The main event finally arrived.  Although there are supposed to be a couple more debates, this seemed like the most important one. It was the first debate, so it probably had what will be the largest viewing audience.

Fox News also hosted it.  I knew going into it that Chris Wallace is no fan of Trump, but I thought that he would at least ask some tough questions to Biden.  We can expect nothing but softballs in future debates

I heard Chris Wallace say before the debate that, as moderator, he basically wanted to be invisible.  Well, if that was his goal, he failed miserably.  He was arguing as much with Trump as Biden was.

I know Trump interrupted a lot.  I think that could be a turn off to some people.  But let’s face it; anyone who already hates Trump will be turned off by his interrupting, while anyone who already loves Trump won’t mind it at all. Maybe there is a tiny percentage of people who could go either way who might have been turned off by it.

At times, it was understandable that Trump interrupted.  He didn’t like hearing false accusations against him.  He didn’t like hearing false premises being thrown out there.  And this wasn’t just coming from Biden.  It was coming from Wallace.

Imagine someone asks you this question.  “Many people say you are a stupid idiot.  Given that you are a stupid idiot, how to do you plan to enact your agenda for the country?”  Ok, so Wallace didn’t ask that, but there were times where his questions went long with premises that were objectionable.  Trump isn’t going to sit back and let him continue with what seems more like a long argument than a debate question.

Overall, I give Chris Wallace a failing grade as moderator.  I had at least hoped he would ask Biden some tough questions. There were a few questions that may have been challenging for Biden, but really they were questions that should have been expected, such as his thoughts on packing the Supreme Court.

It would have been nice for Wallace to ask Biden about his son and Ukraine.  It would have been nice to ask him about threatening to withhold foreign aid to Ukraine (you know, what Trump was impeached over) in order to get the prosecutor fired who was investigating the company his son was “working” for.

Trump had many more challenging questions for Biden than what Wallace had.  I believe Trump has to keep doing this in future debates. He probably shouldn’t interrupt Biden as much, but when it is Trump’s turn to speak, he should challenge Biden with his own questions.

I thought it was a good move bringing up Bernie Sanders and radical leftists.  He was doing his best to have Biden either commit to the far left agenda or to oppose it and risk losing the far left vote. Trump was somewhat effective in this, but they were talking over each other a few times he was trying to make this point.  He said something about Pocahontas (Elizabeth Warren) not dropping out before Super Tuesday, but I’m not sure that a lot of people would have understood Trump’s point there.

Trump should keep hammering away at Biden on Ukraine and his son.  He should keep challenging him on the support from the radical left. He should point out that Kamala Harris is fully supporting the rioters and even helping them get out of jail. Maybe Pence will do this in the upcoming VP debate.

In fact, I think it would be to Trump’s benefit to say that Biden isn’t an awful guy, but that he is being controlled.  If Biden wins, he may be president, but he won’t be running the show.  It will be Harris and her fellow radical leftists.  I believe this strategy could serve Trump well, and I’m not sure how Biden would respond.

It’s hard to say who won the night.  I think it was a victory for Biden in the sense that he didn’t majorly mess up. The expectations were incredibly low for him.  He still can’t figure out the difference between “millions” and “thousands”.  But overall, he didn’t do anything really embarrassing.

Trump was aggressive as usual.  His haters will hate him more, if that’s possible.  His supporters will still support him.  I think Trump is trying to ensure that his base will come out in full force.  There probably aren’t a lot of undecided voters at this point.  There may be some people who may or may not actually vote. I can’t imagine they would be inspired by Biden, but they could be inspired for or against Trump.

Trump was effective on the issue of law and order.  Biden said that Antifa is just an idea.  I think Trump could have hit Biden even harder on this issue, since it is leftists who are burning down cities.  It isn’t coming from Trump supporters, and I think he needs to make this crystal clear.

The problem is that when they talked about the law and order issue, it was an hour into the debate. A lot of people may have stopped watching at that point, and those are the people who could probably be the most swayed at this point.

I thought Trump was absolutely horrible on the issue of the coronavirus.  He just comes across as very weak.  He is quite wishy-washy.  I think this is a mistake.  Trump can be sympathetic while at the same time making it clear that there are trade-offs in life.  He should say that Biden favors national lockdowns and mask mandates. He should say that more people would die from the lockdowns than the coronavirus.  If he were really gutsy, he would point out that the CDC figures are garbage and that the people who died with the coronavirus did not necessarily die of the coronavirus.

This part came early in the debate, and it was his time when likely the most people were tuned in. It is the one issue that touches almost everybody’s life.  Trump should declare himself as fully opposing any more lockdowns. Instead, he came across as unusually weak.  I believe this was his biggest blunder of the night, although I’m not surprised.

There was an interesting part later in the debate when talking about transitioning.  Trump said that there was an attempted coup.  He said that people were spying on his campaign, and it includes charges.  He said Obama knew about it, and it is on tape.

I have no idea if Trump actually has hard evidence in the form of a tape (i.e., a recording). That would be quite the October surprise.  But I’ve heard this story too many times.  I’ve heard many people say that Hillary Clinton will finally be going to prison. I’ve heard the same thing about Obama, Jim Comey, John Brennan, and James Clapper.  While I wish it were true because these are the highest form of criminals, I don’t believe it.  The system is so rigged, they seem to be completely protected.

At least Trump seems to be aware that the last 4 years has been one giant coup attempt.  If it isn’t Russia, it’s Ukraine.  If it isn’t Ukraine, it’s tax returns. If it isn’t tax returns, it’s that he’s a racist.  And on and on it goes.  Everything the establishment and its media does is an attempt to delegitimize Trump and to get him out of office.

Overall, I call the debate even in terms of gaining or losing supporters.  Trump was much better at debating overall, but the expectations were low for Biden.  He is probably happy he got through the night.  I know many people will say that the whole thing is an embarrassment and that they acted like little children fighting.  But in a way, that is what Trump wants.  If anything, Trump pulled Biden down into the weeds with him.  He certainly pulled Chris Wallace down with him.

Trump thrives on chaos, and there was some chaos with the debate.  The people who were already going to vote for Trump probably didn’t change their minds because of Trump’s antics.  They like Trump because he is a fighter, so most of them would have been disappointed with anything less.

The big loser is Chris Wallace.  Even someone from Fox News came across as biased against Trump.  We can only imagine what the next two debates will look like.

Since February 2020, the Federal Reserve has increased its balance sheet by nearly $3 trillion.  From its low in August 2019, it is approaching a doubling, or a 100% increase.

If you go back to 2008, the Fed’s balance sheet is now higher by a factor of almost 8 times. Over a 12-year period, this is incredible.  I can’t say that it’s unprecedented for a central bank, but it’s unprecedented for the U.S. central bank.

