Looking Backwards …
LB #1
The easiest way it seems to be in the Donald Trump government is to have a job at Fox News first and say things that agree with Trump. Who knows, you might even get to be Secretary of Defense. The other way is to write a really big check. Ben Kamisar and Faith Wardwell write for NBC News, “Linda McMahon, the former professional wrestling executive who led Trump’s Small Business Administration in his first term and has served in a leadership capacity at a variety of pro-Trump outside groups, is Trump’s pick to lead the Education Department. McMahon, who is also helping to lead Trump’s transition, donated more than $21 million to help Trump’s campaign this election cycle… Chris Wright, the Liberty Energy CEO tapped to be Trump’s energy secretary, gave the campaign and affiliated committees more than $235,000. Scott Bessent, a top Trump fundraiser chosen by Trump to lead the Treasury Department, donated more than $1 million to MAGA Inc., and another $676,500 to Trump’s campaign and affiliated committees. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law who served as his senior adviser during his first term, gave the campaign and affiliated committees more than $851,000. His father, Charles Kushner, who was pardoned by Trump and is expected to be nominated to be the ambassador to France, gave that same amount, plus another $1.2 million to a pro-Trump super PAC. Former Sen. Kelly Loeffler, the Georgia Republican who has long been a major GOP donor, is being tapped as Trump’s small business administrator, pending Senate approval. She donated almost $2 million to the pro-Trump outside efforts.
Warren Stephens, a longtime GOP donor who gave to Trump’s primary opponents before giving $3 million to MAGA Inc., was announced as Trump’s pick to be ambassador to the United Kingdom. And Trump announced this week that David Sacks, the venture capitalist who gave six-figures to Trump’s joint fundraising operation, will be named his “White House A.I. & Crypto Czar.”
I think I detect a pattern, if you want a job in government be a billionaire and write Don a check and we didn’t even mention Elon Musk who is in almost $300 million to the Don, but also giving almost $9 million is billionaire and clueless Howard Lutnick who is the new Commerce Secretary. We mentioned him last week when he was surprised that the Atlanta Fed’s GDPnow indicator was flashing recession after it had been out for 10 days. Clueless, but apparently, he is out of touch as well. This from Aris Folley at the Hill, “During an appearance on the “All-In” podcast that was released on Thursday… At one point in the wide-ranging, nearly two-hour conversation, Lutnick also said that if Social Security “didn’t send out their checks this month,” his “mother-in-law, who’s 94, she wouldn’t call and complain.”
He was implying that only criminals and fraudsters would complain if their social security check didn’t show up for a month. I am not sure that you Howard are competent to have that conversation when you say that no one would miss their check if they didn’t get one this month. Of course, your mother wouldn’t, you’re a billionaire! How many people run in your circles Howie that get a check and that means a trip to the grocery store. Not tomorrow, not the day after, but now because they are literally out of groceries. They have to pay the heat, or the rent, or the electric. These are all facts of life for millions yes millions of people that are so far from his country club, billionaire yacht riding, and mother who I’m sure wouldn’t miss a check. What a clown. Just watch this fool any time he is on tv. He is a sitcom in the making. He paid for his position, and he is going to get his tv time.
I wish I was done talking about this lunkhead, but unfortunately, I am not. Just one week after Trump decided to have a Tesla car show in front of the White House, this week the Buy a Tesla telethon continued with the lunkhead Howard Lutnick going on Fox News and saying this from James Rogers at MarketWatch, “Buy Tesla — it’s unbelievable that this guy’s stock is this cheap. It’ll never be this cheap again,” Lutnick said on Jesse Watters’s show on Fox News late Wednesday.
“Elon Musk is the best entrepreneur and technologist in America, and I bet on him,” the former Cantor Fitzgerald chairman and chief executive said of the Tesla CEO.
Lutnick’s comments nonetheless raised eyebrows. “Traditionally, we see administrations looking to prop up American industry, and they will often focus on a handful of businesses as an example,” Jordan Libowitz, a spokesperson for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, known as CREW, a nonprofit government watchdog organization, told MarketWatch. But the Trump administration’s championing of Tesla — as evidenced by Lutnick’s remarks and a recent photo-op with Tesla vehicles outside the White House — marks a significant shift, according to Libowitz.
“It seems like they are going all-in on propping up Tesla’s stock,” he said. “It’s highly unusual when the owner or primary shareholder is a member of the administration.”
