After the CPI numbers came in close to expectations and showed a year-over-year rate of 2.7%, a couple of days later we got the Producer Price Index (PPI) numbers.  These numbers showed a much different picture from the CPI.

The PPI rose 0.9% in the month of July.  The Dow Jones had estimated a 0.2% rise.  This is quite a difference.

This is a measure of wholesale prices.  For an entire index to rise almost 1% in a single month is significant.  If this trend holds, you have to believe that consumer price hikes of this magnitude are not far behind.

Stock investors loved the news of the relatively good CPI numbers.  They saw it as a go-ahead for a Fed rate cut in September.  Yet, when the PPI numbers came out, there wasn’t that much negative sentiment.  Why didn’t the script flip?  Why didn’t investors fear that there would be no rate cuts coming any time soon because price inflation is obviously still a problem?

The only reasonable answer is that we are in a mania.  We are likely nearing the peak of a massive bubble.  Good news is good news for stocks.  Bad news is good news for stocks.  It doesn’t really matter at this point.

Tariff Effects

Some defenders of Trump’s tariffs have pointed out that the tariffs have had little negative impact on the markets or economy at this point.

When the tariffs were first announced in early April, stocks went down significantly.  But after Trump seemed to backtrack and leave the door open for negotiations, it has been “up, up, and away” for stocks, even as new tariffs are announced.

Maybe investors still don’t believe that Trump will follow through on most of his talk.  But the tariffs are already a reality.  Still, say the Trump tariff defenders, it hasn’t caused our prices to rise.

But just as there is a delay between monetary inflation and price inflation, there will also be a delay here.

Some of these tariffs have only been in effect for a short time.  Even with that, many retailers in the U.S. are selling inventory that was received before the tariffs went into effect.

And think about making something like a car.  It doesn’t get done in just a few days.  It takes time.  The steel and other materials that are imported that go into making a car are just now arriving at the higher price.  Steel tariffs went up in early June.  Any car being sold right now was probably made with steel from the previously lower tariffs (taxes).

This very significant PPI number that came out is a warning sign.  We could be facing significantly higher prices in just a matter of months.

The one thing that could offset that is a major recession, which also isn’t out of the question.

Take your pick – higher prices or a deep recession.

What if we get both?  It will be quite devastating to the living standards of the average American.

Donald Trump has relentlessly attacked the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell.  Trump has nicknamed him “Too Late” Powell.  Trump’s problem with Powell is that he is taking too long to lower interest rates.

Trump is a low interest rate guy, going back to his days as a businessman.  There are reasons that Trump wants lower rates now.  It would mean lower rates of interest on U.S. debt, which means the government can spend and borrow more with lower interest costs.  Lower rates could also mean the economic boom is greater and longer, at least according to conventional wisdom.

The problem for Powell and the Fed is that we are coming off a period of high price inflation.  The numbers have still not returned to the Fed’s target of 2%.

The CPI numbers for July 2025 came out.  They were mostly in line or slightly better than expectations.  But the year-over-year rate is still coming in at 2.7%.

Since the numbers came in slightly lower than expected, stocks roared higher, hitting new all-time highs. Investors are pricing in a rate cut from the Fed in September.

But why should there be a rate cut if the economy is supposedly booming and the stock market is hitting new highs?  Plus, price inflation is still not down to the Fed’s target.

Sabotaging Trump

Some people think that Powell is purposely not lowering rates just to get at Trump.  This may or may not be true.

If Powell really wants to sabotage Trump, he should just give him what he wants.

Let’s step into the shoes of Powell.  Forget for a moment that there should be no such thing as a central bank that is centrally planning the economy by controlling the money supply and short-term interest rates.

Let’s also pretend that Powell really does want to sabotage Trump and step away leaving him a mess and that he doesn’t really care one way or the other about the economy.  If Powell doesn’t quit or somehow get fired, then he will leave his office in May 2026.

Powell should just give Trump what he wants.  He should lower the Fed’s target rate.  Go 50 basis points at the next meeting and then another 50 at the one after that.

When trouble inevitably arrives, it will be hard for Trump to blame Powell at that point.  We may get more of a temporary boom in asset prices, which could delay a recession until after Powell leaves office.

Between the lower rates and the much higher taxes (tariffs) from Trump, it would be likely that price inflation would accelerate again.

Meanwhile, the Fed can maintain its policy of actually deflating the balance sheet while lowering short-term rates (a somewhat contradictory situation).

The deflating money supply and the normalizing yield curve (after being inverted for almost 2 years) should still bring on a recession.  But Powell will be exiting while having given Trump his lower interest rates.

Trump is going to have an economic disaster on his hands regardless of what Powell does, but at least Trump won’t be able to as easily blame Powell if he aggressively lowers the Fed’s target rate.

