The Iowa Democratic caucuses will be held on February 3, 2020.  This will likely be my last major political analysis before then.  I will reassess the situation after Iowa, and maybe after the New Hampshire primary on February 11, 2020.

It is a fascinating situation to me because we could potentially have two somewhat anti-establishment candidates going head to head.  Maybe the term “anti-establishment” is not quite correct, but they are not establishment approved.

I am referring to Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.  Trump is hated by the establishment and its media.  That is obvious.  Bernie is also hated, but they are a little more careful to not be so blatant about it.

The problem the establishment elites have with these two individuals isn’t that they will necessarily drain the swamp or reduce the size of government.  The problem is that they occasionally tell the truth. This is especially true with respect to foreign policy.

Trump has shown that he can be really bad on foreign policy.  He surrounds himself with war hawks and gets persuaded into these foreign interventions.  He is a coward in many respects.

Bernie may not be much better, but there is hope.  Most of what he says regarding foreign policy is pretty good from a libertarian aspect.  He is certainly good as compared to all of the other Democratic candidates, with the exception of Tulsi Gabbard.

The problem with Bernie (from my perspective) is that he would also likely be a coward. This is the man that campaigned for Hillary Clinton in 2016.  She is one of the biggest bloodthirsty war hawks of all time.  She also worked with the Democratic Party establishment to snatch the nomination from Bernie.  If there was any major election interference in 2016, it was here.

I also point out that Bernie puts little emphasis on foreign policy.  He is more concerned with attacking the top 1% than he is with stopping the bombing and starvation of little children in foreign countries.

Still, even though Bernie is a massive interventionist domestically, he does appear to favor non-intervention with foreign countries, or at least that is what his rhetoric indicates.  The establishment doesn’t like him because they fear that he might actually follow through with some of what he says.  This would hurt the U.S. empire and the military-industrial complex.  This is why they oppose Bernie.  They aren’t scared about him enacting higher taxes on the rich.

Bernie’s Loyal Followers

It seems strange that the two current frontrunners for the Democratic nomination are old white men. Sanders is 78.  Biden is 77.  They would both turn 80 in their first term in the White House.

There is a big difference between the two, even aside from their politics.  Biden is stumbling.  He can barely put two good sentences together.  He is boring and safe, at best.  But I can’t even say that he is boring. He is actually funny.  The problem is that people who are laughing are laughing at him and not with him.

Bernie, on the other hand, acts younger.  He has energy and passion.  This has earned him a loyal following.  The people who favor Joe Biden in polls are doing so mostly because of name recognition and that they think he can best beat Trump. If they start paying attention, they will realize that he may be the worst person to put up against Trump. If Biden can barely act coherent when speaking for 15 minutes in a 2-hour debate, how will he do when he is speaking half the time in a 2-hour debate?

I think more Democratic voters are going to realize in the coming months that Joe Biden would be a complete disaster.  It would be entertainment for those who don’t like him.  It would be like a bad movie where the audience cringes at one of the characters who keeps embarrassing himself.

This is why Pete Buttigieg should stay in the race.  The establishment may turn to him when they realize just what a disaster Biden is.

It’s interesting that the narrative is that Bernie and Elizabeth Warren are fighting for the hard left voters.  I don’t think there is as much truth to this as there once was.  The really hardcore left doesn’t like Warren. They see her as a phony, which they should.  They only trust Bernie.

Meanwhile, I think the establishment would be more than happy with Elizabeth Warren as president. They could completely control her. She would mostly give them what they want.  And she wouldn’t be enacting a wealth tax.

So if Biden implodes, they may just turn to Warren.  Actually, I think Biden has already imploded.  I am just waiting for others to recognize this fact.

I know there are still several other candidates, but I don’t see a path to victory for any of them. Michael Bloomberg may have an outside chance, even though he is not all that likeable.  It is interesting that there are two billionaires (Bloomberg and Steyer) who are running for the Democratic nomination.  The Democrats supposedly want more equality and they also want to keep money out of politics.  I’m not sure how those views can be squared with billionaire candidates.  But the fact that Bloomberg is gaining a little support just shows that some people are easily enough brainwashed with a few simple commercials.

If several people stay in the race, then I think Bernie has a good chance because of his loyal following that nobody else has.  The establishment does not want him.  This showed during the last debate when he was asked about telling Warren that a woman couldn’t be president.  He vehemently denied he said it.  Immediately after that, one of the debate moderators asked Warren a question based on the premise that Bernie had made that comment.

If Bernie can somehow get by the establishment this time, I actually think he has a decent chance against Trump.  If I were Trump, he is the person I would fear the most.

The bad thing is that it will become something of a referendum of capitalism vs. socialism. Unfortunately, Trump will be representing the capitalism side.  This is a guy who likes tariffs and is helping to run an annual budget deficit of $1 trillion.  And let’s not forget his continued promotion of lower interest rates by the Fed.

2020 will be an interesting year.  I still think the economy is one of the biggest factors.  I don’t know if the stock market can hold up for another 10 months. If it goes down 5 or 10 percent from here, it’s not a big deal.  But if there is a major crash and an obvious onset of a recession before November, then Trump will be in big trouble.  That is, unless the Democratic voters are foolish enough to hand him the gift of Joe Biden.

If you follow the FIRE movement (financial independence, retire early), then you may know about the 4% rule.  This is a general rule about figuring out how much you need to retire, which includes retiring early in life.

For example, let’s say that your living expenses are $40,000 per year, and you plan to keep a similar lifestyle.  According to the 4% rule, you need $1 million in order to retire financially free, assuming you can maintain the same lifestyle.  4% of $1 million is $40,000.

If you want to live on $80,000 per year, then you will need $2 million in assets in order to retire.

You shouldn’t include the equity in your house, unless you are factoring that into your cost. If you own a one million dollar house outright but have no other money, then you are obviously not financially free if you keep owning the house and living in it.  If you want to include a house that is paid off, then you have to include what it would cost you with a mortgage as part of your living expenses.

I have heard a few people say that 3% is the new 4%.  In other words you should be conservative and use a 3% rule.  So, if you are going to live on $40,000 pear year, then you would need about $1.333 million.

Still, most people who are even talking about such a rule are using 4%.  Therefore, that is what I will discuss here.

To be fair, even those who use the rule, use it as a general guideline.  I think most would admit that there are nuances.

