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It’s The Economy
Darrell Castle talks about the economy in general as well as the United States economy specifically, and why American families are struggling financially.
Transcription / Notes
IT’S THE ECONOMY
Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. This is Friday the 21st day of November in the year of our Lord 2025. I will be talking about the economy in general as well as the United States economy specifically. You probably remember when Democrat policy advisor James Carville told then candidate Bill Clinton, “it’s the economy stupid.” He was correct and the advice is still correct today.
Remember that next week is Thanksgiving so there will be no Castle Report. I will join you again on Friday December 5.
Carville was a very effective political operative in those days and was apparently able to convince Mr. Clinton that the people who would elect him or his opponent cared more about their standard of living than they did about any foreign policy issue. They should have cared more about donating their children to the foreign policy whims of whoever was in office but when push comes to shove everyone has to eat. A family of four, and those relationships used to exist, is acutely aware of what food and gasoline cost.
I’m a layperson in economics in the sense that I’m not trained in economics but I do have a family with the same economic needs as everyone else. Most importantly I have been a bankruptcy attorney for 46 years which has kept me in the forefront of the economic needs of ordinary people. Tens of thousands of people and businesses have told me about their struggles in cities all over the country and I have helped them find a way through their economic troubles.
With all that said let’s look at some of the economic facts that trouble the country right now. When I say, as I do from time to time, that an economic catastrophe is coming with the only question being when it will arrive, why do I believe that. Not much makes sense these days since America is the hottest economy attracting trillions in capital but inflation is still present and it seems that almost weekly another major corporation announces layoffs or store closings. Last week the fast-food chain, Wendy’s, announced that it would be closing 400 restaurants. Amazon announced that it would be replacing about 30,000 employees with robots.
The economy depends on federal spending and that is now completely out of control. My fear is that so many irreversible commitments have been made that the federal government is not capable of living within its means and if true that would signal eventual disaster. Fiscal year 2025, which ended on September 30 of this year posted a deficit of $1.8 trillion. Deficit means that the government spent $1.8 trillion more than it received in revenue. It’s simple if you think about it from the standpoint of your family. Suppose you make $75 thousand per year but you spend $100 thousand and you do that year after year. You know what is going to happen eventually and that means you will be in my office to consult about bankruptcy.
You can keep the plates in the air for a while by borrowing, pay day loans and the like, and by using one credit card to pay another until there is no more credit limit left on any cards. You can last for a while by just making interest payments on the cards but then you can’t even do that. This problem gets worse and worse until it becomes unfixable and bankruptcy results. That is exactly what the federal government is doing to manage its spending. One of the major warning signs of impending trouble that economists always warn us about is when interest becomes the biggest item in the budget.
It doesn’t exceed medical expenses or social security yet but this year, ominously, interest was higher than the massive defense budget. Just as you do with your credit cards the government has to borrow just to pay the interest. In other words, the government is paying debt by incurring more debt which drives the debt and next year’s payments even higher. This all means that annual interest, which now exceeds 20% of tax revenue will continue to increase. The debt is purchased primarily by foreign governments, central banks, large corporations, commercial banks and individual investors. Recently, in an ominous trend, those foreigners have been net sellers of U.S. debt.
That means that the financing of the debt falls to domestic investors meaning you and me. People individually, through retirement accounts or through purchase of some investment fund, finance government debt with their savings. It is necessary that individual Americans do well because they have to save to invest in U.S. debt. Unfortunately, this year net savings is on track to be less than $1trillion, the lowest figure in many years while the deficit is on track to be roughly $2 trillion.
This all means there are not enough foreign buyers and not enough domestic savers to finance the debt so the only option is for the banking system, i.e., the Federal Reserve, to create the money to pay for the excessive spending. I say excessive because if you spend more than you make with no plan to pay it, I call that excessive. When you get yourself into that cycle you have to stop, to reverse course before it is too late. It’s almost like alcoholism or some other addiction. You can stop for a while, but then it’s too late and you can’t stop on your own.
Inflation is the result when money is created and pumped into the economy without any corresponding increase in production. Energy, it is estimated, is about 50% of the cost of producing everything. When you make energy decisions on a national level that cut back available energy and add to the costs, everything increases in price across the economy. When politicians of one party or another decide to put on their virtue signaling act by refusing to allow domestic production it costs everyone. Everything families use, food, fuel, autos, and clothes for individuals cost more and the products necessary for business from machinery to microchips increase as well.