No Sympathy for Powell or Trump

This was just an exercise in what Powell could do to get back at Trump.  But don’t feel sorry for Jerome Powell.  He shares a lot of fault for the massive price inflation we saw in 2022.  He helped Congress run the trillion-dollar deficits in 2020 and 2021.  He kept rates low and kept inflating the money supply right up to the point when price inflation spiked higher.

But Powell is just a regular establishment guy.  He is not much different from other members of the Fed.  He tries not to rock the boat, but Trump has rocked his boat.

Trump deserves what is coming to him.  Unfortunately, the American people do not deserve it.  Trump is completely unhinged at this point, especially with him using tariffs as a means to dictate foreign policy and punishment for anything he doesn’t like from a foreign government.  The problem is that it actually punishes American businesses and consumers.

Imagine if price inflation spikes higher while we also have a massive recession and a crash in stocks.  Will Trump just double down and give us even higher tariffs, effectively sanctioning the whole world and ourselves?  Will Trump push through even higher spending?  Will we get $5 trillion annual deficits?

It sounds absurd, but the things Trump is doing these days are absurd.  He has completely squandered the work of DOGE while giving Americans one of the biggest tax increases of all time with his crazy tariffs.  He is bragging about the increased “revenue”, which is nothing more than tax collections.  Meanwhile, the national debt continues to grow at a staggering pace, even with the higher taxes.

Actually, forget the plan laid out above for Powell.  If I were Powell, I would hand in my resignation tomorrow morning.

The term “reversion to the mean” is used somewhat interchangeably with the term “regression toward the mean”.

According to Wikipedia, a regression toward the mean is, “the phenomenon where if one sample of a random variable is extreme, the next sampling of the same random variable is likely to be closer to its mean.”

When it comes to finances, a reversion to the mean says it is likely that asset prices and investment returns will revert back towards their historical long-term average.

However, you do need to account for inflation here.  If there is 20% annual price inflation and stocks go up by 20% in a year, they are effectively flat in real terms.  A reversion to the mean would suggest that stocks might actually go higher since the real return has been zero.

In the definition above of the regression to the mean, it refers to a sample.  In other words, let’s say you flip an evenly weighted coin ten times and you get heads nine times and tails one time.  If you flip the same coin again ten times, there is nothing to suggest that you will get tails nine times to even things out.  A regression to the mean will mean that ten more flips should tend toward the result of five heads and five tails.

When it comes to stocks, let’s say the historical average is a return of 8%.  If you have one year where stocks go up by 50% (assuming little or no inflation), then it doesn’t mean the following year will tend toward the historical 8% return.  It is not a new random sample.  The stocks are already inflated by 50%.

In this scenario, if you are going to revert to the mean of 8%, the previous 50% rise in stocks will mean that they will go down approximately 22% in the following year to get back to the 8% average – in this case, over a 2-year span.

$100 x 1.08 x 1.08 = $116.64 (2-year return with 8% per year)

$100 x 1.50 = $150

$150 x .78 = $117 (2-year return with a 50% gain and a 22% loss)

The Nasdaq Bubble

In August 2025, U.S. stock market indexes are hitting all-time highs.  Stocks are not the only asset at or near all-time highs, but it is the financial asset that is most commonly used by Americans to invest.

(While a primary residence is often considered to be a financial asset, it is really more of a consumption item at least up until the point of selling or renting it out.)

Let’s look at the Nasdaq.  It has been so incredibly volatile over the last 3 decades, it is hard to pick a good starting point.  The index closed the year at 1,577 in 2008 after the financial crisis had already hit.  By the end of 2015, it was back up to 5,007, which is actually near where it peaked at the height of the dot-com bubble in 2000.

For easy numbers, let’s start in 2015 when the Nasdaq was around 5,000.  The Nasdaq is now sitting above 21,000.  In 10 years, the Nasdaq has gone up approximately 320%.  That is a compounding return of a little over 15% per year over the course of 10 years.

If we go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), it shows that $5,000 from June 2015 has the same buying power as $6,758.37 in June 2025. That is a little more than 3% compounded annually, but it was skewed higher because of 2022 and 2023.

Even if you think the BLS price inflation numbers are off, they aren’t off by that much.  Compare $6,758.37 to over $21,000 (the Nasdaq).  Even if you think stocks should average 5% higher than inflation, it isn’t even close.

Price inflation over the last 10 years is just over 3% according to the BLS.  The Nasdaq has been returning over 15% per year on average over the last 10 years.  This doesn’t connect unless you conclude that we are in a massive bubble.

