Author: Tony Wikrent Page 3 of 48

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – January 18, 2026

by Tony Wikrent

Dingbat imperialism and its malcontents

Dingbat Imperialism, the Lowest Stage of Capitalism

John Ganz, Jan 13, 2026 [Unpopular Front]

Germany planning ‘Arctic Sentry’ Nato mission to protect Greenland 

[Telegraph, via Naked Capitalism 01-13-2025]

Tech billionaires behind Greenland bid want to build ‘freedom cities’ 

[Responsible Statecraft, via Naked Capitalism 01-13-2025]

The Oligarchs Pushing for Conquest in Greenland

Casey Michel, January 13, 2026 [The New Republic]

Trump’s fixation on filching the island territory from Denmark may seem like the demented ravings of a mad king. But to a cohort of plutocrat weirdos, it makes perfect sense.

Trump not violating any law

‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’

Trump Stuns By Saying ‘I Don’t Know’ When Asked Directly NBC’s Kristen Welker ‘Don’t You Need to Uphold the Constitution?’

Joe DePaolo, May 4th, 2025 [mediaite.com]

How Trump gave the green light for the killing of protestors. 

[Borderland Talk with Jenn Budd, via Naked Capitalism 01-12-2025]

…I will argue to my dying day that he did not see her or her wife as an actual physical threat in that moment, but someone who should be taught a lesson. This analysis is based in my experience as a former agent, and teaching lessons to people who do not respect our authority is rampant in ICE, Border Patrol and CBP. Watch HBO’s Critical Incident to see all three agencies teach Anastasio Hernandez-Rojas this lesson….

But in October, things changed.

ICE shot at protestor Marimar Martinez hitting her five times on October 4, 2025. Now, Renee Good is dead. What changed? Why has ICE started shooting at people trying to warn the community of their presence when they did not before?

What changed is that ICE and other agencies performing civil immigration enforcement were given a directive from the President of the United States to label them as “domestic terrorists.” On September 25, 2025, before the Martinez shooting, Trump issued an executive order titled, “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Political Violence.” This EO changed the definition of who is considered by federal agents to be a “domestic terrorist” to include:

• anti-Americanism
• anti-capitalism
• anti-Christianity
• support for the overthrow of the United States Government
• extremism on migration
• extremism on race
• extremism on gender
• hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family
• hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on religion, and
• hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on morality.

To be fair, people like Marimar and Renee who maintain what the right-wing and this administration considers “extremism on migration” have been considered “domestic terrorists” for quite some time now. But they were not given the green light to kill them until the administration officially designated them as ‘domestic terrorists” in the executive order….

The Machinery of Terror

Chris Hedges, Jan 11, 2026

The Trump administration is consolidating the familiar machinery of terror of all authoritarian states. We must resist now. If we wait, it will be too late.

I have seen the masked goons who terrorize our streets before. I saw them during the “Dirty War” in Argentina, where 30,000 men, women and children were “disappeared” by the military junta. Victims were held in secret prisons, savagely tortured and murdered. To this day, many families do not know the fate of their loved ones.

I saw them in El Salvador, when death squads were killing 800 people a month. I saw them in Guatemala under the dictatorship of José Efraín Ríos Montt. I saw them in Augusto Pinochet’s Chile and in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. I saw them in Iran under the rule of the ayatollahs where I was arrested and jailed twice and once deported in handcuffs. I saw them in Hafez al-Assad’s Syria. I saw them in Bosnia, where Muslims were herded into concentration camps, executed and buried in mass graves.

I know these goons. I have been a prisoner in their jails and spent hours in their interrogation rooms. I have been beaten by them. I have been deported, and in several cases banned, from their countries. I know what is coming….

[X-Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 01-13-2025]

https://x.com/sandibachom/status/2010874067419873362

Exclusive: Secret ICE Programs Revealed 

Ken Klippenstein [via Naked Capitalism 01-15-2025]

Important.

‘ELITE’: The Palantir App ICE Uses to Find Neighborhoods to Raid 

[404 Media, via Naked Capitalism 01-17-2025]

“Stupod B*tch”: GoFundMe for Minnesota ICE Agent Is Chilling 

[New Republic, via Naked Capitalism 01-13-2025]

US Border Agents Intentionally Stepped in Front of Moving Vehicles to Justify Shooting at Them 

[Nation, via Naked Capitalism 01-13-2025]

Enforcement Regime 

Michale Macher, Phenomenal World, via Naked Capitalism 01-12-2025]

How a 40-second encounter led an ICE agent to shoot and kill a Twin Cities resident 

[Minnesota Star Tribune, via Naked Capitalism 01-12-2025]

[NC: Comprehensive report and not a good one for ICE.]

[X-Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 01-12-2025]

My final message before I’m on an FBI watchlist: Palantir, Epstein, & The New York Times 

Juan Sebastian Pinto [a former Palantir employee, via Naked Capitalism 01-12-2025]

Strategic Political Economy

China curbs high-frequency trading to de-risk markets 

[Asia Times, via Naked Capitalism 01-17-2025]

[TW: Worth noting to show, yes, it is possible to actually regulate financial markets.]

