Will Durant on the future of China (1935)

This nation, after three thousand years of grandeur and decay, of repeated deaths and resurrections, exhibits today all the physical and mental vitality that we find in its most creative periods; there is no people so adaptable to circumstance, so resistant to disease, so resilient after disaster and suffering, so trained by history to calm endurance and patient recovery.  Imagination cannot describe the possibilities of a civilization mingling the physical, labor and mental resources of such a people with the technological equipment of modern industry.  Very probably such wealth will be produced in China as even America has never known, and once again, as so often in the past, China will lead the world in luxury and the art of life.

No victory of arms, or tyranny of alien finance, can long suppress a nation so rich in resources and vitality.  The invader will lose funds or patience before the loins of China will lose virility; within a century China will have absorbed and civilized her conquerors, and will have learned all the technique of what transiently bears the name of modern industry; roads and communications will give her unity, economy and thrift will give her funds, and a strong government will give her order and peace.  Every chaos is a transition.  In the end disorder cures and balances itself with dictatorship; old obstacles are roughly cleared away, and fresh growth is free.  Revolution, like death and style, is the removal of rubbish, the surgery of the superfluous; it comes only when there are many things ready to die.  China has died many times before; and many times she has been reborn.

~ Will Durant, The Story of Civilization: Our Oriental Heritage, "Revolution and Renewal," pp. 822-823 (1935)

Herbert Hoover on tariffs

The sole purpose of protective tariffs is to protect the wages of the American worker and the farmer’s income from being dragged down to the level of cheap foreign wages and standards.

~ President Herbert Hoover, October 1929

John Leake on how Zelensky rose to power

I suspect that many of his fans have no idea how he rose to prominence in European affairs. Few probably know that Zelensky was the protege of the Ukrainian billionaire oligarch, Ihor Kolomoyskyi. 

Wikipedia describes his rise to power: 

In 2019 Kolomoyskyi owned 70% of the 1+1 Media Group whose TV channel 1+1 aired Servant of the People, a comedy series in which Volodymyr Zelenskyy plays a school teacher who, defying all expectations (including his own), becomes president of Ukraine on an anti-corruption platform. In March 2018, members of Zelenskyy’s production company Kvartal 95 registered a new political party called “Servant of the People.” Twelve months later, they succeeded in getting their candidate past Yulia Tymoshenko in the first round of the presidential election, and on 21 April 2019 to defeat President Poroshenko in the second round with 73 per cent of the vote. 

In an unexpected twist to this story, both the United States and Ukrainian governments turned on Kolomoyskyi in 2020, indicting him for multiple crimes in both countries. As with all things and people in Ukrainian politics—which has long been dominated by rival oligarchs worth billions in a country whose annual household median income is about $1000 U.S.—the reality of Kolomoyskyi’s affairs would probably be extremely difficult to elucidate. That fact that the Biden and Zelensky regimes turned on him doesn’t necessary mean he is guilty as charged. More likely, he’s no better and no worse than the rest of Ukraine’s shady oligarchs, including Victor Pinchuk, who was the single largest donor to the Clinton Foundation. 

I mention Zelensky’s career because it reminds me of the movie the The Wizard of Oz and The Matrix about the difficulty of distinguishing reality from an elaborate and convincing simulacrum. 

~ John Leake, "Europe Loses Its Mind for Zelensky," LewRockwell.com, March 5, 2025

Warren Buffett on tariffs

Tariffs are actually - we have a lot of experience with them - they're an act of war, to some degree.

Over time, they are a tax on goods.  I mean, the Tooth Fairy doesn't pay 'em. [laughter]  You always have to ask that question in economics, you always say, "And then what?"

~ Warren Buffett, CBS News interview, March 2, 2025

The Economist on Trump's reciprocal tariffs

What happens when you ditch the principles that underpinned global trade for three-quarters of a century?  Donald Trump hopes to find out.  He wants to levy “reciprocal” tariffs, which match the duties American exports face abroad, plus charges to offset any policy he deems unfair.  A stable multilateral trade system which has, for all its flaws, fostered miraculous rises in global prosperity would give way to arbitrary judgments made in the Oval Office.

~ "Reciprocal tariffs really mean chaos for global trade," The Economist, February 19, 2025

WSJ Editorial Board: calling Trump's tariffs the "dumbest" in history is an understatement

President Trump likes to cite the stock market when it’s rising as a sign of his policy success, so what does he think about Monday’s plunge?  The Dow Jones Industrial Average took a 650-point header after he announced that he’ll hit Mexico and Canada on Tuesday with 25% tariffs. 

Mr. Trump said at the White House there was “no room left” to negotiate with the two American trade treaty partners.  Some of his smarter advisers have been hoping he’d start renegotiating the USMCA and delay the tariffs.  But Mr. Trump wants tariffs for their own sake, which he says will usher in a new golden age.

We’ve courted Mr. Trump’s ire by calling the Mexico and Canada levies the “dumbest” in history, and we may have understated the point.  Mr. Trump is whacking friends, not adversaries.  His taxes will hit every cross-border transaction, and the North American vehicle market is so interconnected that some cars cross a border as many as eight times as they’re assembled.

Mr. Trump also objected when we reported an analysis by the Anderson Economic Group that the 25% tariff will raise the cost of a full-sized SUV assembled in North America by $9,000 and a pickup truck by $8,000.  Is this how the new Republican Party plans on helping working-class voters?

~ The Editorial Board, "Trump Takes the Dumbest Tariff Plunge," The Wall Street Journal, March 4, 2025

Kevin Duffy: Is Trump a Trojan horse?

The good news is that the Left bet it all on Covid stimulus, vaccines, ESG, DEI, transgender athletes, preferred pronouns and climate change. This was classic hubris at the top of a bubble, i.e. collective detachment from reality. When bubbles burst, you get major reversals. The Trump phenomenon is largely a reaction to the idiocy of the Left. 

