The FOMC released its latest monetary policy statement.  As was widely expected, the Fed maintained its target for the federal funds rate between 5.25% and 5.50%.

Jerome Powell said that a rate cut in September is on the table if the inflation data continues to move towards the Fed’s 2% target.  It’s notable, but not surprising, that the Fed would even consider rate cuts until price inflation goes below 2%.

The American consumer has been hammered the last few years.  While the rate of price inflation has gone down, prices still continue to go higher on top of the major increases that have already happened.

I continue to believe that the Fed knows that there is a great risk of a major recession, market crash, and possible financial crisis.  Otherwise, why would they be talking about rate cuts while price inflation is still above their target?

The Balance Sheet

The Fed’s balance sheet continues to come down from its all-time high in 2022.  While the federal funds rate tends to get the most attention, the Fed’s balance sheet is perhaps just as important.

The Implementation Note from the latest policy statement shows that the Fed will continue to reduce its balance sheet.  It will continue to not roll over approximately $25 billion per month in Treasury securities and $35 billion per month in mortgage-backed securities.  This means that the Fed’s balance sheet should continue to go down somewhere near $60 billion per month, which isn’t an insignificant amount.

Sure, it isn’t a lot when compared to the massive money creation that happened in 2020 and 2021.  Still, it means that eventually something has to give.

When Ludwig von Mises wrote about the Austrian Business Cycle theory, he stated that even a reduction in the rate of inflation will eventually bring on the bust.  With the Fed actually reducing its balance sheet, this means we are not going to hyperinflation any time soon, and it means that there will be a bust of some sort.  This is what happens after a prior expansion of money and credit, and I think it’s safe to say that this expansion was too big to grow our way out of it.

In other words, if you have a small expansion of the money supply but growth and productivity far exceed that, then there probably won’t be any bust.  Perhaps prices won’t come down as much as they would have without the money expansion, but it seems to be painless enough.  That is not the case today because of how massive the money expansion was in such a short period of time.

Don’t Forget the Inverted Yield Curve

The yield curve is still inverted.  It was inverted for all of 2023, and it remains inverted today.  This means that longer-term yields are actually lower than short-term yields.  This has generally been a reliable indicator of a coming recession.

It is crazy that the yield curve has remained this inverted for this long.  If the severity and length of the inverted yield curve is any indication of the severity and length of the recession, then we should be in for a doozy.

Unbelievably, stocks soared before and after the Fed announcement.  It seems that almost everything is good news for the stock bulls these days.  Gold also soared, but that is a more recent thing, as gold has not had the huge run up that stocks have had since 2009.

It’s quite incredible that the Dow is nearing 41,000, while the Nasdaq is getting close to 18,000 again.  These gains for stocks are massive.  Just a return to the mean will mean a major crash in stocks.

If the Fed doesn’t step in quickly and aggressively when the fall starts to happen, I think we could easily see a 50% crash or more.  This might happen even if the Fed does step in quickly and aggressively.

Don’t Ignore the Bears

I sound like a broken record.  And I know the criticisms of people who sound bearish.  They say that the bears are eventually right but that you miss out on all of the gains in the meantime.

I can’t stress enough just how risky these financial markets are right now.  Americans are already hurting because of higher consumer prices and wages that won’t keep up.  But the people who own significant assets are a bit more optimistic because everything seems to be going higher with no end in sight.

What happens if stocks crash by 60%?  How optimistic do you think most of these people will be at that point?  The year 2008 wasn’t that long ago, but people have short memories.  How many hopes and dreams will be shattered when the much-hyped U.S. index fund takes a massive hit and doesn’t recover within months?

Again, I think the people at the Fed know the significant risks out there.  They are willing to accept a massive drop in stocks.  They are less willing to accept a financial crisis and bank failures.

With the assassination attempt against Donald Trump and the withdrawal of Joe Biden from the presidential race, Trump’s pick for running mate has perhaps gotten a little less attention than otherwise would have been the case.  In some ways, Trump’s pick of J. D. Vance is more relevant now because of the real possibility of the deep state taking out Trump.

Perhaps it is just a coincidence that the assassination attempt took place just before the Republican National Convention and the naming of Trump’s running mate.  If Trump had actually been killed, you have to wonder if anyone knew Vance was the pick and if it would be believed that Vance was the pick.

Even if Trump does end up winning the presidency and taking office and surviving four years, this is an important pick.  It would seem to make Vance the preliminary frontrunner for 2028.

I had said many months ago that my decision on whether to vote for Trump would largely hinge on his pick for vice president.  With the pick of Vance, it doesn’t add a lot more clarity for me.