There is no corresponding increase in wages for people so their standard of living is diminished. If a person usually pays $2.75 per gallon for gas and uses 20 gallons per week that is $55 per week so if it goes to $3.00 he just took a $5.00 reduction in his standard of living. People see this happening and they circle the wagons by cutting back on spending. When people reduce spending huge corporations such as Walmart and Amazon cut back as well which means jobs are lost and the process gets worse and worse. Lay-offs are becoming common and technology such as AI along with robotics makes reducing the workforce easier to do.
As I said earlier, Amazon has announced plans to replace 30,000 workers with robots. Those machines never have sick days, they take no vacations, they do not get pregnant, and they don’t worry about retirement. Bad policies from the federal government and most policies are bad, make our lives more complicated and more expensive. For example, Obamacare was called The Affordable Care Act but it has made the cost of healthcare much higher and the cost of insurance is skyrocketing.
There are several indicators that can be followed to track the status of the economy. The first and most obvious is shipping records. The giant container ships that you see pictures of and view on television represent the health of the population economically. Timber is another indicator and prices are lower this year. That’s good for consumers because it means things made from timber are also lower but it also bodes ill for the overall health of the economy. Lower demand for timber means lower demand for new houses. Builders aren’t building as much and that means the housing market is slow.
Not many are looking to build a new home because they can’t afford it. Instead, people who have low-interest rate mortgages are sitting tight which means fewer homes on the market and higher prices. The young suffer because they don’t have a lower interest rate loan and houses are rising so they can’t afford to move out of their apartment to have a family. Most people who start a family want a place with a yard for their kids to play in, I know I did when my daughter was born. High home prices mean that for the first time in U.S. history, the average age of first-time home buyers is above 40.
The president sees all this as well as I do and he is very conscious of the fact that his tariffs have added to the cost of everything whether he admits it or not. A tariff is a charge whether we call it a tax or not, it is a fee we charge foreigners for the privilege of having access to the American market. The result when it ripples through the economy is more money burning a hole in the government’s pocket and higher prices for individuals. The president sees that and he hears the crying so he comes up with a plan to send $2000 to each American below a certain income. I’m opposed to it for many reasons but the primary one is that it will fuel more inflation and make everything cost more and be self-defeating. Who wouldn’t want an extra $2000 he hasn’t earned but in the long run it will not help. My local newspaper, which is owned by the USA Today group and therefore is an almost exact copy of the New York Times, except the sports coverage is not as good, said in an article I received last Wednesday that the cost of it “could be $600 million” while the tariffs have brought in only $300 million.
So, the cost could be this or that but I assume everything in the article is slanted and a lie so you can’t depend on it for information. Instead, the paper should say, look folks, this country is $38 trillion in debt and on track to spend $2 trillion more than it takes in so to have some chance to avoid a catastrophe use the money to at least reduce the deficit.
Finally, folks,
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Alec Penstone Was Right
Darrell Castle talks about an interview of a British veteran that was conducted on Good Morning Great Britain on Veteran's Day earlier this week and the "viral" result of his comments.
Transcription / Notes
ALEC PENSTONE WAS RIGHT
Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. This is Friday the 14th day of November in the year of our Lord 2025. Last Tuesday the 11th was Veterans Day here in America or what they still call Armistice Day in Great Britain. I will be talking about that by using an interview of a British veteran named Alec Penstone that was given on British television and the “viral” result of his comments.
Mr. Penstone was selected as the veteran to be interviewed and to represent all British veterans on the British television show Good Morning Britain. His interview was live and obviously intended to convey to the British public that the TV show, its hosts, and the network in general are just as patriotic and honoring of veterans as the general public. In other words, they intended to traffic from his honor and his willingness to serve in a time when service required great sacrifice.
Mr. Penstone, now 100 years old served in the British navy on Arctic Convoy duty. The convoys carried goods from Great Britain and America around the Arctic route to Russia. Without those convoys Russia might have been defeated and knocked out of the war and the 3 million men, 3000 tanks, and 4000 aircraft committed by the Nazis to the defeat of Russia could have been used on the Western front to oppose the D-day landings so it was vital service.
Yes, it was vital but also very dangerous because ships were hunted by German submarines and surface raiders. Being hit by a German torpedo or naval gunfire was certain death in a freezing Arctic ocean but men like Mr. Penstone were there and willing to endure the conditions to prevail. I tell of his exploits to show you that the man was and is a genuine war hero and not just someone sitting in an office drinking coffee while others were out in the mud and blood.
