The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) just finished up its meeting on monetary policy and released its latest statement.  There were no unexpected policy changes in terms of the federal funds target rate and the Fed’s slow draining of its balance sheet.

CNBC showed a nice comparison of the changes from the previous FOMC statement.

Probably the most significant change is the committee’s view of inflation.  The previous statement said, “Inflation on a 12-month basis is expected to remain somewhat below 2 percent in the near term but to stabilize around the Committee’s 2 percent objective over the medium term.”

The latest statement said, “Inflation on a 12-month basis is expected to move up this year and to stabilize around the Committee’s 2 percent objective over the medium term.”

In other words, the slight wording change in the statement indicates that the Fed sees inflation (based on its definition) as picking up slightly, or at least perceives slightly higher inflation in the near future.

Of course, in terms of monetary policy, we actually have slight deflation right now.  In terms of the Fed’s balance sheet, the money supply is going slightly down with the Fed’s policy of allowing a small amount (relative to the total size) to mature and not be rolled over.  In fact, as of February 1, 2018, the Fed will be rolling off $20 billion per month, which is up from $10 billion per month previously

The FOMC decision – or perhaps non-decision – came the day after Trump’s State of the Union speech.  From a libertarian standpoint, there was nothing unexpected.  There was the usual political theater.  And of course, the Democrats hated almost everything that Trump said.

While Trump is still a disaster on foreign policy, he is not as hawkish as he could be.  He is not as hawkish as other presidents have been in the past or as much as most of the other potential candidates from 2015/ 2016 could have been.

On economic grounds, he is right to say that we need less regulation.  He was right in calling for a cut in corporate tax rates.  Unfortunately, he doesn’t get much right after that.  He wants a massive infrastructure program that will centralize what should be done at a local level (or privately) if it should be done at all.  This will just be more boondoggles with another trillion dollars or so added to the already over-bloated debt.

As I have previously said, Trump is going to regret that he claimed so much credit for the booming (for some) economy and the booming stock market.  The Federal Reserve is still tightening its monetary policy.  The stock market has boomed with three rounds of QE, but we have to wonder how long the stock market can go without more Fed injections, let alone a slightly deflationary stance.

This was Janet Yellen’s last meeting as Fed chair.  Jerome Powell is set to take over on February 3, 2018.  He is not a good appointment by Trump, but perhaps Trump is depending on a Keynesian type who will juice the economy when it is needed.  We shouldn’t expect any radical shift when Powell takes over, but you can bet that the Fed will quickly reverse course if the economy takes a hit.  The Fed will not only stop rolling off securities, but it will probably start a new round of purchases (QE4?).

The markets, in the midst of its rather historic run, took a break on Tuesday.  Supposedly the thought of higher interest rates spooked the markets for one day.  Stocks, bonds, and gold all went down that day.  Or maybe investors just needed a short break before resuming the buying spree, particularly in stocks.

It is interesting that Yellen will escape without having to deal with any major crises on her watch.  Previous Fed chairs were not so fortunate.

For Jerome Powell, he may end up wishing he never got the position of Fed chair.  He could end up playing the role of Ben Bernanke, but the public may not be quite as patient with massive bailouts of the financial industry this time around.

Despite what Trump may have said in his speech, the state of the union can change quickly.  A boom can turn to bust quickly.

I think the president is overrated.  I don’t mean this president in particular, but the presidency in general.  The president certainly has a great deal of power, but I think he is often credited too much (or discredited too much) for the overall economy.

There is no question that the president matters.  The president approves legislation, which includes budgets, and only a two-thirds majority in Congress can override a presidential veto.  A president can also set the tone and the agenda.  Even with Trump, who is perhaps the most hated president ever by the establishment media, has a bully pulpit.  He not only has Twitter, but he could call a primetime speech at any time, and the networks would feel compelled to cover it.

If Ron Paul had been elected president and allowed to take office, he would have withdrawn troops from all over the world, or at least we can guess this is what would have happened.  If he had taken office and not followed through on this promise, then a democratic and peaceful revolution really would have been hopeless at that point.

But let’s say Ron Paul had taken office (it doesn’t matter if it had been 2009 or 2013 or 2017).  Just by ending the wars and bringing home the troops, hundreds of billions of dollars could have been saved right there on an annual basis.  Those resources could have been used to satisfy consumer demands.  In addition, a President Paul could have vetoed every single budget bill, or at least vetoed every bill that ran any kind of deficit.  Maybe Congress would have overridden him, but you can be pretty sure that some domestic spending cuts would be made.  Just the fact that Ron Paul was elected (in our example), the politicians would have felt somewhat compelled to go along with the electorate.

In this sense, a radical politician who advocates free market policies could dramatically improve the economy for the better in the long run.  But if there were massive spending cuts and a liberalizing of markets, it might expose some of the malinvestments from previous times.  You could still get what feels like an economic downturn while resources realign according to consumer demand.

