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.

How do so many bad people get in positions of high power?  As Hayek said, the worst get on top.  That is very true in the United States, and it has been this way for a long time.

It isn’t just the president.  It is Congress.  It is the head of agencies.  It is the powerful people in the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and even the military.  It is judges and prosecutors.  It is also top people in corporations, the media, and many people with influence.

The system has almost made it impossible for good and decent people to get into positions of power.  Part of it is always the fact that good people tend to not seek out positions of power, especially political power.  And when they do, they are excluded from the game because they won’t play along.

Still, the American people vote for some of these people.  Sometimes they aren’t given much of a choice, but it is still somewhat of a reflection of their character.  There are occasionally people like Ron Paul who come along and the large majority of people won’t support him because they are told so by others.  They just believe whatever their masters tell them, thinking that they are thinking for themselves.

By the way, this isn’t just Americans.  This happens everywhere, and often it is worse in other places.

Naïve or Evil?

I look at the people who are enthusiastically supporting Kamala Harris for president and wonder how it is possible.  To be sure, different people have their different reasons.  Many of her supporters just hate Trump and will vote for the person with the best chance to beat him in the election.  It is hard to imagine that so many people just love her policies, especially when her stance on many issues seems to be fluid.

This is one of those cases where there is no black and white.  It isn’t just a question of whether someone is evil or stupid.  They might be both.  They might be a little bit evil and naïve when it comes to politics.

The problem is that we can’t say that someone is just completely naïve and that is it, unless they are so naïve that they can’t recognize at all that they are supporting immoral things.  Every single person supporting Kamala Harris is acting immorally to some degree.  They are supporting her authoritarianism.  Even if they just want free tuition for college (or whatever she is promising today), it is still immoral.

I have never heard a Harris supporter or any Democrat justify voting for a Democrat just because they already pay a lot of taxes and want to get back a portion of the money that was stolen from them.  They don’t see it in these terms.  Maybe there is some Democrat somewhere who believes this, but I haven’t heard about them.

Democrats believe in the power of the state.  They believe it is just fine and dandy for the government to take your money to use it for “public goods”.  In fact, many of them wouldn’t even refer to it as “your money”.  They think it all belongs to the government and the government allows you to keep some of it.

To be sure, the Republicans aren’t much better.  At least there are some who have some understanding of the immorality of taking from some to give to others.  They don’t always apply it consistently, but there is some realization.  There are also more legitimate excuses for supporting someone like Trump over Harris because he is the lesser of two evils.  I have heard Republicans and libertarians (large and small “L”) who think the whole system is corrupt but that they support one candidate over the other because it might at least move us in the right direction.

The Ruling Elite Rely on Propaganda

Even though there is much immorality, I still believe that the majority of Americans are generally good people.  Outside of political realms, they wouldn’t dream of hurting another person on purpose other than in self-defense.  They wouldn’t rob their neighbor either, even if it was in the name of charity for others.

In a just system, most people are good people.  The ruling elite rely on the naïveté of the people for their own power.  This is why they use propaganda.

I can’t think of a single brutal dictator or elected official who came to power by announcing that they would rule with an iron fist over his people.  They might talk about ruling over a small minority of the population, but even here it is usually wrapped in propaganda.  Hitler didn’t come to power announcing that he would slaughter the Jews.  Stalin didn’t rise to the top by telling his people that he would starve them and ship any dissenters to concentration camps.

Some people rise to power by threatening other countries outside of their domain.  This is even happening now in the U.S. presidential race.  It seems that the two major parties always have some bogeyman like Iraq, Russia, China, etc.  But these are not the people voting for them.  The one exception, although he is no longer running, is Joe Biden talking about MAGA.

The point here is that no authoritarian is going to explicitly announce that he will act as an authoritarian towards his subjects.  He will want more of your tax money to help the poor.  He will want more war to spread democracy and freedom abroad.  He will want to confiscate guns for the safety of the children.  He will want to spy on you to keep you safe from terrorists.

They play on the goodness of people.

The ruling elite rely on the people to eat up their lies and propaganda.  They have to trick you into supporting them.  If they told you the whole truth, then most people wouldn’t support them because they would see it as evil.  They would also see it as being against their own interests.

The ruling elite generally hate your guts.  At best, they don’t care one way or another about you.  They care about their own power, their own wealth, and their own safety.

If only people understood that these authoritarians are not their friends.  Unfortunately, they just eat up whatever they are told by the media and then discount anyone who is actually trying to tell them the truth.