The bad news is that Biden was, in many ways, a continuation and even acceleration of Trump 1.0. E.g., Trump's response to Covid was to go large, resulting in a 20% increase in government spending. To help pay for it, the Fed expanded its balance sheet 79% in 11 months. Trump jumpstarted the vaccines (Operation Warp Speed). Trump started a trade war with China. Trump even created the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in 2018 which led to censorship under Biden. 

I fear that Trump is not the man riding in on the white horse to save the day, but more like a Trojan horse pedaling the same failed policies of the Left, sold to his supporters as anti-Left.

~ Kevin Duffy, Facebook post, March 1, 2025

Richard Wolff on the American defense umbrella: "Germany bet on the wrong horse"

Germany is the biggest and most powerful core of what we call Western Europe, and it has been for a long time.  Germany was the only serious competitor with the United States to replace the British empire.  Had Germany not fought and lost both world wars, we would be much more aware of what was going on in that country than we are.  But those wars removed Germany from the competition.  World War II removed Japan from the competition and gave us, the United States, the kind of free ride of the last 75 years of being the dominant economic powerhouse in the world.  And we are now going through the decline, the precipitous decline of the American empire...  And that is changing everything because after Germany was defeated twice in two world wars and its enemy was the United States in both world wars, it took a very subordinate position, as did the other loser in World War II, Japan.  Subordinate to the winner, which is often what happens in big wars.  

And so, what we are seeing is a moment, cataclysmically important for global politics - although you wouldn't notice that from American media treatment - we are seeing Germany leading Europe to recognize now that they bet on the wrong horse after World War II.  Because the United States, which would and did, protect them from their fantasy of being at risk of a Russian invasion, it protected them for 70 years, it can no longer afford to do it because its own empire is declining, and so with the Trump administration the United States is withdrawing from being the protector of Europe and now wants to rip it off to benefit the United States - that's what the America First really means - when the United States in its decline has to turn on its former friends and allies, above all Europe, but equally Canada and Mexico, because it is trying to hold on to as much of its declining empire as it can.  And it will sacrifice its friends before it turns in on itself.  But please notice the word "before."

~  Richard Wolff, "German Election Shockwaves: Rapid Decline of US Influence in Europe w/ Prof. Richard Wolff," BreakThrough News, February 25, 2025

Deirdre Bosa on how Trump's previous tariffs supercharged China's AI efforts

Not only have those previous tariffs not worked, but they actually supercharged China's AI efforts in some very unexpected ways...  Necessity is the mother of invention...  The previous tariffs, they laid the groundwork for DeepSeek's breakthrough.  Additional restrictions could supercharge at another much larger, definitely state-backed, Chinese company, Huawei.  And it could supercharge them in chips, the very foundation of the race.  Now without access to Nvidia's highest GPUs, DeepSeek built a model on less performance chips, H20s, which according to Reuters has led other Chinese companies to ramp up their own orders for those cheaper chips.  Now, as additional tariffs threaten to cut off access to them, Chinese AI companies may be forced to turn to Huawei's alternative.  Now again, they're not the best and they're not the preferred hardware, but they may be good enough and getting better.  This morning, the FT [Financial Times] reports that the company has significantly improved the yield, or amount of advanced AI chips that it can produce, a near doubling from about a year ago.

~ Deirdre Bosa, "How stricter chip restrictions could backfire to benefit Huawei," CNBC, 0:25 mark, February 25, 2025

Josh Hendrickson on the Trump tariff strategy

If you favor smaller government and you believe his [Stephen Miran's] argument, then I think that you would be in favor of higher tariffs and lower income taxes... and to the extent we have debt, also potentially coupling that with reductions in government spending.

[...]

The U.S. effective tariff rate is so low relative to other countries that the U.S. is just in a better position to raise tariffs relative to those other countries.  So on some level, that makes it harder to retaliate.  The other issue... is that this currency offset seems to go in one direction.  It seems to go for the United States and not necessarily for these other countries, for them than the initial tariffs on the U.S.

~ Josh Hendrickson, economics professor, Ole Miss, "Unpacking the Document that Spells Out Trump’s Tariff Strategy," The Human Action Podcast, February 14, 2025

(Professor Hendrickson is referring to a paper written by Stephen Miran, President Trump's nominee to chair the Council of Economic Advisers, which lays out Trump's tariff strategy.)

Ruchir Sharma on competitiveness in China vs. the U.S.

The difference in China is that in some way the market is more competitive than the U.S., that if you look at the various industries there, the concentration is a lot less, the competition is a lot more intense where the U.S. big companies tend to dominate across sectors, particularly tech.  So that is the irony there, which is not that great maybe for some investors who are looking for moats.

~ Ruchir Sharma, founder, Breakout Capital, "DeepSeek has shifted the perception on China's tech prowess," CNBC, February 26, 2025

Ruchir Sharma on what is driving the rally in Chinese stocks

Xi Jinping is very aware that he needs the private sector to help grow.  He's facing the headwinds from the U.S., the uncertainty with the tariffs.  He needs the private sector now.  So he's trying to make the private sector more of an ally rather than the hostile attitude that he adopted a few years ago.  That's a change.

But so far, the rally has nothing to do with the stimulus.  It is very much a sentiment shift triggered by low valuations and the fact that DeepSeek has shifted the perception on China's tech prowess.

~ Ruchir Sharma, founder, Breakout Capital, "DeepSeek has shifted the perception on China's tech prowess," CNBC, February 26, 2025

Henry Hazlitt on Marxism

The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man who is better off than you are.  Never under any circumstances admit that his success may be due to his own efforts, to the productive contribution he has made to the whole community.  Always attribute his success to the exploitation, the cheating, the more or less open robbery of others.  Never under any circumstances admit that your own failure may be owing to your own weakness, or that the failure of anyone else may be due to his own defects - his laziness, incompetence, improvidence, or stupidity.

