George Cole and the Discovery of Pivot Points for Day Trading | Toby Crabel

The daily support and resistance lattice that most day traders treat as folk knowledge was first set down in 1936 by George William Cole (1870–1937), though he rarely gets credit for it. Cole was the first author to publish the formula now called Classic or Floor Pivots. Toby Crabel himself uses these pivot levels—not as a standalone system, but as one layer in a larger map of reference points.

"Before the many books and derivations of pit trader's numbers, there was George Cole in 1936. He was the first author to write about the formula so many day traders use now, most of whom have no idea where it originated. I haven't seen any contemporary authors credit Cole for it. Fair enough, the method works well, and the numbers are good reference points for structure in the market. It’s worth knowing where they sit each day in whatever you're trading."

 Cole self-published Graphs and Their Application to Speculation (a sequel to his 1928
book Successful Speculation: A Business) the year before he died, and Donald Mack
reprinted it in 1998 in the Financial Times / Pitman Traders' Masterclass series.

Cole was not creating a simple day-trading cheat sheet. He wanted speculation to operate like a profession: charts as a visual map of mass psychology, a "law of occurrence or recurrence" in commodity prices, and human judgment required to pull the facts together. That is 1930s technical analysis in the Wyckoff family—slow, pictorial, and commodity-first. On subsequent literature, Crabel is blunt, and he names names:

"Almost all short-term traders have explored these numbers. Larry Williams called them his own. John Hill, Fisher, and Ochoa each added something to them. Carter and Person use them too. I saw traders on the floor in the '80s carrying their "Green Sheets" into the pit, and these numbers were the dominant feature on them. It’s safe to say most traders know about them and have built systems around them, so it pays to know where they sit if you want a read on the market’s mind throughout the day."⁠

These details matter. By the 1980s, the formula was no longer just a book idea; it had become pit infrastructure.

» Huh! that fellow is a 'chart trader.' « 

 

Two Different "Pivots," Often Smashed Together

► Structural and Swing Pivots: A high with lower highs on both sides; a low with higher lows on both sides. Livermore called turning points "pivotal points" and split them into reversal versus continuation. Larry Williams later said he first called those short-term turns "ringed" highs and lows "in deference to the work done in the 1930s by Henry Wheeler Chase." That is swing structure, not a closed-form projection.

► Calculated Floor Levels: Yesterday's high, low, and close, printed into today's map before the open.

 

This is what Crabel means by Cole numbers (15-minute E-mini NASDAQ-100 of January 29, 2024): "R4 to S4 including the pivot (p), are all Cole numbers. I-1 hi and I-1 lo are yesterday's high and low. The two-day high (2 day hi), the all-time high (ath), and swing low (1 day sw lo) are also an important part of market structure."⁠ 

John Person's lineage credits Chase with the formula and Williams with its 1979 revival. The honest history involves two 1930s names, an unread reprint, a popularizer, and a floor practice that was already regarded as "secret numbers" when Person walked onto the CBOT. Crabel is likely right that Cole printed the arithmetic first. Person is likely right that the pits treated it as inherited craft. Neither invented the market’s habit of defending yesterday’s range.

The Formula Without Mysticism 

   Let H, L, C be the prior session's high, low, and close.

 

R4 and S4 are further range multiples, which Crabel plots. PP is the typical price (High + Low + Close / 3). R1 and S1 reflect the opposite extreme through that typical price, while R2 and S2 add or subtract the full prior range. Variants exist simply because people keep reweighting those same three numbers: Woodie doubles the close; Fibonacci stacks 0.382/0.618/1.00 of the range off the Pivot Point; Camarilla builds tight fade and breakout rails off the close; DeMark flips the calculation depending on whether the prior bar closed above or below its open. None of this is new physics. It is a daily map printed from a finished bar. 

 

How Crabel Uses the Numbers

He does not treat Cole levels as a system in themselves. He views them as a "predetermined" framework that sits next to a "dynamic" one:

"These are all predetermined price levels. Once the market opens, there are dynamic reference points to factor in too, and I cover those elsewhere. [...] Price will often poke through a high or low before resuming trend, so the action around the previous day's high and low matters."⁠

That last sentence is the core operational rule. The Cole grid provides the scaffolding; the prior high and low are the live walls. A poke-and-fail through yesterday's extreme, in Crabel's framing, tells you far more than a simple tap of R2.

