Legislators have a strange relationship with magic. To achieve that which physically cannot be done, they like to wave magic wands and pretend that it can. Reality puts a limit on political power, a realization that always sits poorly with those in charge of our trillion-dollar bureaucratic machinery.

Money supply growth fell again in November, and this time it turned negative for the first time in 28 years. November’s drop continues a steep downward trend from the unprecedented highs experienced during much of the past two years. During the thirteen months between April 2020 and April 2021, money supply growth in the United States often climbed above 35 percent year over year, well above even the “high” levels experienced from 2009 to 2013. 

Introduction: Division, friction and polarization have been on the rise in the West for at least a decade, but the escalation we saw during the “covid years” was especially worrying. Over the last year, this “worry” has become a truly pressing concern, even a real emergency one might argue, as inflationary pressures and an actual war were added to the mix of political and social tensions.  

If you follow Indian politics, chances are you expect news of political horse trading every major election cycle. Horse trading is the phenomenon of elected representatives switching their party affiliations, often in exchange for money or roles in government. When there are simultaneous elections in several states, and the time that lapses between elections less, the machinery of all our political parties is devoted to churning out strategies for winning.

On December 21, the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, spoke to Congress in an effort to get more financial and military support from the American government. Zelenskyy spoke of peace, freedom, and interconnection as the main goals of the Ukrainian fight but that Ukraine needed American resolve. Zelenskyy stated: