Carney and rules-based order, Davos… Rubio and a speech out of Nazi Germany, Munich?

Carney and rules-based order, Davos… Rubio and a speech out of Nazi Germany, Munich?

 

Speaking at the annual Munich Security Conference on Saturday, United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio urged European countries to collaborate with the US to build a “new Western century”, describing US-Europe ties as “civilisational”.

-       Marco Rubio wants to build a ‘new Western century’. Will Europe join? – Aljazeera

By Gregg Wall (2-20-26)

It should have been lost on no one that Secretary of State Rubio gave his “New Western Century” speech last Saturday… akin to Nazi ideology, mythology, Blut und Boden… in the same city as the beer hall putsch, the city of the Munich Pact that saw Hitler’s rise, Europe’s fall, and launched WW2.  The secretary of state appeared to want to make Manifest Destiny great again and invited Europe along for the ride (some might say Rubio insisted?).  Zero surprise, Rubio echoed Trumpian themes in his speech to the Europeans: eliminate liberal/progressive policies, shed your post-colonial guilt (i.e. glory in your white supremacy), pivot supply chains and purchases away from China, and shut down immigration. Moreover, Rubio seemed to insist that Europe stay out of American technology, buy US arms, and defer to and support American energy dominance. This, as the United States runs up record trade imbalances and seemingly can’t quit China (which remains a top trading partner and produces, historically, some of the greatest trade deficits for the U.S.)… making Trump not only boorish and an ogre, but an insufferable hypocrite. 

As I wrote in 2024, read here and here, centrist and corporatist leaders throughout the West have fallen and been voted out of office due to their failure & refusal to address the very real economic needs of their citizens and the wage & wealth inequality that comes with financialization, globalization, and neoliberalism.  And in a great many instances, these centrist and corporatists have walked far-right populists and authoritarians to power, like Trump and Rubio. In the darkness, there are two positive elements, certainly from my perspective: one, not only is political duopoly increasingly being recognized for what it is (i.e. a fraud and a front for oligarchy); but two, the populist right parties, which momentarily are ascendent, are already failing. The reason for that failure is that the populist right, being creatures of and in bed with the very same oligarchs and multinationals that sponsor the duopoly, have little or nothing to offer aside from culture wars, hate, rage, and xenophobia. That is to say, their economic policies, but for the exception of exhibiting a more libertarian bent, or statist twist, are by and large the same dereg, globalist, neoliberal policies as the duopoly.  All this is to say, the very same deregulatory, neoliberal policies that are failing the duopoly are also failing the far-right populists.

These populist right parties are already in trouble with Trump failing domestically and Trump running around bailing out… either financially or rhetorically or via threats (sometimes all three)… authoritarian leaders and states that Trump perceives as his natural allies, such as:  Milei in Argentina; Bolsonaro in Brazil; allegedly, insurrections in Alberta CA; Takaichi in Japan; Netanyahu in Israel; and of course, right-wing types in Latin America, such as President Kast in Chile.

In short, dereg, globalization, neoliberalism, political duopoly… centrist & corporatist politicians… are failing throughout the West.  Financialization is not just a dead end, it’s crippling and a net drag.  Only to be replaced with white-wing bigots, racists, & haters with identical or near identical economic policies: greed & oligarchy first.  Look at the countries and their far-right populist governments Trump has bailed out or may bail out.  Libertarian & neoliberal failure are everywhere.

 

 

 

 

The arrogance and the law of the jungle tone of the Rubio speech is in keeping with America’s treatment of allies, friends, and imagined foes amplified since Trump’s second inauguration and bookends perfectly with Canadian PM Carney’s speech given a month ago at Davos, which laid out an alternative path for middle powers (versus the hegemony & sometimes tyranny afforded by great powers). 

Mr. Carney made quite a splash at Davos by calling out the obvious (all the other leaders were apparently too timid or weak)… simply put, the U.S. is not a beacon of light and the rules-based order is dead (my words, not Carney’s).  That Canada and the EU middle powers should unite, against the fading light, against power, greed, and the law of the jungle that Mr. Trump fully embraces.  But unless PM Carney deals with the simultaneous failure of deregulation, financialization, and neoliberalism… and the egregious impoverishment of the Canadian people (i.e. affordability and well-paying jobs)… Carney’s domestic mandate – like that of PM Starmer & so many peers – may soon fade, as will the political foundation liberals need to achieve Carney’s new world order. 

