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There are two types of evidence in criminal cases — direct evidence and circumstantial evidence. Direct evidence comes in the form of things like confessions, admissions, or eyewitness testimony. Circumstantial evidence comes in the form of indirect evidence.

For people who believe only in direct evidence, they will never accept the fact that the U.S. military-intelligence establishment orchestrated and carried out the assassination of President Kennedy. That’s because there is no direct evidence that has ever surfaced establishing the guilt of the national-security establishment in the assassination. Such people will always fall within the group of people who lament, “Golly, I guess we just will never know who killed JFK.” People in this group will spend their lives scoffing at the “conspiracy theorists” who have arrived at a different conclusion.

On the other hand, for people like me who believe in the validity of circumstantial evidence, there is now no reasonable doubt but that the U.S. national-security establishment orchestrated and carried out the assassination of President Kennedy.

Let me give you an example of direct evidence and circumstantial evidence. Let’s assume that a witness in a court case testifies that he couldn’t sleep and that he saw it raining all night long.  That’s direct eyewitness evidence that it rained. But let’s assume that he fell asleep instead. The next morning, it isn’t raining but he states that he saw that water was flooding the streets, the lawns were drenched, water was dripping from trees, and nearby streams were overflowing. That is circumstantial — or indirect — evidence that it rained during the night. That evidence can be admitted into a trial, and it is just as valid as direct evidence.

As a former civil and criminal trial attorney, I was trained to think like a lawyer. The more books I read about the Kennedy assassination, the more I became convinced that the military and the CIA were responsible for JFK’s murder. However, I also felt that there simply wasn’t sufficient evidence — direct or circumstantial — to convict beyond a reasonable doubt, which is the standard of proof used in a criminal case.

There certainly wasn’t any direct evidence in the form of a confession or an admission of guilt in some long-secret memorandum. And while there was a lot of circumstantial evidence of guilt, it simply wasn’t enough, I felt, to convince a jury of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

Everything changed for me when I read Douglas Horne’s five-volume book Inside the Assassination Records Review Board. As I finished reading Horne’s book, I now knew that the national-security establishment had orchestrated and carried out the assassination. No, not by direct evidence but rather by circumstantial evidence.

Horne, who served on the staff of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) in the 1990s, firmly established beyond a reasonable doubt that the military conducted a fraudulent autopsy on JFK’s body on the very night of the assassination. Why does that matter? Because there is no innocent explanation for a fraudulent autopsy being carried out on the body of the president. Once one concludes that the autopsy was fraudulent, one cannot help but conclude that the military-intelligence establishment is guilty of the president’s murder. There is simply no way around it.

I set forth the evidence surrounding the fraudulent autopsy in my book The Kennedy Autopsy, which is essentially a short, easy-to-read synopsis of Horne’s five-volume book. Let me give you just one example of what I’m talking about when I use the word “fraud.”

The physicians who treated JFK at Parkland Hospital steadfastly maintained that he had a massive exit-sized hole in the lower back of his head. They weren’t the only ones. So did nurses who were inside the treating room. So did a Secret Service agent. So did a newsman outside Parkland. In fact, so did two FBI agents at Bethesda Hospital, where the military conducted its autopsy on a top-secret basis. Their evidence constituted direct, eyewitness evidence that there was a massive-exit-sized hole in the lower back of Kennedy’s head. That direct evidence was later corroborated by circumstantial evidence provided by a Navy film expert in Washington, a Navy chief petty officer named Saundra Spencer, who developed, on a top-secret, classified basis, post-mortem autopsy photographs of the president at the Navy photographic center in Washington, D.C. Her sworn testimony before the ARRB in the 1990s established that the autopsy photographs she developed showed a big, exit-sized hole in the back of the president’s head, just as the Dallas eyewitnesses had stated.

A great documentary to watch is JFK: What the Doctors Saw. Or just watch this interview of Dr. Robert McClellan, who was one of the treating physicians at Parkland. Go to 6:05 to watch McClelland describing the massive hole in the back of Kennedy’s head. McClelland is now deceased but for the rest of his life, he never wavered in what he witnessed that fateful afternoon.

Just recently, in the halls of Congress, Dr. Donald Curtis, who I think is now the only physician who treated Kennedy who is still alive, gave sworn testimony before the House Oversight Committee’s Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets. Ironically, Doug Horne gave sworn testimony at the same hearing.