Global power shift

[X-Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 01-17-2025]

Seyed M. Marandi: Violent Riots & a Massive War Coming

Glenn Diesen [YouTube, via Naked Capitalism 01-13-2025]

‘Kill Switch’—Iran Shuts Down Starlink Internet For First Time

Zak Doffman, Jan 12, 2026 [Forbes]

We have not seen this before. Iran’s digital blackout has now deployed military jammers, reportedly supplied by Russia, to shut down access to Starlink Internet. This is a game-changer for the Plan-B connectivity frequently used by protesters and anti-regime activists when ordinary access to the internet is stopped..

“Despite reports that tens of thousands of Starlink units are operating inside Iran,” says Iran Wire, “the blackout has also reached satellite connections.” It is reported that about 30 per cent of Starlink’s uplink and downlink traffic was (initially) disrupted,” quickly rising “to more than 80 per cent” within hours.

The CIA/Mossad Operation to Spark a Color Revolution in Iran has Failed 

Larry Johnson [via Naked Capitalism 01-12-2025]

The “Trump Doctrine” Is Shaped By Elbridge Colby’s “Strategy Of Denial” 

Andrew Korybko [via Naked Capitalism 01-12-2025]

Trump Declares National Emergency to Protect Stolen Venezuela Funds 

[Antiwar, via Naked Capitalism 01-12-2025]

Venezuela Raid – Aftermath 

[Black Mountain Analysis, via Naked Capitalism 01-12-2025]

Felonomics

1 Year Into Trump 2.0, the Social Security Administration Is in Disarray

Martin Burns and Mary Liz Burns, Jan 16, 2026 [Common Dreams]

They’re not capitalists — they’re predatory criminals

Regulators say DoorDash and Uber Eats chiseled NYC delivery workers out of $550M in tips

[Gothamistvia Naked Capitalism 01-15-2025]

Information age dystopia / surveillance state

LAWYER: Cops Have a NEW “Social Score” to Label You a Threat 

[Hampton Law, YouTube, via Naked Capitalism 01-13-2025]

[NC: Usefully tells you which settings to disable/enable on your iPhone or Android to reduce data extraction. Even though I had told my tech woman to do that, she had missed some. Surprised it does not recommend turning off WiFi save when you specifically want to use it (yours truly is perfectly happy to pay for connectivity for the sake of my privacy, which I infer is a outlier practice). My ride share app asks I turn on WiFi to facilitate geolocation, which despite GPS, is pretty poor otherwise. I prefer to type in my pickup.]

De-Banked 

Scott Ritter [via Naked Capitalism 01-15-2025]

[Ritter’s accounts zeroed out without explanation.]

Climate and environmental crises

Ocean Temperatures Just Hit a Dire New Record 

[Scientific American, via Naked Capitalism 01-13-2025]

World’s richest 1% have already used fair share of emissions for 2026, says Oxfam 

[The Guardian, via Naked Capitalism 01-12-2025]

Democrats’ political malpractice

Do the Democrats Have the Guts to Outflank Trump on Defense Industry Looting? 

Les Leopold, Jan 13, 2026 [Wall Street’s War on Workers]

Monopoly Round-Up: Why Did Trump Just Attack the Fed and Corporate America? 

Matt Stoller, Jan 12, 2026 [BIG]

Resistance

What to Do If ICE Shows Up: Know Your Rights

Kim Wehle, Jan 11, 2026 [Zeteo]

Here are five guidelines for how to respond if US federal immigration agents stop, approach you, or knock at your door.

1. If ICE stops or intimidates you, do not precipitously flee

2. If detained (even temporarily), you can stay silent

3. ICE can make certain arrests without a warrant, but it cannot search your home without either a judicial warrant or your consent

4. If detained, you can ask the ICE agent to identify themselves

5. You can hire a lawyer after an arrest, but whether you can immediately call one depends on state law….

Here’s How You Can Challenge Wage Garnishment for Defaulted Student Loans

[Truthout, via Naked Capitalism 01-12-2025]

Civic republicanism

Mere Anarchy 

Aurelien [via Naked Capitalism 01-15-2025]

Last week, I suggested that these days governments and the private sector were increasingly following a policy of nihilistic destruction, which was the logical, if uncomfortable, outcome of the kind of apocalyptic individualism now rampant everywhere after the unchallenged triumph of Liberal ideas.

I think that case is sufficiently well established, and this week I want to look in more detail at specific areas where this is happening, or has even happened, and consider what some of the practical consequences may be. They are all logically deducible from the ultra-individualist, almost autistic, mindset that Liberalism at its worst entails, and it may be worth saying just a word about that first….

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – January 11, 2026

by Tony Wikrent

“A curtain of darkness is settling over our nation.”

[TW: For a reason I shall explain, there were a number of posts this past week that struck me but I have not included all of them here. What struck me was the impression that the writers are beginning to wrestle with some truly fundamental questions of human nature, and how human nature can be molded — or more accurately, channeled and contained — by how society is organized, according to which principles, and whether the leaders of society embody, to some degree or another, those principles. So, I was greatly encouraged a couple days ago when a reader from this site reached out to me using Facebook messages to initiate a discussion of civic republicanism.]