So, the hosts of the show sought to bask in the honor and dignity of the man and I suppose absorb some of it onto themselves but it just didn’t go according to script. The question was ‘what are your thoughts on Remembrance Day and what does it mean for the country”. The old sailor responded like this.
“I can see in my mind’s eye those rows and rows of white stones. All the hundreds of my friends, everybody else who gave their lives. For what? The country of today. No, I’m sorry the sacrifice wasn’t worth the result that it is now.”
The female host taken aback by the man’s honesty said, “Oh Alec, I’m sorry you feel like that” Perhaps Alec has some mental illness or a touch of dementia, after all he is 100 years old. The male host decided to give him a chance to explain his answer. “What do you mean by that, though? “Maybe this would, give the man a chance to denounce all those British people who have been protesting the fact that Great Britain, the country he fought for, is no longer British. If that is what they expected, he left them disappointed. “What we fought for was our freedom. We find that even now, it’s a darn sight worse than when I fought for it.” Yes, that was his answer and the hosts were a little unprepared for it. I’m going to use a little poetic license and say that he fought so that Western Civilization might endure and he, with tears in his eyes, knows that it has not.
The host in conclusion of the interview said, “it’s our job now, isn’t it, to make it the country that you fought for.” I will answer Mr. Penstone and say no that isn’t your job because your job is to make it the opposite of the country he fought for. I don’t think you want this to be a Christian nation with traditions and people who defended that concept against Vikings, Romans, and Nazis, but that is why he fought. Well, I have put my words in the mouth of this Centenarian war hero who fought Nazi Germany to preserve his country’s freedom so I will give an account of why I think he is correct.
Mr. Jefferson said in his declaration that when you make such charges you must explain them. “A decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.” I will, then, give some reasons why I think freedom here in America is not what it was and certainly not what it was intended to be.
When people see what is happening in America they know something is wrong and since they have experienced nothing but the globalist-dominated propaganda of what amounts to public education they are driven to grasp at a charismatic leader who promises relief through ideas as dumb as socialism. It works like this, they see that 90% of all wealth and that might be a low estimate, is controlled by 10% of the people and again those numbers are probably a little low but that is what the economists tell us.
The young are propagandized but that doesn’t mean they are stupid. The charismatic leader tells them we can just make everything free for you and we can make the 10% or less pay for it. The young suddenly realize that although they hardly have any of the wealth, they have more than 50% of the votes and that gives them the power to attempt the looting. There is an old adage in economics that says money goes where it is treated the best. So, anyone who has any money that will be looted by the charismatic leader flees to safer ground. They see the storm troopers on the horizon and they flee before it is too late.
In America, minorities have rights that can’t legally be taken by the majority. The majority looks around and concludes that it can arrange things to discriminate against any people that it wants too. That’s what all the redistricting of congressional districts have been about for the last 60 or so years and what the drive for equity and egalitarianism has been about. It’s all a globalist scheme to mold humanity into an amorphous mess that is easily controlled by charismatic leaders chosen and funded by them. It can’t and won’t work but it is also the opposite of the freedom that Mr. Penstone fought for. That is freedom of the individual to work, study, and achieve to limits of one’s own merits not to have a person’s status in life dictated by a centralized control mechanism.
I could give examples of places socialism has been tried and failed all day long but there is no time for that. I will just say that the new mayor of New York City is sometimes called a communist but he is not because that utopian dream is not achievable. Lenin and Stalin tried to achieve it but they only got to an advanced form of socialism. Yes, Stalinism is just the advanced state of socialism.
Let me move on now to other destroyers of the American dream. They are destroyers of the individual and national freedom that Mr. Penstone fought for. They are examples of the surrender of independence upon which concept America was founded. Yes since World War ll at least, if not before, America has gradually come to be controlled by some type of globalist conglomerate. How else could you explain what I am about to describe.
The U.S, plans to build a military base in Israel at an estimated cost of about half a billion dollars. That is the prebuilding estimate and of course the actual cost will escalate because it always does. I could stop there and tell you that this idea is perhaps the most stupid idea ever conceived by the minds of people totally controlled by globalists. I need, however, to describe what seems to be happening and of course I still hold out hope that it won’t happen but it is under way as I speak.
