Ed: If you want to see this column, and future columns, distributed it is on you to post the link to this column around on social media.  So-called "free speech" X has handed me a 7 day suspension for telling the AP to stick their recommendation to get more covid jabs in their own butts, deeming that "violent speech."  This is what "AI" is capable of today -- no more "intelligent" than a two year old, and its no better at driving a car than that either, but this is the world we live in where someone's computer will blackball you with no human review of any sort and no right of appeal (incidentally, you might think about that before riding in or owning a car with that garbage in it as yes, that data IS SOLD to others who will fuck you in the ass with it), so if you want to see these ideas propagated, its on you.  I will be looking at the linkbacks which will tell me whether its worth continuing to write these columns from organic activity, that is people like you, spreading them around.  That which nobody reads there is no reason to write and publish -- I can go ski and drink beer instead this winter, should that be the decision of the polity at large.

Medicine is no longer "medicine"; it has been irredeemably corrupted in the United States.

Only severing, with prejudice, the source of that corruption can resolve this.

Witness this article from 2015:

“A lot of what is published is incorrect.” I’m not allowed to say who made this remark because we were asked to observe Chatham House rules. We were also asked not to take photographs of slides. Those who worked for government agencies pleaded that their comments especially remain unquoted, since the forthcoming UK election meant they were living in “purdah”—a chilling state where severe restrictions on freedom of speech are placed on anyone on the government’s payroll. Why the paranoid concern for secrecy and non-attribution? Because this symposium—on the reproducibility and reliability of biomedical research, held at the Wellcome Trust in London last week—touched on one of the most sensitive issues in science today: the idea that something has gone fundamentally wrong with one of our greatest human creations.

"Something"?

Let's talk about the basic issue: Science is not a result or a statement of fact.

It is a process whereby one first begins with a hypothesis (that is, a belief or theory), one designs one or more experiments, hopefully to try to disprove said theory although attempting to prove it is also acceptable, data is collected and analyzed and then results reported publicly.

You might think that is where it ends.  You're wrong.

Replication by disinterested and even hostile parties is next.  The first experiment means literally nothing from a scientific point of view because there's no proof you didn't tamper with it.  If the hypothesis is proved its even worse if you were the one who stood to benefit from that.  That is, human corruption has to be filtered and the only way to do that is to have disinterested or even hostile parties confirm what you found by repeated running of, and examination of, your experiment.

We don't do this anymore when it comes to "medicine" and we don't even bother attempting it when it comes to other things such as "climate."

As a result trillions is stolen and people die.

Nobody cares about the dying part either -- only the money part.

At the core of this corruption is the money motive and over 120 years ago Congress recognized that men and women would corrupt the various areas of commerce by all sorts of means, every one of them foul, and by doing so ultimately destroy what had driven an incredible burst of progress in this nation called America.  They recognized that the patent and similar laws, passed to incentivize inventing things, could be perverted if you had a way to choke supply and demand so that those "protected" things were perversely required and others deliberately downplayed or overlooked -- or worse, outright prohibited.

They passed 15 USC Chapter 1; the Sherman Act was first, quickly evaded and Clayton followed to make clear that this was not a paper tiger and a line of BS; it was a deadly serious felony for which you'd go to prison.

Robinson-Patman followed stating that in the context of goods buyers of like kind and quantity could not be discriminated against.

These laws have been on the books for over a century.

Virtually every single medical office, every pharmacy, every pharmacist, dentist, hospital and physician violates them every day.

They're 10 year federal felonies, not a jaywalking ticket.

Simply put its illegal to charge different people different amounts of money for the same thing -- like kind and quantity.  As soon as you collude in an attempt to prevent, irrespective of the means, competition on price you've broken the law.  If you obscure the price of a procedure or thing so that it is effectively impossible for a consumer of that thing to shop before purchase, you tie sales together so I have to take (and pay for) something I do not want to get something I do want, or you charge me $2 for something you give to someone else for $1 where we both wanted to buy the same thing under the same set of circumstances you have broken the law; you are a felon.

More than forty years ago the Supreme Court ruled (in Royal Drug) that insurance companies are not allowed to "negotiate price" on a differential basis and that McCarran-Ferguson, another law exempting insurance companies from some aspects of anti-trust, did not apply because "purchasing agreements with vendors of a thing" is not the business of insurance.  It is, in fact, nothing more than attempting to negotiate a volume transaction.  That decision was confirmed a few years later in Maricopa County when the medical providers tried once again to circumvent 15 USC claiming that there was some special aspect of it when an insurance company was involved.  They lost the second time as well.

