raising the full retirement age gradually from 67 to 69, also allowing about 17-years to start the process, and immediately commencing increases to the payroll tax by 2 full points from 12.4% to 14.4% will guarantee the Social Security scheme through the end of this century.
Do it now, Congress.
This is the cleanest way.
These people are as phony as the day is long
... But Kennedy’s MAHA coalition that supported Trump in the 2024
presidential election hates glyphosate, which has been alleged to cause
cancer in myriad lawsuits. Now, the executive order threatens to unravel
that coalition ahead of the 2026 midterm elections that could loosen
the president’s grip on Washington. ...
The massive trade deficits were the main reason Trump instituted his equally massive tariffs to eliminate them, but they're still here lol
U.S. trade deficit totaled $901 billion in 2025, barely budging despite Trump’s tariffs
The U.S. trade deficit swelled in December, closing out a year in which the imbalance was essentially unchanged despite efforts by the Trump administration to close the wide gap.
Closing out a tumultuous year in the global marketplace, the goods and services shortfall in December totaled $70.3 billion, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. That marked an increase of $17.3 billion from November and was well above the Dow Jones consensus estimate of $55.5 billion.
For the full year, the U.S. ran a $901.5 billion deficit, down slightly from 2024 but only by 0.2%, or $2.1 billion. The total was also a bit less than the record $923.7 billion shortfall in 2022.
The report follows a year in which President Donald Trump implemented a series of aggressive tariffs aimed at leveling the global playing field. In April, Trump announced an across-the-board duty of 10% on all imports as well as so-called reciprocal tariffs aimed at specific countries that had run up surpluses against the U.S.
However, during the course of the year Trump softened many of those positions, and negotiations with major trading partners are ongoing.
In an effort to get ahead of the tariffs, companies front-loaded imports during the first three months of the year. The trend abated following the early effort, with October registering the lowest monthly deficit since 2009.
The U.S. had its largest goods deficit with the European Union, at $218.8 billion, followed by China, at $202.1 billion, and Mexico, at $196.9 billion.
Exports for 2025 totaled $3.43 trillion for all of 2025, up $199.8 billion from 2024. Imports also rose, totaling $4.33 trillion, an increase of $197.8 billion.
Wednesday, February 18, 2026
White House economic advisor Kevin Hassett, thankfully passed over for Fed chair, wants NY Fed authors punished for tariff paper he disagrees with
What a jerk.
... The people associated with this paper should presumably be disciplined ...
It's OK when I do it: Hypocritical Trump lauds $36 billion Japanese investment in U.S. oil and gas, one week ago bashed Reagan era $25 billion equivalent in U.S. automotive sector
But Trump's sin could end up dwarfing Reagan's by 22 times.
Trump lauds Japan’s pledge to invest $36 billion in U.S. oil, gas and critical mineral projects
U.S. President Donald Trump has welcomed Japan’s pledge to invest nearly $36 billion in oil, gas and critical mineral projects in Texas, Ohio and Georgia.
The commitment represents the first tranche of investments by Japan following a landmark trade deal between the two countries, one in which Tokyo pledged to invest $550 billion in American-based projects and Trump cut tariffs on most Japanese imports to 15%. ...
Trump expands the police state by bribing local police with monies from the Big Ugly Bill in exchange for help enforcing immigration law
The Supreme Court slapped down Arizona in 2012 for trying to enforce its border with Mexico when Obama wouldn't do it.
Will they slap this down?
Agreements that allow local police to work with ICE skyrocket
Agreements between Immigration and Customs Enforcement and local law enforcement that allow officers to make federal immigration arrests have increased by 950% in the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term, according to a new analysis of ICE data.
As of Jan. 26, there were 1,168 agencies with officers trained to help ICE, up from 135 during the Biden administration and 150 at the end of Trump’s first term, according to the analysis by FWD.US, a nonpartisan policy organization.
The Trump administration has called on local law enforcement to support its growing deportation operations nationwide, reviving a controversial “task force” model that allows local police officers to be deputized by ICE to stop people and make arrests based on suspicion that someone is in the country illegally. ...
ICE’s advertising for the program promised to give law enforcement agencies $7,500 for equipment per trained officer; $100,000 for new vehicles and overtime pay of up to 25% of an officer’s salary.
The analysis shows 39 states have policing agencies now participating, but didn’t give the total number of officers now working with ICE.
The states with the most participating agencies were Florida, with 342 agreements, Texas, with 296 agreements, Tennessee, with 63 agreements, Pennsylvania, with 58 agreements and Alabama with 52 agreements, according to the analysis by FWD.US, which advocates for immigration and criminal justice reforms.
State and local police agencies and sheriffs departments potentially stand to gain between $1.4 billion and $2 billion this year if they agree to participate because of the large infusion of cash from Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, the organization predicted.
“This amount would dwarf all other federal funding for local law enforcement,” the FWD.US report found. ...
Tuesday, February 17, 2026
The warning signs were a lot older than a few days
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15566063/Robert-Dorgan-gunman-hockey-Rhode-Island-warning-signs.html
Monday, February 16, 2026
Sunday, February 15, 2026
The CBO forecasted last week that we will be $64 trillion in debt by 2036
... In CBO’s baseline projections, whereas debt held by the public increases by $24 trillion from the end of 2026 to the end of 2036, debt held by government accounts remains relatively stable, averaging $7 trillion over the next decade. As a result, gross federal debt is also projected to rise by $24 trillion over that period, reaching $64 trillion at the end of 2036. Debt held by government accounts makes up 12 percent of that sum. ...
More (page 18).
Spending: Wei Tu Hai
Taxes: Wei Tu Lo
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