The latest consumer price index numbers came out for February 2024.  The CPI was up 0.4% for the month, while the year-over-year stands at 3.2%.  This was a little higher than expected.

The median CPI also came in at 0.4% for the month.  The year-over-year median CPI now stands at 4.6%.

It’s interesting that the market is expecting a rate cut by the Fed in June, even though price inflation seems to be a stubborn problem.

CNBC ran an article detailing some of the specific price increases.  The most unbelievable thing is the rise of 20.6% in vehicle insurance.  Of course, it may not be unbelievable if you’ve had to pay it lately.

Some food prices and items are actually down.  Others are up.  A few other notable things are rent (up 5.8%) and motor vehicle repairs (up 8.5%).

This is why it is significant.  These few items make up a huge chunk of a middle-class American budget.

If you don’t own a house and you rent, imagine if you paid just $1,000 per month in rent last year.  Now it is up 5.8% or $58 per month.  That adds up month after month.

If your car insurance was $1,000 last year, now it is up 20.6% or $206 per year.  And if you have a vehicle repair that would have cost $2,000 last year, it now will be 8.5% higher, or $170 more.

These may be very conservative numbers for some people.  Rents are much higher than $1,000 per month in most cities for anything livable.  Many renters are probably paying an additional $1,000 or more extra per year.

So just the cost of driving your car and renting your apartment may have gone up $1,500 for the year.  If you make $60,000 per year and get a 3% raise in pay, that is an increase of $1,800 per year.  After taxes, that barely covers the expenses to drive and rent your apartment.  We haven’t even started considering food and other items.

Bidenomics

This is why it is a joke that Biden or any of his handlers would be even attempting to brag about the economy.  There are some people who will actually try to justify the state of the economy by saying that the stock market is up and housing values are still high.  The higher housing prices only price out those who don’t already own.  There are few people who are selling and making a good profit to then only rent (at higher prices).

The stock market may be nice for some people with a 401k plan, but that doesn’t apply to some people.  And for others, it doesn’t do them any particular good right now, as that is their retirement money and they may not even be able to access it.

For most people, they just see their expenses going higher and wages not keeping up.  This is the true state of the economy, and it is hard to trick people into believing that they are doing well when they aren’t.

Even if a recession doesn’t officially hit before November 2024, it is hard to imagine Biden being reelected with this disaster of an economy.  It is curious why Republicans who were running for president did not emphasize this issue.  They could have easily acknowledged that average Americans were getting the short end of the stick.  Instead, they were too busy assuring us of their allegiance to Ukraine.

Most people have quietly moved on from COVID.  There are still a few fanatics who preach vaccines and COVID safety, but luckily there are few of them.  There may be some who still endorse COVID protocols reminiscent of 2020 through 2022 and are silent about it.  The reason they are silent about it is because it is too embarrassing to preach it any longer.  Most people will shake their head or laugh at them.

There is a large percentage of the American population who endorsed the lockdowns and vaccine mandates. We can’t be sure if it was a majority because there is always a segment of the population who accept government directives even though they may not explicitly endorse them.

Still, regardless of the percentage, it was probably somewhere around half the country that largely accepted the COVID tyranny.  Most of them have moved on.  They don’t say much at all.  If the topic comes up and they have to say something about it, they will usually say that we didn’t know as much about the virus at that time.

This is not true because it was known in March 2020 that it was mostly old people and people with major health problems who were dying of COVID or supposedly dying of COVID.  I can’t speak as much for what happened outside of the U.S., but I can say that many Americans who supposedly died of COVID were people who probably would have died soon anyway.  And for the younger or healthier people who supposedly died of COVID, it seems they actually died of deadly hospital protocols.

There was still mass hysteria in 2021.  Many states still had strict protocols, and this is also when the vaccine mandates showed up.  But in 2021, it was quite obvious that this was not the killer disease that it was originally portrayed to be.  So, I don’t buy the excuse that “we” didn’t know a lot about the virus back then.  Many people did know, but they were dismissed as whackos or conspiracy theorists.

