After Aaron Rodgers tested positive for COVID-19, it was publicly learned that he was unvaccinated.  When previously asked if he was vaccinated, Rodgers answered that he was immunized.

What Rodgers said was kind of like what the establishment media does to everyone else when discussing most political issues.  It may have been factually correct, but it wasn’t truthful.

Rodgers missed a game because of his positive test and his status of being unvaccinated for COVID-19.  Due to NFL rules, he had to wait at least 10 days before returning.  If he had not been in the second-class status of the unvaccinated, he may have been able to return sooner with negative tests.

After everything came out, Rodgers did an interview over video, and he threw all of his cards out on the table.  He said he realized he was in the crosshairs of the woke mob and he wanted to tell his side of the story before being cancelled.  This was the reason that he wasn’t upfront about his vaccination status in the first place.

Rodgers said he didn’t need to investigate at least two of the vaccines and the criminal activities of the vaccine companies because he was already allergic.  The funniest thing Rodgers said was that if he had the flu, he would be playing on Sunday.

I caught a segment on ESPN of First Take, where the panelists in unanimity attacked Rodgers.  Michael Irvin seemed to take great offense at Rodgers saying he is a “critical thinker”.  I think Irvin wants to assure us that he is a critical thinker too.

Stephen A. Smith had to get all serious and call Aaron Rodgers a national embarrassment.  Smith criticized Rodgers for not being truthful over the summer.  About the only thing where I agree with Smith is that Rodgers was deliberately deceitful.  But I can fully understand why Rodgers did this.  It was because he didn’t want hacks like Smith who shill for the establishment to go on the attack against him.

Smith points out that Carson Wentz and Kirk Cousins aren’t vaccinated and they are still playing.  He asks if there is a witch-hunt against them, and responds to his own question that they are playing every week.

Hey, Stephen A., there’s a difference between a witch-hunt and not playing.  I recall seeing several stories of these quarterbacks being criticized.  I also know that the NFL gives them incredibly strict protocols that the vaccinated players aren’t subject to.

Then Smith says that your medical history is a private matter, but not with the issue of vaccines.  Why this one thing Stephen A.?  Is that because society has dictated to you what the one exception is when it comes to divulging your medical status?

The kicker for me is when Smith cites Kyrie Irving and says Kyrie deserves more credit than Rodgers because he manned up and cost himself money.  The joke here is that I have watched this show on ESPN one other time for longer than 10 seconds in the last year.  That one other segment I saw consisted of Stephen A. Smith relentlessly attacking Kyrie Irving for abandoning his team and not being a team player for not getting vaccinated.

If Rodgers had come out at the beginning of the season and said he wasn’t vaccinated and had no plans to get vaccinated, I’m sure the hack named Stephen A. Smith and all of the other attack dogs for the establishment would have been all over him at that time.

One Thing I Never Heard Mentioned

There was something I never heard mentioned by Stephen A. Smith or the ESPN panel.  In fact, in all of the stories I saw about Rodgers testing positive for COVID-19, with the exception of the interview with Rodgers himself, there was something I never heard mentioned from anyone.

I never heard anyone say, “We are praying for Aaron and his quick recovery.”

I never heard anyone say, “We hope Aaron gets better soon.”

I never heard anyone say, “I hope Aaron is able to survive his battle with COVID-19.”

Outside of the interview itself, I never heard anything to this effect at all.  That’s because nobody was concerned or even pretending to be concerned about his health status.

What kind of a pandemic is that?  There is this massive obsession to get everyone vaccinated.  Rodgers didn’t get vaccinated, and he tested positive for COVID-19.  But nobody was suggesting that he might die.  Nobody was suggesting that he was really sick and might have to go to the hospital.

Rodgers isn’t young by NFL standards.  He is 37 years old and will shortly turn 38.  But he is relatively young, and he is in incredible shape.  COVID, if that’s what he had, was nothing to him.  Why would someone like this want to get an injection with possible side effects, some of which are serious?  If he actually had COVID, then he has far greater immunity at this point than anyone who is vaccinated who didn’t have it.

How can anyone take this seriously any more?  Everyone should be left alone to make their own decisions.  It is especially absurd that young and healthy people have to overturn their lives due to a virus that is highly unlikely to inflict any serious harm on them.  It is especially criminal what is being done to children.

You can watch a college football game with a hundred thousand people packed into a stadium, but then your kid has to go to school with a mask on and stay in a bubble and not be near anyone else.  It is a joke.

