TRUE BORN SONS OF LIBERTY

Friday, September 4, 2026

This blatant political interference with the full faith and credit of the United States by the president should be condemned by everyone

Trump doubles down on threat to halt trade with top partners unless Fed cuts rates

Every age group in America has lost its worth ethic to one degree or another, for one reason or another

The percentage of each age group's population which works is in structural decline:

Teens since 1978 (get a haircut and get a real job);

College kids since 1989 (because they went to college more and more after that, duh);

Core adults 25-54 since the late 1990s (they keep getting knocked down but they mostly keep getting back up again 👍 -- this is a huge tranche with some people carrying the load more than others, and you know who you are);

Americans 55 and over since 2019 (the Great Recession didn't kill 'em, from which they made more than a nice recovery, but they are not going to recover from the pandemic era for decades to come because Peak Baby Boom turned 62 that year).

Trump's immigration policies have been all sound and fury, signifying nothing

All theatre.

Yes, very bad theatre, but theatre nonetheless.

The foreign born population in August 2026 is virtually unchanged from October 2024.

When yields were hopeful about federal spending cuts from DOGE and federal revenue increases from tariffs

"Fiscal discipline" from Mad King Ludwig:

Trump is too stupid to take the win handed to him by +162k payrolls in August

New York Fed’s Williams says yield surge due to strong economic prospects

Analysis: Lower Treasury yields could require a weaker economy. Trump won’t fix them

... The rise in real yields is “more of a reflection of the strength of the economy,” New York Federal Reserve President John Williams told CNBC Wednesday. Some people want to read the rise in yields as dragging on the economy, but that logic is backward, he said.

“It’s not really about financial conditions affecting the economy. It’s more about the economy affecting financial conditions,” Williams said.

The flip side of Williams’ analysis is that it may take an economic slowdown for borrowing costs to cool. But that isn’t a solution anyone would want to root for.

This will never not be funny

They hate you with the heat of 1,000 suns.

U.S. payrolls rose 162,000 in August, much more than expected; unemployment rate at 4.1%

10Y yield at 4.64% and 30Y at 5.16% is good actually

I don't know how you crash something that was so tiny already, but Trump found a way

Manufacturing employment as a percentage of population:

Mad King Ludwig blows another gasket

Trump tells Fed to slash rates or he’ll end trade with countries with U.S. surpluses

If ever an act deserved the hook, this is it.

Golden Age NOT: Just 49.14% had a full time job in August 2026, the second lowest figure for an August in 11 years

Both Biden and Trump have had this figure above 50%, but even that has been pathetically weak.

Compared to the past, 50% should be the floor, not the ceiling.

I remain disgusted with the complacency of both political parties, as demonstrated by the complete absence of urgency about the one thing which is the very ticket to the middle class.

August 2016: 49.59%

August 2017: 49.87%

August 2018: 50.36%

August 2019: 50.94%

August 2020: 47.44%

August 2021: 49.18%

August 2022: 50.58%

August 2023: 50.68%

August 2024: 49.98%

August 2025: 49.44%

August 2026: 49.14%

Thursday, September 3, 2026

Marco Rubio is not far from the kingdom of God

Secretary Rubio: America Made A "Terrible Mistake" Deindustrializing For Globalization "Fantasy"

The Reagan tax revolution made America ripe for globalization, but you can't explain that to a mouthbreather.

The goal wasn't globalization.

After all the dotcom malinvestment, the entry of China into the WTO opened a door to a ready, welcome, and fateful solution which became globalization, funded by oodles of low marginal ordinary income tax rates.

We need more philosophers, and fewer Rubios.

The nerve of these people

The rate cut in September 2024 was the real disaster because inflation was not licked, and yields now have simply retested their highs after some hopeful but ultimately failed signs of spending discipline around DOGE and of increased revenue from tariffs.

The failure to win in the Persian Gulf just compounded the inflation problem, restoring the status quo ante, and then some.

The Fed is the one needing the help, but it isn't going to get it from a spendthrift Congress and reckless executive branch.

Vance says Fed should lower interest rates: ‘Would be nice to have some help’

One reason I don't trust the Trump Administration's illegal immigrant statistics is that we didn't have the biggest increase to the foreign born population until January 2025 when Trump & Co. took charge of the data

The percent increase to the foreign born population was 3.27% in January 2025, the highest on record.

That's a Trump Administration figure which it is more than happy to blame on Biden, but it came out under Trump's watch in February 2025, not under Biden.

It would be to Trump's advantage to exaggerate the problem on the front end to claim larger effects on the back end.

But it makes ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE that there would be the biggest surge of immigrants into the country ever just as their biggest enemy ever is about to take office.

Meanwhile the biggest percentage declines to foreign born population came in June 2023 and April 2024, 1.91% and 1.92% respectively, when Biden was still president.

We don't interpret that as evidence of a non-existent Biden policy which was tough on migration.

Whatever one makes of the government data, it shows that we still have 48 million foreign born in America in July 2026, same as we did in December 2023. The figure captures both legal and illegal aliens in addition to American citizens.

The question I have is why is this all coming out one day before we get the August 2026 data?

Are they expecting bad news and trying to get out ahead of it?

Trump cuts migrant population by nearly 3 million; total U.S. population likely to drop

President Trump has cut the illegal immigrant population by 2.3 million since he took office, according to a preliminary analysis of government numbers to be released Thursday.

... The drop in illegal immigrants, although significant, is lower than the Homeland Security Department’s own published figures.

In January, at the one-year mark of the Trump presidency, the department said it had removed nearly 3 million illegal immigrants from the country, including 675,000 compelled deportations and 2.2 million self-deportations. ...