~ Henry Hazlitt

Edward Curtin on Trump bringing peace to Ukraine

The real issue is Trump and the question of whether or not he is for real in his efforts for peace in Ukraine. I am very skeptical and think it is justified. 

I am convinced that the US/NATO war against Russia will not be ending unless NATO is dissolved, which Trump is not proposing.  He only wishes to strengthen NATO with European money, not that of the U.S. NATO’s only raison d’être is to destroy Russia as an independent country and create regime change there through multiple means.  This has always been so.  This is why NATO has existed for so long and has expanded.  Open warfare in Ukraine is just one means among many they have used over the years.  You can end the overt war and continue the covert. 

If NATO is not dissolved, the undermining of Russia will continue under Trump, who seems to recognize that the proxy war is lost on the battlefield, a fact obvious for years despite U.S. government and mainstream media propaganda to the contrary – propaganda so blatantly false that it raises questions about people’s gullibility.  How many foreign leaders does such media need to call the new Hitlers before people wise up? 

Trump’s theatrical antics will persist, however, and Trump and Putin will probably eventually meet and some deal may be struck on Russia’s terms, but if Russia doesn’t want to be tricked again, it should beware the possibility of a Trump Trojan horse.

~ Edward Curtin, "Hold the Applause for Trump, the 'Peacemaker'," LewRockwell.com, February 22, 2025

Porter Collins on the shift right in world politics

Trump is a walking volatility machine.  He is driving Democrats and the Democratic Party insane.  It's in complete disarray at this point...  Look at all the big donors.  All the big donors switched sides immediately.  Elon [Musk], who was Mr. green, Mr. ESG, now he's a hard core right-wing guy.  Tim Cook, Mr. DEI himself, was front row at the inauguration.

And so not only have the politics swung, but the money has swung.  Always follow the money.  The money [has] gone all-in on the Republicans: Facebook, Dana White, all this stuff.  The rest of the world's kind of moving right, too.  A lot of Latin American politics, European politics, all moving to the right.

~ Porter Collins, co-founder, Seawolf Capital, interview with Danny Moses, On The Tape, February 12, 2025

Pieter Slegers on investing and learning

Keep growing and be a learning machine.  I definitely don't consider myself, for example, the smartest guy in the room...  How can you offset it?  Just by reading as much as you possibly can...  The first thing I do, every first two hours - I'm a morning person, an early bird - every day between 5 am and 7 am, I just read...  Last year I read 91 books...  Everything can be found in books and by reading, buying a $20 book, and basically learning from the best person in the world about a certain topic.  That's amazing.  And when you combine these books with having some great mentors in your life, people who are maybe farther than you in what you are doing, well that's a very powerful combination...  If you reach out to people asking for help, asking for advice, you will be surprised how many people are willing to help you, especially people with a lot of experience.  They love to help you, especially people with a lot of experience.  They love to help other people get along the way.

~ Pieter Slegers, "How to Spot Rare Quality Businesses Among All the Losers," Stansberry Investor Hour, 55:15 mark, February 18, 2025

Nassim Taleb on antifragility

Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty.  Yet, in spite of the ubiquity of the phenomenon, there is no word for the exact opposite of fragile.  Let us call it antifragile.  Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness.  The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.  This property is behind everything that has changed with time: evolution, culture, ideas, revolutions, political systems, technological innovation, cultural and economic success, corporate survival, good recipes (say, chicken soup or steak tartare with a drop of cognac), the rise of cities, cultures, legal systems, equatorial forests, bacterial resistance... even our own existence as a species on this planet.  And antifragility determines the boundary between what is living and organic (or complex), say, the human body, and what is inert, say, a physical object like the stapler on your desk. 

The antifragile loves randomness and uncertainty, which also means— crucially—a love of errors, a certain class of errors.  Antifragility has a singular property of allowing us to deal with the unknown, to do things without understanding them— and do them well.  Let me be more aggressive: we are largely better at doing than we are at thinking, thanks to antifragility.  I’d rather be dumb and antifragile than extremely smart and fragile, any time. 

It is easy to see things around us that like a measure of stressors and volatility: economic systems, your body, your nutrition (diabetes and many similar modern ailments seem to be associated with a lack of randomness in feeding and the absence of the stressor of occasional starvation), your psyche.  There are even financial contracts that are antifragile: they are explicitly designed to benefit from market volatility.

Antifragility makes us understand fragility better.  Just as we cannot improve health without reducing disease, or increase wealth without first decreasing losses, antifragility and fragility are degrees on a spectrum.

~ Nassim Taleb, Antifragile (2012)

Jim Grant on Trump 2.0: "He’s a man on many missions"

The flamboyant developer [who in 1986 took it upon himself to rebuild the dilapidated Wollman Rink in New York’s Central Park] is today the flamboyant president, still almost childlike in the purity of his vanity and in his devouring need for approval.  It’s the scale of his operations that has changed.  The skating rink has become the Washington ‘swamp,’ the sclerotic New York City Parks Department is today the elephantine United States government. 

He’s a man on many missions: U.S. territorial expansion, hunting down federal fraud and abuse, personal enrichment (and making no secret of it), ending lawfare, suspending the minting of pennies, threatening tariffs and lifting those threats, abolishing federal agencies, closing the southern border, sweeping away woke ideology, settling political scores, trolling Taylor Swift, appointing himself chairman of the board of the Kennedy Center, pardoning Jan. 6 prisoners and plastic straws and gunning for New York City bike lanes, all the while conducting a lucrative side business in Trump-branded merchandise and speculative tokens and – coming soon – a family of Trump-themed exchange-traded funds.

