There is reported to be a measles outbreak in the western part of Texas.  There was a second death attributed to measles, this time in neighboring New Mexico.

We don’t really know what the word “outbreak” means in this context.  We definitely aren’t talking about numbers like the flu.

The article stated that the person tested positive for the measles virus after death, so we don’t know for sure if the person died with measles or because of measles.  It is like COVID hysteria all over again.

The first thing I want to remind people is that we live in a country of about 340 million people.  It is typically not a good idea to make decisions or judgments based on a couple of personal stories.

For the sake of argument (and thinking), I just want to explore some questions on the assumption that the two deaths were because the people had measles and that these deaths wouldn’t have happened if they had been vaccinated against measles.

Measuring One Risk Only

The problem here is that there are potential risks to getting vaccinated.  If we could be assured that there are absolutely no risks to being vaccinated against measles, then it would be a good case that everyone should get the measles vaccine.

To be clear, the risk isn’t just death.  It isn’t just autism either, which seems to get the most attention when talking about vaccines.  It can be any number of things.

And you can’t just compare death from measles with vaccination versus death from measles without vaccination.  This was one of the big issues with the COVID vaccines.  In the Pfizer trials, there were more people in the vaccinated group who died than in the placebo group (see page 23), but they sold the Pfizer vaccine on the basis that more people died of COVID in the placebo group (if that was even true).

To get a true picture, you have to do an overall comparison of the health of a vaccinated group and a group that isn’t vaccinated.  You can’t just look at their outcome based on the one thing that was targeted in vaccination – in this case, the measles.

You also need to study this long term.  You can’t do a proper study just by looking at 6 months of data.  What if someone is more likely to die of something else 30 years down the line after being vaccinated?  We can’t know this without long-term studies.  Just because someone doesn’t drop dead or develop autism within 2 weeks of being vaccinated, it doesn’t mean there aren’t longer-term side effects.

It’s Not Just Death

It is a big mistake to just look at death.  This was a major mistake during the height of COVID hysteria.  There are trade-offs in life.  An elderly person might want to risk seeing their loved ones even if it meant a slightly higher chance of getting COVID and dying from COVID.

Even if the measles vaccine makes it more likely that you will live longer, that still doesn’t make the case.

Let’s say that getting the measles vaccine does marginally increase the risk of getting autism.  How do you balance that with the risk of dying with measles?

It would be interesting to get honest answers from those who are directly impacted by autism.  For example, let’s say you surveyed mothers of severely autistic children.  If they could do some kind of treatment that would give their child a 50% chance of being cured of autism but would give their child a 1% chance of death after taking the treatment, how many of them would give the treatment to their child?

This isn’t an easy question.  The answers you get in public might not match the answers you would get in a private survey.  My guess though is that a lot of mothers would risk the death of their child in order to give them a chance to live a somewhat “normal” life.

There is no right or wrong answer here.  The point is that there are trade-offs.

So, what if there is a 0.1% chance of dying from the measles without vaccination, but there is a 1% chance of developing severe autism with vaccination?  What would you choose for your child?  Again, these are made-up numbers, but they are supposed to be somewhat provocative questions.

Even if we aren’t talking about severe autism, what if certain vaccines significantly increase the chances of asthma or diabetes or any number of things?  There are some diabetics who would probably risk a 1% chance of dying with the measles for the better chance of not having diabetes.

I am completely making these numbers up. Of course, if you don’t get a measles vaccine ever in your life, you will have a much lower risk of dying from the measles than 1%.

Conclusion

These are meant to be thought-provoking questions.  Even if someone did die of the measles and it could have been prevented by vaccination, it doesn’t automatically mean that everyone should be vaccinated against measles.

Getting the measles was something that was common in the past, and it generally wasn’t scene as highly dangerous.  Sometimes a child’s body is meant to get these things to build stronger immunity.

We have a lot more chronic disease today than we did a generation or two ago.  Maybe it is mostly because of our food.  Maybe we have too many electronics and satellite towers.  But we shouldn’t discount vaccines.  Again, the only way to know is to do honest testing.

And we shouldn’t just look at outcomes from the illness.  We shouldn’t just look at death.  Maybe getting the measles when you are young helps develop immunity to other things for when you are an adult.

The only way to know these things is to ask questions and do honest studies.  These stories about people dying of measles from the establishment media aren’t asking serious questions.  They have their narrative, which is that you would have to be crazy to not get vaccinated.

Trump had his big event, delivery the first State of the Union address since taking office the second time.  While Trump is a different animal, it is still amazing to see how some things never change.

The left was there to protest, and order had to be restored at the beginning of the speech.  We didn’t have Nancy Pelosi behind him to tear up the speech, but that is only because the Republicans hold a narrow majority in both houses of Congress.

I can remember watching a few speeches by Clinton when I was a teenager and young adult.  He would have his special guests and deliver remarks meant to warm the heart (or break the heart).

It was no different with Trump in 2025.  He had many special guests attending, some of whom experienced tragedy and others who offered hope and optimism.  There were some heart-wrenching moments, and I am certainly not implying that they weren’t real.

What I am saying is that these speeches are produced like a Hollywood movie and are carefully scripted to tug at your heart strings.  It is marketing because people connect with individuals and their emotions.  You can rattle off statistics all day long, but a personal story gets a message across.  Again, I am not questioning the genuineness of the stories that were told in Trump’s speech, but a few nice personal stories don’t really dictate the state of our union.