One thing that was a surprise after 2008 is that consumer price inflation did not run rampant after seeing such a big increase in monetary inflation.  I believe there are many contributing factors to this.

One is that the demand for dollars likely increased.  Or in other words, the money velocity fell, which meant money was changing hands less frequently.  Another major factor is that the U.S. dollar is still the world’s reserve currency.

I believe the biggest factor is that much of the new money went into excess reserves at the banks. A good chunk of the new money was not lent out by banks, thus not producing the multiplier effect from fractional reserve lending.

I will also point out that some would disagree that consumer price inflation has been low.  I agree that it may be understated, but I can also assure you that food prices did not go up by 4 or 5 times from 2008 to 2014.  Food prices are not 8 times higher today than in 2008.  It’s not even close.  Food prices are closer to the annual 2% or so price inflation as seen in the CPI.

Now, if you get into health insurance, that’s a different story.  But the dramatic increase in health insurance premiums has more to do than just monetary policy.

It is also true that while many consumer goods have seen low price inflation, it is a different story for assets.  Housing prices have risen in many areas beyond the rate of inflation as measured by the CPI. And then stocks are perhaps the biggest asset bubble of them all.

A big question now is whether we will see something similar to what was seen after 2008/ 2009. Will asset prices continue to rise?  Will the CPI remain relatively tame?  And where will all this new money go?

Excess Reserves

I checked the Fed’s graph on excess reserves held by depository institutions.  From February 2020 to May 2020, they went from $1.518 trillion to $3.217 trillion.  They increased by about $1.7 trillion in three short months.  Since then, reserves have fallen back to about $2.8 trillion, which is still an increase of almost $1.3 trillion from February.

The Fed’s chart says it has been discontinued this metric, but it appears up to date.  I’m not sure of the reason for this.

One other thing I am not sure about is whether the chart accounts for the change in reserve requirements (or lack of).  Back in March, one of the unprecedented moves made by the Fed was the elimination of reserve requirements.  Therefore, anything a bank has in reserves now should be included as excess reserves.

So there is no question that bank reserves have once again increased in tandem with the Fed’s balance sheet.  But not all of the new money is being held as reserves, which means at least some of it has been lent out.  The more that is lent out, the more likely we are to see higher price inflation.

With the monetary inflation that we have already seen, coupled with the Fed’s promises of continued loose money, I will be very surprised if we don’t see higher price inflation than what was seen after 2008/ 2009.

The CPI is already running higher in the midst of a recession.  And strangely enough, stocks are hitting all-time highs in the midst of a recession.

We haven’t even begun to see the total wreckage from the lockdowns of 2020.  In fact, the lockdowns aren’t even over in most places, and many businesses are never coming back.  We are seeing a dramatic increase in federal government spending at the same time that tax collections are likely falling.  I’m sure the Fed will continue to finance the majority of the deficit.

The newly created money distributed through government spending is going all over the place. Some of it went to small business owners.  Some of it went to people on unemployment.  Some of it went out as direct “stimulus” payments.  As usual, some of it went to special interests and their lobbyists.

When people were sitting at home not working and collecting a higher salary than before, it is easy to see how they would have spent even more than usual.  But the high unemployment checks have already been reduced and will likely keep going down.  Reality will start to set in for some people.  Reality has already set in for tens of thousands of business owners.

When the wreckage becomes clearer, there will be opposing forces pulling on inflationary pressures. A deep recession will likely lead to people saving more money and spending less.  At the same time, the Fed is likely to create even more new money, which should pull price inflation higher.

This is why diversification is so important.  It is why it is important to get out of debt, save money, and also protect some of your wealth with hard assets.  You don’t know which way this is going to go.  Perhaps we will see stagflation like the 1970s.  If that’s the worst we get, I will almost be thankful.

The U.S. dollar is still considered to be the world’s reserve currency.  A lot of global trade is done with the use of dollars.

The U.S. dollar has had this status for many decades.  It could be dated to the end of World War 2.  Actually, the Bretton Woods agreement was first established in 1944.

The U.S. dollar operated on something resembling an international gold standard from that point until 1971. It was a regular fiat currency for Americans, who weren’t even allowed to legally own gold, with certain exceptions.  But foreign governments could redeem gold for the dollars they held, or at least that’s what they were told.

France, under Charles de Gaulle, actually did start redeeming gold for dollar holdings. This is one of the reasons why the U.S., under Nixon, abandoned the last remains of the gold standard on August 15, 1971.

It wasn’t France’s fault though.  If it hadn’t been France, it would have been another country.  The main reason that the U.S. abandoned the international gold standard is because the gold reserves were not increasing in correspondence to the money being printed.  When money is being created out of thin air, you will eventually run out of gold as foreign governments redeem those depreciating dollars for gold.

The situation was unsustainable.  Either the money creation had to stop or promises had to be broken.  It’s not a surprise which route was taken by the U.S. government in hand with the Federal Reserve.  It was easier to revoke a previous promise than it would have been to stop inflating the currency.

It’s no surprise that a period of even higher inflation occurred after this move.  The 1970s was the worst period in terms of price inflation in the 20^thcentury in the United States.

Paul Volcker eventually came in as Fed chair and did what was necessary to reduce price inflation and eventually bring interest rates back down.  Volcker’s Fed simply stopped creating money out of thin air for a period of time, and it allowed interest rates to go up to what could be called market-clearing levels.  This saved the dollar from hyperinflation.  It saved the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

Since the early 1980s, the U.S. dollar’s spot as the reserve currency of the world has been secure. While the euro came about in the late 1990s and China has seen tremendous growth over the last 4 decades (life changing for most Chinese), the U.S. dollar is still considered king.

This is for a combination of reasons.  People often cite one reason on why the U.S. dollar is the world’s reserve currency, but I do believe it is the combination of multiple factors. The U.S. is a military superpower (when it isn’t fighting regional wars and occupying other countries). The U.S. is a large country. The U.S. is by far the wealthiest country.  And for all its faults, the U.S. dollar is a relatively stable currency.  These factors all contribute to the U.S. dollar’s status.

Some of this is self-reinforcing.  For example, the U.S. dollar may be more stable because it is the world’s reserve currency.

The U.S. government also managed to compel or bribe major oil exporters in the Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia, to do business in dollars.  This is why it is referred to as the petro dollar. It is amazing that this has continued for this long.

Exporting Inflation?

I am not a fan of the term “exporting inflation”.  I think it is misused, but there is also something to it.  What I will say is that the U.S. dollar’s use as a reserve currency means that Americans experience lower price inflation than what otherwise would have been the case.

