Imagine we are in the year 2025.  It is announced that a new virus strain has seemingly been discovered.  It is a form of the sniffles.  It is a novel sniffles.  Sometimes it is called Sniffles-25.

The primary symptom of the sniffles is a runny nose.  Most people have to use a tissue to wipe their nose unless they use their sleeve.  Some people who are getting sick with the sniffles show signs of other symptoms, which can include tiredness, headache, upset stomach, and lethargy.  But a runny nose is the primary and common symptom amongst people with the novel sniffles.

If anyone gets the novel sniffles and goes to the hospital, the hospital will get reimbursed a greater amount if certain equipment is used.  If the person with the sniffles dies, then the hospital gets even more.  So it is important for the hospital to document whether a patient had a runny nose when entering the hospital.

There are still about 325 million people living in the United States at this time, and almost 3 million people die every year of various causes.  We’ll say that 2.8 million people die every year.

About 8 percent of the population currently has a runny nose or has experienced a runny nose in the last 7 days.  Anyone who has used a tissue to wipe their nose in the last 7 days is assumed to have Sniffles-25.

Anyone who dies who has used a tissue to wipe their nose in the last 7 days is listed as Sniffles-25 positive, and the death certificate should identify this.

The 8 percent of the population who have been deemed to have Sniffles-25 within the last week are spread out somewhat randomly.  It impacts all ages of people.

There are 2.8 million deaths every year in the country, and about 8 percent of them have a runny nose within a week of dying.  Therefore, by the end of the year 2025, it could be said that 224,000 people died with the sniffles.  This includes someone who is 95 years old with cancer, and it includes someone who dies in a motorcycle crash.

But when the media reports these deaths, they accidentally change one word.  Instead of saying “with”, they say “of”.  Therefore, it is reported that 224,000 people died in the year 2025 of the sniffles.

It gets a lot of people scared.  People who get the sniffles and start experiencing other symptoms like headache or tiredness feel that they need professional help and will often go to the hospital for treatment.  Fear of the sniffles has managed to shut down the economy and have nearly everyone walking around with a mask on.  If you have to wipe your nose, you had better seek some privacy so as not to alarm other people.

This was the year 2025 with the novel strain of the sniffles.  While people had experienced runny noses before, there was never anything like this.  But by the end of the year, there were millions of people walking around saying that the sniffles had killed well over 200,000 Americans.

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This is not a claim that COVID-19 is the sniffles.  This is not a claim that COVID-19 cannot be dangerous to anyone. This is not a claim that nobody should take COVID-19 seriously.  This is not a claim that nobody has died of COVID-19 as a contributing factor.  These are different discussions.

It is a claim that you should be careful in citing that over 200,000 Americans have died “of” COVID-19.

Mike Pence vs. Kamala Harris was not as entertaining as Donald Trump vs. Joe Biden.  Most people were disgusted with the political theater of Trump vs. Biden, or at least they claimed to be.  I’ll admit I enjoyed it.  I have low expectations of these people anyway, so it may as well be entertaining.

After watching the vice presidential debate, I have confirmed that I prefer Trump over Pence, and I prefer Biden over Harris.  Actually, I already thought this, but it was easily confirmed after the debate.

Biden is part of the good old boys club.  He is corrupt and part of the establishment.  He is easily molded, which could be seen as good or bad.  I don’t see Biden as more of a threat than any other politician belonging to the establishment.

Kamala Harris is far scarier.  I can tell she is a nasty person like Hillary Clinton.  She holds just about all of the worst positions.  She is evil, and her stance on issues is evil.

This was yet another debate without talk of foreign policy.  There was a little discussion about China, but it was mostly about tariffs and the coronavirus.  There were a couple of mentions of Russia, but more on that little item later.

Harris did not get to show off how much of a war hawk she is.  She talked about how many different groups of people were supporting the Biden/ Harris (or is that Harris/ Biden?) ticket.  She said 7 members of the George W. Bush cabinet are supporting their campaign.  In other words, the establishment war hawks who hate Trump are supporting their campaign.

Harris is really scary on all of the issues.  The good news is that she isn’t likeable.  She is condescending at her best.  Mike Pence tried to play it different from Trump.  Pence was more conciliatory and sometimes overly nice.  Harris was an attack dog who couldn’t say a nice thing.  Almost all of her jabs were directed specifically to Trump.

There were a couple of times where Pence interrupted, but it wasn’t frequent.  As soon as he did, Harris had to condescendingly berate Pence about how she is talking.  It was easy to see why she was such a failure in the Democratic primaries.

Harris avoided directly answering many questions.  When asked about a national mask mandate and national lockdowns, she avoided answering.  Instead, she talked about contact tracing and vaccines.  In Kamala Harris world, this means more government spying and forced injections.

Pence was not particularly good talking about the coronavirus.  He kept talking about a vaccine.  He is a bit more polished than Trump, but he is so much more boring.  He is there to play it safe.  You don’t get the cold hard truth from Pence like you sometimes get from Trump.

This was probably the most frustrating aspect and the main reason why I am not fond of Pence. He is an establishment guy, and he sounds like an establishment guy.  He isn’t Trump or anything close.  He didn’t go after Harris hard enough, and Trump and Pence should know that they aren’t going to get much help from debate moderators.

This moderator was an improvement over Chris Wallace, which isn’t saying much.  She didn’t have as many problems to deal with.  But it was annoying when Pence would go over his time.  She would keep saying, “Thank you Vice President.  Thank you Vice President.”

I know he was going over his time, but can you say it once and let him finish?  Do you have to keep interrupting every 3 seconds?

I used to laugh when they would have these lights at debates that would change colors when the candidate was getting close to the time limit.  I can see now why they may have been somewhat effective.

Anyway, the moderator didn’t ask any really tough questions, especially of Harris.  That is my biggest criticism.  That is why it is up to Trump and Pence to ask the tough questions.

There was one question that the moderator definitely didn’t ask.  Pence had a great opportunity to bring it up, but mostly fumbled it.

Harris actually started, on her own, talking about Trump cozying up to Russia.  She was revisiting the whole Russia hoax. Just the other day, there was a document declassified (but heavily redacted) that showed John Brennan’s handwritten notes from when he was head of the CIA.  He says in his notes that he informed Obama about how Hillary Clinton was going to push the Russia narrative against Trump.

