Tesla, Inc. was originally founded as Tesla Motors.  It is named after the great inventor named Nikola Tesla.

Tesla – the company – was not actually originally founded by Elon Musk, who is the face of the company.  Musk was an early investor.  He invested more than $30 million and became chairman of the company in 2004.  It has been a good investment so far, especially on paper.

The price of Tesla’s stock recently surged above $1,000 per share.  Given that there are about one billion shares, this means the company is now valued at over one trillion dollars as of this writing.

Is Tesla really worth one trillion dollars as a company?  According to the market, it is.  The only thing we have to go by is the last traded price of the stock.

Elon Musk’s net worth goes up or down on most days more than most people will ever make in a lifetime.  If Musk’s net worth goes up or down “only” a billion dollars in a day, that would be a calm day.

Musk is now worth in the neighborhood of a quarter of a trillion dollars.  But it doesn’t mean he has $250 billion available for spending.  It is mostly tied up in the stock.  If Musk wanted to realize his gains, the stock price would drop when he started selling heavily.

If you are a more average investor, it is not a problem to realize your gains by selling.  If you took a chance and bought 1,000 shares of Tesla several years ago, your shares would now be worth over a million dollars.  You could easily realize your gains by selling 1,000 shares, and it wouldn’t move the stock price more than a couple of cents.

So for people who invested (speculated) in Tesla stock, those gains are very real if you decide to sell.

Actual Valuation

The market says that Tesla is worth one trillion dollars.  That is according to the buyers and sellers of the stock.  But it doesn’t mean that it is a rational valuation.  It doesn’t mean that the fundamentals of the company support this valuation.

The latest news that drove the stock higher was a report that Hertz is going to purchase 100,000 vehicles from Tesla for its fleet.  Even if this comes true, how much is this really worth to the company.

Let’s be generous and say that Tesla has a really good profit margin and is able to profit $10,000 per vehicle sold.  This would mean $1 billion in profit from the Hertz deal.  That represents a profit of 0.1% of the company valuation.

Perhaps one could argue that the Hertz deal opens up the possibility of other similar deals in the future with other rental car companies.  But even if Tesla got four more deals like this one, it is a tiny fraction of the company valuation.

Tesla is now the fifth or sixth largest company in the U.S. according to its approximate one trillion dollar valuation.  The most valuable companies ahead of Tesla are Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet (Google), and Amazon.  Facebook is around the same.

Most people I know use these five other companies.  Facebook and Google have a ton of advertising revenue.  Most people in the first world use Amazon to make purchases.  Most people own a product that generates revenue for Apple or Microsoft or both.

I only know a few people who own Tesla vehicles.  Tesla has a loyal fan base, and they are mostly people with money because the cars are so expensive.  They don’t make any sense from a financial standpoint, but they are fun to drive.

Toyota is the second most valuable automaker, and I see a lot more Toyotas on the road than Teslas.  The Teslas are more noticeable, but that in itself is a sign that there aren’t that many of them out on the road.  Toyota, according to the market, is worth only about one-quarter of Tesla.

Sometimes you just need to use your own eyes to make a judgment.  If you see a hundred cars on the road and just one of them is a Tesla, how is this company so much more valuable than all of the other automakers?

There is one final and important thought on Tesla stock to consider.  According to the company’s website: “Tesla has never declared dividends on our common stock.  We intend on retaining all future earnings to finance future growth and therefore, do not anticipate paying any cash dividends in the foreseeable future.”

The whole point of owning a stock is to get dividends.  Sure, an investor/ speculator is just trying to make money, and you can make money by buying shares and selling them at a higher price.  But if a company never pays a dividend, is it really worth anything at all?

When you buy shares of a company, you are buying a piece of that company so that you can share in the income that is generated.  There is certainly a possibility that Tesla could declare dividends in the future, but that is not “in the foreseeable future” according to the company now.

Tesla may be valued at over a trillion dollars by investors and speculators, but it doesn’t mean it makes sense.  Tesla is the face of the stock market bubble.

It has become evident that higher consumer price inflation is anything but transitory.  Even if you fully trust the government’s CPI statistics, then price inflation is still running about two and a half times higher than the Fed’s target.  The Fed’s target is 2%, but the CPI is over 5%.

The Fed changed its 2% target earlier this year, at least sort of.  Jerome Powell says that the Fed is now looking for a 2% average.  The problem is that they never defined over what period of time.  Do we need an average for the last year, or for the last 20 years?

