Wendy, there is real irony in the current "No Kings" theme that the Democrats have resurrected. The funny part is that they clearly missed the BIG picture for the little stuff. What you have described is the potential slide into feudalism with the government having ownership of corporations or industry in which a President then transforms into a King! I can see that more clearly now and don't like it one bit. Guess the question raised about what difference does it make whether the industry owns the government or the government owns the industry because no matter, the results work out pretty much the same either way; you will always be somebodies serf or slave. I think we have a better chance with industry since they cannot print money, jail people or send them into war. I know this is not absolute but the odds appear better with industry. Also completely agree with the sentiment expressed by Rob that too many folks are penny wise and pound foolish which explains the state of financial peril people have put themselves in today. Wendy, I also know you try to leave politics out of your writings but sometimes, uninvited it will intrude and you need to call it as you see it. You can count me as a disillusioned Trump supporter and there is a painful lesson learned in that alone.
Thank you, Barbara. I always appreciate your thoughtfulness. The irony is indeed thick—and mindboggling. It pains me to get political, but it pains me more to watch people get played.
What you're describing—the slide into feudalism, the consolidation of power, the sense that the game is rigged no matter who is in charge—are good points. In the end, it's not really about a party or a person. It's about a system built on a mode of thought that breaks everything into parts, reduces people to leverage and extraction, and leaves us feeling fragmented and alone. You are right—whether the state owns industry or industry owns the state, the underlying logic is the same: control, accumulation, and the reduction of human beings to something manageable. That's not left or right. It's systemic.
I share your disillusionment with Trump. It's painful to trust in something, or someone, hope this time will be different, and then find out it's the same old story. It's hard to face this kind of truth because it means facing where it's going. But I appreciate your naming it.
What I'm trying to do is not take sides in the political theater—but to step back far enough to see the theater itself. The actors change. The script stays the same. The question isn't who's in power. It's whether we can learn to see the patterns and the psychology behind the performance.
4 prominent Dems have gone awol or adamently abdicated.
Bill Mayer, John Fetterman, Van Jones, and the nuttiest of all Jim Carville
the only reason to mention them is to suggest that the party has self destructed
due to embracing insanity. They are hardly the only.
Not a wholehearted endorsement of the Pubs by any means.
The Commander in Chief has done stellar work, many of his manuvers are incomprehensible to his base, however we are also not privilege to the high level intel.
Both Barbara and Susan of Promethean Action are two scholarly women having extensive background and knowledge spanning decades. I too am a subscriber and have benefited from their historical analysis but of late question how much we can still keep blaming on the City of London. Think they may have beaten that to death. I think Wall Street has taken that leading role some time ago and have relegated the City of London to second fiddle. I also subscribe to Jeff Childers since the early covid days and bless him continually for his being one of the leaders in warning folks about the dangers of that jab. You will never find a more loyal or patriotic individual. He is tireless in defending Trump and I have always appreciated his efforts. But I've also concluded that sometimes you can want something good to happen for your country so much that you become so emotionally invested that you can no longer see how what was the perfect antidote (Trump) now has feet of clay. Right from the horses mouth (Trump) we are in Iran because that country can never have a nuclear bomb. That is the one and only reason sited by Trump. Do I believe it's as simple as that? No. There are other influences that seem to have gained too much influence in this matter and I will leave it at that. You are right, salve is needed for disillusioned supporters but I don't think that it can work? Too many things are required of me to no longer see. You can't feather your own and your families nest with the winnings of your decisions even while some of those decisions were very good. In other words, you don't get a two-for. Something has gone seriously off what was a very promising track.
Mostly agree. All are on edge. If you overstood the assertions regarding the
City of L, that are also facts (nothing to do with AI), then you also comprehend the takedown of the "Reserve" also the setup... You likely also have heard
"the end is not for everyone" statement... hang on we have no options.
Assuming their assessment is accurate, this country did not win the American Revolution. England never loosened its grip. Did DJT not reiterate the depth of the swamp?
Jeff is an attorney, most definitely not schooled in Science or Biology. A master of metaphor with a bent for the comical. You do not have to conclude... yet
Know of exactly no one who is not sick of this dog and pony show.
The no nuke development issue fits. Why else would DJT have the certainty and resolve? Others opine he is a time traveler...
With Billions, he might have furthered his empire and had a gravy life... Previously had a severe case of Derangement due to his TV show The Apprentice (never watched an episode, just the You're Fired line)... Was asked by an elderly drywall guy, why did I despise him so?? Had to admit, to having no credible answer...
Since have utilize well developed character assessment skills gleaned from decades of "practice". I get him and also that he is appealing to pipefitters from Nebraska... that is the "base" Not the well educated Ivy League crowd...
Perhaps you also know of Dave of X22? All contribute in their own ways.
Those facts are solid, and I don't dispute them. The essay acknowledges that Britain built the extraction infrastructure. But here's where I diverge: if England never loosened its grip, why did Bretton Woods make the dollar the reserve currency in 1944? Why does the U.S. Treasury, not the Bank of England, print the world's reserve currency today?
I think we're looking at the same beast, but I'm arguing it's a franchise, not a monarchy. The U.S. inherited the British playbook and runs it better. London is the old headquarters; Washington and Wall Street are the current operators.
As for Trump's certainty on the nuke issue—he has resolve. I just think it's resolve to defend the petrodollar, not resolve to liberate Iran. The 'no nukes' line is the sales pitch; the 'no oil priced in other currencies' is the actual policy.
And Dave of X22? I'd put him squarely in the 'loyal opposition' bucket. He keeps people hopeful and entertained, but ask yourself: after a decade of X22 content, has the Federal Reserve been audited? Has the debt gone down? Has your local community become more self-sufficient? The narrative is a treadmill. It feels like resistance, but it's actually containment.
That's all I'm going to say for now. I need to rest my brain. More on Sunday, when I've completed my research and the Promethean essay comes out. That will be the last one on this topic...then onto a new more uplifting series: The Rise of Sophia.
Wendy, the reason I engage, is for the benefit of whoever the lurkers are. Assessments are either accurate or not. Asking good questions does not win the hand it furthers the assessment.
I do not put anyone in a "bucket" including you.
Whether a fanchise or not, the City of London, the Vatican, and Wash. DC are not part of the countries they occupy. They may be franchises, and they may have been defrocked. The entities in control remain elusive although ultra wealthy bloodlines have been fingered.
Next week I tackle Promethean. I invite you to read it. Then decide for yourself what makes sense. I’m just the investigator here to present facts, patterns, and make people think.
You have the facts right. The equity stakes. The chip licenses. The tribute paid in crypto and real estate. You lined them up and let them speak, which is the hardest kind of writing to do well.
But I read the same facts and see something different at the end of them.
A pyramid needs a middle. The lord is only a lord because the serf cannot leave. Feudalism was never about the castle. It was about the road. Whoever owned the road owned the grain, the miller, the market day, and the man who walked it. Cut the road and the castle is just a large cold house.
Every extraction pyramid works the same way. It sits between a producer and a customer and charges for the passage. The dealer principal who cannot see his own margin data pays the manufacturer for the privilege of being told. The small manufacturer pays the distributor. The saver pays the currency. The tribute is always the same tribute. Only the costume changes.
What makes a pyramid stand is not force. It is necessity. The layer in the middle has to know something you cannot know, or reach something you cannot reach. That is the whole trick. Take away the knowing and the reaching and the middle has nothing left to sell.
That is what is happening right now, underneath the story you told.
Intelligence used to be expensive. It sat at the top of the tower because that was the only place that could afford it. Research departments. Consulting firms. Central banks with a hundred economists. If you ran a twelve-branch dealership in Wisconsin, you could not buy that. You waited for it to trickle down as a slide deck, eighteen months late, with your own numbers in it.
That is over. It ended quietly, the way real things end. A man with a $200 subscription and his own data can now do work that cost seven figures four years ago. He does not need permission. He does not need the tower. The tower still stands. It just does not do anything anymore.
This is the inversion. Intelligence moved from the top of the pyramid to the ground. And a pyramid that loses its reason for existing does not get reformed. It gets abandoned.
So I read your neo-feudalism differently. Not as the arrival of a new order. As the last consolidation of an old one. Men grab hardest at what is slipping. The gatekeeper builds his gate higher exactly when the wall around it is coming down.
You wrote that his power makes him vulnerable. That is right, and it is more right than you said. He has bound his fortune to the continued necessity of the gate. That is a short position on the future.
On the gold, we agree on direction and I would put it plainer. I wrote in 1974 that an untethered currency has no value except the one set by its last trade of the day. Not the average. Not the policy. The last one. When the tether goes, the number is set at the margin, by whoever is still willing to trade, and nobody in Washington is at that desk. Beijing is buying physical and closing the paper window because they understand this. They are not forecasting a price. They are getting into position to be the last trade.
Groman's $38,000 may be right or wrong. It does not matter much. What matters is that the number will not be decided by the people who think they are deciding it.
