Monthly Archives: December 2025

The dollar may not suddenly crash, but the world is moving away from it and other fiat currencies. If it eventually results in one or more gold-backed currencies, that wouldn’t be a bad thing. From David Haggith at thedailydoom.com:

Out with the old, in with the new. Trade in your old bucks right on cue.

It takes a special kind of dump truck to haul away this much burning money quickly enough to get the degraded dollar out of the way of the president’s new money.

Many more stories about the Epstain scandal rocked the Trump White House over the Christmas break as over a MILLION new files were suddenly found out of nowhere, requiring (I kid you not) the sudden mass hiring of people with no experience or special security clearances to start redacting the files for their mandatory pre-Christmas release, which never happened for the vast majority of files. Team Trump must now be buying Sharpies by the truckload. I’d like to have that shipping contract.

Still, with all of that, I’m going to concentrate today on the economic stories that came through as 2025 comes to a close. The Epstain stories, however, are all available for you below.

The demise of the dollar is here

One of the important stories that has been slowly emerging this year is the demise of the dollar. That is worth noting because for more than a decade, I resisted going with the dollar-collapse narrative that is popular in the economic-collapse sphere where I write, and that always proved to be the right position. However, at the start of the year, I switched and finally began predicting the dollar’s collapse was now likely to arrive quickly—perhaps within a couple of years—claiming that the Trump Tariffs have the power to do to the dollar what nothing else has.

This week, we got to see that prediction verified in mainstream news, where the dollar’s collapse is also rarely talked about, and the publication tagged that collapse to the same forces I’ve been pointing to.

Wired Magazine published an article claiming “The Dollar is Facing an End to its Dominance.”

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h/t Malone News

h/t Malone News

Both U.S. neighbors creep towards totalitarianism. From Derrick Broze at lavagabond.substack.com:

Looking toward 2026, Mexicans and foreigners residing in Mexico are preparing to navigate an uncertain future regarding new laws that require biometric identification for certain services.

In July 2025, several new laws took effect in Mexico that greatly increase opportunities for government surveillance and coerce the population into registering for a biometric program required to access many services, including banking, health programs, social welfare, education, cellphone service, and internet access.

While the laws are set to be phased into practice beginning in February and continuing throughout the spring of 2026, it remains unclear how the policies will be enforced in a country known for its weak federal government and rampant corruption. It is also uncertain how the infrastructure for such programs will be implemented in Mexico’s vast rural areas, where as much as one fifth of the population resides.

The biometric requirement relates to Mexico’s personal identity code for citizens and residents, known as the Clave Única de Registro de Población (Unique Population Registry Code), or CURP. The CURP typically consists of 18 characters derived from a person’s family names, date and place of birth, and gender. It functions similarly to the US Social Security number.

The new laws will require the CURP to include the holder’s photograph and a QR code embedding biometric data, including scans of both fingerprints and irises. The legislation mandates the creation of a “Unified Identity Platform,” managed by the Ministry of the Interior and the Digital Transformation Agency. This platform will integrate the biometric CURP with the healthcare system as well.

The biometric CURP would also be required for purchasing internet and cellular services. This would force businesses selling these services to check a customer’s CURP before purchase. Individuals who do not comply with the CURP requirement could see their internet or phone service interrupted.

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It’s all paper and it’s all based on faith. From NO1 at noO1.substack.com:

When infinite paper meets reality

Remember Greece in 2015? Banks closed. ATMs limited to €60 per day. Then €50. People queuing for hours to withdraw their own money from their own accounts. Pensioners fainting in bank lobbies. Businesses unable to pay suppliers. The economy grinding to a halt because nobody could access cash.

That wasn’t theoretical. That was real people discovering they were unsecured creditors in a banking system that had taken exorbitant risks with their deposits.

And I have a feeling it’s about to happen again. Not specifically in Greece. In banks across Europe that you’ve never heard were in trouble. Because they made bets on the two most boring asset classes imaginable.

A metal. And bonds.

Your deposit isn’t sitting in a vault with your name on it. It’s part of a giant pool that banks use to make investments, provide liquidity, and generate returns. When those investments go bad, your deposit becomes a liability banks can’t honor. You become an unsecured creditor standing in line behind secured creditors who get paid first.

The secured creditors are the big institutions. The prime brokers. The derivatives counterparties. They get the collateral pools. They invoke their legal priority. They take everything.

You get a number in a queue. And maybe €60 a day if you’re lucky.

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Israel has its tentacles in every major Western intelligence apparatus. From José Niño at libertarianinstitute.org:

In the aftermath of the devastating Twelve-Day War in June 2025, Iranian Intelligence Minister Esmaeil Khatib made a striking claim that captured international attention: more than fifty foreign intelligence services had provided direct support to Israel during the conflict. Speaking during an official visit to Iran’s southwestern Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province in October 2025, Khatib characterized this coalition as an “intelligence NATO” that coordinated efforts to destabilize Iran through hybrid warfare encompassing military attacks, psychological operations, cyber warfare, and media campaigns.

His statement came against the backdrop of the Twelve Day War that began on June 13, 2025, when Israel launched surprise attacks on Iranian military and nuclear facilities, killing over 1,000 Iranians. Iran responded with “Operation True Promise 3,” involving twenty-two waves of missile strikes and over 550 ballistic missiles targeting Israeli territory. The United States intervened on June 22 with B-2 bomber strikes on Iranian nuclear sites before a ceasefire was brokered on June 24.