The dynamic half of the map is the work Crabel is known for. In the 1988 Stocks & Commodities series that became his 1990 book, he defined the open itself as the other reference point of the day:

"Opening range breakout is one of the most important indicators of daily market direction that a trader can utilize. An opening range breakout (ORB) is a trade taken at a predetermined amount above or below the opening range. When the predetermined amount (the "stretch") is computed, a buy stop is placed that amount above the high of the opening range and a sell stop is placed the same amount below the low of the opening range. The first stop that is traded is the position and the other stop is a protective stop."⁠

He was already distinguishing rare trend days from ordinary rotation:

"Early entry is defined as a large price movement in one direction within the first five minutes after the open of the daily session. A study of early entry is essentially a study of price action, and the type of price action that takes place on early entry shows that participants are urgent about entering the market. It is a distinct recognition of either a profitable or dangerous situation. [...] It should be noted that directional moves of this nature are relatively rare and may occur only 10% of the time. Most days (70% to 80%), prices exhibit rotation or choppy action and the first five to 10 minutes of trading are sluggish and directionless without a clear movement away from the opening range.⁠"

The hinge between those two day-types is the principle that still sits under NR4, NR7, inside days, and two-bar and three-bar narrow range:

"The market having a specific nature is constantly changing from a period of movement to a period of rest and back to a period of movement."

Linda Bradford Raschke, 1998.

 

That is the Principle of Contraction/Expansion. Cole numbers do not tell you which regime you are in; compression plus a move off the open does. Crabel reduced that entire visual tradition to two forces:

"My observations of markets through visual displays of data have led me to a simple conclusion: there are two primary forces at work. One is momentum, which includes the opening range breakout (ORB). The other is mean reversion, which at times can even involve trading in the opposite direction of the ORB. This has always been a useful way to think about markets. But over time, I have come to appreciate that there are many nuances and additional conceptual frameworks that continue to refine this view."⁠

Cole's grid is useful in both regimes. On a rotation day, it marks the likely fade rails. On a momentum day, it marks where the move should pause or accelerate. It does not choose the regime for you.

John L. Person, 2012.

 

What Changed: The Open Stopped Being the Open

The Cole numbers survived the death of the pit because they do not depend on a clean open. ORB did. Crabel has been explicit about that at length, and the long version is the right one:

"⁠Where's the open? For God's sake. I mean there's so much volume in the 24-hour sessions it's impossible to determine what the open is. So the wonderful thing about open range breakout—back in the day when there were just primary session, domestic session trading—was it was the most vital piece of information, the reference point that you could have. [...] The real problem is where is the reference point? Where the open was a great reference point, but now what other reference points are there in the markets? One is the close of the previous day and the movement off of that."⁠⁠

He has also been careful not to claim invention of the open as a tool—"I didn't invent it"—and to note that Larry Williams was already working the same ground, and was not pleased to see it in print.

 

  Larry Williams, 1979.

What Crabel does claim is the research program: find where order flow concentrates, then trade the imbalance. In the early 1990s, that meant two markers. Now it means a crowd of them:

"⁠In the early nineties I used ORB as a primary, or previous day’s high or low, as a reference point for marking and entering trades. Now we probably have 10 or 15 or maybe even 20 different reference points that exist in any market and different ways of navigating that. [...] The closing of the previous day tends to be much more important now than it ever was.⁠"⁠

Reading the Cole essay against that interview and the layout of Crabel's January 29, 2024 chart, the takeaway becomes obvious. R4 and S4 are the old predetermined lattice. The prior high and low, two-day high, all-time high, and swing low are the reference points that still carry energy now that the open is no longer a single moment.

  Mark Fisher, 2002. 

 

What is Solid, What is Soft

► Solid: The levels are objective and available before the session begins. They establish a sensible bias rule: lean long above PP, lean short below PP, and treat R1 and S1 as the first places the auction should hesitate. Prior-day highs and lows are usually respected more than outer projections because they are actual traded extremes rather than mathematical reflections. Crabel's poke-through-and-fail observation around those extremes remains one of the cleanest intraday tells in trading literature. The green sheets existed because the numbers were shared—and shared levels become structural market points even after their original rationale is forgotten.
► Soft: The formula does not account for overnight gaps or a Sunday FX open. "Yesterday" is no longer a clean object in 24-hour markets. Outer levels are often wallpaper. Buying S1 and selling R1 as a standalone system is how the method earns its bad name. The edge, when there is one, is confluence: a Cole level + prior high and low + opening range or prior close + the actual swing right in front of you.

