Politics

Even The NYT Is Saying, “Buy Gold”

Via SchiffGold.com,

A recent piece in the New York Times encouraged readers to buy gold, noting its record-breaking run since 2020. However, what the article gets wrong is associating the phenomenon with presidential policies instead of central bank monetary policy. Treasury policies can contribute to money supply growth by issuing debt, and presidential policies can add fuel to economic fires. 

But money printing and sustained artificially-low interest rates are why inflation keeps resurging no matter which political party is in power.

As Peter Schiff recently said on X:

Trump has given the Fed a gift, as FOMC members will blame the coming surge in inflation on tariffs. But tariffs won’t be the cause. Resurgent inflation will result from the Fed’s monetary policy mistakes. They held interest rates too low for too long and printed too much money.
— Peter Schiff (@PeterSchiff) February 20, 2025
The Fed is permanent, and can’t be reformed. 

No matter who joins the Board of Governors or who becomes Fed Chairman, the only tools that central banks really know how to use are inflationary. Money printing and artificially-low interest rates are the only methods the Fed has in their effort to manage the economy.

Inflation is an expansion of the money supply, not the rise in prices. Prices go up as a result of inflation, not the other way around. But while the NYT piece attributes this 12% increase in 2025—following a 27% rise in 2024—to President Donald Trump’s second-term policies, such as tariffs and deportation plans, the fundamental driver is that central bank monetary policy has inflated the money supply and eroded confidence in fiat currency, propelling gold’s ascent. 

Analysts like those quoted in the NYT article suggest that Trump’s proposed tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China, could stoke inflation by raising import costs. Economists quoted in the piece note that such measures, combined with labor market pressures from deportation policies, are pushing investors toward gold. This makes sense on the surface — disruptions to trade and labor can indeed lift prices, and higher costs for imports will just be passed onto consumers. But money supply growth is what inflation is; price increases are just one of its downstream effects. Gold’sgain suggests a deeper unease tied to the Federal Reserve’s actions rather than any single administration.

The money supply (M2) has ballooned from $15.4 trillion in early 2020 to over $21 trillion today, according to Fed data. Meanwhile, interest rates remain below historical norms. Low rates discourage saving and devalue fiat currency, making gold—a finite asset immune to printing presses—an attractive hedge. The Times focuses on Trump’s tariff threats, but central banks set the stage long ago.

M2, 1981 to Present

Source

The World Gold Council reports that central banks bought 1,037 tons of gold in 2024, up 6% from 2023, signaling a shift away from dollar dominance. Physical demand is also straining markets, with the article noting New York futures traders awaiting bars from London vaults.

The Times mentions Trump’s quip about auditing Fort Knox “to make sure the gold is there,” a comment Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent downplayed. Official figures peg U.S. reserves at 8,133 metric…

NATO Is The Big Obstacle To Peace In Ukraine

Authored by Jacob Hornberger via The Future of Freedom Foundation,

During his recent campaign for president, Donald Trump repeatedly stated that he had a secret plan for settling the war in Ukraine. 

He suggested that he would be able to resolve the conflict within a day of so of taking office. That obviously was political hyperbole because the war is still going on. Trump and people in his administration are now talking to Russian president Vladimir Putin and Russian officials in an effort to find a way to end the war and possibly even normalize relations between the United States and Russia.

There is one great big obstacle, however, to bringing an end to the Ukraine-Russia conflict. That obstacle is NATO, the old Cold War dinosaur that should have gone out of existence with the end of the Cold War, just like the Warsaw Pact did.

Instead, NATO not only remained in existence, it also ultimately became the root cause of the war between Ukraine and Russia.

It’s that critically important point that is lost on the U.S. mainstream media. For them, the war began at the moment that Russia invaded Ukraine. Nothing that preceded that invasion matters to the mainstream media. What came before the invasion is simply considered irrelevant.

But it’s not irrelevant, especially because it might well prove to be an insurmountable obstacle to a lasting peace between Ukraine and Russia.

With the surprise end of the Cold War, the U.S. national-security establishment — i.e., the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA — lost its big official enemy — Russia (or, to be more exact, the Soviet Union), which meant the end of the big Cold War racket that had kept the national-security branch in high cotton in terms of power and taxpayer-funded largess.

The Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA were panicky. At first, they announced that they were willing to participate in the “war on drugs.” They then converted their old partner and ally Saddam Hussein into an official enemy, who they used to scare the American people for some 11 years. Then, their interventionist and deadly foreign policy in the Middle East brought about the 9/11 retaliatory strikes and they were off to the races again, with the “war on terrorism” replacing the Cold War’s “war on communism.”

But they never lost sight of the possibility of reconverting Russia into a renewed official enemy, as part of a new Cold War, especially given that the anti-Russia Cold War sentiment was so deeply embedded within the American people. That’s when they began using NATO to expand eastward toward Russia’s border by absorbing former members of the Warsaw Pact.

An important thing to note about this was that U.S. officials had promised Russia that NATO would not expand. It would stay, they repeatedly stated, right where it was.

It was a lie. Instead, NATO was used to expand eastward, which enabled NATO’s missiles, tanks, weapons, troops, and planes to get ever closer to Russia’s border. It’s worth mentioning that…