In our reality, the economic policies from administration to administration do not change much.  There wasn’t that much difference between George W. Bush and Barack Obama.  Bush actually ramped up spending faster than Obama did.  Bush gave us Medicare coverage of prescription drugs.  Obama gave us Obamacare.  There were small differences in tax rates.  Bush gave us Bernanke, and Obama gave us Yellen at the Fed.

Trump has perhaps been slightly better in terms of regulations.  There were some elements of the tax reform package that were positive, especially the cut in corporate tax rates.  Still, spending is continuing to increase.  The debt is continuing to increase at a rapid pace.  Trump is a mercantilist who believes in protectionist tariffs.  And his appointments to the Federal Reserve consist of more Keynesians.

So unless a president is going to radically break from the status quo, the president does not impact the economy that much.  It is more a matter of timing and a matter of Federal Reserve policy.

Trump Takes Ownership

Unfortunately for Trump’s sake, he is taking full ownership of the supposed boom that is happening now.  He is touting GDP and other government statistics.  Worst of all, he is touting the stock market.

In a recent interview on CNBC, Trump said, “The stock market is up almost 50% since my election.  Had the Democrat won [Hillary Clinton], I believe you would have been down 50%.”

I think he is going to really regret those words.

He can’t avoid taking ownership now.  If he is using the booming stock market to brag, then what is he going to say when it goes bust? He can’t turn around at that point and talk about his warnings of a bubble during his campaign.

If Trump is still president in November 2020 when the next presidential election occurs, it is a safe bet that we will have had some kind of bust at that point.  My bet is that the stock market will be lower at that time than it is now.  And if it is higher at that point, then it will be because the Fed has started another round of massive monetary inflation.

Trump’s job in dealing with the media and intelligence agencies is hard enough.  But when stocks crash, he will have nobody to blame but himself.  He would have had a case to be made if he weren’t bragging about the stock boom.  But now, if a recession hits, most people are going to blame him, and he isn’t going to have any good response.  His approval ratings will drop below where they are now.

The only thing we can do is to refute Trump now, before the crash hits.  The boom in stocks does not have a lot to do with Trump’s presidency.  Part of the portion that is attributable to Trump’s policies is artificial and unsustainable.

When things get bad economically, let’s hope enough Americans understand that it wasn’t the free market that brought us to this point.  It is government regulation, massive government spending, and Federal Reserve manipulation of the economy that make our living standards lower than they otherwise would be.

For legal reasons, I should probably say that I haven’t really created my own cryptocurrency, as the title suggests.  But I could create my own cryptocurrency.

I could call it Libertarian Coin.  Or maybe Anti-Fed Coin works better.  At this point, it is all marketing.

I like cryptocurrencies for a few reasons:

1. The technology behind them, while still in need of significant improvement, is innovative.  The technology will be useful for other purposes in the future even if I don’t fully understand it.
2. I like competition for the central banks.
3. The cryptocurrencies draw attention and discussion towards the Fed and central banking in general.

Unfortunately, on the last point, some of the attention it is starting to draw isn’t so much as cryptocurrencies as an alternative to fiat money, but the parallels between cryptocurrencies and the government-issued fiat currencies.

As a libertarian, I try to be somewhat sympathetic to cryptocurrencies and those who advocate them.  After all, it isn’t easy to find vocal opponents of government-issued currencies.

With that said, I feel the duty to warn those who will listen that this is a giant bubble just waiting to implode.  This isn’t to say that more money will not be made in cryptocurrencies.  When I say money, I mean U.S. dollars or other government money.  The bubble may last a while longer, and maybe a few will be smart enough to cash out, even though we have no idea when the right time will be.

Cryptocurrencies are very similar to government-issued currencies except in the fact that we are not essentially compelled to use them. With legal tender laws and tax implications, it is virtually impossible to live in the United States and not use U.S. dollars.

When you buy a stock, you are buying a share of the company.  It is usually a very tiny share, but it is a share in the company nonetheless.  If you own stock in Apple, you own a tiny fraction of its operations.  You own a tiny fraction of its buildings and equipment.  You own a tiny share in the profits in the form of dividends.  When you buy Apple stock, you are buying something.

When you buy gold, or even a certificate representing gold, you are buying something.  You can actually touch the gold, and you can use it for jewelry, or industrial purposes, or as an alternative form of money.  Gold has a history of being used as money for thousands of years up through part of the 20th century.  It is still held by central banks today.

If you buy a cryptocurrency – let’s say Bitcoin, since it is the most popular – then what are you buying?  Bitcoin isn’t a company like Apple.  You can’t redeem your Bitcoin shares for anything tangible like gold.

Bitcoin does not sell products like Apple.  It doesn’t make a profit as a corporation would.  The only profit is coming from the next sucker who will buy it at a higher price than what you paid for it.