This is all going on while there are major widespread shortages being reported.  In a free market, most shortages are easily correctible with higher prices.  I think some companies have been resistant to raising prices too dramatically all at once.  So unless we see these shortages come to an end really soon, we are likely to see continuing rising prices at a significant rate.

We are in a boom time, but it is something of an artificial boom created by easy money and low interest rates.  That is part of the reason for the shortages.  There is an increase in demand, as some people feel wealthier than they actually are.  Real estate is booming.  Stocks are booming.  Bitcoin is booming.

But there is one notable thing that isn’t booming, and that is precious metals, or gold in particular.  Gold is supposed to be the number one hedge against inflation, yet it has not really boomed much as compared to other assets.

There isn’t an easy answer as to why except to say that there just isn’t a mania in gold right now.  People are trying to get into real estate so that they can have a nice place to live, hence the real estate bubble.  Some are also trying to make money off of it.

In terms of other investing (or speculating), most people are trying to make a quick buck.  I don’t think most people jumping into Bitcoin are doing so because they plan to use it as a form of money one day.  They are trying to make a quick and easy profit in dollars.

The same could be said more and more every day about stocks.  Sure, there are some people just buying and holding for the long term.  There is also a new generation of younger adults with a Robinhood account or something similar who are trying to make a quick buck.  It is easier to make a quick 10% by buying Tesla than it is buying gold.

There is something of an irrational mania going on right now, and it just so happens that gold isn’t part of that mania.  In fact, it is one of the few assets that isn’t part of the mania.

Another important point to consider is that price inflation, at least according to the government’s CPI numbers, is running at just over 5% year-over-year.  We aren’t like the 1970s yet.  Maybe we will be there in 2022, but we haven’t hit double digits yet.

While I think many people realize that slightly higher price inflation has a high likelihood in the near future, I don’t think most people believe it is a major threat.  They don’t necessarily think it will go to 10% or more for any significant period of time.  Even the “expert” financial analysts think the Fed will just step in and hike rates if necessary.

And maybe they are right.  Or maybe the Fed will lose control and be faced with out-of-control price inflation or a major tightening that will crash the entire economy.  I can’t be certain which one they will choose.

Right now, the market is telling us that price inflation is not a significant worry.  The bond market is telling us that with very low yields, and the gold market is telling us that with only mild price increases.

On the other hand, sometimes the market just gets things wrong.  That’s not exactly correct, as the last price is the true price, and it is the market price.  But the market is wrong in the sense that everything is distorted, which is largely due to the Fed’s easy money and artificially low interest rates.

Even though gold has performed relatively poorly compared to most other assets, it is still around $1,800 per ounce.  If you had bought 20 years ago, you would have done well.  Admittedly, you would have done even better had you bought the Nasdaq in March 2009 and held it until now.

I think it is hard to go wrong buying gold and gold-related investments right now if you aren’t already heavy in them.  If we have a bad recession, then the price could go down.  But the prices in stocks and real estate are going to crash hard, and the drop in the gold price will look mild in comparison.

If the boom continues for a wild, then expect price inflation to continue at its current pace or even higher.  At some point, this is going to spook some people, and some investors are going to hedge their bets with some gold.

You can’t take away thousands of years of history just because some people are trying to make a quick buck on their Robinhood account.  There is eventually a reversion to the mean.  There is eventually a return of fundamentals.

There is going to be an epic crash, or there is going to be a prolonged period of high price inflation.  Maybe there will be both.  At some point, gold is going to join the party, or else the party is going to stop.  Maybe gold will have its own party down the road.

In the quest of Joe Biden and his handlers to destroy civilization, they are mandating vaccines for federal contractors and most government employees.  A mandate for employers with 100 or more people is supposedly coming, but no details have been released yet.

In response to this tyranny, some states are taking their own action.  Most notable are Texas and Florida.  There may end up being some kind of face-off between state governments and the federal government.

Right now, the governors of Texas and Florida are trying to prevent companies from enacting vaccine mandates, even by passing legislation.  It isn’t clear how far this will go.  If a company is compelled in two different directions, maybe it will just come down to a court battle.

Imagine being the owner of a company in Texas.  On the one hand, you have the federal government telling you that you must have vaccine mandates.  On the other hand, you have the state government telling you that you must not have vaccine mandates.

