Karen Kwiatkowski: U.S. Military Breaks Down & Economy Crashes ( Video - 1h12)

   Interesting insight about the US nowadays. This confirms that the US has no plan, no strategy and not even tactics. With Iran, the curtain of imperial power has been lifted and the emperor is naked. The war itself has nothing to do with nuclear weapons since already 20 years ago Iran was on the list of countries to be subdued for total control of the Middle East so the US is just following the script. It didn't happen then only because Iran was a hard nut to crack and not knowing how to do it, previous Presidents wisely decided not to. Well, we now know how hard it really was! 

   So now what? This is almost impossible to answer. The loss of prestige for the Trump Administration is immense but on the other hand doubling down seems almost impossible. The crisis will probably continue to fester while Trump tries to exhaust Iran economically and Iran conversely tries to exhaust Trump politically. A game of chicken with not so peaceful spectators around. What could go wrong?  

Karen Kwiatkowski: U.S. Military Breaks Down & Economy Crashes

Senate Panel Holds Fauci In Contempt For Refusing To Answer Questions

   All what we have been arguing about the Covid crisis over the last 6 years is finally coming to the front with Congress confirming the accusations to which Dr Fauci refused to answer saying this was a witch hunt. In this exact way, absolutely ALL criminals can accuse the prosecution of "witch hunt", that is literally their job. And the job of the defense is to defend the accused party. Here, in this specific setting Dr Fauci only had to answer questions which he refuse to do. 

   Unfortunately, it is in the next step that the strength of the Deeps State will be revealed. Now that he has been held in contempt of Congress, the DOJ (Department of Defense) should prosecute him. Based on recent antecedents, I wouldn't hold my breath. They probably won't. Remember Epstein? There was a file, then there was none. Same Department of Justice. Different priorities, probably after powerful people made a few phone calls.    

   Those people you cannot indict or prosecute are de facto above the law. A list of these people will tell you who really has power in America today. And it is definitively not "We, the People" as written in the Constitution. Do we still need one then?

Senate Panel Holds Fauci In Contempt For Refusing To Answer Questions

Anthony Fauci has been held in contempt of Congress by the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, after he repeatedly refused to answer lawmakers' questions about funding risky research to genetically manipulate bat coronavirus in Wuhan China, and his role in the ensuing lockdown quagmire that cratered the economy after he was put in charge of leading the COVID-19 response. 

Oh, and they obtained a copy of his cell phone. 

In an 8-5 vote brought by Committee Chairman Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), the contempt vote seeks to refer the case directly to the DOJ for prosecution - bypassing a full vote from the Senate. 

"Seeking the truth is not a witch hunt," Paul said be fore the vote, per the WSJ. "Accountability is not vengeance. Accountability is what stands between the American people and a repeat of the mistakes and the very real consequences of the past." 

The Committee's top Democrat, Sen. Gary Peters, called the investigation "one-sided from the beginning," claiming that "Information has been selectively released to support conclusions that the chairman reached years ago." 

The minority keeps trying to hijack the Fauci hearings with the lie that we haven’t shared the records from this investigation with them. This is a cop-out lie. This has been an intentionally open and transparent investigation. Not one Democrat on the committee cared enough to… pic.twitter.com/hHGtQDV5Ez

— Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) August 6, 2026

Which of course is complete bullshit. Fauci funded the research, botched the response after COVID-19 broke out, lied about it under oath, and then pleaded the 5th when receipts came out.  

WATCH: Democrats across the board vote to protect Dr. Anthony Fauci. pic.twitter.com/y9xm1mFDbc

— Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) August 6, 2026

Committee Chairman Rand Paul, R-Ky., questions Fauci on Wednesday.Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images

Or, as Paul wrote prior to the vote: "Dr. Fauci appeared under subpoena and invoked the Fifth Amendment to refuse answering questions. During the hearing, I ruled that the Fifth Amendment did not apply because of the pardon, and that Fauci had waived any remaining privilege by giving opening testimony. I ordered him to answer and warned him about contempt, yet he still refused. That is obstruction of a congressional investigation. The Committee will act accordingly."

PASSED BY REPUBLICANS ON BEHALF OF THE MILLIONS OF AMERICANS AND THEIR FAMILIES STILL AFFECTED YEARS AFTER THE COVID PANDEMIC, THE RESOLUTION TO HOLD ANTHONY FAUCI IN CONTEMPT OF CONGRESS HAS PASSED OUT OF THE SENATE HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS COMMITTEE BY A VOTE… https://t.co/9wgO1KeMd2

— Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) August 6, 2026

Meanwhile, the WSJ reported last night that the panel obtained a copy of Fauci's cell phone.

A Senate panel investigating Dr. Anthony Fauci has obtained a copy of the doctor’s iPhone, potentially securing even more records related to the doctor’s actions during the Covid-19 pandemic. The copy of the phone was transferred by the Department of Health and Human Services to the Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which is chaired by Sen. Ron Johnson (R., Wis.).

This revelation comes just days after copies of Fauci’s journals were publicly released following their transfer from HHS to Congress. Two Republican senators, Johnson and Rand Paul of Kentucky, have increased pressure on Fauci in recent days to answer questions related to pandemic health measures and the origins of Covid-19.

The subpoena, issued in July, directed Fauci to testify on the committee's investigation into "risky life sciences research and the origins of the COVID-19 virus," according to the Epoch Times.

The July 29 hearing itself was a prolonged exercise in refusal. Fauci opened by accusing Paul of an "unhinged obsession" with him and claiming the sole purpose of the session was to trap him into saying something that would land him "behind bars."

From that point forward he answered nothing of consequence. Senators pressed him on gain-of-function research funding, the lab-leak evidence he had privately acknowledged while publicly promoting a natural-origin narrative, lockdown policies, school closures, personal financial awards solicited with federal employees on taxpayer time, and contradictions between his public statements and private diary entries. He declined them all.

