CMR is the leading provider of funding and management support for small to medium-sized businesses and entrepreneurs 

Authored by Andrew Korybko,

Lavrov sheepishly said during a roundtable event last week that “I do not even want to suspect that Alaska, like the actions of the Europeans, was designed to buy time to rearm the Kyiv regime. I don’t even want to think about it. But in reality, things turned out the way they did.”

 

This came three and a half years after former German Chancellor Angela Merkel admitted in December 2022 that the Minsk Accords were just a ruse to buy time for Kiev to rearm.

Putin famously responded a month later that “We endured for a long time, tried to reach an agreement for a long time. But, as it turns out now, we were simply led by the nose, deceived. It’s not the first time this has happened.” Given that he cautioned Russia’s strategic forecasters against indulging in “wishful thinking” during a speech at the headquarters of his country’s Foreign Spy Service in summer 2022, it was widely assumed among “Non-Russian Pro-Russians” that he wouldn’t fall for a similar ruse.

Lo and behold, that’s precisely what happened after Trump reneged on the “Spirit of Anchorage”, which an RT contributor described as him having agreed to coerce Zelensky into withdrawing from Donbass in exchange for Putin then declaring a ceasefire. It’s a matter of speculation whether Trump intended to dupe Putin or whether he just caught too caught up in retrospect planning Maduro’s capture and the Third Gulf War. The outcome, nevertheless, is the same since Trump didn’t do what he promised Putin.

Trump is now “escalating to de-escalate” through a “war of attrition” because he senses weakness from Russia due to the new “cordon sanitaire” around it and thus believes that strengthening Ukraine’s strike capabilities, imposing more sanctions, and provoking unrest can coerce energy-related concessions. The Wall Street Journal reported on the aforementioned three-phase strategy last fall so Russia would have presumably been aware of it but still maintained hope that Trump would implement his deal with Putin.

This “wishful thinking” has now been shattered after he signed the G7 joint statement calling for more arms to Ukraine and sanctions on Russia, which preceded a report that he told Zelensky to act “more boldly” against Russia after being impressed by its recent US-backed strategic strikes. To be sure, Russia had realized even before this that something was wrong after Putin’s close advisor Yuri Ushakov played dumb about the “Spirit of Anchorage” last month, but now it’s indisputable that it no longer exists.

Seeing as how there’s no longer any credible hope that Trump will coerce Zelensky into withdrawing from Donbass by cutting off arms, funds, and intel to Ukraine, not even in exchange for a resource-centric strategic partnership with Russia, only three options remain for Russia.

1. It can either decisively “escalate to de-escalate” in its own right to swiftly end the conflict on as many of its terms as possible,

2. carry on as usual amidst this new “war of attrition” at tremendous risk to itself,

3. or freeze the conflict.

Unless he’s bluffing about “escalating to de-escalate” and abruptly implements his half of the “Spirit of Anchorage”, which is unlikely after all that’s recently happened, then it would mean that the past year since their meeting achieved nothing at all other than getting Russia’s guard down. Even if they agreed on that quid pro quo, however, Russia would have probably kept the same tempo. Now that its “spirit” is discredited, Russia has the pretext for ramping everything up, but it’s still unclear whether Putin will.

Median household income differs significantly across racial and ethnic groups in the United States, with one group sitting well above the rest.

In 2024, Asian households reported a median income of $121,700, nearly $30,000 higher than White alone, non-Hispanic households and more than double the median income of Black households.

These differences reflect a mix of factors, including education, geography, occupation, household composition, immigration patterns, and historical inequalities.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist's Bruno Venditti, ranks median household income by race and Hispanic origin in 2024, using inflation-adjusted dollars.

The data for this visualization comes from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Asian Households Lead by a Wide Margin

Asian households had the highest median income in 2024, at $121,700. This was well above every other group shown in the Census dataset.

White alone, non-Hispanic households ranked second, with a median income of $92,530. Hispanic households followed at $70,950.

American Indian and Alaska Native households had a median income of $59,050, while Black households had the lowest among the listed groups at $56,020.

Asian households had a median income that was $29,170 higher than White alone, non-Hispanic households in 2024.

This group has ranked at the top of the dataset for every year shown, from 2002 to 2024.

It is important to note that these are median household figures, not individual earnings. Household income can be affected by the number of earners in a household, local cost of living, age distribution, educational attainment, and where people live and work.

