Donald Trump has been president now for one year in his second term.  I very hesitatingly voted for Trump in November 2024, even though I vehemently disagreed with Trump on several issues.

I thought Trump had a chance of being the lesser of two evils.  The Biden regime needed to be repudiated after 4 years of more war and COVID tyranny, among other things.  I was also cautiously optimistic that Trump was being surrounded by some good people near the end of his campaign.  He was surrounded by seemingly decent people like Robert Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk, and Vivek Ramaswamy.  He also chose J.D. Vance as his VP, who is less hawkish than a lot of the alternatives.

For this reason, I reluctantly voted for Trump in the hopes that things might improve a little, and also as a repudiation of the Democrats.  I fully expected some bad things like tariffs and possible hawkishness on certain countries like Iran.

The Good

Trump started out in January 2025 on a high note.  He enacted a lot of executive orders.  There was so much flying at us in the first few days, it is still hard to grasp.  Some of the executive orders were simply repealing previous executive orders, which is completely legitimate.

Trump corrected a massive injustice by pardoning most of the January 6^th protesters.  Most of these people were non-violent, and we still don’t know the extent of federal agents helping to create the situation that day.  Most of the protesters could have been charged with trespassing and given a fine.  It was a ridiculous notion to send people to jail for years and years for taking a walk through the Capitol building.  They didn’t have weapons, and they certainly had no means of orchestrating a coup.

Trump also satisfied his promise to the Libertarian Party by freeing Ross Ulbricht.  This was another correction to a massive injustice.  Unfortunately, it would turn out to be one of the few things he did that the Libertarian Party or libertarians in general would really like.

We also have to remember that we had Elon Musk taking residence by Trump’s side and initiating DOGE.  You can criticize Elon Musk, but he seemed to be genuine in his attempts to cut government spending, and especially corrupt and fraudulent spending.  This is why Musk and Trump eventually had a falling out.  It is because Musk was really irritated that his work with DOGE wasn’t producing any results.  Instead, we got stuck with the One Big Beautiful Bill.

DOGE was far more chaotic than it needed to be.  It probably actually increased some spending by forcing government workers back into the office and offering generous severance packages to government employees to leave their job without first researching whether those jobs actually served a function.  (It’s not as if we would no longer need passports if all of the workers at the passport office decided to quit and take a severance package.)

Still, on the whole, DOGE seemed encouraging to those who cared about government spending.  They were actually uncovering a lot of crazy stuff where our tax money was going.  Unfortunately, the DOGE mania didn’t last long, and it is now dead.  We were never going to get any DOGE rebate checks because nothing of any significance ever got cut from the budget.

Turning Ugly

Things went downhill quickly about 2 months in.  In March 2025, the Trump administration started arresting immigrants, particularly students, who were critical of Israel.  These were legal immigrants.

While Trump campaigned on stopping illegal immigration, he certainly never talked about arresting people and deporting people for the words they use or for the things they write.  It is still surprising that this got such little coverage.  The Trump administration may have linked this to immigration, but it was just a pure violation of free speech.  It was also interesting that legal immigrants were more likely to be arrested and deported for criticizing the state of Israel than criticizing the U.S. government.

This sent up major red flags for me in March 2025, and I could already see the drastic turn towards authoritarianism.

Of course, things got much worse from there.  Trump bombed Yemen on behalf of Israel.  He bombed Iran on behalf of Israel, even when he said he was negotiating with them.  Trump has been murdering boaters off the coast of Venezuela in the name of drugs.  He then proceeded to kidnap the president and his wife there.

The Trump administration has also bombed Iraq, Syria, Nigeria, and Somalia.  This is a total of 7 countries being bombed in one year.  And let’s not forget that Trump continues to fund Israel to slaughter innocent people in Gaza, and he continues to fund Ukraine to keep the war going there.

If all that weren’t enough, Trump has also been a trainwreck on the domestic front.  He has raised and lowered tariffs so many times, I don’t think anybody has been able to keep count.  He has hiked tariffs on countries because of their political situation or because they are trading with the wrong countries (according to Trump).  While his excuse originally was to bring back manufacturing, he has used tariffs as one of his main weapons (aside from dropping bombs) to bully other countries.  Of course, it just serves to hurt American businesses and American consumers by making things more expensive.

The Absurd

There are so many absurd things in one year that it is hard not to leave things out.  There is all of the lying about the Epstein files.  There is Trump going on a political war against Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene.  There is Trump weaponizing his “Justice” Department just the same as what was done to him.  But instead of going after the people who tried to jail Trump, Trump is going after other people, such as Jerome Powell, probably for not lowering interest rates enough.

Trump has been seizing oil tankers in international waters.  Now we are going through a major spat about Greenland just because Trump all of a sudden thinks he can be emperor of the world.  The fact that Trump was even thinking about invading Greenland shows how unhinged the man has become.

He wrote a letter to the president of Norway saying that because he didn’t receive the Nobel Peace Prize that he no longer felt the need to be peaceful.  So that’s why you talked about peace on the campaign trail? Because you wanted a prize to enhance your ego?

