Ayn Rand wrote, “Socialism is the doctrine that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that his life and his work do not belong to him, but belong to society, that the only justification of his existence is his service to society, and that society may dispose of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to be its own tribal, collective good.”
She nailed it.
Because I am a therapist, people always ask me: “What is self-esteem?”
In part, self-esteem refers to the attitude that you have a right to your OWN life, and to live for your OWN sake.
In line with Rand’s quote, socialism (which is tyranny) is incompatible with self-esteem.
In short: Freedom (economic and otherwise) is the mental oxygen you breathe. Your self-esteem will choke under socialism. And if you possess any self-esteem at all, you could never support socialism.
Contrary to repeated assurances by the Federal Chancellor, the German state apparatus is growing at an accelerating pace. What we are witnessing before our eyes is the transformation of the economy into a command economy.
You may recall: In the days between last year’s federal election and the appointment of the new government, a political window opened in which Germany committed fundamental breaches of its own fiscal rules. The outgoing Bundestag decided on a redefinition of the debt brake and ultimately executed its substantive demise by outsourcing massive new debt.
The legitimization of financing gimmicks, the establishment of sectoral exemptions and special funds constitutes a fiscal original sin. It opens the door wide for the state to finance administration, the welfare system, and economic policy interventions with ever more debt. Taxpayers are left holding the bag for this budgetary deregulation, while capital markets — thanks to the hypothetically unlimited backstop of the European Central Bank — remain wide open. Fiat credit flows freely, the state sector expands, and in doing so crowds out the productive forces of society.
The Classic Bureaucracy-Reduction Rhetoric
Chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz used this phase of political power vacuum in April to offer glimpses into his political agenda. Alongside well-worn political platitudes such as “switching into growth mode” and launching an “investment offensive,” one familiar media trope made its appearance: cutting bureaucracy.
At first glance, cutting bureaucracy sounds citizen-friendly and suggests a responsible approach to public finances. A lean state would be tangible proof of serious fiscal policy and a guarantee that the private sector — the true engine of societal performance — is not burdened unnecessarily with documentation requirements and bureaucratic drudgery.
Friedrich Merz knows this. Cutting bureaucracy sounds good. It sounds reasonable. And it has devolved into a hollow political phrase — cheap to invoke while, at the same time, a veritable hyperstate is being constructed.
For it is public administration itself — now employing 5.5 million people — that exposes the political rhetoric as fiction. The gigantic special fund, adding €50 billion in new debt annually, must be administratively distributed. Thousands of individual subsidy projects must be reviewed, approved, and monitored. This requires massive bureaucratic expansion. Merz and Klingbeil were well aware of this when they wove the narrative of a lean state into their media messaging.
Moreover, since it has become clear that the conflict in the Donbas is not going away anytime soon, the build-up of a substantial military-industrial production system has emerged — under the shadow of stoked fears of Russia — alongside the green “art economy.” This year, Germany’s defense budget amounts to €120 billion. Distributing these additional funds equally necessitates additional layers of public administration, from ministerial departments down to local governments.
A Man of the Strong State
Friedrich Merz is by no means a man of the lean state. He is a committed advocate of centralized industrial steering under political primacy. He believes Germany can successfully pursue its transformation toward a green and militarized command economy through massive borrowing.
Politics now interprets the decline of German industrial production as a mandate to deliberately repurpose empty factories for arms manufacturing.
At the same time, the deep economic crisis — having already cost Germany 400,000 industrial jobs since 2019 — is largely kept out of public debate. Meanwhile, the public sector is being transformed into a buffer for an impending labor market catastrophe, expanding its workforce by roughly two percent annually.
By the end of the third quarter of 2025 alone, employment in public services, education, and healthcare increased by 205,000, according to Focus. Without disparaging these jobs, it must nonetheless be emphasized that they represent social services that must first be financed by value creation in the private sector.
In manufacturing — the core of Germany’s economic strength — around 143,000 jobs were cut last year. Fewer than eight million people now work in this fundamental sector. The automotive industry alone laid off more than 60,000 workers last year — six percent of its total workforce in Germany. This reflects a dramatic collapse in production activity, which has lost more than 15 percent of its volume across all industrial sectors since 2018.
The causes of this economic decline are well known: a self-inflicted energy crisis, high fiscal burdens, and mounting competitive pressure from China, India, and the United States — countries not subjected to the same regulatory pressure continuously imposed by the German state and the European Union.