~ Jim Grant, Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, February 14, 2025

Kumal Kapoor on the importance of low fees when choosing a fund

I don't think it's a passive vs. active debate...  Ironically, even Vanguard's active funds are quite good.  And the reason they are is because they're low fee.  So if you parse our data, what you find in public markets is it's less about "Is active winning or is passive winning?"  It's really about low cost is beating the heck out of high cost, including in the active space.

~ Kumal Kapoor, Morningstar, Barron's interview, February 20, 2025

James Bovard on CISA and censorship

Hegelian notions of “Government = Truth” propelled censorship here in recent years. Three years ago, Americans learned they lived under a Disinformation Governance Board with a ditzy Disinformation Czar who boasted of graduating from Bryn Mawr University. A public backlash led to the board’s termination but federal censors quickly and secretly resumed their sway over the internet. 

Though American censors rarely invoke Hegel, their schemes tacitly presume that political power is divine, if not in origin, at least in its effect. The Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), created in 2018, has relied on “censorship by surrogate,” subcontracting the destruction of freedom. CISA partnered with federal grantees to form the Election Integrity Partnership a hundred days before the 2020 presidential election. That project, along with the efforts of other federal agencies, created an “unrelenting pressure” with “the intended result of suppressing millions of protected free speech postings by American citizens,” according to a 2023 ruling by Federal Judge Terry Doughty. 

What standard did CISA use to determine whether Americans should be muzzled? CISA settled controversies by contacting government employees and “apparently always assumed the government official was a reliable source,” Judge Doughty noted. Any assertion by officialdom could suffice to justify suppression of comments or posts by private citizens. But when did government I.D. badges become the Oracle of Delphi? 

During the 2020 presidential election campaign, CISA established a “Rumor Control” webpage to deal with threats to the election—including rumors that the feds were censoring Americans. CISA targeted for suppression assertions by Americans such as “mail-in voting is insecure”—despite the long history of absentee ballot fraud. Biden won the presidency in part thanks to Democrats exploiting the covid pandemic to open the floodgates to unverified mail-in ballots. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) declared, “Twitter was basically an FBI subsidiary before Elon Musk took it over.”

~ James Bovard, "Sacrificing Truth on Leviathan’s Altar," Mises Wire, February 19, 2025

Doug Casey on the closing of USAID

While Trump is adding new distortions with his tariffs, he’s unwinding old distortions by deregulating.  For example, the abolition of USAID.  It was a veritable criminal organization spending $50 or $60 billion a year of taxpayer’s money on destructive grifts.  Many entities and individuals who were expecting funding from USAID will default on their obligations, and have to liquidate.  The same thing will happen when the Department of Education bites the dust.  And FEMA.  And hopefully hundreds more agencies, offices, departments, bureaus, and NGOs.  With any luck, thousands of grifters will be jailed or wind up living under bridges. 

~ Doug Casey, "Trump’s Tariff and Income Tax Plans: A Major Shift for Gold and Your Portfolio," International Man, February 15, 2025

Bradley Greer: Bill Gates, George Soros and WEF recipients of USAID

USAID has long been a key player in U.S. foreign policy, providing aid to countries worldwide under the banner of so-called “humanitarian assistance and development.” 

The agency has also faced scrutiny for its role in funding programs that critics argue align with broader geopolitical strategies rather than purely philanthropic goals. 

Historically, USAID has been involved in funding initiatives such as international vaccine programs and “democracy promotion efforts.” 

Bill Gates

One of the major recipients of USAID funding has been the GAVI Alliance, an international vaccine initiative supported by Bill Gates. 

In 2020, USAID committed $1.16 billion to GAVI for fiscal years 2020 to 2023, with an additional $1.58 billion pledged for the following five years. Reports indicate that total contributions to GAVI could exceed $2 billion. 

George Soros

Additionally, USAID has been linked to funding non-governmental organizations (NGOs) involved in political and economic programs worldwide.

A 2017 report from the Heritage Foundation suggested that George Soros’ Open Society Foundations (OSF) had played a significant role in implementing USAID-funded initiatives since at least 2009.

Historical documents indicate that USAID and OSF collaborated as early as 1993 to train professionals in Eastern Europe. 

By the late 1990s and early 2000s, OSF-affiliated NGOs were involved in political movements across Eastern Europe, including Ukraine’s Orange Revolution in 2004.

[...] 

World Economic Forum

Beyond individual programs, USAID has also been involved with international organizations such as the World Economic Forum (WEF). Between 2013 and 2022, USAID invested approximately $26 million in multi-year agreements connected to WEF initiatives. 

In response, House Republicans introduced the ‘Defund Davos Act’ in January 2024, seeking to prohibit U.S. government agencies, including USAID, from funding the WEF. 

Legislators supporting the bill argued against the use of taxpayer dollars to support the Forum’s initiatives. 

~ Bradley Greer, "Calls for Bill Gates and George Soros Arrest For Defrauding Taxpayer of Billions Through USAID," Disswire.com, February 14, 2025

Doug Casey on Trump's tariffs

Trump seems to think that tariffs will fuel a boom.  That’s ridiculous.  They’ll only result in a huge reduction in our standard of living.  Tariffs amount to placing your own country under embargo.  It’s like shooting yourself in the foot.

~ Doug Casey, "Trump’s Tariff and Income Tax Plans: A Major Shift for Gold and Your Portfolio," International Man, February 15, 2015

Marko Papic investing in 2025: bet against the Davos consensus

Davos is great and you learn a lot, but it is a little bit like living in The Economist cover.  It is what it is.  It's in the price, it's consensus.  And I think that this year there might be three things that happen that will actually go against that consensus.  

First, referring to my point about Donald Trump, we may not want to go swing fully against globalization as a new paradigm.  President Trump has a nuanced position on trade and he will use those tariffs to negotiate new deals...  Maybe we've overstated how much trade wars are going to matter in '25.  