A Persistent Income Gap

The gap between the highest and lowest median household incomes was $65,680 in 2024.

That difference compares Asian households at $121,700 with Black households at $56,020. In practical terms, the top group’s median income was more than double the lowest group’s.

The long-term trend also shows that these gaps have persisted across multiple economic cycles. While incomes have generally risen since 2002 in inflation-adjusted terms, the distance between the highest- and lowest-income groups remains substantial.

Hispanic Household Income Continued to Rise

Hispanic households had a median income of $70,950 in 2024.

That was up from $67,240 in 2023, and well above the 2002 level of $54,670 in 2024 dollars.

The Census Bureau defines Hispanic as people of Hispanic or Latino origin, regardless of race. This means Hispanic households can include people who identify with any racial group.

If you enjoyed today’s post, check out Number of Indian Tribes in the US on Voronoi.

The Trump administration is taking another step to strengthen the nation's critical minerals supply chain, announcing plans to build a series of mineral processing facilities on U.S. military bases through partnerships with private industry, according to Bloomberg.

The initiative marks the first time commercial mineral processing operations will be located on Army installations.

The U.S. Army said it has reached preliminary agreements with REalloys, Titan Mining, EnergyX, and Australia's ioneer to develop facilities that will process rare earth elements, graphite, lithium, and boron. REalloys is slated to build a rare earth separation plant at the Tooele Army Depot in Utah, while Titan Mining will establish a graphite purification facility at either Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas or Anniston Army Depot in Alabama. EnergyX will develop a lithium processing facility, and ioneer will construct a boron plant.

Bloomberg writes that the projects are part of a broader push by President Donald Trump to rebuild America's domestic critical minerals industry and reduce reliance on overseas suppliers, particularly China, which dominates much of the global processing market. Critical minerals are essential for military equipment, electric vehicles, semiconductors, renewable energy systems, and a wide range of consumer electronics.

Unlike traditional government subsidy programs, the Army said these agreements require the companies to pay for and carry out infrastructure improvements at the military bases in exchange for operating rights. The Pentagon expects the facilities to provide the military with more reliable access to strategically important materials while expanding U.S. processing capacity. Construction could begin as early as 2027, with production expected to come online in 2028.

The announcement follows a series of recent moves by the administration to boost domestic mineral production through loans, investments, and strategic partnerships. Those efforts have accelerated as geopolitical tensions with China continue to reshape global supply chains, with both countries taking steps to secure access to the raw materials increasingly viewed as essential to national security and advanced manufacturing.

During the COVID-era flood of free money, from stimulus checks to the Federal Reserve's zero-interest-rate policy, luxury watch prices skyrocketed to the moon. But once that liquidity boom faded and interest rates were pushed sharply higher to rein in the inflation monster fueled by helicopter money, the secondary luxury market slid into a multi-year correction.

Over the last year and a half, however, that downturn appears to have bottomed out (see here and here), with prices continuing to rebound.

The Bloomberg Subdial Watch Index, which tracks prices for the 50 most-traded watches by value on the secondary market, bottomed in January 2025, about 1.5 years ago, and has been tracking higher ever since.

• Subdial's used Rolex index bottomed around $11,000 in January 2025 and has since rebounded to nearly $12,000.
• And used Audemars Piguet watch prices.

A more granular look at the used Rolex watch index shows the Rolex Submariner Date ...

... bottomed in the summer of 2025 at around $9,800 and has marginally increased to about $10,200 this month - still far from the $13,500 COVID-era highs.

However, price action across the luxury watch market has not been uniform and largely depends on shifting consumer tastes and the interest rate environment. 

Great reads:

• The Watches Of Operation Epic Fury
• The Real Watches Of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro

Industry insights: 

• Did Gen-Z Just Get A Taste For Fancy Used-Watches
• "Winner Takes All": UBS Speaks With Swiss Watch Industry Insider On "Stabilizing Market"

In recent weeks, Audemars Piguet and Swatch launched an affordable $400 pocket watch that generated massive consumer demand - mostly because of the price point.

Colombia's president-elect Abelardo de la Espriella gave drug cartels and guerrilla groups one month to surrender, marking a massive U-turn from the soft-on-crime policies of the socialist regime under incumbent President Gustavo Petro.

"To all those acting outside the law, you have one month to arrange your submission," Trump-Backed Espriella said in his first speech since official results confirmed his electoral win on Sunday.

