The two most useful sources on all the “news” sites today might be our own Reader Ray and a weekend video by The Asian Guy on YouTube.  We’ll toss in our consigliere, too, because his phone call Monday is a dandy starting point.

Ring-a-Ding on NATO

My consigliere called in Sunday.  “Greenland is about getting out of NATO.  Because Trump KNOWS that would never fly in Congress. “

Between us, we figured that with the (alleged) Muslim re-conquest of Europe, [academics call this a Eurabia conspiracy theory] -which is dramatically changing the politics and behavior of the EU could be seen as threatening.  To some, it might not be long before the U.S.A. and Russia could have a common interest in keeping the “retooled Europe” contained.

Sure, the U.S. is going for Greenland – but Trump may be using it to leverage our way out of NATO.  Which tees up our two useful news sources.

Reader Ray’s find:

“Shockingly, our “brilliant” NATO Ally, the United Kingdom, is currently planning to give away the Island of Diego Garcia, the site of a vital U.S. Military Base, to Mauritius, and to do so FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER.”

Which he spied at Truth Details | Truth Social by DJT.

When a country acts, it is never for “no reason” – there’s an agenda in play.  And that’s real estate.

Which then gets us to The Asian Guy (a probable AI) which is explaining that what’s going on in the world right now is an Asset War.  Countries which are not self-sufficient in energy, food, raw materials, are facing a crisis.  They need trade because if they are not aligned with a Trade Bloc, they could “go Venezuela” in a heartbeat.

Markets hate this kind of thing (change).

Smacking the 85-DMA

The weekend’s “change in the news flow” is playing poorly in the markets.  Tariffs on Europe over Greenland could trigger (like it hasn’t) a Global Tariff War. Trump says he will ‘100%’ carry out Greenland tariffs threat, as EU vows to protect its interests.

Result? The Dow was set to smack into the 85 Day Moving Average, which in our work on the Peoplenomics side of the house has been a very good indicator of when to load the widows and orphans into lifeboats.

If you haven’t, the Ebbinghaus-Ure Model looks at mathematical “echoes” reflected in study of moving averages.  As you can see above, we expect the NASDAQ (based on early futures) to drop under the 85-DMA.  But we’ll also bear in mind that there is often a “bounce” off a major average line (the 50 and 200 DMAs have similar bounces).  This means if you like playing “slow speed investing” it’s at least time to have coffee and size things up.

Is This Race, Religion, or Revenue in Play?

It’s tempting to argue today’s geopolitics like it’s a census fight: who is “native,” who is “other,” who is “replacing” whom. But Europe makes that framing slippery on purpose. Most countries don’t track “race” in any consistent, comparable way across borders, and the definitions that do exist change over time.

Modern liberalism has made everyone “special” making “counting” a fool’s errand.  The EU especially ran from terms like Caucasian to “foreign born” because of two drivers:

• Legal Restrictions: In France, the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) does not provide data on race or ethnicity, as a 1978 law restricts collecting this information without specific waivers.
• Post-WWII Context: Modern Germany is particularly sensitive to collecting data on ethnicity due to the Nazi regime’s use of population registers, leading to a general avoidance of such metrics.

Result? The only pan-European numbers you can compare cleanly are proxies: foreign-born, non-citizen, asylum, migration flows. Which means when you hear “Europe is changing,” you’re usually hearing politics riding on top of statistics that were never designed for a straight line comparison back to 1945 or 1914.

Immigrants Brought Their Beliefs 

Religion is the next substitute category people reach for, and it has real explanatory power in some places, but it also misleads.

Religion gets dragged into this next, because it’s emotionally sticky and easy to argue about. But the data is uneven and the politics are louder than the spreadsheets. Even when you can estimate a trend, “religion” still doesn’t tell you citizenship, tax base, voting power, or who is doing the logistics work that keeps a country running. The reliable trail is still money, movement, and geography.

Which brings us to revenue and leverage: NATO’s “write-a-check” cost is not the monster number people imagine. On the narrow definition of NATO’s common-funded budgets, you’re talking roughly $0.8–$0.9 billion a year for the U.S. share (order of magnitude), not hundreds of billions. The hundreds of billions are U.S. defense spending that supports deterrence generally, but that’s a Washington budget choice, not a bill from Brussels. So if the political temperature is rising, it’s not because NATO’s internal overhead is breaking the bank. It’s because leverage works: tariffs, trade threats, basing rights, and shipping routes are all pressure points where a small push can produce a big reaction.

Revenue matters on the home front, too.  The U.S. Defense Industry is massive and it’s a powerful generator of jobs.  And to appreciate it, consider where much of the global combat fighter fleets were made.  Some of that was done with FMS – foreign military sales – and we are the biggest arms merchant in the world.  How big is that?   Lemme whip out the green eyeshades…

As of early 2026, the most recent complete data for U.S. Foreign Military Sales (FMS) is for fiscal year 2024 (October 1, 2023, to September 30, 2024), totaling $117.9 billion. This marked a 45.7% increase from FY2023’s $80.9 billion and was the highest annual total on record at the time, including $96.9 billion funded by allies and partners, $11.8 billion through Foreign Military Financing (FMF), and $9.2 billion via other security cooperation programs.  Think inflation and lobbying and move up from there.