The second thing is that I think people are overstating is just how woefully inadequate Europe is as an investment opportunity.  There are things happening here that very few people brought up at Davos.  One is that there's an important German election coming up.  Second is that there is an energy revolution, both in alternatives but also in terms of LNG supply that will help Europe solve its energy problems.

And so what I would say is that 2025 may actually be a year where the dollar peaks and when some of these consensus trades, which is to be in Magnificent 7, in the U.S., particularly tech, actually... move against that consensus.

~ Marko Papic, "Thoughts From the Apex of Globalization," 1:40 mark, January 26, 2025

Aldous Huxley on modern democracy

By means of ever more effective methods of mind manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms... elections, parliaments, supreme courts and all the rest... will remain. 

The underlying substance will be a new kind of Totalitarianism.  All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly like they were in the good old days.  Democracy & freedom will be the theme of every broadcast & editorial.  Meanwhile, the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite will quietly run the show as they see fit.

~ Aldous Huxley, 1962

Michael Lee: "What's going on with DOGE is nothing short of remarkable"

What's going on with DOGE is nothing short of remarkable...  If I knew having Elon and his team come in and slash a trillion or more of federal spending through waste, fraud and abuse, I wouldn't have voted for him [Trump] once.  I would've voted for him ten times.  Everybody wants this.  It's unbelievable.  It's essential.  Look, over 20 cents of every dollar that comes into the Treasury from tax revenue goes to service debt.  And before you know it, that's going to be 25, 30, 35 cents.  Nothing better has happened from the government in my lifetime than what we're seeing with DOGE.

~ Michael Lee, founder, Michael Lee Strategy, FOX News interview, 2:30 mark, February 12, 2025

Ernest Hemingway on working smart

Never mistake motion for action.

~ Ernest Hemingway

James Ling on working smart

Don't tell me how hard you work.  Tell me how much you get done.

~ James Ling, business executive

Dr. William Mayo on learning from mistakes

Deliver me from the man who never makes a mistake - and also from the man who makes the same mistake twice.

~ Dr. William Mayo, founder, the Mayo Clinic

Robert Frost on education

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper.

~ Robert Frost, poet

Steve Forbes after 9/11: "The Fed should keep this money hose on"

The Federal Reserve has admirably pumped significant liquidity into the economy, thereby easing the increasingly deadly deflation that we've been undergoing for at least three years.  But the benefits of this, other than avoiding immediate panic, won't be fully felt until the Fed publicly announces that this reliquidity is permanent, not temporary.  The dollar gold price, the most sensitive measure of monetary stability or instability, has moved from roughly $270 to $290 an ounce.  The Fed should keep this money hose on until the yellow metal reaches $300 to $325 an ounce.  Don't stop now, Alan.  You're almost there.

~ Steve Forbes, "Not There Yet," Forbes, October 15, 2001

Scott Trask on the French Revolution

Through 1788 and into 1789 the gods seemed to be conspiring to bring on a popular revolution.  A spring drought was followed by a devastating hail storm in July.  Crops were ruined.  There followed one of the coldest winters in French history. Grain prices skyrocketed.  Even in the best of times, an artisan or factor might spend 40 percent of his income on bread.  By the end of the year, 80 percent was not unusual.  “It was the connection of anger with hunger that made the Revolution possible,” observed Schama.  It was also envy that drove the Revolution to its violent excesses and destructive reform. 

Take the Reveillon riots of April 1789.  Reveillon was a successful Parisian wall-paper manufacturer.  He was not a noble but a self-made man who had begun as an apprentice paper worker but now owned a factory that employed 400 well-paid operatives.  He exported his finished products to England (no mean feat). The key to his success was technical innovation, machinery, the concentration of labor, and the integration of industrial processes, but for all these the artisans of his district saw him as a threat to their jobs.  When he spoke out in favor of the deregulation of bread distribution at an electoral meeting, an angry crowded marched on his factory, wrecked it, and ransacked his home. 

From thenceforth, the Paris mob would be the power behind the Revolution.  Economic science would not fare well. According to Jean Baptiste Say, “The moment there was any question in the National Assembly of commerce or finances, violent invectives could be heard against the economists.” That is what happens when political power is handed over to pseudo-intellectuals, lawyers, and the mob.

The exponents of the rationalistic Enlightenment had stood for a constitutional monarchy, a liberal economic and legal order, scientific progress, and a competent administration. According to Schama, “They were heirs to the reforming ethos of Louis XVI’s reign, and authentic predictors of the ‘new notability’ to emerge after the Revolution had run its course. Their language was reasonable and their tempers cool. What they had in mind was a nation vested, through its representatives, with the power to strip away the obstructions to modernity. Such a state . . . would not wage war on the France of the 1780s but consummate its promise.” 

If only the French elites could have agreed on a course of reform along these lines, there would have been no Terror, no Napoleon, no centralizing, statist revolution. And it was the pressing financial crisis, brought on by deficit spending to fund a global empire that in the end frustrated the kind of evolutionary political and economic liberalization that is the true road of civilized progress.

~ H.A. Scott Trask, "What Brought on the French Revolution?," Mises Daily, February 4, 2022

(Originally published April 9, 2004.)

Shaun Rein: Chinese consumers are buying local brands

Chinese consumers are cutting back.  They are buying local brands right now not because they're being told to by the government, but because they're patriotic, just like the Canadians are buying Canadian to offset the Trump tariffs and also because Chinese products are cheaper and just better right now.  So I use a Xiaomi phone because it's about 30% cheaper than Apple.  I think it's almost as good.  Maybe it's as good as an Apple.

So investors need to be buying brands that are Chinese to ride the patriotism trend and also because they're just good value.  Think Luckin Coffee rather than Starbucks.  Think ANTA Sports rather than Nike.