Curtis’s testimony is summarized in an excellent article posted today entitled “The Double Significance of Dr. Curtis” by a lawyer and JFK assassination researcher named Lawrence P. Schapf. Snapf writes, “Dr. Curtis told Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, chair of the the task force, that as he stood next to the president’s left leg, he saw Dr. Clark lift the president’s head and call over each of the department heads to show them the fatal head wound, so that they could see for themselves why he had stopped the resuscitation. Curtis said they all got a good look at the head wound. He remembers Dr. Clark mentioning the cerebellum several times. The cerebellum is inside the lower rear portion of the skull and is key to motor functions.”

So, what’s the problem? The problem is that an official military autopsy photograph shows the back of JFK’s head to be fully intact — that is, no big, exit-sized hole in the back of JFK’s head. Thus, if what all those eyewitnesses stated is true and correct, then that military photograph has to be fraudulent. There is no way around it.

For me, as a lawyer, the direct evidence of all those eyewitnesses, including some of the most competent, honest physicians in the country, is so overwhelming and persuasive that there is only one reasonable conclusion that can be drawn — the military’s autopsy photograph is false and fraudulent.

Moreover, that’s only one part of the overall autopsy fraud. The other parts, including two different brain examinations that were carried out as part of the autopsy that autopsy physicians claimed was only one brain examination, are detailed in my book and Horne’s book.

Once one reaches the conclusion that the military’s autopsy was fraudulent, that necessarily leads to a much bigger conclusion — guilt beyond a reasonable doubt on the part of the U.S. national-security establishment in the assassination itself. That’s because there is no innocent explanation for a fraudulent autopsy. None! A fraudulent autopsy is conclusive circumstantial evidence of guilt on the part of the military-intelligence establishment in the assassination of President Kennedy. There is simply no way around it.

Reprinted with permission from Future of Freedom Foundation.

A victory for pregnancy centers in Pennsylvania has produced hope for pregnancy care workers in the Keystone State.

The commonwealth’s former attorney general Michelle Henry had created a page titled, “Report Reproductive Health Deceptive Activity,” in 2023 on the AG website for clients of pregnancy centers to report complaints.

Local pregnancy help advocates recently discovered that the website has been removed.

The Pennsylvania Pregnancy Wellness Collaborative (PPWC) sent two of its members to the new attorney general’s office April 15 with a mission. David Sunday, openly pro-life, was elected in November as the new AG.

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PPWC, as defined in its 2024 opening press conference by the organization’s President Sarah Bowen is an, “initiative unifying pregnancy medical clinics and resource centers that provide compassionate and essential care for women and families in Pennsylvania.”

In 2023, Democrat Henry publicly and falsely stated the website was necessary because most pregnancy centers were not licensed and therefore not providing adequate medical care.

PPWC members Jill Hartman, executive director of A Woman’s Concern in Lancaster, and Jon Merwarth, executive director of Bright Hope Support Centers in Allentown, sat down with the attorney general’s council. Sunday was unable to attend the meeting.

“I believe they really wanted to hear what we had to say,” Hartman said.

Hartman and Merwarth came before the council with statistics refuting the data presented by the previous attorney general office.

Hartman said Henry’s move to depreciate Pennsylvania centers stemmed from the 2022 report by “progressive” collaborative The Alliance titled, “Designed to Deceive: A Study of Crisis Pregnancy Centers in Nine States.” Among those nine states placed under scrutiny was Pennsylvania, along with Alaska, California, Idaho, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington.

“That report is what drove much of the false info,” Hartman said.

In the report, researchers incorrectly declared Pennsylvania clinics committed false advertising by using the terms “choice” and “options” in their websites.

The PPWC members addressed these claims with the AG office during the April 15 visit.

Hartman presented the PPWC study, “Optimizing Maternal Health in Pennsylvania” in the visit, highlighting the positive impact of pregnancy help centers.

She shared this document which she drafted in response to Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s efforts to start a state-funded pilot pregnancy center.

“There are 87 centers in 161 locations throughout the commonwealth,” Hartman noted in the document. “These centers represent 78 percent of the 67 counties in Pennsylvania with focus on areas with the greatest need.”

