kscarbel2

President Trump issued an executive order on January 7 prohibiting defense contractors from paying dividends or buying back shares "until such time as they are able to produce a superior product, on time and on budget." Separately, President Trump also said annual defense contractor CEO payouts should be limited to $5 million. Reminds me of the movie "Dave". .

So the Navy is paying $17.2 million per aircraft for the new (long delayed) T45 trainer............and it can't perform a carrier touch-and-go ??? https://www.twz.com/air/navys-t-45-replacement-will-not-be-capable-of-making-carrier-landing-touch-and-goes

GM and Allison have smoothed over their differences and decided not to divorce. GM will continue the Allison badging. https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a70256695/gm-allison-transmission-renew-partnership/

Dropped to $2.49 three weeks ago. Then rose back to the long time $2.99 Now for a week averaging $2.79 I buy 89 because the quality of 87 has fallen too far. And with 89, I get much better fuel economy, almost that of 91.

Venezuela crude is very heavy (and has a high sulfur content) which must be diluted with naphtha or Texas Light to flow. That said, our gulf refineries were designed specifically for processing Venezuelan crude.

Warsh's War on Fed "Groupthink" Breitbart / February 4, 2026 In March 2016, Kevin Warsh stood before the National Association for Business Economics and delivered what may be the most blistering critique of Federal Reserve decision-making ever offered by a former Fed governor. The speech, titled “Challenging the Groupthink of the Guild,” laid out a comprehensive indictment of how the Fed conducts monetary policy. “The clustering of economic forecasts reveals conformity of views inside the Fed,” Warsh argued. He noted that estimates among Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) participants were “very closely aligned” and “closely match the outputs of the staff forecast.” This wasn’t just an academic concern. The Fed’s internal groupthink was “deepening the groupthink among other stakeholders, including outside economists, Wall Street pros, and business leaders.” Five years later, the Fed’s catastrophic miss on inflation vindicated Warsh’s diagnosis. An institution more open to challenging the transitory inflation narrative would have tightened sooner. An institution less obsessed with achieving consensus and more open to internal dissent would have been better prepared to navigate our post-pandemic economy. Warsh’s most fundamental critique targets the Fed’s devotion to economic models that consistently fail to predict reality. He uses a provocative historical analogy: the Fed’s attachment to its models resembles the centuries-long adherence to Ptolemaic astronomy, which placed the Earth at the center of the universe despite mounting contrary evidence. “When the real economy fails to comport with their heralded model-based forecasts, they judge that the error invariably belongs to the real world,” Warsh observed. The Fed explains away persistent forecast failures as “headwinds” – temporary factors that will soon dissipate. But “seven years of headwinds suggests a problem not with the weather, but the climate.” The dominant models employed at the Fed and establishment macroeconomists are, in Warsh’s assessment, “at best, a way station between Ptolemy than Copernicus.” They systematically underestimate the importance of global economic developments, largely ignore the financial sector despite the 2008 crisis, and assume markets are efficiently priced, at least when prices are rising. The problem isn’t that models are useless. “All economic models are wrong, some are useful,” Warsh acknowledges. The problem is treating model outputs as gospel rather than as rough guides that should be heavily supplemented with judgment and market signals. Perhaps no phrase is more sacred in modern Fed communications than “data dependent.” Warsh calls it potentially “the most dangerous words in the conduct of monetary policy.” Why? Because what counts as “data” for Fed purposes is “anachronistic, backward-looking, and subject to massive revisions.” The monthly employment report that moves markets has standard error bounds “about equal to the net estimate.” The February 2016 report showed 242,000 jobs created, but that estimate was “statistically significant… plus or minus 100,000.” Moreover, policy affects the economy “with long, variable and uncertain lags.” As a wise central banker once told Warsh: “Policymakers must move early because they are late.” Instead of obsessing over backward-looking official statistics, Warsh argues that the Fed should pay more attention to market prices, which offer “contemporaneous insight into the real economy.” In particular, watching the prices of commodities—especially metals—would improve the performance of monetary policy. The Fed should “focus our countercyclical policies on the left side of the decimal point, not the right side.” That is, the Fed should be responding to large, persistent changes in economic activity, not “fiddling with measures of the NAIRU” to explain away inconsistent data. Warsh saves special scorn for the Fed’s proliferation of forecasts. In 2015, FOMC members provided “more than 70 individual point estimate forecasts” and gave “about 62 formal ‘economic outlook’ speeches. That was double the number from a decade earlier.” “To what end, exactly, this proliferation of forecasts?” Warsh asks. “The Fed has not forecasted a US recession accurately 12 months before its arrival since WWII.” Paul Samuelson famously quipped that “Wall Street indexes predicted 9 of the last 5 recessions.” Warsh’s retort: “That is better than 0 for 12, the Fed’s post-war batting average.” The forecasting obsession carries massive opportunity costs, Warsh contends. “The economic brain trust at the Fed is a precious public resource. It ought not to be squandered by repeating outputs of broken models.” That talent should be “aimed squarely at the toughest, most consequential economic issues of our time.” Warsh’s critique connects to his broader concern about Fed mission creep. The central bank kept promising its extraordinary policies would deliver broad prosperity but that never happened. The Fed’s QE worked through a “wealth effect” — and “the wealth effect works best for the wealthy.” While household wealth increased impressively “for those who already possessed financial assets,” Warsh noted that “about half of American households have no accumulated balance sheet wealth.” QE was a non-entity for most Americans whose purchasing power and wealth is less exposed to the flood of liquidity it created. It’s tempting to think of Warsh’s nomination as a puzzle: Trump wanted a dove but picked a hawk, as some have said. But this assumes the only thing that matters is where rates go. Warsh has consistently argued for looking at market signals and real-time information, engaging in robust internal debate, and avoiding forward guidance that locks the Fed into a path. That framework is compatible with a range of rate decisions. And lately he has signaled that he thinks the central bank should look past any tariff-induced price hikes and that improved productivity can raise output growth without raising inflation, precisely the rejection of Phillips Curve thinking he articulated in 2016. The real question isn’t whether Warsh is a hawk or dove. It’s whether his analytical approach will improve Fed decision-making. The establishment types endorsing Warsh and the populists who are concerned are both likely to be surprised by Chairman Warsh’s policies.