In Defense of Pretexts — Paying tribute to virtue is better than the alternative…

Brian Beutler, Jan 09, 2026 [Off Message]

…my impression is most people, even many of Trump’s own loyalists, haven’t experienced all this as just another week in Trumpville. They feel more disturbed—or, in MAGA, more titillated—as though a new threshold of wickedness has been crossed.

That’s been my feeling since Sunday morning, for reasons I at first struggled to articulate.…

I would of course prefer to live in a world where policymakers and elected officials were scrupulously honest and above board. If that were our condition, we wouldn’t have pretexts, because we wouldn’t start any wars. We might finish them, but we wouldn’t go looking.

Building a world like that should be our north star. But in the world of today—of mixed and rotten motives, where wars of choice happen whether I want them to or not—I’ll take false justifications for bad acts.

If you care about America’s highest aspirations—freedom, equality, self-governance rule of law—the pretexts matter. We can be clear eyed about the people who lay false claim to these ideals, yet still take some solace in their lies, because the lies confirm that the ideals still have power.

Why pretend that a war of plunder is meant to spread democracy or fight communism or defend the homeland, unless you know that the public values certain higher principles, and may revolt if you traduce them? If your true motives are toxic, you have to conceal them, because the people—we the people—are better than you.

This is the tribute vice pays to virtue in the rawest sense, and it is revealing. These are cynical people, many of whom have no place in their hearts for principle or consistency. But if that is their nature, why would they pay tribute to anything? Vice is vice.

They do it because virtue still controls. It’s still the default. Because they haven’t won the masses over to uncut evil.

By dispensing with the pretexts, Trump suggests he thinks he’s overcome that obstacle, worn the public down, made us as malevolent as he is. He still pays some tribute to virtue. He won’t cop to having launched a war. But the theft and subjugation are right there on the surface, without any tributes to virtue.

I think this is what has people so unsettled. Why he has to be stopped preemptively and forced to reverse, or else be run out of office. If he prevails—not just in acting lawlessly, but in doing so nakedly, and without pushback—then it’s over. We become changed.

That’s why I miss the pretexts. It’s also why I take some solace in the fact that his Venezuela “policy” polls poorly. That his menacing of Greenland polls even worse….

The Future of Democracy Depends on the Republican Party — The Battle for a Liberal Society is Happening Within the Political Right

Ryan Enos, Jan 09, 2026

Right now, the Republican Party is enabling the authoritarian leader who is ignoring the law and terrorizing his own citizens. Because of this party’s leader, we no longer live in a full democracy. But, despite this or, perhaps, because of it, the future of democracy in the United States will depend on choices made within the Republican Party.

This must be the path because a liberal democracy requires more than one functioning party, and, at least in the foreseeable future, the Republican Party will be one of them. Our plan for sustaining that liberal society can’t be shutting the GOP out of power, but rather must include shaping the Republican Party, the party that will represent the approximately half of society that inevitably holds right-wing beliefs, into a party that upholds liberalism (small l) and democracy.

The alternative is to hope that Democrats win all elections moving forward. But if this is our plan for sustaining democracy, we are cooked…..

Trump not violating any law

‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’

Trump Stuns By Saying ‘I Don’t Know’ When Asked Directly NBC’s Kristen Welker ‘Don’t You Need to Uphold the Constitution?’

Joe DePaolo, May 4th, 2025 [mediaite.com]

Rep. Omar Warns Trump Aims to Provoke Enough Agitation in Minnesota So He Can Declare ‘Martial Law’

Jon Queally, Jan 10, 2026 [CommonDreams]

Cold Blood: A New Reichstag Plot Begins With Murder — Minneapolis is the target of a blatant effort to incite a new wave of domestic oppression.

Jim Stewartson, Jan 07, 2026 [MindWar]

Following ICE murder of Renee Nicole Good, Trump officials threaten mass repression

[Countercurrents, via Naked Capitalism 01-10-2025]

… The conscious and deliberate character of Good’s killing is underscored by the open and unapologetic defense of the murder by Trump administration officials. By hailing the killing, Trump and the coterie of fascists in the administration are making clear that it was an expression of official government policy.

Everything coming out of the mouths of administration officials is a lie, and everyone knows it is a lie. On Thursday, Vice President JD Vance held a press conference in which he slandered Good and praised her killer. He called the federal agent’s actions “legitimate” and denounced the media for “talking about this guy as if he’s a murderer,” adding menacingly, “Be a little bit more careful.”

The Trump administration is seizing on the murder of Good as a pretext for a sweeping escalation in the criminalization of political opposition. Vance announced the creation of a new assistant attorney general position that will answer directly to the president. Asked about his message to “far-leftist agitators,” Vance declared: “Now they have an assistant attorney general who is going to prosecute and investigate their fraud and their violence more aggressively than it has ever been investigated.”