When the Fed creates new money, it is mostly through digits.  But there is some corresponding increase in the actual currency being printed.  We know that a lot of currency is sent overseas.  It is done largely by U.S. residents who originated in other countries.  They are sending money “home” to their families living in other countries.  U.S. dollars are widely used in other countries around the world.  They can be especially useful in third-world countries in which the government/ central bank inflates like crazy.

When U.S. dollars go to foreign countries to be used as a form of money, this reduces the supply in the United States.  This has a deflationary effect, or perhaps more accurately, cancels out some of the inflation.

Most of the money created out of thin air by the Fed is done in the form of digits.  As this additional new money resides in the banking system, you can’t really export this to other countries.

Sure, you could take your dollars and buy some goods from someone in China.  But then what does the Chinese person do with these dollars?  That person can convert it right back into his own currency or use it to buy American goods. Either way, it isn’t really exported out of the U.S. the same way that physical currency is.

The main way that digital currency is, in a sense, exported is through the buying of U.S. Treasury bills, particularly by foreign central banks.

Treasury Securities Held by Foreign Countries

There is a chart updated once a month showing the Treasury securities held by major foreign holders.

China and Japan are by far the top holders of U.S. government debt.  They are both over $1 trillion.  The next closest is the United Kingdom with just over $400 billion.

The two countries (China and Japan) have been close, although China has typically held a bit more through most of the 21^stcentury.

Japan is now in the lead with over $200 billion more than China, as of July 2020.  China has reduced its holdings a little from the previous year, but the main thing is that Japan has increased its holdings rather significantly.

So if you hear that China is getting out of U.S. Treasury securities, it isn’t really true so far. The holdings have only gone down a little.  Russia is a country that has mostly abandoned U.S. Treasuries.

If the Chinese central bank wants to reduce its exposure, it doesn’t need to sell any U.S. government debt.  It just has to allow it to mature without replacing it.

Despite the tough talk coming out of Washington DC with regard to China, it hasn’t seemed to make much difference.  I don’t think the Chinese are going to go on a massive selling spree of U.S. Treasuries.  If anything, there may be a gradual reduction over time, but I don’t even see that coming soon.

Amplified Effects

While Americans have seemingly benefitted from having the U.S. dollar serve as the world’s reserve currency, it is not without consequences, at least in the future.

In some ways, I compare it to someone dependent on welfare.  Americans have been getting a free ride in some ways. The U.S. government can spend recklessly, while foreigners buy up some of the debt that is incurred in order to support the spending.  American consumers benefit with cheaper prices than what otherwise would have been.

The downside is that it has helped sustain the reckless spending from Washington DC.  If foreigners weren’t buying up U.S. government debt, then the Fed would have to buy up the debt, which would be more inflationary.  It would put stronger limits on what the federal government could do.

I also believe that this is the equivalent of using leverage.  As real estate investors know, using leverage can be really beneficial.  You can use smaller amounts of money, but make amplified profits.

But also, as every real estate investor should know, leverage can be quite dangerous. If things go bad, the leverage can amplify the down side.  Instead of having amplified profits, you get amplified losses, which often means bankruptcy.

I see this as an analogy to the U.S. dollar being the world’s reserve currency.  What happens if and when this status is quickly lost?

I don’t think another currency is going to replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. I just don’t think the world needs one.  In our modern technological world, you can trade between currencies almost instantaneously.

If China is buying oil from Russia, why do they need to use the dollar?  They can use their own currencies.

If we see another reserve currency, it will more likely be gold.

But back to the question of what happens if the dollar’s status goes away.  Or what happens even if price inflation becomes a major concern?  What if foreign central banks start reducing their holdings of U.S. government debt while at the same time foreigners start sending some of their physical currency back to the U.S.?

The effects will be amplified going the other way.  We could see price inflation worse than it otherwise would have been.

I believe that monetary inflation and all of its consequences is the major threat facing our economy.  Rising prices could be one of the consequences, but there are many others to be sure. Resources are being misallocated. Saving and investment are discouraged.  Our living standards are lower than what they should be.

I don’t see any panic coming out of the central banks in China or Japan.  But things can change quickly.  And if fear of price inflation all of a sudden becomes relevant, we could see amplified effects.  We won’t see the reversal of the dollar’s status from the last 75 years all in one day, but there is potential to see major impacts when price inflation becomes a major issue.

The government, at all levels, has done particularly severe damage in 2020.  In the United States, the lockdowns and mask mandates have mostly come from governors and mayors.  The federal government, under the Trump administration, has taken a federalist approach on these things, meaning the decisions have been left to state and local governments.

This doesn’t mean that the federal government hasn’t caused tremendous harm with regard to the coronavirus and reactions to the coronavirus.  Of course, the government has spent trillions of additional dollars, which has been financed by debt and inflation.  But even when it comes specifically to medical care, the federal government has done great damage.

The shutting down of private businesses has perhaps been the most surprising aspect of all of this. It has severely damaged the principle of property rights when governors and mayors get to decide what is essential and what is not.

This can’t all be blamed on the mayors and governors though.  The legislatures of state and city governments have largely allowed these dictatorial measures to take place.  But beyond this, the governors and mayors have gotten away with it to a large extent because public opinion has allowed it.  A majority of Americans bought into the fear of a virus and were willing to give up liberty for some perceived safety.

Even if you think the coronavirus was a major threat to humanity, it is no excuse to allow the state to interfere with voluntary associations.  If someone wants to risk going to a store or a hair salon or a bar, they should be allowed to take that risk as a free individual.

Still, despite the lockdowns happening at a state and local level, and despite the widespread fear in the population, things would have been much better had it not been for the federal government.  In fact, it is possible that almost none of this would have happened.

The Alphabet Agencies

First, the widespread fear was largely a result of the U.S. federal government.  There are lockdowns and panic worldwide, but a lot of countries and governments copy what happens in the U.S.  Unfortunately, while other countries copied what was happening in the U.S. and originally in parts of China, the measures were even stricter because of people even more willing to give up liberty.  The U.S. looks pretty good these days compared to Australia or England.

While the news originated in China, it was the U.S. government that really ramped up the fear.  Between the CDC and the FDA and the NIH, we heard non-stop about this deadly virus, and life all of a sudden changed dramatically in March.  The establishment media pointed to all of the “experts”, which means handpicked government experts.  So we got a lifetime bureaucrat in Dr. Fauci, and we also got to hear a lot from Bill Gates who specializes in viruses.  I thought Gates’ specialty was getting computer viruses, but apparently he is attracted to people viruses as well.  Gates is a top funder of the World Health Organization, another entity that has sold a lot of fear with the virus.