Government Propaganda Is a Trojan Horse

    To be honest, governments around the world have always used propaganda. You do not get people to wage wars without it. But propaganda turns toxic when other sources of news are suppressed. If the risk of people believing "something else" grows, it tells you there must be something rotten inside the apple. 

   Propaganda in the US has always been "soft" as it was abutted by a strong social norm to conform. Explicit during the MacArthur years, implicit otherwise, Hollywood-like.   

   Europe had a freer patch from the 1970s to the 1990s. The youth rebellion of the 60s opened the gates which were more slowly closed post 9/11.  

   Then growth stopped in the 2000s which you couldn't see by looking at counterfeited inflation numbers but that people painfully felt year after year.  

   Then people started looking at the causes. Populism, proposed external causes, but in reality, excess spending to pander to the electorate was almost always the real cause, and the source of constant lying. You simply do not get elected by telling the truth to the common folks to paraphrase Jean-Claude Juncker: 'We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it.'  

   Then you start staring at the abyss. More contradictions, more lies, more of what doesn't work, suppression of the truth, legislation to cement the lies, criminalization of the truth. Cicero already described the process 2,000 years ago!  

   But if you read this blog, you already know this. Navigating between propaganda and slops is exhausting and slowly goad people back towards the mainstream medias as they give up the fight. Switching from one type of propaganda to another is likewise tiring. I have noticed this phenomenon especially acutely while going back to France recently where mostly what's left of the news is almost pure disinformation, often by fabrication but mainly by omission.   

   Just as the Jesuits in the Middle Ages who were not permitted to lie and ended up master of not telling the truth through countless subterfuges, our governments are slowly advancing the "science" of "mis, de, non, -information" so that in the end the only truthful fact left in the newspapers is the date!    

 

By J.B. Shurk (American Thinker) — Ignore the bureaucrats; listen to the free thinkers.

***

If the Trojan War were being fought today, the Greeks would not need to hide inside of a big, wooden horse and hope to be dragged inside Troy’s city gates.  They’d simply disseminate all kinds of lies on social media and wait for the Trojan people to fight each other.  Such is the power of corrosive ideas: They can destroy a civilization before its defenders understand that they are under attack.

Information warfare is the name of the game today.  It exists all around us.  Soundbites attack us from every phone, computer, tablet, and television screen.  Succinct messages ripple through social media platforms until people from opposite sides of the world repeat the same words without knowing why.

The most powerful bits of information are the ones that sound unquestionably true.  “Believe all women.”  “Black lives matter.”  “Build back better.”  Their simplicity assists their deception.  We certainly shouldn’t distrust women, right?  Who wants to argue that black lives mean nothing?  Surely nobody wishes to build something worse than it was before.  People hear the soundbites, nod their heads, and repeat those words to their friends and neighbors.  Some place signs in their yards with those three-word messages, as if they were brilliant expositions of fundamental truths.

Successful information warfare propagates ideas without triggering in those who receive the message any need for reflection.  Like the Greeks’ wooden horse, the communication is hollow.  It is intended to be just attractive enough that listeners drag the soundbite into their heads but sufficiently harmless in appearance to avoid real scrutiny.  Great propaganda does not conquer by force.  It seduces.  It knocks on the door, smiles, and charms its way into unsuspecting minds.  Then it waits — patiently — until the day arrives when it can do the most damage.

Effective propaganda, however, is inherently fragile.  Should anyone take the time to reflect on those three-word messages above, their magic spells are broken.  Once someone asks, “Don’t some women lie?” people remember that accusations matter less than evidentiary proof.  Once a person is shouted down for saying, “All lives matter,” it becomes clear that “diversity” and “equity” have nothing to do with equality and justice.  When anyone stops to ask, “What are we building, and why are we building it?” the World Economic Forum’s plans for a “new world order” stand naked and exposed.

In other words, thinking is the enemy of information warfare.  Those who engage in its dark arts see independent thinkers as missile shields that must be eliminated.  Reason and rational debate remain the most effective defenses against propaganda.  People who ask questions build forts for society with their minds.  The entrances to those forts are adorned with this sign: Come let us reason together.

Reasoned debate is not scary; on the contrary, it is the path upon which we walk toward enlightenment.  It is why people who demand complianceshould never be trusted.  Anyone who says, “The science is settled,” or, “Trust the experts,” seeks to deprive the listener not only of his capacity to reason but also of his prospect for salvation.  When we forsake the mental gifts that God has given us, we hobble our potential for spiritual growth.  Nobody has ever been redeemed for “just following orders.”  A good life comes from good choices, and good choices come from faithful contemplation.  In this way, attacks on free speech are attacks on our very souls.

When propagandists attack our souls from all directions, it is difficult to know who is waging war against us and why.  But there are telltale signs.  When groups and governments attempt to “cancel” individuals for their personal beliefs, they are waging war against individual conscience.

Sometimes acts of war are obvious, as when a British communist allegedly bludgeoned well-known conservative Ann Widdecombe to death with a hammer.  Other times, information warfare is more subtle, as when the British government banned Christian and Finnish politician Päivi Räsänen from flying through London’s Heathrow Airport because she boldly defends the Bible’s prohibition against sexual sin, something that both Finland and the United Kingdom have now officially criminalized as “hate speech.”  Along the same lines, the Polish government recently convicted a young, pregnant mother for the “crime” of speaking at a public rally against mass immigration.  Found guilty of “inciting hatred,” Oliwia Olejniczak has received a harsher punishment for expressing her opinion than many illegal immigrants have for committing rape.

When governments abuse their criminal justice systems to persecute Christians and mothers concerned about their families’ safety, the signs are clear: Those governments are at war with their own people.  When governments “cancel” citizens for their beliefs, politicians and bureaucrats identify for us which independent thinkers they most fear.  As is written in the Gospel of Matthew (5:10), “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”  When people stand up for moral truths — while bearing the brunt of their governments’ hatred — pay attention.  Those people are building forts for society with their minds.  Seek the shelter of those forts; then expand those forts to protect others.  This is the way to defeat government propaganda.