In most circumstances, I would expect the courts to rule in favor of the federal government.  In this situation, it is less clear because of the nature of the issue, and also because the federal mandate is clearly unconstitutional.

There are some libertarians claiming that these state edicts (or laws) are infringing on the rights of property owners.  I have discussed this issue before, but a lot has happened since I wrote about it less than 2 months ago.  It is technically correct that this is anti-liberty on a stand-alone basis.  The government shouldn’t be telling property owners (business owners) what they should mandate or what they shouldn’t mandate.

At the risk of wavering on my libertarian credentials, the state laws or edicts don’t get me worked up.  In fact, a piece of me is cheering them on in this situation.

The state rules are obviously a response to the unconstitutional and immoral actions of the Biden administration.  If there were no mandates coming out of Washington DC, then there wouldn’t be this response.

They are also completely unequal.  One is mandating discrimination, while the other is forbidding discrimination.

I have written before on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and how parts of it are not libertarian.  Aside from the unconstitutionality of it, it transformed our society from mandating discrimination to prohibiting discrimination.  The true libertarian position is that the government (at any level) should do neither.

Still, if I had to choose one, I would much rather live in a society where the government prohibits discrimination rather than mandates discrimination.

If the government (at any level) said that all restaurants could only allow white people to enter their establishment, this would be appalling.  If the government said that all restaurants had to allow any race of people (the current law), then this may be unlibertarian, but it is far less appalling.  Can you see the major difference here?

Dave Smith mentioned this same issue on his podcast the other day, just as I had been thinking about it.  He is taking the same position that it is hard to get worked up over states fighting back against vaccine mandates even if they are not doing so through perfectly libertarian means.

These vaccine mandates coming out of Washington DC are the major fight right now.  If you exclude foreign policy, this is the most tyrannical thing to come out of the federal government in at least the last 50 years.  It impacts tens of millions of people.  People are being told that they must submit to the government’s medical shot or else they will lose their job.

This must be defeated or else we will go into further tyranny.  While I would prefer to defeat this with pure libertarian means, I am not going to spend any time opposing state governors who are essentially on our side of this issue.

If these unconstitutional and immoral mandates coming out of the White House are allowed to stand, then this is not going to be a good place for your children and grandchildren to live in down the road.  It will only get worse.  The tyrants must be stopped.

On Saturday night, I attended the recording of the 2,000^th episode of the Tom Woods Show in Orlando, Florida.  It was 4 hours of fun, with a few serious moments mixed in.  And that was just for the show itself.

I attended the 1,000^th episode four years ago, which was a great time as well.  The major difference was the size of the crowd.  This time around, there were about 2,500 people who attended the show.

While I drove to Orlando, there were people from all over who flew in.  I heard that there were people from all 50 states.  It takes some dedication to get on a plane (especially these days) to watch a live episode of a podcast.

I have been dealing personally with vaccine mandates, and I have been a bit down lately.  To see 2,500 enthusiastic supporters of liberty in one room was uplifting.

It’s not just the existence of 2,500 people in a room with nobody wearing a mask (except for Michael Malice that one time) that made it great, although that is wonderful.  But the fact that just about all of these people are dedicated opponents against the COVID tyranny is heartwarming.

I could hear what got the biggest laughs and what got the biggest cheers.  The mention of anti-Faucism and taking a stand against vaccine mandates got some of the biggest cheers.

Since the episode hasn’t been released yet, I can’t give away too much.  But even the drunk idiot who interrupted the show at midnight was against masks.  He just didn’t realize he had walked into a giant room filled with people who probably share his opinion on the matter.

I actually ran into several people that I knew.  It is interesting how you can see some of the same familiar faces when you travel in the same circles, although I don’t go to many libertarian events these days.

There was a lot of great conversation before and after the show.  It is nice being around like-minded people.

I was introduced to Doc Dixon, who is a magician.  He is also a comedian.  He had a big part in the show.  I can vouch that he is just as funny in person as he is on stage.

I did not talk to Tom Woods, but I had already spoken with him a handful of times in the past.  It was better for people who had never met him in person to be given the chance to meet him.

Next time there is a libertarian Family Feud (the game show), I suggest that Tom be the host of the show instead of being one of the participants.  He seemed to be the only one on stage who actually knew how the show works.

I have no idea if I’ll watch or listen to the episode when it gets released.  Maybe some of it will be edited down so that it isn’t 4 hours long.  After the 1,000^th episode, I think I watched back parts of it, but I can’t remember if I listened to the whole thing again.

