On Wednesday, January 27, 2021, the FOMC released its latest statement on monetary policy.  It came as no surprise that the Fed is holding its target federal funds rate near zero.

The statement says: “The COVID-19 pandemic is causing tremendous human and economic hardship across the United States and around the world.”

No.  The government lockdowns and restrictions, along with previous monetary policy, are causing tremendous human and economic hardship.

It wasn’t COVID-19 that shut down hundreds of thousands of small businesses across the country in 2020.

The statement also says: “The Committee seeks to achieve maximum employment and inflation at the rate of 2 percent over the longer run. 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. The Committee expects to maintain an accommodative stance of monetary policy until these outcomes are achieved.”

I also heard Powell refer to this in his press conference.  The Fed no longer just wants to get to 2 percent inflation (by their measure).  The Fed wants to go above 2 percent inflation to make up for previous inflation (by their measure) that ran below 2 percent.

This makes absolutely no logical sense except that the Fed wants to be able to run higher inflation numbers than its original stated goal.  Why would you have to make up for inflation that didn’t happen several years ago?  I mean, there was double-digit inflation in the 1970s, so maybe we should have some deflation now to make up for that.

The only reason for this newly stated goal is to provide cover when inflation (by their measure) exceeds the 2 percent target but they still need to help fund deficits and bailouts.  It is hard to send stimulus checks and bail out the whole country while having to keep inflation at just 2 percent.

There isn’t going to be any slowdown in spending by Biden and the Democrat-run Congress, or at least not if they can help it.  There are a lot of special interests and lobbyists in Washington DC to take care of.

The Fed’s Balance Sheet

The Federal Reserve’s balance sheet continues to grow.  It has slowed down from its unprecedented rise in March, April, and May of 2020.  But it’s hard to go up a trillion dollars per month every single month.

The FOMC statement says: “In addition, the Federal Reserve will continue to increase its holdings of Treasury securities by at least $80 billion per month and of agency mortgage‑backed securities by at least $40 billion per month until substantial further progress has been made toward the Committee’s maximum employment and price stability goals.”

I’m not sure if we are on QE4 or what number we’re on now.  It’s hard to keep count.

Even after the unprecedented rise last year, the Fed is still continuing to add at least $120 billion in new money every month.  This is so unbelievable, it almost makes it sound rational that stocks and real estate have boomed in the face of a massive recession.

Interest rates, while ticking up a little, still remain near historical lows.  I believe this will continue until we see stronger signs of consumer price inflation.

Based on the political madness and the monetary policy madness, I am still a strong advocate of owning gold and gold-related investments.  I think owning actual gold, gold certificates, and gold ETFs are the safer play.  I think mining stocks will continue to be volatile, but there is potential for extraordinary returns there.

Even if we see the stock bubble finally collapse, I don’t think gold will go down that much. And any down moves will be temporary, as the Fed’s only solution is to create even more money out of thin air.

If confidence in the U.S. dollar starts to erode, then gold will rise quickly.  I expect we will eventually see a gold bubble too, but that is likely years away.

In percentage terms, the price of gold in dollars has gone up less over the last year than the Fed’s balance sheet.  Think about that.  And the Fed is going to continue to expand by at least $120 billion per month.

Financially speaking, there are two major events to prepare for right now: a popping of the stock market bubble and massive inflation.

We already have massive inflation in monetary terms.  But I expect we will eventually see massive price inflation.  Before that happens, I expect we will see a major drop in stock prices.

As the Fed said, there is “tremendous human and economic hardship across the United States and around the world.”  Unfortunately, the Fed is only contributing to this hardship, and things are going to get worse before they get better.

Ignorance is bliss in certain situations.  There are times in my life where I have felt that being ignorant would have been easier emotionally.  Sometimes being aware of something can cause more stress and anxiety than the problem itself would have caused without knowing.

I think ignorance is bliss for some people when it comes to politics.  If watching or reading the news causes you stress and anxiety, it is probably better to not watch it, especially when you have no control over what is happening.  Of course, in our world of fake news, you might be less ignorant by not watching the news anyway.

It is harmful to closely follow politics if you are going to use it as an excuse to not better your life.  “I can’t get a higher paying job with all of these immigrants coming in and stealing jobs.”  “I can’t start a business with all of these government regulations.”  I’m not going to save for retirement when the government is doing it for me.” “I’m not going to work on that side hustle of mine tonight because I have to see what all of my Facebook friends are saying about Trump.”

I’m sure you can think of your own examples.

With that said, I do think it is important to be aware of what is happening around you, and it is important to be knowledgeable and ethical.  I can’t imagine my life without a libertarian education.  I really don’t think I would trade it for 10 million dollars.

I also like to say that you may want to ignore politics, but politics isn’t going to ignore you. I think this was made quite evident in 2020.  In fact, I think it was hard for some people because they were almost forced to take a political position when they were previously able to remain politically silent for their whole life.

I suppose it is still possible to remain silent and refuse to answer people’s questions.  You don’t have to offer your opinion on mask mandates and lockdowns.  But your actions are going to tell everyone where you stand to some degree.

If you are staying at home and only going out for “essentials” while wearing a mask at all times, then it is pretty clear where you come down.  If you are prohibiting your children from doing activities, it is really clear.  On the other hand, if you are socializing up close with others and going to eat out at restaurants, it is also pretty clear where you come down.

Sure, it is possible that you may stay at home and believe the coronavirus is really dangerous without favoring lockdowns and other government mandates.  But these people are very few.  Most of the hysterics hang on to every word of the establishment and its corporate media, and they likely favor the government interventions that are touted by this same group.

Living Life

I never changed the way I was living since March 2020 except for what was forced upon me by government and society at large.  I haven’t “socially distanced” on purpose, except I have seen a lot fewer people because they are distancing.  Sometimes I am forced to wear a mask if I want to shop somewhere or attend something.

I live in Florida, which is open for business.  There are a lot of localities that have mask mandates, and a lot of businesses require them.  But businesses are open that want to be open, which is most of them.  Life is close to normal in Florida except you still feel like you’re in a hospital when going to the store, and activities in government-owned or government-controlled buildings are quite different.

In 2020, ignorance wasn’t bliss.  To me, ignorance meant listening and hanging on to every word spoken by the so-called experts. It meant following the establishment media and worrying non-stop about the “pandemic”.

I knew the establishment media was lying from the beginning for several reasons.  First and foremost, they lie.  If they’ll lie about things to get us into a war overseas, then surely they’ll lie about the severity of a virus.

I also knew that the mortality statistics they were quoting were fake.  The government-approved “experts” were saying that the virus had a 3 to 4 percent mortality rate.  This was coming out of China where they were mostly testing people who were really sick.  This is faulty statistical analysis.

If you tested people for the flu entering a hospital in the United States, you would probably get a 3 to 4 percent mortality rate there too.  People who are going to the hospital tend to be in bad shape. I’m sure there were many people in early 2020 in China who had the coronavirus or some other flu who didn’t get tested and recovered just fine at home.

I have always viewed this as something akin to the flu.  The hysterics love to quote the number of dead, now over 400,000, but they are again falling for propaganda and faulty statistics.  Early on, the federal government issued guidelines, along with monetary incentives, to code anyone who tested positive for COVID as a COVID death if that person dies.

If you said that anyone who has had the common cold in the last few weeks and dies gets marked as a death from the common cold, then you would have a pandemic of the common cold.