If Trump had picked Tim Scott or Marco Rubio, then I would have seen it as the same old thing from 8 years ago.  It would mean that Trump had learned nothing and would just surround himself by war hawks who only pretend to like him.

If Trump had picked a hardcore libertarian as his running mate, then I would have seen a changed Donald Trump that I could get behind in spite of his flaws.  Of course, that was never a realistic possibility.

There was an outside possibility that Trump could pick a libertarian-leaning conservative such as Vivek Ramaswamy.  There was also talk of Tulsi Gabbard, who tends to be non-interventionist in terms of foreign policy, at least compared to the others who were supposedly on Trump’s list.

I would put Vance in between the Ramaswamy/ Gabbard category and the Scott/ Rubio category.  He is a mixed bag in a lot of ways.  In some ways, he is perhaps the best we could have realistically hoped for, but maybe that’s not saying much.

In the Mold of Trump

I have heard that Donald Trump Jr. favored Vance.  That wouldn’t surprise me.  Donald Trump Jr. is the most liberty leaning person in the family.  He isn’t quite the alpha male that his father is (who is?), but he tends to be better on the issues than even his father.  He is definitely better than his sister Ivanka and her husband.

I see many similarities between Vance and Donald Trump.  They are both populists to a certain extent.  They have a certain anti-establishment streak.  They both preach something of an America First policy.

Unfortunately, they somewhat share the same bad attributes too.  They are inconsistent on foreign policy and tend to be hawkish when it involves the Israeli state.  They say they won’t fund Ukraine or they give some kind of nuanced position on it, but there is no such talk when it comes to Israel.  Vance has been quite contradictory on this issue, which also includes threatening Iran.  How can you preach America First while also wanting a war with Iran to help Israel?

They are also both not very conservative when it comes to economics.  Sure, they are better than most Democrats, but that’s not saying much.  Trump may be decent on some things such as tax cuts and cutting some regulations.  But he is bad on tariffs (taxes on imports) and overall spending.  It seems that Vance would be similar in his views.

In this sense, maybe Vance is a good pick for Trump.  Vance isn’t the worst life insurance policy for Trump to have.  I doubt the establishment fears Vance as much as they fear Trump only because he is less combative.  But it is certainly better than having some typical establishment Republican.

Never Trumper?

Vance, at one time, declared himself to be a “never Trumper”.  He has obviously changed his position since that time, at least in what he says.

I always get a bit skeptical over anyone who was a “never Trumper” and then switches sides.  It is usually just for political reasons.  Remember all of the people like Nikki Haley and Mitt Romney who hated Trump in 2015 and early 2016 but then tried to cozy up to him.  The same could be said for Lindsey Graham and John Bolton.  They have pretended to be on Trump’s side for political power reasons when it was convenient.

I don’t think this quite fits Vance in the same way, but I am still skeptical.  I can understand libertarians who didn’t like Trump and then tentatively supported him for strategic reasons.  But most of these people, to the degree they exist, still have their criticisms of Trump.  They just see him as a better option.  This doesn’t describe Vance.

I will wait to see what Vance does on the campaign trail.  Let’s see if he gets more hawkish in terms of foreign policy.  There are going to be a lot of war hawks trying to cozy up to him.  Let’s see if he can stand firm against them.  Unfortunately, I’m not that optimistic.

Vance is not Dick Cheney or Mike Pence.  That’s the good news.  It is a low bar.  But at least there is a little bit of hope that Trump may pick some marginally better people to surround himself with as compared to the last time around.

It’s hard to make this stuff up.  If you look at the national political scene in the U.S. over the last several weeks, you couldn’t write a novel like this because it would be seen as too unrealistic.

Joe Biden has an absolutely disastrous debate performance against Trump, where his dementia becomes obvious, even to those who had vehemently denied it up until that point.  The establishment narrative quickly changed from “sharp as a tack” to “Biden has been a good president but he needs to step aside as the nominee”.

There is still this obvious point that sits out there that doesn’t seem to get addressed by most of the establishment media.  If Biden is too incompetent to run for re-election right now, how is he competent enough to be president for another 6 months?  This just helps to point out that Biden was never really the one making the important political decisions.

Then we get an assassination attempt against Trump that nearly resulted in his death.  There was at least one innocent person who lost his life, while Trump miraculously turned his head just before being struck in the ear by a bullet.  And in Trump fashion, he pops to his feet and pumps his fist in the air while yelling “fight”.

This incident completely shut down most of Trump’s critics, at least for a while.  It is hard to wish him well while also claiming that he is the next Hitler and wants to destroy democracy.