The Higher It Goes, the Harder It Falls

Starting in 2015 is also rather generous.  If we go back to 2008, the Nasdaq actually reached a low below 1,300.  The Nasdaq is over 16 times higher than the low it hit in 2008.

The Nasdaq is extremely volatile.  If there is a crash and the Fed doesn’t step in with massive monetary inflation, it will fall well below what would be considered a “normal” valuation.  Even if the Fed does step in with massive monetary inflation, it might be too late to save the crash.  And, of course, it will only make things worse economically.

From 2000 to 2002, the Nasdaq dropped almost 80%.  In 2008 alone, the Nasdaq fell over 50% from its high to its low.

If the Nasdaq went down to 5,132, the peak of the dot-com bubble in the year 2000, it would mean a fall of over 75% from where we are right now.

The higher this thing keeps going, the harder it’s going to fall.  We can go to the adage that things that are unsustainable have a tendency to stop.

Are you prepared if U.S. stocks crash by 75 or 80 percent?  How will it impact you mentally?  Will it significantly change your plans for the future?

Forget about the overall economy and inflation just for a minute.  If stocks fell by 80%, how well will you handle this?  If it will greatly impact your financial well-being, then you should consider a different strategy.

This isn’t an all-or-nothing game.  It doesn’t mean you have to sell all of your stocks.  It just means that you should be well-positioned if and when we have a stock market crash.

This isn’t 4-D chess from Trump.  He doesn’t have some master plan to take down the deep state.  If anything, Trump is part of the deep state at this point, but he is not helping the deep state with regard to public opinion.

Sometimes Trump looks like Inspector Gadget uncovering the criminal system we live under.  This doesn’t exactly work though because Inspector Gadget, while not bright, was a good guy.  Trump is often siding with the bad guys, yet he is exposing the bad guys and the system they work under.

The Federal Reserve

We have long been told that the Federal Reserve is supposed to be an independent body that guides our economy and doesn’t do things for political reasons.

Trump has blown up that whole notion.  He keeps attacking Jerome Powell (“Too Late Powell”) for not lowering interest rates.  It is not clear if Powell is refusing to lower the Fed’s target rate just to get at Trump, but who could blame the guy at this point if that plays into it at all?

On July 30, 2025, the FOMC released its latest statement on monetary policy.  It was widely expected that the Fed wouldn’t lower its target rate, and that is what happened.

The interesting thing is that two members of the committee dissented from the vote.  These were Trump appointees.  They obviously felt politically compelled to side with Trump and vote to lower the target rate.

The most interesting thing about this story is that it was the first time more than one person dissented on a vote since 1993.

Since Trump has been so vocal in opposing Powell, these two committee members felt the need to dissent on the vote.  Yet, that hadn’t happened in over 30 years.

What kind of a system is that, where you go more than 30 years without more than one dissenting vote at a meeting?

Libertarians say that nobody knows what interest rates should be and the market should set interest rates.  But if you are going to have a committee of people determining the overnight borrowing rate for banks, you would think they might occasionally have a difference of opinion.

It isn’t even so much that the FOMC members are in collusion.  It is more that they just do what the financial establishment expects them to do.

Trump wants lower rates so that he can run up more debt at lower rates.  Yet, he somehow manages to discredit the whole system with his antics.

BLS Numbers

A couple of days after the FOMC meeting, the jobs numbers came out worse than expected.  Trump didn’t like the results, so he fired the commissioner of labor statistics.

This meme almost writes itself.

Maybe the commissioner was a political hack, as she was appointed by the Biden people.  Maybe she was fudging the numbers.  But who, other than Trump, would actually fire her on the day the statistics are released because he doesn’t like the statistics?

If Trump wanted to fire her, he should have done it months ago.  It shouldn’t be on the day that the negative statistics are released and he finds out that she is a Biden appointee.

Talk about shooting the messenger.

This is becoming more like The Apprentice every day, except Trump was much kinder on the television show.

What will Trump do if the next round of inflation numbers come out and they are higher than expected?

Again, Trump is actually making a mockery of the system.  It’s probably true that many of these government statistics are rigged.  So, Trump wants his own person in there so that they can rig it in his favor.

Bullying

Trump also thinks that he can just bully any foreign government to do what he wants.

The Canadian government came out with a statement favoring a Palestinian state.  In response, Trump says that it looks like we may not get a trade deal and will impose higher tariffs on Canada.

Trump has also said he is imposing higher tariffs on Brazil because they are attempting to jail one of the opposition political leaders.  If it is similar to the way that the powers-that-be tried to jail Trump while he was running for president, perhaps Brazil should have been enacting high tariffs on the United States last year.

Trump’s version of negotiating is like the Mafia’s version of it.

