The FOMC released its latest statement on monetary policy. The federal funds target rate has been hiked by another 50 basis points, while the balance sheet continues to drain slowly.
This is all in the face of an inverted yield curve, which is the best predictor of a coming recession.
You probably don’t need to be an expert in Austrian school economics to understand that there is major economic trouble ahead. Still, it doesn’t hurt to invoke the face of the Austrian school, Ludwig Von Mises.
“There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.”
The Fed had a very loose monetary policy from 2008 to 2014. It looked like we were going to get a recession in 2020, but then COVID hysteria happened, which gave the Fed an excuse to more than double its balance sheet again in a short period of time. This delayed the recession.
So why doesn’t the Fed just delay the next recession too, and do the same thing again?
As Mises explained, eventually it ends up in what he called a crack-up boom. This means that there is some form of hyperinflation and the currency is destroyed.
I have long held that the Fed is not likely to engage in hyperinflation. We can get relatively high price inflation like we see now, but the Fed doesn’t want to destroy the dollar. That’s why we see the Fed tightening now.
Even if the Fed didn’t tighten, we would still eventually see a major recession. Mises pointed out that even the slowing of the rate of growth of the money supply will eventually be enough to bring on the correction in the malinvestment.
But we are in an environment where there is major malinvestment from previous Fed actions, and now the Fed is raising interest rates and draining its balance sheet, even if slowly. The yield curve is heavily inverted, yet the Fed continues to tighten.
The theme for the rest of this year and 2023 will be to live like we are in a recession. This is the best way to prepare for a recession. You should try to lower your spending, even in the face of price inflation, and you can hopefully set aside some extra money.
But the most important aspect of living like we are in a recession now is that it prepares you mentally. You will not be as disoriented when the recession does hit, and you are less likely to make a stupid mistake. It will also be less difficult for you to cut back since you have already cut back.
The recession is likely to hit hard in 2023. Maybe the worst won’t be until 2024. But unless the Fed drastically reverses course, there is a recession on the horizon. Even if the Fed does reverse course, it probably won’t be enough to stop it at this point, unless they do resort to mass inflation.
Let’s hope that the Fed doesn’t reverse course so that we get the lesser of two evils.
The latest CPI report came out today and showed that consumer prices overall rose just 0.1% last month in November. It was expected to be 0.3%.
The year-over-year price inflation still stands at 7.1%, which is obviously well above the Fed’s supposed target of 2%.
Stocks responded well on the news in the morning. Perhaps investors are expecting the Fed to be a little less hawkish on inflation going forward, although more rate increases are expected.
Even if the Fed stops increasing its target rate after the December meeting, I don’t think there is any stopping the coming recession. Unless the Fed responds at least as aggressively as it did in March 2020 when it began the more than doubling of its balance sheet, there is no stopping the economic pain coming in 2023.
And if the Fed did something crazy to stave off a recession, it would only make things worse in the long run.
The yields are highly inverted right now, which is the best warning sign of a coming recession as there is. Meanwhile, the Fed is still raising rates and slowly draining its balance sheet in the face of a highly inverted yield curve.
I don’t think people are processing just how bad things are going to get. We already have situations of shortages. Debt continues to go higher not just for government, but for families as well. With the high price inflation, real wages have been going down, but the tax bills aren’t going down with them.
Middle class America is already hurting, and that is with a relatively low unemployment rate. While a recession might ease consumer price inflation, there will also be a massive asset deflation. Stocks and real estate have already hit some turmoil, but it is likely to get much worse.
Once the recession becomes evident, people will start tightening their belts. This will cause business activity to slow down greatly, and we will see a massive shift of resources in the economy. This will cause greater unemployment, and it will cause many company bankruptcies to the extent that the government doesn’t bail them out.
Most businesses are not some kind of money laundering scheme like FTX, but it doesn’t mean they don’t get sucked in to the bubble economy and over invest. The companies that are overleveraged will have trouble paying their bills.
I expect stocks to get absolutely hammered in 2023. I also expect housing prices to generally go down, but they also may be more responsive if the Fed reverses course on its monetary policy and starts inflating again.
While the government sends tens of billions of dollars off to the money pit of Ukraine, middle class Americans suffer and will continue to suffer.
It is best to start living like it is a recession now. Then the adjustment won’t be as hard. Many Americans will be in for a shock when the good times stop rolling next year. I think many are already starting to face reality, but they just don’t fully believe it yet. They have seen their purchasing power decline, but they don’t believe that it will continue or that it will get significantly worse.
If you live like you are in a recession now, then you will be more mentally prepared when the recession actually hits.
