Category: simonblack

It was supposed to be a library. Instead, Barack Obama is getting a bomb shelter.

The Obama Presidential Center in Chicago’s Jackson Park was first pitched as a community beacon, a temple of hope to uplift one of America’s most beleaguered neighborhoods.

Cost: $350 million. Delivery date: 2021.

What Chicago actually got was a half-finished, windowless Soviet cube with walls so thick they’re rated against blasts— although that’s probably not a bad idea given the Left’s penchant for “fiery but mostly peaceful” protests.

And of course, the budget has more than doubled, now beyond $850 million with no completion until at least 2026… though most likely MUCH beyond.

But when compared against other Leftist projects that haven’t materialized— like California’s 20-year $35 billion high speed rail— the Obama library may end up being a bargain.

The construction crews who are working on the project joke that it looks like a “totalitarian command center from 1984.”

And the workers themselves might feel like they’re in 1984, with the Obama Foundation conscripting them into reeducation circles straight out of the Ministry of Love.

Crews were pulled off the job and marched into three, 90-minute DEI workshops—rituals of the Left where rants about “oppressors and oppressed” took priority over actual construction work.

One foreman recalled being walked through a parable about two men picking apples: one with a tall ladder, one with a short ladder. The apparent conclusion, as in all things on the Left, is that heterosexual white men are inherently evil.

“I’ve been building for 37 years,” said the foreman, “and they’ve got me sitting in a classroom talking about ladders while my crew is falling behind schedule.”

But some of the sharpest criticisms have come from Obama’s own people—the progressive activists and community leaders who once chanted his name like a gospel refrain.

Now, those who used to be among Obama’s most ardent supporters complain that his monument is wreaking havoc in their community.

Alderwoman Jeanette Taylor, an early Obama supporter from his ‘Barry’ days, now reports South Side rents doubling from $800 to $1,800. Property taxes are crushing landlords. And “$400,000 homes nobody can afford” are sprouting where more affordable homes once stood.

“Every time a big project comes, it displaces the very people it says it wants to improve life for,” she warns.

The center also bulldozed beloved parkland, playing fields, and neighborhood spaces— all razed to make way for the 19-acre Glory to Obama campus. Residents complain that culture and community were “washed away” in the process.

And then there’s the money. The Obama Foundation’s donor rolls read like a Forbes cover—Jeff Bezos, Oprah Winfrey, George Soros. And the Left is complaining about this too.

You’d think progressives would welcome billionaires donating their fortunes to fund a community project. But no: the same chorus that insists the rich don’t pay their “fair share” now sneers at their philanthropy too.

Billionaires are evil when they don’t pay enough tax. But they’re also evil when they do contribute.

Why? Because the project raised property values, and with them, property taxes.

How dare they improve a place! How dare they ignore a place!

How dare they keep their money! How dare they donate their money!

Activists demanded the city sign a Community Benefits Agreement—binding promises of affordable housing, local hiring, and protections against predatory development—before the first shovel hit dirt. They were ignored.

This from the same political movement that lectured America for decades about “inclusive growth,” “community-driven change,” and “nothing about us without us.”

Obama himself built his career as a community organizer, insisting that ordinary voices deserved a seat at the table. Yet when it came to his own legacy project, the tables turned—literally bulldozed—while luxury hotels sprouted down the street.

One activist, Ken Woodard, describes the project as a “monstrosity” that simply landed on top of the neighborhood, erasing its landscape of trees and flowers.

Another, Tyrone Muhammad, calls it a modern Tower of Babel: all noise, no connection.

The Left’s great paradox is that it cannot stop attacking the very heroes it elevates.

Obama, the community organizer who promised to listen, builds a monument that silences his neighbors.

The activists, trained to see injustice around every corner, denounce the former President with the same fervor once reserved for his enemies.

It’s hard to imagine what they’ll do when they take power again.

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It was just one week ago that I made a prediction about the Trump administration’s plans to hijack the Federal Reserve.

I was discussing how a key Fed official had just unexpectedly resigned. And with Powell’s seat coming open next year, I was pointing out how the administration seemed to be building a majority inside the Fed who would be willing to cut rates.

And I speculated that some kind of scandal might emerge to clear the way for more vacancies.

I said:

“You know, to be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more sudden resignations. It’s politics, it’s a dirty business. Is there going to be some nasty news coming out about some interest rate hawk who likes higher rates, who doesn’t want to print money? They found drugs in his car or whatever. He was on Epstein’s list? They set him up on a hooker sting? I wouldn’t be surprised to see that with some Fed officials who have a firm stance in favor of keeping interest rates high.”

Here’s the video:

Why is this administration so desperate to cut rates? Because debt service is out of control—$1.2 trillion just to pay interest.

And since there’s zero political will to cut spending, the only way out is to cut rates.

That’s why the President has been publicly attacking Powell, pushing the narrative that the central bank is corrupt, incompetent, or both.

But Powell’s term is up next year, and it’s clear Trump plans to replace him with someone who will be compliant with what the White House wants.

Then, just two weeks ago, Fed Governor Adriana Kugler suddenly resigned without explanation. Trump immediately appointed Stephen Miran to replace her—an outspoken Trump economic adviser who’s already gone on record calling for a weaker dollar.

And based on that, I said wouldn’t be surprised if they tried to replace others.

Now, Fed Governor Lisa Cook is facing allegations that she committed mortgage fraud.

Bill Pulte, head of the FHFA (Federal Housing Finance Agency), claims Cook signed mortgage applications for two different homes only two weeks apart, each time declaring the property as her primary residence.

That’s a crime because it can qualify the borrower for lower rates and better terms that are only allowed on one home. In other words, she was allegedly trying to get cheaper loans by lying to the bank.

Trump immediately declared: “Cook must resign, now!!!”