This is why I don’t think a lot of the COVID hysterics are honest.  If they are honest, they are incredibly dumb on this issue.  Nobody was questioning the health status of Aaron Rodgers.  Even the dumb media forgot to do it.

If Rodgers had been vaccinated, they would have been sure to say that he has mild symptoms because he was vaccinated.  They never say that he had mild symptoms because he is in good physical shape.  They never mention that he had mild symptoms in the same sentence as him being unvaccinated.

I have long-thought that Aaron Rodgers is one of the most intelligent players in football with his decision-making on the field.  Apparently he is a critical thinker off the field too.  Does that bother you Michael Irvin?

The latest CPI numbers came out, and it isn’t pretty.  The CPI rose 0.9% in October 2021.  The year-over-year CPI now stands at 6.2%.

If you annualize that monthly rise in the CPI, then we are above 10% annual price inflation.  I’m not saying this is the case yet, but it is important to do the math and point out the obvious.

What’s really obvious is that the Fed’s 2% mandate is a joke.  We blew past that threshold many months ago, even using the government’s own statistics.

We might now be closer to the 1970s than the 2010s in terms of rising prices.  It is not surprising given that the Fed has more than doubled its balance sheet since February 2020.  Perhaps it is a little surprising only because the Fed created a lot of money after the financial crisis hit in 2008, but we never saw this kind of spike in price inflation.

The absurd thing is that the Fed is still creating money out of thin air.  They finally announced a taper at the last meeting, but that only means that they will inflate less than before.

When price inflation is on the verge of double digits, the policy should be to stop creating money, even from a more conventional standpoint.  Will the Fed finally stop its quantitative easing, or whatever it’s called now, when price inflation hits 15%?

There is a chance the Fed could lose some control.  This is more than just government statistics.  I think most people see the rise in prices when going to the grocery store.  If you are shopping for a car or a house, then you can really see the rise in prices.

All price inflation will impact different people to varying degrees.  Some people are on a fixed income, which can be especially painful.  Some people are in the market for a house or a car, which is a major expense.  It’s one thing to pay 10% more for a dozen eggs.  It is another thing to pay 10% more for a house or car.  Of course, the prices for houses and cars have gone up much more than 10%.

So we are entering something resembling the 1970s, except we have a senile idiot in the White House surrounded by a bunch of people intent on destroying civilization.  Meanwhile, the head of the Fed – probably soon to be replaced by someone even worse – is a Keynesian hack who sees no problem with continuing the inflation.

At this point, I would take a Jimmy Carter.  I would certainly take a Paul Volcker as head of the Fed.

I don’t know how much these people just don’t know what they’re doing versus how much they are trying to cause chaos.

I don’t think the Fed actually wants total chaos.  They don’t want to lose control of the dollar, or else it could ruin their own control.  I believe they think they can pull back at any time and save the dollar, just as was done by Paul Volcker.

Maybe they are right, but it is a high-stakes risk.  And even if they can save the dollar by slamming on the monetary brakes, the recession that follows will be one for the ages.

Almost everything is in a bubble right now except for gold and other precious metals.  I expect we will eventually have a reversion to the mean.

This means that either gold will go up a lot or everything else is going to fall hard.  It could be some combination of the two.

On Tuesday, November 2, 2021, there was a clear signal sent by voters, particularly in Virginia and New Jersey.  The message is that a majority of people don’t support the leftist agenda, which is epitomized by the Biden White House.

In Virginia, some of the cultural issues really got the headlines.  There’s little question that Terry McAuliffe’s comment that parents shouldn’t get a say as to what their kids are taught in school probably swayed a few votes.

If you listen to CNN, then the reason the Republicans won statewide races in Virginia, particularly the governor’s race, is because the voters are a bunch of racists.  If you listen to some of the other corporate media, you may hear a few suggestions that it had to do with education and some cultural issues.

One thing that doesn’t get much mention is that some people voted the way they did because of COVID hysteria and vaccine mandates.  While most Republican governors were awful the last 19 months, the Democrats were far worse.

If you lived in a state with a Democrat governor, then you lived under lockdowns and mandates.  You probably continue to live with some restrictions.  If you lived in a state with a Republican governor, you probably had less time with lockdowns, with a few exceptions.

The White House is now pushing vaccines (by force) onto most Americans.  They aren’t literally kidnapping you and sticking a needle in your arm.  Instead, they are threatening your employer and saying that you must get jabbed or you aren’t allowed to work.  It is pure authoritarianism.

