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.

There have been something like 2,000 or more flights cancelled over the last three days, primarily with Southwest Airlines.  Southwest stated that it was due to weather and some unidentified air traffic control issues.

A lot of the cancellations were occurring with flights to and from Florida.  I live in Florida, and I can tell you that there were no severe weather issues over the weekend.  There may have been a few very scattered thunderstorms, but less than what would be typical on a summer afternoon in Florida.

At this time, all indications point to what is being called a “sick out”.  It is a protest against coming vaccine mandates.  A sizeable enough portion of the Southwest workforce decided to temporarily go on strike.  It was a mini Atlas Shrugged.

It just shows that a rather small percentage of the people can disrupt everything.  It doesn’t have to be anywhere close to half the employees walking out.

A few places can get away with the vaccine mandates.  In New York, it’s likely that somewhere between 80 and 90 percent of those eligible are vaccinated.  If you go down to 60 to 70 percent in another location, then things get dicey quickly.  If half of those people are willing to strike (or willing to get fired), it can mean just about the complete shutdown of a company.

With how hard the vaccines have been pushed, most unvaccinated people have made a very conscious choice to not get jabbed at this point.  Some could get bullied into it with a threat of being fired, but the 30% or so are pretty firm in their conviction at this stage.

The government (in this case, the FAA), the corporate media, and Southwest are not really being honest.  They may be technically factual in what they say, but they are not being truthful.  They are either ignoring the vaccine mandates entirely as it relates to this story, or they are not willing to attribute the staffing shortage over the weekend with the mandates.

The media is also gaslighting the public by tying these company mandates to Joe Biden’s executive order.  They will say that Southwest is trying to meet the deadlines to require employee vaccination from Biden’s executive order, but there is no such thing.  There is no executive order with a deadline, and OSHA has not released anything.

If there were a deadline, then why aren’t some other airlines like Delta imposing absolute mandates?  Is the “mandate” optional then?  Maybe Biden will go through with his executive order and OSHA will issue detailed instructions, but that hasn’t happened at this time.  There is no legal obligation for any of these airlines to impose any vaccine mandates.

I have had decent experiences before flying with Southwest.  But in this case, I believe the executives there are essentially lying to the public.  They don’t want to admit that it was their own stupid policies that caused this disaster to happen.

It’s hard to say how the tens of thousands of stranded passengers will feel about this.  Some will blame the selfish unvaccinated employees.  But I think a larger percentage will blame the Southwest executives for putting in place a stupid policy that caused a significant portion of their employees to show how important they are.

This would be hard for a nurse to do in a hospital.  If half the nurses walk out in protest, then it literally could kill people. But the hospital administrators have no problem risking the lives of their patients by firing nurses for not getting jabbed.

I think there must have been some kind of coordination of Southwest employees for this to happen.  I’m guessing someone came up with the idea and the word spread fast.  There is safety in numbers to a degree.  If a couple of people called in sick to protest the mandates, Southwest could just fire these people if they know that was the intent.  If it is hundreds of people or more calling in sick to protest, it’s rather hard to fire these people without destroying the entire business.  The people who didn’t show up at work in protest just showed how powerful they are.

We’ll have to see if this starts happening in other industries.  With flights, it has a rather immediate and dramatic effect, as flights just can’t go anywhere.  It is a bit more subtle if you are talking about a company that sells insurance or paints houses.

It is also understandable that pilots and flight attendants would be especially concerned, as flying increases your chance of blood clots.  Developing blood clots is one of the primary concerns of the COVID vaccine side effects.  They don’t call it the clot shot for nothing.

While the protest itself seems promising, this whole story is just another example of gaslighting.  I have been hearing lately that the COVID deaths in the United States have now passed those of the flu of 1918 (misnamed the Spanish flu).  Even if you accept the phony COVID death count, this is still dishonest reporting, as the population at that time was less than one-third of what it is today.  Again, it is technically factually correct, but it isn’t truthful.

Most media outlets will not outright lie on a regular basis.  They are sneaky with their words so that most of what they say is not technically wrong.  “An anonymous CIA source has confirmed that Russia stole the elections.”  “The CDC has officially declared that this is the deadliest pandemic on record.”

Joe Biden is a different story.  He just outright lies now.  He is still going around saying that if you are vaccinated, then you won’t die.  This is all while he is pushing his fake executive order that hasn’t even done anything yet except to scare people and give cover to employers.

I have one thing to say to that.  Let’s go Brandon.

At certain large events in the country, chants of “F**K Joe Biden” have been breaking out.  These are not just a group of five or ten people doing this.  These are loud chants that can be heard throughout a stadium or arena.

If this is any sign of the intensity of the American people being fed up with government and their “rulers”, then it means that things should start to change.  It means the political establishment has overplayed their hand.

