While it may be challenging to keep up with President Trump’s slew of statements, ideas, and new laws, changes to the U.S. tax code have been on Trump’s agenda since he kicked off his 2024 presidential campaign. Against the backdrop of the newly announced tariffs on China, Mexico, and Canada, expected changes to the tax code include reductions in income tax rates and increases in income tax credits. Despite these changes appearing promising at first glance, increases in tariffs (and thus, likely increases in consumer prices) may offset moderate reductions in individual income taxes.

Any changes to tax legislation will proceed through the legislative process called “reconciliation.” On January 17, 2025, a House Ways and Means Committee prepared and circulated a long list of proposed tax law changes.

While writing (and, to be fair, reading) about taxes is arguably the most boring way to pass the time, let’s quickly walk through the key proposed changes to the United States tax code and their expected impact on the U.S. economy. We’ll begin with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which is the most important part of the proposal.

Extension of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (“TCJA”)

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The province of Alberta in Canada published a damning report about the Covid pandemic, basically admitting that they got it all wrong.

The vaccine did not stop the transmission of Covid, masking did not stop the spread of Covid and had harms, lockdowns has “limited scientific data supporting such measures during the initial wave.”

Many of us knew this but it is amazing to see a government body knowing this. The province said that they were pressured by the federal government to implement pandemic measures and “these actions, while purportedly intended to uphold professional standards, often obstructed healthcare providers from performing their duties in good faith.”

This is a bombshell of an admission but will the federal government do something about it? The report has already been used in several court cases by people who were either injured by the Covid vaccine or punished for not taking it.

The post Canada Admits Pandemic Mistakes appeared first on Redacted.

News outlets have been exposed for having been paid by the U.S. government in the wake of the closure of USAID. The New York Times and Politico are in the hot seat right now.

Search for these organizations at USASpending.gov shows that they both received a lot of government money. Politico has received $8 million since 2016. The New York Times at least $1 million.

Politico editors say that this money was not for content. It was for a “professional subscription” that “provides both private and public sector clients with granular, fact-based reporting, real-time intelligence, and tracking tools across key policy areas.” Defenders of this say that the pro version offered “legislative tracking” and that it is a valuable tool, to the tune of $10,000 per year subscriptions. The US government’s own websites do that too so why did they need Politico to offer a dashboard? Even if the tool is that valuable, it still makes Politico a government contractor, which is an inherent journalistic conflict.

A search for the New York Times shows a similar pattern, taking money not just from USAID but also the Department of Defense, the Department of Health and Human Services and the National Science Foundation. Honestly, after how The New York Times lied to lead the American people into the Iraq war, I don’t know how anyone would be surprised by this.

Former State Department whistleblower Mike Benz made this cautionary note: there is “a distinction between USAID paying for premium prescriptions for its own staff vs USAID paying the media outlet to produce news…USAID does both, but the latter is obviously much more pernicious than the former.”

Wikileaks reports that “USAID was funding over 6,200 journalists across 707 media outlets and 279 ‘media’ NGOs, including nine out of ten media outlets in Ukraine.”

The post State Run Media appeared first on Redacted.

Doctor Anthony Fauci’s pre-emptive pardon applies to federal prosecutions, not state prosecutions. That is why state Attorneys General are picking up this baton.

South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson says that he is “leading a coalition of state attorneys general in an investigation into Dr. Anthony Fauci’s role in the COVID-19 pandemic response, demanding accountability for alleged mismanagement, misleading statements, and suppression of scientific debate.”

There is enough proof to show that he did all of those things. AG Wilson sent a letter to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune to “commend ongoing Congressional efforts to uncover misconduct and request state-level cooperation in pursuing any violations of state laws.”

This means that they want Dr. Fauci to be subpoenaed by Congress. He would not have the ability to plead the Fifth Amendment due to the pardon.

South Carolina is leading this charge but other participating states include: Tennessee, Florida, Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Idaho, North Dakota, Utah, Indiana, South Dakota, Arkansas, Montana, Missouri, Kansas, West Virginia and Nebraska. Not one Democrat-lead state is curious about this issue.

The post Fauci Not Off the Hook appeared first on Redacted.

President Trump says that the “Gaza Strip would be turned over to the United States by Israel at the conclusion of fighting.”