And if Cook does go, that gives Trump yet another seat to fill on the Fed committee that sets interest rates, bringing him closer to a majority willing to cut rates aggressively.

I think they have found their cudgel…

I joked it might be a hooker sting, or someone’s name popping up on Epstein’s list.

Turns out they don’t even need those dirty tricks. They have a paper trail of a mortgage fraud.

Bill Pulte is a hardcore MAGA guy, and as head of the FHFA, he has access to all sorts of— apparently incriminating— information.

I think this administration has realized that just about every politician has probably cut a corner like this at some point. You fudge a line on a form to get a better deal, and no one thinks twice about it. They tell themselves it’s victimless—“the only loser is the bank”—so what’s the harm?

This is what they got Letitia James on.

According to a criminal referral from the FHFA, she allegedly committed mortgage fraud on multiple properties. In 2023 she bought a home in Norfolk, Virginia and claimed it as her primary residence—even though she was serving as New York’s Attorney General, a role that legally requires her to live in New York.

She also allegedly misrepresented a five-unit Brooklyn building as having only four units to qualify for better loan terms. And in older mortgage applications, she bizarrely listed her father as her husband to secure joint ownership benefits.

So we’re talking bank fraud, mail fraud, false statements to a financial institution.

And here’s the kicker—this is exactly what she went after Trump for. Only in his case, the banks testified they weren’t defrauded and actually profited from the loans. With James, the allegations are much more blatant and self-serving.

Talk about poetic justice.

We heard over and over from James and her ilk that “No one is above the law!”

Well mortgage fraud in particular has a pretty obvious and concrete paper trail of evidence. And you can’t go back in time and un-sign the papers you lied on.

Senator Adam Schiff, the former House impeachment manager, is also under investigation, following an FHFA criminal referral alleging he pulled the same trick of declaring multiple “primary residences” to lock in cheaper loans and tax breaks.

If they can prosecute a former president for these crimes, why not go after Senators and Attorney Generals? After all, it wasn’t politically motivated when they went after Trump… Right?

This is how the Trump administration will settle old scores.

And it is how they will clear the Fed board to get their way.

I understand why they want to do that. The government’s debt load is so extreme that it feels like lower rates are the only escape hatch.

But that has consequences.

They’re going to realize pretty quickly that you cannot slash interest rates without also printing a mountain of new money.

But if you can see the writing on the wall—that all of this points to serious inflation—then you can prepare for it now.

We’ve talked about the financial side of that many times— and how certain investments in real assets won’t just allow you to escape the worst, but actually benefit from inflation.

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Few people understand how the Federal Reserve actually works— and frankly, I’m not sure the President or Treasury Secretary are among them.

That’s not an insult, just based on what they say. Let me explain.

Most people think the Fed sets “the interest rate” for everything—mortgages, car loans, 10-year yields. But that’s not how it works. The Fed only sets a very narrow rate—the overnight lending rate between banks.

Everything else, from your mortgage to the government’s long-term borrowing costs, is determined by the bond market. And as America’s debt spirals past $37 trillion, the bond market—not the Fed—is in control.

This misunderstanding matters. Because when Treasury Secretary Bessent says he’s going to “get rates down,” what he really means is printing money.

That’s the only lever left: the Federal Reserve creates money electronically and uses it to buy government bonds.

The consequence of that is inflation: more money in the system means higher prices. Sometimes it shows up in financial assets—stocks, bonds, real estate—can also surge to record highs as a result of inflation. Other times inflation hits the grocery store, your utility bill, or your insurance premiums.

Lately, it’s been both. Inflation is everywhere.

But this administration is also openly floating the idea of a sovereign wealth fund—borrowing billions (or trillions) and putting that money directly into the stock market. Intel. Nvidia. Strategic stakes in American companies.

It’s not socialism, and it’s not free markets. It’s something in between: a blending of state and corporate power. Call it National Capitalism.

If that sounds far-fetched, remember—they’re already talking about taking a stake in Intel. Why would they stop there?

This administration is full of people whose entire background is borrowing massive sums of money at low interest, pouring it into enormous projects, and pocketing the spread.

There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s what they know. That’s what they do. Trump is a very successful real estate developer who has personally borrowed billions of dollars throughout his career.

So of course when they look at the economy, their instinct is to repeat the same playbook on a national scale—borrow cheap, buy big, and hope the gap between cost and return pays for everything.

But when the government itself becomes one of the biggest stock buyers, what happens to markets? They explode higher.

And you’re going to want to own assets when that happens.

This is the subject of today’s podcast.

We dive into:

• Why the Fed’s “rate cuts” don’t control the 10-year or 30-year Treasury yields—and why the bond market is now in charge.
• How the U.S. is spending $1.2 trillion a year just on interest payments, and why refinancing old debt at today’s higher rates keeps driving costs up.
• The Fed’s true method of lowering rates: creating new money, buying bonds, and fueling asset bubbles—at the cost of more inflation.
• The absurdity of how the US banking system works.
• How every time the Fed “prints money” to bail out a crisis—9/11, 2008, the pandemic—it ends up inflating specific bubbles: housing, stocks, crypto, collectibles, and now consumer prices across the board.

And we wrap up with a quick look at Total Access—our highest level membership built around forging lasting relationships with other members in extraordinary settings. It combines world-class networking and internationalization strategies with unforgettable, once-in-a-lifetime travel experiences.

Right now, Total Access membership is open for a limited time. You can learn more here.

And you can listen to the full podcast here.

The podcast transcript is available here.

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I know it’s cliche, but one of the happiest days of my life was a bit more than four years ago when my daughter was born in Cancún, Mexico.

My wife and I chose Mexico deliberately— given all the COVID craziness that was going on (especially in the US), we wanted to be in a place where the pandemic wasn’t going to factor into our lives at all. And Cancun was perfect.

