The “Robin Hood” Tax Campaign: Why Raiding the Rich Will Bankrupt America’s Future

 

Politicians promise painless cash from billionaires, but history screams otherwise—raid the rich today, wreck the economy tomorrow, and watch deficits grow teeth. In plain terms, taxing the rich won’t rescue America’s sinking budgets—it will choke growth, scare off innovators, and leave the middle class holding the bill when the Robin Hood fantasy collapses.

I have heard the pitch before. “Tax the rich. They can afford it.” It rolls off the tongue like a moral anthem. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani wants a 2% levy on incomes above $1m. California’s Governor Gavin Newsom is flirting with a 5% “one-time” wealth tax on billionaires. In Europe, the drumbeat is louder. France debates wealth taxes. Britain’s left wing circles the same idea. The story is simple: budgets are bleeding, debts are rising, voters are exhausted after the inflation surge of the early 2020s, so let the top 1% foot the bill.

It sounds noble. It sounds fair. It sounds like Robin Hood. But I have learned something from history. Good intentions do not always make good economics. When politicians promise painless money, I check my wallet.

Let’s start with cold numbers. In the United States, the top 1% earn about 20% of national income and already pay nearly 33% of federal income taxes. That is not a rounding error. That is a third of the bill. The idea that high earners are lounging tax-free is mostly fantasy. America already runs one of the most progressive tax systems in the developed world. Since 1990, the government has offset much of the rise in pre-tax inequality through higher taxes on top earners and expanded spending, especially in health care. Redistribution has grown, not shrunk.

Yet politicians still say, “They can pay more.”

But there is a math problem no slogan can fix. There are simply not enough billionaires to fund a modern welfare state. California’s proposed wealth tax would raise about 2% of the state’s annual output. Mamdani’s proposal would bring in roughly 0.25% of output per year. That is loose change compared to pension obligations, Medicaid spending, defense budgets, and interest on debt. Even closing the notorious “step-up in basis” loophole on capital gains at death would likely raise less than 0.1% of GDP annually. That reform may be justified. It may be fair. But it will not rescue a broken budget.

You cannot fund a $6 trillion federal government by chasing a few hundred billionaires with a clipboard.

And then comes the second problem, the one politicians whisper about but rarely shout: economic damage. In New York, the top combined federal, state, and local tax rate already reaches 52%. Add another levy and what do you signal? That success is suspect. That risk is punishable. That innovation is a public utility.

Research backs this up. Studies show that a 1 percentage-point increase in income tax reduces the probability of filing a patent in the next 3 years by 0.6 percentage points. That may sound small, but innovation is fragile. Economists estimate that innovators capture only about 2% of the total value they create. Society captures the rest. So when you discourage entrepreneurial effort, you do not just hurt a millionaire. You shrink the pie for everyone.

Politicians wave this away. “Bankers will still show up.” Maybe. But growth is not built only on bankers. It is built on risk-takers who decide whether to launch a company in San Francisco or Singapore, whether to scale up in Austin or Dublin. Capital is mobile. Talent is mobile. Taxes are not.

Now let me talk about fairness, because that is the emotional engine of this crusade. Mamdani and Newsom lean hard on that word. Fairness. They frame wealth taxes as moral corrections. But fairness is not the same as envy. A fair system respects property rights. It is predictable. It allows people to reap the rewards of risk. If a wealth tax feels like an arbitrary seizure, trust erodes. Once trust erodes, capital flees quietly, then loudly.

History is my witness. Look at Russia after 1917. The Bolsheviks believed they were building a just society. Private property was abolished. Wealth was seized in the name of equality. What followed was economic collapse, forced collectivization, and famine. By the early 1930s, millions had died during the Holodomor in Ukraine. Central planning suffocated incentives. Innovation stalled. The Soviet Union eventually limped along for decades, but it never matched the productivity of market economies. It collapsed in 1991 under the weight of its own inefficiency. The road to that failure was paved with promises of fairness.

Before someone says, “We are not proposing communism,” I know that. But the lesson stands. When the state starts treating private wealth as a bottomless ATM, it drifts toward control, not growth. When you punish the farmer for growing more corn, do not be shocked when the harvest shrinks.

Now consider America’s own moral crusade: Prohibition. In 1920, the 18th Amendment banned alcohol. Reformers believed they were saving families, reducing crime, uplifting society. Instead, the policy created a black market worth billions in today’s dollars. Organized crime exploded. Al Capone built an empire in Chicago. Federal tax revenues from alcohol vanished during a period when the government still needed funds. By 1933, the 21st Amendment repealed Prohibition. The experiment failed because it ignored economic incentives. People wanted alcohol. Suppliers found ways to provide it. Good intentions collapsed under real-world behavior.

The Robin Hood tax campaign risks repeating that pattern. Politicians want easy money without asking the broad middle class to sacrifice. Voters, still scarred by inflation spikes in 2021 and 2022, resist broad-based taxes. So leaders reach for the least politically costly target: the rich. It feels painless. It polls well. But it is fiscally shallow and economically risky.

Europe shows the truth. Countries with large welfare states rely heavily on consumption taxes. Value-added taxes in nations like France and Germany hover around 20%. Everyone pays. That is how they fund generous benefits. America, by contrast, maintains a lower overall tax burden and a more progressive structure. If we want European-style spending, we would need European-style broad-based taxes. Pretending that billionaires alone can fund it is fantasy.

And there is a political cost. When only a small minority pays the bill, the majority loses incentive to question spending. Polls show voters rarely consider the economic side effects of tax hikes. If I believe someone else will pay, why restrain my appetite for new programs? But when everyone has skin in the game, debates become serious. Trade-offs become visible. Democracy becomes disciplined.