Which brings me to what I would ask you to write next.
Serfdom requires dependency. Everything in your trajectory — capitalism, socialism, corporatism, neo-feudalism, serfdom — assumes the ground stays dependent. Take that assumption away and the whole chain breaks at the last link.
So the answer is not political. It is not a better man in the chair. It is a living economy: production near the customer, settlement peer to peer without a toll booth, intelligence held by the operator instead of rented from the tower. Not a movement. Not a slogan. Just work, done locally, by people who no longer need to ask.
Own nothing and be happy is a system, you said. So is own something and answer to no one.
Build the second one and the first has nothing to tax.
This is a masterclass in pattern recognition. Apologies for the late reply—I've been deep in the next piece, The Intellectual Architecture of Trumpism.
If I'm reading you right, here's what you're saying:
1. Extraction operates through dependence, not force. The gatekeeper—the lord, the bank, the distributor—only has power because you need them to reach something: knowledge, markets, money. Their authority is borrowed from your need. Remove the dependence, and the power fades. That's the vulnerability they've spent centuries hiding.
2. The "road" was information. Banks, consultancies, central banks—they controlled the knowledge because they controlled access to it. The priesthood of the experts. But that road is now open. Anyone with a connection can find what they once guarded. The pyramid has inverted—intelligence moved from the top to the ground. And once a secret is no longer secret, the gatekeeper becomes a museum piece.
3. The system won't reform—it will collapse. Gatekeepers don't share power gracefully. They grab harder. They tighten control. They double down on the very thing that made them obsolete. But a pyramid that loses its reason for existing doesn't get reformed—it gets abandoned. The rats flee. The structure collapses from within. We're watching that in real time.
4. Gold's price will be set by the last trader. Not policy. Not averages. Whoever is still willing to trade sets the number—and Beijing is positioning to be that person. They understand something the West has forgotten: when the system fractures, the last one holding the asset writes the rules. The West is still debating interest rates. The East is buying gold.
5. You can't vote your way out. You can't elect a savior. The machinery is too deep. The incentives are too aligned. The only exit is building something the system can't tax or control—something that exists outside its reach. That's not cynicism. That's realism.
6. The WEF wants you to own nothing and be happy. The alternative is to own something—land, tools, community—and answer to no one. That's not a slogan. That's the only real exit. Ownership is sovereignty. Sovereignty is freedom. And freedom is the one thing the system cannot tolerate.
So the transition isn't a new order. It's the last gasp of the old one. The death rattle of a system that has exhausted its own logic.
And the missing piece—the road forward—isn't political. It's building something independent. That's the piece my essay needed.
Good news: I'm on it.
The next essay begins this new road. And the series that follows, The Rise of Sophia, takes it further. Stay tuned. There's much more to come.
For now, I'll leave you with this:
Knowledge and wisdom are not the same thing. We built this world on knowledge—exhausted it, consumed it, and now it's eating itself. Knowledge is what built the machine. Wisdom is what the machine cannot replicate.
What's rising next is what we lost in the building: wisdom. Or as the Greeks called it, Sophia.
That's where I'm headed, and there's quite a lot to unpack in the next eight essays or so.
Thank you for the insightful comment and the challenge. I love it.
There is a simple confusion about Democracy, perpetrated by the 'founders', and perpetuated by their fans ever since. It is the rhetorical trick of contrasting a Constitutional Republic against direct democracy. A republic is government by elected representatives. What's the trick? It is that the Republic being compared is limited by a Constitution, but the Direct Democracy is not. A proper comparison would be a Constitutional Republic vs. a Constitutional Direct Democracy. A constitution prohibits the Representatives from violating Individual Rights. It would serve the same purpose in a Constitutional Direct Democracy.
That is a profound alternative that the 'founders' (wishing to have power) did not consider. They declared that Democracy is Mob Rule. But a bunch of Representatives is rule by a Mob also. If we know what good laws are, we can vote for them. We don't need to vote for a parasite who will vote for them for us. Anarchy does not mean no rules. It means no rulers. Ask yourself how many of today's laws a majority would have voted for.
Read 'The Nature Of Evil - Centuries of Parasitic Philosophy' Available on Amazon
So yes, I see what you're saying. The founders set up a false comparison:
Constitutional Republic (good) — representatives elected, power limited by a Constitution
Direct Democracy (bad/mob rule) — everyone votes on everything, no limits
That's an unfair comparison: limited system vs. unlimited system. A Constitutional Direct Democracy would have been a genuine alternative. You suggest they avoided it because they wanted power. But I think that might be a little harsh. The founders had just fought a war against a king. They genuinely feared what an unconstrained democracy could become. Still, though, we were never given the option of direct participation with constitutional protections. That option was foreclosed. And we're living with the consequences.
Interesting discussion and I am personally looking forward to the Sophia dialogue up next.
Just wanted to point out what a good read The Devil's Advocate by David Talbot is; and The Fourth Turning by Strauss and Howe ( we are in it)..
And the unsettling fact that CV 19 vaxxx is a slow working bioweapon design...how many will be actually left standing at the end of 2027 as the immune systems are struggling to keep up at this stage (Dr. Tau Braun on SubStack) : the economic implications of this reality are yet to be realized.
I would also argue that Iran is nuclear capable ( deep inside the mountains) and extremely dangerous ( and that we know this).
The Japanese Yen Carry Trade issue may upend quite a bit here...Karl Bass warning many years ago that this would be the 'match' ...nor do I underestimate their current prime minister.
The US was never a democracy. It's been an underground dictatorship disguised as a republic. El Trumpo has said a lot of things (promises, mostly) and most of them vanished into thin air. DOGE? That should still be rifling through the government uncovering corruption. $5,000 tariff rebates? Lost in the mail passing through China perhaps. Now if you are not MAGA, you are seen as an enemy. This is utter clownish BS.
Congress is on a completely different wavelength doing whatever it wants. Giving our military to Israel? Splendid. Yet they won't butt heads with El Trumpo and stop his silly wars and bombing (now up to about a dozen countries). But hey, lets spend $1.5 trillion on the military and chalk up another trillion in deficits. No more does it matter.
I supported El Trumpo previously, but no more. As far as I can see, there is NO ONE in the DC Cesspool that I can support or even vote for. The debt crisis will keep moving forward and the public will continue to lose faith in the government. And why should it not?
Martin Armstrong talks about this regularly and has a very good recent article about Japan and what it is facing. We are not too far behind.
I hear you. And I don't think you're wrong. You moved from supporting Trump to seeing the whole D.C. system as bankrupt—that's because you're paying attention.
The broken promises, the endless military spending, the debt, the loss of faith—it's all real. And it's exactly what I've been writing about: the illusion of choice, the quiet takeover, the extraction that continues no matter who sits in the chair.
You're right, there is no one in that cesspool worth voting for. It's too bad we can elevate a Peace Corps Volunteer to the presidency. It's all so carefully controlled with the same families backed by big money and power.
The question now is what we build instead. That's where my next series are heading, Sunday I'm tacking the intellectual architecture of Trumpism. And then a new series, The Rise of Sophia, will be focused more on the next road we build. Not a new politician. Not a new party. Something else.
Stay tuned. And thanks for the Martin Armstrong tip—I'll look it up.
Now that the equation is somewhat balanced. Lets tip the scale, yeah?
57-Year Record Low on Jobless Claims — And Trump’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge Locks In America’s AI Future
Two major wins define this week. First: jobless claims fell to their lowest level since 1969, a 57-year record that puts the full force of the Trump economic agenda on display. The Working Families Tax Cuts are igniting a manufacturing renaissance across all 50 states, with manufacturers reporting protected jobs, preserved wages, and broad economic growth nationwide. Second: President Trump secured the the Ratepayer Protection Pledge — a landmark commitment guaranteeing that America’s AI dominance is built without sticking consumers with the bill. The administration also launched the Genesis Mission, committing more than $5 billion to a national AI-for-science initiative.
The EU’s years-long war on American companies just triggered a historic response. President Trump signed a Presidential Action initiating Section 301 investigations into the predatory trade practices of 60 economies, with the EU squarely in the crosshairs. The final straw: a fresh $1 billion fine against Google, bringing the EU’s total against Google alone past $18 billion — on top of $15 billion against Apple, $3 billion against Meta, and $2.5 billion against Amazon. The penalties will be reversed, substantial tariffs are coming, and the EU will pay a “very big price.”
The election integrity crackdown intensified. The White House exposed a Democrat “glitch” that registered thousands of noncitizens to vote — with New Jersey’s governor admitting hundreds actually cast ballots due to a so-called “software error.” DHS issued $84 billion in fines to illegal immigrants. The SAVE America Act has never been more urgent.
What's the difference between the government owning industry vs industry owning the government which has been the way since the industrial revolution?
The serfs worked only a few months and had enough to live basic lives. It was misleading to think they were like slaves or debt slaves.
We were always debt slaves though!
