Trump has been playing a game of chicken with China.  Unfortunately, it’s being done with the American people and the Chinese people.  Trump enacts higher tariffs on imports, which disproportionately hurts the American people and makes things more expensive in the United States.  The Chinese government retaliates by enacting its own higher tariffs, which disproportionately hurt the people in China.

It’s a rather sick game when it impacts the living standards of hundreds of millions of people.

Trump got into a game that he didn’t fully understand.  He can continue to talk tough about making other countries come to the table and getting fair trade, but he is in over his head.  He already had to backtrack significantly because of the beating in the stock market.  And then he relented and exempted certain electronics, including Apple iPhones, from the higher tariffs.

I guess higher prices of smartphones wasn’t acceptable, but he figures you won’t notice the difference as much if you are paying more for smaller household goods.

The obnoxiously high tariffs that Trump has put in place on Chinese imports will certainly hurt some Chinese manufacturers who make products that are sold in the United States.  Still, the pain is far more widespread in the United States, as all Americans are consumers in some sense.

Trade Deficits

What is with this obsession over trade deficits?  It is amazing how much people spout off about trade deficits without understanding what they even are.  This seems to include some Trump advisors, and maybe Trump himself.

There is no imbalance of trade.  It is trade.  As long as it is done voluntarily, both parties expect to be better off.

With so-called trade deficits, everybody has a trade deficit with others.  I have a trade deficit with the grocery store.  I get food and other items, and the grocery store gets my money.  The grocery store doesn’t feel obligated to use the same money and buy something off of me.

If the Chinese sell some furniture to Americans and then use the money to buy U.S. stocks, who cares?  I guess some people care a great deal, because that is what a trade deficit is.

Or maybe the Chinese buy products from Canadians and then the Canadians use that money to buy American products.  In this case, our trade deficit with China would be offset with the Canadian trade deficit.

It is all a collectivist notion.

If anyone should complain about an imbalance in trade, it is probably Russia.  They used some American dollars to buy U.S. Treasury debt, which the U.S. government essentially defaulted on a few years ago.

The Big Player – Debt

There is an elephant in the room that Trump doesn’t seem to be talking about.  Xi, the president of China, does not seem to be talking about it too, at least not openly.

The Chinese government/ central bank owns almost $800 billion in U.S. Treasury securities (i.e., U.S. government debt).  Just going back to early 2022, China had over $1 trillion.  Looking at the sanctions put on Russia, it is no surprise that China has been backing away from owning so much U.S. debt.

With the tariff trade war taking place now, we have to believe that Chinese officials are privately talking about getting rid of U.S. debt.  I don’t think they are going to go nuclear (financially speaking) and sell off mass amounts of U.S. debt.  But they can just let what they have mature and not roll it over.

If Trump thinks the trade deficit is such a problem, then stop selling U.S. debt to foreigners.  How’s that for an idea?  Maybe Trump will get his wish of reducing the trade deficit with China by encouraging China not to buy U.S. financial products, including U.S. Treasury bonds.

That means fewer buyers of U.S. Treasuries.  That means the federal government will have to cut spending (there’s no sign of that) or the Fed will have to start buying up debt again (more inflation).  There is also the option of letting Americans buy the debt, but this will likely mean much higher interest rates, which will only lead to even more spending and more debt coming out of Washington.

The Trump Destruction

Trump has no idea what he is doing here.  Elon Musk understands economics much better than Trump, but I don’t think Musk can get through to him here.

Trump really is a bully, which is part of his tariff strategy.  He wants foreign leaders to come and beg him.

Trump has also threatened countries that consider abandoning the dollar and using their own currency or some alternative to the dollar.  Yet, Trump seems to be doing his best to destroy the dollar, or at least destroy its status as the world’s reserve currency.

It is because of these threats and because of these tariffs that countries will be forced to abandon the dollar.  They cannot trust the U.S. government.  And it is exacerbated by what they have seen done to Russia.

If I were a Chinese official, I would not want to be under the thumb of this U.S. president or any U.S. president.  I would be getting out of dollars and moving to alternate currencies or gold.

Trump foolishly thought he held all the cards.  He did not.  It is especially difficult when he attacks virtually every country on the planet with higher tariffs at the same time.  He could have done it to one country and gotten away with it.  The markets have forced him to scale back.

Trump says that Xi wants to make a deal but he just doesn’t know how to go about it.  I think Trump is talking about himself.

We were already going to get a recession with or without new tariffs.  This has made it worse, and it will put most of the blame squarely on Trump when it comes.  The stock market is a more immediate feedback mechanism.

I think Trump is going to want to desperately make a deal with China.  In Trump fashion, he will declare himself victorious.

If nothing is done and these tariffs exceeding 100% remain in effect, we are going to see much higher prices for some consumer goods.  We may see lower prices for some assets, particularly financial assets.  The tariffs will make a recession far worse than it would have been, and I believe it would have been bad enough without the tariffs.

Trump will get blamed for the recession other than from his hardcore supporters.  It is deserved even though the Federal Reserve plays a big role.  He is acting like an economic dictator.  If you govern with threats and constantly changing rules, there are going to be consequences.

