When it comes to commercial fishing in Alaska, the vessel name Bad Intentions turned out to be more than a catchy moniker — it was allegedly a mission statement.
A federal grand jury has indicted five experienced Southeast Alaska fishermen in a sweeping conspiracy to illegally harvest thousands of pounds of halibut, in violation of the Lacey Act. One of the boats at the center of the scheme? The F/V Bad Intentions.
Jonathan Pavlik, 43, of Yakutat, is accused of masterminding the operation, allegedly conspiring with Vincent Jacobson, 51, and Kyle Dierick, 36, both of Yakutat; Michael Babic, 42, of Cordova; and Timothy Ross, 58, of Washington. The indictment alleges the fishermen coordinated illegal halibut harvests near Yakutat from 2019 through 2023.
According to court documents, Pavlik and the others routinely broke federal law by reporting that halibut had been legally caught under their Individual Fishing Quota permits, even when some of them weren’t even aboard the fishing vessel during harvests, a requirement under federal regulations. In total, over 10,700 pounds of halibut were allegedly harvested and falsely reported.
The indictment goes on to detail a particularly brazen episode between August and October 2023, when more than 9,600 pounds of halibut harvested aboard the Bad Intentions were allegedly offloaded onto another vessel, the F/V New Era, and then falsely reported and sold.
Pavlik faces four counts of conspiracy, five counts of unlawful sale, and five counts of false labeling under the Lacey Act. His alleged co-conspirators — Jacobson, Dierick, Babic, and Ross — are each charged with one count of conspiracy.
If convicted, the defendants face up to five years in federal prison for each count and fines up to $250,000.
The case was investigated by NOAA’s Fisheries Office of Law Enforcement, Alaska Division, with assistance from the Alaska Wildlife Troopers. It is being prosecuted by the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Alaska.
Initial court appearances are scheduled over the next two weeks before US Magistrate Judge Matthew M. Scoble in Anchorage.
In Alaska’s high-stakes fisheries, the rules are strict and the penalties are steep. If prosecutors win their case, the road to jail may be paved with Bad Intentions.
A pair of administrative orders by Gov. Mike Dunleavy seek to streamline government, reduce regulations, and create greater efficiencies and public transparency through the use of artificial intelligence. The two new administrative orders are aimed at overhauling how Alaska’s executive branch operates, with an emphasis on reducing regulatory burdens.
The first, dubbed the Government Efficiency Review, directs the Office of Management and Budget to conduct an annual review of all executive branch agencies. The goal is to identify cost savings, streamline state operations, modernize internal processes, and ensure that taxpayer dollars are used responsibly.
Initial focus areas include examining grants to non-state entities and accounts payable systems. The order also requires agencies to incorporate technology and artificial intelligence to improve public visibility into how state funds are spent.
“Alaskans expect their government to deliver essential services in the most efficient and responsible way possible,” said Governor Dunleavy in a prepared statement. “This order ensures we prioritize critical needs, eliminate waste, and safeguard the state’s financial stability.”
The second order establishes a Regulatory Reform Initiative, replacing earlier directives with a new framework intended to cut red tape and promote economic development. Under the order, all state agencies must review existing regulations and related materials and reduce regulatory requirements by 15% by the end of 2026, and by 25% by the end of 2027.
Among the initiative’s mandates:
Streamlining permitting procedures in the Departments of Natural Resources, Environmental Conservation, and Fish and Game;
Setting enforceable permitting timelines, with automatic approvals if deadlines are missed;
Publishing all agency guidance documents to the Alaska Online Public Notice System;
Creating a State Unified Regulatory Plan each year for transparency and coordination across agencies.
“Alaska must compete on the world stage,” Dunleavy stated. “This order eliminates unnecessary red tape, modernizes permitting, and promotes accountability—while maintaining strong protections for our people and environment.”
Both orders take effect immediately and apply to all executive branch agencies, boards, commissions, and public corporations.
Anchorage’s greenbelts are still persistent encampment zones, a city where summer brings not tourists but tarps, tents, and trash. Despite laws meant to prevent it, illegal camping sprawls unchecked across public lands. We give you an unfiltered look at the slow unraveling of Alaska’s largest city under Mayor Suzanne LaFrance and Democrat rule. These images tell the story:
Minnesota and Benson Blvd. outdoor living, walking distance to Starbucks.
The new tent encampment is between Starbucks and the Legislative Information Offices in the Wells Fargo Bank building.
