Bill Bonner, "Debt Distress, Metal Mayhem"

Stonehenge

"Debt Distress, Metal Mayhem"

by Bill Bonner

Baltimore, Maryland - "The solstice came and went. The sun...at its lowest point midday, on the horizon, on Saturday...now has begun its long climb. And now people north of the equator can say ‘hallelujah.’ The world is not coming to an end after all. The sun is not going to disappear. Life goes on.

We try to fit today’s events into the patterns of the past. After all, they are the only ones we have to work with. Alert readers will see the problem immediately. As Heraclitus put it, ‘we only step into that river once.’ Which is to say, the water rushing by today is not the same water that flooded by yesterday...or last year...or 100 years ago. Still...just as the sun bounces off the horizon at the soltstice each year, some patterns don’t change.

One of the surest patterns of the past is the birth-life-death program. Never fails. Happens to us all. To great empires too. Every one of them. All the greatest empires of the past are…well…past. Our empire will die too. It’s just a matter of time.

When Donald J. Trump was elected for the second time our intuition told us that his purpose was not to MAGA (make America great again). That’s a river you can’t step into twice. Instead, he was destined to help it get where it was going - down. But when Nobel Prize-winning economists pick up the scent...we have to wonder: are we chasing the wrong stag? Joseph Stiglitz at the South China Morning Post: "How Trump is hastening the end of American hegemony."

Stiglitz is wrong about most things. Is he (and we) wrong about this too? Let’s look. The two things that typically feature in an empire’s last chapters are excess spending...and unnecessary war. Both are self-inflicted wounds that fester…and eventually kill the host. In the 21st century, America has had plenty of both. When Mr. Trump was running for president in 2015, he promised to put an end to them.

Once in office, however, he played the role history had prepared for him. Full of bile, bombast and buncombe, he was a much more interesting president than his predecessor. But the Establishment breathed easy; he changed nothing important.

But even we were shocked by the new energy and determination that Mr. Trump brought to the job on his second go-round. This time, not only did he boost the Pentagon budget, he gave it a credit card with a $1 trillion limit. He renamed it the Department of War to make it clear where we’re going. And now everyone is gunning up.

Solidarity.com: "NATO: Prepare for war with Russia in 5 Years"

The South China Morning Post: "Japan PM office source hints at need for nuclear weapons amid policy review."

More ominously, Mr. Trump is bringing the muscle to the homeland itself. His masked-covered enforcers are sure to trigger a ‘domestic terror’ event they’re looking for.

As to spending, there too, POTUS has stayed the course. Rather than retreat from unaffordable, excess spending, he has added even more unaffordable and more excessive spending - with a Big Beautiful Budget Abomination that guarantees more debt and distress in the years ahead.

Much was made of the young gunslingers on the DOGE posse. They were said to be putting an end to billions in waste. But after riding into town, guns blazing, they seem to have mounted up and left just as quickly; nothing more is heard of them.

Meanwhile, as Stiglitz points out, Trump has also made great strides towards isolating the US, along with its sidekick, Israel, and turning much of the world against us. Capricious tariffs, mass murder, destruction, sanctions and seizures have driven friends away. Washington Monthly: "Donald Trump’s go-it-alone America." Trump’s uniquely toxic brand of “self-reliance” threatens the collective strength that truly makes America great.

Also worth mentioning is the remarkable crime wave emanating from the White House. POTUS announces a flip-flop on tariff policy; lo and behold, someone has put on a very profitable trade just hours before...as if he knew something was coming. Ambassadorships are up for sale. Presidential pardons too. And the President’s crypto scheme is the slickest grift ever to blight American politics.

In a remarkably short time, too, some of the least qualified people in the country have been put into positions of power. Any day we expect Trump’s golf caddie to be named Secretary of the Interior. Mr. Stiglitz, no doubt, regards all these things as a failure; we see them as a success. Life goes on. We begin a new solar cycle. And Mr. Trump’s historic role remains the same - not to save the empire, but to destroy it. He’s doing a good job at it."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

Dan, I Allegedly, "Dumbest Business Ideas Ever! Who Wrote This Check?"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 12/23/25, 12/23/25

"Dumbest Business Ideas Ever! 

Who Wrote This Check?"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Moscow Metro: You Won't Believe What They Just Put Inside!"

Meanwhile, in a sane, civilized society...

Full screen recommended.

Englishman In Russia, 12/23/25

"Moscow Metro: 

You Won't Believe What They Just Put Inside!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Englishman In Russia, 12/23/25

"Now Moscow Built Santa's Factory - Breathtaking!"

In Russia, Moscow Christmas near Red Square just 

got even better! Santa Claus is coming to town at the Gift Factory!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Travelling With Russell, 12/23/25

"I Worked in a Secret Russian Supermarket"

"What is it like to work in a supermarket in Russia? What if the supermarket is in a secret location, located 3 levels underground? Join me as I discover what it's like to work in a Russian Dark Supermarket in Moscow, Russia."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Adventures With Danno, "Big Lots: I Can't Believe This Is Happening"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, 12/23/25

"Big Lots: I Can't Believe This Is Happening"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com

"Heavy Snowfall in Moscow, This Is Not the Russia You Imagine"

Full screen recommended.

