Zero Hedge

Repricing Sovereignty

Repricing Sovereignty

Authored by Mark Jeftovic via BombThrower.,com,

Personal Freedom In The Age of Mass Compliance

What follows are a couple of excerpts from the last Bitcoin Capitalist Letter, which was a long-form piece that was a refinement of my overall long term investment thesis. It corrects for my biggest mistake in the previous model: the belief that nation states were in secular decline, and centralized government power was waning.

This may be true for the long haul, but for the next five, ten, twenty years – we’re heading into an era that numerous commentators have been identifying, and I’m looping under umbrella “State Capitalism”. 

More specific to our “Great Bifurcation” thesis, what this really means is State Capitalism for the “haves” and  mass compliance and (the warmth of?) collectivism for the  permanent underclass. UBI is coming out of necessity, and anyone who thinks that isn’t going to be some permutation of social credit (most likely based on personal carbon footprint quotas) is ngmi.

Late Stage Globalism

A paper I came across recently was Nicolas Colin’s Late-Cyle Investment Theory, which came out in June ’25 but Colin was recently a guest on Hidden Forces.

Colin’s paper posits that we are entering the maturity phase of the computer/networking information age.

What got my attention, both from the podcast interview with Demetri Kofinas and then as I read through the paper itself, is how it explains the mechanisms by which late-cycle dynamics force governments toward what we’ve described last edition, a global march toward a kind of “state capitalism” and that “uncomfortable reality I have been grappling with for a few months, that The State and The Economy are in the process of merging”.

We’re seeing a kind of  inexorable slide into state-directed capital allocation; it’s taking forms peculiar to its cultural backdrop but it’s happening all over the world.

Russell Napier calls it “National Capitalism”; he also appeared on Hidden Forces a year ago and we covered it in the December ‘24 edition.

WEF luminaries like Marianna Mazzacuto – wholly in favour of the trend – calls it “The Entrepreneurial State”; Tyler Durden over at Zerohedge calls the American expression of it “WHAM” – White House Asset Management.

My favourite version of it is George Gilder’s  “Emergency Socialism”, because it captures the exigencies that are making this a priority among governments worldwide.

Colin is somewhat unique in that he argues high public debt isn’t a policy mistake but a structural feature of technological maturity (not sure I agree, tbh).

As he puts it, governments continue borrowing as if the previous growth regime still applies, even as productivity gains plateau and returns diminish.

The numbers are stark:

  • US public debt at 122% of GDP (255% including private sector)

  • France at 112% (300% total)

  • Japan exceeding 260% public (400% total).

Not mentioned in his paper, but I’ll add that Canada’s total government debt (all levels) is 120%, and our private debt on its own is north of 200%.

These levels dwarf anything seen during the 1970s inflation.

The options, as Colin lays them out, are brutally limited, and this shouldn’t come as a surprise to any of us here.

Governments cannot meaningfully raise taxes, any increases can only be performative and symbolic. Those who pay the lion’s share of them have already demonstrated a willingness to relocate if the “tax the rich” slogans translate into excessive action (we’re already seeing anticipatory exoduses from New York City as Mamdami comes in threatening full-on socialism).

Nor can governments cut spending, because various entitlement programs dominate budgets.

Colin thinks that they can’t outgrow the debt because technological maturity means slower productivity growth, which is the core of his thesis.

He may be right, but I don’t think governments believe that – they are looking at AI to ignite a productivity boom that can outpace the debt bubble.

Whether Colin is correct, or governments believe their own mantra about a productivity miracle in the offing, both roads lead to the same place:

There is only one politically viable path, and that is inflation.

“Run it hot”, basically.

But here’s where Colin’s analysis dovetails with our thesis: inflation has consequences.

As prices rise and real rates fall, voluntary demand for government bonds evaporates (this is why we’ve been seeing yields on sovereign debt spiking higher for over a year).

The one common denominator from those we’ve mentioned above (Colin, Napier, Gilder) is that the most likely outcome is financial repression: policies that force domestic savings into public debt through capital controls, regulatory mandates, and banking rules.

This is the merger of the state and capital that I’ve been warning about. It is a type of financial repression, but the quiet bureaucratic kind where your pension fund must hold treasuries, where capital controls prevent you from moving wealth offshore, where the rules of the game are systematically rigged to channel private savings toward public obligations.

Colin frames this as part of a broader institutional fragmentation. Trade wars, he notes (citing David Skilling), are precursors to capital wars.

States that once relied on global capital markets increasingly treat capital as a strategic resource (hence the advent of things like “Strategic Bitcoin Reserves” – my comment, not his).

The open, rules-based order many still assume to be in place is actively unravelling.

Napier talked about all this a year ago and never once uttered the word “Bitcoin”, let alone crypto.

Colin, for his part, sees crypto and stablecoins as part of the emerging new financial system (sound familiar?), and what’s fascinating is how this all maps onto The Stablecoin Standard thesis we’ve been developing.

He sees dollar-backed stablecoins as America’s attempt to extend monetary hegemony into the digital age, essentially creating a new channel for petrodollar-style recycling where foreign demand for USDT and USDC indirectly finances US government debt.

No surprise here, but it contains an inherent tension: stablecoins work precisely because they route around traditional banking, yet that same feature makes them harder to control when geopolitical pressures mount.

The implication for us is clear and it emerges in a kind of “Barbell trade” portfolio that both recognizes the reality of State Capitalism while also hedging for it via the simultaneous emergence of a parallel system (more on this below).

The big wake-up call for me, is that The State Is “The House”. I’ve spent most of my adult life thinking that it was on its last legs, that at some point a Geopolitical Minsky Moment would demolish the entire scaffolding, and then sound money and free markets would assert themselves.

I was wrong. I’ve now realized that.

The general public will never not believe in the legitimacy of “The State” (even though they may dispute who currently occupies the machinery). It’s baked in since childhood – and it won’t matter that their leaders debase the currency, leach away their wealth, send their children to die in turf wars or even load their neighbours into boxcars. The masses will always believe that The House is legitimate, inevitable and necessary.

With all that said, I still do think that there will be a geopolitical Minsky moment, a kind of global, macro “force majeure” that resets the table, simply because the fiat currency system is well past its “use by” date – but make no mistake, the only thing that happens to The House in the aftermath is that some other faction takes over the lease. And the masses will then dutifully follow the new boss.

The only antidote to this is on the individual level. Independent thinking and independent wealth. That’s it.

If you have a compassionate streak and you want to help the masses or uplift the poor, you have one way to do it: give them the means, motive and opportunities to lift themselves at an individual level – education, mentorship, motivation, angel investing, scholarships, introductions.

One may ask what the exact change in thesis is; if we’re still long Bitcoin, we’re still invested in what we think is the emerging new financial system, we’re still long picks and shovels.

Before we get to it, we have to put a couple more pieces on the table.

The picture we see emerging is this:

  • Increasing numbers of plebs are “checking out” of the system, trying to degen their way to wealth, and not even bothering to vote for a system that has essentially abandoned them (referring to our write up on The Prison of Financial Mediocrity  in the full edition)

  • AI is killing not only jobs, but entire career paths. UBI is moving past being part of the conversation – I expect 2026 to be a  pivotal year in turning it into reality in multiple jurisdictions.

  • Whoever still believes there’s a functioning system in place, does so for the simple reason that they are banking on it to save their asses: hence the growing populist surge on both sides of the political spectrum – but “democratic socialism” and collectivism seem to hold characteristically peculiar attraction for vast swaths of the public.

The final piece in all this is the unrelenting crack-up of the global financial system itself and the geopolitical scaffolding that, until recently, seemed immutable.

I reiterate my old prediction that Donald Trump will be the penultimate president of the United States as they are understood today. Whoever comes after will be the last. And then the US will morph into something else, similar to the breakdown of the USSR in the early 90s.

The same is happening in Canada – where there are now three separatist movements: Quebec, Alberta and now Saskatchewan.

The Eurozone will likely crack up under its own internal tensions and secessionist movements are poised to gain momentum the world over.

How do we reconcile that with an era of Big Government and State Capitalism?

There will simply be more states: a multi-polar world, and different jurisdictions will govern with varying levels of heavy-handedness and interventionism.

Singapore, for example, is for all intents and purposes an authoritarian enclave – under the singular rule of the People’s Action Party since independence, and everybody who lives there seems fine with that. The trains run on time, there are very low levels of corruption and street crime is practically unheard of.

They’ll cane you for chewing gum in the subway (harsh? Try riding the TTC in Toronto without getting stabbed by a mental patient), and they’ll execute you for serious crimes, but there are no “immigration discounts” on sentencing (in November, two men were hanged for trafficking heroin, one a Singaporean, the other, Malaysian).

Singapore is no libertarian paradise, but there is also pretty well zero possibility that any purple-haired Trantifa berserkers are going to shoot up your kid’s school, or that some liberal arts soy-boy in a keffiyeh will smash your face in with a brick on New Year’s Eve.

So there’s that.

Parag Khanna, in his elite-class best-seller “Technocracy In America: Rise of the Info State”, said the governance model of the future should be some manner of Swiss-Singapore hybrid. I remember being both bemused and mortified when I first read that (it came out in 2016) …in the intervening years, I find myself thinking we may do OK with a touch of both:

“What model should post-authoritarian or newly democratic societies pursue: Swiss-style organic economic diversification or Singapore-style managed innovation?

The answer is both. Having lived for stretches in both these small countries, I’ve come to see that despite their enormous differences, what matters most is that Switzerland and Singapore are both verifiably democratic and rigorously technocratic at the same time.”

Khanna cites Harvard’s Michael Porter and Richard Rosecrance, who forecasted an emergence of a “market state” era.

Also,

“business strategist Keniche Ohmae, in his book The Next Global Stage (2005), argued that urban agglomerations of city-states resembling the medieval Hanseatic League would become the world’s power centers.”

When you take a step back, it’s not that different from the mosaic of competitive (not combative) sovereignties posited back in The Sovereign Individual (or, Snow Crash).

It just turns out that Khanna arrived as a similar conclusion from a different angle. If I’m honest, my initial reaction to it probably owed much to Khanna’s involvement with the WEF.

As a recent guest on the Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast once quipped, almost off-handedly, “the wealthy never suffer in any society”.

In places like Singapore – and the innumerable micro-sovereignties that will spring up over the coming years – there will be due process and basic rights (Singapore has a constitutional guarantee on free speech, with a lot of escape hatches for the government in cases of public order, hate, etc. – the same thing is happening here in Canada, and around the world).

But realistically, it will probably take deep pockets to be able to exercise those rights. In Canada we have an expression to describe what happens to property owners who use deadly force against violent home invaders, “The process is the punishment”.

It means if your door gets kicked in by some low-IQ imports who are already out on bail for doing this previously, and you blow their heads off with a legally owned shotgun, you will be charged and forced to stand trial. After a few years, and several hundred thousand dollars in legal fees, you’ll likely prevail in court. If you don’t have the resources to fight that battle, you’ll take a plea deal and spend some time behind bars with exactly the same types of people you just defended yourself against.

Remember our maxim: “In the future, it’ll be a lot more expensive to be free”.

Meanwhile, the bottom tiers of the wealth pyramid across most jurisdictions (the permanent underclass) are going to embrace collectivism, populism and wind up with varying degrees of authoritarianism.

The Post-Singularity Stack and the SoS Portfolio

This is the tightest wrapper I could come up with for everything I’ve been trying to set out in this issue.