Dave Smith, unfortunately, couldn’t be at the 2,000^th episode.  He was probably my favorite from the 1,000^th episode.  I got to meet him there, and I became a regular listener of his podcast a short time later.

Still, for the 2,000^th episode, there was no shortage of comedy.  There were quite a few libertarians who showed a comedic side that I hadn’t really seen before.

At the end of the night, a bunch of us got on an elevator to go up to our rooms.  Michael Malice, whom I had never met, got on.  People were calling out floors to me, as I was closest to the elevator buttons.  But they weren’t working.  Nothing was lighting up.  There were two lobby buttons, so I tried hitting the other lobby button because I thought maybe the elevator was going down instead of up.  When I hit the lobby button, Michael Malice said we’re already at the lobby.  He said something to the effect of, “Don’t you know how an elevator works?”

So in less than a minute, I had gotten insulted by Michael Malice.  Some people seek out this honor, but it came easily to me.

If you listen to the 2,000^th episode without having attended, I don’t know how funny it will be as compared to the live show.  I still think it will be worth your time if you have a sense of humor.

When Tom celebrates his 3,000^th show in another four years, I hope our world is in a better place.

The latest CPI figures came in for September 2021.  It was up 0.4% for the month.  While the CPI rose a little below what was expected, it is still higher than the Fed’s supposed target of 2 percent annually.

Now the median CPI has joined the party.  The median CPI had been going up 0.2 or 0.3 percent each month for the last several months.  In September, it rose 0.5%.  The year-over-year median CPI is now at 2.8%.

The median CPI tends to be less volatile than the CPI.  With the median number accelerating, it adds confirmation that price inflation is a real problem.

In another post, I explained that the shortages all over that are being blamed on COVID are really largely a result of Fed policy.  The easy money and artificially low interest rates have caused a massive misallocation of resources.  There are workers out there putting in swimming pools and building luxury cars, while they should be delivering food and manufacturing household necessities.

Of course, I don’t actually know what workers should be doing, but the point is that the market is highly distorted.  The easy money is fueling unsustainable demand for certain things.  It also doesn’t help that Joe Biden and company are seemingly intent on destroying civilization by forcing millions of people out of work because they don’t want a needle in the arm.

If the shortages continue, then higher prices are inevitable.  The only thing to fix that is a hard recession.  Pick your poison.

Since the CPI numbers came out, stocks have done well.  Investors think the Fed is going to keep the party going.  It is quite astounding that the year-over-year CPI has been running at 5% or higher for the last 5 months, yet the Fed keeps saying it is transitory.  The Fed is still creating $120 billion per month in new money, and we are wondering whether an announcement of tapering (merely a slowdown of the money creation) will happen before the end of the year.

If the Fed isn’t slamming on the monetary brakes now, it is easy to see that the FOMC members are planning loose money for as long as they can get away with.

For this reason, we probably haven’t reached the peak of the bubble yet.  Stocks and real estate continue to go wild.  The even more speculative cryptocurrencies are even crazier.  This isn’t going to end well for some people.

Between Congress, Joe Biden and his handlers, and the Federal Reserve, I don’t think you could hatch a plan to do more damage to the economy than what they are doing right now.  With massive spending, massive monetary inflation, and crazy vaccine mandates, it’s almost like they are purposely trying to tear down our civilization.

The madness has awakened a lot of people who were previously not political.  That is the good news.  The bad news is that there is going to be a lot of wreckage to clean up if and when the madness subsides.

There have been something like 2,000 or more flights cancelled over the last three days, primarily with Southwest Airlines.  Southwest stated that it was due to weather and some unidentified air traffic control issues.

A lot of the cancellations were occurring with flights to and from Florida.  I live in Florida, and I can tell you that there were no severe weather issues over the weekend.  There may have been a few very scattered thunderstorms, but less than what would be typical on a summer afternoon in Florida.

At this time, all indications point to what is being called a “sick out”.  It is a protest against coming vaccine mandates.  A sizeable enough portion of the Southwest workforce decided to temporarily go on strike.  It was a mini Atlas Shrugged.

It just shows that a rather small percentage of the people can disrupt everything.  It doesn’t have to be anywhere close to half the employees walking out.

A few places can get away with the vaccine mandates.  In New York, it’s likely that somewhere between 80 and 90 percent of those eligible are vaccinated.  If you go down to 60 to 70 percent in another location, then things get dicey quickly.  If half of those people are willing to strike (or willing to get fired), it can mean just about the complete shutdown of a company.

