The U.S. stock market is a Ponzi scheme. It needs new investors (suckers) to keep the Ponzi afloat.

Trump brags that the Ponzi going higher and higher is making everybody rich.

He sounds just like Bernie Madoff at this point, and when the Ponzi collapses, Trump is going to be blamed, so he'll look for somebody else to divert the blame from himself.

At some point, every government becomes a cheerleader for a market Ponzi, and it sees those who think rationally about market valuations as enemies of the state. And when markets collapse, those who accurately predicted the collapse are BLAMED for causing it... for not having enough "optimism" and thereby causing people to sell.

The very act of selling, at that point, is practically considered a criminal act by the government that desperately needs the Ponzi to continue growing. In Trump's case, it's far worse than ever before, because Americans are more indebted than anyone can remember, and Trump's only answer to rising food prices, fuel prices and health insurance costs is to tell people they're getting rich in the stock market.

When the market craters, that narrative falls apart. And the American people are abandoned, impoverished and wondering what happened to that "Golden Age" Trump promised them.

They didn't know it was always a scam from the very start. There is no Trump Golden Age coming. The gold is only for himself and his family. Everybody else gets rug pulled. The entire Trump presidency has been one giant rug pull, in fact.

Got another powerful infographic for you on this 250th anniversary of the birth of our nation: Check out the rise and fall of world reserve currencies over the last several centuries.

Note that most currencies barely survive a century as the world reserve. The dollar, which is now being printed by the trillions (a form of theft from the citizens), has been the world standard, arguably, for about 106 years.

This too will come to an end. With Trump printing and spending like mad, that day will come even sooner. Thanks to Trump's foolish war with Iran, the entire world now sees the U.S. military as weak and ineffective. Most countries are taking steps to move away from dollar transactions and holding dollar (Treasury) debt. While the dollar is still by far the currency of the largest and most liquid debt market (U.S. Treasuries), that's slipping away as nations turn to domestic currency settlements and gold.

Will the U.S. dollar survive much longer as the dominant global currency? (AI-generated infographic, pardon small errors.)

Happy 250th to the United States of America! At 250, it has lasted longer than most, but of course the original founding Republic is already ancient history.

Today, we live under a tyrannical regime of authoritarians, bureaucrats and incompetent fools who steal our money, start new wars, poison our crops, inject our children with toxic chemicals and tell us it's a new "Golden Age!"

The American Empire doesn't have much time left. Here's an infographic of the rough timelines of the rise and fall of previous empires. When will the American empire be added to this list? Probably soon. (Pardon minor AI errors in the chart...)