I can already hear the counterargument: “So do nothing?” No. Close loopholes. Simplify the code. Demand efficiency. Cut waste. But do not pretend that raiding the top 1% will erase decades of fiscal mismanagement. That is theater, not reform.

The Robin Hood model is seductive because it avoids hard conversations. It says we can spend more, tax only a few, and escape consequences. But economics is not a fairy tale. Budgets are arithmetic. Incentives matter. Growth matters. Trust matters. When Mamdani or Newsom promise that the levy is “one-time,” I raise an eyebrow. Governments rarely surrender new revenue streams. Once the door is open, it rarely closes. Today 5%. Tomorrow another “temporary” fix. I have seen this movie before. The sequel is never cheaper.

I am not defending greed. I am defending realism. If we want sustainable budgets, we must reform spending and broaden the tax base honestly. If we want growth, we must protect incentives. If we want fairness, we must define it carefully, not emotionally.

Robin Hood may win cheers in the village square. But in a modern economy, arrows do not balance books. They just pierce confidence. And once confidence bleeds out, no tax rate can revive it.

 

This article stands on its own, but some readers may also enjoy the titles in my “Brief Book Series”. Read it here on Google Play: Brief Book Series.

 

 

The Supreme Court Stops President Trump's Tariff Storm… For Now

 

The Supreme Court just clipped President  Trump’s tariff trigger finger—but the trade war isn’t dead. It’s wounded, angry, and hunting for a legal backdoor.

I watched the Supreme Court pull the emergency brake on President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs, and I could almost hear the gears grind in Washington. This was not a polite tap on the wrist. It was a 6-3 ruling that cut straight through the heart of Trump’s tariff economics. The justices said it plain and cold: the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977 does not authorize the President to impose tariffs. Chief Justice John Roberts reminded us that the framers “did not vest any part of the taxing power in the Executive Branch.” That line hit like a gavel slam in a silent courtroom.

Let’s be honest. This was David versus Goliath. A small wine importer, VOS Selections, went toe to toe with the White House. Alongside firms like Learning Resources Inc., they challenged the administration’s use of IEEPA. The law was built for sanctions against rogue states like Iran and North Korea. It talks about regulating financial transactions. It does not whisper the word tariff. Not once. Yet the administration treated it like a blank check.

If the Court had blinked, we would be living in a different country today. Imagine any president—Republican or Democrat—declaring a vague “emergency” and slapping tariffs at will. During oral arguments, the hypothetical was raised of a Democratic administration declaring a climate emergency and imposing steep tariffs on imported electric vehicles or diesel trucks. One person. One declaration. Billions in taxes overnight. That is not trade policy. That is executive taxation by decree. Give a man a hammer, and every problem looks like a nail.

Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs were broad and chaotic. They were announced with the swagger of a man who believed the presidency carried a tariff wand. Markets swung. Businesses scrambled. Over the past year, tens of billions of dollars in tariff revenue flowed in. Now the legal foundation for those levies is gone. The Court made it clear that when Congress delegates tariff powers, it does so in explicit terms and under strict limits. IEEPA was not one of those terms.

This ruling reins in Trump’s tariff economics model because that model leaned heavily on speed and shock. The power was in the unpredictability. Declare an emergency. Impose a tariff. Force a negotiation. Cut a deal. Move on. It was high-stakes poker played with the global economy. But the Court just removed a wild card from the deck.

History tells me why this matters. In 1930, Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. Average U.S. tariffs on dutiable imports rose to nearly 60%. Other countries retaliated. Global trade collapsed by roughly 66% between 1929 and 1934. Economists still argue about the scale of the damage, but few deny that protectionism deepened the Great Depression. After World War II, lawmakers tried to avoid that spiral. They built a system that favored negotiated reductions in trade barriers, from the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1947 to the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995.

Over time, Congress delegated more authority to presidents. The theory was simple. Legislators are close to local industries and pressure groups. They feel the heat from steelworkers in Ohio and farmers in Iowa. Presidents, in theory, take a broader view. They see consumers, exporters, and the geopolitical chessboard. So Congress passed laws like the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 and the Trade Act of 1974, giving presidents tools such as Section 232 and Section 301. It assumed the White House would act as the adult in the room.

That assumption now looks shaky. Trump used Section 301 during his first term to impose tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of Chinese goods. At the height of that trade war, tariffs covered more than $360 billion in imports from China. Studies by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York estimated that the tariffs cost the average American household around $800 per year due to higher prices. The administration argued that China’s unfair trade practices justified the move. Critics said consumers were footing the bill.

Then came the second term and the IEEPA gambit. It was bolder. Faster. Less tethered to specific findings about unfair trade or national security. Just declare an emergency and go. The Court’s ruling slams that door shut. No more free-floating tariff power under IEEPA. No more emergency-as-excuse for broad import taxes.

But here is where the story gets complicated. I am not popping champagne just yet. The president still has other tools. Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 allows tariffs of up to 15% for up to 150 days to address balance-of-payments problems. Section 232 of the 1962 Act allows tariffs on national security grounds. That is how we got tariffs on steel and aluminum. Section 301 can still target countries deemed to engage in unfair trade practices. These laws require investigations, reports, and findings. They are slower. They throw sand in the gears. But they are real.

So yes, the Court has reined Trump in. But it has not disarmed him.

The difference now is credibility. Before, a tweet or a press conference could rattle markets because the legal path was quick and direct. Now, any new tariff wall must be built brick by brick under existing statutes. Agencies must conduct investigations. Findings must be issued. There is paperwork. There are timelines. The element of sudden shock is weaker. When threats require process, they lose some bite.