There has been a lot of propaganda.  It all flows down to your local news station.  But let’s be clear that it largely comes from the top, which is really the U.S. government.  And remember that Trump is only one small aspect of the U.S. federal government.  We live in an administrative state.  Trump can’t drain the swamp without at least trying to drain some of the administrative state.

Aside from getting Trump out of office, there are politicians and bureaucrats who have incentives to play up the virus.  It gives them power.  It gives them prestige.  It gives them a crisis to deal with.  In some cases, it may give them money.

The powers-that-be had many impacts in promoting the coronavirus.  Some of it had long been in place, while there were other measures specifically targeting this virus.

One easily identifiable thing is that Medicare paid more to hospitals for coronavirus patients. Medicare paid a lot more for patients put on a ventilator.  While not every doctor is corrupt, it is an incentive for doctors who are corrupt or who are just apathetic and willing to go along.  I’m sure many hundreds, probably thousands, unnecessarily died in New York because of this.  The doctors were just drugging up patients and throwing them on ventilators to die, even for some who probably didn’t even have coronavirus. We’ll see if anyone is held to account in the future for what was essentially murder.

Next, you have the CDC with its phony statistics.  They told doctors and hospitals from early on that if a patient dies with COVID-19, then they should be counted as COVID-19.  In other words, when you have someone who is 90 years of age and dying of cancer, they could be marked as a COVID death if they tested positive for COVID or even just showed symptoms of it.

It’s not a coincidence when almost all of the people supposedly dying of COVID probably would have died around the same time anyway (with the exception of some who went into some of the deadly New York City hospitals).  You could declare a pandemic of the sniffles if you attribute the sniffles as the cause of death to anyone who dies who had to wipe his nose within a week of his dying.

But most people sat at home and watched the ticker of deaths on the news with little curiosity as to who was actually dying.  They also didn’t bother to look up how many people died of heart disease that day, or how many people died of cancer.  This was propaganda intentionally put out by the CDC.

And how about the FDA? It has been known that the FDA delays life-saving medicines for years while people unnecessarily die. The FDA wants a medicine to be deemed completely safe, even if it would save more lives than cause harm. Of course, this goes out the window when it comes to their precious vaccines that they like to promote.

In 2020 though, the FDA took it a step farther and has made it difficult to get hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for coronavirus.  In spite of many doctors reporting its successful use, the FDA could have none of that.  They need 100% safety, unless it is a vaccine, in which case it can be rushed to market.  Of course, this drug has been used widely for malaria (and other coronaviruses) for decades and has little in side effects.  If competition were actually allowed, maybe most people would realize that a coronavirus is treatable and not deadly at all to any relatively healthy person.

Beyond this, there are many long-term things that have served to make this much worse.  As a libertarian, I am against government licensing, including for doctors.  This does not mean I am against licensing, but it shouldn’t be mandated by the state, and it shouldn’t be issued by the state.

Government licensure is one of the primary reasons that the market in medical care doesn’t seem to be functioning correctly.  The fear of license revocation is why many doctors will not use or promote alternative therapies that are not establishment approved.

Again, this takes away competition.  It also tends to silence many doctors who do not believe the hype of the virus. I know of several doctors who think this whole thing is a sham.  But we’re told we have to listen to the experts, which again are the handpicked experts by the establishment trying to promote a narrative.

The administrative state is massive and deep.  There are many ways it has caused great damage to our medical care system. I have only touched on a few major things that have caused great harm in the year 2020.  But the history is long and deep, and I’m sure there are many things that I am completely unaware of that serve to worsen the situation.

So while people, particularly business owners, should get mad at mayors and governors for shutting things down, there is a lot of blame to be placed in Washington DC.  These are major structural problems.  The best long-term solution is to defund these alphabet agencies that have caused so much havoc.

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) held its meeting this week, which was the last before the election in November.  The next FOMC meeting is scheduled for November 4^thand 5^th.  While the actual voting will be over, it is some doubtful that we will have the official results.

Either way, the FOMC is bipartisan in the sense that it will always do the bidding of the establishment.  It won’t really change anything no matter who is declared the winner of the presidential election.

The FOMC released its latest monetary policy statement.  There is no surprise that its target range for the federal funds rate remains the same, which is near zero.

It is now part of its official statement that the Fed wants higher inflation.  It says, “With inflation running persistently below this longer-run goal, the Committee will aim to achieve inflation moderately above 2 percent for some time so that inflation averages 2 percent over time and longer-term inflation expectations remain well anchored at 2 percent.”

As Peter Schiff pointed out, what sense does it make to average out what has already happened in the past?  If there was low inflation two years ago, why should that dictate policy going forward?

The FOMC statement also says, “In addition, over coming months the Federal Reserve will increase its holdings of Treasury securities and agency mortgage-backed securities at least at the current pace to sustain smooth market functioning and help foster accommodative financial conditions, thereby supporting the flow of credit to households and businesses.”

In the Implementation Note, it interestingly mentions commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS).  In 2008/ 2009, it was assumed that the Fed was buying up mortgage-backed securities because of bad loans on residential real estate. Now the Fed is going to bail out the banks from the delinquent loans from businesses that were shut down. This is a major example of one government destructive policy leading to another destructive policy.

The major item reported by the financial media from the meeting is that most Fed officials agree that rates will remain near zero until at least 2023.  Three years is a long time, so why the rigid stance?

Did Someone Forget About Inflation?

It seems odd that the Fed members would take this stance that rates will stay near zero for at least three more years.  Going back to the FOMC policy statement, it said, “the Committee will continue to monitor the implications of incoming inflation for the economic outlook.  The Committee would be prepared to adjust the stance of monetary policy as appropriate if risks emerge that could impede the attainment of the Committee’s goals.”  This statement by itself isn’t scary, but it is when coupled with the fact that the Fed sees near-zero rates for at least three years.

What risks could emerge that hadn’t already emerged in 2020 other than high price inflation? Sure, we could see banks collapse, more defaults, and a host of other things, but that would just mean that the Fed will go that much more crazy with its monetary inflation.

If three trillion dollars added to the balance sheet doesn’t do it, why not an additional 10 trillion? Why not 20 trillion?

So the Fed is willing to be accommodative and flexible when it comes to more money creation, but it is taking a strong stance that they will not tighten monetary policy under any condition.

Here is the question I want answered.  What happens if, one year from now, the annual price inflation rate as measured by the CPI is coming it at 20%?  Does the Fed still leave its target rate near zero?  What if it is “just” coming in at 10% per year?

I have long said that I think hyperinflation is a highly unlikely possibility in the United States.  While I would still consider it not likely, I think the chances have gone up a little.  I would put the possibility of hyperinflation in the next 10 years at over 1% at this point.