There should be fewer naïve people (politically speaking) in the world today because of alternative media. That probably is the case, but there are still way too many people who just believe whatever their media masters tell them.

We just need for these people to be a little open-minded and listen to those who are actually trying to tell them the truth.  It wouldn’t hurt if they learned a little economics too.

When Robert Kennedy Jr. picked Nicole Shanahan as his running mate, I didn’t know anything about her other than what I could immediately look up.  I knew that Kennedy offered Dave Smith his VP slot right after debating each other on Dave’s podcast about Israel.  Perhaps anything after that would be a disappointment.

My initial assessment of Nicole Shanahan was that she is a leftwing attorney who was married to one of the founders of Google.  This was probably a correct assessment at one time, but it wasn’t fair in 2024.  She definitely comes from the left, and she will admit that, but she is not like anything leftwing by today’s standards.

I was wrong on my initial assessment.  When someone is running for political office and I get something wrong about them, it is usually because I wasn’t harsh enough.  In this case, I can finally say I was wrong because I was too harsh and not generous enough.

To be sure, Nicole Shanahan isn’t a libertarian.  There are certainly elements of political leftism that come out at times, just as with Kennedy.  For example, they like to use the word “democracy” with a little too fondness.  And maybe they are just referring to democratic mechanisms within the rule of law.

Although libertarians don’t praise democracy, it is understandable why Kennedy and Shanahan are upset and using the word, considering the so-called Democrats have done everything possible to undermine their participation in the election.  They were rigging the whole primary process against Kennedy, which is why he changed to running as an Independent.  They certainly weren’t going to include him in any debates.  The so-called Democrats also did everything they could to keep him off of state ballots.  Now that Kennedy wants to drop his name from the swing states, the Democrats are trying to keep his name on there.  You couldn’t make this stuff up.

With that said, Nicole Shanahan has been really great for the most part when I have heard her in interviews.  It seems like she is learning on the job at times.  It’s probably not something a vice presidential candidate should be doing, but it is better than not being open minded and getting things wrong.

Libertarian Tendencies

RFK Jr. spoke in front of the Libertarian National Convention in May.  His speech was very libertarian.  I was quite surprised by the depth of it.  Even if he was pandering to his audience, most politicians wouldn’t have been capable of delivering such a speech.

RFK Jr. also gave a great speech when he announced the suspension of his campaign and his support for Trump in the swing states.  It wasn’t great because of his endorsement of Trump.  It was great when he talked about censorship, American health issues, and Ukraine.  He got it all correct.

I have disagreed vehemently with Kennedy when it comes to Israel.  He has been so good on issues of foreign policy and war, yet he seemed to completely revert to the establishment position with Israel.  If he had just taken a more neutral stance since October 7, 2023, I think his campaign would have done better, and a lot more libertarians would have supported him.

With that said, Kennedy must have seen something appealing about Nicole Shanahan, besides the fact that she has a lot of money.

I have learned a lot more about her, especially with her interviews with Ron Paul and Dave Smith.  These were more like conversations, as she wasn’t just giving scripted answers and was also learning from these two libertarian giants.

She has been great on health issues, which I fully expected from the beginning.  She understands that the government has vastly interfered with pharmaceuticals and agriculture to make us sicker.  There is nothing wrong with “big pharma” and “big agriculture” by itself.  The problem is that they are big because the government is helping them and, in the process, making us less healthy.

Beyond health issues, Shanahan has been great with Kennedy on issues of censorship.  She understands that the government is trying to shut up people who want to tell the truth or just want to express an alternative opinion.  She understands the problems with trying to censor misinformation, regardless of whether it is true or not.

Surprisingly, Shanahan has said some great things about the gold standard.  This is better than you would get from most Republicans.  I believe she has actually become somewhat of a fiscal conservative, even if she doesn’t want to completely tear down the welfare state.  You can tell that Ron Paul has had influence on her and that she is quite appreciative of it.

Like Kennedy, she has also been good on most foreign policy.  She understands the nature of the military-industrial complex and the war machine.  It was interesting that on her last podcast with Dave Smith, she even said some slightly encouraging comments on Israel that seemed to express that she didn’t back the mass slaughter of the Palestinians.  If only RFK Jr. had taken this stance from the beginning.

