It was only a short 4 years ago when much of the country was still in lockdown because of a so-called pandemic.  Even in 2022, there were still restrictions, and people were still being compelled to get a so-called vaccine.

I am still of the opinion that if COVID was not hyped by the government and its puppet media, then we would have barely noticed a thing.  Maybe there would have been a few headlines about having a worse than normal flu season and that elderly people should be extra cautious.

I will not forget the extreme damage that was done through the threatening violence of government.  Some people were prohibited from operating their business or going to their job.  Many people were prohibited from visiting loved ones, even those who were in desperate need of companionship and an advocate.

I will not forget the people who were mistreated (murdered) by the hospitals who just followed orders and did not give proper treatment to people who needed it.  Worse, the hospitals oftentimes gave sick people deadly drugs and threw them on a ventilator because that was the deadly protocol.

I will not forget that about 100 million people were told that they better get a medical injection in their arm or else they will not be allowed to work at their job.

This was a stunning level of authoritarianism, yet it has barely come up in the 2024 presidential election.

Washington DC Orders

It is true that the federal government didn’t issue the lockdowns.  It was done by state governors and city mayors and other local political entities.  Still, it was the federal government recommending the lockdowns, and it is hard to ever use the term “recommending” when it comes to the federal government.  It’s like hearing from the Mafia, “We recommend that you make a payment by Thursday.”

The federal government was giving a lot of bad guidance.  You could say they were constantly engaging in misinformation.  The government was paying hospitals to label everything COVID and put people on ventilators.  The government issued mask mandates for airplanes and federal buildings.  The government funded the so-called vaccines and marketed them, and of course, mandated them.

The people who did this to us are criminals.  They killed a lot of people and ruined a lot of lives.  Yet, it is barely a topic that is discussed.

2024 Politics

It is amazing that COVID has received such little attention.  The “vaccines” and the mandates have received almost no attention.  I think Trump mentioned the word “mandates” once during his debate with Biden.

Kamala Harris referenced COVID once to actually attack Trump.  She said something to the effect that the country suffered under Trump but then the Biden administration brought us through the pandemic.  This is a joke and complete projection.  Trump was bad on COVID for many reasons, yet it was obvious going into the 2020 election that Biden would be far worse.  Biden and his puppet masters exceeded all expectations on just how authoritarian they could be.

It is no surprise that the topic of COVID and the vaccines wasn’t brought up in the debates.  It doesn’t particularly benefit either candidate to do so, and it doesn’t benefit the debate “moderators” to do so.

Trump has done many interviews.  I don’t know he has been asked about COVID recently.  I do recall interviews farther back in time where he was given a little pushback and asked about lockdowns and vaccines.

Harris is doing more interviews now with the election a few weeks away.  She is already tanking in the interviews, but could you imagine how tripped up she would get if she were asked a tough question on COVID vaccines?  I didn’t expect anything from Fox News, but just imagine how bad Harris would have been tripped up with a question such as:

“Vice President Harris, under the Biden administration, an executive order was issued that required about 100 million Americans to receive a medical injection in their arm.  If they refused such injection, they would not be allowed to work at their job and feed their families.  Do you agree that this was the right thing to do by President Biden?  Do you agree that people should not be allowed to work and provide for their families if they do not agree to be vaccinated?”

She would have been a deer in the headlights.  She might have just walked off the set or had some kind of a seizure right on the spot.

Never Forget

The establishment media and the criminals who imposed these lockdowns and mandates don’t want to talk about it much these days.  We should never forget what was done to us by these tyrants.

There have to be millions of people out there who suffered greatly.  There are people who lost loved ones due to mistreatment (to put it kindly).  There are people who lost income during the lockdowns.  There are people who got depressed during lockdowns.  There are people who lost their jobs because they wouldn’t take a jab in the arm.  There are people who were injured after being compelled to take a jab in the arm.

There is really nobody speaking on their behalf right now on the national stage.  I can’t imagine any of these people would vote for Harris.  Perhaps they might vote for Trump as the lesser of two evils.

COVID hysteria and the mandates are still fresh in my mind.  I don’t know how many others still think about it.

In late May 2024, Chase Oliver was nominated as the presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party (LP).  It was a surprising outcome to say the least.  He almost lost to NOTA (None of the Above) on the last ballot after all of the other candidates had been eliminated.

If there is such a thing as a left libertarian, it is Chase Oliver.  He was apparently bad on COVID, and he is openly gay.  Personally, I don’t think being gay automatically makes you a leftist, but he wears it on his sleeve and has somewhat gone along with the so-called woke agenda.

If you ask Chase Oliver about policy issues, he does come down as mostly libertarian.  He seems to be genuinely anti-war, but it is always hard to know what someone would actually do if they attained political power.  There are some on the left who claim to be anti-war, but once they are in political power, they end up supporting the military-industrial complex.  At the very least, they end up emphasizing cultural issues while deemphasizing war issues.

When Oliver got the nomination, I said I would at least give him a chance.  I would consider giving him a protest vote if he said all of the right things on the major issues and generally avoided or deemphasized any issues where I don’t agree.

Still, if I am going to throw away my vote in protest, then the person better be pretty solid.  It isn’t like voting for the lesser of two evils.  I disagree with Trump on many major issues, yet I would at least consider voting for him as the lesser of two evils and a protest against the deep state.  If I am going to vote third party for someone who has no chance of winning, then that person better be solid on the major issues.  Otherwise, I can just write in someone like Ron Paul or simply not vote at all for president.