I think the biggest factor is age.  If you are 70 years old and you have a million dollars and live on $40,000 per year, then you will probably be fine, assuming you don’t need full-time care in a nursing home (which may still be assuming too much).  If you are 30 years old with a million dollars and currently live on $40,000 per year, I don’t think you have any chance of making it financially without working again.

The 4% rule assumes that you will only draw interest (which really includes dividends and capital gains) from your investments.  You will make 4% on your investments, and you will use that money to live, while keeping the principal intact.

The return on your investments will likely vary.  You probably aren’t going to have some kind of annuity for life, and if you did, it wouldn’t be paying out 4% right now.  The only way I could possibly see getting a relatively steady return on your money of 4% is by investing in residential real estate.  But even here you have to factor in all of the maintenance costs and vacancies.  There is also no guarantee that the rents will not go down.

Those who put faith in the 4% rule don’t expect an exact 4% return every year.  They actually count on a higher return overall, but that will include some down years.  They hope that the good years will more than offset the bad years.

The Inflation Factor

If you can’t already tell, I am not really in favor of using the 4% rule for determining early retirement (or maybe any retirement).  I think it is useful as a measuring stick, but it may steer some people the wrong way.

Let’s say someone is 40 years old.  Let’s say they were lucky and skilled enough to obtain $1 million in assets.  Let’s say they are frugal and live on just $40,000 per year.  If that person wants to take a couple of years off of work to travel, I would tell them to go for it if that is what they want.  If they want to take their dream job that only pays $12 per hour, I say go for it.

However, I don’t think this person should retire with the expectation of never working again for money.  I just don’t think a million dollars will last that long.  If technology improves, or even if it doesn’t, this person could live another 60 years.  A million dollars simply will not last.

We live in a world of central banking where there is almost constant inflation.  If prices go up only 1% in a year, the central bankers are complaining about the lack of inflation.  Most of them say they want at least 2%.  But actual price inflation is impossible to measure precisely.  Sometimes the government statistics underreport the actual inflation due to the weighting and other factors.

Let’s say that you get price inflation of 3% per year.  Using another rule – the rule of 72 – this means that prices will double approximately every 24 years.  This means they will quadruple after 48 years.

Our hypothetical person who is 40 years old will see his cost of living go up by four times by the time he is 88 years old.  If he still has the same lifestyle (which is assuming no additional medical costs), then he will be living off of $160,000 per year.

If we see a decade like the 1970s where price inflation was in the double digits, then most of the 4% rule retirees can start looking for work again.  A decade of 10% annual inflation will likely devastate these people.

I know that defenders of the 4% rule will say that the rule takes inflation into account.  In other words, if you have 4% price inflation, then you should expect 8% returns.

The problem is that we live in the real world.  There is no guarantee of annual returns of 8%. The stock market in Japan is lower now than it was 30 years ago.  Anyone who used the 4% rule in Japan in 1989 and invested in stocks would have been back to work within a few years.

There is a tradeoff between keeping the nominal principal amount safe and hedging against inflation.  You could keep a million dollars in a savings account and make 1% per year, but that wouldn’t even guarantee to last you 20 years living off $40,000 per year.  That is because of inflation.  After 10 years, you may be spending $60,000 per year for the same lifestyle that $40,000 bought you 10 years prior to that.

Meanwhile, if you get too aggressive with your money, you risk losing the principal amount. If you put a million dollars into stocks, it may only be worth $700,000 the following year if there is a bear market.

This is why it is so hard to plan for retirement.  The inflation factor makes it extremely difficult.  And this is the main reason that it makes the 4% rule highly unreliable.

I think it is fine to use the 4% rule as a general measuring stick, but I would not recommend basing your entire retirement on this.  There needs to be some flexibility because nobody can predict inflation or investment returns.

U.S. stocks are hitting all-time highs again.  This will be a theme for 2020.  It’s not to say that the “all-time highs” part will be the main theme, even though that could continue for a while.  The theme is that this is one of the biggest stock bubbles this country has ever seen, and its implosion will be significant.

There was a tiny setback for stocks at the beginning of the year with the prospect of a full-blown war with Iran.  But after Iran’s rather mild response, and Trump seemingly backing off, stock investors cheered on the reduced tensions with another rally this past week.

Every time a new high is notched, it is a signal of just how much more painful it will be when it all comes crashing down.

It’s not that U.S. stock indexes making new highs is by itself a problem or any kind of signal of a bubble.  The problem is that the returns in stocks have been extraordinary over the last decade and much of this is due to easy money from the Fed.  A much smaller portion is due to actual corporate profits, and these profits can quickly vanish with the arrival of a recession.

In my predictions post for the year 2020, I predicted that stocks would hit new all-time highs again early in this year. So far, I am right, but I admit this didn’t take a lot of skill to predict accurately.  The odds were good that this would happen.

Part of getting predictions right is luck.  As I noted, the timing and exact nature of events is impossible to predict because we are dealing with the action of billions of human beings.

So I don’t know when this whole thing is going to implode, but I am confident that it is going to implode.  I am not talking about a 15 to 20 percent correction.  I am talking about a major crash that will see U.S. indexes fall by at least 50%, but probably even more.

Stocks are often tied to economic growth or the overall health of the economy.  I do think this is a mistake, but it’s not altogether wrong either.

Do Asset Bubbles Help the Middle Class?

Right now, the American people are struggling.  This is a generalization, but the average middle class person is finding it hard to save any significant money.  We can blame smartphones all we want, but this isn’t a major expenditure, especially when compared to housing and medical care.  We should be able to have smartphones without experiencing a decline in living standards elsewhere.

In many ways, this does remind me of how things were in the mid 2000s.  There was a supposedly booming economy then, yet many people were feeling the pinch of debt and a high cost of living.  There is no question that many people made bad decisions, but we have to acknowledge that there was a cluster of bad decision making largely due to government policies and the Federal Reserve.

Just as housing prices and stock prices were going up in the mid 2000s, so it is today.  This time around, there seems to be more of a bubble in stocks and a milder bubble in housing as compared to last time. We won’t know for sure until it all shakes out.

People hear about the booming stock market, so they tend not to question out loud the supposed strength of the economy.  They wonder why they are struggling to pay their bills when those around them seem to be doing well.  But those around them probably aren’t doing well either.

Admittedly, this is a first-world problem.  I know there has been a spike in homelessness, especially in California. But most Americans have a roof over their head and food on the table every night.  This shouldn’t prevent us from exploring why our living standards aren’t higher than they should be.

Most Americans don’t have any significant ownership of stocks outside of a retirement plan. So think about someone who is an adult but still well below the official retirement age.

