With the approval and coming release of vaccines for COVID-19, there are questions on what the proper libertarian stance should be on this vaccine and vaccines in general. There is also a question of whether libertarians (or anyone else) should get the vaccine.

From a libertarian standpoint, it should obviously be voluntary on whether to get the vaccine or any other vaccine.  It is a personal decision.  Whether or not it is a good idea is a different matter.

There are a few self-identified libertarians out there who will argue that the state can compel vaccination because walking around unvaccinated can be seen as aggression. This is a major stretch at the very least, but I believe it is flat out wrong.

If you are walking around without a vaccine, then this is not aggressive behavior.  If you are sick and contagious and walking around trying to infect others, then this would be considered aggressive behavior. It is a little more questionable if you are sick but not purposely trying to infect anyone.

Even here though, a good libertarian stance would argue for strong property rights.  If most property is owned privately (i.e., not by the government), then it really becomes a question of the property owners’ policies and voluntary associations.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that every storeowner has to have an explicit policy for everything. We do rely on social norms. When you walk into a store, you don’t need a specific invitation.  The “open” sign is understood.  You also, hopefully, don’t cut in front of someone in line at the register.

If you walk into a store and sneeze on people on purpose, there may not be a specific policy against this.  But you will be infringing on others, and the store manager will likely throw you out.

The hard thing we are facing now with vaccines is that there is a threat of having your life made difficult if you are unvaccinated.  For instance, Ticketmaster has already suggested requiring vaccination to attend a concert or other event, or to get a negative COVID test right before the event.

It is not hard to imagine that the airlines might require something similar.  It is not hard to imagine many major corporations following suit, especially when corporate executives are quick these days to do the politically correct thing and to stay on the good side of the establishment.

As a libertarian, I don’t legally object to a company requiring vaccination in order to do business there.  I will personally object and complain, but I don’t want the government to force a company to not require vaccination.  Of course, if the government got involved, we know which side it would come down on.

The big problem is that the government is influencing these businesses to take these types of actions.  It is not all that different from mask policies.

Even worse, the government is heavily involved in many of these industries.  Again, we need to return to private property rights. If the government didn’t own and control so many things, then this would not be as much of a problem.

The government is heavily involved in medical care in almost every way.  So it is no surprise that hospitals and other medical facilities are likely to require or highly encourage vaccination.  The same goes with airlines.  In the realm of schooling, most schools are government-run and government-funded.

Even in industries where the government has less control, the threat still looms.  Every legal business is licensed by the state. If you are a hardware store owner, are you going to announce that vaccinations are unnecessary?  Are you going to say to your employees that you don’t recommend getting a vaccine?  You will be lucky if you can just ignore the vaccination issue. Again, threats loom.  This is more true now than ever after we have seen that governors and mayors can just deem your business as “non-essential” and shut it down without even going to the legislature.

So the root of the problem isn’t vaccination.  The root of the problem is a lack of respect for property rights.  It is a problem of government at all levels being able to interfere with businesses.

Vaccine Safety and Efficacy

Now there is the question of whether it is wise to get vaccinated.  There is certainly a lot of skepticism, which is good. I only wish there had been that much skepticism about the hyping of the dangers of the virus from the beginning.  I wish there had been more skepticism about the wisdom of locking down society.

It’s interesting that there are no clean political lines when it comes to getting a vaccine.  The vaccines are coming out on Trump’s watch, but they were announced after the election.  So some Trump supporters favor the vaccine because Trump is touting it and because they are coming out while he is still president.  But much of the left also favors the vaccine because they are being approved after the election, which seemingly takes a lot of the political element out of it.

Libertarians tend to be the most consistent in not wanting to get the vaccine, but I have definitely seen exceptions here as well.

With regard to Trump, I think he has just been bad on this issue.  With the overall issue of the coronavirus, Trump has been better than Biden just because Biden has been so horrible.  At least Trump admits that there are tradeoffs and that we can’t lock down society for a long period of time.  As he has said a few times, we can’t let the cure be worse than the disease.  Of course, from my perspective, the cure became worse than the disease on the first day of lockdowns back in March.

When Trump was elected in 2016, there was talk of him setting up some kind of vaccine safety committee to be headed by Robert Kennedy Jr.  This would have been a hand grenade thrown right at the FDA, the CDC, and the entire pharmaceutical industry.  This is why it never happened.