With how hard the vaccines have been pushed, most unvaccinated people have made a very conscious choice to not get jabbed at this point.  Some could get bullied into it with a threat of being fired, but the 30% or so are pretty firm in their conviction at this stage.

The government (in this case, the FAA), the corporate media, and Southwest are not really being honest.  They may be technically factual in what they say, but they are not being truthful.  They are either ignoring the vaccine mandates entirely as it relates to this story, or they are not willing to attribute the staffing shortage over the weekend with the mandates.

The media is also gaslighting the public by tying these company mandates to Joe Biden’s executive order.  They will say that Southwest is trying to meet the deadlines to require employee vaccination from Biden’s executive order, but there is no such thing.  There is no executive order with a deadline, and OSHA has not released anything.

If there were a deadline, then why aren’t some other airlines like Delta imposing absolute mandates?  Is the “mandate” optional then?  Maybe Biden will go through with his executive order and OSHA will issue detailed instructions, but that hasn’t happened at this time.  There is no legal obligation for any of these airlines to impose any vaccine mandates.

I have had decent experiences before flying with Southwest.  But in this case, I believe the executives there are essentially lying to the public.  They don’t want to admit that it was their own stupid policies that caused this disaster to happen.

It’s hard to say how the tens of thousands of stranded passengers will feel about this.  Some will blame the selfish unvaccinated employees.  But I think a larger percentage will blame the Southwest executives for putting in place a stupid policy that caused a significant portion of their employees to show how important they are.

This would be hard for a nurse to do in a hospital.  If half the nurses walk out in protest, then it literally could kill people. But the hospital administrators have no problem risking the lives of their patients by firing nurses for not getting jabbed.

I think there must have been some kind of coordination of Southwest employees for this to happen.  I’m guessing someone came up with the idea and the word spread fast.  There is safety in numbers to a degree.  If a couple of people called in sick to protest the mandates, Southwest could just fire these people if they know that was the intent.  If it is hundreds of people or more calling in sick to protest, it’s rather hard to fire these people without destroying the entire business.  The people who didn’t show up at work in protest just showed how powerful they are.

We’ll have to see if this starts happening in other industries.  With flights, it has a rather immediate and dramatic effect, as flights just can’t go anywhere.  It is a bit more subtle if you are talking about a company that sells insurance or paints houses.

It is also understandable that pilots and flight attendants would be especially concerned, as flying increases your chance of blood clots.  Developing blood clots is one of the primary concerns of the COVID vaccine side effects.  They don’t call it the clot shot for nothing.

While the protest itself seems promising, this whole story is just another example of gaslighting.  I have been hearing lately that the COVID deaths in the United States have now passed those of the flu of 1918 (misnamed the Spanish flu).  Even if you accept the phony COVID death count, this is still dishonest reporting, as the population at that time was less than one-third of what it is today.  Again, it is technically factually correct, but it isn’t truthful.

Most media outlets will not outright lie on a regular basis.  They are sneaky with their words so that most of what they say is not technically wrong.  “An anonymous CIA source has confirmed that Russia stole the elections.”  “The CDC has officially declared that this is the deadliest pandemic on record.”

Joe Biden is a different story.  He just outright lies now.  He is still going around saying that if you are vaccinated, then you won’t die.  This is all while he is pushing his fake executive order that hasn’t even done anything yet except to scare people and give cover to employers.

I have one thing to say to that.  Let’s go Brandon.

At certain large events in the country, chants of “F**K Joe Biden” have been breaking out.  These are not just a group of five or ten people doing this.  These are loud chants that can be heard throughout a stadium or arena.

If this is any sign of the intensity of the American people being fed up with government and their “rulers”, then it means that things should start to change.  It means the political establishment has overplayed their hand.

If I were at a college football game with my kids and such a chant broke out, I would tell them to cover their ears as I join in.  Maybe it isn’t the best chant in the world, but it certainly gets the message across.  Because some people shy away from loudly cursing in public, the chants might be even louder if it was a little more appropriate for a public setting.

After Biden’s speech on September 9 (the chants started just before this), when he proclaimed himself dictator in requiring mass injection in the American population (or lose your job), I received many messages from friends.  Even a few people who had previously been vaccinated were outraged, even though it didn’t impact them directly.