Trump might have dementia like Joe Biden before him.  But Biden was so far gone, and he was fully controlled by his puppet masters.  Trump is controlled by Netanyahu, but he still calls the shots on other areas.  The problem is that the war hawks, who previously hated Trump, just suck up to him and stroke his ego.  They tell him how great he is, and then they convince him to bomb the next country.  Trump is both evil and stupid.

Trump has the worst combination of narcissism and some kind of early dementia.  He has become almost everything that the left has accused him of being.  The left no longer needs to make up stories about him in order to accuse him of being a tyrant.  Still, I will see leftists make up stories about Trump or exaggerate things, even though they don’t need to do it at this point.

When Things Change

The Republicans mostly live in fear of Trump.  If you step out of line one little bit, look at what happened to MTG.  She was a major defender of Trump for many years, and look at how she was treated.

When things turn bad for Trump, they will turn bad quickly.  Imagine when there is enough public opinion against him on the right that Republicans in positions of power start opposing Trump.  Things could spiral against Trump very quickly, especially if we hit a hard recession.

Also, Trump has made most major officials in other countries mad, to say the least.  Do you really think Putin or Xi like Trump at this point?  Do you think all of these other prime ministers and presidents who have been bullied, made to look weak, and had tariffs slapped on them have an ounce of sympathy for Trump?

Trump is hated almost everywhere now except for a MAGA faction in the United States.  But even here, you have to imagine that there are several million people who voted for Trump who now despise him.  Trump is making war and not peace.  He is not helping the average American.  He is making things worse.

Let’s hope the second year goes better than the first.  If most everyone turns on Trump, it is hard to say how things will go.  He is already a very unpredictable man.  Unfortunately, this unpredictable man has a lot of power at his disposal.

And ultimately, that is the problem.  The problem isn’t the abuse of power.  It is the power to abuse (as Harry Browne liked to say).  We don’t just need to get rid of Trump.  We need to drastically reduce the power of the president and the federal government.  We shouldn’t have to worry about any particular unhinged person getting into office.

Sometimes it is effective to attack the right from the right and the left from the left.  If you criticize Trump’s foreign policy or violation of civil liberties, a lot of Trump defenders will just blow you off as a left winger.  It is much more difficult for them to do when you attack Trump from the political right.

One area Trump is very vulnerable is on economics.  It is becoming less hyperbolic by the day to refer to Trump as a socialist.  Trump defenders don’t know how to handle this accusation, especially if you start listing out all of the examples.  It seems to actually cause their brain to malfunction.

Trump is not an outright socialist, but neither is Bernie Sanders or Zohran Mamdani.  If you asked Sanders or Mamdani if people should be allowed to own a toothbrush, they would probably agree.  They don’t advocate for the government literally owning everything.  It is all a mix of socialism (government ownership), economic fascism (government control), and some market activity.  They mostly want government to control things, but they still don’t advocate for a total abandonment of all market activity.  They still want the existence of money as a way of making exchanges.

At this point, Trump is more of a socialist than an advocate for free markets.  All you have to do is look at all of his rhetoric and actions from the first year of his second presidential term.

It’s All Government Central Planning

Trump has vastly increased government spending, which was already beyond control.  DOGE was a complete joke and did nothing to cut the federal budget.  Trump is now advocating for a $1.5 trillion military budget.  There are about 130 million American households.  That would be $11,500 per household every single year, just for the military.  Do you want to pay $11,500 per year for a world empire?

The U.S. debt keeps rising dramatically.  It is over $38 trillion.  It will probably hit $40 trillion in less than a year.  Trump just keeps spending and spending.  It couldn’t get any worse with a Sanders presidency.

Trump is overseeing some of the largest tax hikes in history too.  He is unconstitutionally enacting tariffs on a whim.  If he doesn’t like who another country is doing business with, here’s a 50% tariff.  No wait, make it a 100% tariff.  Ok, just kidding, we’ll call it 75%.  There is another country that elected the wrong person.  Give them a 50% tariff too.

Of course, this is mostly a tax on the American people who will pay higher prices.  Or it will just destroy trade with other countries and there will be fewer choices and worse quality with just American-made products.  We haven’t given all of these tariffs enough time to show just how bad they are for business and for our overall living standards.

Other Trump Socialist Policies

The list could go on and on.  But here are a few more from recent times.

• Trump is telling credit card companies to charge a maximum of 10% interest.  This will just prevent a lot of people from being able to obtain a credit card.  It will also destroy a lot of the benefits for people who hold credit cards, including those who pay it off each month.
• Trump is ordering the purchase of mortgage-backed securities in an attempt to lower mortgage rates.  What’s next?  Will Trump just outright hand out free money to buy houses?
• Trump is threatening criminal charges against Jerome Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve.  It isn’t because Powell is counterfeiting money.  It is because he hasn’t obeyed Trump’s wishes and counterfeited enough.
• Trump is ordering that investment companies will no longer be allowed to buy single-family houses.  He turns to socialist dictates instead of trying to ease regulations and taxes.
• Trump is continually advocating for more money printing and artificially lower interest rates.  His solution to everything is more inflation and more debt.

What’s to Come?

