In a year marked by fiscal surprises and technological upheaval, America stands at a crossroads. The June 2025 budget surplus has upended the old narratives, leaving Wall Street’s perennial skeptics scrambling for new alarms. Yet beneath the noise, a deeper transformation is underway.

The Great Depression of the 1930s was more than an economic collapse; it was an ideological crucible. As capitalism faltered, socialism surged, promising salvation through state control. Today, that battle rages anew, with the U.S. Federal Reserve at its heart. Martin’s metaphor of the Federal Reserve as a chaperone—removing the punch bowl to curb excess—once defined an era of restraint: intervene only to prevent instability, never to orchestrate outcomes. That era is dead. The Federal Reserve has abandoned its traditional neutrality, embracing Keynesian dogma and becoming a partisan weapon in the war between capitalism and socialism, a war that threatens American economic sovereignty.