Due credit goes to Addison Wiggin, from the Grey Swan Fraternity, who recently put out a piece entitled “Repricing Legitimacy”. It touches on many of the same themes we’re monitoring here: the widespread disaffection of the younger generations, and the loss of faith in legacy institutions – albeit, as we’ve noted above, somewhat ironically juxtaposed with a renewed enthusiasm for Big Government and even collectivism.

“Our job isn’t to pick a slogan or a side. It’s to recognize where legitimacy is being rebuilt, where it’s being faked, and where it’s quietly draining away.

Revolutions without plans tend to end in terror and sorrow. Systems without trust eventually seize up.

Cycles don’t care what we believe. They respond to balance. And balance, right now, is being renegotiated almost everywhere at once.“

Drawing on source material mentioned earlier, plus a few others:

The common theme seems to be that they are books which filled me with revulsion and dread the first time I read them.

Shvets’ thesis is point blank: the old neoliberal capitalist consensus has collapsed and no new model has yet emerged, but all indications are that it’ll include some kind of socialism (my extension on this is that we’re headed for a two-tier system of techno-socialism for the masses, and state capitalism for the asset holders).

If you hear Shvets on any interviews, he usually blames the markets for breaking down – saying, in effect, that “the market model has been discredited”. I would beg to differ, saying that the market functioning has been completely coopted by government interventionism and fiat debasement, but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter. The dysfunction is real.

He makes frequent references to something called the “Fujiwara Effect”, a meteorological term for when multiple hurricanes converge into a single, humongous, cataclysmic storm. The analogy here is the compounding of multiple negative cycles: financial, with the debt bubble; technological, with the existential disruptions coming from AI – and he also puts “climate change” in there, which I actually view as the one thing we don’t have to worry about, at least not now.

It’s still a fitting term for what we’re headed into: some kind of transition that won’t be incremental, but “rupture”-like.

Towson, whose book is over a decade old, reframed value investing as not only a game of mental chess with “Mr. Market”, but as one where “Mr. Government” had entered the chat. Investors and entrepreneurs would henceforth have to take the ever-increasing regulatory and ideological biases of The State into account when making their allocation decisions.

Daniel Bell himself defended criticisms that he was extolling a China-style command economy, which he maintains he was not, but that the point of his book was that nobody can dispute China’s results in operating that way. It works. Or at least it did (they too, have an enormous, untenable debt bubble, just like everybody else).

If there is a common aspect to these models it’s that policy starts to crowd out price discovery.

We’ve been dancing around this realization for a long time; this is what I’ve been intuiting every time I said that shorting anything was a fool’s errand because markets are now structurally hardwired to go up – more so than at any other time in history.

That’s fiat debasement at work, and it puts the entire universe of assets on an escalator, and from there it’s a matter of picking what will outperform the rate of decay in our denominators.

Tyler Durden’s phrase “White House Asset Management” (WHAM) is telling us that intrinsic value is now a political function, at least partially so. Imagine being short MSTR only to wake up some morning and find out that Trump put out a tweet during his morning dump announcing that the US government just took a 10% stake in MSTR, MARA and HUT/ABTC.

Nobody should be surprised if that happens. Not anymore

For many years I’ve taken pains to chart a largely libertarian, if not anarcho-capitalist path, the crux of which was trying to conduct myself with no regard to who was in power or which party formed the government.

I basically tried to tune out The State. I’ve conceded that it’s become much harder to do that since COVID, but I was still making my investment and capital allocation decisions from a market forces perspective.

And that is what is changing now. Our overall thesis may be unperturbed: The Great Bifurcation, Monetary Regime Change, etc. – but I am now grudgingly acknowledging that The State is going to impact our economic calculus more than I’d care to admit.

Those above-mentioned books which filled me denial and dread when I first read them, I’m now re-reading to adjust my investment theses around them.

I’m not exactly happy about it, but here we are…

Let’s talk SOS (Sovereign vs Serfdom):

If we’re going to stipulate that The State, “Mr. Government” (or “Mr. Regime” as I began to frame it mentally) is now part of the calculus, one of the places to start is to look at the largest economy in the world – The United States – and look at what its stated, national strategic objectives are.

The “economic security” objectives include: critical supply chains (logistics) and materials, energy dominance, reviving the defence industry, and growing financial sector dominance.

We know that energy dominance doesn’t mean windmills and solar, it means nuclear, oil, and natgas.

We also know that financial sector dominance will have Bitcoin, blockchain, crypto and stablecoins baked in.

And, big surprise, more military spending.

When I looked at all this and realized that all major powers are jockeying around these same themes, what came to mind for me was a kind of barbell positioning between “Mr. Regime” and a Parallel System (including “freedom tech”) across two axes:

Axis A: Serfdom vs Sovereign

Regime-aligned: are companies and assets that directly benefit from various national security strategy priorities (energy dominance, reindustrialization, defense industrial base, financial/AI leadership).

Sovereign / Parallel: Bitcoin, gold, privacy, decentralized rails and jurisdictions that hedge State Capitalism and what I sometimes call the “monetizing serfdom” trade.

These are positions that get us through whatever this is happening right now and over the next five to ten years.

Axis B: The “Post-Singularity” stack

Sound Money: Bitcoin, precious metals, future fintech

Smart Machines: AI / HPC / Big Data

Scarce Resources: energy, metals, base commodities

These are the companies and resources ushering in or underpinning “what comes next”.

Putting it all together

I touted this edition as a “major revision to the thesis”, however as I worked my way through it, what became apparent to me was that not a lot had changed within the thesis itself, except perhaps in timing:

  • The Great Bifurcation was coming => TGB is here
  • Governments and institutions are out of their depth
  • Bitcoin will make a place in the next financial system => Bitcoin has taken its place within the emerging financial system

If the overall components and mechanics of the thesis haven’t changed – then what exactly did? Because something sure feels different to me.

I guess the big shift is from an overall optimism that humanity was going to level up en masse through the separation of the State and money (“fix the money, fix the world”), and admitting that was extremely naive.

It comes down to two things:

#1) Big Government is waxing, not waning:

Despite our governments and institutions being legacies of the industrial age, trying to linearly extrapolate their approaches into a non-linear world, their influence is not waning – as I have been positing since the aftermath of the pandemic.

The State is asserting itself ever more into the private sphere, everywhere.

I’ve made passing references to “a last gasp of Big Government” and the Nanny State in the past, but I think I under-emphasized it. This so-called “last gasp” will persist for a long time in the context of our lives. It could be a couple of decades, or more, before this plays itself out.

#2) I’ve completely misread the public mind

Again, thinking the demise of institutional credibility and loss of faith in an unaccountable and insular ruling class coming to a head during COVID was a secular wave.

That also appears to be wrong. It was an aberration and the general public has settled back into lethargy and compliance.

The combination of these realities pushes us toward the “Mr. Regime” side of the investment thesis, which is basically monetizing servitude, and on a certain level, that just feels wrong.

Aren’t we supposed to try to educate the masses? Make them understand how screwed they are if they don’t take massive action right away?

Our better nature may say so, but let me tell you a story about that impulse… (a true one):

In 1984, an unknown social psychology professor put out a book that was intended to be a consumer awareness tool designed to “pull back the curtain” on how people are manipulated.

The author described himself as a lifelong “patsy” and “easy mark” who wanted to educate the general public on the tactics of “compliance professionals” (like salespeople, marketers, nudge units and propagandists) so that they could defend themselves.

The book flopped, his publisher going so far as to withdraw promotion and publicity funds, citing that it would be like “throwing money down a pit”.

Nobody cared.

That book was eventually discovered by the very people who it was intended to expose: the marketing industry.

Robert Cialdini’s “Influence” is now an evergreen staple of the business world, having been re-released in an expanded edition, and has sold over 7 million copies worldwide.

This anecdote is both depressing and indicative of the world we live in – a microcosm for everything.

You thought Bitcoin was going to emancipate the masses from the tyranny of central banking?

The masses don’t care. They’re busy piling onto Polymarket and betting on which Stranger Things character is going to die in the finale:

You know who does care about Bitcoin, now? JP Morgan. Wells Fargo. Citigroup.

As TFTC notes, “14 of the top 25 US banks are now building Bitcoin products”:

Note also how a couple are building their Bitcoin products for “HNW Clients Only.

And that’s why if we want to stay on the right side of The Great Bifurcation and have the means to chart our own paths through this period of State Capitalism, we’re going to have to do it individually – and recognize that in the future, it’ll be a lot more expensive to be free.

That’s why the revised thesis carries a cynicism that’s uncomfortable. Any remaining altruism I felt toward a public that would rather ignore, or even punish the messenger than act on the message has to be quelled, and any civic-mindedness I had left has to be channeled accordingly (mentorship, curation, lead by example, etc).

What bothers me the most about this, was that in the past there was no existential impetus to break oneself out from the crowd. Everybody had the perfectly reasonable option of simply fitting in: you could get an education or a trade, work for a living, buy a house, raise a family, put your kids through college and just live a quiet, middle class life.

My dad worked on the shop floor in a General Electric plant for over thirty years, after which they gave him a pen for his retirement and a pension that my mom collected for another 17 years after he died. My parents were probably among the last generation of truly working/middle class people to live, work, save and retire.

All that is over. A bygone era.

Serfdom or Sovereignty (“SoS”) – that’s the choice now and most people aren’t even aware of it, and when they see somebody choosing sovereignty it looks downright heretical to them.

We can’t help these people, and that makes me sad, even if the majority of them would gleefully stone me to death in the street if the TV set ever tells them that the reason their livelihood is gone and their savings have been vaporized was because of “Bitcoin speculators” and goldbugs.

Most people are stupid. Especially when they act in numbers. If you’re reading this letter, you aren’t one of them.

The next edition of The Bitcoin Capitalist Letter, with more on the Post-Singularity Stack, should be out next weekend. Bombthrower readers can get a special trial offer here

Sign up for the Bombthrower Mailing List here and get a free copy of The Crypto Capitalist Manifesto.

Tyler Durden Sun, 01/25/2026 - 10:30

'Repatriate The Gold': German Economists Urge Withdrawal From US Vaults

'Repatriate The Gold': German Economists Urge Withdrawal From US Vaults

Authored by Kate Connolly via The Guardian,

Shift in relations and unpredictability of Donald Trump make it ‘risky to store so much gold in the US’, say experts

Germany is facing calls to withdraw its billions of euros’ worth of gold from US vaults, spurred on by the shift in transatlantic relations and the unpredictability of Donald Trump.

Germany holds the world’s second biggest national gold reserves after the US, of which approximately €164bn (£122bn) worth – 1,236 tonnes – is stored in New York.

Emanuel Mönch, a leading economist and former head of research at Germany’s federal bank, the Bundesbank, called for the gold to be brought home, saying it was too “risky” for it to be kept in the US under the current administration.

“Given the current geopolitical situation, it seems risky to store so much gold in the US,” he told the financial newspaper Handelsblatt.

“In the interest of greater strategic independence from the US, the Bundesbank would therefore be well advised to consider repatriating the gold.”

Stefan Kornelius, the spokesperson for Friedrich Merz’s coalition government, said recently that withdrawal of the gold reserves was not currently under consideration.

But Mönch is only the latest in a string of economists and financial experts to argue that such a move would be in keeping with the greater strategic independence that Europe’s largest economy has been seeking from the US in recent months.

Michael Jäger, the head of the European Taxpayers Association (TAE) as well as the Association of German Taxpayers, has also said Berlin should make its move, arguing that the US’s stated desire to seize Greenland should concentrate minds.