The Funny

Trump has a sense of humor.  I think it drives the left nuts.  He delivered his speech well, and he definitely had his funny moments.

The funniest moment was when Trump was talking about the U.S. sending hundreds of billions of dollars to Ukraine and then went off script.  The Democratic Party side was applauding and Trump said, “Do you want to keep it going for another five years?”

A few kept applauding, including Elizabeth Warren.  Trump then says, “Pocahontas says yes.”

Mike Johnson and DOGE

As Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson was sitting behind Trump.  He would nod his head in agreement and shake his head when Trump was talking about bad things that have happened.

Just remember that Mike Johnson is a snake.  Or maybe that is an insult to snakes.

Johnson is an opportunist.  He will tow the Trump line for now because Trump is highly popular within the Republican Party.  If Johnson gets an opportunity to stab Trump in the back at a later date that would benefit Johnson, he will do it.

When Johnson shakes his head in disgust at Trump reading out all of the wasted money being spent on these ridiculous projects, just remember that Johnson continues to approve funding for all of this nonsense.  Why wasn’t Congress looking at all of this before, instead of just blindly passing budgets?

Instead, it takes Elon Musk and a group of young go-getters to do in a few weeks what Congress was never going to do.  They actually looked at where the money was being spent.

It was a wise move for Trump to list off some of the egregious expenditures that have been discovered, including funding all of these so-called woke projects overseas.

The Good and Bad Trump

There were no major surprises in the speech.  From a libertarian standpoint, we got many good and bad talking points.  But none of them were new.

On Greenland, Trump was more measured, saying that it was up to the people to decide whether to join the United States.

On the Panama Canal, Trump was not measured and seems determined to take over the Panama Canal.  Is he really going to start a war or use military force over a few billion dollars a year in fees?  Either way, it is not moral.

Trump was, of course, mostly good on Ukraine.  He continues to say that he wants a ceasefire, and he wants people to stop dying there.

Trump keeps pushing more tax cuts, which is mostly good, but there is still a massive spending problem in Washington DC, even with DOGE.

Trump has said some disturbing things regarding Israel and Gaza, yet he is still better on this issue than we would have seen from Biden or Harris, who would have kept funding Israel with a green light to keep bombing and killing innocent people with no actual efforts at a ceasefire.

Trump’s Downfall?

I fear that the many good things coming out of the second Trump presidency will be undone by Trump’s bad economics.  He simply doesn’t understand that tariffs will make things more expensive for U.S. consumers. Any industries that are helped are being helped by limiting competition from businesses overseas that can produce things more efficiently and cost effectively.

For those who say that Trump is just using tariffs as a negotiating tool, they are ignoring reality at this point.  Trump wants higher tariffs.

Trump is not wrong when he says the late 1800s were a time of great prosperity.  And yes, we had high tariffs then.  But we also didn’t have a federal income tax or Federal Reserve, and federal spending was a tiny fraction of what it is now, even when adjusting for inflation.

We are going to see a recession regardless of what Trump does.  It is baked into the cake.  But these higher tariffs will make things worse.  We will get a recession coupled with higher prices.

The tariffs could completely offset any good that DOGE is doing in trying to curtail government spending.

In order for Trump to be effective for the next four years, he needs the American people on his side.  He needs the average American who doesn’t pay a lot of attention to politics to appreciate some of the things Trump and Musk are trying to do to reduce government.

The only way this works is if the average American has optimism.  They can live through a recession, including a hard recession.  But if we are getting higher prices with it, Trump is going to lose a lot of support.

These tariffs are a major threat to our living standards.  They will make food more expensive.  They will make cars more expensive.  In a recession, we should see prices go down, but I fear we won’t get that benefit.

If Trump loses support from middle America because of his high tariffs, then it will threaten everything else he is doing that is good.

It has been one thing after another since Trump took office.  Trump and Musk have been a bull in a China shop.  That usually has a negative connotation to it.  But in this case, the China shop is the U.S. government/ empire.

It hasn’t been pretty, but it is almost impossible to reduce the size and scope of this behemoth without it being messy.  It is especially messy for those who have been sucking off the blood of Uncle Sam for all of these years.  It is even messier for some of the ruling elite who have lived high while committing crimes in the name of doing good.

It would be nice if someone would compile a nice clean list of all of the highlights of the Trump administration in 2025.  For example:

• Freeing the J6 prisoners
• Freeing Ross Ulbricht
• Repealing electric vehicle mandates
• Withdrawing from the WHO
• Declaring no biological men in women’s sports
• Uncovering USAID
• Appointing Tulsi, RFK Jr., Patel, Bhattacharya, Bongino
• Declaring a desire to cut the military budget in half with China and Russia
• Telling Zelenskyy to pound sand

This barely touches on things.  There have been so many executive orders (or repeal of previous executive orders) that one can barely keep up.  Yes, there have been some bad things mixed in there, especially with tariffs and some foreign policy statements.  Still, how can someone who favors liberty not at least acknowledge that something is different this time around?

The Good Shock and Awe

When Bush and company invaded Iraq in 2003, we heard about a shock and awe campaign.  This meant mass bombing, destruction of buildings, and the mass killing of innocent people.  This was the evil shock and awe.

Trump is going with a shock and awe campaign of his own, but it is mostly good, at least so far.

Trump is hitting the media, the establishment politicians and bureaucrats, and all of his critics from every angle.  And he is doing it so fast, they don’t know what is hitting them.

This was a good overall strategy, even if it has been, perhaps, more chaotic than necessary.