“We represent 85 percent of the counties in Pennsylvania,” she said in an interview with Pregnancy Help News.

The site on the attorney general’s page “was set up to convince people to be against us,” Hartman said, adding she is not aware of any complaints registered or investigated from the site’s inception.

She added that PPWC and pregnancy centers in Pennsylvania want what is best for clients as they look for support, saying, “We are wanting data to drive decisions rather than false narratives.”

Hartman said the collaborative is aware there will be folks in the Commonwealth who will choose not to see pregnancy centers as a resource.

“It’s fine if you do not agree with us,” she said. “What’s not fine is that you lie about us.”

Nearly four weeks after the visit with the new AG, a PPWC member went online to review the attorney general website and discovered instead the words, “Oops! That page cannot be found.”

“We are just so pleased,” Hartman said. “We were just coming off from the Day of Advocacy press conference at the capital that week and then we noticed this removal.”

Inquiries by Pregnancy Help News to obtain comment from the Pennsylvania Attorney General Office did not receive a response.

LifeNews Note: Tabitha Goodling has been writing for media outlets for more than 20 years in her home state of Pennsylvania. She has served as a client services director at her local pregnancy center since 2018. She and her husband are raising four teenage daughters, which include a set of triplets. This column originally appeared at Pregnancy Help News.

The post Pennsylvania Removes Web Site That Trashed Pro-Life Pregnancy Centers appeared first on LifeNews.com.

Businesses will no longer be forced to accommodate abortion in the workplace, thanks to a Trump-appointed judge. This is a huge step in protecting preborn babies and religious freedom across the country!

U.S. District Judge David Joseph ruled last Wednesday that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission overstepped its authority when it tried to include abortion as a condition covered under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act — a law passed in 2022 to support pregnant women in the workplace.

Judge Joseph stated that if Congress wanted to include abortion in the law, they would have made it clear, especially on such a divisive and important issue. “Congress would have spoken clearly” if it had intended for the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act to cover abortion, he wrote.

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The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had issued a sweeping rule interpreting the law to include “termination of pregnancy, including via miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion.” But Christian and conservative groups immediately challenged the regulation, warning it would violate conscience protections and force employers to participate in the abortion agenda.

Thanks to this ruling, American businesses will not be forced to give employees time off to end the lives of their preborn babies — a chilling policy that the Biden administration tried to slip through under the guise of “pregnancy accommodations.”

This decision is the latest reminder of how crucial it is to have leaders and judges who respect Life. Under President Donald Trump, federal support for abortion was rolled back, the Hyde Amendment was enforced, and the Mexico City Policy was reinstated, cutting off taxpayer funding for elective abortions both at home and abroad.

Last week’s court ruling is a resounding Pro-Life victory, showing that the fight to protect the most vulnerable is far from over.

LifeNews Note: Ashlynn Lemos is the communications intern for Texas Right to Life.

The post Judge Blocks Biden’s Abortion Mandate on Businesses appeared first on LifeNews.com.

“Emergency contraception” refers to chemicals, drugs, or devices (usually the hormonal drugs ulipristal or levonorgestrel) that are ingested or inserted after intercourse and prior to the recognition of pregnancy with the goal of preventing a recognizable pregnancy. The American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) opposes the use of so-called ”emergency contraceptives” (EC) in adolescent patients for the reasons discussed below.1

All human life begins at fertilization and deserves protection.2  EC acts primarily through interfering with the tubal transport and uterine implantation of the embryo resulting in the embryo’s immediate, or, through ectopic pregnancy, delayed death.

Increased use of EC in society has not been shown to reduce overall the rates of

pregnancy or abortion.  In addition, there are several unintended harmful consequences. Studies show that the rate of sexually transmitted infections increase when EC is more easily available.  This is consistent with an increase in risky sexual practices.  This potentially leads to increased risks of death, cancer, and infertility.

The use of EC may undermine needed parental involvement. The pre-frontal cortex of the brain which is responsible for judgment and overriding purely emotional decisions is not mature until the mid-twenties. Adolescents need the guidance of their parents. If parents do not know that their children are sexually active, engaging in other high-risk activities, or facing life-affecting decisions, they cannot give their children the guidance they desperately need.