We recall what Friedrich Merz promised in April of last year: to reduce bureaucratic costs — estimated by the ifo Institute at around €146 billion annually — by 25 percent, while simultaneously shrinking public-sector employment by eight percent over the coming years due to demographic effects alone.
A Distorted Reality
Ignorance or deception? The brazenness with which Merz distorted political reality at precisely this point is striking when viewed against the continued expansion of the public sector. People are migrating out of the productive parts of the economy into the state apparatus out of sheer self-preservation — the very apparatus that represents the greatest destroyer of economic performance.
Germany is facing a profound economic asymmetry that is being deliberately intensified by political action.
The expansion of the German state apparatus, which has pushed the government share of GDP above 50 percent, reveals one thing clearly: the social dislocations caused by a politically engineered energy crisis and subsequent deindustrialization are being papered over with cheap credit. More state, less private economy. New government debt is nothing more than confirmation that policymakers are rejecting reform pressure and shifting the costs of delay onto future generations.
If this debt camouflage succeeds — leading to net new borrowing exceeding 5.5 percent this year once the finance minister’s accounting tricks are included — politics buys time. Time it urgently needs in its battle against the economic reality of the green transformation.
The question is: how long can the federal government postpone unavoidable reforms through the credit pump? The social costs of open-border policies and the delayed adaptation of the welfare state to economic reality are accumulating into a socioeconomic fiasco — one that will unfold abruptly once capital markets begin to question Germany’s creditworthiness.
Yes, “our” backs. Republicans are killing conservatism. They are too quick to acquiesce to what seems (to them) to be Democrat reasonableness, but is really Democrat destructiveness.
Here are the two problems American voters face because of “maverick” congressional Republicans:
Their own pride in their alleged integrity forbids them to do what the voters want them to do. They believe they know better.
Their non-combative (weak) nature is a feature, not a bug, and it’s killing the conservative agenda.
Frankly, I’d like to strangle any Republican who does not support what Trump is doing. Our votes this last election gave Trump a mandate to do what we voted him to do, not to do what some egocentric false-pride congressman thinks is a better idea. We don’t want their better ideas, we want Trump’s better ideas. His track record proves that he knows things few others can figure out. That is a gift. The rest of us don’t have it.
I don’t know what Republican congressmen and senators think they are doing, but this I can tell them most assuredly: The American voter abhors their willingness to cave to Democrats and we hope their respective keisters will be primaried so we can get some courageous vertebrates sitting in those chairs.
The Quislings in our party are paying far too much attention to their local issues and not enough to the grand national mandate Trump received when he was elected. The Quislings pretend to be measured, moderate, pensive, calculating, …better. They are none of those things. In fact, they may as well be Democrats. We voters are sick of them.
It is way past due that “moderate” Republicans take a leaf from the Democrat playbook and vote loyally the way the leadership wants them to vote, not the way weaklings vote. Do they have a clue how weak they are? And in their weakness, they are killing Trump’s agenda, an agenda we the voters strongly approve of and voted for. How can it be clearer? Stop standing in the way of Trump’s agenda, which is the MAGA agenda. The margin is too thin for that kind of disloyalty to the voting public.
You won’t catch a Democrat doing that excrement. That is why we have so many problems getting Trump’s agenda passed; because some Republicans think they know better, are better. They don’t. And they aren’t.
NOTE TO REPUBLICANS IN CONGRESS: We don’t want your moderation. People in the middle of the road get run over. We are in a war for the soul of America and you are a roadblock. Vote with Trump or kiss your derriere goodbye.
Actor Giancarlo Esposito crystallized today’s Democrat Party by admitting he is willing to see people die to fulfill his revolution.
This is a direct quote, per the far-left Variety, and these are the words of a narcissistic sociopath.
“This is time for a revolution — and they don’t even know that’s what they’re starting. We have to stand up to it. They can’t take us all down. If the whole world showed up on Putin’s doorstep or the Iranians’ doorstep or in Washington, they’d kill 500 or 50 million or however [many], but the rest of us would survive with a new [world].”
Don’t you get it, you over-privileged, leftist dummies?
Do you not see it?
You bored, spoiled brats attempting fill the God-shaped hole in your soul by attacking law enforcement, destroying private property, and provoking violence are nothing more or less than cannon fodder to Democrat Party elites like Giancarlo Esposito.
On “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul,” this actor brilliantly portrayed a cold, chilling and ruthless sociopath. It turns out: He wasn’t acting. The actor who portrayed Gus Fring wants a revolution against whites, and hopes for tens of thousands of patriotic Americans to die. He sees ICE as the perfect opportunity for launching a racial supremacy, totalitarian movement in America. Well, the mask is off, because we know this is how most Democrats feel, and probably always have.