That is also why Crabel's credit-where-due note is more than antiquarianism. Cole printed a portable map. The pits made it a common language. Williams, Hill, Fisher, Ochoa, Carter, and Person turned it into product. Camarilla, Woodie, Fibonacci, and DeMark are variants. Crabel's own contribution is the frame around the map: predetermined levels first, then the day’s dynamic reference points, then a decision about whether the session is momentum or mean reversion.

Ochoa's CPR, Cole's Floor/Classic or Traditional, Woodie, DeMark, Fibonacci, Scott's Camarilla.

However, do not give the pivots' arithmetic more metaphysics than it earns. It is a prior-day typical price and a set of reflections. It works when the market is still negotiating yesterday's range. It is noise when the market has already decided today is a different day. The skill is telling those two conditions apart—and that skill, as Toby Crabel keeps repeating, is not in the formula. It is in the structure you put around it.

Reference:

Toby Crabel (September 1, 2026) - George Cole and the 1936 Discovery of Pivot Points for Day Trading.  

 

Why pivot points work?

Self-fulfilling prophecy.

 Aha!

 

See also:

Toby Crabel (1990) - Day Trading With Short Term Price Patterns and Opening Range Breakout. 

John L. Person (2020) - Candlestick and Pivot Point Trading Triggers. 

Frank Ochoa (2010) - Secrets of a Pivot Boss.
John Seckinger (2004) - Take a Two-Dimensional Approach: A Sophisticated Look at Pivot Points.

Charles Drummond (1979) - Point & Line.

Seasonality vs. Cycles: October the Midterm Sweet Spot—If the Switch Holds

October's reputation as a crash month misinterprets the presidential cycle and midterm sweet spot playbook. Since 1950, the S&P 500 has averaged a +3.0% gain in midterm Octobers, closing higher 74% of the time. November extends that momentum, adding +2.8% with a 79% win rate. From September 30 through year-end, the midterm path averages +6.6% and yields positive returns in 16 of 19 instances. Jeffrey Hirsch's  Stock Trader's Almanac signal isn't "beware October"—it's that the four-year cycle stops leaking in October.

Seasonality Midterm October Map for the S&P 500: Midterm years leave September weaker than the all-year path—then pull away from October 1 through mid-November. S&P 500 calendar-day path from the September 14 close: crimson is midterms 1950–2022 (+3.0% in October, 74% up); navy dashed is all years 1928–2025. Late September is still the washout (window trough ~Sep 30). 2026 has already rallied +21% off the March low, so this is a Q4-bid midterm, not a crash-then-rally analog, unless 7,550 breaks.

However, the leak precedes the rally. Both the all-year seasonal map and the midterm composite sag from the autumn equinox through month-end. September 27 falls directly within that washout zone, with the midterm path averaging a trough near September 30 (−1.3% from mid-September levels). Because September 27, 2026, falls on a Sunday, the active trading window shifts to Friday the 25th and Monday the 28th. That cluster represents a dip-buying opportunity, not an immediate breakout zone.

Presidential Election Cycle in US Stocks

Yale Hirsch is most widely credited with detecting and popularizing the Presidential Election Cycle in US stocks. A market historian, he introduced the pattern in the first edition of his Stock Trader's Almanac in 1967 and refined it in later volumes. Drawing on decades of data, Hirsch showed that equity returns tend to be weaker in the first one or two years of a presidential term and stronger thereafter—especially in the third, pre-election year—as administrations shift toward stimulus to support re-election prospects. Although related political-business-cycle ideas appear in economics (notably William Nordhaus's 1975 model of pre-election stimulus), the specific documentation and popularization of the stock-market version by year of the term belong to Hirsch's Almanac work; academic testing of the equity pattern followed mainly from the 1980s onward.

Overlap with the Kitchin and Broader Business Cycles

The presidential cycle is a fixed four-year political calendar. It overlaps in length with several economic cycles of roughly three to five years, yet the mechanisms differ and the patterns should not be treated as identical. The Kitchin Cycle, identified by Joseph Kitchin in 1923, is a short inventory-driven business cycle averaging about forty months. Firms over-order in expansions, then destock, producing production swings that feed into the broader economy. Because its typical span nearly matches a presidential term, many observers refer to the dominant four-year equity rhythm as both the Kitchin and the presidential cycle; some studies even treat the observed market pattern as encompassing both. The crucial distinction remains that Kitchin is an economic-inventory process while the presidential cycle is a political-calendar effect tied to election incentives. They can reinforce each other—late-term stimulus coinciding with inventory rebuilding—or drift out of phase because one is rigid and the other variable.