The Trump critics are going to whine no matter what.  Trump could have just done one or two bold things, and the media would have obsessed over those things in order to criticize Trump.

These people were going to whine anyway, so you might as well make them whine about a hundred different things.  They don’t know where to focus.  As soon as they bring something up, Trump goes ahead and does something else.

Trump was going to get called a Russian agent or a Putin puppet by some of his critics no matter what he did.  He might as well just hit them with everything he’s got.

It has made some of his critics look really bad in the process, even to the average person who doesn’t follow a lot of politics.  You are complaining because Trump doesn’t want men in women’s locker rooms?  You are complaining because Trump has exposed that we shouldn’t be paying for diversity programs in Serbia or transgender comic books in Peru?

Peace in Ukraine?

The latest part of the shock and awe campaign was to belittle the dictator from Ukraine, who has been on the receiving end of hundreds of billions of dollars courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer (and holders of U.S. dollars via inflation).

It was amazing to hear J.D. Vance go after Zelenskyy during his White House visit.  When Trump stepped in, it wasn’t clear if he would try to calm things down.  Instead, he just built on what his vice president said.  Trump said that Zelenskyy was risking World War III.  He also told him that he doesn’t hold the cards right now to be calling any shots.

There are comments all over by Trump critics saying “I stand with Ukraine.”  Does that mean you stand with the dictator who cancelled the last election?  If you actually stand with the people of Ukraine, then you should want to see them stop dying.  The only way to do that is to get a ceasefire, which the dictator/ authoritarian doesn’t seem interested in doing.  He just wants more money and weapons from the U.S. taxpayer.

This gives Trump an excuse now to just cut off funding to Ukraine.  He has gone this far, so he might as well do this next.

Trump is absolutely correct in saying that this was a war that never should have happened.  The U.S. never should have helped orchestrate a coup there in 2014.  And in 2021, if the Biden administration had responded to Putin and given assurance of not admitting Ukraine into NATO, that in itself might have been enough to prevent the conflict.

For all of the people who are saying Trump acted like a child, or he acted undiplomatically, or he was an embarrassment to our country, just think about what you are saying.  He is trying to end the dying in Ukraine.  The Biden administration purposely flipped off Putin and would not sit down and speak with him in 2021 (or after), which could have prevented the war from starting.  Then they proceeded to fund and weaponize Ukraine to prolong a war that was never winnable by Ukraine.

Who is the child here?  Even if you do think Trump acted like a child during the meeting, which is worse?  Is it worse to act like a child and get into an argument with someone in the Oval Office, or is it worse to take actions that lead to hundreds of thousands of people dying?

Conclusion

Trump should keep hitting the establishment from every angle.  He should try to do this in a way that minimizes the damage to the ordinary American.  Most Americans just want to go to work and support themselves and their family.

The establishment is going to strike back in ways that we can’t fully predict.  But in terms of just being critical of Trump, they are going to whine and call him names anyway.  If Trump is going to be called a racist, a fascist, a child, a Russian agent, or any number of things, he might as well make some progress in tearing down the criminals who have been running the show for way too long.

We are in the Everything Bubble.  Every major asset is in a potential bubble.  This includes stocks, bonds, and real estate.  It might also include crypto currencies.

The yield curve was inverted in 2023 and much of 2024.  It is still relatively flat, but it is somewhat normalizing, where longer-term rates are above shorter-term rates.

The yield curve has been an accurate predictor of recessions.  When it normalizes, the recession hits.  The exception was 2020 where the slowdown in the economy was covered by trillions of new dollars created by the Fed in a very short period of time because of government lockdowns.

A recession is looking highly likely in 2025.  Couple this with stocks hitting new all-time highs recently and it is a recipe for a major crash.

If we do get a deep recession soon, stocks will get punished hard.  Real estate prices will likely plummet.  They have already started to soften.

Bonds are more uncertain.  If people do not see inflation as a big threat, then investors will seek safety in bonds.  This should lower rates and raise the price of bonds.  In the short run, bonds may do ok for investors.

The Bitcoin Bubble

I have long thought that crypto currencies – and Bitcoin in particular – are tied to the Everything Bubble.

It is possible that Bitcoin could hold up while most other cryptos find their true value somewhere near zero.

I used to think that Bitcoin would go down close to zero one day, but I’m not convinced that will happen any time soon.  There are diehard Bitcoin enthusiasts who would sell their first-born child to get their hands on more Bitcoin.  They think it is the answer to all of our problems in life.

“Bitcoin will fix that.”  Well, it hasn’t yet.

There are hardcore people who will insist that Bitcoin is the new digital gold and that it will fix just about anything wrong with our economy.  Some will believe this until the day they die.  For this reason, Bitcoin will never go to zero in my lifetime.

Of course, even a $100 trillion bill in the old Zimbabwe currency will fetch a few dollars on Ebay just as a novelty.

Anyway, the bigger question is what will happen to Bitcoin (in terms of dollars) if and when the crash happens in the economy.

Perhaps the last week has given us a little taste.  It has been far from a perfect correlation, but it seems that Bitcoin has generally gone down with stocks.  This is especially the case with the Nasdaq.

As I write this, Bitcoin is below $85,000.  It was over $100,000 not that long ago.  That is quite a plunge in such a short period of time.

The main point here is that it is quite possible that the Bitcoin bubble could burst in a major way in tandem with a severe recession.

I don’t know if that means it will go down to $50,000, or $10,000, or $5,000.  But I wouldn’t discount any of these numbers.