Those who engage in information warfare have a propensity for projecting their crimes onto the innocent.  This is why leftwing groups and governments accuse Christians of “hate speech,” while saying the most hateful things about Christians.  It is also why governments and NGOs insist on categorizing citizens’ dissenting speech as “disinformation” or “misinformation,” when governments and NGOs manufacture false information on an industrial scale.

There has never been a time in human history when self-appointed public censors turned out to be the “good guys.”  Communists, fascists, Nazis, and military dictators all believe in censoring public speech and rigging public debate.  The globalists, socialists, collectivists, and other Big Government parasites that have infiltrated and seized most national governments today likewise believe in censorship and the criminalization of dissent.  Information — whether true or false — does not belong to any one group of people.  Oligarchies are not filled with angels; they are filled with sinful human beings.

We saw how evil oligarchies can be during the COVID lockdowns.  Government bureaucrats and self-described “experts” told us explicitly, “Now is the time to do what you’re told.”  Western governments committed unforgivable crimes against their citizens in the name of “science.”  Australia rounded up people into “quarantine camps,” and we now know that pretend-President Joe Biden’s CDC was planning to do the same thing in the United States.

For eighty years, American schoolchildren have been taught that President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII was an unconscionable violation of Americans’ constitutional rights that could never be permitted to happen again.  Yet it almost did happen again.  The U.S. government was preparing to imprison Americans who refused experimental pharmaceutical injections or expressed unapproved speech.  In January 2022, majorities of Democrats believed that “unvaccinated” Americans should be fined, locked in their homes, sent to quarantine camps, and imprisoned for questioning the effectiveness of the experimental injections.  A third of Democrats believed that the government should remove children from homes with “unvaccinated” parents.

How did we get so close to completely destroying the Bill of Rights?  Health bureaucrats and government authorities engaged in an all-out information war against the American people.  They pushed lies into American homes just as the Greeks pushed a wooden horse into Troy.  And their attack on the American people almost worked.  Americans hated each other more than ever before and nearly tore each other to shreds.  COVID was weaponized into the kind of irrational fear that destroys civilizations.

In the end, it was not the “experts” or government ministers who prevented Western civilization’s collapse.  It was the people who saw through the propaganda and refused to submit to tyranny.  The next time governments send a Trojan Horse, just light the damn thing on fire.

France's €107 Billion Deficit Shock: The Next Euro Debt Crisis?

   We have discussed several times already about the slow motion suicide of Germany which is destroying its industrial base and the cultural suicide of England.  

   France is another category of its own. 40 years ago it was a country of engineers from Polytechnique and other "Grandes Ecoles". These people built TGV High Speed Trains, Ariane rockets, Nuclear Power Plants and Airbus planes. 

   But at the same time, France was also fundamentally a "socialist" country, with a huge civil servant count (57% of employment) and an interventionist state addicted to deficits. Before the Euro, just like Italy, the country balanced its books by devaluing its currency regularly and generating enough growth thanks to its high productivity, which allowed it to compete. 

   But then the Euro arrived. It destroyed growth and exploded the deficits, so much so that nowadays they are literally incalculable and just computed at the end of each year. Twice, three times the European limit of 3%, who cares? The machine is out of control anyway and eventually the European Central Bank will pay for everything, right?      

   Or maybe not as Greece painfully learned. But France is not Greece and as the second largest "customer" of the ECB (European Central Bank), the country knows that when you owe too much to the bank, you are not prisoner of the bank, the bank becomes prisoner of you and is obliged to extend forever more "credit". 

   Everybody knows that such an arrangement is not stable and eventually unravel. It is just a problem for future generations. And then one day, quite suddenly, the future knocks at the door...  

France's €107 Billion Deficit Shock: The Next Euro Debt Crisis?

by Thomas Kolbe

Tuesday marked another low point for European fiscal stability. France, a cornerstone of the euro system, confirmed once again that it remains a leading candidate and potential trigger for a future euro financial crisis.

According to the French Ministry of Finance, the deficit of the French central government amounted to around €107 billion by the end of June. These are staggering figures – a deficit that is 14.4 percent higher than originally planned by the government.

Source

Unless the government builds a fiscal firewall and no economic miracle occurs, the central government deficit could rise to around six percent this year. Not included are the gaps in the social security system, municipalities and regions, which account for an additional significant share of France’s overall deficit. It is possible that the second-largest economy in the European Union will end the year with an overall government deficit of around eight percent.

All budget plans would therefore become obsolete. Last year, the government was already calculating with a deficit of five percent – a figure that, under the originally defined Maastricht criteria, should have triggered an excessive deficit procedure. However, the euro debt club has long abandoned any fiscal restraints.

The problem lies not only on the revenue side. While government revenues recently increased by around 3.7 percent, expenditures rose by 5.4 percent at the same time. The state is growing faster than the economic base that is supposed to finance it.

Despite tax increases and difficult negotiations over spending cuts, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has failed to slow down his country’s debt spiral even remotely.

French fiscal policy can no longer be taken seriously. Forecasts from Paris now have the half-life of the French prime ministers who have failed in increasingly shorter intervals.

The spectacle France is presenting to the world will have consequences. The debt struggle of the Grande Nation no longer concerns France alone, but the entire euro system and the European Union.

It is becoming increasingly clear that European policy over recent years has contributed to a dramatic loss of economic dynamism and productivity. France is facing political paralysis, a president without popular support and the ongoing disintegration of a society that maintains one of the largest welfare states in the world, with a government spending ratio of 57 percent, in an attempt to cover its social fractures.

Cultural alien migration has a price, and sooner or later that price inevitably becomes visible in fiscal policy.

France is also following the German model and constructing its own state economy through debt in an attempt to overcome a never-ending productivity crisis. It is remarkable that this belief in the healing power of central planning can be found throughout the European Union. Has nobody learned the fundamental lessons of history?

The more capital is redirected from the productive sectors of the economy into the construction of a political economy, the poorer the population becomes. This is how socialism works.