The only way to fix this, short of simply shooting everyone who is financially raping the American public to the tune of trillions a year via these felonious schemes that twice have been ruled illegal at the Supreme Court and which call for 10 years in the federal slammer for each person who commits said offense is to mandate (and start throwing people in jail if they won't do it) that all persons must be charged the same price for the same thing consumed by a single person in the medical and pharmaceutical industry and "insurance" must be prohibited from coupling paying, provision of service and similar.

This is one of the core holdings in the plan I have promoted for over a decade.

Insurance companies can legally set a "payment rate" of $x for some procedure but they can't condition that on you going to a specific provider as that is an illegal restraint of trade and monopolist practice; if the payout rate for an appendectomy is $5,000 then it has to be no matter where you have it done because you are the principal -- not the insurance company.  Likewise the hospital has to publish each and every thing in a way that the ultimate consumer which is you, not an insurance company, can determine the cost of a procedure with certainty before you obtain it.  Charging someone for a thing they did not agree to is void under long-standing consumer protection laws.

Further 15 USC Ch 1 absolutely bans the payment of "incentives" (bribes) by insurance companies to physicians or hospitals on various metrics -- for example, payment for vaccination rates.  That amounts to an illegal force-tied sale that is shoved down the customer's (patient's) throat under penalty of being fired, and a thing they may not want and once again is not "the business of insurance"; and again the Supremes so-ruled in Royal Drug.  This practice, which is near-universal and was extended to covid shots, is illegal and it is a criminal felony carrying 10 years in prison for not just the insurance company executives that put it in place but also every individual physician who complies with and benefits from it.

Medicine has one very specific circumstance that doesn't arise in general with other services: You might be flat on your back and unable to shop or negotiate.  In every other line of work abusing a person of diminished capacity is a further felony -- in medicine its how money is made.  This must change and such an offense must be dealt with through extreme prejudice, including permanent license revocations, prison sentences and forced disgorgement of all assets obtained by such a practice.

This isn't a "radical proposal"; in fact all of it was mandated by the Supreme Court more than forty years ago.

If our government will not enforce the law and by deliberately refusing screws the American people out of trillions of dollars per year there is absolutely no reason for the American people to peacefully permit that to continue for even a single day.

Actuaries compute the value of human lives every day; the medical and "health insurance" system violates those limits  on a wild-eyed basis every single hour and by doing so commits offenses sufficient to call for the imposition of the death penalty.

We cannot fix a system that has designed itself to be corrupt other than by removing those capacities.  Those who have and are profiting from this will, of course, resist such a change and have for decades.

We're no longer in a position to ignore this problem as, at the present time, the entire budget deficit and thus the entire inflationary problem in the United States is driven by CMS, which is in fact Medicare and Medicaid, and further medicine generally has expanded from about one dollar in 20 to one dollar in five over the last several decades, with virtually all of that expansion being stolen.  We are talking about six trillion dollars a year in the United States alone and if there is a monetary theft that is worthy of forcing to stop no matter how or what people must to put a stop to it -- this is it.

This is Trump's first and most-important job because the entire Federal Budget Deficit lies here, there is no other way to fix it than to dismantle the medical monopolies and he can do it without a single new law being passed by prosecuting every single hospital and pharma company that prices on any sort of differential basis and arresting, charging everyone involved with a 10 year in the prison felony, who does not immediately implement 100% level pricing all disclosed up front and with every link to so-called "insurance" severed.

THIS IS THE PATH OUT OF THE MELTDOWN and note the date it was written.  No, we cannot avoid the hit to GDP and unemployment in the short term that fixing this will cause.  It will come but we can avoid the destruction of the medical system entirely and the destruction of the federal government's funding capacity.

IT MUST BE DONE ON TRUMP'S FIRST DAY IN OFFICE AND NOTE THAT NOT ONE NEW LAW IS REQUIRED AND THUS CONGRESS IS NOT ONLY NOT REQUIRED TO DO ANYTHING THEY CAN'T STOP IT EITHER.

One common refrain: They're inflationary.

That's a lie and any economist who says that knows he or she is lying.

This is math, not politics.