I am glad that I have seen through this whole thing from day one.  While it is frustrating to watch the world around me destroy itself, at least I am not in a state of panic, or at least not from the virus. My children, likewise, have no fear over the virus, just as it should be.

I watch these people who are nervous wrecks.  I see parents pulling activities away from their children.  I see two-year old kids in stores wearing masks.  I see people who are afraid to see any friends or extended family members up close.  They are living a life of panic and loneliness. I am not sure sometimes whether to laugh at them or to feel sorry for them.  Sometimes it is both.

These people are ignorant.  The thing about being ignorant is that you usually don’t know that you are ignorant.  These people got suckered, but they have no idea that they got suckered.  If someone tries to tell them they have been suckered, even in a polite way, they shut that person out.  “Don’t deny the science.”

Intelligent Ignoramuses

The problem is that the hysterics are largely intelligent people.  Many of them are well read.  Many of them have college degrees or advanced degrees.  Many of them make a good living.  Many of them are articulate.

Unfortunately, this hurts them.  They think that because they are basically intelligent people, that they can’t get duped. They think their intelligence applies to every facet of life.  They are blinded by their own intelligence.

 They will gladly listen to Dr Fauci and the other experts that are paraded before them by the politicians and the corporate media. If anyone questions the wisdom of these experts, then that person must be the ignorant one.  They aren’t following the experts.  They aren’t following the science.  They are deniers.  They are conspiracy theorists.  They are lower class rednecks.

This is why conversations with the other side are mostly hopeless.  You will sometimes find someone with an open mind who is willing to consider other viewpoints.  Sometimes you will find someone who just hasn’t given things much thought. Other than that, it is almost impossible to change people’s minds, especially when it challenges their whole worldview.  They were suckers, and they will never want to admit they were suckers.  The only way out is for the same people (the establishment) to tell them that it is ok to start resuming life again.  They need to hear from the same “experts” that things are safer now, whether it is because of a vaccine, or the wise policies of Biden, or whatever the “reason” may be.

I think the only other way to convert some people is to be an example.  Live your life to its fullest, given the choices around you. In 2020, I went to a wedding. I went to a large party inside a house.  We had neighborhood kids running through our house.  We go out to eat as much as we did prior to March 2020.  It has to bother some people who are living in fear inside their house.

You may not move people to our side, but maybe you can demonstrate that you can continue to live life without fear of the plague.  Maybe you can convince them, with your actions, that they can set foot outside of their house and survive.

It isn’t all or nothing.  There is a wide spectrum of people with varying degrees of fear.  The immediate goal isn’t to move everyone to not being fearful at all.  The goal is to move them one step closer to being less fearful.  Or maybe you can convince someone who isn’t fearful to be a little bolder in not always wearing a mask or speaking out more.

The hardest people to convince of anything are the intellectuals who believe they know it all.  They are the biggest suckers of them all.  Either that, or they are playing along and virtue signaling for the sake of their own career and reputation.  I’m not sure which is worse.

Joe Biden has become president.  I accepted this fate long before many Trump supporters did.  I knew it would be difficult to prove extensive election fraud, let alone actually get a fair hearing of it from an establishment that was determined to get rid of Trump.

I don’t think Congress or the U.S. Supreme Court should have tried to overturn the results.  It was fine for some members of Congress to challenge the certification process, if nothing else to draw attention to the likely fraud that took place.  But I don’t want the federal government overturning the Electors sent by each state.  It would set a very bad precedent for the future.

I don’t care that Trump continued to talk about fraud from the day after the election right up until the events of January 6.  I think he obsessed a little too much about it at the expense of other things, but I have no problem with him fighting and speaking out against a perceived injustice.

To some extent, Trump is to blame for allowing some of the election fraud to the degree that it took place.  He wasn’t ready for it.  He didn’t have the boots on the ground.  He didn’t have a ground infrastructure in places like Atlanta, Detroit, and Philadelphia to monitor these things.  Sure, it still would have been difficult.  It is difficult when the whole establishment is against you. But it still could have made a difference with more preparation.  The Trump team (if there was one) could have also challenged many of the state rulings early on that permitted changes for rules regarding mail-in ballots.

Trump went out very defeated.  The establishment had been going after him for five years, and they finally got their victory over Trump.  The second impeachment of Trump was just a victory lap.

Biden is now president.  With all of the announcements and executive orders being issued, I have seen nothing good so far. You would think that I could find one good thing out of many, but they are all bad from what I have seen so far. I’ll have much more to say about Biden/ Harris in the time ahead.  For now, I want to write about the end of Trump’s presidency.  It was unique in the fact that he was an anti establishment candidate, at least in rhetoric, who managed to get in.

2020 – A Year of Disaster

There is a lot of rhetoric when it comes to people discussing the president.  In every presidential election, we tend to hear the same line: “This is the most important presidential election of our lifetime.”  This is a rather sick joke when talking about Mitt Romney vs. Barack Obama.

In the case of Trump, there was something different.  A lot of Trump’s policies ended up not being much different, but the rhetoric was unique.  Trump also exposed the establishment/ deep state to the general public as never before. Sometimes it was inadvertent, but it became quite obvious that the ruling class despised Trump.  They also despise his supporters.

2020 was a different year.  I can’t help but think it would have been much different had Trump not been president.  Maybe we would have seen a virus scare. Maybe we would have seen riots and protests across America.  But I tend to think these things would have been much more mild without Trump.

In a sense, Trump gave us mass panic over a virus and massive rioting across the country for several months.  Trump didn’t actually give us those things, but the establishment gave us those things, probably as a way to get at Trump.  It could also be seen as a form of punishment to the under class for daring to put Trump in office and in continuing to support him.

Still, these things happened on Trump’s watch.  It was mayors and governors who locked things down starting in March 2020. But Trump was goaded into supporting these measures.  He originally came out and said that the virus isn’t a big deal and that Americans should go about their lives.  After he said this, they made him pay.  They made us all pay.  And we’re still paying.

Trump didn’t have to go along with the virus hysteria.  He was certainly better on the issue than most others in the establishment, but Trump could have been much better.  In many ways, he was a coward.  He showed weakness on this issue, so they pressed it harder.

I can’t directly blame Trump at all for the riots, even if the establishment and its media encouraged them because Trump was in office.  But when election time came around in November, it was hard for many people to say that their lives were made better by the Trump presidency.  I, myself, said that I might prefer for Biden to win if it meant that all of the lockdowns and hysteria would end. I wasn’t giving in to the demands of the Mafia.  It wasn’t my fault that people were total suckers in 2020 and went along with all of the hype of a virus to the point of accepting massive lockdowns and other mandates.

I also thought Trump showed incredible weakness by touting the vaccines.  If you remember back to 2016, there was actually talk about Trump setting up some kind of a vaccine safety committee and getting Robert Kennedy Jr. to head it up.  Of course, this never happened, and Trump ends his presidency by bragging about bringing vaccines to the populace quickly, which are largely untested. They certainly weren’t tested on the most vulnerable people in our society, who are supposedly the people who need the vaccine the most.

The Ending

Trump left office with a whimper.  He talked about his wonderful accomplishments, but I didn’t see most of what he talked about as accomplishments.  Much of it can be undone by the Biden presidency in no time.

Trump could have gone out with a bang.  He could have pardoned Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, two individuals despised by the establishment.  Instead, Trump only found the boldness within him to pardon the likes of Steve Bannon and Lil’ Wayne.

