For our top economic article today, I’ve chosen one by Bill Bonner who lays out in crisp terms the socialist/fascist transition that is sweeping our nation:
Stagflation is here. We wait to find out how long it will last and how deep it will go.
The worse it gets the greater the pressure for radical change. But in what direction?
Communism? Socialism? Capitalism? Fascism?
A recent article on Yahoo! that I posted in The Daily Doom last week claimed “Americans' support for capitalism drops to new low, poll finds.” The peculiar thing is that conservatives are largely advancing the transition.
As Bonner goes on to explain …
Wherever we’re going, for better or worse, Donald Trump leads the way. And it’s not toward capitalism. Our old friend, Steve Chapman in the Chicago Tribune:
“Donald Trump pioneers a strange policy: Republican socialism
“Socialism used to be the antithesis of Republican principles. But Donald Trump has begun a government invasion of the private sector.”
I warned about that in this weekend’s Deeper Dive,
The US government … needs, immediately, to curtail its sudden novel enthusiasm for acquiring ownership in factories in exchange for permitting them to exist or grow! That is the definition of economic fascism, a form of socialism, not capitalism, and certainly not anything Republicans/conservatives of the past ever stood for. (Nor very many Democrats either….)
We do not need to be partially nationalizing companies. Companies do not need government making business decisions at a board level or sucking their profits away from other human investors via major share ownership. This is the take-over of capitalism and its dismantling….
Bonner’s article gives several examples of the avalanche that is rapidly sweeping corporate ownership into US government coffers:
In June, the Trump administration approved Nippon Steel’s acquisition of U.S. Steel on the condition that it give the White House a “golden share” of the Japanese company. Although it is not an equity stake, Trump declared, “We have a golden share, which I control, or the president controls.”
On Aug. 22, Intel announced an agreement with the administration to take $8.9 billion in the company’s common stock, approximately a 10 percent stake, making the U.S. the largest investor in the tech giant that builds the semiconductor chips that power smartphones, computers and data centers.
This deal is no freebie for the American taxpayer. It is in lieu of Intel repaying the federal grants it received under the bipartisan U.S. Chips and Science Act, which Biden signed into law in 2022.
Earlier last month, Trump also made a deal with two of Intel’s rivals, Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices, requiring them to pay 15 percent of the revenues made from sales to China to the U.S.
It’s one thing to skim the profits. It’s another to own the business. Typically, the feds don’t know, and don’t care, how to manage an enterprise. They are parasites, not producers; wolves, not shepherds. Let them take a lamb now and then, and the flock survives. Put them in charge, on the other hand, and pretty soon you have no lambs at all.
Trump has sometimes praised Hitler as a great leader, and those are moves straight out of Hitler’s economic playbook as he was rebuilding Germany from collapse by partnering BIG government money with private and public companies for a share of ownership and control. It came to be called economic fascism.
It used to be that Republicans did not trust government to get in bed with business. Now they are leading government into owning controlling, or at least major-influencing, shares of the businesses as a cost of doing business. Almost as if they are now sleeping in the poppy fields of Oz, conservatives seem fine with this, just like they seem fine with Trump seizing control over crypto currencies and positioning his own family stablecoins at the center to become the new coins of the realm just as they seem OK with him trying to control interest rates by cajoling the Fed to do more stimulus in a time when Trump says the economy is great. It just keeps coming.
What is finally becoming a bridge too far for a few conservatives, however, is that Trump is going beyond trying to create the new coin of the realm while making sure his brand is the centerpiece. They were fine with that, it seemed, but he’s also now creating the digital ID system that will run the beast. As Winepress reports,
Following the creation of a digital dollar framework in July, the Trump administration is now creating the tools needed to facilitate those digital dollars, also referred to as stablecoins and tokenized asset deposits, as it seeks to create a nationally approved digital ID system for the U.S. that can safely store Americans’ tokenized ‘money’ and digital assets.
And, as another article below says today, some in MAGA, such as MTG, are finally becoming incensed with this:
In an article called "Trump loves AI, and the MAGA world is getting worried," Politico reported, "President Donald Trump’s AI action plan has set off a backlash from some of the biggest figures in the America First movement — a rift expected to shape the next round of arguments in Congress about how to turbocharge the technology."