Add in world-class healthcare at affordable prices, and it was an easy call. Plus babies born in Mexico automatically become citizens, and both parents and grandparents receive permanent residency.

Pretty much everything about her birth went really smoothly. The Mexican paperwork was shockingly easy, and we were able to get her passport and our residency cards very quickly.

The most difficult part by far was the US side.

We couldn’t fly back to Puerto Rico until she had a US passport. But thanks to the State Department’s broken online system (which crashes constantly and conjures bizarre errors) we were scrambling for a slot.

(It’s also bizarre that, despite millions of Americans traveling to Cancun each year, the US government put its consulate 4 1/2 hours away in Merida… not exactly convenient.)

Once there, storm-trooper style security treated a newborn’s bottled milk as a threat, and then we sat for more than an hour while bureaucrats invented reasons to say “no” to her passport application.

In the end, we finally got what we needed—but the whole process revealed the deeper truth: in the US, government offices act as if citizens work for them. They’ve forgotten their purpose is to serve, and citizens are left with inefficient, indifferent, even borderline inhumane experiences.

Some other countries take a different approach; they treat citizens like valued customers, and bureaucrats are measured on the efficiency and quality of their service.

When the US first launched the Department of Government Efficiency—DOGE—I thought this should be a critical piece of the reform.

Yes, of course, slash fraud, waste, and abuse. But even more urgently, reset the entire culture of how the US government does business with its citizens.

I recently found a glimmer of hope that this may be happening.

Late last week, Social Security marked its 90th birthday since being signed it into law in 1935 at the height of the Great Depression.

Ever since, generations of Americans have accumulated stories of painfully navigating this massive institution— too often about waiting rooms, endless forms, and mind-numbing incompetence.

But something unusual has happened in the last few months. Frank Bisignano, the new commissioner, took over. He comes from a CEO position in the private sector, and seems to be running Social Security like a business.

He’s pushed a digital-first strategy, incorporated AI tools, and focused on simple things that most people in the private sector would take for granted.

Processing backlogs are coming down. Efficiency is up.

Barely a year ago, you had to spend nearly 30 minutes on hold when you called Social Security. Today, the agency says the wait is under five minutes—while serving nearly twice as many people.

You can also now schedule appointments before going into an office— imagine that. And the average wait time at a Social Security office has also been slashed down to just six minutes.

The Social Security website has been overhauled as well, so taxpayers are able to obtain much more information and handle their service needs online. Crazy that it took until 2025 to make this happen.

Oh, and it turns out that the Social Security website— until very recently— used to be offline nearly 30 hours per WEEK for scheduled downtime. They’ve now eliminated this and MySocialSecurity is now available 24/7.

Frankly, the bar for government performance is so low that saying “the website now works” is heralded as a massive breakthrough.

But still, it’s encouraging to see what’s possible when someone with a private-sector mindset actually tries to fix things. In just a few months, one of the worst bureaucracies in Washington has shown major improvement.

Unfortunately, there’s one thing the Commissioner can’t control: Social Security’s looming insolvency.

Social Security’s finances are up to Congress, and that picture is bleak.

Social Security is almost out of money. Everyone in Washington knows it. At best, there’s less than eight years until Social Security’s major trust fund runs out of money. And it will probably take place sooner than that.

Just like fixing bad government service, fixing Social Security’s solvency is not complicated. At this point there are only a few levers to pull: either raise taxes, or roll back retirement age.

The trustees and Social Security’s own actuaries have spelled out these solutions for years, practically begging Congress to act.

They’ve also been clear— the sooner that Congress works to solve the problem, the less painful the solution will be.

If they raise payroll taxes now, the tax hike will be minor. If they wait until 2032, the increase will be brutal.

Similarly, if they pass a law today to phase in an increase to the retirement age, the change will be minor. If they wait a decade, the increase will be much more dramatic.

Yet Congress is—predictably—the least capable group on the planet when it comes to handling obvious problems.

Sure, most likely they won’t let Social Security fail. But the longer they wait, the more likely the eventual fix will simply be a multi-trillion-dollar bailout funded by “printing” money.

The national debt will continue its upward surge, taxpayers will fork over more money, and inflation will quicken.

Bisignano, Social Security’s new “CEO” commissioner, shows what is possible when government changes its posture.

Instead of the usual “F-you, take a number” attitude, Bisignano’s team worked to serve people more efficiently and respectfully. That massive cultural shift moved the needle almost instantly—wait times fell, backlogs shrank, and an agency long known for dysfunction suddenly became usable.

It shouldn’t stop there. The same mindset could be applied to bigger problems—Social Security’s solvency, immigration, debt. None of these are mysteries. The solutions already exist. It’s not rocket science. What’s required is competence and a willingness to act early, before the problems metastasize.

But that’s the catch. The most incompetent body of all—Congress—is the one charged with making those decisions.

And until voters stop sending the same clowns back to Washington, nothing changes.

These are people who can’t balance a budget, can’t read a balance sheet, and can barely string together a coherent thought—yet they’re entrusted with fixing the nation’s most critical programs.

It’s no wonder every solution comes too late, costs too much, and creates another crisis in the process.

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Did you hear about the crime of the century from this week?

A few days ago Vice President Vance joined British Foreign Secretary David Lammy for a day at Chevening House — the stately 17th-century home that doubles as a retreat for Britain’s top diplomat.

It turns out that neither Vance nor Lammy held the required “rod license” that would allow them to legally fish on the private pond on the private estate.

It doesn’t matter that neither of them actually caught any fish— although apparently JD Vance’s kids were able to snag a couple invasive carp, which you’d think would be a good thing.

After being informed of his vile transgression, the Foreign Secretary dutifully bought a license afterward and “referred himself” to the Environment Agency for the appropriate punishment. He faces a fine up to £2,500, roughly $3,400.

The US media aced as if Vance had caused an international incident… like he poached the King’s jewels at a state dinner.