Do you know why the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 was named as such?  It’s because it was legislation named after two congressional sponsors.  It was not a good piece of legislation, as it likely contributed to the Great Depression, but at least it was legislation.

Herbert Hoover, as president, had to sign the legislation for it to pass.  He didn’t arbitrarily dictate it to everyone.  At least it gave some notice and predictability to businesses.

All Taxes are Bad

All taxes are evil, but some are definitely more evil than others.  If a society is going to have some form of forced taxation, then it is best for the taxes to be small, proportional, maintain privacy, and minimize the disincentive to produce and build wealth.

Excise taxes tend to be less bad because they minimize on infringing on our privacy, and they minimize disincentivizing productivity.  Some are more fair than others.

If you have a gas tax that pays for the roads, that seems to be a rather fair way to go about it.  Now we have electric cars that don’t use gas, so it isn’t taxing the users as fairly as in the past.

Some people see tariffs as a good form of taxation.  It is a tax on imports.  I hear some Republicans justifying Trump’s tariffs by saying that it would be great if they could replace the income tax.

Guess what?  Trump isn’t getting rid of the income tax.  He can dictate higher tariffs, but he can’t dictate an end to the income tax.  Anyway, he doesn’t want to end the income tax because he needs the money to fund his massive budgets.

It’s not as if Trump is pushing to end the income tax at the same time he is imposing higher tariffs.  In fact, Trump isn’t even pushing for any of his campaign promises to stop taxing Social Security and no taxes on tips.

It’s not even clear if Trump is imposing higher tariffs in order to collect more money for the government.  He sees it as some kind of power trip to order other countries around.

The Excuse Factory

With Trump’s tariffs and a wild stock market, we get to hear the Republican talking points come out trying to justify it.

“He is using it for leverage.”

“He is trying to bring back manufacturing.”

“China is refusing to negotiate.”

“Other countries are manipulating us.”

It is all a bunch of collectivist thinking and bad economics.

Why does China have to negotiate with Trump?  Just because Trump said so?  Why can’t Trump just allow Americans to choose whether or not to voluntarily buy things from China?

For manufacturing, I don’t think most Americans really do want to bring it back.  How many Americans really want to work in a factory or some kind of manufacturing plant?  I don’t.  If there are people in China who want to work in factories and sell us things we want, why wouldn’t we let them?

This whole thing about manipulation and fair trade is a joke.  The Federal Reserve is the biggest currency manipulator in the world.

If you really want to help businesses in America, then start reducing spending, reducing taxes, and cutting all of the red tape.

How Can a Business Plan Properly?

Imagine trying to operate a business in this environment.  The costs of imports are fluctuating constantly as new tariff announcements are made.

Even companies who manufacture products in the U.S. often import materials.  This would include American car companies.

Imagine being the head of a construction company.  A client comes to you and says they want a quote on adding additional space on their building this summer.  In order to do the job, you will need quite a bit of lumber.

The lumber you will need cost $5,000 last week.  Next week it may cost $8,000 because of higher tariffs.  Maybe Trump will announce a reprieve for 90 days and you can get your lumber for $6,000.

If you quote a higher price than you would have before all of these new tariffs, the client might just say no.  If you quote a price assuming lumber will go back down to $5,000 but it ends up being $8,000, then you risk not making much profit on the job.

Now picture this scenario with tens of thousands of businesses and millions of people.  It is complete craziness.  It is impossible to predict or properly plan when your prices can arbitrarily go up or down depending on the mood of the president.

Feedback Mechanism

There is one good thing about this tariff disaster.  There is a fast feedback mechanism in the form of the stock market.  When higher tariffs are announced, stocks tank.  When there are signs that there will be tariff relief, stocks go up.

Trump announced today that he would be suspending much of the tariffs for 90 days while imposing 125% tariffs on China.  If these China tariffs stay in place, prices for many consumer goods are going to go a lot higher.

I told someone that I feel better about these tariffs than I did about the vaccine mandates from Joe Biden and company.  With the tariffs, there is instant feedback, and the majority of Americans don’t want to see their stocks crash and prices increase.  With the vaccine mandates, there were probably only 25% or so who were adamantly opposed to them.  It was definitely a tougher battle.

Trump has already gotten the message.  Now he is trying to find a way to backtrack on it.  The recession will probably happen anyway, but now his tariffs will just get more of the blame, even if he cuts them back permanently.

Elon Musk attacked Peter Navarro, Trump’s economic advisor.  Musk said Navarro is dumber than a sack of bricks.  Musk understands that these tariffs are bad for business.  We just don’t know if he still has influence on Trump.

Navarro is truly a moron. What he says here is demonstrably false.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 8, 2025

I wonder if Elon Musk realizes that DOGE is almost dead.  There will be no cut in federal spending of $1 trillion.  The budget is going up.  Trump is celebrating the first trillion-dollar “defense” budget.

The good news is that these high tariffs probably won’t stick for long unless Trump is trying to go down as the least popular president ever.  The bad news is that we will still get a recession.  The other bad news is that we are back to business as usual in Washington DC: militarism and massive spending.