Of course, this is all to the detriment of the average American.  Because the Canadians are taking a stance that supposedly opposes Israel, Trump is willing to make Americans pay for it by not having a good trade deal.

It makes you wonder why Trump’s number one priority seems to be pleasing Netanyahu at the expense of the living standards of Americans.

It shows blatantly that the ruling elite don’t really care about the well-being of the American people that they rule over.

Conclusion

Trump really is the great disruptor, but not always for the reasons that his supporters think.

Trump is helping to take down the deep state by inadvertently exposing the whole rotten system.

The only way the deep state can be taken down and we can gain more liberty is by people recognizing that the ruling elite is not on their side.  Trump is doing a great job at discrediting the system, just as his predecessor did before him.

It was recently announced by Coca-Cola that it would start using real sugar in its drinks.  High-fructose corn syrup has been used in Coke in the United States since the 1980s when sugar was abandoned.

The MAHA movement is celebrating this because real cane sugar is believed to be far less harmful than high-fructose corn syrup.  And, of course, Trump is taking credit for this change.

It is a bit odd coming from Trump who likes to drink Diet Coke.  The artificial sweetener is probably even more harmful than what is found in regular Coke.

Still, it is a mild win in the health movement because it means Coke might be less unhealthy now.  But even more, it shows that there are more people aware of what is being put in their food and drinks.

While Trump, the individual, can chalk this up as a win, we would be remiss to point out that this is a government created problem in the first place.

Subsidies and Taxes

While the tariff man celebrates his victory, maybe someone should tell him that the U.S. government has caused this unhealthy practice of using high-fructose corn syrup in lieu of cane sugar.

First, the U.S. government subsidizes the corn industry.

Second, the U.S. government has protectionist tariffs on sugar imports from other countries.

This makes it cheaper to use corn syrup and more expensive to use sugar.  This is a major reason that so many companies use the less healthy high-fructose corn syrup instead of real sugar.

Instead of talking to Coca-Cola about using real sugar, maybe Trump should have cut the sugar tariffs to zero.  Instead, he has been too busy hiking tariffs all over the place, which will just cause more distortions in the marketplace.

These are the subtle, yet real, consequences of government interference in the marketplace, including with tariffs.  Tariffs are taxes.  When you tax something, it gives you distortions.

Who Gets the Credit?

While Trump takes credit for this switch to real sugar, we have to consider the cause and effect here.

Did Coca-Cola switch back to real sugar because of Trump?  Perhaps that is part of it because they don’t want to be on the bad side of Uncle Sam, just like you don’t want to be on the bad side of the Mafia.

Aside from this, companies need to make a profit by pleasing their customers.  The reason we have a MAHA movement isn’t just because of RFK Jr.  It is because there are many millions of Americans who have become more aware of health and medicine, which includes what we consume.

This move by Coca-Cola is a move to satisfy consumer demand.  Sure, many in the MAHA movement will never drink Coke or soda in general because there are healthier things to drink.  But there are also many who want to enjoy the occasional soda without feeling like they are poisoning their body.

Excess sugar is not good either, but it generally isn’t really bad for most people in moderate amounts.

The good news isn’t that Trump got Coca-Cola to start using real sugar again.  The good news is that companies will feel compelled to start responding to the growing number of Americans who are aware of what they are consuming.

Donald Trump has almost become unhinged at this point.  And that is grading on a Trump curve.  When he calls his base stupid and says he doesn’t want their support if they are questioning his Jeffrey Epstein narrative, then something has gone very wrong for Trump.

Even many of Trump’s hardcore supporters are not buying Trump’s Epstein narrative.  This was an issue that Trump and his son called attention to many times before Trump became president for his second term.  And now he wants to pretend like there is nothing there and that it is another Democratic hoax.

Trump thought he could be clever by lumping the Epstein issue in with the Russia hoax, but most of his base just isn’t buying this lie.  With the Russia hoax, that was orchestrated by the Democratic establishment and pushed by the establishment media.  It was pushed relentlessly.

The Democrats were never obsessing over Epstein.  It was Republicans who were bringing up the issue and demanding answers and accountability.  The Epstein story is very real.  The only hoax is the coverup.

It is funny that many Democrats are now trying to call attention to the Epstein story because they see it as a liability to Trump.  They say that Trump won’t release the Epstein list or files because it implicates Trump.  But if this were the case, don’t you think that Biden and company would have released that portion of it?  They did everything else they could to damage Trump.

So, right now, both the Democrats and Trump are highly discredited.  The most likely reason Trump is trying to drop the whole Epstein thing down the memory hole is because Epstein was connected to the deep state and intelligence.  It is actually the same reason that Biden and company didn’t release anything significant.

