Author: David Stockman

Someone should remind the Donald that he actually is President and that it’s high time he accomplished something. Anything. Back on April 21st, for example, he promised that a core feature of his platform — a sweeping, pro-jobs tax reduction — would be soon unveiled. Trump said the tax reform package will be introduced on “Wednesday or shortly thereafter,” just before his 100th day in office. While the president would not reveal details about the tax plan, he did say that the cuts will be “bigger I believe than any tax cut ever.” Well, we’ve passed the eighteenth Wednesday since that promise. What was actually … Continue reading →

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If you ever wondered why our monetary central planners and their Wall Street megaphones are so clueless about the on-going deterioration of capitalist prosperity in America, look no farther than this bit of tommyrot from JPMorgan’s chief economist. Therein one Michael Feroli avers that Harvey’s estimated 15 trillion gallon deluge on Houston may appear to be crushing tens of billions of residential, commercial and industrial properties, but not really. Alas, what finally appears to be real news from CNN is not all that. By the lights of Feroli’s economics, Harvey is a fake disaster that will lead to an increase … Continue reading →

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You have to hand it to the Donald. He speaks his mind. This week he dropped an unwelcome stink bomb on Capitol Hill during his Phoenix rant Tuesday night. If Mexico won’t pay for my wall, he seemed to say, then Congress will—-even if I have to shut down the Imperial City to extract the first $1.6 billion of seed money: “We’re going to get our wall,” Mr. Trump said at a rally in Phoenix. “If we have to close down our government, we’re building that wall.” The Mexican Wall waste an estimated $20 billion needed to complete and would … Continue reading →

The post It’s Can Kicking Time appeared first on LewRockwell.

We aren’t shedding many tears over Steve Bannon’s departure. His ethno-nationalist and protectionist worldview are anathema to true notions of liberty, free markets and a minimalist state. While Bannonism presented itself as a coherent alternative ideology to mainstream Big Government and globalism, it actually boiled down to a superficial and incoherent potpourri of cultural resentments and prejudices, economic shibboleths and amateur historical theorizing. Indeed, it appealed to the lumpen-intelligentsia of the alt-Right precisely because it proposed to replace the oppressive statism of the liberal status quo with a more virulent right-wing statism rooted in protectionism and nativism. Notwithstanding the rotten … Continue reading →

The post The Goldman Sachs Regency appeared first on LewRockwell.

Given the anti-Trump feeding frenzy, we continue to believe that a Swan is on its way bearing Orange. But if that’s not enough to dissuade the dip buyers, perhaps the impending arrival of the Red Swan will at least give them pause. The chart below comprises a picture worth thousands of words. It puts the lie to the latest Wall Street belief that the global economy is accelerating and that surging corporate profits justify the market’s latest manic rip. What is actually going on is a short-lived global credit/growth impulse emanating from China. Beijing panicked early last year and opened up the capital expenditure … Continue reading →

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Who would have thought the red hot war of words between Kim Jong-un and the Donald could be wiped right off the cable gab-a-thons in just one weekend. But the Charlottesville riots did exactly that, thereby delivering still another cautionary tale about the unhinged times now upon us. So we will say it again. The boys and girls buying the dip again this morning are out of their ever-lovin’ minds because this weekend did not really bring a respite from the Korean crisis. Instead, the Charlottesville override was yet another nothing event that was blown into a massive Cable Spectacle … Continue reading →

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The S&P 500 moved by a mere 0.16% yesterday, making it 13 straight days in which the principal stock market average has changed by less than 0.3%. We mention that because it turns out that 13 straight days of virtual flat has never occurred before in records going back to 1927. But despite the implication of the graph below, this is not about watching grass grow. That’s even given that the S&P’s closing prints over this unprecedented stretch of equipoise—–2474, 2473, 2473, 2470, 2477, 2478, 2475, 2472, 2470, 2476, 2478, 2472, 2477, 2481, respectively—–suggest exactly that. To the contrary, it … Continue reading →

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Approximately two months before the election on September 10th I locked down the final draft of my book, Trumped! In the opening sentence I ventured the following opinion, which was most certainly not in the mainstream at the time: FIRST THERE WERE 17. THEN LITTLE MARCO, LOW ENERGY JEB AND LYIN’ Ted were gone. At length, there was one. And now there is even a chance he may become President. That he did, and contrary to all expectations, too. But now there is an excellent chance that Mike Pence will become the 46th occupant of that office. This time the pundits … Continue reading →

The post Trump Will Be Taken Down appeared first on LewRockwell.