I suspect the hysteria over COVID-19 was greater than it would have been had Trump not been president.  He got suckered. He went along with Fauci and all of the establishment medical hacks.  He originally bought into the idea of lockdowns.  In this sense, he deserved to lose the 2020 election, even if fraudulently.

At this point, I’m not sure how much worse things could get under Biden in terms of the COVID hysteria.  He can implement a 100-day mask mandate (or request), but maybe that will just make the Trump people a little more defiant.  Right now, almost everyone wears a mask because they are obedient citizens. At the very least, they feel societal pressure to conform.

Trump continues to push hard for the vaccines.  It certainly makes no sense based on what he was saying in 2016. Unfortunately, many Trump loyalists are going to listen to him on this one and take the vaccine.

My personal recommendation is to skip it.  It may be hard for some people, especially if their job depends on it. If this is the case, then my best recommendation is to stall for as long as possible.  At least give it a little time to see if there are major side effects being experienced by a significant percentage of people. But don’t rely on the corporate media for this reporting.

Just the fact that the establishment and its media are promoting these vaccines so hard gives me reason to stay away from the vaccines.  They lie about weapons of mass destruction.  They lie about climate change.  They lie about Russian interference in the election.  If they’ll lie about all of this, why wouldn’t they lie about the safety and efficacy of a vaccine?

Also, I just don’t believe the narrative about COVID-19.  Even if you believe the death count, which you shouldn’t, it means that really old people and really unhealthy people mostly die from (or with) it.

If you are relatively young and healthy, then there is no reason to be vaccinated.  Your risk of bad side effects from the vaccine is likely much higher than your risk from the actual virus.

If you are elderly or if you are in poor health, then you probably shouldn’t be injecting vaccines into you that will likely just serve to further weaken your immune system.

These are just my opinions.  If you disagree, you are free to take the shots.  Of course, I wish that others had respected my rights and the rights of others to live our lives as we saw fit this year.  If you thought you were at high risk for the virus, then nobody was telling you that you had to leave your house.  But for those of us willing to take the risk (supposedly), we should have been allowed to voluntarily associate with others.

The other major problem with these vaccines is that they all come about with government funding. The U.S. government has spent billions of dollars already, which means that the taxpayers have paid for them. Again, we get back to a lack of property rights, although a few billion dollars is nothing these days.

However, the government funding and approval create even more moral hazard.  It takes away market competition.  It gives a false sense of security when the FDA approves a vaccine and declares it to be within its safety guidelines.  And these vaccines coming out now were obviously rushed, and there was far less stringent testing than normal.

It would not surprise me if the coming vaccines just cause a new wave of illness.  Maybe the illnesses will be blamed on the coronavirus.  Maybe they will be ignored.

One thing I do know is that it would have to get pretty bad for any establishment news sources to report on it.  You will have to rely on alternative media, which you should probably do anyway.

My best hope is that the vaccines don’t really do much of anything but they are used as an excuse to say that the coronavirus “pandemic” is now under control and we can start opening up the economy.

Actually, my best hope is that everyone wakes up and realizes they have been swindled since March 2020.  But I’m trying to be realistic here.

The Federal Reserve’s balance sheet has slowed down since its unprecedented rise from March to May 2020.  However, it is still rising, even if relatively slowly.

When you look back at the year 2020, there are a lot of incredible things to look at.  The hysteria over a virus is the most incredible thing, especially considering that the overall mortality in the U.S. for this year will not be all that different compared to previous years.

In regards to the reaction, I’m not sure what is more surprising – the fact that people so easily gave up their liberty to government, or the fact that many people have isolated themselves from friends and family.

It is still amazing what has happened in the last 9 months.  It is hard to believe that governors and mayors across the country were able to close down hundreds of thousands of private businesses just on their own word.

With all that has happened, it is easy to be distracted and not look at the many economic consequences.  For those who actually consider the economic costs of the shutdowns, we tend to focus on the unemployed and the many companies that have been put out of business, as well we should.

Still, even if all government lockdowns and restrictions ended tomorrow, we would feel the economic consequences for many years to come.

With all of the unprecedented things happening, it is easy to ignore the Fed’s balance sheet. It has now grown by over $3 trillion since the beginning of March.  We may be somewhat numb to it, given the massive expansion after the 2008 financial crisis, but it doesn’t mean it won’t significantly impact us.

While stocks started to crash in March and April, things reversed rather quickly after the Fed showed it would do whatever was necessary to bail out everyone.  We saw unemployment payments to people that exceeded the salary they had been previously earning, while most Americans received “stimulus” checks regardless of their employment situation.  The checks certainly did stimulate the stock market.

