Thursday, March 13, 2025
What the Demise of the Lowly Penny Really Means by John Horvat II March 7, 2025
What the Demise of the Lowly Penny Really Means
The new administration announced that the U.S. Mint will stop producing the penny coin.
The penny, a mainstay piece of American currency, costs too much to produce. Treasury officials say it takes 3.7 cents to make the copper-coated coin. Thus, the nickel will eventually become the lowest denomination to make change.
The suppression of the penny is considered a casualty in the war on governmental waste. To save money, Americans are told to abandon it without regret or sentimentality.
However, the move represents more than just an exercise in saving money. It is an indicator of an economy in trouble that needs to be addressed.
Eternal and Natural Law: The Foundation of Morals and Law
The Purpose of Money
Saint Thomas Aquinas says money is “invented by the art of man, for the convenience of exchange, and as a measure of things salable.”1 It also serves as a store of value, allowing people to put away savings.
In fulfilling its functions, money facilitates the practice of commutative justice, whereby one receives what is due for a good or service. Unlike barter, money makes it easier to receive one’s due in transactions more precisely by creating units of value.
Money also allows people to estimate what things are worth in those units and to arrive at exact prices that satisfy the demands of justice.
The Reason for Currencies
Thus, nations issue currencies, which are tokens that serve as measures of value. The monetary unit is like a yardstick that allows a person to calculate a thing’s worth. To make this calculation easier, governments divide the monetary unit into smaller fractions to approximate the true value of goods and services closer.
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Thus, the American government uses the dollar unit and divides it up into a hundred cents. It mints coinage reflecting this division, including the penny. The closer the price is to the actual value of something, the more complete is the practice of commutative justice. Both sides leave the transaction satisfied.
The Penny as an Expression of a Passion for Justice
The role of the lowly penny is an expression of a nation’s passion for justice. It takes the desire to give each what is due to a height since even the smallest fractional value is considered important in the transaction.
The penny is a symbol of a healthy economy that considers the true and most accurate value of things. It shows that the government is zealous in satisfying the demands of justice.
The Suppression of the Penny
The suppression of the penny signals that something has gone wrong with the American economy. It signals that the economy has reached a point where the system is not allowing the coin to do its job.
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The main culprit is inflation, which has brought down the value of the penny to insignificance. Nothing can be bought with a single penny anymore. Gone are the days of penny sales, penny candy or other such goods. A penny saved is barely a penny earned. The dime store has been replaced with the dollar store, where the penny counts for little.
Thus, the penny’s diminished fractional value makes it harder, not easier, to calculate how strict commutative justice might be exercised. It is like including an almost microscopic unit of measure on the yardstick.
Replacing the Penny
The suppression of the penny will make the nickel the smallest denomination of American currency. This will force the merchant and consumer to round off prices to the nearest five-cent increment. In this case, the jump is a bit too abrupt, and the approximation of true value is hampered—albeit slightly.
The suppression of the penny marks the first time in modern American history that a fractional monetary unit is taken out of use. It prepares the way for further changes, which will corrode the dollar further.
In the present climate of inflation, it is easy to see how the nickel might be replaced with the dime or higher units.
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The Penny as a Source of Stability
A penny suppression will affect the stability of the currency. One characteristic of money is that it must be a stable measure of value and means of exchange. Consumers must have confidence in the currency as a condition for its use.
The psychological dependability of the omnipresent penny helps foster the needed stability even with its reduced worth due to inflation. The reassuring visage of Abraham Lincoln has long been part of American coinage. Should the coin fade away, something of this stability will also fade.
Thus, the penny suppression should be a red flag that says something is terribly wrong with the economy. American money is no longer stably serving its threefold functions of means of exchange, measure of worth and store of value.
It has reached a point of no return that prepares the way for yet more suppressions if changes are not made to the system.
The Dangers of Frenetic Intemperance
Indeed, frenetically intemperate forces have long entered the economy and markets, inflating prices, increasing debt and creating financial uncertainty. This mixture is a recipe for disaster.
Major changes are needed to address these issues. These changes must restrain the intemperance of consumers who accept no limits and a government that spends beyond its means.
Tweaking the system will not resolve the problem. Indeed, things are really dire when not even the lowly penny can survive.
Photo Credit: © trekandphoto – stock.adobe.com
Russia Is No Place to Look for New Business Deals by Gary Isbell March 11, 2025
Russia Is No Place to Look for New Business Deals
After years of sanctions, some leaders are calling to welcome Russia back to the community of nations. They point out lost business opportunities that might now be explored.