Downtown Anchorage, along Flattop Pizza.
Nap time in downtown by Flattop Pizza.
While Mayor LaFrance pushed parents to bring children to a bike event in Town Square Park, vagrants moved over to the trees nearby, as an Anchorage Police officer keeps watch.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, whose department oversees the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the federal offshore leasing program, dealt the offshore wind industry a major blow this week by rescinding all designated Wind Energy Areas on the US Outer Continental Shelf.
The move is just the latest in a string of steps taken by the White House and the Department of Interior to carry out President Donald Trump’s oft-repeated campaign promise to bring an end to the offshore wind industry in the United States.
Since the advent of the Biden administration’s aggressive push to fast-track permitting approvals for massive industrial sites in the midst of known whale migration routes and prolific commercial fishing grounds, the offshore wind industry has been plagued by scandals and mishaps.
Commercial fishermen in the Northeast have complained loudly and filed lawsuits over claims the industry’s noisy operations and ship traffic has damaged their businesses.
The advent of construction of hundreds of towers higher than New York skyscrapers coincided with a huge increase in the numbers of whales and other marine mammal carcasses washing up on northeastern shores.
The collapse of a giant blade from a Vineyard Wind turbine caused huge amounts of dangerous shrapnel to wash up on local beaches, creating an uproar in Nantucket and other coastal communities.
Though offshore developers and Biden-era regulators at NOAA have denied claims related to fishing and whales, the reputational harm has been done. The damage caused by the blade collapse at Vineyard wind was too transparent even for the Biden White House and regulators to obscure, and the US Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement ordered operations to be shut down pending an investigation and cleanup efforts. That order was lifted in the waning days of Biden’s presidency on Jan. 17 as a final favor to the struggling industry.
There have been no similar favors from Washington, DC since Jan. 20, when Trump was sworn into office. His efforts to end Biden’s favored business started with a Day 1 executive order targeting both offshore and onshore wind, and a steady succession of additional orders and administrative moves has flowed from the executive branch in the past 6 months. Congress also got into the act in early July, with language in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act mandating a gradual rescission of wind industry access to Biden-era tax breaks and other subsidies.
Burgum has aggressively acted to pursue the President’s goals. Indeed, on July 29, the day before he rescinded Big Wind’s offshore designated areas, Burgum published a policy update which ends Biden-era preferences for offshore and onshore wind projects under federal jurisdiction.
The four policy actions contained in Tuesday’s notice include:
Ending preferential treatment for offshore and onshore wind projects.
Restoring the multiple use of public lands and waters doctrine observed by every president since it was established more than 120 years ago.
Providing stakeholders expanded engagement access mandated under the Administrative Procedures Act.
Ordering a study to review the wind industry’s impacts on migratory birds.
That final item could become especially damaging to the wind industry’s future given the practices at the state and federal levels of approving major wind projects in the midst of known migratory bird corridors. Even “red” states like Texas and some of the Great Plains states have ignored wind power’s known impacts on migratory birds to enable policymakers to virtue signal their green credentials to constituents.
As I wrote earlier this week, the President made his views about wind power clear again with his harangue during a press availability with EU President Ursula Von Der Leyen in Scotland, saying, “It’s the worst form of energy, the most expensive form of energy. But windmills should not be allowed…it’s not going to happen in the United States.”
That was on Monday, when the President would have no doubt been aware of the actions Burgum was about to take over the rest of the week. Now, with Burgum’s new measures going into effect at DOI, the future of the U.S. offshore wind industry is clear, and the outlook for onshore wind is only marginally less disastrous.
Elections do matter, and politicians in blue states and red states alike will have to find other ways to signal their glorious green virtues.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
The Republican State Leadership Committee just confirmed everything we’ve been warning about: Alaska is being hijacked from the inside — and the enemy isn’t just wearing blue. It’s wearing red.
According to the RSLC, Alaska is now a purple state.
Not because Democrats surged. Not because voters flipped. But because too many Republicans in the Legislature deliberately handed Democrats the keys — and too many others stood by and let them do it.
Let’s not sugarcoat this:
We’ve got the governor’s mansion. We’ve got a GOP lieutenant governor. We’ve got a fully Republican congressional delegation. And, on paper, majorities in both legislative chambers.
So why are Democrats calling the shots?
Because the establishment Uniparty has been quietly working to dilute conservative momentum. Enter: the Reagan Caucus.
