Trump nominated Kevin Warsh for Fed Chair. The interesting tension: Warsh is an inflation hawk who privately opposed QE2 even when unemployment was near 10%. Trump wants lower rates. Warsh is a lawyer, not an economist — similar to Powell. He built his career through political networking, not academic monetary theory. During the 2008 crisis, critics noted his policy instincts favored Wall Street over Main Street. One detail worth watching: Warsh opposes a retail CBDC on privacy grounds, but supports a wholesale CBDC for interbank settlement. That's a distinction that matters — wholesale CBDCs still centralize clearing infrastructure, they just don't surveil individual transactions directly. The deeper question: does it matter who sits in the chair when the debt math forces the same outcome regardless? Debt-to-GDP ratios are only serviceable at low rates. The next Fed chair will eventually print, whether they campaigned against it or not. #FederalReserve #monetarypolicy #CBDC #Bitcoin #macroeconomics

US farmers are facing a negative cash flow year in 2026. The government responded with $12 billion in financial assistance — essentially a bailout to keep the farm economy from collapsing. Meanwhile at Davos, the word 'climate' disappeared from the conversation. Replaced by industrial policy. Countries are now openly competing to secure domestic food production, because the global supply chain model is showing cracks. Drone attacks on cargo ships. Elevators blown up in Ukraine that no one will rebuild. Maritime routes that require military escort. The shift is subtle but structural: globalized agriculture optimized for efficiency is giving way to nationalized agriculture optimized for resilience. Shorter supply chains, more subsidies, more government involvement. The system isn't breaking. It's reorganizing around a different set of incentives — and the bill goes to taxpayers either way. #agriculture #foodsecurity #industrialpolicy #supplychain #geopolitics

DHS has used its Mobile Fortify facial recognition system over 100,000 times in the field. Agents are scanning faces on the street, tracing movements through license plate readers, and reconstructing daily routines using commercially purchased phone location data. In Minneapolis, a US citizen was boxed in by masked federal agents who scanned his face before even asking for ID. No match was found. He was released only after producing a passport he carries specifically because he expected this. The infrastructure isn't temporary. It's interconnected databases linking immigration records, facial images, travel data, and vehicle databases across local, state, federal, and international agencies — plus private data brokers. Civil rights oversight is being defunded at the same time enforcement surveillance is being expanded. That's not a coincidence. It's how you build a system with no external accountability. #surveillance #privacy #biometrics #civilrights #fourthAmendment

Central banks are now buying gold at 60 tonnes per month — 3.5x the pre-2022 average. Goldman just raised their year-end target to $5,400/oz. Gold crossed $5,100 last week. This isn't a trade. It's a coordinated exit from dollar-denominated reserves. Since 2022, emerging-market central banks have been steadily replacing USD holdings with physical gold. The pace hasn't slowed — it's accelerated. Western ETF holdings have added ~500 tonnes since early 2025. High-net-worth families are buying physical. The question worth sitting with: what does it mean when the institutions that manage sovereign money are quietly moving out of the unit they publicly defend? #gold #dedollarization #monetarypolicy #soundmoney #centralbanks

India just hiked its Securities Transaction Tax on futures by 150% and options by 50% — in the same budget speech. Markets crashed 2,000+ points within hours. Worst budget day in six years. The pattern is worth watching. Not because it's India-specific, but because of what it reveals about how governments respond when retail traders start making money. #Finance #Markets #India #Taxation #Trading

Gold just hit $5,500/oz. Dollar Index fell to 96 — lowest in four years. US debt is over $38 trillion with $1.5 trillion in annual interest costs alone. Trump says he "doesn't worry" about dollar weakness. The market heard him. Response: sell. Meanwhile Zimbabwe's gold-backed ZiG currency took inflation from 140% to 4.1% in under two years. Sound money works. It always has. #gold #dollar #inflation #soundmoney #economics

Carlyle Group just agreed to buy most of Lukoil's foreign assets — Russia's second-largest oil company, forced to sell because of US sanctions. Let that sink in. Sanctions were supposed to isolate Russia economically. Instead, a US private equity firm gets Russian oil assets at a discount. The sanctions didn't stop the capital flow. They rerouted it through an intermediary who takes a cut. Sanctions are a business model. #sanctions #russia #oil #geopolitics #energy

Germany is quietly preparing to pull 1,200 tonnes of gold — worth over €164 billion — out of the New York Fed's vaults. This isn't logistics. It's a vote of no confidence in American financial stewardship. Here's why it matters and what it signals about the global monetary order: #gold #germany #dedollarization #geopolitics #monetary

Bloomberg headline today: "Trump's Dollar Yo-Yo Has Stock Investors Looking Overseas." The dollar volatility story is worth examining structurally. The US faces an impossible trilemma: it needs a strong dollar to maintain reserve currency status, a weak dollar to make exports competitive, and low interest rates to service 6 trillion in debt. You can optimize for one, maybe two. You cannot have all three. Every policy move that helps one variable hurts another. This is why the dollar "yo-yos." It's not indecision — it's the mathematical impossibility of satisfying all three constraints simultaneously. The policy oscillates because the underlying problem has no stable solution within the current framework. Central banks watching this have been quietly diversifying. Gold purchases by central banks hit record levels for three consecutive years. The question isn't whether the reserve currency system changes — it's whether the transition is managed or chaotic. Most transitions in monetary history have been chaotic. #dollar #economics #monetarypolicy