Let's definite this: A tariff is a tax on an imported good or service.  It thus does indeed raise the price of said good or service by the amount of the tariff.  This is easily understood and weaponized by the liars in the media and economic profession.  The media may not know the facts but all economists do.

In fact a tariff is exactly neutral to inflation as a whole.

Why?

Let's take an example.

There is a thing that has a price of $1,000 at the dock coming into the US.  The US Government slaps a $1,000 tariff (100%) on it, so now the cost at the dock is $2,000.  Assuming the business passes that through and neither attempts to profit from or absorb it, that is, they take no deliberate action to attempt to exploit it or be damaged by it, the entire $1,000 shows up on the shelf price.

That sounds inflationary.

It isn't.

Why not?

Because all inflation is caused by the emission of credit, and the US Government is running a fiscal deficit -- that is, emitting credit.  This is the infamous (and true) Milton Friedman statement: "Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomena."

So where does the $1,000 go?

It goes directly to the Federal Government and reduces inflation generated by the federal government's deficit spending by the exact same amount the price increase at the consumer increases it.

Right as I write this CNBC is lying to you -- and the Press is about to do it too with their "questions" for Powell.

Again: Tariffs are a zero when it comes to inflation -- they neither help or hurt it as a function of imposing and collecting them because there is exact balance, to the penny, of both inflationary and deflationary forces.

HOWEVER, to the extent a tariff incentivizes jobs and production to come back to the United States they are deflationary and benefit consumers by lowering inflation pressure in that producing a good or service in the United States instead of overseas means all of the tax revenue generated by the activity happens here in the United States and tax revenue of course decreases the deficit and thus drives inflation down.

This is the kick-off in a new category, "47", which is intended to identify the areas that I have spoken of many times before with an emphasis and focus, in all cases, back to economics.

It is my hope that some of these proposals, and they can be done quickly, will permit movement of this area back into the main Market Ticker side -- with ads.  To do that will require some of these changes to occur.

To be clear -- that which requires Congressional assent is tough; while it appears the GOP will hold the House, and we know they will have a majority in the Senate (likely by 2 seats when the dust settles) it will remain a relatively-thin majority.  Expecting strong pushes from Congress is unwise, and further, insanity among Congress can be even stronger than that from the Executive, so it is extremely important not to have to rely on Congress and further, to use measures where they're available and clearly within the Constitution and existing law to accomplish the goals.

I refuse to play games with the "reach as far as you can, damn the Constitution" nonsense.  Trump did this in his first term with bump stocks and got his ass handed to him ultimately.  In fact the Supremes required the BATFE to return them to those who they seized them from, and if they destroyed them to pay for them.

There are a number of acts Biden and Harris took that were clearly unlawful.  All of them must be unwound.  Some will be unpopular but that doesn't matter; you either stand on the Rule of Law or you do not.  Further, unlawful and unconstitutional attempts at obstruction, such as the highlighted area here if it occurs must be met with immediate indictment and prosecution along with the immediate yanking of any security clearance of anyone involved, which is an absolute and non-reviewable right of the President.

ttps://x.com/Breaking911/status/1854244852080214103

The next year, and indeed the next four, will either define an American Renaissance after a painful correction of deliberate deception and hiding of economic cycles, or it will lead to ruin.  Harris not only didn't have the chops to understand this she had zero intention of fixing it as she was one of the chief protagonists over the last four years involved in causing it.  The Federal Deficit last year hit roughly two trillion dollars, which is an approximately 7% forced inflationary emission of credit over the last fiscal year.  You have seen the doubling in your grocery bills, wild-eyed spikes in insurance and other necessary purchases, along with a crazy degradation in health care quality and ramps in price.  I warned when Obamacare came in that the bill was an attempt to paper over what was an impending disaster rather than deal with the problem and here we are more than 10 years down the road having compounded the damage.  We cannot continue to do this without a catastrophe occurring.

The broad outline of what we must accept includes that through no fault of either political party, just the plain reality of economic cycles, the interest rate environment has turned.  Almost nobody alive today, save a few such as Warren Buffett, have ever been active in business in the former upward-moving cycle.  These cycles usually run 30 or so years -- not one or two -- and should have turned back after the financial crash of 2008.  Rather than face that both Bush and Obama tried to paper it over, and I'm sure some folks told them they could do it forevermore.  That was flat-out false and whether it was born out of stupidity or intentional misconduct so those giving the advice could make off with a few more billion does not matter.  What matters now is that the cycle has turned and will remain so for the next three or so decades, not a couple of years.