Maybe this is what Trump was talking about at the last debate when he said they had Obama and all of them caught.  But it has received almost no media coverage (surprise, surprise).

Here is really strong evidence that the whole Russia narrative was a hoax.  It was pushed by Clinton, Obama, Brennan, Comey, and the other criminals.  Yet, when Harris brings up Russia, Pence didn’t say a thing.  He did mention something in reference to it near the end of the debate, but it was not specific and most people probably didn’t know what he was talking about for the few who were still watching.  I can only hope Trump keeps talking about it at the next presidential debate.

Overall, I thought they were both terrible.  Pence is polished but boring.  Harris is unlikeable.  And like Biden, she couldn’t directly answer a question about packing the court.  I think Pence and Harris are both losers, but Harris is the bigger loser.  Unfortunately, despite her horrible qualities, she actually has a pretty good chance of becoming president of the United States because many people hate Trump and Biden is old and controlled.

This is a popular theme you will hear from third-party campaigns and supporters.  I was involved in Libertarian Party politics in the past, so I know it well.  When there was an election with a Libertarian Party candidate running, it was frequently said that one shouldn’t vote for the lesser of two evils.

In other words, you don’t have to vote for the Democrat or Republican.  They are both evil, so you shouldn’t support evil.

I suppose this line of thinking presents a problem if you don’t agree with everything the Libertarian stands for.  I hear it now with Jo Jorgensen running for president on the Libertarian Party ticket.  I hear that you shouldn’t vote for the lesser of two evils (Trump or Biden).  The problem is that I don’t fully support Jorgensen and everything she says.  So really, she may just be the lesser (the least) of the three evils.

We are confronted with the question of why you shouldn’t support the lesser of two evils, but you should support the lesser of three evils.

When it comes to advocating policies, I find it easy to be a libertarian.  I can just follow the Libertarian Party pledge.  I don’t advocate the initiation of force for political or social goals.

Sure, there are gray areas.  Sometimes it isn’t always clear what constitutes force, or what constitutes initiating it. But it is a general principle that can keep one from going astray on any particular issue.

It can be tough to take a libertarian stance on certain pieces of legislation.  For example, if there is a proposal that would cut two different taxes but raise one other tax at the same time, should a libertarian support it?  It would lead to a net decrease in taxation, but one piece of it would mean higher taxes.

Of course, whether a libertarian chooses to support the proposed legislation, he or she should make it clear that they support the part of lowering taxes and do not support the piece that raises taxes.

When it comes to voting, it becomes really difficult as a libertarian.  How much should a candidate be in line with your philosophy?  Does it make sense to vote for the lesser of two (or more) evils?

Governor Lockdowns

I live in the state of Florida.  I was mad back in April when the governor, Ron DeSantis, issued lockdown orders for the state. I was calling him Dictator DeSantis.  I spoke similarly of the mayor of my city, and I still do.

But DeSantis has changed his tune enormously over the last several months.  He just fully reopened Florida, although there are still some restrictions from local city or county governments.

DeSantis has been quite good on the issue of lockdowns and mask mandates coming from the government, at least compared to most other governors in the United States.  I would probably give the top prize to Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota.  But considering Florida is a very populous state with a wide range of people, I feel lucky that Florida is relatively better off in terms of government restrictions for a virus.

Florida has a broad demographic of people.  But if anything, there are a disproportionate number of older people, who are supposedly at much higher risk from the virus.  That makes it that much more astounding that DeSantis was able – politically speaking – to fully reopen things ahead of most other states.

DeSantis just barely won the election in 2018.  He barely beat out a corrupt “progressive” (i.e., a socialist) who almost surely would have heavily locked things down on his own dictatorial orders for a long period of time.

Don’t get me wrong here.  These dictatorial powers have been allowed by the consent of the people.  If most people didn’t consent to mask mandates and the shutting down of businesses, then even the hardcore leftwing governors wouldn’t be able to get away with these edicts.

When there are a lot of mixed opinions out there, as we have now, it does provide some latitude for governors and mayors.  DeSantis could have just as easily kept things somewhat locked down.  He would have had some pushback from his more conservative base, but that hasn’t stopped some other Republican governors in other states.

I did not vote for DeSantis in 2018.  In some ways, I feel a little bad that I didn’t, although I certainly couldn’t have known what would happen in the year 2020.  If you had asked me back in April, I would have criticized DeSantis heavily, saying that he is no different than all of the other bad politicians.

While voting for DeSantis would have been voting for the lesser of two evils, he really is less evil than the person who lost.  I am grateful that DeSantis is governor over some socialist who would be cracking skulls right now for not masking up or for trying to open up a business.

Stating Principles

I don’t know if this will change the way I vote in the future.  I have voted for what I thought before was the lesser of two evils, and the person turned out to be far more evil than I thought.  It is not an easy subject for a libertarian.

There is one thing that is really important, and I think this is the key for any libertarian. If you decide to vote for the lesser of two evils, make sure you make it clear what you want.

For example, you could say, “I support Governor Candidate A because he wants to lower income taxes by 10%.  I want to lower income taxes to zero, but I will tentatively support Governor Candidate A because it is a step in the right direction.”  (Luckily I don’t have to worry about a state income tax in Florida.)

You should always make your principles clear.  You should make your end goals clear.  And don’t be afraid to criticize a candidate even if you are voting for the person as the lesser of two (or more) evils.  Voting for someone doesn’t mean that you excuse them when they do something wrong.

There is no right or wrong for a libertarian when it comes to voting.  Well, if you are voting for someone like Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, I would need some really good reasoning on how that would advance society towards liberty.  However, you certainly don’t need to agree on everything in order to vote for a candidate or even lend some enthusiastic support.

I was never a big fan of using the “lesser of two evils” argument.  I stopped saying anything like it a while ago.  This year has confirmed it for me. DeSantis really is the lesser of two evils, and Floridians are much better off for it.

The main event finally arrived.  Although there are supposed to be a couple more debates, this seemed like the most important one. It was the first debate, so it probably had what will be the largest viewing audience.

Fox News also hosted it.  I knew going into it that Chris Wallace is no fan of Trump, but I thought that he would at least ask some tough questions to Biden.  We can expect nothing but softballs in future debates

I heard Chris Wallace say before the debate that, as moderator, he basically wanted to be invisible.  Well, if that was his goal, he failed miserably.  He was arguing as much with Trump as Biden was.