Still, there is a bigger factor in this whole thing than knowledge that I have a problem with.

Compulsion

Most people won’t admit they were wrong.  It is a hard thing for humans to do.  There are a few people who will admit that they didn’t quite get things right though.  There is an even smaller percentage who will apologize or at least say that maybe the other side got things right.  Some are more genuine than others.

But even if someone apologizes for getting things wrong, this isn’t good enough for me.  I won’t accept this apology.  The problem is that these people advocated for the use of government force to keep people in their homes and to mandate a medical injection in order to keep their job.

There may be an extremely tiny percentage of people who got things wrong on COVID, and perhaps were hysterical about it, but did not advocate for the use of any government force.  I may not fully trust the judgment of these people now, but I could accept an apology from them if they just say they got some things wrong on COVID.

However, for most of the people who do admit getting things wrong and offer some sort of apology for getting things wrong, they advocated for the use of force.  Are they offering an apology for using force, or are they offering an apology for not understanding more about a virus?

The same goes for the vaccine mandates.  Are they sorry for mandating the vaccine, or are they sorry for not believing people who questioned the safety and efficacy of the so-called vaccines?

I don’t want an apology because the vaccine didn’t work.  I want an apology because force was used.

I won’t accept an apology from someone who is merely saying they got some of the facts wrong.  That means they will just make the same mistake the next time.  They will be willing to use government force again in the future.  They just want to make sure they get their facts straight before using force.  Of course, they probably thought they had their facts straight three years ago.

The lesson of this whole thing isn’t that the vaccines were not safe and effective as sold.  The lesson should be that force never should have been used.  Biden should be in prison for threatening to fire approximately 100 million people if they didn’t get jabbed.  Any politician, bureaucrat, or media figure who supported these mandates should be shunned from society.  They should never be in a position of power ever again.

The problem in 2020 through 2022 wasn’t that people got the facts wrong on COVID and vaccines.  The problem is that they were willing to use the force of government to impose their way on other people.

The price of gold in dollars has broken above the $2,100 mark and closed at its highest level ever this week (in nominal terms).

The price of gold is not near its all-time inflation-adjusted high, even using the government’s price inflation data.  The price of gold briefly went above $800 in early 1980.  Using the BLS CPI inflation calculator, you can plug in $800 in January 1980.  44 years later, that has the same buying power as $3,171.

This is probably understated, if anything, but it shows that gold could still surge a lot higher if we get into another gold-buying frenzy.  And that is at today’s level.  There is no telling how much the Fed will inflate in the future to service the massive debt and support the financial system.

This isn’t a prediction that gold is going to surge above $3,000 per ounce any time soon.  It is just to show that it is possible.

Up until now, we haven’t been in any kind of a gold bubble, unlike most other asset classes.  It is quite surprising that we haven’t seen the price of gold go up with worries about price inflation.  Stocks have gone up a lot.  Real estate went up a lot until the last year or so.  Bitcoin is booming again.

Gold has risen, which is evident by it hitting an all-time high, but it has moved slowly.  It tends to make a move, then maybe pull back a bit, and then trade in a somewhat narrow range for a while.

It wouldn’t be surprising for the same thing to happen here, but if I could say for sure, I would be extremely wealthy playing the futures market.

Gold has simply not been part of any speculative bubble.  It has gotten little attention over the last many years.  This is noticeable by watching CNBC during the day.  You can see the three major indexes constantly updating.  You can see the yields a little less frequently.  You can see the price of Bitcoin frequently enough.  The price of gold appears once in a while.

There seems to be something wrong in a world where the price of Bitcoin is popping up more than the price of gold on a television station that primarily follows the investment markets.  I am not blaming CNBC.  They are actually probably responding to consumer demand.  There are more people interested in the day-to-day movements of Bitcoin as compared to gold.

Will Gold Stocks Finally Follow?

Gold stocks have done rather poorly over the last several years, even with the price of gold going higher.  The costs of mining, just like the costs of most things, have gone higher.  But the price of gold hasn’t exploded as might be expected in a relatively high price inflationary environment.