This only touches the surface of the things she has said.  Overall, she is an opponent of the establishment.  I was also completely wrong for criticizing her for likely being out of touch with the average American.  She said in her podcast interview that anyone with over $15 million is basically untouched by inflation, but it is really hurting everybody else.  She may have a lot of money, but she is showing empathy and understanding for those who don’t.  She understands that average Americans are struggling today.

Conclusion

I got this one completely wrong at the beginning.  Nicole Shanahan gets a high-grade mark for liberty in 2024.  She is more libertarian than some self-identified libertarians.  I am happy I was wrong on this one.  She is a great person to have on our side.  She has changed positions on political issues a lot from just 4 years ago.

I hope she continues to use her resources to spread the message of liberty.  I hope she continues to consult those who are already strong libertarians.  If she runs for president one day, I will consider supporting her.

The Federal Reserve is doing what it says according to the FOMC monetary policy statements.  Each time the Fed meets (about every 6 or 7 weeks), we hear about interest rates.  But the Fed also tells us what it is doing with its balance sheet.

The Fed continues to allow some of the maturing debt to mature and not be rolled over.  If the Fed buys a 2-year Treasury bill, it does so by creating money out of thin air.  That money essentially goes to the U.S. Treasury, but not directly.  It goes through a broker bank.

The Fed buys this debt, and the Treasury actually pays interest to the Fed on the debt, just the same as if any individual bought a U.S. Treasury bill.  Let’s say that the Fed bought a 2-year bill for $1 billion.  It would be paid interest, and at the end of 2 years, the debt would mature.  The Treasury would then owe $1 billion back to the Fed (plus whatever interest there was).  In most cases, the Fed would roll over this debt.  In other words, it would just use the proceeds to immediately buy another Treasury bill.

But the Fed’s policy of late has been to not roll over some of this debt.  The debt matures, and the money just evaporates as quickly as the Fed originally created it.  This is deflationary.

The Balance Sheet

You can get a good overall picture by looking at the Fed’s balance sheet.  In 2008, the Fed had about $900 million on its balance sheet.  That is chump change compared to now.  After the financial crisis hit in September 2008, it surged and more than doubled in a short period of time.

The balance sheet grew to over $4 trillion by 2014.  In 2018 and 2019, there was slight deflation, and the balance sheet briefly dipped under $4 trillion.  In 2019 (before COVID hysteria hit), the Fed was already starting to inflate again.  Then March 2020 hit, and the Fed went crazy again.

The balance sheet peaked at about $9.65 trillion in April 2022 (more than 10 times what it was in early 2008).  Since then, it has fallen to about $7.140 trillion.  In other words, it has fallen more in the last couple of years than what existed back in early 2008.

Even though virtually everyone in the financial community is expecting a Fed rate cut in September, the fact of the matter is that we are still in deflation mode.  The Fed is engaging in monetary deflation even though consumer prices continue to increase.

Massive Recession Ahead?

While people are saying that the Fed is going to cut rates to get ahead of a recession or to possibly prevent one, it doesn’t usually work this way.  There are many times where the Fed already began cutting rates and we ended up in a recession anyway.  Sometimes the recession had already started but it just wasn’t evident in the data yet.

It is obvious that America is in a recession now because middle-class America is struggling with increasing prices and lagging wages.  Maybe there isn’t a technical recession yet according to the data, but this doesn’t mean much to households just trying to pay their bills.

The fact that the stock market is booming also means nothing.  This primarily benefits people who already have significant assets.  Plus, even for someone who is middle income, the benefit of a rising 401k doesn’t do much good right now trying to pay the bills.

The yield curve remains mostly inverted, which it has been for all of 2023 and 2024.  This is an amazingly long time for an inversion.  When you couple the inverted yield curve with a deflating balance sheet, it sure does point to a massive recession ahead.  The big question is when it will finally happen.

Conclusion

It is interesting that the Fed has never really had a stable monetary policy since 2018.  The Fed continued to inflate in early 2022, even when consumer prices were starting to rise at a rate greater than the Fed’s supposed 2% target.  It then all of a sudden had to shift from monetary inflation to monetary deflation in 2022.

You have to wonder if the same thing will happen again.  As soon as the recession becomes evident, will the Fed shift immediately from monetary deflation and go back to monetary inflation?  This seems like a good possibility depending on how severe the recession appears to be.

This is why investing in gold and other hard assets is still a good long-term play, even if they do take a hit in a recession.  The only thing the Fed knows how to do to solve economic slowdowns is to create more money out of thin air.  Why would it stop now?