Presumably, that’s when his plan to take it over for a rehab would begin.

When will the fighting end, exactly? We have a ceasefire now so does this assume that fighting will resume? On whose terms?

While the world digests President Trump’s proposal that the U.S. rebuild Gaza, Israel is reportedly not honoring the ceasefire. Al Jazeera reports that at least two Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire. One of them was a child, reportedly killed by a sniper.

Americans were frenzied for clarification on President Trump’s plans for Gaza. White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt was asked if this plan would include American forces.

“The president has not committed to that yet,” she said.

Yet? So who would do all of this renovating and relocating of Palestinians that don’t want to leave? Puck News reports that the President’s son-in-law Jared Kushner was behind this plan. He has a background in real estate development so presumably, to them, it’s just a matter of relocating the tenants during the rehab. Only we know that is not the reality.

Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry released this statement about the plan. It states that Saudi Arabia will not establish diplomatic relations with Israel without “an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.” They say that their position is “unwavering” and “non-negotiable and not subject to compromises.” Saudi Arabia is a U.S. ally so this position holds weight.

Hamas said that they condemn President Trump’s plans and are calling for “an emergency Arab summit to confront the displacement project.”

The post About That Gaza Plan… appeared first on Redacted.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Market Recap: Doug Casey on how ‘insane’ tariffs destroy living standards

2. EQUITIES: Steve Diggle on why the Nasdaq is set up for a 2000-style crash

3. ECONOMY: Steve Hanke on Fed’s rate cut, economic slowdown in 2025

4. ECONOMY: Fed will launch a ‘bazooka’ after market crash, says Matt Piepenburg

5. COMMODITIES: Rick Rule on why he is optimistic about Canadian oil and gas

6. CRYPTO: Markus Thielen on why Bitcoin will reach $122k in the short-term

7. What to Watch

MARKET RECAP

Latest News. On Saturday, February 1st, The White House announced that, effective February 4th, the U.S. would be rolling out 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada, and a 10 percent tariff on China.

The executive action also would have imposed a 10 percent tariff on Canadian energy.

Markets reacted badly to the news on the morning of Monday, February 3rd, with the Dow down over 500 points and the S&P down 1.6 percent.

However, stocks recovered following news that U.S. President Donald Trump had worked out a last-minute deal with Canada and Mexico, which involved both countries devoting more resources to policing their borders and stopping the illicit flow of fentanyl.

In return, The White House agreed to pause tariffs for 30 days.

Doug Casey, best-selling author of Crisis Investing and Founder of the Crisis Investing newsletter, called the trade conflict “stupid and unnecessary and destructive.”

Casey was speaking on February 3rd at 2pm EST, before Trump rolled back tariffs on Canada.

“What’s going to happen is we’re going to see a significant drop in the standard of living,” he said. “If [The President] wants to get rid of U.S. trade deficits, what needs to happen is U.S. taxes and regulations need to eliminated. That would reduce the cost of production in the U.S., and people would come to the U.S., instead of running away from the U.S.”

Casey predicted that the end result of a trade war would be no trade between the countries involved in it.

“Just as Trump has attempted to punish Canada, Trudeau… thinks that he can now punish Americans [with tariffs],” he explained. “What’s Trump likely to do? Well, you punish me, I’ll punish you more. And there won’t be any trade between America and Canada… or any other country.”

However, Casey said that tariffs by themselves do not cause inflation, since they only raise relative prices, and not the overall price level.

“Tariffs don’t increase inflation,” he said. “What increases inflation… is an increase in the money supply. What tariffs do is they increase the prices of individual items, not the general price level… and people can buy less of those items, and they can use their money to buy something else.”

Market Movements

From January 27th to February 3rd, the following assets experienced dramatic swings in price. Data are up-to-date as of February 3rd at 9pm ET (approximate).

1. Whirlpool — down 25.5 percent.

2. JetBlue Airways — down 25.3 percent.

3. Comcast Corporation — down 13.2 percent.

4. Palantir Technologies — up 11 percent.

5. Arabica Coffee — up 8.8 percent.

The following major assets experienced the following price movements during the same time interval.

DXY — up 1.4 percent.

Bitcoin — down 0.9 percent.

Gold — up 2.7 percent.