For those who have opposed COVID lockdowns and mandates, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida has been something of a hero, at least for many. Some people don’t know or forget that DeSantis actually did lock down Florida in April 2020.
Luckily, he realized his mistake quickly. I have no idea how much of it was political instinct and how much of it was a genuine appreciation for liberty and common sense. By September 2020, Florida was completely open and the only mandates left were some mask ordinances from county/ local governments. Most of the rest of the United States still had major restrictions at the state level.
When I became aware of a lockdown in Florida in late March 2020 (set for April), I was referring to DeSantis as Dictator DeSantis to my friends and family. I wrote an email to DeSantis and the mayor where I live. I recently came across those emails, which are almost identical.
Here is a copy of my email to DeSantis on March 31, 2020. I am only leaving off my personal information at the end. Everything else is word for word.
********
Dear Governor DeSantis,
With all of the fear surrounding the coronavirus, there have been major business shutdowns, stay-at-home orders, and other measures taken by government officials at all levels. I am absolutely opposed to any such measures from the government, whether it is at the federal, state, or local level. If people feel they are at risk, they can voluntarily stay at home and isolate themselves from others. Just because there is fear of a pandemic, it does not entitle anyone to become a dictator. That includes mayors, governors, and the president. I urge you to resist calling for any more government shutdowns and to immediately repeal those shutdowns that were already ordered. This is for the sake of liberty and our economic future.
Sincerely,
********
As you can see, I was firm, but relatively polite. I have no idea if this had any impact at all. But I know that some politicians just need some encouragement at times to do what is right. Sometimes they need to hear from others to gain enough courage to do the right thing.
I feel fortunate to have lived (and continue to live) in Florida during a time of hysteria, panic, and government totalitarianism. I realize how much better my family and me had it compared to others.
Have you ever wondered why people who were so wrong in the past still have a platform for their views? This can span across all subjects, but I have really been thinking about this with regard to COVID.
It is really quite striking how this occurs. Take the Iraq War as an example. Some people got it wrong just because they listened to the wrong people and believed what they were being told by the media and politicians. And then there were some people who were cheerleaders for the war and pushed it hard.
These people either blatantly lied or they were just completely wrong about weapons of mass destruction. Iraq under Saddam Hussein never posed any threat whatsoever to the U.S. Perhaps Hussein just wasn’t obedient enough to the U.S. government.
Anyway, the people who pushed the war the hardest are the same people who are still to this day on television analyzing foreign policy. They get to comment on Ukraine and Russia and everything else. Why would anybody listen to them?
There are some rare people like Tucker Carlson who admit they were wrong. In fact, Carlson goes well beyond this because he has learned from his mistakes (mainly, trusting the regime). So I don’t mind listening to Tucker Carlson on foreign policy topics because he admits that he was wrong on the Iraq War and his views have changed dramatically.
COVID Hysteria and “Vaccines”
I realized recently that most of the people who were right on almost everything from the very beginning of COVID hysteria are people who don’t have much of a platform to this day. There are exceptions.
Of course, the talking heads on CNN or other establishment media outlets were wrong on almost everything. They just move on as if they were never wrong. They will never admit to being wrong. If they are questioned, they will just say that they were following the science and the science changed.
How does the science change? Doesn’t that mean that they were just guessing in the first place? And if they were just guessing, then there was no justification of forcing their views on others. From my standpoint, there’s no justification for forcing your views on others at all, even if they are grounded in fact.
Why would anyone listen to someone like Fauci or Biden at this point when it comes to anything COVID, or really anything at all? They are quite obviously liars. They didn’t just make mistakes. If they just made honest mistakes, then they would have occasionally gotten something right.
Biden just flat out lies about stupid things all the time. He makes up his own stories. But he repeated several times in 2021 that if you are vaccinated, you can’t die.
Even if this were true, he was extremely loose and inaccurate with his words. Perhaps what he meant to say was that if you have taken the COVID vaccine, then you can’t die of COVID.
But even if he had said it more precisely, it was still a complete lie. And then he tries to force the shot on 100 million Americans with the loss of their job. He has also banned foreigners from entering the country without vaccination proof, even though there is widespread admission now that the so-called COVID vaccines do not stop transmission.
The people who pushed COVID hysteria but who now just quietly move on are generally immoral people. It is fine to get things wrong, but it is not fine to advocate the use of force on other people. Anyone who supported lockdowns or vaccine mandates should absolutely never be trusted. They shouldn’t have a platform. They should be begging for forgiveness.