It is crazy that Trump managed to survive, but we are left with a story that can really only have one of two possibilities.  Either the assassination attempt was a coordinated inside job, or it was an act of complete incompetence by the Secret Service.  Even many of those who will question any so-called conspiracy theory are scratching their heads about this one.

How could a potential threat be allowed such easy access?  And how could the Secret Service not pull Trump from the stage until the threat was taken care of?  The director of the Secret Service is being forced to resign, but this still doesn’t answer the obvious questions.

If this wasn’t enough, “Biden” announced that he is withdrawing as the Democratic Party nominee.  “He” did so in a letter that was posted on Twitter/ X.  This in itself is a bid odd.

As of this writing, Biden has not made a public appearance since before withdrawing.  There is speculation on whether he is still alive.  There is rightly speculation on whether he even knew or understood that there was a letter issued stating he was withdrawing.  Meanwhile, Joe Biden’s brother gave an interview where he made it sound like Joe Biden is on his last legs of life.

Present History

Again, you couldn’t make this stuff up.  You really have to sit back and appreciate the fact that we are living through a time that is incredible.  It is history in the making.

Thankfully, we have the internet.  We don’t just want the establishment narrative of events to be the history of what happened.  We are getting to document this craziness as it happens so that future generations can see it.

It is interesting to compare the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963 with the attempted assassination of Trump in 2024.  There are certainly many parallels.

Aside from Trump getting lucky and dodging death, there is a major difference.  We have many cell phone videos of the event in 2024, and the conspiracy theories out there are virtually unlimited.  This was not the case in 1963 and for many years beyond.  There was little sharing of information back then.  You could have suspected that there was more to it than just a lone gunman, but you really had no way to investigate it or to even share it with others outside of the people you knew.

The Deep State is Vulnerable

Since Trump came on the political scene in 2015, one positive thing he has done is to help expose the deep state.  Sometimes it isn’t even on purpose.  But his worst enemies in Washington DC are the worst people.  They are liars, criminals, and murderers.  They hate Trump because Trump has the potential to expose them for what they are.

Imagine what the deep state would do to someone like Ron Paul or some other person who wanted to drastically defund the federal government?  They are bothered by Trump disrupting the status quo just because he sometimes talks about an “America First” foreign policy.  Imagine what they would do to a real non-interventionist.

The last few weeks have done much more damage to the deep state.  Trump was nearly killed under highly suspicious circumstances, to say the least.  It became evident that the media covered for Joe Biden all this time and that he hasn’t really been in charge of anything.  Just these things alone are highly damaging to their narrative.

A majority of people are now highly suspicious of the power elite.  They are not trusting the official narrative because it has gotten too ridiculous.

It almost feels like everything could crumble.  It might not be as dramatic as the breakup of the Soviet Union, but there are major cracks in the foundation of the U.S. empire at this point.  The ruling elite have lost the trust of Americans, and rightly so.

It is going to be a very dangerous time.  It is like being around a dangerous wild animal that has been wounded.  But we should appreciate that there is great potential for rolling back the oppressive state.

There is a deep state, and it has been exposed.

Libertarians tend to not be cheerleaders for democracy, especially pure democracy.  It is two wolves and a sheep voting on what is for dinner.  Still, in what is supposed to be a constitutional republic, you can favor certain democratic processes.

Democracy within a free-market system is great.  You can vote with your money.  You are even, in a sense, voting with any exchange, including your labor.  You are also voting when you choose not to buy something.  It is all voluntary.

When it comes to government, voting doesn’t make something fair or just.  It can oftentimes be a violation of property rights.  It can infringe on the rights of the minority.  In our system today, sometimes it even infringes on the rights of the majority.

Although we shouldn’t cheer on democracy, sometimes we would be better off today if we actually did have some democracy.  Even with all of the media propaganda, you have to wonder if the majority of Americans would vote to send money to Ukraine while they have trouble paying for their groceries and insurance.

The Democratic Nominee Selection

Joe Biden has declared that he will drop out of the presidential race.  Almost everyone has realized that he has dementia or some kind of cognitive issue.  It was rather obvious several years ago, but the establishment media had protected him up until his disastrous debate performance.

Let’s remember that there really was no choice in the first place in voting for a nominee for the 2024 presidential election.  There was on the Republican side.  Trump wisely chose not to attend the Republican debates, but there were definitely primaries with many candidates to choose from.  It’s just that the Republican electorate overwhelmingly chose Trump.

On the Democratic side, any establishment candidates were prevented from running.  They may not have literally been prevented, but the word went out that there would be no challengers.  Robert Kennedy Jr. quickly realized that the process would not be fair with the Democratic establishment in charge.  He would simply not be allowed to get the nomination, so he chose to run independent.