The deeper issue is constitutional. Article I of the Constitution gives Congress the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises. Tariffs are taxes. Roberts reminded us of that basic truth. If the Court had ruled the other way, it would have rewritten the balance of power between Congress and the presidency. One emergency declaration could have opened the door to unlimited tariff authority. That would have been a quiet revolution.

I see irony here. Trump built his brand on strength, leverage, and deal-making. He treated tariffs as bargaining chips. But the Supreme Court has now told him that leverage must sit within statutory boundaries. You cannot just say “emergency” and move the markets. The Constitution is not a suggestion box. Still, I do not underestimate the resilience of tariff economics. The administration can pivot. It can lean harder on Section 301 investigations. It can expand Section 232 findings to new sectors like semiconductors or critical minerals. It can use Section 122 for temporary across-the-board measures. Each path is narrower, more technical, more exposed to judicial review. Yet the threat remains.

The broader lesson is uncomfortable. Congress gave presidents wide discretion over trade because it trusted them to be wise stewards. That trust now looks naïve. If cooler heads ever return to Capitol Hill, lawmakers might rethink how much power they have ceded. They could impose stricter time limits, require congressional approval for certain tariffs, or tighten definitions of “national security” and “emergency.” But any reform would likely need presidential signature. And what president volunteers to shrink his own power?

For now, I give credit where it is due. The Supreme Court drew a line. It told the executive branch that taxation by emergency decree is not the American way. That matters. It protects not just importers like VOS Selections, but the structure of our government.

Trump’s tariff economics has taken a hit. The leash is on. But the dog is still in the yard, pacing, watching the fence for weak spots. And in Washington, as I have learned, fences are only as strong as the will to defend them.

 

If you’re looking for something different to read, some of the titles in my “Brief Book Series” is available on Google Play Books. You can also read them here on Google Play: Brief Book Series.

 

Red vs. Blue Since 1776: America Was Born Arguing

 

The red-blue war didn’t start on cable news—it began in 1776, and without parties to channel rage into votes, America could implode. Hence, political parties aren’t America’s disease—they’re its shock absorbers, forged in revolution and tested by civil war. Remove them, and the system shatters.

If anyone thinks the political war between Democrats and Republicans began with social media hashtags or prime-time cable news, I have to laugh. America has been fighting with itself since the ink dried on July 4, 1776. America did not inherit unity. The country inherited liberty. And liberty is loud.

The moment the colonies broke from King George III, they removed a single source of authority. But nature hates a vacuum. Power rushed into the open, and men who had just stood shoulder to shoulder against Britain began circling each other. That tension did not wait for the 21st century. It arrived with the Constitution.

In 1787, when the Constitution was drafted in Philadelphia, the fight began in full view. Federalists like Alexander Hamilton and James Madison pushed for a strong central government. Anti-Federalists warned that such power would become a new monarchy in disguise. Newspapers became weapons. Pamphlets flew like arrows. Madison, writing in Federalist No. 10, admitted what many hoped to avoid: factions (known as ‘political parties’ today) were inevitable. Liberty itself breeds division. You can silence disagreement only by silencing freedom. That was not an option. So the Constitution would “control the effects” of faction rather than erase its causes. From day one, the system assumed conflict.

The ink was barely dry before that conflict turned personal. Inside George Washington’s cabinet, Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson clashed like heavyweight fighters in powdered wigs. Hamilton wanted a national bank, federal control of state debts, and a muscular central authority. Jefferson feared that same authority would crush the states. Their rivalry birthed the first party system—Federalists and Democratic-Republicans. The Founders had warned against parties, yet they formed them almost instantly. Why? Because power without opposition is temptation in human form.

By 1798, the tension snapped. President John Adams, a Federalist, signed the Alien and Sedition Acts. Criticize the government too harshly and you could land in jail. Jefferson’s allies fired back with the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, arguing states could resist unconstitutional laws. The election of 1800 followed, bitter and chaotic. Thomas Jefferson defeated Adams, and for the first time in modern history, power transferred peacefully between rival factions. That moment was not polite. It was revolutionary. The system survived its own anger.

The decades rolled forward, but the argument never slept. In 1832, South Carolina declared it could nullify federal tariffs it disliked. Vice President John C. Calhoun sided with the state. President Andrew Jackson threatened force. The nation teetered. Congress brokered compromise. Once again, party conflict did not destroy the republic. It tested it.

Then came slavery, the deepest wound. By 1860, nearly 4 million enslaved Black Americans lived mostly in the South. The Democratic Party split between Northern and Southern factions. The Republican Party rose in the 1850s to oppose the expansion of slavery. Abraham Lincoln won the presidency in 1860 with about 40% of the popular vote in a four-way race. Southern states seceded. The Civil War erupted in 1861 and raged until 1865, killing about 700,000 Americans. That was not partisan theater. That was blood.

Yet even during that war, elections continued. Lincoln faced reelection in 1864 while cannons roared. Ballots were cast in camps and cities. Democracy did not shut down. It endured. That fact alone should silence anyone who thinks today’s divisions are unprecedented.

After the war, the tension shifted but did not vanish. The election of 1876 between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel J. Tilden ended in dispute. Tilden won the popular vote by about 250,000 ballots. An electoral commission awarded Hayes a 185–184 victory. The Compromise of 1877 ended Reconstruction and withdrew federal troops from the South. It was controversial. It angered millions. But it prevented renewed civil war. The republic staggered forward.