The problem I have is that there were some people who got completely suckered in at the beginning. Since that time, they have come around to the other side. Some of it was not out of principle. They just saw that the wind had shifted. This is what the governor of Texas did. He opened up Texas when he saw how popular DeSantis was becoming for opening up Florida early on. For this reason, you should never trust Greg Abbott on anything. He is just better than some other politicians because at least he stopped the tyranny when he realized it was no longer popular.
Some of the harshest critics today of the COVID vaccines are people who actually got the vaccine. Maybe some of them were vaccine injured or saw other people around them who were injured. In most cases, they just realized that they had been lied to.
I am not talking about some of the doctors on Fox News who now give wishy-washy warnings about COVID vaccines, or lightly criticize them for not stopping transmission. These people have just hopped on the bandwagon. They were shills for the vaccines a year ago.
I am talking about some of the hardcore critics. Some of them are very good, and they sound very scientific. But where was their science when the shots first came out and they thought they were good?
I don’t want to oppose them because they are on my team now, so to speak. And they are often quite effective in their opposition to the COVID vaccines and COVID tyranny in general.
The thing I struggle with is why they have the big platform. It’s like the military guy who goes to war and realizes that he’s fighting a war for lies. He comes home and speaks out against the war and gets the biggest audience. Yet, there were people who were never duped and never supported the war in the first place.
Getting It Right From the Beginning
I think of Ron Paul in March 2020. He was speaking out against the COVID tyranny from the very beginning of it. He said that kids need to be outside playing football. I remember it very clearly, and I remember being quite happy hearing someone that was on my side.
I still to this day don’t know why I never once bought into the hysteria. I never “social distanced” from anyone from my end. I know little about science and viruses, but I knew it was ridiculous to be closing beaches and outside parks. A very quick search on the internet at the time confirmed that viruses break up in the sun. This was before Google started rigging all of the results for the regime on anything COVID. If the official science was saying that in 2019 and before, then why were things being shut down everywhere in 2020, including outside places?
The biggest reason I never bought into the lies was because I knew that the ruling elite defaulted to lying about anything of importance. When the establishment media, politicians, and bureaucrats are all singing the same tune in unison, I figure it must be a lie. I have to at least assume it is a lie until I can prove otherwise.
Ron Paul was right on COVID from the very beginning. It helps a lot when your views are grounded with principles. In this case, it is the principle to not initiate force against others. Even if COVID was as bad as they said it was, it does not somehow make it moral to lock people down. It does not make it moral to force people to get injections that they don’t want.
I certainly welcome those who changed their views and came to the correct side, as long as it was done for the right reasons. They need to demonstrate that they will never again fall into a moral trap of advocating force on others.
But I would like recognition that there were some people who took the moral high ground the entire time. There were some people who were correct the entire time. They didn’t have to wait until it was ok to have divergent views from the mainstream media.
I will remember who got it right and who got it wrong. And for those who got it wrong, I know the people who quickly straightened course and those who changed with the wind. Personally, I would rather listen to the people who got it right from the beginning or near the beginning than others who took a while.
When it comes to China and the Chinese government, I feel like only libertarians get the issue right, if anyone at all. There is a lot of nuance.
There is a difference between the Chinese people and the Chinese government. There is also a difference between the Chinese rulers’ goals on foreign policy and their goals domestically.
There were big protests going on in China, presumably because of the harsh COVID lockdowns that have persisted to this day. It is a much scarier thing to protest in China than in the United States. If you are American, you just need to not use violence and not enter any government buildings (i.e., the Capitol), and you will most likely be ok.
If you are Chinese and you protest or speak out against the ruling elite, you risk getting arrest, or perhaps even disappearing.
I have again heard some conservatives and libertarians criticizing Americans because even the Chinese are protesting and Americans just don’t care. But as I pointed out many months ago and last year when there were mass protests in Europe and elsewhere, the reason Americans aren’t protesting as much is because there is less to protest. We haven’t had any lockdowns in 2022, and most mandates (with some notable exceptions) have gone away.
With that said, it is also unfortunate that conservatives and leftists are getting things wrong on China.
Conservatives
I hear so many conservatives taking political shots at China. Some of them are even half-decent on other foreign policy matters. Of course, Donald Trump has done that since at least 2015, and he slapped tariffs on Chinese goods, which served to make things more expensive for Americans.
Conservatives who like to bash China are mostly just trying to score political points. They are also finding someone to blame for their own shortcomings, collectively speaking.
I hear that China is this big threat to America. I’ll actually hear conservatives say that China is manipulating their currency.
My response: “Yeah, no kidding. Just like the Federal Reserve and every other central bank on the planet.”
To talk about China as a currency manipulator is a joke. Let the Chinese people worry about their own central bank. If anything, Chinese currency manipulation has made things cheaper for Americans.