A supposedly bad guy ran into a building in Yemen, so the U.S. government blew up the building.  If Donald Trump’s own family had been residing in that building, would he still have given orders to blow it up in order to keep shipping lanes open?

If a criminal runs into a building in the United States, it is not protocol to blow up the building.  Even if it is a really dangerous criminal, it doesn’t make much sense.  You have to kill people in order to save people?

What Trump and his team are doing in Yemen is highly immoral.  It would rightly be condemned here in the United States if the police were to blow up a building because a criminal was in there.  They would probably be charged with murder.

Yet, when it happens in Yemen, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of concern.  After all, we can just say that they are all a bunch of terrorists or they are harboring terrorists.  If there was a little child in there, well, that’s their fault.  Or it’s collateral damage.  We have heard all of the justifications for murder.

Elon Musk Thinks About the Families in Ukraine

Elon Musk talked about being compassionate for the people involved in the conflict in Ukraine.

He said:

“I take great offense at those who put the appearance of goodness over the reality of it.  Those who virtue signal and say we can’t give in to Russia, but have no solution to stopping thousands of kids dying every day….  I have contempt for such people and I want to make that clear.  Because they’re virtue signaling and their lack of a solution means that kids don’t have a father.  It means that parents lost a son.  For what? Nothing.”

Elon Musk becomes deeply moved, and deadly serious, when Bret Baier asks him why he called Sen. Mark Kelly a "Traitor" for pushing to send more US aid and weapons to Ukraine.

Watch every second of his response.

"We should have empathy for the thousands of people dying everyday… pic.twitter.com/FP3rZSFDzL

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) March 27, 2025

Everything Musk said there is true.  He is actually taking a moral stand for peace by saying this.

We can wonder if Musk feels the same way about kids in Gaza or Iran.  We can wonder if he feels the same way about kids in Yemen who are now being bombed by Trump – the guy who said he wanted to bring peace.

If Musk truly believes what he is saying here, then something has to give.  Either Trump has to scale back on his war making or Musk has to speak out against it, whether in public or private.  If he goes to Trump privately and shares his concern of Trump killing innocent people, then Trump will face a choice.

Even if Musk stays in his lane with DOGE, starting wars with other countries isn’t compatible with cutting spending.

If there is a fallout between these two personalities, then watch out.  The danger is that Trump gets rid of Musk and steps up his status as war criminal and chaos maker.

Trump Influencers

What happened to the people who surrounded Trump in the leadup to the election?  There seemed to be people generally in favor of more peace rallying around Trump.  They included Robert Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Donald Trump Jr., J.D. Vance, Tucker Carlson, Nicole Shanahan, and even Joe Rogan.

Tulsi and RFK have, unfortunately, seemed to somewhat cheer on the warmongering.  Vance opposed the bombing in Yemen, but he didn’t exactly strongly oppose it either.  We have no idea if Don Jr. is saying anything to his father.  Nicole Shanahan has not exactly been speaking out against war, but even she admitted that she was a little concerned with one of Kennedy’s comments.  She is continuing to focus on her main issue of health.

Tucker Carlson continues to be heroic, but he also hasn’t taken any direct hits at Trump yet.  I don’t blame him for this because he realizes that he could quickly lose his influence with many people if there is a falling out there.  Still, at some point, I think Tucker will have his line in the sand.  If Trump goes into an all-out war with Iran, I don’t think Tucker is staying quiet.

How is it that Trump learned almost nothing from his first term?  Maybe he is just a big phony and really wants war.  He just knows how to deliver the lie.

It really is hard to say, but Trump has quickly turned into another war president.  His intentions almost don’t even matter at this point.  He has blood on his hands.  He is killing innocent people, including children, in Yemen.  It doesn’t matter if he is being misled by his war hawk advisors.  Why did he put them there as advisors?

Trump’s presidency has gone up in flames in the matter of weeks.  Some of his supporters will just go along with whatever he says.  It is like post 9/11 all over again.  If the government says we have to keep you safe from terrorists, then just let them do whatever they need to do.

The only hope is that there are enough Trump supporters or former Trump supporters who speak out against these insane and immoral policies.  He must be called out by credible people for his war making and his immoral acts.

Donald Trump is doing everything in his power to prove his leftist critics correct.

To be sure, the left has gotten almost everything wrong about Trump.  This includes made-up quotes, quotes taken out of context, made-up stories, and overall projection.

The left got it wrong and/or lied about Trump on Charlottesville, January 6, Russia collusion, and a list that keeps going and going.  The left is still getting things wrong on almost everything.

One of the things we frequently hear from the left is that Trump wants to be a dictator.  This can mean different things.  Trump did peacefully step down from power in 2021 even as he contested the election results.  He was legitimately elected in 2024, so the dictator claim seems to be empty rhetoric.  It is also rather rich coming from a group that tried to throw Trump in prison before the election.

Still, just because you are elected, it doesn’t mean you can’t be a dictator.  Now, Trump is doing everything possible to prove his critics correct, and I am not going to defend him here.  In fact, I am speaking out against Trump and the disastrous policies he has been pushing for the last month or so.