“Trump is unpredictable and he does everything to generate revenue. That’s why our gold is no longer safe in the Fed’s vaults,” Jäger told the Rheinische Post.

“What happens if the Greenland provocation continues? … The risk is increasing that the German Bundesbank will no longer be able to access its gold. Therefore, it should repatriate its reserves.”

Jäger said he had written last year to the Bundesbank and the finance ministry, urging them to “bring our gold home”.

Until recently the gold issue has been the preserve mainly of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which has repeatedly urged the return of the gold for patriotic reasons. But it has increasingly crept into the mainstream discourse.

Katharina Beck, the finance spokesperson for the opposition Greens in the Bundestag, has also spoken out in favour of relocating the gold bars, calling them an “important anchor of stability and trust”, which “must not become pawns in geopolitical disputes”.

However, Clemens Fuest, the president of the Institute for Economic Research (Ifo) and one of the country’s most prominent economists, warned against such a move, saying it could lead to unintended consequences and would “only pour oil on the fire of the current situation”, he told the Rheinische Post.

Germany’s total gold reserves are worth almost €450bn.

Just over half are held at the Bundesbank in Frankfurt am Main, 37% in the vaults of the US Federal Reserve in New York and 12% at the Bank of England in London, the global centre of gold trading. The Bundesbank says it regularly undertakes an audit of the supplies of gold it holds in storage.

Speaking last October at the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) autumn meetings in Washington DC, the Bundesbank president, Joachim Nagel, assured attenders there was “no cause for concern” over the German gold held at the US Federal Reserve.

Frauke Heiligenstadt, the parliamentary group spokesperson on financial policy for the Social Democrats, junior partners in the government, said that while she understood concerns about the gold reserves, there was no need for panic.

“Germany’s gold reserves are well diversified,” she said. Because half of them are located in Frankfurt, “our ability to act is guaranteed”. Having gold in New York made sense, she added, because “Germany, Europe and the US are closely linked in terms of financial policy”.

But, amid Trump’s hardening rhetoric towards his western partners, an increasing number of Merz’s Christian Democrats have been speaking out in favour of relocation.

“Due to the Trump administration, the US is no longer a reliable partner,” Ulrike Neyer, a professor of economics at the University of Düsseldorf, told the Rheinische Post.

Tyler Durden Sun, 01/25/2026 - 09:20

Where The US Has Military Footholds In Europe

Where The US Has Military Footholds In Europe

Since the beginning of his second term one year ago, President Trump has escalated his public campaign regarding his plans for acquiring Greenland, framing the autonomous Danish territory as a "national security necessity" due to its Arctic location, while the island is also rich in untapped mineral resources.

Trump's rhetoric has ranged from offers to purchase the territory from Denmark, including a direct payment to its residents, to veiled threats of military intervention, having notably stated in early January: "We are going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not, because if we don’t do it, Russia or China will take over Greenland, and we’re not going to have Russia or China as a neighbor".

That rhetoric appeared to peak last weekend and then drifted back into more diplomatic discussion after his flip-flop on possible kinetic action during his speech in Davos.

This push follows a pattern of assertive U.S. foreign policy, including the recent military raid in Venezuela to capture the country's President Nicolas Maduro.

The U.S. already operates a permanent military base in Greenland: Pituffik Space Base, a Cold War-era installation now staffed by about 200 personnel, down from a peak of 10,000. The base is critical for missile defense and space surveillance, but Trump argues that full U.S. control is needed to deter Russia and China, despite existing defense agreements with Denmark that allow for expanded U.S. military presence.

As Statista's Tristan Gaudiat notes in the map below, the U.S. also currently maintains over 50,000 troops across around thirty permanent bases in Europe (area of responsibility of the United States European Command), with important air hubs like Keflavik (Iceland), Ramstein (Germany) and Lakenheath (United Kingdom), or naval stations like Rota (Spain) and Souda (Greece).

These bases are not only tools of NATO deterrence but also leverage points for U.S. power projection around the globe.

Where the U.S. Have Military Footholds in Europe | Statista

You will find more infographics at Statista

Europe's reliance on U.S. military infrastructure is a double-edged sword.

While European leaders have condemned Trump's Greenland ambitions as "absurd" and a threat to NATO's unity, some also recognize their dependence on U.S. bases and security support.

On the other hand, in response to Trump's escalations, the EU and several member states could consider the possibility of restricting U.S. access to European bases - a move that could significantly hamper American operations in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Denmark, backed by the EU, has reaffirmed Greenland's sovereignty and warned that any U.S. annexation attempt would "destroy 80 years of transatlantic security links".

Furthermore, Denmark has boosted its Arctic defense budget and, alongside France, Germany and other European partners, has deployed small military contingents to Greenland for exercises, signaling unity and willingness to defend Arctic sovereignty.

Tyler Durden Sun, 01/25/2026 - 08:45

2026 Is The Year Of Balance Sheet Engineering In The Battery Storage Market

2026 Is The Year Of Balance Sheet Engineering In The Battery Storage Market

By Michael Kern of OilPrice.com

In the first quarter of 2026, the global energy storage market is no longer a playground for visionaries... it is a graveyard for the undercapitalized.

The data is rough. As of March 2025, QuantumScape sat on $860 million in cash against a trailing twelve-month burn rate of $331 million. This 2.6-year window is the "valley of death" made manifest in a ledger. 

While the early 2020s were fueled by the speculative highs of SPAC mergers and theoretical energy density, the 2026 market has pivoted to "Balance Sheet Engineering."

Success is now measured by manufacturing yield and the ability to exploit the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) Section 45X.

The gap between a patent and a production line has become a chasm that physics and finance are struggling to bridge.

Lessons from the Liquidation Slow-Burn

The history of next-generation batteries is written in the records of bankruptcy courts. We see the "polysulfide shuttle" not as a chemical reaction, but as a financial sinkhole.

OXIS Energy, once the titan of Lithium-Sulfur (Li-S), entered administration in 2021 and spent four years in a liquidation slow-burn. Creditors were still waiting for "intended dividends" in September 2025. They received pennies for a dream that promised 550 Wh/kg but delivered fewer than 100 cycles before the chemistry ate itself.

Physics is indifferent to venture capital timelines... and physics usually wins.

Pellion Technologies attempted to harness the divalent power of Magnesium-Ion, offering theoretical density that dwarfed lithium. But magnesium ions move through solid hosts like sludge. When Khosla Ventures realized the drone market couldn't fund the R&D required for automotive scale, they pulled the plug. Pellion is now "deadpooled."

Not every failure ends in an auction of lab equipment. Ambri, the MIT-born liquid metal battery firm, utilized a Section 363 sale in 2024 to wipe its slate clean. By selling assets to a consortium led by Bill Gates’s Frontier fund, Ambri shed its legacy debt while keeping its calcium-antimony tech alive.

In energy finance, "failure" is a terminal event for the middle class... but it is merely a recapitalization event for the ultra-high-net-worth.

How Sodium Neutralized Lithium’s Edge

While Western startups navigate insolvency, China has executed a violent pivot to Sodium-Ion (Na-ion). This is the "Great Bifurcation" of 2026.

The Western strategy is a high-stakes bet on premium "leapfrog" technologies like Solid-State. The Chinese strategy is a brutal scale-up of the "good enough."

In 2025, Lithium-Iron-Phosphate (LFP) prices in China crashed to $44/kWh due to massive overcapacity. Sodium-Ion, despite lacking the same scale, is hovering at $59/kWh.

  • LFP Cost (2025): $44–$52/kWh
  • Na-ion Cost (2025): ~$59/kWh
  • The Friction: Sodium is currently more expensive than the lithium incumbent it was meant to replace.

But cost is only half the story. Sodium-Ion represents a geopolitical hedge. By deploying Na-ion via brands like CATL’s "Naxtra," China has effectively destroyed the pricing power of lithium miners. If lithium prices spike, the world’s largest manufacturer simply flips a switch to sodium.

The West is playing for performance... China is playing for control.

Subsidy Lifelines

For the survivors in the U.S., the business model is no longer about selling batteries—it is about harvesting tax credits.

Section 45X of the IRA has become the primary revenue driver for firms like Peak Energy and Lyten. The credit provides 10% of the production cost for "electrode active materials." Because the legal definition is chemistry-neutral, it doesn't matter if the cathode is made of expensive lithium or dirt-cheap Prussian Blue.

The Foreign Entity of Concern (FEOC) rules have created a "supply chain wall." Because China controls 80% of the lithium refining capacity, standard Li-ion batteries are increasingly ineligible for U.S. consumer tax credits.

This has created a desperate demand for "FEOC-compliant" alternatives.

  • Sion Power: Secured $75M in Series A funding led by LG Energy Solution.
  • The Logic: LG isn't buying a chemistry; they are buying a 50 Amp-hour large-format cell production line in Arizona that doesn't rely on Chinese precursors.
  • The Shift: Hiring former GM executive Pamela Fletcher as CEO signals that the "science experiment" phase is over.

You don't hire an automotive veteran to run a lab... you hire them to manage a supply chain.

A Solid-State Stalemate

If Sodium-Ion is the hammer, Solid-State is the ghost. Toyota, the undisputed leader in solid-state patents, has moved the goalposts again. Mass production, once promised for 2025, has been pushed to 2027 and beyond.

The technical friction remains the "yield" bottleneck.

Ceramic separators are brittle. In a laboratory, a 90% yield is a triumph. In a gigafactory, a 10% scrap rate is a financial death sentence. This is why companies like Solid Power have pivoted to a capital-light licensing model. They are letting BMW and SK Innovation take the hit on the CAPEX-heavy manufacturing while they collect royalties on the sulfide electrolytes.

The market has bifurcated into two distinct spheres:

  1. The China-Sphere: Focused on LFP and Na-ion, driven by TWh-scale manufacturing and low-cost exports.
  2. The Western-Sphere: Focused on High-Nickel and Solid-State, propped up by Section 45X subsidies and trade barriers.

The "PowerPoint Engineering" era is dead. The "Balance Sheet Engineering" era is here.

The winners of 2026 are not the companies with the highest theoretical energy density... they are the ones with the smartest tax lawyers and the highest manufacturing yields.

Tyler Durden Sun, 01/25/2026 - 08:10

Trump Slams Davos Elites Over "Green New Scam" As Climate Crisis Narrative Falls Apart

Trump Slams Davos Elites Over "Green New Scam" As Climate Crisis Narrative Falls Apart

President Trump used his time at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to denounce the globalists' disastrous "Green New Scam" policies that have caused degrowth in parts of the West and helped spark an energy crisis with soaring power prices.

"You're supposed to make money with energy, not lose money. Here in Europe, we've seen the fate that the radical left tried to impose on America," Trump told the elites in Davos.

Just a few years ago, Davos elites were betting big on solving their made-up climate crisis, which was used to loot taxpayers by diverting public funds into risky green energy companies and climate NGOs. But with Trump restoring common-sense energy policies centered on reliable fossil fuel power generation, and rolling back left-wing green policies that handed China and the East a competitive manufacturing edge, globalists were absolutely furious with the president this week.

Take, for instance, climate alarmist and grifter, Al Gore, on Tuesday booed Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick during his speech at a VIP dinner in Davos.

The Financial Times reported the dinner "descended into uproar after combative remarks from Lutnick," with European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde leaving the event early.

Gore's behavior was just as embarrassing for the United States as Gov. Gavin Newsom's bizarre behavior. The unhinged behavior of both Gore and Newsom - both leftist - in the public domain is merely a sign that Trump is winning against America's left-wing.

