“Scott Bessent is eminently more qualified than Howard Lutnick to run the U.S. Treasury,” said Bass in a Wednesday post on X. “Scott understands markets, economics, people, and geopolitics better than anyone I’ve ever interacted with. Markets have already anticipated a Bessent choice. Lutnick is not Trump’s answer.”

In response, RFK Jr. suggested that Lutnick – who is currently working as co-chair of Trump’s transition team, would be a strong advocate for Bitcoin – which he described as “a hedge against inflation for middle class Americans,a remedy against the dollar’s downgrade from the world’s reserve currency, and the offramp from a ruinous national debt.”

Bitcoin is the currency of freedom , a hedge against inflation for middle class Americans,a remedy against the dollar’s downgrade from the world’s reserve currency, and the offramp from a ruinous national debt. Bitcoin will have no stronger advocate than Howard Lutnik.

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) November 16, 2024

Musk suggested more people weigh in on the decision, but said he views Bessent as “a business-as-usual choice,” while Lutnick “will actually enact change.”

Would be interesting to hear more people weigh in on this for @realDonaldTrump to consider feedback.

My view fwiw is that Bessent is a business-as-usual choice, whereas @howardlutnick will actually enact change.

Business-as-usual is driving America bankrupt, so we need change… https://t.co/igGLZOJ8wz

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 16, 2024

According to Bloomberg, the choice is ‘creating tension and increasing the chance that another candidate rises up,’ citing anonymous people familiar with the decision making.

Trump himself has appeared frustrated with the infighting and staff are looking for alternatives, with Robert Lighthizer, Senator William Hagerty and Apollo Global Management Inc. Chief Executive Officer Marc Rowan among the names in the mix.

Lutnick was a key support to Trump’s fundraising in the final months of the campaign and he has helped lead the team’s transition to the presidency. Because of that, some key advisers are looking at what else Lutnick might take — if not Treasury — such as a plum ambassadorship, according to people familiar with the decision. –Bloomberg

That said, Lutnick previously donated to both Hillary Clinton in 2015 and Kamala Harris’ Senate campaign in 2016, among others.

Ultimately, the choice is up to Trump – who hasn’t shared his opinion in public.

According to JPMorgan analysts led by managing director Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, “Retail investors appear to be embracing the ‘debasement trade’ in an even stronger manner by buying Bitcoin and gold ETFs.”

hE also noted that this retail enthusiasm extends to meme and AI tokens, which have seen outperforming market caps.

Recent data highlights that Bitcoin has surged above $73,000, prompting significant inflows into U.S.-listed spot BTC exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Over the past week alone, these ETFs increased their combined assets under management by more than $2.27 billion according to Farside Investors.

This marks the third-largest month of inflows into Bitcoin ETFs since their inception in January. The increase is attributed largely to retail interest seeking alternative assets as protection against currency debasement.

However, institutional investors have largely refrained from participating in this rally. The analysts remarked that institutional players paused their activity with Bitcoin futures recently based on cumulative open interest changes within CME contracts adjusted daily.

“Bitcoin futures have become rather overbought,” they warned. “Creating some vulnerability going forward.”

JPMorgan’s report also observed continued inflows into gold ETFs driven primarily by retail investors amidst a decline in institutional engagement with gold futures trading.

“Overall,” they concluded, “to the extent a Trump win inspires retail investors to not only buy risk assets but also further embrace the ‘debasement trade’, there could be additional upside for Bitcoin and gold prices.”

While Trump’s potential re-election is perceived as generally positive for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, its impact on gold may be more muted according to David Morrison from Trade Nation.

“Gold should continue to do its own thing,” he stated regarding current market conditions.

Morrison elaborated further: “It is currently in a bull market and this is unlikely to change under either candidate.”

He emphasized factors such as lower interest rates and declining dollar values that can bolster gold prices while noting little influence either candidate might exert over Federal Reserve policies—even despite Trump’s comments advocating rate cuts during his tenure.

With Fed chair Jerome Powell maintaining his position without any immediate threat of dismissal—despite Trump’s previous attempts at pressure—Morrison highlighted underlying bullish fundamentals supporting bullion investments amid rising geopolitical tensions alongside central bank purchasing activities primarily from nations like China rather than traditional Western central banks such as those represented by Federal Reserve or ECB actions.

He cautioned about absent retail demand during recent rallies but suggested that igniting such demand could lead toward substantial price gains moving forward.

Nicky Shiels from MKS PAMP provided insights suggesting fluctuating dynamics surrounding future valuations: “Gold’s trajectory into yearend is quite binary and contingent on both election outcomes.”

“The case for Gold at $2500 or $3000 can be made,” she said regarding possible price movements influenced heavily through various economic scenarios unfolding post-election day along with domestic data releases impacting Fed outlooks significantly moving ahead.”

For practical investor strategies concerning precious metals given uncertainty ahead; Shiels advised caution while remaining engaged: “Stay lightly long…but keep dry powder ready.”

Article generated from corporate media reports.

If the dollar does lose its position as the global reserve currency, it will be catastrophic for the American economy. Catastrophic for the American people on whose backs 80 years of reserve status were built. And it will subject billions of foreigners, for whom the dollar has meant decades of being bullied, to history’s greatest bait and switch.

Dollar at Risk

In late March, Saudi Arabia announced it will price oil in Chinese yuan. Even CNN was worried, in a rare display of situational awareness, while Fox fretted about “Weimar”—hyperinflation.

The dollar has been the undisputed global reserve currency since the 1940s. Reserve currency status looks great on paper: You get to print stacks of green paper and foreigners give you cool stuff for it, like toasters, luxury cars, and copper mines. The problem is who profits—who gets paid when foreigners crave the green paper?

Unfortunately, it’s not the American people; it’s whomever’s printing money: The Fed, meaning the Treasury, to whom they hand their ill-gotten profits, and—you guessed it—Wall Street. Commercial banks.