I know Trump interrupted a lot.  I think that could be a turn off to some people.  But let’s face it; anyone who already hates Trump will be turned off by his interrupting, while anyone who already loves Trump won’t mind it at all. Maybe there is a tiny percentage of people who could go either way who might have been turned off by it.

At times, it was understandable that Trump interrupted.  He didn’t like hearing false accusations against him.  He didn’t like hearing false premises being thrown out there.  And this wasn’t just coming from Biden.  It was coming from Wallace.

Imagine someone asks you this question.  “Many people say you are a stupid idiot.  Given that you are a stupid idiot, how to do you plan to enact your agenda for the country?”  Ok, so Wallace didn’t ask that, but there were times where his questions went long with premises that were objectionable.  Trump isn’t going to sit back and let him continue with what seems more like a long argument than a debate question.

Overall, I give Chris Wallace a failing grade as moderator.  I had at least hoped he would ask Biden some tough questions. There were a few questions that may have been challenging for Biden, but really they were questions that should have been expected, such as his thoughts on packing the Supreme Court.

It would have been nice for Wallace to ask Biden about his son and Ukraine.  It would have been nice to ask him about threatening to withhold foreign aid to Ukraine (you know, what Trump was impeached over) in order to get the prosecutor fired who was investigating the company his son was “working” for.

Trump had many more challenging questions for Biden than what Wallace had.  I believe Trump has to keep doing this in future debates. He probably shouldn’t interrupt Biden as much, but when it is Trump’s turn to speak, he should challenge Biden with his own questions.

I thought it was a good move bringing up Bernie Sanders and radical leftists.  He was doing his best to have Biden either commit to the far left agenda or to oppose it and risk losing the far left vote. Trump was somewhat effective in this, but they were talking over each other a few times he was trying to make this point.  He said something about Pocahontas (Elizabeth Warren) not dropping out before Super Tuesday, but I’m not sure that a lot of people would have understood Trump’s point there.

Trump should keep hammering away at Biden on Ukraine and his son.  He should keep challenging him on the support from the radical left. He should point out that Kamala Harris is fully supporting the rioters and even helping them get out of jail. Maybe Pence will do this in the upcoming VP debate.

In fact, I think it would be to Trump’s benefit to say that Biden isn’t an awful guy, but that he is being controlled.  If Biden wins, he may be president, but he won’t be running the show.  It will be Harris and her fellow radical leftists.  I believe this strategy could serve Trump well, and I’m not sure how Biden would respond.

It’s hard to say who won the night.  I think it was a victory for Biden in the sense that he didn’t majorly mess up. The expectations were incredibly low for him.  He still can’t figure out the difference between “millions” and “thousands”.  But overall, he didn’t do anything really embarrassing.

Trump was aggressive as usual.  His haters will hate him more, if that’s possible.  His supporters will still support him.  I think Trump is trying to ensure that his base will come out in full force.  There probably aren’t a lot of undecided voters at this point.  There may be some people who may or may not actually vote. I can’t imagine they would be inspired by Biden, but they could be inspired for or against Trump.

Trump was effective on the issue of law and order.  Biden said that Antifa is just an idea.  I think Trump could have hit Biden even harder on this issue, since it is leftists who are burning down cities.  It isn’t coming from Trump supporters, and I think he needs to make this crystal clear.

The problem is that when they talked about the law and order issue, it was an hour into the debate. A lot of people may have stopped watching at that point, and those are the people who could probably be the most swayed at this point.

I thought Trump was absolutely horrible on the issue of the coronavirus.  He just comes across as very weak.  He is quite wishy-washy.  I think this is a mistake.  Trump can be sympathetic while at the same time making it clear that there are trade-offs in life.  He should say that Biden favors national lockdowns and mask mandates. He should say that more people would die from the lockdowns than the coronavirus.  If he were really gutsy, he would point out that the CDC figures are garbage and that the people who died with the coronavirus did not necessarily die of the coronavirus.

This part came early in the debate, and it was his time when likely the most people were tuned in. It is the one issue that touches almost everybody’s life.  Trump should declare himself as fully opposing any more lockdowns. Instead, he came across as unusually weak.  I believe this was his biggest blunder of the night, although I’m not surprised.

There was an interesting part later in the debate when talking about transitioning.  Trump said that there was an attempted coup.  He said that people were spying on his campaign, and it includes charges.  He said Obama knew about it, and it is on tape.

I have no idea if Trump actually has hard evidence in the form of a tape (i.e., a recording). That would be quite the October surprise.  But I’ve heard this story too many times.  I’ve heard many people say that Hillary Clinton will finally be going to prison. I’ve heard the same thing about Obama, Jim Comey, John Brennan, and James Clapper.  While I wish it were true because these are the highest form of criminals, I don’t believe it.  The system is so rigged, they seem to be completely protected.

At least Trump seems to be aware that the last 4 years has been one giant coup attempt.  If it isn’t Russia, it’s Ukraine.  If it isn’t Ukraine, it’s tax returns. If it isn’t tax returns, it’s that he’s a racist.  And on and on it goes.  Everything the establishment and its media does is an attempt to delegitimize Trump and to get him out of office.

Overall, I call the debate even in terms of gaining or losing supporters.  Trump was much better at debating overall, but the expectations were low for Biden.  He is probably happy he got through the night.  I know many people will say that the whole thing is an embarrassment and that they acted like little children fighting.  But in a way, that is what Trump wants.  If anything, Trump pulled Biden down into the weeds with him.  He certainly pulled Chris Wallace down with him.

Trump thrives on chaos, and there was some chaos with the debate.  The people who were already going to vote for Trump probably didn’t change their minds because of Trump’s antics.  They like Trump because he is a fighter, so most of them would have been disappointed with anything less.

The big loser is Chris Wallace.  Even someone from Fox News came across as biased against Trump.  We can only imagine what the next two debates will look like.

Since February 2020, the Federal Reserve has increased its balance sheet by nearly $3 trillion.  From its low in August 2019, it is approaching a doubling, or a 100% increase.

If you go back to 2008, the Fed’s balance sheet is now higher by a factor of almost 8 times. Over a 12-year period, this is incredible.  I can’t say that it’s unprecedented for a central bank, but it’s unprecedented for the U.S. central bank.

One thing that was a surprise after 2008 is that consumer price inflation did not run rampant after seeing such a big increase in monetary inflation.  I believe there are many contributing factors to this.