However, let the investor beware. Despite appearances of resilience, Russia’s economy is not everything it seems to be. Making any new business deals will be fraught with risk. Promises of rare-earth metals investment or oil profits may sound alluring, but the deeper one digs, the more fool’s gold one finds.
At first glance, Russia’s economy appears to be holding up under the strain of war and sanctions. However, its resilience is propped up by unsustainable government military spending and skewed economic priorities.
Eternal and Natural Law: The Foundation of Morals and Law
For instance, in 2023, Russia spent a record-high 36.6 trillion rubles (around $386 billion) on defense. This influx drove up GDP figures, but it will harm economic integrity in the long term.
Meanwhile, inflation is high at 9.9 percent as of January 2015, nearly double the central bank’s target. Interest rates set post-Soviet high of 21% in October 2024.
The national economy also suffers from the casualties in the war with Ukraine that will never enter the workforce. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Russians have lost a minimum of 172,000 Russian troops that have been killed and 611,000 wounded, It also faces the exodus of young professionals and a staggering labor shortage of around 5 million Russian workers.
Another red flag for investors is the nightmarish experience of those few foreign businesses foolishly optimistic enough to operate in Russia. These firms have experienced significant losses, while others have suffered outright asset seizures. The site Leave-Russia chronicles the hardships of companies that left and stayed.
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The most glaring example of such theft is Mobil Exxon’s exit from the Sakhalin project. Exxon’s $4 billion stake in the venture was transferred to a government-owned company. This confiscation left a gaping hole not only in Exxon’s portfolio but also in global perceptions of Russia as a country that honors agreements.
For instance, British Petroleum (BP) had to make a $25 billion write-down after exiting Russia. It remains entangled with stakes in Rosneft, a Russian state oil producer. Western brands like McDonald’s, IKEA, and Starbucks not only exited but also witnessed their vacated assets redistributed to Putin loyalists in classic Kremlin style.
The war has created what analysts call “economic lawfare.” Legal compliance and regulations in Russia make it a bureaucratic swamp for foreign investors. Asset nationalization, arbitrary taxation, and a lack of access to Western credit make even thinking about entering the Russian market a recipe for disaster. The remaining European and U.S. companies still operating in Russia face reputational damage, operational loss and chaos.
On paper, joint ventures that concentrate on developing Russia’s resource-rich sectors—oil, gas, and rare-earth metals—appear to be gold mines for international investors. However, they present a set of insurmountable challenges of their own.
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Rare-earth deposits, for example, remain largely untapped due to their location in Siberia’s unforgiving wilderness or the Arctic’s hostile environment. The absence of infrastructure and refining capacity means that even the most valuable resources are inaccessible without significant upfront investments and years or decades of development.
Meanwhile, China has already asserted its claim by purchasing Russian oil and nearly monopolizing entire sectors of the economy. Over half of all new cars sold in Russia are now made in China. Beijing’s deep entrenchment in the Russian market makes operations in the country like stepping into a minefield dominated by the communist Chinese.
Even more troubling, Russia is becoming increasingly isolated from global innovation and high-tech supply chains. Western sanctions have cut it off from critical technologies, forcing it to rely upon low-tech exports or the out dated, cheap technology of Chinese imports.
These elements present a bleak picture of productivity and progress. It is not a good place to invest.
The message for businesses evaluating their next moves is clear—Russia is a swamp, not a marketplace. It is a country weighed down by its hostility to everything Western, its demographic decline and technological stagnation.
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Investors are better off looking elsewhere where there is the honor necessary for agreements, respect for private property, transparency, innovation and long-term stability.
If there’s one lesson to be learned from the bitter experiences of McDonald’s, BP, Mobil Exxon, and others, it is this: no deal is worth the risk of entanglement in this mire. Russian roulette might make for a dramatic metaphor, but it’s not a game you want to play when it comes to business.
Photo Credit: © Mistervlad – stock.adobe.com
Four Years, $320 Million and Zero Bodies: The Mystery of the “Graves” at Canada’s Kamloops School by Gary Isbell March 12, 2025
Four Years, $320 Million and Zero Bodies: The Mystery of the “Graves” at Canada’s Kamloops School
The alleged discovery of 215 bodies in unmarked graves at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia sent shockwaves throughout Canada in May 2021. The alleged tragedy became a rallying cry for liberal politicians and indigenous tribe activists everywhere.