Kitchin Cycle Signals S&P 500 Rise Into Late 2026.

The presidential cycle also interacts with the general Business Cycle through policy timing: adjustment-oriented measures early in a term give way to growth-oriented stimulus later. Stocks, as a leading indicator, historically show weaker average returns and more frequent recessions in the first half of the term and stronger performance, especially in year three, in the second half. Empirical work finds that standard business-cycle variables do not fully account for the presidential return pattern; the equity effect persists as something of a residual puzzle.

Links to Hurst Cycles

Technical cycle analysis supplies a further parallel. J. M. Hurst's model organizes markets into a hierarchy of harmonically related nominal periods governed by commonality, synchronicity, and proportionality. The 54-week cycle is an intermediate member; longer relatives include the 40-week, 18-month, and especially the 54-month (approximately 4.5-year) cycle. Four 54-week periods nest into roughly 4.15 years, close to a presidential term, and Hurst practitioners often map the four-year political pattern onto their 4-to-4.5-year or 46-to-54-month rhythms. Historical studies, including those referencing Edward Dewey, note a roughly 46-month cycle of high regularity that aligns in period with the presidential timeframe. The political calendar can help phase or contextualize Hurst troughs and peaks, yet pure Hurst analysis remains grounded in price action and nested harmonics rather than external politics; the two tools are complementary, and presidential turning points coincide with major Hurst lows only intermittently.

Interaction with the Decennial Cycle

A still longer calendar regularity, the Decennial Cycle, interacts with the presidential pattern through systematic overlaps. First detailed by Edgar Lawrence Smith in the 1930s and later popularized in Hirsch's Almanac, the decennial pattern tracks average performance by the year's ending digit. Early-decade years (ending in 0, 1, or 2) tend to be softer—a "decade hangover"—while mid-decade years, especially those ending in 5, have been almost invariably positive and often strongly so; later years are more mixed. Because ten is not a multiple of four, the two cycles nest in shifting combinations: every decade contains two full presidential terms plus part of a third, so a year's place in the presidential sequence systematically aligns with particular ending digits. Years ending in 5 frequently fall in the first or third presidential year—both historically stronger—helping to amplify the mid-decade strength. Early-decade softness often coincides with post-election or transitional periods that overlap the weaker half of the presidential cycle. Practitioners like Ned Davis therefore treat the two as additive filters: a year that is both a strong presidential year (particularly year three) and a favorable decennial year is viewed more constructively, while alignment of weak slots raises caution.

Complementary Framework

Taken together, these patterns form a nested set of calendar and economic regularities. Length similarities produce natural correlations and frequent joint discussion, especially around the four-year rhythm shared by the presidential, Kitchin, and certain Hurst cycles. The presidential cycle functions as a political overlay that can influence or coincide with inventory-driven, business-cycle, and pure price-based rhythms, particularly around policy timing and major turning points. The decennial cycle supplies an additional independent calendar layer that modulates the four-year pattern at predictable intersections. None of the cycles causes the others; each is an empirical tendency best used as a parallel lens. Real markets approximate the historical averages but never duplicate them exactly, because exogenous events, monetary policy, and larger forces continually interact with and sometimes override the calendar regularities.

S&P 500 vs. 2026 Cycle Composite (Seasonal, Presidential, and Decennial).

 

 2026 Is Already Off-Script

This market has diverged significantly from the historical midterm template. Jeffrey Hirsch's traditional model calls for a ~17% peak-to-trough drawdown—typically extending from late spring into mid-August—before launching into a Q4 rally. Instead, the 2026 tape printed its low early on March 30 at 6,344, rallied to 7,799 by August 13, and closed Thursday at 7,704—up +12.5% year-to-date and +21.4% off its lows. October arrives following an extended recovery rather than into a fresh, deeply discounted cyclical low.

Cycles vs. Seasonality

Running parallel to seasonality is the Hurst cycle model, which presents a more cautious picture. Across the Dow, S&P 500, and Nasdaq-100, the primary 40-week nominal trough starts at the March 30, 2026 major low, and is projected for January 9, 2027. Intermediate shared cycle troughs ahead of that window map to September 26 (40-day cycle) and October 30–31 (80-day cycle). Under this framework, the August highs are treated as the macro top for this wave segment. Until the major January trough arrives, counter-trend crests remain rallies to sell—unless a key pivot level fails, forcing an early-October alternate cycle low.

Primary Cycle Count Forward Projection and Confluence Calendar (Sep 2026 to Jan 2027).  