One is that the demand for dollars likely increased.  Or in other words, the money velocity fell, which meant money was changing hands less frequently.  Another major factor is that the U.S. dollar is still the world’s reserve currency.

I believe the biggest factor is that much of the new money went into excess reserves at the banks. A good chunk of the new money was not lent out by banks, thus not producing the multiplier effect from fractional reserve lending.

I will also point out that some would disagree that consumer price inflation has been low.  I agree that it may be understated, but I can also assure you that food prices did not go up by 4 or 5 times from 2008 to 2014.  Food prices are not 8 times higher today than in 2008.  It’s not even close.  Food prices are closer to the annual 2% or so price inflation as seen in the CPI.

Now, if you get into health insurance, that’s a different story.  But the dramatic increase in health insurance premiums has more to do than just monetary policy.

It is also true that while many consumer goods have seen low price inflation, it is a different story for assets.  Housing prices have risen in many areas beyond the rate of inflation as measured by the CPI. And then stocks are perhaps the biggest asset bubble of them all.

A big question now is whether we will see something similar to what was seen after 2008/ 2009. Will asset prices continue to rise?  Will the CPI remain relatively tame?  And where will all this new money go?

Excess Reserves

I checked the Fed’s graph on excess reserves held by depository institutions.  From February 2020 to May 2020, they went from $1.518 trillion to $3.217 trillion.  They increased by about $1.7 trillion in three short months.  Since then, reserves have fallen back to about $2.8 trillion, which is still an increase of almost $1.3 trillion from February.

The Fed’s chart says it has been discontinued this metric, but it appears up to date.  I’m not sure of the reason for this.

One other thing I am not sure about is whether the chart accounts for the change in reserve requirements (or lack of).  Back in March, one of the unprecedented moves made by the Fed was the elimination of reserve requirements.  Therefore, anything a bank has in reserves now should be included as excess reserves.

So there is no question that bank reserves have once again increased in tandem with the Fed’s balance sheet.  But not all of the new money is being held as reserves, which means at least some of it has been lent out.  The more that is lent out, the more likely we are to see higher price inflation.

With the monetary inflation that we have already seen, coupled with the Fed’s promises of continued loose money, I will be very surprised if we don’t see higher price inflation than what was seen after 2008/ 2009.

The CPI is already running higher in the midst of a recession.  And strangely enough, stocks are hitting all-time highs in the midst of a recession.

We haven’t even begun to see the total wreckage from the lockdowns of 2020.  In fact, the lockdowns aren’t even over in most places, and many businesses are never coming back.  We are seeing a dramatic increase in federal government spending at the same time that tax collections are likely falling.  I’m sure the Fed will continue to finance the majority of the deficit.

The newly created money distributed through government spending is going all over the place. Some of it went to small business owners.  Some of it went to people on unemployment.  Some of it went out as direct “stimulus” payments.  As usual, some of it went to special interests and their lobbyists.

When people were sitting at home not working and collecting a higher salary than before, it is easy to see how they would have spent even more than usual.  But the high unemployment checks have already been reduced and will likely keep going down.  Reality will start to set in for some people.  Reality has already set in for tens of thousands of business owners.

When the wreckage becomes clearer, there will be opposing forces pulling on inflationary pressures. A deep recession will likely lead to people saving more money and spending less.  At the same time, the Fed is likely to create even more new money, which should pull price inflation higher.

This is why diversification is so important.  It is why it is important to get out of debt, save money, and also protect some of your wealth with hard assets.  You don’t know which way this is going to go.  Perhaps we will see stagflation like the 1970s.  If that’s the worst we get, I will almost be thankful.

The U.S. dollar is still considered to be the world’s reserve currency.  A lot of global trade is done with the use of dollars.

The U.S. dollar has had this status for many decades.  It could be dated to the end of World War 2.  Actually, the Bretton Woods agreement was first established in 1944.

The U.S. dollar operated on something resembling an international gold standard from that point until 1971. It was a regular fiat currency for Americans, who weren’t even allowed to legally own gold, with certain exceptions.  But foreign governments could redeem gold for the dollars they held, or at least that’s what they were told.

France, under Charles de Gaulle, actually did start redeeming gold for dollar holdings. This is one of the reasons why the U.S., under Nixon, abandoned the last remains of the gold standard on August 15, 1971.

It wasn’t France’s fault though.  If it hadn’t been France, it would have been another country.  The main reason that the U.S. abandoned the international gold standard is because the gold reserves were not increasing in correspondence to the money being printed.  When money is being created out of thin air, you will eventually run out of gold as foreign governments redeem those depreciating dollars for gold.

The situation was unsustainable.  Either the money creation had to stop or promises had to be broken.  It’s not a surprise which route was taken by the U.S. government in hand with the Federal Reserve.  It was easier to revoke a previous promise than it would have been to stop inflating the currency.

It’s no surprise that a period of even higher inflation occurred after this move.  The 1970s was the worst period in terms of price inflation in the 20^thcentury in the United States.

Paul Volcker eventually came in as Fed chair and did what was necessary to reduce price inflation and eventually bring interest rates back down.  Volcker’s Fed simply stopped creating money out of thin air for a period of time, and it allowed interest rates to go up to what could be called market-clearing levels.  This saved the dollar from hyperinflation.  It saved the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

Since the early 1980s, the U.S. dollar’s spot as the reserve currency of the world has been secure. While the euro came about in the late 1990s and China has seen tremendous growth over the last 4 decades (life changing for most Chinese), the U.S. dollar is still considered king.

This is for a combination of reasons.  People often cite one reason on why the U.S. dollar is the world’s reserve currency, but I do believe it is the combination of multiple factors. The U.S. is a military superpower (when it isn’t fighting regional wars and occupying other countries). The U.S. is a large country. The U.S. is by far the wealthiest country.  And for all its faults, the U.S. dollar is a relatively stable currency.  These factors all contribute to the U.S. dollar’s status.

Some of this is self-reinforcing.  For example, the U.S. dollar may be more stable because it is the world’s reserve currency.

The U.S. government also managed to compel or bribe major oil exporters in the Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia, to do business in dollars.  This is why it is referred to as the petro dollar. It is amazing that this has continued for this long.

Exporting Inflation?