To see why, imagine foreigners didn’t want dollars. The Fed and banks could only print a little bit since printing a lot would create inflation, and voters would toss them out.

But if foreigners want a large number of dollars, the Fed and banks can print a matching amount. It’s like a river flowing into the money supply reservoir, matched up with a river flowing out to foreigners. The reservoir stays stable, and voters don’t riot.

But notice where the profits went. That river to foreigners didn’t go to we the dollar-holders—we are the reservoir; we are unchanged. The profits went right through us to the source of the river: the US Treasury and Wall Street.

So, like the rest of our crony financial system, it’s a hustle. The American people think they’re benefitting from reserve status, but the profits were sucked out and handed to the people who designed the institutional fleecing we call a financial system.

Enter Weimar

Now, here’s the problem. What if foreigners suddenly don’t want dollars?

Maybe China’s paying them to sell oil in yuan, or maybe the Fed lost the plot and creates too much inflation.

Demand dries up, the dollar starts to lose value, and foreigners start worry their life savings and corporate treasuries are melting. They sell out of the dollar. A little at first, more and more if it accelerates.

Now that river to foreigners reverses, it flows back into the reservoir. The dollar collapses. 70 years of Fed and Wall Street money printing comes rushing back like a tsunami running up a canyon. We’re talking double-digital inflation, over multiple years, at a minimum.

If they screw this up, reserve currency status could turn out to be a trap, an absolute catastrophe for the American people.

What Are the Stages of De-dollarization?

So what happens if the dollar falls?

For starters, foreigners don’t need as many dollars. Meaning there are extra dollars nobody wants. This makes the price of the dollar fall—it gets weaker.

It’s usually slow at first, then picks up speed if it keeps going, a progressive rush for the exits. This is because the first ones out only lose a little bit, but the longer they waited, the more they’ll lose.

Who’s left holding the bag as the dollar becomes increasingly worthless? Easy: Americans. The only people on earth who are actually obligated to use the US dollar, thanks to an obscure law passed in 1862 as a wartime emergency that nevertheless managed to stick around for 151 years.

So Americans have no choice: unless you swapped your dollars for gold, or Bitcoin, or goats, you go down with the ship.

What happens to those Americans? A falling dollar drives up the price of everything that comes into America. But it also drives up the price of anything traded on world markets. Meaning the raw materials and imported components that drive American factories and sustain American consumers.

The first to jump would be gasoline, heating fuel, and food prices—all of those are world markets. Along with prescription medicines since China has a creeping stranglehold thanks to our idiotic over-regulation—indeed, this is more or less true for every consumer product that China dominates: we shot ourselves in the foot, and now it’s coming back to bite us.

Next, those expensive commodities and input prices pour out through the supply chain. Yanking prices up in industry after industry—cars, construction materials like steel or concrete, clothes, furniture, TVs, computers, and medical devices.

Gone are the days of affordable luxuries—now you gotta work for them.

The Main Event: Capital Flows

And that’s when the main event begins: capital flows.

If foreigners get nervous, they sell not only dollars, they sell assets denominated in dollars. Starting with the most liquid: stocks, bonds, and treasuries. These are easy to trade—IBM stock is easier to sell than a Taiwanese factory in Wisconsin—so they go first.

About 40% of American stocks are owned by foreigners and about one-third of corporate bonds. If foreigners start fleeing, both plunge. This could cut your 401k almost in half, and it could drive up borrowing costs for companies to impossible levels.

Leading to mass bankruptcies on top of the wave of bankruptcies the Fed’s already engineering to try and stop the inflation it started.

It doesn’t stop there: one-third of US treasuries are owned by foreigners—over $8 trillion in bonds. If foreigners start dumping those, it will either send US government debt service soaring by potentially hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Or, much more likely, it forces the Fed to step in and buy up all that foreign demand, flooding yet more trillions into the economy.

This would flip inflation overnight marching back towards double-digits.

Conclusion

There are ways to stop this. But given the Washington clown show to raise the debt ceiling yet again, paired with their obsession with sanctions that scare foreign countries off the dollar, Washington isn’t remotely close to the serious thinking it will take to right this ship.

Losing reserve currency status would savage the American economy, and it would savage the American people. No country needs reserve currency status—after all, it doesn’t benefit the people. But, like climbing a cliffside with no gear, once you go halfway, you better not let go.

About the Author

Peter St. Onge is a Mises Institute Associated Scholar and an Economic Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation.  For more content from Dr. St. Onge, subscribe to his newsletter where he writes about Austrian economics and cryptocurrency. 

[A version of this article first appeared on Peter St. Onge’s substack.]

The world is transitioning from a paradigm of Federal Reserve fiat currency dominance to what appears to be a gold-backed digital currency that will eventually serve as the new world reserve currency instead of the United States dollar.

The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) nations have already announced plans to create this new gold-backed digital currency as competition for the dollar, which is rapidly declining as the U.S. military-industrial complex loses its foothold of control over the world.

In order to level the playing field, especially for smaller nations, BRICS is in the process of bringing a gold-backed digital currency to fruition, and soon. And the recent failures of FTX, Genesis Trading, and other fraudulent cryptocurrency exchanges and platforms is helping to speed things along.

• (Related: The FTX crypto fraud helped fund the “TOGETHER Trial,” which aimed to discredit the usefulness of ivermectin as a remedy for covid.)

“This theme of fraud and money laundering is now a recurring motif as the truth about these exchanges is revealed,” writes Stan Szymanski for Encouraging Angels about this transition of power and currency control.

“While the implosion of crypto is continuing to be exposed through money laundering and bankruptcy, the U.S. Dollar (and by default, the United States) has clearly lost its stranglehold on world currency leadership.”

Soon the world will be free of central bank-owned fiat monopoly money

Finance as it currently exists under fiat-based central banking schemes is nothing short of fraudulent. It benefits a select few at the expense of everybody else and the fruits of their labor, which continue to be stolen via inflation and the constant boom-and-bust cycle of the markets.