The first few weeks of his presidency in 2025 started out somewhat well.  It included many just pardons, a few seemingly good appointments, and a DOGE team with good intentions to expose waste, fraud, and outright criminal spending.

It has now fallen apart quickly as the Trump administration is dominated by war hawks and authoritarians.  I know, that last part is repetitive.

Free Speech – Out the Window

The Trump team is arresting people and threatening to deport people who are here legally.  This includes someone who has a green card and should be considered a legal and permanent resident.  They are arresting people with government officials who aren’t even in uniform.  They are essentially kidnapping these people, and it isn’t even clear if there are actual criminal charges.

This really is something out of Nazi Germany.  So, for all of the leftists calling Trump a Nazi or Hitler, I am not going to completely disagree with you any longer.

What is the crime of these people?  It isn’t that they are criticizing Donald Trump.  It is that they are criticizing the state of Israel.  The Trump regime is arresting people for speaking out, organizing protests, and writing opinion columns.

And all of the Trump officials and supporters who are defending these actions sound like a bunch of authoritarians or imbeciles, oftentimes both.  They use vague language about being in our country (even though they are here legally) and that we must support our friend Israel.  They can’t actually identify any crimes that are being committed.

This is just an outright assault on free speech.  Anyone who is not an American citizen is being intimidated not to say anything that could be construed as being “pro Palestinian” or against Israel.  You may just be arrested and deported for sharing your opinion.  This could even intimidate American citizens from speaking out.

You should be free to say anything you want as long as it isn’t threatening violence.  This is especially egregious because of what you are not allowed to say.  You could just say that there are too many people in Gaza dying, and that might be enough to get you arrested.  This is full-on totalitarianism.

Tariffs

Trump continues to act like a dictator when it comes to his idiotic tariff policies.  He just arbitrarily decides to raise or lower tariffs on a whim.

Even though Congress is horrible, at least income tax legislation has to go through Congress.  It slows everything down.  As bad as the tax code is, at least there is some predictability.  It isn’t constantly changing without advanced notice.

These tariffs are just awful.  It isn’t just the high rates either.  It is the uncertainty for businesses.

Will they be 25% higher next month?  Will they go up another 25%?  Will they go back down if the president of some country falls down on his knees and kisses Trump’s ring?

So, not only are the tariffs exceedingly harsh, there is also major regime uncertainty.  It is hard enough to plan as a business.  This is incredibly burdensome not knowing what the taxes on imported goods will be from one day to the next.

Trump deserves the recession that he is going to get.  He deserves it good and hard.  We have to make clear that it has nothing to do with DOGE and any phony cuts that may have been announced.

The bad economy has everything to do with monetary policy and government spending.  The added burden of higher tariffs and the uncertainty they bring just adds to the chaos and a worse economy.

One person should never have the power to just arbitrarily slap on a tax that impacts hundreds of millions of people.

Yemen

The Trump team really messed up with the controversy over allowing a journalist (a mostly bad one) on one of their chat groups where they are planning a war against Yemen as if they are planning a birthday party.

I don’t know if this was intentionally done by someone or if it was really an accident.  Either way, it shows total incompetence.

The response by the Trump team has been pathetic in trying to explain this.  They just come across as a bunch of liars and fools.

Yet, that isn’t really the bad part.  The bad part is that they actually carried out this bombing attack against Yemen.  We can be reasonably sure that a lot of innocent people died.

Donald Trump has quickly confirmed his status as war criminal in his new term.  He was also a war criminal in his first term, but there is definitely an argument to be made that he was far less bad than his predecessors.

The reason the Trump team bombed Yemen is because they like war.  But in this specific case, the Houthis were threatening to block shipping lanes because of the Israeli state’s continued killing of people in Gaza.

And we all know you can’t do or so anything against Israel.  If you live in the U.S. and do that, you may be arrested.  If you live in a foreign country and do that, then you will be blown up, along with your neighbor too.

Of course, this is what you get when Trump picks Mike Waltz as his National Security Advisor.  He was originally part of the Bush administration as an advisor to Dick Cheney.  You know, the Cheney family who supported Kamala Harris.

Way to go, Trump.  Keep surrounding yourself and putting trust in the war hawks while you attack Thomas Massie.

Speaking Out Against Trump

It is vitally important that we speak out against Trump.  This does not include the leftists who have continually attacked Trump over the years and gotten almost everything wrong.  They have little credibility.  Just because they called Trump a dictator and are turning out to be right on that one thing, it doesn’t give them any credibility.

It is especially important for people who voted for Trump, supported Trump, or even sympathized with Trump to speak out against these atrocious policies.  We need some big names to come out against Trump.  I am not saying they should be like me and call him a war criminal.  But they should politely and firmly call out all of these areas where he is wrong, particularly with regard to foreign policy and arresting people for speaking and writing.

I don’t expect Tulsi Gabbard or RFK Jr. to speak out.  They might be part of the problem, and they are working for Trump right now.

Elon Musk is really only a temporary worker for Trump.  It would be nice for him to start pushing back in private.  If there is ever a falling out between Trump and Musk, it is going to be a doozy.