Now Let’s Suppose… If someone was President – who really didn’t want more wars – one way to turn down the heat on the home front might be to dial back overseas sales.  Spend the defense money at home. After all, why sell weapons to potential adversaries?

Next Look at the Chessboard

Greenland sits on Arctic posture, North Atlantic lanes, and the future resource map; Diego Garcia is the kind of location planners don’t talk about publicly because it’s the quiet hinge of power projection; and Europe is where a trade shock can ricochet into alliance cohesion fast.

The Greenland tariff talk being floated in the news isn’t really about “teaching Europe a lesson” on spreadsheets, it’s about forcing alignment through economic pain and political signaling. When you lay the pieces together, “race vs religion” is mostly the story people tell themselves. The operational story is revenue: who controls the routes, the bases, the choke points, and the cash flows when the world gets tighter.

Then there’s the Fusing Problem

This is the “one more angle” that is beyond our (present, local) modeling power:

If the U.S. were no longer in NATO, one argument is that the automatic “tripwire” linking a Baltic or Polish border incident to a U.S. commitment would be weaker, which could reduce the odds of Washington being pulled into a Europe-based Article 5 escalation from a miscalculation, hybrid attack that goes too far, or a fast-moving local clash. In that framing, Europe would have to carry more of its own deterrence burden and would likely become more cautious about forward posture, while the U.S. could try to limit its exposure to alliance-driven obligations. The counterpoint is that removing the U.S. could also weaken deterrence and make limited probing more tempting, so “reduced Article 5 risk” comes at the price of potentially higher regional instability.

Putin’s been fairly clear: Russia is going back to Tsarist borders (think Catherine the Great).  And Eastern Europe has long been problematic.  Vladimir Putin wants to recreate brutal 18th century Russian Empire in Ukraine (April 2022).

We will cover the 1929 Replay angles to all this in the Peoplenomics ChartPack tomorrow.  Plus there’s a dandy (serious software and AI engineering (PhD) level) discussion of how centralized power structures are trying to steal “freedom to choose” from your future AI capabilities.

Around the Ranch: Geo-Storming

Not a lot of point to turning on the HF ham radio gear today.  (I may get a few things done, instead).

The reason for the crap radio conditions?

ALERT: Geomagnetic K-index of 8, 9-

Threshold Reached: 2026 Jan 20 1021 UTC Synoptic Period: 0900-1200 UTC Active Warning: Yes NOAA Scale: G4 – Severe NOAA Space Weather Scale descriptions can be found at www.swpc.noaa.gov/noaa-scales-explanation

Potential Impacts: Area of impact primarily poleward of 45 degrees Geomagnetic Latitude. Induced Currents – Possible widespread voltage control problems and some protective systems may mistakenly trip out key assets from the power grid. Induced pipeline currents intensify. Spacecraft – Systems may experience surface charging; increased drag on low earth orbit satellites, and tracking and orientation problems may occur. Navigation – Satellite navigation (GPS) degraded or inoperable for hours. Radio – HF (high frequency) radio propagation sporadic or blacked out. Aurora – Aurora may be seen as low as Alabama and northern California.

I wanted to mention this for a simple reason.  We spent a lot of antenna theory for End of World disaster planning.  Yet, here comes the Sun and there goes the HF circuit.

Next Prepping Gem:  

Event type: Earthquake
Region: Southern California
Geographic coordinates: 33.892N, 116.171W
Magnitude: 4.9

This would be a dandy time to check water and emergency prep.

Wild-Eyed Speculation Department

Remember (and yes, this will sound nuts, but go with me…)  We still cling to our crackpot theory that the Einstein e=mc2 equation is bi-directional.  Such that when you smash atoms, you can release oodles of energy.

But, going the other way. if you put a ball out in from of an Active Sun (Earth, say?) high output solar striking the Earth might create (a kind of energy condensation) more matter.

And – if correct – that may power things like the Cali quake and the derailment that initialized the train collision in Spain over the weekend.

Takeout?  With all the inbound energy, the visionaries referencing a megaquake may be right.  Just a matter of when.  Our guess?  Around equinox time because that’s when crustal loading will be shifting at the highest of the year…

Meantime, at the High Dive Competition:  Aggregate Index peaked on January 9, BTC peaked October 4 and has done what could be seen as an Elliott 1 down, and an a-b-c- 2 up of a possible Wave 2…so a fine time will be had by the financial judges this week.

Beware the Treasury Buyback at 11 AM Eastern…

Write when you shake it off,

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