On foreign policy, conservatives like to make China out to be the bogeyman. It isn’t all that different from what the left does with Russia.
China is certainly run by some bad people (like just about every government), but they aren’t the communists of old. Economically, China is far more open than it was 40 or 50 years ago, and the Chinese people are a lot wealthier.
It is mostly a Keynesian system now, but this type of central planning if far preferable to a communist system. There are major civil liberty issues in China, including the rights (or lack of) to protest and speak out. But the totalitarianism is against the Chinese people. The Chinese government is not showing any signs of wanting to take over the world. They are having enough trouble keeping their own subjects in line.
As long as the U.S. government doesn’t provoke things, China is not a threat to Americans. The Chinese are not interested in a major war. The Chinese government wants China to become an economic powerhouse, but in their own way, while keeping the people obedient.
The Political Left
The stuff coming from the political left these days is rich. We get to hear from Fauci who refers to the draconian lockdowns in China. We get to hear from Trudeau who says he supports the right of the people to protest.
Let the hypocrisy flow.
It is amazing to hear all of these people criticizing China for the harsh lockdowns. Hello! Does anybody remember 2020, and even 2021, in the United States of America?
These people criticizing the Chinese government are tyrants themselves. They just don’t like that the Chinese government is too in your face with it. They need to do it with a bigger smile on their faces. They need to do it all in the name of protecting people. They need to do it for the children.
For the left, it is ok to terrorize people and order them around. You just have to do it in a way that resonates. The people have to feel like they can’t live without their benevolent rulers.
When Americans were forced into lockdown, it was for the health and safety for everyone. If China does it for a bit longer, it is a human rights violation.
Conclusion
There is a lot of nuance when it comes to China. It is a much freer country than it was prior to 1980. But there is also a great deal of totalitarianism, and I hope that the Chinese people are able to break free from it.
But the American politicians and media talking about China is just terrible to hear. They are either wrong or being highly hypocritical. They are also using it as a distraction and for blame for their own failures.
Americans shouldn’t worry about the Chinese, or at least not to the extent that the government should do anything about it. The best things that Americans can do for the Chinese is to trade with them and to set a good example for liberty.
It is amazing how little attention this is getting. The yield curve is heavily inverted and is sending major warning signs for the near future. The short-term yields are higher than long-term yields, and I don’t remember ever seeing it this exaggerated.
The spread on the 2-year yield and the 10-year yield is about 77 basis points (4.46% vs. 3.69%) as I write this. That is a huge spread.
Even more incredible is comparing the longest-term yield against the shortest. The 1-month yield stands at 4.11%, while the 30-year yield stands at 3.74%. This is a difference of 37 basis points.
The 10-year and 30-year yields are the lowest on the curve right now.
Treasury/ bond investors are willing to take a lower interest rate for 30 years than for 1 month. Maybe the bond market is wrong on this one, but it is basically telling us to expect something along the lines of economic Armageddon.
This is barely being covered in any so-called mainstream news. CNBC does cover the bond yield inversion to a certain extent, but there isn’t a ton of emphasis on it. Maybe you can only talk about it for so long, but there is a lot more focus on individual companies and how they are innovating and investing for the future.
The yield curve is so out of whack that it is hard to make sense of it. The only conclusion is that we are headed for some kind of depression next year.
I see the financial “experts” saying that we should expect moderate or slowed growth next year. The perma bulls never predict a recession, which is why they are perma bulls. Still, to be fair to CNBC, they do have some alternative voices on who are sounding the alarm, but probably not loud enough.
There is typically a lag from when the yield curve inverts to when the recession kicks in. But unless the Fed goes crazy with money creation as it did in March 2020, there is no avoiding this major recession. In fact, creating money and lowering interest rates will only prolong and worsen the inevitable.
The yield curve may straighten out before we actually see the recession kick in. This is typical. But it could still take a year to show up. With the massive inversion and the Fed’s continued tightening, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the recession come earlier in 2023.
The Fed is still fighting the 8 percent price inflation that it created. The Fed will likely raise its target rate again at the December meeting. The Fed is aggressively raising its target rate in the face of a highly inverted yield curve. This is the formula for a massive recession or depression.
The air is already coming out of the Everything Bubble, but expect it to get much worse. The crypto market is largely the face of this speculative bubble, and there will be a lot more damage here. But the decline in major asset prices – particularly stocks and real estate – will be felt the hardest by most people.
And with any bad recession, we should expect that unemployment will start to rise. It has been an unusual time with companies struggling to hire people. As businesses go bankrupt and consumer demand falls, the labor market will shift quickly.