Now that Biden is dropping out, it is likely that the nominee will be chosen at the convention.  I’m sure there is already a short list of names floating around.  Maybe the person has already been decided, if unofficially, behind closed doors.  It could be Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, or some governor.  We’ll find out soon enough.

But there is a larger point.  The people of the Democratic Party will not choose the nominee.  They do not get a say.  They tried to nominate Bernie Sanders a couple of times, and the ruling elite made sure that didn’t happen.  Bernie dutifully fell in line with the establishment once he was knocked out (both in 2016 and 2020).

Now they don’t have a Bernie problem.  The ruling elite can just select the candidate without the voters having the option of stirring up any trouble.

This is rather rich considering the talking points we have heard about Donald Trump.  They say that Trump is the next coming of Hitler and that he is a threat to democracy.  Yet, it is the “Democratic” Party that is not allowing the people to vote for their nominee.

They don’t need to risk any unapproved candidate possibly saying something that goes against the official narrative.  There won’t be any significant questions raised about supporting overseas wars or infringing on civil liberties at home.

The “Democratic” View

The “Democratic” Party hasn’t really had to use this play in the playbook yet.  They might like it.

Why worry about what the dumb voters think?  We can just tell them who they are supposed to support.  And we’ll call it democracy and hope that nobody sees the glaring contradiction.

Also, let’s make sure we just focus on the presidential race.  Biden is too demented to run for president, but he can still be the president for another 6 months.  Just make sure nobody asks who is actually making the decisions.  After all, it’s just all part of the democratic process that Trump is trying to destroy.

There are many conspiracy theories floating around after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump.  Some are more plausible than others.

It is possible that it really just was a lone nut who had a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) who wanted to become a hero for those who hated Trump.  After all, if you think Trump is truly Hitler, then it becomes easier to justify violent actions against him.

The problem here is just how amateur the assassin seemed to be.  He obviously got one shot that hit Trump and several others that killed someone and severely injured others.  But his actions leading up to the shots being fired are just ridiculous.  He was scoping out the area and then climbed a ladder onto the roof.  He was crawling on top of the roof, but he could still be easily seen by people on the ground.

As I wrote a couple of days after the incident took place, either the Secret Service agents who were there are evil or completely incompetent.  I can’t rule out them being completely incompetent, but this is almost an understatement.  You could have trained a bunch of people off the streets the day before on what to do, and they would have done a better job.  In fact, if the Trump supporters at the rally and outside the rally had been armed and not afraid to get in trouble with the law, they probably would have taken out the threat.

I am sympathetic to the argument that the Secret Service couldn’t just blow a guy’s head off because he looked suspicious.  But it was obvious he was up to no good, and they should have been able to see that he had a gun because some people on the ground saw that.  If they didn’t want to kill him on the spot, why were they not radioing in a “code red” or whatever it is?  They should have been rushing the stage to cover Trump and get him out of there.  But none of this was done.

It was ridiculous that that roof wasn’t already occupied by Secret Service, let alone not being monitored carefully.  Now we get to hear different government agencies blame each other.  The local police say it wasn’t their job.  The Secret Service says it was the police’s job because it was outside the venue.  I don’t know about the police, but the Secret Service is fully to blame for this.  It is just a question of whether it was total incompetence or if it was done on purpose.  They only shot the guy after Trump went down.

Where is the Alex Jones Treatment?

There have been a few conspiracy theories coming from the left.  They don’t like the fact that Trump got shot and came out looking like a hero and a tough guy.  Shortly after Trump gets shot in the ear, he pops up and pumps his fist in the air.  How many people would do such a thing?

One of the conspiracies coming from the left is that Trump grabbed his ear and had some kind of packet in his hand with red liquid, to make it look like blood.  In other words, they are claiming that there were no bullets fired.

Of course, in today’s world of cell phones and videos, that would be almost impossible to get away with.  But let’s compare this with the Alex Jones treatment.

Alex Jones originally questioned whether a school shooting actually happened.  He got sued and had a judgement against him for something like $50 million.  It was supposedly hurtful to the families of the victims, as if that is a reason you should be prevented from speaking.

Well, this shooting at the Trump rally took at least one innocent life.  It is not known if anyone else will ultimately die, but there are a couple of serious injuries as well.

What about the families of these victims?  These leftists who are claiming there was no actual shooting are doing the same exact thing that Alex Jones was accused of doing.  Does it only matter because Alex Jones is more famous?  Can these leftist conspiracy theorists be sued for tens of millions of dollars because of the hurtful things they are saying?

Of course, I don’t believe it should be illegal in any way to speak conspiracy theories, even if they are ridiculous.  As long as you aren’t threatening anyone, you should be free to give any theory you want, even if it may hurt the feelings of others.