The base will be located in Israel along the Gaza Strip and will house several thousand American troops whose mission task is to maintain the ceasefire in the region. It is the result of a negotiated agreement between the U.S. and Israel. I have to stop and ask what in the world is going on here. I just can’t understand how and why American parents are supposed to send their children in harm’s way because it’s in some other country’s best interest. This seems like absolute madness to me and is proof positive that the president and through him the entire administration is totally under the control and domination of a foreign country and its advocates here in the U.S.
Wait a minute though doesn’t that violate every principle that this country was founded on and that hundreds of thousands have died to protect. Yes it does folks but we are doing it anyway. My guess is that there won’t be too many peeps from congress about this on either side of the isle. Why, well obviously, they are controlled by the same lobby representing the same country that seems to have the president’s full support. They line up at the microphone to compete and debate who is the most pro-Israel among them. Woe to any member who fails this test because he or she will be quickly out of office or at best pushed into a no influence corner of the room.
Let’s take a moment to take the 10,000-foot view of this as they say and by the way this base is supposed to house 10,000 troops. So, to summarize, decades of American support, American money, American blood going all the way back to 1948. Washington has destroyed at least 5 countries in the region so now it is being tasked with the cost of rebuilding and rehabilitating the region and all its people from ordinary people to insane terrorists.
I’m going out on a limb here I know but I’m going to say that when all those Maga voters voted in the last presidential election they thought they were voting for America first. They voted for what was in America’s best interest not the best interest of another country. This is complete madness and I can’t think of another word for it. I am in a state of disbelief coupled with sadness and topped off with extreme anger so I guess that makes me an extremist.
Finally, folks,
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The Marine Corps Lives Forever
Darrell Castle talks about the 250th Birthday of the U.S. Marine Corps, the NYC mayoral election held last Tuesday, and how a self-described socialist won the election.
Transcription / Notes
THE MARINE CORPS LIVES FOREVER
Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. This is Friday the 7th day of November in the year of our Lord 2025. Next Monday the 10th of November is the 250th anniversary of the birth of the United States Marine Corps, an organization that I served with for four years more than 50 years ago. The title comes from a belief drummed into our heads back then, Marines live and they die but the Marine Corps lives forever.
I am not going to spend this entire report taking you down memory lane because there are just too many bad things to talk about. This Report that I do each week is in a way a journey through the sewers of the world. People often ask me why don’t you ever talk about any good news and my answer is, because I just don’t see any. Often, good news is in the eye of the beholder and it depends, to quote an old saying, on whose ox is being gored. The point is though that someone’s ox is always being gored and politics seems to be the art of making it the other guy’s ox.
I wonder if other people with military experience remember it the same way I do. I remember mostly the pleasant times of friendships with my buddies, of sitting in bars with them all over the world. When I served in the Marine Corps the number of Lieutenants was very small so you could walk into a military bar anywhere in the world and odds are you would see someone you knew. We all had the same thing in common and that gave us purpose and camaraderie. That’s what I remember most of the time and I forget the moments of sheer terror and extreme boredom that went along with it.
I take great pride in my Marine Corps service and in its 250-year existence. I guess its one of those, you had to be there kind of things, but this 250th reminds us that next 4th of July will be the 250th anniversary of the United States. That’s right the Marine Corps existed before the country a fact that was pounded into us by our leaders in the early days. Those are some of the things I remember as I look back over more than 50 years but now it’s time to move back into the real world of today.
Sometimes even the real world doesn’t seem real or we might say that can’t be real and with AI you never know for sure. We try one fantasy and when it fails we try another. We use one imaginary problem to escape from a different problem that perhaps was not a fantasy but was caused by reliance on a fantasy. For example, last Tuesday New Yorkers tried to escape from one of those fantasies by embracing an even more toxic fantasy. Time will show the results but if history is any indicator the results will be horrendous. That is the result history has given each and every time populations have tried to indulge in the New York fantasy. Yes, the people of New York elected a self-described socialist as their mayor. The race was not very close and Republican Curtis Sliwa did not get enough votes to deny the second-place candidate the race, but Andrew Cuomo lost despite spending more than $65 million. He did not have the message and New Yorkers apparently are tired of the same old corrupt politicians so they voted for a new George Sorus funded candidate. Yes, George, it seems, owns a lot of American politicians.
I obviously don’t know the mind of each individual New York voter but apparently Mamdani found his appeal among the young and that generation, the one coming behind my daughter voted him into office. That generation knows they are struggling and they know that what they were promised turned out to be a fantasy that could not deliver anything but promises. Go to college using debt to obtain a meaningless 4-year degree and have a pretty good middle class job which doesn’t provide nearly enough to live in this new credit-based economy, especially in an expensive Democrat city.