I heard that Massachusetts is trying to pass a law against spanking children. It seems ridiculous, but given that this state gave us Mitt Romney, anything is possible.
I don’t approve of spanking children, because I see no reason to teach your children that initiation of violence is ever a good thing. At the same time, parents must be given wide discretion, outside the obvious examples of physical or sexual abuse, or outright neglect, before the government gets involved in prosecuting them for raising their children.
However, there’s one thing worse than the image of an adult spanking a child, and that’s the spectacle of a government social worker coming in to a home trying to enforce this law. Just imagine what this would look like. The premise of such a law is that such an official could do a better job of raising a child than even the most insensitive, ignorant, uneducated parent.
I don’t share this premise.
Parents, even inadequate parents, have given us some pretty intelligent and accomplished offspring over the centuries. Look at all the accomplished people who write and speak of their inadequate parents, and imagine the ones we don’t know about. Now look at what government gives us. Take your pick on the various accomplishments of government: incompetently fought wars; the welfare state bureaucracy; Medicare and Social Security, with their impending bankruptcy; the O.J. Simpson verdict; political correctness; public schools that do everything but teach; and so much more.
I’ll pick parents over the government, any day of the week.
Q: Can a person be lacking in character and strong in competence?
A: In certain respects, yes; but ultimately, no. Ultimately, low character will drive out and undermine competence. Imagine you have a car mechanic, or some other service professional, whose work you like. Yet you discover he charges fees when he said he wouldn’t, and you catch him in a few lies. You hear complaints from other customers as well. What happens to your opinion of him? The same thing happens to him, internally. The concentration, focus and motivation that makes some of his work competent will inevitably be stressed by the ongoing consequences of complaints by customers, as well as the stress of remembering which lies he told–to whom–and when he has spoken the truth. It’s an accomplishment to be competent, but it also takes work to be a liar, or otherwise lacking in character. The two are constantly colliding within the conflicted individual
One of the most incredible accomplishments in the annals of global propaganda is the idea that Republicans in the United States are opposed to civil rights for individuals and the Democrats are for them.
n the summer of 1964, James Chaney, Mickey Schwerner, and Andy Goodman left Oxford, Ohio to go and register blacks to vote in Mississippi. As they well understood, a vast network of self-styled vigilante “justice” existed in citizen councils, State Sovereignty commissions, the KKK, and many other locally oriented partisans aimed to intimidate and if necessary, kill them. For these civil rights activists from the Congress of Racial Equality led by James Farmer Jr., there was little hope of registering blacks to vote and educating black children about their inherent dignity without the protection and law enforcement of the federal government. This nexus of local authoritarians refused federal intervention in their state in a manner not unlike their refusals when Republican president Ulysses S. Grant sent troops into the South to prevent the repeal of civil rights for blacks in the aftermath of the civil war. The Democrat Party has since the inception of the Republican Party in the 1850s refused to accept the federal government’s disruption of their local “warm collectivism.” The Justice Department was created by Republican administrations to thwart the Southern efforts to locally repeal the civil rights of black citizens. One of the most incredible accomplishments in the annals of global propaganda is the idea that Republicans in the United States are opposed to civil rights for individuals and the Democrats are for them.
Republican presidents are like Hitler and Democratic presidents are the rhetorical antithesis is fueling dangerous incivility in our current era. President Bush has largely remained silent while Democratic Presidents Obama and Clinton loudly violate the civic norm of quiet presidential retirement. This is also a feature of our public culture fixated on demonization of Republican presidents. Fantasies about killing President Bush and arguing that he was “Hitler” and determined to ‘kill as many innocent civilians as possible in Iraq and New Orleans’ abounded in his time as president and academic rankings of him as president show he is held in public contempt. This is the over-riding structuration of incivility in 21st century American culture. Trump is undoubtedly a rhetorical reaction to the “compassionate conservatism” of George W. Bush who continually seeks to turn away the partisan tide against him with conciliatory rhetoric.