If the last 19 months has done something positive, it has shown some people (those who care to look) that the authoritarianism comes more from the left.  More people are also realizing that they can’t trust anything coming from the establishment and its media.  They also can’t trust any of the so-called experts.

There’s no question that the recent election was a total rebuke of the totalitarianism coming from the left.  So what does the Biden White House do?

More Vaccine Mandates

A couple of days after the election, OSHA finally released its rules telling all companies with 100 or more employees that they have to require vaccination or weekly testing.  The rules are less stringent than those on federal contractors, but it is especially egregious because these are supposed to be private companies.  (Federal contractors are private companies too, but they get at least some of their revenue from federal contracts.)

The White House simply didn’t care about the backlash.  They saw that voters were upset on Tuesday, but they went forward with their plans as if nothing had happened.  As I’ve said, it’s like they are trying to destroy civilization.

I could blame it all on Biden, but this obviously requires some support from the populace.  Also, we know that Biden isn’t devising these plans.  He is just the face signing the orders.

Don’t get me wrong here.  Biden is fully responsible for the criminal acts that he is engaging in.  Even if he is something of a stooge, he is the person who is the sitting president, and he is the one issuing the orders, even if someone else is telling him what to say.

I don’t know when the madness will end.  You would think that major economic disruptions would do it, but again, it seems that Biden’s handlers actually want destruction.

Something has to give over the next few months.  There are tens of millions of people who are being given an ultimatum.  It isn’t going to go well.

Don’t listen to the media.  They are 100% gaslighting the people right now.  There is very little talk of the vaccine mandates that are causing havoc on our society.  It should be the number one story on the news every night.

The media just tells you not to pay attention.  Only pay attention to what they are telling you.  The crowd isn’t chanting “F**k Joe Biden.”  The crowd is chanting “Let’s Go Brandon.”

Now that the crowd really is chanting “Let’s Go Brandon”, the media will tell you it’s something else.  Or they will just try to mute out the crowd on television.

The establishment media:

“The Democrats didn’t lose in Virginia because of lockdowns and vaccine mandates.  The crowd isn’t chanting anything about Joe Biden.  Those deaths and injuries are all related to COVID and can’t have anything to do with vaccines.  The COVID cases may still be bad with widespread vaccination, but they would be even worse if there were no vaccines.  Just keep believing everything we tell you.  Listen to the experts (our experts).  Follow the science (our science).  Wear your mask, get your jab, and keep being an obedient citizen.”

The FOMC released its latest monetary policy statement.  There was a unanimous vote to keep the target federal funds rate near zero.  However, it was also announced that a tapering will begin.

The Implementation Note instructs the following:

• Undertake open market operations as necessary to maintain the federal funds rate in a target range of 0 to 1/4 percent.
• Complete the increase in System Open Market Account (SOMA) holdings of Treasury securities by $80 billion and of agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS) by $40 billion, as indicated in the monthly purchase plans released in mid-October.
• Increase the SOMA holdings of Treasury securities by $70 billion and of agency MBS by $35 billion, during the monthly purchase period beginning in mid-November.
• Increase the SOMA holdings of Treasury securities by $60 billion and of agency MBS by $30 billion, during the monthly purchase period beginning in mid-December.

In short, the Fed will keep inflating, but at a slower pace.  It has been adding (creating money out of thin air) $120 billion per month to its balance sheet.  It will slow down the money creation by adding “only” $105 billion starting this month, and then $90 billion starting in December.  We don’t know after that.

So the monetary inflation will go at a slower pace than before.  We’ll have to see if the Fed gets to a point where no monetary inflation is taking place, or if some other event will happen before then.

The other notable thing is that the statement says, “Inflation is elevated, largely reflecting factors that are expected to be transitory.”

This was a change from the September 2021 statement that said, “Inflation is elevated, largely reflecting transitory factors.”

In other words, it seems that the Fed is now hedging its bets.  We can’t be sure that price inflation is transitory, but it is expected to be (according to our government models).

Maybe Jerome Powell and company had to stop and put some gasoline in their cars.

The Everything Bubble

With the release of the statement, stock market indices closed at record highs in the United States.  A little bit of tapering apparently isn’t going to stop this party.

The everything bubble goes on, which includes stocks, bonds, real estate, cryptocurrencies, and NFTs.  I will note that when all of this comes crashing down, bonds might do well in the shorter term, as they can be seen as a safe haven.