Window To Moscow, 12/22/25

"Heavy Snowfall in Moscow, 

 This Is Not the Russia You Imagine"

"Many people imagine Russia very differently - but this is the real winter. Heavy snowfall, glowing city lights, festive streets, and a vibrant winter atmosphere in the heart of Moscow. This video captures a snowy winter walk in Moscow during one of the most beautiful moments of the season. Deep snow, evening lights, people enjoying winter, and the true feeling of a Russian winter that often surprises viewers from around the world."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Neil H, “Daybreaks Early Rising”

Neil H, “Daybreaks Early Rising”

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Can you see them? This famous Messier object M89, a seemingly simple elliptical galaxy, is surrounded by faint shells and plumes. The cause of the shells is currently unknown, but possibly tidal tails related to debris left over from absorbing numerous small galaxies in the past billion years. Alternatively the shells may be like ripples in a pond, where a recent collision with another large galaxy created density waves that ripple through this galactic giant.

Click image for larger size.

Regardless of the actual cause, the featured image highlights the increasing consensus that at least some elliptical galaxies have formed in the recent past, and that the outer halos of most large galaxies are not really smooth but have complexities induced by frequent interactions with - and accretions of - smaller nearby galaxies. The halo of our own Milky Way Galaxy is one example of such unexpected complexity. M89 is a member of the nearby Virgo cluster of galaxies which lies about 50 million light years distant.”

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

o

"Attitude..."

“Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you 

as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens 

to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.”

 - Kahlil Gibran

“Why Albert Einstein Thought We Were All Insane”

“Why Albert Einstein Thought We Were All Insane”

by Simon Black

“In the early summer of 1914, Albert Einstein was about to start a prestigious new job as Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics. The position was a big deal for the 35-year old Einstein – confirmation that he was one of the leading scientific minds in the world. And he was excited about what he would be able to achieve there. But within weeks of Einstein’s arrival, the German government canceled plans for the Institute; World War I had broken out, and all of Europe was gearing up for one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history.

The impact of the Great War was immeasurable. It cost the lives of 20 million people. It bankrupted entire nations. The war ripped two major European powers off the map – the Austro Hungarian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire – and deposited them in the garbage can of history. Austria-Hungary in particular boasted the second largest land mass in Europe, the third highest population, and one of the biggest economies. Plus it was a leading manufacturer of high-tech machinery. Yet by the end of the war it would no longer exist.

World War I also played a major role in the emergence of communism in Russia through the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. Plus it was also a critical factor in the astonishing rise of the Nazi party in Germany. Without the Great War, Adolf Hitler would have been an obscure Austrian vagabond, and our world would be an entirely different place.

One of the most bizarre things about World War I was how predictable it was. Tensions had been building in Europe for years, and the threat of war was deemed so likely that most major governments invested heavily in detailed war plans. The most famous was Germany’s “Schlieffen Plan”, a military offensive strategy named after its architect, Count Alfred von Schlieffen. To describe the Schlieffen Plan as “comprehensive” is a massive understatement.

As AJP describes in his book "War by Timetable", the Schlieffen Plan called for rapidly moving hundreds of thousands of soldiers to the front lines, plus food, equipment, horses, munitions, and other critical supplies, all in a matter of DAYS. Tens of thousands of trains were criss-crossing Europe during the mobilization, and as you can imagine, all the trains had to run precisely on time. A train that was even a minute early or a minute late would cause a chain reaction to the rest of the plan, affecting the time tables of other trains and other troop movements. In short, there was no room for error.

In many respects the Schlieffen Plan is still with us to this day – not with regards to war, but for monetary policy. Like the German General Staff more than a century ago, modern central bankers concoct the most complicated, elaborate plans to engineer economic victory. Their success depends on being able to precisely control the [sometimes irrational] behavior of hundreds of millions of consumers, millions of businesses, dozens of foreign nations, and trillions of dollars of capital. And just like the obtusely complex war plans from 1914, central bank policy requires that all the trains run on time. There is no room for error.

This is nuts. Economies are comprised of billions of moving pieces that are beyond anyone’s control and often have competing interests. A government that’s $33 trillion in debt requires cheap money (i.e. low interest rates) to stay afloat. Yet low interest rates are severely punishing for savers, retirees, and pension funds (including Social Security) because they’re unable to generate a sufficient rate of return to meet their needs.

Low interest rates are great for capital intensive businesses that need to borrow money. But they also create dangerous asset bubbles and can eventually cause a painful rise in inflation. Raise interest rates too high, however, and it could bankrupt debtors and throw the economy into a tailspin. Like I said, there’s no room for error – they have to find the perfect balance between growth and inflation.

Several years ago hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio summed it up perfectly when he said, “It becomes more and more difficult to balance those things as time goes on. It may not be a problem in the next year or two, but the risk of not getting it right increases with time. The risk of them getting it wrong is clearly growing. I truly hope they don’t get it wrong. But if they ever do, people may finally look back and wonder how we could have been so foolish to hand total control of our economy over to an unelected committee of bureaucrats with a mediocre track record… and then expect them to get it right forever. It’s pretty insane when you think about it."