Vance accused “a group of left-wing radicals” of using “domestic terror techniques” to oppose the government’s immigration policies.

He never referred to Good by name, instead smearing her as “that woman,” a “deranged leftist” who was “brainwashed.” He insisted the killer was “protected by absolute immunity,” denounced the local investigation into the murder, and declared, “The unprecedented thing is the idea that a local official can actually prosecute a federal official with absolute immunity.” ….

In an extraordinary statement, Trump declared that he operates outside of any legal constraint. Asked whether there were any limits on his ability to strike, invade or coerce other nations, Trump responded: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.” He dismissed international law outright—“I don’t need international law”—and made clear that he would be the sole arbiter of any legal constraints: “It depends what your definition of international law is.” ….

While leading Democrats have issued insincere statements in response to the killing of Good, their main concern is to contain the explosive growth of opposition within the United States…. At a press conference Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries were asked if they would use their budgetary powers to rein in ICE. They refused to answer….

Letters from an American, January 10, 2026

Heather Cox Richardson, Jan 11, 2026

…Hours after Good’s death, Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem appeared in Manhattan behind a podium emblazoned with the words: “ONE OF OURS, ALL OF YOURS.”….

We’re All “Domestic Terrorists” Now

Ross Rosenfeld, January 8, 2026 [The New Republic]

In ICE’s Own Words, It’s “Wartime” in America 

Michael Tomasky, January 9, 2026 [The New Republic]

ICE just launched a “wartime recruitment” campaign and seeks agents who want to “defend” their “culture.” There will be more Renee Goods….

Trump Lays Out a Vision of Power Restrained Only by ‘My Own Morality 

[New York Times, via Naked Capitalism 01-09-2025]

No Authority. Only Violence.

Jim Stewartson, Jan 09, 2026 [MindWar]

A word often used to describe Trump is authoritarian. But this is insufficient. Authority is the recognized right to control outcomes within a set of constraints accepted as binding—familial, religious, cultural, moral or legal.

The U.S. federal government is deliberately destroying the idea of any authority being legitimate except the ability to project coercive violence. We are living in the “might makes right” world of neo-Nazi ideology, a kratocracy.

• William Montague defined kratocracy as: a government by those strong enough to seize control through violence or deceit.

In ‘Unhinged’ Rant, Miller Says US Has Right to Take Over Any Country For Its Resources

Julia Conley, January 06, 2025 [CommonDreams]

Trump admin sends tough private message to oil companies on Venezuela 

[Politico, via Naked Capitalism 01-04-2026]

Administration officials have told oil executives in recent weeks that if they want compensation for their rigs, pipelines and other seized property, then they must be prepared to go back into Venezuela now and invest heavily in reviving its shattered petroleum industry, two people familiar with the administration’s outreach told POLITICO on Saturday….

Monopoly Round-Up: A Gunboat Oligarchy Goes After Venezuelan Oil

Matt Stoller, Jan 04, 2026 [BIG]

[TW: a history lesson that is grandly encouraging. Wright Patman would be a wonderful subject for Ron Chernow’s next book (but so also would be Lincoln economic advisor Henry Carey; Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, who delivered one of the most important American explanations of civic republicanism; and Pennsylvania Congressman Thadeous Stevens, whose warnings of the dreadful consequences of failing to seize the wealth of the slave-holders proved to be entirely accurate). Also important is Stoller noting that Trump is really just a continuation of Bush. Implication: getting rid of Trump will not solve the underlying problems of an entrenched oligarchy controlling both major political parties, and the militant conservative and libertarian movements that are nurtured and richly funded by that entrenched oligarchy.]

Trump kicked off 2026 with a military attack on Venezuela and a naked seizure of oil resources. Wall Street is overjoyed. Plus, Mamdani takes office and billionaires rage at a wealth tax….

…U.S. domination of the oil reserves of South America is not new. And neither is the fusion of corporate and state interest.

Ninety five years ago, in 1931, Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, who owned Gulf Oil (now Chevron), forced the President of Colombia to give his company the Barco oil concession, which borders Venezuela. How? Well Wall Street banks and the U.S. government threatened to withhold vitally needed bank loans if Colombia did not cede the franchise….

At the time, Democrats were incompetent and split, as it was an era of deep reverence for the wealthy and bitter culture warring over race and alcohol. For instance, the head of the DNC in the late 1920s, a Dupont executive named John J. Raskob, published a pamphlet titled “Everybody Ought to Be Rich” encouraging Americans to borrow money to invest in the stock market.

Just as there is increasing support for cynical and nihilistic figures today, many in the 1920s felt warmly towards Mellon, Mussolini, and authoritarianism in general….

But then came the 1929 crash, and a period of “debunking” of myths, as Louis Brandeis put it. The old order was discredited. And a political realignment occurred. The Democrats turned to liberalism, and former party elites like Raskob became bitter foes of FDR in the 1930s. But more importantly, Patman’s impeachment campaign succeeded. Mellon was fired, because then-President Herbert Hoover was under political pressure over the widespread revulsion towards economic elites. You get a sense of this dynamic by going through Patman’s Congressional correspondence. “We have just got Al Capone,” wrote one Texan. “Now let’s get some of the others.”