Lutnick responded on X...

Let's circle back to the so-called "climate crisis" narrative, which was merely an information operation to sway public sentiment polls to pass the controversial Green New Deal into law in 2019, but failed to gain legislative traction. Following that failure, corporate media helped set and amplify the narrative, unleashing what amounted to a broad psyop on the American public about a planet in crisis. Then Democrats were able to push through the Inflation Reduction Act, a massive climate and energy spending package signed by former President Joe Biden in 2022.

As shown in the Bloomberg data below, as soon as the climate bill was passed and taxpayer funds flooded the green industry and NGOs by the tens of billions of dollars, the narrative of the world on fire because of cow farts and Taylor Swift's private jet almost disappeared.

Earlier today, Trump on Truth Social said, "Record Cold Wave expected to hit 40 States. Rarely seen anything like it before. Could the Environmental Insurrectionists please explain — WHATEVER HAPPENED TO GLOBAL WARMING???"

Of course, left-wing corporate media was furious with Trump ...

Trump is correct about the climate crisis agenda and how it amounted to one giant "scam." It served as a vehicle for Democrats to loot the Treasury, and the reckless spending that followed the IRA fueled the worst inflation storm in more than a decade, which Trump is now working to correct through common-sense energy policies that will bridge the power grid until reliable clean nuclear power comes online in the 2030s.

Tyler Durden Sun, 01/25/2026 - 07:35

The AI Factor Behind Trump's Power Play On China's Oil Suppliers

The AI Factor Behind Trump's Power Play On China's Oil Suppliers

Authored by James Gorrie via The Epoch Times,

Why is it so important to the Trump administration to take control of Venezuela and encourage the people of Iran to overthrow the Islamic regime?

The link between the two is obviously oil.

Of course, the strategy in Venezuela involves oil, but also includes restricting China’s influence in the Western Hemisphere, undermining the BRICS currency, and shutting down Venezuelan drug trafficking, illegal immigration, and other nastiness.

Same for Iran regarding oil. Both are important energy suppliers to China, but especially Iran.

But it’s not the whole picture. President Donald Trump’s broader strategy is about restricting China’s access to cheap, reliable oil at the exact moment it needs that energy to compete with the United States in artificial intelligence (AI).

Venezuela Was a Great Deal—For China

Looking back, Venezuela was as an unbelievable good deal for China. Sanctioned by the United States and shunned by much of the West, Caracas sold heavily discounted crude to Chinese refiners willing to tolerate risk. It wasn’t glamorous oil—but it was dependable and cheap. Venezuela provided about five percent of China’s annual oil needs; not a huge figure, but enough to matter.

Trump’s decision to blockade Venezuelan oil exports and assert control over the country’s oil infrastructure effectively ends that dream deal. With U.S. control, China loses a meaningful slice of supply, about four percent, that helped buffer it from global price swings.

That matters more than it sounds.

As the world’s largest oil importer, even small disruptions force Beijing to scramble for alternatives—often at higher prices, longer shipping distances, or greater political cost.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (R) speaks during a meeting with Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza (L) at the Diaoyutai State Guest House in Beijing on Jan. 16, 2020. Ng Han Guan-Pool/Getty Images

Iran: The Bigger Pressure Point

But the Venezuelan oil flow to China is small potatoes compared to that of Iran.

China is Iran’s largest oil customer, buying the vast majority of Tehran’s exported crude, up to 80 percent, often at steep discounts, and is the life blood to China’s independent refineries, its petrochemical sector, and its power-hungry industrial base. In other words, Iranian oil is critical to China’s continued economic and technological growth.

That fact puts Trump’s renewed pressure on the ruling Islamic regime in Iran in a different light. The tariffs, sanctions enforcement, secondary penalties, and encouraging rebellion by the Iranian people is more than just punishment for Tehran. It puts China in an energy bind.

Should Beijing keep buying Iranian oil and risk broader economic retaliation, or comply and lose one of the cheapest energy sources available?

Either way, Beijing pays more for less reliable oil supplies.

Why Oil Still Matters in the AI Age

There’s a popular myth that AI runs on “clean” digital infrastructure—clouds, algorithms, and software. In reality, AI runs on electricity, and electricity is still largely generated through nuclear power and fossil fuels, i.e., oil, natural gas, and coal. Training large AI models requires staggering amounts of energy, and a single hyperscale data center can consume as much electricity as a mid-sized city. Multiply that by hundreds of facilities, and energy, not chips, becomes the real bottleneck in the AI race.

Beijing understands this. That’s why it continues to approve a record number of new coal plants, expand its gas infrastructure, and secure long-term oil contracts—even while leading the world in renewables.

What’s more, China knows that oil and gas help stabilize power grids that support data centers. Intermittent renewables alone can’t guarantee the always-on power that AI systems require. Plus, AI hardware depends on petroleum-based products—plastics, resins, coolants, lubricants, and advanced composites used in chips, servers, and cooling systems. Oil is a non-negotiable industrial input.

Finally, oil is relatively inexpensive, lowering the cost of training models, which compounds quickly, because whichever nation can train more models faster and cheaper leads the AI race.

Cutting China off from discounted oil doesn’t just raise fuel prices, it raises the cost of intelligence itself.

A worker rides bicycle at an oil refinery of China’s Sinopec in Wuhan, a city in China’s Hubei Province on May 10, 2011. STR/AFP/Getty Images

Energy as a Hidden AI Weapon

This is where Trump’s strategy becomes clearer.

The United States doesn’t need to out-build China in data centers if it can out-price and out-power them. America has abundant domestic oil and gas, expanding LNG exports, and deep capital markets to finance new, energy-hungry infrastructure.

China, by contrast, is vulnerable. It imports over 70 percent of its oil. Much of that comes from politically unstable or sanctioned states. Disrupt those flows, and China’s AI ambitions become more expensive, more fragile, and more dependent on geopolitical goodwill.

In that sense, oil becomes a second-order AI weapon, in that it is not something that directly attacks technology, but something that quietly determines who can afford to scale it.

What This Means for the Global Balance

Yes, Russia still matters in this equation—but more as a background variable than the main event. Lower oil prices and tighter markets can squeeze Moscow’s revenues and complicate its war financing. China’s increased reliance on Russian crude also deepens a partnership that carries long-term risks for Beijing.

But the real target of Trump’s energy denial strategy isn’t Russia. It’s China’s momentum.

Trump’s energy foreign policy is about slowing China’s rise without firing a shot—forcing it to spend more, plan more cautiously, and accept structural disadvantages in the most important technological competition of the century.

The Bigger Picture

AI dominance won’t be decided by who writes the best code. It will be decided by who can power the most machines, the longest, at the lowest cost.

By squeezing Venezuela, pressuring Iran, and reshaping global oil flows, Trump is betting that energy strategy, not algorithms, will decide the winner in the AI-driven economy.

And if that bet is right, the future of AI may be decided not in Silicon Valley or Shenzhen, but in oil fields, shipping lanes, and sanctions that most people aren’t paying attention to.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Sun, 01/25/2026 - 07:00

Lefty Protestor Bites Off Federal Officer's Finger

Lefty Protestor Bites Off Federal Officer's Finger

Authored by Catherine Salgado via PJMedia.com,

It seems long past time for President Donald Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act.

In the chaos and violence following the death of an armed Minneapolis would-be terrorist shot while fighting Border Patrol, another protester has bitten off the finger of a federal officer.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin posted photos on X showing the loathsome protestors who so viciously assaulted federal officers, and also photos of the one officer’s wounded hand and the severed finger.

What absolute scum these protestors and the politicians who encourage them are.

McLaughlin explained, “In Minneapolis, these rioters attacked our law enforcement officer and one of them bit off our HSI [Homeland Security Investigations] officer’s finger. He will lose his finger.”

What a proud victory for Walz and co.! They managed to ruin a brave officer’s life.

Just ponder how deranged and bestial you have to be to seek out a federal law enforcement officer for the express purpose of assaulting him, and then deliberately bite off his finger.

I can't help but think of Gollum biting off Frodo's finger at the climax of The Lord of the Rings to obtain the Ring; and the fiction has a parallel to the reality. As Tolkien meant the Ring to represent sin and evil, and as Gollum is destroyed and driven mad by it, so leftist domestic terrorists seem drunk on and driven mad by their lust for violence and revenge.

Indeed, the protestor who bit off the HSI officer's finger is d*mn lucky he didn't get shot. One hopes he at least faces some legal accountability, but that seems in precious short supply in Minneapolis.

As for the shooting that triggering the other violence, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem explained that Border Patrol officers were simply trying to carry out the arrest of an illegal alien who was wanted for violent assault.

“During the operation, an individual approached U.S. Border Patrol officers with a 9mm semi-automatic handgun. The officers attempted to disarm the suspect, but the armed suspect violently resisted. Fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers, an agent fired defensive shots,” she declared.

“This violence is directly fueled by hateful rhetoric from Minnesota's sanctuary politicians. It must end now.”

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz rushed to frame the armed protester as an innocent victim of eeeevil federal goons, raving about a “horrific shooting by federal agents” and labeling them “violent, untrained officers.” 

This is why there is violence. The gunman who died had two magazines of ammunition and no ID on him, indicating he planned to trigger a mass casualty event. Furthermore, he was trying to intervene on behalf of a violent criminal illegal alien — which is in itself a felony (as is protecting illegal aliens, as Minnesota politicians do).

There is no possible way a sane person could be on the side of such a man, and yet Democrats are all on his side. Of course, fully committed Democrats are also insane.

Pray hard for our brave HSI, Border Patrol, and ICE officers in Minneapolis.

Local police are not helping them, local authorities are lying about them, and mobs of protestors are literally out for their blood.

Tyler Durden Sat, 01/24/2026 - 22:10

Would Term Limits Make The DC Swamp Even Worse?

Would Term Limits Make The DC Swamp Even Worse?

Via Brian McGlinchey at Stark Realities

Though America is beset by increasingly bitter political divisions, there are two convictions that unite Americans across party and demographic lines. Large majorities are certain that Congress isn’t serving the interests of the American people, and that Capitol Hill would become far more virtuous with the imposition of term limits.

Despite their broad appeal to our “throw out the bums” instincts, term limits would probably make Congress even worse than it is now. Even as a proposed policy, the concept does the country a disservice by distracting Americans from the more extreme remedies required for a federal government guiding us along a dangerous path into mounting partisan hostility, unconstitutionally-concentrated power, and obliviousness to coming financial ruin.

According to a 2023 McLaughlin and Associates poll, an overwhelming 87% of US adults favor congressional term limits, a finding that’s consistent with other surveys. Proposals vary. Reflecting a common recommendation, one of the term-limit bills introduced this session would limit House representatives to six two-year terms, and senators to two six-year terms, thus maxing out both varieties of legislator at a dozen years. Notably, members who served before 2023 -- including the bill’s introducing sponsor, Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) -- would be exempted.

One dynamic that makes term limits appealing is the overwhelming power of incumbency in US electoral politics: Federal incumbents who sought reelection had a 98% success rate in 2024, matching the pace of 2022 and edging the 96% rate seen in 2020.

Jarring as they are, those stats create a false impression of the degree of stagnancy in the House and Senate. That’s because -- over the dozen years often floated as a term-limit maximum tenure -- a substantial number of legislators already leave on their own. According to the most recent Pew Research calculations, over a 12-year period, 69% of House seats and 62% of Senate seats had different occupants at the end versus the beginning.