The U.S. dollar is still the world’s reserve currency, but this could work against it at some point too.  It could make the inflationary effects that much more dramatic if people start dumping dollars quickly.  It will be amplified when foreigners send their U.S. dollars back to America in an attempt to secure some hard assets in exchange for the quickly depreciating currency.

It is easy to forget that in the year 2020 we have seen tens of millions of people file for unemployment, trillions in new spending, and hundreds of thousands of businesses shut down permanently.

While many are suffering, some of the suffering was covered up with generous unemployment benefits and stimulus checks.  But there is no free lunch.  In fact, you are going to find that the lunch is more expensive than ever. I believe that inflation is the number one financial threat in the near future, and you should be preparing for it now.

The presidential election is not far away.  The official day is Tuesday, November 3, 2020, but I have a feeling this day won’t mean a lot except for those who go to their local polling place.

There is a strong chance that there will be no declared winner on November 3^rd. This wouldn’t be that unusual. Even in 2016, we didn’t officially know until Wednesday morning because some of the swing states were relatively close.

This year, there is a good chance we won’t know on Wednesday either.  We may not know on Thursday.  The last time we saw election results drag out for weeks was in the 2000 election.

The 2000 election was ridiculously close.  The chances of that happening again are extremely small.  It came within a few hundred votes in Florida.  What are the chances that one state ends up deciding it all, and then it comes down to a few hundred votes in a state of over 6 million votes?  I’m sure there was a lot of funny business on both sides, but it was between two establishment candidates (Bush and Gore), so the outcome wasn’t all that important to the establishment.

The year 2020 is different.  The establishment has everything on this.  They will do whatever it takes to get Trump out of office.  If they can get away with a coup, they will do it. This could be through rigging the election, or just flat out denying the results if they favor Trump.

I have seen some speculation that the establishment is planning a military coup.  Of course, in order to do this, they will have to fool a majority of Americans.  This is why, it is being speculated, that the establishment has been trying hard lately to get the military generals on their side. They have been putting out stories of how Trump has been degrading to the military.  As Trump recently put it, it is the top people at the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex that oppose Trump.

The idea here is that they will falsify the vote totals.  Trump will be the clear leader after election night, but then they will claim that the mail-in ballots will have to be counted.  You will see a shift to Biden over the next several days, and the establishment will eventually declare him the winner. Trump will dispute the results, but the establishment will say that he is refusing to leave office and that the military needs to step in and take control.

This sounds far-fetched until you think about the last 4 years.  Everything has revolved around making Trump look bad and trying to get him out of office.  They spent at least 2 years, on an almost daily basis, lying about how Trump was colluding with Russia and how Russia had stolen or hacked the election. Apparently this happened with a few hundred thousand dollars in Facebook clickbait ads by a Russian organization that may not have even been tied at all to the Russian government.

There was also Ukraine where Trump was accused of withholding aid to Ukraine for political reasons and personal benefit.  In other words, Trump was accused of doing what Joe Biden had already admitted to doing on video when he threatened to withhold aid to Ukraine until the prosecutor investigating the company his son worked for was fired.

Of course, we also had to hear every story about Trump and what he said on Twitter if they could try to make him look bad in any way.  This included taking him out of context frequently and the establishment portraying Trump of what they think he meant to say instead of actually quoting him.

All things considered, I don’t think a military takeover due to disputed election results sounds that far off the wall at this point.

If Trump wins in a landslide, I don’t think there is much that they can do to change that. But if it is close, then expect major turmoil.

A Silent Majority?

The establishment was stunned in 2016 when Trump won.  A lot of people were stunned.  It came as a surprise because most of the news coverage was anti Trump. Except for the hardcore Trump supporters, the rest of the people who voted for Trump were relatively quiet about it.  Most of them weren’t announcing it on Facebook.  They weren’t being interviewed on the news.  They may have been quietly telling their close friends and family that they might vote for Trump.

I don’t think there is a silent majority in favor of Trump.  There may be a silent plurality though.  And there are many people who may not love Trump yet they despise the left.  This might be especially true since the left has essentially endorsed the rioting, and they continue to favor government lockdowns from a flu virus.

Rioting in the streets, mask mandates, and government lockdowns doesn’t really sound like a recipe for winning to me.  Then again, Trump is hated by many, as the media does have a hold of a good portion of the public.  Let’s face it.  Nobody is voting for Biden.  They are just voting against Trump.

Biden has finally spoken against some of the rioting.  Maybe he was waiting for his leader Obama to ask the protestors to stay peaceful, but for some reason that never came out of Obama’s mouth.  It makes you wonder if Obama actually favors the rioting and chaos.

Biden, in good leftist fashion, didn’t just say that he opposed the rioting.  Instead, he had to just flat out lie and say the opposite of the true story.  He said that it was Trump and his supporters responsible for the rioting. The scary thing is that there are probably millions of people that believed him.

It is really hard to know where things stand right now for the same reason we didn’t know going into the 2016 election.  The debates will tell us more, but it really is hard to know how people feel out there.

There is a lot going on.  There are protests and riots.  There have been lockdowns since March by governors and mayors across the country.  Now we feel like we’re in a hospital when we go to the grocery store.

We did get one glimpse on the opening day of football in the NFL.  Kansas City is one of the few teams allowing some fans in the stadium. When they paid tribute to social justice at the start of the game, there was major booing coming from the crowd. The reaction from the players is that they just couldn’t understand why anyone would boo.  I mean, are the majority of football fans in Kansas City racist?  To ask the question is to answer it.  They are tired of the social justice warrior garbage.  Football is supposed to be their escape from politics.  Instead, they are hearing from football players being paid millions of dollars talking about inequality and how they fear for their life every day.

If the Kansas City football game gives us any hint of what’s about to come, then Trump may stun the establishment once again.  You know most of these Kansas City fans aren’t on Facebook every night arguing politics and talking about how great Trump is.  Most of them are probably mostly silent on politics most of the time.  Yet, they were tired of the politically correct garbage and had no trouble booing when it was easy to do so.  Just like it will be easy to fill in a bubble next to Trump’s name on Election Day.

So with the major Trump hatred out there, chaos in the streets, and a smacked down economy, Trump is still in the game.  And this is before debating Biden.

Prepare on November 3^rd

Unless Biden wins in a landslide, there is going to be some kind of chaos.  Either the election results will not be clear and it will drag on, or Trump will win in a landslide.

If Trump wins in a landslide, I expect there will be majoring rioting in the streets of major cities.  In some cases, this will just be a continuation of what has been going on since the end of May.  But I really do expect that the left will act violently to news of a Trump win.  Sure, it will be a small minority of people who actually commit violence and property destruction, but it will be enough people to cause a lot of damage and chaos.