It almost doesn’t matter what happens from here. The economic recession or depression is baked into the cake. The thing that will matter is how the government and central bank respond when it hits.
Instead of allowing a cleansing of the malinvestment and letting resources be allocated in accordance with consumer demand, they will likely interfere and prop up failing businesses and industries and inject more “stimulus” to try to cover up some of the pain. This will only make it worse.
We really need a recession like the early 1980s where the Fed doesn’t fight it. We need a liquidation of the malinvestment. We need to allow the free market to operate. Unfortunately, I don’t see that happening.
The good news is that consumer price inflation may come down, at least for a while. Consumer prices aren’t going back to where they were a few years ago, but maybe they will stop rising so fast. Prices of some assets may go back to where they were years ago, but not groceries.
The inverted yield curve is the number one indicator of a coming recession. It is the big economic news that nearly everyone is ignoring. You would be wise not to ignore it.
I was a follower of the Free State Project when it first began. I never signed up as a committed member (I didn’t want to move), but I followed its progress and spoke about it favorably to others. I still remember when they were debating which state to choose, and I remember when New Hampshire was ultimately chosen in 2003.
Here we are about 20 years later, and I have to question the progress and the strategy of the whole thing. To be sure, I was a supporter then, and I still wish everyone well who is doing it. I am just questioning the effectiveness of it, especially after the last three years.
I followed Harry Browne closely in the early 2000s, and I can recall that someone asked him about the Free State Project. He questioned the whole strategy and correctly pointed out that many people don’t want to uproot their lives and go to a particular place. At the same time, he wished them well and hoped that they would make progress.
I am now more in the Harry Browne camp on this subject, especially after COVID hysteria and the recent elections.
The Republican governor in New Hampshire, Chris Sununu, was reelected. He isn’t a particularly good governor, especially given what happened in 2020 with lockdowns. It is better than the people of New Hampshire putting in a Democrat, but it’s too bad that the liberty lovers couldn’t get someone from the Republican Party with a more pro-liberty streak in there.
The really disappointing part from the election is in the U.S. House and Senate. Democrats hold both House seats and both Senate seats from New Hampshire.
I am no fan of most Republicans in Washington DC, but how does the home of the Free State Project manage to elect all Democrats to Congress? It means a majority of the voters are ok with vaccine mandates, lockdowns, funding for war in Ukraine, student loan bailouts, and all of the other chaos coming out of the Democratic Party.
Perhaps a lot of Free Staters choose not to vote for the lesser of two evils or to vote at all. At the very least, you would think they would have had some influence by now on the rest of the population.
This was one hesitation I had about the whole thing early on. I wasn’t sure how residents of New Hampshire would feel about liberty lovers “invading” their state and pushing their politics, even though their ideas consist mostly of getting politics out of people’s lives.
Even worse than the recent elections is the reaction to COVID. New Hampshire wasn’t particularly bad compared to other states, but it wasn’t great either. It wasn’t South Dakota. It wasn’t even Florida, which did have lockdowns in April 2020 but fully opened up in September.
One would think that having a small but decent percentage of the population who consider themselves pro liberty to have had a big impact on lockdowns. Maybe they did have an impact and it would have been worse than it was. But it had to have been disappointing for Free Staters to do all that work and end up being locked in their homes because they were deemed non-essential. New Hampshire should have been showing the way for the rest of the country.
Instead, it was left up to South Dakota (a conservative state) and Florida, which had a governor smart enough and brave enough to quickly realize his errors. DeSantis had a brief period of acting as dictator, but was heavily opposed by the establishment in later 2020 for daring to open up Florida.
Where was New Hampshire? Still waiting for advice from Fauci on what they could and couldn’t do?
A Natural Progression to a Free State
In Florida, Ron DeSantis won the governor’s race with nearly 60% of the vote. Four years ago, he just barely won the election for governor.
This is for a mix of reasons, but most of them point back to COVID hysteria, or lack of COVID hysteria. Some people who didn’t vote for DeSantis in 2018 (me included) voted for him this time. It was a reward for being one of the better governors and not locking us down (much).
There are also a lot of people who moved to Florida since that time, and some of them moved specifically to get away from COVID hysteria. They wanted to go to a state that was open where their kids could go to soccer practice and they probably didn’t have to get a jab to keep their job.
Anyone moving from California to Florida in 2020 or 2021 because of COVID was not going to be bringing leftist politics with them. It was quite the opposite.
Maybe only 1 or 2 percent of the current population of Florida moved in the last couple of years because of COVID hysteria, but you can bet that almost every one of them voted for DeSantis.