Someone might say that you are buying the technology behind Bitcoin.  But this means nothing.  That technology isn’t earning a profit.  It isn’t patented, as can be seen with well over a thousand cryptocurrencies today.  There is no Bitcoin company selling technological services to consumers.  And there is no building owned by a Bitcoin company.

In other words, when you have shares of Bitcoin – as opposed to shares of Apple or another company – you don’t really own anything. You don’t own anything tangible, and you don’t own anything that can be sold to consumers other than the speculation itself.

There will be a major crash in Bitcoin and all of the other cryptocurrencies, unless there is something out there that is actually backed by something.  The only thing I am unsure of is whether the crash in cryptocurrencies will happen before a stock market crash and recession, or after.  Or maybe they will occur simultaneously.

But as much as stocks are in a bubble, they aren’t going to zero.  That is because you still own the company and its underlying assets.  Some stocks might go to zero where the company’s debt is greater than its assets and it is no longer able to make a profit.  But as a whole, stocks aren’t going to zero.  I can’t be sure of cryptocurrencies, but they really could go to essentially zero.

Ok, so I didn’t really create my own cryptocurrency, but here are a couple of guys who did.  Maybe you could get in early.

(Warning: You may not want to watch at work or around the kids.)

It has been one year since Donald Trump was inaugurated as president and delivered a speech that promised to shift power out of Washington DC (the swamp) and back to the people.

It is still somewhat surreal that Trump was elected president.  It isn’t so much because he was a reality tv star or he can be loud and somewhat obnoxious at times; it is because he defied the establishment and still managed to win.

Aside from Fox News, just about the entire television industry was against Trump.  Even with Fox News, it had Megyn Kelly at the time, along with several war hawks, who vehemently opposed Trump.  And the establishment media’s opposition to Trump wasn’t the same as opposition to Romney or Bush.  It was, and still is, absolute hatred.

So just the fact that Trump was able to win the presidency on at least a somewhat anti-establishment platform should give us great hope.  He went into South Carolina and said that Bush had lied us into war in Iraq.  He said he wanted to get along with Putin in Russia.  He said we shouldn’t be footing the bill for NATO.  He was certainly inconsistent, but he dared to question the U.S. empire in his campaign.  For that reason, it is amazing he won, and those who love liberty should recognize that, even if they don’t like Donald Trump.

It was also very entertaining to watch the election results come in and the reactions of the establishment media pundits.  They were shocked and squirming in their seats.  It showed that their opinions didn’t matter as much as what they thought.

Now that Trump has been president for one year, we can assess the positives and negatives.  He has mostly been a disaster, but there are certainly some good points.

He pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement.  I’m not sure how much it really means, but even symbolism can matter.

The FCC under Trump pulled out of net neutrality.  This is positive, as anything should be celebrated where the government has less regulatory authority, even if the internet service providers rely on local government-granted monopolies to a large extent.

I have written extensively on the tax reform, and a lot of it is good.  The cut in the high corporate tax rates is especially positive.  But as I’ve pointed out, it unfortunately does not address the issue of spending.

I have heard some Trump defenders say that Trump has been good for liberty because he hasn’t done much.  In other words, libertarians should want someone who doesn’t do much in office.  The problem with this argument is that it isn’t true, and it’s not going to be true in the future.  Unless Trump is being overridden by Congress, he is partially responsible for the spending that comes out of Washington DC.  It is hard to say that a president is “doing nothing” when the federal government is spending $4 trillion (and growing) per year.  That’s a lot to pay for nothing.

It isn’t that Trump isn’t doing much.  It is more that he is maintaining the status quo in a lot of areas, including overall spending.  On spending, if anything, he is proposing even more than Obama, so we can’t even call it the status quo.

In terms of foreign policy, Trump has been mostly bad.  His Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, is actually less hawkish than a lot of other potential people who could have been put in that position.  Tillerson is very far from having anything resembling a libertarian position on foreign policy, but he is less disastrous, at least so far, than past people in that position, including Hillary Clinton.

Trump has mostly fallen in line with the establishment on foreign policy.  He sent missiles into Syria.  He continues all of the wars.  He continues the U.S. government’s policy of cozying up to Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Perhaps one good thing that Trump did as compared to Obama is that he stopped overtly funding ISIS.  That is why ISIS has broken up to a large degree.  There are still a lot of terrorists out there to be sure (that is what happens when you kill their relatives and destroy their countries), but at least the U.S. government has seemed to withdraw its heavy support of ISIS, the supposed enemy.

Trump did appoint a lot of bad people, including Nikki Haley.  He is getting a lot of bad advice.  Luckily, he has not started any major new wars yet, but there is still time for that.