Please, tell me when we weren't controlled by government/private collusion.
Some think it was during the post war times because middle class were given a bigger piece of the pie. People felt free because they "owned" their homes but not for women or minorities!
Then they stopped apartheid and let women to work and the wages stagnated.
Then the economy shifted to opening wall street gambling to the middle class.
That's when we all became debt slaves because we were sold the idea of rentier capitalism where mere ownership provides returns.
Back in the 2000s, I saw booming house prices and felt like it was unsustainable. I didn't expect it to last to the current days. I was so frustrated that people didn't see the issue. So frakking what, your house went up 3x inflation but if you sell you still have to buy another inflated house!
People bitched about gas prices instead. My boomer coworker drives a big truck 60 miles a day for work. I calculated his fuel cost at $4 a gallon and double that $8 a gallon and guess what. It only cost him $250 more a month at double the gas cost!
It's nuts that he and many others bitch about that but are ok with their ridiculous $3,000 or more a month mortgages.
Penny wise and pound foolish.
Gold will not change that and gold didn't stop manipulation before 1970.
The markets are broken because people are penny wise and pound foolish.
But because people are waking up to the rigged game, we have hope in the future.
You're right that the government owning industry versus industry owning the government is a somewhat blurred distinction. The merger of political and economic power has been the norm for a long time. What I'm pointing to is a shift in who holds the upper hand—from private capital influencing the state, to the state actively buying private companies and acquiring equity stakes. I'm also pointing to a trajectory (back to my favorite subject of enantiodromia, or the law of reversal).
Your observation about people being "penny wise and pound foolish" is spot on. The fixation on gas prices while ignoring massive housing debt or the hidden tax of inflation is a major blind spot—exactly the kind of distraction that allows the quiet takeover to proceed. I make that same point in the essay: "it's happening while we're distracted by the headlines."
Where I'd push back is on gold. Correct—gold didn't prevent manipulation before 1971. But that was a system where the U.S. still held a great deal of the world's gold and could rig the rules. What I'm describing is a different scenario: a transition to a world where gold settles international trade, where central banks are forced to hold physical metal, and where the dollar loses its exorbitant privilege. That would impose hard constraints on the state's ability to inflate its way out of debt. It shifts power to the East. Can you see that?
Dismissing gold because it didn't work under a different system misses the structural shift I'm trying to describe. The debt is unsustainable, and the rest of the world isn't going to continue to pay for it. Military force only goes as far as you can afford it—and right now, it's being subsidized by China (via U.S. Treasury debt). Who is really holding the cards here? The dollar has zero real value on the global stage other than recency bias. There is no logic behind a debt-backed system that doesn't turn tyrannical.
On serfdom, you're right that medieval serfs weren't slaves. I use the term "neo-feudalism" as a metaphor for a system where economic survival depends on the favor of those who hold power, not as a literal historical comparison. The point is about dependency and personal loyalty replacing institutional accountability.
Finally, you ask when we weren't controlled by government/private collusion. I'd say rarely—but perhaps during brief periods when the right brain was elevated back to Master.
I understand the gold now. It reminds me of the ideal of what the federal reserve or a state bank was supposed to serve. A base where stability in the money supply wasn't dependant on different localities/regions.
Right now, gold seems to be the best option to keep nations honest with each other.
But in the future, perhaps the base will be energy itself which includes labor, not just commodities.
I'm not talking about the dream of the globalists with their carbon trading fraud but a system based on balancing how much we use vs how much we consume.
(Star Trek's Federation of Planets run on this type of system.)
In that case, the oligarchs and upper classes would be in debt to those that are productive. I heard of how in the Russian Tsar times, the royalty were the ones in debt to the people and this made them serve the people, not the other way around.
Like you, I see hope in rational solutions. We are headed in that direction with people waking up to the hierarchies.
Luke Gromen often describes gold as an energy proxy. He's onto something.
Every ounce of gold represents an immense investment of human labor, fuel, machinery, ingenuity, and time. Before it became money, it had to be wrested from the earth. That is what makes it a store of value across civilizations—it embodies the real cost of extraction. In that sense, it echoes the original intuition behind the classical labor theory of value: things requiring extraordinary effort to produce tend to command enduring value. Gold carries that burden of production in a way fiat currency never can.
The dollar stores no such history. It is a financial claim backed by institutions, law, and confidence. In a debt-based monetary system, its value depends less on work already completed than on expectations about future production.
Bitcoin sits in a different category altogether. If gold is a store of accumulated effort, Bitcoin is a wealth compactor—the purest expression of energy, consumed on an ever-increasing scale, just to stay alive. Its scarcity is enforced not by geology but by mathematics, and its security depends on the continuous expenditure of electricity, specialized hardware, and computation.
That is the essential difference. Gold required enormous energy to produce, but once refined it simply exists. A bar can sit quietly in a vault for centuries without consuming another watt of power. Bitcoin, by contrast, is a living network that must continually secure and validate the ledger—and it eats more energy to do it with every passing year. Its value doesn't sit still. It requires constant feeding.
Gold's value is anchored in physical reality. Bitcoin's value is anchored in distributed consensus. Gold stores the memory of work already done. Bitcoin stores confidence that the work will continue. You see the same mindset in markets. Guess who is going to win?
My issue with gold is that its value is gatekept by finance capitalism.
That's why even though platinum was above gold it's now flipped to the extreme opposite. Pt is more rare and harder to obtain and much more useful for industrial processes.
The energy/labor exchange is harder to manipulate by hoarding. It's closer to the consumer than the traders (finance and markets).
I understand. But at the end of the day, the only thing that can truly fix this is what more than 100 countries already have—gold in their national reserves. Are they just speculating? I don't think so. There must be a really good reason to go through this kind of hassle to maintain a vote of no confidence in the system. I think it's probably better to do as the banks do, not as the media says. Note, they aren't holding platinum or silver. We don't really have to understand all the reasons why to be on the right side of the reset. https://www.gold.org/goldhub/data/gold-reserves-by-country
It may come to pass that Fort Knox is revealed even after the initial
hope was dashed. Many astute think so. I do not have an opinion stopping short of suggesting a promise broken. Character Assessment reasoning... Cryptos require agreement of value without physicality. Many very wealthy early adoptors nearby...
I meant that gold will not prevent market inflation where people buy up commodities to drive up the price.
Gold itself is inflated right now and I think it's because people are afraid of the economy. The ETF non physical gambling markets drove it up just like Musk pumped and dumped bitcoin.
Gold used to be close in price to platinum and palladium.
"The platinum to gold ratio is the single most revealing chart in precious metals. For nearly a century, platinum traded above gold, often substantially. Since 2015, the relationship has inverted, and platinum has traded at a discount unprecedented in modern history. Understanding how and why this happened is central to evaluating whether platinum represents a contrarian opportunity or a permanent revaluation.
The ratio is calculated simply as platinum spot price divided by gold spot price. A ratio of 1.0 means parity. Above 1.0, platinum is the more expensive metal, reflecting its industrial scarcity and historical premium. Below 1.0, gold is the more expensive metal, reflecting monetary demand overwhelming platinum’s industrial use case.
Why Did Platinum Trade Above Gold for So Long?
The fundamental answer is scarcity combined with industrial demand. Platinum is approximately 30 times rarer than gold in the earth’s crust. Annual mine production of platinum is roughly 5 to 6 million ounces, compared to gold’s 115 million ounces. On a pure physical scarcity basis, platinum should command a premium.
For most of the 20th century, industrial demand reinforced this scarcity premium. Catalytic converter technology deployed in the United States starting in 1975 created a large, growing, and price inelastic demand source. Chemical catalysts, glass manufacturing, and electronics added steady industrial pulls. Gold, during much of this period, was constrained by the dollar peg (until 1971) and lacked the central bank buying that now supports its price.
The ratio averaged 1.35 from 1975 to 2000. Platinum traded at a 35 percent premium to gold on average during that quarter century. Peaks above 2.0 were common during supply disruptions, and dips below 1.0 were rare and brief."
I appreciate the question, but it's a little like asking if I used the internet, a spellchecker, a laptop, a dictionary, a thesaurus, a library, a search engine, a grammar checker, a word processor, or any of the countless tools modern writers and publishers rely on every day. I use a variety of research tools—but the writing, the voice, the structure, and the thinking are mine. I don't use AI to generate essays. Is that what you are implying? That I don't think or spend time on my writing? I spend days—sometimes up to 40 hours or more—on one essay. The words are mine. The craft is mine. After spending that kind of time on something, for someone to reduce it to a question about tools is actually quite demeaning.
People write books using ghostwriters. Major publications have teams of editors, fact-checkers, and multiple drafts before a piece goes to print. At a news agency, a story passes through several hands before it reaches the public. I was recently told by a book publisher that AI is transforming the industry—editors use it, publishers use it, writers use it. That is simply the reality of modern publishing. Do they disclose all their processes? No. If I hired and paid a research assistant (which would be impossible on my meager earnings), should I disclose that? Do the big guys disclose? No.