The Switch Levels Are the Entire Trade

These key switch levels dictate the structural bias: Dow Jones 51,172, S&P 500 7,550, and Nasdaq-100 30,125. On Thursday, September 24 the Dow undercut 51,172 intraday before reclaiming it by the close. The S&P and Nasdaq switch levels continue to hold. As long as 30,125 holds on the Nasdaq, a tactical bounce toward October 16 remains valid.

If the switches hold, the expected window of October 4–7 represents a sell zone to exit long positions taken off the September 26 low. If a switch breaks, a trough accelerates forward into October 4–5 as a primary buy window—the exact inflection point where seasonality and cycle analysis converge.

 

Execution Stance

Tactical discipline remains essential. Maintain light exposure heading into the Friday–Monday window, avoid initiating long positions on the Dow at current levels, do not hold the S&P 500 in anticipation of immediate new highs, and avoid over-allocating to the Nasdaq.

 

S&P 500 80-day cycle (primary): Starts at the Aug 20 trough. Wavelength 71 days. High already in on Aug 28, at 11% of the wave—left, not in the middle. Sep 21 did not beat it. Printed highs and lows as of Sep 21. "Expected" repeats that cycle's last translation. Oct 31 is the 80-day low only—the 20-day low before it is Oct 17. 80-day FLD 7,790 is still lost. The 20-week from this same Aug 20 trough does not bottom until Jan 9, 2027 (timing schematic, not a price forecast).

S&P 500 80-day cycle (alternate): Same Aug 20 start. On this count the low is Oct 5, not Oct 31, and Oct 5 is not a high. Sep 21 did not beat Aug 28.No crest between Sep 21 and Oct 5. The Nov 10 bounce is drawn smaller because this alternate cycle count does not expect it a new high (timing schematic, not a price forecast). 

DJIA 80-day cycle (primary): Starts at the Aug 20 trough. Wavelength 71 days. High already in on Aug 28, at 11% of the wave—left, not in the middle. Oct 30 is the 80-day low only—the 20-day low before it is Oct 17. The 20-week from this same Aug 20 trough does not bottom until Jan 9 (timing schematic, not a price forecast).  

 

DJIA 80-day cycle (alternate): On this count the low is Oct 4, not Oct 30, and Oct 4 is not a high. The Sep 22 bounce already failed. Next week is a bounce only if Sep 26 holds above 51,172. The high of that bounce is Oct 4, and it is a sell. It is a short, left-translated 40-day high, about a week, and it does not repair 52,364. If 51,172 breaks, next week is down into Oct 4. Then Oct 4 is the low near 50,000, not the high (timing schematic, not a price forecast).

If the switch levels hold, treat the late-September dip strictly as a tactical trade—take profits into early October, look to cover risk around the October 30–31 trough, and save major position sizing for the January 9 40-week/18-month cycle low. If a switch level fails, step aside during the bounce and buy the index at its early-October reset instead. Midterm seasonality provides a strong tailwind once a low is established—it is not a license to ignore the cycle trough. 

Dow: Oct 4 is a sell only above 51,172. Under 51,172 it is the buy.
S&P: Oct 4–7 is a sell only above 7,550. Under 7,550, Oct 5 is the buy.
Nasdaq: Oct 16 is a sell only above 30,125. Under 30,125, Oct 5 is the buy.

 

See also:

TPR (September 13, 2026) - S&P 500 Hurst Cycle Analysis.

Jeff Hirsch (September 2, 2026) - September Stock Market Performance in Midterm Election Years. 

Jeff Hirsch (December 29, 2025) - 2026 Midterm Election Year Seasonal Patterns of US Indices. 

Seth Golden (July 28, 2026) - Presidential Cycle Sweet Spot: Post-Midterm Election Gains.

The Collapse of America's Constitutional Order | Jeffrey Sachs

A president stood at the UN and claimed the right to annihilate a civilization. Congress said nothing. That is the constitutional order collapsing in public. I shuddered then, and I shudder now that a president of the United States can stand at the podium of the UN General Assembly, speaking to world leaders in a language of annihilation of other countries and of sending them to hell. It was ghastly, unprecedented, totally disgusting, disgraceful for the United States. But it is also a measure of how broken the constitutional order of the United States is.

 » Like the worst tyrant or gangster imaginable. «

Annihilation as Presidential Language

Trump basically said, like a madman—which I think, arguably, he is—that he and he alone will decide the survival of Iran. He said that he has a big, big choice to make. Maybe Iran will be a great country. Maybe Iran will be annihilated. Maybe Trump will send it to hell. And not only was the language vulgar in a way that I certainly could never, in my lifetime, have imagined coming from a president of the United States or anybody standing at the UN podium—because what Trump said was odious and completely in violation of every religious, moral, ethical, and legal standard that we have in this world—it was also a measure of the brazen collapse of our Constitution.