The point is that there is a massive double standard.  The powers-that-be orchestrated this lawsuit against Alex Jones in order to bankrupt him and shut him up.  You won’t see the same treatment given to those calling the shooting at the Trump rally fake.

With the complete evil or incompetence we just saw that almost resulted in Trump’s death, we should be discussing conspiracy theories more openly than ever.

It was obvious that 2024 would get crazier, but this has reached new heights and we are still several months out from the general election.  With an assassination attempt against Trump, we are getting historic moments seemingly every week.

The event is tragic because at least one innocent person lost his life, and another was apparently severely injured.  Meanwhile, Teflon Don somehow gets through mostly unscathed.

If that bullet had been an inch or two over, Donald Trump would be dead.  We would be sitting here in the middle of July not knowing the nominee of either major party.

The left and the establishment really do want Trump dead.  Some are more willing to say it out loud.  They tried smearing him in the establishment media, and it only made him more popular.  They made up a Russia story, and at least half the country correctly didn’t believe it.  They impeached him twice.  They have multiple political prosecutions that are attempting to bankrupt him and send him to jail.  Yet, Trump only gets more popular, if anything.

I have said that the only thing left they haven’t tried (that we know of) is to kill him.  Now that has been tried.  We don’t know if this really was a lone nut or if there is some greater conspiracy.  It wouldn’t surprise me either way.  It won’t surprise me if we find out that the shooter had some kind of ties to the CIA or some other intelligence agency.  Again, it also really could have just been a lone nut who hated Trump.

Incompetence or Evil?

There is a striking similarity to this assassination attempt to what happened in Israel on October 7.  After the attacks in Israel, I said that the Israeli government either allowed or assisted in the attacks, or it is completely incompetent.

I feel the same way here about the Secret Service.  Either some of the Secret Service agents are evil and allowed the shooting to take place, or else they are completely incompetent.  If I were Donald Trump, I would be exploring new options for security protection.

How could a nearby building just outside of the rally not be cleared and protected during this rally?  That would be one of the most obvious things to do.  In fact, there probably should have been police or Secret Service on top of the building where the shots were fired.  If the building owners wouldn’t allow it, then you don’t hold the rally there.

In addition, there have been many witnesses who said they saw the man go up on the building with a rifle or some kind of gun.  They were trying to point him out to police and Secret Service.  The shooter was not killed until after he got off his shots.

I understand that you can’t just kill someone because it looks like he might be about to do something.  But why wasn’t the Secret Service rushing the stage where Trump was speaking until the possible threat was verified and taken care of?  How could they just not do anything other than kill the guy after he got his shots off?

I have read many things on the Kennedy assassination, and for some people who have done great research on the topic, they believe that at least some members of the Secret Service were in on the shooting of JFK.  They did not follow proper protocol that day.

I am not saying for sure that the Secret Service was in on the shooting of Trump.  It is more likely that they aren’t that evil.  But if that’s the case, then it means they are totally incompetent and should not be in that position.

Alpha Male

In this tragic situation, I still couldn’t help but laugh at Trump.  The guy just narrowly missed death.  He had the top of his ear blown off and there is blood on his face.  It was not fully known if there was still a threat.  While the Secret Service was surrounding him and trying to keep him down, Trump sticks his head up and pumps his fist in the air.  He seems to be saying, “Fight.  Fight.”  Meanwhile, the crowd starts cheering and chanting “USA”.

Trump had literally almost been killed seconds ago and had blood on his face, and his first instinct is to keep campaigning and pumping up the crowd in defiance of evil.  Trump is a true alpha male.

Let’s not forget that Trump is 78 years old.

Even after he was being ushered into a vehicle, he still stuck his head up one last time and pumped his fist in the air.  I can think of nobody else in this world who would do this other than Trump.

If Trump manages to survive the next 4 months, I don’t see how he could not be elected.  Even if he is sentenced to jail and there is massive election fraud, I don’t see how he doesn’t win.

If I were Trump (which I’m definitely not and can’t understand his mentality), I would consider not doing these events any longer.  I know this is where Trump thrives, so he probably will continue to do them.  Still, I don’t think anyone at this point will call him a coward if he campaigns from home.

Trump should be dead, and he was extremely lucky.  I’m not sure why he would continue to put himself at severe risk, especially with this incompetent or evil “protection” that he has.

If You Strike Me Down

Trump has his many flaws and gets a lot of things wrong.  Still, I can’t help but think of the Star Wars seen when Darth Vader is about to kill Obi Wan Kenobi.

“If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.”