This is the new Commerce secretary, but a former Commerce department director wrote a scathing letter on his way out the door. Yasmeen Hamadeh writes for the Daily Beast, “A top director at the Commerce Department in charge of expanding internet access to rural areas claimed in a scathing email to colleagues that rural broadband funding may soon be funneled to Elon Musk’s Starlink, despite its comparatively lower quality service.
The 1,100-plus-word email, first reported by Politico, was written by Evan Feinman, the director of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program (BEAD), within the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). “Stranding all or part of rural America with worse internet so that we can make the world’s richest man even richer is yet another in a long line of betrayals by Washington,” Feinman wrote in the email, according to Politico.”
We know Politico could be as biased to the one extreme as Fox News might be to the other, but it seems like we have a little conflict of interest when the efficiency guy is eliminating the competition and giving himself windfall market share.
Does Musk have Donny baby and Lunkhead working on commission? More Starlink subscribers and Teslas sold and Musk will write more checks to both of them? Is that the scam he is peddling now? What is going on? Why are we having the government push us to buy Teslas and Tesla stock specifically? Where is the SEC? Oh wait, they are going to get rid of that agency next, aren’t they. Just remember when the SEC was created, it was after all of America lost their ass in stocks after getting smoke blown up their skirts by rich industrialists…
LB #2
Speaking of getting rid of an arm of government, Trump signed another executive order to greatly minimize the Department of Education. This from ZeroHedge, “White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said all the critical functions of the Department of Education will remain, ahead of President Trump signing an executive order to dismantle the federal agency.
“The Department of Education will be much smaller than it is today. As you know, the president’s executive order directed Linda McMahon to greatly minimize the agency. So, when it comes to student loans and Pell Grants, those will still be run out of the Department of Education,” she told reporters at the White House, referring to McMahon, the Education secretary.
“The great responsibility of educating our nation’s students will return to the states. Any critical functions of the department … will remain,” Leavitt added. Leavitt’s comment comes as the president said he wants the department completely eliminated, but that would require an act of Congress, which is unlikely to happen since 60 votes would be needed in the Senate.”
The states should be in control of this and despite some really fishy things happening in government we need to stop and acknowledge when there are good things happening as well. This country is the United States and the more we give back to the states the better we will be. Unless you happen to live in California, Illinois or New York. Then God Bless.
LB #3
For those of you fluent in Shakespeare you will recognize the line Et tu Brute? The words were spoken by Julius Caesar when he realized his friend Brutus was one of his assassins. Well in today parlance we can say Et tu Britain? Britain is clearly working off a different script than others and betrayals could be lying right beneath the surface like a croc in the Northern Territory. Mark Curtis writes for Declassified Uk, “When UK officials signed a 100 year partnership with Ukraine in mid-January, they claimed to be Ukraine’s “preferred partner” in developing the country’s “critical minerals strategy”.
Yet within a month, Donald Trump had presented a proposal to Ukraine’s President Volodymr Zelensky to access the country’s vast mineral resources as “compensation” for US support to Ukraine in the war against Russia. Whitehall was none too pleased about Washington muscling in.
When foreign secretary David Lammy met Zelensky in Kyiv last month he reportedly raised the issue of minerals, “a sign that Starmer’s government is still keen to get access to Ukraine’s riches”, the iPaper reported. Lammy earlier said, in a speech last year: “Look around the world. Countries are scrambling to secure critical minerals, just as great powers once raced to control oil”.
The UK foreign secretary was correct, but Britain itself is one of those powers, and Ukraine is one of the major countries UK officials – as well as the Trump administration – have their eyes on. It’s no surprise why. Ukraine has around 20,000 mineral deposits covering 116 types of minerals such as beryllium, manganese, gallium, uranium, zirconium, rare earth metals, and nickel.
The country, whose economy has been devastated by Russia’s brutal war, also possesses one of the world’s largest reserves of graphite, the largest titanium reserves in Europe, and a third of the continent’s lithium deposits. These resources are key for industries such as military production, high tech, aerospace, and green energy. ”
I love it. Britain makes a move and then Trump wants to follow up and muscle his way in. When we discussed how Putin and Ukraine almost had a peace deal completed and then Boris Johnson flew over and wrecked it, I think we are starting to get a clearer picture of what exactly this war is all about. Russia, Europe, and the US are fighting over the mineral, commodity, and strategic location of Ukraine. The breadbasket of Europe with fields many times larger than the American breadbasket could provide food stability to whomever controls the region. The minerals could provide jobs, sources of exports, and cash flow. Lastly, the US would love to be able to have access to the front door of Russia and the backdoor to Europe. America wants access to the front door of Europe as well with Greenland. Russia doesn’t want any of this and they are winning the war, they are the only one losing lives, and frankly they control all of the cards which is why Trump has made very little progress with Putin. The real story to be following here is that Britain wants those minerals as well and how does that affect her and her continent’s relationship with Washington. It might not be as stable as the last 75 years would suggest.