Fast-forward to 2000. George W. Bush and Al Gore battled over Florida. The margin was 537 votes. The Supreme Court decided Bush v. Gore. Half the nation felt robbed. Yet Gore conceded. Power transferred peacefully. In 2020, turnout reached about 66% of eligible voters, the highest in over 100 years. Legal challenges erupted. Courts ruled. Institutions held.

This pattern is not accidental. It is structural. Madison eventually admitted that “different interests and parties arise out of the nature of things.” He started as a critic of factions and ended as their reluctant architect. He understood a truth that still stings: disagreement is the price of freedom.

Americans claim they despise political parties. Polls often show trust in them hovering below 30%. Yet every president after Washington has belonged to one. Congress organizes itself through them. Voters mobilize through them. Parties channel ambition, anger, and ideology into elections instead of street battles. They are not clean. They are not noble. But they are necessary.

Where there is liberty, there will be disagreement. Where there is disagreement, there will be organization. And where there is organization, there will be parties. That was true in 1787. It was true in 1860. It is true now. America was not designed to avoid conflict. It was designed to survive it. The red-versus-blue clash is not a glitch. It is the sound of a free society arguing with itself. The miracle is not that we fight. The miracle is that, for more than 200 years, we have mostly fought with ballots, courts, and words instead of muskets.

The political wars did not start yesterday. They started at the birth of the nation. And as long as Americans remain free, the argument will go on—not as proof of collapse, but as proof that liberty is alive and unapologetically loud.

 

If you’re looking for something different to read, some of the titles in my “Brief Book Series” is available on Google Play Books. You can also read them here on Google Play: Brief Book Series.

 

 

The War Putin Can’t Win and Can’t End: How Ukraine Could Become Putin’s Afghanistan

 

Putin can’t win in Ukraine, but he’s terrified to stop—because he remembers Afghanistan, and he knows a lost war doesn’t just kill soldiers, it can kill regimes.

You would think that after years of blood, smoke, and broken cities, a war that neither side can decisively win would simply burn itself out. That logic works in textbooks. It does not work in Moscow. Let me be blunt. Vladimir Putin is caught in a vice of his own making in the Russia-Ukraine war that he started in February 2022. He cannot win. And believe me, he knows it by now. But he also fears peace. That fear may be stronger than his fear of defeat.

Look at the battlefield math. During the Great Patriotic War from 1941 to 1945, the Red Army advanced about 1,600 km from Moscow to Berlin. In Ukraine, after years of fighting, Russian forces in Donetsk have advanced roughly 60 km. That is not blitzkrieg. That is trench warfare with drones. The modern battlefield is a 10–30 km “kill zone,” watched by UAVs, satellites, and operators who see everything. Massing troops now is like gathering under a spotlight and shouting, “Here we are.” Precision artillery and drones shred formations before they move.

Russia has mobilized hundreds of thousands of troops since 2022. Western intelligence estimates place Russian casualties in the hundreds of thousands, killed and wounded combined. Moscow does not publish clear numbers, but even conservative estimates show staggering losses. Recruitment now relies heavily on cash incentives. Since June 2025, according to Re: Russia, the average sign-on bonus has risen by 0.5 million roubles to 2.43 million roubles, about $32,000. When a state must pay more and more to fill ranks, patriotism is not enough. When the price of blood goes up, the market is sick.

The war costs about 5.1 trillion roubles a year, roughly 90% of the federal budget deficit. Defense spending now stands near 8% of GDP. Oil revenues, the backbone of Russia’s economy, face sanctions and volatile prices. Debt payments are rising. The civilian economy is shrinking. Yes, Russia adapts. Yes, it survives sanctions. But survival is not victory.

Putin can still strike Ukrainian cities and power grids. Missiles and drones can spread fear. But aerial terror rarely forces surrender. Britain survived the Blitz. Ukraine has endured years of bombardment. Europe has not abandoned Kyiv. Support actually increased in the past year, even as U.S. direct financing reportedly fell by about 99% compared to peak levels. Ukraine is now less dependent on American intelligence than it was in 2022. The war has hardened it.

So why not cut a deal? Because peace is not just a diplomatic act. For Putin, peace is political risk. And here is where Afghanistan’s ghost walks into the room. The Soviet-Afghan War began on December 24, 1979. Soviet troops entered Afghanistan expecting a short intervention. It ended on February 15, 1989, when the last Soviet forces withdrew under General Boris Gromov. About 15,000 Soviet soldiers were killed. More than 1m Afghans died. The war drained billions of dollars. It weakened the Soviet economy and shattered morale at home. Veterans returned angry. The mujahideen gained strength. Within 2 years, in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed.

Putin watched that collapse from inside the KGB. He has called the fall of the USSR the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century. He knows what a losing war can do to a regime. Afghanistan did not collapse the Soviet Union alone, but it accelerated decay. It exposed weakness. It bled credibility. It created veterans who asked hard questions.

Now imagine Putin ending the Ukraine war without a clear victory. Russian soldiers return home. Thousands of families ask about lost sons and unpaid “coffin money.” The economy, already bent under military spending, must shift from war footing to peace. Factories that make shells must find new products. Soldiers must find jobs. In Russian history, disgruntled veterans have destabilized regimes, from the turbulence before 1917 to the bitterness after Afghanistan in the 1980s. Peace could open political space for criticism. And criticism, in an authoritarian system, is dynamite.

Putin likely fears that stopping the war would trigger the very questions he cannot control. Why did we invade? Why did we lose so many men? Why are we dependent on China for financial and military support? Why is the economy weaker?