If “they” manage to kill Trump, his 80 million or so supporters aren’t going away.  They aren’t just going to accept what happens and say, “Oh well, I guess we’re stuck with Kamala Harris or Nikki Haley now.”

I do not think there is going to be a bloody civil war.  I think most Trump supporters will remain peaceful no matter what.  But it doesn’t mean they are going to sit down and accept whatever is handed to them.  This is actually a scenario where I see secession or some kind of separation become a real possibility.

The evil establishment has been exposed.  That is Trump’s greatest gift.  If they strike him down, it will just reveal how utterly evil they are.  The American people can only be tricked into supporting a government with evil people at the top.  If it is obvious that they are evil, the majority of Americans will reject it.  Even evil and tyrannical governments rely on the consent of the people they rule over.  This is why they use propaganda.

The U.S. Supreme Court has made a lot of interesting and important rulings lately.  Some are good for liberty, such as the recent ruling involving Chevron deference.  This could be a long-term blow to the administrative state where bureaucracies make enforceable laws just because they were supposedly delegated the power from Congress.

Some rulings are not so good.  The Supreme Court basically punted on the question of whether it was appropriate for the federal government to pressure social media companies to censor content, which seems in clear violation of the First Amendment or the Tenth Amendment.  Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch – the three best justices for liberty – dissented on that one.

We also have the recent ruling regarding Donald Trump and his legal woes.  The Supreme Court ruled that the former president has partial presidential immunity if it involves actions related to his presidential duties.

I have my opinions about this case, but I am not really upset or happy about it one way or the other.  I think the ruling was a way to provide some justice to Donald Trump, whether that is right or wrong.

To be sure, the cases against Donald Trump are garbage.  In most cases, he didn’t actually commit any crimes.  For certain things, he may have committed a technical crime, but they shouldn’t be crimes and he is purposely being singled out for enforcement because of pure political reasons.  With that said, it is another question of whether the Supreme Court should have gotten involved.

I know that some Trump haters have gone to the narrative that it means the president can do whatever he wants.  Of course, in some ways, that was already true long before the court ruling.  They say that Biden could just order a hit on Trump and then claim presidential immunity.  But it would be hard to claim that he was acting as part of his presidential duties.  I think that’s why there was some nuance with the Supreme Court decision.

They wanted to provide some justice and immunity for Trump, but they also didn’t want to make it sound like they were giving dictatorial powers to the office of the president.

There is Already Immunity

It’s amazing how so many political issues and cases have gotten to the core of libertarianism in recent years.  This one case seems to be no exception.

Isn’t this one of the main complaints of libertarians?  Politicians can essentially do whatever they want as long as they don’t completely set public opinion against them.  They can do things that ordinary people can’t get away with.

This is even more true with the president.  The president can just murder people, and there is almost no chance there will ever be a prosecution.

If Trump could be legitimately charged with anything, it would be for war crimes.  He ordered the bombing of Syria.  He ordered the assassination of an Iranian official.  The same can be said for most other presidents through history, especially within the last 100 years.

Biden is helping to fund mass murder in Gaza.  He is funding the tyrannical regime in Ukraine and contributing to tens of thousands of innocent Ukrainians needlessly dying.  When Obama was president, he had people assassinated, including Americans overseas.

But the powers-that-be will never prosecute Trump for war crimes.  They approve of these things.  If they went after Trump for any of this, then that would expose past and future presidents for their war crimes.

There was already presidential immunity.  This has been the precedent for a long time.  They get away with things that we can’t.

Perhaps this was part of the reasoning for the more pro liberty justices to rule in Trump’s favor.  The system is already corrupt and flawed, so we might as well stop the political persecutions of Trump.

Anyway, this is why I am not getting worked up over this particular case.  There is nothing new to see here.  Presidents get away with crimes all the time.  If anything, maybe this case will just waken a few more people up to this fact.

Since the disastrous “debate” performance (not from my view), there has been a rift within the Democratic establishment on whether Joe Biden should continue as the party’s presumptive nominee for president.  This is noteworthy because usually the establishment media (other than Fox News) and the Democrats in power are singing in unison, especially when it comes to something like this.

Just about everyone on the left has shown support for Joe Biden.  It’s never been because they love Joe Biden.  It is because they hate Donald Trump.  Some just truly hate Trump’s personality.  The people in power hate Trump because they see him as a threat to the status quo, which is a threat to their power.

The corporate press hasn’t exactly turned against Joe Biden.  They aren’t pointing out that he is a criminal.  But they are pointing out that he had a bad debate performance and that maybe he is not the best person to beat Donald Trump.

The sad, yet hilarious, thing about this is that the establishment people, including the corporate media, are questioning Biden’s cognitive abilities in terms of running for re-election.  They are purposely ignoring the bigger question in the room.  How is Joe Biden currently the president?