~ Shuan Rein, "Chinese consumers are cutting back and buying local brands, says China Market Group's Shaun Rein," CNBC, 0:50 mark, February 12, 2025

Ron Unz on the decline of America

The truth is, when you look at the audience here, all of you, regardless of whether you're young or old have lived your entire lives when America was the most powerful, most successful country in the world and in many cases, the most prosperous country in the world.  But the problem is prosperity, power and success breed arrogance.  It breeds an unwillingness to look at reality and the result of that many times is the nemesis of a country and I think we're seeing that right now in the United States, and we've been seeing that for at least the last couple of decades.

~ Ron Unz, "The Decline of America," "Mises in Reno" event, 0.25 mark, May 23, 2023

Jeremy Hammond on Donald Trump's plans to rebuild Gaza

If Trump believed that the Palestinians would agree to be dislocated from Gaza because of Israel’s destruction, and that Israel’s Arab neighbors would be delighted to assist in the plan to complete the ethnic cleansing that Israel started in 1948, he sorely miscalculated.

~ Jeremy R. Hammond, "David Hearst Explains Trump's Plan to Ethnically Cleanse Gaza," Jeremy R. Hammond, February 10, 2025

Tom Bernhardt on Trump shutting down USAID

Trump 1.0 promised to drain the swamp but was largely ineffective because he was naïve and got continually blocked by the powerful establishment.  I didn’t expect Trump 2.0 to be much improved.  I voted for him primarily as punishment to the Dems whose actions so deserved another round. 

But Trump 2.0 is surprising.  He came prepared and loaded for bear.  Maybe it was the time of reflection during the lawfare prosecutions, civil suits, impeachments, Russiagate, and assassination attempts, but something clearly changed. 

So he just did the best thing, maybe the best thing ever by any president.  Trump shutdown the mothership of discretionary and unaccountable corrupt power: USAID. 

For those that watch corporate news and think the AID stands for aid and other humanitarian goodiness; that’s fake, even opposite.  USAID is an extension of the CIA that performs regime changes around the globe, creates/supports political movements, funds compliant media for propaganda, funds a large area of bizarre unamerican causes, and generally acts as a money-laundering slush fund for those in power and their friends (97% vote Dem).  The result of the chaos they create is war, destruction and the death of millions. 

It doesn’t get any better domestically.  USAID, through its myriad of NGOs, funded BLM, which burned down American cities in 2020.  They fund Soros-backed DAs around the US that don’t prosecute many crimes, especially property crimes.  If you recall my motorcycle theft/recovery experience, this is but one personal example of countless around the country.

~ Tom Bernhardt, Facebook post, February 10, 2025

Cyrus Janssen on trade with developing countries

Just last year, China announced it would have zero tariffs for all developing countries around the world, cementing its position as the trading leader for the Global South.  Meanwhile, the United States currently has sanctions on one-third of the global economy, including 60% of all poor countries.  If I'm a developing country looking who to trade with, it's a no-brainer: China is the clear partner.

~ Cyrus Janssen, "Harvard Economist Reveals Shocking Secret About Trade War with China," Cyrus Janssen, 3:15 mark, February 9, 2025

Kim Iversen on AI lowering barriers to entry

What AI... really brings forward is the ability of the little guy to compete with the big guy.  And that's kind of what DeepSeek showed.  They're like, "We did this for a fraction of the money and we were able to compete with you."  AI, not just in the creation of your own AI, but even like you said with the creation of movies, for example.  The fact that a small team of creators can get together with like five people and create an incredible Hollywood blockbuster where normally that would take massive numbers of people, thousands of employees, millions upon millions of dollars to make a Hollywood blockbuster, and now that opens up to anybody to compete with these big businesses.

So the one really great change I see is that there seems to be a lot of monopolies in the United States with these big businesses.  They've dominated industries, it's hard for new people to break in, smaller companies to break in, and yet AI may be opening that path for anybody and everybody.  Much like the technology advancements that we experienced here with shows and broadcasting.  The fact that I'm able to do this and compete with mainstream news is incredible and even ten years ago wasn't even a real possibility, but now today it is.  The advancement is amazing.

Kim Iversen, "Are We Screwed? How China Outplayed the U.S. Overnight," The Kim Iverson Show, 14:40 mark, February 7, 2025

Paul Samuelson on correcting error

I hate to be wrong.  That has aborted many a tempting error, but not all of them.  But I hate much more to stay wrong.

~ Paul Samuelson

(Samuelson has one of the worst track records of among any economist, having predicted a recession after WWII and lauding the Soviet model during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.)

Tim Price on Trump's use of executive orders

Another dark cloud hanging over the political landscape is the, for want of a better phrase, imperial nature of the entire executive order process.  To an admitted outsider, rule by executive order fiat seems to run a coach and horses through the idea of a constitutional framework for democratic government, and the concept of checks and balances against Presidential overreach.  It also seems to refashion the Presidential role to something akin to a ‘primus inter pares’ amongst a cadre of philosophically and morally unreliable tech bro robber barons. 

But let’s not allow the best to become the enemy of the good.  Given what’s at stake, we’ll take robber barons over doctrinaire Communists every day of the week.

~ Tim Price, "War of the Worlds," Price Value Partners, February 3, 2025

Kevin Duffy on who pays for tariffs

All taxes are taxes on production.  Ultimately the consumer pays the tariffs, but that doesn't measure the true costs.  If there were 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs (there are, they were quadrupled under the Biden administration), no Chinese EVs will be sold in the U.S.  This harms American consumers without raising a penny for the government.  

Poverty requires no explanation.  Just go live on a desert island and try to make everything yourself.  Wealth creation requires specialization (getting the highest value for your time) and trading the fruits of your labor with others.  Trade, as long as it's peaceful and voluntary, is win-win.  Both sides benefit, otherwise the exchange wouldn't take place.  The more people we can trade with and the more they produce, the wealthier we become. 