A dictator can survive war by invoking emergency. War centralizes power. War justifies repression. War rallies nationalism. Peace demands accountability. And accountability is dangerous. This is the vice. He cannot win decisively. The 60 km advance proves that. He cannot easily escalate without greater costs. NATO support, sanctions, and modern technology limit his room. Yet he fears peace because Afghanistan showed what happens when a long, costly war ends without glory.

In the 1980s, Soviet leaders faced a bitter truth. The Afghan war had not strengthened the empire; it hollowed it out. Putin does not want to be the man who presides over a similar unraveling. He wants to be remembered as a tsar who restored Russian greatness, not as a ruler who bled it dry.

But here is the brutal irony. The longer the war continues, the more it eats Russia alive. The budget strain deepens. The casualty count grows. The international isolation hardens. The risk of internal instability rises. A war meant to project strength becomes a mirror reflecting weakness.

Can external pressure end it? Targeting Russia’s shadow oil fleet and punishing buyers of sanctioned oil could squeeze revenue. Countering propaganda that the West seeks to destroy Russia could reduce nationalist fear. Exposing the myth of inevitable Russian victory could erode public support. No leader likes to back a loser.

Yet in the end, it comes down to pain. How much pain is Putin willing to inflict on Ukraine? How much pain are Russians willing to endure? Afghanistan taught that a regime can fight for years and still lose its footing at home.

Putin is trapped. He cannot win in the way he imagined in 2022. He cannot easily stop without risking his grip on power. So he drags the war forward, hoping for a Ukrainian collapse that has not come.

History is watching. Afghanistan’s shadow is long. And every day the war grinds on, that shadow grows darker over Moscow.

 

This article stands on its own, but some readers may also enjoy the titles in my “Brief Book Series”. Read it here on Google Play: Brief Book Series.

 

Tanzania: When Stability Turns Deadly.

 

When elections deliver 98% and dissent delivers funerals, democracy is already dying—Tanzania now faces its most perilous hour since independence.

I have watched power in Africa long enough to know the smell of it when it turns sour. It starts with applause. It ends with gunfire. Tanzania, once the quiet diplomat of East Africa, now walks with a limp and a loaded rifle. Don’t welcome Africa’s newest despot. Samia Suluhu Hassan has caused Tanzania’s most dangerous crisis since independence.

Chama Cha Mapinduzi has ruled Tanzania since 1961. That is 65 years of unbroken control. Longer than any ruling party in Africa. Under Julius Nyerere, the founding father, millions were forced into collective farms under the policy of ujamaa. It was sold as African socialism. It delivered shortages, inefficiency and economic collapse. By the early 1980s, inflation had soared above 30%, growth had stalled, and Tanzania had to turn to the IMF. When Nyerere stepped down in 1985, CCM reinvented itself. It embraced a flawed but competitive democracy. It allowed opposition parties. It opened markets. For decades, Tanzania became the poster child for slow, steady stability.

Average GDP growth over the past 20 years has hovered around 6%. Investors came. Tourists came. Aid flowed. Afrobarometer polling in 2024 still showed CCM as the most popular party. Tanzania looked like the calm cousin in a rough neighborhood.

Then came October.

An election that should have been routine exploded into the first mass protests in mainland Tanzania’s history. The country has a population of more than 70m. It is not a small island state. When anger erupts at that scale, it shakes the ground. State security forces responded with bullets. Hundreds, possibly thousands, were killed. The exact number is unclear. That alone tells you everything. In stable democracies, body counts are counted. In broken regimes, they are buried.

And as people died in the streets, Samia Suluhu Hassan claimed 98% of the vote.

Ninety-eight percent. In a competitive system. In 2026. That number does not whisper legitimacy. It screams fraud. Even dictators in the 1970s blushed at figures like that.

Dan Paget, a scholar of Tanzanian politics, has said that the last time mainland Tanzania experienced brutality on this scale was under German colonial rule more than 100 years ago. Let that sink in. A country that survived colonialism, Cold War politics, and regional wars without mass bloodshed has now drawn blood from its own citizens.

Samia came to power in 2021 after John Magufuli died. Magufuli was autocratic, yes, but he wrapped himself in populist nationalism. He cut waste, fought some forms of corruption, and cultivated an image as a bulldozer for the common man. Samia styled herself as the opposite. She spoke softly. She welcomed back exiles. She reopened space for media. She mended ties with Western investors. Many Tanzanians believed she was a liberal reformer.

I did not.

When a leader promises constitutional reform and then quietly shelves it, I take note. Tanzania’s constitution gives the president enormous power. The promised review stalled. Opposition parties threatened to boycott the election. The state responded not with dialogue but with arrests. Tundu Lissu, the most prominent opposition figure, was arrested and charged with treason. Treason is not a parking ticket. It carries the possibility of death. He remains behind bars.

In 2025, critics disappeared. A CCM bigwig vanished. A Catholic priest vanished. Scores of others were taken. Many are feared dead. When disappearances become routine, fear becomes policy.

Some once argued that Samia, a Muslim from Zanzibar, which accounts for about 3% of Tanzania’s population, was forced to rely on hardliners in the party and security services. They said she was weak. That she had no base. That she was cornered.

But after repeated cabinet reshuffles, she now commands every arm of the regime. Diplomats in Dar es Salaam say she has surrounded herself with Zanzibaris, family and loyal newcomers. Her daughter is now deputy minister of education. Her son-in-law is minister of health. When blood ties replace merit, the state becomes a family business.

And the world is watching.

The EU has frozen aid. The United States is reviewing bilateral relations, citing concerns over churches and the treatment of investors. Tanzania relies heavily on foreign capital and development finance. In 2023, foreign direct investment inflows were about $1bn, modest but vital. If investors fear instability, that money dries up fast.