I was in communication with several people who don’t want the jab, and they are fearful that they will have to submit or lose their job.  Many people are already faced with this situation because of corporate wokeness and government nudging (to put it mildly).

But there is one emotion I saw that was greater than fear.  It was anger.  There are tens of millions of people who are angry at Joe Biden and his handlers.  They realize that these people are out to destroy their lives and take away all of the good things.  While Fauci, Biden, and the other tyrants want everyone jabbed while celebrating a virtual Christmas again this year, most Americans are trying to get on with their lives.

If COVID has done one thing for us in the last year and a half, it has exposed the thirst for totalitarianism, particularly from the political left.  The rulers want to rule good and hard.

The left and the establishment (almost one and the same now) are overplaying their hand, but it isn’t clear that they know this.  They are turning millions of people towards libertarianism or some mild form of it.

It is one thing for someone to say that they disapprove of the job the president is doing in a poll.  It is quite another to passionately hate the president because you view him as a tyrant.  There are tens of millions of Americans who view Biden as a liar and a tyrant.  They see him as a thug trying to stick a needle in your arm, as well as in the arms of children.

The hard part is that almost the entire corporate media is on Biden’s side, and most of the corporate executives are on Biden’s side or too afraid to speak out.  There isn’t much honesty or courage in corporate America these days, and many of these employers are using sleazy tactics to compel their employees to take the jab.

And now Biden’s people are instructing the FBI to treat protesting parents as domestic terrorists.  Jen Psaki said that it isn’t acceptable for parents to use threats.  I would like for one actual reporter to ask her if threatening people to get vaccinated or lose their job constitutes domestic terrorism by her and Biden.

You have to wonder when this whole thing is going to break.

Consent of the Governed

In the 1500s, Etienne de la Boetie pointed out that all rulers rely on the consent of the governed.  It does not have to be an explicit consent, but the majority of people have to accept the legitimacy of the rulers in some way.

So how can Joe Biden still be standing at this point?  A slim majority of Americans do not accept what Biden is doing, and most of the people who do not support him absolutely despise him and what he is doing.

First, Biden was just inaugurated in January of this year.  He hasn’t even been in office for 9 months yet.  This makes it that much more astounding that he is so hated.  But other than a recall vote in ultra-leftist California for the governor, there has been no major referendum yet.  Perhaps the gubernatorial election next month in Virginia will tell us a little more.

Second, and more importantly, most of the people who despise Biden still grant some legitimacy to the system.  Some of that legitimacy has faded, but most people are not libertarians.  They see a greater role for the state than just protecting people’s rights.  They still give too much respect to all of the illegitimate laws and orders out there.

The good news is that things are slipping away from the statists.  I believe that many of Biden’s critics are starting to question the legitimacy of the whole system.  They may even be seeing the benefits of a possible separation.

There have been many protests in schools over masks, critical race theory, and other political issues.  Of course, they are all political issues when we are talking about government schools.  While I am happy to see parents speaking up for their kids, unfortunately some don’t see the answer that is right in front of them.  They need to make the big sacrifice of pulling their kids out government schools.  This is at least becoming a thought for many parents who would have scoffed at the idea a few years ago.

The entire state apparatus is being called into question to some degree.  The establishment is pushing so hard on vaccines, and calling anyone who opposes their agenda a domestic terrorist, that they are risking their own power.

They are losing the consent of a substantial minority of the population.  This is a positive development for liberty.

The bad news is that the state apparatus is still big and powerful.  The establishment will dig in even deeper and flail around like an out-of-control destruction machine.  There are going to be some hard-fought battles ahead.

The battles are going to be in information.  The politicians and the corporate media will keep trying to gaslight the substantial minority of Americans who will just believe and go along with whatever they say.

When it comes to the vaccines, we have to make it a liberty issue.  It’s fine to argue that the vaccines are not as safe and effective as what Biden and his handlers tell us.  But even if you think the vaccines are the greatest thing ever, do you believe that we should be able to make our own choices?  Do you believe the state should compel us in making our own personal and medical decisions?

There is no sign of Biden’s executive order after his speech a month ago.  There is no sign of any rules coming down from OSHA.  Maybe it was all a bluff, but this doesn’t make it any better for Biden’s image.

“Ha ha, there really isn’t a mandate.  We were just trying to get employers to do our dirty work.  Sorry if you had to worry about your job for months and months because we were bluffing.  But we got millions of more people vaccinated.”