Let’s say someone owns a house and has a 401k through their employer.  Housing prices may be going up in their area.  The stock market is going up.  On paper, their net worth is increasing.  It has increased a great deal since 2009.

The problem here is obvious.  All of the wealth is on paper.  You can’t touch the 401k money in most cases, especially if you still work for the same employer. Other than possibly getting a loan and going further into debt, you can’t touch that money until you are almost 60 years old.  If you leave your job, then you can access it, but you will pay income taxes and an early withdrawal penalty.

The equity in the house is mostly useless unless you plan to sell it and move somewhere cheaper. You could do a cash-out refinancing, but this just adds to personal debt and makes it harder in the longer-term future.  It is reminiscent of the mid 2000s.

So people see rising house equity and larger retirement accounts, but these things don’t really pay for the electric bill or the higher cost of repairs for the house.  It certainly doesn’t pay for the rising costs in insurance and medical care.

The recession, to a large degree, is already happening.  It is happening in the sense that people are struggling.  We just haven’t seen the rise in unemployment yet.

There needs to be a correction.  The falling stock market will correspond with the correction.  The problem is that the correction – a precise word here – is not typically allowed to fully happen by the government and central bank. The Fed does not allow a full cleansing of the misallocated resources.

A correction will actually help many struggling American families.  It will be painful.  It will be especially painful for those who lose their job.  The positive side is that prices should come down (until the Fed’s monetary inflation ruins that), which will make life a little more affordable for many people.

The virtually inevitable crash in stocks that is coming is not just relevant to your investment portfolio.  It is relevant in its symbolism in the unsustainable boom that we are in.  The crash in stocks will occur mostly in tandem with the coming correction.

Trump ordered the assassination of a top Iranian official, or at least that is what the narrative is.  Trump is certainly not denying that he was involved in the decision, so I will take him at his word that he has blood on his hands.

I first started this blog in 2008, and one of my first pieces was about Iran.  I was fearful that the Bush administration at that time was going to launch a war against Iran.  Thankfully, that did not happen.  The disaster in Iraq was such a stain on Bush that it made it virtually impossible (politically speaking) to start another war.

Here we are over a decade later, and we are on the verge of a full-scale war with Iran.  When Trump campaigned in 2015 and 2016, he talked about the disastrous and endless wars in the Middle East.  Now that he is in office, he has been unable to end the wars, and he has started a new conflict with Iran.

This is not the doing of Iranian officials.  They do not seek war with the United States.  It is Trump’s fault for pulling out of the agreement with Iran, which was one of the few good things that Obama did as president.  Trump slapped sanctions on the Iranians and has continued to make threats.  With this assassination, there is a real and significant danger of escalation.

Some might argue that Trump is not really calling the shots.  Maybe it is Pence and Pompeo and the other war hawks in his administration.  Maybe Trump is taking orders from the Israeli government.  Maybe Republican senators are nudging him into conflict in exchange for supporting Trump when the Senate has hearings from the House impeachment.  Maybe it is all of these things.

One thing we do know is that Trump is not in the dark about what is happening.  He is defending this assassination of an Iranian official.  The best you can say about Trump at this point is that he is a coward.  He will stand up to the media at times, and he will pick fights with people on Twitter.  But when it comes to the war hawks that he hired, he has no courage.

Trump doesn’t have to listen to them.  He can give a primetime speech in front of the American people explaining why he is ordering the immediate withdrawal of troops from the Middle East. But he hasn’t done this. Instead, he goes along with murdering someone and risking a major war.

Even if you think of the worst-case scenario – meaning, the best excuse for Trump – I don’t see how anyone who is anti war can support him.  Even if he is secretly being threatened that something bad will happen to his family if he doesn’t go along, then he should simply resign from office.

When I say that anti war people should not support Trump, it doesn’t mean you should act like his worst enemies.  You shouldn’t have Trump Derangement Syndrome.  You can speak in favor of the good things he does and speak out against the bad things he does.

The Hypocritical Left

Most of the political left have proven themselves to be a bunch of hypocrites.  They will criticize Trump no matter what.  They criticize him when he announces the withdrawal of troops from northeastern Syria.  They criticize him for cozying up to dictators when he meets with the North Korean leader.

Now, Trump is giving the less interventionist position to the left by engaging in war with Iran. Now they can criticize him and take the less hawkish stance.

Of course, much of the left will say that the Iranian official was a really bad guy (without offering any proof, of course).  Their main talking point right now is that Trump did not get authorization from Congress.  Has that ever stopped any president of the last 70 years or more from engaging in foreign intervention?  The original authorization to use military force after 9/11 has been used to justify war virtually everywhere in the Middle East.  An actual declaration of war hasn’t taken place since World War 2.

Regardless of the bad and unprincipled arguments made by most of the left, they still gain the high ground on Trump on this issue.  Trump was too much of a coward to stand up to his neoconservative buddies.

I think Trump will lose some support from libertarians and libertarian leaning people who didn’t necessarily agree with Trump on many things, but were at least sympathetic to him in his battle against the deep state.

Trump has maybe done two good things for the cause of liberty.  One is that he was actually elected in the face of a hostile media.  He got past the establishment.  This should give us some hope that it is possible to bypass the establishment.

The second good thing is that Trump has helped expose the deep state, which is a term that was rarely used four years ago.  For anyone paying attention, it is obvious that there is an establishment elite that looks to control the narrative.

As far as I am concerned, Trump has served his purpose.  We have no more use for him at this point.  He is a disaster in almost every way when it comes to policies. I really doubt that Bernie Sanders could be much worse.  If Bernie is president, at least we might see some congressional opposition to the massive budgets.

As for Bernie, I think he is a beneficiary of Trump’s blunder with Iran.  Bernie is probably the best of the major candidates when it comes to foreign policy.  I am not including Tulsi Gabbard.

As I frequently point out, I don’t trust Bernie when it comes to foreign policy.  He does not emphasize it, and he campaigned for Hillary in 2016, who is one of the biggest war hawks of all time.  I have little doubt that Bernie will be put in his place as soon as he takes office, if not before.  But maybe we could have a little hope that he will be a little less belligerent than all of the presidents we have seen so far in the 21^stcentury.

The establishment is against Bernie because he does suggest less intervention overseas.  He wants more intervention domestically, but his policies might hurt the military-industrial complex.  I don’t know who the establishment would be more against in a matchup between Trump and Sanders.  After this week, they might actually favor Trump.