The People Who Want to Forget About Epstein

Even though you will find many Democrats on Facebook or other social media trying to tie Epstein to Trump, there isn’t an obsession over this in the establishment media.  And it isn’t just because they are covering for Bill Clinton and some Hollywood celebrities.

Again, this is more about Epstein running some kind of blackmail operation.

It is also interesting how many of the Israeli firsters like Ben Shapiro are going out of their way to defend Trump and assure us that we should trust Kash Patel and Pam Bondi.  Whenever Shapiro obsesses over something, it usually has to do with defending or covering for the Israeli state.  It makes you wonder about Epstein’s ties.

And to be sure, Ben Shapiro was not a Trump supporter when Trump was delivering a quasi-peace message. Shapiro has been an enthusiastic Trump supporter for the last few months because Trump has bombed Iran and has done whatever his master Netanyahu has told him to do.  If Trump makes a turn back to a less interventionist foreign policy or makes any suggestion that the U.S. should cut funding for the Israeli state, Shapiro will be against Trump again.

As for the average Democrat on the street who is calling attention to the Epstein story, they think they are being clever because they see a fracture within the MAGA movement.  They do not understand that they are helping to undermine the deep state.  They think they are just undermining Trump.

The Russia Hoax

Now that much of Trump’s base is not happy with him and calling into question his anti-deep state credentials, we get this from Tulsi Gabbard.  As the Director of National Intelligence, Gabbard has been doing her own little investigation of the Russia collusion story that took up so much time on the establishment media airwaves during the first Trump term.

This is actually an incredible story.  Gabbard has shown a little evidence, and is claiming there is more, that Obama not only knew about the fabrication of the Russia collusion story, but he actually was one of the main people who orchestrated it.  Obama, as the sitting president in 2016, fabricated a story to try to overthrow the elected president (Trump).

Not only is that an act of treason, but it also led to much hostility with the Russian government.  If that Russia hoax had never happened, maybe Russia wouldn’t have gone to war with Ukraine.  Instead, we get all of this anti-Russia sentiment that has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths because Americans don’t want to negotiate with the Russians and are more than willing to hit them with sanctions and allow their tax money to be sent to Ukraine to perpetrate the war.

This is a big deal.  Gabbard is referring the matter to the DOJ, which includes a major criminal act by Obama.  If what Gabbard is saying is correct, then Obama should be tried for treason and should be in a jail cell for the rest of his life.  Yet, we hear almost nothing from the leftist media.

It doesn’t surprise most MAGA people or many libertarians who saw it as a hoax from the beginning.  The surprise is that any of this is coming to light.

However, if history is any guide, Obama won’t be going to jail for a single day.  We know how this stuff works in Washington DC.  Remember, Trump was laughing it up with Obama at a funeral.  It would be amazing if Obama was hauled off in handcuffs for the crimes he committed, but it is highly unlikely that anything like that will happen.

Distraction?

Tulsi Gabbard was able to come up with results from this investigation in less than 6 months being on the job.  And this crime goes back to 2016.

One question that arises is: Why didn’t anyone in the first Trump term figure this stuff out when the Russia collusion story was actually happening?

It is easier to investigate and find evidence of something that is just a couple of years old than it is when it is nine years old.  It is easier to find evidence when the story is happening.

John Ratcliffe was the Director of National Intelligence from May 2020 to January 2021 in the first Trump term, yet we got nothing from him.  He is now the Director of the CIA.

Gabbard was able to produce all of these results in less time than Ratcliffe was in office.  This doesn’t mean that Tulsi Gabbard is lying about this stuff.  It most likely means that people like Ratcliffe are part of the deep state and have little interest in rocking the boat.

At the same time, you have to wonder about the timing of this whole thing.  Trump was losing his base because of the Epstein lies, and for good reason.  This story about Obama and other deep state figures orchestrating a coup against Trump is a big story, but it is also suspicious in that it attacks the deep state.  Trump needed a story like this to assure his base that he is still with them in going after the deep state.

So, we have two things here.  The Russia hoax and the implications is a big story, especially as it relates to Obama.  It is likely true.  Yet, it is still serving as a distraction from the Epstein story.  And we can be reasonably sure that the deep state figures, especially Obama, will not be prosecuted for any crimes.

You really have to be objective if you are going to get anywhere near the truth.  You can’t figure this stuff out if you have Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) where you are obsessed with Trump and want to criticize him for everything in life.  You also can’t figure this out if you are hardcore MAGA and think Trump is some kind of savior.

You have to be able to sort through the lies and truths.  We get both from this Trump administration.

We hear that we are no longer a united country.  We hear that the American people have lost trust in their government leaders.  This is all true.  But is that a bad thing?

If we had great and benevolent leaders in government, then maybe it would be good to have some trust in them.  If we lived in a free society where virtually everyone recognized the rights of others, then perhaps it would be good to have a united country.