The cryptocurrencies have to be the most absurd aspect of this everything bubble.  While crashing real estate and stocks will hurt more people, the crypto portion of the bubble has to be the poster child of this nonsense.

It isn’t just about Bitcoin any more.  There are thousands of cryptocurrencies now in existence, and some of them are just going up in price because it is part of the latest craze.  It could be because of a unique name or because of a tweet from Elon Musk.  There is absolutely no utility from these cryptocurrencies other than to try to make money from the next sucker.  This is not to say that the blockchain and other technology used for cryptocurrencies don’t have utility.

Perhaps it is ironic that the original idea of Bitcoin and other cyrptos was to be a competing currency against the Fed’s dollar.  Yet, it is the Fed’s crazy inflation that is propping up these ridiculous cryptocurrencies with easy money.

The Fed has provided the money and the casino, so people feel like they might as well play the game as long as they are there.  You try to make a quick profit (in dollars) before the money dries up.

The Fed is cutting back on the money creation, but the money is not exactly drying up yet.

We live in strange times.  In many ways, it is true that politics is downstream from culture.  This is why I stress the importance of education (not schooling).  When more people are educated as to the benefits of liberty, then the politics will change.

While I think some progress is being made on that front, it sure hasn’t changed the politics yet.  I’m hoping the politics isn’t too far behind.

There are tens of millions of Americans who are absolutely furious at Joe Biden and the corporate media that covers for him.  It isn’t just a matter of them disapproving of the job he’s doing in a poll.  I really mean they are furious.

My neighbor commented the other day that she couldn’t think of any other president who has had such a direct impact on her life.  I had been thinking that same exact thing earlier in the day.

The president can have a very direct impact on people in other countries when starting a war.  That is the worst thing someone can do.  You can’t get any worse than directly killing people.  But the truth is that, for Americans, war doesn’t directly impact most people.  The small percentage of people who go to war are directly impacted, but that is it, except for those close to them.  For everyone else, it is just watching the television and seeing what is happening.  Your taxes or purchasing power may be impacted, but the war itself is just one of many things that impacts that.

Maybe there are a few people out there who really get bothered by a hike in income taxes of 2 or 3 percent, but I don’t think it’s many.

In 2021, tens of millions of people are dealing with vaccine mandates, and many of these people have to choose between a jab and their job.  This is a direct result of orders coming down from the White House.

This applies to most federal government workers and all federal contractors.  It is also supposed to apply to all companies that employ 100 or more people, but there has been no formal directive on this yet.  There are some companies that are trying to implement mandates even though they are not yet legally compelled to do so, but it is still a result of what is coming out of the White House.

While Trump Derangement Syndrome impacted many people (some severely), there was an easy cure.  All you had to do was turn off the television and social media.  If you didn’t hear the latest news, then you would have no idea what Trump’s latest obnoxious tweet said.  And it likely had absolutely no impact on you whatsoever.

But in 2021, you can turn off your television set, but it doesn’t mean you won’t get a notification from your employer saying that you must be vaccinated or lose your job because they are following directives from the White House.

Devastating Impacts

While it looks like the White House is backtracking slightly, saying that the December 8^th deadline to be vaccinated is “flexible”, it still makes one wonder why this is happening.

Biden is now one of the least popular presidents of all time at this early of his presidency.  The man has only been in office just over 9 months, and he is absolutely despised by half the population.  So much for him being a uniter (as if anyone actually believed those words).  If anything, he is uniting people against him.

I don’t think it is actually Biden calling the shots, as he is too incompetent and senile at this point.  Still, he is the president, so he takes full responsibility.  Given this, it is still curious as to why his handlers seem intent on destroying civilization.

It sounds strange and conspiratorial to use those words, but I don’t know what else to call it.  Just about everything the White House does these days is stupid and destructive.  And when it seems not to be working, they just double down on it.

Now they are looking at throwing tens of millions of people out of work because they won’t take their shot in the arm.  Meanwhile, there is already a massive shortage of labor and goods due to the destructive policies coming out of Washington DC and the Federal Reserve.

I have never been a fan of Bill Clinton.  I think he is a criminal, and he certainly used his office for many criminal and corrupt activities.  But when Clinton was president, he also wanted to be liked.  He was something of a populist.  He actually wanted a good economy, or at least the appearance of a good economy.  He may have been doing bad things, but he wasn’t trying to destroy civilization.