Out of all of the Democratic candidates, Bernie has the largest following of loyal supporters. People who favor Joe Biden are just favoring him by default.  The longer that several major candidates stay in the race, the more it favors Sanders.  The others will split up the more establishment votes.

I wish Bernie would take a more principled stand against war.  I wish he would emphasize the issue more.  Unfortunately, he will probably continue to play envy games against the top 1%, or whatever it is.  He cares more about soaking the rich than he does about saving innocent lives of foreigners.  Still, I think Bernie is going to benefit from Trump’s stupid, dangerous, and cowardly move against Iran.

I am a strong advocate for using a permanent portfolio for financial investments. I wrote a short e-book on the topic.

The permanent portfolio is an idea developed by the late Harry Browne.  It is explained in his book Fail-Safe Investing.  In the book, he distinguishes the difference between investing and speculating.  He advocated investing in a permanent portfolio.  Speculation should be done with money that you can afford to lose.

In my book, I discuss tweaks you can make to the permanent portfolio to fit your personal situation. I don’t know if Harry Browne would have approved of this or not, but I still don’t deviate too much from the portfolio.  It is there as a home base.

With that said, I think it is important that I disclose what I am currently doing.  I certainly have some money invested in PRPFX, which is the mutual fund that is loosely modeled after the permanent portfolio.

However, beyond PRPFX, I am quite light on stocks.  Stocks make up less than 25% of my total financial assets.  If you exclude some specialty stocks in precious metals and energy, then I am way below 25%.

Is this speculation? Yes.  But it is very calculated.  After all, what is the worst that can happen in terms of my investment portfolio?  The worst-case scenario that could result from this deviation is that stocks continue to go higher for a long period of time.  I will miss out on the gains.

I am betting on a major correction (or worse) in U.S. stocks in the somewhat near term.  I am making this bet by not owning as much as what is recommended in the permanent portfolio.  I have not yet proactively bet in any significant way by shorting the market.  I may decide to buy a bear fund at some point, but I will limit my exposure in case I am completely wrong and stocks go up.

The permanent portfolio offers simplicity.  You don’t even really need to follow the financial markets in order to follow it.  You just have to rebalance your portfolio once in a while.  Even simpler, you can buy PRPFX and let it sit there.  (I have warned in other writings that PRPFX is a bit more speculative than the actual permanent portfolio.)

I am light on stocks knowing that this is a deviation.  I just want to disclose this because I am such a strong advocate of the permanent portfolio.  I am still using it as my guide, but I am deviating in accordance with what I think is currently happening in the economy.

Stocks are near all-time highs.  They went down quite a bit today because the U.S. government has essentially started a proxy war with Iran.  This has added uncertainty.  But even if things cool down with Iran, I think stocks are in trouble.

The yield curve mostly inverted for several months in 2019.  The 3-month yield was higher than the 10-year yield.  This is a recession warning.  Meanwhile, starting in September, the Fed has intervened in the “repo” market in order to prevent a spiking of short-term interest rates.

In 2019, the S&P 500 was up about 29%. The Nasdaq was up 35%.  This is not normal.  Does anyone honestly think that the economy is booming so much, and profits are going to be so high, that these valuations are justified?

I think the downturn will begin in 2020.  Maybe it can be delayed until 2021, but I doubt it.  No one can know for sure.  But I am willing to forego possible gains in the stock market in order to protect against possible losses.  I think the downside is much greater than the upside at this point.  And when the implosion begins, it is going to get ugly.  I can’t discount the possibility of something very severe, where stocks go down in the neighborhood of 70 or 80 percent.  I am not saying this is going to happen, but it is a realistic possibility.

If and when the stock crash happens and the Fed ramps up its monetary inflation – as it surely will do – then I will go back to 25% in stocks as part of the permanent portfolio.  If stocks get beaten down bad enough and I have the courage to do so, maybe I will go a little heavy in stocks at that time.

I believe the stock bubble is the biggest bubble at this point that could implode at any time. There is a giant government bubble, but unfortunately we may have to wait a while longer before that implodes.

It’s said that hindsight is 20/20.  Now that we are entering 2020, I am not sure what that means since we always seem to be living in hindsight.

I am not one to make a lot of predictions.  I know the risks of making predictions, especially when it comes to investing. This is why I have followed Harry Browne’s advice.

Harry Browne didn’t say this exactly, but this was his general advice.  You can’t predict the future.  When it comes to analyzing your investments, don’t try to predict what will happen.  Instead, ask yourself if certain scenarios are realistically possible. If some scenario does come to fruition, are you prepared for it?  Are your investments prepared for it?

I am a follower of the Austrian school of economics.  The face of Austrian economics is Ludwig von Mises.  He wrote the book Human Action.  One of the basic premises of Austrian economics is that humans act.  This makes it impossible to predict the future because you don’t know how millions of human beings will act.

You can make decent predictions on how people will react to certain things.  Incentives do matter.  If the price of something goes up, generally speaking, the demand will go down.  If the government sets a minimum wage that is high enough, unemployment will go up, all else being equal.

But to make specific accurate predictions is extremely difficult, and it is even more difficult when it comes to timing.  With that said, I am going to throw out my predictions for 2020, just for fun. If I am wrong, this doesn’t invalidate my political and economic beliefs.  Regardless of what happens in 2020, I will still believe that the initiation of force for political or social change is wrong. I will still believe that monetary inflation by a central bank misallocates resources.

Economic Predictions

I believe that a recession will start in 2020.  I am less sure about whether the general public will know that a recession has started.  Remember that the financial crisis from 2008 actually started before that. The official recession was dated back to December 2007.

I expect U.S. stock market indexes to hit new all-time highs in early 2020, continuing the trend from 2019.  But I don’t think we will see all-time highs again for many years to come after 2020.

My biggest question is whether a dramatic fall in stocks will begin before or after the November election.

I have valid reasons for expecting a recession to begin in 2020.  The yield curve – as measured by the 3-month and 10-year yields – inverted in 2019.  If history is any guide, this means a recession should start in 2020.

In addition, there is a mess that started in the “repo” market back in September.  The Fed has had to step in continuously to provide funding.  I don’t fully understand the reason or what institutions are in trouble, but that is because the Fed is so secretive.  I do know that it is not a good sign for the economy.

The dollar will likely remain strong through 2020 because the other major currencies are so horrible.