With those numbers in mind, Republican Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie -- who has backed term-limit bills-- cautioned that the idea is not a “silver bullet.” Pointing to the notion that term limits would open more seats to good people since incumbents are otherwise hard to dislodge, Massie noted the substantial churn in seat-holders, and asked, “Where are all the good guys/gals?”

Note that about 84% of congressional seats are “safe seats,” where party control isn’t in question, and the real election happens in the party primary. This incentivizes primary candidates to take positions that maximize their appeal to their party’s extreme, which contributes to polarization in Washington. Term limits wouldn’t change that, other than increasing the frequency of contested primaries, which, if anything, might make the phenomenon slightly stronger.

Cook Political Report's House Race Ratings as of Jan 15

Cycling more people out of Congress may exacerbate one of the worst dynamics of Washington: the “revolving door” that sees legislators frequently moving on to lobbying posts and board positions, and incentivizing them to cater to lobbyists and corporations before their swing through the door happens. “Mandating member exits ensures a predictable and consistently high number of former members available to peddle their influence,” wrote Casey Burgat at Brookings.

Term-limit proponents are hopeful that bringing new faces into Washington would reduce the power of special interests, lobbyists and the entrenched bureaucracy -- the last of which is sometimes called the “Deep State.” However, lacking understanding of complex federal issues and experience with DC’s legislative machinery, wide-eyed, rookie legislators are even more susceptible to outside influences who bring clear guidance sprinkled with money and favors.

Advocates of term limits often envision a warm, fuzzy new era where career politicians are replaced by humble “citizen legislators” who come from all walks of life and professions. However, the great majority of US representatives and senators held some other office before winning their current seat, and there’s no reason to think term limits would do away with the inherent advantages that state and local officeholders have when they seek federal office.

Many champions of term limits are convinced that term-limited federal legislators would spend far less time on electoral politics and fundraising. Don’t bet on it. First, until a legislator’s final term, they’d still be focused on re-election. More importantly, much and perhaps even most of the time and energy that members spend on fundraising isn’t for their own campaigns, but for their parties.

Here, it’s important to spotlight a little-known yet powerful congressional dynamic, one that guarantees that even term-limited legislators would continue spending substantial time on party fundraising: Each party ties committee assignments to how much money a legislator raises for the party.

The numbers are big. “Between 2023 and 2024, Democratic Party members were expected to raise between $100,000 and $30 million per year in dues to the party to move up in the [House] chamber,” wrote Maya Kornberg of the Brennan Center for Justice. It’s the same on both sides of the aisle. Here’s how Republican Massie candidly described the arrangement to Reason’s Matt Welch:

“[Members] have to raise money and give it to the party in order to rent or buy their committee assignments. Literally, the party comes to you, whether you’re a Democrat or Republican, and says, ‘if you want an important committee, you’re going to have to pay us this much money,’ not one time, but every election cycle. You can’t go back to your district and ask your constituents at a fundraiser to help you buy a seat on a committee. You get that money from the lobbyists who are in Washington, DC.”

For members striving for plum committee assignments, there’s another major avenue of fundraising, one that turns legislators into glorified telemarketers, calling party donors across the country and asking for donations or inviting them to events that require them. It’s illegal to make such calls from their offices, so legislators walk to nearby party call centers to do it.

A hidden-camera glimpse inside the GOP call center showed a dozen tiny offices with phones; a board displays how much each legislator has raised (CBS News)

“You’re told…don’t even ask for one of these ‘A’ committees unless you’re ready to do the hard work across the street,” said Massie. He refuses to participate, and pays the price via exclusion from powerful committees such as Ways and Means, Appropriations, or Energy and Commerce.

As Florida Democrat and then-congressman David Jolly told CBS News, dialing for dollars is a major part of life on the Hill:

“The House schedule is actually arranged, in some ways, around fundraising…You never see a committee working through lunch because those are your fundraising times. And then, in between afternoon votes and evening votes, that's when you can see Democrats walking down this street, Republicans walking down that street to spend time on the phone making phone calls.”

Under term limits, the only thing that would change in this bleak picture are the particular faces trudging off to a Red Team or Blue Team call center, or lunching with lobbyists offering fundraising help -- rather than learning about any of the infinite issues subjected to federal governance. (Knowing their time on the Hill is limited, legislators will have even less reason to invest their time in building mastery of complex issues.)

In fact, to the extent that term limits manage to put a modest dent in the power of incumbency and render a few more of their seats vulnerable, parties would be even more concerned with raising money to either defend a majority or take it over, and would thus exert more pressure on members to refill the party’s coffers.

There’s one more way term limits would exacerbate the problem of outside influences: With a shortened span on Capitol Hill, more members would be focused on what they’ll do next. Though “citizen-legislator” daydreamers may have quaint visions of a farmer returning to his tractor, most term-limited legislators will be either planning a run for a different office, or looking for a job. Either ambition makes them susceptible to the policy overtures of people outside the chamber promising funding for future campaigns, help getting the inside track on a lobbying job of their own, or maybe a private-sector post in the industry the lobbyist represents.

Term limits would bring many unintended consequences that run counter to their advocates’ noble intentions. However, the concept’s worst attribute is that, even as a mere proposal, it diverts attention from what’s most wrong in Washington. Term limits focus on the frequency with which Washington’s power is exchanged, when the biggest problem is the power itself. For more on that, see the most-read article at Stark Realities: Americans Are Fighting For Control Of Federal Powers That Shouldn’t Exist

* * *

Stark Realities: Invigoratingly unorthodox perspectives for intellectually honest readers. Join thousands of free subscribers at starkrealities.substack.com

* * *

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge

Tyler Durden Sat, 01/24/2026 - 21:00

Tehran Rejects UN 'Protest Killings' Resolution, Blasts Western Moralizing

Tehran Rejects UN 'Protest Killings' Resolution, Blasts Western Moralizing

Iran has flatly rejected a United Nations Human Rights Council resolution condemning what it described as the "violent crackdown on peaceful protests" by Iranian security forces, after two weeks of raging economic protests earlier this month, which also included a government enforced total internet shutdown.

Following a closed-door session in Geneva on Friday, 25 council members - including France, Japan, and South Korea - voted in favor of the formal censure.

SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

But there were significant voices among the seven that voted against, including China, India, and Pakistan. Fourteen others abstained.

The council demanded that Tehran halt arrests linked to the protests and take steps to "prevent extrajudicial killing, other forms of arbitrary deprivation of life, enforced disappearance, sexual and gender-based violence."

UN human rights chief Volker Türk told the council that "the brutality in Iran continued, creating conditions for further human rights violations, instability and bloodshed."

Tehran blasted the resolution as another display of Western hypocrisy, arguing that the sponsors of the emergency session have never genuinely cared about human rights in Iran.

Iran’s envoy Ali Bahreini pushed back at the meeting, saying as follows:

"It was ironic that states whose history was stained with genocide and war crimes now attempted to lecture Iran on social governance and human rights."

This past week in Davos for the World Economic Forum, there was an interesting moment where US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent actually openly boasted that US sanctions helped drive the protests, after crippling the economy.

So Islamic Republic leaders are right to be skeptical when American, Israel, or European officials claims they 'stand' with the Iranian people, and seek 'democracy'. Already, UN officials are invoking historical "genocide" instances and are dubiously comparing them with what's going on in Iran:

A prosecutor said at least twice more people were killed in Iran in half the time compared with the Srebrenica genocide.

Iran's Bahreini reiterated some of his government's official casualty figures from clashes with police and security services, which were initially issued days ago via state sources. He said 3,117 people were killed during the unrest, but he also claimed that 2,427 of those deaths were caused by "terrorists" - covertly funded by enemies of Iran - namely the United States, Israel, and their allies.

Tyler Durden Sat, 01/24/2026 - 18:05

Last Look At Snowfall Models As 'Snowpocalypse' Begins

Last Look At Snowfall Models As 'Snowpocalypse' Begins

How Will This Weekend's Mega-Storm Compare to the Winter Blasts of 2016 and 1996?

Meteorologist Ben Noll says this weekend's snowstorm could be similar to the Blizzard of 1996. For our more seasoned readers, 1996 was an unforgettable winter. Many younger readers, however, have grown up in snow droughts and years of corporate media narratives centered on Al Gore's global warming alarmism.

Yet here we are on Saturday morning, looking over the latest weather models that show more than half the country under a winter storm warning. Noll wrote on X earlier that "55 percent of all people living in the United States — some 190 million — were under an alert related to the storm."

The latest snowfall predictions stretch from Texas to the Northeast.

"This is legitimately one of the biggest storms I can recall tracking. Snow spans from Arizona to DC this evening," private weather forecaster BAWMX wrote on X.

Winter appears locked in across the Lower 48 for the next several weeks.

Next, let's refine the snowfall outlook for the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast. Courtesy of private weather forecaster NY NJ PA Weather weighs in below.

Thanks to early-week client notes from energy research firm Criterion Research, we were well ahead of the curve in explaining how the Arctic cold blast, combined with a major winter storm, could create power-grid risks. The storm threatens to crimp natural gas supply through production freeze-offs and reduced pipeline flows, increasing pressure on already stressed-out regional power grids. Our focus will be on the PJM grid this weekend.

Here's the reporting:

Crickets from Greta and the climate crisis cult this week. Oh, wait, that's because the climate money ran out and the focus shifted entirely to Palestine. For those grounded in reality, prepare for what could be a historic winter storm this weekend. We've told readers in the PJM region and the Northeast to consider buying a whole-house generator, citing a Goldman note (read here). Become ungovernable with a wood fireplace and/or a coal-burning stove.

As for the travel space, it's a nightmare. For anyone traveling over the next 24 to 48 hours, expect delays and cancellations.

So far, roughly 9,000 flights have reportedly been canceled.

Tyler Durden Sat, 01/24/2026 - 17:55

Duffy's Nuclear Option Remains On The Table: California Could Lose Authority To Issue Any CDLs

Duffy's Nuclear Option Remains On The Table: California Could Lose Authority To Issue Any CDLs

Authored by Rob Carpenter via FreightWaves.com,

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy just dropped what I’ve been calling the nuclear option.

In an appearance on Katie Pavlich Tonight Thursday, Duffy made clear that withholding $200 million in federal funding isn’t the end of this fight. If California doesn’t come into compliance on the non-domiciled CDL issue, Duffy said, “we will eventually pull their ability to issue commercial driver’s licenses to anybody in California.”

Not just the 17,000 non-domiciled CDLs at the center of this fight. Every single CDL in the state.

I’ve written extensively about this standoff since the FMCSA released its audit findings last September, which showed that roughly 25% of California’s non-domiciled CDLs were improperly issued. I’ve covered the $160 million funding hit. I’ve warned about the decertification authority in 49 U.S.C. 31312 and 49 CFR 384.405, which most people in this industry didn’t even know existed.

How We Got Here

This didn’t start with the Trump administration’s September 2025 emergency rule restricting non-domiciled CDLs to certain visa categories. That rule, which limited eligibility to H-2A, H-2B, and E-2 visa holders, has been stayed by the D.C. Circuit since November. The court found that petitioners were “likely to succeed” on their claims that the FMCSA violated federal law in its rulemaking.

The California problem predates all of that.

FMCSA’s August 2025 Annual Program Review found California had been violating federal regulations that existed long before Duffy took office. The state was issuing CDLs with expiration dates extending years beyond drivers’ lawful presence documentation. In one case that still makes my blood boil, California issued a driver from Brazil a CDL with passenger and school bus endorsements that remained valid months after his legal presence expired.

