Economy

A Texas Tanker Convoy

How Iranian Mines and American Realpolitik Made the Spice Flow Again A wave of empty VLCCs heading for Corpus Christi and Houston isn’t just a dramatic map; it’s living proof that pragmatic Hemisphere-first statecraft turned a Persian Gulf crisis into U.S. energy strength, cheaper domestic natural gas for our factories, and a cautionary tale about choosing politics over production. That map stopped me cold the first time I saw it. Dozens of empty supertankers streaming westward across the Atlantic and Caribbean like a disciplined blue-water convoy, all making straight for the loading terminals at Corpus Christi, Freeport, and Houston. It’s not…

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Crossing Our Modern Delaware

Why Securing the Strait of Hormuz Is the True Test of American Resolve Against Iran Today brings a striking convergence: Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery's New York Times piece and my own column here on jameskay.online arrive the same day, both insisting that Operation Epic Fury must press on to control the Strait of Hormuz. The timing feels providential, echoing 1776, when Thomas Paine's American Crisis No. 1 hit print on December 19, its rousing prose read to Washington's army just days later, steeling them for the daring Delaware crossing on December 25–26. "These are the times that try men's souls," Paine…

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Building AI’s River Rouge

Factories, Financing, and Freeing Energy The column started with a single X post from @HedgieMarkets laying bare the financial engineering behind the AI boom: massive data centers funded through special purpose vehicles, off-balance-sheet debt, and leverage that would make a subprime lender blush. Meta's $27 billion Hyperion deal with Blue Owl, Oracle's $38 billion Vantage play tied to OpenAI's Stargate, xAI's $20 billion raise looping in Nvidia GPUs-these aren't just big numbers. They're bets on explosive revenues that have to show up in the next 5 to 15 years, or the whole structure risks looking like a house of cards when…

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Egg-Face Economists

Inflation Dips, Private Jobs Surge in Trump's Resilient Economy In my previous column, “The BLS Affordability Boost,” I laid out how the January 2026 jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics gave working families a tangible win. Private-sector payrolls jumped 172,000-far exceeding the consensus forecast of 55,000 to 80,000-while unemployment edged down to 4.3% and average hourly earnings rose 3.7% year-over-year. For the first time in a while, wage growth outpaced the prior month's inflation reading, putting real dollars back in pockets here in Plano and across Texas. Barely three days later, the February 13 CPI release for January served…

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The BLS Affordability Boost

Unpacking the "Unexpected" January Jobs Report If you've been following the economic tea leaves like I have for over 30 years in this game, you know the drill: Wall Street "experts" cluster their forecasts like sheep, the media slaps "unexpectedly" on anything that doesn't fit their narrative, and real-world metrics get buried under a pile of revisions and spin. Today's January 2026 BLS jobs report? It's a classic case. Clocking in at +130,000 nonfarm payrolls with unemployment ticking down to 4.3%, this thing smashed the lowball consensus and kicked off the year with a bang for the Trump administration and Republicans.…

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From Branches to Booms

A Bold Vision for Capital Gains Tax Reform The past week delivered a stark reminder that markets are still groping for solid ground. Gold, after climbing toward $5,300 an ounce in a frenzy of inflation-hedge buying, cratered to around $4,890-a 10% wipeout in a matter of days. Silver suffered far worse, plunging roughly 35% from peaks above $130. Bitcoin tested $78,000 after teasing six figures, Ethereum followed suit, and equities took their lumps too: the Russell 2000 shed more than 7%, Nasdaq proxies dropped 4–5%, and the broader indices followed in lockstep. One widely shared thread on X captured the carnage…

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Tax the Fruit, Not the Branches

A Supply-Side Answer to the Deflation Warning Anthony Pompliano dropped a clear warning this week. Truflation’s real-time dashboard shows U.S. inflation at 1.21% year-over-year-down sharply, well below the Fed’s lagging 2.7% BLS print for December. He’s been saying it for months: the real threat isn’t runaway inflation. It’s deflationary pressure from weak demand, delayed purchases, and a middle class that’s pulling back. Inflation is now at 1.2% according to @truflation.For the last year I have been warning that deflation was a much bigger risk than inflation.The Federal Reserve completely screwed this up.They must cut rates aggressively now! pic.twitter.com/WZ6dpfjYS5— Anthony Pompliano 🌪…

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The Narrative Fails Again…Unexpectedly!

The Perpetual Surprise of Prosperity Just in time for Christmas, the Bureau of Economic Analysis finally released the delayed third-quarter GDP figures-delayed, of course, by the longest government shutdown in modern history-and what do we find? Real GDP growth at an annualized 4.3%, accelerating from 3.8% in Q2 and marking the strongest quarterly expansion in two years. Consumer spending surges 3.5%, exports jump 8.8%, and corporate profits leap $166 billion. Yet the headlines, from CNBC to CNN, uniformly intone the same ritual incantation: "much more than expected," "unexpectedly robust," "blasts past forecasts." This is not mere journalistic shorthand. It is the…

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Rebalancing the American Workforce

November Jobs Report Shows Prioritizing Private, Native-Born Employment The U.S. labor market in 2025 shows a clear rebalancing toward private-sector and native-born workers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' November report, delayed due to the earlier government shutdown, reported 64,000 jobs added, with unemployment at 4.6%-its highest since late 2021. Private-sector gains of 69,000 fully offset public-sector losses, highlighting a shift driven by policy changes. This rebalancing reduces government bloat and redirects job growth to Americans, but low workforce participation and discouraged workers remain concerns that could limit long-term benefits. The GOP's Path to Overhauling Democrats Failed Health Legacy Congress has adjourned…

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Tennessee’s Smelting Rise in the REE-naissance Saga

Tennessee's Role in Breaking China's Critical Minerals Grip In the arc of America's REE-naissance-spanning policy blueprints in Saskatoon separators, Utah's ionic bounty, and Uyuni's lithium pivot-the missing link has been robust, scalable downstream processing. Enter Korea Zinc's $7.4 billion U.S.-backed smelter in Tennessee, announced Monday, transforming an operational Nyrstar site into a fortress for 13 critical metals, including 5,100 tonnes of rare earths annually. This isn't mere metallurgy; it's the industrial anvil forging hemispheric independence, syncing upstream feeds from Utah clays and Bolivian brines with midstream tech like REalloys-SRC's AI-driven purity. As China's rare earth export licenses flow under truce terms,…

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