I am not a fan of the term “exporting inflation”.  I think it is misused, but there is also something to it.  What I will say is that the U.S. dollar’s use as a reserve currency means that Americans experience lower price inflation than what otherwise would have been the case.

When the Fed creates new money, it is mostly through digits.  But there is some corresponding increase in the actual currency being printed.  We know that a lot of currency is sent overseas.  It is done largely by U.S. residents who originated in other countries.  They are sending money “home” to their families living in other countries.  U.S. dollars are widely used in other countries around the world.  They can be especially useful in third-world countries in which the government/ central bank inflates like crazy.

When U.S. dollars go to foreign countries to be used as a form of money, this reduces the supply in the United States.  This has a deflationary effect, or perhaps more accurately, cancels out some of the inflation.

Most of the money created out of thin air by the Fed is done in the form of digits.  As this additional new money resides in the banking system, you can’t really export this to other countries.

Sure, you could take your dollars and buy some goods from someone in China.  But then what does the Chinese person do with these dollars?  That person can convert it right back into his own currency or use it to buy American goods. Either way, it isn’t really exported out of the U.S. the same way that physical currency is.

The main way that digital currency is, in a sense, exported is through the buying of U.S. Treasury bills, particularly by foreign central banks.

Treasury Securities Held by Foreign Countries

There is a chart updated once a month showing the Treasury securities held by major foreign holders.

China and Japan are by far the top holders of U.S. government debt.  They are both over $1 trillion.  The next closest is the United Kingdom with just over $400 billion.

The two countries (China and Japan) have been close, although China has typically held a bit more through most of the 21^stcentury.

Japan is now in the lead with over $200 billion more than China, as of July 2020.  China has reduced its holdings a little from the previous year, but the main thing is that Japan has increased its holdings rather significantly.

So if you hear that China is getting out of U.S. Treasury securities, it isn’t really true so far. The holdings have only gone down a little.  Russia is a country that has mostly abandoned U.S. Treasuries.

If the Chinese central bank wants to reduce its exposure, it doesn’t need to sell any U.S. government debt.  It just has to allow it to mature without replacing it.

Despite the tough talk coming out of Washington DC with regard to China, it hasn’t seemed to make much difference.  I don’t think the Chinese are going to go on a massive selling spree of U.S. Treasuries.  If anything, there may be a gradual reduction over time, but I don’t even see that coming soon.

Amplified Effects

While Americans have seemingly benefitted from having the U.S. dollar serve as the world’s reserve currency, it is not without consequences, at least in the future.

In some ways, I compare it to someone dependent on welfare.  Americans have been getting a free ride in some ways. The U.S. government can spend recklessly, while foreigners buy up some of the debt that is incurred in order to support the spending.  American consumers benefit with cheaper prices than what otherwise would have been.

The downside is that it has helped sustain the reckless spending from Washington DC.  If foreigners weren’t buying up U.S. government debt, then the Fed would have to buy up the debt, which would be more inflationary.  It would put stronger limits on what the federal government could do.

I also believe that this is the equivalent of using leverage.  As real estate investors know, using leverage can be really beneficial.  You can use smaller amounts of money, but make amplified profits.

But also, as every real estate investor should know, leverage can be quite dangerous. If things go bad, the leverage can amplify the down side.  Instead of having amplified profits, you get amplified losses, which often means bankruptcy.

I see this as an analogy to the U.S. dollar being the world’s reserve currency.  What happens if and when this status is quickly lost?

I don’t think another currency is going to replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. I just don’t think the world needs one.  In our modern technological world, you can trade between currencies almost instantaneously.

If China is buying oil from Russia, why do they need to use the dollar?  They can use their own currencies.

If we see another reserve currency, it will more likely be gold.

But back to the question of what happens if the dollar’s status goes away.  Or what happens even if price inflation becomes a major concern?  What if foreign central banks start reducing their holdings of U.S. government debt while at the same time foreigners start sending some of their physical currency back to the U.S.?

The effects will be amplified going the other way.  We could see price inflation worse than it otherwise would have been.

I believe that monetary inflation and all of its consequences is the major threat facing our economy.  Rising prices could be one of the consequences, but there are many others to be sure. Resources are being misallocated. Saving and investment are discouraged.  Our living standards are lower than what they should be.

I don’t see any panic coming out of the central banks in China or Japan.  But things can change quickly.  And if fear of price inflation all of a sudden becomes relevant, we could see amplified effects.  We won’t see the reversal of the dollar’s status from the last 75 years all in one day, but there is potential to see major impacts when price inflation becomes a major issue.

The government, at all levels, has done particularly severe damage in 2020.  In the United States, the lockdowns and mask mandates have mostly come from governors and mayors.  The federal government, under the Trump administration, has taken a federalist approach on these things, meaning the decisions have been left to state and local governments.

This doesn’t mean that the federal government hasn’t caused tremendous harm with regard to the coronavirus and reactions to the coronavirus.  Of course, the government has spent trillions of additional dollars, which has been financed by debt and inflation.  But even when it comes specifically to medical care, the federal government has done great damage.

The shutting down of private businesses has perhaps been the most surprising aspect of all of this. It has severely damaged the principle of property rights when governors and mayors get to decide what is essential and what is not.

This can’t all be blamed on the mayors and governors though.  The legislatures of state and city governments have largely allowed these dictatorial measures to take place.  But beyond this, the governors and mayors have gotten away with it to a large extent because public opinion has allowed it.  A majority of Americans bought into the fear of a virus and were willing to give up liberty for some perceived safety.

Even if you think the coronavirus was a major threat to humanity, it is no excuse to allow the state to interfere with voluntary associations.  If someone wants to risk going to a store or a hair salon or a bar, they should be allowed to take that risk as a free individual.

Still, despite the lockdowns happening at a state and local level, and despite the widespread fear in the population, things would have been much better had it not been for the federal government.  In fact, it is possible that almost none of this would have happened.

The Alphabet Agencies

First, the widespread fear was largely a result of the U.S. federal government.  There are lockdowns and panic worldwide, but a lot of countries and governments copy what happens in the U.S.  Unfortunately, while other countries copied what was happening in the U.S. and originally in parts of China, the measures were even stricter because of people even more willing to give up liberty.  The U.S. looks pretty good these days compared to Australia or England.