Maybe Trump was threatened.  Maybe he cut a deal with the devil.  Maybe he was assured that he wouldn’t be criminally prosecuted as long as he didn’t pull any stunts like pardoning Assange or Snowden.

I have defended Trump many times because of the idiotic accusations against him. Russiagate was a hoax.  The impeachment (number one) over Ukraine was rather ridiculous.  In fact, Trump sort of knew what he was doing in terms of investigating the Bidens.  They really were doing corrupt and criminal things.

With that said, I thought Trump left on a bad note.  It wasn’t his fault for what happened on January 6, as he did not advocate any violence.  But he didn’t necessarily handle it well afterwards.  And since he was kicked off social media, it was difficult for him to respond anyway.  He should have been prepared for the coordinated censorship.  He should have already told his followers to follow him on other platforms.  Again, it was another failure to anticipate on his part.

Trump left looking weak and broken, but we all know we haven’t heard the last from him. Whether or not he’ll run in 2024, I have no idea.  I also don’t know how much the left and the establishment will continue to obsess over him now that he is out of office.

Anyway, all of those predictions about how Trump wouldn’t leave office were never true.  I had no doubt that Trump would leave office if defeated.

Foreign Policy

Trump was completely inconsistent on foreign policy.  But as I’ve said many times, I would rather someone who is inconsistent than someone who is consistently bad.

We didn’t get any new major wars.  This is the first time in at least 4 decades for any presidency.  That was a major positive.

Of course, Trump was a disaster in many ways.  He ordered the assassination of an Iranian official and almost started a war there.  He pulled out of the agreement with Iran, which was one of the few decent things done by the Obama administration.  He dropped bombs on Syria due to allegations (likely false) that Assad was using chemical weapons on his own people.  Trump started to interfere in Venezuela, but luckily that went nowhere.  Trump continued the brutal war and sanctions against the people of Yemen.  He continued all of the wars that he inherited, and his administration continued to drop bombs in many places.

Trump talked about withdrawing troops in several places, but he could never quite seem to get it done. It is a problem when you hire a bunch of war hawks in your administration.  This was a major fault of Trump in his whole presidency. He surrounded himself by people he couldn’t trust.  Many of them despised Trump, but they put on a fake face for him and pretended to support him.  The few people who actually did support Trump ended up being prosecuted by the FBI.

I thought one shining moment of Trump’s presidency was when he met with Kim Jong Un of North Korea. Trump handled him very well and showed diplomacy.  Can you picture Hillary Clinton ever doing that?  Could you picture Biden or Harris doing that?  Trump showed that there was really nothing to fear over North Korea, and a little diplomacy can ease tensions quickly.

Economics

Trump was decent on some things and horrible on others.  He cut taxes, including the incredibly high corporate tax rates.  That was a major positive.

Trump also managed to actually roll back some regulations, which is something that is almost never done.  We live in a bureaucratic administrative state.  He didn’t come anywhere close to ending that or even reforming that.  But Trump probably did about as well as could be expected in not growing the number of regulations more.

Trump was horrible on the issue of protectionism and tariffs.  This showed his lack of understanding in economics.  It also exposed the lack of understanding of many of his supporters.

Trump was horrible on the issue of spending.  The deficit exploded on his watch in 2020.  This is just a continuation of previous administrations.  He, of course, did nothing to address the long-term problems with the debt and unfunded liabilities.

Trump was critical of the Federal Reserve and nominated a controversial figure (to the establishment) to the Fed (Judy Shelton), but he was all over the place.  When he criticized Powell, it was because he was being too tight.  Trump wanted lower interest rates and more monetary inflation.

In some ways, I think it is good for Trump to be out of office now.  The stock market is in a major bubble.  It was probably already in a bubble when he was first elected, just as he pointed out in 2016.  If that was a bubble then, I don’t know what to call now.  Biden and Harris can deal with the popping bubble.  They will try to blame Trump, but that will be a tough sell for many.

Trump did very little to improve the economic situation in this country.  The Federal Reserve and the overall spending are the biggest problems, and he just made things worse.  No politician is going to “fix” these problems.  They will fix themselves, if that’s the word you want to use, when the government can no longer keep the game going.  We will have to see higher price inflation first before that happens.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the Trump presidency was a mixed bag.  It wasn’t great for liberty except that he helped to expose the establishment. He made many Republicans realize that the Mitt Romneys of this world are not their friends.  Following in Ron Paul’s footsteps, Trump made it ok to be a Republican and not be a war hawk.

Trump was entertaining for me in many ways.  I will actually miss his pettiness to a certain extent.  Trump just about ruined stand-up comedy.  I can’t watch any of the late night shows on television any more, as they just obsess over Trump, and they aren’t funny.

I think it is time to move on.  Biden will be a disaster, but at least people will have to find someone else to blame.  They will still blame Trump and his deplorables, but it won’t be as effective.  My hope is that Trump supporters will show opposition and gain some principles in the process.  Now that Trump is out of office, they can start complaining about the debt.

Biden and the establishment are fully back in the driver’s seat.  But there are 75 million people who voted for Trump who aren’t going away.  They voted for Trump because they are dissatisfied with the system.  They feel that the system has failed them, and they are largely correct.

The worst part of a Joe Biden presidency would be another major war.  As I write this, Donald Trump has less than 48 hours left in office.  Assuming nothing really crazy happens in the next 2 days, Trump will be the first president in at least 4 decades to not start a new major war.

Trump failed to end the wars he inherited.  The military continued to drop a lot of bombs on his watch.  The war making and starvation against the people of Yemen continued.  Trump got close to an all-out war by assassinating an Iranian official.

So Trump has been bad in many ways with regard to foreign policy, but he has probably been the best over the last 4 decades.  He was definitely better than any president since Reagan.

I fear that will change under Biden.  Biden is an establishment guy.  I don’t think he is making many decisions, if any, at this point. If his handlers want another war, then another war we’ll have.

Just about every Biden cabinet pick and advisor is there for his or her diversity (not diversity of thought) or for his or her reliable history in making war.

Maybe the establishment has its hands full right now and won’t move on to yet another war. It’s possible.  If there is another war, then it will obviously impact the people of that country the most.  Americans aren’t typically directly impacted by American wars except for the occasional blowback and the hidden costs.  They obviously aren’t good for the people and their families who get deployed, but the vast majority of Americans feel no direct impact.

They are impacted financially, but they don’t really know it.  The war spending can be financed through debt and inflation. It doesn’t work like a reverse UBI where the government comes knocking on your door asking you for your share of the costs of war.  You don’t have to write out a check for $800 in order to deploy the troops and drop the bombs.  The impact is subtle through monetary inflation, which makes people’s dollars worth less over time.

Domestic Policies

So while I think another war would be the most disastrous thing, especially if it is with another country that can actually fight back, in most cases it won’t be something that impacts Americans the most.

The biggest focus in terms of the economy is on the coronavirus and the lockdowns.  Up until now, the lockdowns have been implemented at state and local levels.  Governors and mayors did what Trump didn’t do, even though the federal government was recommending and pushing for lockdowns back in March of 2020.

I have heard speculation that Biden may try to implement a nationwide lockdown for something like 6 weeks.  It would probably happen around the first of February.  I have no idea if this will happen.  I suspect that states like Florida and South Dakota will ignore it.

I think the big threat here is that it will force the hands of major companies to comply.  It isn’t that much different from Twitter and Facebook shutting down Donald Trump.  There will be a culture where it will be expected that you will shut down. Big companies and big organizations will likely comply.