That is to say, Carney’s vision is no vision if he doesn’t address the affordability, housing, and growing healthcare crisis in this nation.  The far-right, the populist right leaders are always willing to exploit their polarized base of support to deflect and distract from their corruption, greed, looting, privatization, and neoliberal policies.  Trade agreements don’t pay Canada’s rent; in fact, globalization and neoliberalism deletes Canadian labour (add in the labour cancelling goals of AI and it looks very grim).  Unless Canadians are prosperous and can afford life… unless Canada has a strong vibrant middle class, Mr. Carney’s vision will likely be very short lived or come to nothing.  At the moment, Canadians are beset on all sides by corporate greed and six consecutive years of corporate price gouging.  A devalued Canadian currency… Bank of Canada’s policy, in a classic beggar thy neighbor approach…  does absolutely nothing for Canadians and makes their purchasing power weaker still. 

Mainstream/Establishment economists love to hang their hat on precious GDP and growth … but look at the U.S, where GDP growth is meaningless, doesn’t put food on the table, doesn’t pay the rent, or come close to paying for-profit healthcare bills. Instead, GDP & growth pools in the accounts of the billionaire and monopolies.  More specifically, in regards American GDP, welcome to a command economy.  When 40% of the US economy is government spending, GDP is whatever Dictator Trump decides to make it.  When dereg and neoliberalism fails, money printing and military Keynesianism takes over.

Hence, Trump’s attempts to hijack the Federal Reserve, run a low rate regime, engineer QE, and push ultra accommodative monetary policy to lesson debt service loads; hence, Trump’s proposal to boost defense spending to 1.5 trillion.   

But with this much fraud and looting w/in the Department of War (unable to pass audits, year after year)… the American people receive nothing except endless austerity and the IOU for $42 trillion in national debt.   

This serves as a cautionary tale for Canada, the EU, and the UK… who share with America a failed economic paradigm, colossal & growing debt, a predatory economic aristocracy, highly detrimental financialization, and the drive for greater military spending as a panacea (as often as not driven by economic decline and Trump’s & Rubio’s obvious threats). 

PM Carney seems to be going down the well-worn path of heads of state embracing deregulation, globalization, and neoliberalism… and capital & greed first policies, like supply-side and trickle-down.  Policies that finished off Trudeau and countless other centrists and corporatists, like Sunak, Starmer, Draghi, Biden, Harris, Scholz, Merkel, and Macron, etc., etc.  These neoliberal policies… clouded & obscured in words and ideas like triangulation, three-dimensional chess, and variable geometry… are just more of the same.  A “neoliberal same” that has seen the middle class eviscerated and billionaire net worth soar… wage and wealth inequality skyrocket… they’ve also seen soaring poverty and life itself has become unaffordable for far too many. 

Carney is riding a wave right now because of Trump and it’s doubtful that Carney would have been elected without Trump’s ravings.  I certainly wish Mr. Carney all success.  Carney comes off as calming, professional, and staid, during a time of chaos… so I understand the attraction for a great many Canadians.  But remember who Carney is… a banker, and where he comes from… private equity.  And remember who Carney serves: Great Wealth.

As part of the PM’s pivot, he needs to rebuild the Canadian middle class and address affordability & labour concerns… or all his efforts at variable geometry will, likely, amount to precious little or at best more of the same.  Trade is great, but the last two decades have seen the middle class throughout the West destroyed, including Canada’s.  Trade must be labour focused, not mere arbitrage and a race to the bottom. 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2026

Another economist pushing… Financialization

Another economist pushing… Financialization

Canada’s economy is on life support, the nation is in a clear recession watch, and the Bank of Canada needs to cut interest rates further, says an economist.

A new report from Rosenberg Research, Canadian Economy on Life Support, shows that despite interest rate cuts from a high of five per cent in 2024, per capita GDP is still falling, and the economy is growing at only one per cent annually.