The Jacobin protest culture of the 21st century is not the heir of the beloved community and civil rights movement formed by great leaders such as James Farmer Jr. and Martin Luther King Jr. They continue to burn and intimidate Christian churches and Jewish voices like the anti-civil rights partisans of the 1960s. The calls for violence against ICE agents and Border Patrol are plainly inconsistent with the central call for non-violence. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum bravely criticized Governor Tim Walz for characterizing his refusal of federal law enforcement as akin to the dangers endured by Anne Frank. The deliberate characterization of ICE officers as “gestapo” is a concerted rhetorical privilege accorded America’s structural anti-Republicanism that has inspired assassination attempts — many successful — of Republican presidents from Abraham Lincoln to Gerald Ford and of course two recent attempts on President Trump. The deaths of Goode and Pretti should be a subject of public lament, but they should be seen as subordinate and caused by a larger culture of incivility incited by a Jacobin culture that refuses the public credibility of Republican presidents. Shortly before the shooting of Pretti, the attorney general of Arizona called upon her residents to treat ICE agents under a doctrine of self-defense allowing them to shoot to kill. This Jacobin culture openly celebrates the death of Charlie Kirk, regrets the failed assassination attempts against President Trump, and fundamentally repudiates the stated principles of nonviolence enacted by leaders such as John Lewis. This public privilege allows and encourages professionally unethical behavior on social media as medical personnel wish harm on an array of individuals serving in the Trump administration. The status and standing of professionals calling for harm of Trump supporters is relatively uncompromised. American history is clear despite the fomented propaganda: Democratic Presidents as diverse as Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Joe Biden have fought fiercely against individual civil rights. Democrat cities like Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Minneapolis, Portland, and others have partisan traditions that refuse the public legitimacy of Republican presidents. These traditions incite violent rebellions that since Ulysses S. Grant required justice department interventions including Republican president Dwight Eisenhower at Little Rock in the 1950s. The insurrections of Democratic localities from Mississippi to Arkansas and now Minneapolis and Portland are not commendable and they are not in the tradition of civil rights. Punishing misconduct of law enforcement requires adherence to rule of law that does not surrender localities to mob rule like that seen in Minneapolis. The refusal of Republican federal enforcement in democratic localities is in the same political tradition that killed Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman. It demonstrates an American structural anti-Republicanism that endangers civil rights for all individuals.
Dr. Ben Voth is professor of rhetoric and director of debate at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. He is the author of several academic books regarding political communication, presidential rhetoric, and genocide.
Hillary Clinton took to social media to express support for the rioters in Minneapolis even as the disgraced former candidate and her husband were dodging a congressional subpoena looking into their relationship with family friend and Clinton Foundation co-founder Jeffrey Epstein.
After condemning the Trump administration’s push to deport illegal alien criminals from Minneapolis, despite the obstruction of violent leftist rioters who had tried to murder federal law enforcement agents and bit off an agent’s finger, Clinton urged directing funding to the rioters.
“In Minnesota, scores of ordinary people are bravely looking out for their neighbors, defending their communities, and protesting lawless violence,” she tweeted. “Here’s how to stand with them.”
The link that the former senator and presidential candidate promoted goes to the ‘Stand With Minnesota’ site which urges defunding ICE, praises the harassment of ICE personnel on behalf of illegal aliens and tells readers to “Hassle ICE-Supporting Businesses” and lists hotels that are housing ICE agents. This list was already used by leftist radicals to mob hotels.
And it gets worse from there.
The primary purpose of ‘Stand With Minnesota’ is to fundraise for various groups including those linked by investigative journalists to the Minneapolis riots.
The list of groups that Hillary Clinton is fundraising for includes the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC), a core group behind the protests, whose members have been caught on video defending violence, and which received funding from the city of Minneapolis.
MIRAC calls for the legalization of all illegal aliens, including criminals and even child rapists, and the end of any kind of immigration laws. Its toolkit encourages the harassment of federal immigration law enforcement personnel, reporting sightings of officers trying to arrest illegal alien criminals, and confronting them. State Sen. Omar Fateh, another Somali ally of Rep. Ilhan Omar, had rallied with MIRAC and supported its demand to arrest federal immigration officers.
Mira Altobell-Resendez, a MIRAC organizer and a DEI employee of the University of Minnesota, who had previously been involved in the pro-Hamas encampment, had rallied with Rep. Ilhan Omar, and who had been accused of having allegedly smashed her way into a federal vehicle during the riots to seize documents and lists of agents. The activist denied doing it but later appears to have stated, “Just because something is illegal doesn’t mean we won’t do it.”
Beyond Hillary Clinton, pro-crime and pro-illegal organizations have been helping finance MIRAC like a coffee shop selling ‘F___ ICE” coffee with the proceeds going to MIRAC.