The simplest way to explain this in the form of business is that if you can borrow $1 million at 5% the interest cost is $50,000 a year.  Companies -- and governments -- almost never pay that borrowing off.  Go find the business, school, local, state or federal bond issue that is actually retired and is gone off the books.  It essentially never happens and the reason is that if you can roll over that debt at 3% interest 10 years later the $50,000 it used to cost you is now $30,000 and the other $20,000 goes straight to the bottom line of your cash flow sheet.  This in turn incents you to either borrow more or simply report the  higher "earnings" and thus your stock price goes up.  It also makes municipal and state balance sheets, never mind the federal one, look better than they are.

But as with all areas of leverage what helps in one direction screws you in the other.

If you have a $20,000 (because you had a 2% loan) interest payment on that million dollars and now the interest rate offered is 5% when the debt comes due you have to pay an extra $30,000 a year.  That comes straight off the bottom line and in government that either means you must raise taxes, cut services or, if the federal government you can force it on the backs of the people through inflation by increasing the debt even further.  Doing the latter, which is what we've been doing makes it exponentially worse because that inflation causes people to demand even higher rates of interest.

This is why despite The Fed cutting 50 basis points the longer term bonds have gone up in rate; the market has discerned that (1) the rate environment has turned, (2) that's a multi-decade trend change and (3) "cutting" increases inflation and thus makes rates go higher because nobody intentionally lends money at a loss.

We must take immediate action to reverse the market's beliefs in this regard -- and we can't lie because the market has already figured it out.  There is plenty more -- getting rid of mandates unsupported by data, ending legal immunity for all medical products (specifically "vaccines") along with voiding any claim of "trade secret" protection against disclosure in any sort of medical product or device, getting seed oils out of Americans' diets, especially involuntarily-consumed ones and more, but those have payback periods measured in many years or decades and we simply don't have decades to put a dent in things.  Yes, those are important too and I'll be writing on them as well but this post is on immediate actions that must take place within days or weeks of Trump being inaugurated if he is serious about actually preventing a foldback-style collapse of the economy, government and markets.

To restate from the point related to the above email from the Harris campaign to its workers, those who have been proved to have intent to obstruct must have their security clearances yanked on a summary basis.  This is a plenary right of the Executive and there are no grounds for review nor do you have a due process or other right to obtain and maintain one.  Every one of the people who, for example, was involved in the "Russia Russia Russia" scam, which was proved a scam, in the last Trump Administration must have their clearance summarily revoked on Trump's first day in office.

So with that said, here is the broad outline:

• All of the Harris/Biden unlawful giveaways must be immediately canceled and clawed back.  Yes, this means all of the college loan "forgiveness" (which is no such thing, it is forcing you to pay someone else's debt.)  I have a solution to this that the colleges will not like but again this is an outline posting; the details will follow in other entries.  All Executive Orders are subject to this risk; none create a due process right and thus there's nothing to sue about.
  
  
• All of the expansion of CMS expense must be stopped immediately and reversed by enormous amounts -- 80% has to be the target and an undershoot is not acceptable.  There is no way to do this by "cutting" Medicare or Medicaid because besides being politically suicidal it also doesn't work as it will simply force the paying and escalation into the private markets which means you get the bill anyway along with the inflation from continuing to run a $2 trillion a year, and advancing, fiscal deficit.  The full fix lies here and only here, with the first element of it being the first three bullet-point paragraphs.  This can be enforced in one day by bringing felony criminal charges under 15 USC Ch 1 against any hospital, physician or drug firm (including distributors and pharmacies) that violates these clauses as that law was twice ruled explicitly applicable at the Supreme Court in the late 70s and early 80s.  Congress cannot stop it and no, you cannot fine people because they can cost-shift that -- you must put them in prison if they don't stop.  This has to happen immediately; give the hospitals, doctors and all drug and device-related sellers and makers 30 days warning and then the indictments and arrests start.
  
