1) EU to Trump: How Dare America Use Its Military Might To Liberate Millions of People From Fascism?

2) Yes, Cry for Venezuela

It's an excruciating economic lesson for the ages.

How can one of the most resource-rich countries on the planet, with trillions of dollars of energy and mineral reserves, beautiful beaches and beautiful people become impoverished in just 25 years?

It should have per capita wealth equal to Saudi Arabia and tourism like Bermuda.  Yet half of its citizens now live in "extreme poverty."

The simplest explanation? Venezuelan communist leaders Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro abandoned free markets and "rugged individualism" in favor of the "warm embrace of collectivism."

This is a teachable moment and these charts tell the tragic story that we pray other leaders around the world (such as Mandami) learn from:

Step 1) Venezuela moved from free market capitalism to socialism and autocracy.

Venezuela’s economic freedom index rating fell in half and now ranks 165th in the world near North Korea.  

Step 2) Oil production - the major source of GDP in Venezuela - fell by 80% due to government incompetence.  

Step 3) GDP collapsed by almost two-thirds.

Step 4) Inflation soared

Talk about an “affordability” crisis, Venezuela’s inflation was over 500% last year and it was 130,000% (!) in 2018. We had to move the years 2019 and 2020 off the y-axis in the chart below to show the inflation rates in other years. The local currency is now worthless, which is a good way to destroy a country’s economy.  

Step 5) Poverty skyrocketed

Four of five Venezualans live in poverty today.

Step 6) Almost one in four Venezuelans fled the country.

3) Aim for Prosperity Not Equality

As the Venezuela collapse demonstrates, free-market nations almost always have higher growth and per capita incomes. But often they also have higher inequality than poor socialist countries. That's because in the socialist nations, everyone (except the political leaders - think Maduro) is equally poor and miserable.

The left in America and Europe believe that making a country poorer through redistribution policies like high tax rates will make the poor happier. This is a "misery loves company" model of economic governance.

But it turns out that isn't true. A new peer-reviewed study in Nature carries this headline:

The authors analyzed 168 studies from around the world. Their conclusion, as Tyler Cowen, an economist at George Mason University, puts it, is that linking inequality and unhappiness "has been bad science all along."

The study concludes: "Contrary to popular narratives... individuals in more unequal areas do not report lower subjective well-being."

Soak-the-rich may reduce inequality by reducing wealth, but they don’t make the poor any better off.  

4) Still Crazy After All These Years

That's an old Paul Simon riff, but it applies to academic economists.

We noted last week, that the academic and blue-chip economists got it all wrong in 2025.

They estimated growth for 2025 would be 2.1%, but it has been closer to 4% over the past three quarters.

Even the anti-Trump Economist magazine reports the economy is "set to accelerate" thanks to the Trump tax cut:

We quote:

The effects of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (BBB), a tax-cutting law enacted in July, will soon start to be felt. Americans will receive refunds that reflect retroactive tax cuts on income from 2025. They will also find that levies on monthly earnings have fallen. According to Piper Sandler, an investment bank, these "two years of tax cuts in one" are worth about $191bn. Such tax-cutting should be enough to boost GDP by 0.3%.

Alas, the consensus of the pointy headed economists surveyed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia in November was that growth in 2026 would slow to 1.8% in 2026, due to tariffs.  Will they ever learn?

And by the way, Trump tariffs are expected to fall, not rise this year.

5) Will CBS News Start Reporting the Actual “News?”

When's the last time you watched a network news show on ABC, CBS, or NBC?  For us, it's been years and years because of rampant network bias.

So it’s good news that CBS Evening News is getting a makeover, or so we're told, and will now report real news, not left-wing propaganda, starting at 6:30 pm Eastern tonight.

We'll believe it when we see it, but the news division is now run by our friend Bari Weiss, who has spent years puncturing "woke" orthodoxy at her publication, the Free Press.

Tony Dokoupil, Weiss's pick to be the new anchor of CBS Evening News, has a record of independence as a reporter and broadcaster. His two-minute introductory video released last week included the blunt admission: "No one trusts mainstream media anymore." (We're raising our hands!)

"On too many stories, the press has missed the story," he said, because “we put too much weight in the analysis of academics or elites and not enough on you."

Ya think?

The voices at other industry legacy news outlets reacted to this with snide outrage:

6) The Venezuela of Tomorrow?

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