Trump is already unhinged, and we haven’t even hit a recession or financial crisis yet.  Imagine what this guy is capable of saying and doing when a real crisis hits.  It will be one order and dictate after another, trying to force his ways on the economy.

We are in the realm of possibility where we see $5 trillion annual deficits soon.  It looks like Trump is trying to oversee the demise of the U.S. dollar and an implosion of our economy.

Would you really put it past Trump to say that he is going to nationalize the grocery stores?  Would you be surprised if he declared that he is now in charge of the central bank and will set all policies?

The guy is a total socialist.  Trump himself said that he is only constrained by his own morality at this point, which isn’t very good news for the American people.

Why should we be scared of Bernie Sanders at this point?  Trump is a socialist.  He is the president now.  He thinks he is the dictator, which is consistent with socialists.

1. I hate the framing of the debate when people argue about whether it was in “our” interest to capture Maduro and generally intervene in Venezuela.  Perhaps we can speculate on how bad it will work out, but it completely ignores the immorality of the whole thing.  Imagine I hit a grandmother over the head and take her purse.  Then a debate ensues about whether it will really benefit me over the longer run.  There is a large ethical problem that lingers here.  I don’t care if “we” can get rich by taking over Venezuela’s oil.  It is highly immoral and evil.
2. I am beginning to think that Trump is more of a socialist dictator than Maduro.  At least Maduro confined his socialism to just the people of Venezuela.
3. The new mayor of New York City is also a socialist.  Can he possibly be any worse than kidnapping a president, and declaring that he will now be “running” the country and controlling the oil?  At least his socialism is confined to New York City where the people actually elected him.
4. The excuses keep changing and expanding for going into Venezuela.  It is quite similar to the story of Iraq in 2003.  The narrative quickly shifted from weapons of mass destruction to “liberating the Iraqi people”.
5. Even if Maduro was not legitimately elected, Trump wasn’t elected anything in Venezuela.  How many MAGA people justify Trump’s invasion because Maduro wasn’t legitimately elected, yet they also believe that Trump won the 2020 election?  By their standard, I guess Putin, Xi, or any other world leader could have bombed Washington DC in 2021, kidnapped Biden, and declared they would be running the United States until the proper transition had taken place.
6. Maduro is being indicted on drug and weapons charges.  Apparently, U.S. gun laws apply to the entire world, including foreign presidents and militaries in their own countries.  Isn’t almost every world leader in violation of U.S. gun laws?
7. It would be hilarious if Maduro – the socialist – were to defend himself in court by arguing that U.S. gun laws are contrary to the 2^nd Amendment.  Maybe he should up the ante and argue that U.S. drug laws violate the 10^th Amendment.  I can just picture the attorney for Maduro: “Where in Article 1, Section 8 is any authority granted to the federal government of the United States to make laws prohibiting drugs?”
8. Trump has already fallen hard.  The only true allies he has left are some hardcore MAGA people and the Republican war hawks.  The war hawks are just simply using and abusing Trump.  They will turn on him when it is convenient.  Trump is a total disgrace.  He is completely unhinged at this point.  We can only hope that his power will get cut off one way or another before he gets us into a major war.
9. J.D. Vance is just a weak piece of garbage.  He is trying his best to justify all of this violence from Trump and company.  He has almost no chance of becoming president unless Trump doesn’t make it to January 2029.
10. The left is still useless (and worse), but I am not going to stop them right now from going after Trump, even though they still get so much wrong.  Yes, Trump is just extending power that has grown over the last 100 plus years.  Still, we need as much criticism as possible of Trump at this point because he is a total maniac who sees no limits to his use of violence.

2025 was a crazy year in a lot of ways.  With a few exceptions, it wasn’t a good year for liberty.  The Trump administration seemed to start off well with pardons, a few good cabinet appointments, and the idea of DOGE.

It all quickly faded.  DOGE may have exposed some things, but it went nowhere, as Trump simply had no desire to cut anything significant out of the budget.  Government spending has increased.

Things really went downhill in March and April of 2025.  The Trump administration started arresting legal immigrants simply for peacefully protesting or speaking out against the crimes of the Israeli state.

While Trump’s rhetoric is all over the place, he has continued to fund Ukraine and Israel.  His so-called peace deals or ceasefires haven’t really panned out.  Trump has bombed Yemen, Iran, Syria, Somalia, Nigeria, and Venezuela.  It has all been unnecessary and evil.  He has provided weapons and funding for all of the killing and bombing done by the Israeli state.  He has given Netanyahu just about everything he wants.

The Epstein files have been a total disaster for Trump.  Kash Patel has been shown to be a liar.  The same goes for Pam Bondi.  Trump did a terrible job of lying about the whole thing.  It is obvious he has been trying to protect people by not releasing information.

Trump has declared war against the good people who have defended him against the establishment in the past.  It isn’t just Elon Musk.  Trump drove Marjorie Taylor Greene from office, and he is running the biggest campaign against Thomas Massie.  Trump and his establishment cronies are spending more money trying to get rid of Massie than any Democratic person in Congress.

Overall, the first year of the second term of the Trump presidency has been a disaster.  It has been a bigger disaster than his first term, and we still have over three years to go.