10-year Treasury yield — up 0.9 percent.

S&P 500 — down 0.3 percent.

Russell 2000 — down 1.1 percent.

USD/yuan — down 0.8 percent.

EQUITIES:
NASDAQ COLLAPSE CRISIS
Steve Diggle, January 31, 2025

Risks to market stability are similar to those in 2008 during the Global Financial Crisis according to Steve Diggle, Founder of Vulpes Investment Management.

Diggle made over $3 billion betting on volatility in 2008, and warned of an upcoming crash in the tech-heavy Nasdaq.

Diggle said that market volatility risks have risen due to central banks being constrained in their policy tools, alongside “untenable” asset prices.

“[Firstly], the extent to which the central banks will feel comfortable continuing their money printing is limited because we’ve had this very significant 50-year high inflation,” he said. “And secondly… asset prices have now grown to a point, particularly in certain areas, where they just look untenable… It’s now a good time to start revisiting the idea of downside hedging because the chances of volatility have gone up, but the cost of hedging has gone down.”

However, Diggle said that the chances of another 2008 financial crisis are slim.

“I think it’s unlikely for two reasons,” Diggle explained. “One, the epicentre of risk now is no longer in the banks… The banking system is an awful lot more robust than it was in 2008… Secondly, the central banks are watching particularly the banks, but [also] general, broad pillars of the financial system, and stand ready to add liquidity a lot faster than they did in 2008.”

A “2000 Nasdaq collapse style crisis” is more likely to occur, said Diggle.

“We’ve now got some gigantic companies sitting on relatively small or fragile revenues,” he explained. “We also have a macroeconomic background with the new President in the United States who… has a fairly radical agenda and is very unpredictable.”

As an example of fragility, Diggle pointed to the recent crash in Nvidia stock, which was driven by DeepSeek, a Chinese tech firm which reportedly ran an efficient AI model on old Nvidia chips.

“When a tiny little 200-person company [DeepSeek] can cause the most valuable stock in the world to lose $560 billion in a single session… if that’s not a sign that things are fragile, then I don’t know what is,” said Diggle.

ECONOMY:
FED’S END GAME
Steve Hanke, January 30, 2025

Steve Hanke, Professor of Applied Economics at Johns Hopkins University, said, in response to the Fed’s rate decision, that the Fed failed to account for the money supply growth in its monetary policy.

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday, January 29th, held its key interest rate steady, after cutting three times in a row last year. The current range for the Fed Funds Rate is 4.25 to 4.5 percent.

Jerome Powell, Chair of The Federal Reserve, said in a press conference that the Fed needs to see “real progress on inflation” or labor market weakness before further rate cuts.

“[Powell] never mentioned the money supply growth, he never mentioned credit growth, and those are… the drivers that fuel for the economy,” Hanke said. “To hit the Fed’s inflation target… of 2 percent, Hanke’s Golden Growth Rate for the money supply, measured by M2, is 6 percent per year.”

Hanke went on to say that the current M2 money supply growth rate is only 3.9 percent, which is “too slow.”

He added that the Fed should stop its quantitative tightening program.

“The Fed is too tight,” said Hanke. “… A 25 basis point reduction [in the Fed Funds rate]… would be okay, not a big deal one way or the other. The big deal is quantitative tightening.”

At the current rate of money supply growth, the economy is going to “slow down” in 2025, said Hanke.

“The nominal GDP will go down because inflation will go down,” he said. “I think [inflation] will be dipping down, by the end of the year, below the 2 percent target actually, and I think the real growth will be slow.”

ECONOMY:
FED TO LAUNCH ‘BAZOOKA’ AFTER CRASH
Matthew Piepenburg, January 26, 2025

Matthew Piepenburg, Partner at Von Greyerz AG, said that the Federal Reserve would unleash a “bazooka” of stimulus following an upcoming market crash.

“You’ve got a very narrow, over-valued market by every indicator,” he said. “Eventually the laws of gravity will apply… The question is will the Fed wait for a crash to then pull out the bazooka?… Will we have a Nikkei ‘89 that stays down for a long time, or will we have another dip, buy the low, and see QE sustain this market?”

Saving the bond market would be especially important for the Fed in the event of a market crash, according to Piepenburg.