Nowhere to Be Found

I haven’t heard or seen a single thing from Chase Oliver or even about Chase Oliver for several months.  He is nowhere to be seen.  Maybe I am just looking in all of the wrong places.

I get emails from the national LP.  I think they mentioned Oliver in a few emails not long after the convention.  Most of the emails I get now talk about specific issues or about running candidates for local office or fundraising.

I know the LP leadership isn’t really a fan of Chase Oliver.  Many of the people are from the Mises Caucus and would have supported Dave Smith for president, but he decided not to run.  Angela McCardle (the LP chair) has not gone out of her way to campaign for Chase Oliver except to say that she encourages all leftists to support him.  There is a certain irony that the leftist libertarians (if that’s not an oxymoron), who absolutely hate Trump, actually helped Trump by nominating someone like Oliver.  He won’t be stealing many Trump votes.

I haven’t seen or heard of Chase Oliver anywhere, and I don’t think that would have been the case if the nominee had been someone different.  To be fair, I’m not sure that the establishment media would have had any LP candidate on.

I remember seeing Harry Browne on Fox News in 2000 when he was running.  That was before I was really familiar with him.  For all of the faults with Fox News, they do tend to be more open about having some diverse views on the network.  I have no idea if Chase Oliver has tried to get on the network.

I know Gary Johnson made some appearances on television when he ran with the LP.  He was on MSNBC when they had their little “gotcha” moment with Aleppo.

Alternative Media?

Maybe I can give a pass for not appearing on the corporate media.  But what about alternative media?  Has he tried to get on Joe Rogan?  What about getting interviewed by someone like Jordan Peterson?  What about Candace Owens or Patrick Bet David?  What about libertarians like Tom Woods and Dave Smith?

Part of me understands why Chase Oliver wouldn’t want to go into these environments and be challenged, but what do you have to lose?  Be a libertarian and maybe some of the audience will like you enough to throw you a vote.

Why is this guy acting invisible?  I genuinely don’t know.  I don’t know if he is just being shut out from the conversation.  I don’t know if he is scared to do any hard interviews.  I don’t know if his campaign team is just completely inept.  Maybe it is a combination of these things.

If Oliver had said all of the right things and emphasized the right issues on the campaign trail, I seriously would have considered throwing my vote his way.  But how can I even consider supporting someone who won’t even show his face?

Robert Kennedy Jr., in spite of some of his faulty positions, appeared almost everywhere he could when he was actively running for president.  Sure, his name helped him get to some of these places.  But he didn’t seem to be afraid to be interviewed by people who were going to ask him some tough questions.  He wanted the exposure, and he wanted to reach as many people as he could.

Good for the LP?

The fact that Oliver is barely visible at all is perhaps good news for the LP.  I don’t want people getting the impression that he is representative of a libertarian philosophy.  And since there are so many people committed to voting for or against Donald Trump, maybe it wasn’t the best time to have a strong LP candidate.  I also don’t want people voting LP for the simple fact that they can’t stand either of the two major candidates.  I want people voting LP because they actually favor greater liberty.

Hopefully we can get a good candidate and nominee in 2028 that will help advance the cause of liberty.  And maybe that candidate can actually show their face to people and be heard.

The latest CPI numbers came out for September 2024.  The CPI was up 0.2% for the month, while the year-over-year now stands at 2.4%.

The less volatile median CPI showed an increase of 0.3% for the month.  The year-over-year median CPI is 4.1%.

The general consensus from the financial media talking heads is that things are improving because this is the lowest annual price inflation reading we’ve seen since early 2021.

I can’t emphasize enough how a falling rate of price inflation isn’t any kind of great victory.  Sure, we could be showing a year-over-year increase of, say, 8%, which would be far worse.  But we shouldn’t act as if 2.4% is really good news, even if we are to believe the statistics.

The problem is that the 2.4% increase over the last year is on top of the even bigger increases we saw the two years before that.

Imagine a couple who had their house broken into 4 times last year.  This year, their house was broken into 2 times.  The husband announces to his wife, “Good news, we’re trending in the right direction.”  Meanwhile, they still haven’t recovered any of their stuff that was stolen from last year.

Car Insurance

This CNBC article gives a breakdown of the (price) inflation figures.  It shows eggs have risen almost 40% over the last year.  That actually doesn’t line up with my own personal experience.  I have seen egg prices rising again, but the worst I saw was in 2021 and 2022.

What does line up with my own experience is motor vehicle insurance, which is up 16.3% according to BLS data.  I expect this is felt by everybody who owns a vehicle that is insured.

This is a great example of where it is hard to measure price increases and how much they impact people.

Imagine a family that owns two vehicles.  Last year, they were paying $3,000 in annual premiums for insurance, which was already up a lot from the year before.  It went up by 16.3% in the last year.  It is now $3,489 annually.  That is an additional $489 they are paying from the year before, which was already a struggle.

An extra $40 per month doesn’t seem like a big deal, but that is the increase for just that one thing.  What if the family makes $70,000 per year and is living paycheck to paycheck?  That $40 extra per month for that one thing makes a significant difference.  Now start adding in the additional costs for food, homeowners insurance, health insurance, and the actual cost of a new vehicle or vehicle repairs.

If you have a family making an income of $20,000 per month ($240,000 per year), then those additional expenses are easily handled.  That extra $40 per month for car insurance isn’t nothing, but it doesn’t have much of an impact on the family pulling in $20,000 per month.

