My understanding is that he will pivot to that strategy when it’s closer to the midterm elections. He has taken one step which is to prohibit the financial sector from buying houses, and thereby creating artificial scarcity and increasing the prices (a scam against the people.) This announcement last week didn’t get enough coverage, but he is taking action.
Source date (UTC): 2026-01-21 19:27:48 UTC
Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/2014057358633336905
WHY THE U.S. CANNOT BE SCANDINAVIA
–“… it would require that the American middle classes accept a MASSIVE downward mobility hit, which is completely out of the question given the anomic (norm-less) and polarized state of American society and politics.”–
@obsessivehermit
Europeans are almost universally poorer in terms of disposable income than the americans. You can however leave europe and come to american and generate wealth.
Which is what happens. Most european VC’s will simply as how long before you can move to the States.
The USA was built for the middle and upper classes by rejecting the aristocratic and clerical classes as parasites. Europe, because of their heritage under the aristocracy and the church is built largely for the working classes at the expense of the middle and upper middle (and lower-upper) classes.
There is value in both systems, especially if we migrate to those countries that suit our class interests. Europe is doing this under the EU, hence the collapse of industry and increase in debt in France, and the expansion of industry in poland, and the exit of educated talent from poland to germany etc.
The USA has a similar process but it is from one state’s growth-city until it’s near bankruptcy to another state’s growth city repeating the process eternally. California was a flight destination, and now people are leaving california for texas as a flight destination. Of course these people will destroy texas as they have california until collapse (bankruptcy) causes them to reform. Even then people change only with gravestones so it takes a generation or three. Connecticut is dead for all intents and purposes because it’s the state that most copied the soviets. As such state employees have all the benefits and everyone who can escape the nihilism does. Massachusetts lost the tech sector to california but because it has the top universities, it had finance and medicine and other specializations to build upon, while drawing talent from around the world and the country.
Cheers
CD
Source date (UTC): 2026-01-18 19:56:52 UTC
Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/2012977512117395863
If there is de-dollarization I don’t see it. There was some chance under the Euro, but the Europeans violated the first principle of a reserve currency and violated the property rights of depositors and investors.
The USA doesn’t do that ever. It’s a core principle. And we have the debt capacity because of the size of our economy and strength of our military to do so.
A common reserve currency needs common interests. This is why the competition by hostile states is irrelevant. They can’t really do without the dollar. There is some hope that digital currency like bitcoin will sometime provide an alternative, but that system is still slow and fragile enough that governments are unwilling to try it at scale.
So for now, there are two currencies: the dollar, and oil. Everything else is a hedge (gold).
Cheers
Source date (UTC): 2026-01-15 23:25:03 UTC
Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/2011942738812637322
First, well done.
Second, well, I would agree on the defense spending – and of course, that’s what trump’s doing. But as for the reserve currency, I don’t understand why we should give that up since it grants us nearly infinite borrowing power and all but insures that as the world falls into crisis, that wealth flies to our financial system and economy.
I would split the difference and shrink our defense radius and our defense spending as a consequence, force distribution of it to others who depend on the freedom of the seas and relative free trade, and maintain our position as reserve currency.
The chinese have little time left, and the russians perhaps even less. Iran is up and down but has to eventually drop. Our problem is merely export of illegals and holding the borders closed until we integrate who we have (and be alittle more aggressive about that integration vs repatriation.
Assuming those all function we have to tolerate a decade to twenty years before there are no competitiors left.
Source date (UTC): 2026-01-15 20:20:45 UTC
Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/2011896356596813916
See, that’s the thing, If I buy a stock for a dollar, and the price goes to 100 dollars do I really have 100 dollars?
If I sell a stock that means the company no longer has the money to work with, or at least can no longer borrow against the value of the stock.
Well, one of the cabinet members just lost over a billion dollars in the market (It’s ok. He has more billions.). But in order to work for the administration he had to divest. (unlike the Pelosi’s). It cost him over a billion.
Source date (UTC): 2026-01-12 20:37:42 UTC
Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/2010813459529883969
I answered this elsewhere in this (long) thread.
You’re wrong of course. Its precisely the concentration of capital into Pareto Optimums (people most able to make use of it) that creates the possibility for those less able to make disproportionate american incomes. That wealth isn’t ‘spendable’ it’s at work in investments. Even then, there is a vast difference between investments statedin market value vs liquidation value.
There is a reason that the soviets called the american left ‘useful idiots’. Because y’all believe such nonsense instead of thinking it through.
Source date (UTC): 2026-01-12 17:24:55 UTC
Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/2010764944636010797
Wealth does not equal consumption.
almost all of that wealth is invested in productivity making possible the incomes. Pull it from investments it stops working and things get worse. The more important question is why aren’t people saving? Because they’re living beyond their means.
As I’ve said elsewhere, the standing issues are
(a) housing (most important, current president is trying.)
(b) immigration (pressure on wages plus pressure on housing, plus pressure on culture and institutions) (current president is dedicated to this)
(c) deindustrialization (current re-indudstrialization under current president is helping)
(d) the dismantlement of the family unit (by women)
(e) certain financial sector games and lack of consumer protections.
(f) unnecessary taxation of more than half (the bottom half) of citizens, who constitute only 3% of federal income.
(g) debt due to insufficient reproduction to pay for future benefits.
Source date (UTC): 2026-01-12 17:06:33 UTC
Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/2010760319971573967
Biggest market.
Source date (UTC): 2026-01-12 13:02:57 UTC
Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/2010699017936904583
Our organization has been making this argument for almost a decade. Though we include the reforms in the financial sector as well – the extractions from which are even more horrifying. Our point is that there is no reason we tax the common folk so to speak. We don’t have to increase taxes. I get angry thinking of independent contractors whose bodies give up by their late forties paying income taxes when their net contribution to taxes is in the low single digits. It’s just ‘not right’ so to speak.
Noblesse Oblige.
Source date (UTC): 2026-01-02 06:56:10 UTC
Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/2006982836041982024
Yes, the increase in expectations of consumption – much of which was created during the 90s – that’s created a false impression of the baseline expectations of potential home owners.
Someone just sent me Austin figures which are informative, but not representative. National numbers are all over the place. I grew up in a small town in western NY state, and housing is ridiculous today. At present, I’m back living in the USA. I live a few miles east of the Microsoft Redmond WA campus, and we’re seeing east-asian sized apartments at NYC and San Francisco prices. Meanwhile the company (the tech sector) is exiting it’s (overpaid) middle layer on a scale we saw in postwar industrial sector in the 80s that led to the franchise boom as people were outcast from industry.
The Northwest saw this with Boeing in the 70s. Seattle was nearly a ghost town. I lived through the movement of tech sector from Boston to the west coast in the 80s but Boston recovered because of it’s institutions. I’m seeing the same near certainty in the current tech sector (where I made my wealth since the 80s).
So, between ‘the great sort’ and changes in urbanization, offshoring, asymmetry in the economy because of the tech sector, the tech sector obscuring the rest of the economy, questionable education expense, financialization of the economy, the pressure on the young remains prohibitive – and is more than responsible for suppression of reproduction.
Source date (UTC): 2026-01-02 06:51:24 UTC
Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/2006981636328456548