…Ultimately, what the attack on Venezuela shows is that Donald Trump decided to use his 2024 mandate for change to revert back to a traditional gunboat diplomacy framework, both domestically and abroad. Like Mellon, Harding, Hoover, and George W. Bush, Trump is operating on behalf of financial capital. Indeed, Trump more reflects Bush than anyone else; his administration is staffed with former Bush Republicans, and the GOP Congress is full of Bush adherents.

Read More

by Tony Wikrent

Trump DHS Post Calling for ‘100 Million Deportations’ Suggests Intent to Kick Out Nonwhite Citizens

Stephen Prager, January 02, 2026 [CommonDreams]

The Trump administration provoked horror this week with the suggestion that the United States could be turned into a paradise if over a quarter of the people in the country were deported.

On Wednesday, the official social media account for the Department of Homeland Security posted a piece of artwork depicting a pink late-1960s Cadillac Eldorado parked on a bright, idyllic beach. Over the clear blue sky are the words “America after 100 million deportations.”

Happy Race War! (Or anything but the Epstein Files) — The U.S. regime’s vision for 2026 is to deport almost a third of its own population.

Jim Stewartson, January 01, 2026 [MindWar]

To put this number in perspective:

• The total number of undocumented immigrants in America is about 14 million.
• The total number of foreign-born people in America—including naturalized citizens—is about 53 million.
• The total number of Black and Hispanic people in America is about 110 million.
• 100 million is almost a third of the total U.S. population.
• Millions would necessarily die in any such process.
• The economy would collapse.

The “third world” framing in the post makes the intention explicit. It’s not about crime or even immigrants; it’s about race. The only conclusion you can reach is that DHS’s goal is to forcibly transform America into a whites-only ethnostate like apartheid South Africa—by deporting every Black and brown person… somewhere….

DHS Says REAL ID, Which DHS Certifies, Is Too Unreliable To Confirm U.S. Citizenship 

[Reason, via Naked Capitalism 01-03-2025]

Trump’s Immigration Nightmare: It Is Happening Here

Radley Balko, December 24, 2025 [The New Republic]

With astonishing speed, the administration has toppled the most cherished pillars of a free society. And the experts agree: It’s all going to get much, much worse….

…Over the last year, I’ve spoken to and met with immigration attorneys and advocates all over the country. Many who openly spoke with me prior to the 2024 election are no longer willing to be quoted, fearing retaliation against their organizations or their funders, or even against them personally.

In more recent months, I’ve also interviewed former ICE and Customs and Border Protection officials, and former Immigration Court judges who served across multiple administrations of both parties. Career legal and law enforcement officials tend to be circumspect in their critiques of fellow law enforcement officers. They tend to avoid casual references to police states, or comparing U.S. police agencies to those in authoritarian countries. That’s no longer the case. These career police executives and prosecutors now use language I’ve rarely heard from current or former government officials in my career….

Read More

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – December 21, 2025

by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

The $79 Trillion Heist

Harold Meyerson, December 03, 2025 [The American Prospect]

…As Emma Janssen has reported in these pages, marketers are going where the money is, like bank robber Willie Sutton. First-class and business-seat travel on the airlines is booming, so much so that seating arrangements on Delta and United are being reconfigured to create more room for the affluent, while coach seats are going unfilled and “discount” airlines struggle. Revenues are up 3 percent this year at the Ritz-Carltons, the Four Seasons, and other luxury hotels, yet down by 3 percent at economy hotels. And when it comes to life’s biggest purchase—a home—the median age of first-time buyers reached 40 this year, an all-time high according to the National Association of Realtors….

Life in the nonaffluent nation is getting harder. According to a Brookings Institution analysis from last year, 43 percent of American families don’t earn enough to pay for housing, food, health care, child care, and transportation; every week, they must juggle which to pay and which not to pay. Among Black and Latino families, those figures rise to 59 percent and 66 percent, respectively….

What would America look like if the gap between worker pay and productivity hadn’t opened? A RAND Corporation study from earlier this year found that the bottom 90 percent of wage earners received about 67 percent of all taxable income in 1975. In 2019, the last year for which this data was available, they received 46.8 percent. Had that bottom 90 percent continued during the past half-century to make the same share of the national income they’d had in 1975, RAND calculates that by 2023 they would have made an additional $79 trillion. Just in the year 2023, they would have made an additional $3.9 trillion. As the size of the bottom 90 percent of the U.S. workforce is roughly 140 million people, that means that the average earner would have made about $28,000 more in 2023 than they actually did.

Where have all those missing $28,000 paychecks gone? Well, our nation was home to 1,135 billionaires this year, whose aggregate net worth in 2024 came to a cozy $5.7 trillion. That’s $1.8 trillion more than what it would take to cut 140 million $28,000 paychecks.…

[TW: Meyerson then summarizes the responsibility of Ronald Reagan for this economic devastation, enumerates the specific policy changes Reagan implemented, and seven policy changes needed to reverse this descent and begin to rebuild the US economy and restore general widely shared prosperity.]