I don’t think Biden and all of his absurdities are sustainable.  But it is still terrifying because Biden and his handlers seem to have no limits.  They are just an out-of-control machine intent on destroying things and wrecking people’s lives.  Maybe this can be corrected with the 2022 congressional elections and the 2024 presidential election, but by then I’m not sure how much there will be left to save.

The coming months are scary with millions of people facing job losses because of mandates.  Add on top of this widespread shortages and the possibility of significantly higher price inflation.

I feel like something has to give.  We are going to descend into a much worse tyranny, or else we are going to fight back the beast here.

The chants of “Let’s Go Brandon” seem to be getting louder and more widespread.  It is more than just Biden, but Biden is the front man, so he should be held responsible.

The left will toss Biden aside when it is convenient, but he is the one right now who is signing these unlawful and immoral executive orders.  If he is removed from office, then his replacement should get the same treatment until these mandates and other disastrous policies are removed.

The defenders of liberty must beat back these destroyers of civilization through persuasion, disobedience, and any other peaceful methods.  All of the absurdities must be pointed out to those who are not in full opposition to the ruling class.

We need chants of “Let’s Go Brandon” to be so loud and widespread that the man just resigns in shame and goes into hiding for the rest of his pathetic life.

Tesla, Inc. was originally founded as Tesla Motors.  It is named after the great inventor named Nikola Tesla.

Tesla – the company – was not actually originally founded by Elon Musk, who is the face of the company.  Musk was an early investor.  He invested more than $30 million and became chairman of the company in 2004.  It has been a good investment so far, especially on paper.

The price of Tesla’s stock recently surged above $1,000 per share.  Given that there are about one billion shares, this means the company is now valued at over one trillion dollars as of this writing.

Is Tesla really worth one trillion dollars as a company?  According to the market, it is.  The only thing we have to go by is the last traded price of the stock.

Elon Musk’s net worth goes up or down on most days more than most people will ever make in a lifetime.  If Musk’s net worth goes up or down “only” a billion dollars in a day, that would be a calm day.

Musk is now worth in the neighborhood of a quarter of a trillion dollars.  But it doesn’t mean he has $250 billion available for spending.  It is mostly tied up in the stock.  If Musk wanted to realize his gains, the stock price would drop when he started selling heavily.

If you are a more average investor, it is not a problem to realize your gains by selling.  If you took a chance and bought 1,000 shares of Tesla several years ago, your shares would now be worth over a million dollars.  You could easily realize your gains by selling 1,000 shares, and it wouldn’t move the stock price more than a couple of cents.

So for people who invested (speculated) in Tesla stock, those gains are very real if you decide to sell.

Actual Valuation

The market says that Tesla is worth one trillion dollars.  That is according to the buyers and sellers of the stock.  But it doesn’t mean that it is a rational valuation.  It doesn’t mean that the fundamentals of the company support this valuation.

The latest news that drove the stock higher was a report that Hertz is going to purchase 100,000 vehicles from Tesla for its fleet.  Even if this comes true, how much is this really worth to the company.

Let’s be generous and say that Tesla has a really good profit margin and is able to profit $10,000 per vehicle sold.  This would mean $1 billion in profit from the Hertz deal.  That represents a profit of 0.1% of the company valuation.

Perhaps one could argue that the Hertz deal opens up the possibility of other similar deals in the future with other rental car companies.  But even if Tesla got four more deals like this one, it is a tiny fraction of the company valuation.

Tesla is now the fifth or sixth largest company in the U.S. according to its approximate one trillion dollar valuation.  The most valuable companies ahead of Tesla are Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet (Google), and Amazon.  Facebook is around the same.

Most people I know use these five other companies.  Facebook and Google have a ton of advertising revenue.  Most people in the first world use Amazon to make purchases.  Most people own a product that generates revenue for Apple or Microsoft or both.

I only know a few people who own Tesla vehicles.  Tesla has a loyal fan base, and they are mostly people with money because the cars are so expensive.  They don’t make any sense from a financial standpoint, but they are fun to drive.

Toyota is the second most valuable automaker, and I see a lot more Toyotas on the road than Teslas.  The Teslas are more noticeable, but that in itself is a sign that there aren’t that many of them out on the road.  Toyota, according to the market, is worth only about one-quarter of Tesla.

Sometimes you just need to use your own eyes to make a judgment.  If you see a hundred cars on the road and just one of them is a Tesla, how is this company so much more valuable than all of the other automakers?

There is one final and important thought on Tesla stock to consider.  According to the company’s website: “Tesla has never declared dividends on our common stock.  We intend on retaining all future earnings to finance future growth and therefore, do not anticipate paying any cash dividends in the foreseeable future.”