But we don’t have those things.  We will probably never have great and benevolent leaders.  We are lucky to get 1 in 100.  The best we can hope for is that the politicians at least pretend to favor liberty and somewhat reflect the will of the people because the people demand liberty.

Compared to What?

There are some good people out there who say we need to unite the country and that we need to restore trust in our elected officials.  They say this because they want things to get better.  It is understandable.

But given our situation, we should have a loss of trust in our government.  Think about the COVID lockdowns and vaccine mandates.  Think about how often we get lied to when it comes to starting a new war.  After the 9/11 attacks, we had a very united country.  How did that work out?

We shouldn’t trust these people at all.  In fact, you should almost assume the opposite until you can personally verify the truth.

As long as we have government officials who lie, then there should be a lack of trust.  What is the alternative?  There is no alternative of having a steady stream of honest politicians.  The only alternative from what we have now would be to just go ahead and trust the politicians.  In other words, you would have to deceive yourself and believe the liars for the sake of trust and unity.  But that doesn’t seem like a good path forward.

The government has continued to grow, but at least we have people questioning the narratives now.

If you go back 30 or 40 years, you had to mostly rely on 3 or 4 television networks to watch the news.  You relied on the establishment newspapers for the articles that got printed.  Your only choice was to believe them or not believe them.  Most people believed them.  It was very difficult to find narratives that strayed far from the establishment narrative.

Now you can find information everywhere with many differing opinions and takes.  Sure, many people live in their own bubble and only read the sources they choose.  But at least everything is out there for people who are curious.  It is hard to plead ignorance these days.  With some curiosity, you should be able to see many different viewpoints on various issues.

Give Us More Loss of Trust

If we want to regain liberty and shrink the size and scope of government, then we need even more of a loss of trust of our government officials.  It can’t just mean a loss of trust in one party or the other.  It needs to be an across-the-board lack of trust.

This delegitimizes government officials, whether they are elected or not.  The state relies on our consent to survive.  If they lose the consent of a large percentage of the population, then they ultimately lose power.

This is how we move in a direction of greater liberty.  The state relies on propaganda to get the consent of the people.  If the propaganda stops working, they lose support.  This means that we gain liberty over time, regardless of who gets elected to office.

The June 2025 CPI numbers came out mostly in line with expectations.  It was up 0.3% for the month and 2.7% year-over-year.

The median CPI was also up 0.3% for June, and the year-over-year median CPI was up 3.6%.

This is probably the best-case scenario for Fed officials.  It is their Goldilocks of not too hot and not too cold.

If the price inflation numbers had come in higher, this would have signaled that it is still a major problem.  It would have been very bearish for the market, as any hope for a rate cut in the near future would have been gone.

If the price inflation numbers had come in lower, this would have been taken as a signal of a slowdown in the economy.  It would have forced the Fed’s hand to start following the ideas of Trump – mainly lower interest rates.  While investors like the idea of lower rates, they don’t want lower rates because we are looking at a major economic slowdown.

Too Hot for Consumers

Price inflation is still high for American consumers, which is basically anyone living in the United States.  Even using the Fed’s own target of 2%, it is still running high.

There is nothing magical about 2%.  It just means that the central bank wants a continuous policy of mild price inflation.  For Americans, it just means that our money gets depreciated every single year.  The same dollar buys less and less.

With the CPI running at 2.7% for the last 12 months, it means we are losing this amount of purchasing power in just one year.  And this is on top of the higher prices we are already facing from the high price inflation in the few years prior.

So, while Wall Street and the Fed can celebrate the “moderate” inflation, Americans struggling to pay their bills get to see higher bills or less stuff to purchase.  It isn’t getting any better even if the price inflation rate has come down.

Recession?

The CPI numbers aren’t telling us much about a possible recession ahead.  This is why the Fed likes it right now.

But it doesn’t mean that a recession isn’t ahead.  It just means that consumers haven’t severely reacted to the possibility yet.

The boom/ bust business cycle isn’t dead.  The Fed hasn’t finally figured out some secret formula to prevent recessions forever.

The yield curve was still inverted for 2023 and much of 2024.  It hasn’t quite fully normalized yet because the Fed is not playing Trump’s game of lowering interest rates.  This is keeping the short-term yields close to the 10-year yield.  But things can change very quickly.

At the first major sign of a recession, the Fed will capitulate.  Trump will finally get his way, and he will blame the Fed for the recession because they were too late in lowering rates.  The Fed does deserve a lot of blame for the upcoming recession, but it isn’t because they were too late in lowering rates.