The Housing Crisis Is A Democracy Crisis

Evelyn Quartz, Dec 16, 2025 [The Lever]

…French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville, among the young nation’s first chroniclers, came to believe that Americans’ propensity to form civic associations created the lasting bonds that were the country’s real defense against tyranny. Without communal ties and shared responsibilities, Tocqueville feared individuals would fall prey to paternalistic “soft despotism,” in which top-down state administration replaces self-government.

In such an arrangement, he wrote, “Each [citizen], living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest… he exists but in himself and for himself alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his country.”

In 2025, both Jefferson’s and Tocqueville’s warnings could not be more relevant. An all-powerful corporate state has robbed ordinary citizens of the ability to put down roots. Without a stable, affordable place to live, civic associations, and the bulwark they provide against tyranny, wither away. The housing crisis is thus a democracy crisis….

America’s housing stock — once supported by strong public initiatives like the New Deal housing programs — was steadily financialized with the help of policymakers. Under the rhetoric of “individual choice” and the rise of neoliberal economics, public housing programs increasingly subsidized the private market.

The clearest example of this is the federal Section 8 voucher program, launched in 1974. The program required qualifying tenants to redeem affordable-housing vouchers in the private housing market. This allowed policymakers to back away from bold investments in public housing and hand responsibility instead to private actors.

In 2008, the neoliberal outsourcing of the housing market to Wall Street imploded the global financial system. As a result, millions of Americans lost their homes and were driven deeper into financial instability, as banks and private equity firms tightened their control over American life.

President Barack Obama inherited a collapsing economy, much as Roosevelt had seven decades prior. But instead of rescuing the common citizen — a mission central to Roosevelt’s response — Obama bailed out banking executives while offering struggling homeowners technocratic private-sector solutions like the Home Affordable Modification Program, which sought to modify loans rather than provide direct relief.

As a result, private equity giants subsequently cashed in on the financial crisis by buying up hundreds of thousands of foreclosed homes to rent out for profit.

Now, instead of helping more people become rooted in their communities, housing is dominated by rentier capitalism: a system in which homes are treated not as places to own, nor to participate in democratic life, but as financial assets. Today, a handful of consolidated private landlords dominate the rental market. The largest, Greystar Real Estate Partners, manages nearly a million rental units in the United States and was sued by the Federal Trade Commission earlier this year for allegedly burdening tenants with hidden junk fees…

A perfect distillation of the social uselessness of finance

Cory Doctorow, 18 Dec 2025 [Pluralistic]

How Capitalism Replaced America 

[Murtaza Hussain, via Naked Capitalism 12-17-2025]

Why economic policy matters for the Greens

Richard Murphy, December 15, 2025 [Funding the Future]

… This results, first, in their inability to explain the role of money, tax, borrowing, and the whole fiscal management cycle that lies at the core of macroeconomics, and second, in their failure to confront how economic power is exercised in modern economies, which confrontation is inevitably required to deliver the green transition we need….

The green transition, on which I have campaigned for a long time, will not be delivered by good intentions, ethical markets, or better pricing signals alone. It will only be delivered when political movements are willing to challenge the power of finance and markets directly, together with the flawed ideas on which their supposed power is based. And that cannot be done without understanding the role of money creation and the state’s capacity to use it for public purposes.

The problem is not that the Greens care too little about economics. It is that too many of them might accept an economic framing that treats markets as the ultimate arbiters of what is possible. Within that potential framing, government is cast as financially constrained, dependent on private capital, and permanently at risk of market punishment. As a result, green ambition could be trimmed to what markets will tolerate, not what climate science demands, and that is how radicalism is quietly neutralised, as I fear might be possible if those whom I am challenging get their way.

If you accept that the state must first persuade or appease financial markets before it can act, then the green transition is already compromised. Large-scale public investment becomes conditional. Industrial strategy becomes hesitant. Public ownership becomes politically “difficult”. And climate action is reduced to nudging private behaviour rather than reshaping the economy….

Markets do not lead transitions that undermine their own profitability. They resist them. That resistance can only be overcome by a state willing to act decisively: investing directly, owning strategically, regulating firmly, and accepting that public purpose must take precedence over private return. But that requires abandoning the idea that the state must ask permission from capital before it acts….

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – December 14, 2025

by Tony Wikrent

Trump not violating any law

‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’

Trump Stuns By Saying ‘I Don’t Know’ When Asked Directly NBC’s Kristen Welker ‘Don’t You Need to Uphold the Constitution?’

Joe DePaolo, May 4th, 2025 [mediaite.com]

White House Refuses to Rule Out Summary Executions of People on Its Secret Domestic Terrorist List

Nick Turse, December 12 2025 [The Intercept]

The Trump administration ignored questions about whether it would order the killings of those on its NSPM-7 list — even while answering our other queries.