Maybe this will be Biden’s excuse to say that he did something bold and effective. After the flu season ends, Biden and company can declare victory, at least in the short term, until they need another crisis to exercise more power.

It’s also possible Biden will do something much more mild, like asking everyone to wear a mask for 100 days.  Of course, that would probably lead to fewer people wearing masks, but most everyone is playing pretend these days anyway.  He can declare victory over the virus after his mask ask.

Moral Hazardous Bailouts

In the longer term, aside from a new war, I think the most disastrous thing to come out of Biden may be a massive bailout of the states.

To be sure, the lockdown states have already been getting bailed out to a large degree.  It was governors and mayors that locked things down, so why is it the federal government bailing everyone out?  This includes expanded unemployment benefits and business bailouts.  There are more failing businesses and unemployed people in the lockdown states.

So the lockdown states are getting rewarded for their bad policies.  It is a form of moral hazard.  They can keep going with their bad policies if a lot of the people being harmed by them are getting bailed out.

I think Biden’s bailouts will be worse and more direct.  There will be money going directly to highly corrupt governments like those in California, Illinois, and New York.  Biden is going to reward his blue states that are heavily populated. They will be rewarded with your tax money for their totalitarian policies.

It allows the bad policies to go on longer than they should.  It allows the corrupt governments to keep being corrupt and not face as severe budget woes.

I can’t predict what will come of this administration except that it will be fully run by the establishment and we will probably see more unprecedented spending.  The unprecedented policies from the Federal Reserve will also likely continue.

America will survive Joe Biden.  America will even survive Kamala Harris.  But we are likely to see some tough times ahead.  They will only be able to blame Trump for so long.

The American people need to wake up and stop accepting these lockdowns and other restrictions done in the name of science.  They are totalitarian edicts, and Biden is going to help prop up these authoritarians with direct and indirect bailouts.

You don’t get wealthy by paying interest.  You get wealthy by earning interest.

This is one of my favorite lines when it comes to personal finance.  While I am not adverse to all debt, I do think that a good path to wealth entails minimizing debt and not holding any bad debt.

While being a proponent of minimizing debt and being somewhat risk averse in terms of investing, I have great concerns regarding inflation now and in the future.

Many people who fear inflation are not adverse to debt.  They may promote various assets to hedge against inflation, or to even make money from inflation.  These assets could include stocks, real estate, gold, and other commodities. In many cases, they even find it useful to use debt in order to finance these purchases.  This is especially true when it comes to real estate.

Some have an even more flippant view of debt because they believe inflation will take care of the debt.  In other words, if the currency is depreciating by 10% per year, then you shouldn’t care about having debt at 5% interest.  After all, you are paying back the loan in a depreciating currency.  This can even be an excuse to take on more debt because it means paying it back later on when the money isn’t worth as much.

There are several problems with advocating more debt because of an expectation of inflation.

First, if you have a loan with a 4% interest rate, you are paying that 4% interest for as long as you have the loan.  It is extra money going to the lender out of your pocket.  Whether or not the money is rapidly depreciating, the money is exiting your account and going to the account of the lender.

Now, there is a counter to this that it would be better to borrow money at 4% interest and to get a return of anything higher than this (less taxes owed on the gains).  If you can borrow at 4% and get a return of 8% on this money, then it makes sense.

But that leads to problem number two with advocating more debt.  You don’t know that you will be right.  Maybe inflation (monetary or price) will stop. Maybe the currency won’t depreciate as much as you think.  Maybe the assets you buy won’t go up in value, even nominally.

There were people predicting runaway price inflation in 2009 with the Fed’s reaction to the financial crisis.  There are people still predicting runaway price inflation in Japan due to the massive government debt-to-GDP and the easy money policies from the Bank of Japan.  So far, they have been wrong.

Sure, if I knew that gold was going to go to $20,000 per ounce in the next 10 years, then I would borrow money at a low interest rate and buy as much gold as I could. But I have no idea that this will happen.

While I suspect that we will see higher price inflation in the future and that certain assets will go up in price, I really don’t know for sure.  This is why we diversify.  Diversification isn’t just about the investments that you buy. It also means diversifying your situation, which includes not overloading yourself with debt.

The best financial diversification is to have absolutely no debt and to have money left over to invest in assets that perform well in an inflationary environment.  You are protected either way with inflation or deflation.

Gold is an inflation hedge.  Paying off debt is a deflation hedge.  Paying off debt also just makes good sense.  The worst-case scenario with paying off debt is that you could have used the money for something else to get a higher return.

Mortgage Debt

I am currently refinancing my mortgage.  My current rate is just below 4%, and I have a little over 19 years left on it.

I was looking to refinance to a 20-year mortgage.  I could pay it off in about the same time while lowering my monthly payments.

However, when I was looking at rates in late 2020, the rates for a 15-year fixed mortgage were much better.  I have locked in a rate table that includes a rate as low as 2% on a 15-year loan.  This would include paying points (additional closing costs).

As of right now, I am going to refinance to a 15-year mortgage even though my payment will go up slightly (less than $100 per month, even with rolling in closing costs). I will pay off my mortgage in 15 years instead of in 19 and a half years.

I don’t know if this will turn out to be the mathematically optimal decision.  What I do know is that I think it is the right decision given what I know right now.

If I knew with absolute certainty that gold would go up 10% per year every year for the next two decades, then I would be better off doing a refinance into a 30-year loan.  I would also be better off taking out a large loan as a cash-out refinance.  The same goes if I knew that stocks or bonds would give this return in the future.

But I have no idea. I suspect that we will hit higher price inflation ahead and that gold will do well, but I am not certain.

What I am certain of is that I will pay my mortgage off in 15 years or less.  Even if we do hit much higher inflation, I will have locked in payments that I can afford.

I know there are people who are taking advantage of the low rates and refinancing into a 30-year mortgage.  There are people doing this even when they have owned their house for 5 or 10 years, or even longer. They’ll go from having, say, 20 years left on the loan, to restarting back at 30 years with a much lower payment.

While cash flow is important, I think it is shortsighted to do this in many cases.  You could keep refinancing back to a 30-year loan every 10 years and lowering your payment, but you will never actually get rid of the payment.  It is especially problematic when people do this and take cash out, thus pushing the loan balance higher again.  It is understandable for people who are really desperate and need the money, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense to do this if the money is being used for a new pool or new granite countertops in the kitchen.

There is no right answer to all of this.  Personal finance really is personal.  However, it is important to give proper thought to taking out more debt or even refinancing existing debt.

While I think everyone should prepare for higher price inflation ahead, you shouldn’t bet the farm on it.  This means not going into more debt on a possible false assumption that the currency you use will rapidly depreciate in the coming years.

If you want to become wealthy, you aren’t going to do this by continually taking on more debt. Debt can be useful in growing a business or buying real estate, but it should be used with careful thought.

We are in an information war right now.  The powers-that-be are trying to shut down all dissident voices.  These power players include the government, the corporate media, the social media giants, and big business in general.

There is a certain extent that media and corporations are complicit in shutting down anti establishment voices because they themselves feel threatened.  If you are a big company and you dare to go against the grain in the current climate, you could feel major repercussions just from the government.  This especially becomes the case when you receive any government money or any kind of favoritism.