As Einstein quipped at the height of World War I in 1917, “What a pity we don’t live on Mars so that we could observe the futile activities of human beings only through a telescope…”

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

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"It is common to assume that human progress affects everyone - that even the dullest man, in these bright days, knows more than any man of, say, the Eighteenth Century, and is far more civilized. This assumption is quite erroneous. The great masses of men, even in this inspired republic, are precisely where the mob was at the dawn of history. They are ignorant, they are dishonest, they are cowardly, they are ignoble. They know little if anything that is worth knowing, and there is not the slightest sign of a natural desire among them to increase their knowledge."

- H. L. Mencken, 1929

○

Freely download "Ideas And Opinions", by Albert Einstein, here:

-  https://namnews.files.wordpress.com/

The Poet: Wendell Berry, "A Warning To My Readers”

"A Warning To My Readers”

“Do not think me gentle

because I speak in praise

of gentleness, or elegant

because I honor the grace

that keeps this world. I am

a man crude as any,

gross of speech, intolerant,

stubborn, angry, full

of fits and furies. That I

may have spoken well

at times, is not natural.

A wonder is what it is.”

- Wendell Berry

"The Vegas Purge Has Begun: Casinos Just Wiped Out 386,000 Jobs Overnight"

Full screen recommended.

State Radar, 12/22/25

"The Vegas Purge Has Begun: 

Casinos Just Wiped Out 386,000 Jobs Overnight"

"The shocking truth behind Las Vegas's silent purge that destroyed 386,000 American jobs overnight. While Caesars drowns in $122 BILLION debt and MGM revenue collapses 4%, thousands of casino workers are sleeping in cars along I-15. This explosive investigation reveals how Wall Street's takeover of the Strip triggered the most devastating employment crisis in Nevada history.Discover the dark reality corporate casinos desperately hide: From the Poker Palace closure to 72,000 unemployed Nevadans, we expose the systematic replacement of human workers with AI and automation. Former Caesars employees reveal how "restructuring" became code for mass layoffs, while MGM's "streamlining" erased entire departments without warning."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Zelensky Government Collapses – Formation of New Regime, NATO in Turmoil"

John Mearsheimer, 12/22/25

"Zelensky Government Collapses – 

Formation of New Regime, NATO in Turmoil"

"Zelensky's government is collapsing and a new regime is forming in Kyiv, sending NATO into turmoil as the entire strategic architecture of Western support begins to crumble. Before the mainstream narrative catches up, let me explain what this means for the war, for NATO's credibility, and for the geopolitical order that Western leaders promised would emerge from this conflict. Think of it like a schoolyard fight where the smaller kid's friends promised to back him up indefinitely - but now those friends are quietly realizing the fight costs more than they expected, the bigger kid isn't backing down, and maybe it's time to find an exit that doesn't look like complete abandonment. That's where we are. Zelensky's government collapsing isn't just about Ukrainian domestic politics - it's about the unraveling of a Western strategy that was always built on optimistic assumptions about Russian weakness and sustained Western commitment."

Comments here:

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And this is what Donald Trump said we paid '$359 billion" for.

1,500,000 dead Ukrainian soldiers, 100,000 dead Russian troops - for what?

The Poet: David Whyte, "One Day"

"One Day"

"One day I will say

the gift I once had has been taken.

The place I have made for myself

belongs to another.

The words I have sung

are being sung by the ones

I would want.

Then I will be ready

for that voice

and the still silence in which it arrives.

And if my faith is good

then we'll meet again

on the road,

and we'll be thirsty,

and stop

and laugh

and drink together again

from the deep well of things as they are."

- David Whyte,

"Where Many Rivers Meet"

"The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful.

And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see -

it is, rather, a light by which we may see - and what we see is life."

- Robert Penn Warren

The Daily "Near You?"

Borgo, Corse, France. Thanks for stopping by!

"There Is Always The Hope..."

“What happens to people living in a society where everyone in power is lying, stealing, cheating and killing, and in our hearts we all know this, but the consequences of facing all these lies are so monstrous, we keep on hoping that maybe the corporate government administration and media are on the level with us this time. Americans remind me of survivors of domestic abuse. This is always the hope that this is the very, very, very last time one’s ribs get re-broken again.”

- Inga Muscio

"From Inflation to Implosion"

"From Inflation to Implosion"

by MN Gordon

"The 2026 fiscal year started on October 1. The Treasury, so far, has reported its spending for the first two months. The dismal results should come as no surprise. The U.S. government has already run up a deficit of $458 billion – and there’s still 10 more months to go. Specifically, for the months of October and November there were total outlays of $1.198 trillion, with receipts of just $740 billion. The difference – the $458 billion – was made up with debt. Of the $1.198 trillion in outlays, $179 billion was to pay the net interest on the debt.