One thing where my mind has changed from 2020 is the importance of politics. I have long-believed that educating others on the benefits of liberty is the most important thing for libertarians to do, and I still believe that. However, I underestimated the importance of having the lesser of two evils in office.
DeSantis is not a libertarian, but I realize that Florida would have been in lockdown well into 2021 if he had not won in 2018. Florida also showed the way for other states to follow.
I also saw how the greater of two evils was bad with Joe Biden as president. We have gotten vaccine mandates, student loan bailouts, war in Ukraine, and all around chaos. Courts have struck some of it down. Biden and company just shrug it off with no consequences and move on to the next dictatorial edict to destroy Western Civilization.
A majority of the people of New Hampshire evidently didn’t care about all of the chaos coming out of Washington DC. They voted for more chaos.
The people who are part of the Free State Project are generally good people, and they have committed a lot for the cause of advancing liberty. I don’t live in New Hampshire, so I don’t know what progress has been made. I would encourage them to do an assessment on the effectiveness of their strategy.
I sincerely wish them well, and I do hope they succeed in bringing much greater liberty to New Hampshire. With that said, if they don’t see much progress, it may be time to cut their losses and put their efforts somewhere else to greater use. Maybe they will all have to move to the same city in New Hampshire to have a libertarian town or city within a statist state and a statist country. Or they could just move to Florida and help make it better.
A missile flew into Poland killing two civilians. There were almost immediate accusations that it came from Russia. There were also quick calls saying that Poland is a NATO ally, and therefore must be defended.
The Russian government denied the accusations, and it was discovered quickly that it wasn’t a Russian missile and that the missile came from Ukraine.
For the first time since the war in Ukraine started, the U.S. government actually retreated with its rhetoric. Maybe the crazies in the Biden White House actually don’t want a full-fledged nuclear war after all.
The implications were that if Russia had attacked Poland, that means that the U.S. is obligated to go to war with Russia because it is a member of NATO.
The U.S. government and the establishment media have actually had to acknowledge that this missile did not come from Russia. It came from Ukraine.
But if Ukraine attacked Poland, doesn’t that mean that the U.S. government has to defend Poland and go to war with Ukraine?
I am being a bit facetious, and I don’t want any war from any side. But it is an illustration of the hypocrisy and criminality coming out of Washington.
Ukraine will say it was an accident. But they weren’t admitting to it when Zelensky was trying to up the ante and drag the United States further into the war. The coverup itself is a criminal activity.
But how do we even know it was an accident? Ukraine wanted to blame Russia for a missile attack on Poland so that they could drag the U.S. into direct combat (instead of just pouring in tens of billions of dollars). If the Ukrainian government will lie about who fired the missile, then it wouldn’t be hard to believe that they purposely fired that missile and that it wasn’t an accident.
A Biden/ Deep State Slush Fund Dries Up
It is amazing how so much of the corruption coming out of Washington DC ties back to Ukraine. Ukraine itself seems like a giant slush fund for the Biden family and the ruling elite in the U.S.
I think Trump’s instincts were correct when he was trying to get information out of Ukraine, which he was later impeached for. The problem is that Trump was talking to one of the criminals (Zelensky) who was involved in all of the money laundering.
Right after the midterm elections this year, where the Democrats did better than expected, we found out that FTX is going bankrupt. FTX was considered a major company as a cryptocurrency exchange.
A lot of information is coming out quickly on FTX, but you probably won’t hear the details on CNN or NBC Nightly News.
FTX was a lot more than a Ponzi scheme, although it certainly was that. It appears that it was a giant slush fund for Biden and company. This could include some Republicans within the establishment.
FTX donated millions of dollars to deep state politicians in the United States. But we are also learning that Ukraine “invested” a nice sum of money in FTX. And where did Ukraine get that money?
So let’s spell out what likely happened here. Congress, with the support of all Democrats and most Republicans, has authorized tens of billions of dollars to go to Ukraine. And, of course, Biden has approved this. It will soon be over 100 billion dollars in total.
Ukraine takes the U.S. taxpayer money and funnels a portion of it into FTX. FTX then takes a portion of that and funnels it to the campaigns of the establishment politicians who can be counted on to support more funding to Ukraine.
I don’t even know if there is technically anything illegal about it, but it is certainly criminal. And this is all used to support the oligarchs in the U.S., the oligarchs in Ukraine, and to continue a war with Russia that is only harming the innocent people of Ukraine.
So it looks like FTX was just a giant slush fund that funneled U.S. taxpayer money to the campaigns of the people who are spending U.S. taxpayer money. The Ukrainian government and FTX were the middlemen.