It is tempting for libertarians and conservatives to want to quash censorship by relying on the government.  It is the only way that many of them see a solution.  But it is important to resist this temptation, as it is antithetical to liberty.  Also, why would you rely on the very people in government to make this right when they are the ones trying to silence you?

The establishment is getting its revenge on the people who dared to elect Donald Trump in 2016. They have been fighting an ongoing war against Trump since 2015.  Even though Trump surrounded himself by a bunch of swamp people, he has dared to tell the truth at times.  He has provided a much-needed voice to the underclass, or as Hillary Clinton would call them, the deplorables.

The war against Trump has mostly been against Trump for the last 5 years.  They ridicule him.  They lie about him.  They make a caricature of him.  They paint him in a bad light at every possible turn.  It’s not that Donald Trump doesn’t have his flaws. He has many.  But the establishment and its media will try to make Trump look as bad as possible virtually all of the time.

Before Trump took office, there were fake allegations that Trump colluded with the Russians to steal the 2016 election.  Some of his closest advisors were prosecuted for things that most people couldn’t even tell you about.  The truth is that they were prosecuted because they were a threat to the establishment.  They were a threat to reveal truths about the swamp, and they were a threat because some of them wanted to reduce the U.S. empire.

There were continuous allegations against Trump for four years in office.  He was impeached in December 2019 for a phone call with the president of Ukraine where Trump asked him to look into the Biden family (and for good reason).  When I wrote a summary of 2020, I actually forgot to include the impeachment saga, as the Senate did not acquit him until February 2020.  Isn’t it odd that it never came up once as a question in one of the main presidential debates?

Trump seemed to slide by everything.  Sure, the establishment media convinced half the population that Trump is a horrible person and that most of our problems are a result of him.  But close to the other half of the country remained in line with Trump, or at least sympathized with him.  They understood that Trump was a little different from the ruling class, and Trump himself had helped to show that the ruling elite were in it for themselves.

After the November 2020 election, Trump continued to claim that he won.  He continued to claim that there was massive election fraud, and a great percentage of his followers believed it then and still believe it now.

On January 6, 2021, it came to a climax when hundreds of thousands of people showed up in Washington DC to protest the certification of Joe Biden as the next president. The bizarre twist came when people went past the barriers and were on the grounds of the Capitol building. It is hard to say if there were outside agitators who initially led the way, but I have no doubt that there were some Trump supporters who actually entered the Capitol building.

In the grand scheme of things, there may have been a few hundred protesters to enter the building out of possibly a million people.

It was a bad idea for several reasons.  Unfortunately, this is what got all of the attention.  Because a few hundred people got goaded into entering the Capitol building, it sparked a full movement of censorship against anti establishment forces.

The politicians and their media lie constantly.  Sometimes they don’t outright lie, but they propagandize constantly to distort the truth.  It is the same thing as they do to get support for a war.  George W. Bush never actually said that Iraq was responsible for the attacks on 9/11, but he often conflated the two things to give the impression that Saddam Hussein was partially responsible.

In this case, they say that Trump incited violence and insurrection.  The media is trying to paint anyone who is a Trump supporter as some kind of domestic terrorist.  This is especially laughable given the media’s support for the massive violence that occurred in the summer of 2020 in major cities across America.

So anyone who attended the Trump rally/ protest is being painted as a bad person, even if they did not step foot on the Capitol building.  There is a full attack to shun people from society who in any way supports Trump or even questions the establishment and its motives.

From 2015 to January 6, 2021, most of the effort was to get Trump and bring him down.  He was the face of the anti establishment movement.  On January 6, 2021, the war shifted from Trump to his 75 million supporters.  Maybe the war was always really against his supporters, but up until this time, it was mostly personalized against Trump and those close to Trump.  Now it is against a whole segment of society.

An Echo Chamber

While I don’t want the government to control social media, I am highly critical of what is going on. We should demand that these companies get no government funding for anything.

I see some people cheering on the censorship.  These are people that don’t like Trump.  They don’t understand what they are cheering for.

Companies like Facebook and Twitter have banned Trump.  They would rather do this and lose money from people who will no longer use their platform.  Perhaps the scariest thing is the actions taken against Parler, which is a competitor.  Apple, Google, and Amazon have all taken steps to close down Parler.  As of right now, Parler’s website is not functional.

It’s not that Parler allows threats of violence on its platform.  It’s that it is a place where people are free to post what they want as long as they aren’t inciting any kind of violence.  But because it is becoming a place for conservatives and libertarians to go, it had to be shut down.  The powers-that-be can’t have dissident voices out there.

To be clear, it’s not even that Parler is a platform for conservatives.  It’s just that it is attracting people who are being shut out of Facebook and Twitter.

The people who are cheering on this censorship apparently want to live in an echo chamber. They don’t want to hear any opposing views.  It might confuse them.

If you ban contrarian views from Facebook and Twitter, then people are going to find some other outlet.  The establishment can keep trying to attack the competition, but people are going to find a way to be heard, even if they are just being heard by others who agree with them.

Conservatives and libertarians understand opposing views for the most part, even if they don’t agree with them.  It can be hard to understand why people may hold these views, but the views are understood.

The same can’t be said for much of the left and for the establishment in general.  The ruling elite may understand, but the average person on the street doesn’t understand these anti establishment views.  They just listen to the caricatures that are drawn up by the establishment media.

There are tens of millions of people out there who get 99% of their information from the establishment media.  They watch the news on television.  They read establishment sources on the internet.  A few may still read the newspaper.  They are bombarded with the same views over and over again. So when they hear it repeated a hundred times that Trump incited violence, then it must be true to them.

There is a total lack of curiosity.  They may see the occasional dissident voice on Facebook.  They can’t even entertain the possibility of another opinion being on to something.

This is why someone who isn’t in hysterics over the coronavirus must be evil or stupid. They have heard hundreds of times from their trusted media that the virus is very deadly and dangerous and we must obey the mask mandates and social distancing as directed.

To be sure, we are better off today than in previous decades.  30 or 40 years ago, you watched television and read the newspaper.  It was a complete echo.  Now there are alternative news sources, but you have to be a little curious and open-minded to look at them.

The reason there is such disunity is because a lot of people don’t believe the lies of the ruling class.  There is seeming unity in North Korea.  There was unity in the Soviet Union.  Nobody questioned the official narrative or else they risked being erased from society, whether it be by death or a concentration camp.

Now, the ruling elite are trying to erase those who don’t accept the official narrative. They can’t get away with concentration camps or death in most cases, so they turn to censorship.  They want to shut people up.  They want to ban information.  They want to scare people into silence.

In the long run, it isn’t going to work.  It’s not to say that we don’t have a tough road ahead of us.

As I’ve been repeating for several months, the tens of millions of Trump supporters aren’t going away.  You can pretend that they don’t exist, but it doesn’t make it so.  While many of them may be misguided in some aspects and not fully able to articulate a position of liberty, they do understand that the ruling elite is their enemy.  This is an important realization that the other half of the country does not understand.  Instead, the people who preach unity and dutifully obey their rulers are the serfs.  They are enslaving themselves.  They are helping to enslave all of us to a certain degree.  They are being duped, and they have no idea.  They can’t see through the echo chamber.  When they are lied to enough on a constant basis, they can’t comprehend that they may be being lied to.  It would rattle their entire worldview.

The empire (the establishment) has struck back.  They have gotten their revenge in 2020 and the beginning of 2021.  They got the hysteria they wanted with a virus.  They got unprecedented government controls.  Now they are painting Trump supporters as violent people.  They are trying to block the free flow of information.