Here at the Economic Prism, we remember when the ‘annual’ deficit first exceeded $450 billion. You may too. It wasn’t very long ago – 2008 to be exact. At the time we thought spending was totally out of control. Little did we know, just one year later, 2009, the budget deficit would spike to $1.4 trillion. Now trillion-dollar annual deficits are the norm.

With this current rate of spending, the 2026 fiscal year deficit will come in around $2.75 trillion. This deficit, like each annual deficit, will be racked and stacked on top of the total government debt. After many decades of extreme deficits, the U.S. national debt is at $38.5 trillion – and rising fast.

The critical observation here is that too much spending is never enough. Congress, the politicians elected to represent us, have failed at their jobs. They are incapable of making the tough decisions needed to balance the budget. Each member has his or her pet projects and programs to cover. Some want free drugs for old people. Others want taxpayer loot for roads and bridges in their district. Some want more warfare spending. Others want more welfare spending. Many want both.

Short Timer Thinking: The Washington politicians know the runaway spending cannot go on forever. But they intend to be retired – or dead – when the ultimate debt and currency crisis erupts. The average age of members of the House at the beginning of the 119th Congress was 57.9 years. And for Senators the average age was 63.9 years. These are short timers. With short timer thinking. And they care little about future generations or the nation’s long term financing prospects.

Similarly, President Donald J. Trump is 79 years old. He’s not thinking about the next decade or two. He’s thinking about the upcoming mid-term election. He wants to use the government purse to buy votes. One means Trump recently stated is to distribute tariff revenue in the form of $2,000 checks. Trump calls it a dividend check. Yet, this tariff revenue was effectively the spoils of a regressive tax on American consumers. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates this plan could cost $600 billion, which is double the tariff revenue projected for fiscal year 2026. The difference, the $300 billion, would be made up with debt.

Trump has also said he wants to eliminate the income tax. It’s about time. The income tax shouldn’t exist to begin with. If you didn’t know, the income tax was unconstitutional under the constitution that was drawn up by the original authors. The Supreme Court case Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co. (1895) struck down an earlier income tax, saying it was a “direct tax” requiring apportionment by population, which was impractical.

To overcome Pollock, the 16th Amendment was passed, stating, “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration”. This level of power and extreme theft would have been completely unacceptable to America’s founders. Yet we live with it each and every day.

Unleashing the Beast: The 16th Amendment is what unleashed “the beast” and is the origin of today’s mammoth government that reaches its tentacles into all corners of American life and across the globe. Eliminating the income tax would be a vast step in the direction of smaller, more limited government. But this assumes spending is dramatically cut and long-standing promises, like social security, are revoked.

From what we can tell, this isn’t Trump’s intent. He believes that in the absence of the income tax, government funding will be made up with tariff revenue. The tariff revenue, however, isn’t enough to cover his dividend checks. In fact, annual tariff revenue wouldn’t even be enough to cover one month of current government outlays. Regardless, all the talk of using tariff revenues to pay out dividend checks and eliminate the income tax is a giant distraction from the fact that the nation is flat out broke and is maxing out its credit cards before its creditors ultimately cut it off.

When the government spends money it doesn’t have, it has two main ways to cover the tab. It can borrow the money by selling T-Bills to domestic and foreign investors. Or it can borrow from credit the Federal Reserve creates out of thin air. Both add to the $38.5 trillion debt. Both inject money into the economy that has not been earned.

The effect is simple, and intuitive. Every new dollar conjured into existence dilutes the value of every existing dollar already present. It’s simple supply and demand. When the supply of money goes up way faster than the supply of real goods and services – like cars, houses, or even a loaf of bread – the purchasing power of your money plummets. That’s why you’re paying more for groceries, more for rent, and why your savings account seems to be shrinking in real terms, even if the number in the bank stays the same. The connection is direct…

From Inflation to Implosion: Runaway government spending is the engine, and consumer price inflation is the toxic smoke it burps into the atmosphere. The spending on pet projects and $2,000 dividend checks is just more fuel being dumped on an already raging fire. But there’s a danger far greater than domestic inflation. The U.S. dollar, for all its current woes, still holds the title of the world’s primary reserve currency. This status is what allows the U.S. to run these astronomical deficits without instantly collapsing.

The rest of the world, from central banks to global commodity traders, needs U.S. dollars for international trade. They effectively finance our debt by holding dollars and T-Bills. The GENIUS Act is an attempt to perpetuate this. However, the world isn’t stupid. They see America’s spending and debt problems. They see the $38.5 trillion debt bomb and the total lack of political will to defuse it. Every time Congress greenlights a massive, debt-funded spending bill, it tells international creditors that Washington does not care about financial integrity.

As trillion-dollar deficits become routine, and the President talks of eliminating the income tax without a credible revenue replacement, these global players watch with unease. They know that sooner or later Washington will try and inflate its way out. And that this will ultimately lead to the inevitable outcome of a significant dollar devaluation. By this, the dollar’s value would implode relative to all goods and services. Moreover, this would happen as all currencies continue to lose value against gold.