Overall, Trump’s promises to drain the swamp have not come true.  If anything, Trump is now just a weird creature living in the swamp.  Most of his promises were empty.  He may or may not get the wall.  Obamacare, while taking a hit, has still not been fully repealed.  There are some things we can be especially thankful that he did not fulfill his promises.  High tariffs is one area.  The wall is another area, although I recognize that some libertarians are not opposed to one.

Even some of the smaller things he hinted at have been left behind. I was hoping he was going to have a committee – headed by RFK Jr. – to study the ill effects of vaccines.  I guess the pharmaceutical lobby was too powerful.

As far as Russiagate, I think the whole thing is a scam.  The crimes were committed by the Clintons, the Obama administration, and the intelligence/ spy agencies.  It is amazing that it is still used as a story against Trump when there is no evidence of anything of significance, except for the crimes of the people who set the whole thing up.

One of the most frustrating things of the Trump presidency is his lack of use of the bully pulpit.  He uses Twitter, but not everyone is on Twitter.  And not everyone hears or sees the exact messages that he sends.

Trump should start making speeches in primetime.  The networks will essentially be forced to cover the speeches.  He should lay out the corruptness of the investigators in Russiagate.  He should lay out his case and point out that there is no evidence other than hearsay from a few anonymous sources in the intelligence agencies.

Trump should also pick some easy fights to win.  The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the FBI clearly lied in the Bundy case.  Trump should explain this in a primetime speech and propose massive budget cuts to each of the agencies.  They obviously have way too much money to spend if they are spending millions trying to prosecute people through lying and evidence tampering.

Trump is obviously very smart in certain ways.  He has some good political instincts, which is why he was able to get the Republican nomination and get elected.  On the other hand, he is not an intellectual.  Of course, we don’t want an intellectual who thinks they know how to run other people’s lives better than they do.  But it would be nice if Trump had some intellectual curiosity other than just watching Fox News.  It would be nice if he would read a book on some basic economics.

I don’t know if Trump will survive four years, but he has made it through one.  I will continue to be anti-anti-Trump.  In other words, I oppose his deepest enemies in the swamp.  His greatest enemies are the political left and the hardcore war hawks.  They truly do have Trump derangement syndrome, and they really don’t even make sense any more.  They grasp at straws trying to point out every flaw of Donald Trump.  And they get offended, or pretend to get offended, when Trump sends out a Tweet that is impolite.  But they don’t get offended when Trump or any of the presidents before him drop bombs on innocent people overseas.

The biggest positive of the Trump presidency is that he is helping to expose the whole rotten system.  Some of it is intentional on his part, and some of it is not.  While I don’t hold out any great hope for the Trump presidency in the next three years, let’s hope he doesn’t start any major wars, and let’s hope he keeps exposing the corrupt system that is Washington DC.

As I write this, it was 20 years ago today that the story was broken of a 23-year old White House intern who was having sexual relations with the president of the United States.

The Drudge Report, which originally reported the story, celebrated the 20th anniversary of this breaking news by displaying several links about the event.  It was this story that really catapulted Matt Drudge and his website into uncharted waters.  It is now a favorite news site amongst conservatives, many libertarians (myself included), and probably even some on the left.  Drudge should be celebrating this event because he is now worth likely somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 million.

But it wasn’t the sexual scandal of Bill Clinton and the ensuing impeachment that is really the big story.  It is certainly memorable, and perhaps entertaining, but the actual story probably didn’t change our lives all that much in the long run.

The significance of the story is that it marked a change in modern news and communication.  It broke the first hole in the gate that was managed by the gatekeepers.  The gatekeepers are the establishment media.

Newsweek magazine had the story and was supposedly going to report it, but ended up killing the story.  There were likely other outlets that knew of the story.

To this day, we don’t know what would have happened if the internet was not in existence in 1998.  Maybe the story would have never been released, or maybe it would have just come from the National Enquirer.  It probably would have gone down as an unsubstantiated rumor.

The internet was in its infancy in 1998.  But for anyone paying close attention, it was Drudge’s story about Lewinsky that really signaled a changing of the guard.

We will never go back to the world of 1990.  It is too late for the establishment to stop it.  And since the internet plays such a vital role in our economy and our lives every day, it would be impossible for politicians to shut it down for any significant length of time.  Politicians would rather have their constituents on Facebook than having them stand outside their office with pitchforks.

To be sure, the establishment media is still there and kicking.  It still does great damage and influences people to a large degree.  But it also faces competition as it never did before.

Most people get at least some of their news from the internet now.  Whether it is from actual news sites or blogs or social media, there is a lot to choose from.  Of course, there is a lot of inaccurate and bad information out there, but at least one can search for the truth.  At least you have a chance of finding something that you are looking for.

In the old days, you basically had to walk around in a virtual state of ignorance.  If you were curious about some obscure fact, there was almost no way to easily find it out, unless it happened to be in the Almanac or Encyclopedia.  You could go to a library, but the search could be daunting, and it may not even have what you are looking for.

