So much has been written about why we should end the Federal Reserve, and with the recent public demand for an audit, the message has finally reached the masses. Hopefully, if such an audit manifests, it will be the first step toward ultimately dismantling the Federal Reserve. (We should start with the extremely shady Bank Term Funding Program). But very little has been written about how to end the Federal Reserve, and that is what I wish to address here.

In his book, Socialism, Ludwig von Mises warns about the threat posed by socialism to peaceful co-existence and to Western civilization.

The assertion that pre-colonial Africans had no concept of diplomacy is both misleading and ahistorical. Among the Igbo-speaking people of southeastern Nigeria, a rich tradition of diplomacy flourished long before colonial incursions disrupted their political, economic, and social systems. The Igbos practiced intricate and effective diplomatic strategies rooted in pragmatism, negotiation, and cultural values, ensuring peaceful coexistence and mutual prosperity with neighboring groups.

The philosopher Karl Popper devoted considerable attention to Karl Marx in Volume 2 of The Open Society and Its Enemies, originally published in 1945, and in this week’s column, I’d like to consider some of his insights.

Popper’s most fundamental criticism of Marx is expressed in this paragraph:

Much has been written recently on Trump’s statements regarding tariffs and even his idea to replace income tax with tariffs.

According to a woefully outmoded law of the United States, the American government must account for the more than 8,100 tons of gold it owns at the now completely irrelevant price of $42.22 per ounce. In the precise language of the 1973 Act to Amend the Par Value Modification Act, still in force, the legally stipulated price is “forty-two and two-ninths dollars per fine troy ounce.” (That “two-ninths” is interesting.) But the real value, the market price of gold, has now traded over $3,000 per ounce, about 71 times the statutory price.

‘A ceasefire is when the Israelis fire and we cease.’ ~ Refaat Al-Areer, RIP
 

The median elapsed time between an American official opposing anything Israel does, and then dropping out of history is getting shorter. 

While the financial press is attempting to cover Trump’s frenetic bipolar tariff policy, the ponderous commercial real estate market continues to deteriorate. Bisnow.com reports, citing CoStar, “US banks reported delinquencies hit 1.57 percent at the end of last year, a rate not seen since the fourth quarter of 2014.”