The whole point of owning a stock is to get dividends.  Sure, an investor/ speculator is just trying to make money, and you can make money by buying shares and selling them at a higher price.  But if a company never pays a dividend, is it really worth anything at all?

When you buy shares of a company, you are buying a piece of that company so that you can share in the income that is generated.  There is certainly a possibility that Tesla could declare dividends in the future, but that is not “in the foreseeable future” according to the company now.

Tesla may be valued at over a trillion dollars by investors and speculators, but it doesn’t mean it makes sense.  Tesla is the face of the stock market bubble.

It has become evident that higher consumer price inflation is anything but transitory.  Even if you fully trust the government’s CPI statistics, then price inflation is still running about two and a half times higher than the Fed’s target.  The Fed’s target is 2%, but the CPI is over 5%.

The Fed changed its 2% target earlier this year, at least sort of.  Jerome Powell says that the Fed is now looking for a 2% average.  The problem is that they never defined over what period of time.  Do we need an average for the last year, or for the last 20 years?

This is all going on while there are major widespread shortages being reported.  In a free market, most shortages are easily correctible with higher prices.  I think some companies have been resistant to raising prices too dramatically all at once.  So unless we see these shortages come to an end really soon, we are likely to see continuing rising prices at a significant rate.

We are in a boom time, but it is something of an artificial boom created by easy money and low interest rates.  That is part of the reason for the shortages.  There is an increase in demand, as some people feel wealthier than they actually are.  Real estate is booming.  Stocks are booming.  Bitcoin is booming.

But there is one notable thing that isn’t booming, and that is precious metals, or gold in particular.  Gold is supposed to be the number one hedge against inflation, yet it has not really boomed much as compared to other assets.

There isn’t an easy answer as to why except to say that there just isn’t a mania in gold right now.  People are trying to get into real estate so that they can have a nice place to live, hence the real estate bubble.  Some are also trying to make money off of it.

In terms of other investing (or speculating), most people are trying to make a quick buck.  I don’t think most people jumping into Bitcoin are doing so because they plan to use it as a form of money one day.  They are trying to make a quick and easy profit in dollars.

The same could be said more and more every day about stocks.  Sure, there are some people just buying and holding for the long term.  There is also a new generation of younger adults with a Robinhood account or something similar who are trying to make a quick buck.  It is easier to make a quick 10% by buying Tesla than it is buying gold.

There is something of an irrational mania going on right now, and it just so happens that gold isn’t part of that mania.  In fact, it is one of the few assets that isn’t part of the mania.

Another important point to consider is that price inflation, at least according to the government’s CPI numbers, is running at just over 5% year-over-year.  We aren’t like the 1970s yet.  Maybe we will be there in 2022, but we haven’t hit double digits yet.

While I think many people realize that slightly higher price inflation has a high likelihood in the near future, I don’t think most people believe it is a major threat.  They don’t necessarily think it will go to 10% or more for any significant period of time.  Even the “expert” financial analysts think the Fed will just step in and hike rates if necessary.

And maybe they are right.  Or maybe the Fed will lose control and be faced with out-of-control price inflation or a major tightening that will crash the entire economy.  I can’t be certain which one they will choose.

Right now, the market is telling us that price inflation is not a significant worry.  The bond market is telling us that with very low yields, and the gold market is telling us that with only mild price increases.

On the other hand, sometimes the market just gets things wrong.  That’s not exactly correct, as the last price is the true price, and it is the market price.  But the market is wrong in the sense that everything is distorted, which is largely due to the Fed’s easy money and artificially low interest rates.

Even though gold has performed relatively poorly compared to most other assets, it is still around $1,800 per ounce.  If you had bought 20 years ago, you would have done well.  Admittedly, you would have done even better had you bought the Nasdaq in March 2009 and held it until now.

I think it is hard to go wrong buying gold and gold-related investments right now if you aren’t already heavy in them.  If we have a bad recession, then the price could go down.  But the prices in stocks and real estate are going to crash hard, and the drop in the gold price will look mild in comparison.

If the boom continues for a wild, then expect price inflation to continue at its current pace or even higher.  At some point, this is going to spook some people, and some investors are going to hedge their bets with some gold.

You can’t take away thousands of years of history just because some people are trying to make a quick buck on their Robinhood account.  There is eventually a reversion to the mean.  There is eventually a return of fundamentals.