But for the record, I work alone, and I do not outsource my thinking and writing to AI. If I hired a contractor to build my house, I would disclose that. But if I used power tools instead of hand tools, I wouldn't list them in the blueprint. AI is a tool I use for research, organization, generating images, and handling mundane tasks. It is not a replacement for my own thinking, writing, or voice.
Would it make you feel better if I developed a separate page outlining my entire writing process? Or does the content not speak for itself?
Re-read your reply. You are suggesting AI is a tool, nothing more, that you use for mundane tasks. Many would agree. I do not.
I happen to have the academic and clinical skills to administer health advice and treatment. Once used GROK to ask a question for which the answer was known in volumes. Took the AI seven seconds to issue a totally inaccurate response.
"It" was propaganda. Since the querry was well thought out in advance.
Was easy to spot the misinformation. "It" actually referenced Wiki and Reuters as source material... Looked credible but was hui...
The word "content" was not meant to belittle. Every Sub author provides content. Do you have a better word? The "world" is a poor choice of words as "it" does not overstand anything. People do.
Fully realize what you intended to say.
Your "research" or DJT came from somewhere. There are much better sources.
Many AI users and promoter are wittingly or not working diligently for unemployment... Consider that. Even physicians...
Take care of your neurologic condition. Get the right help.
Lets balance the equation, shall we? Jeff Childers list, there are others
Behold:
Trump 2.0 Accomplishments (as of mid-July 2026) 🔥
- USAID and the “Institute for Peace” closed
- Negative net migration for the first time in 50 years
- 2.6 million+ illegal aliens removed (including 650,000 arrests and 400,000 convicted criminals) + 2 million self-deportations induced by ending incentives
- Fentanyl trafficking crushed 56%+; overdose deaths down 21% monthly since inauguration
- Laken Riley Act signed and aggressively enforced
- Catch-and-release ended (99.9% drop); zero releases into the U.S. for eight straight months
- Record-low border encounters; Darién Gap migration cut 99%
- Largest one-year homicide drop in U.S. history; violent crime (rapes, robberies, assaults) down significantly
- Targeted crime operations in major blue cities delivering record-low murders in several metros
- Law enforcement officer deaths down 25%
- Tren de Aragua, MS-13, and other cartels dismantled; international drug cartels designated as foreign terrorist organizations
- Antifa designated a domestic terrorist organization
- Gas under $3/gallon in 43 states; record U.S. energy production and exports at all-time highs
- 654,000+ new private-sector jobs (all net gains to native-born Americans); 671,000+ jobs added since January 2025
- 4.3% GDP growth in Q3 2025; largest blue-collar wage growth in 60 years; real earnings up ~$1,100 annually
- Inflation tamed to ~2.4% core CPI (down ~70% from Biden peak)
- One Big Beautiful Bill passed (July 2025) — making 2017 tax cuts permanent, No Tax on Tips, Trump Accounts for newborns, senior deductions
- $5T+ in deregulation savings + $215 billion in government efficiency cuts ($1,335 per taxpayer)
- $10T+ in reshored/domestic investments secured
- Trade deficit at lowest level since 2009; $300 billion+ in tariff revenues collected; Predatory global tariffs shifted in the US’s favor for the first time in modern history
- NATO allies leaping toward 5% GDP defense spending
- OPEC dismantling
- 85+ detained Americans released; Abraham Accords expanded
- Strikes on Houthis, Iranian assets, and narcoterrorist vessels; Nicolás Maduro captured
- South America shifts rightwards; Europe shifts rightwards
- Record military recruitment goals met; largest military investment in decades with AI integration; F-47 sixth-generation fighter unveiled
- VA backlog reduced 60%; 3 million disability claims processed; 51,936 homeless veterans housed; benefits restored for vaccine-mandate discharges
- Transgender enlistment barred; DEI eliminated across military and federal agencies
- Over 269 executive orders signed in the term (230 in first year alone — highest first-year total since FDR); 81 memoranda + 158 proclamations
- DOGE-driven bureaucracy cuts; IRS IT budget savings of $2B; wasteful contracts eliminated; federal retirement system automated and brought out of a literal coal mine
- DEI discrimination banned in federal contracting and agencies; race-based hiring ended
- DEI outlawed for college admissions; colleges’ patent revenue shared with taxpayers who funded it
- Federal ‘boards’ and ‘commissions’ fired and replaced with conservatives
- Washington, DC beautified; reflecting pool refinished
- Gender ideology extremism curbed in schools, medicine, and government (minors protected from chemical/surgical procedures); girls’ sports protected from creeps
- MAHA reforms launched: Presidential Commission established; Most Favored Nation drug pricing with 16+ major pharma companies; 8 artificial food dyes phased out (40%+ industry compliance); Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act; marijuana reclassified to Schedule III; childhood vaccine schedule revised from 72 to 11 consensus shots; expanded IVF access; $50M autism initiative; new whole-foods dietary guidelines
- Massive firings at CDC, FDA, NIH of sold-out scientists; Ralph Baric and EcoHealth debarred; even some arrests
- Withdrew from WHO
- Crypto regulatory framework via GENIUS Act; Strategic Bitcoin Reserve created; Operation Choke Point 2.0 ended
- Sanctuary city funding cuts implemented
- Election integrity and citizenship verification measures expanded nationwide; USPS program pending; SAVE Act drafted and run at Congress several times now
- Energy dominance unleashed: National Energy Emergency declared; 6,000+ drilling permits approved (55% increase); 13.1 million acres opened for coal leasing; record LNG exports (>100 million tons); nuclear projects advancing toward online status; major energy export deals ($100B South Korea, $200B Japan); Paris Agreement withdrawal
- US becomes a net oil exporter for the first time in history.
- Trump Accounts launched for newborns with federal seed funding + corporate matching
- Farmer aid secured; skilled trades and domestic manufacturing (semiconductors, autos, heavy equipment) expanded
- Over 100,000 fraudulent visas revoked; 275,000 illegal aliens removed from Social Security rolls; benefits terminated for 1.4 million illegal aliens; H1-B crackdowns and $100,000 application fees
- 62,000+ missing migrant children rescued; Alien Enemies Act invoked against gangs
- Vice-president-led welfare fraud task force recovering billions and making mass arrests
- $2B sent to rebuild Western North Carolina
- Massive AI, space, and nuclear investment projects
- John Bolton convicted. James Comey arrested. John Brennan under investigation (probably facing a grand jury).
- RussiaGate grand jury set up and running in Florida.
- DOJ/ODNI seized Fulton County 2020 ballots. Trump is still working on Plans B, C, D, etc, with a ‘new’ integrity announcement scheduled as soon as tomorrow night.
I rather look to the declaration of independence as the way to follow which said that we should change the constitution as conditions change.
The constitution didn't give us rights and that's why people protested and we got the bill of rights AMENDMENTS which gave rights to select groups. Slaves were still slaves and women had little rights.
Wendy, there is real irony in the current "No Kings" theme that the Democrats have resurrected. The funny part is that they clearly missed the BIG picture for the little stuff. What you have described is the potential slide into feudalism with the government having ownership of corporations or industry in which a President then transforms into a King! I can see that more clearly now and don't like it one bit. Guess the question raised about what difference does it make whether the industry owns the government or the government owns the industry because no matter, the results work out pretty much the same either way; you will always be somebodies serf or slave. I think we have a better chance with industry since they cannot print money, jail people or send them into war. I know this is not absolute but the odds appear better with industry. Also completely agree with the sentiment expressed by Rob that too many folks are penny wise and pound foolish which explains the state of financial peril people have put themselves in today. Wendy, I also know you try to leave politics out of your writings but sometimes, uninvited it will intrude and you need to call it as you see it. You can count me as a disillusioned Trump supporter and there is a painful lesson learned in that alone.
Thank you, Barbara. I always appreciate your thoughtfulness. The irony is indeed thick—and mindboggling. It pains me to get political, but it pains me more to watch people get played.
What you're describing—the slide into feudalism, the consolidation of power, the sense that the game is rigged no matter who is in charge—are good points. In the end, it's not really about a party or a person. It's about a system built on a mode of thought that breaks everything into parts, reduces people to leverage and extraction, and leaves us feeling fragmented and alone. You are right—whether the state owns industry or industry owns the state, the underlying logic is the same: control, accumulation, and the reduction of human beings to something manageable. That's not left or right. It's systemic.
I share your disillusionment with Trump. It's painful to trust in something, or someone, hope this time will be different, and then find out it's the same old story. It's hard to face this kind of truth because it means facing where it's going. But I appreciate your naming it.
What I'm trying to do is not take sides in the political theater—but to step back far enough to see the theater itself. The actors change. The script stays the same. The question isn't who's in power. It's whether we can learn to see the patterns and the psychology behind the performance.
Thank you for your honesty and contemplation.