The Economy

Trump’s disastrous tariffs will only make our lives more expensive.  They will also make for lower quality products, as they serve to eliminate foreign competition.

At the risk of calling the last 10 out of 2 recessions, I do predict that we will be in a recession in 2026 unless the Fed goes crazy with quantitative easing.  I thought we would get a recession last year because we had had an inverted yield curve for most of 2023 and 2024.

The yield curve has taken a while to normalize, but it is finally mostly normalized now.  If history is any guide, we should be seeing a recession in the next 12 months.

I was going to predict that the Fed would return to QE (digital money printing), but that already happened with its December 2025 meeting.

It is absurd that consumer price inflation is still running above 2% and yet the Fed feels the need to lower its target rate and to start expanding its balance sheet.  It only had about 12 days of its transition from balance sheet contraction to balance sheet expansion.

Perhaps we will finally see the Everything Bubble pop.  Housing has already cooled down.  It was somewhat stagnant in 2025 in general.  Bitcoin fell below the $90,000 mark.  I expect it will keep falling, but it is going to be a wild ride with a lot of ups and downs.  The fall of Bitcoin may be the face of the end of the speculative bubble.

Bitcoin has been somewhat correlated to the Nasdaq, which doesn’t make a lot of sense.  It only makes sense when you realize that they are both speculative bubbles.  But at least the Nasdaq companies make products that consumers buy.  The fall for Bitcoin will be greater than the fall in the Nasdaq or stocks in general.  Still, stocks could fall by 50% or more.

Gold and Silver and the Dollar

The precious metals will also continue to see high volatility.  If there is a deep recession, we could see some temporary drops.  But expect gold and silver to keep running higher in the longer term because the Fed’s only solution will be to print more money.

It is extraordinary what gold and silver have done in 2025.  Gold was up over 60% for the year.  Silver was up over 140%.

GDX – a gold miners ETF – was up about 142% in 2025.  GDXJ – a junior gold miners ETF – was up about 153%.

These are extraordinary returns to say the least.  It isn’t likely that 2026 will see these gains, but it is still possible.  One reason for the high returns is the weak U.S. dollar.

In a recession, Americans typically find a safe haven in the U.S. dollar.  This may not happen this time around.  The national debt is quite staggering, and the Fed is already going back to monetary inflation before the recession has officially begun.  With the sanctions and bullying of other countries from Trump, there is good reason for China, Russia, and several other countries to turn away from the dollar.  They certainly won’t be buying any significant amounts of U.S. Treasury debt.

Foreign Policy

Your guess is as good as mine here.  Trump’s foreign policy in 2025 was absolutely atrocious.  He has proven himself to be a war criminal.  How many more countries can Trump find to bomb?  Apparently all 195 countries or so on the planet are a possibility.  It is the biggest joke that people even talk about the possibility of Trump getting the Nobel Peace Prize.

The only way to predict what will happen in 2026 is to predict what Trump will think and do.  This is impossible.  Not even Trump knows what he is going to do tomorrow.  It usually depends on the last person he talked to.

The best hope at this point is that Trump does not get us into any major wars.  He already has essentially declared war on Iran and Venezuela.  Iran was incredibly diplomatic in settling things down quickly the last time.  Venezuela is just not capable of fighting back unless it plans to go all out and face a devastating bombing campaign from the U.S. government.

Trump is just flat-out murdering people in Venezuela.  They are coming up with ten different excuses for doing it.

What was the point of Trump beating out lil’ Marco Rubio in 2016?  Trump has basically handed over his foreign policy to Rubio now.

There needs to be a severe backlash against Trump from his base.  There is already backlash from some conservatives and libertarians who may have supported Trump or voted for him as the lesser of two evils.  That is why his approval ratings are way down, but they aren’t down low enough.

Politics

Trump will get even more unpopular as the economy tanks.  He is already acting like Biden, trying to convince the populace that the economy really is good, in spite of how you may feel.

When the recession hits and the asset bubble implodes, Trump’s approval rating will sink to its lowest ever. He will still be above 25% because he has a base of people who will support him no matter what.  He will also get support from the war hawks who actually hate Trump but accept the more up-to-date version of Trump who does their bidding in funding and starting wars.

The prediction I feel most confident of is that the Democrats are going to take back Congress in 2027.  Even though the Democrats remain unpopular (and rightly so), many independents and libertarians, along with some Republicans, are going to sit out the November 2026 election.  The Republicans fully deserve to lose.  It will probably be a landslide against the Republicans.  They are already deeply unpopular, and we aren’t even in a recession yet.

My prediction for 2028 is that J.D. Vance is going to have a very difficult time running for president on Trump’s record of failures.

One positive for liberty that has happened and will continue to happen is the turn to alternative media.  The establishment news on television is dying.  It is mostly old people watching CNN, MSNBC, and even Fox News.  The main networks like NBC, ABC, and CBS are also not as influential as they were even 10 years ago.  They still have some influence, but it is waning quickly, and rightly so.

The hope for 2026 is that Trump won’t start any new wars and that the American people will continue to not trust the ruling elite.  If public opinion keeps shifting away from the establishment, there is hope for greater decentralization and liberty in the future.  It probably won’t come in 2026 though.