The only reason the Fed won’t return to massive monetary inflation is if they are losing control of the dollar and risking massive price inflation.  Either way, owners of hard assets will likely benefit in the long run.

With the election approaching, there is no shortage of news out there.  It started in June when the other half of the world was forced to recognize that the sitting president of the United States has dementia.

In July, Trump was nearly killed by the deep state or deep state incompetence.  But he turned his head just enough at just the right moment, or else we would be in an entirely different political landscape right now.

Shortly after that, there was something of a coup against Biden, although I’m not sure if coup is the right word, since he was never really in charge of anything anyway.  He was forced out of running.  Anyone who thought that Jill and Hunter could say otherwise doesn’t understand how politics in Washington work.  It was never Joe Biden’s choice.  He is a useful idiot of the establishment.  As soon as it was apparent that he had no chance of beating Trump, he was easily dumped.  They don’t mind keeping the dementia patient as president for several more months though.

Now the corporate media has coronated Queen Kamala as the person bringing back joy to our world.  I have to admit, she was much sharper in her speech at the convention than I thought she would be.  Maybe the right word is “shrewd”.  She knows how to read a teleprompter well, and she can minimize her cackling when the time comes.

There was one lie after another spoken in Chicago at the DNC.  Joe Biden said he took on big pharma.  Yeah, remember that time that he told 100 million Americans that they better get a jab or else they wouldn’t be allowed to work and feed their families?  That really showed big pharma a thing or two.

We had Michelle and Oprah telling us not to be greedy or take too much.  And apparently Oprah wasn’t the only billionaire there that week to deliver a message.  The party speaking out against billionaires seems to have their fair share of them.

Michelle also let us know that the only reason someone wouldn’t vote for Kamala is because she’s black or because she’s a woman.  She assured us that Donald Trump fears her and Kamala because they are successful, intelligent women.

We got to see the guy Kamala picked, who has been elevated to “Coach”.  It looks like his arm is going to fly off when he waves to the crowd.

When Kamala finally finished things off, there wasn’t much left to say.  After all, they certainly weren’t going to talk about any substantive issues.  She inserted her own lies about an armed mob storming the Capitol on January 6^th and killing police officers.  It’s really amazing when people are not just capable of lying, but uttering the exact opposite of the truth.  It reminded me of later 2020 when the Democrats were blaming Trump for the lawlessness and riots that took place in major cities.

RFK Jr.

The day after the convention was over, the political news didn’t stop.  Robert Kennedy Jr. took to the microphone to announce that he is suspending his campaign because he doesn’t see a path to victory in November.  He is also withdrawing his name from swing states so as not to help Kamala Harris.

If you live in a blue state, I would encourage you to vote for RFK Jr. just to make a statement.  Even if you are a Trump supporter, you should consider this.  I mean a really blue state like New Jersey, Washington, or California.  Imagine if Kennedy can get 10% or more in these states.  That would make a statement.

Kennedy is throwing his support behind Trump in spite of their disagreements on certain issues.  He hates the Democrats that much now, and probably rightfully so.  Kennedy was a bit naïve going into the presidential primaries thinking that he would be treated even remotely fairly by the Democratic establishment and its corporate media.

Of course, you have to give Kennedy some credit for recognizing it early and calling it out.  Bernie Sanders is still trying to figure out how he got screwed out of a nomination twice.  Maybe he is still investigating the Russians on that one.

Kennedy has said some really great things.  In his speech announcing the suspension of his campaign, he talked about censorship.  He talked about how unhealthy Americans are.  He also talked about Ukraine, and accurately said that the U.S. government helped overthrow the president of Ukraine in 2014, which provoked the current conflict.  Maybe he can educate Trump on that one.

Luckily, Kennedy did not bring up Israel, where he takes the establishment position.  Or you can call it the military-industrial complex position.  I still think if Kennedy had even been more neutral in his stance here, he would have gotten a lot more support.

We don’t know where Kennedy supporters will go from here.  Apparently, his family isn’t too happy with him, but most of them weren’t supporting him anyway.  I suspect that a tiny percentage of his supporters will go to Harris and a bigger percentage to Trump.  But I’m guessing that something like half probably just won’t vote for either one with Kennedy essentially out.

Trump

Donald Trump is certainly going to get a bit of a boost from RFK.  He is also getting the endorsement of Tulsi Gabbard.