Bitcoin should go down as measured by the U.S. dollar, but I have been very wrong on this before. I don’t expect Bitcoin to go to zero in 2020, but I expect it will lose its luster.  There is always the possibility that people will seek out alternatives like Bitcoin in a financial crisis, but I think the dollar will still reign supreme for now.  Gold will reign supreme in the long run.

Speaking of gold, I am still bullish overall.  I think the dollar price of gold could go down in a recession, but it will be temporary.  It is best just to make it part of your portfolio for the long term.

As far as interest rates go, I expect that investors will seek safety in long-term U.S. government bonds.  Long-term yields will go down until there is a genuine fear of price inflation.  If you are looking to refinance your mortgage, I think it is best to wait if you can.  And if you are looking to buy (and not sell) a house, then I think it is best to wait for prices to come down.

Political Predictions

I think that Trump will survive the impeachment saga, and the Senate will vote to not remove him from office.  It is just a question of whether they will have a full-blown trial or just a short discussion and a vote.

I give Trump a 50/50 chance of being reelected.  There are so many variables (see above).  If stocks crash before the election, his chances go way down. Even if that does happen, I don’t completely discount that he could be reelected in a down economy.  If he gets lucky and has Joe Biden as his main opponent, then anything is possible.  If Biden keeps sniffing the hair of girls while on camera, you never know.

However, that is my next prediction.  I don’t think Joe Biden will be the Democratic nominee.  He can barely survive talking for 10 minutes during a 2 or 3-hour debate.  His campaign team sighs relief when he can get through a debate or speech without saying something completely stupid.  It would be great fun to have Biden up on stage for a 2-hour debate against Trump, but I think many Democrats are realizing how bad he is, especially when it comes to speaking.  I know George W. Bush got elected sounding like a total dolt, but Biden is old and sounds like a dolt.  It isn’t a good combination.

I predict that either Bernie Sanders or Pete Buttigieg will get the nomination.  If it gets down to these two, Mayor Pete will have the establishment backing.  Bernie will not, although they can probably tolerate him better than Trump. Even though foreign policy would be unlikely to significantly change under Bernie, he does occasionally tell the truth, which rattles the establishment.

Still, Bernie has the most hardcore followers of all the candidates for the Democrats.  He has a loyal following.  His followers, for all of their faults, know that the other candidates are not genuine, and for good reason.  They don’t trust Elizabeth Warren, as they shouldn’t.  They won’t get behind any of the obvious establishment candidates.

If several candidates stay in the race for a while, this will tend to split up the votes. Bernie may be able to come out on top this time because of his devoted followers.  He is in his upper 70s and just had a heart attack, but his followers know that he is the only real deal when it comes to being a so-called progressive/ socialist.

Aside from presidential politics, I predict that nobody significant will pay a big price (like jail time) for the whole Russia hoax.  We already know that the corrupt FBI made up things for FISA warrants.  I would love to see people like Comey, Clapper, and Brennan be taken away in handcuffs, but unfortunately I don’t think that will happen.  William Barr is an establishment guy.  Maybe a few low-level people will take some blame just to make it look like someone is getting in trouble.

The good thing is, and I have saved my best prediction for last, is that I think the establishment/ deep state will continue to slowly lose legitimacy.  I think the establishment media will continue to lose trust, as they should.  I think that more people will slowly learn of these things that aren’t covered by the media, such as the Afghanistan papers and the OPCW fake reporting of Assad gassing his own people in Syria.

Even though there will be some tough times ahead, the empire is losing legitimacy.  It is also going to essentially go bankrupt at some point.  When we hit the day where interest rates and price inflation are high, the Fed will have to finally scale back.  Congress will be forced to scale back as well.  It doesn’t seem possible right now, but it will eventually happen.  That is when we need our message of liberty to be the loudest.

Stocks are more than double from the previous bubble.  I’m a poet, and I didn’t even know it.

It seems that the U.S. stock indexes are hitting new all-time highs virtually every day. If you put money into an index fund in March 2009 and held it until today, you would have done very well.

But I don’t want to compare stock prices right now to what they were in March 2009, which was the low point of the great recession, at least for stocks.

I want to compare today’s prices with what they were when the good times were seemingly roaring. The Dow Jones Industrial Average hit a high of 14,164 on October 9, 2007.  As I write this today (December 27, 2019), the Dow closed at 28,645.  That is just over double in about 12 years.

The S&P 500 hit a high of 1,565 on October 9, 2007.  Today, the S&P 500 stands at 3,240.  Again, that is more than double from its previous bubble peak.

The Nasdaq hit a high of 2,811 on October 10, 2007.  That was its high for that cycle.  It had hit a high just above 5,000 in the technology boom/ bubble of the late 1990s and early 2000.  The Nasdaq stands today at 9,006.  It is not quite double what it hit 2 decades ago, but it is more than 3 times what it was during its 2007 peak.

The numbers are obviously more stunning when you compare today’s levels to what they were in 2009. But there was major panic at that time, as the country saw the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Stocks probably sold off more than what was justified.

But obviously there was a major bubble in stocks in 2007.  The big drop did not come until later in 2008.  It is a good lesson that the bursting of a bubble can start somewhat gradually at first.

Does anyone really think that stocks should be worth twice as much as what they were worth in 2007? Does anyone think they are worth 4 to 5 times what they were in March 2009?

Of course, they are worth what they are worth on the open market.  But are the valuations justified?  And what portion should we attribute to the great inflation that took place after the financial crisis began?

Inflation and Stocks

I have long maintained that monetary inflation is the main reason that, broadly speaking, stocks rise.  Sure, individual stocks go up and down based on earnings and other factors.  But as a whole, the stock indexes go up and down largely due to monetary policy.

If there were a fixed money supply, stocks would not likely go up (again, as a whole) over time as they generally do now.  You would invest in an index of stocks in order to get dividends from the earnings.  The main goal would not be capital gains, if at all.

But in our world today, it is one of central banking and fiat money.  And with this, there is mostly monetary inflation.  This is why stocks generally go up over time, in spite of the wild volatility on a shorter-term basis.

The Federal Reserve nearly quintupled the adjusted monetary base from 2008 to 2014.  However, with fear in the market, coupled with the Fed paying interest on bank reserves, much of the newly created money did not get lent out.  This helped contain consumer price inflation.

Consumer price inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) has been relatively stable since 2008, running around 2% per year.  This still depreciates the money you hold in your pocket (or bank account), but it is mild as compared to what could have happened.