Happy New Year!

The latest CPI data was released for November 2025.  Investors celebrated and drove U.S. markets higher because price inflation was tamer than expected.

The year-over-year CPI now stands at 2.7%.  The expectation was 3.1%.  But the October data was never released because of the government shutdown.

I have a confession to make.  I thought that when the release came this month that it would include the full October data, since there was never a report issued in November.  But we don’t even get official CPI numbers for October.  I guess they couldn’t even retroactively track the data.

It is beyond ridiculous that this data wasn’t tracked in October when the government was “shut down”.  This was a time when the government went another $600 billion or so in debt.  The funding for foreign wars continued.  A lot of things continued.

Yet, somehow, they couldn’t spend the tiny little fraction of money that it would take to track inflation data that impacts how the Federal Reserve controls interest rates and the money supply.

Sure, I wish there was no central bank and we had a free market in money.  I wish there were no government statistics and that any tracking were left to the market.  But given our current system, it is a bit ridiculous that the government wouldn’t spend this miniscule amount of money (relatively speaking) to track inflation data. The Fed’s decision on whether to lower its target rate and whether to return to quantitative easing (which it did) is dependent on data to a certain degree.

What if the CPI numbers came out really high, right after the Fed just announced another rate cut and return to buying government debt?  These Fed decisions have such a big impact on the economy, yet the government couldn’t operate this one little thing (tracking statistics), while continuing to send money to Ukraine.

Is Price Inflation Normal Again?

My guess is that Trump saw the data that was going to be released.  I can’t imagine he delivered a speech the night before talking about how prices were coming down if he didn’t know the data.  It wouldn’t have been a good look if the CPI numbers had come in higher than expected.

Just as Biden lied about inflation, so is Trump.  Trump is repeating the same lie that prices are coming down.  This is perhaps true for a select number of products.  But prices are not coming down overall.  They are still increasing.  They are just increasing at a slower rate than before.

Even with these new numbers, we still aren’t at the Fed’s supposed target of 2%.  We haven’t been there in about 4 years.

As I have been asking, why is the Fed lowering rates and returning to QE (digital money printing) when the price inflation rate hasn’t even gotten back to 2% yet?

Of course, how can we even trust these numbers?  The numbers are very sketchy, especially given the limited data.  Plus, Trump will just fire someone if they report numbers that he isn’t happy with.  It throws into question all government statistics at this point (even more than before).

If it is true that the rate of price inflation is coming down, it still doesn’t mean we are in good shape economically.  This may just be a reflection of people spending less money because of the economic conditions.  When a recession is on the horizon, people tend to sense the trouble and spend less.  It could be because of job losses or the threats of job losses.  It could be because some people are in too much debt and have to cut back.

While disinflation (for lack of a better word) is not necessarily associated with a recession, it could be that in this case.  Given the previously inverted yield curve and the major asset bubble we have seen, the new inflation numbers may just be a sign of consumers running out of money to spend.

The risks for a recession are high.  With inflation data being tamer than expected, it might give the green light to the Fed to be even looser with its monetary policy.  On that, we’ll have to see.  But these cuts of 25 basis points to the Fed’s target rate isn’t going to stop a recession from happening.

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) released its last monetary policy statement for 2025.  It wasn’t a certainty, but it was widely expected that the Fed would cut the federal funds rate by 25 basis points, and that’s exactly what it did.

There were three dissenting votes.  Two Fed members wanted to hold the target rate steady, while one member wanted a half-point (50 basis points) cut.

Opinions still vary on what the Fed will do in 2026.  Of course, this is based on the current data, which isn’t all that current with some government statistics being delayed.  And things can change very quickly.

But the small cut in the federal funds rate isn’t the big story.  The Fed announced that, beginning in two days, it will begin buying $40 billion in short-term bills.  They are calling this “maintenance”.  Maybe by maintenance they mean maintaining the illusion of our bubble economy.

Federal Funds Rate Problem?

One of the reasons for the buying of short-term Treasury bills is to keep the federal funds rate in the new range of 3.5 to 3.75 percent.

The actual FOMC statement is more subtle.  It states: “The Committee judges that reserve balances have declined to ample levels and will initiate purchases of shorter-term Treasury securities as needed to maintain an ample supply of reserves on an ongoing basis.”

Since the fall of 2008, the Fed has been able to manipulate the federal funds rate by paying banks interest on their reserves.  It’s been a good deal for the big banks, and it’s been a good deal for the Federal Reserve. That sounds about right.

But it seems that the rigged game has to be altered now.  It is possible that the Fed is having trouble maintaining the federal funds rate without actually creating new money out of thin air.  This is one of the reasons they will be buying new debt, which means that the money supply will once again increase.

The 12 Days of Stable Money

The Fed didn’t give us the 12 days of Christmas this December, but it did give us the 12 days of stable money. Or maybe it will just be 11 days.

From the late October meeting, the Fed announced it would be winding down its quantitative tightening.  Starting December 1, all Fed holdings would be rolled over as they matured.

