What Caused the Great Depression? (Part 2)

Too Much Debt. The total private debt-to-GDP ratio in the United States was nearly 300% by the time the Great Depression started in 1929. In fact, “never before in this country had such a volume of funds been available at such low rates for such a long period,” said Harry Jerome in Mechanization in Industry (1934). The reasons for all this […]

What Caused the Great Depression? (Part 1)

Bad Diagnosis Leads to Bad Solutions. This is the most important question that any person can ask if they want to understand how an economy works and what is wrong with their economy today. We’ve all heard various explanations from partisan politicians and political pundits, but given the severity of the Political and Economic Toxic […]

A Sorrowful Political Party Prison

Rise of the Political Party Machines. The two-party political system in the United States has not always existed. The U.S. Constitution contains nothing about political parties at all because the U.S. Founding Fathers never wanted party-based politics to dominate and corrupt the political system. In fact, when the U.S. Constitution was signed in 1787, there were […]

Exploiting Sick Americans to Subsidize Foreign Wars is Bad Policy

The CIA, Crack Cocaine, and the Sabotage of Nicaragua. During the 1980s the White House and several influential members of Congress gave explicit and detailed orders to the State Department, CIA, DEA, FBI, and the NSA to actively sabotage and overthrow the Nicaraguan Government. This included using U.S.-owned C-123K military cargo planes (among other vehicles) […]

Biology to Geopolitics: Evolving International Relations

The Pain-Pleasure Principle in Geopolitics. All behavior in the animal kingdom is governed by the avoidance of pain and the pursuit of pleasure. As we ascend from the primitive animals of Earth up to the pinnacle of human creation, we can observe that the pain-pleasure dynamic still governs all human behavior, but it assumes different […]

Power, Hegemony, and Geopolitical Balance

Should a State Seek Hegemony? “Hegemony” should be defined before discussing this topic. My definition: “Hegemony describes a dominant state’s capacity to compel other states in the International System to consider the dominant state’s interests before acting in their own interest.” With this definition in mind, the answer is certainly, yes, every state should seek […]

The Truth About Iraq: No End In Sight

Whenever I watch documentaries like “No End In Sight” that illustrate the gross incompetence and corruption in the U.S. Government’s (USG) senior political leadership ranks, I feel my stomach twisting into knots and I literally want to vomit. It’s like having a family member who is always drunk and belligerent: They keep terrorizing the neighbors […]

Thomas Jefferson’s First Inaugural Address

March 4, 1801 FRIENDS AND FELLOW-CITIZENS, Called upon to undertake the duties of the first executive office of our country, I avail myself of the presence of that portion of my fellow-citizens which is here assembled to express my grateful thanks for the favor with which they have been pleased to look toward me, to […]

George Washington’s Farewell Address (1796)

Friends and Citizens: The period for a new election of a citizen to administer the executive government of the United States being not far distant, and the time actually arrived when your thoughts must be employed in designating the person who is to be clothed with that important trust, it appears to me proper, especially […]

Federalist 85

Concluding Remarks From McLEAN’S Edition, New York. Author: Alexander Hamilton To the People of the State of New York: ACCORDING to the formal division of the subject of these papers, announced in my first number, there would appear still to remain for discussion two points: “the analogy of the proposed government to your own State […]