Looking Forwards…
LF#1
I was watching Trump meeting with the President of Ireland and Trump was telling the story about how he had purchased a great piece of land in Ireland and was wanting to develop it. He had gotten the approvals and permits and such from Ireland and was praising the Irish government and then he mentioned that the EU would have to approve the permits and plans and that unlike the Irish government it would take years to go through the layers of bureaucracy that is the EU system. Trump said we were going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars but didn’t.
While Trump was excoriating the EU for being anti-business, I just started laughing out loud. I was dying. Here is the great deal maker, in his own niche of real estate development, and he doesn’t even know the permitting process? This is after he bought the land mind you? Who buys the land with hopes of developing it and doesn’t know how to? He’s a real estate developer! This is the great deal maker you are dealing with America? He tells this story in the White House for other people to hear. This is why he has a touchdown worth of bankruptcies under his belt. That’s six for you counting at home and if it weren’t for the bankruptcy laws he would have squandered his entire inherited fortune. It turns out bankruptcy court is nepotism’s best friend.
So, when I hear he is owning or pwning Putin or Xi in anything, I just laugh. Here is Jamie Dettmer from Politco, “ After Ukrainian negotiators agreed to a U.S.-brokered ceasefire proposal earlier this week, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the ball was in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s court. But it was an easier ball for the Russian leader to play than many thought. He wasn’t aggressive with a risky power shot, taking a high-risk bid to win a quick point. Rather, he nimbly floated a lob high and deep, piling conditions and delays onto ceasefire talks.
It was classic Putin.
The Russian leader has seen U.S. presidents come and go and, all too often, he’s deftly drained their stamina and exhausted their attention to get much of what he wants. The big question now is what U.S. President Donald Trump’s return shot will be. He’s the one in a hurry to end the war on Ukraine, burnishing his cherished reputation as a skillful deal-maker.
Putin, meanwhile, has had the measure of his Washington opponents — and on Thursday, he demonstrated he understands Trump’s psychology. Praise the man while deflecting him; pat him on the head — something Ukraine’s passionate President Volodymyr Zelenskyy almost fatally forgot to do in his Oval Office meeting last month, prompting a hasty ejection from the White House.
There was no firm Russian nyet to stoke the U.S. leader’s anger, rather a teacher’s applause for Trump’s idea and effort. It was all drawn from the playbook that he and his lugubrious Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov have used time and again: Obfuscate, delay, muddle, throw in some whataboutism, be sorrowfully unctuous, but make sure to dangle a carrot.
Just the day before, Lavrov had given an hour-and-half -long master class in Putin-style diplomacy, which should have been a warning to the White House. But as Lavrov piled deflection and digression upon deflection and digression, his plaintive lecture demonstrated that — just as Putin reinforced yesterday — Russia plans to play Trump, much like it did former U.S. President Barack Obama when it came to Syria, using delaying tactics to prevent America from hitting their client for unleashing chemical weapons.
Of course, unlike Obama, during his first term Trump did order an airstrike on a Syrian government airbase in response to a chemical weapons attack. So, Putin has no doubt taken into consideration that a vexed Trump might lash out. Hence, the careful calibration of his response to the ceasefire proposal.
And so far, the play seems to be going as planned. For Trump, Putin’s response was “very promising.”
Putin is laps ahead of this Trump and everyone knows it but the Trump cheerleaders. I’m not saying that for any other reason than it is true. These guys have been doing this for 30 years and Trump and his chief negotiator Steve Witkoff, another New York real estate deal maker are out dealing with foreign policy with people that have decades of experience, connections, and savvy. Witkoff was in charge of the cease fire between Israel and Hamas. That is back off. It turns out this diplomatic job is very hard, not easy, and that is why these areas have been fought over for millennia.
If Putin wanted to develop a piece of property in Queens and he was up against Trump I would say the exact opposite because that is what Trump has been doing for 30 years.
Dettmer continues, “And Trump’s options for forcing Putin into doing anything aren’t great. Earlier this week, he threatened to apply economic pressure on Russia if Putin didn’t agree to a ceasefire: “I can do things financially that would be very bad for Russia. I don’t want to do that because I want to get peace. In a financial sense … we could do things very bad for Russia. It would be devastating.”
But Russia’s already been sanctioned every which way since it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago. “Trump is much more concerned about this deal than about Ukraine,” former Russian diplomat Boris Bondarev said. “That gives Putin leverage.”