Yet the government’s first instinct after the crackdown was not remorse but reassurance. Reassure investors. Protect existing capital. Speed up talks on a long-delayed liquefied natural gas project. A final investment decision is expected this year. The message is clear: business first, bodies later.

But growth alone cannot silence anger. Tanzania’s population grows at nearly 3% per year. That means the economy must grow above that rate just to keep incomes steady. At 6% GDP growth, per capita gains are thin. Youth unemployment and underemployment remain high. Too few young people have formal jobs. When they are jobless, they are restless. As one minister admitted, they are easily “triggered” into protest.

China is often cited as a model. After the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, China doubled down on growth. It delivered decades of rapid expansion, lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty. But Tanzania is not China. It lacks the industrial base, the scale, and the global leverage Beijing wielded. You cannot copy and paste history.

Meanwhile, corruption is said to be rising. Business experts in Dar es Salaam speak of rent-seeking everywhere. Foreign firms complain of shake-downs. A Western diplomat put it bluntly: things are better for corrupt oligarchs. Not for investors.

I have heard this script before. First comes centralization. Then comes repression. Then comes economic favoritism for insiders. Finally comes the claim that stability requires strong hands. When the drumbeat of fear grows louder, liberty slips out the back door.

Some criticism of Samia is fueled by misogyny and Islamophobia. That is real and ugly. But stripping away prejudice does not erase policy. The crisis is not about gender. It is about governance. It is about the gap between promise and practice.

CCM has survived because it adapts. After economic collapse in the 1980s, it reformed. After political pressure in the 1990s, it opened space. It has been a strange beast, yes, but a flexible one. Now it faces an inflection point. Another uprising could be catastrophic. A former minister has warned that unless security forces show humanity, CCM will be removed from power.

A coup within the party is possible. Internal rebellion has toppled leaders before in African ruling parties. Outsiders cannot know how deep dissatisfaction runs within CCM. But when elites begin whispering, the clock starts ticking.

Tanzania was long known for stability in a volatile region. It mediated conflicts in Burundi. It hosted refugees. It avoided the coups and civil wars that scarred neighbors. Now that reputation is cracking.

I do not celebrate instability. I fear it. A nation of 70m cannot afford chaos. But stability built on fear is a house of cards. A 98% victory is not strength. It is insecurity dressed up as triumph. Do not welcome Africa’s newest despot. Do not clap for a leader who trades reform for repression and calls it order. Tanzania stands at its most dangerous crossroads since 1961. The bullets of October did more than kill protesters. They shattered a myth. The myth that CCM’s long rule guaranteed peace.

History teaches a brutal lesson. When power refuses to bend, it eventually breaks. And when it breaks, it rarely does so quietly.

 

For readers interested in a separate line of thought, the titles in my “Brief Book Series” are available on Google Play. Read them here on Google Play: Brief Book Series.

 

No Safe Haven: Why the Next Crash Could Hurt More

 

AI hype is soaring, but history screams warning: when bubbles burst, fortunes vanish fast, and the old safe havens might fail you this time.

On February 8th 2026, as America inhaled wings and beer and waited for the halftime show, an AI chatbot named Claude flashed across the Super Bowl screen. I didn’t see innovation. I saw déjà vu. I saw ghosts from 2000, when 17 dotcom firms bought 30-second ads during the same game, each torching millions for a shot at immortality. Weeks later, the Nasdaq began its long fall. The party lights went out. Portfolios bled.

History does not repeat, but it rhymes—and sometimes it screams.

Now the hype machine is back, only this time it runs on neural networks and trillion-parameter dreams. Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft have pledged a combined $660bn on AI in the coming year. That is not pocket change. That is empire money. A year ago, Wall Street would have cheered. Today, investors flinch. Microsoft’s stock is down 16% since its spending plans landed. Meta popped, then wobbled. Confidence feels thinner than it did.

Everyone knows stocks are expensive. The S&P 500’s cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings ratio has hovered well above its long-run average of about 17. When valuations stretch, expected returns shrink. That is not ideology. That is math. When you pay too much for earnings, you bake in disappointment. The higher you climb, the thinner the air.

So I ask myself the question that keeps money managers up at 3 a.m.: how do I hedge a bubble when everything looks bubbly? The obvious answer is to sell. Cash out. Walk away. But I have watched this movie before. During the late 1990s, the Nasdaq rose nearly 12-fold in the 5 years to March 2000. Along the way, it suffered at least a dozen corrections of 10% or more. Any one of those dips could have scared a cautious investor into selling. Anyone who bought at the start of 1995 and simply held on would have doubled their money even after the crash. Timing a mania is like trying to catch a falling knife while riding a bull.

Professional managers often cannot just sit in cash. Their mandates chain them to equities. Clients pay them to be invested, not to hide under the desk. Even for individuals, selling because stocks “look pricey” can mean missing the last explosive leg up. Bubbles do not pop politely. They stretch further than reason allows. The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

So I look for refuge. In the 1990s, bonds did the job. From early 1995 to the Nasdaq’s peak in March 2000, a Bloomberg index of American Treasuries rose nearly 50%. When stocks crashed, the same Treasury index rose another 30% as central banks slashed rates. Bonds were a shock absorber. Stocks fell, bonds rose. The classic 60/40 portfolio looked like genius. But 2022 rewrote the script. Inflation surged to 9.1% in June 2022, the highest in 40 years. The Federal Reserve hiked rates aggressively. Stocks fell. Bonds fell. The S&P 500 dropped 19% that year. Long-term Treasuries suffered one of their worst drawdowns in decades. The supposed hedge failed. Both sides of the portfolio burned at once.