In the long run, it isn’t going to work.  There are too many people who have woken up to the reality that the ruling class is not working for them.  The people in the echo chamber will occasionally hear alternative viewpoints. A few of them will be rattled and will have to rethink their view of the world.

While part of human nature wants to trust people and seek safety, I believe the thirst for liberty will overwhelm this.  Liberty is part of human nature.  That is an idea that cannot be permanently silenced.

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” ~John F. Kennedy

As a libertarian, I have a lot of mixed feelings about what happened in Washington DC on January 6, 2021.  It is mostly libertarians who wonder when the American people are going to pick up their theoretical pitchforks and head to DC, but I have never been one to preach this.

Violence begets violence.  There are times to use violence when it is in self-defense.  Otherwise, it should be avoided by anyone who seeks peace.

As a libertarian, I understand that the state (i.e., the government) is a violent institution. The very definition of the state is that it has a legal monopoly on the use of violence.  We often don’t see violence employed, but the threat is there.  What the state tells you to do is not typically a suggestion.  It is a requirement backed up by the use of force.

Still, I don’t think the storming of the Capitol Building can be justified as self-defense. I understand it was to intimidate politicians, most of whom I dislike.  I understand that it was a government building (taxpayer funded) that was briefly occupied and a little bit damaged.

The problem is that these rulers are ruling by the implicit consent of the people.  I would even go so far as to say that most of the people at that rally, including the few who entered the Capitol Building, consent to the system to a certain degree.  They may want to remake the system, but they wanted their guy in as president.  I wonder how many people at that rally favor ending government schools.  I wonder how many don’t believe in the government’s Social Security system.  I wonder how many want to remove all troops from overseas.

Don’t get me wrong. I am sympathetic to the cause for which many of the protesters went to DC.  It is not surprising that there was finally a little bit of violence employed by the Trump side after enduring so much.  With that said, I think it was a very bad idea to storm the Capitol Building.  I’m not sure what it accomplished other than losing at least one life and losing a lot of sympathy from others.

I want to be clear that this is the fault of those who stormed the building.  Even though I think it was a stupid decision, I don’t think most of these people are bad people.  They got caught up in a mob mentality.  Revolution sounds like a fun thing, especially when you are angry at the situation.

It would not surprise me if there were provocateurs in the crowd.  It also seemed much too easy for the crowd to just walk by the police and get into the building.  I have seen speculation that at least one of the first people to go in is actually from Antifa.  You can find anything on the internet, but I also wouldn’t doubt that this is possibly true.  I do believe that most of the followers were probably actual Trump supporters.

The woman who was shot and killed was killed execution style.  She was going through a broken window.   She was not going in to hurt anyone.  There was no reason to shoot her except to send a message.  I believe in proportionality, and this was not proportional.  I believe the person (police officer or secret service agent) who fired that gun should be charged in her murder.

The woman took a risk doing what she did, and she paid for it with her life.  It is the saddest part of what happened that day, at least to me.

Glaring Hypocrisy

When watching the corporate media report on this, I couldn’t help constantly drawing comparisons to what happened across the country in major cities throughout the summer. The protests and riots that destroyed several blocks of several cities were put in a rather different light than what happened at the Capitol.

I believe this is for two reasons.  One is obvious, which is that the BLM/ Antifa riots were a leftwing cause, so they were treated favorably.  What happened in DC on January 6 came from mostly pro Trump people.

The second reason, I believe, is that the attacks throughout the summer of 2020 were mostly against private property.  There were some police stations attacked and city halls, but private businesses and private housing sustained the vast majority of the damage. The temporary siege of the Capitol was government property.  It is a sacred symbol of our democracy, or so say the powers-that-be.  It showed a vulnerability of the state. It showed that the state relies on the consent of the governed, and it was briefly rattled.

As previously discussed, the woman shot dead was only entering a window.  She was not pointing any weapons.  She didn’t have a flamethrower in her hand. Yet, with all of the riots across America, I’m not sure that one person was ever killed by the police for vandalizing, looting, arson, or attacking others.  It took a 17-year old kid to kill a couple of people who were attacking him, with the police seemingly nowhere to be found.

The establishment media is completely contradicting themselves from what happened half a year ago.  They called this domestic terrorism, but they couldn’t seem to find those words for the rioters in downtowns across the country.

Some have suggested that the people entering the Capitol all should have been shot dead.  Were these same people calling for all people to be shot dead who were breaking store windows, lighting cars and buildings on fire, and looting private property?  The question answers itself.

Meanwhile, the entire establishment is condemning Trump for what happened, even though Trump wasn’t telling anyone to do this.  Sure, he was constantly complaining about election fraud, but it doesn’t mean he should take the blame for the result of what happened.

Trump reiterated that there was election fraud and told the people to go home in peace.  This wasn’t enough for his critics of course, but nothing would have been enough.  But back in late May and June when cities were burning, did Obama or Biden or Harris make a call for non-violence?  Again, the question answers itself.  Harris was too busy helping to post bail for the few rioters who were arrested.

Mike Pence and Election Fraud

I am not sure if the storming of the Capitol would have happened if Pence hadn’t made the announcement that he did prior to the Congressional certification process.

You can read Pence’s letter.  While I believe there was significant fraud, I actually tend to believe that Pence got it right. The vice president cannot overturn an election.  Perhaps he could have delayed the certification more and held more hearings.  But you don’t want to set a precedent where the vice president, as president of the Senate, can overturn the electoral votes sent by the states.

If the vice president had this kind of power, don’t you think that Joe Biden, as vice president at the time, would have just declared Hillary Clinton to be the victor in the 2016 presidential election?

I try to put myself in the position of others to see if I am being fair.  What if Ron Paul had been cheated out of an election because of the vote counting in certain swing states?  On the contrary, what if Ron Paul had won and had the majority of electors and the vice president tried to overturn it?

I think we need to stick with decentralization.  I’m sure there was fraud in Georgia and Michigan.  I’m sure that Pennsylvania broke its own laws. But it really does need to be handled at the state level.  There is some responsibility that goes to Trump for not being prepared and having more players on the ground to prevent this type of thing.  If the Trump people are mad and want revenge, then start taking over state legislatures to prevent this type of thing in the future.

Republican Hypocrites

While I generally think Pence did the right thing in this situation, I understand why Trump and his supporters feel betrayed by Pence.  But again, Trump has to take some responsibility for this. Trump could have picked anyone as his running mate in 2016.  He chose Mike Pence, an establishment guy.  He also chose a bunch of people who opposed his agenda for his cabinet.

Elaine Chao just resigned as Transportation Secretary.  She is the wife of Mitch McConnell.  I haven’t liked the woman since she was in the Bush administration.  Again, it’s Trump’s fault for picking a person who probably despises Trump.

Why did Chao resign right after the events of January 6?  She already knew that Trump heavily disputed the election results. Trump didn’t tell people to take the Capitol.  He was doing the same thing on January 6 as he had been doing all along.  So it was really the result of what happened that caused her to resign.  She saw her political opportunity, and she took it.  The Republicans should forever keep her locked out of politics, and they should do the same to her husband.

Also, there were several Republicans in Congress who were going to raise objections to the electoral votes.  But after the brief takeover of the Capitol, they said it seemed inappropriate.