Prices in assets have not been as tame.  Housing prices have certainly risen again in most areas, although not necessarily to the same degree as in the 2000s.  But the obvious asset price inflation has happened in stocks, which does not get reflected in the government’s CPI calculations.

As investors search for yield, especially with low interest rates, the newly created money has been used to bid up stock prices.

Unfortunately, many people gauge the health of the economy with the performance of the stock market. There is certainly a correlation, but we have to be careful in distinguishing correlation from causation.

A recession is a correction of the misallocated resources.  The misallocation has already happened.  While unemployment is low, many people are struggling.  They feel like their cost of living is going up faster than their wages, and they are probably correct.

A correction (if allowed) is necessary to realign resources in accordance with consumer demand. When the correction becomes apparent, stocks will likely fall.  But it doesn’t mean that everything was great up until the peak of the stock market.  The misallocations had already happened.  Investors dumping money into stocks was part of that misallocation.

The crazy rise in stock prices is largely due to monetary inflation.  It isn’t because so many companies have become so much more profitable.  Stock prices have gone far beyond the rate of inflation.  This is especially true if we measure stock prices against consumer price inflation.

When the recession hits, we may actually see mild price deflation for a short period, although this won’t last long as the Fed is likely to step in quickly with more digital money printing.  The deflation in asset prices will be far more severe.  The higher they go, the harder they fall.

Conclusion

Stocks have more than doubled from the bubble of 2007.  If they plummeted from the 2007 levels, what will happen at the December 2019 levels, which are far higher?

To ask the question seems to answer it.

The House of Representatives has voted to impeach Donald Trump.  The establishment media has been trying to get Trump long before he was sworn in as president, so they took part of a victory lap with his impeachment.

The impeachment was a sham, just as the Russia-gate hoax was before it.  There are far bigger crimes that Trump has participated in (if you could call his phone conversation with the president of Ukraine a crime), and you could say the same thing for probably every president of the last 100 years.

Trump could be impeached for bombing Syria, threatening and sanctioning Iran (among others), and helping Saudi Arabia to starve the people in Yemen.  But almost nobody cares about these things, which actually kill people.  If anyone went after Trump on these things, then they would have to be consistent and give the same criticisms (or worse) to Obama and Bush before him.

I would like for Trump to be impeached for waging war, dropping bombs, and issuing sanctions. This would be a precedent that I want to be set.  But most of the leftists are not really anti war.  If they are, they are certainly more anti Trump than they are anti war.

Politically speaking, I think the Democrats may have overplayed their hand on this.  It is so blatantly partisan.  The Clinton impeachment 20 years ago was mostly partisan, but at least Clinton actually committed a crime.  It was made to be all about sex, and the Republicans got sucked into that narrative.  But Clinton did commit perjury, which is a felony, in the Paula Jones trial.  One could certainly make the argument that, while it was a felony, it only hurt the victim in court. It didn’t hurt the whole country. But at least there was an actual crime that would send most people to prison.

With the Trump impeachment, there really was no crime.  Trump asked the Ukrainian president to help find out what happened with Joe and Hunter Biden.  But there was no proof that Trump threatened to withhold money.  It may or may not have been because Joe Biden is running for president.  You do have to understand that Ukraine ties in with Russia and the whole Russia-gate hoax.  Trump may have been trying to find out more about who was trying to frame him and how.

The articles of impeachment were weak.  One was for abuse of power, which is incredibly vague.  And again, probably every president has abused power.  According to Biden, he knew how to use power too.  He did the exact thing that Trump was being accused of and admitted it on video.

The other article of impeachment was obstructing Congress.  This is so incredibly stupid.  Does Trump have to hand over anything that Pelosi and Schiff ask for just because they asked for it?

While the establishment media had its little celebration over the impeachment (again, overplaying their hand), it probably was a distraction to a certain extent.  I suppose I have played into that distraction just by writing what I have so far.

I heard someone say that it distracts us from the spending legislation.  The federal budget is approaching an incredible $5 trillion per year, while the annual deficit is around $1 trillion and rising.  And this is during a supposedly booming economy.

The only thing is that I don’t think most Americans would care about the budget anyway, even if impeachment weren’t a story.  They’ll say in polling that they care about spending and the debt, but they don’t really care when it comes down to it.

The Ignored Stories

I would contend that there are even bigger stories than the budget.  We expect the budget to keep growing as long as they are able to fund it.  So in that respect, it isn’t anything out of the ordinary.

But there have been at least three bombshell stories that have happened just within the last few weeks.  Yet, you barely hear a thing about them from the establishment/ corporate media.

The first story is about Afghanistan.  The Washington Post obtained documents showing that top leaders continually lied about the progress (or lack of progress) of the war for the last 18 years.  In other words, with the tens of thousands of lives lost and many more than that ruined, the whole thing is a farce.  The war just continued on, wasting lives and money, when the people waging the war knew it was a disaster.

The second story is about Syria.  Members of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) have disputed the final report that was released that claimed Assad used chemical weapons against his own people.  There are many people who dispute the final report and say it is unlikely that it was Assad.  They also point out that the chlorine traces that were found were very low levels, such as that commonly found in a household from cleaning products.

The claim that Assad gassed his own people has been an ongoing lie to help justify the immoral and illegal war in Syria.  It was likely the U.S. government that threatened the OPCW and rigged the report.  In other words, the U.S. government lied us into war in Syria.  But impeachment gets all of the headline news.

The third story is about the FBI.  The Inspector General report was originally hailed as showing that there was no evidence of bias in the FBI obtaining warrants to spy on the Trump campaign.  But when you dig into the details, it shows that the FBI withheld and distorted evidence to obtain the FISA warrants to begin spying (and continue spying) on the Trump campaign.  And the Steele dossier, which was put together by someone working for the Clinton campaign, was used as the primary source for the FISA warrants. In other words, it proved all of the things that were pointed out by those of us who have been calling it a hoax from day one.

The CIA, FBI, and other elements of the deep state have been trying to overthrow Trump since before he took office.  This is so blatantly obvious to anyone paying attention who can think rationally for a couple of minutes.

Maybe the average Democrat hates Trump for his brash personality and his insensitive Tweets. But the people trying to overthrow him hate Trump because he occasionally tells the truth and questions the nature of the empire.  This is why they so desperately want him gone.

But the media ignores all of the big stories that show that the high-level people in the military and the intelligence agencies are a bunch of liars and murderers.  Instead, they focus on Trump.

It’s not that any one of these stories were a surprise to me.  They just added confirmation to what I already knew.  But these stories do provide evidence to what some of us have been saying all this time.  Yet the media ignores them for the most part.