The Fed dropped its target federal funds rate to near zero, eliminated reserve requirements, and expanded its balance sheet by $3 trillion.  While that may be music to the ears of stock investors, it shouldn’t be music to the average middle class American who will eventually pay for all of this in the form of higher prices and a lower standard of living.

It’s quite amazing how bullish stock investors are.  Stocks were hitting all-time new highs when news was being announced of the possibility of effective vaccines.  I wouldn’t bet any money on these vaccines, as it could all go bad rather quickly if and when people start reporting bad side effects.  As with the government lockdowns, the vaccine cure is likely to be worse than the disease.

But even if these vaccines will provide the miracle cure to open up the economy again, these announcements of effective vaccines were coming at the same time that many cities and states were imposing stricter lockdowns.  So the stock bulls just shrug off the new lockdowns, but cheer the vaccine news.  The new lockdowns in places like California will put the final nail in the coffin of many small businesses, but that seems to be irrelevant to the bulls.

Price Inflation

Meanwhile, the latest numbers have come out for the Consumer Price Index (CPI).  The CPI rose 0.2% in November 2020, while the more stable median CPI came in at 0.1%.  The median CPI, year-over-year, is actually trending down a little.

I have to hand it to the Fed.  They have been able to get away with a lot without moving the overall price inflation numbers much.

The Fed’s massive monetary inflation is hurting us severely by allowing Congress to spend recklessly and by allowing a major misallocation of resources.  But since it isn’t showing up in the CPI, they are basically getting away with it.

One of the main problems with the CPI right now is that it doesn’t show us that necessities are tending to be more inflationary than more luxury items.  Governors and mayors determined what was essential, so it’s funny the Fed doesn’t discriminate on this basis as well.

If haircuts and pedicures are non-essential, then does it really matter if prices for these things have stayed flat or even gone down?  Prices may be really stable, or even down, for luxury services, for certain electronic items, and for rent in Manhattan.  But for most people, their basic necessities of food and medical care are going higher in price.  In most areas outside of some big cities, housing prices are also going up.

So while the CPI tells you that inflation is no problem, it seems to be a problem for many people when prices at the grocery store for some items are going up by 5% or 10% or more in the matter of months.

Since there is talk of more stimulus (bailouts) and almost no talk of worrying about deficits, we should expect the Fed to continue to expand its balance sheet in order to fund a good portion of the deficits.

It is hard to imagine that stocks can just keep going higher while the reported price inflation stays in check.  Something has to give. We are living in irrational times. The human race is completely irrational with regard to listening to the powers-that-be over a virus.  There also seems to be irrationality with regard to new stock market highs in the wake of economic devastation.

As Keynes said, the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.  So in that sense, it is hard to bet against the trend right now.

But there is a saying that when things can’t go on, they have a tendency to stop.  I don’t know what we’ll see first – a stock market crash or a spike in price inflation.  I am expecting one or the other.

In 2020, it would have been more profitable to invest in the Nasdaq than to invest in gold.  But past performance does not indicate future performance.  In these turbulent times, I’d rather stick with something more secure. When stocks eventually fall, I believe they will fall hard.

I have written quite a bit in 2020 on the coronavirus.  I think it is justified because the reaction to the virus is the number one issue facing most Americans, at least politically speaking.

It is still amazing to me how easily people all over the world just gave up liberty because the powers-that-be told them to be afraid of something.

I had a Facebook friend the other day, who is a leftist in California, say that we need to do what’s necessary.  It was in reference to more lockdowns in the state.  I didn’t reply, but I wanted to say, “Spoken like a good little serf.”

I haven’t believed much of anything about this virus that has come from establishment media sources.  If they’ll lie about stuff to get us into war, it surely is not beneath them to lie about the dangerousness of a virus.

I knew we were being lied to in March, and not just because of the sources.  They were saying it was a three to four percent mortality rate in China.  It was a completely flawed statistic.  They took the number of people who died divided by the number of people who tested positive.

Back in February and March, there was not much testing.  The people being tested in China were the really sick people, most of whom were going into the hospital.  So of course 3 to 4 percent of them were dying.  The people tested were already really sick.  This is not how they calculate the mortality rate for the seasonal flu.  The denominator is not the number of people who tested positive for the flu. It is a projection.  It is an estimate.  They didn’t do this with the coronavirus.