From a practical standpoint, consumer prices would explode higher, interest rates would spike up, and the standard of living would collapse. If you think this could never happen in America, you’re living in ignorant bliss."

- https://economicprism.com/

"We Must Not Forget..."

 

"War..."

“When people speak to you about a preventive war, 

you tell them to go and fight it.”

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

○

"Humanity is the spirit of the Supreme Being on earth, and that humanity is standing amidst ruins, hiding its nakedness behind tattered rags, shedding tears upon hollow cheeks, and calling for its children with pitiful voice. But the children are busy singing their clan's anthem; they are busy sharpening the swords and cannot hear the cry of their mothers."

- Kahlil Gibran

U.S. Navy Hospital Corpsman HM1 Richard Barnett, assigned to the 1st Marine Division, holds an Iraqi child in central Iraq in this March 29, 2003 file photo. Confused front line crossfire ripped apart an Iraqi family after local soldiers appeared to force civilians towards positions held by U.S. Marines.

"The Drumbeats Of War Are Getting Louder"

"The Drumbeats Of War Are Getting Louder"

by Michael Snyder

"Hundreds of millions of people all over the western world are enjoying the holiday season as if nothing has changed. But meanwhile the pounding of the war drums just continues to intensify. If the world keeps going down this path, next year’s holiday season could look completely different. Unfortunately, most people seem to assume that everything will magically work out just fine somehow. That greatly frustrates me, because ignoring the reality of the crisis that we are facing is not going to fix anything. If ordinary citizens in the western world truly understood what was at stake, they would be going completely ballistic right now. Global war is rapidly approaching, but the vast majority of our entertainment-addicted population doesn’t seem to get this.

Over the weekend, there were some very alarming new developments. On Saturday, U.S. forces seized another Venezuelan oil tanker…"In a pre-dawn operation on Saturday, the U.S. Coast Guard seized a Panama-flagged vessel called Centuries. A U.S. official told CBS News that the interdiction of the vessel followed a similar playbook to an earlier U.S. seizure of an oil tanker near Venezuela. White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly said on social media that the vessel on Saturday was “a falsely flagged vessel operating as part of the Venezuelan shadow fleet to traffic stolen oil and fund the narcoterrorist Maduro regime.”

Needless to say, the Venezuelans were furious. They accused the U.S. of committing a “serious act of piracy”…"In a statement on Saturday, the Venezuelan government condemned the vessel’s seizure, saying it was a “serious act of piracy.”“The colonialist model that the U.S. government seeks to impose through such practices will fail and be defeated by the Venezuelan people,” the statement said."

Of course now that the ball is rolling, the U.S. does not intend to stop. On Sunday, it was being reported that U.S. forces were pursuing yet another oil tanker…"The United States is pursuing an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, according to multiple reports, just a day after the Coast Guard seized a different tanker in the same waters amid a rapid U.S. military buildup in the region.

If seized, it would mark the third U.S. interception of an oil tanker in less than two weeks. An official told Reuters on Dec. 21 the tanker was under sanctions, and it had not been boarded so far. Officials did not give a specific location for the operation or name the vessel being pursued, according to Reuters. Bloomberg was among the first to report on the operation."

The pursuit of the tanker comes less than a week after President Donald Trump ordered a “blockade” of all sanctioned ships from entering and leaving Venezuela, further pressuring the oil-rich nation’s economy. U.S. Senator Rand Paul is calling the seizure of these tankers a “prelude to war”. He is quite right about that.

And now that the Venezuelan Navy will be escorting at least some of these tankers, the shooting could begin at any time…"Venezuela has ordered its navy to escort its tankers carrying petroleum products from its ports after President Trump declared a “complete and total blockade” on “sanctioned” tankers going into and out of Venezuela, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.

The report said that several ships sailed from Venezuela’s east coast with a naval escort on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. US forces already boarded and seized one tanker last week and intend to steal the cargo. If the US attempts to seize another tanker, it could now lead to a direct clash with the Venezuelan Navy."

People need to understand that it isn’t just Venezuela that we are making angry. Approximately 40 percent of the oil that Cuba imports comes from Venezuela, and we are being told that if that oil is cut off the Cuban economy could collapse…"Venezuela remains Cuba’s most important energy supplier, covering roughly 40% of the oil Havana needs to import. While shipments have already fallen sharply from their peak years ago, analysts warn that any further disruption could have catastrophic consequences. Energy experts say a sharp drop in Venezuelan crude would likely trigger a full-scale economic collapse on the island, the Journal reported."

And as I discussed last week, China imports more oil from Venezuela than the rest of the world combined. This blockade is going to be really bad for our relationship with China, and that could end up having enormous implications for all of us.

Meanwhile, the Russians continue to take control of more territory in Ukraine…"Russian forces have taken control of the settlements of Vysoke in the Sumy region and Svitloe in the Donetsk People’s Republic, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported in its daily briefing.

Svitloe is located between Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad, while Vysoke lies close to the border with Russia’s Belgorod region. The Defense Ministry regularly reports on settlements coming under Russian control in the zone of the military operation. According to the ministry, eight settlements came under Russian control in the week leading up to December 12, including Seversk in the DPR. On December 17, the ministry also reported the capture of the village of Herasymivka in the Dnipropetrovsk region."