The BRICS idea of pegging digital currency to actual gold – and ensuring that gold actually exists through solid accounting – has the potential to create a fairer and more just monetary system not controlled by the globalists like the current system is.

“The countries of the world are tired of being whipsawed by Fed policies,” Szymanski writes.

“Gold is the eternal constant … the BRICS will use Gold as a lynchpin in the establishment of their new currency. The rabid purchase of Gold by central banks that is noted above is a harbinger of its future employment in wider financial matters to come.”

Crypto in and of itself, in Szymanski’s view, has no inherent worth. Its blockchain backbone, however, has incredible utility potential, and could serve as a solid backbone for a future world reserve currency backed by real gold.

“Since the new coming world reserve currency will have a gold component, it must also be linked to an electronic medium for the instantaneous accounting and settlement of trade and transactions,” he explains. “Combining Gold (value) and crypto (accounting) can make sense if done right.”

Already, there is a gold-backed cryptocurrency scheme in the works between Russia and Iran. This gold-backed crypto will enable cross-border transactions instead of fiat currencies like the U.S. dollar, the Russian ruble, or the Iranian rial.

“The world is working feverishly to break free from the dollar hegemony of the United States,” Szymanski writes. “Gold will be a key to the new system as it has been real money for 5,000 years. Crypto will play a part as a transaction and accounting mechanism.”

“To the American populace (this is not financial advice-consult your financial professional): If your net worth is invested in dollar denominated assets including but not limited to 401(k), pension plan, savings accounts, Certificate of Deposit, mutual funds, stocks and bonds and the like you will most likely not believe how low the value of your assets can go when your country is not the holder of the world reserve currency.”

If you enjoyed reading this story, you will find more like it at Collapse.news.

Sources for this article include:

• EncouragingAngels.org
• NaturalNews.com
• NATURAL NEWS

Will there be a great fall soon? That’s hard to say, but on thing is absolutely certain: If our Humpty Dumpty economy does have a great fall, all the nation’s horse and all the nation’s men will not be able to put it back together again. It’ll make The Great Depression seem like a minor fiscal blip, as I discussed in a brief for The JD Rucker Show. Here’s Michael Snyder from The Economic Collapse Blog to explain more…

Is your job safe?  Right now, we are witnessing so much turmoil is so many different sectors of our economy.  The housing market is crashing, the cryptocurrency industry has imploded, the tech industry is laying off workers at an extremely frightening pace, and some of our most important retailers are heading into bankruptcy.  The information that I am about to share with you is deeply troubling.  It has become exceedingly clear that our economy is in huge trouble, and I fully expect that our problems will accelerate even more as the year rolls along.

Let me start by pointing out what is currently happening at Microsoft.  It is one of the wealthiest companies in the entire world, but due to a shift in “macroeconomic conditions” executives have decided that it has become necessary to lay off 10,000 workers…

Microsoft announced thousands of job cuts this week, becoming the latest tech company to pluck its workforce as the global economy slows.

The software company confirmed Wednesday its reducing workforce by 10,000 people through the end of the third quarter of the 2023 fiscal year.

The cuts come “in response to macroeconomic conditions and changing customer priorities,” the company’s CEO Satya Nadella released in a statement to its employees Wednesday.

If even Microsoft is laying off thousands of workers, is any job in the private sector truly safe?

Meanwhile, some of the biggest names in the retail industry are plunging into bankruptcy now that the holiday season is over.

On Tuesday, it was Party City’s turn…

Party City filed for bankruptcy protection Tuesday, weighed down by competition and years of financial losses.

The largest party goods and Halloween specialty retail chain in the United States said in a regulatory filing that it reached an agreement with debtholders to cut its $1.7 billion debt load.

Even more alarming is the fact that it is being reported that a bankruptcy filing for Bed Bath & Beyond has become “likely”…

Bed Bath & Beyond has been in discussions with prospective buyers and lenders as it works to keep its business afloat during a likely bankruptcy filing, according to people familiar with the matter.

The retailer is in the midst a sale process in hopes of finding a buyer that would keep the doors open for both of its major chains, its namesake banner and Buybuy Baby, said the people, who weren’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

So many brick and mortar retailers are really struggling right now, and many of them are blaming competition from Internet retailers such as Amazon.

But if Amazon is doing so well, why did they start laying off approximately 18,000 workers on Wednesday?…

Earlier this month, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told employees in a blog post that the company was laying off about 18,000 people as it seeks to cut costs and would begin contacting impacted employees on Jan. 18.

“Amazon has weathered uncertain and difficult economies in the past, and we will continue to do so,” Jassy said in the Jan. 4 post. “These changes will help us pursue our long-term opportunities with a stronger cost structure.”

The wave of layoffs that we have been witnessing in the tech industry is truly unprecedented.

Prior to this week, more than 25,000 tech industry workers had already been laid off this year, and this comes on the heels of the massive layoffs that we saw last year…

According to the data tracking website, more than 101 tech companies around the world have laid off 25,436 employees so far in 2023. Most of the layoffs have taken place in the United States, accounting for 22,400 employees fired.

The number of workers being laid off from tech companies is a trend that is continuing since 2022, when 154,336 workers were fired from over 1,000 tech companies around the world, according to the data.

But at least the tech industry is in far better shape than the cryptocurrency industry is.

Let me share four major announcements that have all happened within the past 10 days…

#1 It is being reported that Genesis Global Capital “is laying the groundwork for a bankruptcy filing”…

Genesis Global Capital is laying the groundwork for a bankruptcy filing as soon as this week, according to people with knowledge of the situation.

The cryptocurrency lending unit of Digital Currency Group has been in confidential negotiations with various creditor groups amid a liquidity crunch. It has warned that it may need to file for bankruptcy if it fails to raise cash, Bloomberg previously reported.