Now we have the free flow of information between billions of people  on the planet.  We can get first-hand accounts of things that happened instead of relying on the news to report what they want to report.  We are no longer dependent on 3 or 4 television stations that report basically the same thing.

For this reason, I don’t understand why so many people are pessimistic about the future.  There are certainly a lot of things to be concerned about in terms of foreign policy, civil liberties, and living standards.  But we have one of the greatest things going for us in that the gatekeepers no longer have a sealed gate.  We don’t have to rely on them for information any longer.

This is very positive for the prospects of liberty.  It is the establishment and the cronies who rely on false information and propaganda to continue a system of government control.  It is much easier to manipulate the people when you have control over the information that they are fed.

That control has shifted, and libertarians should celebrate this fact.  The truth is on our side.  Therefore, anything that opens up communication and the free flow of information is beneficial because more people can hear the truth.

Things changed in the 1990s, and it has grown far more powerful than we could have imagined.  Drudge’s story about Monica Lewinsky signified that change in 1998.  It allowed tens of millions of people to shut off their television and close their newspapers and turn on their computer.

We are better off for it, and we have more liberty because of it.

There was quite a stir recently after Oprah Winfrey’s speech at the Golden Globe Awards.  There is now speculation on whether Oprah (known by her first name) will run for president of the United States.

I have already written on the prospects of a Mark Cuban presidency.

There is little doubt that Oprah would run on the Democratic ticket.  And assuming Trump is still around in 2020 and decides to run again, it would make quite the showdown in the general election if Oprah won the nomination.

The left would have a hard time trumpeting up Oprah’s success as a businesswoman.  After all, they hate Donald Trump, yet it is hard to deny his success as a businessman.  The same can be said with Mark Cuban.  It is true though that being good in business does not translate into success as a politician, at least not in terms of liberty.

Most business people will say that they can bring more efficiency to a bureaucratic government.  This almost never happens.  Plus, efficiency isn’t a goal for libertarians.  The goal is liberty.  In fact, there are many times that libertarians prefer an inefficient government to an efficient one.  We certainly don’t want an efficient IRS. I wouldn’t even necessarily want an efficient government education system.  It means politicians would be more efficient in teaching (indoctrinating) students with their ideas.

Being a good businesswoman is Oprah’s strength.  She was a highly successful talk show host and she is still highly successful in her business ventures.  She should keep doing what she is good at.  The marketplace has rewarded her with great wealth for providing value to others.  The profit signal tells her that she should keep doing what she’s been doing, and it will better serve mankind.

When you get into government, there are no signals of profit and loss.  There is no feedback mechanism.  This is why it is impossible for government to be efficient at allocating resources.

While I have several positive things to say about Oprah, her past judgement in company is not one of them.  She is close to the Obamas.  She has been in the company of the Clintons.  She was on the inside with Harvey Weinstein.  There are already a lot of pictures that tell more than a thousand words.

Oprah is not guilty of the crimes of these people for associating with them.  But it shows a lack of good judgement of character on her part.  I have no idea if Oprah is an honest person, but I like to give her the benefit of the doubt.  Either she lacks good character, or she lacks good judgement of character in others.  In other words, she would not be a good president.

If you can’t figure out that Hillary Clinton is a corrupt criminal that should be behind bars, then I really think that alone is reason enough to disqualify you in my eyes.  It is possible to have someone who is highly principled and believes in liberty, but just doesn’t pay any attention to current events.  If there were such a person and they didn’t know much about Hillary Clinton, then maybe that person could get a pass.  But Oprah knows the Clintons, and if she can’t figure out just how corrupt they are, then there is little hope for her in figuring out the corrupt system that is Washington DC.

Oprah is even closer with the Obamas.  I assume she mostly approves of their agenda.  If Obamacare doesn’t bother Oprah, and if the wars in Libya and Syria and elsewhere don’t bother Oprah, then she is certainly nowhere near on the side of liberty.

There is always a chance that someone could get into office and study up on the issues and realize just how bad and corrupt things are.  This may have happened with John Kennedy to a certain degree, at least in terms of foreign policy and the CIA.

However, if Oprah really is a good person and just naive about everything, then she is going to get eaten alive by the swamp.  If she even gets to the general election, then she will get hit hard by all of the lobbyists and the insiders if she is elected president.  She will be quickly corrupted, or else she won’t survive long.  She won’t even know how to handle it.  Also, if she doesn’t have a clue going in, then it will be the Obama and Clinton types who will surround her like vultures.  They will get the cabinet appointments and the advisor jobs.  She will get a lot of bad advice.

It is understanding that people want change.  That is why Obama was elected in 2008.  It is why Trump was elected in 2016.  If Oprah is elected president in 2020, it will be a continuation of the discontent with the status quo.