I am not an epidemiologist or any kind of a scientist.  I am not a statistician, although I was pretty good at statistics in high school and college.  But I could figure this out without much thought.  Are you telling me that nobody else in the corporate media could have pointed this out?  Or was it too inconvenient of a fact to point out?

And then the CDC changed guidelines for coding deaths.  If you were diagnosed with COVID-19 or were suspected of having COVID-19 and then died, then you died of COVID-19.  Again, that’s different from the way the seasonal flu has been handled and calculated in the past, and I already thought that was an overstated number.

Proper Language

The whole thing is a giant tragedy for the human race in 2020.  Many millions of lives have been destroyed.  If you count severe hardship and poverty, it is probably tens of millions or hundreds of millions.  As bad as Americans have it with the lockdowns and hysteria, it is a hundred times worse in third-world countries where the people have very little wealth to fall back on.  When they get shut out of a job, they can’t feed their families that night.

The use of language has been infected as well.  I keep hearing almost everyone refer to this as a “pandemic”.  It may be a pandemic of ignorance, but there is no pandemic regarding a virus.

I don’t know anyone personally who has died of the coronavirus.  I barely know anyone who knows someone who has died of it. Most of the people who supposedly die of the coronavirus are people who typically die.  They were elderly people and people with severe health problems.

The United States has a population of about 330 million people.  You can always find an example of somebody dying of something. There are many thousands of deaths that occur each year with no explanation.  That explanation is now coronavirus.

The people who have supposedly died of coronavirus are a good sample of people who typically die.

So I refuse to use the word “pandemic” in this context, unless it is in quotes.

I hear it from people frequently.  “I couldn’t travel this year because of the pandemic.”  “I didn’t get to see the concert because of the pandemic.”  “I lost my job because of the pandemic.”

I refuse to say anything like this.  I will say that I couldn’t travel because of the hysteria.  I will say that I didn’t go to the concert because it was cancelled.  I will say that someone lost his job because of the lockdowns.  None of this is because of the “pandemic” because there is no pandemic.

If everyone who has the common cold or has recently had the common cold were marked as dying of the common cold if they died, then you would have an equivalent “pandemic” of the common cold.  There are almost 3 million Americans who die every year.  Some percentage of those people had the common cold or recently had the common cold at death.  It doesn’t mean they died of the common cold.

I also despise the inaccurate use of language in blaming the virus for things that were caused by humans.  For example, “I was temporarily laid off from my job because of COVID.”  No, you were laid off from your job because of the hysteria and likely because of lockdowns by the state.

It is especially frustrating when people on “our side” use this type of language because it plays right into the hands of the fear mongers.  It is not easy because of the things we hear every day, but you should make a conscious effort to be accurate in your language.

What’s Next?

I don’t know what 2021 will bring.  I assume that Joe Biden will be president.  I don’t know if the virus will magically disappear.  I hope that’s the case, but I’m afraid that politicians have gotten a taste of this new power that they will not easily relinquish.

If people are willing to give up their livelihood because of what a few handpicked “experts” say, then what will be next?  Maybe they will try the global warming/ climate change theme again and tell everyone they must obey all orders or else the oceans are going to flood the continent in the next 5 years.

Since the coronavirus worked so well and is so hard to prove its existence, maybe they will just come up with a new virus.  The symptoms will be tiredness and anxiety.  If you have anxiety, then you probably have the virus.  You should probably stay home and take your marching orders.

Maybe the next panic will come from the vaccine coming to supposedly quell the current panic. But if people get sick from the vaccines, then I’m sure it will be blamed on something else.  Again, maybe it will be a new virus or a mutated form of the coronavirus.  They could make up anything at this point.  As long as it is said by NBC Nightly News, then half the population will believe it.

It doesn’t matter what ridiculous thing I say.  What has happened in 2020 is ridiculous.  It is perhaps the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on the human race.

I went to the park over the weekend and there was a family playing basketball outside, and they were all wearing masks.  There were other people on the play equipment wearing masks.  This wasn’t virtue signaling.  It was pure ignorance.

People have gone insane on the things they are saying and the things they are doing or not doing. They are allowing elderly relatives to die alone because they don’t want to risk the chance of giving them a virus.  The few really old people that I know don’t want to be alone.  They want to experience life right now because they don’t have much life left on this planet.

Children are being emotionally traumatized.  In some cases, they are having to give up time with friends.  Many of them have had sports or other activities taken away from them.  It is ridiculous and cruel at the same time.