Another organization being funded through the list shared by Hillary Clinton is ‘Communities Organizing Power and Action for Latinos’ (COPAL) which created the ‘Immigrant Defense Network’ that claims to have trained 10,000 activists tracking and harassing ICE personnel. COPAL maintains a ‘rapid response’ line to track federal officers arresting illegal alien criminals.
Multiple beneficiaries of the fundraising list shared by Hillary are part of IDN including the ACLU, Minnesota 8, a Cambodian pro-illegal group, and Ayada Leads, a Somali Muslim activist group with ties to Rep. Omar.
Ayada Leads had tweeted a message urging reporting of any ICE personnel while warning “Remember SALUTE when reporting.” SALUTE is a military acronym meaning ‘Size, Activity, Location, Unit, Time, Equipment’. The use of military terminology suggests active warfare.
Monarca, another of the groups on the list, also maintains a ‘rapid response’ network offering training on “protecting your neighborhoods from federal enforcement incursions.” Its butterfly logos have been viewed as coded signals spotted at the scenes of riots and worn by politicians and activists including Lt. Gov Peggy Flanagan who has been linked to some of the riots.
Of the two ‘direct service organizations’ on the list spread by Hillary is the ‘Headwaters Foundation’ headed by Bilal Alkatout, a Kuwaiti immigrant who describes himself as a gay ‘Palestinian’ who has “never stepped foot in Palestine”. Headwaters is a notorious local operation that helped fund BLM during the riots and more recently provided funding to pro-Hamas groups like ‘Students for Justice in Palestine’.
Much of the funding for this comes from the Bush Foundation (no relation to the presidential family) which announced that “we have temporarily removed our staff and board member information from our website”. Before the information was suppressed, Bush listed grantmaking staff that included Farhiya Abdulkarim, a Somali Muslim migrant, who formerly worked as a DEI coordinator at Concordia College, who promoted the ‘Immigrant Rapid Response Fund’ that is the other direct response organization that appears on the Hillary list.
Other radical groups on the list promoted by Hillary Clinton includes CAIR, an unindicted Hamas terror funding co-conspirator whose leadership praised Oct 7, and SWOP “Support Sex Workers Impacted by ICE Presence” meaning the often criminally trafficked illegal alien prostitutes
This comes as Hillary and her husband continue to dodge a congressional subpoena looking into the human trafficking operations of their former friend and partner, Jeffrey Epstein.
Hillary Clinton’s actions show the extent to which the Minneapolis riots are being supported from the top down by key figures in the Democratic Party. These riots are not organic. Many of the groups involved have benefited from federal, state and city funding. Their nonprofits have been protected from interference within the IRS despite their involvement in illegal activities.
The riots won’t stop until the insurrectionist networks behind them have been dismantled.
By spreading the list, Hillary unintentionally helped highlight the radical networks behind the riots. It remains for federal law enforcement to break up the network, pull federal funding and non-profit status, seize all communications by key personnel and prosecute the conspirators.
Gold and silver prices plunged Friday, as President Donald Trump’s nomination for the next chair of the Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh, appeared to relieve concerns about the central bank’s independence.
By 7:12 a.m. ET, spot silver was down 10.6% to settle at around $103.81 an ounce, paring back earlier losses. In the early hours of the morning, the metal had plummeted as much as 16% and dipped below the $100 milestone.
Meanwhile, spot gold shed around 5.7% to trade at $5,136.27 an ounce. Earlier, the safe-haven metal had lost as much as 7%.
Argor-Heraeus’ CEO Robin Kolvenbach holds one kilo bars of silver and gold at the plant of refiner and bar manufacturer Argor-Heraeus in Mendrisio, Switzerland, July 13, 2022.
Denis Balibouse | Reuters
Gold and silver prices plunged Friday, as President Donald Trump’s nomination for the next chair of the Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh, appeared to relieve concerns about the central bank’s independence.
By 7:12 a.m. ET, spot silver was down 10.6% to settle at around $103.81 an ounce, paring back earlier losses. In the early hours of the morning, the metal had plummeted as much as 16% and dipped below the $100 milestone.
Prices of the precious metals also faltered on futures exchanges, with front-month gold contracts losing 3.4% in New York, while silver futures for February delivery were down by 10%.
The sell-off gripped the wider precious metals market, with spot platinum dropping more than 10%, while palladium fell close to 8%.
On Friday, Trump named Warsh — who served at the central bank during the 2008 financial crisis — successor to current Fed Chair Jerome Powell.
National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett had been the favorite to replace Powell for some time, but Warsh became the front-runner in prediction markets in recent days.
In a note on Friday morning, Evercore ISI’s Krishna Guha said the market was “trading Warsh hawkish.”