Is Gold Part of the Bubble?

I’m not sure that gold is part of the Everything Bubble.  So maybe I should call it the Most Everything Bubble.  This was certainly true up through 2023, but gold has gone up in price (in terms of dollars) a lot since then.

If it is part of the bubble, it is the latecomer in the game.  Plus, I can think of very good reasons that gold would be going higher right now, including foreign central bank buying in order to get away from the U.S. dollar.

It will also be interesting to see if Trump and Musk are able to open up Fort Knox and look inside.  Will all of the gold be there?  And if not, what will that do to the price of gold?  If anything, I would think it would send it higher.

The most likely scenario with gold is that it performs in a similar fashion to what happened in the 2008 financial crisis.  Since it is an asset, it will probably go down in price initially in a recession.  People desperate for cash will sell anything, including gold.

When gold went down in late 2008, it wasn’t as bad as the fall in stocks, and it was also relatively short-lived.  The price recovered quickly.

With all of the mess going on in the world and with the debt continuing to increase, I will take my chances with some gold in my portfolio.  It would be a bigger risk to not have some.

If the price of gold goes down in a recession, we can be confident that the Fed will start running its digital printing press again in short order.  This will be bullish for gold in the longer run.

Overall, I have been pleasantly surprised by the things Trump has done in his first month in office.  I have my major criticisms such as his desire for higher tariffs and some of his disturbing comments about taking over Gaza.

I also don’t completely agree with the methods of trying to downsize the federal government, but I’m also not sure how else it could be done.

I understand the reasoning behind ordering federal employees back to the office.  There is a perception that there are all of these government employees sitting at home collecting a paycheck.  And while that might be true for some, it isn’t true for all.  Plus, having to provide office space just increases expenses for the taxpayers.

I am also not sure about firing all federal government employees who are on probation.  This can just mean that they were recently hired for their position and haven’t had a review.  It is costly to hire and train new people, and we also don’t know that the new person is any worse than someone who has been there for 30 years.  In fact, the government employee who has been there for 30 years might be more bureaucratic than the new person in some cases.

If we are talking about getting rid of IRS workers, I’m all for it.  Of course, even there, you need someone to process the tax refunds this season.

I don’t want to wait twice as long at the passport office because they are understaffed.  If you are getting rid of a passport requirement to travel, that’s fine, but I don’t think that proposal is on the table.

So, in some ways, I think this attempt to downsize the federal government is chaotic.  Of course, not doing anything and allowing it to stay the course is more chaotic.

Some Sympathy

Now that some federal workers are being laid off, we get to hear sob stories from the establishment media. For example, we might hear about a single mom who found out on Valentine’s Day that she lost her job and will have trouble paying her bills soon.  Of course, there are many people who get laid off every day from jobs that aren’t government jobs and we aren’t usually treated to the sad stories on television.

The thing that really irritates me is that the people who are calling attention to these stories now mostly didn’t have a word to say when people were getting fired for not getting a shot in their arm in 2021 and 2022.  There were tens of thousands of people who were good and productive workers, yet they got fired because of vaccine mandates for “vaccines” that didn’t even stop transmission of what it was supposed to prevent.

Just remember that every time someone is shedding a tear for other people who were laid off because of DOGE.  Did that same person shed a tear for all of the people fired for disobeying the Biden handlers’ mandates?

With that said, I don’t think we should be insensitive to people being laid off now.  Most people who work in government are not part of the ruling elite.  They found a job, probably with good benefits, and they probably do what they are supposed to do.  We shouldn’t cheer on the fact that they lost their job.  We should only cheer on that the taxpayer will save money by the government not doing things that it shouldn’t have been doing in the first place.

Can We Accept a Win?

Even though I have my criticisms of Trump and Musk, can any libertarian possibly imagine a better first month from any administration?

I can’t even imagine a libertarian getting in office and doing this much in such a short time frame.

There are some self-identified libertarians who are critical of Trump and Musk and saying that they should go through the proper channels with Congress.

Maybe that is the preferred method, but we all know what would happen.  Let’s say they tell Congress, “Please pass some legislation to allow us to look into the money that is being spent by USAID and other organizations.”  Maybe they’ll get around to it someday after you’re gone.

Many of the executive orders coming from Trump are undoing things that were already put in place by the executive branch.  Some of it is repealing stuff that is blatantly unconstitutional.

Congress has to pass legislation to fund all of these alphabet agencies, but they are really under the executive branch.  It is kind of a joke for anyone to suggest that we need legislation in order to look at where money is being spent.  That’s our money.

Ron Paul tried for many years to get an audit of the Fed.  Now, Elon Musk and company are talking about just doing it, along with checking to see if there is gold stored at Fort Knox.  Why would anyone complain about this other than because they just hate Trump or they have something to hide?

What Would You Do?

You can’t beat something with nothing.  If you are supposed to be on the side of liberty and you are criticizing Trump and Musk for all of this exposure of corrupt government spending, then what would you do?

If you were given the keys to the White House, what would you do?  Would you beg Congress to please audit some of these agencies?  Would you beg Congress to please start cutting the funding in the next fiscal year?

This is a serious question.  Our tax money is not just being wasted but used against us.  Our money is being used to degrade our culture, to punish people not obedient to the system, and to propagandize us.

I seriously doubt that anyone could have done a better job than Elon Musk and his team have done in the last month in exposing the highly corrupt spending.  Again, this is all of our money that was taken from us.