#2 Crypto.com announced that it will be laying off “20% of its workforce”…

Crypto.com announced plans to lay off 20% of its workforce Jan. 13. The company had 2,450 employees, according to PitchBook data, suggesting around 490 employees were laid off.

CEO Kris Marszalek said in a blog post that the crypto exchange grew “ambitiously” but was unable to weather the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire FTX without the further cuts.

#3 Coinbase has decided “to cut about a fifth of its workforce”…

On Jan. 10, Coinbase announced plans to cut about a fifth of its workforce as it looks to preserve cash during the crypto market downturn.

The exchange plans to cut 950 jobs, according to a blog post. Coinbase, which had roughly 4,700 employees as of the end of September, had already slashed 18% of its workforce in June saying it needed to manage costs after growing “too quickly” during the bull market.

#4 The founder of cryptocurrency exchange Bitzlato has actually been arrested.  Apparently he was laundering money on a scale of epic proportions…

The founder of the Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency exchange Bitzlato was arrested early Wednesday in Miami in connection with a vast money laundering operation, accused of transmitting more than $700 million in illicit funds in the past four years.

Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said Anatoly Legkodymov, 40, a Russian national, oversaw a major “high-tech financial hub that catered to known crooks,” including cybercriminals and drug dealers seeking to process dirty money.

The cryptocurrency industry will never look the same again after all of this turmoil.

On top of everything else, the Saudis appear to be poised to make a major move that could literally change everything.

At the yearly gathering of the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Saudi finance minister decided to drop a bombshell…

Saudi Arabia is open to discussions about trade in currencies other than the US dollar, according to the kingdom’s finance minister.

Needless to say, this could potentially completely undermine the dominance of the petrodollar.

Of course we cannot afford to have that happen, because the dominance of the dollar is one of the only things that is keeping our system afloat.

At this point just about everything is moving in the wrong direction for the U.S. economy, but most people still do not understand the bigger picture.

A lot of the “experts” assume that we will just suffer through a temporary recession and then things will eventually return to normal. I wish that was true.

Unfortunately, our entire system is starting to crack and crumble all around us, and those that are currently running things are not going to be able to put it back together again.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

About the Author: My name is Michael and my brand new book entitled “End Times” is now available on Amazon.com.  In addition to my new book I have written six other books that are available on Amazon.com including “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. (#CommissionsEarned)  When you purchase any of these books you help to support the work that I am doing, and one way that you can really help is by sending copies as gifts to family and friends.  Time is short, and I need help getting these warnings into the hands of as many people as possible.

I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.

I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is definitely a great help.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, I strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

Article cross-posted from The Economic Collapse Blog.

Alternative video sources:

We Are Witnessing an Enormous Wave of Bankruptcies and Layoffs During the Early Stages of 2023 https://t.co/uFkMhcIzpI

— JD Rucker (@JDRucker) January 21, 2023

Vyacheslav Taran died when the helicopter that he was riding in suddenly slammed into a hillside.  He was the co-founder of a trading platform known as Libertex, and his involvement in the cryptocurrency industry had made him a very wealthy man.

Unfortunately for Taran, he won’t be able to spend any more of that wealth because his life is now over…

A Russian billionaire has become the third top cryptocurrency trader to die suddenly in recent weeks.

Vyacheslav Taran, 53, the co-founder of trading and investing platform Libertex, died after his helicopter mysteriously crashed in a resort town near Monaco.

The vehicle plummeted on November 25 afternoon, killing Mr Taran, who had lived in Monaco for a decade, as well as a veteran pilot.

As we have seen so many times over the years, riding in helicopters can be extremely dangerous.

And it is interesting to note that “another passenger allegedly cancelled last minute”…

The finance titan was flying with an experienced pilot, 35, from the city on the shores of Lake Geneva after another passenger allegedly cancelled last minute.

The single-engine light helicopter Eurocopter EC130 operated by Monacair collided with a hillside near Eze village at around 2pm, Monaco Life reported

Hopefully we will find out the identity of the “other passenger” that decided not to go at the last minute .

That may give us a clue about what really happened.

In the end, this may have just been a tragic accident, or Taran may have been targeted for a reason that does not involve cryptocurrency.

A lot of prominent Russians have been dying lately, and so this could just be another instance where wealthy Russians are being targeted.

We just don’t know.

But what we do know is that another co-founder of a prominent cryptocurrency company was suddenly found dead last week.

It is being reported that 30-year-old Tiantian Kullander died unexpectedly while he was sleeping…

Tiantian Kullander, co-founder of Hong Kong-based digital asset company Amber Group, died unexpectedly last week in his sleep. He was 30 years old.

The company confirmed the news in a statement, saying that Tiantian, also known as “TT,” had “passed away unexpectedly in his sleep on November 23, 2022.”

Once again, it is certainly possible that this death could have absolutely nothing to do with the cryptocurrency industry.

Throughout 2022, lots of seemingly healthy young people have been dropping dead, and Kullander may just be another to add to the list.

But just like Taran, Kullander was one of the cryptocurrency industry’s most important pioneers…

“Besides co-founding Amber and building it into a multi-billion fintech unicorn, TT sat on the Board of Fnatic (one of the world’s most successful e-sports organizations) and founded KeeperDAO (the first on-chain liquidity underwriter) before giving it back to its community,” the company’s statement continued. “TT was a devoted husband, a loving father and a fierce friend. His passing is a tragedy and our thoughts and prayers are with his family. He is survived by his wife and their beloved son. We kindly request that you respect their privacy during this difficult time.”

It is often said that two is a coincidence, but three is a trend.

Well, there is one more mysterious cryptocurrency industry death that I would like to discuss in this article.

On October 28th, 29-year-old Nikolai Mushegian was found dead on a Puerto Rico beach.