Despite the patriotic name, this isn’t Reagan’s conservatism. It’s a polished operation with one mission: Undercut America First conservatives by forcing every race into the mushy middle.
Their playbook is simple:
Stall endorsements
Control the primary narrative
Prop up establishment-friendly candidates who caucus with Democrats while pretending to be “reasonable Republicans”
They’ve openly declared themselves anti-MAGA.
That’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s in their own mission statement. They’ve made it crystal clear: They think Trump voters are the problem.
So ask yourself:
Why are the same people always telling you to “wait until after the primary” before endorsing anyone? Why are they preaching “consensus” while publicly snubbing candidates with actual grassroots support?
Because timing is everything.
By freezing endorsements until after the primary, they keep control of the board.
While principled conservatives wait in good faith, the establishment kingmakers are cutting deals, forming coalitions, and flooding the ballot with just enough “tolerable RINOs” to fracture the vote under Alaska’s ranked-choice chaos.
This isn’t about unity. It’s about manipulation.
This isn’t just a governor’s race. It’s a full-spectrum takeover: Governor. Lt. Governor. State House. Senate. All of it.
What you’re watching is the slow-motion hijacking of the Alaska Republican Party, gift-wrapped as “moderation.”
And make no mistake: It’s not accidental. It’s a deliberate, coordinated strategy to morph Alaska from a bold, America First stronghold into a neutered, Uniparty-controlled purple state. Their weapon? Ranked-choice voting and narrative control.
That’s why they’re saying, “Wait until after the primary.” That’s why they preach “neutrality” while rigging the game behind the curtain.
Staying “neutral” is just their way of pulling the strings without leaving fingerprints on the knife.
Meanwhile, legislative aides, chiefs of staff, and consultant-class Republicans toss around labels like “radical right,” trash grassroots conservatives, smear women’s clubs, and belittle candidates who actually fight for the people.
They don’t want fighters. They want obedience.
And they’ll shame, silence, and sabotage anyone who steps out of line.
Even worse? Some of these elected Uniparty players have said out loud that Alaska must “move to the middle” to keep their grip on power.
Translation? They’re willing to turn Alaska purple to stay in charge.
Is that what you want, Alaska?
Because here’s the reality: You voted for Trump in 2024 by 13 points. Your voice was loud and clear. And they’re doing everything they can to bury it.
This isn’t Right vs. Left anymore. It’s controlled vs. free.
And right now, the Reagan Caucus and their allies are working to control this state, while pretending they’re just being “pragmatic.”
Let me be blunt: The middle is a mirage. Consensus is camouflage. And “neutrality” is just the tool they use to take your voice and hand it to someone else.
Alaska isn’t purple because of voters. It’s purple because of cowards, consultants, and calculated sabotage.
But it doesn’t have to stay that way — unless we let it.
There’s a real difference between principled leadership and political cosplay. Between a candidate with convictions and one curated by consultants. Between real unity based on shared values—and weaponized unity used to freeze out conservatives behind closed doors.
The game is on. And the strategists are counting on you to stay asleep.
But here’s the twist:
They’re not afraid of Democrats. They’re afraid of you — the voter who won’t comply, the voice they can’t manage, the movement they couldn’t cancel in 2016, 2020, 2024, or now.
It’s time to choose.
Choose bold. Choose early. Send a message.
Pick candidates who aren’t trying to get invited to Democratic cocktail parties.
Because if we don’t make our move before the primary, we’ll be stuck with what’s left after the establishment rigs the board.
And by then, it’ll be too late.
The battle for 2026 has already started. They’re hoping you don’t notice.
Pamela Melin is a former deputy mayor of Palmer, health executive with an MBA, entrepreneur, and president of the Valley Republican Women of Alaska. She builds businesses, defends freedom, and calls out political cowards. God, country, and common sense come first. Her motto: “If it rattles the swamp, mission accomplished.”
Suicide Basin, a glacial side basin of icy water along the Mendenhall Glacier near Juneau, is rapidly filling and is expected to reach capacity by mid-August, prompting heightened monitoring and flood preparedness by local and state officials and families in the Mendenhall Valley areas prone to flooding.
According to the latest update from Aug. 4, the basin’s water level has risen nearly 27 feet in the past week, climbing at an average rate of about 3 feet per day. The current water elevation stands at 1,340 feet — 28 feet below its estimated spillover point of 1,368 feet. The water elevation was 1,337 on Sunday.