We know this pattern from Germany: The state is effectively consuming itself. The greater the damage caused by an expanding state economy in the productive sectors of society, the higher the tax burden and inflationary pressures will ultimately become.

Following this logic, France has raised several taxes over the past twelve months. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu shifted additional burdens primarily onto companies and higher-income earners.

The special levy on large companies with revenues exceeding one billion euros was extended and is expected to generate around €7.3 billion in additional government revenue. In addition, an extended special tax on high incomes is expected to bring in around €650 million. Further measures complete the tax package. Overall, the additional revenues are intended to reduce the burden on the French budget by around €9 billion.

https://www.reuters.com/business/what-is-frances-2026-budget-2026-02-02/

Yet even this fiscal effort is completely out of proportion to the scale of the budget problem. Tax increases are merely treating the symptoms – they do not solve the structural crisis of the French welfare state.

The problems are similar to those in Germany. There are no serious efforts to resolve the migration crisis, no fundamental reform of social programs and no strategy to create new economic momentum through tax relief for the middle class.

France resembles a slow-motion car crash. Everyone sees the collision coming, yet nobody still has the strength to soften the impact.

What happens if the bond market lowers the thumb on France’s creditworthiness?

The rating agencies have already sent warning signals. Fitch downgraded France’s credit rating from AA− to A+ and pointed to the growing debt burden, political uncertainty and the lack of a sustainable path toward stabilizing public finances.

https://www.reuters.com/world/fitch-abaisse-dun-cran-la-note-de-la-france-2025-09-12/

We are witnessing the first signs of a new euro debt crisis emerging on the horizon. Looking back, we must recognize that politics found it easy for a long time to exploit the fiat credit money system and the ECB, integrated into the political process, in order to maintain the illusion of unlimited political feasibility.

Regardless of where in the EU: Politics continues to uphold the illusion that the welfare system has no limits as long as the flow of credit does not dry up.

Reassured and lulled into a false sense of security, nobody questions the political strategy that led to the economic disaster. Yet these quiet times may soon come to an end as interest rates on bond markets continue to rise.

Fauci’s Pandemic of Vanity

   Fauci like Trump is the kind of people our society selects on its road to hell. People intoxicated with their own self, with no values or moral compass, almost completely unable to differentiate between truth and lies.  

   In the case of Trump, it is even worse since his "ideas" follow the rules of Ron Cohn his former mentor and attorney to never back down, attack, deny everything, never admit fault and always claim victory.  

   This failure of democracy was identified long ago by thinkers such as Menken. Initially, the institutions are strong enough to deal with such people, then "they" learn how to game the system. This is where we are today.  

 by Martin Armstrong

Anthony Fauci’s diary, in his own words, provides ample reason to conclude that this man became intoxicated by attention, obsessed with his public image, and disturbingly comfortable turning a national catastrophe into an Anthony Fauci celebrity show. While you were locked away in your home, glued to the television for answers, waiting by the phone for news of loved ones isolated from society, Fauci was basking in his status as an international celebrity.

On March 10, 2020, Fauci wrote, “For better or worse, I am becoming an international celebrity.” Twelve days later, while Americans were losing jobs and watching their businesses collapse, he recorded that the “press is going wild with me.” He then marveled that doughnuts were being named after him, T-shirts carried his face, songs were being dedicated to him, and celebrities such as Trevor Noah and Steph Curry wanted his time.

By May, the self-admiration had become impossible to miss. Fauci wrote that his fame was “explosive and really unimaginable,” adding that he was “the most famous and talked about person in the country.” Who writes that about himself during a mass-casualty emergency? He carefully documented his television profiles, invitations, celebrity encounters, praise from journalists, and even an invitation to appear on Dancing with the Stars. The country was terrified, children were locked out of schools, elderly people were dying alone, and Fauci was keeping a scrapbook of his own stardom.

His entry about Julia Roberts is particularly revealing. He recalled her exclaiming, “Oh my God. It’s Dr. Fauci,” calling him her personal hero, and expressing her delight at speaking with him. He did not merely record the policy discussion; he preserved every drop of praise. The diary repeatedly reads less like the working notes of a dispassionate scientist and more like the journal of a man thrilled that Hollywood had finally discovered him.

The media devoured the Fauci spectacle because he provided exactly what it wanted: a government official willing to sanctify its preferred narrative while treating dissenters as ignorant or dangerous. He appeared across television networks, newspapers, international publications, and glossy magazines, including a special InStyle digital cover photographed poolside in sunglasses while the country remained under pandemic restrictions. Time placed him among its 100 most influential people, Saturday Night Live had Brad Pitt portray him, documentary filmmakers celebrated him, and journalists treated access to him as though they were interviewing a movie star. The press did not scrutinize Fauci as a powerful federal bureaucrat whose decisions affected hundreds of millions of lives; it built a personality cult around him and then attacked anyone who refused to kneel before “America’s doctor.”

The diary contains even more evidence of how completely Fauci came to view himself as the central figure on Earth. On March 22, 2020, he marveled that there were “many print profiles and features on me” and that the “press is going wild with me.” Days later, he catalogued the doughnuts, T-shirts, songs, celebrity calls, and television appearances created in his honor, while in April he wrote that the press remained “hot and heavy about me” and saved a link to an Atlantic story titled “Why America Is Thirsty for Anthony Fauci.”

By May, Fauci declared that it was not hyperbole to call himself “the most famous and talked about person in the country” and “one of the most recognizable” people in the world. Even at the Kennedy Center Honors in December 2022, he recorded being “completely swamped” by people yelling his name and applauding, adding that he was amazed his recognition had reached “such a height.” This was not a passing observation about unwanted publicity; it was a meticulous, almost compulsive inventory of his own importance, written by a man who seemed unable to encounter a compliment, celebrity, magazine profile, or cheering crowd without preserving it for posterity.