It is, however, a big deal for the family making $70,000 per year and already struggling to get by.

Who Does Price Inflation Hurt the Most?

There is no question that higher price inflation hurts the poor the most.  This includes people with a relatively low income.  But it has become such a problem in the last few years that price inflation is having a significant impact on middle class America.

We live in a world where it just seems like almost everything is expensive.  The cost of the average house or car is incredibly higher than it was.  If you want to get someone in your house to fix something, it will likely cost you at least a hundred dollars just for someone to show up at your door.

I remember when I could get an oil change for under $20 a couple of decades ago.  Maybe it wasn’t even that long ago.  I doubt there are many places that would do that now.

I know the price of eggs and peanut butter have risen dramatically over the last several years.  We get anchored to the new prices, but we shouldn’t forget what they were and what is being done to us.  Our living standards have taken a hit because of these reckless monetary and spending policies.

Government makes our lives much more expensive by taxing and regulating.  Of course, we shouldn’t forget the lockdown mania of 2020 either.  Still, the root of this is monetary policy, which is there to enable massive deficit spending by Congress.

This is what happens when the Federal Reserve creates trillions of new dollars out of thin air.  We are suffering the consequences of it now.  Until it is widely understood that this is the core problem, we will continue to suffer under it.

Sometimes we don’t know whether really egregious acts of the state can be chalked up to evilness or just incompetence.  Oftentimes, it is a combination of both.

There is nothing like a natural disaster to expose the incompetence and evil of government.  We are witnessing this with the response to the devastation of Hurricane Helene.

It is actually striking how similar it is to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 that left much of New Orleans flooded.  There are certainly differences between the two storms and the reactions.  In 2005, Bush had already won reelection while Hurricane Helene happened right before a major election.  Still, the horrible responses to both events are similar, and it is obvious that nothing has improved over the last 19 years.

This isn’t just a federal government thing, although FEMA and the federal response is the biggest area of evil and incompetence.  But it is important to acknowledge that state and local governments can also hinder efforts to help victims by imposing bureaucratic red tape.

I saw a story of a man flying a helicopter.  He rescued a woman who was stranded and was going to go back for her husband.  The local bureaucrats told the helicopter pilot that he would be arrested if he went back to rescue the man because he hadn’t yet gone through the proper government channels.

If that wasn’t bad enough, there was some dumb woman who was trying to defend the decision.  I wish the person interviewing her had asked her the following:

“If you or one of your family members were stranded and your life was in imminent danger, would you tell someone not to attempt a rescue until they got it approved through the proper government channels?”

It is actually amazing that some people can be so dumb and evil at the same time.

Let Them Eat Cake

The response from Biden and Harris has also been dumb and evil.  You would think they might be smart enough to put on a good act.  Instead, Biden has seemed to just blow the whole thing off and say that people are doing well and that the government is responding accordingly.

Trump was politically wiser and visited Georgia shortly after the devastation.  He also promoted raising money for the people in need.

The establishment media is covering the effects of the storm more now, but it was surprising just how little they were covering it in the few days after.  It wasn’t just one town under water.  Most of the west coast of Florida running up the Gulf side had massive flooding with tens of thousands of houses ruined or sustaining significant damage.  Farther north, there was massive flooding from the rain and rising rivers.  The states most impacted were Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and South Carolina.  It even went up to Kentucky and parts of Virginia.  As of this writing, there are still people who are stranded and in need of help and some who are missing.

Imagine your own situation with your house.  Imagine just a foot of water gets into your main living space.  All of your appliances are ruined.  Your furniture is ruined.  Your kitchen cabinets are ruined.  Your floors and drywall are ruined.  And any personal stuff that wasn’t up high is ruined.

Of course, the flooding in many areas was far worse than a foot high.  In places like western North Carolina, houses and buildings were underwater.

But Biden and Harris don’t even try hard to empathize.  Remember that Georgia was a very close state in 2020 that was contested by Trump.  Biden actually won the state according to the official results.  You would have to imagine that there are some mad residents there who aren’t happy with the federal government’s response (or non-response) at this time.

Where are the Resources?

It’s bad enough that the government at all levels takes almost half of our income.  If we had a lot more wealth at our own disposal, then we would have better houses less prone to flooding over time.  And with more wealth, when a disaster does strike, it would be much easier to deal with.

It is even worse when FEMA actively prohibits private parties from attempting to deliver food or rescue help.  So not only do they take our money, but then they use that money to actively get in the way of rescue efforts.  Again, this is reminiscent of Katrina.

Some have been pointing out the money that has gone to illegal immigrants instead of going to helping the hurricane victims.  There have been a lot of loose numbers thrown around.  In general, I think it is a valid point.  At the same time, I think the money going to illegal immigrants is almost a drop in the bucket compared to what is sent overseas and spent on the military-industrial complex.

There has been something around a couple of hundred billion dollars spent on Ukraine to perpetuate the war there.  All of that money could have been used at home.

From a libertarian standpoint, we should get to keep the money we earn, so this isn’t a plea to have greater government welfare at home.  But it is still valid to point out that resources sent overseas can’t be used at home, regardless of whether it goes through the government.

If hundreds of billions of dollars weren’t being spent on funding Ukraine, Israel, and all of these other overseas adventures, then that money could be used at home, which includes helping victims of hurricanes.

