A young man who has the courage to speak truth to power! We need more Ed Elson types in this country. Integrity and trust begins with truth and facts. Well done Ed. Thanks.
Ed is a Princeton indoctrinated, trust fund dilettante, a vocal Mondani/ Hamas supporter. His financial takes are polluted by his left of center politics …oh & he’s obnoxious.
And this is not even mentioning the extremely dubious (to say the very least) deal the IRS agreed on to never investigate any member of the Trump family on tax related issues. A truly sordid, head spinning affair, where the president of the US is suing a department of which he is basically the boss, using the 'justice' department of which he is also basically the boss, to benefit himself. And still, he gets away with it, as with so many things.
You say "The only reason he hasn’t devastated our democracy is because ours was purpose-built to restrain people like him." I say, just give it a few more months.... New election denial and associated riots for the midterms, anyone?
Union leaders ought to have been a bit more outraged when the Secretary of the Treasury snuck “In God We Trust” onto the greenback during the Civil War. Salmon P. Chase’s cheeky move was practically unconstitutional. Still, that seems like small change compared to Mr Trump. What shall we call his new coin? Not the greenback. The orange buck? The copper con?
I don’t understand why every Dem isn’t screaming all of this from the rooftops! What is WRONG with our so called Dem leaders!! Thanks Ed, this is excellent. Keep it up!
Trump is Dorian’s portrait incarnate. Look in the mirror America. This what we have become a Kmart blue light special on every corner. Trump is even starting to resemble Penni Wise the clown.
Ed, I grew up on a continent where I watched this exact move made by men who never went back to being ordinary citizens. Malawi's Hastings Banda put his face on every banknote and had it hung in every shop, school, and government office by law: "Life President," his title read, no ambiguity about the arrangement. Mobutu did the same in Zaire, veneer of a five-year term re-electing a man whose face was already the currency. Idi Amin gave himself a title so long it required its own paragraph and put his portrait on the coinage before he'd finished consolidating the power the coinage was meant to announce. None of these men needed the money to say it. They needed the money to make everyone say it, every single transaction, forever, whether they meant to or not.
The faces on coins in your article look like a Rogue’s Gallery of dictators and leaders of regimes. Not one is a democracy, but then that tracks, as the US is not the Republic it used to be; it’s a Kingdom ruled by King Leer, my name for him because he’s Shakespeare’s tragedy in motion and he flew the Lolita Express.
Massie, to his credit, named the reality out loud. A leader's face on currency isn't decoration—it's a loyalty test disguised as commerce. Every citizen who buys bread with a Trump dollar has, in some small, unconsented way, participated in the ritual. That's precisely why Franco, Gaddafi, and Hussein all reached for it, and why it's illegal in democracies for a reason. Congress understood this in 1866 but apparently now no longer enforces it. The coin isn't the crime. It's the tell—the moment a man who has spent a term testing how much law bends around him decides to stamp the answer in metal, so the country carries the verdict in its pocket without ever being asked if it agrees.
Good article! I am on eBay now trying to put together a “collectors set” of one coin / bank note from each of the dictators mentioned above…
In addition to the ones mentioned in the article, it seems like Bashar Al-Assad of Syria, and Ayotollah Khomeni of Iran also put their faces on currency
Thank you Ed. You laid it all out, and these are just financial crimes. He is also destroying our institutions. In a way he’s worse than many of his few peers, he tries to lower the standard of living.
The thin veneer of US "values, democracy, rule of law " cracked open at first sloppy attempt from an expertly cunning erratic leader and his power hungry minions. A too large part of US population is so brained washed, there is no critical thinking left. US congress and constitution need an upgrade to 2.0. Wont happen until painful events, maybe a military draft, local sustained protests and riots, an embarrassing US defeat on the world stage, finally forces voters to change. This might take 10 years, 2 presidential voting cycles as history teaches us :-(. More pain ahead..
A young man who has the courage to speak truth to power! We need more Ed Elson types in this country. Integrity and trust begins with truth and facts. Well done Ed. Thanks.
Ed is a Princeton indoctrinated, trust fund dilettante, a vocal Mondani/ Hamas supporter. His financial takes are polluted by his left of center politics …oh & he’s obnoxious.
Gosh, Joe . Are you sure about Hamas? And obnoxious seems a little harsh.