Every time the Russians move forward, our European allies will become more desperate to stop them. But the only way that Ukraine can win the war is if we get directly involved in the conflict. According to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, that is “ultimately what the EU and NATO want”…"She went on to accuse the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization of wanting to pull the U.S. into direct battle with Russia.

“[Deep-staters] foment fear and hysteria as a way to justify the continuing of the war and their efforts to undermine President Trump’s efforts towards peace,” Gabbard said. “And do so in this case in order to try to pull the U.S. military into a direct conflict with Russia, which is ultimately what the EU and NATO want.” “We cannot allow this to happen,” she declared."

Right now, the Ukrainians and the Europeans are working on a “deal” that they know with 100 percent certainty that the Russians will reject. When the Russians inevitably reject that “deal”, that will be used as justification for what they want to do next. And what they want to do next is certainly not a mystery, because they have been feverishly preparing for it.

Unfortunately, events in the Middle East are heading in a very alarming direction as well. On Sunday, the IDF conducted more strikes on Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon…"The Israeli military said Sunday that it targeted Hezbollah operatives in strikes in southern Lebanon. The Lebanese health ministry reported one person was killed and another wounded. Israel has kept up regular strikes on Lebanon, usually saying it is targeting Hezbollah infrastructure or operatives violating the November 2024 ceasefire. Hezbollah is supposed to disarm, but that never was going to happen. So the IDF is just going to keep hitting them.

And according to NBC News, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will soon be presenting options for attacking Iran again to President Trump…"Israeli officials have grown increasingly concerned that Iran is expanding production of its ballistic missile program, which was damaged by Israeli military strikes earlier this year, and are preparing to brief President Donald Trump about options for attacking it again, according to a person with direct knowledge of the plans and four former U.S. officials briefed on the plans.

Israeli officials also are concerned that Iran is reconstituting nuclear enrichment sites the U.S. bombed in June, the sources said. But, they added, the officials view Iran’s efforts to rebuild facilities where they produce the ballistic missiles and to repair its crippled air defense systems as more immediate concerns.

Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are expected to meet later this month in Florida at the president’s Mar-a-Lago estate. At that meeting, the sources said, Netanyahu is expected to make the case to Trump that Iran’s expansion of its ballistic missile program poses a threat that could necessitate swift action." The Israelis and the Iranians both clearly understand that their fight is not over. So both sides are getting ready for the next round.

2025 has certainly been a chaotic year. But I expect 2026 to be even crazier. The drumbeats of war are steadily getting louder, and if we don’t turn back now the death and destruction that we will witness will be off the charts."

- https://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

"How It Really Is"

 

Bill Bonner, "The Bad Seed"

"The Bad Seed"

by Bill Bonner

Baltimore, Maryland - "The new ‘toys for tots’ program announced by Donald Trump set our mind to spinning. Newsweek: Once the program goes live, a financial institution will receive the funds for a given child’s account and activate it. From then on, up to $5,000 can be contributed to the account per year, though no additional deposits are necessary.

“The compound growth from Treasury’s initial seed funding alone stands to make young Americans wealthy. The S&P has grown at a rate of 10.5% each year, on average, since the 1950s. Assuming that growth rate continues, a single $1,000 deposit into a Trump account at birth will grow to over $600,000 by the age of retirement,” [Scott] Bessent said.

Hold on...Fox reports: "A fully funded account could reach as much as $1.9 million by age 28, according to the Treasury’s Office of Tax Analysis." Whoa...where does this money come from?In order to give $1,000 to a youngster, the feds need to take $1,000 from someone else — oldsters...and middle-agedsters...and all the sters in between. A simple question: How will this money do more good for the recipients than for the people it was taken from?

Some of the people from whom the money is taken worked hard for it. Others got it by investing. Some would otherwise invest it in enterprises that would grow and hire more people. And some would just p*** it away. What sense does it make to take it from them and give it to someone else to p*** away?

But neither the press nor the public nor Congress itself took much notice of this latest larceny. Probably the most entertaining part of the story is the way rich guys are getting on board. Especially those in the industry most likely to benefit from it. They make it sound like a public service. Bloomberg: "Dalio, BlackRock join donor list for ‘Trump Account’ program." Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio...said Wednesday his foundation will donate $250 each to roughly 300,000 “Trump Accounts” for children in Connecticut. BlackRock Inc. also announced it would match the federal government’s contributions to the accounts for employees’ children, seeding them with $1,000 each.

Bessent...“An entire generation of Americans is about to learn in the most life-changing way possible how even small contributions can become generational wealth, and it’s all thanks to President Trump.

For half a century, Wall Street has brought in the sheep. It colluded with Washington to boost up nominal stock prices...while suppressing real interest rates...practically forcing savers into the stock market. The wool grows while you sleep, it tells clients; ‘all you have to do is buy our retail investment products.’ At first glance, it looks like they were right. The Dow rose from 880 in 1971 to over 48,000 today - a leap of 54 times.