If Trump rewards them with a position in his administration, I hope he makes Tulsi Secretary of State.  It should be a major improvement over anything we’ve had in several generations.  I like Kennedy on health issues, but I don’t think he is best suited to head up the FDA, CDC, or an advisory commission.  If Trump really wants to risk his life and that of Kennedy, he should make Kennedy head of the CIA.  Now that would be a shot at the deep state.  But changing the head of the CIA didn’t help RFK Jr.’s uncle any.  The person he fired from the CIA was probably behind his assassination.

If I knew that Trump would put Kennedy as head of the CIA and Tulsi in an important position in foreign policy, then I would likely vote for Trump.

Unfortunately, I can’t say that much good about Trump otherwise in recent times.  His campaign has not been very good at all.  It is a bit disturbing to hear him talk about the attempt on his life as he continually praises the Secret Service.  It seems like he does understand that it was an inside job, and he is afraid to say anything about it publicly.

Even on policy, he has been largely ineffective.  It is sometimes funny when he personally attacks his political opponents, but it can also be distracting.  Instead of questioning when Kamala started to identify as African-American, he should be hammering home how expensive life is.

On the foreign policy front, he hasn’t been good either.  He takes the establishment position of funding the Israeli government’s mass murder of people in Gaza.  Even on Ukraine, he hasn’t been good.  He says he’ll bring an end to the war, but he doesn’t say how.  He makes these ridiculous claims that these wars never would have started in the first place if he had been president because others would have been too afraid of him.  This just sounds stupid.

Trump has not been that impressive since the Republican Convention, but he still has a good chance of winning the election.  Despite the media hype at the DNC, there is a major problem for Kamala Harris.  She is in the incumbent party while the world is a mess and the economy is a mess.  It’s hard for her not to own some of that.

The next couple of months will be interesting to say the least.  The last couple of months have been a major piece of history that we are living through.  I’m not sure how much people recognize that.

Michelle Obama spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Tuesday night.  She is a nasty and bitter person, and every bit of it came through in her speech.

It was far worse than I could have imagined.  If you read a transcript, parts of it sound like it could be a parody written by some rightwing Republican.

If you don’t want to suffer through her speech, it starts out with some “hope” and inspiration stories.  The second half mostly consists of her telling everybody that society is racist, Donald Trump is racist, and the only reason people won’t vote for Kamala Harris is because she is a black woman.  She also assured everyone that Trump fears her and her husband because they are intelligent successful people who happen to be black.

There was originally a lot of talk about Michelle Obama possibly replacing Biden as the nominee for president.  I questioned the basis for this.  Michelle Obama may not want to be president, and we don’t really know of her ability to discuss actual political issues.  Her speeches are one giant culture war accusing everything of racism.

Barack Obama, in spite of his evilness, is charismatic, and he also understands his audience better.  It is much the same way that Bill Clinton has a way of relating to people better than Hillary Clinton.  Maybe the men in these examples are just better actors.  But Obama at least tries to be funny and offer his empty platitudes of hope and change.

Michelle Obama, on the other hand, is purely divisive and bitter.  She just can’t help herself.  It is who she is.  This is why she could never be a legitimate contender for president.  She would simply turn off too many people with her hatefulness.  What plays well to the diehard Democrats at the convention would not play well with middle America, even for those who tend to lean politically left.  The people at the convention were eating up every word she said (in a creepy way), but I don’t think this is representative of America in general.

The Worst One

Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton have both spoken to the convention.  Their speeches were certainly filled with many lies and hate.  But they did not reach the level of Michelle Obama.

I had known that Obama was this way, but I had no idea it was this big of a psychological disorder for her.  She will forever be angry at the world around her.  It is a sad situation to see, especially for someone who spent 8 years in the White House with her husband ruling over this supposed racist country.

She says that there is no affirmative action generational wealth for black people in this country.  I wonder how her daughters feel about that.  What will happen to the multi-million dollar mansions that the Obamas own?  Will they be passed on to white people?

As evil and authoritarian as Kamala Harris is, I think she is smart enough to not give this kind of a speech.  At the very least, her advisors will make sure of it.  If Harris delivers anything close to the speech that was given by Michelle Obama, she will almost surely lose the election.

Harris already comes across as a phony, probably because she is.  She has this awful and uncomfortable laugh at things that aren’t funny, yet she is reportedly quite nasty to her staff.  This is why most of them end up quitting.

But Harris has to win over swing voters and independents.  She can’t give this kind of divisive speech that was given by Obama.  She can’t just call the whole world racist and expect to win.