Awfully pessimistic, but so very spot-on. Look at that list of fine gentlemen (no women) who put their mugs on coins. Winners all!
A great piece.
And this is not even mentioning the extremely dubious (to say the very least) deal the IRS agreed on to never investigate any member of the Trump family on tax related issues. A truly sordid, head spinning affair, where the president of the US is suing a department of which he is basically the boss, using the 'justice' department of which he is also basically the boss, to benefit himself. And still, he gets away with it, as with so many things.
You say "The only reason he hasn’t devastated our democracy is because ours was purpose-built to restrain people like him." I say, just give it a few more months.... New election denial and associated riots for the midterms, anyone?
Union leaders ought to have been a bit more outraged when the Secretary of the Treasury snuck “In God We Trust” onto the greenback during the Civil War. Salmon P. Chase’s cheeky move was practically unconstitutional. Still, that seems like small change compared to Mr Trump. What shall we call his new coin? Not the greenback. The orange buck? The copper con?
Thanks, Ed. Glad you are stepping up on this; keep up the good work.
I don’t understand why every Dem isn’t screaming all of this from the rooftops! What is WRONG with our so called Dem leaders!! Thanks Ed, this is excellent. Keep it up!
Maybe because they're all playing for the same team????
At this point the system IS failing. So what is there really to lose?
This is true, although hopefully America can come back as a democracy
Trump is Dorian’s portrait incarnate. Look in the mirror America. This what we have become a Kmart blue light special on every corner. Trump is even starting to resemble Penni Wise the clown.
Ed, I grew up on a continent where I watched this exact move made by men who never went back to being ordinary citizens. Malawi's Hastings Banda put his face on every banknote and had it hung in every shop, school, and government office by law: "Life President," his title read, no ambiguity about the arrangement. Mobutu did the same in Zaire, veneer of a five-year term re-electing a man whose face was already the currency. Idi Amin gave himself a title so long it required its own paragraph and put his portrait on the coinage before he'd finished consolidating the power the coinage was meant to announce. None of these men needed the money to say it. They needed the money to make everyone say it, every single transaction, forever, whether they meant to or not.
The faces on coins in your article look like a Rogue’s Gallery of dictators and leaders of regimes. Not one is a democracy, but then that tracks, as the US is not the Republic it used to be; it’s a Kingdom ruled by King Leer, my name for him because he’s Shakespeare’s tragedy in motion and he flew the Lolita Express.
Massie, to his credit, named the reality out loud. A leader's face on currency isn't decoration—it's a loyalty test disguised as commerce. Every citizen who buys bread with a Trump dollar has, in some small, unconsented way, participated in the ritual. That's precisely why Franco, Gaddafi, and Hussein all reached for it, and why it's illegal in democracies for a reason. Congress understood this in 1866 but apparently now no longer enforces it. The coin isn't the crime. It's the tell—the moment a man who has spent a term testing how much law bends around him decides to stamp the answer in metal, so the country carries the verdict in its pocket without ever being asked if it agrees.
And for more on his theft of the country, I outlined it in detail here: https://erictelltales.substack.com/p/america-please-wake-up
The piece is aimed at the 97% of Americans who have yet to stand up and say no!
Good article! I am on eBay now trying to put together a “collectors set” of one coin / bank note from each of the dictators mentioned above…
In addition to the ones mentioned in the article, it seems like Bashar Al-Assad of Syria, and Ayotollah Khomeni of Iran also put their faces on currency
excellent! 👏
Are you still hiring a research analyst for Prof G Markets?
World leaders on coins: you forgot about Queen Elizabeth II
Ed, you have Deranged Trump Syndrome -- pervasive and relentless with symptoms comparable to Cyclospora.
Thank you Ed. You laid it all out, and these are just financial crimes. He is also destroying our institutions. In a way he’s worse than many of his few peers, he tries to lower the standard of living.
The thin veneer of US "values, democracy, rule of law " cracked open at first sloppy attempt from an expertly cunning erratic leader and his power hungry minions. A too large part of US population is so brained washed, there is no critical thinking left. US congress and constitution need an upgrade to 2.0. Wont happen until painful events, maybe a military draft, local sustained protests and riots, an embarrassing US defeat on the world stage, finally forces voters to change. This might take 10 years, 2 presidential voting cycles as history teaches us :-(. More pain ahead..