LF#2
If there is one group that I am more worried about than any other it is the average American who doesn’t get to buy their politician, they get to buy products that will soon have a tariff cost attached that they already can’t afford. StudyFinds.Org writes, “A survey of 2,000 employed Americans making less than $75,000 annually shows what happens to the modern paycheck—where it goes, how fast it disappears, and how many people need to plan carefully just to make it through each month…Past-due bills are another big reason people count their chickens before they hatch, making up 38% of pre-spent funds. Only 40% of those surveyed keep up with all their bills, while 55% typically juggle between one and four overdue bills every month…The money that does arrive disappears quickly. Americans spend about 43% of their paycheck within just three days of getting it. When you add this to the 51% that’s already spoken for before arrival, very little remains for the rest of the pay period.
This quick drain creates a cycle of stress that most Americans find themselves stuck in. Only 20% of respondents said they don’t run out of money or need to tighten their belt before their next check comes—meaning 80% feel the squeeze as payday approaches.
For those caught short at the end of each pay cycle, the effects hit home: 62% struggle to buy groceries, 30% have trouble paying major bills, another 30% can’t cover smaller bills, and 16% find it hard to afford medicine and make loan payments.”
Hey Commerce Secretary and all you other billionaires now working in the government of the United States, do you still think they won’t miss a check? I’d like to acquaint you with the people to whom you say you represent. Tariffs are a tax on these people, inflation is a tax on these people, and they pay taxes unlike you people.
LF#3
While this administration is talking out of one side of its mouth about lower regulation the other side is doing things like this. Joe Lancaster writes for Reason.com, “One of President Donald Trump’s Day 1 executive orders designated “certain international cartels” as “foreign terrorist organizations”..
To that end, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) announced a new rule cracking down on cash transactions this week, but only in certain geographical regions. No matter the administration’s intent to target cartels, the rule will expand government surveillance of its citizens.
FinCEN “issued a Geographic Targeting Order (GTO) to further combat the illicit activities and money laundering of Mexico-based cartels and other criminal actors along the southwest border of the United States,” according to the announcement. “The GTO requires all money services businesses (MSBs) located in 30 ZIP codes across California and Texas near the southwest border to file Currency Transaction Reports (CTRs) with FinCEN at a $200 threshold, in connection with cash transactions.”
“More than one million Americans are about to face a new level of financial surveillance,” writes Nicholas Anthony, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute. “Financial surveillance in the United States has long needed reform, but this move is in the wrong direction.”
Anthony says rather than lowering the threshold, the $10,000 baseline is overdue to be raised…
The Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 established CTRs as we know them today, and Treasury regulations enacted in 1972 set the threshold at $10,000.
As Anthony points out, the $10,000 threshold has remained since that time. If it had been raised even just to keep up with inflation, the current minimum for filing a CTR would be anywhere between $80,000 and $180,000…For this reason, the number of CTRs has ballooned far past the point that any bureaucracy could feasibly find it useful. Last year, FinCEN reported that for FY 2023, businesses and financial institutions filed around 20.8 million CTRs—an average of 57,000 per day.
“Inflation may have contributed to the increase in volume of CTRs filed, which has increased by about 62 percent since fiscal year 2002,” according to a December 2024 report from the Government Accountability Office. “The inflation-adjusted threshold in 2023 would have been about $72,880. Using an inflation-adjusted threshold would have reduced the number of CTRs filed by at least 90 percent annually since 2014.”The Trump administration’s push to crack down on penny-ante cash transactions is reminiscent of actions the Biden administration attempted.
The Biden administration also proposed a rule requiring banks to report to the IRS any customers with at least $600 in annual deposits and withdrawals—in other words, nearly everybody.”
$200 in cash and you are going to be surveilled under this emergency war on drugs that Trump is using to justify tariffs, surveillance, and the taking of freedoms. I’d rather we pass a law and make drugs illegal in this country versus letting the government surveil anyone in 30 counties with $200 in their pockets. That 30 counties will soon be 30 states. Don’t ever trust the federal government.
Sincerely Yours,
C Thomas Printer
The Dow Jones finished trading …at 41,985.
The 10-year Treasury bond is at …4.25%
The price of Brent Crude is … at $ 72.16 per barrel.
The price of gold is … at $3,028/oz.
The price of silver is … at $33.53/oz.
I leave you with this from the information superhighway, What did the left eye say to the right eye? Between you and me, something smells.
Thank you for listening today and you can find all of our articles and more on our website cthomasprinter.com.