Justin Trudeau’s administration immediately took a position without any facts. He took center stage by expressing solidarity with the Indigenous community by mandating flags to be flown at half-mast across federal properties and committing funds to investigate and uncover the supposed graves.
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Kamloops was one of many federal Canadian schools operated by the Catholic Church. It is where the graves supposedly existed. However, nearly four years after the investigation began, not a single body has been exhumed at the Kamloops School site. No excavation dates or concrete evidence has been established to back up the egregious claims indicting the Church.
Critics say the lack of evidence casts doubt on the Trudeau administration’s intention. They accuse the government of fueling a moral panic and using the alleged tragedy to incite anti-Christian sentiment. While no bodies have been found, Trudeau has been successful in stoking anti-Christian sentiment.
Indeed, the fallout from the Kamloops announcement was immediate and devastating. To date, over 100 Christian churches, mostly Catholic, have been vandalized or burned to the ground in Canada. Trudeau refrained from condemning the attacks and suggested that the attacks were the result of public outrage over the supposed “graves.”
The government’s narrative was constructed using a single interpretation of ground-penetrating radar at the Kamloops site. Anthropologist Sarah Beaulieu conducted the survey using radar to detect irregularities in the soil. Beaulieu’s findings identified anomalies that were interpreted as “possible” burial sites but were never confirmed as the remains of human bodies.
When it comes to ground-penetrating radar, the truth lies beneath the surface, quite literally. Radar does not differentiate between soil disruptions and actual human remains. Excavation, though expensive and time-consuming, is the only way to confirm or disprove allegations that have tarnished impeccable reputations and inflamed cultural tensions.
Eternal and Natural Law: The Foundation of Morals and Law
However, politicians and activists leaped quickly from improbable conjecture to absolute certainty. The Trudeau government accepted claims at face value and immediately allocated $320 million to search for unmarked graves nationwide. The original speculation was presented as evidence of systemic abuse orchestrated by the Catholic Church and other Christian institutions that ran residential schools across Canada.
Even Pope Francis apologized on behalf of the Catholic Church without any evidence, deepening the perception of guilt. Yet voices of skepticism steadily grew louder.
Nearly four years of investigations have yielded no physical evidence of graves at Kamloops or any other residential school sites across Canada. Frustrated by the lack of progress, several academics have publicly condemned the original claims. Jacques Rouillard, a professor emeritus at the Université de Montréal, described the case as a “moral panic,” suggesting that radar anomalies alone cannot substantiate the existence of unmarked graves.
Physical excavation is necessary to verify claims. Other locations have revealed graves that were associated with tragedy, such as the Spanish flu and other diseases, rather than with malicious abuse.
As part of the investigation, indigenous leaders presented conflicting oral stories. Apologists say any questioning of these stories is taboo because it’s “disrespectful” to the indigenous peoples. The same investigators, however, have no problem questioning the integrity of the Catholic Church.
Canada gave over $320 million to the Residential Schools Missing Children Community Support Fund and now has nothing to show for it. The Survivors’ Secretariat, a nonprofit investigating Canada’s oldest residential schools, recently reported that the federal government has denied further funding—an implicit acknowledgment that even the administration has lost faith in the bogus narrative of unmarked graves.
The investigation’s goal was truth and reconciliation. However, what could have been a transparent and collaborative effort became a hasty, reactionary campaign that shook the faithful, sowed division and destroyed tens of millions of dollars of church property.
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The lack of physical remains in Kamloops underscores the need for impartial investigations and responsible governance, particularly when the reputations of entire institutions—like the Catholic Church—are at stake.
Excavations should have been conducted immediately to uncover the truth. The public deserves more than a politicized narrative based on speculation, and Canada’s Catholics deserve relief from government-endorsed scapegoating.
Multiple Canadian academics have also questioned the commonly accepted figure of 150,000 Indigenous children being forced to attend residential schools, arguing that it is misleading. They contend that, for many indigenous families, these schools were a blessing—the sole pathway to education at a time when tribes could not provide anything of the sort.
Truth requires evidence, accountability and dedication—not hastily constructed emotional left-wing narratives fanning the flames of historical grievances.
Photo Credit: © Bumble Dee – stock.adobe.com
No More Corruption: Terminate the Office of Refugee Resettlement Immediately! Your Role Counts Under Obama and Biden, the ORR has morphed into a system that aids illegal aliens in exploiting American resources.
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