You’d think they would have had a more indirect trail. At least when the Clinton family did their money laundering schemes, they would set up a bunch of different third-party companies and foundations to make a more complicated trail.
Anyway, this is how the deep state operates now. They figure that the so-called mainstream media will cover for them (and they aren’t wrong), and that they can get away with almost anything. The latter part has yet to be determined.
The deep state is getting sloppy though. Now Biden is calling for another $37 billion for Ukraine. These are insane amounts of money. Now that FTX has run off with investor money and U.S. taxpayer money, it’s time for another middleman. When the new funding is approved for Ukraine, I’m sure some of that will be poured into some other company or foundation for them to run their criminal activities.
You can’t make this stuff up. You could write a book or produce a movie with this script and it would seem like too much of a fantasy. People wouldn’t believe that they could do this right before your eyes and keep getting away with it.
Donald Trump is quickly losing support. He is losing his base. He has not lost it all yet, but he will soon find himself alone if he doesn’t change quickly.
This has little to do with the midterm election results, or at least not directly. The establishment media declared Trump the big loser from the election, as some of Trump’s candidates lost, and the Republicans overall came up short of expectations.
To be sure, Trump only shares a little blame for what happened in the election. Perhaps his endorsement of Dr. Oz was not the best choice, but Trump did have some decent candidates who won. J.D. Vance in Ohio is somewhat libertarian leaning, and he won the Senate seat there. Kari Lake was an impressive candidate, even if she comes up short in Arizona where proper vote counting seems not to be a priority.
The establishment Republicans like Mitch McConnell are more responsible for some of these Republican candidates coming up short on Election Day. These people did as much as possible to sabotage the so-called MAGA candidates without doing so directly. They certainly did what they could to not direct money to close races with Trump-endorsed candidates.
So I think there is a little blame that Trump deserves for the underwhelming election performance by Republicans, but I think it is minimal.
The problem with Trump is that his ego is finally getting in his own way to an extent that he is imploding before our very eyes. He is attacking anyone who hurts his feelings or may potentially challenge him in the future. He is attacking anyone of significance who is offering some mild criticism or constructive criticism.
Trump Unnecessarily Attacks Ron DeSantis
Before the election, Trump was already going after DeSantis. He called him Ron “DeSanctimonious”. This was completely wrong, especially right before the election.
After DeSantis won by a landslide in Florida, Trump upped the ante. He sees DeSantis as a threat for the Republican nomination for president in 2024. Trump called DeSantis an average Republican governor. Trump says that he is the reason that DeSantis ever became governor. Even if this is true, it is completely unnecessary and almost irrelevant at this point.
The howler came when Trump criticized DeSantis for locking down Florida. It’s true that DeSantis did institute lockdowns in April 2020. DeSantis quickly realized his mistake and reversed course. By September 2020, Florida was completely open, while most other states still had lockdowns or significant mandates.
The biggest joke is that Trump recommended these lockdowns, and Trump had Fauci and Birx at his side throughout most of 2020. Trump even criticized Brian Kemp, the governor of Georgia, when he relaxed restrictions in the late spring of 2020.
Trump was a total disaster when it came to COVID. The best you can say about him is that he isn’t Biden. But Trump, like most of his presidency, had the wrong people at his side. In fact, he had the people who most opposed him. If Trump had realized his mistake (like DeSantis) early on and corrected course, I would have more praise than criticism for him on this issue. But instead, Trump was completely duped by the COVID hysteria, and he played into his enemies’ hands.
And now Trump wants to criticize DeSantis for COVID lockdowns? What next? Will Trump blame DeSantis for allowing Florida to provide COVID vaccines?
If there is one thing to criticize DeSantis for regarding COVID, it’s that he listened to Trump in the first place.
Trump Goes After Candace Owens
In this video, Candace Owens explains why Trump went after her.
Candace Owens has becomes quite popular amongst conservatives, and I see a bigger libertarian streak in her every time I see her.
As she explains, she questioned Trump on the vaccines, but she thought their disagreement was from a place of good faith. When some people went to Owens wondering if Trump was just being a shill for big pharma, she said that Trump comes from a different generation where they grew up without the internet and they were told that all vaccines were great.
While she has a strong disagreement with Trump on the vaccines, she was actually defending Trump on this issue to a certain extent. She was saying that he is coming from a position of good will, and the vaccine companies aren’t just bribing him.
So Trump reads an article (or maybe just the headline) and gets the message that Candace Owens says that Trump is too old to understand the internet. Again, she was actually trying to defend him, but Trump has too big of an ego to understand this or to accept any mild criticism or disagreement. So the next time they see each other in person, Trump is rude to her.