The establishment media should be losing legitimacy.  I think it is to a certain degree, but still not enough.  There are way too many people who just hear the talking points and accept them as spoken.  But the media distorts and sometimes outright lies.  They lied with the Russia story.  They lied about Assad using chemical weapons.

Perhaps worse than their lies is just the ignoring of certain stories.  Just as ABC spiked the Epstein story years ago, they will ignore the stories of Syria that refute what they once said. They will mostly ignore the important details about the corrupt FBI.  They will mostly ignore the liars in the military-industrial complex who kept cheerleading the war in Afghanistan.

The establishment media should be ignored.  They want to control the narrative, which they have successfully done in the past.  Luckily we have some alternative sources today.

Whenever you hear a political story from one of the main networks, you should assume they are lying or distorting the story.  More importantly is to not fall into the trap of thinking that what they are saying is really the top story.

For whatever reason, the media does the bidding of the deep state.  This is why the FCC should be abolished.  There are other reasons for this too, which go back many decades.  But regardless of the reason, it is important to delegitimize the establishment media so that people stop listening.  Whatever they say, you should believe the opposite until you can verify the claims being made.

I have imagined many times before how much things could improve if we (the United States) had a libertarian president.  When I say “libertarian”, I mean philosophically, regardless of party affiliation.

I have pointed out the many things a libertarian president could do, even without a libertarian Congress.  Our libertarian president could end all wars right away.  Our libertarian president could pardon all non-violent drug offenders convicted under federal law, plus other prisoners convicted of victimless crimes.  Our libertarian president could veto every budget and force Congress to override the veto.  Our libertarian president could use the bully pulpit to encourage the American people to tell their representatives what to do.

Of course, if we ended up with a libertarian president, that means there would have been a major philosophical shift in the thinking of a large percentage of Americans. Maybe the stars would have to align with other unlikeable candidates in the election.  A few scandals wouldn’t hurt either.  But for a libertarian to be elected president, there would have to be some kind of major shift.  This would be the most important advancement towards liberty.

But let’s say that we got a libertarian president without a dramatic shift in public opinion. For a crazy example, let’s say that Trump is running against Biden in 2020.  Let’s say they both get caught in major scandals right before the election.  I am not talking about a made-up scandal by the CIA like what we have now with the impeachment. I am talking about major scandals for both sides where there is irrefutable evidence and where the loyal constituents even find it hard to forgive.

Meanwhile, let’s say that a real libertarian, like Jacob Hornberger, is in the race as a third-party candidate.  Let’s say that Trump gets 25% of the vote, Biden gets 25% of the vote, the Green Party and other candidates pick up 15%, while Hornberger gets 35%. Let’s say that Hornberger barely gets a majority in the Electoral College.

In this scenario though, people voted for Hornberger just because he seemed the most trustworthy out of the candidates, and they couldn’t vote for Trump or Biden because of their major scandals.  I know, the scandals would have to be really bad for this to happen.

Now let’s assume Hornberger is allowed to take office, meaning that the CIA and other factions of the deep state do not physically prevent him.  If you think they have fought hard against Trump for the last three years, imagine what would happen with an actual libertarian in there.

Hornberger could take office on day one and begin the task of dismantling most of the federal government.  Or could he?

The Deep State and the Administrative State

Americans face two great opponents that are both factions of the federal government.  Most don’t know they face these opponents, or at least cannot articulate it well, but they are opponents nonetheless.

There is the deep state, and there is the administrative state.

The term deep state has become common in today’s world.  If you used that phrase five years ago, you would have been written off as a conspiracy theorist.  Today, it is still possible to get called a conspiracy theorist, but even deep state members are admitting there is a deep state.  They try to justify the deep state, saying it is a good thing it is there in order to prevent Trump from destroying everything.

The deep state is certainly a major threat.  It is the more ruthless and violent of the two factions.  But at least some people are now aware of its existence, largely thanks to Donald Trump.  Really, more people are aware of the deep state today because of the deep state’s reactions to Donald Trump.

A less obvious opponent is the administrative state.  People call government a bureaucracy, so there is certainly awareness of the administrative state.  But people do not understand the threat it imposes because it seems relatively harmless.  You aren’t really afraid of a bureaucrat unless you are depending on them to approve important paper work that you are depending on, such as a permit or license for a business.

The major problem with the administrative state is that it is so ingrained.  It is almost impossible to get rid of, even for a libertarian president.

As libertarians, we can casually say that we should just abolish certain agencies.  And I do believe this could technically be done with enough support.  But just abolishing an agency would cause a lot of havoc in a lot of people’s lives.  It isn’t just the people working for the administrative state.  Imagine how much money is owed between different parties. Imagine all of the paperwork. You would have to find all of the corresponding regulations to repeal that go along with each agency. Otherwise, it might be against the law for people to do something without having any means of getting approval.

What about companies that have paid billions of dollars for trials with drugs or food?  What about people in medical school getting government licensure to become a doctor?  What about companies that are in the middle of government contracts that are getting paid for work that was previously done?  What about buildings that are under construction and half-built that are being funded by the government?

I know the answer to many of these questions is to still just abolish everything and let the chips fall where they do.  However, even those who may favor a dramatic reduction in government will feel a lack of justice if they have a direct interest in some particular agency or project.  They may feel they have invested a lot of time and money for nothing.

The problem is that there are thousands and thousands of examples of where people will not be pleased with the immediate abolishment of a government agency.  They may not have ever wanted to deal with the agency in the first place, but because of the regulations as they existed, they were forced to become somewhat dependent on the agency.

I bring this up as a libertarian not to say that it is impossible or that we should not keep calling for this.  I bring it up to point out that it is far more complicated than just repealing an agency, eliminating the budget, and sending everyone home.  What do you do with all of the files with names and Social Security numbers on them sitting in office filing cabinets?

For this reason, I actually think the administrative state is harder to repeal or scale back than the deep state.  I don’t even know how a libertarian president would go about starting the process, even with a decent percentage of the population supporting such an agenda.

Trump has trouble withdrawing a few thousand troops from Syria without the deep state going crazy. Maybe a libertarian president could stand firm and withdraw troops.  Maybe.  I am not even sure about this any more.

I am starting to think I have been naïve all of these years for saying that a president can just order the troops home as commander-in-chief.

It would be great if a libertarian president, or any president, could withdraw troops and end all foreign interventions.  It would save a lot of death and destruction for foreigners.  It would bring about a lot more peace. It would also save a lot of money in the U.S. budget.