Fauci later insisted that he was “certainly not getting a big head,” which is precisely the sort of sentence people write after devoting page after page to how famous, admired, recognizable, and important they have become. This does not prove a clinical personality disorder, but it displays the traits ordinary people associate with extreme narcissism: grandiosity, hunger for admiration, hypersensitivity to criticism, contempt for opponents, and relentless attention to personal status.

The sickest part of this story is that Fauci’s celebrity required the pandemic to continue dominating public life. Every new restriction, frightening prediction, television interview, and conflict with Trump kept him at the center of the national drama. He became more than a bureaucrat; the media transformed him into an untouchable secular saint, and his diary strongly suggests that he loved every minute of it. Americans were ordered to sacrifice their livelihoods, freedom, education, and family relationships while the man presented as “the science” sat behind closed doors recording just how famous the suffering had made him.

THE END IS HERE!!!

   This may be an overstatement or maybe not. A repeat of 2008 is not possible. Central Banks have learned and would immediately flood the market with liquidities. Of that, we can be certain. 

   But what else can happen? Japan may indeed be the canary in the coal mine. Stuck between the rock of rising rates and the hard place of its huge debt. The country can keep sliding towards irrelevance a little longer but eventually at the end of the road, there is either no money or hyperinflation. (PS: Historically, Governments always chose hyperinflation.) In any case, the interest of the debt becomes impossible to pay. This is not a detail since banks, insurance companies and many people depend on these payments to survive. One way or another, it is the end of a system.

   

    But then there is the note on the desk of U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent above. I have in the past participated to many such high level meetings and this note is frightening. It confirms that Scott Bessent is both incompetent and an imbecile. Usually, before such discussions, high level officials are briefed by specialists who explain to them what must be discussed in details, what are the options and what can be expected from the other side. The result is infinitely more complicated than "Buy Japanese Yen"!   

   This note confirms that Scott Bessent understands almost nothing about his job and shouldn't be anywhere close to the position of US Treasury Secretary. 

   Unfortunately, what is true for Scott Bessent must also be true across the board for almost ALL the appointed people in the Trump Administration and if that is the case then God have mercy because necessarily when the issues become complex, these people will be completely unable to decide what is the right strategy and will therefore easily be influenced by whoever has the deepest pocket as we have seen recently. THIS in finance is extremely dangerous and more than anything else is the immediate risk we are facing. It doesn't have a due date but it is a Sword of Damocles hanging over the world economy. 

Via State of the Nation

THE PETRODOLLAR IS DEAD:
Stick a fork in it!

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SOTN Editor’s Note: Something quite huge is happening in the realm where the “Financial Masters of the Universe” have reigned supreme since the Babylonian Banking Cartel first set up shop over 4000 years ago.

It’s been obvious to the initiated since at least the stock market crash of September through October of 2008 that the entire Global Economic & Financial System is in tatters. It’s truly remarkable that the financial engineers and market manipulators have been able to keep the Global Gambling Casino going since then–a long 18 years of artificially propping up the largest Pyramid-Ponzi scheme in world history.

Just as the free-fall collapse of Lehman Brothers was engineered as a perfectly controlled demolition of the GE&FS on Monday, September 15, 2008, the nation of Japan as serving as the trigger for the upcoming free-fall market collapse of 2026.

Japan Is the First Domino in the Sovereign Debt Crisis

Not only that but the DARPA-directed geoterrorists are very busy shaking up that multi-island nation in advance of the BIG ONE—both geological and financial.

STAY AWAY FROM JAPAN

However, the U.S. Treasury simply cannot stay away from Japan in light of the fact that they hold $1.143 trillion in US Treasury securities making it the largest foreign holder of U.S. government debt. Which is exactly……..

Why the U.S. stepped in after decades to prop up Japan’s yen

But wait, it only gets worse.

Treasuries Get Whacked by Japan’s Big Yen Fix. Bonds Don’t Need More Trouble But Are Finding It

What all this really means, as well explained by the much more comprehensive analysis below, is that Japan has been set up as the “Lehman Brothers” of 2026.

State of the Nation
August 3, 2026

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Op-Ed: Bessent Note at Camp David Proves “The End is Nigh”

Hal Turner

OPINION-EDITORIAL — U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Friday, July 31, exposed a “to-do” list during President Donald Trump’s cabinet ​meeting, indicating he was contemplating U.S. purchases of $5 billion to $10 billion ‌worth of Japanese yen, a Reuters photograph taken during the meeting (Shown above) held at Camp David shows.

The Real Panic Isn’t in the Gulf. It’s on the Balance Sheets.

While the world fixates on whether Trump’s latest “locked and loaded” threat is another bluff, the real story is unfolding not in the Strait of Hormuz but on the foreign exchange markets. Yesterday, Treasury Secretary Bessent was photographed with a “To Do” list that read: “Buy Japanese Yen (JPY) 5-10 billion dollars.” You don’t scribble a ten-billion-dollar currency intervention on a notepad for a routine meeting. You do it when the world’s third-largest economy is about to detonate the global bond market.

This is the economic front of the same war you just read about. While the U.S. military has run out of the munitions to sustain an air campaign, the U.S. Treasury is running out of the credibility to sustain a financial one.

The Japan Trap

Japan is the largest foreign holder of U.S. government debt, sitting on over $1.1 trillion in Treasury bonds. It also has an economy that is being ground to dust by the same energy crisis that is choking the rest of the world. The price of LNG—the fuel Japan must import to keep its lights on—is up 77.5% year-on-year. That means Japan’s trade balance is hemorrhaging, and its currency, the yen, has collapsed to a 15-year low against the dollar.

A collapsing yen is a catastrophe for Japan. It makes imported energy even more expensive, crushing domestic consumption and industrial production. But a collapsing yen is also an existential threat to the United States, for one simple reason: Japanese investors, who have borrowed cheap yen for decades to buy higher-yielding American assets, are now facing a margin call of historic proportions. If the yen falls too far, they are forced to sell those U.S. bonds to cover their losses.