Trump is a maniac with these tariffs and tariff threats.  It is causing havoc in the world economy, which is made up of 8 billion people.  The disruption is mostly behind the scenes, as businesses struggle to predict what their costs and competition will look like in a month from now and a year from now.

It seems like it is a different tariff or tariff threat every day.  We may be getting a 50% tariff on copper.  Brazil is facing stiff tariffs because Trump doesn’t like the political situation there.  Should Brazilian officials have slapped a massive tariff on the United States when Trump was on trial last year?

Trump is now threatening a 100% tariff on Russia if the war in Ukraine doesn’t end in 50 days.  Of course, there are already major sanctions on Russia.  Trump could talk to Putin and promise not to expand NATO any closer to Russia.  Trump could cut off funding to Ukraine.  But no – instead we get more tariffs.  That seems to be Trump’s solution to everything.  He thinks it is a bullying tactic, which it is, but it is a tactic that will deeply cost the American consumer.

This is one of the few promises from his campaign where Trump is delivering.  Unfortunately, it was one of the bad promises, and he is putting it on steroids.  Other than some pardons and a few executive orders, most of Trump’s good promises are out the window.

Dictatorial Power

The left likes to call Trump a dictator.  Trump is doing his best to prove the leftists correct.  The problem with the left here (there are many others) is that they are hypocritical.  They weren’t talking about dictatorial power when Biden and company implemented vaccine mandates or arbitrarily declared student loans to be forgiven.  Even if the Supreme Court did overturn some of it, it doesn’t mean it wasn’t a broad overreach of power.

Harry Browne (quoting Michael Cloud) liked to say that the problem isn’t the abuse of power, it is the power to abuse.

In this case, Trump shouldn’t have the power to arbitrarily hike and lower tariffs on a whim.  The American people deservedly give low ratings to Congress, but it is still generally better when things are done through Congress as opposed to executive decrees.  At least when it goes through Congress there are competing interests and the process takes some time.

With Trump just announcing new tariffs virtually every day, it is a nightmare for business.  It is a joke when Trump defenders say that he is trying to bring back manufacturing.  With these erratic policies, it will do no such thing.

Trump announces a 50% tariff on copper.  Even if it were feasible to mine additional copper in the United States, is some company really going to invest tens of millions of dollars to explore and mine for copper?  You could start your business tomorrow, and who knows how long it will take before you actually get any copper out of the ground.  It might take years.

Meanwhile, Trump could arbitrarily just eliminate the tariffs he just imposed on copper.  You just invested tens of millions of dollars for copper mining in the U.S., and now you have to compete with copper mines throughout the world once again.

It is completely ridiculous that this one person has so much power to disrupt.  Congress should take back its authority to tax.  If Trump doesn’t obey, he should be impeached.  We know that Congress will do no such thing, just as it doesn’t do anything to stop illegally declared wars.

TACO Trump

There is an acronym now to describe Trump’s tariff policies.  It is TACO, or, Trump Always Chickens Out.

The problem with this acronym is that it challenges Trump’s manhood in a bad way.  What if he decides to fight back against this label?  That means he has to not chicken out.  It means he has to follow through with his steep tariffs.

In April, after his stupid “Liberation Day”, we got instant feedback from investors when stocks tanked.  Trump then started to walk back some of his tariffs.  Now, stocks are hitting new all-time highs.  Investors either believe TACO will continue, or they simply just don’t care about tariffs.

We are in an Everything Bubble.  Perhaps these tariffs will speed up the popping of the bubble.  Maybe they will just make life even more miserable for Americans when a recession does hit.

Since March, virtually everything that Trump has done is bad.  Why should we expect him to correct course now?

And to be clear, Trump deserves no credit if he repeals his own authoritarian edicts to impose tariffs.  It is just like he doesn’t deserve any credit for getting a ceasefire in Iran.  No ceasefire would have been necessary if he hadn’t helped start the war there.

Trump has lost the game on foreign policy.  He has lost the game on civil liberties.  He has lost the game on Epstein, which is actually turning some of his base against him.  Now he is going to lose the game on the economy.

He is almost unhinged at this point, and he is so unpredictable, it isn’t good for wealth building.  Trump is doing everything he can to prove the left correct.

The Trump administration has assured us that Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide and there is no Epstein client list.  It is especially remarkable coming from Dan Bongino, Kash Patel, and Pam Bondi.

The first two were questioning the whole Epstein story before they were part of the Trump administration.  Meanwhile, Bondi had previously said that she had a list on her desk ready to be reviewed.

Kash Patel was more recently on Joe Rogan saying that Epstein committed suicide and that we should just trust him on this.  He gave us his version of, “Would I lie?”