If the results are close, then I expect the establishment (not just the left) will try to steal it away from Trump.  They won’t even necessarily declare Biden the winner.  They will just say that the results aren’t clear and Trump needs to step down.  Maybe they’ll push for Pelosi to step in.  I don’t know if it will come to the military stepping in for a more official coup, but anything is possible at that point.

Again, this will result in chaos.  We may have rioting during this time.  It will mostly come from the left.

I am not making a prediction on what will happen, but I am saying that there is a decent chance that there will be major chaos starting on November 3^rd.  It may last a day, or a week, or a month, or longer.

I don’t think it’s a bad idea to prep a little for this event.  After you vote in the morning (if you plan to do it in person), then head to the store afterwards and pick up some extra supplies and food. I don’t know what the next toilet paper item will be to disappear off the shelves as we saw in March.  It could be food.  It could be soap.  It could be cash from the ATMs.  It will probably be guns from gun stores.  It may or may not be gold from coin shops.

Anyway, I don’t think it would hurt to be a little extra prepared than normal heading into the evening of November 3^rd.  The worst-case in buying some extra stuff is that you will pay less for it than you would pay a month or two down the road when inflation has increased the price more.

2020 has been an incredibly wild ride so far.  I never thought we would see some of what has happened.  As usual, the left has overplayed its hand, which may cost Biden the election.  No matter what, I expect more chaos to prevail.

Alan Greenspan, at the age of 94, recently gave a short interview on CNBC.  He warned about the growing debt and inflation.

Greenspan was the chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006.  He associated with Ayn Rand in his early days and wrote, in my opinion, one of the best essays ever on gold and central bank inflation.  His essay was published in Rand’s book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

While Greenspan’s office was not an elected one (he was appointed by Reagan), he unfortunately ended up being like most people who get into government.  And despite what some people argue about the Fed being a private bank, let’s face it that it is a political office.

Once in office, Greenspan seemed to abandon his commitment to the free market and gold as a use for money.  He actually had the nerve to say that the Fed had advanced to where it could almost mimic a gold standard.  He had to invent crazy answers like these when questioned by Ron Paul.

I have been highly critical of Greenspan over the years because I know he knows better.  He wrote some great things on gold and how deficit spending is a scheme for the confiscation of wealth.  He wrote that, without gold, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation.  He knew this at a relatively young age, but he didn’t use his knowledge to do good in the world, especially when he became Fed chair.

I am not even accusing Greenspan of outright lying.  He just didn’t speak the truth when he had many opportunities to do so.

With all of that said, he is still interesting to listen to.  He also still shows some sympathy for the free market, or at least against outrageous government interventions in the economy.

So I take his warning seriously about inflation.  I am warning about the same thing too, but it’s actually nice to hear some confirmation coming from a former Fed chair.  While I think Greenspan could have spoken the truth more in the past, I also don’t think he wants to see the whole system implode.

Actually, I don’t think the current chair – Jerome Powell – wants to see the system implode either. But he is less sympathetic to the free market starting out than Greenspan was, and Powell may be a little more clueless.

If you use the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) inflation calculator and plug in the number 100 into August 1987, it becomes 173 dollars in January 2006.  This means that from the time Greenspan took office to the time Greenspan left office, the dollar inflated by 73% according to the government’s own statistics.  The unsustainable housing boom occurred on Greenspan’s watch.

It’s nowhere near the worst outcome for a central banker, but it’s not the best either.  So when Greenspan warns of inflation, he is obviously thinking it will be quite a bit higher than when he was in office.

The CPI

The latest CPI numbers were released for August 2020.  The median CPI went up 0.3% in August.  The CPI went up 0.4% for the month, and this is after going up 0.6% the previous month.

Using the CPI and the “CPI less food and energy”, prices have gone up over 1% over the last two months.  If this becomes a trend, we will have double-digit annual price inflation not far down the road.

This isn’t a prediction, but a warning.  The Fed has created massive amounts of money in 2020.  The balance sheet is up nearly $3 trillion.  Much of this new money is going directly to individuals through stimulus and unemployment benefits.  Some of it went to business owners, many of whom were forced to close down.

It’s no surprise that Powell recently announced that the Fed would target 2% inflation as an average over time.  The Fed already uses a metric that comes in below the CPI.  Now it wants to average, which makes no sense at all.  If you have had five years of no price inflation, why should the Fed shoot for 10% inflation this year to make up for it?

It makes no sense, but it’s not supposed to make sense.  It is an excuse for the Fed to keep creating money and keep interest rates low, even when the official price inflation exceeds its 2% target. I’m sure Greenspan must recognize this too.

If the CPI keeps accelerating, I don’t know how the Fed gets out of this.  Congress is relying on the Fed to buy up most of its debt. And there is no sign of the spending out of DC slowing down.  They were already running a trillion-dollar annual deficit before March 2020 when the economy was essentially shut down.

I don’t know if we will see a 1970s-like scenario again.  It’s possible we may not, and it’s possible it could be worse.

There are a lot of moving parts with the supply of money, the demand for money, and lending. I am not predicting double-digit price inflation, but I am warning about the possibility.  You should prepare accordingly with some investments in hard assets.

Even though governors and mayors across the country have gained great power in 2020 – consider the lockdowns and mask mandates – the federal government has also gained power in some aspects.

To be sure, the federal government already had great power, especially when it comes to spending and making war overseas.  We have also had an administrative state for a long time, where bureaucratic alphabet agencies are allowed to essentially write their own laws.

With the fear of a virus in 2020, the federal government is spending more money than ever, and it is doing so through Federal Reserve monetary policy.  We have also seen the power of the “health” agencies. Much of this power already existed, but it has become more obvious now.  For example, the FDA can just arbitrarily approve or disapprove (i.e., prohibit) of certain drugs and treatments.

Unfortunately, it has gone way beyond medicine.  The CDC issued a nationwide order that halts “residential evictions to prevent the further spread of COVID-19.” That’s right.  The CDC is now playing national landlord, effectively destroying property rights for the millions of landlords everywhere.

It would have been hard to imagine a halt on evictions in February 2020, let alone the orders coming down from the CDC.  But here we are in the year 2020, where the CDC director gets to issue a statement that has far-reaching implications for rental housing everywhere in the country.

This is partially Trump’s fault.  He may be doing this for political reasons.  He doesn’t want to see people thrown out of their residence right before the election.  I think, even from a political standpoint, he is miscalculating.  If anything, the eviction moratorium is probably making more people mad and resentful.  I just don’t know how much they’ll blame Trump.