Couple this with a lack of enthusiasm in the gold market, and gold stocks have generally underperformed. This could all turn around quickly, but it would have to be with a sustained rise in the price of gold.

Buying gold stocks, gold mutual funds, and gold ETFs is a rather high-risk proposition, but it could come with high rewards when investors and speculators finally pile in.

Of course, investing in the broad stock market seems like a high-risk proposition these days too.  But it doesn’t feel like it to most people because they are accustomed to stocks just going up in the last decade and a half.  Every time there is a decent pullback, the bull market resumes.

The Fed has been in tightening mode for a couple of years now, and the yield curve has been inverted for well over a year.  Yet, investors seem to have little fear of a recession or a major pullback in stocks.

If we do finally get a deep recession, we shouldn’t expect gold or gold stocks to do well in the short run.  They may do well if the Fed starts creating massive amounts of new money out of thin air.  The price of gold will probably hold up better than most stocks in general, but we may have to wait for more Fed funny money before we see a dramatic surge in gold and mining stocks.

It isn’t easy to be a good parent.  Most parents hope to teach their kids to be respectful and productive human beings.  They hope to equip their children to be independent adults.

You can tell your kids things until you’re blue in the face.  What you say may or may not stick.  If you really want to teach something to your kids, the best way to do it is to set a good example.

You can tell your kids not to smoke, but if they ever see you smoking, then there is a good chance they will follow.  You can tell your kids not to curse in public, but if they hear you doing it, then they are likely to follow your example.  And good luck telling your kids to eat their vegetables if you don’t have a serving on your own plate.

And so it goes for teaching others the benefits of liberty.  You can talk all day long about the latest government boondoggle.  You can do your best to explain good economics.  But often the best way to exert your libertarian influence is to simply just set a good example.

Setting Examples

During COVID hysteria times, I didn’t wear a mask anywhere unless I was explicitly told.  I remember walking around Publix (the grocery store) and being the only person not wearing a mask.  While it might have made a few people mad, I hope it inspired some others to be brave and also not wear one.  (The Publix employees were always very kind, and I was never once questioned about not wearing a mask.  I can’t say the same for Whole Foods.)

You can preach all day long about how the government shouldn’t be involved in education.  But if you actually homeschool your own children, it will show others that it can be done.  They might even talk to you about it and explain their fears of doing it.

The Best Example

The best way to set a good example is to just be a good person.  Also, it helps to be a somewhat normal person.  Some libertarians like to act as outcasts of society, and it is certainly their right to do so.  But it doesn’t do any favors for selling liberty.

It’s ok to fit in to society in many aspects, even if you believe in a minimal or no state society.  You aren’t selling out your libertarian principles by watching the Super Bowl or enjoying a concert at your local park.  In fact, the more you fit in, the more likely that others will listen to you when it comes to your politics (or maybe I should say anti-politics), as long as you aren’t overbearing.

There are many great things in our society in spite of a massive state.  We should embrace those great things and join others in embracing them, even if those other people are not completely on our political team.  You may find you have more influence when you embrace these things and generally are a happy person.  Other people want to be around happy and friendly people, and that is how you will have the most influence.

While U.S. stock market indexes hit new all-time highs, the Japanese stock market is also hitting new marks.  The Nikkei hit an all-time high last week, finally beating the high reached in late 1989.  That’s right.  It only took a little over 34 years.

It could be said that Japan has its own bubble, especially given its debt-to-GDP ratio that makes the wild spenders in the U.S. Congress look conservative by comparison.  The Japanese government has finally gotten the inflation it wanted, and it brought stocks to new highs.

Perhaps the business cycle in Japan is just running a bit slower than in the United States, which is like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.  Japan’s last major stock bubble happened 3 and a half decades ago, which is at least a generation.

It’s not that every time an asset hits a new all-time high that it is in a bubble.  But when it is driven by a policy of loose money and artificially low interest rates, the distortions tend to point to it being unsustainable in the long run.