That’s not a new rule problem. That’s a California screwed-up problem.

California agreed in November to revoke all 17,000 improperly issued licenses by January 5, 2026. Then, on December 30, the California DMV unilaterally announced a 60-day extension to March 6, citing the need to ensure it doesn’t wrongfully terminate licenses for drivers who actually qualify.

Duffy’s response on X was blunt: “Gavin Newsom is lying.”

FMCSA never agreed to the extension. California proceeded anyway. On January 7, DOT made good on its threat and withheld approximately $160 million in National Highway Performance Program and Surface Transportation Block Grant funds. That’s on top of the $40 million already withheld over California’s refusal to enforce English language proficiency requirements.

The Nuclear Math

California has more than 700,000 CDL holders. The state is home to the nation’s largest trucking workforce, with over 138,000 truck drivers moving freight through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the agricultural heartland of the Central Valley, and every retail distribution center feeding the country’s largest consumer market.

Under full decertification, California would be prohibited from issuing, renewing, transferring, or upgrading any commercial learner’s permits or commercial driver’s licenses until FMCSA determines the state has corrected its deficiencies. Previously issued CDLs would technically remain valid until their stated expiration dates, but here’s where it gets ugly.

Other states could refuse to recognize California credentials during the noncompliance period. FMCSA could issue guidance declaring CDLs issued by a noncompliant state invalid for interstate commerce. The Commercial Driver’s License Information System, which enables interstate verification, could flag every California license.

For the 700,000 CDL holders in the Golden State, decertification wouldn’t just be an administrative headache.

It would effectively ground them from operating in interstate commerce.

I’ve been doing compliance work in this industry for over 25 years. I’ve never seen a federal-state confrontation escalate this fast or this far.

What’s That Look Like? 

The 17,000 non-domiciled CDLs at the center of this fight represent just over 9% of California’s for-hire carrier base. I believe that number represents just under half the total increase in CDLs 

This isn’t really about 17,000 drivers anymore.

J.B. Hunt’s analysis suggests that, between non-domiciled CDL restrictions and English language proficiency enforcement, we could see 214,000 to 437,000 drivers removed from the U.S. supply over the next two to three years. FMCSA estimates that 97% of the current 200,000 non-domiciled CDL holders nationwide won’t be able to satisfy the new requirements under the September rule, assuming it survives legal challenge.

Transport Futures economist Noël Perry puts the at-risk population even higher when accounting for undocumented drivers and new-hire restrictions: potentially 600,000 drivers, or 16% of the active workforce.

Whether those numbers hold up or not, one thing is clear. The days of states running their CDL programs with what Duffy called “reckless disregard” for federal requirements are ending.

What Happens Next

California is stuck between a rock and a hard place it created for itself.

On the one hand, the federal government is withholding $200 million and threatening to revoke the state’s authority to issue any commercial credential. On the other hand, a class-action lawsuit filed by the Asian Law Caucus, the Sikh Coalition, and Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP argues that the DMV’s own administrative errors caused the mismatches in expiration dates and that drivers should be able to immediately reapply for corrected credentials.

The lawsuit names five individual plaintiffs and the Jakara Movement, a Fresno-based organization serving the Punjabi Sikh community. An estimated 150,000 Sikh truck drivers operate in the United States, and many of the affected drivers argue they’re being punished for what amounts to clerical errors by the state.

They’re not wrong about the clerical errors. The DMV admitted in correspondence with federal regulators that “shortcomings of its technical systems and processes” led to the mismatched dates.

That admission doesn’t help California’s legal position with FMCSA. It strengthens it.

If California knew it had systemic programming errors that extended CDL expiration dates beyond work authorization periods, why didn’t it fix them before the feds came knocking? That’s the question that should concern every carrier operating in interstate commerce. A CDL issued in violation of federal requirements may not be valid for interstate operation, meaning drivers holding those credentials could face enforcement action in any state, and carriers dispatching them could face significant liability exposure.

Governor Newsom told the press that DOT had agreed to the March 6 extension. Duffy says that’s not true. FMCSA Administrator Derek Barrs has been equally clear: “We will not accept a corrective plan that knowingly leaves thousands of drivers holding noncompliant licenses behind the wheel of 80,000-pound trucks in open defiance of federal safety regulations.”

California’s argument that its CDL holders are involved in fatal crashes at a rate far below the national average, and that Texas-issued licenses have a 50% higher rate of fatal crashes, might play well in press releases. It doesn’t address the fundamental regulatory compliance issue.

FMCSA didn’t withhold $160 million because of crash rates. It withheld funding because California admitted to issuing 17,000 licenses in violation of federal requirements and then refused to revoke them on the agreed timeline.

The nuclear option remains on the table, and based on everything I’ve seen from Duffy over the past six months, I wouldn’t bet against him using it.

Tyler Durden Sat, 01/24/2026 - 17:30

Stablecoins: A Quiet Revolution In Finance

Stablecoins: A Quiet Revolution In Finance

Authored by Robert Burrows via BondVigilantes.com,

With geopolitics taking centre stage, the seismic tremors of Stablecoin activity go largely unnoticed. Stablecoins sit at a fascinating intersection of finance and technology. They promise the speed and programmability of cryptocurrencies with the price stability of traditional money.

What began as a niche settlement tool for crypto markets is now being discussed as a parallel monetary system—with profound implications for banks, credit creation, and financial stability.

What are stablecoins?

Stablecoins are digital tokens designed to maintain a stable value, usually pegged to a fiat currency like the US dollar. While there are several types, fiat-backed stablecoins dominate the market, accounting for roughly 90% of usage.

Two of the most widely used examples are USDC (Circle) and USDT (Tether). 

Both are backed by reserves, but the composition of those reserves varies:

 

Stablecoins are becoming major players in the treasury market with Tether now the 17th largest holder of treasuries on the planet.

Source: US department of Treasury as of October 2025

How are stablecoins different from cash?

If you can already pay with a bank card, does it matter if settlement takes two days instead or instantly?

For most consumers, the benefits of stablecoins look incremental compared to existing digital banking services.

But there is one notable difference: interest.

The GENIUS act and interest rules

The GENIUS Act, proclaimed by Donald Trump to have been named after himself, was signed into law in July 2025 and created a federal framework for stablecoins. Its aim is to provide regulatory clarity, consumer protection, and oversight. Crucially, the Act prohibits stablecoin issuers from paying interest directly to holders, ensuring they behave like cash rather than investment products.

However, third-party platforms, such as Coinbase or Binance can still pass through yield to users. That is, the interest earned by Circle or Tether from holding the interest bearing reserves is passed on to the exchanges, which then pass through to holders of the stablecoins through a process called ‘staking’. It is important to note that these yields are not guaranteed to be passed through and remain poorly understood, which has likely limited adoption.

Core use cases driving adoption

Payments and Settlement: Stablecoins enable near-instant, 24/7 settlement without relying on correspondent banking networks. For cross-border payments, this can be far cheaper and faster than SWIFT. Global remittance costs on average about 6.5% per transaction on flows of roughly $900 billion. Stablecoins could cut that close to zero. It’s no surprise Western Union is exploring its own stablecoin as its business model faces disruption.

Cryptocurrency market infrastructure: The cryptocurrency universe has gone from strength to strength (less so lately). Stablecoins act as the base currency of the crypto ecosystem, allowing traders to move in and out of risk assets without touching the banking system.

Financial Inclusion: In countries with weak banking systems or high inflation, dollar-pegged stablecoins offer a stable store of value without requiring a bank account. With the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency, adoption in South America and Africa is easy to imagine. Asian markets may lean towards both US-backed and yuan-backed stablecoins. Financial inclusion can cut both ways, as it may accelerate capital flight from emerging economies and funnel more funding into US debt markets.

The funding threat to banks

Banks rely on deposits to fund loans.

Stablecoins disrupt this in three ways:

  1. Deposit disintermediation: If households and corporates hold stablecoins instead of bank deposits, banks lose a cheap and stable source of funding.

  2. Reduced credit creation: Stablecoin reserves are typically invested in:

    • Treasury bills

    • Reverse repos

    • Cash at central banks

This shifts money away from private lending and towards government financing. For the US, this is convenient given its $38 trillion debt stock, with 40–45% needing rollover in the next 18 months.

  1. Pro-cyclicality risk: In a crisis, depositors may rush into stablecoins perceived as safer, amplifying stress on bank funding and making bank runs increasingly likely.

The stablecoin market is currently $300 billion in size, with bullish growth forecasts of $4 trillion by 2030. If this growth is realised, it will likely come at the expense of bank deposits and not from new external sources. This is a problem for the banks, and it won’t come as a surprise that recent crypto legislation stalled just last week amid banking industry lobbying against stablecoin interest payments. Stablecoins are not necessarily a catalyst for widening but is another concern for a sector which has spreads trading at all time tights.

To summarise, for everyday consumers, stablecoins offer little beyond what bank accounts already provide. For banks and the economy, the stakes are much higher. If stablecoins disintermediate banks, lending costs rise, credit availability shrinks, and growth slows, unless alternative credit channels scale up quickly.

The US Government will welcome the extra demand for short-term debt, but the cost could be a fundamental reshaping of the banking system.

Tyler Durden Sat, 01/24/2026 - 16:20

Newsom Announces California Will Remain In WHO Despite US Withdrawal

Newsom Announces California Will Remain In WHO Despite US Withdrawal

California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Friday that the Golden State will remain a part of the World Health Organization's network, even though the Trump administration just completed the United States' withdrawal from the WHO.

“The Trump administration’s withdrawal from WHO is a reckless decision that will hurt all Californians and Americans,” Newsom wrote.

“California will not bear witness to the chaos this decision will bring. We will continue to foster partnerships across the globe and remain at the forefront of public health preparedness, including through our membership as the only state in WHO’s Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network.”

As Jacki Thrapp reports for The Epoch Times, Newsom, who confirmed in October that he’s considering a 2028 presidential bid, revealed the new collaboration after meeting with WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland.

Newsom’s decision goes against the Trump administration’s approach to the agency, which is managed by the United Nations.

Trump, a critic of the WHO’s pandemic responses, has wanted the United States to exit the WHO ever since his first term. His administration formally made the split on Thursday.

“This action responds to the WHO’s failures during the COVID-19 pandemic and seeks to rectify the harm from those failures inflicted on the American people,” said Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr in a joint statement Jan. 22.

The Trump administration said the agency “abandoned its core mission and acted repeatedly against the interests of the United States,” even though America was a founding member and the largest financial contributor.

All U.S. funding of WHO has ended, amounting to about $111 million in annual “mandatory dues” and $570 million in “voluntary contributions,” according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

“We right these injustices and bring an end to the bureaucratic inertia, entrenched paradigms, conflicts of interest, and international politics that have rendered the organization beyond repair,” the press release by Rubio and Kennedy added.

“We will get our flag back for the Americans who died alone in nursing homes, the small businesses devastated by WHO-driven restrictions, and the American lives shattered by this organization’s inactivity. Our withdrawal is for them.”

Rubio and Kennedy said the WHO refused to give the United States its flag back after the departure announcement.

Tyler Durden Sat, 01/24/2026 - 15:45

Niall Ferguson: How Trump Won Davos

Niall Ferguson: How Trump Won Davos

Authored by Niall Ferguson via X,

There is a rapidly forming narrative in the European and liberal media that the Europeans “won Davos”: primarily by getting Trump to “de-escalate” his demand that the United States acquire Greenland from Denmark.

This is a very wrong take.

The reality is that Trump won Davos, hands down.

