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Beneath the Surface

The Great Sorting-Out Begins

Loading ...James Howard Kunstler

January 24, 2025 • 4 minute, 49 second read


BidenTrump

The Great Sorting-Out Begins

“The purpose of a pardon is to correct a miscarriage of justice, not to prevent future judicial action.” — Dr. Joseph Sansone

James Howard Kunstler

 

This, as they say, is one of those weeks when decades happen. You realize that under the fiends fronted by “Joe Biden,” the US government became a demon-driven machine for wrecking lives, perverting the law, and demolishing all scaffolds of decent behavior. And now, it all has to be fixed, cleaned up, fumigated, rectified, rehabilitated.

Scores of executive orders flew out of the Oval Office, rescinding four years of “Biden” regime lunacy in every direction: Censorship, dead. . . Gain of function research, killed. . . CBDCs banned. . . CBP-app for aiding illegal migrants, discontinued. . . border fortified. . . homicidal alien mutts deported. . . World Health Organization, no thanks. . . Paris Climate Accords, fuggeddabowdit. . . DEI, vacated through all of government. . . Green New Deal, scrapped. . . “pride” in mental illness, cancelled. . . Ukraine War, headed for the negotiating table. . . all in four days and so much more coming.

The DEI flimflam is particularly illustrative of the hazards still lurking. The DC blob is desperate to hide its chaos agents by switching their job titles and shuffling them around to hidey-holes in obscure precincts of this-or-that bureaucracy. Being federal employees, of course, they all have searchable names and payroll accounts, so you may be sure they’ll be discovered wherever they’re hiding-out and placed, as ordered, on “administrative leave.” Since DEI was essentially a program to promote incompetence, these employees represent a monumental cargo of dead-weight. So, the next task will be finding a way under the civil service codes to cashier them for good. For instance, reclassifying their job status to render them fire-able.

 

This is sure to be a major friction-point for the so-called “resistance,” the huge cadre of “activist” Wokesters embedded in the agencies. Cue the army of Democratic Party lawyers who will be filing suits to prevent the chief executive from coherently managing the departments of the executive branch. But there’s a catch: this time, the White House will not be funneling scads of money directly to the NGOs that pay for these blob-adjacent lawyers, nor will they be able to redirect money out of the DOJ, FBI, and CIA for that purpose. The president may also find a way to interrupt the flow of money from foundations financed by malign freelancers such as George Soros and Linked-in founder and billionaire Reid Hoffman (who financed the E. Jean Carroll “rape” trial hoax and many more Democratic Party pranks ).

Another friction point: release of the pardoned J-6 prisoners is being loudly opposed by DC District federal judges such as Tanya Chutkan and Amy Berman Jackson. They don’t enjoy any privilege or prerogative for voicing prejudicial opinions about vacated cases, nor for failing to comply with paperwork needed to discharge them. They can be impeached for that in the House of Representatives. Or, if they actively obstruct releases, the new-and-improved Department of Justice might consider 18 U.S.C. § 242 – Deprivation of rights under color of law.

Meanwhile, goons at the DC jail detained pardoned prisoners unlawfully this week after years of the grossest mistreatment, including solitary confinement in basement “holes” without beds, blankets, or water, and direct physical assault that could be described as “torture.” All of this was countenanced by DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, despite plentiful public reports of abuse over the past four years. That is, she knew all about it. This is an argument for finally rescinding Washington DC’s “home rule” status and placing the city and all its departments back under federal management.

Last night, Mr. Trump signed an order to declassify government files relating to the murders of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King. Of course, the intel agencies holding these files have had a half-century to expunge anything in the files that might reflect poorly on the intel agencies — such as, the long-trafficked rumor that the CIA was behind the killing of all three. Why would you expect to get anything like that? How could the remaining material be anything but a cover-your-ass file? Well, now we shall see. At some point in his first term, Mr. Trump allegedly saw what was in the files and demurred from his promise then to release them. Was it too shocking? Or was it the well-groomed nothingburger described above?

That’s not to say that there’s any shortage of weird, tantalizing documentation around all those cases, inexplicable doings. . . sketchy characters like Oswald, Jack Ruby, Howard Hunt, Clay Shaw, Sirhan Sirhan, Thane Eugene Cesar, James Earl Ray, “Raul” (Ray’s alleged “handler”), Frank Liberto, Loyd Jowers. . . . and curious circumstances like the so-called “magic bullet” that supposedly exited JFK and wounded Texas Governor Connolly, and was later found oddly intact on a stretcher in Parkland Hospital. I guess we’ll find out shortly.

Now, we await the confirmation of Mr. Trump’s cabinet. Pam Bondi’s USAG nomination was held up for a week by peevish freshman Senator Adam Schiff, after she called him out for being censured last year in the House for “reckless” statements — that is, she reminded the committee and the public that Mr. Schiff is a chronic liar. There are rumblings that he will be kicked off the Senate Judiciary Committee (maybe not such a good fit for someone incapable of telling the truth). The preemptive pardon he received last week from “Joe B” might be tested through the courts in the years just ahead. The Judiciary Committee announced that it will convene an inquiry into the whole J-6 fiasco. Do you sense that there is much to discover in that hairball of enigmatic events, hidden actions, concealed motives, and buried evidence?

All this (plus a lot I left out) and the first week isn’t even over yet!


“Dispersion Rising”

January 16, 2026 • Addison Wiggin

Economists at Goldman Sachs said this morning they expect core inflation to finish the year around 2% even while GDP rises at a “surprisingly strong” 2.5% clip.

In our view, their inflation forecast is optimistic. Their GDP call? Modest.

The last time we pumped this much liquidity into the system — 2020 through 2022—the result was a manic asset bubble, runaway inflation, and an epic hangover at the Fed.

Goldman’s optimism has triggered a fresh round of bullish bets: cyclical stocks are rallying, “dispersion” in the S&P 500 is spiking, and the Fed is expected to cut interest rates twice before Jerome Powell gets kicked out of Washington at the end of his term on May 15.

“Dispersion Rising”
The Boom Behind the Data

January 16, 2026 • Addison Wiggin

Anecdotally, we’re hearing stories of warehouses full of GPUs sitting unused for lack of energy to power them. It’s a natural feature of the heavy capital investment in new machines. The grid has to catch up!

While Trump’s great reset rolls on in 2026, keep an eye on modular nuclear reactors and increased demand for uranium, natural gas and related resources.

The Boom Behind the Data
The Economics of Precious Metals Stocks Today

January 15, 2026 • Shad Marquitz

These PM producers are literally printing the most ‘hard money’ that they ever have at these metals prices and record margins here at the midway point in Q4.

If there ever was a time for this sector to get overheated and frothy, this would be it… only that isn’t what we’ve seen playing out.

PM producers are still insanely profitable at even at current metals prices and should be far more valuable based on their margins, revenue generating potential, and their resources still in the ground.

The Economics of Precious Metals Stocks Today
The Passing Parade and the Price of Admission

January 15, 2026 • Addison Wiggin

Who stipulated that politics and money have to be serious?

We do, in fact, write about money, the economy and financial markets. It’s to our own peril if we ignore the “passing parade” and its impact on them.

Populism as practiced by President Trump and the MAGA crowd is equally as pernicious, in our view, as the open worship of collectivism as expressed by Mamdani, AOC, and the progressive snollygosters gaining momentum among younger voters.

The system, as it were, is broken in all kinds of interesting ways. But we still have to live in it. And make decisions about our lives… our money… our families and our future.

The Passing Parade and the Price of Admission