If you want to send your money to media companies overseas, be my guest.  If you want to fund diversity programs and transgender comic books in foreign countries (or at home), go for it.  But don’t take other people’s money by force to do it.

If Rand Paul had become president on January 20, 2025, would we be any farther ahead than we are right now?  Maybe we wouldn’t have the tariff nonsense, but it is hard to believe that anyone would have uncovered as much as what has been uncovered in the first month.

This is a sincere question if you are highly critical of Trump and Musk.  What would you do?  I don’t want to hear that you would go through Congress because you might as well say that you would do nothing.

Some people just never want to accept a win.  One year ago, could anyone have realistically expected this much government waste and corruption to be uncovered in such a short period of time?

While it is valuable information to know your financial net worth, you also have to be careful with relying on this information when determining financial independence.  Even aside from financial independence, you can’t rely on your net worth to determine your retirement plans.

One of the primary reasons is that you have to take into account your cost of living or your expected cost of living.  You could have a net worth of $3 million at the age of 55, but you can’t retire on this if you are expecting to spend $300,000 per year in retirement.

If you have a net worth of $3 million per year and only plan to spend $50,000 per year in retirement, this is a whole different ballgame.  If you diversify your investments and nothing crazy happens (like hyperinflation), then your money should last.

Your Home

There is debate about whether to include your house in your net worth.  For your net worth, I think it is appropriate.  After all, if you own a $500,000 house with only $100,000 left on a mortgage, you are far better off than someone who owns a $500,000 house with a $400,000 mortgage.

However, you do have to be careful counting your house when it comes to financial independence or retirement.

Let’s say that Person A rents an apartment but has a net worth of $2 million that is in investments.

Person B has a house valued at $2 million and has paid it off completely, but has no investments and almost nothing in the bank.

They both have a net worth of $2 million.  Yet, they are in very different situations.  Person A, depending on his expenses, might be close to retiring.

Person B might be close to retiring if he is planning to sell his house next month in order to rent or to buy something like a $200,000 house.

However, if Person B has no intention of moving any time soon, then the $2 million net worth means almost nothing in terms of being financially independent.  It’s the same situation as someone who owns a $300,000 house free and clear with no other assets.  If anything, the $2 million house is a bigger liability because of higher property taxes and maintenance costs.

Person B’s one advantage is that he doesn’t pay rent and doesn’t have a mortgage payment.  That’s the only advantage, unless he plans to sell his house and downsize.

Other Factors

There is a lot of messiness with calculating net worth and financial independence.  One big factor is taxes.

If someone has $1 million in a 401k plan, that will be taxable when it is taken out.  Meanwhile, someone else might have $1 million in a Roth IRA, which isn’t taxable upon withdrawal.

Both people have a million dollars, but one person’s million dollars is more valuable than the other’s because it isn’t subject to taxation.

I don’t even know how to fully account for this unless you want to get deep into the numbers and tax brackets.  But it is at least something that should be considered.  If you have a lot of money in a Roth IRA, you won’t need as much of it as you would need in an account that will be taxed.

The 4% Rule

In the financial independence community, people often reference the 4% rule.  This means that you should be able to live on 4% of your financial assets.  Another way to say this is that you need 25 times your annual expenses.

If you are planning to spend $100,000 per year in retirement, then you need $2.5 million to be financial independent and not have to generate additional income.

I am not that confident in this rule.  I think it is assuming stock market returns that we have seen more recently without considering that returns may be far less in the future.  Just a reversion to the mean will mean far lower returns in the coming years as compared to what we have seen over the last 15 years.

Another problem with the 4% rule is that it doesn’t seem to account for age.  If you spend $100,000 per year and have $2.5 million, it will likely be enough for you if you are already 80 years of age.

If you are 40 years old and plan to retire forever on this money, I doubt it will be enough unless you can generate really good and consistent returns.

One last problem with the 4% rule is inflation.  This is especially true for the younger person.  What if we have a period of high price inflation?  That $100,000 per year in expenses could go up to $150,000 per year in less than a decade.  If your $2.5 million didn’t grow to $3.75 million over that same time, then you are now living on more than 4%.  You can see the problem.

All it takes is a bad bear market and a few years of high price inflation to throw everything off.

This is why the 4% rule should only be a guide.  There is no guarantee of what will last in retirement.  You should at least be aware of the dangers of depending on the 4% rule.

Conclusion

Beware of anyone trying to make financial planning and retirement planning sound easy.  Also be careful of assuming high investment returns.

We often hear that the U.S. stock market generates 8% annual returns.  But these are not consistent returns.  They don’t account for inflation and taxes.  And most of all, there is no guarantee that they will continue.

When looking at financial independence and/ or retirement, your expenses matter a lot.  A paid-off house shouldn’t be counted in your column of financial assets unless you are planning to sell it.  The benefit is that you can lower your expense side if you don’t have rent or a mortgage payment.

Lastly, the thing that matters most is that you save.  Do something!  If you save money and buy investments that don’t do particularly well, you will still be far ahead of someone who doesn’t save at all.

The latest consumer price index (CPI) numbers came out for January 2025.  The numbers came in a little hotter than expected.

The CPI rose 0.5% in January, and the year-over-year rose to 3%.  It seems to be getting farther away from the Fed’s 2% target now.

The median CPI, which tends to be less volatile, was up 0.3% in January.  It now stands at an annual rate of 3.6%.

Yields on bonds went up on the news.  Stocks went down, but partially recovered during the day.  The Nasdaq actually finished slightly higher on the day.  Gold went down on the news but also recovered through the day.