I have one thing to say: F**K Joe Biden.

Every single government edict coming down in the COVID era is an add-on to what was already established before March 2020.  Last year, I wrote about how we need a radical defense of property rights to fight against lockdowns.  We really need this radicalism to fight against all of the mandates at every level.

The existence of business licenses easily enabled the government to issue lockdowns and mask mandates on what are supposed to be private businesses.  I have also written about the medical tyranny, including having to go to a doctor to get a permission slip (a prescription) to get certain drugs.  Incidentally, this also drives up the price of medical care.

Now we are seeing reports of some pharmacies denying people their prescription for Ivermectin as a treatment or preventative measure for COVID.  It is an off-label prescription, meaning that Ivermectin is not officially designated as a treatment for COVID, but this is a common occurrence in medicine.  In a free market, you wouldn’t need a prescription at all.  It would be your choice whether to consult a doctor or a pharmacist.

The most tyrannical thing to happen in all of this is Biden’s pronouncement that most federal workers and federal contractors must get vaccinated.  In addition, any company with 100 or more employees will have to require vaccination or testing of their employees (if the edict goes into effect).

The federal government shouldn’t have this power in the first place, and it doesn’t according to the Constitution and the 10^th Amendment.  But the federal government has been mostly ignoring the Constitution for a long time now.  It is even more egregious that Biden is doing this through executive order.  It is not actually a law being passed by Congress.

The idea of using executive orders has been going on for a long time now, so it is no surprise that the president took his dictatorial powers to such an extreme this time.  In addition, Biden is handing off the rulemaking to OSHA, which also has no legitimate law-making power.  But this is a continuation of Congress unconstitutionally delegating law-making powers to alphabet agencies.

One of the excuses for mandating vaccines is that schools have been mandating a whole host of vaccines for a long time now for kids.  This excuse is also being used in California, which will mandate COVID shots for all eligible kids attending school (supposedly including private schools).  I have seen some responses to this that the COVID vaccine is different in that it is experimental and rushed, despite the FDA approval for Pfizer.

While it is probably correct that the COVID vaccines are more dangerous than other vaccines, the principle being espoused by the totalitarians is consistent.  If you already conceded that the state can tell you to inject your kids, then what is one or two more shots in the arm?

This is why I have been an opponent of mandatory vaccinations for a long time now.  Of course, when it comes to government schools, I don’t think they should exist at all, which is another problem, which has fed into the tyranny of today.  But given that state schools exist, I don’t think vaccination should be required in any way.  I don’t even think you should have to apply for an exemption.  It set the bad precedent that we are dealing with today.

All of the tyranny we are dealing with today is a result of government overreach that was allowed to happen in the past.  A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take away everything you have.  That includes your individual liberty, which includes controlling what goes into your own body.

When I think of the many areas of our lives that government is involved in, especially the worst things, it has all fed into where we find ourselves today.

You can look at wars, executive orders, the drug war, the Federal Reserve, government education, government medical care and regulations, Congress illegally delegating its powers, government regulation of businesses, and unconstitutional alphabet agencies.  It all fed into the authoritarianism of COVID.

On the plus side, many people are being awakened from the tyranny, and it isn’t just against the COVID hysteria.  When the tyrants say that “vaccines are already required for school, so what’s one more”, it makes some people question why all other vaccines are a requirement for school.  Some people question why they have their kids being educated by the state at all.

Some people are questioning why they need a permission slip from their doctor to acquire certain medications.  Some people are questioning why businesses need a permission slip to operate.  Some people are questioning the entire bloated system who didn’t previously question it.

For this, there is reason to be optimistic.  Many people are being awakened.  The problem is that the tyrants and their sheep are going to make our lives miserable until they are beaten back.

With the federal government continuing to spend towards disaster, and with Biden acting as a dictator, the market activity seems like minutia.

For a long time in writing this blog, I have stressed the importance of being healthy and maintaining an income.  While I tend to focus on the Federal Reserve and market activity, I always say that you should worry about your source of income more than your investments, with certain exceptions.

If you have a net worth over a million dollars with a modest middle-class salary, then you should actually probably worry more about your investments than your job.  But for most people, your job or main source of income comes first.

Joe Biden is threatening tens of millions of Americans that they will have to get the government’s jab in the arm if they want to keep their job.  As of now, we are still waiting for OSHA to release the details of these tyrannical dictates, so we don’t know how much of it is a bluff and how big the loopholes will be.  Still, thousands of people across the country are already losing their job because their employer put in place a mandate.