In this particular case, Mushegian actually predicted ahead of time that he would soon be killed…

A brilliant young cryptocurrency pioneer named Nikolai Mushegian tweeted on Oct. 28 that intelligence agencies were going to murder him — and was found dead on a Puerto Rico beach hours later.

“CIA and Mossad and pedo elite are running some kind of sex trafficking entrapment blackmail ring out of Puerto Rico and Caribbean islands,” Mushegian, a developer of blockchain-based decentralized finance platforms who wanted to end global banking corruption, tweeted at 4:57 a.m. “They are going to frame me with a laptop planted by my ex [girlfriend] who was a spy. They will torture me to death.”

Of course we can’t actually prove that shadowy forces killed him.

All we know is that just hours after his ominous tweet his body was found in the waves on Ashford Beach.  Interestingly, he still “had his wallet on him”…

The 29-year-old then left his $6 million beach house in the luxe Condado area of San Juan, Puerto Rico, for a walk. A little after 9 a.m., a surfer off Ashford Beach, a spot considered so rife with riptides that local hotels warn against ocean swimming, discovered Mushegian’s body in the waves. He was wearing his clothes and had his wallet on him, sources told The Post.

If some criminals jumped him on the beach, they would have certainly taken his wallet.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean that he was murdered.

He could have simply drowned after going for a swim, and there is also the possibility that he could have killed himself.

According to those that knew him, he had very serious mental health issues that he was dealing with, and it appears that he was also a heavy drug user…

A person who knew Mushegian very well for years until they had a falling-out two years ago said that the developer was “very very smart” but also suffered from extreme bouts of paranoia.

“He had mental problems,” said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “He saw a psychiatrist at times. He smoked a lot of pot. A tremendous amount.”

Ultimately, we may never know if all three of these deaths are connected somehow.

But I find it very interesting that all three of these men were key pioneers in the industry.

And now they are all gone.

Life is so short, and for some it ends far sooner than they were anticipating.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

About the Author: My name is Michael and my brand new book entitled “End Times” is now available on Amazon.com.  In addition to my new book I have written six other books that are available on Amazon.com including “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. (#CommissionsEarned)  When you purchase any of these books you help to support the work that I am doing, and one way that you can really help is by sending copies as gifts to family and friends.  Time is short, and I need help getting these warnings into the hands of as many people as possible.

I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.

I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is definitely a great help.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, I strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

Article cross-posted from The Economic Collapse Blog.

A Few Facts and Curious Coincidences

First of all, the massive financial scandal has left investors with billions of dollars in losses. That in itself makes the debacle one of the costliest on record. The speed at which FTX both attracted investors and lost all of its money is also unprecedented. Its CEO, Samuel Bankman-Fried (also known by his initials SBF), went from a net worth of up to $26 billion to essentially broke in a matter of days.

It’s also amazing how Bankman-Fried was able to acquire such a large amount of investor cash so quickly and publicly.

Why didn’t that attract some sort of regulatory inquiry despite warnings from market experts in congressional testimony?

The Madoff of Cryptos

This is a very good question since the dynamics of the collapse involved evident malfeasance on the part of Bankman-Fried. Not only were basic capital protections ignored, but FTX investors’ cash was diverted into Alameda Research, an investment firm owned by SBF. That’s an illegal and unethical conflict of interest that should have already drawn criminal charges against him, especially in light of the scope of the financial losses. He has rightly been described as the Bernie Madoff of cryptocurrency.

Yet somehow, amazingly, SBF has yet to be arrested. What’s more, regulators missed these obvious red flags. Or did they simply ignore them?

And if regulators ignored the FTX transgressions, why would that be?

The simple answer, though certainly not the only or complete one, is that Bankman-Fried and FTX were and remain politically connected to very powerful people. That’s a well-established fact.

Son of Stanford Professors

Another well-established fact is that Bankman-Fried’s parents are both Stanford professors. His mother, Barbara Fried, teaches courses in federal income taxation, legal theory, tax policy, distributive justice, and moral psychology. His father is an expert in taxation policy and has testified before Congress. Both are deeply connected to the Democratic Party establishment, and both profited handsomely from FTX to the tune of some $300 million in properties.

Turning a Blind Eye

But did politicians help protect FTX along the way?

That, too, has yet to be established. It is a fact, however, that the political elite in Washington, our elected representatives, benefitted greatly from FTX. Since 2019, Bankman-Fried has been the second largest donor to the Democratic Party, contributing $38 million of essentially stolen investor funds from FTX to the party.

But it wasn’t just the Democrats that were funded by FTX. In that same period, Bankman-Fried’s co-CEO, Ryan Salame, who ran various parts of FTX, donated about $20 million to the Republican Party. So both parties gained from large financial contributions by FTX.

One can’t help but wonder how many blind eyes and legal protection such contributions may have bought Mr. Bankman-Fried. That is speculative but not unreasonably so.

Tainting the Bitcoin Well

Furthermore, hundreds of millions of dollars have been stolen from the exchange and funneled into bitcoin. That dynamic is turning the world’s top cryptocurrency into a haven of thieves and tarnishing its already damaged reputation. Bitcoin is already under duress as energy costs associated with mining have risen while bitcoin’s price and credit sources have contracted.

The timing of the FTX collapse is another coincidence. It certainly helps the anti-cryptocurrency crowd. Critics warn that money, especially cryptocurrency, is just too important to leave to the market and private issuers.

That argument sounds reasonable, but it’s also highly coincidental with the FTX crash occurring in the same period as the Federal Reserve’s public announcement and initial testing of its Central Bank Digital Currency, known as the digital dollar.

Why’s that important? There are at least a few reasons.

A Perfect Crisis for the Digital Dollar

One is that the FTX crash is the perfect crisis to help “demonstrate” to the public that unregulated, decentralized, and anonymous exchanges, and trades and holdings of cryptocurrencies that are beyond the purview of the federal government pose a threat to investors.