There is going to be an epic crash, or there is going to be a prolonged period of high price inflation.  Maybe there will be both.  At some point, gold is going to join the party, or else the party is going to stop.  Maybe gold will have its own party down the road.

In the quest of Joe Biden and his handlers to destroy civilization, they are mandating vaccines for federal contractors and most government employees.  A mandate for employers with 100 or more people is supposedly coming, but no details have been released yet.

In response to this tyranny, some states are taking their own action.  Most notable are Texas and Florida.  There may end up being some kind of face-off between state governments and the federal government.

Right now, the governors of Texas and Florida are trying to prevent companies from enacting vaccine mandates, even by passing legislation.  It isn’t clear how far this will go.  If a company is compelled in two different directions, maybe it will just come down to a court battle.

Imagine being the owner of a company in Texas.  On the one hand, you have the federal government telling you that you must have vaccine mandates.  On the other hand, you have the state government telling you that you must not have vaccine mandates.

In most circumstances, I would expect the courts to rule in favor of the federal government.  In this situation, it is less clear because of the nature of the issue, and also because the federal mandate is clearly unconstitutional.

There are some libertarians claiming that these state edicts (or laws) are infringing on the rights of property owners.  I have discussed this issue before, but a lot has happened since I wrote about it less than 2 months ago.  It is technically correct that this is anti-liberty on a stand-alone basis.  The government shouldn’t be telling property owners (business owners) what they should mandate or what they shouldn’t mandate.

At the risk of wavering on my libertarian credentials, the state laws or edicts don’t get me worked up.  In fact, a piece of me is cheering them on in this situation.

The state rules are obviously a response to the unconstitutional and immoral actions of the Biden administration.  If there were no mandates coming out of Washington DC, then there wouldn’t be this response.

They are also completely unequal.  One is mandating discrimination, while the other is forbidding discrimination.

I have written before on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and how parts of it are not libertarian.  Aside from the unconstitutionality of it, it transformed our society from mandating discrimination to prohibiting discrimination.  The true libertarian position is that the government (at any level) should do neither.

Still, if I had to choose one, I would much rather live in a society where the government prohibits discrimination rather than mandates discrimination.

If the government (at any level) said that all restaurants could only allow white people to enter their establishment, this would be appalling.  If the government said that all restaurants had to allow any race of people (the current law), then this may be unlibertarian, but it is far less appalling.  Can you see the major difference here?

Dave Smith mentioned this same issue on his podcast the other day, just as I had been thinking about it.  He is taking the same position that it is hard to get worked up over states fighting back against vaccine mandates even if they are not doing so through perfectly libertarian means.

These vaccine mandates coming out of Washington DC are the major fight right now.  If you exclude foreign policy, this is the most tyrannical thing to come out of the federal government in at least the last 50 years.  It impacts tens of millions of people.  People are being told that they must submit to the government’s medical shot or else they will lose their job.

This must be defeated or else we will go into further tyranny.  While I would prefer to defeat this with pure libertarian means, I am not going to spend any time opposing state governors who are essentially on our side of this issue.

If these unconstitutional and immoral mandates coming out of the White House are allowed to stand, then this is not going to be a good place for your children and grandchildren to live in down the road.  It will only get worse.  The tyrants must be stopped.

On Saturday night, I attended the recording of the 2,000^th episode of the Tom Woods Show in Orlando, Florida.  It was 4 hours of fun, with a few serious moments mixed in.  And that was just for the show itself.

I attended the 1,000^th episode four years ago, which was a great time as well.  The major difference was the size of the crowd.  This time around, there were about 2,500 people who attended the show.

While I drove to Orlando, there were people from all over who flew in.  I heard that there were people from all 50 states.  It takes some dedication to get on a plane (especially these days) to watch a live episode of a podcast.

I have been dealing personally with vaccine mandates, and I have been a bit down lately.  To see 2,500 enthusiastic supporters of liberty in one room was uplifting.

It’s not just the existence of 2,500 people in a room with nobody wearing a mask (except for Michael Malice that one time) that made it great, although that is wonderful.  But the fact that just about all of these people are dedicated opponents against the COVID tyranny is heartwarming.

I could hear what got the biggest laughs and what got the biggest cheers.  The mention of anti-Faucism and taking a stand against vaccine mandates got some of the biggest cheers.

Since the episode hasn’t been released yet, I can’t give away too much.  But even the drunk idiot who interrupted the show at midnight was against masks.  He just didn’t realize he had walked into a giant room filled with people who probably share his opinion on the matter.