There are high-profile people that need to start speaking out against this Trump authoritarianism.  I am thinking of people like Tucker Carlson, Vivek Ramaswamy, Nicole Shanahan, and Joe Rogan.  There are other conservative personalities who could speak out too, but I am afraid some of them won’t dare to defy Trump in any way.

I think Tucker Carlson has spoken out in his own way.  He has been critical of starting foreign conflicts.  He doesn’t go after Trump by name, but he does make it somewhat known where he stands.  He certainly doesn’t stand with the war hawks of the Trump administration, of which there are many.

This is a valid strategy.  You can just attack all of the people Trump hired who are doing bad things without naming Trump at all.

The people with credibility who supported Trump in the hopes of something different need to speak out now. We need to bully Trump into the right positions.  If he continues to be under the thumb of the war hawks, then it should show in his approval ratings.

With Trump starting and continuing conflicts overseas, along with a coming recession and higher consumer prices, Trump’s approval ratings should be in the toilet by summer.

I very tentatively voted for Trump in November 2024.  It was the first time I ever voted for someone for president who won.  I voted for Trump as the lesser of two evils.  I had some mild optimism because of the people who rallied around him in the weeks leading up to the election.

This is now a critical time where we need some of those same people to speak out against Trump and these authoritarian policies.

We still have a lot of reason for hope, but Trump is lost.  I don’t know if he is just another evil politician or if he is really that stupid.  I suspect it is a little bit of both.  The people with credibility need to push him in the right direction.  If enough Trump supporters or former Trump supporters make it known that this isn’t what they voted for, maybe Trump will get the message.  Even war criminals can be compelled into doing the right thing.

I was in a home improvement store recently to pick up a few things.  It is springtime, and it is time to think about my lawn.  I saw a sale on lawncare products.

There were two different types of fertilizer for grass.  One type was weed and feed.  The other type was a turf builder.  They were the same brand name.  If you bought a large bag of weed and feed and a large bag of the turf builder, you instantly got $50 off when checking out.  There was no coupon required.

I didn’t need these big bags.  I saw there was a similar deal for smaller bags.  If you bought one of each, you got $20 off at checkout.  Considering one of the bags was only $25, it seemed like a pretty good deal.

As I was grabbing the bags of fertilizer, there was another man who had appeared.  He put a big bag of the weed and feed on his cart.  He said to his wife (I think) that he probably needs a smaller bag too.

I mentioned to him that if he gets the large bag of turf builder, he will get $50 off because he was already buying the weed and feed bag.  That was the only thing I said.

The price of the large bag of weed and feed was about $60.  The large bag of turf builder was about $50.  He was already getting the weed and feed for $60.  He could get the bag of turf builder for free.

He said to me, “I have weeds.  I don’t need that stuff.  I need this.”  He said it in a rather brash way.  He could have at least said something like, “Oh, thanks for letting me know.  I only need the weed and feed.”

I find it hard to believe he couldn’t have used the free bag of turf builder to go with his weed and feed.  I am far from a lawn expert, but I would think the turf builder could at least be a good supplement once the weeds are under control.

Walking Away

There is a point to my story.  When he made his comment to me, I could have explained to him that the bag of turf builder would essentially be free.  It might have been $49 and something cents, so it would have actually been a few cents cheaper to get it.

But this guy already had his mind made up.  He wasn’t overtly rude to me, but he also wasn’t friendly or polite.  I tried to be nice with my brief statement.  Once he responded the way he did, I had no use for him any longer.  I had no use for him in the first place, but I was just trying to be helpful.  I didn’t say another word to the man.

It doesn’t usually annoy me when people are stupid about something.  It annoys me when they are stupid and arrogant about it.  They think they know something, yet they don’t.

Ignorance is Bliss

I remember an incident a long time ago when I was a young adult.  I was going to Busch Gardens (the theme park) to meet some friends inside.  I had a couple of empty cans of soda that had a $20 off coupon on the can.  If you turned in the can when buying your ticket, you got $20 off the ticket.

I was waiting in line to get a ticket.  I was a capitalist back then too.  I was going to use one of the cans for my own ticket.  I offered a young woman in line to buy the can for $10 from me and it would get her $20 off her ticket.  She looked at me with skepticism and said no.

(Today, I would probably just give the can away to someone who looked like a decent person.)

The woman’s boyfriend hadn’t heard our conversation.  He turned around and asked her what I was saying to her.  She said (from my memory), “I don’t know.  He was trying to sell me that can for $20 so that I can get $20 off of my ticket price.”

The guy then said to me, something to the effect of, “You know, that doesn’t make sense.  It only gets $20 off the ticket.  You should sell it for something like $10 so that we get something out of it.”

He was absolutely correct in what he was saying.  The problem is that his girlfriend was an idiot.  I had offered it to her for $10.  She just couldn’t be bothered to process the information.  She told him the wrong information.

I could have explained to the guy that I had offered it to her for $10.  I could have explained that his girlfriend was not that bright.  When he said what he said, I just looked at him with a smug face and turned around.  I ended up selling it for even less to someone else.

The man thought I was an idiot.  The truth is that his girlfriend was the idiot.  I didn’t bother correcting the record.  I knew when to walk away.