These young people know that the average age of first-time home buyers is now 38 years old and that is the generation ahead of them not their generation. So, they are struggling and the promises they have relied on, the promises that gave their parents a good life are just not there for them. No matter what happens with interest rates, and despite the efforts of the federal government to stimulate the economy with more debt it just gets worse because debt is the economy and debt is toxic. They turn to a man who is basically foreign to all those promises because he comes from a different place and he is backed and funded from different sources that, in my carefully researched opinion are intentionally destructive.
He has a different answer for them and his solution is very simple. Why has no one before him thought that these problems could be alleviated by just making some things free. City run grocery stores should solve the high cost of food, right. What about the cost of running perhaps the world’s biggest public transportation system, and the cost of using public transportation. Pretty simple, just make it free along with free childcare and we can reduce rent with a rent stabilization freeze. Now, we know from experience that rental real property will not be maintained or upgraded because landlords can’t raise rent to cover it, but oh well.
How do we pay for all of it. Well, that is simple too we just take the money from the rich and give it to the poor so that makes the new mayor a kind of modern-day Robin Hood. There are problems out there in this economy that will be solved one way or another. If they are not solved through some type of action, they will solve themselves in some version of collapse. The fantasy of everything free will not solve the problems I am talking about because this economy is based on credit and debt and that is getting out of hand. Everything free is the opposite of the correct solution which is to pay down debt or at least do something to stop or even slow down its increase.
I don’t see any evidence of that solution being tried in fact it just gets worse and worse. Delinquencies in debt are rising rapidly, in auto, credit card, and student loan debt. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, delinquencies hit a record $18.4 trillion in the 2nd quarter of 2025. The national debt hit $38 trillion which causes strain across the economy as service on all that debt puts downward pressure on our standard of living. So, those are a few of the problems that confront the general government and now confront the people of New York City.
The new mayor makes it very clear that he wants to be a national figure by declaring war on Donald Trump and by making his successful campaign about Trump. He seems to have convinced his supporters that there is a vast pool of money and they are not getting their share and that is because of greed. If the people who control the vast pool of money were not so greedy and so selfish then they would release the money so the New York voters could have their financial problems relieved by getting things they used to pay for free. All this greed seems to make the new mayor very angry and he finally revealed that anger in his victory speech.
He seems to be an egalitarian as well, this mayor, because he intends to cancel New York’s school programs for gifted students. So, the gifted students will join all the others at the bottom so we can’t have meritocracy whereby a young person is able to achieve all that a free society allows. Instead, your gifted child will be confined with all the non-gifted ones hopefully in the middle, but more likely at the bottom. If that is your message, Mr. or Ms. politician, apparently those at the bottom and in the middle will support you in large numbers.
There is a possibility that this socialist victory in New York City will turn out to be a positive for Republicans nationwide. The new mayor sees himself as a national figure as I said and that might not be such a bad thing. The Democrat victories which seem so significant are concentrated along the coasts and in the large Democrat cities. In other words, this self-described socialist mayor obviously made significant inroads with his audience and his message resonated with them. On the other hand, it’s the same audience and doesn’t indicate any new trend. This new mayor then, is the new face of the Democrat Party and we will see how that plays outside the coastal Democrat strongholds.
The elite of the current Democrat Party don’t want this socialist as their new face, but he claims it anyway so they spend time distancing themselves from him after he won. The Republicans should learn from this because the message is that people are concerned about bread-and-butter issues, literally. Sometimes the elite in Washington seem unable to relate to ordinary people who care more about the cost of ground beef than what new missile the Chinese are testing. The government shutdown which is interfering with food stamps is a good example. People are dependent on them and can’t seem to live without them since most of their lives have been spent eating food courtesy of other taxpayers.
I’m just saying that the current officers of our government in Washington have not taken advantage of what the Democrats have done. My message might be, they admit they have forced this government shutdown to obtain political leverage so they get their leverage and you don’t get food. The people on the other side of the politics of the new mayor need to understand that there are legitimate reasons why people voted for him and those reasons should be addressed. It’s not much different from when Trump was elected and instead of asking why, and what are the voters concerned about, Democrats developed only one message. Trump is bad, he’s a racist, he’s a fascist and other than that we have nothing to say. So,