You have to wonder if there are people who bought near the top of the market in Japan in 1989 and have held on this entire time without selling.  It would have had to have been someone relatively young.

Of course, it’s not as if a lot of people put a lot of money in stocks right at the top of the market without investing at any other time.  So we shouldn’t make it sound as if every investor from 1989 in Japan is a loser.  Maybe they bought a lot of shares after it plummeted.

Still, it calls into question the whole strategy of buy and hold.

Buy and Hold, For How Long?

There are many financial advisors and media personalities who give the advice to buy low-cost index funds and to hold them for a long period of time.  Some even advocate that all or most of your investment money should go into mutual funds.  They say that the market always goes up in the long run.

And I suppose Japan has just proven that to be true.  In the long run, stocks do go up, especially in our world of fiat currencies.  But just how long are you supposed to wait?

Warren Buffett is considered by many to be the greatest investor of all time.  He probably is.  But Buffett doesn’t advocate that others do what he did.  Buffett got incredibly wealthy by buying solid companies that he researched for long-term growth.  This isn’t really the advice Buffett gives to others.  He just says to buy an index fund and hold it.

Up until now, Buffett’s advice has generally been sound.  He says he is long on the U.S. economy.

But what about Japan?  It’s not as if Japan is some third-world country.  In fact, in the 1980s, people were saying that the Japanese were going to overtake the U.S. economically.

Imagine someone who invested in the Japanese market in 1989 who was 45 years old.  Now they would be close to age 80.  And the market just finally got to where it was in 1989?

When people say to buy and hold for the long run, how long are you supposed to wait?  Are you supposed to base your retirement plans on this long run?

Can It Happen Here?

Americans think it can’t happen here.  There have been stock crashes, but the market always seems to recover relatively quickly.

In many ways, there are a lot more problems in the United States now than there were in Japan in 1989. Japan wasn’t trying to run a world empire back then.

The same thing probably won’t happen in the U.S. only because the central bank will resort to greater money printing (digitally speaking).  Still, the example of Japan shows what is possible.

Even if the U.S. market went down by 50% and stayed down for half as long (17 years), how many people would be financially devastated?  How many people would have to come out of retirement?  How many people would have to delay retirement by many years?

You don’t have to listen to the conventional advice and put most of your money in stocks.  There are options, such as the permanent portfolio.  Buying mutual funds is only diversification as compared to buying individual stocks.  But most stocks tend to move up and down together as an asset class.  You can diversify in different asset classes.  The hardcore stock investors in Japan in 1989 should have at least diversified into bonds.

I am a hardcore defender of free market capitalism.  And this isn’t an article saying that I believe in free markets except for this one particular area.

I frequently hear people say things like the following:

“I am all for the free market, but we need some government regulation.”

“I am all for the free market, but we can’t just have the poor dying on the streets.”

“I am all for the free market, but we have to have fair trade with China.”

Perhaps I am intertwining the terms “free market” and capitalism”, but generally speaking I am just referring to a lack of government interference in the marketplace beyond upholding property rights and contracts.

I even believe in the free market when it comes to money.  We certainly don’t need a Federal Reserve or any kind of central bank.  We don’t even need the government to issue a gold-backed currency.  The marketplace can figure out the best form of money (or moneys).

With that said, there is a downside to free market capitalism.  It produces a massive amount of wealth over time and people get to enjoy great prosperity.  By itself, this is a wonderful thing.  So what’s the problem?

The State as a Leach

If we could maintain a libertarian society with a very minimal state, there is no problem.  The problem is when we get away from liberty.

We end up with a tyrannical government that feeds off of the prosperity that came from free market capitalism.  And if there is still some semblance of the free market, wealth is still produced, even if at a slower pace.  It continues to feed the beast.

The United States over the last century is the perfect example of everything right with free market capitalism, along with everything that is wrong with it.

The American people have enjoyed prosperity and a level of wealth that would have been unimaginable a century ago.  We are walking around with handheld computers in our pockets.  We walk onto an airplane and fly across the country in a few hours.  We press a button in our house to make it hotter or colder.  The list could go on forever.