I actually ran into several people that I knew.  It is interesting how you can see some of the same familiar faces when you travel in the same circles, although I don’t go to many libertarian events these days.

There was a lot of great conversation before and after the show.  It is nice being around like-minded people.

I was introduced to Doc Dixon, who is a magician.  He is also a comedian.  He had a big part in the show.  I can vouch that he is just as funny in person as he is on stage.

I did not talk to Tom Woods, but I had already spoken with him a handful of times in the past.  It was better for people who had never met him in person to be given the chance to meet him.

Next time there is a libertarian Family Feud (the game show), I suggest that Tom be the host of the show instead of being one of the participants.  He seemed to be the only one on stage who actually knew how the show works.

I have no idea if I’ll watch or listen to the episode when it gets released.  Maybe some of it will be edited down so that it isn’t 4 hours long.  After the 1,000^th episode, I think I watched back parts of it, but I can’t remember if I listened to the whole thing again.

Dave Smith, unfortunately, couldn’t be at the 2,000^th episode.  He was probably my favorite from the 1,000^th episode.  I got to meet him there, and I became a regular listener of his podcast a short time later.

Still, for the 2,000^th episode, there was no shortage of comedy.  There were quite a few libertarians who showed a comedic side that I hadn’t really seen before.

At the end of the night, a bunch of us got on an elevator to go up to our rooms.  Michael Malice, whom I had never met, got on.  People were calling out floors to me, as I was closest to the elevator buttons.  But they weren’t working.  Nothing was lighting up.  There were two lobby buttons, so I tried hitting the other lobby button because I thought maybe the elevator was going down instead of up.  When I hit the lobby button, Michael Malice said we’re already at the lobby.  He said something to the effect of, “Don’t you know how an elevator works?”

So in less than a minute, I had gotten insulted by Michael Malice.  Some people seek out this honor, but it came easily to me.

If you listen to the 2,000^th episode without having attended, I don’t know how funny it will be as compared to the live show.  I still think it will be worth your time if you have a sense of humor.

When Tom celebrates his 3,000^th show in another four years, I hope our world is in a better place.

The latest CPI figures came in for September 2021.  It was up 0.4% for the month.  While the CPI rose a little below what was expected, it is still higher than the Fed’s supposed target of 2 percent annually.

Now the median CPI has joined the party.  The median CPI had been going up 0.2 or 0.3 percent each month for the last several months.  In September, it rose 0.5%.  The year-over-year median CPI is now at 2.8%.

The median CPI tends to be less volatile than the CPI.  With the median number accelerating, it adds confirmation that price inflation is a real problem.

In another post, I explained that the shortages all over that are being blamed on COVID are really largely a result of Fed policy.  The easy money and artificially low interest rates have caused a massive misallocation of resources.  There are workers out there putting in swimming pools and building luxury cars, while they should be delivering food and manufacturing household necessities.

Of course, I don’t actually know what workers should be doing, but the point is that the market is highly distorted.  The easy money is fueling unsustainable demand for certain things.  It also doesn’t help that Joe Biden and company are seemingly intent on destroying civilization by forcing millions of people out of work because they don’t want a needle in the arm.

If the shortages continue, then higher prices are inevitable.  The only thing to fix that is a hard recession.  Pick your poison.

Since the CPI numbers came out, stocks have done well.  Investors think the Fed is going to keep the party going.  It is quite astounding that the year-over-year CPI has been running at 5% or higher for the last 5 months, yet the Fed keeps saying it is transitory.  The Fed is still creating $120 billion per month in new money, and we are wondering whether an announcement of tapering (merely a slowdown of the money creation) will happen before the end of the year.

If the Fed isn’t slamming on the monetary brakes now, it is easy to see that the FOMC members are planning loose money for as long as they can get away with.

For this reason, we probably haven’t reached the peak of the bubble yet.  Stocks and real estate continue to go wild.  The even more speculative cryptocurrencies are even crazier.  This isn’t going to end well for some people.

Between Congress, Joe Biden and his handlers, and the Federal Reserve, I don’t think you could hatch a plan to do more damage to the economy than what they are doing right now.  With massive spending, massive monetary inflation, and crazy vaccine mandates, it’s almost like they are purposely trying to tear down our civilization.

The madness has awakened a lot of people who were previously not political.  That is the good news.  The bad news is that there is going to be a lot of wreckage to clean up if and when the madness subsides.