The debate between J.D. Vance and Tim Walz certainly had a different flavor from Trump vs. Harris.  The “moderators” were still fully in the tank for the Democratic candidate in spite of claims that they weren’t going to “fact check”.

There were a few somewhat tough questions thrown at Walz, which he should have been prepared for, but wasn’t.  He definitely looked bad answering (or not answering) the question about him not being in China during the events with Tiananmen Square.

When Vance was first announced as Trump’s running mate, the talking points went out to the corporate media to use the word “weird” to describe Vance.  In some ways, Vance is a little bit weird, or at least a little bit different.  But I find the word is much more appropriate for Walz.  His mannerisms are weird.  His hands look like they are going to fall off when he waves to a crowd.  Even his stories and the way he told them came off as a little weird during the debate.  He has more in common with Kamala Harris than I thought.

In full disclosure, I didn’t see the entire debate, and I watched it somewhat out of order.  Still, I will say that Walz came across as more likable than I thought he would be able to pull off.  While his mannerisms and expressions are a bit strange, he did come across as down to earth and someone who wants to get along with others.  It is probably all a show, but not all politicians are able to fake it.

With Vance, he set out to not come across as belligerent or bombastic.  He was calm even when he went on the attack.  He even remained calm when challenging the media in front of him.  He was obviously trying to portray something different from Trump.  Perhaps the strategy was to appeal to some women and maybe some more moderate-type voters who are on the fence but don’t like Trump’s brashness.

The debate was surprisingly cordial, and it didn’t go unnoticed.  Some people are saying that is how it should be done.  Some are suggesting the tickets should be flipped because these two acted like the grown-ups.

Many Republicans Don’t Want Cordial

While there was a strategy for Vance to appeal to so-called moderates and swing voters, this isn’t what the hardcore Trump people want to see.  Don’t get me wrong here.  The Trump supporters approve of Vance’s performance.  But if Trump had acted this way in 2015 when he started his run, he wouldn’t have gotten the support he did.

The reason is that Republicans are tired of getting walked all over.  They are tired of Bush, McCain, Romney, McConnell, and all of these establishment politicians who would always tell them what they wanted to hear. But they would be polite about it and say things in a moderated way.  Once in office, they would throw a few bones to the base and then roll them on everything else.

Trump was a fighter.  He was the bull dog that they wanted.  They wanted someone who wasn’t afraid to be bombastic and say things that weren’t normally said by politicians.  This is why they initially liked him and supported him.  They trust that Trump will fight on their behalf.

This is an important point to realize for now and in the future.  The Republican base doesn’t like Trump in spite of his brashness.  They like him because of it.  They want an advocate who will fight on their behalf.

While the debate by Vance was fine in the eyes of Trump supporters, they don’t want Trump to start acting like this because it will be seen as a sign of weakness and compromise with the establishment.

Issues and Positions

There was nothing terribly surprising by what either candidate said.  We all knew there were not going to be any major deviations from the top of the respective tickets.

It is interesting that there was not a discussion about the hurricane that had just gone through and devastated millions of people with flooding.  Even if the moderators don’t ask, you can still bring it up.  It seems like more of a missed opportunity for Vance by not contrasting the tens of billions of dollars being sent to Ukraine while people in America have lost their homes and are in major need of help.  I don’t think Trump would have missed this opportunity, although he probably would have expressed it clumsily.

Vance did do a good job of showing empathy for middle-class America and the struggles they face.  He seemed to return to this theme.  Unfortunately, he always brought this back to illegal immigration or tariffs.

The whole obsession with tariffs by Trump and Vance is stupid.  It is just another tax.  Higher tariffs increase the prices we pay for consumer goods.  Why don’t they address the real problem of regulation, government spending, and the Federal Reserve?  They will sometimes mention spending and regulation in generalities, but they have no plan to significantly improve anything.

It goes without saying that Harris and Walz will continue to promote policies that harm the economy.

On foreign policy, both tickets are bad.  Trump and Vance are slightly better because they are sometimes critical of sending more money to Ukraine.  They at least speak of negotiating a peace deal.  It is hard to say what will actually happen if Trump is elected.

I am not impressed with any of the candidates.  The best you can say for Trump and Vance is that they might do less damage than Harris and Walz.

Will the Debate Make a Difference?

Overall, I would say that Vance won the debate.  I don’t think expectations were that high for either one, and I think Vance probably exceeded expectations.  Some voters may not have been familiar with him at all other than what they had heard from the media.

The VP debate doesn’t usually mean much.  It is interesting that this is likely the last debate.  The presidential candidates usually debate three times before the general election.  In this case, it is one.  Trump did it twice because he got played debating Biden early on.  Biden’s horrific performance early on allowed the Democrats to dump him from the ticket before the convention.

As with everything, it is a question of things on the margin.  For 99% of people, this VP debate meant nothing.  It wasn’t going to change their mind.  I’d be surprised if there are 1,000 people in America who actually flip their vote because of this debate.

At this stage, almost nobody is going to flip their vote.  Someone voting for Harris isn’t going to change to voting for Trump.  Someone voting for Trump isn’t going to change to voting for Harris.

Where it matters is people who might not vote or might vote for a third-party candidate.  It is possible that Vance could have moved the needle a tiny bit.  But even a fraction of 1% of voters makes a big difference in this election.  As with the last election, it is going to come down to a handful of swing states.

There are election shenanigans in every major election.  If Trump wants to win, he needs a big enough margin that any cheating in the big cities won’t matter.