-       Canada’s economy is on life support and country is in recession watch, says economist, BNN Bloomberg

-        

The annual value of US equities turnover has amounted to $85 trillion, or 370 percent of GDP—about 60-75 percent of which has been executed by algorithmic and high-frequency trading, buying and selling securities in matters of seconds. It is not clear how such activities may have helped raise funds for companies to do business.

-       Financialization has increased economic fragility, Atlantic Counsel

 

By Gregg Wall (2-7-2026)

The sky is falling, the sky is falling, cried the economist… a mouthpiece for a failed status quo.  The problem?  Per the economist, Canada is not growing, growth has stalled, and the solution is more rate cuts… more monetary welfare for financialization, rapacious oligarchs, and the neoliberal paradigm that has failed Canada, the EU, and the United States, since at least 2008.  Rate cuts (aka welfare for the connected and powerful), of course, have destroyed Canada’s middle class, led to cheap finance for M&A, the offshoring of the economy & factories, juiced asset valuations for the uber wealthy… all of which, along with unlimited taxpayer welfare for the rich, fueled industry consolidation, cartel and monopoly formation, and further resulted in monopoly pricing power and monopsony power to crush wages. How ironic that the economist’s policy prescriptions are a direct attack upon the dual mandate in America, and the primary concerns of the ECB and BOC.  To wit, stable prices, full employment, and growth.

The economist in question fails to address several items; he merely calls for more monetary welfare for the powerful, the lords of finance, private equity, and venture capital (the cancerous tail that wags the economic dog).  First, decades of growth have produced little or nothing for Americans and Canadians, as the spoils of the economy – wages & wealth – have gone to a predatory few. Wage and wealth inequality are out of control in Canada and even more obscene in the United States.  

Second, the problems Mr. Rosenberg describes are problems nearly all Western economies face… the aforementioned cartels, financialization, monopolies, and wholesale theft and looting by capital.  None of this is novel inside Canada or the West, they are the norm, the result of a failed economic model and paradigm, continuously propped up and on life support by debt, deficits, and increasingly, military Keynesianism.  Poverty is endemic throughout much of the West, excepting, notably Scandinavian countries, which, with a healthy social welfare state, produce the happiest citizens in the world.  And Canada is no exception.  When Mr. Rosenberg talks about “life support” perhaps he should consider what is obviously on life support and that is the dereg, financialized, necro, neolib economy (continuously fed the morphine of central bank money printing, quantitative easing, and the low interest rate regime to manage debt, debt service loads, and endless financial engineering – at the expense of CAPEX, the real economy, and real wage gains).  

Which brings us to number three, compare Canada to our southern neighbor, that is burning its economic, fiscal, and monetary candle at both ends and the middle, with:

·      $42 trillion in national debt (including Donnie’s $4 trillion Wall St bailout);

·      40% of GDP is government spending;

·      U.S. debt to GDP (federal only) is 124%;

·      Endless colonialism, violence, and wars, including a police & surveillance state that is attacking the American people;

·      An empire that is a money pit, along with our friend(?), Israel… an America that increasingly finds itself without friends.

And number four, and finally, none of this is sustainable.  King Trump has alienated the world, attempting to have it both ways: pretending there is a rules-based order when clearly there is not, as Trump imposes brute force and threats to Americans, friends, and foes alike.  Canada stands out as the only peer nation the US runs a trade surplus with (sans oil & gas).  Canadian oil and gas the ungrateful Americans make a killing on, while Canada pays the O&G industry’s obscene externalities, subsidies, tax breaks, and welfare.  Let’s be clear, Canada’s economy is not seeing growth because it’s under attack by an ungrateful, greedy American government.  If one studies economies addicted to financialization & financial engineering, one finds out they are addicted to debt, deficits, and growth in money supply (hallmarks of both a debt trap and a doom loop).  And we all know where that leads.  That’s right, a disaster.  Rampant military Keynesianism over sustained periods… same nasty ending: a hideous misallocation of taxpayer resources.