4 prominent Dems have gone awol or adamently abdicated.
Bill Mayer, John Fetterman, Van Jones, and the nuttiest of all Jim Carville
the only reason to mention them is to suggest that the party has self destructed
due to embracing insanity. They are hardly the only.
Not a wholehearted endorsement of the Pubs by any means.
The Commander in Chief has done stellar work, many of his manuvers are incomprehensible to his base, however we are also not privilege to the high level intel.
That is not meant as as excuse...
Salve is needed for disillusioned supporters.
The Iranian debacle has little to do with oil, and everything to do
with the City of London and their stranglehold on the US via the Fed Reserve,
that is neither Federal nor a Reserve.
For top of the tree details: Promethian Action. Two scholarly women having extensive
background and knowledge spanning decades, and are as good as Wendy, in 'splaining
themselves to an expanding audience.
Both Barbara and Susan of Promethean Action are two scholarly women having extensive background and knowledge spanning decades. I too am a subscriber and have benefited from their historical analysis but of late question how much we can still keep blaming on the City of London. Think they may have beaten that to death. I think Wall Street has taken that leading role some time ago and have relegated the City of London to second fiddle. I also subscribe to Jeff Childers since the early covid days and bless him continually for his being one of the leaders in warning folks about the dangers of that jab. You will never find a more loyal or patriotic individual. He is tireless in defending Trump and I have always appreciated his efforts. But I've also concluded that sometimes you can want something good to happen for your country so much that you become so emotionally invested that you can no longer see how what was the perfect antidote (Trump) now has feet of clay. Right from the horses mouth (Trump) we are in Iran because that country can never have a nuclear bomb. That is the one and only reason sited by Trump. Do I believe it's as simple as that? No. There are other influences that seem to have gained too much influence in this matter and I will leave it at that. You are right, salve is needed for disillusioned supporters but I don't think that it can work? Too many things are required of me to no longer see. You can't feather your own and your families nest with the winnings of your decisions even while some of those decisions were very good. In other words, you don't get a two-for. Something has gone seriously off what was a very promising track.
Mostly agree. All are on edge. If you overstood the assertions regarding the
City of L, that are also facts (nothing to do with AI), then you also comprehend the takedown of the "Reserve" also the setup... You likely also have heard
"the end is not for everyone" statement... hang on we have no options.
Assuming their assessment is accurate, this country did not win the American Revolution. England never loosened its grip. Did DJT not reiterate the depth of the swamp?
Jeff is an attorney, most definitely not schooled in Science or Biology. A master of metaphor with a bent for the comical. You do not have to conclude... yet
Know of exactly no one who is not sick of this dog and pony show.
The no nuke development issue fits. Why else would DJT have the certainty and resolve? Others opine he is a time traveler...
With Billions, he might have furthered his empire and had a gravy life... Previously had a severe case of Derangement due to his TV show The Apprentice (never watched an episode, just the You're Fired line)... Was asked by an elderly drywall guy, why did I despise him so?? Had to admit, to having no credible answer...
Since have utilize well developed character assessment skills gleaned from decades of "practice". I get him and also that he is appealing to pipefitters from Nebraska... that is the "base" Not the well educated Ivy League crowd...
Perhaps you also know of Dave of X22? All contribute in their own ways.
yep.
Those facts are solid, and I don't dispute them. The essay acknowledges that Britain built the extraction infrastructure. But here's where I diverge: if England never loosened its grip, why did Bretton Woods make the dollar the reserve currency in 1944? Why does the U.S. Treasury, not the Bank of England, print the world's reserve currency today?
I think we're looking at the same beast, but I'm arguing it's a franchise, not a monarchy. The U.S. inherited the British playbook and runs it better. London is the old headquarters; Washington and Wall Street are the current operators.
As for Trump's certainty on the nuke issue—he has resolve. I just think it's resolve to defend the petrodollar, not resolve to liberate Iran. The 'no nukes' line is the sales pitch; the 'no oil priced in other currencies' is the actual policy.
And Dave of X22? I'd put him squarely in the 'loyal opposition' bucket. He keeps people hopeful and entertained, but ask yourself: after a decade of X22 content, has the Federal Reserve been audited? Has the debt gone down? Has your local community become more self-sufficient? The narrative is a treadmill. It feels like resistance, but it's actually containment.
That's all I'm going to say for now. I need to rest my brain. More on Sunday, when I've completed my research and the Promethean essay comes out. That will be the last one on this topic...then onto a new more uplifting series: The Rise of Sophia.
Wendy, the reason I engage, is for the benefit of whoever the lurkers are. Assessments are either accurate or not. Asking good questions does not win the hand it furthers the assessment.
I do not put anyone in a "bucket" including you.
Whether a fanchise or not, the City of London, the Vatican, and Wash. DC are not part of the countries they occupy. They may be franchises, and they may have been defrocked. The entities in control remain elusive although ultra wealthy bloodlines have been fingered.
Enjoy your afternoon, gorgeous outside
very dark entities also involved with the groups you name .
Good point. No bucket. Have a great afternoon.
agree here...plus the nuke option..China ...etc..
Next week I tackle Promethean. I invite you to read it. Then decide for yourself what makes sense. I’m just the investigator here to present facts, patterns, and make people think.
Patterns: The Fourth Turning illustrates this universally beautifully with archetypes.
Tackle is a tell, it implies takedown. Hopefully without AI "research tools"
If you approach from the Assessment angle, that would be closer to objective...
"Whenever the people need a hero, we shall supply him." Albert Pike 33rd Degree Freemason
....fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice........
Has zero to do with "hero" worship, everything to do with accurate assessment
The Pyramid Is Already Hollow
Wendy,
You have the facts right. The equity stakes. The chip licenses. The tribute paid in crypto and real estate. You lined them up and let them speak, which is the hardest kind of writing to do well.
But I read the same facts and see something different at the end of them.
A pyramid needs a middle. The lord is only a lord because the serf cannot leave. Feudalism was never about the castle. It was about the road. Whoever owned the road owned the grain, the miller, the market day, and the man who walked it. Cut the road and the castle is just a large cold house.
Every extraction pyramid works the same way. It sits between a producer and a customer and charges for the passage. The dealer principal who cannot see his own margin data pays the manufacturer for the privilege of being told. The small manufacturer pays the distributor. The saver pays the currency. The tribute is always the same tribute. Only the costume changes.
What makes a pyramid stand is not force. It is necessity. The layer in the middle has to know something you cannot know, or reach something you cannot reach. That is the whole trick. Take away the knowing and the reaching and the middle has nothing left to sell.
That is what is happening right now, underneath the story you told.
Intelligence used to be expensive. It sat at the top of the tower because that was the only place that could afford it. Research departments. Consulting firms. Central banks with a hundred economists. If you ran a twelve-branch dealership in Wisconsin, you could not buy that. You waited for it to trickle down as a slide deck, eighteen months late, with your own numbers in it.
That is over. It ended quietly, the way real things end. A man with a $200 subscription and his own data can now do work that cost seven figures four years ago. He does not need permission. He does not need the tower. The tower still stands. It just does not do anything anymore.
This is the inversion. Intelligence moved from the top of the pyramid to the ground. And a pyramid that loses its reason for existing does not get reformed. It gets abandoned.
So I read your neo-feudalism differently. Not as the arrival of a new order. As the last consolidation of an old one. Men grab hardest at what is slipping. The gatekeeper builds his gate higher exactly when the wall around it is coming down.
You wrote that his power makes him vulnerable. That is right, and it is more right than you said. He has bound his fortune to the continued necessity of the gate. That is a short position on the future.
On the gold, we agree on direction and I would put it plainer. I wrote in 1974 that an untethered currency has no value except the one set by its last trade of the day. Not the average. Not the policy. The last one. When the tether goes, the number is set at the margin, by whoever is still willing to trade, and nobody in Washington is at that desk. Beijing is buying physical and closing the paper window because they understand this. They are not forecasting a price. They are getting into position to be the last trade.
Groman's $38,000 may be right or wrong. It does not matter much. What matters is that the number will not be decided by the people who think they are deciding it.
Which brings me to what I would ask you to write next.
Serfdom requires dependency. Everything in your trajectory — capitalism, socialism, corporatism, neo-feudalism, serfdom — assumes the ground stays dependent. Take that assumption away and the whole chain breaks at the last link.
So the answer is not political. It is not a better man in the chair. It is a living economy: production near the customer, settlement peer to peer without a toll booth, intelligence held by the operator instead of rented from the tower. Not a movement. Not a slogan. Just work, done locally, by people who no longer need to ask.
Own nothing and be happy is a system, you said. So is own something and answer to no one.
Build the second one and the first has nothing to tax.
Steve Clegg
Evanston, Illinois
Steve,
This is a masterclass in pattern recognition. Apologies for the late reply—I've been deep in the next piece, The Intellectual Architecture of Trumpism.