Trump has been playing his cards right lately by visiting Georgia after the hurricane while the Biden administration just seems to blow it off as if it is no big deal.  It is a very big deal to those living in Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and South Carolina.

If Trump can survive any more attempts on his life, he is the favorite to win in November as of right now.  We don’t know what tricks are coming over the next four weeks.

Avril Haines is the Director of National Intelligence.  She is the person who informed Trump of threats to his life coming from Iran.

Haines is also a main player in promoting the idea that Russia was colluding with the Trump campaign to steal our elections.  To this day, she identifies Russia as the greatest foreign threat to our elections.

Haines was part of the CIA and the NSA under Obama.  She is associated with the evil agencies that libertarians should most distrust.

We are getting “information” from Haines and those in the deep state that there are threats from Iran to assassinate Donald Trump.

Brilliant Strategy?

It’s hard to say for sure that this is a lie.  There are certainly reasons that Iranian officials would have for wanting to kill Trump.  After all, Trump ordered the assassination of a top Iranian official when he was president.  It was one of the worst things that Trump did as president, and it risked leading to a war with Iran.

But the lying liars in U.S. intelligence are making this a story.  They probably have no actual evidence, just as was the case with the Russia hoax and almost every reason they give to go to war.  Even if there is some kind of threat to Trump from Iran, is there actually any significant risk of Iranians being able to carry it out?

But putting blame on Iran makes sense.  Many pro Trump people, who have become more skeptical of U.S. foreign adventurism, still buy into Iran being this big enemy of the United States.  If the U.S. government would stop sanctioning Iran, making threats, and funding their enemies, then Iran would have no reason to oppose the U.S. at all.

Some conservatives are getting suckered into this whole thing about Iran trying to kill Trump.  On the left, they will just repeat anything that is said by the establishment and the so-called intelligence agencies.  So, it seems a good majority of Americans will buy this claim that Iran is a major threat to Trump’s life.

This achieves many things for the deep state.  It unites people in opposing Iran.  It makes a convenient enemy for a possible future war or conflict.  It distracts us from the previous assassination attempts on Trump.  Most of all, if Trump actually is assassinated, it means that the deep state can blame Iran instead of itself.  Some Trump supporters may actually buy it, too.

Is Trump This Stupid?

The crazy thing is that Trump is actually repeating these claims about Iran trying to kill him.  It reminds me of when Bernie Sanders was running for president and the liars started saying that the Russians were attempting to help the Sanders campaign.

Instead of Sanders calling the whole thing ridiculous, he went along with it and talked tough about Russia not getting away with it if he is president.  That was so obviously out of the establishment playbook, just as this whole thing with Iran.

If the establishment can make up a narrative to downgrade a somewhat anti-establishment candidate, plus stir up war fever by making a foreign country out to be doing bad things, they are getting a two for one special.

Some will say that Trump is just playing along with the deep state, but why?  They have likely already tried to kill him.  Trump is putting his life at even greater risk by going along with this scam.

Does he not understand that by going along with this story that it gives an excuse for the deep state to assassinate him?  If Trump is killed, then they can just blame Iran, and even some Trump supporters will believe it.  The deep state can get rid of Trump and stir up conflict with Iran.  It’s a win-win for them.

If Trump has some kind of a deal with the deep state, it better have come after the attempt on his life in July.  Otherwise, he is being completely played.

The fact that Trump is actually going along with this supposed Iran threat really makes me doubt his capabilities or motivations for a second term.  He is either stupid, or he is making deals with the deep state.

Trump is risking his life even more now by going along with the same deep state actors that sold us the Russian collusion hoax.

The investment markets are playing tricks on the average investor.  Perhaps they are even tricking the professionals.  I’m afraid that some buy-and-hold investors are going to get a very difficult lesson in the coming years.

Some investors are too young to have ever experienced a true bear market in stocks.  Let’s take someone who is 30 years old (born in 1994).  When the 2008 financial crisis hit, this person was only around 14 years old.  When I was 14, I wasn’t paying any attention to financial markets or investments.  I was more concerned about what my friends were doing that afternoon and when my next basketball game was taking place.

Since 2008/ 2009, we haven’t had a bear market.  Maybe we technically had one in 2020, but the Federal Reserve was already at the start of creating trillions of dollars in new money before lockdowns ever began. The down market lasted about 2 months and stock indexes were hitting new highs before the year was over.

This was not a true bear market.  Maybe it fit the technical definition of one, but it was a false bear market experience.  It wasn’t a bear market where investments got absolutely hammered and there was negative sentiment that was widespread for a long period of time.

Even the 2008/ 2009 bear market turned around relatively quickly, but at least it was for a good solid six months.  Stocks hit their low in March 2009, but things were quite negative at that time.  Plus, the housing bust had a couple of more years to go before it bottomed out.

Even for those who are older, 2008 was a long time ago.  It was 16 years ago.  Americans tend to have a short memory.  They certainly have a short memory when it comes to politics.  There may be a few people out there who have the scars from 2008 if they lost their house in foreclosure or they were just about to retire with a big stock portfolio.  But for the vast majority, 2008 is a distant memory that didn’t greatly impact where they stand today.  And if it did, they probably didn’t take away a lesson to diversify out of the stock market.

Will the Next Downturn be so Kind?

We have had a few rough days on Wall Street more recently.  There was panic for a couple of days, and then stocks went back to just going up.  There has been more volatility, but the Dow and S&P are near all-time highs.