Also, cases of sexual assault and sex trafficking may be obscured and unrecognized. Perpetrators may obtain these pills without restriction and force them on their sexual victims. Victims allowed to obtain EC without prescription may also be too embarrassed to seek proper testing and  medical treatment for sexually transmitted infections. In both cases, the appropriate legal constraints and needed psychological care after the assault are not provided. This leaves the victim without proper care and allows the perpetrator to continue assaulting other victims.

In addition to opposing the use of EC in adolescents, the College also strongly opposes any laws or regulations requiring physicians to prescribe EC when it violates their conscience.

Approved by the ACPeds Board of Directors (May 2025)
Approved by ACPeds Members (June 2025)

Corresponding ACPeds Referenced Paper:

Emergency Contraception – Not the Best for Adolescents (May 2025)

Other Pertinent ACPeds Referenced Papers: 

When Human Life Begins (March 2017)

Encouraging Parent-Adolescent Communication Is Best for Children (September 2020)

Adolescent Brain: Under Construction (May 2022)

Former First Lady Michelle Obama ignited a firestorm of controversy with remarks made during a recent episode of her podcast, “IMO with Michelle Obama & Craig Robinson.”

Obama described a woman’s reproductive system as primarily serving purposes beyond childbirth, stating, “the least of what it does is produce life.”

The comment, which surfaced during a discussion on women’s reproductive health, has drawn sharp criticism from pro-life advocates who see it as diminishing the significance of a woman’s ability to bear children—a core tenet of their perspective.

“So many men have no idea about what women go through. Right? We haven’t been researched,” Obama claimed.

“We haven’t been considered, and it still affects the way a lot of male lawmakers, a lot of male politicians, a lot of male religious leaders think about the issue of choice, as if it’s just about the fetus, the baby. But women’s reproductive health is about our life.”

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That’s when Obama trashed women’s capacity as mothers saying it the “least” important function of a woman’s reproductive system.

“It’s about this whole complicated reproductive system that does — the least of what it does is produce life. It’s a very important thing that it does, but you only produce life if the machine that’s producing it — if you wanna, you know, whittle us down to a machine — is functioning in a healthy, streamlined kind of way.”

Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, highlighted the statement on social media, arguing that it illustrates a troubling disconnect from the celebration of life-sustaining capacities that pro-life advocates hold dear.

Hawkins said:

Michelle illustrates what’s wrong with modern education in attempting to wordsmith whether the “reproductive system” is really intended to focus on reproduction.

Women certainly represent more than just a part of themselves, but let’s not pretend it’s an irrelevant part, as we alone have the gift of carrying Life. What’s been broken in modern culture is the celebration of our capacity to SUSTAIN Life in our bodies, something that too often has been drugged away or cut out entirely.

The post Michelle Obama Trashes Women’s Capacity to Have Children: “It’s the Least” of What Women Do appeared first on LifeNews.com.

The American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) recognizes that adolescent depression is a serious public health concern with increasing numbers of adolescents experiencing feelings of sadness, hopelessness, or depression. Depressive episodes are associated with negative consequences such as academic difficulties, poor peer and family relationships, increased involvement in high-risk behaviors, self-injury and suicide.

ACPeds recommends that all adolescents be screened for depression and treated appropriately.  ACPeds also encourages adolescents and families to develop habits that support mental health and decrease the likelihood of developing depression.  These habits include improving family connections such as eating meals together, volunteering together, and participating in religious activities together.  Keeping a gratitude journal and limiting social media use may help both in preventing and mitigating depressive symptoms. Remaining sexually abstinent also reduces the likelihood of developing depressive symptoms. Finally, habits that support physical health, such as decreasing poor quality foods and increasing intake of omega-3 fatty acids in one’s diet, improving nighttime sleep, and exercising, especially spending time outdoors in nature, all help reduce tendencies for depression in adolescents.

Approved by the ACPeds Board of Directors (May 2025)
Approved by ACPeds Members (June 2025)

Corresponding ACPeds Referenced Paper:

Decreasing Risk Factors for Adolescent Depression (June 2018)

Other Pertinent ACPeds Referenced Papers:

Adolescent Brain: Under Construction (May 2022)

Marijuana and Mental Illness (June 2020)

The Benefits of the Family Table (Feb. 2021)

On the Trump Front  —  a change in the agenda?