  
• Illegal "migrants" and others here are a huge net drain on both state and federal resources along with adding demand to the economy which of course means higher prices across the board -- for rent, food, vehicles, insurance and more.  8 USC 1324 already provides for, once again, felony criminal prosecution for any entity that provides aid, comfort, employment, housing or anything else to a person who is here illegally with either knowledge or reckless disregard.  Give everyone 30 days fair warning on the first day of the new Administration and then you start indicting employers, NGOs and landlords. Again its not fines you seek it is indictments, convictions and imprisonment, and you go after people, not just companies.  Where a corporation is involved that does business with the Federal or State governments you indict them as well because felony conviction, under existing law, permanently debars a company from federal contracts.  The enhancements if an illegal alien commits murder or serious bodily harm are serious; a person who harbors an illegal that commits murder is liable for life in prison.  This will resolve the illegal alien problem immediately and in addition will take a huge amount of pressure off the economy and dramatically reduce prices.  Further, all blanket "protected status" grants by the Harris/Biden Administration all of which were in fact illegal must be immediately rescinded, rendering every one of those individuals instantly deportable which again has no due process protection and both can and must be done on the first day -- and if they don't immediately leave anyone employing or assisting them goes to prison.  For those who wish to come here legally and work I'll lay that out in the detail posting soon enough.  That process change will require Congressional approval -- which we must force to occur.
  
  
• All restrictive energy policies that came out of the Biden/Harris Administration must be reversed immediately.  Behind every unit of GDP is a unit of energy; we simply cannot afford the so-called "green" nonsense as it is wildly more expensive in all cases because it is unreliable and thus you must pay twice or suffer blackouts.  This has to be done through the Notice-and-Comment process in most cases or it will get blocked (as Trump found out with the Census question) so it will take six months or so to reverse all of this but reverse it we must.  In addition Trump must demand that Congress revoke by explicit legislation the effective "Interstate Compact" known as CARB; if California wishes to take such actions within their state boundary that is their right as a state but they cannot impose it on Interstate Commerce (or anything that touches Interstate Commerce, such as a truck or train that enters or leaves their state while carrying goods to or from) nor can other states adopt same without the consent of Congress under the Constitution as that is an Interstate Compact which Congress must explicitly disallow so as to remove any ambiguity.
  
  
• Collusion to repress opinions must be met with immediate and harsh legal sanction under existing law. This can be done today under 15 USC Ch 1 and again it is not fines that have to be sought, it is criminal felony charges against directors and officers of any firm that engages in same.  Any firm is free to do what it wishes individually but when you leverage, for example, "brand safety" claims you're not an individual firm any more -- you are acting in collusion with others, the right you are implicating is the First Amendment and that's illegal under 100+ year old felony criminal law.  Here's look at essentially all of the social media platforms.  ("X" is the closest to be in compliance and can probably come into compliance fairly easily -- for the others, its an earthquake but one that should have been applied 10 years ago.)  The First Amendment does not apply to private concerns as no such right exists in the private space, absent government involvement, but anti-monopoly statutes do and they're a ten year, pound-you-in-the-ass felony conviction for violations.  In addition to indicting firms you also indict directors and officers by name and personally, throwing them in prison upon conviction as the Statute not only permits but requires.

If you think we can avoid the impact of the rate cycle turn you are wrong.  We cannot.  That cycle turn will revalue downward all firms that have debt on, and in the last ten years corporations, despite having clear warning that this cycle was turning, have wildly increased leverage rather than take it down.  They will have to deal with that and stock prices will adjust -- and not a little.  The same will be true for real estate as it is frequently financed, and many who got in over their heads are going to be bankrupted.

That sounds horrible but in fact it is good -- if you need a building for some purpose, whether a business or a place to live, is it to your benefit to have higher or lower prices?  Obviously you want lower prices.  For those who own real estate without any mortgage debt on it you lose nothing in real terms because you get less for your current house but you pay commensurately less for the other one, just as was the case on the way up.  Those who got in over their heads and refinanced, especially serially or took the funds out and spent them somewhere will go broke but that is unavoidable, just as it is with commercial real estate owners who did the same thing.

If we address the five points above then while the serious downside economic event that Harris and Biden baked into the cake will occur -- that cannot be avoided -- within the first half of Trump's administration the turning point will be reached and just like occurred in 1920/21 while the downturn will be painful the resulting recovery and re-shoring of both manufacturing and all other lines of business into the United States will be prompt, enormous and record-setting.

In other words come the 2026 midterms the result will start to be evident and by 2028 it will be obvious that not only was it the right and sane choice but America will stand alone on the world stage as it once used to in terms of both economic and political achievement.

We must do it now, and do it all, because if we fail then the essential services that everyone believes we should have will not be able to be funded and virtually everyone in the United States will be economically destroyed.

These are the stakes.

Details to follow.