Beyond this, I am not sure what a libertarian president could do at this point.  The mess has piled up for many decades.  Some of it goes back over a century.  There are so many regulations and different little departments within all of these government agencies that it seems nearly impossible to dismantle them.

If we had a dramatic shift in public opinion towards libertarianism, maybe the best we could hope for is a slow incremental dismantling.  Maybe budgets could be cut by 2% per year.  Maybe we would need government committees (did I really just say that?) made up of libertarian-minded people that could organize the dismantling of these agencies somewhat orderly.  I think there would be enough libertarians who would volunteer to do this without being paid by taxpayers.

The Soviet Union was largely disbanded overnight.  There was a lot of corruption and chaos that followed, but things sort of worked out, at least compared to the way things were.  I doubt the same thing would happen in the U.S.

It is hard to say what would happen if we had a libertarian president.  It would largely depend on the individual and how courageous the person is.  But even with someone who stands firm, I think it would be nearly impossible to dismantle the administrative state.  The best we could hope for is a start.

They say that one of the worst things you can say to your child (from your child’s perspective) is not that you are angry at them or that they are in trouble, but that you are disappointed in them.  I don’t really know if that’s true, but I have to say that I am somewhat disappointed in Tulsi Gabbard.

Of course, disappointment implies that you had expectations to begin with.  I don’t know if I ever had great expectations of Tulsi, but I certainly hoped that she would be a shining light in the darkness.

And don’t get me wrong; to a certain extent she was.  The Democratic debates would have been completely awful if she had not been in them (for those she was in).  Without her on stage, it is just a bunch of hacks arguing over who can better control the lives of 330 million people (or more, if you count foreign policy).

Tulsi had some great moments in the debates.  She took down the worst person of them all – the authoritarian Kamala Harris.

Tulsi repeatedly criticized U.S. foreign policy, particularly what she called the regime change wars. As a libertarian, this is what I think matters more than anything.  Not only is it a matter of life and death, particularly for the people in those countries, but it also ties back to our own civil liberties and our living standards.

Tulsi was probably the least bad on domestic issues, which isn’t saying much in this crop of candidates.  She didn’t stand up on stage and act like everything was free.  She didn’t continually engage in class warfare as the other candidates do on a regular basis.

And yet, with all of this praise I give her, she could have been so much better.  To paraphrase an old quote, she coulda been a contender.

Government Of, By, and For the People

It is probably good she will not be in the December debate.  If I hear her utter this phrase one more time, I will probably throw something at my tv.

It’s not that there is anything particularly bad about this saying – “Of the people, by the people, and for the people”.  It’s just that it is so commonplace in the realm of politics.

She complains that the media silences her, which to a large degree it does.  So she gets maybe a total of 6 minutes in a two hour debate to make her pitch, and she actually wastes 10 seconds or more, sometimes multiple times in one debate, making this statement.  It is something that could just as easily be said by Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden.  It is a meaningless phrase.

She also wasted her entire closing statement in the last debate talking about Hawaii and the Aloha spirit.

The reason I write about Tulsi is because there is something unique about her, at least as compared to the other Democratic candidates.  She is the only one speaking consistently about a more peaceful foreign policy.

Bernie Sanders will say a few good things in regards to foreign policy, but it is only when he is specifically asked.  He puts no emphasis on foreign policy.  He is too busy taxing the rich in his mind and coming up with more free stuff for the voters.  This is also the man that campaigned for the evil warmonger that is Hillary Clinton.

Tulsi will not be in the upcoming December debate.  She did not qualify.  And while I think this is partially because of the establishment and the establishment media, I do think she shares a bit of the blame.

Tulsi stated earlier in the week that she would not participate in the debate even if she qualified.  It was her form of protesting.  Maybe she saw the writing on the wall and knew she wouldn’t qualify anyway.  But what good does this protesting do?  It doesn’t help convey your message to anyone.

In fact, I didn’t even know that Tulsi had made this statement that she would not participate. The only reason I found out is because I looked up to see if she would qualify for the next debate. That’s when I found a story about her refusing to participate.

What purpose does this serve?  If you believe there is major injustice in the world because of U.S. foreign policy, wouldn’t you take every little opportunity you have to try to convey that message to the public?

I had a few minor frustrations with the Ron Paul campaign in 2007/2008 and again in 2011/2012. I was more frustrated with some of the commercials that were being run (and what was not being run).  I thought his commercials should have been more bold, particularly when it came to foreign policy.

But there wasn’t a lot of frustration when it came to the debates.  Ron Paul didn’t speak a lot of meaningless slogans.  Sure, some of his answers at times could have been better, just as is the case with any candidate.  For the most part though, Ron Paul stood his ground, and we wasn’t afraid to be bold in criticizing U.S. foreign policy. In fact, he would oftentimes get questions on the budget or economics in general, and he would take it back to foreign policy saying that we can save the money and reduce the budget by ending the wars.  This is what Tulsi should have been doing.

I don’t remember Ron Paul chewing up his time with slogans about “of the people, by the people, and for the people”.

Foreign policy is the one issue that distinguished Tulsi Gabbard from everyone else on the Democratic stage.  She should have been hammering this issue home on every question she got.

I know she is not a libertarian.  I know her foreign policy isn’t perfect.  I know that much her domestic policy is horrible.  But whether you are a libertarian or not, you have to admit that she was a bit different than the others.  This is why the establishment hates her.

The problem is that she didn’t emphasize this enough.  The establishment and its media wouldn’t like her no matter what, so she should have gone all-in.  Skipping the debate is the opposite of going all-in.

If Tulsi had been bolder in the last debate, maybe she would have met the threshold for this upcoming debate.  But that didn’t happen, and she already said she wasn’t going to participate.

The Tulsi Gabbard campaign is basically over at this point.  It was fun for the short time it lasted.  She made a very minor impact.  Compared to Ron Paul, it really was very minor.  There are hundreds of thousands of libertarians today who probably wouldn’t be if it hadn’t been for Ron Paul.

I hope Tulsi learns some lessons from this, and I hope radical libertarians also learn a lesson. It doesn’t help to issue slogans in an attempt to suck up to people.  What does work is a radical and principled message. Honesty also works.  This is a lesson that Rand Paul should have learned from his failed presidential campaign.  In contrast, the Ron Paul campaigns were not failures. He didn’t win the presidency, but he won the hearts and minds of hundreds of thousands of people.