Who Has the Power to Declare War?

Is there a political system where one man decides the fate of another civilization? Is that how the American system works? Of course, the answer is no. The Founding Fathers, who rebelled against a mad King George III, were very explicit in the Declaration of Independence, celebrated this year, 250 years after its issuance. We're in the 250th anniversary, one that Trump says is about our freedom. It was explicit that King George took on the authority to put the military above civil rule.

And when the Founding Fathers wrote the US Constitution, they specifically assigned the power to declare war not to the commander in chief, but solely and exclusively to the United States Congress—not by choice, not if they care about it or want to, not if they want to delegate it or not, but solely to Congress. Trump said yesterday he doesn't care what the public thinks. He doesn't care what the vote is. He says, 'It doesn't even cross my mind.' And earlier this year, when he was asked, 'Well, are there any limits on your power?' he thought about it and said, 'Yes, my morality, but it's my will. It's what I want to do. Otherwise, no, there are no other limits.'

When Congress Fails to Act

What did our Congress do? The majority party in both houses simply remained silent. Trump said he was going to have the difficult choice of whether to annihilate one of the most ancient civilizations in the world, 5,000 years old, twenty times older than the United States of America.

What did our Speaker of the House say? Nothing. What did our Senate majority leader say? Nothing. What did the members of the president's party in Congress say? Nothing. That is the institutional failure. Congress has the constitutional authority over war and the power of the purse. Yet when the president claims the unilateral authority to determine whether another country lives or dies, the institutions constitutionally empowered to check that authority remain silent.

The tens or hundreds of billions of dollars that Trump has wasted of American income in this flagrant war of whim—where is Congress to say, 'You have no authority whatsoever to spend that because only we can decide on the spending and only we can declare war'? This is worse than the Roman Empire. There was a Senate that actually still said something. Our Senate says nothing.

Beyond Partisanship

I am not partisan. And a Democratic president who dared to be as absolutely mad and deranged as this president would probably find subservience in that party too. So I'm not even making a partisan point. I'm making a point about the collapse of our constitutional order.

We are so broken that not only do we have a madman in power, but there is no respect for the constitutional limits on presidential power. The president can make statements, as he made yesterday, unprecedented in the chamber of the General Assembly in front of world leaders, speaking like the worst tyrant or gangster imaginable, and not a murmur from the Republican Party, which dominates the House and the Senate.

The Absence of Institutional Restraint

Have we come to a point where one man, who I happen to think is utterly incompetent, utterly sociopathic, actually—when people are killed under his order, not a moment of reflection or remorse when 150 schoolgirls are murdered, and he knows the truth. He says, ‘Yeah, the Iranians probably did it. We'll find out.' No, not any control at all in our system of government.

So, how I feel? I shudder at the last 24 hours, both at what the president said. It made my skin crawl. I was sitting there in the chamber listening to this madness. I mean, it really was psychopathic madness, speaking in this way, with a vulgarity that is unimaginable. But then I've shuddered since at the lack of response by the leaders—the majority leader of the US Senate, the Speaker of the House, Supreme Court justices, anybody—to say no. In our system of government, it's not one person who decides on the fate of another civilization.

The Grim Constitutional Question

We are a country, we say, first of all, of representation, and the American people are aghast at this. They oppose it overwhelmingly. They do not support this war of Netanyahu and Trump, which is a two-person war of murder and destruction and assassination of leaders of another country. They do not support it.

So this is the grim fact. It wasn't just the awful statements. That was my first reaction. But then I thought, what have we come to when one person can make a statement like this and then remain essentially unchallenged in the United States system of government? Annihilation is not diplomacy. Congressional silence is not restraint. A constitutional republic cannot survive if one man claims the power to decide whether another civilization lives or dies.

 

Quoted from:

Jeffrey Sachs (September 23, 2026) - Reaction to Trump's UN Speech, and what Lies Netanyahu Will Tell the UN.

Jeffrey D. Sachs (b. 1954) is an American economist, professor, and author specializing in sustainable development, global economics, and international policy. He is Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, has advised governments and international organizations, and served as a special advisor to UN Secretaries-General. A 2011 Economist survey named Sachs, Bernanke, and Minsky among the decade's most influential economists.