I follow the FIRE movement somewhat closely.  That stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early.  Many people in the FIRE movement advocate a buy-and-hold strategy in low-cost mutual funds or ETFs.  They say that stocks always go up in the long run.

The strategy of buy-and-hold index funds does not have to be a characteristic of FIRE or FI.  It just so happens that many of the leaders in the movement are advocates of this strategy.  You can still have the goal of FIRE or FI without using this investment strategy.

I have heard and seen comments from this community about the recent activity in the stock market.  I have seen similar comments repeated about staying the course.  I have seen people say that they waited out the little blips down and their portfolio is now up above where it was before.

But again, they are judging based on a tiny down move of around 5% or so over the course of a few days. This isn’t anything like seeing a 70% drop over the course of a couple of years.  These people are in a false sense of reality.  They think every time the market ticks down that it will just pop back up, and then they can share their wisdom on social media.

I’m afraid some of these people are going to be near suicidal if we ever have a hardcore bear market that lasts for several years.  Their entire basis for living seems to be on their wisdom and perseverance to hold index funds through the bad times and to watch how rich they will get later on.

I think most FIRE/ FI people will be better off if and when a major downturn happens, at least financial speaking.  They are smart not to have debt outside of a mortgage and they have money saved, even if it isn’t diversified.  Many Americans barely have any savings.  So even if stocks go down by 70%, you can still look at it that 30% of something is better than 30% of nothing.  It is the mental toll on these people that I worry about.

J.L. Collins and His Meditation

There is a video (or audio) of J.L. Collins helping people through a downturn in stocks.  Collins is one of the unofficial leaders of the FIRE community, and he certainly has a soothing voice.  He has this recording that is like a meditation session.  It is designed to calm you down when the storm hits and to ride out the storm without panic selling.

He reassures you that everything will be ok.  He tells you that this is just a temporary downturn and to stay the course.  In many ways, it is brilliant.

The only problem is, what if he’s wrong?  What if this isn’t temporary?  What if stocks don’t always go up?  What happens if it ends up like Japan where the stock market is lower today than it was at its peak in 1989?  Is 35 years considered temporary?

If we have a stock market crash of 70% that lasts several years, this is going to absolutely devastate the plans of many millions of people.  Even a crash of 50% will take a major mental toll on people.

Young Americans and Americans with a short memory have become accustomed to market rebounds for the last 16 years.  They think a drop of 10% is big, and they think it goes back up in a short period of time.  They have been correct up until now.  They will continue to be correct until they aren’t any more.

If you want to not lose sleep over your investments and also not live in a false reality, try something like the permanent portfolio.  There are no guarantees with anything, but it seems to be a lot safer than going all-in on stocks.

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) released its latest monetary policy statement.  It was widely expected that the Federal Reserve would cut rates, but there was a question of how much.  I thought the Fed would cut by 25 basis points.

The Fed issued a 50 basis point cut to its targeted federal funds rate.  This will drive down short-term market interest rates.

Some are going to call this the Kamala rate cut.

The annual price inflation rate according to the government statistics is 2.5%.  The Fed’s statement said, “Inflation has made further progress toward the Committee’s 2 percent objective but remains somewhat elevated.”

The statement also reads, “The Committee seeks to achieve maximum employment and inflation at the rate of 2 percent over the longer run.”

A few years ago, the Fed was talking about averaging 2% inflation, but didn’t really specify a time period.  With the high price inflation we have seen over the last several years, it seems the Fed should be trying to get price inflation under 2% for several years to make up for what we have recently had.

Is the Economy Strong?

Yet, the Fed is cutting its target rate by 50 basis points (0.5% interest).  This does not seem consistent.  What seems logical is that we are right before an election, and a cut in rates would seem to benefit the incumbent party by boosting the stock market and economic activity, even if it may lead to higher prices in consumer goods down the road.

The reason I thought the Fed would only cut 25 basis points is because the Fed likes to be predictable.  In addition, a cut of 50 points could backfire, as it could end up signaling panic to the market.  Stocks zoomed higher after the Fed announcement, but the rally was short lived.  If anything, this could be a signal that the Fed officials think the economy is far weaker than what they are publicly saying.

This will also help de-invert the yield curve, which is what we are likely to see before we see a recession.  The 10-year yield is now higher than the 2-year yield, and the short-term yields are moving lower faster as compared to the long yields.  In other words, the yield curve is flattening out.

Still Deflation

There is an even bigger inconsistency with this whole thing.  The Fed is lowering rates, which indicates a looser monetary policy.  Yet, the Fed is still engaging in monetary deflation.

According to the Implementation Note, the Fed will continue to not roll over some maturing debt.  In total, it will continue to allow $60 billion per month to expire ($25 billion in Treasury securities and $35 billion in agency debt and mortgage-backed securities).

This is a total disconnect from how the Fed operated before the fall of 2008.  In the old days, the Fed would generally get lower interest rates by issuing new debt (i.e., expanding the money supply).

Now, the Fed controls the federal funds rate by changing the interest rate paid on reserve balances.  In other words, the Fed pays banks money to keep funds parked with the Fed.  This controls the overnight lending rate between banks, which is the federal funds rate.  This is what everyone is talking about when they talk about the Fed cutting “rates”.  It is really the federal funds rate, which again, is controlled by the Fed’s rate paid to banks for their reserves.