My Experience at the Grocery Store

I went to the grocery store over the weekend before this latest CPI report came out.  I noticed some higher prices.  The price of some dark chocolate bars had seemed to have gone up.  The price of macadamia nuts and some other nuts was higher than what I had previously paid recently.

The eggs were the biggest shock.  Most of the shelves were empty.  Of the egg cartons that were there, there weren’t many choices.  I could get the “cheap” store version.  A dozen was just under $5, which is more than what organic cost for me five years ago.

There were also some expensive organic eggs that were more than $10 for a dozen.  Those were my only choices.  There are usually less expensive organic eggs that I buy.  Maybe a new shipment of eggs was coming the next day.  Still, it was noticeable.

When I compare prices to what they were five years ago, most things are quite a bit more expensive.  From my standpoint, given what I tend to buy, I think prices have gone up at a greater pace than what the price inflation numbers show.

Trouble for Trump

With the higher inflation data, this means that the Fed is less likely to lower its target interest rate.  It is more likely to continue its deflation of the balance sheet for a little while longer.

The yield curve was inverted for all of 2023 and most of 2024.  It is finally normalizing as longer-term yields are now above shorter-term yields, in general.

What will get the blame when the recession hits?  Will it be the tariffs?  Will it be the focus on spending cuts?

The tariffs are bad and hurt the economy and can contribute to higher prices.  Government spending cuts are good for the economy, at least in the long run, as resources are put to more productive uses.

The one thing that won’t get a lot of attention is the Austrian Business Cycle theory.  This is the main factor.  The Fed engaged in monetary inflation and artificially low interest rates during prior periods.  This misallocated resources and led to an artificial boom in the economy.  Now it has to be corrected.

If Elon Musk stays at it and spending actually goes down, then we will be better off if the recession hits sooner rather than later.  In three years or so, maybe we will have a real recovery with a reduced presence of government.

It is more important than ever to promote libertarianism and give proper explanations for what is happening in the economy.  The massive federal spending and the Fed’s willingness to monetize the debt in prior years is to blame for what is to come.

Donald Trump has a lot of issues, and this country will continue to have a lot of major issues.  But for any libertarian – or anybody at all – to say that Trump is just another part of the ruling elite is to not acknowledge the situation.

There are some people who just can’t find any good no matter what.  The Berlin Wall comes down and the Soviet Union collapses, but there are still people there assuring us that communism is actually winning and gaining ground.

Trump has a lot of faults, and many of them are indefensible.  It makes it much harder to defend him against his leftist enemies who like to call him a dictator when Trump makes threats to other countries.

Trump has made some disturbing comments about Gaza.  He doesn’t understand the situation in Ukraine well enough.  His threats over the Panama Canal are unacceptable.  His use of tariffs to blackmail other countries is immoral and harmful to us.

I also have a concern that there won’t be enough permanent changes coming from this administration on the good things.  If Trump uses executive orders to “fix” a lot of things, then they could just as easily be overturned by the next group that gets in there.

With that said, what Trump has done so far is absolutely incredible.  It is actually an embarrassment to the first Trump term and to every other administration of this century and probably long before that.

DOGE Shines a Light

In less than 3 weeks, Elon Musk and his DOGE team have uncovered more than every government agency has uncovered in the last 25 years.  It is actually shocking how much has been uncovered in such a short period of time just by actually investigating some things.

This is a little similar to what happened when Musk bought Twitter and exposed the government trying to “persuade” companies to censor content.  It wasn’t shocking that it was happening, and many of us knew it was happening, but we finally got the proof and the details of it.

With the exposure of USAID, it isn’t shocking that this stuff was happening.  It is just shocking that we are getting to see all of these details.

We know that the U.S. taxpayer through USAID was spending $1.5 million for promoting diversity in Serbia, $70,000 for a DEI musical in Ireland, $47,000 for a transgender opera in Colombia, and $32,000 for a transgender comic book in Peru.

These aren’t big amounts by federal government standards, but they are quite symbolic of what is going on.  The U.S. taxpayer has also been forced to pay many foreign media companies to spread the propaganda of the U.S. government.

And that’s just the point.  As Clint Russell pointed out, it isn’t just that this money is “wasted”.  It is money spent by the government to actively sabotage us – the American people – while enhancing the power of the ruling elite.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1887538325126262835?mx=2

Where Has This Been?

This just shows how evil, or at the very least, unconcerned, every prior administration has been for the last several decades.  While transgender comic books may be somewhat new, you know this has to go back many decades before the turn of the century and in agencies throughout the government.

How does Elon Musk come in and uncover more in 3 weeks than everything we’ve seen coming out of the government for the last several decades?  It is because he actually cared to do so and Trump let him do it.

Maybe it was the bullet to Trump’s head and all of the prosecutions.  But Trump 2025 is a different animal than before.

If Trump had officially won the 2020 election and continued in office in 2021, I don’t think this would have happened.  Maybe we had to suffer through Joe Biden for four years to get anything good and decent.  In saying that, I don’t mean to downplay the suffering and death that happened over Biden’s time in office.

If Elon Musk has been able to uncover this much in less than 3 weeks, what else are we going to see over the coming weeks and months?  Maybe the revelations will slow down, but it is nice to know that there are people in a position of power who are actually trying to uncover the truth.

Chaos

This has been a time of chaos.  We can still be sympathetic to government employees who might lose their job, as long as they aren’t the ones who were actively trying to destroy us.