“If you don’t support an otherwise unloved U.S. Treasury, then bond yields rise, [which] means the cost of debt rises,” he explained. “Yields are the real interest rate, not the Fed Funds rate, and so if yields rise, that crushes just about everything but the U.S. dollar.”

The risk to the bond market is greater due to rising U.S. national debt, said Piepenburg.

“The rest of the world is catching on that the U.S. is too massively in debt,” he said. “It’s a bad credit from a bad issuer… [The U.S. government needs] more support from the Fed if they really want to cut some of the expense of interest.”

Piepenburg also said that the U.S. is unlikely to reduce its debt until it cuts military spending and entitlements.

“The only way to really cut spending is to do something severe in the military budget or the entitlements,” said Piepenburg. “You have the optics of the DOGE, but the real spending cuts are going to have to come from politically difficult areas like the military, like entitlements. They’re massive.”

COMMODITIES
’ECONOMIC DILEMMA’ FOR INVESTORS
Rick Rule, January 24, 2025

Rick Rule, President and CEO of Rule Investment Media, said that political constraints had limited the development of oil and gas over the past few years, especially in Canada.

“[Canada] could be a much larger exporter of oil and gas,” he said. “The problem hasn’t been technical, it’s been political. [Prime Minister Justin Trudeau] decided there was no business case for Canadian natural gas, despite the fact that it sold for $2 a million BTU in Alberta, and $14 million [Canadian dollars] in Rotherham or Shanghai.”

However, a change in political regimes both in Canada and the United States would lead to benefits for the oil and gas sector, said Rule.

“I think that we’re headed into a period that is extraordinarily bright,” he said. “Canadian [oil and gas] will do better than most, because the governmental constraints to the production and export of both Canadian heavy oil and Canadian natural gas are really, really, really changing… At the same time, the transmission infrastructure blocks in the United States, that occurred during the Biden era, are likely to be gone too.”

Despite an escalating trade war, with Canada threatening to cut off energy supplies to the United States in case Trump implements tariffs, Rule said that he is not concerned.

“This is a non-starter,” said Rule. “This is Mr. Trump pandering to his base.”

When it comes to inflation, Rule said that the CPI Index is a “flawed” measure, and that true inflation.

“The idea that the basket of goods and services that you consume… has only gone up by 2.5 or 2.6 percent compounded in the period 2020 to 2025 is farcical,” he said. “The underlying depreciation in the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar is probably more like 7.5 or 8 percent.”

CRYPTO:
BITCOIN’S NEXT PRICE SURGE
Markus Thielen, January 26, 2025

Markus Thielen, CEO of 10x Research, predicted that in the short-term, Bitcoin would hit $122k.

“When you look back over the past 12 months, we have been moving in $16k to $18k increments,” he explained. “So the fact is that we’re sort of… struggling around this $90k to $106k range, so the next $16k range is going to be $122k.”

He said that the Chinese New Year could be a “big catalyst” for buying, as a lot of Bitcoin demand comes from China.

“When you look back in early 2014, actually 90 percent of all Bitcoin trading was in China,” he said. “So the Chinese New Year that we’re going to have next year might be a big catalyst.”

Thielen said that over time, Bitcoin had kept its purchasing power, and has functioned as a “store of value.”

“[Bitcoin] is of course too slow, or too small really, to be a monetary currency,” he said. “So Bitcoin is not a currency but it is a store of value… Bitcoin is a gross operating business with a network effect that keeps on growing.”

When it comes to the policy idea of a Bitcoin strategic reserve, Thielen said that there is “no reason really to doubt” that it would be implemented.

“I think [Trump] is quite in favour of this view of a strategic Bitcoin reserve, and all [the U.S. government] has to do is not sell [the Bitcoin they already have],” he said. “I think it’s just a matter of time until they announce it.”

WHAT TO WATCH

Monday, February 3, 2025

• Construction Spending — The amount spent on construction over the prior month.

Wednesday, February 5, 2025

• U.S. Trade Deficit — Monthly U.S. trade deficit data will be released.

Thursday, February 6, 2025

• Bank of England rate decision — The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee will meet to make an interest rate decision.

Friday, February 7, 2025

• Unemployment Rate — The unemployment rate, the share of jobless in the labor force, will be released.