Rosenberg’s policy prescriptions are more of the same: more of the very policies that placed Canada and the West into the horrible positions we find ourselves in today. That is to say, doubling down on financialization, concentrated wealth and power, oligarchy, pathocracy, and endless support for wealthy boomers (who have, often, hitched their wealth to their homes, while there’s an affordability and a housing crisis throughout North America).  The West compels citizen support for a low-rate regime by tying their homes and wealth to a low-rate regime, while the macro damage to the economy, jobs, and opportunity are catastrophic.  Please look around and tell me what you see.  If central banks want to aid the public and discourage economy cancelling financial engineering and the wartime economy, they should try a bifurcated rate regime… surely central banks can manage that.  They should certainly stop devaluing currencies. 

At the end of the day, aggressive monetary policy is just more welfare for the predatory elite.  Policy that works at cross purposes with the FED’s and many other central banks’ mandate, max employment and stable prices, by feeding a colossal drag on the economy.  Once again, financialization, financial engineering, oligarchy, private equity, VC and monopoly are activities, personages, and business practices that should be discouraged, crushed, and eliminated.

All known killers of the Canadian and American economy and jobs. 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2026

So Much Losing… The End of Year One in Donnieland

So Much Losing… The End of Year One in Donnieland 

Trump repeated his assertion that he’d “ended eight unendable wars in 10 months”, an exaggerated claim similar to one we rated Mostly False. He also said “no president’s probably ever settled one war,” which we rated False.

-       Fact-checking US President Trump’s speech marking one year in office - Aljazeera

 

By Gregg Wall (1-24-2026)

Trump voters got taken for a ride, again.  What else is there to say at the closeout of year one, second term.  If we are honest with ourselves, would it be any different if Kamala was in charge?  As I have stated many times, push the culture wars aside, and the two major parties – answering to billionaires & Wall St. - are fundamentally identical on the economy and foreign policy.   If anything, the affordability crisis, healthcare, housing, genocide in Palestine and the Ukraine, under a Kamala government, may have been worse, certainly no better.  Dem ’28 front-runner, Governor Gavin Newsom, was popping off at Davos this week.  Mr. Newsom is deeply upset about the fascism that has descended upon the United States, indeed the world, the Venezuela shakedown, the police state inside America, the neo-Nazi ICE goons, courtesy of Team Trump.  And to be honest, there was very little I disagreed with Mr. Newsom about, except for one glaring omission.  

Trump didn’t appear out of nowhere.  Like all demagogues and fascists, Trump had considerable help in his rise, from centrism, corporatism, the establishment, a failed state, neoliberalism, what the MSM likes to refer to as moderates… “moderates” are right-wing American politicians (Dems & GOP), practiced in the art of insider trading, on the take, on the make, entirely corrupt, and entirely owned.   If the United States was actually a functioning democracy -- that actually took care of its citizens, instead of dumping welfare on billionaires, multinationals, wars, and Wall St. -- would the American people have rolled the dice again on a right-wing dictator, an oligarch?  Assuredly not.  

What the California governor conveniently left out of his Davos rant is that his party was in power, not once but twice, before Trump came to power.  That, at the end of the day, as the alleged opposition party (in reality, controlled opposition), Dems are responsible for Trump’s rise.  Obama had an opportunity, as well as Joe Biden… but both “leaders” failed the American people, indeed the world, in spectacular fashion.  And even if they, Obama and Biden, didn’t feel that they could bring about the change necessary to prevent someone like Trump from coming to power, they had a duty to inform the public, to spell out to the world in no uncertain terms, what was wrong with the United States and what should be done to correct the country.  Here, I’m thinking of the greats … like Lincoln, FDR, Eisenhower (and his farewell address) … leaders who did not hold back, who laid it on the line and left it all on the playing field (with their very lives).  We saw some of that from the Canadian PM this week, Mark Carney, who has made the fateful decision in the last couple of weeks to be something greater than himself: a politician who has seen reality and chosen to act.  In this instance, in Carney’s case, by opening trade with China and spelling out the end of the rules-based order at Davos.  Carney’s speech, this week, was a profile in courage.  Acknowledging that the rules-based order was nothing less than American hegemony & tyranny … the rules-based order a sham, selectively applied (That Canada and the EU were willing to accept this charade, often at the expense of the Global South, because they received free defense as part of the quid pro quo. That is, free defense in exchange for silence.).  To be sure, PM Carney was a great deal more polished about the cold, grim realities I am laying down here, but he certainly opened the conversation.  And Carney’s speech certainly hit home, because Trump & Co. haven’t shut up about Canada since.  As for China, the conservatives inside Canada and the US quickly went on the warpath against Carney’s decision… trotting out lame lines about climbing into bed with communism, the instability of China, the national security threat, humanitarian & human rights concerns, the lack of gratitude to our American neighbor, the threat to Canadian jobs.   When, if Canadians are completely honest, the biggest illustration of a command/wartime economy, the creator of instability, Canada’s all too real national security threat, the godfather of human rights abuses, the complete lack of gratitude, the threat to Canadian jobs… comes directly from the United States under POTUS Trump.