With that, the state at all levels, but particularly the national level, has taken a cut of this wealth and has used it to do great damage.

There would be no nuclear weapons without the great wealth that came before their development.  There would be no drone strikes in Syria or bombers flying over Iraq if it hadn’t been for our prosperity.  We wouldn’t have a national security state capable of spying on every American if the technology and wealth didn’t exist.

In some ways, free market capitalism has helped fund its own demise.  The whole thing seems like a giant contradiction, and it almost hurts your brain to think about it.

The U.S. government is spending over $6 trillion per year because of our vast wealth.  This spending is mostly destructive (to varying degrees), and it enables the state to make us less free.

If free market capitalism were simply being used by the state to make us less wealthy, then it wouldn’t be such a big problem.  We could accept that we are still better off with it because we are far wealthier than not having a somewhat free market.  The problem is that the government isn’t just taking our wealth and making us poorer.  It is using our wealth against us to repress us and sometimes to even kill people.

The Alternatives

My critique of free market capitalism isn’t really a critique of the free market but moving away from the free market.  The problem here is that you have to maintain a minimal state with all of the new wealth and prosperity.  There is the problem that people with a lot of wealth have a lot of extra time on their hands to act as tyrants.  The wealth generated from the free market funds the very people who would do away with the free market.

The fact that we have had a relative free market makes the chances of the world being blown up by nuclear weapons greater than it would have been.

With that said, I will never not favor free market capitalism for this or any other reason.  If we don’t have some semblance of the free market, what is the alternative?  We could have state control from a state that is relatively poor, but we would all be living in poverty.

We take risks in life every day.  Although the lockdowns in 2020 seemed to indicate that people did want to live in a safety bubble, there is a reason the lockdowns didn’t last.  Even if you thought it was a really dangerous and deadly virus, at some point you want to live life, even with the risks.

If someone offered you a lifestyle of poverty but could guarantee that you live until at least the age of 80, would you take it?  I don’t think most people would.  We would rather take some risks and live a fulfilling life.

I will take the risk of free market capitalism funding a tyrannical state that can and will be used against us.

Of course, there is always the possibility of having free market capitalism and keeping the state in check or not having a state at all.  This requires educating others on the benefits and morality of liberty and not relying on the state.

It is possible to have great wealth and prosperity without using it to fund a giant tyrannical state apparatus.  I think this will be the ultimate achievement of the human race if we can get to a point of great wealth while maintaining peace.

In a recent debate for a California Senate seat, Barbara Lee defended her proposal for a $50 per hour federal minimum wage.

Barbara Lee is currently a member of the House of Representatives.  She is perhaps best known as the sole “no” vote on the authorization of the use of force after the September 11, 2001 attacks.  Unfortunately, her anti-war credentials were thrown out the window in the last couple of years by supporting U.S. involvement in the Ukraine/ Russia war.

She has always been bad on economic issues, so that is nothing new.  But maybe there is something to celebrate with her proposing a $50 minimum wage.  Some of the other candidates for the Senate seat are advocating for a more “moderate” $20 to $25 per hour.

Those of us in the Austro/ libertarian camp sometimes like to use a reductio ad absurdum to make our point.  In this case, it means using an absurd example to show the fallacy of a proposal, particularly in economics.  And the most classic example involves the minimum wage.

When some candidate proposes increasing the minimum wage by, say, $2 per hour, a libertarian might retort by saying, “Why not make it $100 per hour?  After all, if a higher minimum wage is beneficial without drawbacks, why not just keep raising it up?”

Well, Barbara Lee has taken the reductio ad absurdum and applied it well on this issue.  The only problem is that she is serious.

This might even be too radical leftist for California voters.

Minimum Wage, Minimum Impact

A principled libertarian supports no minimum wage imposed by the state.  Any interference in wages is an interference in the market.