"Trump’s rush toward AI is exposing an important fault line in the Republican coalition: Many of its voters and leaders deeply mistrust the power of Big Tech, but Trump himself has worked closely with industry CEOs to deliver on their priorities," the report states.
It’s hard to tell the difference between Trump’s plan and the sustainable-development goals of the WEF’s Agenda 2030:
“Digital IDs linked with bank or mobile money accounts can improve the delivery of social protection coverage and serve to better reach eligible beneficiaries. Digital technologies may help to reduce leakage, errors and costs in the design of social protection programmes….”
In November 2023, the EU Parliament formally reached an agreement on implementing a new framework for a European digital identity (eID)4. The EU said at the time: “Under the new law, member states will offer citizens and businesses digital wallets that will be able to link their national digital identities with proof of other personal attributes (e.g., driving licence, diplomas, bank account). Citizens will be able to prove their identity and share electronic documents from their digital wallets with a click of a button on their mobile phone.”
You cannot expect Trump to let America (or his own investments in the new digital gold) get left behind Europe. So, read what follows to compare his plans to what Europe is doing:
Winepress continues,
This is part of an obligation mandated in the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act (GENIUS Act),6 a bill that President Donald Trump signed in July that establishes a framework for stablecoins; digital dollars, programmable tokens acting as “money,” providing corporations and other third-party entities to effectively become a “bank” that can issue stablecoins pegged to the U.S. dollar. As I covered in my report the week it was signed - after Congress held the longest voting session ever in its history - the bill effectively creates CBDCs that are managed by third-party operators in collaboration with the U.S. government for regulation, and technology and funds linked back to the Federal Reserve.
Trump’s AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks confirmed7 during the signing event that the bill creates a digital dollar that will eventually be widely used by Americans and others around the world.
“And for every digital dollar in a crypto wallet, there'll be a traditional dollar in a US bank account, which will create trillions of dollars demand for US Treasuries. So that is the power of this bill, as you asked all the comments, this is a huge promise made and promise kept by President Trump….”
The Treasury’s request for comment in accordance with the demands of the GENIUS Act asked for four things: Application Program Interfaces (APIs), AI, Blockchain Technology and Monitoring, and Digital Identity Verification. As for digital IDs, the Treasury wrote:
“Digital identity verification (also known as identity proofing) is the process of establishing and verifying that a person is who they claim to be in a digital context. Treasury is aware of several efforts in the digital asset industry to develop portable digital identity credentials designed to support various elements of [Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Counter-Terrorism Financing (CFT)] and sanctions compliance, maximize user privacy, and reduce compliance burden on financial institutions.
“These tools can incorporate different pieces of information, such as government-issued identity documents or biometrics, and can vary by operational models, governance, and convenience. Digital identity verification tools can also potentially be used by regulated digital asset intermediaries to support onboarding or by decentralized finance (DeFi) services' smart contracts to automatically check for a credential before executing a user's transaction.”
Joy. That also means they can stop your transaction. This certainly won’t end well.
I reported a month or so ago about how the government scanned my face at the airport to link it to my passport. They got me! Anytime they see my face on a camera, they will now be able to match it to my passport identity. I didn’t even give it much thought at the time. I was too busy trying to solve a boarding-pass problem Alaska Airlines created for us to think about it. It can happen quickly.
The warning in my Deeper Dive continued rather quaintly against this complex brave new world that is moving so quickly into existence,
We don’t need or want private presidential ownership of the nation’s money supply either, as is starting to happen with the nationalizing via US Treasury of cryptocurrencies and backing of presidential select stablecoins.
This transformation of our economy is an entirely new level of insanity in the overturning of conservative principles … by conservatives … or those who once were. It overturns free, capitalist markets by mandating a government cut of the pie in exchange for government allowances, and it is not going to end well at all.
What we need is not Fed manipulation, not federal manipulation via shared ownership in factories, not growing presidential ownership of the monetary system either, but simply a return to actual free markets, functioning without all the manipulation. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen anything like that and we are moving further from it than ever! That’s why the system is not working.