The spillway threshold has been recalculated this summer due to a change in ice conditions. A recent drone survey conducted by the University of Alaska Southeast revealed that the elevation of the basin’s natural ice dam that holds the water back is 3 feet lower than it was last year.
Suicide Basin has produced annual glacier lake outburst floods since 2011, sending torrents of water down the Mendenhall River. The most destructive flood occurred on Aug. 6, 2024, damaging homes, parks, and infrastructure in the Mendenhall Valley. That historic event happened when the basin reached its capacity at 1,357 feet.
The last release event from Suicide Basin occurred on Oct. 20, 2024.
The timing and intensity of the next outburst flood depend on several dynamic factors, including temperature fluctuations over the Juneau Icefield and precipitation from possible late-summer storm systems. If current trends continue, an overflow event could begin as early as the second week of August.
Residents in flood-prone areas near Mendenhall Lake and River have been urged to stay informed through updates from the National Weather Service and the City and Borough of Juneau. Emergency managers are preparing early-warning protocols and updating response plans in anticipation of another potential flood.
Alaska has always been a state of enormous potential. But potential alone doesn’t power homes, create jobs, build roads, or fund schools. For decades, Alaskans have looked to the vast natural gas reserves on the North Slope as a game-changing opportunity. Today, that opportunity is no longer theoretical; it’s real, it’s permitted, and it’s ready.
The Alaska LNG Project (AKLNG) is now one of the most strategically important infrastructure efforts in the United States. It’s fully permitted, shovel-ready, and attracting growing international interest. The project includes an 807-mile pipeline from the North Slope to Nikiski, capable of transporting 3.3 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day, representing a volume large enough to meet the annual residential needs of more than 15 million U.S. households. With federal approvals in place and global demand rising, the conditions for success have never been stronger.
President Donald Trump recently issued an executive order designating Alaska LNG as a national strategic priority. He underscored its significance not just for Alaska’s economy, but for America’s energy independence and national security. In 2024, the U.S. Department of Energy extended Alaska LNG’s export authorization through 2050, reaffirming federal commitment and enabling long-term contracts with key Asian markets like Japan and South Korea. In his March address to Congress, President Trump reiterated this support, sending a clear message: Alaska’s gas matters on the global stage.
And the world is listening. Asian nations are actively seeking long-term, stable LNG supply contracts. Alaska offers a unique advantage: secure, U.S.-produced energy with a shorter shipping route and higher environmental standards than competitors. From Nikiski, it’s only 8 to 10 days to Tokyo by sea, less than half the time it takes from the Gulf Coast. Alaska LNG also has one of the lowest upstream carbon footprints in the world. We’ve got a clear advantage, and now is the time to act.
The Alaska Gasline Development Corporation (AGDC) continues to advance the project, building commercial partnerships and progressing toward a final investment decision (FID) expected by year’s end. The next phase is execution: securing financing, finalizing offtake agreements, and putting Alaskans to work. Once it’s built, AKLNG means good-paying jobs for Alaskans, billions in new revenue, and reliable energy for the future. The project is expected to create more than 10,000 construction jobs at its peak and support over 1,000 permanent positions once operational. Independent studies estimate that AKLNG could generate up to $26 billion in direct and indirect economic activity during construction and operation phases.
The LNG export terminal planned for Nikiski — right in the heart of District 8 on the Kenai Peninsula — represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Alaskans. It will create construction jobs, long-term pipeline and plant operational jobs, and economic growth that will ripple throughout our communities. According to AGDC, the Nikiski facility alone could contribute more than $300 million annually in wages and local economic output, which would significantly bolster our tax base, fund infrastructure, and support local schools. But its impact doesn’t stop here. This project will benefit all of Alaska, sending our energy to the world while bringing revenue and reliability back home.
But this project is about more than just economics. It’s about strengthening America’s energy posture, reducing global dependence on authoritarian regimes for energy, and delivering cleaner-burning fuel to our allies. It’s about ensuring Alaska plays a central role in a more stable, secure, and sustainable energy future.
That window, however, won’t stay open forever. LNG markets are competitive. Other nations are moving forward with their own projects. If Alaska hesitates, we risk falling behind and losing this opportunity entirely. We’ve spent decades getting to this point. The permits are in place. The world needs our resources and energy, and our communities are ready to work, to lead, and to be part of something that powers Alaska’s future.