And not only did he win it; he owned it.

I have never before seen a single individual so completely dominate this vast bazaar of the powerful, the wealthy, the famous, and the self-important.

Trump never seriously meant to annex Greenland or to impose new tariffs on the Europeans.

Why would he when the U.S. already enjoys all the military access to the frigid island it could every possibly need?

Fact: Trump means what he says on Truth Social only about half the time.

Ten years ago, Europeans made the mistake of taking Trump neither seriously nor literally.

Now they make the opposite mistake of treating him both seriously and literally.

The reason Trump forced Greenland to be the No. 1 topic at Davos was to keep European leaders from meddling in America’s Middle Eastern and Eastern European policy.

Why might Trump prefer the Europeans to be talking about Greenland instead of Iran or Ukraine?

Because Europe would be bound to make its usual pleas for “de-escalation” with respect to Tehran. And because the Americans think it was the EU and UK who last year impeded progress

Of course, this goes wholly counter to the Davos consensus, which is that wicked Trump has torn up the sacred liberal international order.

But, as I never grow tired of reminding you, the Davos consensus is always wrong. Always.

Read Niall's full essay here...

Tyler Durden Sat, 01/24/2026 - 15:10

DHS Says 5-Year-Old Was "Abandoned" By Parents During ICE Operation In Minnesota

DHS Says 5-Year-Old Was "Abandoned" By Parents During ICE Operation In Minnesota

Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Jan. 23 refuted reports that ICE agents detained a 5-year-old boy in Minnesota, saying the child was abandoned by his parents during an immigration enforcement operation.

Columbia Heights Public School District had previously said that 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was taken into custody along with his father while in their driveway on Jan. 20. School officials said an ICE agent asked the child to knock on the door to see if there was anyone inside.

DHS on Friday provided details on the situation and said the primary concern of its officers was the child’s safety and welfare.

“ICE did NOT target, arrest a child or use a child as ‘bait.’ ICE law enforcement officers were the only people primarily concerned with the welfare of this child,” DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said on X.

McLaughlin said federal agents conducted a targeted operation to arrest the child’s father, identified as Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, an illegal immigrant from Ecuador, but he fled and abandoned his child.

For safety reasons, one ICE agent remained with the child while other officers apprehended Conejo Arias, according to McLaughlin.

McLaughlin added that officers had tried to ask the “alleged mother,” who was inside the house, to take custody of the child and assured her she would not be taken into custody, but she refused.

“During this situation, agitators swarmed the scene and began yelling and blowing horns, scaring the child,” McLaughlin said.

“Following the mother’s abandonment of the child, officers abided by the father’s wishes to keep the child with him and even got the child McDonald’s and played his favorite music. Father and son are together at Dilley,” she added.

According to McLaughlin, parents are asked if they want to be removed with their children, or ICE will arrange for the children to be placed with a safe person the parent designates.

The move, she said, aligns with how the former administration conducted immigration enforcement.

Zena Stenvik, superintendent of the Columbia Heights Public School District, told a press conference that another adult living in the home, who was outside during the encounter, had begged the agents to let them take care of the child, but was denied.

“Instead, the agent took the child out of the still-running vehicle, led him to the door, and directed him to knock on the door, asking to be let in, in order to see if anyone else was home—essentially using a 5-year-old as bait,” Stenvik said.

Stenvik said Liam’s middle-school brother came home 20 minutes later to find both his father and brother missing. Two school principals from the district came to the house to offer support to the family.

The superintendent said that four students from the district, including Liam, have been apprehended by ICE so far.

The operation in Minnesota is part of the Trump administration’s broader immigration enforcement targeting illegal immigrants.

As of Jan. 19, ICE has arrested 10,000 criminal illegal immigrants, many of whom were “killing Americans, hurting children, and reigning terror in Minneapolis,” according to Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.

Tyler Durden Sat, 01/24/2026 - 12:50

Shockwaves In Beijing: Xi Targets His Own Top General, Longtime Confidant, In Elite Purge

Shockwaves In Beijing: Xi Targets His Own Top General, Longtime Confidant, In Elite Purge

Another significant military purge appears underway in China, as Saturday morning the West woke up to news that China's most senior military officer, who is second only to Xi Jinping, has been put under investigation over alleged "grave violations of discipline and the law."

Gen. Zhang Youxia is a vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, the Communist Party body that controls China's armed forces, and this comes as somewhat of a major shock given he is widely regarded as President Xi's closest ally within the military - or at least prior to this.

Another member of the commission, Gen. Liu Zhenli, has also been placed under investigation, according to the Defense Ministry on the same day. He's in charge of the PLA military's Joint Staff Department.

AFP: Zhang Youxia, left, and He Weidong, the previous second ranked Vice Chairman who was purged in 2025.

No further details have been given regarding the accusations against General Zhang Youxia, but such language is often presented in such crackdowns as a euphemism for corruption.

Xi has described corruption as "the biggest threat" to the Communist Party, having previously several times warned that the struggle against it "remains grave and complex." But critics as well as Western observers say this has served as a convenient and public PR mechanism for sidelining political rivals, and strengthening Xi's power and hold on the levers of power.

The Wall Street Journal's Jonathan Cheng says that General Zhang's downfall is surprising as not only has he known Xi for decades, but is the "most senior member of military hierarchy to face dismissal since fallout of 1989 Tiananmen protests."

And a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst who follows Chinese elite politics, Christopher K. Johnson, tells the NY Times on Saturday, "This move is unprecedented in the history of the Chinese military and represents the total annihilation of the high command."

Chinese social media rumors: Previously, on the evening of January 21, there were online rumors that Zhang Youxia's suspected residence in Beijing was surrounded by plainclothes officers.

via X/@whyyoutouzhele

The rumors and speculation were rampant over the last several days, triggered by a conspicuous absence at a high-profile military event where Xi gave an address:

Two of China’s top generals, Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, apparently did not attend a gathering of all of China's senior political leaders on Tuesday. Their absence has fired the starting pistol on speculation they have been purged, speculation that will now continue until confirmation or they appear in public.

The event in question was the catchily-titled Study Session for Principal Officials at the Provincial and Ministerial Level on Studying and Implementing the Spirit of the Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee. President Xi Jinping attended and gave an opening speech, flanked by all six members of the Politburo Standing Committee as well as the vice president.

Eagle-eyed observers quickly noticed that while the second-ranked Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission Zhang Shengmin was sat in the audience, Zhang Youxia, who is the first-ranked vice chairman, and Liu Zhenli, who is the only non-ranking member, both appeared to be absent.

This is the latest 'anti-corruption' purge action since the October news of the expulsion of nine senior generals, which marked one of the largest such crackdowns of top military officials in decades. 

Zhang's political pedigree runs deep: his father was among the founding generals of the Chinese Communist Party. He joined the army in 1968 and is one of the few current senior leaders said to have actual combat experience. Zhang had remained in his post beyond the customary retirement age for military officials, which was understood as a sign Xi's confidence in him, until now apparently.

Pro-Beijing pundits are offering an alternative take to the Western reporting...

More to come? It is likely as WSJ's chief China's correspondent Lingling Wei describes, "And this is far from the end. With thousands of officers having risen through the ranks under Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, these individuals now recognize they are primary targets for a systemic purge." She reports that "Mobile devices have been seized across ranks and all units are now on high alert."

Tyler Durden Sat, 01/24/2026 - 12:15

Trump Says Canada Will Face 100% Tariffs if It "Makes A Deal With China"

Trump Says Canada Will Face 100% Tariffs if It "Makes A Deal With China"

Authored by Omid Ghoreishi via The Epoch Times,

U.S. President Donald Trump says Canadian goods exported to the United States would be hit with 100 percent tariffs if Canada makes a deal with China.

“If Governor Carney thinks he is going to make Canada a ‘Drop Off Port’ for China to send goods and products into the United States, he is sorely mistaken. China will eat Canada alive, completely devour it, including the destruction of their businesses, social fabric, and general way of life,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social on the morning of Jan. 24.

“If Canada makes a deal with China, it will immediately be hit with a 100% Tariff against all Canadian goods and products coming into the U.S.A. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

The U.S. president wrote the remarks while posting a Jan. 23 article by Just the News titled, “Deal with the Devil: How Canada’s New Partnership With China Could Backfire.”

Trump’s reference to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney as “Governor” marks a return to the relations the U.S. president had with Carney’s predecessor, former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, using the title to reflect his view that Canada should be part of the United States. Trump had not previously used the title for Carney, saying on several occasions that he likes him, but relations soured after Carney delivered a speech at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, last week in which he levied heavy criticism at the United States.

Prior to arriving in Davos, Carney met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing, where he signed a series of agreements that included slashing tariffs on Chinese EV imports from 100 percent to 6.1 percent for the first 49,000 units, in exchange for China cutting tariffs on Canadian canola from 85 percent to 15 percent until at least the end of the year. While in Beijing, Carney said Canada–China relations are entering a “new era,” and that Ottawa’s pursuit of a partnership with China “sets us up well for the new world order.”

The Epoch Times reached out to Carney’s office for comment but didn’t immediately hear back.

Cutting Tariffs on China

Trump had initially shrugged off Carney’s new deal with China, telling reporters on Jan. 16 that, “It’s a good thing for him to sign a trade deal. If he can get a deal with China, he should do that.”

But senior members of his cabinet were concerned. U.S. Transport Secretary Sean Duffy said Canada will regret the decision to partner with Beijing and allow Chinese EVs into its market. “I love my friends in Canada, but they will live to regret the day they let the Chinese Communist Party flood the market with their EVs!” Duffy said in a Jan. 17 post on X.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told CNBC on Jan. 16 that the deal is “problematic for Canada,” and that Washington had imposed tariffs to protect autoworkers. He said that while Canada made the deal to bring relief to agricultural producers, in the “long run, they’re not going to like having made that deal.”

Canada first imposed 100 percent tariffs on Chinese EVs, along with levies on steel and aluminum, in 2024, in lockstep with the United States, which has long been concerned about China dumping products.

Canada’s other deals with China include agreements on energy, public safety, and lumber.

Davos Speeches

In his speech at the WEF in Davos on Jan. 20, Carney criticized U.S. pressure to acquire Greenland, while saying middle powers should band together to resist pressure from major powers. “Great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited,” he said.

Trump said the next day in his speech at the WEF that Carney “wasn’t so grateful,” adding that Canada “lives because of the United States.”

Carney said in another speech on Jan. 22 in Quebec City, this time to Canadians, that Canada “does not live because of the United States. Canada thrives because we are Canadian.”

Later that day, Trump said he is rescinding his invitation to Carney to join the U.S.-led Board of Peace that is going to help rebuild Gaza.

In another Truth Social post on Jan. 23, Trump criticized Ottawa’s position on Greenland and China, saying, “Canada is against The Golden Dome being built over Greenland, even though The Golden Dome would protect Canada. Instead, they voted in favor of doing business with China, who will ‘eat them up’ within the first year!”

Meanwhile, Beijing’s envoy to Ottawa weighed in on the Greenland issue while taking a swipe at the United States, saying this week that Canada and China “see eye to eye” on supporting Greenland’s territorial integrity, according to The Canadian Press.

Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick also criticized Carney’s recent comments and deal with China, suggesting that his recent remarks may be related to an upcoming election. He added that Ottawa’s EV deal with Beijing could jeopardize Ottawa’s chances when renegotiating the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement which is set for renewal this year.