How is Joe Biden “running” the country?  They have assured us that the idea of there being a deep state is a right-wing conspiracy theory or that it simply means we have people in government who will do the right thing.  But if Biden is too demented to debate or run again, then who exactly is running the country right now?  Can we have a name or a group of names of the people calling the shots?  It sure doesn’t seem to be Biden.

If there isn’t a deep state, then there is at least a shadow president who is running the show.  Is it Jill?  Is it Hunter?  Is it Obama?  Is it Hillary?  When Biden signs an executive order, who is putting it in front of him to sign?  We know that it wasn’t Joe Biden’s idea.

I don’t like the idea of the president “running” the country, but that is the view of the establishment and, to some degree, the average American.  Biden still has 6 more months as president.  Shouldn’t the media’s concern be about who is running the country for the next 6 months?  Why is all of the concern about being who should replace Biden as the nominee in order to beat Trump?  It tells you where their priorities are and what they really believe.

Mutually Assured Destruction

Countries with nuclear weapons tend not to use them, especially against other countries with nuclear weapons.  Let’s hope this remains the case.  The reason, at least up until now, is an idea known as mutually assured destruction.  If you drop a nuke on another country, then you might get blown up too.  This makes even all of the politicians vulnerable.

The same theory operates to a certain degree in establishment politics.  Anyone who is heavily involved is invested in the game.  They have dirt against others, and others have dirt against them.

Biden is more than waist deep in dirt.  He has criminal activity going back a long way.  He has been using Ukraine as some kind of slush fund since at least the time he was vice president.

If there is a consensus in the establishment that Joe Biden has to go, then Joe Biden doesn’t have a real choice.  Unless he wants to blow up the whole system, he will quietly go into the night.  In return, the establishment will continue to cover up his crimes.

If Joe Biden is too demented to understand and Jill makes the decision to refuse to give up the nomination (let alone the presidency), then I’m sure she will be reminded that we wouldn’t want any leaks to the media about the “big guy” getting 10%.

Of course, Joe Biden is already on video saying that he threatened to withhold a billion dollars from Ukraine until they fired the prosecutor that was investigating the company that his son was working for.  The corporate media just doesn’t play it.  “Hey Jill, if Joe doesn’t give up the nomination, it would be a shame if the media started playing that clip for everyone to see.”

If Jill and Joe get the big idea to go full nuclear and expose the criminality of others, then it would be game over for them.  There might be a plane crash, or Joe might suddenly suffer from a more extreme health issue.

I think Jill and Joe would get the point.  He is senile and demented, but he is a career criminal.  He still understands the game.  If they want him out, then he will have to leave.

The only reason they would keep Joe Biden around at this point is if they truly think he is the best chance at beating Donald Trump.  I don’t think most people believe that any more.  For that reason, it is likely that there will be another nominee coming out of the Democratic establishment.

It actually worked really well for them.  They didn’t have to worry about a democratic vote with the people.  They didn’t have to contend with RFK Jr. getting the nomination.  They didn’t have to worry about someone mildly disruptive like a Bernie Sanders.  They will just get to pick Kamala or whoever it is without any fuss or campaigning.

The Nasdaq hit another milestone this past week.  On July 2, 2024, the Nasdaq closed above 18,000.  Unless there is a significant and quick turnaround, it looks like it will hit the 20,000 mark in the not-too-distant future.

With the Fed’s massive monetary inflation from 2008 to 2022, there is some justification for vastly higher stock prices.  When there is more available money, prices tend to go up.  This doesn’t just apply to consumer products like food and clothes.  It also applies to stocks.  In fact, sometimes the effects are more exaggerated with stocks, especially in today’s world where buying and selling happens with the push of a button and there are low or no trading fees.

Price inflation is not uniform, and it seems that stock investors have received a benefit from the inflation of the last decade and a half.

It is good to look back and see where this came from.  I remember wondering if the Nasdaq would hit the 10,000 mark in early 2020.  Then COVID hysteria hit and it looked like the market would be down, especially with some businesses forced to temporarily close or minimize business.  Instead, we saw a massive infusion of new money from the Fed, and stocks turned around quickly and started hitting new highs.

The Nasdaq first went above the 10,000 mark on June 10, 2020.  In other words, it has gone up 80% in about 4 years, and I already thought it was something of a bubble 4 years ago.

If we go back to December 2019, the Nasdaq hit the 9,000 mark.  You can see the Nasdaq milestones here.