To them, Vance’s unlicensed fishing is somehow proof of depraved lawlessness… and much ink has been spilled this week condemning the Vice President for his “irresponsible” behavior.

We have a different view. Frankly the British government should be embarrassed. And not because of what happened to Vance… but because regular Brits are subjected to this same useless bureaucratic nonsense on a daily basis.

It’s bad enough that the British government has betrayed its citizens with a destructive open-border policy. They importing boatloads of migrants each year and pour billions in taxpayer funds into housing, food, health care, and legal aid for them.

Hotels across the country have been commandeered to house asylum seekers, while local councils slash services for the citizens who pay for it all.

And when grooming gangs run rampant— men of overwhelmingly Pakistani Muslim descent, preying on thousands of underage girls — the authorities cover it up. Police labeled victims as “consensual” participants, while doctors dismissed pregnant 12-year-olds as making “lifestyle choices”.

Politicians refused even to investigate, fearing accusations of racism that might unravel their open-border narrative.

This went all the way to the top, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer leading his party to reject a national inquiry, dismissing it as “the bandwagon of the far right”.

But on top of everything else, the British government goes out of its way to strangle the economy and make people and businesses worse off.

A recent government review found Britain’s red tape helped drive the cost of building a nuclear power plant from £18 billion to £48 billion.

Across the board, 130 regulatory agencies impose about £70 billion a year in compliance costs — roughly 3–4% of GDP.

Productivity growth has averaged a pathetic 0.5% since 2008, costing £80 billion annually in lost output. And as of this spring, GDP fell 0.3% in April and 0.1% in May, showing an economy slowly suffocating under its own bureaucracy.

The reality is you can’t even use the loo in Britain anymore without first obtaining a license.

You even need a license to watch TV — £174.50 a year for color, and £58.50 if you’re still rocking black-and-white — money the BBC uses to pump out propaganda to support the government’s cover-ups.

The government has plastered Big Brother billboards shaming those who don’t pay; they sent Christmas cards threatening £1,000 fines, and promised door-knocks on December 25th for people who didn’t pay their BBC TV license.

And it’s not just TV or fishing; you need a license for a wireless mic — not to beam signals into space, but for karaoke or a YouTuber’s lapel mic. And about a million other things.

Normal, basic functions of everyday life are absurdly over-regulated in the UK. And I sincerely hope that Vance took notice… because America isn’t too far behind.

In the Land of the Free, you need a license to braid hair, read palms, open a thrift store, or become an interior designer.

And that may not sound like a big deal at first, until you realize this is why politicians are thrilled to see the US economy grow at a pathetic 3% per year.

In the early 20th century the US economy was growing leaps and bounds precisely because the free market was sacrosanct… and talented producers weren’t constrained by countless regulations.

If you wanted to open a restaurant, all you needed was food and customers.

My grandfather built houses with his own hands and rented them out. My grandmother knew how to do hair and nails, so she started a beauty salon in small town Oklahoma. No inspectors, no licenses… just hard working people providing good value for the money.

In today’s America it can take a year or more to navigate local, state, and federal bureaucracies, even for something simple like a restaurant. For something more complicated (like a copper mine), there are examples of critical projects that have been stalled for decades.

All of this results in a slower, less dynamic economy. And America is worse off for it.

I’ve written before that Liberation Day— the day the Trump administration declared economic war with tariffs— should have been the day they took a chainsaw to the entire 200,000 page code of federal regulations.

Maybe standing in a British field being scolded over an imaginary fishing crime will light a spark.

If JD Vance, i.e. the face that launched a thousand memes, comes home from this trip determined to cut 10,000 US regulations for every manipulated meme image of his face, then maybe America can finally get back on track.

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I was still just a kid as the US headed into the 1992 US Presidential election, but I remember the excitement around my home town as Ross Perot entered the race as an independent candidate.

Perot was from Dallas, where I grew up. And he was one of the first tech billionaires, long before the dot-com boom.

Like Elon today, Perot knew that America was heading down a dangerous fiscal path. At the time, the US government was spending about 28% of its annual tax revenue just to pay interest on the national debt.

It wasn’t because the debt was so vast. Actually back then it was just a fraction of today’s debt.

The real problem was that sky-high interest rates from the 1980s (15%+) had pushed the government’s borrowing costs and annual interest bill to the moon.

So Ross Perot decided to run for President under a promise to fix the deficit.

Few people understood anything about the deficit back then. So Perot used his vast fortune to buy TV time where he would explain the problem in hour-long presentations. I remember  learning things from him that I’d never even heard about before– Treasury markets, bond yields, government accounting, mandatory spending, and more.

Perot single-handedly dragged America’s deficit issue to the front page and started a national conversation; so even though Bill Clinton ultimately won the election, Perot succeeded in making deficit reduction a top priority.

It was interesting times politically. Clinton was rocked by scandals, impeached, and deeply hated by the other party… quite similar to the situation today. They didn’t have social media back then, but ‘talk radio’ pundits raged 24/7 with the same ferocity of today’s Twitter mob.

Yet even with such conflict and division, Congress and the White House managed to work it out. And over the next decade, interest costs fell from 28% of tax revenue down to 18%. And by the end of the 1990s the government was posting strong budget surpluses.

How did they do it? It wasn’t rocket science or black magic. They simply took a common sense approach to spending– they held spending increases to minimal levels, all while tax revenue soared thanks to a tech-fueled economic bonanza.

Over the ten-year period between 1991 and 2000, government expenditures only rose by 35%. Adjusted for inflation that’s just 5.5% over the entire decade.

Meanwhile tax revenue nearly doubled over the same period. Poof. Problem solved. And America stormed into the 21st century with a record budget surplus, and its interest costs and national debt under control.