If I'm reading you right, here's what you're saying:
1. Extraction operates through dependence, not force. The gatekeeper—the lord, the bank, the distributor—only has power because you need them to reach something: knowledge, markets, money. Their authority is borrowed from your need. Remove the dependence, and the power fades. That's the vulnerability they've spent centuries hiding.
2. The "road" was information. Banks, consultancies, central banks—they controlled the knowledge because they controlled access to it. The priesthood of the experts. But that road is now open. Anyone with a connection can find what they once guarded. The pyramid has inverted—intelligence moved from the top to the ground. And once a secret is no longer secret, the gatekeeper becomes a museum piece.
3. The system won't reform—it will collapse. Gatekeepers don't share power gracefully. They grab harder. They tighten control. They double down on the very thing that made them obsolete. But a pyramid that loses its reason for existing doesn't get reformed—it gets abandoned. The rats flee. The structure collapses from within. We're watching that in real time.
4. Gold's price will be set by the last trader. Not policy. Not averages. Whoever is still willing to trade sets the number—and Beijing is positioning to be that person. They understand something the West has forgotten: when the system fractures, the last one holding the asset writes the rules. The West is still debating interest rates. The East is buying gold.
5. You can't vote your way out. You can't elect a savior. The machinery is too deep. The incentives are too aligned. The only exit is building something the system can't tax or control—something that exists outside its reach. That's not cynicism. That's realism.
6. The WEF wants you to own nothing and be happy. The alternative is to own something—land, tools, community—and answer to no one. That's not a slogan. That's the only real exit. Ownership is sovereignty. Sovereignty is freedom. And freedom is the one thing the system cannot tolerate.
So the transition isn't a new order. It's the last gasp of the old one. The death rattle of a system that has exhausted its own logic.
And the missing piece—the road forward—isn't political. It's building something independent. That's the piece my essay needed.
Good news: I'm on it.
The next essay begins this new road. And the series that follows, The Rise of Sophia, takes it further. Stay tuned. There's much more to come.
For now, I'll leave you with this:
Knowledge and wisdom are not the same thing. We built this world on knowledge—exhausted it, consumed it, and now it's eating itself. Knowledge is what built the machine. Wisdom is what the machine cannot replicate.
What's rising next is what we lost in the building: wisdom. Or as the Greeks called it, Sophia.
That's where I'm headed, and there's quite a lot to unpack in the next eight essays or so.
Thank you for the insightful comment and the challenge. I love it.
Best,
Wendy
There is a simple confusion about Democracy, perpetrated by the 'founders', and perpetuated by their fans ever since. It is the rhetorical trick of contrasting a Constitutional Republic against direct democracy. A republic is government by elected representatives. What's the trick? It is that the Republic being compared is limited by a Constitution, but the Direct Democracy is not. A proper comparison would be a Constitutional Republic vs. a Constitutional Direct Democracy. A constitution prohibits the Representatives from violating Individual Rights. It would serve the same purpose in a Constitutional Direct Democracy.
That is a profound alternative that the 'founders' (wishing to have power) did not consider. They declared that Democracy is Mob Rule. But a bunch of Representatives is rule by a Mob also. If we know what good laws are, we can vote for them. We don't need to vote for a parasite who will vote for them for us. Anarchy does not mean no rules. It means no rulers. Ask yourself how many of today's laws a majority would have voted for.
Read 'The Nature Of Evil - Centuries of Parasitic Philosophy' Available on Amazon
So yes, I see what you're saying. The founders set up a false comparison:
Constitutional Republic (good) — representatives elected, power limited by a Constitution
Direct Democracy (bad/mob rule) — everyone votes on everything, no limits
That's an unfair comparison: limited system vs. unlimited system. A Constitutional Direct Democracy would have been a genuine alternative. You suggest they avoided it because they wanted power. But I think that might be a little harsh. The founders had just fought a war against a king. They genuinely feared what an unconstrained democracy could become. Still, though, we were never given the option of direct participation with constitutional protections. That option was foreclosed. And we're living with the consequences.
Interesting discussion and I am personally looking forward to the Sophia dialogue up next.
Just wanted to point out what a good read The Devil's Advocate by David Talbot is; and The Fourth Turning by Strauss and Howe ( we are in it)..
And the unsettling fact that CV 19 vaxxx is a slow working bioweapon design...how many will be actually left standing at the end of 2027 as the immune systems are struggling to keep up at this stage (Dr. Tau Braun on SubStack) : the economic implications of this reality are yet to be realized.
I would also argue that Iran is nuclear capable ( deep inside the mountains) and extremely dangerous ( and that we know this).
The Japanese Yen Carry Trade issue may upend quite a bit here...Karl Bass warning many years ago that this would be the 'match' ...nor do I underestimate their current prime minister.
The US was never a democracy. It's been an underground dictatorship disguised as a republic. El Trumpo has said a lot of things (promises, mostly) and most of them vanished into thin air. DOGE? That should still be rifling through the government uncovering corruption. $5,000 tariff rebates? Lost in the mail passing through China perhaps. Now if you are not MAGA, you are seen as an enemy. This is utter clownish BS.
Congress is on a completely different wavelength doing whatever it wants. Giving our military to Israel? Splendid. Yet they won't butt heads with El Trumpo and stop his silly wars and bombing (now up to about a dozen countries). But hey, lets spend $1.5 trillion on the military and chalk up another trillion in deficits. No more does it matter.
I supported El Trumpo previously, but no more. As far as I can see, there is NO ONE in the DC Cesspool that I can support or even vote for. The debt crisis will keep moving forward and the public will continue to lose faith in the government. And why should it not?
Martin Armstrong talks about this regularly and has a very good recent article about Japan and what it is facing. We are not too far behind.
I hear you. And I don't think you're wrong. You moved from supporting Trump to seeing the whole D.C. system as bankrupt—that's because you're paying attention.
The broken promises, the endless military spending, the debt, the loss of faith—it's all real. And it's exactly what I've been writing about: the illusion of choice, the quiet takeover, the extraction that continues no matter who sits in the chair.
You're right, there is no one in that cesspool worth voting for. It's too bad we can elevate a Peace Corps Volunteer to the presidency. It's all so carefully controlled with the same families backed by big money and power.
The question now is what we build instead. That's where my next series are heading, Sunday I'm tacking the intellectual architecture of Trumpism. And then a new series, The Rise of Sophia, will be focused more on the next road we build. Not a new politician. Not a new party. Something else.
Stay tuned. And thanks for the Martin Armstrong tip—I'll look it up.
Don't forget the Argentina bailout to help out Trump's billionaire friends, I can't remember which. Maybe Bessent.
Now that the equation is somewhat balanced. Lets tip the scale, yeah?
57-Year Record Low on Jobless Claims — And Trump’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge Locks In America’s AI Future
Two major wins define this week. First: jobless claims fell to their lowest level since 1969, a 57-year record that puts the full force of the Trump economic agenda on display. The Working Families Tax Cuts are igniting a manufacturing renaissance across all 50 states, with manufacturers reporting protected jobs, preserved wages, and broad economic growth nationwide. Second: President Trump secured the the Ratepayer Protection Pledge — a landmark commitment guaranteeing that America’s AI dominance is built without sticking consumers with the bill. The administration also launched the Genesis Mission, committing more than $5 billion to a national AI-for-science initiative.
The EU’s years-long war on American companies just triggered a historic response. President Trump signed a Presidential Action initiating Section 301 investigations into the predatory trade practices of 60 economies, with the EU squarely in the crosshairs. The final straw: a fresh $1 billion fine against Google, bringing the EU’s total against Google alone past $18 billion — on top of $15 billion against Apple, $3 billion against Meta, and $2.5 billion against Amazon. The penalties will be reversed, substantial tariffs are coming, and the EU will pay a “very big price.”
The election integrity crackdown intensified. The White House exposed a Democrat “glitch” that registered thousands of noncitizens to vote — with New Jersey’s governor admitting hundreds actually cast ballots due to a so-called “software error.” DHS issued $84 billion in fines to illegal immigrants. The SAVE America Act has never been more urgent.
What's the difference between the government owning industry vs industry owning the government which has been the way since the industrial revolution?
The serfs worked only a few months and had enough to live basic lives. It was misleading to think they were like slaves or debt slaves.
We were always debt slaves though!
Please, tell me when we weren't controlled by government/private collusion.
Some think it was during the post war times because middle class were given a bigger piece of the pie. People felt free because they "owned" their homes but not for women or minorities!
Then they stopped apartheid and let women to work and the wages stagnated.
Then the economy shifted to opening wall street gambling to the middle class.
That's when we all became debt slaves because we were sold the idea of rentier capitalism where mere ownership provides returns.
Back in the 2000s, I saw booming house prices and felt like it was unsustainable. I didn't expect it to last to the current days. I was so frustrated that people didn't see the issue. So frakking what, your house went up 3x inflation but if you sell you still have to buy another inflated house!