If Japan sells U.S. bonds in size, U.S. interest rates spike. If U.S. interest rates spike, the American housing market, stock market, and federal budget all shatter simultaneously. So the United States finds itself in the absurd position of having to prop up the Japanese yen—not out of altruism, but because Japan is holding a gun to the head of the global bond market.

The Euro Is Being Sacrificed

This is where Bessent’s note becomes darkly comic. The U.S. Treasury isn’t buying yen with freshly printed dollars—that would only add inflationary fuel to an already raging fire. Instead, they are selling their reserves of euros to fund the yen purchase. The logic is simple: sacrifice the eurozone’s currency to save the dollar from the consequences of a Japanese bond dump.

This is voodoo economics at the end of an empire. The U.S. is now actively engaged in a currency war against its own allies—dumping European assets to prop up a Japanese financial system that is structurally insolvent under the weight of energy costs it cannot control. It is “Zombie QE,” using whacky, and dangerously unserious macroeconomic tools to bring dead markets on the other side of the world back to life. It is a great depression indicator.

The Next Domino

The European Central Bank has remained silent for now, but it cannot ignore this forever. The U.S. is effectively exporting its financial instability to the eurozone by weakening the euro at a time when Europe is already dealing with a diesel crisis, collapsing industrial production, and gas storage levels that will not make it through winter. If the ECB retaliates—by selling its own dollar reserves to defend the euro—the central bank civil war goes hot, and the entire post-1971 fiat currency system faces a crisis of confidence it cannot survive.

Meanwhile, the yield on the 10-year Japanese government bond is creeping toward levels that make Japan’s sovereign debt load mathematically impossible to service. The Bank of Japan is trapped: raise rates to defend the yen and you bankrupt your own government; cut rates and the yen goes into freefall, triggering the bond dump you’re trying to avoid.

What This Means for the Next Few Weeks

The Bessent “leak” is not an isolated event. It is the first visible crack in a dam that is about to break. The U.S. Treasury does not conduct coordinated currency interventions for routine turbulence. They do it when the system is hours or days away from a cascading failure.

Here is what is likely to unfold:

• Continued Yen Intervention: The U.S. and Japan will keep propping up the yen through direct market operations. This will work for days, maybe weeks. It will not solve the underlying problem, which is that Japan cannot afford its energy imports at current exchange rates.
• ECB Retaliation Risk: If the euro weakens too much, the ECB will be forced to respond—either verbally, with its own intervention threats, or directly, by selling dollars. This would turn a managed crisis into an open conflict between central banks.
• The Carry Trade Unwind: Even if the yen stabilizes temporarily, the broader unwind of the yen carry trade will continue. This means further selling pressure on U.S. equities and bonds, and further upside pressure on yields.

 

• A Bond Market Accident: At some point, a large Japanese institution—a pension fund, a bank, an insurer—will be forced to liquidate a significant block of U.S. Treasuries to meet margin calls. When that happens, the bond market will seize up, and the Federal Reserve will be forced to step in as the buyer of last resort, monetizing the debt and officially ending the pretense that the U.S. fiscal position is sustainable.

The Synthesis

The military situation and the financial situation are two fronts of the same war. The U.S. cannot sustain the military campaign because its fuel and munitions are depleted. The U.S. cannot sustain the financial system because its credibility and the patience of its creditors are depleted. Both are manifestations of the same core reality: the post-1971 petrodollar order, which depended on cheap energy and subservient creditor nations, is dissolving.

Trump can bluff his way through another round of “peace talks.” The Treasury can print its way through another round of currency interventions. But neither can manufacture a barrel of sour crude, a cubic meter of natural gas, or the trust of a creditor who has realized the collateral is gone. The war is ending. The financial system is ending. What we are watching now is the final act of both.

Why Are Americans So Bloody Stupid? (Video - 50mn)

    A stunning indictment of America and its lack of critical thinking delivered with a strong, mesmerizing Australian accent. Brilliant and to the point. You do not need to agree with everything to enjoy the video. Well actually, that's the point of developing critical thinking. Isn't it? Where the video is enlightening is in explaining how exactly things ended up the way they are. If you are American, by the end of the video, you will be a little less stupid. OK, that was a joke. The people following a blog like this one probably already do enjoy a fair level of critical thinking. And as we all know the problem is other people and their tribes. Right? Did I miss something? :-)    

 Why Are Americans So Bloody Stupid?

"Trump's Damage To US Diplomacy Could Last A Generation!" by McGlinchey

   The Trump "shit-show" is becoming harder to watch by the day.  

   There is no obvious goal or direction. The only thing that is clear is that Trump is "owned" unlikely by ideology so it must be by money and the results are catastrophic. Is there truly no one left in Washington who can inject some good sense into foreign policy and avoid complete auto-destruction? Apparently not. This is what happen when you dismiss everybody around you who voices a dissonant idea or objection to yours.  

   One positive aspect on YouTube is that lately the videos of Colonel Douglas Macgregor are not censured anymore. So here's a recent one to confirm that someone with a "brain" can still be found in the US, if not in the White House:

Colonel Douglas Macgregor: America and Israel Have Lost Iran War

  

By Brian McGlinchey via Stark Realities

As the US-Israel war on Iran grinds into its sixth month, it’s clear to all but the most intellectually-dishonest Trump loyalists and war-bent Israel-sympathizers that it’s been a spectacular failure.

A war of aggression that was supposed to precipitate a revolution has instead galvanized popular support of the Iranian government in defiance of the country’s tormentors, who’ve killed thousands of their fellow citizens and destroyed civilian infrastructure. A war that was launched to neutralize Israel’s principal rival seems certain to leave that rival far more geopolitically powerful than before, while driving Americans’ support for Israel to record lows.

Beyond unforgivably throwing away the lives of 18 American service members in an unconstitutional war launched on false pretenses, Trump’s blunder has depleted America’s arsenal and pushed the country more than $100 billion deeper into debt. Meanwhile, the longer Trump delays the inevitable consummation of his defeat, the greater the risk of an economic calamity that engulfs not only the United States but the entire world.