Paul Craig Roberts

Trump’s original plan was to quickly get rid of foreign wars in order to focus on his presidential campaign’s domestic agenda to Make America Great Again.

Trump has discovered that Democrat “judges” and some RINO ones can block and distract him from removing illegal aliens who have no right to remain in the US, and from exercising his legitimate powers as president to reform the corrupt and ideological US civil service.  The civil service is responsible to the executive branch, not to the judiciary, but the judiciary, always seeking to expand its power, is seeking to establish control over the Office of the President.

On the domestic front the frustrations and delays of an over-reaching judicial system have shifted Trump’s focus abroad as an alternative way of Making America Great Again.

In a recent press conference with Genocide King Netanyahu, President Trump declared America’s possession of Gaza.  Questioned by media, Netanyahu seemed to agree, at least for the sake of avoiding conflict with Israel’s American sponsor.

Trump has begun to describe a new Middle East.  It is no longer one that Washington was creating for Greater Israel.  Israel  had Washington destroy  opposing Arab countries–Iraq, Libya, and Syria–disguised as a “war on terror.”  The New Middle East is to be Washington’s colonial empire, in which Washington achieves control over oil flows in a new way.

Unlike the old colonialism in which the British and French exploited the region, sending the profits home, Trump is offering Saudi Arabia, the last standing Arab country, a junior partnership. The junior partnership is also being offered to the Iranians. The Saudias and Iranians are tempted to accept junior partnerships as it saves them from US/Israeli attacks.

Gaza, Trump suggests, will be the highly developed anchor for making all of the Middle East rich.  The new American colonialism, unlike the old, is a profit-sharing empire.  And it puts an end to Israeli/Arab wars.

It is difficult not to see this as a brilliant settlement.  But the world never expected anything of this sort.  Perhaps the American Ruling Establishment sat down with Trump and explained the situation to him.

In place of the American neoconservative unipolar world of American hegemony there will be the division of the world between the three powers–Washington, Russia, and China.  Will the Zionist neoconservative American policymakers accept this or will they continue their pursuit of hegemony?

The path ahead is not clear.  President Putin is not interested in merely a negotiated end of the conflict in Ukraine.  Putin wants a Great Power Agreement that ends the West’s conflict with Russia.  Putin’s agenda goes far beyond merely ending the conflict with Ukraine.

Can Trump and Putin renew the effort of Reagan and Gorbachev and end the revival of the Cold War that the neoconservatives launched?

If not, war will be upon us.

From the Roman Office. ℣. Grant, Lord, a blessing. Benediction. May God the Father Omnipotent, be to us merciful and clement. ℟. Amen. Reading 4 From the Sermons of Pope St. Leo the Great. 2nd for the Lord’s Ascension. Dearly beloved brethren, that mysterious thing, our salvation, which the Maker of the universe thought worth purchasing with His Own Precious Blood, was aimed at by Him…

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Ray Dalio, the former head of Bridgewater Associates, is back in the media, trying to stay relevant by claiming the "deficit has become critical."

" “It’s like ... I’m a doctor, and I’m looking at the patient, and I’ve said, you’re having this accumulation, and I can tell you that this is very, very serious, and I can’t tell you the exact time. I would say that if we’re really looking over the next three years, to give or take a year or two, that we’re in that type of a critical, critical situation.”

And this from Bloomberg:

“If you don’t do it (commit to reducing the deficit), you’re going to be in trouble. I can’t tell you exactly when it’ll come, it’s like a heart attack. You’re getting closer. My guess would be three years, give or take a year, something like that.”

Of course, the scare tactics would not be complete without a terrifying chart to back it up, like this from Deutsche Bank:

"Here we remind readers, that the Big, Beautiful Bill currently in Congress has been scored to add about $5 trillion to the debt, resulting in what we said would be Debt Doomsday for the US; this is simply a trade-off of short-term prosperity (a few extra trillion in the next 4 years) for long-term economic collapse (that 220% in long term debt.GDP)."

That is undoubtedly a horrifying chart. The "scoring" is from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The CBO analyzes spending bills and tries to determine the impact of future spending versus revenue. Here is the calculation of the latest "deficit" scare.

The problem is that neither Dalio nor the CBO is correct in its forecasts. We will examine both to explain why.