Now is the time to deliver. This isn’t just a pipeline. It’s our shot at putting Alaska on the map, leading in energy, and building lasting prosperity for the next generation. And to be clear, one of the few things that could still derail this project is political interference. The state legislature must resist the urge to meddle. This project has momentum, private sector backing, and federal support. Let’s not throw up roadblocks. Let’s get out of the way and let Alaska succeed.
Rep. Bill Elam serves District 8, Nikiski, on the Kenai Peninsula.
A decade from now, Alaska may look very different. Not in its natural grandeur, its mountains, waters, and wilderness will endure, but in its governance, its culture of independence, and the fate of the people who once defined its frontier spirit for all of America.
The political dynamics unfolding in Juneau during the special session are not just procedural skirmishes between a governor and a legislature. They are the early contours of a much larger transformation: the quiet, cumulative centralization of authority under an increasingly bureaucratic state. And unless deliberately reversed, this transformation will define the next generation’s prospects and the twilight years of today’s elders.
In the 2025 special session, the Alaska Legislature’s swift override of Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s vetoes signaled more than a policy disagreement. It was an outright dismissal of structural reform in education. The $200 Base Student Allocation increase, passed without any concurrent policy changes, entrenched the status quo. Gov. Dunleavy had offered a compromise: increased funding in exchange for movement on school choice, charter school expansion, and tribal compacting. These were forward-looking ideas meant to diversify education pathways and empower communities. Instead, they were ignored.
A decade from now, the children educated under this system will face its full consequences. Locked into rigid public structures with little incentive to innovate or improve, Alaska’s education system may fall further behind. The next generation, especially in rural and Native communities, will be less prepared for a modern workforce, less equipped with civic understanding, and less capable of resisting the pull of dependence on state welfare systems. The iron curtain of educational bureaucracy will have succeeded in building a generation that trusts the system not because it works, but because it’s all they’ve known.
For Alaska’s senior population, this political moment is a betrayal. These are the same men and women who carved lives from the tundra, built businesses, worked the pipelines, and governed their families and communities with grit and integrity. They came to Alaska or were born here for the promise of autonomy, economic, personal, and political. But today, that promise is dissolving.
The denial or dilution of the Permanent Fund dividend is more than a fiscal decision. It represents the state’s gradual breach of an unspoken social contract. At the same time, healthcare and welfare systems have expanded not with reform or innovation, but with blind inertia. A slow, administrative creep replaces real care with red tape, and real freedom with institutional compliance. Seniors, already overburdened by complex healthcare systems and increasing costs of living, find themselves surrendering, not through choice, but through exhaustion.
As Thomas Hobbes foresaw in Leviathan, a massive, unresponsive state does not have to arrive through violence. It can come through complacency, convenience, and unchecked authority. In Alaska, this shift has emerged through:
Judicial Imposition – Courts increasingly set policy that supersedes legislative intent and local self-governance.
Popular Surrender – Through ranked-choice voting and limited civic engagement, the public has voted (often unknowingly) for systems that erode their own influence, freedom and future.
Administrative Bloat – Agencies and bureaucrats now hold more practical power than elected officials, crafting rules that evade democratic accountability.
Together, these forces construct a quiet Leviathan, against which resistance feels futile and reform nearly impossible.
By 2035, the results of this centralization will be clear:
Local government will have less say in critical areas like education, zoning, and economic development, as state agencies expand their regulatory over-reach.
Young Alaskans who remain in the state will be less mobile, both economically and intellectually, trained to navigate bureaucracy rather than to challenge or improve it. While those many who leave will not return.
Seniors will be increasingly marginalized, their once-central voices muted in policy conversations, their benefits eroded, and their wealth transferred through inflationary policy and tax creep.
The Alaska of tomorrow will still boast its wild beauty, but without decisive action, its people risk losing something far more vital: the belief that they are sovereign over their own lives and communities. For decades, statutes like Title 29 and Title 14 have steadily undermined the constitutional vision of strong, locally accountable governments, replacing autonomy with top-down mandates and bureaucratic sprawl.
Education has become a machine serving special interests rather than students; the Permanent Fund Dividend, once a symbol of shared wealth, has been hijacked by political gamesmanship; and overlapping regulations stifle development while growing welfare programs consume the state’s budget. Reform is no longer optional. It is survival.
The 2026 election is a pivotal moment. Alaska can either align with a potential national conservative resurgence that favors deregulation, constitutional integrity, and energy development or it will be left behind by its Leftist political establishment content with stagnation and the death of sovereignty.