If that latter nightmare can be sidestepped, we’ll likely find that Trump has inflicted his most enduring damage on an intangible yet critical national asset: the ability of American diplomats to productively engage counterparts all over the world. From using negotiations as a ploy for surprise attacks to murdering heads of state and casually reneging on American commitments — including his own — Trump’s damage to US diplomacy will be evident for years. Of course, that’s not to suggest America’s foreign policy reputation was sparkling before Trump’s ascension to power — only that he and his team have managed to drag it down to new depths.

Trump’s collaboration with Israel to launch an unprovoked war on Iran is manifestly among the worst foreign policy decisions in the history of the American republic. However, it’s important to appreciate that Trump first set this 2026 disaster in motion eight years ago: In May 2018, — spurred on by then-National Security Advisor John Bolton and Trump’s Israel-first donors — Trump withdrew the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action, or JCPOA.

Also called the “Iran nuclear deal,” the July 2015 JCPOA was the culmination of nearly two years of painstaking negotiations over highly technical provisions, conducted by representatives of not only the United States and Iran but also China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the European Union.

Under the JCPOA, Iran agreed to major restrictions on its nuclear program in exchange for relief from brutal economic sanctions. Among other things, the JCPOA required Iran to eliminate its medium-enriched uranium, slash its cache of low-enriched uranium by 98%, limit future enrichment to 3.67%, agree to even more external monitoring than it was already submitting to, and render its heavy-water reactor worthless by filling it with concrete.

Catering both to devoted Israel supporters and to Republicans who were eager to assume that a deal negotiated during the Obama administration must have been treasonous, Trump had repeatedly railed against the JCPOA throughout his 2016 campaign, declaring that his “number one priority is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran.” After being named national security advisor in April 2018, Bolton — who had long been pushing for war on Iran — quickly prodded Trump into making good on his promises to tear up the JCPOA, despite the fact that Iran was fully complying with the agreement.

“Trump’s move demonstrates that the United States cannot be trusted to keep its promises,” the Belfer Center’s Martin Malin said at the time. “It will heighten tensions in an already smoldering Middle East while giving fodder to hardliners and nuclear bomb advocates in Iran.”

After Trump’s withdrawal and the reinstatement of waived sanctions, Iran waited a year, but then began straying from its own commitments -- using elevated uranium enrichment as a lever to push for a new agreement and relief from suffocating sanctions.

Having long denied it was developing a nuclear weapon -- a claim repeatedly deemed truthful by the US intelligence community -- Iran returned to the negotiating table during Trump’s second term, once again ready to part with the uranium it had enriched to higher levels. Indeed, less than 48 hours before the United States and Israel attacked on Feb. 28, Iran offered concessions that included dilution of its 60%-enriched uranium, a multi-year pause on new enrichment, subsequent enrichment capped at 20%, and expanded IAEA oversight. UK national security advisor Jonathan Powell was reportedly surprised by the strength of the Iranian offer, seeing it as reason to hope war would be averted. His and others’ hopes were about to be dashed.

There are many facets of the Trump administration’s assault on diplomacy, but none more vulgar than using ongoing negotiations as a means of unleashing a surprise attack on a negotiating partner — an attack that includes the killing of that partner’s head of state.

That’s exactly what the Trump administration did to Iran in February. Having held a third round of talks in Geneva on Feb. 26, the two countries were set for what was described as technical-level discussions the following week. Instead, teaming up with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump launched a massive war on Iran. In addition to killing more than 100 elementary-age schoolgirls and many other civilians and military conscripts, the opening attack killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, his daughter, son-in-law and 14-month-old granddaughter.

Rubio further diminished US credibility by attempting to characterize the surprise attack as somehow defensive. “We knew there was going to be Israeli action” which would “precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties,” Rubio said. Observers were quick to note that, regardless of Israel’s status as a sovereign state, its dependency on Washington means Trump held de facto veto power over an Israeli strike, which makes the rest of Rubio’s rationale hollow.

Marco Rubio: "We went proactively in a defensive way" pic.twitter.com/i3XMjV0C9e

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 2, 2026

February wasn’t the first time that insincere Trump administration diplomacy set up Iran for a surprise attack. In June 2025, the administration had completed five rounds of negotiations with Iran and scheduled a sixth for June 15. On June 13, Israel attacked Iran. It was no surprise to Trump, who boasted that Israel informed him in advance. On June 22, Trump joined the 12-Day war via Operation Midnight Hammer, bombing Iranian nuclear facilities.

Beyond their fundamental immorality, these surprise attacks amid negotiations undermine long-term US interests by fostering distrust in everyone who witnessed such blatant American treachery. Following the start of all-out war on Feb 28, Washburn University law professor Ali Khan wrote about the consequences of turning negotiations into a “calculated ruse”:

“The breach of good faith signals worldwide that it is pointless to make any deal with someone who would do the opposite after creating an expectation or reliance for the other party. Iran or any other state would be highly reluctant to trust the Trump administration again in future negotiations.”

Note, one shouldn’t assume the world’s distrust will be so tightly associated with Trump that it will vanish when he leaves office. In Marco Rubio and JD Vance, his administration holds at least two potential successors to the Oval Office, to say nothing of senators, representatives and governors who’ve cheered on Trump’s misconduct and would be prone to emulating it. And don’t think for a moment that Democrats are immune to following unhealthy presidential precedents, whatever their commentary may be when those precedents are set by a Republican.

With his 2018 withdrawal from the JCPOA, Trump reneged on a deal made by another president, but Trump has repeatedly reneged on his own commitments too.

That’s the case with the June 17, 2026 Memorandum of Understanding between the United States and Iran, which Trump signed at the Palace of Versailles. Primarily brokered by Pakistan with help from several Middle Eastern states, the MOU has been described as an agreement to make an agreement. It comprises 14 points setting conditions for an immediate ceasefire and 60 days of negotiations for a lasting peace.