Well of course lawmakers on both sides of the aisle condemned President Trump’s call to nationalize U.S. elections. It would result in the demise of the party system (much to my personal satisfaction). Political parties, which in effect silence the actual desires of the people, should be banned. The founding fathers never intended for our government to be, in effect, controlled by parties. https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-call-nationalizing-elections-sparks-110000977.html

https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2026/02/03/russia-says-india-has-not-said-it-is-canceling-oil-purchases-after-trump-trade-deal/ https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/India-Weighs-Cheap-Russian-Oil-Against-Costly-US-Trade-Commitments.html

Very interesting all the way through. The last segment at 1:05:00 is good. . . https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-15524815/Chilling-theory-NASA-moon-Artemis-II-delay.html

Excellent. https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2026/02/03/florida-to-administer-driver-license-tests-exclusively-in-english-to-ensure-safety/

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2026/02/03/obamas-chinese-baby-bump-obama-encouraged-chinese-birth-tourism-inside-the-u-s/

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2026/02/02/soros-linked-groups-sue-to-block-trump-from-halting-welfare-dependent-immigrants/

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If true exactly as described, Russia is in serious trouble and will be seeking revenge. President Trump has agreed to a trade deal with India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, where the US will lower tariffs on goods from India to 18% from 25%. India will reduce trade barriers to zero and will also stop buying Russian oil. An additional 25% tariff penalty imposed for Delhi's refusal to stop buying oil from Russia will be dropped. "He agreed to stop buying Russian oil, and to buy much more oil from the United States and, potentially, Venezuela," Trump wrote. Additionally, Trump said Modi committed to buying over $500 billion worth of American goods including energy, technology, agriculture and coal products.

It gets confusing. https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2026/02/02/trump-deputies-approve-65000-more-h-2b-visa-workers/

“It’s never been my intention to make Greenland the 51st state. I want to make Canada the 51st state. Greenland will be the 52nd state. Venezuela can be 53rd.” “We’re not going to invade Greenland. We’re going to buy it.” President Trump joking around at the annual Alfalfa Club dinner on Saturday

I’ve used Deutz engines in medium trucks from 2003 to the present with emissions levels thru Euro 6.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/ccp-connected-millionaire-allegedly-bankrolls-110019006.html

Senior US military officials have informed the leadership of a key U.S. ally in the Middle East that President Trump could authorize an attack on Iran this weekend. Strikes could commence as early as Sunday. This isn’t about the nukes or the missile program. This is about regime change. US war planners envision attacks that target nuclear, ballistic, and other military sites around Iran, but will also aim to decapitate the Iranian government, and in particular the leadership and capabilities of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The thinking in the Trump administration is that a successful strike on Iranian leadership would be followed by Iranians returning to the streets to protest, leading to the overthrow of the government. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is hoping for an attack, and assuring Trump that Israel can help put in place a new government that is friendly with the West. Two senior Arab intelligence officials were told a US attack could come “imminently.”

A growing number of both Republicans and Democrats are talking about deporting ONLY violent criminal illegal aliens. Some are talking about granting an amnesty “pathway to citizenship” for non-violent illegal aliens. Why ??? https://www.breitbart.com/crime/2026/01/30/swamp-rivals-join-to-sink-trumps-pro-american-migration-policy/

"Agitator and, perhaps, insurrectionist. Alex Pretti’s stock has gone way down with the just released video of him screaming and spitting in the face of a very calm and under control ICE Officer, and then crazily kicking in a new and very expensive government vehicle, so hard and violent, in fact, that the taillight broke off in pieces. It was quite a display of abuse and anger, for all to see, crazed and out of control. The ICE Officer was calm and cool, not an easy thing to be under those circumstances! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN." President Trump (Truth Social)

President Trump has chosen former Federal Reserve Governor Kevin Warsh to head the US central bank when Jerome Powell's leadership term ends in May. Republican U.S. Senator Thom Tillis has said he will not support any of Trump's Fed nominees amid the ongoing criminal probe into Powell. It has also opened the door to the possibility that Powell, who called the criminal probe a pretext to pressure ‍the Fed into setting monetary policy as the president wishes, may opt to stay on at the Fed as a governor even after his term as central bank chief is up in a bid to safeguard it from political capture. A lawyer and distinguished visiting fellow in economics at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, Warsh believes the president is right to press the central bank for steep rate cuts, and has criticized the Fed for underestimating the inflation-busting potential of productivity growth supercharged by artificial intelligence. He has called for a broad overhaul of the central bank that would slim its balance sheet and ease bank regulations. Warsh, 55, was nearly named to the job in Trump's first term before being passed over for Powell, and since then has kept a steady ⁠public profile through speeches and essays that have taken Powell ⁠and his colleagues to task for their management of the Fed's balance sheet, interest rates and other actions.