Odd, I don’t recall Chairman Xi screaming to make Canada his 24^th province. 

 

 

So, back to Trump, in 2025 Trump revealed that he’s no agent of change, no prince of peace, and will do everything to enrich himself, the oligarchy, kowtow to Israel, and keep the United States government opaque, failing to release the Epstein materials (as of this writing, now more than 30 days past his own deadline).  What has Trump achieved: He’s failed on affordability, which enriched Wall St and monopolies immensely… there’s never been a better time to be a shareholder or in management in America’s monopoly, crony economy… or part of Team Wall St.- Financialization.  As for the American people, the bottom sixty to seventy percent are being crucified, slammed by ever-escalating prices, unaffordable healthcare, wages that have not kept up with greedflation, and yet, another tax, a devalued & depreciated US dollar (with declining purchasing power).  Donnie made his billionaire friends fabulously rich with his Big, Beautiful Bill.  DOGE, by all accounts was a failure, and yet it was a win for billionaires and the Silicon Valley venture capital set & Palantir: eliminating government jobs, hoovering up government data, monetizing and privatizing government, and providing justification for passage of Trump’s BBB.  DOGE was an abject loser for the American people, especially with its attack on Medicaid, Social Security, and Medicare… but a huge win for oligarchy.  Trump lost bigly with the American people on the genocide in Gaza, the genocide in the Ukraine, starting up wars with Greenland, Iran, and Venezuela, sucking up to AIPAC and King Bibi… but more importantly, he won with the Zionist princess, Adelson, he won with Peter Thiel of Antichrist & Palantir fame, and he won with billionaires who profit from endless wars, empire, and nonstop violence.  In short, in year one, the American people lost, and the American oligarchy – as well as the global oligarchy – won.  

America’s healthcare insurers have to be pleased.  Another year has come and gone and they still exist, despite the fact that America’s healthcare is twice the per capita cost of most peer nations… not, as alleged by Donnie, because Canada and the EU are receiving a free ride off the United States but because their politicians actually stand up for their citizens and demand that healthcare companies, insurers, and Big Pharma not rip off their respective nations.  Trump successfully achieved an ICE police state … attacked, incarcerated, and murdered Americans & immigrants…  enriched military contractors that armed ICE and the police state immensely (along with for-profit prison contractors, et al).  

Trump’s tariffs were a huge win for Wall St and administration insiders and GOP leaders in congress, as they, likely, front ran foreseeable market action and made a killing.  And then, likely, made yet another fortune, as Trump TACOed and reversed course yet again, generally 24 to 48 hours later.  The Street and insiders love volatility, especially when they’ve been tipped off?  All and all, Trump successfully outraged the world, friends and foe alike, while alienating the American people; all in all, in year one, Trump enriched himself and his friends, while the American people have never been poorer, more distraught, more runover.  Which appears to have been the pedo elite’s objective.  Fond of using the royal “we,” Trump loves to tell the American people how the latest invasion or scam is going to make them all rich, when the only parties growing rich are his family, billionaire donors, multinationals, Wall St, and military contractors.  Trump conveniently seems to forget, or simply does not care, that his administration’s ability to loot, pillage, and steal doesn’t trickle-down to the American people.

Trump’s Golden Era… reduced to being a crude and unwelcome, Golden Shower. 