Colombia's President-Elect Abelardo de la Espriella:

To those who are outside the law, I have a categorical message: You have one month to come to your senses and organize your submission to the rule of law.

Under my government there will be no generous offers or unacceptable… pic.twitter.com/G94Pep8rcg

— Clash Report (@clashreport) June 25, 2026

"In my administration, there will be no generous offers or unacceptable concessions like those they received from the regime that is coming to an end," Espriella added, in reference to the outgoing socialists who favored kind words with narcoterrorists.

Under Petro, a new United Nations report showed that Colombian coca cultivation hit a record high in 2024, with planted acreage rising 3.5% to 261,000 hectares, or about 645,000 acres.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime did not publish its usual estimate for potential cocaine output, although the previous year's coca crop was enough to produce more than 2,600 tons of the drug, according to Bloomberg.

The surge in production under the socialist regime has fueled Colombia's worsening security crisis.

Across Latin America, there has been a massive shift in politics after years of failed socialism sent the continent into an era marked by surging violent crime, economic stagnation, debt traps, currency declines, and collapsing public confidence.

Now, the shift is toward right-wing leaders who support law and order and capitalism.

As socialism and Marxism are eradicated like cockroaches across Latin America, a troubling rise of left-wing revolutionaries in New York City has finally alarmed the mainstream Democratic Party.

Authored by Leo Hohmann via substack,

The big-picture lesson from the Covid era should have been obvious. It should have screamed loud and clear to every freedom-loving American: The power elites who run things at the local, state and federal levels want to tag and track our movement, but not just our movement. They want to track our diet, our healthcare, our purchasing habits, our use of energy, our online comment history, our very thoughts.

They want all of it. And if they get their way, you will own nothing. Literally nothing. Even if you technically own an asset, you will not control it, so do you really own it?

Your bank account will be theirs, programmed to be switched on or off at their pleasure, based on your compliance with the dictates of the surveillance state. Your car will be theirs, able to monitor your eye movements, your posture and who knows what else in real time, and be remotely disabled at their pleasure, thanks to Joe Biden’s remote vehicle kill switch law. Your ability to eat healthy food will be gone, thanks to Donald Trump’s granting of legal immunity to Bayer/Monsanto, protecting it from lawsuits based on the harmful effects of bioengineered food laced with chemicals. Same for your healthcare. Your online speech. Even your thoughts. They will own it all if they succeed in bringing in the long-planned AI-powered digital control grid that is currently under construction in the form of 6G wireless networks along with thousands of AI data centers, Flock cameras and other devices.

Flock Safety, the online security company based in Atlanta, has more than 89,000 vertically integrated and fully internet-connected cameras stationed in more than 5,000 communities nationwide and growing. The invasiveness of their cameras is also growing, with the ability to not only see but to hear everything going on for miles through its Raven Audio Detection Program. Flock is also now selling mobile cameras to law-enforcement agencies that will serve as “first responders” based on suspicious activity picked up under the company’s Falcon Drone Program.

Watch the first 6 minutes of the video below and ask yourself, have you been Flocked? Is it really making you safer?

Cities and states, and specifically law enforcement agencies, will have all of your data and the ability to use it however they want, sharing it with whoever they want including the federal government, and you can bet that kind of power will lead to a totalitarian system.

But, apparently, most folks didn’t get the memo after Covid. Totalitarianism is the goal.

Instead of taking this sweeping big-picture lesson from the Covid era, they filed away much smaller lessons, if they received any lesson at all. Something along the lines of, don’t trust vaccines, or perhaps on a slightly bigger scale something like don’t trust the government in a time of emergency.

These are good lessons, but they stop short of the big lesson that was out there staring us in the face and begging to be learned.

They want to own you. They want to crush your human agency and replace it with an AI-powered control system that is their fraudulent version of God. And if we allow a system like that to be placed in a position of authority over us, a place reserved for God, we will live to regret it, because this system is not designed to respect human sovereignty, human dignity, or free will. All totalitarian systems, whether communist, fascist, Islamist, Christian nationalist, or technocratic in nature, are based on the presumption that they know better, and they have the right to crush our free will.

As a result of so many people missing the loud-and-clear message delivered by the ruling elites during the beta-test for tyranny known as Covid, we are destined to live through a period of further testing. As long as we as a society keep failing the tests, we keep moving closer to the New World Order, which is a technocratic dystopia marked by the death of privacy, the death of anonymity, and the death of representative democracy as we know it.