So, in less than 5 years, the Nasdaq has more than doubled.  Have overall prices in other things doubled?  That’s not the case according to the government’s statistics on the matter.  Are corporate profits double what they were 5 years ago?  Are they expected to be that much higher in the future?  I am looking for some kind of justification other than loose money from the Federal Reserve.

The Original Tech Bubble

The really big Nasdaq bubble happened in the late 1990s.  The Nasdaq went above the 5,000 mark in March 2000.  It then fell for two and half years and went down to just above 1,100.  It was down about 78% from its peak.

To put it another way, the biggest tech bubble in history saw the Nasdaq peak at just above 5,000 and then lose almost 80%.  24 years after that peak, we are now three and a half times higher than the peak in March 2000 when it was a giant bubble.

If we measure from the low in 2002, the Nasdaq is now over 16 times higher from that level.  To be sure, the market probably oversold and overshot in the down direction during the bear market, but that’s not to say that can’t happen again.

What if the Nasdaq lost 78% this time?  From a level of 18,000, a fall of 78% would mean we would see the Nasdaq at 3,960.

Can you imagine right now seeing the Nasdaq go down below the 4,000 level in the next few years?  I don’t think most people can imagine the Nasdaq going down to 9,000 from here (a 50% drop).

Yet, if we are again in a massive bubble, why shouldn’t this be a good possibility?  It has been an amazing bull market in stocks for the last 15 years.  Maybe it will continue, even in the face of an inverted yield curve.  But we shouldn’t discount the possibility of a major downturn, and history shows us what is possible.

This isn’t a prediction of what will happen.  It is just a question for people to answer.  If stock markets fall by 50% from here, are you ok with that?  You don’t have to be happy about it, but will it cause you excessive stress or hardship?

What if the Nasdaq falls 80%?  Are you ok with your current asset allocation if that turns out to be the case?  It isn’t a question of whether stocks will crash and by how much.  Nobody can predict that with any certainty.  The question is whether you are prepared for such a thing to happen.

Sometimes you have to look at statistics over a period of time to get a good picture of what is happening.  One of those things to take note of is the foreign holders of U.S. debt.  Many of the major foreign central banks buy and hold U.S. Treasury securities as reserves.  The U.S. dollar is still considered to be the world’s reserve currency, but for how long?

It is not easy to get completely accurate statistics, as even the Treasury has some seemingly conflicting numbers.  But the trend is unmistakable.

Using Treasury data that goes through April 2024, Japan has slightly increased its holdings from a year ago.  It is still well over a trillion dollars.

But the notable country is China, which several years ago held about the same as Japan.  China used to have over a trillion dollars in Treasury securities.  Now it is down to below $800 billion.

What is notable is just how slowly the reserves are going down.  Some months they increase slightly.  But the trend is definitely down.

This tells us that the Chinese central bank is not actively selling U.S. debt in any significant way.  It is probably just allowing some debt to mature and not rolling it all over.  Over time, this reduces its holdings.

Also note that the dollar has lost significant purchasing power over the last several years.  The value of a trillion dollars today is worth what about $800 billion would have bought you 6 years ago.  You could say that China is de-dollarizing just through attrition.

Why is China Moving Away?

If you want to know why China is slowly moving away from the dollar, the answer is Russia.

The Chinese see what has happened to Russia, especially with regards to sanctions and defaults imposed by the U.S. government.  They wisely don’t want the same thing to happen to them.

The U.S. has stiffed Russia.  You can point fingers to whomever you want over Ukraine, but the fact remains that the U.S. has broken financial contracts and stolen wealth from Russia.  This is a bad way to do business.

What if there is any dispute over Taiwan or even something more minor?  Will the U.S. government just default on all of the debt owed to the Chinese government?  It looks likely that that would happen.

Chinese officials are doing this in a wise and subtle way.  They didn’t pull the fire alarm and start selling like crazy.  That in itself could have led to more conflict with the U.S.  Instead, the Chinese are very slowly backing away from the dollar and becoming more independent from the chaos makers in Washington.  Who can blame them?

It is easy to not notice these things because it just happens slowly over time.  But it certainly appears that China is slowly moving away from the dollar.

Consequences

This means it will be harder for the Federal Reserve to sell its debt at lower interest rates.  It means that the dollar will continue to be used less and less for trade in world markets.  Other countries are realizing that there doesn’t have to be a reserve currency of the world.

Ultimately, at some point down the road, this will make it harder for the U.S. government to continue to run up massive deficits while maintaining low interest rates.

This is a problem for U.S. officials, including Federal Reserve officials.  It could be a problem for U.S. consumers when prices of foreign goods are more expensive.

The good news is that it will eventually put limits on U.S. government spending.  It sometimes seems that there are no limits and that it will just go on forever.  This will not be the case.