But here’s Stephane Renevier, CFA: "A surprising reality: the majority of individual stocks actually lose money. And Treasury bills have delivered better returns than nearly 60% of stocks ever listed on Wall Street. And during that same period, keeping your money out of the stock market, and in gold, did much better than Wall Street...as gold rose from $40 to $4,387 - 109x, twice as much as the Dow. What about dividends? We haven’t done the calculation, but our guess is that after-tax dividends gave the investor less than he lost to inflation.

And now...all thanks to President Trump… Wall Street is sharpening its clippers. Management fees, commissions, performance bonuses - the poor little innocents...they’ll have their funds in the hands of a federal agent(!)....and then move to accounts with...well, Ray Dalio and BlackRock.

They’ll all get rich. Or, maybe not...but at least the kids will get an education. Warren Buffett says he was lucky to be born when he was...and to spend his whole life in the greatest bull market run in history. As we’ve seen, it wasn’t all that great. And it was goosed with ‘printing press money...which came with complications...such as the biggest debt pile in world history... almost guaranteeing high levels of inflation for many years and paltry, if not negative, returns for years to come.

Consumer prices are already rising at about 3% per year - according to official tallies. Unofficially, the real inflation rate is probably over 5%. But since the economy only increases the output of real goods and services at maybe 2% per year it is unlikely (impossible?) that stock prices will do much better.

More likely the stock market will struggle just to keep up with inflation. It may grow at 10% per year, as Scott Bessent suggests. Consumer prices may also go up at 10% per year. Or more. And given the trends now in motion, the dollar may not exist at all, in its present form, when today’s newborns reach 65. What $600,000 dollars will buy you then, we don’t know. Probably not even a pot to p*** in."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

"Can The Dark Ages Return?"

"Can The Dark Ages Return?"

by Victor Davis Hanson

"Western civilization arose in the 8th century B.C. Greece. Some 1,500 city-states emerged from a murky, illiterate 400-year-old Dark Age. That chaos followed the utter collapse of the palatial culture of Mycenaean Greece. But what reemerged were constitutional government, rationalism, liberty, freedom of expression, self-critique, and free markets - what we know now as the foundation of a unique Western civilization.

The Roman Republic inherited and enhanced the Greek model. For a millennium, the Republic and subsequent Empire spread Western culture, eventually to be inseparable from Christianity. From the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf and from the Rhine and Danube to the Sahara, there were a million square miles of safety, prosperity, progress, and science - until the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD.

What followed was a second European Dark Age, roughly from 500 to 1000 AD. Populations declined. Cities eroded. Roman roads, aqueducts, and laws crumbled. In place of the old Roman provinces arose tribal chieftains and fiefdoms. Whereas once Roman law had protected even rural people in remote areas, during the Dark Ages, walls and stone were the only means of keeping safe.

Finally, at the end of the 11th century, the old values and know-how of the complex world of Graeco-Roman civilization gradually reemerged. The slow rebirth was later energized by the humanists and scientists of the Renaissance, Reformation, and eventually the 200-year European Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Contemporary Americans do not believe that our current civilization could self-destruct a third time in the West, followed by an impoverished and brutal Dark Age. But what caused these prior returns to tribalism and loss of science, technology, and the rule of law? Historians cite several causes of societal collapse - and today they are hauntingly familiar.

Like people, societies age. Complacency sets in. The hard work and sacrifice that built the West also creates wealth and leisure. Such affluence is taken for granted by later generations. What created success is eventually ignored -or even mocked.

Expenditures and consumption outpace income, production, and investment. Child-rearing, traditional values, strong defense, love of country, religiosity, meritocracy, and empirical education fade away. The middle class of autonomous citizens disappear. Society bifurcates between a few lords and many peasants.

Tribalism - the pre-civilizational bonds based on race, religion, or shared appearance - remerge. National government fragments into regional and ethnic enclaves. Borders disappear. Mass migrations are unchecked. The age-old bane of anti-Semitism reappears.

The currency inflates, losing its value and confidence. General crassness in behavior, speech, dress, and ethics replaces prior norms. Transportation, communications, and infrastructure all decline. The end is near when the necessary medicine is seen as worse than the disease.

Such was life around 450 AD in Western Europe. The contemporary West might raise similar red flags. Fertility has dived well below 2.0 in almost every Western country. Public debt is nearing unsustainable levels. The dollar and euro have lost much of their purchasing power. It is more common in universities to damn than honor the gifts of the Western intellectual past.Yet, the reading and analytical skills of average Westerners, and Americans in particular, steadily decline.

Can the general population even operate or comprehend the ever-more sophisticated machines and infrastructure that an elite group of engineers and scientists creates? The citizen loses confidence in an often corrupt elite, who neither will protect their nations’ borders nor spend sufficient money on collective defense.

The cures are scorned. Do we dare address spiraling deficits, unsustainable debt, and corrupt bureaucracies and entitlements? Even mention of reform is smeared as “greedy,” “racist,” “cruel,” or even “fascist” and “Nazi.”