If they succeed, and they’re getting close, every action and function of life will come under regulation by nameless, faceless overlords. Voting, traveling, moving about locally, logging onto the internet, shopping for various goods and services, and everything you consume, including food and water, will require you to “verify your identity.” And the only way to verify your identity will be through the digital beast system. Show us your QR code, or some other imprint tied to your individual biometric data.

This transformation is already well underway. You can’t board a plane without allowing the authorities to scan your facial features and enter your likeness into their centralized database. You can’t get a federally approved driver’s license without doing the same. Soon you won’t be able to have a bank account or even log onto the internet without fulfilling such digital ID requirements.

The globalists have already put the chairs in the order needed to start demanding biometric digital ID for practically every service people need to function in modern society. You want to vote? Show your digital ID. You want secure borders? Show us your digital ID so we know if you’re legal or illegal before you get that job you’ve applied for, or that college enrollment you’re applying for. Or that apartment you want to live in. You want healthcare? You want Social Security? Confirm your digital ID. You want to drive? You want to travel? You want to eat?

It’s all coming folks, and it pretty much all hinges on them getting the AI data centers they want up and running. Are you OK with that?

If so, then sit back and do nothing. Just relax and trust the government.

If you’re not, it’s time to start saying “no” and fight back against the data centers, the Flock cameras and the digitization of our human identities. It will cost you some of the modern conveniences, but if you wait to register your resistance, it might cost you much more.

The first order of business in any resistance is to say no.

If you are asked to produce a QR code, say no. A face scan? No. An iris scan? No. A palm scan? No. This is called non-compliance. Dissidents do not comply.

If you are asked to electronically apply online for something or “check in” for an appointment, such as your next doctor’s visit, don’t respond through their preferred method. Make them call you on the telephone if they are so dead set on knowing if you are going to show up for the appointment that you already scheduled. If there is just one human working the cashier at your grocery store, resist the temptation to go through the self-checkout and save a few minutes of time. You’ll be saving someone’s job while sending a message to the corporate owners. Same for your banking relationship, go for the human teller rather than the machine.

Start reading the labels on the food you buy. Look for non-GMO food, stop taking the easier route and buying prepackaged ultra-processed foods that make you sluggish, sick and submissive. Buy organic non-GMO whenever possible and avoid bioengineered food at all cost.

And this is just the first layer of a multilayered approach to non-compliance.

The other layers are more aggressive and involve getting in the faces of your local elected leaders when they go to invite the Flock cameras and data centers into your community. This will involve organizing a citizens’ group and possibly filing a lawsuit. It’s long overdue for us to take ownership of our situation and stop assuming that any politician or political party is on our side or in any way looking out for us or our interests.

I didn’t say it would be easy. Or cheap. Nothing worthwhile ever is.

We can’t afford to have anymore lessons missed, because each lesson missed paves the road smoother to the New World Order.

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

Alan Greenspan, Fed chair from 1987 to 2006, embodies a striking ideological shift from gold-standard advocate to architect of the modern easy-money, debt-fueled financial system. He has now died at the age of 100, and this marks a good time to assess his legacy and explain why it matters.

In the 1960s, as a young economist influenced by Ayn Rand and Objectivism, Greenspan strongly supported the gold standard. In his 1966 essay “Gold and Economic Freedom,” he argued that gold-backed money was essential for laissez-faire capitalism. It restrained governments from inflating the currency to fund welfare states or deficits, preventing the erosion of savings and the boom-bust cycles caused by fiat money manipulation. He viewed central banking and unbacked currency as tools for hidden wealth confiscation through inflation.

This essay is what endeared him to Rand personally. He became a valued member of her inner circle at a time when such circles of influence dominated the Manhattan scene. He won her confidence while his consulting firm was growing in influence. His clients were among the biggest players on Wall Street. His closeness to Rand and her circle contributed to the sense that they had at the time that Rand’s ideas were in ascendance, as her book sales only grew.

Once in power, however, Greenspan operated within the fiat system that he once criticized. He became known for discretionary, flexible monetary policy that prioritized short-term economic stability and growth over rigid rules.

Key elements included the “Greenspan Put.”

Markets came to expect the Fed to cut interest rates and inject liquidity during crises to cushion asset price declines. This started with the 1987 stock market crash (Black Monday), during which Greenspan quickly affirmed the Fed’s readiness to provide liquidity.