Facebook

There are a lot of people in life who just are not that bright when it comes to certain things.  There are many areas in life where I am not that bright.  I just hope that I’m smart enough to know my limitations.  When I don’t know what I’m talking about, then I should minimize my talking about it.

I see Facebook friends post stupid stuff all the time.  When it is really stupid, it is usually political related.  I have had my share of conversations in the past on Facebook.  I don’t think there is anything wrong with this, but I think it is a mistake to spend too much time doing this.

The one purpose it can serve is that other people viewing the comments might be influenced by what you say.  But even that isn’t common.

You aren’t going to change the person’s mind.  They can post the dumbest meme in the world.  You can point out how it is false or a really bad analogy.  It doesn’t matter how right you are or how much sense you are making.  It won’t change the person’s mind.

If you are going to have influence on someone, it isn’t going to be someone who is posting political stuff that is the opposite of what you believe.  You aren’t going to change a statist into a libertarian because of your comments on Facebook.

If you are going to have influence on people, it will more likely be people who are already sympathetic to your views.  Maybe they just need a little deeper understanding of an issue.  Maybe someone who wasn’t previously interested in anything political is now being more curious.  These are the people you are more likely to grab.

I have had to resist making comments many times to posts that are talking points for the establishment narrative.  The best thing is when I see someone post something stupid and it gets no comments and very few likes or reactions.  Silence is sometimes the best dissent.

Conclusion

You can’t avoid stupid people in life.  But you can learn to walk away when it is possible.  Sometimes you can just avoid stupid people by not saying another word to them.

Talking to them is probably not going to make them any smarter, and it will be healthier for you mentally.

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) released its latest statement on monetary policy.  The target federal funds rate remains unchanged in a range between 4.25% and 4.5%.

One thing that typically doesn’t get much attention from the financial media is the actual balance sheet of the Fed.  While we usually hear about “rates”, we don’t hear much, if anything, about whether the Fed is inflating or deflating the base money supply.

The Fed had been draining its bloated balance sheet that reached a high of nearly $9 trillion in 2022.  For many FOMC meetings now, they had maintained a runoff each month of $25 billion in Treasury securities and $35 billion in mortgage-backed securities (a total of $60 billion).

The Fed is maintaining its runoff of $35 billion per month in mortgage-backed securities, but it is reducing its runoff of Treasury securities to just $5 billion per month.  Overall, starting in April, we will be at $40 billion per month instead of $60 billion per month.

To be clear, the Fed isn’t actually selling anything.  It is allowing some of its debt to mature without rolling it over.

This was seen as good news by stock investors.  It means less monetary deflation and one step closer to no monetary deflation at all.  Given the size of the Fed’s balance sheet (still around $6.75 trillion), $40 billion per month isn’t a huge sum.

Economic Uncertainty and Inflation Expectations

The Fed is acknowledging economic uncertainty, and its growth projections have gone down.  But they are stuck between a rock and a hard place as price inflation keeps coming in higher than what they would like.

Jerome Powell was asked about inflation and tariffs enacted by Trump.  Powell said it is impossible to measure how much tariffs account for inflation but that they do account for some of it.

What is his excuse for the 3 years before Trump came into office?

It is certainly true that tariffs will make things more expensive than they otherwise would have been, but you can also see where Powell and the Fed are using this as a get out of jail free card.  The Fed is primarily responsible for the price inflation.

A new or increased tariff will likely increase consumer prices, but it should be a one-time effect if it doesn’t change after that.  It isn’t like monetary inflation that can keep prices going up over time, one year after another, and compounding on itself.  Trump is giving Powell a convenient excuse for not bringing price inflation under control.

The Yield Curve and the Fed

The inverted yield curve, which we had for 2023 and much of 2024, serves as a recession warning.  It will typically normalize before the recession actually becomes evident.

It will often “normalize” because the Fed is pushing short-term rates down in response to an economic slowdown.  It actually is a legitimate question to ask if the Fed is driving the yield curve or if the yield curve is driving the Fed.  It is probably both.

In this case, the Fed is not lowering rates at the moment.  Maybe it is to make trouble for Trump.  Maybe it is because they are truly concerned about price inflation.

Either way, this doesn’t change the fact that the yield curve is still somewhat normalizing even without the Fed sharply cutting its target rate.  If anything, they will just seem late to the game when recession hits and the Fed hasn’t been doing much of anything (which is what it should have done in the first place).

The Fed can’t stop the oncoming recession unless it wants to turn to massive monetary inflation.  Right now, they are sticking with a policy of monetary deflation, even if it isn’t much.

Gold has finally hit the milestone of $3,000 per ounce.  It first hit $2,000 in August 2020.  It has risen 50% in less than 5 years.

Perhaps it is more accurate to say that the dollar has fallen by a third since that time.  In 2020, $3,000 would have bought you 1.5 ounces of gold.  Now it would buy just 1 ounce of gold.

But the price of gold retreated after hitting the $2,000 mark in 2020 and stayed in a somewhat narrow range for a while.  It was trading slightly below $2,000 as late as February 2024.  It has absolutely exploded in price over the course of one year.