Dalio's History Of Faulty Predictions

It doesn't take much to understand that Ray Dalio, a hedge fund titan, is like every other human being and is prone to error. I will not dismiss Dalio entirely, as his track record of managing money at Bridgewater is nothing to be scoffed at. However, his track record is far less enviable regarding debt crisis predictions. Here is a brief timeline.

• March 2015 - Hedge Funder Dalio Thinks the Fed Can Repeat 1937 All Over Again
• January 2016 - The 75-Year Debt Supercycle Is Coming To An End
• September 2018 - Ray Dalio Says The Economy Looks Like 1937 And A Downturn Is Coming In About Two Years
• January 2019 - Ray Dalio Sees Significant Risk Of A US Recession
• October 2022 - Dalio Warns Of Perfect Storm For The Economy (That was also the stock market low.)
• September 2023 - Dalio Says The US Is Going To Have A Debt Crisis

But you can even go further back than these when he wrote about some of his biggest mistakes about a decade ago:

"The biggest of these mistakes occurred in 1981-’82, when I became convinced that the U.S. economy was about to fall into a depression. My research had led me to believe that, with the Federal Reserve’s tight money policy and lots of debt outstanding, there would be a global wave of debt defaults, and if the Fed tried to handle it by printing money, inflation would accelerate. I was so certain that a depression was coming that I proclaimed it in newspaper columns, on TV, even in testimony to Congress."

Even though Dalio understands his mistakes from 1981 to 1982, he has been repeating them over the last decade.

For investors who listened to Dalio's predictions of a coming "depression" a decade ago, they missed participating in one of the most significant bull markets in U.S. history.

Again, please don't make a mistake in what I say. Ray Dalio is a knowledgeable person. However, intelligence does not necessarily prove accuracy in predicting the future. He was wrong in the 80s and has been incorrect over the last decade.

Does that mean he will "never" be correct? No. But investors have lost more money worrying about Dalio's predictions than they would likely have even if he had been accurate.

But what about those CBO projections?

The CBO's Projections Are Full Of Faults

Every year, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) releases a series of projections estimating federal deficits and debt levels over a 10-year horizon. These forecasts, often treated as gospel by lawmakers and media outlets alike, are used to shape public policy debates, inform budget decisions, and frame the long-term fiscal narrative of the United States. Yet, with striking regularity, these projections fail to materialize.

The reason is that, just as with Dalio, the CBO projections are often biased or one-sided estimations, data is excluded, and various other issues impair future accuracy, both good and bad. Furthermore, the agency's forecasting methodology has structural flaws, ranging from rigid assumptions to exclusions of dynamic economic feedback to blind spots in fiscal behavior and policy change. The result is a set of projections that often mislead more than they inform. The following is a brief explanation of these flaws.

• The Static Nature of CBO Models - The CBO's analytical framework is based on a static scoring model. This approach assumes that future policy, such as tax rates, spending levels, entitlement programs, etc., will remain unchanged over the 10-year forecast horizon unless new legislation is ALREADY enacted. In practice, this is rarely the case. For example, if a tax cut is scheduled to expire, the CBO assumes it will expire, even if the likelihood of an extension is high. The same goes for discretionary spending caps, Medicare payment reductions, and defense outlays. As a result, CBO projections often include future "deficit cliffs" or sudden fiscal contractions that lawmakers later avoid, all rendering the projections obsolete before they’re even useful.
• Ignoring Dynamic Economic Feedback - Perhaps the most significant shortcoming of the CBO’s model is its limited use of dynamic scoring—the idea that fiscal policy can influence broader economic outcomes, affecting tax revenues and spending. Instead, they rely heavily on baseline economic forecasts that assume a smooth trajectory of growth and inflation, often borrowed from consensus private forecasts. However, those assumptions are backward-looking, calibrated to historical averages rather than adaptive to current or projected conditions.
• Unrealistic Assumptions About Growth and Interest Rates - One of the most baffling elements of CBO’s debt projections is their unwillingness to incorporate realistic future economic growth rates. Over a 10-year horizon, even minor adjustments to GDP growth assumptions can dramatically alter debt-to-GDP ratios. However, the CBO defaults to a long-run real GDP growth rate of about 1.8% to 2.0%—a figure derived from trend productivity and labor force growth, rather than cyclical or structural changes in the economy.