Lucky for the Democrats that the speeches by the most notable people have come late at night when most people on the east coast have gone to bed.  If you watch the establishment media, the clips they show of Michelle Obama will tend not to be the really bad parts where she is calling everything and everyone racist.

Again, I had no idea she was this bitter and angry inside.  She can’t even cover it up for a nationally-televised speech.  She wanted to deliver this speech.  I don’t think most people would ever want somebody this outwardly hateful as president.

Since price inflation is a problem, Kamala Harris has come out with a rather non-specific economic plan to deal with it.  She has come out in favor of price controls on food.  Why not price controls on everything else we buy?  It isn’t just food that has become expensive.

Her official announcement came on August 16, 2024.  This came a day after the 53^rd anniversary of Nixon announcing price controls, that also included an end to any ties between the dollar and gold.

It’s interesting how our high price inflation today really goes back to that day on August 15, 1971 when the dollar became a total fiat currency.  Of course, the problems started way before that time.  The Fed came into existence in 1913.  There has never been a true free market with money in the history of this country, but it was a lot closer prior to 1913.

Roosevelt outlawed the holding of gold by Americans in 1933, and it didn’t become legal again until the end of 1974.  But foreign governments could still redeem gold for their U.S. dollars, which is exactly what France was doing.  This is why Nixon was essentially compelled to end this.  The U.S. government would quickly run out of gold unless the Fed actually stopped printing money.

The Good News

Before you worry about running out and buying food while it is still available, realize that there is a lot that has to happen here.  First, Kamala Harris has to actually win the presidency.  Second, even if she does win, this would presumably have to go through Congress.

Of course, maybe Kamala learned from her mentor and her mentor’s handlers.  She can just channel her inner dictator and issue an executive order declaring price controls on food.  After all, Biden declared that about 100 million Americans would lose their job if they didn’t submit to getting jabbed in the arm.  He also declared that student loan debt would be forgiven.  When the Supreme Court overturns some of these dictatorial claims, there are no negative consequences for the executive branch.  “Oh well.  I guess we’ll try some other way around it.”

If Queen Kamala declares price controls, you can bet there will be a lot of resistance, including lawsuits.  The price controls probably won’t last long.

Price controls tend not to last long anyway because they are so destructive.  If the shelves at grocery stores are near empty a few weeks after the implementation of price controls, I think most people are at least bright enough to put 2 and 2 together on this one.

Trump has already compared the price control proposal to communism, so it will make it difficult for Trump to do something like this if he ends up as president.  Trump has his own disastrous set of economic policy proposals, but I don’t think they will include price controls on food.

Pandering

The reason Kamala Harris came out with this proposal is because it is something that people want to hear, or at least she and her campaign team think it is something that people want to hear.

It is clear that increasing consumer prices is a major issue in this campaign.  I would contend that it is the biggest issue personally for Americans.  Middle class Americans (and definitely lower class Americans) are struggling a lot.  They are having trouble paying for their basic needs.

It has not been lost on some people that Kamala Harris is the vice president now, and it is not as if she has been criticizing Joe Biden.  If she has a plan to bring down price inflation, why wait until January 2025 or later?

Trump seems to get lucky with a lot of things.  Maybe getting shot in the ear was unlucky, but I think it was more luck that he turned his head at just the right time.

Trump may think that the 2020 election was stolen from him, but I think he was done a favor.  If Trump had remained president in 2021, we still would have seen rising price inflation.  Part of it is his fault for going along with the lockdowns in 2020 and allowing massive government spending.

The whole system is corrupt, and there is almost no talk of actually reducing government spending at the national level.  How will the Fed be able to keep price inflation under control when it has to help fund these giant budget deficits?

If you want to stop food prices from going up, and maybe even to have them go down, then stop all deficit spending and stop the Fed from creating new money out of thin air at the first sign of an economic downturn.

Kamala Harris and her team know that prices are a big issue, so this is her way of addressing it.  She is pandering.  She is essentially trying to buy votes.  But there is no redistribution of wealth here.  Price controls will hurt almost everyone.  She is just counting on voters not to understand that.  She is hoping that the voters just think she can wave a magic wand and make prices go down.  She will be right with some voters.

This is just an election promise that probably won’t come to fruition even if she does win.  Still, Biden was far worse than I ever imagined, so I guess you never know.  Kamala Harris is an authoritarian, but she is also a puppet and a politician.  Her proposal for price controls is the politician in her attempting to pander to voters.