Inflation is Here to Stay

It was surprising that gold hadn’t risen much before 2024, especially given the elevated price inflation that American consumers have experienced.  Gold is typically thought of as a good hedge against inflation, but some were wondering if that was no longer true.

That has all changed now.  It is important to realize that the price of gold isn’t just a reflection of current inflation.  It is a reflection of future inflation expectations.

Perhaps there is more of a realization now that inflation isn’t going away given the massive budget deficits.  Even with DOGE, there is little sign that spending at the federal level is going to get under control any time soon.

We also have to consider that we are living through this Everything Bubble.  When price inflation was roaring in 2022 and 2023, a lot of money was still being used to buy other assets like real estate and stocks.  A lot of money went into housing in 2020 when the Fed was creating massive amounts of new money out of thin air.

The new money was bidding up the prices of other assets, while investors and speculators were not jumping into gold.  Things have finally started to shift in this respect.

Gold in a Recession

It is likely we are entering into a recession after nearly 2 years of an inverted yield curve.  A recession is bad for asset prices in general.  People look to sell things for available cash.  The one exception may be a recession that happens when there is still high price inflation.

We should expect the price of gold to go down in dollar terms with a recession.  This is what happened in late 2008 with the financial crisis.  But gold did not go down to the same degree that stocks did.  Also, gold recovered quite quickly during that time.

While every recession is different, we will probably see something similar play out here.  In fact, any downturn in gold might only last a couple of months as the digital money printing presses get fired up again.

Again, it is all about future expectations.  If there is a lot of monetary inflation with the onset of a recession – and there is little reason to believe we won’t see this – then people will want to hedge against this with gold, even as other assets continue to come down from their bubble highs.

Gold should be a long-term play.  It is there for insurance.  It is there for diversification, which a lot of investors miss.  Gold can really smooth out a portfolio.

It’s not to say that you can’t speculate with gold and mining stocks.  In fact, mining stocks have a lot of potential to rise in multiples of their current prices.  But they could also take a big initial hit in a recession.

Even in bad economic times, there are opportunities.  Sometimes there are better opportunities because things get so relatively cheap.  Either way, you should always have a core of gold holdings for insurance and diversification.

The first 6 weeks or so of the 2025 Trump administration were generally good for those who favor liberty.  Of course, we have to grade on something of a curve because every president for the last many decades has been bad.

Trump, with the help of Elon Musk, came in swinging.  It wasn’t always pretty.  It has been quite chaotic.  Some chaos in a really bad system is to be expected.  Some of the chaos has probably been unnecessary.

Still, we have seen massive waste, fraud, and criminality exposed by DOGE.  There was a hope that we might actually see real cuts in the government.

Trump had his share of establishment picks for his administration, but he has also had some seemingly great ones, such as Tulsi Gabbard and Robert Kennedy Jr.

Trump has made good on his promises to free or pardon Ross Ulbricht and the J6 protesters.

To top it off, Trump threw down the dictator of Ukraine and has taken a position far outside the establishment by saying that he wants peace in Ukraine.

These are just a few of the highlights.  Trump has showed that he really can be different than previous presidents who always maintained the establishment narrative and the deep state.  Even with Trump’s many flaws, he has arguably done more for liberty in the first six weeks of his new presidency than any previous presidents have done cumulatively for the last 25 years.

The Honeymoon is Over

I remember the first Trump term.  Every time he did something really bad for liberty, he would go and do something really positive.  And every time he did something really good, he would find a way to ruin it with something bad.

Maybe we are going for longer stretches this time.  For some reason, everything has seemed to turn after about 6 weeks.

There are three really bad things that have transpired recently.  They aren’t necessarily new things, but it just shows a continuation of bad policies that are against liberty.

1) Tariffs

We already knew that Trump was not sound on economics and really bad when it came to the issue of tariffs.  He sees tariffs as a wonderful thing where he can mold the economy and mold his relationship with leaders of other countries.

First, it is like we are living in a dictatorship where one person gets to arbitrarily decide the policy on any given day.  Why does the president get to just raise or lower tariffs on a whim?  Where is Congress?

Sure, Congress is horrible, but at least it would be a roadblock from this tariff nonsense.  And at least it would add some stability if tariffs had to be enacted with legislation.

Instead, we have Trump changing his mind virtually every day.  One day, we are going to raise tariffs.  The next day, we aren’t going to raise them after all.  The next day, we are going to raise them, but we will exempt certain products and we’ll revisit the issue in another month.

It is total chaos.  But this isn’t like the DOGE chaos where it creates chaos within the government.  This is chaos for the marketplace and consumers.  Suppliers, both foreign and domestic, don’t know what to do or how much to produce or what to charge.

This is just bad policy.  If Trump had just raised all tariffs by 10%, it would make life more expensive for Americans, but at least there would be predictability.  Instead, we are just getting complete chaos.  This could ultimately make things even more expensive or perhaps even lead to some shortages.

2) Free Speech

Trump has been trying to crack down on protests on college campuses, specifically regarding Israel and Gaza.

He has threatened to withhold federal funds from Columbia University for protests there.  I am all in favor of not sending federal funds to Columbia or any other college or university.  But it shouldn’t be on the basis of allowing people to protest or say things you don’t like.

