"The limit of the Fed's and Treasury's ability to create money is the value and acceptance of the dollar and the bond in open market transactions.
The Weimar government never 'ran out of money.' Zimbabwe never 'ran out of money.' And if interest is paid 'in your currency money' you can never fail to service your debt either. What they did run out of were people willing to take their paper at its intended value, from those who are their sphere of control, their compulsion of legal tender.
It is not clear to me that the dollar has passed the point of no return. But it is obviously unstable, as a bulwark of a corrupted system. And therefore it is making its holders understandably nervous."
Jesse, Money and The Limits of Empire, 13 February 2011
"A market collapse is nothing but risk-aversion meeting a market that's not priced to tolerate risk. Buckle up."
John Hussman, April 30, 2025
"If we are indeed in a Minsky Moment, which we think we are, then monetary inflation by the Fed and government intervention without reform will most likely increase the probability of a protracted stagflationary repression in the United States, and possibly lead to civil unrest and an exogenous reform of the system. An abandonment of the system as it is with a turn to fascism has been the historic choice of Wall Street. The political lobbying against systemic reform by the Bankers and their sycophants will be intense and as persuasive to the many as most appeals to fear. However, their reckless advice leads to a trip to the brink of the abyss."
Jesse, Which Way Out of the Minsky Moment, 23 March 2008
"The main objectives of managed democracy are to increase the profits of large corporations, dismantle the institutions of social democracy (Social Security, unions, welfare, public health services, public housing and so forth), and roll back the social and political ideals of the New Deal. Its primary tool is privatization [and deregulation].
It is extremely unlikely that our party apparatus will work to bring the military-industrial complex and the 16 secret intelligence agencies under democratic control. Nonetheless, once the United States has followed the classical totalitarianisms into the dustbin of history, Wolin’s analysis [Inverted Totalitarianism] will stand as one of the best discourses on where we went wrong."
Chalmers Johnson, A New Way of Understanding How the U.S. Is Controlled, May 16, 2008
"We are imperial, and we are in decline. People are losing confidence in the Empire."
Lawrence Wilkerson, The Travails of Empire, October 8, 2014
The Empire seems to have gone barking mad.
Is this just a clever game, a negotiating tactic?
The famous Nixonian 'madman theory' gambit?
Perhaps. But when coupled with a multipolar world of gathering resistance to the usual economic coercion, in which one of your fundamental supports, the fiat Dollar, is based on trust and confidence, it can prove to be strategically fatal.
We seem to be in a pivotal moment.
Stocks were rallying all day, extending the imperial decree that despite the tariff shocks incoming all is well.
You didn't catch it if you just watch the cash price, but US equity markets futures utterly collapsed into the close and went red.
A disappointment from the Amazon cloud after hours is possible. There are many possibilities.
Apple is up to bat next, later this evening.
Gold and silver were hammered today, as is customary on the day before a Non-Farm Payrolls report.
To say I think that this was 'technical' trading would be an understatement.
China metals markets will be quiet for the May 1 holiday week.
The Dollar bumped up a little higher.
The VIX is now low enough to suggest that this rally is getting really long in the tooth.
And did I mention that I think this was a dictated rally to put someone's tariff decisions in a less disastrous light?
One can only wonder.
The truth will come out, eventually.
Be careful where you look and listen, or you may miss it.
See you tomorrow.
Have a pleasant evening.