With that said, I still have to pay attention to what is happening in the overall economy.  It has been the focus of this blog over the years.  I can fight hard against Biden’s immoral and unconstitutional dictates while still commenting on the economy and the markets.

Stocks Show Signs of Weakness

The last week of September was a tough one for the stock bulls.  But I am not convinced that this is the beginning of a bear market or some kind of major pullback.  We have seen this trick before.  Last year and in previous years, there have been significant pullbacks of 5 or 10 percent.  Then the pullback stops and within months or weeks, stocks are hitting new all-time highs again.

In the present scenario, the financial media is blaming the pullback earlier this week on rising long-term yields.  The 10-year yield hit 1.5% this past week, which supposedly frightened investors.

It is hard to believe that a 10-year yield of 1.5% is frightening to the markets.  If that is frightening at all, it should be because it is way too low, not too high.

Price inflation, even by the government’s own measures, is running above 2% at this point.  Yet bond investors are accepting a return of 1.5% per year over a 10-year period.  This means, even before taxes, that the yield is negative in real terms.  You get 1.5% on your money, while losing 2% or more in purchasing power.  It’s not exactly the path to wealth.  It could be argued, however, that it is a path to protecting wealth in a time of great risk.

It actually doesn’t make sense that stocks would fall because of a modestly rising 10-year yield.  If anything were to signal trouble for stocks at this point, it would be falling long-term rates.

The only reason a rising long-term yield could spell trouble for stocks is that there is fear the Fed will have to tighten.  But this is really a reflection of price inflation.  The only reason the Fed would tighten faster than expected is because price inflation is getting out of control.  It’s not clear that the higher 10-year yield is due to fears of higher price inflation.

The Yield Curve

The best predictor of a recession is an inverted yield curve.  And a recession and a crashing stock market typically go hand-in-hand.  In this sense, we should see the yield curve inverting before we see a major crash in stocks.  This means that the short-term rates would go up or the long-term rates would come down, or some combination of the two.

With a slightly rising 10-year yield, this is getting away from an inversion.  The yield curve is getting steeper.  So it is not necessarily pointing to a recession.

Here’s the problem though.  We did have an inverted yield curve in 2019.  There is typically a delay of 6 months to over a year after this happens before the recession becomes evident and stocks fall.

But things didn’t happen as normal in 2020.  (That’s the understatement of the year.)  Due to COVID hysteria and government lockdowns, there was a massive slowdown in business activity across the board in March 2020.  The Fed reacted right away.  It even reacted before the world shut down.  The Fed’s balance sheet took off to the stratosphere.

In a more normal situation, the Fed would not react like this.  If there had been no COVID hysteria in 2020, then a recession likely would have followed a more typical path.  We probably would have seen signs of a slowdown, with stocks falling, and then the Fed would have reacted.  It would have been too late, and there would have been some kind of a real recession, instead of the very brief one in the spring of 2020.

Since the Fed started the process of inflating and lowering interest rates before the recession even officially began, it prevented a major shakeout.  While it was a bad time for many small businesses, most large companies seemed to get through just fine, or even better.  The resumption in the bull market came in late April or May of 2020, and it has been a major boom time ever since for stock investors.

We never really got any kind of correction.  We never saw much of a cleansing of the malinvestment.  Therefore, I don’t know if we ever saw a true recession following the inverted yield curve in 2019.

This makes me wonder whether we actually need to see another inverted yield curve in order to get the next recession.  It really isn’t clear at all because of the abnormality of what happened in 2020.

I generally think that the latest trouble in the stock market is not the beginning of a sustained bear market.  However, I do think we are in a massive bubble that could implode at any time.

When it finally does implode, it is going to severely hurt a lot of people who put their faith in the dictum that stocks always go up in the long run.

Maybe it’s true that stocks always go up in the long run, especially when you have a central bank always willing to inflate.  But “the long run” can mean different things to different people.

Do you know anyone who has made a lot of money in the stock market over the last decade who has sold most of it off and taken the gains recently?  I don’t.

You have conservative investors who have been light on stocks who have missed out on the gains, and you have more aggressive investors who are heavy on stocks who have done quite well over the last decade.  But the ones who have done quite well have mostly stayed in stocks, or have even become more aggressive.  So when the crash finally comes, they are going to be devastated.  We just don’t know when that will be.