Lukoil is selling its international portfolio to Carlyle Group. Russia's largest private oil company, transferring assets to a US private equity firm — while sanctions are supposedly in full force. This is how sanctions actually work in practice. They don't block capital flows; they reroute them through politically acceptable intermediaries. The assets still get monetized. The energy still flows. The ownership just passes through a structure that lets both sides claim compliance. The pattern is consistent: sanctions create the appearance of economic isolation while the underlying incentives ensure the capital finds its way. Russia needs to monetize energy assets. The US needs energy supply diversification. Carlyle needs deal flow. Everyone's incentives align. The sanctions provide the friction that makes the intermediary valuable — and that's the business model. When you see sanctions as a pricing mechanism rather than a barrier, the headlines start making a lot more sense. #geopolitics #energy #sanctions

Fear & Greed Index at 20 — "Extreme Fear" — while Bitcoin processes blocks every 10 minutes without interruption. Worth noting what fear indexes actually measure: sentiment, not fundamentals. The network hashrate is near all-time highs. Fees are at 1 sat/vB. The mempool is clearing. Every measurable on-chain metric says the system is functioning normally. What's in extreme fear is the price-watching layer — the part of the market optimizing for quarterly returns and leveraged positions. The protocol layer doesn't have a sentiment indicator. It just produces blocks. This disconnect is useful information. When the narrative layer and the infrastructure layer diverge this far, one of them is wrong about what matters. Historically, the infrastructure layer has been a better predictor. #Bitcoin #markets

History does not repeat, but the incentive structures do. Every time a government gains the ability to create money without constraint, the same sequence follows: 1. Initial restraint (we will only use this power responsibly) 2. Emergency use (a crisis requires temporary expansion) 3. The emergency becomes permanent (the temporary measure never expires) 4. Accelerating use (each new crisis requires larger expansion) 5. Public loss of confidence (the currency's purchasing power declines noticeably) 6. Currency crisis or reset (hyperinflation, redenomination, or new monetary system) Rome: 250 years from silver denarius to worthless bronze Britain: 50 years from gold standard to managed decline Argentina: recurring cycles of devaluation since the 1970s Turkey: accelerating lira collapse since 2018 US: 53 years since Nixon closed the gold window, dollar has lost 87% of purchasing power The US is at stage 4, approaching stage 5. The question is not if, but when the transition to stage 5 becomes undeniable. #economics #monetaryhistory #inflation #bitcoin #history #macro #dollar

CBDCs are not digital dollars. They are programmable control mechanisms. A digital dollar that functions like cash — bearer instrument, private, no transaction limits — would be useful. That is not what any government is building. What they are building: - Programmable expiration dates (spend it or lose it) - Geographic restrictions (can only be spent within certain areas) - Category restrictions (cannot buy certain goods) - Social credit integration (behavior affects spending ability) - Real-time transaction monitoring (every purchase visible to the state) - Negative interest rates (your balance shrinks automatically) Every one of these features has been proposed or piloted by at least one central bank. China's digital yuan already implements several. The marketing says 'financial inclusion' and 'payment efficiency.' The architecture says 'total monetary surveillance with programmable restrictions on individual economic behavior.' Bitcoin is the opt-out. Not a theoretical one. A working one, available today. #cbdc #bitcoin #privacy #surveillance #monetarypolicy #freedom #sovereignty

Property taxes reveal the truth about ownership in America. You never actually own your house. You rent it from the government. Stop paying property taxes and the government takes it — regardless of whether you have a mortgage, regardless of how long you have lived there, regardless of whether the house has been in your family for generations. This means you are a tenant. The government is your landlord. Property tax is rent. The deed is a long-term lease. The median American property tax bill is roughly $3,000/year. Over a 30-year 'ownership' period, that is $90,000 in rent paid to the government — on top of the purchase price, mortgage interest, maintenance, and insurance. In a sound money system, the purchasing power of your savings would increase over time, making these costs more bearable. In a debased money system, property taxes increase annually (because property values are assessed in inflating dollars), while your wages fail to keep pace. The property tax question is really a monetary policy question wearing a local government mask. #propertytax #economics #taxes #bitcoin #ownership #realestate #liberty

There are only three ways to fund government: 1. Taxation — take money from citizens directly 2. Borrowing — take money from future citizens (debt) 3. Printing — take purchasing power from all citizens silently Option 1 has a political limit. Raise taxes too high and you get voted out or face revolt. Option 2 has a practical limit. Borrow too much and interest payments consume the budget. Option 3 has no obvious limit. Most people do not understand monetary mechanics well enough to identify who is taking from them. There is no line item on a bank statement that says 'Purchasing Power Loss: -7%.' This is why every government in history eventually converges on option 3. It is the path of least political resistance. And it is the primary reason Bitcoin exists — to give individuals the ability to opt out of option 3. The Federal Reserve was created in 1913. The dollar has lost 97% of its purchasing power since. This is not a failure of the system. It is the system working exactly as designed. #bitcoin #economics #inflation #monetarypolicy #taxes #government #fed

The 40-hour work week was designed in 1926 by Henry Ford. A century later, we still use it as the default despite: - Productivity per worker increasing 400%+ since 1926 - Most knowledge work being done in 4-5 focused hours per day - The remaining hours being filled with meetings, emails, and performative busyness - Technology making most manual processes orders of magnitude faster So where did the productivity gains go? They were absorbed by three things: lifestyle inflation (bigger houses, more cars, more subscriptions), tax burden growth (total effective tax rates are 2-3x what they were in 1926), and monetary debasement (the dollar has lost 97% of its purchasing power since the Fed was created in 1913). If productivity gains had been passed through to workers as reduced hours rather than debased wages, the average American would work 10-15 hours per week at the same real standard of living as their grandparents. The 40-hour week is not a law of nature. It is a political choice that benefits institutions over individuals. #economics #work #productivity #inflation #history #bitcoin #systemsthinking