This is why it is important to live your life the best you can given the circumstances.  I recently had lunch with three other guys. We shook hands.  We didn’t wear masks.  This is now somehow seen as reckless in the year 2020. To me, it is normal.

People need to get jealous of you.  They should see other people living their life.  They should see other people not living in fear.  I believe that is the only way to defeat this giant hoax that is bringing so much misery to people all over the world.

The “state” has won the battle in 2020.  The people not living in ignorance need to fight back by not complying with the madness when possible.  The most important thing you can do is to live your life, even if those around you are only trying to avoid death at all costs.  Let them live in fear with their so-called science.  You can live your life.

Some of the so-called moderates in the U.S. Senate have come up with a new stimulus bill.  The price tag is a mere $908 billion. In 2020, this doesn’t seem that big.

If you divide it by the number of households in the United States, this will put a different spin on the whole thing.  908 billion divided by 128 million (approximate households) is just over $7,000 per household.

But before you get too excited, don’t expect a check for your household in the amount of $7,000. In fact, if you are not unemployed or a business owner, your portion should equal approximately zero. Or maybe more accurate, your portion will be -$7,000, since you’ll still have to pay for it in some way.

When people talk about “moderate” politicians, it usually just means they favor big government on all of the issues.  In the case of domestic spending, it is no surprise that Mitt Romney would favor massive spending that largely goes to corporate interests and other governments.

Here is a list of the breakdown of the $908 billion proposal.

Notice that there is no direct “stimulus” check.  While I abhor the idea of a universal basic income (UBI), at least I derive some benefit out of it.  I get some of my own money back.

If this legislation goes through, I will get no benefit out of it whatsoever.  Most other Americans can make the same claim. Instead, it is just more massive spending that will be mostly paid for through Federal Reserve monetary inflation.

Perhaps the worst thing about this legislation is that it is the ultimate moral hazard.  It will only encourage more lockdowns and restrictions coming from state and local governments

The Lockdown Bailout and Federalism

Take a close look at everything in this bill.  Virtually every piece of it will disproportionately go to states with heavier lockdowns.

The bailouts for state and local governments is the obvious piece.  This will just bail out governments that have vastly overspent and find themselves in a major hole.  This is an obvious moral hazard.  It will allow these state and local governments to continue on, at least for a while, with reckless spending.

But look at the other 2 major pieces of this legislation.  There are major supplements for unemployment benefits, and there are handouts for businesses.

These will disproportionately favor the lockdown states.  These are the states that have put more small businesses under or on the brink of being under.  These are the states that have put more people out of work.

So if state and local governments can lock down and not feel the fiscal consequences of doing so, they are likely to do more of it.

The state of California is locking down hard again.  Like almost everywhere else, the state budget and the local government budgets will be pinched.  They will have a reduction of tax collections while at the same time having more welfare to hand out.  But if the governments are being bailed out, and their victims are being partially bailed out, it gives California a pass to continue the lockdowns and restrictions.

Meanwhile, in a state like South Dakota that has stayed mostly open, it will have to help fund the bailout of California.  South Dakota isn’t going to have as high of a percentage of unemployed people and failing businesses.  The people of South Dakota will have to help pay for the lockdowns in other states.

There aren’t many positive things in 2020, at least politically speaking.  One positive though is that we have seen a certain degree of federalism.  Even though the federal government has promoted the hysteria and recommended lockdowns, it was left up to state and local governments to impose them. I am happy to live in Florida, which is one of the few states open for business now.

This bailout legislation helps to destroy some of that federalism.  While I will continue to be happy to be in Florida, it is rather disgusting that I will have to pay for the actions of the tyrants in places like California and New York.

This is why the issue of states’ rights is so important.  It isn’t really the states that have rights.  It is the people residing in those states who should have the right to not have to pay for the idiotic policies endorsed by the people in California and New York. 

I fully understand that there are many people in California and New York who don’t endorse these lockdowns, but it is up to them to work to change the policies or to move out of those tyrannical states.  The people of Florida and South Dakota should not have to support this tyranny.

I can only hope that some politicians who call themselves conservative Republicans will stand up to this.  There were barely any standing up to the enormous spending back in March and April.It is important to oppose these bailouts not just for fiscal reasons, but also because it is a form of moral hazard.  These bailouts will just encourage and enable more lockdowns in the future.

President-Elect Joe Biden – as declared by the corporate media – is picking his cabinet even though he hasn’t officially been elected president yet.

