The Economy is Good! We are in a Recession!

How Can That Be?

By Mitchell Vexler, February 24, 2026

On February 21, Steve Moore, a highly regarded economist and conservative commentator, made the following statements.

“Economy is good”

“Inflation is down”

“Tariffs are working”

“I think the economy is doing really well, and I know that may put me in a minority, because some of these polls are showing people are worried about that a word you just said, affordability. But you know, we've been tracking the income numbers every month since Trump came into office for a second term, and so far over the first nine months or so, Americans' incomes are rising faster than the inflation rate, that means they have more affordability. In other words, they can afford more things, not less, and that's, by the way, a big reversal of what we saw under Joe Biden.”

This begs the question… Which economy… Who’s economy?  The Wall Street economy... or the Main Street economy?

Wall Street and the banksters can clearly pick the meat off the bones of Main Street. Perhaps their day of reckoning is coming as more and more of the fraud of debt and the creation of that debt surface.

Let’s examine a few facts with regard to Main Street – Mom and Pop.

1. Daily Affordability is Unobtainable – What can you do about it
   
   
2. The Amicus Brief contains the evidence of financial condition of homeowners, property owners and society with regard to the simple fact that roughly 42,000,000 households (37.7% of the household population) are in harm’s way of bankruptcy and or losing the roof over their head and cannot afford their home and the property taxes which continue to climb based on the overvaluation and over taxation demanded to service the school district bond fraud. 
   
   
3. The Debt Model of socialism
   
   
4. We Live in the World of Fraud and Fraudsters – How to Protect Yourself
   
   
5. Messages Received from Concerned Americans
   
   
6. Crisis of Confidence
   
   
7. The Thread of Inconsequential Actions
   
   
8. Car loan defaults at all time high. The share of US subprime borrowers at least 60 days behind on their auto loans rose to 6.90% in January 2026, the highest level on record, according to Fitch Ratings data going back to the early 1990s.
   
   
9. https://www.newyorkfed.org/microeconomics/hhdc Household Debt Balances Reach $18.8 Trillion in the Fourth Quarter. Total household debt increased by $191 billion to hit $18.8 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2025, according to the latest Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit. Mortgage balances grew by $98 billion to total $13.17 trillion at the end of December. The pace of mortgage originations continued increasing, with $524 billion newly originated in the fourth quarter. Credit card balances rose by $44 billion from the previous quarter and stood at $1.28 trillion, while auto loan balances increased by $12 billion to $1.67 trillion after holding steady last quarter. HELOC balances increased by $11.6 billion to $434 billion, while HELOC limits rose by $25 billion, continuing an expansion that began in 2022. Student loan balances rose by $11 billion to $1.66 trillion.
   
   
10. For the first time since 1996, gold has surpassed U.S. Treasury bonds as the largest reserve asset held by foreign central banks, with holdings nearing $4 trillion compared to $3.9 trillion in Treasuries.
    
    
11. Central banks are aggressively accumulating gold (over 1,100 tons in 2025 alone) as part of a global de-dollarization trend, reducing reliance on the U.S. financial system amid concerns over debt ($38T+), inflation, and weaponized sanctions.
    
    
12. Gold has delivered a 9.9% annual return over 25 years, outperforming U.S. Treasuries 2:1.
    
    
13. Rising global conflict, inflation and U.S. fiscal unsustainability have reinforced gold’s role as the ultimate geopolitical hedge, with no 3^rd party counter risk. If it is in your hands, you own it.
    
    
14. Gold has overtaken U.S. Treasury bonds to become the largest reserve asset held by foreign central banks worldwide for the first time in three decades.
    
    
15. According to the World Gold Council, the total value of gold held by foreign official institutions now approaches $4 trillion, narrowly exceeding their approximate $3.9 trillion in U.S. Treasury holdings. The last time gold held this top position was in 1996.

A recession, if not depression on Main Street, is crystal clear as the school district bond debt cannot be paid off and the liability only increases as a result of the compound cumulative interest which is paid to the lenders for the next 20 to 40 years, who chose to invest in fraud with the lability on the back of Mom and Pop. 

Given the above, let’s now consider the following:

• The Article, Chain the Doors of The Federal Reserve
  
  
• The Article, Your Money (METALS), Your Future, Neither a borrower, nor a lender be
  
  
• The Article, The Federal Reserve is a Failure – Thesis & Fact Part 2
  
  
• Fraud = Inflation
  
  
• “We have an ordinance” – we the city want you, a multi-family developer, to build a detention pond even though your land is adjacent to a stream and even though there is a detention pond utilized by Walmart (adjacent property on other side) that was designed to hold 60 acres of runoff. The cost of the pond was $250K plus ongoing maintenance. Effectively, this was paid for by rents collected from the residents of an apartment complex, which is inflation and very much fraud on society.  
  
  
• “It’s for the kids” - property taxes and school district bonds - creating a second mortgage, the equivalent of 70% of the value of your home, to pay for a morally and financially bankrupt school system that is producing students that can’t balance a checkbook and are ill-prepared for life. See article, For the Kids. The fraudulent bonds continue to earn interest and compound, instead of pushing the fraudsters into immediate bankruptcy. 
  
  
• “We need fuel taxes because it is good for the environment”. See article, Cultural Decay.
  
  
• “We need special hotel taxes to pay for a marketing campaign created by government employees to promote the state”. This is a make-work program that society and guests pay for and that literally delivers nothing of value. It inflates the cost of your hotel stay.
  
  
• According to Stephan Moore (not Steve Moore mentioned above) “Since the global warming crusade started some 30 years ago, the temperature of the planet has not been altered by one-tenth of a degree—as even the alarmists will admit. In other words, $16 trillion has been spent—a lot of people got very, very rich off the government largesse—but there is not a penny of measurable payoff. But it’s much worse than that. In economics there is a concept called opportunity cost: What could we have done with $16 trillion to make the world better off? What if the $16 trillion had been spent on clean water for poor countries, or preventing avoidable deaths from diseases like malaria, or  finding the cure for cancer?

The reality is… The enemy of society, regardless of political affiliation, is debt and the purveyors of debt that transferred the fraud they created onto the backs of all taxpaying citizens.  Society has been manipulated into thinking certain expenditures are necessary without consideration to the long-term cost of those unnecessary expenditures.  Society has been defrauded!

More information can be read at www.mockingbirdproperties.com/dcad and within the Articles, Letters & Discussions section.