With the latest Fed meeting, they will begin buying Treasury securities on December 12.  This is a return to quantitative easing (QE), also known as digital money printing.  They can call it reserve management purchases or whatever they want, but it appears to be more money printing.

So, we got a stable money policy of no monetary inflation or deflation from December 1 to December 12.  They couldn’t even wait a full 2 weeks from quantitative tightening to quantitative easing.

Problems?

Why is the Fed already returning to QE?  Is it just to maintain the federal funds rate?  If that’s the case, then it is a good indication they shouldn’t be lowering rates right now if they can only maintain it through more monetary inflation.

(While the market should determine interest rates and there should be no Federal Reserve, I am writing this from the basis that we currently do have a central bank.)

The Fed’s supposed price inflation target is 2%.  Even going by government statistics, we haven’t seen 2% in several years.

If the economy is relatively strong and consumer price inflation is still above 2%, why is the Fed cutting rates?  Why is the Fed returning to QE?

It just tells you that something is going on, and they know something is going on.  There are major underlying problems in the economy.  The yield curve was inverted for about 2 years.  With the latest cut in short-term rates, it is normalizing more.  We are facing a recession ahead.  We are in a major bubble, and I think some Fed members sense this.

I don’t think these decisions are purely political.  The dissenting vote who wanted to lower the target rate by 50 basis points was probably political.  Fed officials see trouble ahead, but they don’t want to announce it to everyone.  Then they will just get blamed for panicking the market.

It has not been uncommon for the Fed to cut rates before a recession becomes evident.  If history is any guide, we are on a path to recession right now.  Maybe we are already in it.  The Everything Bubble could implode.

They can fudge the statistics all they want, but there are some numbers and prices that can’t be hidden.  Some of the Fed members sense there is trouble ahead.  It would be wise to pay attention.  Why would they be cutting rates and returning to QE if there weren’t serious problems out there?

The situation in Venezuela is extremely bad, but it is also bringing up some important moral issues.  The Trump administration has been bombing boats off the coast of Venezuela.  The excuse is drugs.

It is hard to believe that these boats are traveling hundreds of miles or thousands of miles to deliver drugs.  But even if that is the case, it doesn’t give the right to the U.S. government to blow them up.

There is absolutely no proof that these boats are carrying drugs.  There is no trial for the people on board the boats.  Some of them are probably fishermen.  And even if they were carrying drugs, since when do we issue the death penalty for carrying drugs?  Plus, it makes it even worse that the U.S. government is doing this to a sovereign country.

Imagine if Russia or China started blowing up boats off the coast of Florida because they suspected they had drugs.  How would that go down?

The big controversy is that there was at least one boat that was bombed that had survivors.  There were orders to kill the remaining survivors.  The more controversial part should be blowing up the boats in the first place, but at least it is getting attention for something.

Pete Hegseth is evil and a bumbling fool.  He is mocking and making light of these murders.  He is completely complicit in these murders.  So is Trump.  This issue alone means they are unfit for office.  They are fit for jail for outright murdering people.

Just Following Orders

Six Democratic members of Congress stated that military members should not follow illegal orders.  The Trump administration is investigating these people.  Trump suggested that this is traitorous and even that these members of Congress are subject to the death penalty.

There is no need to defend these particular members of Congress.  They will support illegal and immoral wars when it fits their agenda.  But there is a need to defend what they said and their right to say it.

They were very careful in saying that people can refuse to obey illegal orders.  If the orders are illegal, why would you follow them?  Hey Trump, just don’t give illegal orders and then it won’t be a problem.

There is certainly subjectivity as to what is illegal.  But you don’t have to be a legal scholar to figure out that it is both illegal and immoral to murder people in boats.

Illegal vs. Immoral

Just because something is illegal, it doesn’t mean it is immoral.  And just because something is legal, it doesn’t necessarily mean it is moral.  This isn’t even a strictly libertarian principle that rests on the assumption that initiative government force is immoral.

If the government passes a law stating that it is ok for the government to murder people who haven’t harmed anyone, it doesn’t make it moral.

Trump, his lawyers, and his spokespeople can spout all they want about “narco-terrorists” or “democracy” or “fighting drugs”.  It doesn’t make bombing boaters legal.  And even if they amended the U.S. Constitution to allow for such a thing, it wouldn’t make it moral.

After World War 2, there were the Nuremberg trials.  German officials were convicted for war crimes and killing people even though some of them were just following orders.  Maybe the victors in the war were just trying further embarrass and degrade the Germans, but the principle is still correct.  Following orders is not an excuse when harming innocent people, regardless of the law and regardless of who is barking the orders.

Right now, Trump is saying that he is the dictator and the military has to follow his orders, no matter what they are.  If he believes they must murder boaters off the coast of Venezuela, then that pretty much means that anything goes.

What if Trump orders the murder of his political opponents?  Will he arrest the military members who refuse his orders?  What if he orders that all judges be given the death penalty if they rule against one of his edicts, such as his tariffs?  Should the military and police follow his orders because it is the president issuing the orders?

Maybe this sounds absurd, but that is only because Trump is being absurd.  It is the duty of people to not carry forward illegal and immoral orders.  This is not being a traitor.  It is not seditious, as the evil and foolish Hegseth said.  It is Trump and Hegseth who are being the traitors by issuing illegal and immoral orders.

