Myrtle Beach, SC Correspondent — Treat the communiqué as a communiqué and the plumbing as plumbing. A dozen flags and a paragraph about local currency is not correspondent banking. The dollar's position is a stack — law that usually holds, a Treasury market that can absorb size, energy priced in a unit people trust, and … Continue reading How should the United States treat expanding BRICS political coordination and local-currency settlement talk — as a serious long-term challenge to dollar clearing, or as a forum without a market?
Champagne Summits
With its most visible figure departed and the aid agency formally closed this week, is the government efficiency effort institutionalizing or dissipating — and what should count as a saving?
Gastonia, NC Correspondent — The mission is right and the vehicle looks fragile, and those are separate sentences. Right, because the government's own auditors have been reporting improper payments around a hundred and sixty billion a year and something near two point eight trillion cumulatively since they started counting. That's the accountability office telling Congress … Continue reading With its most visible figure departed and the aid agency formally closed this week, is the government efficiency effort institutionalizing or dissipating — and what should count as a saving?
Has the first half of 2025 produced a working majority that can pass appropriations on time, or only a governing style that still lives on findings and continuing resolutions?
Myrtle Beach, SC Correspondent — A working majority leaves a markup and a signature on a bill that funds the government before the lights flicker. A style leaves a finding, a continuing resolution, and a speech about the flicker. The record so far is the style. The current fiscal year was closed out on a … Continue reading Has the first half of 2025 produced a working majority that can pass appropriations on time, or only a governing style that still lives on findings and continuing resolutions?
Should allied semiconductor and critical-mineral projects be judged this year by wafers and kilograms delivered, or are ribbon counts still the real metric?
Gastonia, NC Correspondent — Wafers and kilograms. If you can't count them, you had a parade. Mid-2025 is late enough that some dirt should have become a unit, and in one or two cases it has. Arizona is producing at commercial volume, which is a real answer to a question people were asking three years … Continue reading Should allied semiconductor and critical-mineral projects be judged this year by wafers and kilograms delivered, or are ribbon counts still the real metric?
The reconciliation bill was enacted today. Does it change the deficit path this decade, or only move favorite constituencies?
Myrtle Beach, SC Correspondent — We have the score now and the answer is neither ambiguous nor surprising. The published estimate has this adding something over three trillion to deficits across the decade, and the debt ceiling went up five trillion in the same instrument. So it did not change the path. It steepened it, … Continue reading The reconciliation bill was enacted today. Does it change the deficit path this decade, or only move favorite constituencies?
Twelve days after American strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities and a ceasefire that is holding, what should the posture be now — and does the strike settle the nuclear clock or only reset it?
Gastonia, NC Correspondent — The argument we were all having about whether to impose a cost is over. A cost was imposed on the twenty-second and the fuse got moved. Moved is not removed, and that's the whole file now. What I want is an honest answer to a narrow question: where is the enriched … Continue reading Twelve days after American strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities and a ceasefire that is holding, what should the posture be now — and does the strike settle the nuclear clock or only reset it?
Has the early deportation and parole unwind shifted crime and shelter costs in a measurable way in the cities that asked for relief?
Myrtle Beach, SC Correspondent — Shelter costs move first. Crime stories move louder. Measure the first like an adult and treat the second like a prosecutor rather than a rally. The shelter numbers are the printable ones and they have moved. New York's census is down substantially from the peak and emergency sites have been … Continue reading Has the early deportation and parole unwind shifted crime and shelter costs in a measurable way in the cities that asked for relief?
Should federal research and student-aid dollars be withheld from specific universities this year on viewpoint and discipline grounds, or is firm-by-firm litigation the better tool?
Gastonia, NC Correspondent — This stopped being hypothetical in the spring. Money has already been withheld at scale from named institutions and the litigation is already running alongside it. So the real question is whether the version being executed is the one any of us would have designed, and I'd say partly. Withholding on a … Continue reading Should federal research and student-aid dollars be withheld from specific universities this year on viewpoint and discipline grounds, or is firm-by-firm litigation the better tool?
Is a mid-year fight over the Federal Reserve’s independence a necessary assertion of elected control, or a risk to the only remaining adult in the rate room?
Myrtle Beach, SC Correspondent — The Fed isn't a priesthood and it isn't a campaign desk. Elected control already exists in the statute — a mandate Congress wrote, governors the Senate confirms, a chair who can be embarrassed in a hearing. Using those tools is adult. Turning the mid-year rate path into a loyalty test … Continue reading Is a mid-year fight over the Federal Reserve’s independence a necessary assertion of elected control, or a risk to the only remaining adult in the rate room?
The tax and reconciliation bill was signed today. Did Congress write a durable code, or a stack of expiring provisions that will be relitigated in 2027?
Gastonia, NC Correspondent — We can stop arguing about how it should be written. It was signed this morning, and the answer is both. The core is permanent. The rates and brackets don't expire, and full expensing was made permanent. Those are real and they're what a lender models. Everything the campaign was actually about … Continue reading The tax and reconciliation bill was signed today. Did Congress write a durable code, or a stack of expiring provisions that will be relitigated in 2027?