“When the USMCA gets renegotiated this year… do you think the president of the United States is going to say you should keep having the second-best deal in the world?” he told Bloomberg on Jan. 22, making the point that Canada’s current trade deal with the United States ranks second after Mexico. Under the USMCA, 85 percent of Canadian goods are exempt from tariffs, while products not compliant with the trilateral deal face 35 percent tariffs. Mexico’s non-USMCA products are subject to 25 percent tariffs.

Carney hasn’t appeared at media press conferences since relations with Trump soured on Jan. 22, cancelling a scheduled press conference at the conclusion of a cabinet meeting in Quebec City on Jan. 23.

Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne, who took questions from the press instead, said Carney couldn’t attend due to a “scheduling issue.”

Carney was asked by reporters about his talks with Trump late on Jan. 22 as he walked to a cabinet meeting. He responded, “Oh, that’s the most boring question. Think of a new one.”

Tyler Durden Sat, 01/24/2026 - 11:40

Larry Fink Says Public Has Lost Trust In Davos Elites And He Blames "Capitalism"

Larry Fink Says Public Has Lost Trust In Davos Elites And He Blames "Capitalism"

The intrinsic fallacy behind the Davos conference and its supposed mission to "save the world" by molding international policy is easy to describe:  Davos is made up largely of the corporate elites, banking moguls and corrupt politicians that created the world's problems in the first place, often deliberately in order to trigger chaos and gain power. 

Why would the general public trust those people to fix the same problems they created?

This is a question that needs to be posed to BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, who is currently serving as the "interim co-chair" of the WEF after Klaus Schwab's embarrassing exit.  Fink launched the Davos meetings with some stark warnings about AI, and also a surprising admission that the global populace "no longer trusts" the WEF to steer the planet in the right direction.

As noted, no one trusted the WEF before, for the same reasons that no one trusts them now.  Fink would never admit that the public despises the Davos crowd because of they operate like a cartel or cabal, constantly grasping for power while whittling down our freedoms.  Instead, the CEO blamed "capitalism" for the lack of trust. 

Fink argued that the growing wealth gap is a feature of capitalism as we know it today and that this must change.  He admonished the shift of global wealth into the hand of a narrow minority (of which his is a member) and called for the continuing institution of "shareholder capitalism" as a solution.

Shareholder capitalism, for those who are not aware, is the agenda which is directly responsible for ESG lending and the takeover of DEI in the corporate world.  The sudden surge of woke ideology in western countries was a product of corporate lenders like BlackRock and Vanguard pressuring international companies to promote wokeness in exchange for easy access to cheap credit. 

It should also be noted that the wealth gap during the decade of woke cultism (2015 to the end of 2024) increased dramatically.  Shareholder capitalism handed the top 1% another $33.9 trillion.  The wealth of the top 0.001% grew three times larger than the combined wealth of the bottom 50% of people.  In other words, shareholder capitalism expands the wealth gap, it does not reduce it.     

The World Economic Forum and orbiting globalist associations closed their latest Davos event this week looking rather subdued compared to a couple years ago.  From 2020 to 2023 the elites pulled the mask off completely and they are now hoping the public will forget and move on.

The WEF, WHO, and various captured world leaders used the covid scare to conjure up a worldwide hysteria which they intended to exploit.  Sweeping plans were made (out in the open) to institute vaccine passports which would force the population to accept regular injections of experimental treatments in order to retain the right to work and participate in the greater economy.  Intermittent national lockdowns were going to become the norm.  Digital tracking of every individual using covid apps was going to become policy. 

The globalists were going full 1984, all over a virus with a 99.8% survival rate. 

If Larry Fink and his ilk want to know why the populace distrusts them, it's not because of capitalism and free markets.  It's because they exposed themselves and their true intentions in the last several years.  They became arrogant and proved the "conspiracy theorists" right.  Once the mask comes off, it cannot be put back on. 

Tyler Durden Sat, 01/24/2026 - 11:05

In Humiliating Retreat, Starmer Forced To Pull Chagos Bill After Trump Backlash

In Humiliating Retreat, Starmer Forced To Pull Chagos Bill After Trump Backlash

Trump wins again - or rather, Europe caves again. On Friday UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer was forced into an abrupt and humiliating retreat after his plan for the Chagos Islands detonated backlash in Washington.

Starmer had been preparing to ram the controversial legislation through the House of Lords on Monday, only for the bill to be yanked late Friday on growing fears it could unravel a 60-year-old US-UK treaty, which is the foundational Cold War-era deal that allows the US to operate the Diego Garcia military base on the Chagos Islands, or what's known as the British Indian Ocean Territory. 

The chain of events this week kicked off early Tuesday with President Trump's Truth Social onslaught. Among several geopolitical-related messages, mostly on Greenland, he went after the Starmer government.

Getty Images/BBC: Diego Garcia has been home to a joint UK-US military base since the 1970s

Trump took aim at the proposed new deal under which London would surrender sovereignty (to Maritius) while leasing back the strategically critical military base on the islands, including Diego Garcia - where US forces also have a strategic Indian Ocean base, which has been used especially for Middle East operations going back decades. 

Trump attacked the plan to hand sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius as an act of "great stupidity" and "total weakness." He further took the opportunity to say the move underscored exactly why he wants the United States to take control of Greenland.

"The UK giving away extremely important land is an act of GREAT STUPIDITY, and is another in a very long line of National Security reasons why Greenland has to be acquired. Denmark and its European Allies have to DO THE RIGHT THING," Trump wrote as his concluding sentence in the message.

The Telegraph late Friday is confirming the U-turn:

Sir Keir Starmer has been forced to pull his Chagos Islands bill in the wake of a US backlash over the deal.

The legislation was expected to be debated in the House of Lords on Monday, but was delayed on Friday night after the Conservatives warned it could violate a 60-year-old treaty with the US that enshrines British sovereignty over the archipelago.

The Foreign Office has been engaged in some last minute scrambling to verify if Trump's Truth Social message did in fact reflect active US policy:

Asked last night if Mr Trump would be willing to tear up the 1966 treaty and allow the transfer of Chagos to go ahead, the US state department referred back to the president’s criticism on Tuesday when he said: “The UK giving away extremely important land is an act of GREAT STUPIDITY.”

Still, The Telegraph notes that some confusion among British officials remains: "Much depends on whether Mr Trump’s position on the Chagos deal has genuinely changed or – as Sir Keir has claimed – that this was only being used to force a change in Britain’s Greenland stance."

"If Downing Street tried to press ahead without Washington’s approval, it could face a bruising battle with the US state department," the report concludes.

Starmer addressed the House of Commons on Wednesday and asserted it was Trump who flipped his policy. "I made out my position on Greenland absolutely clear on Monday and a moment ago. President Trump deployed words on Chagos yesterday that were different to his previous words of welcome and support when I met him in the White House," he said.

"He deployed those words yesterday for the express purpose of putting pressure on me and Britain in relation to my values and principles on the future of Greenland," he added.

From a British political commentator: "It is, I admit, a humiliating thing for Britain that the final decision should be in the hands of our American allies. We ought to have put a stop to the whole business ourselves."

Conservatives are still warning that rushing the deal for the UK to yield control of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius risks violating international law, with Tory leader Kemi Badenoch having condemned the agreement outright, warning it "cannot progress while this issue remains unsolved." He has bluntly stated this week, "President Trump is right." Also, Reform's Nigel Farage praised the American president for "vetoing" it.

Tyler Durden Sat, 01/24/2026 - 10:45

House Committee Calls On IRS To Crack Down On NGOs Funding Terrorists

House Committee Calls On IRS To Crack Down On NGOs Funding Terrorists

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The IRS must overhaul its oversight of the nonprofit sector amid the fraud scandal in Minnesota that has led to taxpayer funds being funneled for terror activities, Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee said in a Jan. 20 statement.

House Committee on Ways and Means Chairman Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.) speaks during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 13, 2025. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

The lawmakers sent a letter to IRS Acting Commissioner Scott Bessent and CEO Frank Bisignano on Tuesday, raising concerns about “significant fraud, waste, and abuse” of taxpayer dollars.

“As you are aware, investigative journalists recently uncovered a network of fraud involving Minnesota’s Medicaid Housing Stabilization Services program and non-profit organizations in the state during the COVID-19 pandemic—a scheme that not only seemingly funneled millions, if not billions, of taxpayer dollars to the Al-Shabaab terrorist group, but has also resulted in the prosecutions of nearly 80 individuals by the Department of Justice (‘DOJ’) to date,” they wrote.

“This is unacceptable.”

Al-Shabaab is a militant wing of the Somali Council of Islamic Courts and is responsible for the assassination of several peace activists, journalists, international aid workers, and civil society personalities, according to the National Counterterrorism Center. It was designated a foreign terrorist organization in 2008 by the State Department.

During a press conference in Minneapolis on Jan. 9, Bessent said the U.S. Treasury had launched an enforcement campaign targeting Somali-linked fraud networks in Minnesota. According to Bessent, billions of dollars intended for disabled seniors, hungry children, and families with special-needs children were diverted, with some of the funds likely diverted to extremist groups such as Al-Shabaab.

“We have traced where the money went, and we are examining it,” he said, adding that the findings of the probe were “highly concerning.”

The GOP letter highlighted the issue of a Minnesota nonprofit, Feeding Our Future, that was launched to serve food to children from low-income groups. However, its promoters used more than $250 million to buy jewelry, real estate, and luxury goods.

Since 2022, dozens of people linked to Feeding Our Future have been convicted. During a Jan. 7 hearing, Minnesota state Rep. Kristin Robbins said the total fraud in this case had hit about $310 million. In addition, investigators are probing 14 Minnesota Medicaid programs, suspecting $9 billion or more in fraudulent payments.

This potential terror-financing scheme by a tax-exempt organization “calls into question the current safeguards in place to protect taxpayer dollars,” the letter said. “The concern over tax-exempt organizations funneling taxpayer dollars to designated terrorist organizations and other illicit purposes cannot be understated.”

Lawmakers called on the IRS to hold tax-exempt organizations accountable and ensure the funds do not end up in the hands of terror outfits.

Crackdown in Minnesota

Meanwhile, Minnesota is seeing stringent federal immigration enforcement activities. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem recently said that more than 10,000 illegal immigrants have been arrested in the state. The DOJ has started issuing subpoenas to top officials in Minnesota.

Responding to reports of the DOJ investigation, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s office said on Jan. 17 that they have not received any notice of a probe.

“Weaponizing the justice system and threatening political opponents is a dangerous, authoritarian tactic,” Walz said.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey also responded to reports of him being subpoenaed in a federal probe.

“When the federal gov weaponizes its power to intimidate local leaders for doing their jobs, every American should be concerned,” Frey said in a Jan. 21 post on X.

“We shouldn’t live in a country where federal law enforcement is used to play politics or crack down on local voices they disagree with.”

Amid reports of fraud perpetrated by Somalis in Minnesota, including convictions of naturalized citizens, Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) has introduced the Stop Citizenship Abuse and Misrepresentation Act, his office said in a Jan. 19 statement.

The bill seeks to expand the denaturalization process for individuals who have committed fraud or serious felonies or joined up with terror outfits, it said.

“The rampant fraud uncovered in Minnesota must be a wakeup call,” Schmitt said.

“People who commit felony fraud, serious felonies, or join terrorist organizations like drug cartels shortly after taking their citizenship oaths fail to uphold the basic standards of citizenship. They must be denaturalized because they have proven they never met the requirements for the great honor of American citizenship in the first place.”

Tyler Durden Sat, 01/24/2026 - 10:30

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