There is no defense for ordering the intentional murder of innocent people.

The yield curve was mostly inverted during 2023 and most of 2024.  It has been slowly normalizing over 2025.  This means that short-term yields are lower than long-term yields once again, which is the “normal” state of nature.

An inverted yield curve doesn’t make much sense.  Why would someone lend money for 30 years with a lower interest rate than what they would get for lending it out for just 3 months?  Why lock up your money for 30 years when you can get a higher average annual return and get your money back after 3 months?  After all, you can reinvest the money after 3 months.

The only reason to do such a thing is on the belief that rates will be even lower in the future.  You might lock in a rate for 30 years if you thought rates were going lower in the future.

This is not normal.  In a world without fiat money and central banking, it is unlikely we would see this drastic inversion.

Yields in December 2025

As I write this, the yield on a 3-month treasury is lower than both the 10-year yield and 30-year yield.  It isn’t by a lot.  It is about a 34 basis point difference between the 3-month and 10-year yield.  It is about 100 basis points (1%) between the 3-month yield and 30-year yield.

If the Fed cuts its target rate by another 25 basis points in December, then the spread on the yields should widen.  The short-term yields should continue to fall.

This is significant, even though hardly anyone is talking about it.  The yield curve was inverted for about 2 years.  At times, it was quite heavily inverted.  It has been somewhat flat for the last year.  It is finally normalizing, especially with the Fed rate cuts.

The yield curve has historically been a good predictor of recessions.  But the recession doesn’t come when the yield curve is inverted.  It comes after the yield curve was inverted and then normalizes.

If history is any guide, we should be in for a hard recession any time now.

The Fed’s Actions

The big variable is the actions of the Federal Reserve.  There should have been a recession in 2020 with or without COVID lockdowns.  But the government lockdowns provided an excuse for Congress to spend trillions of dollars extra and for the Fed to more than double the money supply in 2 years.  Most of that doubling happened in March to May 2020.

When you inject such a ridiculous amount of money, both through government spending and monetary inflation, it is understandable how the recession barely happened at that time.

It’s always possible the same could happen again here.  It doesn’t necessarily have to be a virus and lockdowns as the excuse.

Still, with consumer price inflation still above 2%, it is hard to imagine the Fed going crazy again with monetary inflation.  The Fed will likely return to monetary inflation when there is some kind of banking crisis, trouble in the bond market, or a massive stock market crash.  But at that point, the recession is already here.  Some of the damage will already have been done, and the Fed’s interventions will likely only make things worse in the long run.

I don’t think the Fed is going to go crazy like 2020 just because stocks take a dive or because Bitcoin is crashing.  If there is a banking crisis, then maybe we will see something like that.

The point is that you shouldn’t count on the Fed to bail out your portfolio.  Remember the tech crash of 2000 to 2002.  Remember the financial crisis of 2008.  There were dramatic drops in the market.  The Fed’s interventions took a while to save the day.

The Fed’s actions will, unfortunately, continue to play a big role in the economy.  This doesn’t mean that your investments are safe in the stock market or Bitcoin or anything else.  The Fed will do whatever it takes to save the big banks.  It won’t do whatever it takes to save your retirement portfolio.

There was recently a release of a 28-point peace plan to end the war in Ukraine.  It is still hard to say how serious this peace plan is and whether it was purposely leaked to the public.

The draft plan actually addresses some of Russia’s security concerns with the U.S. and NATO.  It would also recognize Crimea, Luhansk, and Donetsk as Russian territories.  Most people in these territories are ethnic Russians and would prefer it this way.

There are some major problems with this peace plan, but it isn’t so much as what is written it.  The main problem is that a lot of powerful interests don’t want the conflict to end, and certainly not in this way.

There will be opposition from Europe.  There will be opposition by Zelenksyy.  There will likely be opposition by the war establishment inside the United States, including in Trump’s own administration.

The Only Thing That Matters

This peace plan is basically meaningless for now.  Perhaps it shows that the Trump administration is beginning to acknowledge some of the reasons that Russia invaded Ukraine in the first place.  But this peace plan can only ultimately be enforced in one way.

Trump must be willing to cut off all funds to Ukraine.

That’s it.  That is the big thing.  If he is not willing to cut off all U.S. funds going to Ukraine, then it won’t work.  Maybe he can make this credible threat of stopping all funding behind closed doors, but it must be there.

It is like the ceasefire plan in Israel and Gaza.  It is mostly meaningless in the long run unless Trump is willing to withhold money and weapons to Israel.  So far, he has not been willing to do that, which is why the violence continues.

If Trump cuts off all funding to Ukraine, it would force an end to the conflict quickly.  Ukraine would run out of money, weapons, and probably soldiers.  It would force an end to the conflict, and it probably wouldn’t look all that different from the 28-point peace plan, minus some of the kickbacks to the U.S. government.

The U.S. taxpayer would save more money by stopping all funding to Ukraine rather than trying to get a piece of the “profit” from rebuilding Ukraine.

Just remember the key to ending this whole conflict is the funding.  If Trump is not willing to pull the plug on funding Ukraine, then a peace plan is not likely to work.