People bitched about gas prices instead. My boomer coworker drives a big truck 60 miles a day for work. I calculated his fuel cost at $4 a gallon and double that $8 a gallon and guess what. It only cost him $250 more a month at double the gas cost!
It's nuts that he and many others bitch about that but are ok with their ridiculous $3,000 or more a month mortgages.
Penny wise and pound foolish.
Gold will not change that and gold didn't stop manipulation before 1970.
The markets are broken because people are penny wise and pound foolish.
But because people are waking up to the rigged game, we have hope in the future.
https://robc137.substack.com/p/wasp-vs-bee-intelligence
Hey Rob. Thanks for commenting.
You're right that the government owning industry versus industry owning the government is a somewhat blurred distinction. The merger of political and economic power has been the norm for a long time. What I'm pointing to is a shift in who holds the upper hand—from private capital influencing the state, to the state actively buying private companies and acquiring equity stakes. I'm also pointing to a trajectory (back to my favorite subject of enantiodromia, or the law of reversal).
Your observation about people being "penny wise and pound foolish" is spot on. The fixation on gas prices while ignoring massive housing debt or the hidden tax of inflation is a major blind spot—exactly the kind of distraction that allows the quiet takeover to proceed. I make that same point in the essay: "it's happening while we're distracted by the headlines."
Where I'd push back is on gold. Correct—gold didn't prevent manipulation before 1971. But that was a system where the U.S. still held a great deal of the world's gold and could rig the rules. What I'm describing is a different scenario: a transition to a world where gold settles international trade, where central banks are forced to hold physical metal, and where the dollar loses its exorbitant privilege. That would impose hard constraints on the state's ability to inflate its way out of debt. It shifts power to the East. Can you see that?
Dismissing gold because it didn't work under a different system misses the structural shift I'm trying to describe. The debt is unsustainable, and the rest of the world isn't going to continue to pay for it. Military force only goes as far as you can afford it—and right now, it's being subsidized by China (via U.S. Treasury debt). Who is really holding the cards here? The dollar has zero real value on the global stage other than recency bias. There is no logic behind a debt-backed system that doesn't turn tyrannical.
On serfdom, you're right that medieval serfs weren't slaves. I use the term "neo-feudalism" as a metaphor for a system where economic survival depends on the favor of those who hold power, not as a literal historical comparison. The point is about dependency and personal loyalty replacing institutional accountability.
Finally, you ask when we weren't controlled by government/private collusion. I'd say rarely—but perhaps during brief periods when the right brain was elevated back to Master.
I understand the gold now. It reminds me of the ideal of what the federal reserve or a state bank was supposed to serve. A base where stability in the money supply wasn't dependant on different localities/regions.
Right now, gold seems to be the best option to keep nations honest with each other.
But in the future, perhaps the base will be energy itself which includes labor, not just commodities.
I'm not talking about the dream of the globalists with their carbon trading fraud but a system based on balancing how much we use vs how much we consume.
(Star Trek's Federation of Planets run on this type of system.)
In that case, the oligarchs and upper classes would be in debt to those that are productive. I heard of how in the Russian Tsar times, the royalty were the ones in debt to the people and this made them serve the people, not the other way around.
Like you, I see hope in rational solutions. We are headed in that direction with people waking up to the hierarchies.
https://robc137.substack.com/p/wasp-vs-bee-intelligence
Luke Gromen often describes gold as an energy proxy. He's onto something.
Every ounce of gold represents an immense investment of human labor, fuel, machinery, ingenuity, and time. Before it became money, it had to be wrested from the earth. That is what makes it a store of value across civilizations—it embodies the real cost of extraction. In that sense, it echoes the original intuition behind the classical labor theory of value: things requiring extraordinary effort to produce tend to command enduring value. Gold carries that burden of production in a way fiat currency never can.
The dollar stores no such history. It is a financial claim backed by institutions, law, and confidence. In a debt-based monetary system, its value depends less on work already completed than on expectations about future production.
Bitcoin sits in a different category altogether. If gold is a store of accumulated effort, Bitcoin is a wealth compactor—the purest expression of energy, consumed on an ever-increasing scale, just to stay alive. Its scarcity is enforced not by geology but by mathematics, and its security depends on the continuous expenditure of electricity, specialized hardware, and computation.
That is the essential difference. Gold required enormous energy to produce, but once refined it simply exists. A bar can sit quietly in a vault for centuries without consuming another watt of power. Bitcoin, by contrast, is a living network that must continually secure and validate the ledger—and it eats more energy to do it with every passing year. Its value doesn't sit still. It requires constant feeding.
Gold's value is anchored in physical reality. Bitcoin's value is anchored in distributed consensus. Gold stores the memory of work already done. Bitcoin stores confidence that the work will continue. You see the same mindset in markets. Guess who is going to win?
My issue with gold is that its value is gatekept by finance capitalism.
That's why even though platinum was above gold it's now flipped to the extreme opposite. Pt is more rare and harder to obtain and much more useful for industrial processes.
The energy/labor exchange is harder to manipulate by hoarding. It's closer to the consumer than the traders (finance and markets).
Production capitalism over rentier capitalism.
I understand. But at the end of the day, the only thing that can truly fix this is what more than 100 countries already have—gold in their national reserves. Are they just speculating? I don't think so. There must be a really good reason to go through this kind of hassle to maintain a vote of no confidence in the system. I think it's probably better to do as the banks do, not as the media says. Note, they aren't holding platinum or silver. We don't really have to understand all the reasons why to be on the right side of the reset. https://www.gold.org/goldhub/data/gold-reserves-by-country
It may come to pass that Fort Knox is revealed even after the initial
hope was dashed. Many astute think so. I do not have an opinion stopping short of suggesting a promise broken. Character Assessment reasoning... Cryptos require agreement of value without physicality. Many very wealthy early adoptors nearby...
I wonder if the same financial mafia that got us off the gold standard are now driving this rush to get gold back.
Gold has a true useful value but a "gold rush" is like the housing market where the utility of a home is hijacked by those who profit on top of it.
The best example of gold was that a gold coin of an oz or so could buy a nice suit back in the Roman times.
Back when I bought some in the early 2000s, it could buy a nice suit.
Today it can buy way more than a nice suit. That's why I'm weary of the trend.
Largest most valued companies have re-patrioted, Think Apple, Micorn.
Even automakers boty Euro and Asian have moved or are moving stateside.
That may have something to do with the economy, yeah??
"Gold will not change that..." Sure it can: for you. Buy some, keep it in your physical possession, tell no one.
I meant that gold will not prevent market inflation where people buy up commodities to drive up the price.
Gold itself is inflated right now and I think it's because people are afraid of the economy. The ETF non physical gambling markets drove it up just like Musk pumped and dumped bitcoin.
Gold used to be close in price to platinum and palladium.
It went to 2k gold with those at 1k.
Now it's 4k with platinum at 1600.
It's a bubble.
Stronly disagree. If anything Au is grossly undervalued...
Platinum is way more useful in industry and more rare, that's why platinum was above gold before 2011 for a long time in the past.
https://mintedmetal.com/platinum/vs-gold-price-history/
"The platinum to gold ratio is the single most revealing chart in precious metals. For nearly a century, platinum traded above gold, often substantially. Since 2015, the relationship has inverted, and platinum has traded at a discount unprecedented in modern history. Understanding how and why this happened is central to evaluating whether platinum represents a contrarian opportunity or a permanent revaluation.
The ratio is calculated simply as platinum spot price divided by gold spot price. A ratio of 1.0 means parity. Above 1.0, platinum is the more expensive metal, reflecting its industrial scarcity and historical premium. Below 1.0, gold is the more expensive metal, reflecting monetary demand overwhelming platinum’s industrial use case.
Why Did Platinum Trade Above Gold for So Long?
The fundamental answer is scarcity combined with industrial demand. Platinum is approximately 30 times rarer than gold in the earth’s crust. Annual mine production of platinum is roughly 5 to 6 million ounces, compared to gold’s 115 million ounces. On a pure physical scarcity basis, platinum should command a premium.
For most of the 20th century, industrial demand reinforced this scarcity premium. Catalytic converter technology deployed in the United States starting in 1975 created a large, growing, and price inelastic demand source. Chemical catalysts, glass manufacturing, and electronics added steady industrial pulls. Gold, during much of this period, was constrained by the dollar peg (until 1971) and lacked the central bank buying that now supports its price.
The ratio averaged 1.35 from 1975 to 2000. Platinum traded at a 35 percent premium to gold on average during that quarter century. Peaks above 2.0 were common during supply disruptions, and dips below 1.0 were rare and brief."
comment has zero to do with Pt
Federal Reserve notes were previously backed by precious.
Now they are Fiat...
Wendy, did you use AI to compose this???
If you did, is it ethical to do so without disclosure??
