Videos Of The Week
DOGE, USAID(s), The European Democracy Shield & The Potential For An American Golden Age Through Tariffs And An American Sovereign Wealth Fund
It’s been an interesting week on a bunch of fronts, but I wanted to talk a bit about the USAID circus. I could get lost in the rabbit hole on some of the ridiculous spending, but I wanted to focus in on the money spent subsidizing the establishment media. Whether it’s the BBC in Britain, the New York Times, or Politico (which apparently had trouble with payroll) receiving USAID funding, it seems like the spending graft has tentacles all over the globe. I did see an interesting post that breaks down how the how DOGE was originally the United States Digital Service, and how it could be used moving forward. Feel free to take it with a grain of salt, but if DOGE actually is the perfect Deep State IT backdoor, USAID might not be the only thing that ends up in crosshairs.
As you all know, everything you see or hear on the internet is true, but if that does turn out to be the background story for DOGE, it would be ironic. I’m curious to see if anything comes from the rumblings about USAID funding going to Ukraine (from the media to biolabs), but it will be interesting to watch how some of this develops. Apparently auditing the Pentagon is next on the agenda, but if the Trump administration keeps up the pace of the last three weeks (it feels like a lot longer than that), I think we might actually see things pick up momentum as this snowball starts rolling downhill.
I’ll be talking about it more in a podcast later this week, but it looks like Trump & Co. are actually going after the Deep State in round 2. It seems like USAID is a good place to start, and many have said is basically just a front (or slush fund) for the CIA. One prediction I will make is that that turning off the spigot is going to have some interesting downstream effects that are hard to even predict given the size and scope of the helicopter money that has been rained down over the last several decades. The last thing I wanted to mention before moving to the videos is the European Democracy Shield.
I’m sticking with my prediction that the EU is going to break apart by 2030, but apparently the EU will be able to cancel any elections in member states, and will “fight to combat hate speech and disinformation”. It will be interesting to watch what happens with the German election in a couple weeks with the rising popularity of the AfD (Alternative for Germany), which is supposedly the far-right party in Germany. I’m admittedly not an expert on European politics, but to my untrained eye, it looks like 2025 could be an interesting political year in Europe. As an aside, I have seen people complain about the rise of populism like it’s some dangerous and radical idea. What they fail to mention is that if the political class ruled in a way that was popular, they wouldn’t have to deal with an increasing percentage of the population that is ready for a change.
The Old World w/ Stormy Waters
I actually went on Will Tanner’s The Old World podcast (
) last week, but I wanted to share his most recent episode with Stormy Waters. They talk about tariffs, an American Sovereign Wealth Fund, among other topics. Over the last month everyone on fintwit has turned into a tariff expert, and it seems to me like the vast majority are convinced that tariffs are a terrible idea. I’m in the wait and see camp, but feel free to poke around and see what other countries have for tariffs on different goods. I said last week that Europe could be next, and it looks like the EU could be lowering tariffs on American cars from 10% to 2.5%. Rules for thee and not for me, as they say.We got some news that we could see 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum imports this weekend, but Stormy makes a compelling case that tariffs could be a huge positive for the US economy long-term, if they are executed correctly. They also discussed getting rid of the income tax, and the planned obsolescence that we see in so many modern products today. If the US is already the largest consumer economy, imagine what it would look like if Americans had 25-50% more purchasing power each year. They also discussed why multicultural democracies don’t work, and talked about Lee Kuan Yew and Ian Smith as two of the most interesting leaders of the back half of the 20th Century.
The sovereign wealth fund discussion was probably the most interesting part in my opinion. Stormy argues that there are certain things that only come out of government investment, usually extremely long term projects. Feel free to go down the Star Wars, DARPA, and internet rabbit hole if you need to. Instead of taxing businesses, what if you gave them seed money for a stake of the company? What if you actually gave the best and brightest in the US a fraction of the money that went into the USAID black hole and said “go build something”? The point is that if you get rid of the planned obsolescence from manufacturers and the income tax, add tariffs and add a well executed sovereign wealth fund, it’s a pretty interesting recipe for a potential American golden age.
Tucker Carlson Show w/ Mike Benz
The most recent Tucker Carlson show fits right in with the USAID circus. They talk about some of the actual examples of where USAID money has been going, but I think we will continue to see more headlines on it in coming weeks. It did seem like Benz was making excuses for USAID at times, but it will be interesting to see how all this plays out. He talked about the different layers to USAID, the lack of oversight, and the influence on social media and mainstream news outlets. He also covered the ties to Black Lives Matter, the repeal of the Smith Mundt Act in 2013 (which prohibited propaganda from being used on US citizens), and a variety of other topics. Tucker does a good job pulling on different threads, but this one is worth a watch if you want to go deeper into the rabbit hole on USAID.
“When it’s too dirty for the CIA, you give it to USAID.”
- Mike Benz