Marjorie Taylor Greene (MTG) has announced that we will be resigning her seat from Congress effective January 5, 2026.  This was following a week of being verbally attacked by Donald Trump.

MTG and Thomas Massie are the two most pro-liberty members of the House of Representatives.  The only senator that would come close to them is Rand Paul.

And who are the three people that Donald Trump has decided to proactively attack and even threaten to campaign against?  It is the three best members of Congress.

Thomas Massie is more libertarian than MTG.  MTG has identified as America First.  They are the two most honest members of Congress, although MTG had been very careful to not directly criticize Trump.  As of late, she had become more critical of some of Trump’s policies, which was enough for Trump to go on the attack against her.

Massie is accustomed to getting attacked by Trump.  It goes back to at least 2020 when Massie demanded a roll call vote on the trillions of dollars being spent in response to the Covid lockdowns (which incidentally played a big role in the spike in consumer price inflation a couple of years later).

Most recently Trump actually attacked Massie for getting married a little over a year after his wife of 30 years passed away.  This was rather rich coming from a guy who has been divorced twice and has a lot of accusations out there regarding infidelity.

Massie has been a defender of Trump at times.  Maybe it’s more accurate to say that he has been a defender of truth.  When there were accusations about Trump colluding with Russia to steal the 2016 election, Massie said that there was no such evidence.  On the topic of January 6, 2021, Massie continues to seek the truth and claims that there were federal government operatives in the crowd meant to stir up trouble and get people into the Capitol building.  Massie has been better on the issue of January 6^th than Trump himself ever was.

Yet, because he wasn’t an obedient little soldier agreeing with everything Trump says or does, he gets relentlessly and personally attacked by Trump.

MTG did not want to go down that road.

Stay and Fight, or Leave Quietly?

Massie and MTG are now taking two different paths.  Trump and his war hawk friends are spending tens of millions of dollars trying to defeat Massie in the next primary.  Massie is determined to stay and fight.  It is big money at play for one congressional race, especially a primary.  It would be a major black eye to Trump and his establishment “friends” if Massie is able to defeat them.

MTG is resigning from office.  She could have at least stayed in office until January 2027 and just not run for reelection in 2026.  But she didn’t even want to put up with that.

MTG was so careful in her wording not to personally attack Trump for anything up until this past week.  She would criticize policies.  She would say that we shouldn’t be sending billions of dollars overseas to fight wars while people at home are struggling to pay for health insurance and other basic needs.

Even after Trump attacked her, MTG was still careful in her response.  She didn’t get personal the way Elon Musk did when he had his falling out.  MTG did respond to Trump’s remark on her being a traitor, and she defended herself on that.  She could have been a lot more vicious in responding to Trump.

Whether her decision to leave Congress is the right or the wrong one is hard to say.  She is most likely done with political office, but you never know.  She is talented and is far more true to the America First vision than Trump ever was.  Maybe she will find other platforms from which to speak out.

She has fought Democrats and the establishment media (that’s somewhat repetitive) for many years.  They have attacked her and called her all of the typical names.  Her Wikipedia page states that she “has promoted Islamophobic, antisemitic, and white supremacist views”.  She was up for that fight.  She apparently was not up for a fight with the current president.

A Personal Choice

I respect that choice and don’t blame her.  It is a personal choice, and she doesn’t owe anything to the country.

Part of me wants a Democrat to win her seat, even though I detest the Democrats in Washington DC.  The Trump loyalists will blame her if that happens, even though she probably never would have resigned if Trump hadn’t attacked her personally.

Don’t blame MTG for any of this, and don’t think she owes anything more to her country than what she has already done.  This is Trump’s fault, along with all of his loyal followers who would walk off the end of a bridge if he told them to.

Trump has completely betrayed the people who supported him for something of an America First policy. Trump continues to fund Israel and Ukraine.  He has bombed Yemen, Iran, Somalia, and Venezuela in 2025.  He has lied continually about the Epstein files.  He has arrested legal immigrants for speech.  He has continued to increase government spending and is overseeing a national debt that is spiraling out of control.

The Trump loyalists who continue to support Trump are in the wrong here.  It certainly isn’t MTG.  It is Trump and his loyalists who are the problem

While there is still a good chunk of the population who will support Trump no matter what, he has lost support from younger people and more libertarian leaning people.  I personally know several people who voted for Trump in 2024 and now despise him.  I am also aware of many people in the alternative media who at least somewhat supported Trump in this last election and are disappointed to say the least.

Trump’s whole presidency should go down in flames.  It’s not to say that nothing good will come.  But Trump has, if anything, increased intervention in terms of foreign policy.  He is also going to oversee an economic meltdown, which will make him even more unpopular.

Trump made a choice to surround himself with all of the worst people.  He could have surrounded himself with Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Thomas Massie, and MTG.  Instead, he chose the path of surrounding himself with establishment war hawks who will stab him in the back when the time is right.

Hey Trump, when all of the war hawks put the proverbial knife in your back, MTG can sit back and laugh at you.  But she probably won’t because she has dignity and grace.  But you wouldn’t understand that.