 

 

If we are completely honest with ourselves Trump did a couple of positive things this year, and that is recognize his affordability crisis is caused by laissez-faire & deregulation, that is to say, allowing billionaires, monopolies, and Wall St to ripoff the American people with impunity.  Trump has been on a tear: proposing ten percent caps on credit cards, no more financial engineering for unaudited defense contractors, kicking institutional investors out of residential homes & apartments.  All of this with predictable push back and misinformation from the billionaire and Wall St set, like Trump’s proposals will destroy the economy and jobs.  (Just like the 90% - plus income tax rate for the rich, destroyed the economy in white America’s favorite period… Eisenhower’s 1950s.  Of course, the 90% - plus tax rate didn’t destroy America’s economy and our debt to GDP ratio, by the time Ike left the White House, was approximately 54%.)

None of this has happened yet, but we appear to have a beginning, finally, of an industrial policy to go along with our Orwellian command economy, our totalitarian economy, dominated by: cartels, financialization, greed, monopolies, oligarchy, private equity, speculation, Wall St, and the war -with the world- time economy… fully backstopped by the US taxpayer, exorbitant privilege, and federal reserve accommodative monetary policy (roughly 40% of GDP is government spending).  What is clear, America’s industrial policy, since Reagan, allowing the wealthy and Wall St to do whatever they want, including offshoring the U.S. economy, has been an unqualified disaster. 

That is to say, and as much as I hate to give Trump credit, he’s the first to acknowledge that allowing billionaires, banks, concentrated capital, monopolies, and private equity to openly prey upon and steal from the American people… and aggregate the spoils of the economy and government into the hands of a rapacious few… isn’t working.  Not unlike Carney acknowledging the Western rules-based order is a sham, Trump’s open acknowledgement that laissez-faire and neoliberalism aren’t working is monumental.  In short, we’ve met the agents of greedflation & six, going on seven years of skyrocketing prices, they’re all Trump’s donors and friends.  If anyone knows this tribe, many paying bribes to his administration, Trump knows.  Hell, he’s an expert.  Will Trump follow through, will Wall St go along with Trump’s proposals, and will our intensely corrupt congress actually pass legislation to make Trump’s nascent efforts to rein in corporate greed a reality?  Probably not. 

Another compliment is that Trump, at times, is the most transparent President we’ve had, perhaps in the history of the nation.  Are the establishment and Trump in the Epstein documents and files?  Absolutely, so Trump in transparent fashion stonewalls.  Is Trump running a fascist police state -- a dumping ground for January 6 deplorables, haters, and white supremacists -- you better believe it.  It’s as undeniable as Gator Alcatraz.  Is America an empire in terminal decline and wholly dependent upon debt, deficits, and war… at the moment, that’s a yes, yes, yes, and yes.  The administration keeps coming up Nazi.  Trump, by some accounts, really did read the Hitler playbook.  Hence, his overarching goal to save the United States, more importantly, the U.S. dollar, and keep the good times of looting and stealing (for Team Trump) rolling forward: adopting the Hitler playbook of world domination; stealing the gold, minerals, and resources of newly conquered nations; and backstopping & resurrecting the petrodollar, by making a 19^thcentury fuel source – oil & gas – great again.  Will Trump use conquered nations and demand that they purchase Treasuries with long tails and zero coupons (that can’t be traded)? … that’s what Hitler did.  See also the Mar-A-Lago Accords.  Give the devil his due, at this point, it’s readily apparent as to what Team Trump is up to: Making Themselves Richer Still Again.  Trump is telegraphing his blows, in a warning to the world.

And the final Trump positive: Billionaires are increasingly revealed as little more than a band of criminals, thieves… many possibly, even pedos… lawless thugs, and murderers.  With no special abilities, surrounded in hype, welfare from the state, socialism for the one percent.  Parasites attached to the federal reserve, the state, and the American taxpayer.  Entirely ruthless and malign.  We can thank Trump for puncturing the myth and revealing this truth to the nation and the world.  And that concludes 2025.  

Buckle in, put on your helmets, 2026, year two, for scribes and independent journalism, promises to be quite a ride. 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2026