In recent years, it is interesting that one government intervention has minimized the impacts of another government intervention.  In this case, Federal Reserve inflation has diluted the negative impacts of a minimum wage.

While wages don’t necessarily go up in line with inflation, they do tend to go up in nominal terms in an environment of high price inflation.  If prices are going up 5% per year and wages are going up 3% per year, this is a yearly drop of 2% in real wages.  But the nominal wages are still going up 3%, which dilutes the impact of minimum wage laws.

In other words, there aren’t many jobs now that would pay less than the federal minimum wage in the free market even if there were no minimum wage laws.  So, the negative impacts of minimum wage laws are minimal right now, and it is largely due to the impacts of inflation.

The Problem with a $50 Minimum Wage

Unless we have really high price inflation, a $50 minimum wage would be disastrous.  I don’t think this will happen any time soon, and I don’t think Lee will win the election, but let’s just say that we got a $50 minimum wage in effect now.

It would cause mass unemployment, and it would misallocate resources on an extreme level.

I saw a segment of Gutfeld (the television show on Fox News) where this issue was discussed.  Greg Gutfeld and several of his guests were rightly criticizing and making fun of this $50 minimum wage proposal. Unfortunately, they got it wrong on the impacts.

They said it would cause hyperinflation like Venezuela or Weimar Germany.  But this is not good economics.  A massive increase in the money supply is what ultimately leads to hyperinflation.

With a $50 minimum wage, it’s possible some prices will go up.  A fastfood restaurant, like any business, will try to maximize its revenue when pricing its products.  If they had to pay workers this much money, then prices would have to go up to a certain degree.  The problem is that most people won’t pay $15 for a cheeseburger at McDonald’s.

This leaves a lot of scenarios with companies everywhere.  They can try to automate more, which means less employment.  They can raise prices, but again, customers might not be willing to pay.  This could mean that many businesses would simply go out of business.

We’ve never seen such a massive distortion in wage controls as this would present.  Therefore, it is hard to say exactly how things would take shape, but it seems certain that there would be a lot of “under the table” employment.  We would live in one giant black market of employment.

With a $50 minimum wage, it means a majority of workers would likely be officially terminated.  The majority of people in the United States earn less than that amount in the first place.

The good news is that if anything like this ever happened, it wouldn’t last long.  The consequences would be so drastic and immediate, it would be apparent what caused the consequences.  But it would make for an expensive economics lesson.

It’s not that I ever thought price inflation was dead.  But if you listen to most of the talking heads in the financial media, along with the government politicians, you would think that the war against price inflation had been won.  You might even get the false impression that prices were actually coming down.

The rate of price inflation had been going down, but the CPI was still coming in higher than the Fed’s goal of 2%.  And if you have had to make a payment on your car insurance premiums lately, you really know that price inflation has not been defeated.

The CPI numbers came out for January 2024.  The price index rose 0.3% for January.  It was expected to rise 0.2%.  The year-over-year number came in at 3.1%.

Stocks, bonds, and gold all got crushed on the day after the CPI report came out in the morning.  This is because it is bad news for investors who expect the Fed to loosen its monetary policy.  Now they are not counting on a drop in rates any time soon.

You would think that higher inflation would be good news for gold, but the same situation applies to the yellow metal.  In our bizarre world, higher inflation can mean that gold will go down because investors are anticipating tighter money from the Fed going forward.

It’s a House of Cards

This really demonstrated how delicate the bubble economy is.  One big wind can blow down the house of cards.

Investors in the bubble economy aren’t too worried about earnings reports or company financial statements.  They are worried about having access to loose money.  In other words, the dramatic rise in asset prices, particularly stocks and real estate, is built on the Fed’s easy money.  When there is a threat that the easy money will disappear, then stocks go down.

Maybe this move down in stocks will be a small blip and they will continue to go on to new all-time highs in short order.  But I do think this slightly higher than expected CPI report shows the vulnerability of the Everything Bubble.

If a rise in overall consumer prices of 0.3% sends stock prices into a tailspin, what would have happened if it had come in at 0.5%?  Or what if we get another report next month showing that prices went up higher than expected in February?