This was the beginning of what later became known as Quantitative Easing, or money printing, as the method to deal with market upheavals. It represented a wholesale repudiation of the policies of Paul Volcker from 1979 to 1982, the last time this country permitted an economic downturn to take its normal course rather than use artificial methods of stimulating demand. It was a test of the theory of the Austrian School, which argued that recessions serve a purpose of cleaning out malinvestments to prepare the ground for new prosperity.

The test worked to create the conditions of the 1980s boom. And yet at the same time, we saw measures of finance and banking deregulation that would empower new forms of credit finance that blurred the old distinctions between savings and checkable (liquid) deposits. It was this change that would end up fundamentally changing the operations of capitalism.

With sound money and a free market, the interest rate was a reflection of the savings rate. Investors would only borrow what was available, while savers were rewarded for their thrift with high interest rates. The rate of return for financial capital would tend toward an equilibrium identical to industrial output levels. That means that you are always better off saving than taking risks unless you have an eye toward entrepreneurial speculation. That was the balance: save, invest, grow.

Greenspan’s efforts turned the table over. The Fed embarked on a new experiment that would reward debt more than saving through one simple trick. He would push down rates to the point that saving paid less than investing in stocks, such that anyone could go into serviceable debt and invest and make more money with financial markets. Thus began what is called financialization. It overthrew the traditional workings of capitalism for a new calculation that stopped rewarding thrift and started rewarding leverage above all else.

Quite the achievement for a man who decades earlier had condemned this very system!

This strategy was repeated with responses to the 1998 LTCM/Russia crisis, the dot-com bust (2000–2001), and post-9/11. Investors priced in this implicit downside protection—like a put option—encouraging greater risk-taking, leverage, debt service, and wild speculation.

After the dot-com bubble burst and 9/11, the Fed under Greenspan cut the federal funds rate to a then-record low of roughly 1 percent in 2003–2004 and held it there. This created very cheap credit, fueling borrowing, leverage, and rising asset prices (especially housing). This directly inflated the mid-2000s housing bubble by making mortgages extraordinarily affordable and encouraging subprime lending.

The result was moral hazard and a wild culture of risk-taking at the expense of financial prudence. The combination of bailouts for markets (not necessarily individual firms) and low rates fostered the belief that the Fed would always “clean up” after bubbles.

This reduced the perceived downside of speculation, leading to higher leverage in finance, exotic mortgages, and a broader “debt finance” era in which credit expansion outpaced productive growth. Greenspan himself spoke of “irrational exuberance” in 1996 but didn’t act decisively to prick bubbles.

Greenspan’s tenure coincided with (and helped enable) a structural shift toward higher public–private debt levels, financialization of the economy, and repeated asset bubbles. The housing bubble and 2008 crisis are the clearest examples—easy money post-dot-com contributed to over-leveraged households and banks. While he defended his actions (arguing that bubbles are hard to identify in real time and that low rates didn’t solely cause the housing issues), his policies masked rising systemic risks and set the United States on the course toward disaster.

In later years, Greenspan reflected on gold favorably (e.g., calling it the premier global currency and admitting in conversations with Ron Paul that the Fed tried to mimic gold-standard signals). He acknowledged the welfare state’s incompatibility with hard money but pragmatically worked within the system.

Fine talk, but look at how he walked. Greenspan’s successors at the Fed only intensified his apostasy, especially Ben Bernanke, who went one better and slammed rates to zero while protecting against inflationary consequences by filling up bank vaults with fake money. This created innumerable zombie institutions, even as the Fed held the overvalued fake assets on its books. It still does.

Bernanke was succeeded by Janet Yellen, who sought to dampen inflation worries in early 2021, just before depreciation sliced off one-third of the dollar’s purchasing power. This is not a stellar record for which Greenspan set the precedent.

The young Greenspan saw gold as a check on government and banker overreach. The elder Greenspan, wielding immense power at the Fed, used that power to smooth cycles, successfully for a while (low inflation, steady growth in the 1990s)—but at the cost of building a more fragile, debt-dependent financial architecture.

This “Greenspan era” mindset of activist central banking influenced successors like Bernanke (QE) and continues to shape today’s environment of high debt and low rates (until recently) and expectations of Fed rescues. It marked a decisive move away from sound-money principles toward managed fiat credit cycles.

We are still paying a huge price for this mismanagement. Greenspan is the perfect embodiment of the principle that your talk and your walk need to match, lest you become an instrument of hypocrisy and eventual disaster that undermines every intellectual conviction you once embraced.