Actually, yes, Kash Patel, you would lie.  Why am I just supposed to take your word for it?  Just because you once seemed like a disruptor of the establishment?  I can think of a lot of reasons why you would be lying.  It tends to happen to people when they get in positions of power.

Ben Shapiro is telling us that we either need to believe Patel and Bongino, or we need to trust the conspiracies of Alex Jones.  He said those are the only two choices, although I can certainly think of other choices.  Shapiro always seems to have a strong opinion about an issue if it has anything to do with Israel.  It makes you wonder why he has so much interest in assuring us that Epstein committed suicide and didn’t have a client list.

Trump is Pathetic

This was a new low for Donald Trump, also known as Bibi’s B**ch.  As he was hosting Netanyahu, Trump’s team was asked by a reporter about the Epstein files.  In fact, the reporter actually mentioned Alex Acosta, who was Trump’s Labor Secretary in his first term.

(When Acosta was asked about giving a lenient plea deal to Epstein the first time, Acosta said that Epstein belonged to intelligence and to leave him alone.  Why has Congress never pulled Acosta in front of them and asked him who told him that?)

The reporter asked this question to Pam Bondi in a sloppy way, but it was still asked.  Before Bondi could answer, Trump stepped in and gave a non-answer.  He didn’t address the issue of Epstein belonging to intelligence at all.

Trump said that this was old news, even though it was less than two days before that his own administration had declared that there was no Epstein client list and the case was essentially closed.

Trump also pathetically said, in effect, how dare you ask that question when we just had tragic flooding in Texas.  It almost makes you wonder if his administration dropped this news in tandem with a tragedy happening in the country on purpose.

Of course, Trump had plenty of time to host his master, Bibi, at the White House.  He had plenty of time to field other questions not related to flooding in Texas.  This was Trump’s pathetic attempt to silence any more questions on the matter and to move on.  He really came off as a total sleaze bag in his response.

After Trump gave his non-response, Pam Bondi gave a more detailed response that tried to address some of the criticisms that have gone her way.  She really didn’t do herself any favors.  She came across as weak, and she came across as a big, fat liar.

It Isn’t Just the Child Trafficking

The Trump administration is now lying to us about Epstein’s whole operation.  They are now saying that they found all of this inappropriate video of children, but they are only implicating Epstein.  This is really the first time that anyone in power is implicating Epstein as some kind of pedophile as opposed to running a trafficking ring and possibly a blackmail operation.

Many people who question the Epstein story think that it is being kept secret because there are some big names in Hollywood and politics that would be exposed.  And perhaps that is part of the story.

Many people on the left think that Trump was doing inappropriate things with underage girls, and that is the reason that this is being covered up.  Of course, the left has been out to get Trump for 10 years now and have no problem making stuff up about him.  If the Biden handlers had evidence of Trump doing inappropriate things with underage girls, wouldn’t they have released that evidence?

I can’t say for sure, but I actually don’t think Trump did do inappropriate things with underage girls.  I’m not saying it is impossible, but I don’t think that gives an adequate explanation of what is happening here.

The reason that Trump and his people are covering this whole thing up is because of what Acosta said many years ago.  Epstein belonged to intelligence.  He was likely running a major blackmail operation.  The biggest question, perhaps, is whether it was Israeli intelligence, the CIA, or both.

With how vocal Ben Shapiro is on this issue, it would seem to implicate the Israeli government.  Given that the worst things Trump does while in office are usually a result of following the directives of Netanyahu, it seems to implicate the Israeli government.  But it also isn’t hard to imagine that the CIA was part of the whole thing.

This is one of the ways that the deep state lives on.  If you get the most powerful people in a position where they can be blackmailed, then you never have to worry about them disrupting the system too much.  It doesn’t mean they will never do something right or do something that is anti-establishment.  But on the really big things, like supporting certain wars and interventions, they can always count on the status quo being continued.

Intelligence (Israel or the U.S.) may have something on Trump.  It doesn’t necessarily mean the worst, but it could just be some embarrassing things.  Whatever it is, it seems that Trump is fully under the control of Bibi.  He really is Bibi’s B**ch.

The Good News

While this can be demoralizing for Trump supporters and anyone who wants to see the deep state torn apart, there is reason for optimism.

Most people aren’t buying the BS that is being sold by Trump.  Even many MAGA people are calling BS on the Trump administration for this.  It is such an obvious and blatant lie that only the most diehard MAGA supporters are trusting Trump and Kash Patel.

The whole system is losing legitimacy at a fast pace.  It is hard to say how this will manifest in the future.

The dying animal that is Washington DC and the deep state is flailing around and will cause great damage. But it is also fighting for its life.

A majority of people just aren’t buying what is being sold to them anymore.  We shouldn’t complain about this loss of trust in the system because the system doesn’t deserve any trust.