Trump quickly fell short of full compliance. “When you look at what’s happening from the Iranian point of view…the Iranians believe that the United States has not lived up to its part of the bargain,” University of Chicago international relations scholar John Mearsheimer said in July.

There are several elements where Iran reasonably accused Trump of noncompliance, but we’ll examine three, starting with the most significant one of all. Point 5 covers what has replaced uranium as the core focus of the conflict — Iran’s selective blocking of traffic through the economically vital Strait of Hormuz:

5: “Upon the signing of this MOU, the Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge, for 60 days only, from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman and vice versa.….[and] conduct dialogue with the Sultanate of Oman to define the future administration and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz...”

This point was widely understood to mean Iran would lift its blockade but still oversee and direct all traffic. When it exerted control of shipping traffic in March, Iran replaced the pre-war route that went down the center of the strait with one that guides traffic along Iran’s coast. However, after the MOU was signed, the Trump administration started instructing ships to use a different route, which passes through the territorial waters of Oman.

“We violated [the MOU] by setting up a southern corridor,” retired US Army Colonel Daniel Davis declared on his Deep Dive geopolitics podcast. “There’s nothing in the MOU that we signed that authorizes a southern corridor or America to enter into it and decide on our own how that’s going to be done. It’s just not there.” Davis, who returned from Afghanistan and blew the whistle in 2012 on civilian and military officials’ misleading of the public on how that war was progressing, suggested the US move in the strait was a deliberate provocation.

Deliberate or not, it was provocative indeed. After issuing radio warnings to ships attempting to use the southern route, Iran fired disabling shots at them. Trump then restarted his bombing of Iran, which prompted Iranian retaliation against American forces and the countries that host them. The two countries then began a long series of “tit for tat” strikes that continued into this week.

Then there’s Point 10 of the MOU, in which the Trump administration promised to issue sanctions waivers that would allow for unfettered Iranian exports of oil and petroleum. Trump revoked the waivers on July 7, pointing to Iran’s attacks on ships that didn’t submit to Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz… control that, again, the United States seemingly agreed to under Point 5.

Numerically reflecting its high importance to Iran, Point 1 of the MOU required the “immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts in Lebanon.” It focused not so much on Iran and the United States but more so “their allies” — the Iranian-allied Hezbollah militia and the US-allied State of Israel. However, Israel continued its operations, including a level of comprehensive destruction of civilian infrastructure in Southern Lebanon that mirrors what the Israeli Defense Forces did to Gaza. One can make the argument that the United States wasn’t in a position to impose MOU terms on Israel, but if that’s truly the case, Trump shouldn’t have signed an MOU by which he essentially certified that he would.

Doubling down, the Trump administration even took action to legitimize the IDF’s presence in Lebanon. “[The MOU] said we had to get the Israelis out of Lebanon. We made no effort to do that,” said former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman. “In fact, we turned around and Marco Rubio went and…brokered an agreement between the Lebanese government and Israel that they will jointly go after Hezbollah. So what is this? At a minimum, it’s not very smart.”

Critically, Trump’s behavior bolsters the credibility of hardliners in the Iranian government who’ve repeatedly argued that the United States cannot be trusted and shouldn’t be negotiated with. Moderates prevailed over skeptical hardliners when Iran opted to sign the JCPOA, again when it twice attempted to seek sanctions relief and avert war via negotiations only to be subjected to surprise attacks, and again with the June 17 signing of the MOU.

“The hardliners said ‘don’t sign it, you can’t trust the Americans’,” Mearsheimer recently told Chris Hedges. “But the moderates prevailed, and then the hardliners proved to be correct, so they’re now in the driver’s seat, as best we can tell…and those hardliners will push forward a tougher deal for Trump to swallow” whenever the next version of an MOU is pursued.

It’s not only adversaries of the US government that have been subjected to Trump’s sudden reversals on terms he himself agreed to. Just ask Saudi Arabia.

On July 22, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Saudi energy minister Prince Abdulaziz ​bin Salman signed an agreement by which the kingdom would be able to build nuclear reactors and enrich uranium with US technology. Both governments published official announcements, and it was seen as a triumph for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

The very next morning, Trump blindsided the Saudis and his own subordinates, using a social media post to retroactively add a huge requirement — there would be no nuclear deal unless Saudi Arabia joined the Abraham Accords, which entails recognition of Israel as a legitimate state, and the establishment of official diplomatic relations.

Such a move would run counter to Saudi Arabia’s long-running insistence that recognition of Israel is unthinkable without a firm plan for Palestinian statehood. Further, Trump’s demand for a Saudi embrace of Israel comes at a time when Muslims within the kingdom and throughout the region are outraged by Israel’s destruction of Gaza and southern Lebanon, making such a move perilous for the Saudi royals. Contrary to the agreement his energy secretary had signed, Trump also suddenly declared there would be no enrichment of nuclear material inside Saudi Arabia.

“You strike a deal, you sign it, you announce it, you brag about it, and within 24 hours you’re changing the terms in a fundamental way,” observed the Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi on Deep Dive. “If that’s what you do to Saudi Arabia — a country that the United States has a very close relationship with…on top of that, the Trump family has very close business ties with — then what are you going to do with Iran? What is the shelf life of any American commitment under Trump to the Iranians in any agreement?”

Or to anyone else, for that matter. “We’ve convinced the entire world that we don’t know what we’re doing, and we can’t be trusted, and we don’t keep our word, and we don’t even stay consistent from one day to the next,” former ambassador Freeman recently told Davis. “So how can you deal with us? That’s the question everybody has out there.”

As Alastair Crooke sees it, US diplomacy may never be the same. Summing up the effects of Trump’s multi-front assault on trust in America, the former British intelligence agent, diplomat and founder of the Beirut-based Conflicts Forum told Glenn Diesen, “The American ability to negotiate in the old-fashioned diplomatic idea, I think, is gone. I mean, we’re in a new era.”

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