Unfortunately, if Oprah is elected, she will be eaten alive by Washington DC.  She will also preside over a very difficult time for this country.  The national debt is already out of control.  The unfunded liabilities (Medicare and Social Security) are on the verge of bankruptcy without some kind of reform.  And meanwhile, the empire overseas goes on.

If you happen to be reading this Oprah, my advice for you is to forget politics.  Maybe you can disassociate with your political friends too.  Just keep on making money and serving society through the marketplace.

The latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) numbers were released for December 2017.  The CPI was up 0.1% last month.  The year-over-year now stands at 2.1%.

The median CPI, which is generally more stable, went up 0.3%.  Year-over-year, the median CPI is up to 2.4%.

Since the median CPI tends to be more steady, it is somewhat significant that this number has been trending up.  It indicates that this boom we have may have more legs.

To be sure, the boom we have right now is mainly in assets.  It is holders of stocks and real estate who are benefitting the most.  The stated unemployment rate is relatively low, but that does not reflect the struggles of the middle class with stagnant wages and rising healthcare costs.

There is a misconception that price deflation is bad because it is associated with depression.  Therefore, it is held that some inflation is good, as long as it isn’t too high.

But the only reason that price deflation is bad is because it is in context with our world of central banking and the bubbles and busts that ensue.  If there were no central bank, or if the money supply stayed relatively stable over time, then price deflation would be beneficial and not associated with economic downturns.

While the Fed is not currently inflating the money supply, it did so heavily from 2008 to 2014.  And just the existence of the Fed places an implicit guarantee on the bond market and helps to keep interest rates lower than they otherwise would be.

When we see an uptick in price inflation in our current world, it can signal a boom period, at least up to a certain point.  The problem is that much of this boom is artificial and unsustainable.  If prices are rising because people are spending more money based on increased debt, then what seems like a boom is really just an unsustainable situation that will end with some pain.

If a family has $50,000 saved and decides to go on a lavish two-week vacation to spend all of the money, then that two-week period is going to seem like a boom time as long as they don’t think of the consequences of what is to come after the vacation is over.  When the family comes back from vacation with no savings, reality is going to hit a lot harder as compared to if they had only taken a $5,000 vacation.

The point here is that an uptick in price inflation is not the sign of a prosperous economy.  It is the sign of malinvestment.  And the longer the unsustainable boom goes on, the harder things are going to fall.

The stock market can keep hitting all-time highs.  It may do so for a while longer.  But when the crash finally comes, it is going to be devastating, especially to those who are heavily invested in the boom times continuing.

The major financial headline on Wednesday morning of January 10, 2018 was a report that Chinese officials are considering slowing or stopping its purchases of U.S. government debt.  This news sent bond yields higher.

It did not stay in the headlines for long though because the establishment media doesn’t  want to contemplate what might happen if the Chinese were to actually sell off U.S. debt.

China is currently the number one holder of U.S. debt (not including the Federal Reserve).  Japan comes in a close second.  As of October 2017 (the latest figures available as of this writing), China held about  $1.189 trillion.  Japan held $1.094 trillion.  In a distant third place was Ireland with $312 billion.

In October 2016, China held about $1.116 trillion, and Japan held $1.132.  In other words, there were brief periods where Japan actually took over the top spot.  Over the course of a year, China has increased its holdings a little, while Japan has decreased its holdings a little.  When I use the term “little”, it is in context with the total numbers.

Overall foreign holdings of U.S. Treasury securities increased from $6.044 trillion to $6.349 trillion.

Interestingly, Russia actually increased its holdings from about $75 billion to $105 billion, despite the anti-Russia sentiment coming out of the U.S.  Maybe the Russian government and central bank thought it could trust Trump more to regain good economic relations.

So what should we make of this report that Chinese officials are recommending a reduction in buying?

First, by looking at the numbers, the Chinese central bank has not been a big buyer lately anyway, at least in context with its total holdings.  A slowdown in buying has been expected for a long time now, and it has already been happening.  The Chinese are increasing their gold holdings faster than their U.S. Treasury holdings, at least on a percentage basis.

The biggest question that I don’t see answered out there is whether the Chinese would actually stop rolling over maturing debt.  This is how the Federal Reserve is very slowly reducing its balance sheet.  It is technically not selling any debt.  It just isn’t rolling over some of the maturing debt.

If China actually stopped rolling over existing debt, this would be big news.  Then we would start to see a reduction in its holdings.  But if it keeps rolling over maturing debt and maintaining a steady holding of U.S. Treasuries in the neighborhood of $1.1 trillion or $1.2 trillion, then this isn’t that significant of news.

I highly doubt the Chinese are about to drain off their holdings of U.S. debt.  The reason is that the top officials are mercantilists.  They believe that they need to keep U.S. Treasuries in order to help its exporters.  They do not want a strong yuan that would hurt exports, even though it would help over one billion consumers inside of China.