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) numbers were released for July 2024, which were mostly in line with estimates.  The CPI showed prices increased 0.2% for July.  The median CPI showed an increase of 0.3% for the month.

The year-over-year CPI now stands at 2.9%.  The median CPI stands at 4.3%, which tends to be a less volatile number.

Now the financial media can run headlines that say inflation is below 3%.  Some will say that inflation has “eased”.  Some headlines will say that inflation is coming down.  The only thing that is coming down is the rate of price inflation.  But prices are still going higher.  They are still going higher at a rate greater than the Fed’s 2% target.

To say that inflation is coming down is highly misleading.  If anyone says that general prices are coming down, that is downright false.

What if I had personal debt and said that it is coming down because I had accumulated less debt than last year?

For example, let’s say I had $20,000 in credit card debt at the start of the year.  I had accumulated $5,000 of debt in the previous year.  At the end of the year, I have $22,000 in debt, which is up just $2,000.  My rate of debt accumulation went down from the previous year.  I only added 10% this year.  The previous year I had added 33% ($5,000 on top of $15,000).

Should I celebrate and tell people that my debt situation is improving?  My rate of debt accumulation is going down.

Most people would think this is insane because I am still adding more debt.  I am just making the problem worse from what it was.

The same goes for price inflation.  If the CPI is accurate and prices have gone up 2.9% over the last year, is that an improvement?  Sure, it is better that they have gone up 2.9% versus something like 6%, but that is nothing at all to celebrate.  That 2.9% is on top of the already much higher prices.

It’s not as if prices are up 2.9% from 2020.  They are up 2.9% from the already ridiculous prices that we saw in 2023.

CPI Weighting

Some people accuse the CPI data of being inaccurate.  I think that is the case too, but I also find it useful.  It is useful to see the trend on what is happening.  I don’t subscribe to what I think are exaggerations of it being vastly understated.  I don’t think price inflation is running at 15% per year.  If this were the case, prices would double in less than 5 years.  There may be some items that have doubled in the last 5 years, but that isn’t most things.

The biggest problem for the CPI for me is that it is understating some very important things like shelter (rent and home prices) and insurance.

Car insurance and homeowners insurance have gone up a lot.  For some people it has been 20% or more in just a year.  If you get a 3% raise in wages at your job, the whole thing could be eaten up just from the increased cost of car insurance and homeowners insurance.  Throw in health insurance and I think the increase in wages is all eaten up just by these things.  It doesn’t even begin to account for increased prices in cars themselves and food at the grocery store and at restaurants.

Overall, the standard of living for the average American has gone down in recent years.  Quite simply, wages have not kept up with rising consumer prices.  It is hard to keep up with car insurance premiums that go up several hundred dollars in just a year.

This has to be a factor in the coming election.  People know they are struggling.  They just don’t know where to point their finger.  Of course, the president and Congress play the role of spending the money, but the unelected Fed members are the ones who have financed the deficit spending over the years.

The Coming Fed Decision

The markets generally liked the news of the CPI.  Stock indexes were higher on the day.  They have somewhat recovered from the tumble they took more than a week ago.

The Fed has a meeting in September.  The big question is whether the Fed will lower its target rate.  With stocks having stabilized and the CPI coming in near what was expected, I don’t think there is an obvious answer.  Most likely the Fed will lower by 25 basis points.

But to decrease rates while price inflation, according to government statistics, is still running above 2%, seems to not make sense.  What happened to the Fed’s thing about wanting to average 2% over time?  If that’s the case, we should see price inflation well below 2% for several months before the Fed should consider dropping rates.

This just shows that the Fed will always side with inflation.  They don’t want hyperinflation or runaway inflation, but they always want some price inflation.

If we hit a recession and price inflation is still above 2%, the Fed will clearly go on the side of a looser monetary policy.  We aren’t even in a recession yet (that we know of) and the Fed is talking about lowering rates.

This is why it is a good long-term bet to own physical assets.  There will likely be some asset deflation in the near future as the economy goes into recession, but the only thing that Congress knows how to do is spend more money and issue regulations.  The only thing the Fed knows how to do is manipulate interest rates and create money out of thin air.

This is why we will likely never have a deflationary depression, or at least not one that lasts long.  As long as the Fed isn’t faced with losing control of the dollar, the Fed members will side with inflation as a general policy.