In other words, tariffs are a tax on wealth creation. 

Economists disagree on a lot of things, but the case for free trade is not one of them.

~ Kevin Duffy, Facebook post, February 2, 2025

Charles Hugh Smith on the AI race, innovation and open societies

Charles Hugh Smith: A lot of people are saying, "Wait a minute, does this mean China has got the lead in AI?"  I don't think it's a state or governments-run option here to say, "We're going to control the world's AI."  I think the dominance here is which economy is more open, more transparent, more open to sharing information and is going to allow the greatest number of people to start innovating with these new tools.  And so that's really what it boils down to.

Adam Taggart: How weird would it be if that country were China.  It's just not historically, culturally, those are not adjectives that are used around China.

Smith: What's interesting is the whole world has an equal opportunity here.  There's systemic issues here.  It's not just the software or the hardware.  It's which economy, as a system, is more open, more transparent, more adaptable, more flexible and is going to give rewards to somebody in their garage famously that comes up with a product that people love.

~ Charles Hugh Smith, "Did China's DeepSeek Just Pop the AI Stock Bubble?," Thoughtful Money, January 27, 2025

Tom DiLorenzo on Donald Trump's admiration for William McKinley

Lo and behold, President Trump has discovered a new political hero to idolize: President (1897-1901) William McKinley of Ohio whose election was orchestrated by the wealthiest man in Ohio (and the U.S.), John D. Rockefeller, who ran the Standard Oil Company out of his Cleveland home.  McKinley is President Trump’s new hero because he was known as a congressman as the most rabid Republican party protectionist in a party that was founded on the principle of protectionism (and of corporate welfare and a national bank) in the mid 1850s.  The 1890 McKinley tariff was named after Representative William McKinley because of his notoriety as a tool of the Northern manufacturing plutocracy.  It created the highest average tariff rate in U.S. history up to that point and targeted such items as wool and tin with especially high tariff taxes, some exceeding 100 percent.  It caused such a spike in the prices of such items that in the next election the Republican party was wiped out, losing both houses of Congress and the White House, with the Democrat party having a 2-1 advantage in the House.  Free trader Grover Cleveland became president.  McKinley himself was defeated and was installed by the Rockefeller machine as the governor of Ohio. 

The Rockefeller machine got McKinley elected president in 1896.  One of his first “accomplishments” in 1897 was to repeat the political disaster of the McKinley Tariff Tax by signing the Dingley Tariff Tax which created another highest average tariff rate in history.  The people be damned; by that point the Republican party had created a government by the Northern corporate plutocracy, for the corporate plutocracy, of the corporate plutocracy.  President Trump’s kind of people.

McKinley was also a notorious imperialist, waging an imperialistic war against Spain (the Spanish-American War) during which the U.S. government conquered Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, leading the great Yale University libertarian scholar William Graham Sumner to author his famous article, “The Conquest of the United States by Spain.”  The Spanish-American War, Sumner wrote, turned the U.S. into an imperialist power, just like the thoroughly corrupt and bankrupted Spanish empire.  (All empires, by the way, view their populations as good for two things: as taxpayers and cannon fodder in the empire’s wars.  Fast forward to today’s world and the incoming president is proposing a takeover of Greenland, part of Panama, and Canada “for national security reasons.”

~ Thomas DiLorenzo, "How the McKinley Tariff Almost Destroyed the Republican Party," LewRockwell.com, December 31, 2024

Tom DiLorenzo on Donald Trump's "populism"

President Trump’s election is said to be a “populist” victory against the deep state establishment, but there is nothing more anti-populist than protectionist tariff taxes.  Protectionist tariff taxes are nothing more than a price-fixing conspiracy orchestrated by the state that enriches a relatively small group of politically connected corporations (and their unions) by plundering their consumers with higher prices.  After all, if it is possible to use tariffs to force foreigners to pay a county’s taxes, every government on earth would be doing it.  Yet President Trump apparently believes that he has discovered some kind of holy grail of economics that proves you can get something for nothing after all. 

~ Thomas J. DiLorenzo, William McKinley: Prostitute of Protectionism, Mises Wire, January 29, 2025

Ronald Reagan on balancing the budget

Ronald Reagan: When budget deficits are what's causing inflation, I don't see that there's any room to be on either side of that argument.  I think the answer to curing inflation is a balanced budget.  

Johnny Carson: Now how do you do that?  How do you balance the budget?  You don't spend more than you take in...

Reagan: Balancing the budget is like protecting your virtue.  You have to learn to say "no."

Carson: There's gotta be another way.  What's the second option?

~ Ronald Reagan, interview with Johnny Carson, The Tonight Show

Sam Altman on OpenAI's lead in generative AI (2023)

Look, the way this works is we're going to tell you, "It's totally hopeless to compete with us on training foundation models, you shouldn't try and it's your job to, like, try anyway."  And I believe both of those things.   It think it is pretty hopeless, but...

~ Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, June 8, 2023

Bill Strong on the rise of Donald Trump

The ascension of a Donald Trump administration seems to represent a genuine and meaningful disruptive force in American government—and indeed maybe in society at large (given the growing severity and duration of America’s problems, it is not surprising that such a political reaction has finally occurred).  Obviously, we cannot predict how much of the agenda for change will be implemented--but history suggests much of it will be difficult.  Nor can we say for sure what its net outcome will be. 

However, we would note that Trump’s optimistic populist prescription for addressing America’s decline does NOT include a call for popular sacrifice.  There is no acknowledgement that total debt (and the burdens of servicing it) in our country, and the world, is unsustainable.  In other words, there is no call for Americans to reverse our decades-long habit of living way beyond our means, as huge imbalances in borrowing and the current account show.  Rather, suggestions of further gains are legion. 