So, we have a conflicting policy of the Fed lowering rates while simultaneously deflating its balance sheet.  I’m not sure that this has ever been done before over any significant time period.

Of course, when the economic downturn comes, you can expect a reversal of the Fed’s monetary deflation. Not only will the deflation stop, but we are likely to see monetary inflation.  You can call it QE, accommodation, or whatever you want, but the Fed will eventually return to creating new money out of thin air.

The latest CPI report came out showing the price inflation numbers for August 2024.  The CPI was up 0.2% in August, and the year-over-year CPI now stands at 2.5%.  The year-over-year median CPI stands at 4.2%.

The 2.5% annual price inflation number is the best we have seen in several years.  But let’s realize that overall prices, according to the metrics used in the CPI calculation, are still 2.5% higher than this time last year.

Prices were already astronomically high last year, and we just added another 2.5% on top of that.  In other words, the average American is not seeing an improvement in overall living standards.

Since insurance (health, home, and car) takes up such a big chunk of the average American’s budget, the picture is probably even worse.  You can provide any statistic there is, but the real picture is when someone sits down to pay the bills each month and there is less money in the checking account than there was the previous month.

Gold Shines

The yellow metal is hitting new all-time highs in U.S. dollars, now crossing the $2,600 mark for the first time.  The mining stocks are not hitting new all-time highs for the most part, but they are still doing well with the rising price of gold.

Even though the rate of price inflation is supposedly going down, that has not seemed to impact the gold market in a negative way.

I still maintain that the gold price will likely drop in a recession, but that it won’t drop nearly as much as stocks and other assets.  It will also be quicker to recover when the Fed starts creating new money out of thin air again.

Silver has also risen, now surpassing $31 per ounce.  This is still well off the all-time high, which means the potential for silver is perhaps better than gold.  But it also has the potential to fall more in a recession.

A Fed Rate Cut?

Even though price inflation is still above the Fed’s supposed target of 2%, and even though gold is hitting new all-time highs, and even though stocks are still near all-time highs, the Fed is going to cut its target rate at the next meeting on September 18.

The big question now is whether it will cut 25 basis points or 50 basis points.  My guess is that it will be 25 basis points (a quarter of one percent) because they don’t want to give the impression that they think the economy is that weak.

The FOMC’s next meeting after September will start on the day after Election Day, and the policy statement will be released on November 7, two days after the election.  That is interesting timing.

Still, regardless of the election outcome, the Fed will still have two more opportunities this year to cut rates more after this September meeting.

Some will say that the Fed is cutting rates now for political reasons.  Of course, the Fed is always political in a sense.  But even if there were no election, I think the Fed would still be doing the same thing.  Even though asset prices are high, they see the inverted yield curve, and they see the slowdown in the economy coming.  All they know how to do with this problem is drop rates and create more money.  The creating of new money will come later.

The Election

It looks like the Democrats may get away with having an election without an economic meltdown.  It has already been a meltdown with middle-class America, but they can point to positive GDP and a booming stock market.

Things could change in the next 7 weeks, but we are running out of time.  It looks like the recession won’t become evident until after the voting happens.

It is still surprising that Donald Trump did not talk even more about the economy than he did at the debate.  Harris couldn’t answer the question about whether Americans are better off today than four years ago.

Trump went off on immigration, which is certainly important to some people, but he failed to show sufficient empathy towards those who are just struggling to pay their bills.  From his standpoint, that should have been his focus at the debate.  It should be the focus of his campaign.

And the answer is certainly not more tariffs.  That will just raise prices that much more.  The answer is to dramatically reduce government spending, but that tends to not be a winning message.

No matter who wins the election, the yield curve is still somewhat inverted, and there is no preventing the coming recession.  No matter what happens, there will be economic turmoil and there will be political turmoil.  That is to put it mildly.

The big debate finally happened between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.  This was Trump’s second presidential debate this year.

You could say that this debate went better than the last one for the Democrats, but maybe the debate with Biden in June is exactly how they wanted it to go down.  Biden demonstrated to the world that he has dementia or some kind of severe cognitive issue.  This led the way for a replacement who might have a chance to beat Trump.

While Trump did make fun of Biden a few times, he missed the opportunity to ask Harris how long she has known that Biden has dementia.  He also missed the opportunity to ask who exactly is running the country right now, because it obviously isn’t Biden.

The “Moderators”

The debate was hosted by ABC.  The two so-called moderators of the debate were anything but moderators.  They were prepared to “fact check” Trump and did so frequently.

Trump made a point about some Democrats even supporting abortion after birth (infanticide).  He referred to the former governor of West Virginia, but I believe it was the former governor of Virginia (not West).  But this isn’t what they fact checked him on.  One of the “moderators” said that there are no state laws on the books allowing for abortion after birth.  But this wasn’t Trump’s point.  His point was that there are some who advocate it, and most Democrats won’t state whether they support a ban on late-term abortions.

I was surprised that Trump did not go after the media at all.  It was obviously his plan all along.  It might have been a good plan so that he didn’t come across as combative.  Still, it reaches a point of absurdity when the two “moderators” are obviously trying to argue with Trump on behalf of Harris.

I don’t think it would have been in poor taste for Trump to say to the “moderators” something like, “Would you like to come up here on stage and join Ms. Harris at the podium so that you can debate by her side?”

Even though the “moderators” were heavily biased, I don’t think it hurt Trump much, if at all.  If anything, it was so blatant that it just showed they were on her side.  Anyone who liked what they said were already against Trump anyway.