In our times, relativism replaces absolute values in the eerie replay of the latter Roman Empire. Critical legal theory claims crimes are not really crimes.

Critical race theory postulates that all of society is guilty of insidious bias, demanding reparations in cash and preferences in admission and hiring. Salad-bowl tribalism replaces assimilation, acculturation, and integration of the old melting pot.

Despite a far wealthier, far more leisured, and far more scientific contemporary America, was it safer to walk in New York or take the subway in 1960 than now? Are high school students better at math now or 70 years ago? Are movies and television more entertaining and ennobling in 1940 or now? Are nuclear, two-parent families the norm currently or in 1955?

We are blessed to live longer and healthier lives than ever - even as the larger society around us seems to teeter. Yet, the West historically is uniquely self-introspective and self-critical. Reform and Renaissance historically are more common than descents back into the Dark Ages. But the medicine for decline requires unity, honesty, courage, and action - virtues now in short supply on social media, amid popular culture, and among the political class."

- https://victorhanson.com/

Jim Kunstler, "Seeing Is Believing (Not)"

John Brennan, former US Communist Party member, 

former CIA Director, and Convert to Islam

"Seeing Is Believing (Not)"

by Jim Kunstler

"Power that goes unpunished only learns one lesson:

 it can do whatever it wants."

- Roger Stone

"Has it occurred to you that the video footage of the hallway outside Jeffrey Epstein’s prison cell that shows nobody coming or going around the hour that he “killed himself” could be fake? All authorities from the FBI to The New York Times pretend that the date-and-time stamped video is authentic, and that it proves nobody went into his cell to kill him. Nobody has questioned this. How difficult would it be to take a few hours of alternate closed-circuit TV footage of the same drab hallway from the same position, making sure nobody got on-camera, and then stick a fabricated date-and-time stamp on it? Do you suppose that the intel agencies don’t have the capacity to fabricate that sort of evidence?

At this point, seeing what the capabilities are for AI to compose any kind of picture - or even what years’ old Photoshop programs can do - why would you suppose that anything in the Epstein files now being released might not be subject to fiddling by persons and parties with an interest? Even one second of video showing a notable person in somebody’s arms, or performing an illicit act with a child, a mere glimpse of such a thing, would be A) easy to manufacture, and B) guaranteed to create a mighty shit-storm of a political crisis that would steal everybody’s attention from now until the Rockies tumble.

The Epstein files looks like the end of the seeing-is-believing phase of human history. Whatever dazzling fakes you’re watching on “X” these days, consider that the deep fake abilities of government agencies are a mile ahead of commercially-available AI tech that any jamoke on TikTok can use. I wouldn’t believe a single goshdarn thing coming out of these files that preoccupy the nation right now - while many momentous events unfold at home and around the world unnoticed, or get crowded out by the hoo-hah over Jeffrey Epstein’s sketchy doings. The further forward in time this goes, the worse you can expect it to get.

And why wouldn’t it be in the intel community’s interest to keep this hoo-hah going as long and hard as possible, so as to distract the public from some of the other problems besetting the republic - such as the intel community’s obdurately sociopathic and seditious activities against that very republic?

Talk might be cheap, too, but there’s plenty of chatter on the Internet these days to the effect that a claque of players with familiar names, currently under suspicion of major misdeeds, are secretly running critical sections of the government as a kind of rogue directorate. For instance, former CIA Director John Brennan, whose front-job for years has been as a “national security contributor” to MSNBC/NBC. Do you suppose he sits around his home-office all the livelong day and doesn’t talk to any of his old colleagues? How else would he acquire any “national security” info to report on cable TV? And might you wonder whether these conversations, if they occur, include not just queries and postulations but instructions? That is, orders... for people to carry out such-and-such activities? Or suggestions of orders?

And, of course, John Brennan is just one character in a basket of deplorable former intel officials who conceivably wield influence, or issue orders, in the vast turbid, stagnant, septic backwaters of America’s intel swamp. To name a few: Jim Clapper, Michael Hayden, Mike Pompeo, Avril Haines, Leon Panetta, Gina Haspel. (Just add the rest of the list of bigshots who signed the infamous 2020 Hunter Biden / Russian disinfo “open letter.”) And dozens more including a big gang of ex-FBI and DOJ with cases pending for activities that have the shape and smell of a coup to overthrow the US government (that they served).

Do you suppose any of them might have an interest in stirring the pot of cognitive dissonance that is making it nearly impossible for the people of this land to understand what the f*ck is going on around them? You’ve got to wonder what John Ratcliffe thinks about all this (and about the 21,000 employees of the CIA he supposedly directs). And what Tulsi Gabbard knows about the sundry communications flying around the American digital ether. And what fresh treachery is yet being launched by this coterie of scoundrels. And now imagine how difficult life must be for one President Donald Trump. Just sayin’."

"Merry Christmas to all!"

- https://www.kunstler.com/

Adventures With Danno, "Last Minute Christmas Shopping At Meijer!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, 12/22/25

"Last Minute Christmas Shopping At Meijer!"

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