If inflation resurges again, bonds may not save us. If governments’ debts—now exceeding 100% of GDP in many rich countries—spark fears of fiscal strain, both stocks and bonds could land in the same blast radius. We saw a glimpse of that when policy shocks rattled markets and Treasuries briefly lost their safe-haven glow. When trust cracks, correlation spikes.

Gold? It has swung wildly. Bitcoin? It calls itself digital gold, but in 2022 it fell more than 60%. When liquidity dries up, even the rebels beg for mercy.

That leaves derivatives. Options. The financial world’s insurance contracts. Buy a put option on the S&P 500 and you gain the right to sell at a pre-set strike price. Own the stock and the put, and you cap your losses. Today, a 1-year put limiting losses to 10% costs about 3.6% of the amount insured. Pay 3.6% and you sleep better.

But insurance is never free. Analysts at Goldman Sachs studied how such strategies would have fared from 1996 to 2002. A series of 1-year puts limiting losses to 10% produced roughly the same annualised return as unhedged stocks, but with less volatility. Not bad. A series of 1-month puts limiting losses to 4% did worse, because the repeated premiums piled up like credit-card interest. Protection can quietly eat performance.

I think of it like paying for flood insurance every month when the river never rises—until it does. You resent the premiums, then you bless them.

The problem is timing and cost. If volatility is already high, options get expensive. If everyone smells danger, insurance sellers raise prices. Buying puts after the crash starts is like shopping for fire extinguishers while your kitchen burns.

So I circle back to an idea that feels almost insulting in its simplicity: hedge equities with equities. During the dotcom bust, filtered baskets of steadier stocks outperformed. The S&P 500 low-volatility index, which holds the 100 least volatile stocks in the main index, proved a surprisingly effective diversifier. A 50/50 split between it and the broader S&P 500 from 1996 to 2002 generated nearly twice the annualised excess return over cash compared with the S&P 500 alone. Dividend aristocrats—companies that have increased dividends for at least 25 consecutive years—also delivered similar resilience. Quality stocks with high returns on equity and low debt did the same.

In other words, the best hedge was not fleeing the market but tilting within it.

That feels unsatisfying when AI stocks dominate headlines and valuations. Nvidia’s market capitalisation has at times surpassed $2trn. A handful of mega-cap tech firms account for a large share of the S&P 500’s gains. Concentration risk is real. When leadership narrows, fragility grows.

But if I step back, I see that not all stocks are the same. A cash-generating consumer-staples firm with stable earnings is not a venture-backed AI dream burning capital. A healthcare company with steady demand is not a speculative chip designer priced for perfection. If AI spending disappoints, if $660bn fails to produce commensurate profits, the high-fliers will suffer first.

The dotcom crash offers a brutal lesson. Cisco and Intel survived but traded sideways for years. Pets.com vanished. The Nasdaq fell nearly 78% from peak to trough. Yet diversified, profitable companies endured. Investors who owned quality and held on were scarred but not destroyed.

So how do I hedge a bubble, AI edition? I accept that there is no perfect shield. Bonds may not rescue me. Gold may whipsaw. Bitcoin may implode. Options cost money and discipline. Selling everything may mean missing the last manic surge.

Instead, I think in layers. I trim exposure to the most euphoric names. I tilt toward quality, dividends, lower volatility. I consider selective option protection, knowing it will drag on returns. I keep some cash—not because I am scared, but because liquidity is power when markets panic.

Above all, I remind myself that bubbles are stories we tell each other until the bill arrives. In 2000, it was eyeballs and clicks. In 2007, it was house prices that “never fall nationwide.” In 2026, it is AI that will change everything. Maybe it will. But prices can outrun reality.

Protecting a portfolio from a crash looks harder than ever because the old playbook is fraying. Stocks and bonds can fall together. Safe havens wobble. Insurance is costly. The hedge is imperfect. But I would rather carry an imperfect shield than march naked into a storm. In markets, survival is victory. Returns are optional. Staying in the game is not.

 

On a different but equally important note, readers who enjoy thoughtful analysis may also find the titles in my  “Brief Book Series” worth exploring. You can also read them here on Google Play: Brief BookSeries.

 

 

Crypto Winter Just Turned Into a Financial Ice Age.

 

Crypto’s vibes have died, $2 trillion has vanished, leverage is detonating, and the “digital gold” dream is freezing into dust—this isn’t a dip, it’s financial rat poison finally claiming its victims.

I warned you. I said crypto was not a revolution. I said it was not digital gold. I said it was vibes wrapped in code, hype wrapped in hashtags, a casino dressed up as a technology conference. Now here we are. This is the coldest crypto winter yet. And I am not shivering. I am nodding. Bitcoin has fallen from $124,000 in early October 2025 to around $70,000 today. That is a 45% plunge in a matter of months. The total market value of cryptocurrencies has vaporized by more than $2 trillion. Gone. Evaporated. When the tide goes out, you see who was swimming naked. What I see is a market built on mood swings and leverage.

Yes, crypto has crashed before. In late 2021, Bitcoin peaked near $69,000 and then cratered by 77% in 2022. That wipeout erased more than $2trn in value at the time, according to CoinMarketCap data. But back then, tech stocks were bleeding too. The NASDAQ 100 fell by over 33% in 2022 from peak to trough. Everyone was hurting. Misery had company.

Now? The NASDAQ 100 is less than 4% below its recent record high. Nvidia, Microsoft, and the rest of the AI darlings are flexing. Meanwhile, crypto bros are staring at red screens alone. That loneliness matters. Crypto is an asset class powered by vibes. When the vibes turn ugly, there is nothing underneath to cushion the fall. No earnings. No dividends. No cash flow. Just belief.