Could this happen today? Maybe. There are a lot of similarities. The US government currently pays roughly 22% of tax revenue just to cover the annual interest bill on the national debt, and this amount is growing rapidly. Not to mention, interest costs plus mandatory entitlements (like Social Security and Medicare) already consume 100% of tax revenue.

If they don’t solve this problem, America is going to be looking at a major fiscal crisis in the coming years.

Unfortunately few people in power seem to be taking this seriously. The White House is far more focused on tariffs and trade rather than the obvious problem– excessive spending. And when it comes to deficit reduction, their approach is to seize control of the Fed to push through interest rate cuts.

Congress, meanwhile, seems completely oblivious to the problem.

One of my major concerns is that American voters tend to oscillate from one side to another. So if the guys in power now don’t solve this problem now, voters could swing hard to the Left in 2028, quite possibly to a card-carrying socialist.

There are certainly a lot of socialists emerging in American politics. And they all see deficits as a “revenue problem” and believe that higher taxes will fix every challenge.

Well, we did the math in today’s podcast: “taxing the rich” won’t make a dent in the deficit problem. Neither will wealth taxes, or any of the other idiotic proposals that socialists come up with.

The only way to fix this is to cut spending… and to spend the money much more responsibly.

Fingers crossed that they see the light. And soon. But I wouldn’t hold my breath just yet on major fiscal reform… which is why it’s so critical to have a Plan B.

Listen in to today’s podcast, in which we cover:

• The 70% tax rate fantasy – Even taxing every dollar over $10 million at 70% doesn’t cover a single year’s interest on the debt.
• Why huge new taxes barely move the needle – A wealth tax might grab $200–250B upfront, then $60–100B/year. Yet the debt is growing by trillions annually.
• Behavior matters – People restructure income, delay gains, and move capital. The socialists’ ‘wealth tax’ projections will never match reality.
• Their entire philosophy is to treat the private sector like an ATM while refusing to cut a cent of waste.
• The problem with the socialists who want to “seize the means of production” is that they’ve never produced anything!
• The spending problem – The top 2% already paid ~$1 trillion in taxes in 2021 (28% effective rate on $3.5T income).
• Since July 4th, the US has added nearly $800 billion to the debt— about $500B of it brand-new spending.
• The real “third side” of the coin – It’s not just a revenue problem or a spending problem—it’s decades of baked-in waste, fraud, and mismanagement in federal budgets.
• Zero-base budgeting: A common-sense approach where agencies start at zero and justify every dollar… something almost no one in Washington is willing to consider.
• Bond market reality check – The Fed can nudge short-term rates, but long-term rates are set by the bond market—
• This means that political control of the Fed may not deliver the rate cuts they expect.
• Socialist footholds in major cities – from NYC to Chicago to Seattle, socialists  are winning local races and pushing radical tax-and-spend agendas.

The bottom line:

Confiscating more from the productive economy doesn’t fix the problem; it fuels it. The only real solution starts with cutting waste and ending the government’s addiction to spending.

Until that happens, individuals need their own Plan B—whether it’s hedging against inflation with real assets, diversifying internationally, or building networks with like-minded people who see what’s coming.

That’s exactly why we built our Total Access community. Over the years, it’s become more than just an exclusive group—it’s sparked friendships, partnerships, and a global network of people who are prepared, connected, and two steps ahead. After 15+ years in this business, it’s the thing I’m most proud of.

Listen to the full breakdown here.

And you can access the podcast transcript here.

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On Friday afternoon last week, the US national debt hit another ignominious milestone: $37 trillion. And there’s absolutely no end in sight.

Perhaps the wildest part is how quickly the debt is rising. Just before the One Big Beautiful Bill was passed on July 4th– barely a month ago– the national debt was ‘only’ $36.2 trillion. So, the debt increased a whopping $800 billion in a mere 36 days.

To be fair, about $300 billion worth of that amount was ‘pent up’ debt that couldn’t be reflected on the national balance sheet until they increased the debt ceiling last month.

But there’s still roughly half a trillion dollars in fresh spending that went out the door over a five-week period. That is an insane pace of outflows.

The other big problem, of course, is that the debt is becoming a lot more expensive– in other words, the average rate of interest that the US government pays on the national debt is steadily rising.

As of July 31st, 2025, Uncle Sam is paying an average 3.352% on the entire national debt.

That sounds pretty low… until you look back a couple of years and see the average interest rate was just 1.5% in early 2022.

This means that interest rates have doubled in just 2 1/2 years. Combined with the rapid increase in the national debt, America’s annual interest bill is quickly spiraling out of control.

Back in Fiscal Year 2021, the US government spent around 13% of its tax revenue to pay interest on the debt.  This Fiscal year 2025, it will take around 22% of tax revenue to pay interest on the national debt.

That’s an extraordinary increase in just four years. And it’s quite likely this trend will continue, i.e. interest will eat up a larger and larger portion of annual budget.

Why? Because the debt keeps rising… plus interest rates are MUCH higher than they were a few years ago.

Think about it: over the next twelve months alone, nearly $9 trillion of US government debt will mature; that’s nearly 25% of the entire US national debt maturing over the next YEAR.

Obviously, the government doesn’t have $9 trillion lying around to repay this debt. So instead, they’ll simply issue new debt (i.e. government bonds) to repay the old debt.

The key problem is that the new bonds they’ll have to issue will carry a significantly higher interest rate than the old bonds from a few years ago. And this will continue to push up the government’s average interest rate.

Our analysis– with a lot of help from Grok– is that it will take more than 40% of tax revenue, just to pay interest, by the year 2033 (which happens to be the same year that Social Security’s major trust funds are set to run out of money).

So, it’s not hard to see why the White House is so adamant about bringing interest rates down… and why the President is pushing the Fed Chairman to cut rates.

The President may very well get his way. Last week, a key Fed official who was a member of their interest rate committee (called the FOMC) suddenly and inexplicably resigned. She literally quit with no explanation and with almost immediate effect.