At some point, things probably need to calm down a little.  I think there have been mistakes made such as forcing government workers back into an office and offering a blanket severance to anyone who quits.  Some of these actions could cause more spending.  If you get all of the people who issue the Social Security checks/ deposits to quit, I’m pretty sure Trump is going to have to refill those positions.

I know some libertarians might like that kind of chaos, but I don’t think we should wish for chaos.  We know that Social Security isn’t going away or even getting phased out under Trump.  We need some continuity and order given the realities.

It is also important to realize that some chaos is necessary.  When you have this monstrosity of a federal government doing all of these things and spending nearly $7 trillion per year, it isn’t going to be a pretty sight when things start to come undone.

Look at it this way.  There is going to be chaos no matter what.  If Trump 2025 did nothing new and allowed the federal budget and the debt to grow like crazy, we would eventually be hit with some kind of default or major dollar crisis.  Maybe we will get that anyway.  But at least this is a more controlled path to that.

I am not against giving severance pay to government employees in order to make it less chaotic and make some of them go away in a quieter fashion.  If we can eliminate many government jobs that aren’t necessary and are outright harmful, then we will be better off in the long run.

Supposedly, DOGE is going to be digging into the military next.  I hope they do not hold back.  We are paying for people to be stationed all over this country and all over the world, and most of it is not necessary to the defense of our country.  Some of it is obviously quite harmful.  There are literally hundreds of billions of dollars in waste per year to be found here.

For libertarians, we should celebrate these wins.  Trump is no Ron Paul, but who is?  Some of these actions would have been unthinkable a short time ago.  It is still stunning just how much has been done in the first 3 weeks of this administration.

The Senate saved the more “controversial” Trump cabinet picks for the end.  They are controversial because they sometimes tell uncomfortable truths to the establishment.  This included Robert Kennedy Jr., Kash Patel, and Tulsi Gabbard.

There was some controversy with Pete Hegseth too, which required a tiebreaking vote from J.D. Vance.  The controversy wasn’t really with Hegseth’s personal life.  It wasn’t even so much that he wants to “de-wokify” the military.  The controversy is that sometimes he just isn’t pro war enough.

I didn’t watch a lot of Gabbard or Patel, but I did watch a substantial amount of the questioning for Kennedy.  The senators, particularly those who are generously funded by big pharma, had the knives out for Kennedy.

The Democrat senators in particular showed just how awful they are as people.  They would comment or ask about five or six different things during their allotted time.  When Kennedy went to respond, they would cut him off or tell him to answer “yes” or “no” without allowing for any explanation.  It was a truly pathetic display of what happens in Congress.

I believe one of the questions was something like, “So, why Mr. Kennedy did you sell out?”  They should have just asked him when he stopped beating his wife.

Vaccine Obsession

The topic that perhaps got the most attention was vaccines.  The big pharma senators made it a habit to blame Kennedy for the death of any child in recent times that was attributed to the measles, polio, or any other illness that has a vaccine assigned to it.

The propaganda machine has made it so that any time someone brings up Kennedy, he is automatically associated with the issue of vaccines.  Kennedy has made it clear over the years that no vaccine is 100% safe or effective and that there should be more studies done to determine the risks and benefits.

They would certainly accuse Kennedy of being obsessed with vaccines, but I find it is actually the establishment people who are obsessed with vaccines.  Look at what Joe Biden and company did in 2021 and beyond.  They were so obsessed with vaccines that Biden stated several times that you can’t get COVID and you can’t die if you got vaccinated.

They were so obsessed with vaccines that they tried to mandate them for about 100 million people.  And if someone didn’t follow the mandate, then they were not permitted to work at their job.  In other words, get the jab or lose the ability to pay for food and shelter for your family.  Who is obsessed with vaccines here?

The blowhard senators questioning Kennedy from the left really liked to bring up the measles and imply that it is this horrible and deadly disease for children.  Of course, anything can technically be deadly to children, including the flu.  But the vast majority of children who had measles in the past just stayed home from school for a couple of days and quickly recovered.

As Marcia said in the Brady Bunch, “If you have to get sick, sure can’t beat the measles.”  There didn’t seem to be any controversy with this episode at the time.

Political Frustration

Kennedy certainly looked upset at times, but he was way too polite for my tastes.  I have read other people in comment sections saying the same thing.

Several times, Kennedy repeated that he is pro vaccine.  He repeated that he favors the childhood vaccination schedule.

Perhaps the Trump team recommended he say this so as not to upset any of the establishment Republicans who might vote against him.  This is why I wouldn’t make a very good appointee.  I would never get confirmed because of my responses to these ridiculous questions.

At the very least, I think Kennedy should have gone off on the so-called COVID vaccines.  Every time these horrible people brought up vaccines, Kennedy could have just gone off on the “experts” who said that COVID vaccines were effective in stopping COVID and preventing transmission.  I don’t think he would have lost support from anyone saying that.  There would have been quite a few people cheering at home.

Even the people who don’t feel strongly about the issue one way or another would have shaken their head in agreement with that.  Almost everyone knows people who were “vaccinated” yet got COVID anyway.

Abortion and Other Issues

When the horrible senators weren’t making up stuff about vaccines, they were questioning Kennedy on abortion and trying to play his views against Trump.  I don’t think this was effective.

They were also trying other “gotcha” questions and to call into question Kennedy’s competence.  Again, I would have had a different response than Kennedy.  I would have made fun of the people who were previously in the position of heading up the DHHS.  What have they given us?  More chronic disease?