While the news originated in China, it was the U.S. government that really ramped up the fear.  Between the CDC and the FDA and the NIH, we heard non-stop about this deadly virus, and life all of a sudden changed dramatically in March.  The establishment media pointed to all of the “experts”, which means handpicked government experts.  So we got a lifetime bureaucrat in Dr. Fauci, and we also got to hear a lot from Bill Gates who specializes in viruses.  I thought Gates’ specialty was getting computer viruses, but apparently he is attracted to people viruses as well.  Gates is a top funder of the World Health Organization, another entity that has sold a lot of fear with the virus.

There has been a lot of propaganda.  It all flows down to your local news station.  But let’s be clear that it largely comes from the top, which is really the U.S. government.  And remember that Trump is only one small aspect of the U.S. federal government.  We live in an administrative state.  Trump can’t drain the swamp without at least trying to drain some of the administrative state.

Aside from getting Trump out of office, there are politicians and bureaucrats who have incentives to play up the virus.  It gives them power.  It gives them prestige.  It gives them a crisis to deal with.  In some cases, it may give them money.

The powers-that-be had many impacts in promoting the coronavirus.  Some of it had long been in place, while there were other measures specifically targeting this virus.

One easily identifiable thing is that Medicare paid more to hospitals for coronavirus patients. Medicare paid a lot more for patients put on a ventilator.  While not every doctor is corrupt, it is an incentive for doctors who are corrupt or who are just apathetic and willing to go along.  I’m sure many hundreds, probably thousands, unnecessarily died in New York because of this.  The doctors were just drugging up patients and throwing them on ventilators to die, even for some who probably didn’t even have coronavirus. We’ll see if anyone is held to account in the future for what was essentially murder.

Next, you have the CDC with its phony statistics.  They told doctors and hospitals from early on that if a patient dies with COVID-19, then they should be counted as COVID-19.  In other words, when you have someone who is 90 years of age and dying of cancer, they could be marked as a COVID death if they tested positive for COVID or even just showed symptoms of it.

It’s not a coincidence when almost all of the people supposedly dying of COVID probably would have died around the same time anyway (with the exception of some who went into some of the deadly New York City hospitals).  You could declare a pandemic of the sniffles if you attribute the sniffles as the cause of death to anyone who dies who had to wipe his nose within a week of his dying.

But most people sat at home and watched the ticker of deaths on the news with little curiosity as to who was actually dying.  They also didn’t bother to look up how many people died of heart disease that day, or how many people died of cancer.  This was propaganda intentionally put out by the CDC.

And how about the FDA? It has been known that the FDA delays life-saving medicines for years while people unnecessarily die. The FDA wants a medicine to be deemed completely safe, even if it would save more lives than cause harm. Of course, this goes out the window when it comes to their precious vaccines that they like to promote.

In 2020 though, the FDA took it a step farther and has made it difficult to get hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for coronavirus.  In spite of many doctors reporting its successful use, the FDA could have none of that.  They need 100% safety, unless it is a vaccine, in which case it can be rushed to market.  Of course, this drug has been used widely for malaria (and other coronaviruses) for decades and has little in side effects.  If competition were actually allowed, maybe most people would realize that a coronavirus is treatable and not deadly at all to any relatively healthy person.

Beyond this, there are many long-term things that have served to make this much worse.  As a libertarian, I am against government licensing, including for doctors.  This does not mean I am against licensing, but it shouldn’t be mandated by the state, and it shouldn’t be issued by the state.

Government licensure is one of the primary reasons that the market in medical care doesn’t seem to be functioning correctly.  The fear of license revocation is why many doctors will not use or promote alternative therapies that are not establishment approved.

Again, this takes away competition.  It also tends to silence many doctors who do not believe the hype of the virus. I know of several doctors who think this whole thing is a sham.  But we’re told we have to listen to the experts, which again are the handpicked experts by the establishment trying to promote a narrative.

The administrative state is massive and deep.  There are many ways it has caused great damage to our medical care system. I have only touched on a few major things that have caused great harm in the year 2020.  But the history is long and deep, and I’m sure there are many things that I am completely unaware of that serve to worsen the situation.

So while people, particularly business owners, should get mad at mayors and governors for shutting things down, there is a lot of blame to be placed in Washington DC.  These are major structural problems.  The best long-term solution is to defund these alphabet agencies that have caused so much havoc.

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) held its meeting this week, which was the last before the election in November.  The next FOMC meeting is scheduled for November 4^thand 5^th.  While the actual voting will be over, it is some doubtful that we will have the official results.

Either way, the FOMC is bipartisan in the sense that it will always do the bidding of the establishment.  It won’t really change anything no matter who is declared the winner of the presidential election.

The FOMC released its latest monetary policy statement.  There is no surprise that its target range for the federal funds rate remains the same, which is near zero.

It is now part of its official statement that the Fed wants higher inflation.  It says, “With inflation running persistently below this longer-run goal, the Committee will aim to achieve inflation moderately above 2 percent for some time so that inflation averages 2 percent over time and longer-term inflation expectations remain well anchored at 2 percent.”

As Peter Schiff pointed out, what sense does it make to average out what has already happened in the past?  If there was low inflation two years ago, why should that dictate policy going forward?

The FOMC statement also says, “In addition, over coming months the Federal Reserve will increase its holdings of Treasury securities and agency mortgage-backed securities at least at the current pace to sustain smooth market functioning and help foster accommodative financial conditions, thereby supporting the flow of credit to households and businesses.”

In the Implementation Note, it interestingly mentions commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS).  In 2008/ 2009, it was assumed that the Fed was buying up mortgage-backed securities because of bad loans on residential real estate. Now the Fed is going to bail out the banks from the delinquent loans from businesses that were shut down. This is a major example of one government destructive policy leading to another destructive policy.

The major item reported by the financial media from the meeting is that most Fed officials agree that rates will remain near zero until at least 2023.  Three years is a long time, so why the rigid stance?

Did Someone Forget About Inflation?

It seems odd that the Fed members would take this stance that rates will stay near zero for at least three more years.  Going back to the FOMC policy statement, it said, “the Committee will continue to monitor the implications of incoming inflation for the economic outlook.  The Committee would be prepared to adjust the stance of monetary policy as appropriate if risks emerge that could impede the attainment of the Committee’s goals.”  This statement by itself isn’t scary, but it is when coupled with the fact that the Fed sees near-zero rates for at least three years.