If I were at a college football game with my kids and such a chant broke out, I would tell them to cover their ears as I join in.  Maybe it isn’t the best chant in the world, but it certainly gets the message across.  Because some people shy away from loudly cursing in public, the chants might be even louder if it was a little more appropriate for a public setting.

After Biden’s speech on September 9 (the chants started just before this), when he proclaimed himself dictator in requiring mass injection in the American population (or lose your job), I received many messages from friends.  Even a few people who had previously been vaccinated were outraged, even though it didn’t impact them directly.

I was in communication with several people who don’t want the jab, and they are fearful that they will have to submit or lose their job.  Many people are already faced with this situation because of corporate wokeness and government nudging (to put it mildly).

But there is one emotion I saw that was greater than fear.  It was anger.  There are tens of millions of people who are angry at Joe Biden and his handlers.  They realize that these people are out to destroy their lives and take away all of the good things.  While Fauci, Biden, and the other tyrants want everyone jabbed while celebrating a virtual Christmas again this year, most Americans are trying to get on with their lives.

If COVID has done one thing for us in the last year and a half, it has exposed the thirst for totalitarianism, particularly from the political left.  The rulers want to rule good and hard.

The left and the establishment (almost one and the same now) are overplaying their hand, but it isn’t clear that they know this.  They are turning millions of people towards libertarianism or some mild form of it.

It is one thing for someone to say that they disapprove of the job the president is doing in a poll.  It is quite another to passionately hate the president because you view him as a tyrant.  There are tens of millions of Americans who view Biden as a liar and a tyrant.  They see him as a thug trying to stick a needle in your arm, as well as in the arms of children.

The hard part is that almost the entire corporate media is on Biden’s side, and most of the corporate executives are on Biden’s side or too afraid to speak out.  There isn’t much honesty or courage in corporate America these days, and many of these employers are using sleazy tactics to compel their employees to take the jab.

And now Biden’s people are instructing the FBI to treat protesting parents as domestic terrorists.  Jen Psaki said that it isn’t acceptable for parents to use threats.  I would like for one actual reporter to ask her if threatening people to get vaccinated or lose their job constitutes domestic terrorism by her and Biden.

You have to wonder when this whole thing is going to break.

Consent of the Governed

In the 1500s, Etienne de la Boetie pointed out that all rulers rely on the consent of the governed.  It does not have to be an explicit consent, but the majority of people have to accept the legitimacy of the rulers in some way.

So how can Joe Biden still be standing at this point?  A slim majority of Americans do not accept what Biden is doing, and most of the people who do not support him absolutely despise him and what he is doing.

First, Biden was just inaugurated in January of this year.  He hasn’t even been in office for 9 months yet.  This makes it that much more astounding that he is so hated.  But other than a recall vote in ultra-leftist California for the governor, there has been no major referendum yet.  Perhaps the gubernatorial election next month in Virginia will tell us a little more.

Second, and more importantly, most of the people who despise Biden still grant some legitimacy to the system.  Some of that legitimacy has faded, but most people are not libertarians.  They see a greater role for the state than just protecting people’s rights.  They still give too much respect to all of the illegitimate laws and orders out there.

The good news is that things are slipping away from the statists.  I believe that many of Biden’s critics are starting to question the legitimacy of the whole system.  They may even be seeing the benefits of a possible separation.

There have been many protests in schools over masks, critical race theory, and other political issues.  Of course, they are all political issues when we are talking about government schools.  While I am happy to see parents speaking up for their kids, unfortunately some don’t see the answer that is right in front of them.  They need to make the big sacrifice of pulling their kids out government schools.  This is at least becoming a thought for many parents who would have scoffed at the idea a few years ago.

The entire state apparatus is being called into question to some degree.  The establishment is pushing so hard on vaccines, and calling anyone who opposes their agenda a domestic terrorist, that they are risking their own power.

They are losing the consent of a substantial minority of the population.  This is a positive development for liberty.

The bad news is that the state apparatus is still big and powerful.  The establishment will dig in even deeper and flail around like an out-of-control destruction machine.  There are going to be some hard-fought battles ahead.

The battles are going to be in information.  The politicians and the corporate media will keep trying to gaslight the substantial minority of Americans who will just believe and go along with whatever they say.

When it comes to the vaccines, we have to make it a liberty issue.  It’s fine to argue that the vaccines are not as safe and effective as what Biden and his handlers tell us.  But even if you think the vaccines are the greatest thing ever, do you believe that we should be able to make our own choices?  Do you believe the state should compel us in making our own personal and medical decisions?

There is no sign of Biden’s executive order after his speech a month ago.  There is no sign of any rules coming down from OSHA.  Maybe it was all a bluff, but this doesn’t make it any better for Biden’s image.

“Ha ha, there really isn’t a mandate.  We were just trying to get employers to do our dirty work.  Sorry if you had to worry about your job for months and months because we were bluffing.  But we got millions of more people vaccinated.”

I have one thing to say: F**K Joe Biden.