Unless Trump apologizes to Candace Owens (which we know won’t happen), I don’t think he will win back her support. And she isn’t the only conservative who Trump has gone after lately.
These Aren’t Republican Primary Debates
If Trump thinks his path to the Republican nomination and the White House is by fighting with his base, he is misjudging. Or to use a Trumpism, he is misjudging “bigly”.
In 2015, Trump could get away with attacking “Low Energy Jeb”, “Lyin’ Ted Cruz”, and “Lil’ Marco Rubio”. It was effective partially because many of these people were seen as establishment candidates. More importantly, he was running against them for the Republican nomination, and many of these words came from debates.
DeSantis has not announced that he is running for president in 2023/ 2024. I don’t even know if he wants to be president. He has a young family, and he was just re-elected governor in Florida.
If Trump is running – and I am pretty sure he is – DeSantis might just choose not to get involved. He will stay on standby just in case Trump is indicted, or he has health issues, or something else crazy happens.
I have read some diehard Trump supporters criticizing DeSantis for not speaking up right now. They say he could put a stop to all of the fighting by announcing that he won’t be running for president. But why is this DeSantis’s responsibility? Trump could stop it all by just not attacking.
If anything, this makes it more likely that DeSantis will run for president this time around because more Republicans are going to start to favor DeSantis over Trump. Trump is doing this to himself.
DeSantis was campaigning hard and just won re-election. As far as I’m concerned, he doesn’t need to say anything. If Trump wants to hang himself, then go ahead. Why interrupt someone when they are making a fool of themselves?
The Republican primaries have already started in Trump’s head, but he is overplaying his hand. He should have kept quiet on DeSantis until DeSantis actually announced a run for the presidency (if that were to happen). Even then, Trump’s criticism of DeSantis shouldn’t have been from a harsh place. Trump could sell his message just by saying that the establishment (i.e., the ruling elite) fear him far more than they fear DeSantis, which is probably true.
If you had asked me two weeks ago, I would have said that Trump was the big favorite to be the Republican nominee in 2024. After Trump’s two-week implosion, I give him 50% odds at best, and that is only if he wises up.
The establishment has been trying to take down Trump for the last 7 years. They have tried almost everything. Yet Trump has done to himself in the matter of 2 weeks what the establishment couldn’t do to Trump in 7 years.
This may be the tragic downfall of Trump. I have my many criticisms of the man, but I didn’t want to see him go down like this.
I want to see the ruling elite be further exposed and for the country to have a big shift towards peace and greater liberty. I don’t care if this happens through Trump, DeSantis, or someone else, or no particular person at all.
I do think Trump has been good for liberty with respect to exposing the establishment and also awakening many Republicans on foreign policy and civil liberties. I don’t think this will be rolled back, even if Trump falls hard.
It’s too bad Trump has gone down this road of self destruction, but the exposure of the evils of the establishment will not fade away.
With all of the election news, there was also economic news this week with the release of the October CPI report.
The CPI rose 0.4% in October 2022, while the annual rate now stands at 7.7%. The less volatile median CPI rose 0.5% in October, and the year-over-year median CPI remained at 7%.
The consumer price inflation report was a little better than expected, and investors cheered. It is important to note that price inflation is still going up at a significant pace. It is just going up at a slightly slower pace than before.
Food prices continue to go up. When you go to the grocery store, your prices overall will continue to go higher.
Still, with this mildly good news that price inflation seems to be retreating a little bit, stock investors went wild. The bulls came out in full force, probably expecting that the Fed will stop its tightening sooner rather than later.
The Dow went up by about 1,200 points on the day. This was a monster rally in the face of uncertainty and concerning economic issues.
On the same day that the CPI numbers were released, the bond market went crazy too. But it went crazy in a way that should make the stock bulls feel very uncomfortable.
The yields in the bond market point to even bigger trouble ahead, despite what the Fed might do. Long-term yields plummeted in just one day, while short-term yields stayed around the same.
In other words, the yield curve further inverted from what it already was. The 10-year yield fell 30 basis points to 3.82%. The 3-month yield finished the day at 4.28% on November 10.
There is now a 46 basis point spread between the 10-year yield and the 3-month yield. So while stocks soared on Thursday, the bond market is saying, “Hang on a minute.”
This has recession written all over it, and the Fed isn’t even done tightening yet. Consumer prices are still rising at 7.7% annually according to the government’s own statistics. The Fed will be tightening to get inflation under control (that it created) in the face of an oncoming train in the form of a recession.
If you are still heavily invested in stocks at this point, you should take the gift from Thursday and sell. Stocks are going to have their big up days, but it is going to be more down days in the year ahead.