I appreciate the question, but it's a little like asking if I used the internet, a spellchecker, a laptop, a dictionary, a thesaurus, a library, a search engine, a grammar checker, a word processor, or any of the countless tools modern writers and publishers rely on every day. I use a variety of research tools—but the writing, the voice, the structure, and the thinking are mine. I don't use AI to generate essays. Is that what you are implying? That I don't think or spend time on my writing? I spend days—sometimes up to 40 hours or more—on one essay. The words are mine. The craft is mine. After spending that kind of time on something, for someone to reduce it to a question about tools is actually quite demeaning.
People write books using ghostwriters. Major publications have teams of editors, fact-checkers, and multiple drafts before a piece goes to print. At a news agency, a story passes through several hands before it reaches the public. I was recently told by a book publisher that AI is transforming the industry—editors use it, publishers use it, writers use it. That is simply the reality of modern publishing. Do they disclose all their processes? No. If I hired and paid a research assistant (which would be impossible on my meager earnings), should I disclose that? Do the big guys disclose? No.
But for the record, I work alone, and I do not outsource my thinking and writing to AI. If I hired a contractor to build my house, I would disclose that. But if I used power tools instead of hand tools, I wouldn't list them in the blueprint. AI is a tool I use for research, organization, generating images, and handling mundane tasks. It is not a replacement for my own thinking, writing, or voice.
Would it make you feel better if I developed a separate page outlining my entire writing process? Or does the content not speak for itself?
Re-read your reply. You are suggesting AI is a tool, nothing more, that you use for mundane tasks. Many would agree. I do not.
I happen to have the academic and clinical skills to administer health advice and treatment. Once used GROK to ask a question for which the answer was known in volumes. Took the AI seven seconds to issue a totally inaccurate response.
"It" was propaganda. Since the querry was well thought out in advance.
Was easy to spot the misinformation. "It" actually referenced Wiki and Reuters as source material... Looked credible but was hui...
Was a simple question, not an implication. Thank you
AI is not equivalent to any or all of the tools you mentioned.
Your essay is so comprehensive that it begged the question.
Your level of commitment is rare indeed.
The question was not intended to be demeaning whatsoever.
Content providers commonly use AI to create articles.
It is so common that there is now an AI detection "software"
(as some predicted over a month past)
that is OS dependent. At this time not for Linux.
Soon an app will identify AI created prose on the fly.
Had you simply answered No!
That would have been sufficient.
My essays aren't just content. If AI could think like me, I'd be out of a job—I'd retire tomorrow, and the world would finally understand everything.
The word "content" was not meant to belittle. Every Sub author provides content. Do you have a better word? The "world" is a poor choice of words as "it" does not overstand anything. People do.
Fully realize what you intended to say.
Your "research" or DJT came from somewhere. There are much better sources.
Many AI users and promoter are wittingly or not working diligently for unemployment... Consider that. Even physicians...
Take care of your neurologic condition. Get the right help.
Lets balance the equation, shall we? Jeff Childers list, there are others
Behold:
Trump 2.0 Accomplishments (as of mid-July 2026) 🔥
- USAID and the “Institute for Peace” closed
- Negative net migration for the first time in 50 years
- 2.6 million+ illegal aliens removed (including 650,000 arrests and 400,000 convicted criminals) + 2 million self-deportations induced by ending incentives
- Fentanyl trafficking crushed 56%+; overdose deaths down 21% monthly since inauguration
- Laken Riley Act signed and aggressively enforced
- Catch-and-release ended (99.9% drop); zero releases into the U.S. for eight straight months
- Record-low border encounters; Darién Gap migration cut 99%
- Largest one-year homicide drop in U.S. history; violent crime (rapes, robberies, assaults) down significantly
- Targeted crime operations in major blue cities delivering record-low murders in several metros
- Law enforcement officer deaths down 25%
- Tren de Aragua, MS-13, and other cartels dismantled; international drug cartels designated as foreign terrorist organizations
- Antifa designated a domestic terrorist organization
- Gas under $3/gallon in 43 states; record U.S. energy production and exports at all-time highs
- 654,000+ new private-sector jobs (all net gains to native-born Americans); 671,000+ jobs added since January 2025
- 4.3% GDP growth in Q3 2025; largest blue-collar wage growth in 60 years; real earnings up ~$1,100 annually
- Inflation tamed to ~2.4% core CPI (down ~70% from Biden peak)
- One Big Beautiful Bill passed (July 2025) — making 2017 tax cuts permanent, No Tax on Tips, Trump Accounts for newborns, senior deductions
- $5T+ in deregulation savings + $215 billion in government efficiency cuts ($1,335 per taxpayer)
- $10T+ in reshored/domestic investments secured
- Trade deficit at lowest level since 2009; $300 billion+ in tariff revenues collected; Predatory global tariffs shifted in the US’s favor for the first time in modern history
- Stock market record highs
- Gaza ceasefire + hostage release secured; 12-Day War (Israel-Iran) ended; multiple additional peace deals/accords (Armenia-Azerbaijan, India-Pakistan, DRC-Rwanda, Cambodia-Thailand, Kosovo-Serbia, Egypt-Ethiopia)
- Iran’s nuclear capability destroyed + maximum pressure campaign (450+ sanctions designations)
- NATO allies leaping toward 5% GDP defense spending
- OPEC dismantling
- 85+ detained Americans released; Abraham Accords expanded
- Strikes on Houthis, Iranian assets, and narcoterrorist vessels; Nicolás Maduro captured
- South America shifts rightwards; Europe shifts rightwards
- Record military recruitment goals met; largest military investment in decades with AI integration; F-47 sixth-generation fighter unveiled
- VA backlog reduced 60%; 3 million disability claims processed; 51,936 homeless veterans housed; benefits restored for vaccine-mandate discharges
- Transgender enlistment barred; DEI eliminated across military and federal agencies
- Over 269 executive orders signed in the term (230 in first year alone — highest first-year total since FDR); 81 memoranda + 158 proclamations
- DOGE-driven bureaucracy cuts; IRS IT budget savings of $2B; wasteful contracts eliminated; federal retirement system automated and brought out of a literal coal mine
- DEI discrimination banned in federal contracting and agencies; race-based hiring ended
- DEI outlawed for college admissions; colleges’ patent revenue shared with taxpayers who funded it
- Federal ‘boards’ and ‘commissions’ fired and replaced with conservatives
- Washington, DC beautified; reflecting pool refinished
- Gender ideology extremism curbed in schools, medicine, and government (minors protected from chemical/surgical procedures); girls’ sports protected from creeps
- MAHA reforms launched: Presidential Commission established; Most Favored Nation drug pricing with 16+ major pharma companies; 8 artificial food dyes phased out (40%+ industry compliance); Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act; marijuana reclassified to Schedule III; childhood vaccine schedule revised from 72 to 11 consensus shots; expanded IVF access; $50M autism initiative; new whole-foods dietary guidelines
- Massive firings at CDC, FDA, NIH of sold-out scientists; Ralph Baric and EcoHealth debarred; even some arrests
- Withdrew from WHO
- Crypto regulatory framework via GENIUS Act; Strategic Bitcoin Reserve created; Operation Choke Point 2.0 ended
- Sanctuary city funding cuts implemented
- Election integrity and citizenship verification measures expanded nationwide; USPS program pending; SAVE Act drafted and run at Congress several times now
- Energy dominance unleashed: National Energy Emergency declared; 6,000+ drilling permits approved (55% increase); 13.1 million acres opened for coal leasing; record LNG exports (>100 million tons); nuclear projects advancing toward online status; major energy export deals ($100B South Korea, $200B Japan); Paris Agreement withdrawal
- US becomes a net oil exporter for the first time in history.
- Trump Accounts launched for newborns with federal seed funding + corporate matching
- Farmer aid secured; skilled trades and domestic manufacturing (semiconductors, autos, heavy equipment) expanded
- Over 100,000 fraudulent visas revoked; 275,000 illegal aliens removed from Social Security rolls; benefits terminated for 1.4 million illegal aliens; H1-B crackdowns and $100,000 application fees
- 62,000+ missing migrant children rescued; Alien Enemies Act invoked against gangs
- Vice-president-led welfare fraud task force recovering billions and making mass arrests
- $2B sent to rebuild Western North Carolina
- Massive AI, space, and nuclear investment projects
- John Bolton convicted. James Comey arrested. John Brennan under investigation (probably facing a grand jury).
- RussiaGate grand jury set up and running in Florida.
- DOJ/ODNI seized Fulton County 2020 ballots. Trump is still working on Plans B, C, D, etc, with a ‘new’ integrity announcement scheduled as soon as tomorrow night.
Thankfully we Americans have the Constitution and habit. A good habit.
I rather look to the declaration of independence as the way to follow which said that we should change the constitution as conditions change.
The constitution didn't give us rights and that's why people protested and we got the bill of rights AMENDMENTS which gave rights to select groups. Slaves were still slaves and women had little rights.
https://www.michaeltsarion.com/constitution-con.html
There are actually people who think the document is trivial and would casually
amend it due to "conditions"
Sovereigns have comprehension others do not.