Khatib’s claims, while potentially inflated, align remarkably well with patterns this author previously documented in “The Illusion of Israeli Self-Sufficiency in Intelligence,” which exposed how Israel’s most celebrated operations relied on cooperation with the CIA, NSA cyberwarfare expertise, European intelligence networks, and covert collaboration with Arab regimes. As that analysis demonstrated, Israel’s intelligence empire survives not through independence but through reliance on Western logistics, intelligence sharing, and political approval.

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The only strategy Israel has to stop its rapidly diminishing support from disappearing entirely is to shut people up and try to control the narrative. From Brian McGlinchey at starkrealities.substack.com:

New extremes in the long-running drive to limit debate about Israel, Palestine

Across the American political spectrum, support for the State of Israel is steadily eroding. With the long-running, staggeringly expensive redistribution of American wealth and weapons to one of the world’s most prosperous countries under unprecedented threat, Israel’s advocates inside the United States are growing increasingly desperate to suppress the facts, opinions, questions and imagery that are causing this sea change.

Pro-Israel forces have long worked to limit and shape US discourse to Israel’s advantage. However, the intensity and novelty of what’s taking place in 2025 — from the government-coerced transfer of a social media platform to pro-Israel billionaires, to the jailing and attempted deportation of a student for writing an opinion piece, and more — deserves the attention of every American who values free expression, an enlightened electorate, and independence from foreign influence.

Many Americans know that Congress and President Biden teamed up in 2024 to force the Chinese company ByteDance to divest its US operation of the popular video-sharing app TikTok, yet few realize this unusual intervention was motivated in large part by a desire to serve the interests of Israel.

Though politicians pointed to the supposed Chinese menace lurking inside the app — while revealing their lack of sincerity by continuing to use it themselves — the catalyst for the extraordinary legislation’s passage was a sea of viral content illuminating Israel’s rampage in Gaza, casting Palestinians in empathetic light, and questioning the legitimacy of the political philosophy that is Zionism.

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Putin rightfully puts more faith in Russia’s military than peace negotiations. From Moon of Alabama at moonofalabama.org:

Yesterday’s negotiations between U.S. President Donald Trump and the acting President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelenski about a peace agreement with Russia went nowhere (archived):

A new round of peace talks between President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and President Trump seem to have produced little beyond a promise to meet again next month and a reminder of how distant a peace deal remains.
…
After the meeting on Sunday, Mr. Trump signaled that he would remain engaged in the negotiations — a win for Ukraine given his repeated threats to walk away. Mr. Trump also backed away from setting another deadline to reach a peace deal, after having previously floated Thanksgiving and Christmas as target dates.

“I don’t have deadlines,” Mr. Trump told reporters as he greeted Mr. Zelensky at Mar-a-Lago in Florida for the talks. “You know what my deadline is? Getting the war ended.”

Two weeks ago we were expecting this outcome:

The current negotiated parameters can not lead to a peace agreement with Russia.

The Trump administration needs to take a step back. It can deliver the currently negotiated package to Russia which will study it and ask for negotiations of ‘details’ that will take several years to find some end point. Or it can put the whole issue aside for now and go for a retry in six to twelve months.
…
By then resistance to a peace agreement, be it by Ukraine or Europe, will have decreased. Only then will peace in Ukraine and Europe become a real possibility.

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On the playground, we know what big guys do to little guys. The same applies in international geopolitics. From Karen Kwiatkowski at lewrockwell.com:

Many years ago, a budding decentralist and anarcho-capitalist suggested to a pair of highly paid Pentagon area specialist contractors that instead of what we were doing in the horn of Africa, we might gain credibility by recognizing Somaliland, which at the time was peaceful, free trading, and a rare example of an organic government, not at war, nor seeking war.

The sincere suggestion was greeted by at least one dropped jaw, and two blank stares.  Later, I had not changed my mind, and in the three intervening decades, Somaliland has endured.  I wrote in 2003, at LRC:

The Miracle-Gro for tender young countries is culture-driven self-government, absent outside military interference and manipulation from great powers and entangling alliances. It’s kind of like what the founding fathers envisioned for this country.

Born on a Cold War battlefield, what is today Somaliland suffered a genocide conducted by the US-backed government in Mogadishu of Said Barre, from which independence sprang. 35 years later, US genocidal capability seems to have scaled up, as the massive reduction of Ukraine’s prewar population in four years and the literal decimation of Gaza in two years illustrates.

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Trump’s first vice president isn’t lighting many fires as an alternative to Trump. From Roger Kimball at amgreatness.com:

To listen to the chatter of the Important People, you would think that a “decent and elevated conservatism”™ was about to return, has returned, or is just about to triumph in the person of—cue the drum roll—Mike Pence, former vice president and perpetual Mr. Goody Two-Shoes.  

Yes, that’s right, because a baker’s dozen of less-than-fully gruntled employees of the Heritage Foundation decamped to Pence’s “Advancing American Freedom” sandbox, we are supposed to believe—at least, we are supposed to say—that a “Reorganization of the Conservative Movement” is underway.  

What do you think? Does the mutiny at the Heritage Foundation signal a “significant shift within the American right?” Or is it just the familiar anti-Trump palaver we’ve been used to since the media’s “loud and troublesome insects of the hour” began each day by announcing (praying?) that “the walls are closing in” on Donald Trump?

I think it’s the latter. I think so, in part, because Mike “Mr. Morality” Pence is a political non-entity and in part because the colossus he faces is not the Heritage Foundation but his old boss, Donald Trump.

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