For the sake of discussion, let’s assume that Joe Biden actually takes office on January 20, 2021. Let’s also assume that he officially nominates Janet Yellen as the next Treasury Secretary as he has indicated. Let’s also assume that she is confirmed by the Senate.

Janet Yellen would become the first female Treasury Secretary.  She wouldn’t be the first Keynesian though.

Yellen already has the distinction of being the first female chair of the Federal Reserve.  She was nominated by Obama and was in that position from 2014 to 2018.

Yellen is known as an inflation dove.  In other words, she is more than happy to see the central bank create more money out of thin air to pay for things that politicians and taxpayers are not willing to pay for directly through tax collections.

However, when you look at Yellen’s record as Fed chair, she had the tightest monetary policy of any Fed chair since Paul Volcker if you use the Fed’s balance sheet as the measure.

The Fed’s target federal funds rate was already near zero when Yellen entered office, and while it stayed low, she did start the process of raising it.  Yellen oversaw the winding down of the last round of quantitative easing (QE 3) from the 2008 financial crisis.  For her remaining time in office, the base money supply was tight or perhaps even slightly deflationary.  In other words, her actions didn’t fit with her reputation.

It is important to acknowledge that there were also no economic or financial crises that occurred on her watch.  If she had been Fed chair in late 2008 or in March 2020, then I’m sure the story would be different.

What does this tell you?  It tells you that Yellen is going to go along with whatever the establishment is doing.  She will be accommodative when accommodation is necessary.

Yellen is an intelligent person despite being a Keynesian in economics.  She has some practice taking questions as Fed chair.  She is fairly well spoken.  In this sense, it makes her somewhat dangerous.

However, I also believe that libertarians and conservatives should not overplay their hands in criticizing Yellen.  Despite some rhetoric in her distant past, she is rather conventional. She isn’t going to be enacting the policies of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unless that is the way the general establishment is headed.

Yellen is not an outright socialist.  She isn’t even Bernie Sanders.  She understands some economics, even if some of it is wrong.  She also gets some things right.  I think she understands that the Fed can’t just create money with total recklessness without there being some bad consequences.  Just the same, she understands that the federal government can’t run multi-trillion dollar deficits forever without there being bad consequences.

I was a little bit surprised at Biden picking Yellen for this position.  But it isn’t earth-shattering news because Yellen is going to oversee the Treasury department similarly to some other establishment Keynesian.

It’s certainly not good news, but it also isn’t horrible.  You can already see the way Biden is going to govern.  It will be establishment politics.  It will be a return to the status quo of early 2016 to the degree that anything deviated from that.  The deviation was mostly in rhetoric.  In terms of government spending, there has been no deviation except even more spending in 2020.

If banks or certain favored corporations get into trouble, we should expect more bailouts.  We should expect more spending on unemployment and perhaps stimulus checks.  We should expect proposals for small marginal tax hikes on high-income earners.

I am less certain about corporate taxes.  It is hard to imagine that Biden, or even Harris, would try to hike corporate taxes if the economy is still slumping.  This would be true even if the Democrats take control of the Senate.

The problem is that the economy is in major trouble right now.  We live in a tale of two worlds.  I saw this on Thanksgiving on television with scenes of long food lines.  There were cars stretched for miles.  But when I went out on Friday afternoon, the mall was packed.  I wasn’t shopping, but I was going out for dinner.  This was in Florida, which is more open than most other states, but it is indicative that many families are still doing rather well.

The stock market has done amazingly well.  I think it is a giant bubble.  The most amazing thing is that it is hitting new all-time highs in late 2020, even as new lockdowns and restrictions are imposed across the country.

Gold took a bit of a hit in November, but it is still much higher than it was this time last year. With Yellen looking likely as the next Treasury Secretary, I continue to be bullish on gold in the long term.

Assuming Trump leaves office, we may start to get a little pushback from Republicans in Congress on the budget.  However, even if there is a small scaling back from where we are, the government is still going to be running massive deficits.  If there is a stock market crash and a rise in unemployment again, then we will see even bigger deficits again.  Most of this will be paid for by the Federal Reserve buying debt with newly created money.

There aren’t a lot of certainties in life, but there are a few.  The sun will rise in the east.  Hillary Clinton will never be a libertarian.  And the Fed isn’t going to significantly reduce its balance sheet any time soon.  This is why gold is still a good bet, with or without Janet Yellen.

Yellen won’t be any more of a disaster than anyone else would have been under a Biden presidency, but she’ll still be a disaster.  Reckless government spending will continue.