That’s true, but the same could be said about unregulated real estate transactions or the buying and selling of used cars. Nonetheless, the cryptocurrency chaos can be used to justify a federal crackdown on the industry.

Another reason is that the American public will not be easily convinced of the need or desirability of the digital dollar. The FTX collapse may be one way to help shatter public confidence in all cryptocurrencies as safe and viable alternative investments in order to persuade the public to accept the issuance of the digital dollar.

The digital dollar will be transparent and programmable to provide the Fed with new levels of control over our spending habits, strip away privacy, and greatly restrict personal autonomy. In short, digital currency is a formula for tyranny that will be presented as needed for currency security.

Who Are the Shadow Players?

There are other curiosities about FTX and its sudden downfall, such as the identity and influence of FTX and Alameda Research co-founder and CTO Garry Wang. He has been silent so far, and not much is known about him.

Finally, it’s certainly coincidental that Bankman-Fried sought a bailout from his industry rival Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, owner of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. Some believe that China-born Zhao’s loyalties still lie with Beijing. That is not known at this time.

But as enigmatic as the people surrounding the fall of FTX appear to be is how it was allowed to happen in the first place, which leads to at least one more question …

Was FTX designed to fail?

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of our premium news partners at The Epoch Times.

That is how fast it can happen.

Overall, the cryptocurrency industry “has lost more than $1.4 trillion in value this year”…

The cryptocurrency market has lost more than $1.4 trillion in value this year as the industry has been plagued with problems from failed projects to a liquidity crunch, exacerbated by the fall of FTX, once one of the world’s largest exchanges.

FTX wasn’t the first domino to fall, and it certainly won’t be the last.

In fact, now we are being warned that Genesis “may need to file for bankruptcy”…

Digital-asset brokerage Genesis is struggling to raise fresh cash for its lending unit, and it’s warning potential investors that it may need to file for bankruptcy if its efforts fail, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Ouch.

If Genesis fails, that is going to hurt.

So why is Genesis in so much trouble?  Well, it turns out that Genesis had “$175 million locked in an FTX trading account”…

Genesis has spent the past several days seeking at least $1 billion in fresh capital, said the people, who asked not to be identified because discussions are private. That included talks over a potential investment from crypto exchange Binance, they said, but funding so far has failed to materialize.

The rush for funding was precipitated by a liquidity crunch at the lender after the sudden collapse of FTX, one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges. Genesis halted redemptions shortly after revealing on Nov. 10 that it had $175 million locked in an FTX trading account.

Needless to say, that 175 million dollars is now gone and it isn’t coming back.

Meanwhile, Coinbase continues to spiral downhill as well.  According to Axios, the market cap for Coinbase has now fallen under 10 billion dollars…

The market capitalization of Coinbase just dropped below $10 billion. This time last year, it was more than $70 billion.

Of course it isn’t just the crypto industry that is in enormous trouble.

For years, Tesla’s stock price just kept going higher and higher.

But now Tesla’s market value is about 670 billion dollars lower than it was at this time last year…

Business Insider reports that Tesla’s market valuation has plummeted by nearly $700 billion from its peak a year ago. Insider notes that the $670 billion decline is equivalent to the market value of three Disneys, four Nikes, or six Starbucks.

Meanwhile, ordinary U.S. consumers are losing a tremendous amount of wealth as well.

According to the New York Post, U.S. homeowners “lost a staggering $1.3 trillion in home equity in the third quarter”…

US homeowners lost a staggering $1.3 trillion in home equity in the third quarter during a major slump in the housing sector, according to data published by mortgage analytics firm Black Knight on Tuesday.

Home equity – broadly defined as the value of a homeowner’s property minus what is still owed on their mortgage – has plummeted during a rapid market correction.

The equity losses in just three months were “by far the largest quarterly decline on record by dollar value and the largest since 2009 on a percentage basis,” according to Black Knight data & analytics president Ben Graboske.

We have never seen a quarter like that before.

Not even during the crisis of 2008 and 2009 did we see such a huge quarterly loss.

A new housing crash is here, and it has already gone global.  In fact, Spain has already developed a plan to offer “mortgage support relief” to over a million Spanish households…

Spain’s cabinet on Tuesday gave its approval to mortgage relief support for more than one million vulnerable households and help for middle-class families a day after the government and banks reached an agreement in principle.

The measures are subject to final negotiations with banking associations, Economy Minister Nadia Calvino said, adding that banks had a month to sign up ahead of their planned implementation next year.

Sadly, we will see much more government intervention all over the western world as this nightmare gets even worse in the months ahead.

The pace of layoffs is really starting to pick up, and there is a lot of fear out there right now.

Just about everyone can feel that very tough times are in front of us, and some experts are now issuing bold pronouncements that are quite chilling.

For example, Nouriel Roubini is warning that what we are facing is probably going to be “as bad as during the Global Financial Crisis”…

“History suggests it’s going to be near mission impossible to avoid a hard landing. You’re going to get not only inflation, not only a recession, but what I call the ‘Great Stagflationary Debt Crisis.’ So it’s much worse than the ’70s, and it’s probably as bad as during the Global Financial Crisis.”

Actually, if all we go through is a repeat of what we experienced in 2008 and 2009 we would be extremely fortunate.

Because the truth is that it isn’t just the economy that is failing.

As I have repeatedly warned my regular readers, what we are now witnessing is literally the collapse of everything.

Our entire society is slowly but surely coming apart at the seams all around us, but most people still expect that conditions will eventually return to “normal”.

Unfortunately, “normal” has left the building, and a tremendous amount of pain is ahead.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

About the Author: My name is Michael and my brand new book entitled “End Times” is now available on Amazon.com.  In addition to my new book I have written six other books that are available on Amazon.com including “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. (#CommissionsEarned)  When you purchase any of these books you help to support the work that I am doing, and one way that you can really help is by sending copies as gifts to family and friends.  Time is short, and I need help getting these warnings into the hands of as many people as possible.

I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.