What risks could emerge that hadn’t already emerged in 2020 other than high price inflation? Sure, we could see banks collapse, more defaults, and a host of other things, but that would just mean that the Fed will go that much more crazy with its monetary inflation.

If three trillion dollars added to the balance sheet doesn’t do it, why not an additional 10 trillion? Why not 20 trillion?

So the Fed is willing to be accommodative and flexible when it comes to more money creation, but it is taking a strong stance that they will not tighten monetary policy under any condition.

Here is the question I want answered.  What happens if, one year from now, the annual price inflation rate as measured by the CPI is coming it at 20%?  Does the Fed still leave its target rate near zero?  What if it is “just” coming in at 10% per year?

I have long said that I think hyperinflation is a highly unlikely possibility in the United States.  While I would still consider it not likely, I think the chances have gone up a little.  I would put the possibility of hyperinflation in the next 10 years at over 1% at this point.

The U.S. dollar is still the world’s reserve currency, but this could work against it at some point too.  It could make the inflationary effects that much more dramatic if people start dumping dollars quickly.  It will be amplified when foreigners send their U.S. dollars back to America in an attempt to secure some hard assets in exchange for the quickly depreciating currency.

It is easy to forget that in the year 2020 we have seen tens of millions of people file for unemployment, trillions in new spending, and hundreds of thousands of businesses shut down permanently.

While many are suffering, some of the suffering was covered up with generous unemployment benefits and stimulus checks.  But there is no free lunch.  In fact, you are going to find that the lunch is more expensive than ever. I believe that inflation is the number one financial threat in the near future, and you should be preparing for it now.

The presidential election is not far away.  The official day is Tuesday, November 3, 2020, but I have a feeling this day won’t mean a lot except for those who go to their local polling place.

There is a strong chance that there will be no declared winner on November 3^rd. This wouldn’t be that unusual. Even in 2016, we didn’t officially know until Wednesday morning because some of the swing states were relatively close.

This year, there is a good chance we won’t know on Wednesday either.  We may not know on Thursday.  The last time we saw election results drag out for weeks was in the 2000 election.

The 2000 election was ridiculously close.  The chances of that happening again are extremely small.  It came within a few hundred votes in Florida.  What are the chances that one state ends up deciding it all, and then it comes down to a few hundred votes in a state of over 6 million votes?  I’m sure there was a lot of funny business on both sides, but it was between two establishment candidates (Bush and Gore), so the outcome wasn’t all that important to the establishment.

The year 2020 is different.  The establishment has everything on this.  They will do whatever it takes to get Trump out of office.  If they can get away with a coup, they will do it. This could be through rigging the election, or just flat out denying the results if they favor Trump.

I have seen some speculation that the establishment is planning a military coup.  Of course, in order to do this, they will have to fool a majority of Americans.  This is why, it is being speculated, that the establishment has been trying hard lately to get the military generals on their side. They have been putting out stories of how Trump has been degrading to the military.  As Trump recently put it, it is the top people at the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex that oppose Trump.

The idea here is that they will falsify the vote totals.  Trump will be the clear leader after election night, but then they will claim that the mail-in ballots will have to be counted.  You will see a shift to Biden over the next several days, and the establishment will eventually declare him the winner. Trump will dispute the results, but the establishment will say that he is refusing to leave office and that the military needs to step in and take control.

This sounds far-fetched until you think about the last 4 years.  Everything has revolved around making Trump look bad and trying to get him out of office.  They spent at least 2 years, on an almost daily basis, lying about how Trump was colluding with Russia and how Russia had stolen or hacked the election. Apparently this happened with a few hundred thousand dollars in Facebook clickbait ads by a Russian organization that may not have even been tied at all to the Russian government.

There was also Ukraine where Trump was accused of withholding aid to Ukraine for political reasons and personal benefit.  In other words, Trump was accused of doing what Joe Biden had already admitted to doing on video when he threatened to withhold aid to Ukraine until the prosecutor investigating the company his son worked for was fired.

Of course, we also had to hear every story about Trump and what he said on Twitter if they could try to make him look bad in any way.  This included taking him out of context frequently and the establishment portraying Trump of what they think he meant to say instead of actually quoting him.

All things considered, I don’t think a military takeover due to disputed election results sounds that far off the wall at this point.

If Trump wins in a landslide, I don’t think there is much that they can do to change that. But if it is close, then expect major turmoil.

A Silent Majority?

The establishment was stunned in 2016 when Trump won.  A lot of people were stunned.  It came as a surprise because most of the news coverage was anti Trump. Except for the hardcore Trump supporters, the rest of the people who voted for Trump were relatively quiet about it.  Most of them weren’t announcing it on Facebook.  They weren’t being interviewed on the news.  They may have been quietly telling their close friends and family that they might vote for Trump.

I don’t think there is a silent majority in favor of Trump.  There may be a silent plurality though.  And there are many people who may not love Trump yet they despise the left.  This might be especially true since the left has essentially endorsed the rioting, and they continue to favor government lockdowns from a flu virus.

Rioting in the streets, mask mandates, and government lockdowns doesn’t really sound like a recipe for winning to me.  Then again, Trump is hated by many, as the media does have a hold of a good portion of the public.  Let’s face it.  Nobody is voting for Biden.  They are just voting against Trump.

Biden has finally spoken against some of the rioting.  Maybe he was waiting for his leader Obama to ask the protestors to stay peaceful, but for some reason that never came out of Obama’s mouth.  It makes you wonder if Obama actually favors the rioting and chaos.

Biden, in good leftist fashion, didn’t just say that he opposed the rioting.  Instead, he had to just flat out lie and say the opposite of the true story.  He said that it was Trump and his supporters responsible for the rioting. The scary thing is that there are probably millions of people that believed him.

It is really hard to know where things stand right now for the same reason we didn’t know going into the 2016 election.  The debates will tell us more, but it really is hard to know how people feel out there.

There is a lot going on.  There are protests and riots.  There have been lockdowns since March by governors and mayors across the country.  Now we feel like we’re in a hospital when we go to the grocery store.

We did get one glimpse on the opening day of football in the NFL.  Kansas City is one of the few teams allowing some fans in the stadium. When they paid tribute to social justice at the start of the game, there was major booing coming from the crowd. The reaction from the players is that they just couldn’t understand why anyone would boo.  I mean, are the majority of football fans in Kansas City racist?  To ask the question is to answer it.  They are tired of the social justice warrior garbage.  Football is supposed to be their escape from politics.  Instead, they are hearing from football players being paid millions of dollars talking about inequality and how they fear for their life every day.

