Kerby Anderson
Antisemitism is on the rise in nearly every country. Who would have expected to hear “Gas the Jews” in Sydney, Australia? Jewish students in Germany are being warned by their parents not to wear the Star of David in public. Justin Cohen in a BBC story warns, “The Jewish community at the moment is full of dread, full of fear, like I’ve never seen before.”
Those are just a few examples cited by Michael Brown in his commentary, “Wake Up World Before Jewish Blood is Shed in Your Country.” He is pleading with the public to take the recent antisemitic events seriously. He says we need to stand up, speak out, and push back.
The problem of antisemitism has become so severe that the European Union issued a statement about antisemitic incidents in Europe. “The spike of antisemitic incidents across Europe has reached extraordinary levels in the last few days, reminiscent of some of the darkest times in history. European Jews today are again living in fear.”
Alan Dershowitz concludes that “the Democratic Party now faces a choice.” He sees a fracture in the party between centrist and liberal Jews and the woke, anti-Israel progressives. He understands that left-leaning young people often inject vitality and enthusiasm into progressive causes. But now they seem to be embracing bloodlust. And he also points to faculty on elite college campuses that have signed open letters supporting the Hamas attacks.
He first voted for John F. Kennedy in 1960 and has voted for democrats ever since. But if the woke-hard-left succeeds in taking over the party, he predicts that millions of American Jews like him will turn from blue to red. This has implications for our next election.

Kerby Anderson
Two economics professors at Johns Hopkins University are warning that we could be facing tough economic times soon. These men aren’t doom-and-gloom economists, but sober-minded individuals concerned about the policies of the Federal Reserve.
We all know drivers who one minute floor the accelerator and then slam on the brakes. That is my metaphor for what has been happening over the last few years.
Back in March 2020, the government significantly increased the money supply to send money to US citizens during the pandemic. The M2 money supply “grew at an unprecedented, annualized rate of 16.5%.” That was more than three times the appropriate rate for the Fed’s inflation target.
Two years later in March 2022, the Federal Reserve changed course and started tightening the money supply by increasing the federal-funds rate. This “quantitative tightening” contracted the money supply. The economists explain that this was the most extreme contraction since 1933.
They point to the fact that the Federal Reserve “ignored the huge acceleration in the quantity of money and thus failed to anticipate the ensuing inflation.” You might remember when inflation began to show up in early 2021, we first heard that it was merely transitory and caused by the disruption of supply-chains.
Now that the Federal Reserve has pumped the brakes, these economists argue that we are facing the opposite problem. “The money supply has been contracting for 18 months, and soon, after the overhanging extra money from 2020-21 has been used up, spending will plunge, and inflation will fall” they believe even into deflation.
Their evaluation should be a warning to all of us that we may be facing some tough economic times in the future.