The White House responded quickly by appointing none other than Stephen Miran to fill the post; Miran, as you are probably aware, is one of the key architects behind Trump’s entire economic agenda– everything from the tariff bonanza to the so-called “Mar-a-Lago Accords”.

Not to mention, Miran has publicly called for a weak dollar… which is clear conflict given that one of the Federal Reserve’s key mandates is to maintain a stable currency.

I imagine it will be pretty hard for Miran to maintain a stable currency when he’s working so hard (and successfully) to weaken it.

Point is, Miran will almost certainly be a strong advocate on the Fed to dramatically lower interest rates– and to ‘print’ money– in order to weaken the dollar and bail out the Treasury Department.

The White House will also appoint a new Fed Chairman next year once Jerome Powell’s term expires in the spring.

It’s not a sure thing, but the Trump administration is clearly doing everything it can to take control of the Fed and steer US monetary policy towards lower rates.

If they’re successful and manage to hijack the Fed, the end result will likely be new round of Quantitative Easing (i.e. ‘printing money’), leading to a nasty bout of inflation.

But if they’re not successful, the government’s annual interest bill will probably continue to spiral out of control, eventually leading to… a nasty bout of inflation.

This isn’t exactly controversial; in fact, throughout human history, inflation has almost always been the consequence of governments’ financial mismanagement.

The good news is that America has been in this position before. As recently as the 1990s, the US government was spending well more than 20% of tax revenue just to pay interest on the national debt.

Congress and the White House both acknowledged the problem, and they worked together to address it– primarily by reigning in spending.

Could the same thing happen over the next decade? Of course. But at the moment there seems to be zero appetite for cooperation… or to restrain spending.

So, again, the current trajectory almost certainly leads to inflation.

Now, this doesn’t mean the world is coming to an end. Civilization as we know it is not on the brink of collapse. Future inflation is a very solvable problem. But it requires taking sensible, proactive precautions now… all part of a rational Plan B.

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Say hello to the new face of Minneapolis politics: Omar Fateh. He’s young, ambitious, and just clinched the city’s version of the democratic primary… which almost assures his final victory.

One might assume that winning a mayoral election would require a track record of competence, leadership, or results… But in today’s political landscape, Fateh checks all the boxes that really matter to the radical Left. He’s black. He’s Muslim. He’s the son of Somali immigrants.

Most importantly, he’s a self-declared socialist. And his wokeness is so ridiculous that Fateh’s campaign website actually feels like satire.

One of his major “visions” is to “Ensure that events like the Trans Equity Summit are fully funded and prioritized,” noting that, “The current Mayor has underfunded and mismanaged this event…”

A trans summit is the priority… for a city experiencing a massive crime wave while 33% short of its legally mandated police force personnel.

But Fateh doesn’t care about having too few cops. Instead he’s taken direct aim at law enforcement by publicly calling out the police department as “unmotivated” and “untrustworthy.”

Furthermore, Fateh plans to strip funding from the cops… yet at the same time says he will  eliminate the massive backlog of unsolved police investigations.

Sure, that seems totally plausible. Why not fire the doctors and hospital staff, yet simultaneously demand shorter ER wait times?

Fateh also wants to “end the cycle of the Minneapolis Police Department’s (MPD) violence and brutality that has held our city captive for so many years.”

This, of course, is the same city where George Floyd died under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer—an event that triggered nationwide “mostly peaceful” riots and turned the city into ground zero for the “defund the police” movement.

And standing front and center at the time was the city’s current mayor Jacob Frey— who Fateh is running against.

Frey’s reaction to Floyd’s death became symbolic of the broader wave of political theater that followed. He wept like a baby— uncontrollably with full-on convulsions— as he bent the knee at George Floyd’s casket… all while on camera, of course.

Meanwhile he presided over a city that soon descended into riots, burned police precincts, and spiraling violent crime. Instead of doing anything about it, Frey apologized for his whiteness.

This is literally the choice that the good people of Minneapolis have: Jacob Frey, or Omar Fateh— two leftist lunatics.

Fateh’s platform is amazing because he thinks that Frey isn’t extreme enough on the left.

This is why Fatah wants to launch a full-scale attack on private property. He wants to remove capital from the housing market entirely. Publicly owned social housing is the goal, with layers of rent control and mandatory rent-to-own schemes that would essentially confiscate landlord equity over time. Evictions would be all but outlawed.

Fateh might even be more radical than New York City’s socialist front-runner, Zohran Mamdani.

These two are part of a growing cohort of municipal leaders across America who are pushing an aggressively anti-capitalist agenda.

Compared to this crowd, even someone like New York’s former ultra-progressive Mayor Bill de Blasio starts to like Ayn Rand by comparison.

Mamdani wants to solve New York’s housing crisis—caused by decades of price controls and regulatory suffocation—by adding even more rent control. Grocery prices too high? His answer is to have the government own and operate the grocery stores.

That idea was also floated by Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson.

Johnson won by campaigning on taxing “the rich” and “big corporations.” His proposals included a new “head tax” on jobs, which has been a great way to increase unemployment in the city.

The fact that a guy like this could even compete, let alone win, tells you everything you need to know about the Chicago electorate. And seeing the writing on the wall, in the year before Johnson took office, Boeing, Caterpillar, and Citadel all moved their corporate headquarters from Chicago.

Chicago now faces a budget deficit of over $1 billion in FY 2025— up from around $200 million in 2024. Shocking.

While it’s tempting to dismiss this as just another “crazy urban leftist” story, the implications go far beyond city limits.

Urban centers are the economic anchors of an entire metropolitan area. When the urban core collapses—when law enforcement becomes paralyzed, when property rights are eroded, when the tax base flees—the rot doesn’t stay downtown. It spreads to surrounding areas.