Hegseth Ousted Head of US Southern Command Who Raised Concerns About Boat Strikes

[defenddemocracy.press, 12-07-2025]

FBI Making List of American “Extremists,” Leaked Memo Reveals 

Ken Klippenstein, via Naked Capitalism 12-07-2025]

SCOOP: Trump Admin Is Preparing to Revoke Visas of Critics of Elon Musk’s Twitter

Prem Thakker and Asawin Suebsaeng, Dec 11, 2025 [Zeteo]

Trump officials are considering revoking the visas of former European Union Commissioner Thierry Breton and Imran Ahmed, of the Center for Countering Digital Hate.

USA: New Findings Reveal Human Rights Violations at Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz” and Krome Detention Centers 

[Amnesty International, via Naked Capitalism 12-07-2025]

Senate Report Exposes Systematic Abuse of U.S. Citizens by ICE and CBP, Directly Contradicting Noem’s Denials 

[Migrant Insider, via Naked Capitalism 12-10-2025]

The Data Doesn’t Lie: How ProPublica Reports the Truth in an Era of False Claims

Stephen Engelberg, December 6, 2025 [ProPublica]

Trump pardons major drug traffickers despite his anti-drug rhetoric

[Washington Post, Dec 8, 2025]

The president has granted clemency to about 100 people accused of drug-related crimes during his time in office, a Post analysis shows.

Trump’s Pardon Racket

Stephen Holmes, Dec 9, 2025 [project-syndicate.org]

The pardon power is the only authority the US Constitution places entirely in the president’s hands, immune from legislative override or judicial review. For Alexander Hamilton, who assumed that shame would restrain abuse, Donald Trump is the nightmare scenario….

Hamilton was wrong. He did not anticipate a shameless president.

Hamilton’s case for the pardon was political, not moral. He barely mentioned mercy. The power’s core purpose was emergency peace-making: “in seasons of insurrection or rebellion, there are often critical moments, when a welltimed offer of pardon to the insurgents or rebels may restore the tranquillity of the commonwealth.” ….

Trump’s Ethnonational Security Strategy

Michael Burleigh, Richard Haass, Stephen Holmes, and Zaki Laïdi, Dec 9, 2025 [project-syndicate.org]

The United States’ new National Security Strategy is a tissue of populist ideology that reflects no understanding of the real challenges facing the country and views the main threat as liberal democracy itself. The result will be bad for most Americans and their European allies, but highly beneficial for financiers, tech billionaires, racists, and authoritarian powers, especially Russia and China.

Nordics, Not “Shithole Countries” — How American eugenics shaped U.S. immigration policy for decades, inspired Hitler, and paved the way for Trump, Musk and Miller.

Jim Stewartson, Dec 10, 2025 [MindWar]

Man Charged for Wiping Phone Before CBP Could Search It 

[404 Media, via Naked Capitalism 12-10-2025]

How Donald Trump Jr’s Fortune Jumped Six-Fold In A Year 

[Forbes, via Naked Capitalism 12-11-2025]

Eric Trump Has Gotten 10 Times Richer Since Dad’s Election

[Forbes, via Naked Capitalism 12-11-2025]

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 30, 2025

by Tony Wikrent

Trump not violating any law

‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’

Trump Stuns By Saying ‘I Don’t Know’ When Asked Directly NBC’s Kristen Welker ‘Don’t You Need to Uphold the Constitution?’

Joe DePaolo, May 4th, 2025 [mediaite.com]

Legal Experts Accuse Hegseth of ‘War Crimes, Murder, or Both’ After New Reporting on Boat Strike Order

Julia Conley, Nov 30, 2025 [CommonDreams]

The Moment to Pick a Side Has Come [Civil Discourse]

Joyce Vance, Nov 30, 2025

…on Black Friday, the Washington Post ran with an exclusive story about the September 2, 2025, attack on a boat allegedly carrying drugs in the Caribbean, the first of a series of attacks that have involved strikes on at least 23 boats to date. The Post reported that in advance of the strike, “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. ‘The order was to kill everybody.’”

That’s what the special operations commander overseeing the attack did. After the initial hit, live drone feed showed two survivors clinging to the wreckage. The commander “ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions … The two men were blown apart in the water.” The video Trump released later that day did not include the second strike.

The Post quoted Todd Huntley, a former military lawyer who had advised special operations on the illegality of the order: “Even if the U.S. were at war with the traffickers, an order to kill all the boat’s occupants if they were no longer able to fight ‘would in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime.’” ….

There is a price to be paid for confirming a man as the Secretary of Defense who fails to understand the role he is being called upon to serve in, instead, relishing the title “Secretary of War.” Hegseth received a Bachelor of Arts in politics from Princeton in 2003 and a Master of Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in 2013. He joined the Army National Guard as an infantry officer afterward. Nowhere along the road does he seem to have learned the fundamental lessons any Secretary of Defense should have known: The lesson of the Peleus trial.

In 1944, the captain of the U-boat U-852 sank the Greek steamer Peleus in the South Atlantic. There were 12 survivors, including an officer, who was given assurances they would be rescued the following day by Allied forces. But the U-852’s Kapitänleutnant Heinz Eck suddenly ordered his crew to fire on the 12 survivors and attack them with grenades when machine gun fire didn’t suffice to sink their life rafts.

