“Trying to defer America’s fiscal reckoning by monkeying with debt instruments is the trick used by broken hegemons through the ages. It is a Faustian pact.”

As Trump’s “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth demands a fifty-percent increase to the war budget—topping an eye watering $1.5 trillion—it may be instructive to remember that war spending has always and everywhere been the primary enemy of sound money. Some advocates of the warfare state like to lay the blame on social spending, but it has historically been wars that end up ruining currencies and blowing the top off the public fisc.

The total fertility rate needed to sustain a population is 2.1. Averaged over 2020–2024, South Korea’s stands at 0.78, Taiwan’s at 0.89, and Hong Kong’s at 0.79.

In a recent interview with The Economist, Elon Musk boldly contended that “money won’t matter in 2036.” He went on to argue that humans want money for goods and services. He then said, “Well, if that [goods/services are]. . .so abundant that. . .the robots and AI are providing more goods and services than any human could possibly consume, what do you need money for in that case?”

Around two and a half years ago, as the Biden administration was entering what we now know was its final year, the then-president’s re-election campaign was growing frustrated.

According to nearly all the big economic indicators and aggregates, the economy was doing quite well, especially considering the historic shutdown governments had forced on the global economy a few years before.

This month marks 55 years since President Richard Nixon closed the “gold window,” severing the last link between the US dollar and gold. Under the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement, foreign countries pegged their currencies to the US dollar, which was then pegged to a fixed value of gold. Foreign countries could exchange their dollars for gold at a rate of 35 dollars per ounce.

Trump wants a huge 50% increase to the war budget for his endless wars in Ukraine and Iran.