“The Warsh pick should help stabilize the dollar some and reduce (though not eliminate) the asymmetric risk of deep extended dollar weakness by challenging debasement trades – which is also why gold and silver are sharply lower,” the firm’s vice chairman said.
“But, we advise against overdoing the Warsh hawkish trade across asset markets – and even see some risk of a whipsaw. We see Warsh as a pragmatist not an ideological hawk in the tradition of the independent conservative central banker.”
Claudio Wewel, FX strategist at J. Safra Sarasin Sustainable Asset Management, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Friday that a “perfect storm” of geopolitical tensions had helped precious metals move higher this year, pointing to the U.S. capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and Washington’s threats to use military force in Greenland and Iran.
More recently, he said, speculation over who would be nominated as the next Fed chair had been influencing metals markets.
“The market has clearly been pricing the risk of a much more dovish contender, that’s been largely helping the gold price along with other precious metal prices. Over the last 24 hours, the news flow has changed a little bit,” Wewel said, prior to Trump’s announcement.
‘Even good assets can sell-off’
Gold and silver both enjoyed record-smashing rallies in 2025, surging 65% and 150%, respectively, over the course of the year. Those gains have largely continued into 2026, with silver adding 45% while gold is up 19% year to date.
On stock exchanges across the globe, the impact of the metals sell-off was visible on Friday. In Europe, the regional Stoxx 600 Basic Resources index — which includes the Continent’s most valuable mining companies — was down 2% in afternoon trading.
London-listed Fresnillo, the world’s biggest silver producer, was last seen 4% lower, paring earlier losses.
In premarket trade on Wall Street, silver miner Endeavour Silver was down 9%, while Coeur Mining lost 8%. Silver ETFs were dragged into the action, with the ProShares Ultra Silver fund last seen more than 22% lower ahead of the opening bell. The iShares Silver Trust ETF lost 11.2%.
Precious metals have been on a stellar rally over the past 12 months, amid broader market volatility, the decline of the U.S. dollar, bubbling geopolitical tensions and concerns about the independence of the Federal Reserve.
Katy Stoves, investment manager at British wealth management firm Mattioli Woods, told CNBC on Friday morning that the moves were likely “a market-wide reassessment of concentration risk.”
“Just as tech stocks — particularly AI-related names — have dominated market attention and capital flows, gold has similarly seen intense positioning and crowding,” she said. “When everyone is leaning the same way, even good assets can sell off as positions get unwound. The parallel isn’t accidental: both represent areas where capital has flooded in based on powerful narratives, and concentrated positions eventually face their day of reckoning.”
Meanwhile, Toni Meadows, head of investment at BRI Wealth Management, contended that gold’s run to the $5,000 mark had happened “too easily.” He noted that the unwinding of the greenback had supported gold prices, but that the dollar had appeared to stabilize.
“Central bank buying has driven the longer-term rally but this has tailed off in recent months,” he said. “The case for further reserve diversification is still there though as Trump’s trade policies and intervention in foreign affairs will make a lot of countries nervous about holding U.S. assets, especially those countries in the emerging markets or aligned to China or Russia. Silver will mirror the direction of gold, so it is not surprising to see falls there.”
Now over a year into the new congressional term and moving toward the midterms, the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress has been racking up one major victory after another. Don’t believe it? Just look at the facts.
The Babylon Bee has the receipts with the following list of things the GOP has accomplished while in power:
1. Got Little Debbie Zebra Cakes added to the Capitol cafeteria: The far-reaching magnitude of this cannot be overstated.
2. Thought long and hard about doing something: They’re not sure what it was, but they definitely considered it.
3. Added a cool light show to the Washington Monument: And it reportedly only cost American taxpayers $7 trillion.
4. Issued a record number of sternly worded letters: Shape up, or they’ll send one to you, too.
5. Convinced Mike Johnson to try parting his hair on the other side: This required months of tough negotiation.
6. Released six heavily redacted pages of the Epstein files: They’re serious about accountability.
7. Exempted the National Mall landscapers from all ICE operations: They can’t afford to lose José and his crew.
8. Passed legislation to fund the federal government for the next 8 minutes: Isn’t that amazing? Oh, wait, time’s up, and the government is about to shut down again.
9. Lost the midterms earlier than any other Republican Congress in history: And that’s saying something.
No one can say the GOP hasn’t been getting things done. What else have Republicans accomplished while controlling both chambers of Congress for the last year? Add your thoughts in the comments.
THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 