Eck and four others were subsequently charged with war crimes. The charges were in connection with “the act of firing at the survivors and not the original sinking of the ship.” Eck argued “operational necessity,” claiming the survivors could have rallied and attacked the submarine. But all of the men were convicted.

It’s clear that even in wartime, an attack like the one on September 2 is a crime. If we are not at war—an issue the experts are now hotly debating and that we will track with Ryan Goodman in the morning—it’s quite simply murder….

A CIA trained killer who Trump granted asylum to killed a National Guard member — We need answers!

Dean Obeidallah, Nov 28, 2025

Disappeared to a Foreign Prison

Sarah Stillman, November 24, 2025 [The New Yorker]

…Just months earlier, one of these men had a job with UPS in Chicago. Another had lived in Houston, where he worked for his mother’s catering business, composed R. & B. music, and babysat his little brothers. Some had lived in the U.S. from an early age. Jim, a political refugee, had come to Miami from Liberia in the early nineties, when he was twenty-three, after his parents were murdered for their tribal and political affiliations during the country’s civil war. Others, including a twenty-one-year-old woman who had fled Togo fearing genital mutilation, had arrived in the U.S. recently, seeking asylum.

All of them had been taken from the United States against their will. Nearly all had been granted forms of legal relief that bar the government from deporting them to their home countries. At the heart of the protections they’d received was one of the most basic and sacrosanct concepts in both U.S. and international law: non-refoulement. This principle means that no nation should intentionally deport or expel people to a place where they are likely to face torture, persecution, death, or other grave harms….

Mica Rosenberg, Mario Ariza, McKenzie Funk, Jeff Ernsthausen and Gabriel Sandoval, November 24, 2025 [propublica.org]

Under a zero tolerance policy, the first Trump administration separated immigrant children from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border. New data suggests separations are happening all over the country, often after little more than a traffic stop.

What Pam Bondi and Lindsey Halligan did was not incompetence–It was intentional misconduct. They both must be disbarred.

Dean Obeidallah, Nov 25, 2025

The Feds Want to Make It Illegal to Even Possess an Anarchist Zine 

Seth Stern, November 23 2025 [The Intercept]

Federal prosecutors have filed a new indictment in response to a July 4 noise demonstration outside the Prairieland ICE detention facility in Alvarado, Texas, during which a police officer was shot.

There are numerous problems with the indictment, but perhaps the most glaring is its inclusion of charges against a Dallas artist who wasn’t even at the protest. Daniel “Des” Sanchez is accused of transporting a box that contained “Antifa materials” after the incident, supposedly to conceal evidence against his wife, Maricela Rueda, who was there.

But the boxed materials aren’t Molotov cocktails, pipe bombs, or whatever MAGA officials claim “Antifa” uses to wage its imaginary war on America. As prosecutors laid out in the July criminal complaint that led to the indictment, they were zines and pamphlets. Some contain controversial ideas — one was titled “Insurrectionary Anarchy” — but they’re fully constitutionally protected free speech. The case demonstrates the administration’s intensifying efforts to criminalize left-wing activists after Donald Trump announced in September that he was designating “Antifa” as a “major terrorist organization” — a legal designation that doesn’t exist for domestic groups — following the killing of Charlie Kirk….

U.S. Military Documents Indicate Plans to Keep Troops in Caribbean Through 2028

Sam Biddle, Nick Turse, November 25 2025 [The Intercept]

Strategic Political Economy

The UK is cursed: how finance destroyed our economy [applies to USA also]

Richard Murphy, November 28, 2025 [Funding the Future]

For more than 45 years, the UK has suffered not one, but two economic curses: the resource curse and the finance curse. Both were chosen, primarily by Margaret Thatcher, and both inflated the pound, destroyed industry, and left Britain dependent on hot money and speculation. In this video, I explain how we got here — and what we must do to rebuild a real economy based on work, fair reward and democracy.

The hypocrisy of bankers needs to come to an end

Richard Murphy, November 27, 2025 [Funding the Future]

Democratic Public Finance: A Radical Vision for Mamdani’s New York City

[moneyontheleft.org, via Public Banking Institute, Nov 26, 2025]

Public Banking Institute email:

“Democratic Public Finance: A Radical Vision for Mamdani’s New York City” is a must-read for anyone who believes that our cities can—and should—be financially empowered to serve their people, not Wall Street. The essay reframes how we think about money itself, arguing that it should be treated not as a scarce private commodity but as a public tool for collective prosperity. By redefining money as “public credit,” this vision breaks from the austerity-driven mindset that has long stifled local progress and instead positions finance as a democratic force for housing, jobs, and sustainability.

At the heart of this vision is the call for public banking and civic payments infrastructure that would allow New Yorkers to access fair, transparent financial services—free from the extractive practices of private banks. A municipal public bank and “Public Venmo” system would ensure that credit flows directly into community priorities such as affordable housing, small business growth, and green energy, rather than into speculative markets. This isn’t just economic reform—it’s about returning power to the people and ensuring that city wealth circulates locally.

 

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