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.

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?