Most of the Donald’s tweets amount to street brawling with his political enemies, but occasionally one of them slices through Imperial Washington’s sanctimonious cant. Indeed, Monday evening’s 140 characters of solid cut right to the bone: The Amazon Washington Post fabricated the facts on my ending massive, dangerous, and wasteful payments to Syrian rebels fighting Assad….. Needless to say, we are referencing not the dig at the empire of Bezos, but the characterization of Washington’s anti-Assad policy as “massive, dangerous and wasteful”. No stouter blow to the neocon/Deep State “regime change” folly has ever been issued by an elected public … Continue reading →

The post Bravo, Trump appeared first on LewRockwell.

It’s as if on election night the shocked and exasperated rulers of the Imperial City ordered Donald Trump to sleep in the White House attic. Unlike Kevin McCallister’s family in the movie, however, the establishment never stopped obsessing about his bratty insolence and never intended for him to rejoin the family the next morning—or ever. Instead, the Washington political establishment and its collaborators in the main stream media are engaged in an unabashed and unconcealed campaign to remove the Donald from even the figurative White House attic where he now dwells with his Twitter account. The evidence for that lies … Continue reading →

The post Home Alone appeared first on LewRockwell.

On July 10, 2007 former Citigroup CEO Chuck Prince famously said what might be termed the “speculator’s creed” for the current era of Bubble Finance. Prince was then canned within four months but as of that day his minions were still slamming the”buy” key good and hard: “When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated. But as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance. We’re still dancing,” he said in an interview with the FT in Japan. We are at that moment again. Only this time the danger of a thundering crash … Continue reading →

The post It’s Crazy Bubble Time appeared first on LewRockwell.

We frequently hear people say they have nothing to hide—-so surrendering privacy and constitutional rights to the Surveillance State may not be such a big deal if it helps catch a terrorist or two. But with each passing day in the RussiaGate drama we are learning that this superficial exoneration is dangerously beside the point. We are referring here to the unrelenting witch hunt that has been unleashed by Imperial Washington against the legitimately elected President of the United States, Donald J. Trump. This campaign of lies, leaks and Russophobia is the handiwork of Obama’s top national security advisors, who … Continue reading →

The post Lock Them Up! appeared first on LewRockwell.

[Urgent Note: David Stockman warns that the nation’s economy and a massive debt ceiling hangs in the balance as Wall Street’s peak bull stocks carry on. The economist is on a mission to send his new book TRUMPED! A Nation on the Brink of Ruin… and How to Bring It Back out to every American who responds, absolutely free. Click here for more details.] It’s all over now except the shouting about Obamacare repeal and replace, but that’s not the half of it. The stand by Senators Lee and Moran was much bigger than putting the latest iteration of McConnell-Care out of its misery. … Continue reading →

The post The Shakey Empire appeared first on LewRockwell.

The overwhelming source of what ails America economically is domiciled in the Eccles Building. During the past three decades the Federal Reserve has fostered destructive financial mutations on Wall Street and Main Street and among the household, business and government sectors of the national economy alike. These Bubble Finance polices have fueled an egregious financial engineering spree by the C-suites of corporate America to the tune of $15 trillion of stock buybacks, debt-fueled M&A deals and LBOs during the last decade. These actions have stripped-mined balance sheets and cash flows from main street businesses, thereby garroting economic growth—even as they … Continue reading →

The post A Big, Fat, Ugly Bubble appeared first on LewRockwell.

The threat of nuclear war has again sharply escalated owing to North Korea’s apparent successful test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), albeit one that traveled only 600 miles, not the 6,000 miles needed to reach California. Likewise, it was only a two-stage ICBM not the three-stages needed for extended range delivery. And there was no testing at all of the missile’s capacity to drop a guided warhead through the intense heat of reentry without burning up. Nor did this week’s test involve any evidence that the clunky A-bombs Pyongyang has tested underground have been successfully miniaturized in order to … Continue reading →

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