And belief is a fragile thing.

At the end of September, measurable borrowing against crypto assets reached about $74bn. That figure had more than doubled over the previous 12 months. Leverage is rocket fuel on the way up and napalm on the way down. Starting October 10, about $19bn in leveraged crypto bets were liquidated in days. Forced selling. Margin calls. The kind of cascade that does not ask for your feelings.

I have seen this movie before. In 1929, investors bought stocks on margin with as little as 10% down. When prices slipped, brokers demanded cash. People could not pay. The selling fed on itself. The Dow Jones fell nearly 89% from peak to trough. In 2008, mortgage-backed securities were sliced, diced, and leveraged to the sky. When housing cracked, Lehman Brothers collapsed and the S&P 500 dropped 57%. Excess leverage always ends the same way. The higher the monkey climbs, the more it shows its tail.

Crypto is not immune to gravity. It just pretends to be.

Look at Strategy Inc, the company that borrows and issues shares to buy Bitcoin. Its stock has plunged almost 70% since July. That is what happens when you strap your balance sheet to a volatile token and call it genius. It works in a bull run. It burns in a bear market.

Even the so-called institutional embrace is unraveling. In 2024, crypto exchange-traded funds were launched with fanfare. The iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF, IBIT, became the fastest-growing ETF in history, amassing nearly $100bn in assets by October. The narrative was simple: Wall Street is here, this time is different.

Now IBIT has seen outflows of $3.5bn over the past 80 trading days. Most of the capital invested in the fund is underwater. The same institutions that were supposed to legitimize crypto are quietly heading for the exits. No speeches. No apologies. Just redemptions.

Meanwhile, Bank of America’s September survey showed digital assets accounted for just 0.4% of the total portfolio value among fund managers surveyed. The vast majority had no allocation at all. Let that sink in. After all the hype, all the conferences, all the laser eyes on social media, professional investors are basically saying, “No thanks.”

Central banks are not buying Bitcoin either. They are buying gold. According to the World Gold Council, central banks purchased over 1,000 tonnes of gold in 2022, the highest level on record. They continued strong buying into 2023 and 2024 as geopolitical risks and inflation fears lingered. Gold has a 5,000-year track record. Bitcoin has vibes and volatility.

The Czech central bank dipped a cautious toe in crypto last year, buying about $1m worth of Bitcoin. Experimental. Tiny. Symbolic. And it has announced no plans to buy more. That is not adoption. That is curiosity.

Crypto once sold itself as rebellion. A middle finger to fiat money. A hedge against inflation. A shield against central banks. But when politicians and their families are knee-deep in tokens and meme coins, how rebellious can it be? Charles Hoskinson, co-founder of Ethereum, admitted it bluntly: once you become part of the system, the system makes you uncool.

Exactly. Crypto lost its outlaw mystique and gained nothing in return. It is not widely used for payments. It is not a reliable store of value. During the inflation spike of 2022, when U.S. CPI hit 9.1% in June, Bitcoin did not soar as digital gold. It crashed. From around $47,000 in March 2022, it slid below $20,000 by mid-year. That is not a hedge. That is a hazard.

And let us not forget the body count. In 2022, FTX collapsed in one of the biggest financial scandals in modern history. Sam Bankman-Fried was later convicted of fraud. Billions of dollars vanished. Celsius Network filed for bankruptcy. Terra Luna imploded, wiping out an estimated $40bn in value in days. People lost life savings. Pensioners were ruined. Retail investors were left holding digital dust.

Every cycle, the same script plays out. Prices surge. Influencers scream “to the moon.” Leverage builds. Then something cracks. A stablecoin depegs. An exchange halts withdrawals. A founder gets indicted. Prices crash. And the faithful say, “This is just another winter.”

But this winter feels different. Not because the percentage drop is the worst ever. It is not. A 45% fall is brutal, but we have seen 77% before. It feels different because the aura is gone. The vibe is off. And when your entire asset class is built on vibe, that is lethal.

I have always argued that crypto is the most dangerous kind of rat poison in finance. Not because it kills instantly, but because it seduces first. It whispers about freedom and decentralization. It promises 10x returns. It dresses up speculation as innovation. And then, slowly, it drains portfolios while investors tell themselves they are early.

An asset that produces no income must rely on someone else paying more later. That is the greater fool theory dressed in blockchain jargon. When fools are plentiful, prices rise. When fools get cautious, prices collapse. That is not investing. That is musical chairs with code. Crypto has survived many obituaries. It may survive this one too. I am not predicting it goes to zero tomorrow. But survival is not the same as legitimacy. Tulips survived after 1637. So did Beanie Babies after the 1990s bubble burst. That does not make them sound long-term investments.

Right now, the numbers are screaming. $2trn wiped out. $19bn liquidated in days. $3.5bn flowing out of the biggest Bitcoin ETF. 0.4% portfolio allocation among professional fund managers. Those are not vibes. Those are facts.

This is the coldest crypto winter yet because the fantasy is fading. The rebellion is stale. The institutions are cautious. The leverage is toxic. And the mood is sour. Crypto is an asset class built on belief, and belief has a breaking point. I do not hate technology. I respect innovation. But I refuse to worship volatility. When I look at this market, I do not see digital gold. I see a high-stakes casino where the house is leverage and the currency is hype.

And when the music stops, hype cannot pay your bills.

 

For readers interested in a separate line of thought, the titles in my “Brief Book Series” are available on Google Play. Read them here on Google Play: Brief Book Series.