It’s an international race to own the monetary beast now, and Trump seeks to lead it:
Two weeks after the GENIUS Act was passed, the White House published8 a 166-page report titled “Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Finance Technology.” Its Working Group of authors that span across a number of departments, lays out in detail the plans and recommendations this administration has for the future of finance, and how they intend to achieve these objectives. The Working Group, according to the document, “endorse the notion that digital assets and blockchain technologies can revolutionize not just America’s financial system, but systems of ownership and governance economy-wide.”
Who could imagine that placing the US government (and its president) so central to the ownership, control and distribution of cryptocurrencies while requiring people to use digital IDs for access might someday turn the new digital dollar into the tool of an authoritarian government that seeks too much control over what you can do? Who could ever foresee such a thing, and why would anyone want to stand in the way of such progress toward American greatness?
(You can read a lot more details in the Winepress article, listed in boldface in the headlines below. Today the headlines are free for all.)
Economania (national & global economic collapse plus market news)
Long-term unemployment at post-pandemic high, straining workers and economy
Stocks rise after Trump’s positive comments on China trade talks
Bessent: TikTok deal ‘framework’ reached with China, Trump and Xi will finalize it Friday
Trump advocates end to quarterly earnings reports
Money Matters (monetary policy, metals, cryptos, currency wars & going cashless)
A Correction in Gold and Silver is Coming. Altamira Gold Drills and Hits
Wars & Rumors of War, Revolts, Hacks & Cyberattacks + AI threats
Trump loves AI, and the MAGA world is getting worried
A.I.’s Prophet of Doom Wants to Shut It All Down
44 US AGs Write a Letter Warning AI Companies
The little-known think tank pushing Trump to replace the federal workforce with AI
The Uncanny Valley of Zoom: Is There Humanity Without Humans?
Trump Trade Wars & Turf Wars
China Snub of U.S. Soybeans Is Crisis for American Farmers
Political Pandemonium & Social Senescence (socio-political issues & events)
What we know about Charlie Kirk shooting suspect Tyler Robinson
America: 357 Mass Shootings In 2025
When Debate Dies, Society Begins Its Death Rattle (And this is written by a lesbian, who could have found her own reason to hate Kirk but did not and did not even mention it.)
What happens after Charlie Kirk?
Growing concerns about Patel's FBI leadership
Patel faces congressional hearings after missteps in Kirk assassination probe and turmoil at FBI
Musk got DOGE's mission "backward," Lutnick says
Trump’s Reversals on Immigration Mount Over Economic Concerns
US Official Offers Regrets Over Deportation of South Koreans. Will be Allowed to Return
New Bill Could Punish Lenient Judges Following Charlotte Train Stabbing
Democrats dig in on health care as threat of government shutdown looms
Trump vows national emergency in D.C. over ICE dispute “if necessary”
A Pox Upon Us (the plagues, pandemics & health police of the 2020s)
Henry Ford Birth Cohort: Vaccinated Kids Had 453% More Neurodevelopmental Disorders
Off-the-Beat News & Just Plain Offbeat News
Man, 34, has tooth implanted in eye to restore his vision
Doomer Humor
“Donald Trump pioneers a strange policy: Republican socialism. Socialism used to be the antithesis of Republican principles. But Donald Trump has begun a government invasion of the private sector.” — Steve Chapman, Chicago Tribune
Donald Trump is not and never has been a Republican. He is a life-long New York Democrat who descended an escalator in 2015 wearing a Republican Mardi Gras mask. His form of Socialism is plain ol’ big government Socialism that has been promoted and practiced by Democrats for generations.
The MAGA faithful, populated by former tea-party Republicans who’ve lost their way, has substituted Trumpism for Conservatism. Unfortunately, the members of his cult of personality are just like Adolf Hitler’s. No, Trump is not Hitler, but his apostles revere him as a god the same way the Nazis revered Hitler. But instead of straight-arm salutes, his sycophants regale him with MAGA hats and cries of “TDS” and “RINO” against any and all true Republicans.
the 99th percentile are going to get a serious haircut