If the Kansas City football game gives us any hint of what’s about to come, then Trump may stun the establishment once again.  You know most of these Kansas City fans aren’t on Facebook every night arguing politics and talking about how great Trump is.  Most of them are probably mostly silent on politics most of the time.  Yet, they were tired of the politically correct garbage and had no trouble booing when it was easy to do so.  Just like it will be easy to fill in a bubble next to Trump’s name on Election Day.

So with the major Trump hatred out there, chaos in the streets, and a smacked down economy, Trump is still in the game.  And this is before debating Biden.

Prepare on November 3^rd

Unless Biden wins in a landslide, there is going to be some kind of chaos.  Either the election results will not be clear and it will drag on, or Trump will win in a landslide.

If Trump wins in a landslide, I expect there will be majoring rioting in the streets of major cities.  In some cases, this will just be a continuation of what has been going on since the end of May.  But I really do expect that the left will act violently to news of a Trump win.  Sure, it will be a small minority of people who actually commit violence and property destruction, but it will be enough people to cause a lot of damage and chaos.

If the results are close, then I expect the establishment (not just the left) will try to steal it away from Trump.  They won’t even necessarily declare Biden the winner.  They will just say that the results aren’t clear and Trump needs to step down.  Maybe they’ll push for Pelosi to step in.  I don’t know if it will come to the military stepping in for a more official coup, but anything is possible at that point.

Again, this will result in chaos.  We may have rioting during this time.  It will mostly come from the left.

I am not making a prediction on what will happen, but I am saying that there is a decent chance that there will be major chaos starting on November 3^rd.  It may last a day, or a week, or a month, or longer.

I don’t think it’s a bad idea to prep a little for this event.  After you vote in the morning (if you plan to do it in person), then head to the store afterwards and pick up some extra supplies and food. I don’t know what the next toilet paper item will be to disappear off the shelves as we saw in March.  It could be food.  It could be soap.  It could be cash from the ATMs.  It will probably be guns from gun stores.  It may or may not be gold from coin shops.

Anyway, I don’t think it would hurt to be a little extra prepared than normal heading into the evening of November 3^rd.  The worst-case in buying some extra stuff is that you will pay less for it than you would pay a month or two down the road when inflation has increased the price more.

2020 has been an incredibly wild ride so far.  I never thought we would see some of what has happened.  As usual, the left has overplayed its hand, which may cost Biden the election.  No matter what, I expect more chaos to prevail.

Alan Greenspan, at the age of 94, recently gave a short interview on CNBC.  He warned about the growing debt and inflation.

Greenspan was the chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006.  He associated with Ayn Rand in his early days and wrote, in my opinion, one of the best essays ever on gold and central bank inflation.  His essay was published in Rand’s book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

While Greenspan’s office was not an elected one (he was appointed by Reagan), he unfortunately ended up being like most people who get into government.  And despite what some people argue about the Fed being a private bank, let’s face it that it is a political office.

Once in office, Greenspan seemed to abandon his commitment to the free market and gold as a use for money.  He actually had the nerve to say that the Fed had advanced to where it could almost mimic a gold standard.  He had to invent crazy answers like these when questioned by Ron Paul.

I have been highly critical of Greenspan over the years because I know he knows better.  He wrote some great things on gold and how deficit spending is a scheme for the confiscation of wealth.  He wrote that, without gold, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation.  He knew this at a relatively young age, but he didn’t use his knowledge to do good in the world, especially when he became Fed chair.

I am not even accusing Greenspan of outright lying.  He just didn’t speak the truth when he had many opportunities to do so.

With all of that said, he is still interesting to listen to.  He also still shows some sympathy for the free market, or at least against outrageous government interventions in the economy.

So I take his warning seriously about inflation.  I am warning about the same thing too, but it’s actually nice to hear some confirmation coming from a former Fed chair.  While I think Greenspan could have spoken the truth more in the past, I also don’t think he wants to see the whole system implode.

Actually, I don’t think the current chair – Jerome Powell – wants to see the system implode either. But he is less sympathetic to the free market starting out than Greenspan was, and Powell may be a little more clueless.

If you use the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) inflation calculator and plug in the number 100 into August 1987, it becomes 173 dollars in January 2006.  This means that from the time Greenspan took office to the time Greenspan left office, the dollar inflated by 73% according to the government’s own statistics.  The unsustainable housing boom occurred on Greenspan’s watch.

It’s nowhere near the worst outcome for a central banker, but it’s not the best either.  So when Greenspan warns of inflation, he is obviously thinking it will be quite a bit higher than when he was in office.

The CPI

The latest CPI numbers were released for August 2020.  The median CPI went up 0.3% in August.  The CPI went up 0.4% for the month, and this is after going up 0.6% the previous month.

Using the CPI and the “CPI less food and energy”, prices have gone up over 1% over the last two months.  If this becomes a trend, we will have double-digit annual price inflation not far down the road.

This isn’t a prediction, but a warning.  The Fed has created massive amounts of money in 2020.  The balance sheet is up nearly $3 trillion.  Much of this new money is going directly to individuals through stimulus and unemployment benefits.  Some of it went to business owners, many of whom were forced to close down.

It’s no surprise that Powell recently announced that the Fed would target 2% inflation as an average over time.  The Fed already uses a metric that comes in below the CPI.  Now it wants to average, which makes no sense at all.  If you have had five years of no price inflation, why should the Fed shoot for 10% inflation this year to make up for it?

It makes no sense, but it’s not supposed to make sense.  It is an excuse for the Fed to keep creating money and keep interest rates low, even when the official price inflation exceeds its 2% target. I’m sure Greenspan must recognize this too.

If the CPI keeps accelerating, I don’t know how the Fed gets out of this.  Congress is relying on the Fed to buy up most of its debt. And there is no sign of the spending out of DC slowing down.  They were already running a trillion-dollar annual deficit before March 2020 when the economy was essentially shut down.

I don’t know if we will see a 1970s-like scenario again.  It’s possible we may not, and it’s possible it could be worse.

There are a lot of moving parts with the supply of money, the demand for money, and lending. I am not predicting double-digit price inflation, but I am warning about the possibility.  You should prepare accordingly with some investments in hard assets.