I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is definitely a great help.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, I strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

Article cross-posted from The Economic Collapse Blog.

Following the announced resignation of the entire Future Fund leadership team on November 11, one of the companies that was supposed to receive a cash grant from it, SecureBio, lamented the fact that employees at his firm will now be out of a job unless emergency backup funding is procured.

“We don’t think it is right that anyone should lose their jobs over a financial calamity totally unrelated to the excellent work they are doing,” announced SecureBio co-founder Kevin Esvelt.

SecureBio had initially been awarded a $1.2 million grant to develop “better pandemic defenses,” according to Coin Telegraph.

Another company, a biotechnology firm called Sherlock Biosciences, was supposed to receive $2 million from the Future Fund to study infectious diseases. HelixNano, a similar firm within the same field, was supposed to receive $10 million for vaccine research.

Then there is Our World in Data, which was supposed to be given $7.5 million to “track trends relevant to humanity’s long-term prospects,” whatever that is supposed to mean.

FTX was also involved in research to “debunk” the merits of ivermectin as a viable remedy for the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19).

Another entity that was supposed to be on the dole of FTX’s “philanthropic” efforts via Sam Bankman-Fried’s (SBF) “Building a Stronger Future” initiative is ProPublica, which was to receive the first tranche of a $5 million grant this year, followed by more disbursements in 2023 and 2024.

Organizations that received money from FTX in the 90 days prior to its bankruptcy could be subject to a “clawback”

According to Molly Kovite, a lawyer and member of the “Effective Altruism” group, all of these organizations and others that received money from an FTX entity within the 90 days prior to its bankruptcy declaration could be forced to pay it all back through a process known as a “clawback.”

Two days after Kovite announced this on November 14, Open Philanthropy, the philanthropic funder that Kovite represents, announced that it is seeking applications from grantees affected by the collapse of the Future Fund. Each application will be evaluated and provided funding at the group’s discretion.

Meanwhile, U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) are requesting that SBF, the former FTX CEO, and John Jay Ray III, the current CEO, provide more information about what happened to collapse the fraudulent cryptocurrency exchange.

Some 13 different requests for documents, lists and answers have been sent by these two, who are still awaiting answers on behalf of the American public.

“The public is owed a complete and transparent accounting of the business practices and financial activities leading up to and following FTX’s collapse,” the two lawmakers wrote, emphasizing that there has been an “apparent lack of due diligence by venture capital and other big investment funds eager to get rich off crypto.”

“These developments justify our long-standing concerns that the crypto industry ‘is built to favor scammers’ and ‘designed to reward insiders and to defraud mom-and-pop investors,’” they further added.

SBF and Ray have until November 28 to provide the requested materials, which also include “complete copies of all FTX and FTX-subsidiary balance sheets, from 2019 to the present.”

Warren and Durbin also want SBF to provide an explanation for his business decisions as well as strange statements he has made on Twitter that appear to be encoded for secret communication.

The latest news about FTX and SBF can be found at Collapse.news.

Sources for this article include:

• CoinTelegraph.com 1
• NaturalNews.com
• CoinTelegraph.com 2
• NATURAL NEWS

Very interesting. He had the whole game going: a vegan worried about climate change, supports every manner of justice (racial, social, environmental) except that which is coming for him, and shells out millions to worthy charities associated with the left. He also bought plenty of access and protection in D.C., enough to make his shady company the toast of the town.

As part of the mix, there is this thing called pandemic planning. We should know what that is by now: it means you can’t be in charge of your life because there are bad viruses out there. As bizarre as it seems, and for reasons that are still not entirely clear, favoring lockdowns, masks, and vaccine passports became part of the woke ideological stew.

This is particularly strange because covid restrictions have been proven, over and over, to harm all the groups about whom woke ideology claims to care so deeply. That includes even animal rights: who can forget the Danish mink slaughter of 2020?

Regardless, it’s just true. Masking became a symbol of being a good person, same as vaccinating, veganism, and flying into fits at the drop of a hat over climate change. None of this has much if anything to do with science or reality. It’s all tribal symbolism in the name of group political solidarity. And FTX was pretty good at it, throwing around hundreds of millions to prove the company’s loyalty to all the right causes.

Among them included the pandemic-planning racket. That’s right: there were deep connections between FTX and Covid that have been cultivated for two years. Let’s have a look.

Earlier this year, the New York Times trumpeted a study that showed no benefit at all to the use of Ivermectin. It was supposed to be definitive. The study was funded by FTX. Why? Why was a crypto exchange so interested in the debunking of repurposed drugs in order to drive governments and people into the use of patented pharmaceuticals, even those like Remdesivir that didn’t actually work? Inquiring minds would like to know.

Regardless, the study and especially the conclusions turned out to be bogus. David Henderson and Charles Hooper further point out an interesting fact: “Some of the researchers involved in the TOGETHER trial had performed paid services for Pfizer, Merck, Regeneron, and AstraZeneca, all companies involved in developing COVID-19 therapeutics and vaccines that nominally compete with ivermectin.”

For some reason, SBF just knew that he was supposed to oppose repurposed drugs, though he knew nothing about the subject at all. He was glad to fund a poor study to make it true and the New York Times played its assigned role in the whole performance.

It was just the start. A soft-peddling Washington Post investigation found that Sam and his brother Gabe, who ran a hastily founded Covid nonprofit, “have spent at least $70 million since October 2021 on research projects, campaign donations and other initiatives intended to improve biosecurity and prevent the next pandemic.”

I can do no better than to quote the Washington Post:

The shock waves from FTX’s free fall have rippled across the public health world, where numerous leaders in pandemic-preparedness had received funds from FTX funders or were seeking donations.

In other words, the “public health world” wanted more chances to say: “Give me money so I can keep advocating to lock more people down!” Alas, the collapse of the exchange, which reportedly holds a mere 0.001% of the assets it once claimed to have, makes that impossible.