This baked-in pessimism ignores potential upside scenarios such as demographic shifts, productivity surges due to technology, or policy-induced economic acceleration. Conversely, it fails to adequately model downside risks like recessions, geopolitical shocks, or credit events. The result is a misleading "middle path" that rarely reflects actual outcomes.

Similarly, the CBO assumes a gradually rising interest rate environment, where borrowing costs increase alongside debt issuance. However, history shows that interest rates can remain low, even as debt increases. As shown, rates decline with larger deficits as unproductive spending slows economic growth. The recent rate surge resulted from inflation from sending checks to households while shuttering the economy. As the remnants of that infusion fade, economic growth and rates will decline. However, Dalio and the CBO forget the cause of the rate surge and assume the rise was organic when it was not. As growth slows further, Central Bank interventions will challenge the CBO’s recurring narrative that rising debt will inevitably lead to a fiscal crisis via soaring interest payments.

The Future Is Highly Uncertain

To be clear, the CBO is vital in bringing fiscal transparency to government operations. But its forecasts should be treated as scenarios, not certainties. Some economists have argued for including range-based projections—a band of possible debt and deficit paths under varying assumptions for growth, interest rates, and fiscal policy. Others have called for more aggressive use of dynamic scoring to account for behavioral and economic feedback.

One thing is for sure. The future is highly uncertain. As such, any forecast that looks 10 years into the future will be wrong, for better or worse. For example, the U.S. is most likely on the cusp of the next industrial revolution. Such will transform the economy, work, and labor in ways we can not imagine currently. The impact of Artificial Intelligence on employment, productivity, and wage growth could be transformational. However, we must also consider the impact of AI on highly capital-intensive infrastructure needs. As we explored in "Electricity May Cure Debt Concerns."

“Generative artificial intelligence has the potential to automate many work tasks and eventually boost global economic growth. AI will start having a measurable impact on US GDP in 2027 and begin affecting growth in other economies worldwide in the following years. The foundation of the forecast is the finding that AI could ultimately automate around 25% of labor tasks in advanced economies and 10-20% of work in emerging economies.”

They currently estimate a growth boost to GDP from AI of 0.4 percentage points in the US. Such would undoubtedly reduce the impact of rising debt levels.

The CBO’s debt and deficit projections have value, but they are deeply limited by the assumptions they rest on. Their forecasts ignore how politics evolves, how economies adapt, and how unpredictable the future truly is. They exclude meaningful liabilities, fail to account for economic feedback loops, and assume a rigidity in fiscal policy that doesn't exist in the real world.

Conclusion

For investors, policymakers, and citizens alike, the key is not to discard the CBO’s work, but to understand its limitations. Notably, consider the following for those like Dalio, pontificating on the rising debt levels as a percentage of GDP.

Japan is a relatively small country compared to the U.S.

• It is not the world's reserve currency issuer.
• Does not have the economic growth capacity or resources of the U.S.
• Lacks the military strength to defend its sovereignty.
• Has a pressing demographic issue.

Do both countries have financial concerns? Absolutely. Yet, despite all of Japan's shortcomings, they have not fallen into bankruptcy or faced economic devastation. In other words, as an investor, betting on the demise of the U.S. at 120% of debt to GDP, in the face of the rise of Artificial Intelligence and its potential impact, will likely be a losing bet.

It is also crucial for investors to understand the data they view and use to build investment assumptions. As with Dalio, assuming a "debt crisis" is looming, has severely impaired individuals' wealth-building process. Will the CBO and Dalio eventually be correct? Will a debt crisis finally happen? Maybe. Anything is possible. You must answer whether that will occur during your investment time frame. More crucially, what will you do after it happens?

The choice is yours to make. However, a wrong decision can severely impact your wealth-building process and the pursuit of your financial goals.

For more in-depth analysis and actionable investment strategies, visit RealInvestmentAdvice.com. Stay ahead of the markets with expert insights tailored to help you achieve your financial goals.

The post Ray Dalio Is Predicting A Financial Crisis…Again. appeared first on RIA.

In this article, I write about the trend of Celebrity Priests. So, I should define terms before continuing. When I refer to a Celebrity Priest, I do not mean a priest who happens to be well-known because of his virtues. Instead, I am referring to a trend of famous priests who are well-known not just because they have something good to say but because they are marketable as influencers and media…

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