Cultural Issues

The cultural issues play into Kamala Harris’s hands, or at least they seemingly should.  When it came to abortion, I actually think Trump won that piece.  He didn’t really answer the question about whether he would sign a national ban on abortion, but he did rightly say that it would never happen.

Maybe this is my bias, but Trump got this issue almost completely correct.  He said that he and the Supreme Court finally overturned Roe v. Wade.  He said it tore our country apart for over 50 years, and now the issue is back with the states where it belongs.  I only wish Trump were so in favor of states’ rights when it comes to other issues.

Predictably, Harris brought up Trump’s remarks on Charlottesville.  They keep going with this lie that Trump referred to white supremacists as “very fine people”.  There were people in Charlottesville that day who aren’t leftists and aren’t white supremacists, but they want to pretend otherwise.

Harris also started fake crying talking about January 6^th and how it was the biggest threat to our democracy since the Civil War.  She laid it on a bit too thick on that one.  She tried to be so dramatic about it, but I just don’t think most people care about January 6^th other than those who want to say that Trump supported an insurrection.

Of course, there are those of us who care about January 6^th because of the weaponization of the “Justice” Department against those who don’t support the establishment.  Trump rightly pointed out that nobody died at the Capitol except for his supporters.  And despite what Harris said at the convention, it wasn’t an armed mob at the Capitol.  The only armed mob was the Capitol police who killed at least two people.

Trump was asked about saying that Kamala Harris used to not say that she was black.  He said she can call herself whatever she wants and that he doesn’t care.  I actually thought this was a decent response.  When it was Harris’s turn, she was salivating.  She was just eating the whole thing up.  She probably wishes the whole debate could have been on personal attacks and cultural issues, along with Trump talking about the election results from 2020.

Economic Issues

The debate started off with the economy.  Harris never answered the question on whether Americans are better off today than they were 4 years ago.  I thought she could have had a better answer prepared.  She probably should have at least acknowledged that many Americans are suffering with the high cost of living.

Trump was mostly a disaster on this, as he talked about imposing more tariffs.  He also talked about immigration ruining our country.  This was a theme of his for the night.  I think it is a bit of an over-exaggeration to blame our economic woes on illegal immigration.  It might be one factor, but government spending and regulation are the big culprits, along with the Federal Reserve.

Trump said that Harris was adopting many of his policies and that he was tempted to send her a Make America Great Again hat.

Harris said that she favored tax cuts for the middle class, including an expansion of the child tax credit.  Where has she been for the last 3 and a half years?  Why doesn’t she tell Biden to do it right now?  Trump pointed this out at a later time, but I thought he could have pointed this out even more.

In fact, I thought Trump should have hammered home more points on the economy.  That is the number one issue for most people.  They are struggling to pay for high insurance costs and high food prices at the grocery store.  Trump did not focus on this enough, even though his solutions aren’t really the right ones for the most part.

Foreign Policy

There wasn’t a lot of talk about foreign policy, but it did come up.  Harris tried to play both sides of the fence with Israel and Gaza.  The glaring contradiction, which Trump won’t point out, is that the Biden administration keeps funding Israel and sending weapons there that are used to bomb Gaza and kill innocent people.  How can Harris be against the loss of innocent life in Gaza when she and Biden are funding it and continue to do so?

Of course, Trump is also bad on the issue of Israel.  He says he will work out a peace negotiation, but he doesn’t say how.  He ridiculously claims that the October 7^th attacks in Israel never would have happened if he had been president at the time.

When Trump makes the claim that Putin wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine if he was president, this might be closer to the truth.  But it isn’t because Trump is feared and respected as he says.  It is because there is a possibility that Trump would not have ignored Putin’s concerns about Ukraine joining NATO and the U.S. putting missiles on the Russian border.

Both candidates are bad on foreign policy, but Trump seems to be less bad.  When asked whether he wants Ukraine to win, Trump correctly said that he wants people to stop dying.  I don’t know what a victory means for Ukraine if a quarter of the population ends up dead.  With a victory like that, I think I would rather “lose” and live under Russian rule.

On Ukraine, Trump is definitely better than Harris, but we can never know for sure what he will do in office.

Conclusion

I doubt that many minds were changed from the debate.  It wasn’t a complete disaster for either side, and neither side did great.

The debate wouldn’t cause a person to switch from one candidate to the other.  Maybe that is the case for a tiny fraction of one percent.  It matters for those who may or may not vote for the preferred candidate.

I am a libertarian who would never support Harris.  I disagree with Trump on many issues, but I see the possibility of at least a few good things happening if he is president.  I would consider voting for Trump for defensive purposes, but I may vote third party or write in a name.  The debate did not bring me any closer to a decision.

There is a small but still substantial percentage of people who supported Kennedy.  Kennedy has effectively endorsed Trump.  Now the Kennedy supporters are grappling with whether to vote for Trump as the lesser of two evils.  I’m not sure that Trump said anything in the debate to reach out and get some of these people.

I give the slight edge to Trump in the general election, but a lot can still happen.  No matter what happens, I maintain that it will not be good in the short run.

If Harris wins, then we get an authoritarian president with more war and more spending.  If Trump wins, we will get more spending and still some war but possibly not as much.  But we also get the reaction and hysteria if Trump wins.  Will we get another virus?  Will we get riots in the streets again?

The election will be interesting, but times won’t be fun in America no matter what, at least in the short term.