In addition, I doubt if Republicans’ call for a return to “common sense,” is referring to stock market valuations.  As chronicled below, stock valuations in the US are beyond “manic”.  In other words, we see no evidence that new leadership acknowledges the massive valuation anomalies in markets.  A renaissance of faith in “American Exceptionalism” seems to justify the severe over and under-pricing of assets and currencies in the global marketplace. 

~ Bill Strong, co-portfolio manager, Eschaton Opportunities Fund, Quarterly Letter Q4 2024, January 27, 2025

Joseph Quinlan and Lauren Sanfilippo on American exceptionalism vs. isolationism

Globalization is in remission, while its opposite, isolationism, is being rekindled by nationalists around the world, including in the U.S. 

[...]

Most at risk will be open, trade-dependent economies across Europe, Asia, and much of the emerging market universe. These states are the most exposed to an inward-looking world losing its appetite for cross-border commerce. This is a key reason investors remain lukewarm on the export-oriented markets of Europe among the developed markets and on China and Mexico in the emerging world. 

In contrast, the preference for—and outperformance of—U.S. equities remains in place in part due to the simple fact that no country is better disposed toward economic autocracy and isolationism than the U.S. 

[...]

If there were ever an economy built for isolation, it is the United States. If the nation does become a global dropout and opts for retrenchment, the world will become a messier place, but with the U.S. still on top. Stay long America.

~ Joseph Quinlan and Lauren Sanfilippo, "U.S. Exceptionalism Will Thrive in a World in Retreat," Barron's, January 4, 2025

Donald Trump on McKinley's tariffs, Gulf of Mexico and Panama Canal

America will reclaim its rightful place as the greatest, most powerful, most respected nation on earth, inspiring the awe and admiration of the entire world. 

A short time from now, we are going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America — (applause) — and we will restore the name of a great president, William McKinley, to Mount McKinley, where it should be and where it belongs. (Applause.) 

President McKinley made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent — he was a natural businessman — and gave Teddy Roosevelt the money for many of the great things he did, including the Panama Canal, which has foolishly been given to the country of Panama after the United States spent more money than ever spent on a project before and lost 38,000 lives in the building of the Panama Canal.

~ Donald J. Trump, 47th president of the United States, inaugural address, January 20, 2025

Donald Trump on the military

This week, I will reinstate any service members who were unjustly expelled from our military for objecting to the COVID vaccine mandate with full back pay. (Applause.) 

And I will sign an order to stop our warriors from being subjected to radical political theories and social experiments while on duty.  It’s going to end immediately. (Applause.)  Our armed forces will be freed to focus on their sole mission: defeating America’s enemies. (Applause.) 

Like in 2017, we will again build the strongest military the world has ever seen.  We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end — and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into. (Applause.) 

My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier.

~ Donald J. Trump, 47th president of the United States, inaugural address, January 20, 2025

Donald Trump: "We stand on the verge of the four greatest years in American history" (2025)

After all we have been through together, we stand on the verge of the four greatest years in American history. 

[...]

America will be respected again and admired again, including by people of religion, faith, and goodwill. We will be prosperous, we will be proud, we will be strong, and we will win like never before.

We will not be conquered, we will not be intimidated, we will not be broken, and we will not fail. From this day on, the United States of America will be a free, sovereign, and independent nation.

We will stand bravely, we will live proudly, we will dream boldly, and nothing will stand in our way because we are Americans. The future is ours, and our golden age has just begun.

~ Donald J. Trump, 47th president of the United States, inaugural address, January 20, 2025

Jeremy Sargent on the Chinese government

In terms of what a lot of people in the West don't understand about China, although China is sort of top down in its administrative system, it's very layered: you've got your leader, your second, your third, your fourth, going right down to the street level.  That being said, and no, it's not a democracy: you don't vote these people in and out, but they are highly accountable and it's become very accountable based on performance.  So if you're a medium level government official in Guangzhou here, or even a street official looking after this street here, if you don't deliver what you've pledged, you might lose your job.  If you screw up, you go down for it.  And the Chinese government is constantly seeking feedback, gauging opinion, understanding how communities, how people feel about what's going on.  And if people are feeling a certain way about something, they will take action.

So in that sense, there is direct accountability.  If you're the Guangzhou Environmental Protection Department and you pledge to clean up the air or plant ten trees down the street, if you don't do it, you've screwed up and you will suffer the consequences of that.  So there is that accountability, sort of executive-led accountability.

What I feel, sometimes talking to friends back in UK and other countries, that side of China doesn't make headlines in the media.  People don't realize and they think that China's very much a top-down, "do what you're told" and that's the end of it.  But it's not that simple.  It really isn't.

[...]

And I think that's one reason China's modernization has gone pretty well in most senses.  It's because of that accountability.  There's almost an unwritten contract between the government and the people.  "We're going to make things better and if we don't we're screwing up.  We've got no legitimacy left any longer."  That works quite well.

~ Jeremy Sargent, Brit who has lived in China for 25 years, "This walk with Brit in Guangzhou changed my view of China," Max Chernov, 7:15 mark, January 20, 2025

Rep. John J. Duncan Jr. on Israeli genocide

Genocide is defined as "violence that targets individuals because of their membership in a group and aims at the destruction of a people." 

The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted in 1948, established genocide as an international crime.  The US was one of the signers to this agreement.

This was done primarily in response to what had happened to the Jews in Europe during World War II.  In fact, because of what happened then, you would think that the Jewish people would be the strongest opponents to genocide anyplace.

I think everyone realizes that the United States would be the first to act and would lead the campaign against this genocide if it was being done by any other country than Israel. 

~ Rep. John J. Duncan Jr., "Israel Against The World – With US Aid," The Knoxville Focus, January 18, 2025