Nor is this movement just in big cities. Socialist mayors are taking over places from Allegheny County, Pennsylvania to South Fulton, Georgia. Even Jackson, Mississippi elected a self-described socialist revolutionary, Chokwe Antar Lumumba. This trend is gaining traction.

Sure, we’ve had isolated socialist mayors before—Bernie Sanders in Burlington back in the ’80s comes to mind—but that was the exception, not the norm.

For most of the post-WWII era, from the 1950s through the early 2010s, open socialism in American politics was radioactive. But that era is over.

What we’re seeing now is the most successful surge of card-carrying socialists in local office since the early 20th century.

You and I talk a lot about the next inflation cycle—one that will be driven by unimaginable levels of debt, and the money printing required to keep the whole thing from imploding.

Yet my broader concern is how this coming inflation cycle could fan the flames of socialism even further. When an entire country is down economically, you will hear politicians blame capitalism… see people turn to socialism.

This movement will probably keep growing. It’s worth watching the trend.

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It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that global trade is one of the most important issues happening in the world right now.

On April 2nd—so-called “Liberation Day”—the President upended decades of established business and trade practices that virtually every major government and corporation on the planet has relied on.

All of those rules, good and bad, were thrown out the window. Overnight. And that makes this new tariff regime one of the largest worldwide disruptions to business (alongside the pandemic) since World War II.

I’ve been wanting to learn more about this from someone who really knows what they’re talking about… someone who has real experience with international trade deals and knows the system inside out.

So last week, during a live call with our Total Access members, I interviewed one of America’s most senior and successful trade negotiators. And I learned more in that hour-long conversation about global trade than I have in decades of my own international business experience.

First things first, her experience is pretty unparalleled.

She started her career at the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTRO) during the administration of George H W Bush in the early 1990s, and throughout her career she had spent years sitting across the table from Chinese, Korean, Russian counterparts, trying to hammer out government trade deals that would be good for America.

I’ll be blunt— I came into the conversation with a really negative assumption that any career bureaucrat would be ideologically toxic. I thought that the people negotiating these deals would constantly be injecting their personal politics and fantasies… or that they wouldn’t be competent enough to make good deals for the country.

I was flat out wrong. There wasn’t even a hint of ideology. And by the end of the call I couldn’t tell who she voted for, or whether she leaned left or right. Nor did I care.

Instead, I actually felt grateful that the United States has had someone as sharp as she representing the country’s interests at the negotiating table. For her, trade deals are all business, and she’s damn good at it.

She never once implied that President Trump is wrong or naïve. But she also didn’t express unbridled enthusiasm for the administration’s vision of these trade deals either.

Instead, with a mix of extreme insight and dry humor, she gave us an incredible perspective on how the trade system actually works—and what we can expect in the coming months and years.

For example, I asked her point-blank: Is the US even in a position to demand major trade concessions?

Her answer surprised me: absolutely yes.

She explained that even though China’s consumer market is growing—and even though the Chinese government has been preparing for this moment since Trump’s first term—China is still nowhere near as valuable an import market as the US. Not even close.

Nearly every country on the planet is desperate to export its goods to the United States. And because of that, she said, Trump has tremendous bargaining power.

I even asked her about Trump’s tendency for hyperbole; he tells stories about world leaders calling him and “begging” him to drop tariffs. I always roll my eyes at such stories because they don’t sound remotely plausible.

But, again, she corrected me and said these stories are most likely true… simply because the US is in such a strong negotiating position. And there are a number of countries whose leaders would literally beg the President to drop tariffs… because steep US tariffs would send their economies off a cliff, and their politicians out of power.

Again, she’s not a rabid MAGA fanatic. She’s a seasoned, career trade negotiator who’s seen this process from every side over multiple US Presidents.

We also talked about the mechanics of how trade deals are negotiated, and the blatant mistakes that some countries (including Mexico, recently) make. She also explained how unrealistic it is to expect dozens of them to be signed in such a short timeframe.

Ordinarily, she told us, a single trade deal can take years to fully negotiate and finalize all the details. And the details can go on for hundreds of pages.

Now they want dozens of deals in a matter of weeks; these aren’t really “trade agreements”, she said, more like frameworks. In business terms, it’s like a term sheet or letter of intent.

The problem with these frameworks is that they are only a few pages and very light on details, therefore they will almost certainly leave massive gaps—ripe for abuse, noncompliance, and future disputes.

And based on that, it’s not clear whether there will be any long-term benefit from Liberation Day. There might be, but it’s not a sure thing at all.

She also confirmed what we’ve long suspected—China is better positioned to wait this out than the United States.

China has reduced reliance on US exports and doesn’t face political pressure from voters or donors. If both China and the US are damaged, she said, America is more likely to blink first.

She ended with a warning: don’t expect any clarity tomorrow (August 1, i.e. the supposed deadline for the trade deals).

Again, there might be a handful of trade ‘frameworks’, but these are just outlines. The real negotiations haven’t even started. Disputes are inevitable. Tariffs will keep switching on and off. And she expects this chaotic trade environment to last another few years.

***

Just a quick note that we’ll be opening enrollment to Total Access soon—our most valuable and highest tier membership at Schiff Sovereign.

We bend over backwards for our members— including setting up regular, members-only calls like the one I just wrote about with a career trade negotiator— to provide the ultimate insider access and front row seat to the world’s most important trends.

We further provide our members with private investment research and Plan B internationalization strategies (like the best and fastest ways to obtain a second passport).

Members also receive complimentary access to ALL premium content that we provide at Schiff Sovereign.

But he best thing about Total Access is building real relationships—because in today’s world, that’s what actually matters. The most valuable currency you can have isn’t dollars or gold, it’s a trusted network of like-minded people who see the world clearly and act decisively.

Our members come from all walks of life—investors, entrepreneurs, doctors, engineers, even the occasional celebrity—but they share common values. They understand that the world is changing fast. That inflation is real. That governments are out of control. And that having a Plan B is essential.