The left sometimes accuses Trump of wanting to be a dictator.  Yet, when he actually does something somewhat dictatorial, they don’t oppose him.  They have no trouble with him acting like a dictator as long as it is violating property rights.  Of course, these were the same people clamoring for Trump to implement a national shutdown and a national mask mandate.

When property owners complain about having to keep people who don’t pay their rent, you may hear a response that this CDC directive does not give a green light to renters to not pay their rent.  They have to fill out a form and show that they have been adversely impacted and are unable to pay.

But it really does give a green light not to pay rent for many.  It is not hard to imagine that millions of people will take advantage of this and stop paying rent or start paying a reduced amount.

If you own a property and are renting it out for $1,000 per month, it would be easy for a tenant to say that they can only afford to pay $500 per month.  If you were the property owner, what would you do? If you don’t accept this offer, you are risking getting nothing.  You have may have your own mortgage to pay.  You certainly still have to pay property taxes and other expenses. If the person pays you nothing, how long will it take to get an eviction now?

I wrote previously about regime uncertainty.  While I put a bigger focus on government shutting down private businesses arbitrarily, there is big concern for real estate too.

Who will want to be a property-owning landlord at this point?  I know there are many still willing to take the risk.  I also know there are many who want to get out of this business because they would be severely hurt by having a tenant not paying rent for many months straight.

Being a landlord doesn’t mean you’re rich.  It is a very slow path to building wealth for most people.  They hope that a tenant can cover the monthly expenses, on average, while the mortgage slowly gets paid down over a long period of time.  I have at least 4 close friends who are landlords, and they are all middle class.  I was a landlord up until a few years ago. I rented out a condo that I had lived in for 8 years.  I didn’t want to sell in 2010 when the housing market was down.  I ended up selling a couple of years ago. With what is going on now, I am glad that I did.

What Happened to UBI and Welfare?

There is another unbelievable aspect of this whole moratorium on rent.  It is being done at a time when we have had unprecedented levels of welfare.

Since March 2020, we have had stimulus checks go out to most American adults for $1,200 a piece, plus another $500 for children.

For most anyone who lost their job, they were getting a bonus $600 per week from the federal government for unemployment.  This was on top of state unemployment, which meant unemployed people were collecting close to $1,000 per week.  Something around two-thirds of those on unemployment were getting paid higher in unemployment benefits than they were making at their job.

The extra $600 per week ended at the end of July.  With Trump’s directive (again, no pushback of being a dictator by the left on this one), the unemployment is $300 to $400 extra per week in most states on top of regular unemployment.

There is also still talk of another so-called stimulus bill, but this may not happen because of political party fighting.

So here is the big question.  If Americans have been given stimulus checks and massive unemployment benefits, then why can’t they pay their rent?

This just shows why every libertarian should be against any concept of a Universal Basic Income (UBI).  It isn’t a clean replacement for the welfare state.  It is an added piece of welfare to the welfare state.

Renters tend to be people on the lower-income scale.  There are obviously a lot of exceptions, but I am just saying this generally speaking.  But anyone who lost their job this year who was on the lower-income scale would have been making more money than they were before.  So there is no reason they couldn’t pay rent.

Unemployment didn’t impact middle and high-income earners as much, but it certainly did impact many. These people tend to be homeowners.  The halt in evictions doesn’t do them any good.  They need a halt from getting evicted by their mortgage holder.  They could really use a moratorium on paying property taxes.  Couldn’t we all?

Now, there are, no doubt, some people who are renters who were previously making a good middle class salary, or maybe even more.  Someone may have been earning $90,000 per year previously, and now is collecting unemployment for half that amount.  This theoretical person may actually have trouble making the rent payments.

But this person is accustomed to living on $90,000 per year.  This person may be renting a 2,500 square foot house for $2,000 per month.  Why should the landlord have to subsidize this?  Even if the person has a family, there is no reason he couldn’t move to a 1,000 square foot apartment.  Maybe he won’t like it, but the landlord not getting paid doesn’t particularly like it either.

In conclusion, this CDC directive is a vast overreach of power, and it is a violation of property rights.  It also doesn’t make any sense when put in context of the UBI-like stimulus and unemployment benefits we have already seen.  If the federal government wants to bail out renters, why not just get the Fed to create the money and pay it all?  This is a somewhat rhetorical question, but maybe I shouldn’t give out these ideas because someone may take it seriously.

This will have an impact in the future.  There is far less incentive for someone to become a landlord and provide housing for those who can’t afford to buy.  This will result in less housing and higher prices for tenants. It will also lead to a request for maximum security deposits.

California, the leftist paradise that it is, has the biggest homeless problem in the United States. Housing costs are enormous there. If you want to put the rest of the country on a course to be like California with widespread homelessness, I can think of no better action than what the CDC just did.

“The most outrageous lies that can be invented will find believers if a man only tells them with all his might.” ~Mark Twain

How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and [how] hard it is to undo that work again!” ~Mark Twain

I didn’t expect to spend a good portion of my time in 2020 talking and writing about a virus. But it is only necessary because of the gullibility of people.  I wouldn’t be talking about this much, if at all, if there were no government shutdowns, and if I didn’t feel like I was walking in a hospital every place I go.

The establishment sold fear.  They sold it hard. And it worked.

We already had two very different political worlds in America going into 2020.  There are obviously great degrees of variation in this, but it is still reality.

Now there are two very different worlds in terms of coronavirus fear.  There are the pro mask people and the anti mask people. Actually, I don’t know of anyone who is anti mask in the sense that they believe others should be prohibited from wearing one.  They just don’t want to be compelled to wear one, and they think it’s stupid.

So maybe it is more accurate to make the dividing lines between people who are in favor of quarantining and those who are against quarantining.  But again, I don’t know of anyone who is against quarantining in the sense that they believe others should be prohibited from quarantining.  I don’t know of anyone who says that people have to leave their house and not distance themselves from others.  The people against quarantining just don’t want to be forced to stay inside their house, and they don’t want to be prohibited from meeting up with others of like mind.

I have said from day one that anyone who is fearful of the virus is allowed to stay home, to distance, and to take any other precautions on their own, as long as they don’t interfere with the rights of others.

It is really the use of government force in response to the virus that gets to the heart of the matter.  I know of a couple of libertarians who were terrified of the virus, but they did not favor government-imposed lockdowns.  I’m sure there are a few people who are very pro mask who don’t believe everyone should be forced to wear one.  But the people who fall into these camps are so small as to be almost irrelevant.  But if someone believes the media hysteria of the coronavirus but doesn’t believe in any government force in response, then I will consider that person on my side, even if I may discount their opinion on the virus itself.

Digging in Deep

The problem I see at this point is that I don’t know how some people are going to change their position.  They have dug in so deep, how can they possibly reverse their stance at this point?