Among the organizations most affected is Guarding Against Pandemics, the advocacy group headed by Gabe that took out millions in ads to back the Biden administration’s push for $30 billion in funding. As Influence Watch notes: “Guarding Against Pandemics is a left-leaning advocacy group created in 2020 to support legislation that increases government investment in pandemic prevention plans.”

Truly it gets worse:

FTX-backed projects ranged from $12 million to champion a California ballot initiative to strengthen public health programs and detect emerging virus threats (amid lackluster support, the measure was punted to 2024), to investing more than $11 million on the unsuccessful congressional primary campaign of an Oregon biosecurity expert, and even a $150,000 grant to help Moncef Slaoui, scientific adviser for the Trump administration’s “Operation Warp Speed” vaccine accelerator, write his memoir.

Leaders of the FTX Future Fund, a spinoff foundation that committed more than $25 million to preventing bio-risks, resigned in an open letter last Thursday, acknowledging that some donations from the organization are on hold.

And worse:

The FTX Future Fund’s commitments included $10 million to HelixNano, a biotech start-up seeking to develop a next-generation coronavirus vaccine; $250,000 to a University of Ottawa scientist researching how to eradicate viruses from plastic surfaces; and $175,000 to support a recent law school graduate’s job at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “Overall, the Future Fund was a force for good,” said Tom Inglesby, who leads the Johns Hopkins center, lamenting the fund’s collapse. “The work they were doing was really trying to get people to think long-term … to build pandemic preparedness, to diminish the risks of biological threats.”

More:

Guarding Against Pandemics spent more than $1 million on lobbying Capitol Hill and the White House over the past year, hired at least 26 lobbyists to advocate for a still-pending bipartisan pandemic plan in Congress and other issues, and ran advertisements backing legislation that included pandemic-preparedness funding. Protect Our Future, a political action committee backed by the Bankman-Fried brothers, spent about $28 million this congressional cycle on Democratic candidates “who will be champions for pandemic prevention,” according to the group’s webpage.

I think you get the idea. This is all a racket. FTX, founded in 2019 following Biden’s announcement of his bid for the presidency, by the son of the co-founder of a major Democrat Party political action committee called Mind the Gap, was nothing but a magic-bean Ponzi scheme. It seized on the lockdowns for political, media, and academic cover. Its economic rationale was as nonexistent as its books. The first auditor to have a look has written:

“Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here. From compromised systems integrity and faulty regulatory oversight abroad, to the concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated and potentially compromised individuals, this situation is unprecedented.”

It was the worst example of a phony perpetual-motion machine: a token to back a company that itself was backed by the token, which in turn was backed by nothing but political fashion and woke ideology that roped in Larry David, Tom Brady,  Katy Perry, Tony Blair, and Bill Clinton to provide a cloak of legitimacy.

And you can’t make this stuff up anymore: FTX had a close relationship with the World Economic Forum and was the favored crypto exchange of the Ukrainian government. It looks for all the world like the money-laundering operation of the Democratic National Committee and the entire lockdown lobby.

I will tell you what infuriates me about these billions in fake money and deep corruptions of politics and science. For years now, my anti-lockdown friends have been hounded for being funded by supposed dark money that simply doesn’t exist. Many brave scientists, journalists, attorneys, and others gave up great careers to stand for principle, exposing the damage caused by the lockdowns, and this is how they have been treated: smeared and displaced.

Brownstone has adopted as many in this diaspora as possible for fellowships as far as the resources (real ones, contributed by caring individuals) can go. But we cannot come anywhere near what is necessary for justice, much less compete with the 8-digit funding regime of the other side.

The Great Barrington Declaration was signed at the offices of the American Institute for Economic Research, which, apparently, six years prior had received a long-spent $60,000 grant from the Koch Foundation, and thus became a “Koch-funded libertarian think tank” which supposedly discredited the GBD, even though none of the authors received a dime.

This gibberish and slander has gone on for years – at the urging of government officials! – and Brownstone itself faces much of the same nonsense, with every manner of fantasy about our supposed power, money, and influence swarming the darker realms of the social-media dungeons. In fact, the actual Koch Foundation (probably unbeknownst to its founder) was funding the pro-lockdown work of Neil Ferguson, whose ridiculous modeling terrified the US and UK into denying human rights to billions of people the world over.

All this time – while every type of vicious propaganda was unleashed on the world – the pro-lockdown and pro-mandate lobby, including fake scientists and fake studies, were benefiting from millions and billions thrown around by operators of a Ponzi scheme based on cheating, fraud, and $15 billion in leveraged funds that didn’t exist while its principal actors were languishing in a drug-infested $40 million villa in the Bahamas even as they preened about the virtues of “effective altruism” and their pandemic-planning machinery that has now fallen apart.

Then the New York Times, instead of decrying this criminal conspiracy for what it is, writes puff pieces on the founder and how he let his quick-growing company grow too far, too fast, and now needs mainly rest, bless his heart.

The rest of us are left with the bill for this obvious scam that implausibly links crypto and Covid. But just as the money was based on nothing but puffed air, the damage they have wrought on the world is all too real: a lost generation of kids, declined lifespans, millions missing from the workforce, a calamitous fall in public health, millions of kids in poverty due to supply-chain breakages, 19 straight months of falling real incomes, historically high increases in debt, and a dramatic fall in human morale the world over.

So yes, we should all be furious and demand full accountability at the very least. Whatever the final truth, it is likely to be far worse than even the egregious facts listed above. It’s bad enough that lockdowns wrecked life and liberty. To discover that vast support for them was funded by fraud and fakery is a deeper level of corruption that not even the most cynical among us could have imagined.

About the Author

Jeffrey A. Tucker, Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute, is an economist and author. He has written 10 books, including Liberty or Lockdown, and thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press. He writes a daily column on economics at The Epoch Times, and speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.

Article cross-posted from Brownstone Institute.