Do not take a deep breath if you are fearful of missing something…
In no particular order…
On the home front…
Keeping score: Trump vs. Trump
Core inflation is 2.4%. Me, your humble armchair-macro-economist, Steven J. Manning, opine anything lower than 2% would be disastrous to the economy. And: wage increases are outpacing inflation! Hurray!
Fuel, eggs, housing, healthcare (coming soon), all down. Taxes coming down a bunch second quarter. And… Not bad, not bad.
GDP over 4%. Your 401K’s, all healthy!
You, your family, your friends and neighbors are all employed.
Trillions and trillions in foreign investments. It is all about jobs, people.
T(rump) D(erangement) S(yndrome) continues at fever pitch. Has yet to spike.
If I may be so bold, Mr. President, we are no longer living in Marshall McLuhan world! It is not just the medium. It is THE MESSAGE, THE MEDIUM AND THE DELIVERY.
The world…
It is not drifting, as it superficially appears to be. It is accelerating—relentlessly—toward sharper divisions and irreversible polarization. What we are witnessing is not disorder, but a new, fractured order taking shape. Some notable players:
Putin… Everybody’s favorite body-builder, horseman, ruthless megalomaniac. It is critically harmful naiveté to trust the slightest appearance of goodwill from Putin. He will continue manipulating Trump until Trump clamps down on Scholz (Germany) to stop buying gas from Russia. Wars run on money. Putin’s money is from gas. How? Nobody in the US will buy a small Audi for $150,000. Nor German sausages for $50 per pound.
Xi… The best long-game player in history. The most efficient and effective warrior of all time. Murdered over seven million people—thus far—without firing one bullet. COVID. Forges ahead courageously and mightily toward world domination. If I may, Comrade Xi, best hurry. The world was aghast when you engaged in murderous systemic feminicide of babies and your one-child policy. Well, your fine people are now engaged in “less than one child” policy of their own. Your population has decreased again last year.
Oh… A special and sobering mention: the world scarcely knows—let alone fully confronts—that concentration camps that operate within China. Mass detention—extermination in effect. That this reality fails to provoke sustained global outrage is itself an indictment.
Trump…
Obsession with Venezuela continues. Or is it obsession? How about the lovely Margarita Island, twenty miles off the coast of Venezuela. About 1,370 miles from Miami. 2,050 miles from New York. 2,175 miles from Houston. Make note: Margarita Island is the H.Q of Hezbollah in the Western Hemisphere! Enough said? Yes. Maduro has to go.
Trump vs EU vs Ukraine… Bullets:
– We no longer spend billions in Ukraine. The billions we spent, good and bad. Good that we own rights to half of the rare earth minerals in Ukraine. Bad: we have to protect our interests, have to get to those minerals, Zelenskyy and his cabal of thieves stole most of those “billions.”
– EU will loan Ukraine many billions, to be repaid from “spoils of war.” Typical European supercilious myopathy. What “spoils of war?” What historical blindness. Is that not how Germany funded the beginning of WWII? Kudos to Victor Orban (Hungary PM) who is leading a small chorus of Hungary, Slovakia and Czechia warning against that stupid idea.
This is not just bad news. It is astoundingly alarming—exceptionally complex in origin, and chilling in what it exposes about what is really happening to us. We now have a first generation of children whose life expectancy is shorter than their parents. This may be the most consequential—and perversely the most ignored—alarm clock in our very existence.
Fantastic news! Major Alzheimer’s research breakthrough shows reversal of advanced brain damage in mice!
A compound called P7C3-A20 not only halted but reversed cognitive decline in mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease—restoring memory, learning, and coordination. While human trials remain essential, this result represents a dramatic shift in Alzheimer’s research, where full reversal of symptoms has long been deemed unattainable. Thanks, MarketWatch for tickling me on this amazing development.
George Clooney is now a citizen of France. He has not renounced his U.S. citizenship, nor has he shown much interest in accounting for the vast sums his political enthusiasm helped draw from friends into the Biden campaign. Clooney is widely regarded as a smart man. That makes his occasional lapses into political blindness all the more striking.
Mamdani. Incomprehensible economic self-sabotage by New Yorkers. Spielberg’s shark (Bruce) from JAWS comes to mind.
Time flies, backwards. In a playful quirk of geography and aviation, certain New Year’s Eve flights crossed the International Date Line in such a way that they departed in 2026 and landed in 2025 — airline schedules giving passengers a literal extra hour on New Year’s Eve!
Ahmed al- Ahmed. The Bondi Beach hero, instinctively intervened to disarm an attacker, saving countless lives even after being seriously wounded. Why? HUMAN INSTINCTS! He said that his actions were driven almost entirely by an instinctive desire to protect innocent people: was to stop further killings.
He could not stand by and do nothing.
Admittedly borrowing some from Edmund Burke and others after him, here is a Manning-ism: Evil does not require brilliance or numbers to prevail; it requires only the hesitation and silence of good people.
Side notes…
Thus far, 40,000 people have contributed USD $2.6 million to a GoFundMe campaign for him.
May conscience and courage guide others to good deeds—yes, even to heroism under fire.
With that, I bid you all a happy, healthy, prosperous and tranquil New Year.