However, I do think that much of the rest of the world is getting tired of the U.S. government calling all of the shots when it comes to foreign policy and economic policy.  This is why many countries are finding alternatives to the dollar for foreign trade.  They aren’t outright abandoning the dollar, but there is no reason that people in China cannot trade directly with people in Russia without the use of U.S. dollars as a middleman.

U.S. consumers have long been subsidized by the fact that the U.S. dollar is the world’s reserve currency.  U.S. consumers are also subsidized by the Chinese government for propping up China’s export industry.  The Chinese ship products over to the U.S., and they use the U.S. dollars to buy U.S. government debt.  This is just stupidity on the part of Chinese officials, so it is no surprise that they are considering at least a reduction in this policy.

Unfortunately, the Chinese, in the process, are also subsidizing the politicians in Washington DC, along with the Federal Reserve.  When Chinese central bankers buy U.S. government debt, this means that the Fed does not have to buy as much, or interest rates are lower than they otherwise would have been.

For this reason, I hope the Chinese do stop buying U.S. government debt.  I hope they start selling.  It may hurt the U.S. consumer in the short run, but it will also hurt the spending politicians in Washington DC.  It will help to drive up interest rates and finally put pressure on Congress to spend less.  Nothing else has worked.  In order to see any serious cuts in spending, we need higher interest rates and a higher threat of price inflation.

And we drastically need lower spending coming out of Washington DC, as our living standards have taken a massive hit from the resources being consumed.  While most everyone focuses on tax rates, the real focus should be on total government spending.  All government spending is a consumption of resources, and those resources have to come from somewhere.  Whether you pay through the income tax or inflation or debt, it is still ultimately coming out of our pockets (unless the Chinese want to pay for it indefinitely).

In conclusion, I don’t take the news of China reducing its purchases too seriously.  If China actually starts to significantly reduce its overall holdings of U.S. debt, then we should pay closer attention.  It will ultimately be painful, but it would be better for the long run if interest  rates are forced higher and the Congress is forced to cut spending.

Many libertarians have been predicting much higher interest rates and a popping of the bond bubble for quite some time.  However, these predictions have yet to come true.  It is hard to believe after QE1, QE2, and QE3, along with a national debt exceeding $20 trillion, that interest rates  have remained low.

Even more incredibly, the bond market is not being directly propped up by the Federal Reserve at this time.  The Fed ended its QE3 in October 2014.  Therefore, all of the new debt (not counting rolled over maturing debt) has been bought by private investors or foreign central banks for the last three plus years.

As a side note, the Fed is still propping up the bond market by its past actions and its implicit guarantees.  Although the Fed is not currently buying new government debt, the market fully expects the Fed to step in, if needed.

While the current path is unsustainable, it doesn’t mean it can’t last for a while longer.  As Keynes once said, the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.  In other words, you shouldn’t be shorting the bond market right now.

Japan has proven that you can have massive monetary inflation and massive government debt without having imminent price inflation and higher interest rates.  In fact, Japan has seen negative interest rates in recent years, almost defying gravity.  The economy there has certainly suffered from the massive malinvestment, but it hasn’t yet proliferated in the form of significantly higher consumer price inflation and higher interest rates.

There are likely a lot of bubbles, both in the U.S. and throughout the world.  In the U.S., stocks seem to be in a bubble.  Real estate, while not to the same extent as a decade ago, is probably in a bubble in at least some regions.  Bitcoin and other crypto currencies that aren’t actually backed up by anything other than some fancy new technology are probably in a major bubble.

We don’t know for certain that anything is in a bubble because value is subjective.  If a large segment of the population has determined that owning a house is a higher priority than almost everything else in their lives, then maybe housing will stay permanently high for a long while.  Still, we can be sure that there are unsustainable bubbles because there is malinvestment from the previous rounds of monetary inflation and the artificial lowering of interest rates.  While we can’t be certain of any particular bubble, we can look at past history and make a decent judgement.

Is there technical justification for stock market indexes going up around 20% in 2017?  Does this reflect earnings and economic growth?

As for bonds, there should be little question that there is a bubble, especially since there is an implicit guarantee from the central bank to prop up the bond market (keep interest rates down) when needed.  One could argue that this is always the Fed’s policy, but that still doesn’t avoid the likely outcome of bubbles and busts.

However, I would argue that the bond bubble will be the last major bubble to go.  In fact, if stocks tumble and we have a new recession, interest rates would probably go down.  The Fed might start buying government debt again, and investors would be seeking safety.  Although many libertarians do not view U.S. government debt as a safe haven, the fact is that many investors do view it this way.  It is a safe haven in the sense that outright default is highly unlikely.

We need a popping of the bubble that is government.  We need drastic reductions in federal spending.  This overall government bubble goes hand-in-hand with the bond bubble.