Wait a minute. If you think the election was stolen, how does that change based on the events that took place that day? Or do these politicians still think it was stolen but no longer want to cause any disruptions?  It doesn’t make much sense except that they are lying hypocrites.

As I’ve been saying all along, the 70 million plus who voted for Donald Trump are not going away. Most of them are peaceful people, but they aren’t going to “unite”.  When Biden and company say they want unity, they mean that they want everyone to fall in line and follow the edicts of their rulers.  Not everyone likes this plan.

Everyone has their breaking point, but apparently many people have yet to hit theirs, even with the lockdowns of 2020 and beyond.  In less than a year, many people, perhaps a majority, have basically accepted totalitarianism in the United States.

There isn’t a breaking point for some, especially those well off and those who work for the government and get a guaranteed paycheck.  The breaking point for many government workers is the funding of their agency and their job.

If some of these governors keep on destroying their states, they will find an increasingly shrinking tax base.  You can’t keep sucking money out of people when they either move out of state or are not working. If the federal government stops bailing out state and local governments, then maybe the politicians in the lockdown states will finally open things up when they are looking at steep budget cuts.

I feel more insecure going forward, knowing that the American people will just submit to authoritarianism because they are told lies by the authoritarians.

I was accustomed to this when it comes to war.  The politicians, the media, and the “intelligence” agencies can just make up any story to justify a war.  Saddam has weapons of mass destruction.  Assad gassed his own people.  Libya is supporting terrorism.  The excuse hasn’t mattered much.  The people willingly go along and give the military a green light.

When it comes to war though, it happens overseas.  The American people suffer no direct consequences for being wrong and for submitting to authoritarianism.  They don’t even have their taxes hiked.  They pay for it through monetary inflation (dollar depreciation), but most people don’t understand this or think it through.  So the politicians get away with lying about war.

I didn’t think they could get away with implementing authoritarianism at home.  It isn’t on the same scale as a war, as governments are generally not directly killing people.  But the lockdowns and stay-at-home orders have been devastating nonetheless, and they have shattered many millions of lives.

It is easy for a Hollywood celebrity to take a video telling everyone that “we’re all in this together”.  They say this in their giant house with the big pool in the background.

Where are the advocates for the hundreds of thousands of small business owners who were forced to shut their businesses?  Many of these are permanent.  Where is the political left?  These are the people who decry inequality and big corporations. The lockdowns that most of the left have supported have created greater inequality, as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.  They have also destroyed small businesses to the benefit of large corporations.

Dying With a Vaccine, Dying of COVID

Now that vaccines are being pushed, it is inevitable that there will be side effects.  These will include reactions and likely even death.  But it isn’t always easy to identify cause and effect.  This is something that the COVID hysterics won’t admit to when it comes to the virus.

There are establishment outlets warning that just because someone dies after taking a vaccine, it doesn’t mean that they died of the vaccine.  When you have thousands of people getting vaccinated every single day, including many elderly people, you are going to have a few people who would have died anyway.

Yes.  This is what they are actually saying.  In other words, they’re saying the exact same thing that others of us have been trying to point out since March 2020 about COVID-19.  It’s mostly old people and really unhealthy people dying “of” COVID-19, according to the CDC. The people who are supposedly dying of COVID are people who generally die.

So this is the logic of the COVID hysterics.  If you get a COVID vaccine and die, it is a coincidence.  The person would have died anyway.  If you test positive for COVID and die, then you died because of COVID.  There is no way you would have died without it.

When people buy this kind of logic, perhaps they deserve to be enslaved.

We’re still waiting on the final mortality numbers for 2020, but they look to be somewhat in line with what would have been expected without any “pandemic”.  If anything, it looks like it was younger people who saw an increase of mortality due to things like depression, suicide, and drug overdoses.

Admittedly, it gets tricky because there are a lot of variables with people staying at home more.  There are probably fewer traffic fatalities, but more depression-related deaths.  There were probably some people who survived because they didn’t go to a hospital or doctor’s office (medical mistakes are frequent), while others died prematurely because they didn’t go.

But when you look at the more open states within the United States, and you look at relatively open countries, the overall mortality isn’t significantly higher than usual, and they are not higher than the lockdown places.  We’ll hopefully get better data for the year 2020 in the coming weeks, but the point is that this isn’t much of a pandemic at all.  It is only a pandemic in fear and hysteria.

The Breaking Point of Small Business Owners

The hardest hit people are those who have lost work and those who own businesses that were shut down.  For people who already worked at a low wage, they can probably find a replacement job in most cases.  Plus, the generous (generous by politicians using other people’s money) unemployment benefits are oftentimes paying a higher wage anyway.

I can imagine someone who was making $100,000 per year and supporting a family.  If that person loses their job, it would be quite difficult, as the unemployment payments won’t nearly cover the previous salary.

I believe the hardest hit are the small business owners.  Imagine owning a small clothing store.  You get shut down, while people go to Walmart or Target down the road, which are deemed “essential”.  But when you got to Walmart or Target, it is not as if the clothing departments were closed down and you could only buy groceries and household products.  Customers could still walk out of the big stores with clothing.

Restaurants have to be the hardest hit businesses.  This is especially true for restaurants that made most of their money from dine-in customers.  It’s easier for a fast food place to still make decent revenues from drive through services.

I have a lot of empathy for these business owners.  Thug politicians are putting them out of business.  But the people are enabling this.  They are consenting to the power acquired by these governors and mayors.  They aren’t all consenting, but there are enough of them that are.

These business owners are having their livelihood taken away from them.  It is very difficult to start and sustain a successful business. This is especially true for brick and mortar businesses.  They require a lot of startup capital too.

For many of these restaurant owners, they are seeing hundreds of thousands of dollars that they have saved and spent over the years vanishing with one unlawful executive order.

While I have a lot of empathy, they still have decisions to make.  For those in places like New York City or California, they probably should have seen the writing on the wall years earlier.  There is no way they could have predicted what would happen in 2020, but the creeping totalitarianism was evident.  The incredibly confiscatory taxation levels have long been a sign of trouble.

At what point do these people fold and move and never return?  If I lived in California, I would be doing everything in my power to get any money I can for what I have left.  I would move out of the state and never return.  It is hard to close down your business, especially if you have devoted years or decades of your life to it.  But at some point, you cannot deny reality.

I am not typically one who says we should just give up our fight for liberty and let everything go to hell.  At the same time though, you can’t keep fighting an uphill battle where you know you won’t win. The business owners in these non-business friendly states and cities are in a no-win situation other than just leaving.

If you lived in the Soviet Union in 1970, or if you lived in Nazi Germany in 1940, it probably wouldn’t have been wise to stay and fight for liberty.  At some point, the only option is to leave.

These business owners are Atlas.  They feel the weight of the world on their shoulders.  They just need to shrug.

I never could have predicted what happened in the year 2020, so perhaps making predictions is futile. However, predictions aren’t only for fun.  They also don’t necessarily have to be accurate to be useful.

One thing that Harry Browne wrote about in his book Fail-Safe Investingwas to take predictions and test them against your portfolio.  In other words, if you read a good article that seems plausible, predicting a stock market crash in the near future, you don’t have to base your decisions on whether it will be true.  You need to base your decisions on whether you are prepared if it does come true.

The same would be the case for a lot of scenarios.  If someone is predicting a new great depression, or a monetary crisis, or massive inflation, or a spike in interest rates, or all of the above, you should look at your portfolio to see if it will hold up if the person’s predictions come true.