If 99% of people get back to a somewhat normal life – something at least resembling February 2020 in America – then I could see the remaining 1% just giving up and pretending like everything is fine now without addressing some of their previous concerns.

I have heard several people say that they won’t go back to normal until there is a vaccine. But what if a vaccine never comes? Are they literally going to stay locked up in their house for the rest of their life?

I know of many people who have shifted their opinion since March 2020.  This includes conservatives and libertarians.  I can’t really think of any people on the political left who have changed their mind on the threat of the virus, but I’m sure there are a few somewhere.  Some have at least softened their stance.

The conservatives and libertarians I am speaking of were very fearful of the virus back in March 2020.  For some reason, they believed the hype coming from the people who have continually lied to them in the past.  I don’t understand how you can assume that the same establishment media that will lie to you to get us into a war would not be lying about the seriousness of a virus. Sure, there were supposedly expert epidemiologists warning us of the dangers, but the establishment media also finds national security experts who tell us to go to war.

Anyway, the people I do know, or know of, who have had a change of heart, have done so in a variety of ways.  Some flat out will admit that they were bamboozled, but this isn’t many.  Some will just pretend like they never did change their mind and that they knew is was overblown hysteria from the beginning.  I find most people though are somewhere in between.  They will slightly admit that they have had a change in opinion.  They might say that we know more about the virus now and that it isn’t as big of a threat as was thought in March, and there is definitely some truth to that.

It has now been about 6 months since the hysteria started, and some have been quite aggressive with their views since the beginning.  I have been firm in my beliefs since the beginning of this, so it is no problem for me to get back to a normal life.  I don’t have any explaining to do when I walk into a store without a mask because I never wore one in the first place unless it was absolutely mandatory.

But what about the other side?  What about the people who were telling others that they were going to kill granny if they go to the store without a mask?  How do they back down from this position?  Even if the coronavirus completely goes away, there is always somebody out there with the flu.

Not Backing Down

Earlier this week, footage was released of Nancy Pelosi walking in a hair salon without a mask. She was getting her hair done, even though salons in California are essentially shut down.  And Pelosi has, of course, been a hardcore proponent of mask wearing and promoting any kind of fear of the virus that she can.

In good leftist fashion, she attacked the salon owner for supposedly setting her up.  It is Pelosi who wants the apology.

Many people on the right are calling her a hypocrite, and rightly so.  People hate hypocrisy.  But I think there is something worse about this than just the hypocrisy.

Looking at Pelosi’s actions – going to a salon and not wearing a mask – it tells us that she doesn’t believe the things she is saying.  She knows there is no safety issue with going inside a salon and not wearing a mask.  Yet, as a politician, she strongly endorses all of the government-imposed measures that are done in the name of safety.

In other words, Nancy Pelosi knows this stuff is fake.  She knows that there is no major safety issue.  Yet, she doesn’t mind lying about it for political points, even though it has wrecked hundreds of thousands of small businesses and resulted in tens of millions of people unemployed.

Unfortunately, most people on the left will tune this out.  They will call it a rightwing talking point.  They may not even like Pelosi, but they will not concede a point to the other side.

I also witnessed this in the reaction to the news that the CDC website classifies only 6% of the total COVID-19 deaths as being the sole cause of death.  For the other 94% of people, there were co-morbidities. In other words, someone could be dying of cancer and test positive for COVID-19, and they would be listed as a coronavirus death.  This has been something that the non-fear side has been pointing out for a long time now.

It is amusing watching the responses to this on my Facebook feed.  Again, the fear people just dig in deeper.  They have to explain it away.  It is nice to see them on the defensive though.

I have seen numerous posts pointing out that just because someone has other health issues, it doesn’t mean they deserve to die.  They will say that they could have lived a long life with other ailments and that the coronavirus put them over the edge that they otherwise wouldn’t have gone over.  I have seen many variations of this, and they speak to us as if we are completely stupid.

They are saying these things as if most of us didn’t comprehend this before their enlightening post. I have seen a few people say that 94% of deaths had nothing to do with coronavirus, and this is not accurate if you are basing your argument on the CDC website.  It is certainly plausible that some of these people would have lived significantly longer had they not contracted the virus.  I really don’t even know this for sure, but I do concede that the CDC statistic itself doesn’t mean we can assume that the 94% with co-morbidities would have died in the same timeframe anyway.

But here is the frustrating and rather unbelievable part.  The fear side won’t concede anything with this.  They won’t concede that a lot of these people would have died anyway in a short timeframe.  They won’t concede that maybe a good portion of these people would have died at the same time with or without the coronavirus.  They have their death count, and they’re sticking to it.

This little piece of information put out by the CDC is quite relevant no matter how you slice it. It shows what many of us have been pointing out for many months.  The death count, at minimum, is vastly overstated, and doctors and hospitals have been incentivized to label everything a COVID-19 death that they can.

In other words, it doesn’t matter what comes out now.  Even when something comes out like this from the CDC, an agency which the fear side relies on so heavily, it doesn’t change anyone’s opinion, or at least not visibly.  They just dig in harder.  They can’t concede that, at least, maybe the death count has been overinflated.  They will never admit that they were wrong, no matter what comes out.

The best we can hope for is that a majority of others find a way to get back to a somewhat normal life.  When the fear side sees other people going out and having fun, then maybe they’ll slowly get back into society and just not address their previous fears.

I don’t think most people on the fear side are like Nancy Pelosi.  They don’t see it all as a political move.  A majority on the fear side really are fearful.  But since it has become a political issue, it becomes harder for them to back down.  Of course, it was their side that made it a political issue in the first place by supporting the use of government to use force on people. They didn’t have to forcibly shut down private businesses.  They could have just chosen not to go themselves.

The worst thing about these people is that they think they are smarter than they are, and they think the other side is dumber than they are.  Some of the people on the fear side really are intelligent people when it comes to many things.  But they vastly overestimate their own intelligence, and they lack humility. I can see it just in the tone of the Facebook posts and comments that I see.  These people think they are vastly superior, intellectually speaking, so they think it is ok to mold society in their own vision.  This is the vision of the political left.

I have had many people talk down to me on this issue.  They talk to me like I’m an idiot.  So how can these same people ever admit that they were lied to?  How can they admit that they were suckered by the media hype of a virus?  The answer is that they will never admit it.

The best we can hope for is that they quietly drop the fear selling, and they drop their masks. They are just waiting for a statement from the CDC “experts” giving the all-clear sign.  Then they can take credit for their policies of lockdowns and mask wearing and say that, thanks to them, we can go back to a somewhat normal life again.  That is the only way I see that we can get back to a somewhat normal life.  Let’s hope.