The left also tried to use Kennedy’s voice impediment against him.  They would claim that he got flustered several times.  Maybe he was getting flustered by the stupidity and obnoxiousness of the questions.

They also used Kennedy’s own sister against him because of her unkind remarks.  To me, this is more of a reflection on her than him.

If I had a sibling who was a diehard statist who was up for a position like this, I really don’t think I would make it a point to publicly attack the person personally.  I might state that I don’t agree with their views.  I would certainly speak up for what I believe in.  But I don’t think I would personally attack a close family member in such a situation.

MAHA

I really do hope that Kennedy has a chance to “Make America Healthy Again”.  Or at least I want him to make America healthier than it has been.

Kennedy does not even need to implement any significant changes.  If he does, it needs to be in repealing regulations.  But the place where Kennedy will be most effective is just calling attention to issues.

You can recommend that fluoride not be added to water without forcing any local governments to do it.  You can recommend that childhood vaccines be more spread out so as not overburden a child’s immune system.  You can recommend that the food industry use less high fructose corn syrup, less processed foods, and less vegetable oils without mandating anything.  This has an impact and can spread.

Kennedy made this an issue for Trump.  They formed an alliance, which is just fine.  If it weren’t for Kennedy, this wouldn’t have been on Trump’s radar.  If it hadn’t been for Kennedy, who knows if Trump would have won the election.

If Kennedy doesn’t get confirmed, Trump should double down.  There should be a strong political campaign against every Republican who votes against his confirmation.

If Kennedy doesn’t get confirmed, Trump should pick someone who is even more radical than Kennedy.  Get someone who will not be polite in front of these awful senators.  Get someone with the views of Kennedy who has the brashness of Trump.  Keep doing it over and over again.  They might eventually be wishing they had just quietly confirmed Kennedy.

The latest FOMC statement was released with a unanimous vote to maintain the federal funds rate between 4.25% and 4.5%.  Jerome Powell and the Fed are apparently still a little concerned about price inflation while still assuring us that the economy is strong.

Powell is obviously not listening to Donald Trump, who is a low interest rate guy, now that he is president again.  I am not saying that Powell and company are purposely going against Trump, but they aren’t really following his wishes either.

The Fed is actually engaging in the correct policy right now, if such a thing is possible in the world of central planning.  Interest rates and the money supply should be determined by the market, but given that we have a central bank, I believe it is better for us if they don’t engage in a loose monetary policy.

The problem is everything the Fed did before 2022.  The Fed massively inflated from 2008 to 2014 while keeping short-term interest rates near zero.  It started inflating again in 2019 and really went crazy in 2020 and 2021.  We finally started feeling the impacts with rising prices.  Next, we are going to experience the reallocation of resources, which is the recession phase.

The Fed will also maintain its current policy of reducing its balance sheet (i.e., deflation).  The balance sheet is still near $7 trillion, but a reduction of $60 billion per month is nothing to laugh at.  If the Fed maintains this policy and doesn’t go back to monetary inflation, the recession will be here soon enough.

The Yield Curve

It is amazing how little coverage has been given to the yield curve.  It was inverted for all of 2023 and most of 2024.  It is still quite flat, but it has normalized, meaning that long-term rates are once again higher than short-term rates.  This means that the recession should hit within 12 months, but probably less.

Maybe this time really is different.  Almost every financial media personality has a reason why this time is different, if they address the issue at all.  There are always things that are different, but are you willing to bet against a recession?  The inverted yield curve has been a rather accurate predictor of recessions in the past.

When the recession hits, if Trump wants to blame someone, he should blame Trump of 2020 for being suckered on all of the COVID hysteria and going along with the lockdowns and massive bailouts.  All of the money that went to people that weren’t allowed to work and to businesses that weren’t allowed to operate had to come from somewhere.  It came from the digital printing presses.  That gave us the price inflation in 2022 and 2023.  It helped give us Trump’s re-election.  Now it will give us the recession.

The Presidential Blame Game

The president tends to get too much credit for a good economy and too much blame for a bad economy. Congress has to approve the spending, and the Federal Reserve is responsible for creating the money out of thin air and manipulating interest rates.

It will be interesting how Trump will react if and when a recession hits on his watch.  I’m sure he will try to deflect the blame, and some of it will be legitimate.

I think any Trump tariffs should get blamed at least a little bit, but I also think we are getting a recession with or without additional tariffs.

The bad part is that Trump has actually done some good things in the short time he has been back in office.  It looks like he is making a genuine effort to cut back regulations and actually reduce government spending.  This is an almost winless war in Washington DC, as any spending cuts are going to be met with hard resistance.

Still, we need drastic spending cuts for the sake of our living standards.  I just fear that a recession will coincide with an attempt to cut spending, and the spending cuts will get the blame.  This would be the exact wrong lesson.

All we can do is tell the truth and try to get it out there.  Libertarians should explain the causes of recessions and how a turn to free markets will improve our lives.  We should criticize Trump when he does something bad, and we should praise Trump when he does something good.

The truth is slowly getting out there.  Libertarians are influencing the way things are going.  Even if a recession hits, I don’t think most people are going to say that we should return to the Joe Biden economy.

When the recession hits, we need to continue to teach, to write articles, and to spread our message to those who are willing to listen.  Some of those people may get to people close to Trump.

While there may be tough economic times ahead, there is good reason to have hope that we are at peak government right now and that the beast will finally be rolled back.