The same goes for life.  While your investment portfolio is important (if you have one), your overall quality of life is even more so.

So when we talk about predictions for the coming year or the different possibilities, you can derive benefit whether they come true or not.  It is best to ask yourself if you are prepared if one or more things does come true.  This preparedness applies mentally, physically, emotionally, and financially.

Politics

My first prediction is that Joe Biden will take office on January 20, 2021.  I know that Trump and many Trump supporters are still contesting the outcome.  I have little doubt that there was significant election fraud in the big cities in swing states.  This is especially true for Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia. There were also a lot of unlawful changes made in states prior to the election regarding mail-in ballots.

I know there will be objections in the Senate coming up.  I know some Trump supporters have laid out a path to victory. But the entire establishment is against Trump, and I don’t think he has the structure in place to overturn the currently reported votes in the swing states.

If I am wrong and Trump ends up staying in office, then all bets are off the table.  This would change everything.  There would be mass rioting.  There would be a doubling-down on the virus hysteria, if that’s even possible.  So if something happens over the next few weeks where Trump is actually victorious, then prepare for total chaos.  I give it less than a 5% chance though.

Assuming Biden takes office, I don’t think he’ll last long.  How many people are cringing every time he is live on camera? He can’t get through more than a couple of minutes without sounding stupid or lost in space.  I don’t see how he will give a coherent State of the Union address, but maybe they’ll drug him up and he can surprise me.

They’ll let Biden take a spin on Air Force One and take some nice family pictures at the White House. Maybe they’ll let him meet briefly, in a controlled environment, with a few foreign leaders.  Overall, they’ll try to limit Biden’s time speaking in front of a camera to as little as possible.

It’s hard to say if he’ll last a year or a couple of years.  I highly doubt he will last for the full four years.  I give it a better than 50% chance that we will see a president named Kamala Harris.

When the time comes, Biden will graciously go before the cameras and state that he is stepping down due to health reasons or family reasons.  I’m just not sure whether it will happen in 2021.

COVID-19 Hysteria

When I listen to other libertarians or conservatives who believe the coronavirus story is largely propaganda (hyped up by the media), I hear two main possible outcomes, assuming Trump leaves office.

The first outcome is that the lockdowns and restrictions continue, or even get worse, as long as enough people permit them to happen.  The governors and mayors have newfound dictatorial powers, so why would they let them go?  Politicians love power, and they gained tremendous power in 2020.  They will continue to make the virus sound as bad as possible and keep people living in a state of fear.  When people are fearful, they are easier to control.

The second outcome is that Biden gets into office and makes a few token moves.  He’ll “ask” everyone to wear a mask for 100 days. If anything, this might lead to less mask wearing out of rebellion, but he’ll attribute any improvements to his policies and the vaccines.  They can easily change the sensitivity of the PCR tests, thus driving the positive cases way down.  After a few months in office, with the end of winter (which is typically the end of flu season), Biden can declare victory over the virus and we can start going back to a normal (pre March 2020) life.

Both arguments are plausible.  They are both reasonable for a libertarian to make.  I originally thought the second outcome would happen, but it has surprised me just how extensive the lockdowns have been.  It is true that these politicians love their newly acquired power.  At the same time, there are going to be fiscal budgetary problems with state and local governments.  They will get some bailout money from the federal government, but at some point they will want to start collecting tax money again where it previously was.  It would also look bad for Biden if everything just gets worse for the next several years.

My best prediction here is that it will be a combination of the two scenarios outlined above. I think Biden will issue a few orders to make it look like he’s doing something more than Trump.  He will continue to tout the vaccines. Over time, the restrictions will be loosened.  Some states will loosen quicker than others.  But we aren’t going back to pre March 2020 any time soon.  The mayors and governors will keep a hold of their power.  They will generously allow 50% capacity at some establishments, or something like that.  They will ease the burdens on small business owners, but they will not completely go away in many places.

I expect the mask hysteria to continue for a long time.  It is a form of obedience.  When someone wears a mask, it demonstrates that the person is an obedient citizen.  They are listening to “the science” (i.e., the establishment media).

I wish I had better news here.  I feel fortunate to live in Florida.  If you live in California or New York, you should have already made your exit. People’s lives are being ruined. Many people are depressed. Kids are having their childhood robbed of them.

The Economy

I have been predicting a crash in stocks for too long now.  The bubble has expanded bigger than I thought would happen. I already thought it was a bubble in late 2019.  After massive lockdowns for much of 2020, with hundreds of thousands of small businesses closed and millions of newly unemployed people, stocks are booming.

Well, the big stocks are booming.  This has caused the indexes to go wild.  The heavily weighted stocks (think Amazon and Apple) have a major impact on the broad market.  There’s no question that tech stocks have benefitted from the lockdowns, at least in the short run.

But the rise in stock prices is beyond ridiculous at this point.  I expect a massive crash at some point, but we don’t know if it will happen in 2021.  I expect it will, but you never know with the Federal Reserve right now. The Fed’s balance sheet grew by over $3 trillion in 2020.  If the new money keeps flowing, then it could keep the stock bubble going for a while longer.

Going back to Harry Browne, it isn’t a question of whether stocks are about to crash any day now. It is a question of whether your portfolio is prepared in the event that they do crash.  I know some people are going to get burned badly.  I cringe when I hear people talking about putting a big chunk of money in Tesla, or even in an index fund.  I also cringe when I hear people getting into Bitcoin for the first time.  This is another major bubble.

It is best not to get swept up in the mania.  If you want to gamble, you should set aside a small amount for speculation and use only that.  I still recommend a permanent portfolio, or something similar in nature.

I think interest rates will stay low as long as price inflation expectations remain relatively low.  I do believe we will see price inflation pick up at some point, but it is hard to say how much of it will be reflected in the CPI statistics.  Right now, much of the new money created by the Fed is being used to bid up stock prices and housing prices in the suburbs.

Assuming Trump leaves office on January 20, 2021, he may look back later on and be thankful. I think the economy will be a mess over the next four years.  I don’t expect a complete collapse, but there will be rough times ahead for tens of millions of Americans.  There are already rough times now, and it will get worse for many.

The government continues to spend recklessly.  It doesn’t matter who is president.  It doesn’t matter which party controls Congress.  The deficits keep going higher.   The debt keeps going to new ridiculous levels.  The consequences of this and the lockdowns have only begun.  The next four years will be tough, and it won’t be fun for the president. We will likely see some kind of financial crisis and/ or massive price inflation scenario.

Control Your Own Destiny

Regardless of what happens this year, you can only control what you can control.  You can predict everything right, but it won’t matter if you don’t prepare for it.

I do believe that one’s mentality plays a major role in dealing with crisis.  While the events of 2020 were surprising to me, they didn’t catch me completely unprepared.  Sure, I could have owned a bit more toilet paper back in March, but I was relatively calm in the face of it all.  I saw through the propaganda from the beginning, which helped my state of mind.  I saw so many people panicking and living in major fear.  My main fear was the reaction of society.  I wasn’t afraid of a virus though, so I didn’t have that hanging over me as so many others did.  This was a great benefit.

While there are tough roads ahead, and we should fight for our liberty, it is especially important just to take care of yourself and your family.  And the more freely that you can live your life, the more impact it will have for others.  You can be an example for others on not being afraid and being mentally prepared for tough times.

Here’s to a better 2021 than 2020.  I will remain optimistic and realistic at the same time.