As long as consumer price inflation is low, or viewed as low by the public, then interest rates will likely remain relatively low.  It gives the Fed the ability to step in at any time and create more monetary inflation.

We would have to see a scenario similar to the 1970s with higher price inflation before the Fed really feels the pressure to stop all monetary inflation and for the public to take it seriously.  This is when we would see higher interest rates and a crashing of the bond bubble.  It would also finally force the federal government to rein in some spending.

In conclusion, now is not the time to short the bond market.  This will be one of the last things to fall.  There will be a major fall in stocks before we see a major fall in bonds.

While the issue of tax reform has taken center stage lately, there is a minority out there who bring up the problem of federal government spending.  This minority does not include those on the left who are simply opposing Trump and the Republicans and complaining about tax cuts for the rich.

The issue of government spending is a major one that does not receive enough attention.  Politicians and the media can get away with ignoring the spending issue to a large degree simply because many American voters don’t care.  They may say that they care in a poll, but they still believe in a free lunch.  They say they don’t want deficits, but then they are not prepared to identify where the major cuts should be made.

In the debate over taxes, there are some (including libertarians) who say that taxes and spending are two separate issues.  When taxes are on the table, we should support tax cuts and/ or tax reform.  When spending is on the table, then we can support decreased spending.

The problem with this theory is that spending is pretty much never on the table.  Do you really think we are going to have as big of a debate about spending as what just happened with tax reform?  And even if there is a debate, we can be sure that it won’t entail major cuts to major programs.  If anything, the debate will be whether to increase the total budget by 2% or by 5%.

Taxes and spending do go together.  They are linked.  It isn’t quite the same thing as a family separating their expense budget from their income.  With the federal government, it has become common to change the tax code without changing spending (or the pace of accelerating spending).  Taxes can be cut, and if there is a reduction in tax collections to the government, the difference is made up with an increased deficit.  In other words, it just gets tacked onto the national debt.

There are some who will make a Laffer Curve argument.  They will say that we can cut taxes without it resulting in decreased tax collections.  This can be true in some cases if the tax rates are confiscatory enough, but most people have not been arguing that with the current tax reform.  If the latest tax cuts end up being “revenue neutral”, part of that will be because of a reduction in the deductions.

When taxes are cut without commensurate spending cuts, and the deficit increases as a result, then we are not really getting tax reduction.  Specific individuals may get a reduction at the expense of someone else, but as a whole, we are not getting tax reduction.

If the federal government is spending $4 trillion per year, and then it continues to spend $4 trillion per year after tax cuts, then the government is still consuming (misallocating) $4 trillion worth of capital.  These resources are coming from somewhere.  Therefore, we are not going to see a significant improvement in living standards due to tax cuts if the government is still spending a huge amount every year.

With that said, I think we should still support tax cuts.  As individuals, for those of us who understand some economics, at least we have a slightly better chance of protecting ourselves.  If you are allowed to keep additional money (nominally speaking) from a tax cut, then hopefully you will use it wisely and not spend it frivolously.

But even on a national level, I believe we would be better off to have the tax cuts.  To illustrate why, let me use an extreme example.

Let’s say we could just get rid of all federal taxes while keeping spending the same.  The government would have to use debt and inflation in order to fund its $4 trillion plus annual budget.  Of course, it would never do this, even in the short run, because it would illustrate the absurdity of the system.

However, if this did actually happen, and the government had to issue $4 trillion of new debt every year to fund its budget, then it would not last long.  There would not likely be enough private investors to buy the debt, and the Federal Reserve would have to buy massive quantities of U.S. Treasury bills.  In other words, the Fed would have to engage in massive monetary inflation.

Consumer price inflation would likely spike higher, and interest rates on the debt would go up quickly.  This would quickly put a limit on the Fed’s monetary inflation, unless it wanted to risk hyperinflation.

While the current deficit/ debt is unsustainable in the long run, it has not been great enough yet to bring down the system.  The central bankers and the politicians have been able to kick the can down the road.

If the government were adding $4 trillion per year to the national debt, while much of this was also being added to the Fed’s balance sheet, then the game would end quickly.  They would have to start taxing again, or they would have to drastically cut spending.  Likely, it would be a combination of both.

The reason the middle class is struggling so much right now is because of the burden of government.  It is both regulatory and spending.  The U.S. federal government alone is consuming $4 trillion in resources.  Sure, some of this goes directly back to people in the form of welfare, but it is still a misallocation.  If we want to significantly improve our living standards, government spending has to be cut dramatically.

Since most people don’t care that much, and since politicians definitely don’t care, the only thing that is going to bring about lower spending is an increase in interest rates, likely coupled with higher consumer price inflation.  This seems to be the only thing at this point that can put a hard limit on the government’s ability to issue new debt.

If popular opinion can’t bring down federal spending, then the laws of economics will have to do it eventually.