Alaskans must seize this moment to demand bold changes: repeal ranked-choice voting, unleash true school choice, enshrine and restore the PFD, overhaul permitting laws, and return power to local governments as Article X intended. Most of all, voters must reject the comfort of bureaucracy and rediscover the courage that built this state through participation, awareness, and an unshakable insistence on transparency, accountability, and self-governance.
The surface argument between the Federal Reserve and the president appears to revolve around whether we should keep the current fed rate to reduce demand, free up supply, and thereby keep inflation in check.
Like a cancer treatment, we administer “rate poison” to the economy, the inflation cells consume the poisonous Fed rates, the economy gets a little sick, but the patient lives after the recession. Dramatic Federal Reserve rate rises are followed by recessions when they are a response to bad policies, like in the housing crisis of 2008 and the monetary crisis in 2022/3. The Fed believes tariffs are a policy crisis in 2025 and is moving the US into recession to prove it.
This is a fair review of the current standoff between Fed Chairman Jerome Powell and President Donald Trump, but there are much larger forces at work and much more at stake in the Powell/Trump rate scuffle.
Is the Federal Open Market Committee independent?
No. The Federal Open Market Committee’s independence cannot be maintained if it stands against policy. If you are for one policy and against another, then you are a de facto partisan actor in that policy fight. The Fed has labeled potential inflation resulting from tariffs as something that requires monetary policy to address, or, more accurately, undermine, and is therefore not independent of the tariff policy issue.
Can the Fed affect tariff inflation through monetary policy?
No. Businesses will adjust to higher costs or move supply chains to rebalance the cost of materials. Consumers will shift demand to account for the higher prices. Nothing in the Fed’s tools can affect that process. Since nothing can affect the higher costs of materials or goods from tariffs, the Fed has no business including tariff costs regardless of whether they do or don’t register in overall CPI or PPI inflation.
Let’s review the Federal Open Market Committee tariff monetary policy from two vantage points, one where tariff inflation is offset by other larger factors like energy or AI. In other words, tariffs always cause inflation but is it likely that other policy decisions can offset the costs of tariffs, also known as consumption taxes on foreign goods and materials. The other scenario is where tariffs register measurable, one-time (aka transitory) inflation in the economy.
In the first case, if tariffs are offset by other cost factors like energy, transportation or AI, then they will not register as topline inflation and they are not a policy that the Fed needs to try to offset with higher rates, especially rates high enough to force a recession.
If tariffs are a transitory, one-time cost of doing business that is likely to moderate as supply chains and efficiencies are found, then they are also not something the Fed should try to offset with higher rates, especially rates high enough to force a recession.
Can the Federal Open Market Committee’s models accommodate the growth agenda of Trump?
Maybe, but not currently. Since Trump’s trade negotiations require trillions in new investment, production and new projects in the US to provide energy, production capacity and military support for countries around the world, the FOMC policy must be recalibrated to accommodate a 4 to 5% annual growth in the US economy for the next several years. FOMC models appear to be calibrated to 1% to 1.5% growth.
Can the models be changed, and who would lead them to do that? The EPA regulatory changes alone can result in a .3% increase in GDP each year. How will building, energy and mining projects happen with borrowing rates sky high? The agreement to spend 5% of GDP by NATO countries would also yield an almost 2% increase in GDP for the US.
What’s really going on between Powell and Trump?
Underlying the Trump/Powell clash of titans is a deeper debate about Federal Reserve Rate orthodoxy. Specifically, are increases in the fed rate in and of themselves inflationary or deflationary. Orthodoxy says that the economy requires high rates to force a reduction in inflation. The economy will not self-correct with lowered rates.
The conundrum is this: If the Fed reduces rates now, while inflation is above 2%, and inflation decreases, it will call into question decades of scripture about the tightening and loosening of monetary policy by the Fed and may force a rewrite of every textbookin print for economics.
The concern is simply this: If the Federal Open Market Committee did lower rates and inflation came down, it would destroy the guiding principles of the Fed that they have doggedly followed for 50 years. At stake in the current fed decision is something much more essential than the argument between Powell and Trump, even more important than the independence of the Fed.
What is at stake if inflation falls as they lower the Fed rate is nothing less than orthodoxy, and that is why the Fed is resisting the clear indicators that their crisis rates are leading the US into recession and preventing the massive growth needed to fulfill Trump’s trade and America-First agenda.
Glen Biegel is a technology security professional, Catholic father of nine, husband to a saint, and politically active conservative.