Now we have the Trump administration threatening to deport people who are involved in these protests.  This even includes someone who has a green card, which means the person is a legal and permanent resident.

This is a horrible precedent that is a complete violation of free speech.  If the person is directly threatening violence or committing violence in any way, then that should be the crime.  It is not a crime by itself to protest or speak out.

To me, this seems like something the Biden administration would have done, only for protesting or speaking out on a different issue.

I guess Trump and some of his followers are woke.  It just has to be the right issue.

3) Thomas Massie and the Budget

Trump has decided to pick another fight with Thomas Massie and suggested that he should be primaried in the next election.

I guess Trump didn’t learn his lesson from 2020 when Massie tried to question all of the insane and reckless spending to cover over the lockdowns.  It turns out Massie was beyond correct when he took this stand.  There was massive fraud and waste with the trillions spent in 2020, and it was a major factor in giving us the high price inflation that came on in 2022 and still to this day.

By supporting this continuing resolution in Congress, Trump is continuing the awful spending from before.  It almost negates everything that DOGE has done up until this point.  With this budget, there are no cuts in government spending.  Maybe some of it is redirected, but there are no cuts.

At the very least, the awful spending uncovered by Musk and his DOGE team should have gone to Congress to rescind the funds.  That should have been a condition for passing the current continuing resolution.

If Trump doesn’t strike at the budget now and lets the phony Mike Johnson get away with this, then I don’t see much hope in September when the next budget comes up.  Trump has to strike while the iron is hot.  In another 6 months, he will have lost his honeymoon privilege, and he probably won’t have as much support from the American people.

Massie is absolutely correct on the phoniness of this budget and the fake fighting in Congress.  It is a cover for Washington DC to keep doing what it has been doing for a long time.  Trump is absolutely wrong on this issue.

It also shows that Trump still doesn’t understand who is enemies are.  Just because someone criticizes you or opposes something you are doing doesn’t make them an enemy.  Massie defended Trump on things like Russia collusion and J6.  Trump continues to show a lack of judgment.

Conclusion

Trump’s second term started off well, but it has reversed quickly.  The best we can say now is that it has exposed a lot more bad things going on in Washington DC.

We are going to hit a recession, and Trump will get blamed by some people who voted for him or were at least open to him making changes.  It won’t be any cuts in government spending that causes the recession because we don’t know that there are actually any cuts and the recession was going to happen anyway.

Trump’s tariffs should rightly take a little bit of the blame, as it has just made a bad situation worse with the economy.

Now that Trump has done a series of really bad things, maybe he will go and do something good next.

U.S. stocks plunged to start the week on Monday.  The Dow lost almost 900 points, while the Nasdaq was down a whopping 727 points.  The Nasdaq has fallen below 17,500.  It wasn’t long ago that surpassed 20,000.

Bitcoin has also fallen substantially after the initial bump after the election.  After trading at over $100,000 per bitcoin, it has now fallen below $80,000.

Gold has slipped below $2,900 per ounce, but it is holding up pretty well in comparison to most everything else.

Trump’s Humility

In a rare moment of humility Donald Trump said that we are in “a period of transition”, and when asked about the possibility of a recession, Trump wouldn’t exactly rule that out.  He said, “I hate to predict things like that.  There is a period of transition because what we’re doing is very big.”

Perhaps Trump is referring to his administration’s attempt to uncover waste and fraudulent spending, much of which is serving to undermine the American people and spread the establishment narratives.

If we actually get significant cuts in government spending, it will be disruptive to some people, especially the ruling elite.  But that won’t cause a recession.

The Yield Curve

A recession is baked into the cake.  We had an inverted yield curve for all of 2023 and most of 2024.  It has finally started to flatten and somewhat normalize in recent months, which means we should get a recession soon.

You can’t blame Trump for this unless you want to blame Trump from 2020.  Trump went along with the lockdowns and the massive digital money printing that helped blow up this bubble.

We probably would have had a deep recession in 2020 if not for the massive injection of new money in March and April of 2020.  This delayed the inevitable, and now we are in an even worse situation.

Just the Beginning

Don’t get fooled by the down stocks and think that things will turn around quickly.  We have grown accustomed to temporary bear markets that seem to last a couple of weeks.  Before long, we are hitting new all-time highs again.

We have to go back to 2008/ 2009 to see a big market crash.  It’s been 16 years.  Even that one didn’t last that long, but the drop was massive.

Some who are supposedly on the pessimistic side say that we might see a 20 or 25 percent drop in stocks. But then they assure us that everything will be just fine because stocks always go up in the long run.

I can’t rule out a drop of 75% or more, particularly with the Nasdaq.  We don’t know how the Fed will react with a recession and a plunging stock market, but let’s remember that price inflation is still above their 2% target.  And I doubt that Jerome Powell is in a great hurry to bail out Donald Trump from a recession.

When the Nasdaq peaked in the tech bubble of the late 1990s/ early 2000s, it peaked at just over 5,000.  I wouldn’t be shocked to see a bottom somewhere around that level in the future.  That would be about a 75% drop from the peak at just over 20,000.

Be prepared!

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.