That’s why we host private dinners, organize boots-on-the-ground trips, and bring members together in extraordinary places.

Sometimes that looks like the recent trip to Turkey, where members explored opportunities in the country’s citizenship by investment program. Other times it looks more like the luxury super-yacht cruise that just concluded along the coast of Croatia.

We also host conference-style events in promising locations like El Salvador, with really interesting speakers, such as the former President of Mexico who joined our event in Mexico City.

Total Access is also how our members were able to participate in private investment opportunities like Grok, a robotics venture, and an exclusive citizenship deal directly from a European head of state.

Yes, we go to interesting places. Yes, we produce world-class research. But the real value is in the people you meet and the relationships you build.

If you’re interested in Total Access, you can learn more here, and join the wait list to be notified when membership opens up.

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To the surprise of absolutely no one today, the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee chose to do nothing at the close of its two-day meeting.

The White House is furious about the decision; the President believes that the Fed should be slashing rates, and that the current “high” rate of interest is costing the US government hundreds of billions of dollars each year in excess interest.

(I put “high” in quotes because interest rates are still well below historic averages…)

Now, I am no fan of the Fed. Quite the opposite— the organization is a total failure.

Just consider that section 2A of the Federal Reserve Act (passed in 1913) states that the Fed is supposed to maintain a stable currency. Yet the US dollar has lost 97% of its purchasing power under the Fed’s stewardship over the past 112 years.

Personally I think it’s difficult to find another organization that has been so terrible at its core mission for so long.

Yet even with that scathing criticism in mind, it’s still not the Fed’s job to bail out the US government’s finances.

If Congress and the White House want to pay a lower interest rate on the national debt, then they can make the hard decisions to cut spending, balance the budget, and attract foreign investment by acting like responsible adults.

Unfortunately none of that seems to be in the cards.

So instead there seems to be a clear plan being hatched: Project “Hijack the Fed”.

Let’s start from the basics:

In order to fund its roughly $2 trillion annual budget deficit, the US government has to sell debt (bonds) to investors to plug its funding gap. And this responsibility falls to the Treasury Department.

Ordinarily, Treasury would sell a mix of US government bonds, ranging from ultra-short-term 28-day T-bills, to very long-term 30-year bonds.

Lately, however, the Treasury Department has been focused on selling mostly short-term bonds… simply because those rates are lower. The yield on a 12-month T-bill, for example, is just 3.86%, whereas the yield on 10-year Treasury is almost 5%, so it’s a difference of roughly 1%.

In some ways it’s sensible to take the lower rate. But it’s a risky strategy.

If interest rates suddenly rise, then the US government could wind up paying even MORE interest in the next few years, just to save 1% today.

So clearly the Treasury Department must have some confidence that rates won’t be going higher… and will probably be headed lower.

Last month Secretary Bessent even said this out loud: “What I’m going to do is, I’m going to go very short-term. . . Wait until this guy [Fed Chairman Jerome Powell] gets out, get the rates way down, and then go long-term.”

In other words, he’s going to keep selling the lower-interest short-term debt. Then, once Jerome Powell’s term as Fed Chairman ends next year, the Treasury Secretary thinks that HE will be able to “get the rates way down”, at which point he’ll start selling long-term debt to lock in lower rates.

This is a stunning admission that the Treasury Secretary (and by extension the White House) think that they will be able to steer interest rates much lower through their new Fed pick next year.

Coincidentally, Treasury Secretary Bessent also happens to be on Donald Trump’s shortlist to be the next Fed Chairman.

So let’s skip over the obvious legal and reputational issues involved in such a move.

The bigger problem is that there’s only one way for the Fed— even if Secretary Bessent becomes Chairman— to “get the rates way down”… and that is by expanding the money supply, i.e. what we often refer to as printing money.

And just as we saw during the pandemic when the Fed printing $5 trillion, large-scale money printing can easily lead to some nasty inflation.

Why it matters:

We’ve been talking about the next inflation cycle for a while, explaining why 2033 is the key date to keep in mind; this is when Social Security’s major trust fund will run out of money, prompting the Fed to print trillions of dollars and trigger inflation.

But given the Treasury Department and White House’s plan to hijack the Fed, it’s possible that the next inflation cycle could start up again as early as next year.

This isn’t a foregone conclusion. But it makes sense to pay close attention to what they’re doing, because it’s starting to look pretty obvious that they plan to print a lot of money starting next summer.

Today’s podcast:

I want to stress that I’m not predicting some imminent doom. The end of the world is no upon us. There is no reason for rational people to panic.

But it is becoming increasingly obvious where this trend will lead. The Treasury Secretary of the United States of America is flat-out saying that he’s going to “get the rates way down” as early as next summer. And it would be foolish to ignore the inflationary consequences of his plan.

We discuss all of this in depth in today’s podcast episode, including:

• Will the next inflation cycle mean painfully higher food and fuel prices, or perhaps just an inflated stock and real estate market?
• Why there’s a straight line linking the post-GFC (2010-2016) stock market bubble and ‘asset price inflation’, to the rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders
• We explain that, while the Fed has a lot of influence over short-term interest rates, they can’t control long-term rates (including mortgage rates) without printing tons of money. And, yes, that means inflation.
• How the next phase of money printing could make the 2020–2021 pandemic inflation look tame by comparison; it’s all about the sheer volume of money at stake, i.e. $5 trillion versus potentially $20+ trillion.
• Why the US could hit a fiscal wall sooner than anyone thinks, where 100% of tax revenue is consumed JUST by debt interest, Social Security, and Medicare
• We also talk about sensible ways to position yourself for inflation in ways that make sense regardless of what happens (or doesn’t happen) next.

You can listen to today’s episode here.

You can access the podcast transcript here.

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