I can’t say that this is the beginning of a bear market.  However, it shows the fragility of the stock market and the whole financial system.  If stocks are that sensitive to a higher reading in the CPI, imagine what will happen when a new financial crisis hits.

I watched all 2 plus hours of the interview Tucker Carlson had with Vladimir Putin.  Before the interview even aired (if that’s the right term), the establishment media was blasting Tucker and the whole thing.  The people who lie for a living were accusing Carlson of not being a real journalist.

This is actually what a real journalist is supposed to do.  This is what a journalist who isn’t controlled by the government and power elite does.

Overall, I thought Tucker did a good job.  You can always say there are questions you wished had been asked.  I wish he had been more direct on getting Putin to list his demands in order to bring the war in Ukraine to a close.  Still, just giving Putin a platform was good, as it gives the American people an opportunity to hear from the person who is deemed the enemy.

Putin – Marketer, Propagandist, Politician?

Putin is a politician.  He is not like a typical American politician, but he is still a politician.  He is going to use propaganda to his advantage, just as we all do in certain situations.  Using propaganda is similar to marketing.  It can be honest, but you use the words in a way to convince others of your viewpoint.  This can be to sell a product or to sell ideas.

Some people thought Putin did a brilliant job of using propaganda.  I think in many ways this is correct, but I thought his very long lesson on Russian history may not have been that brilliant.

It showed Putin’s intelligence and vast knowledge.  In that sense, it was well played.  Putin is far more intelligent and knowledgeable about history than any U.S. president I can ever remember.  Of course, it doesn’t mean you are a good person.  You can be evil and intelligent.  Hillary Clinton is not as intelligent as Putin, but she is far more intelligent than Joe Biden or Nikki Haley.  She is still as evil as them though.

Putin’s long history lesson did not answer the question for me on whether there was some justification for launching a war in Ukraine.  I really don’t think any wars can be justified from a libertarian perspective unless it is somehow fought to not endanger any innocent people.

With that said, some wars are far worse than others.  I think there are more justifications for Putin invading Ukraine than there were for Bush invading Iraq.  And despite what the media likes to say, the war in Ukraine was far from being “unprovoked”.

Going back in history over 1,000 years ago does little for me, and I suspect it is the same for most others.  I don’t think anything that was done 1,000 years ago could justify any sort of war today.  I feel the same way when the discussion turns to the state of Israel.

The problem is that Putin spent so much time on this history that it diluted the much more important parts of the interview.

The majority of his time would have been better spent talking about the coup in Ukraine a decade ago that overthrew the democratically-elected president who was somewhat friendly towards Russia.  He could have pointed out the seeming involvement of the U.S. government in the coup.

Putin could have spent more time talking about the slaughter and abuse of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine.  He certainly did reference this, but with a disproportionately small amount of time.

Putin also talked about the NATO push eastward to the Russian border, but he probably could have gone into even more detail on this.

Why the Interview Matters

I don’t care about people liking Putin, but I do want the American people to see the human side of Russians, and I want them to see that Putin is not an irrational human being.

Most of all, I want Americans to realize that their own government officials have been lying to them.  This wasn’t an unprovoked war, and it was the U.S. that was the biggest outside provoker.

If Americans understood it to this degree, they would at least take the position that the U.S. government should stop interfering in Ukraine and other parts of the world.

If the U.S. government stopped funding Ukraine and simply promised not to admit Ukraine into NATO, this might be enough to bring the war to a quick close.  This would save a lot of lives on both sides, but particularly innocent Ukrainians.  Without U.S. support, the Ukrainian government would feel forced to reach some kind of negotiation.  Perhaps it would involve allowing free independent states for the ethnic Russians.

Even if you think Putin is a really evil person who just wants to perpetuate war, it is good to hear his reasoning for it.  It is not much different from someone listening to the complaints of Osama bin Laden.  You don’t have to be a bin Laden fan to realize that U.S. involvement overseas contributes to people not liking America and wanting some kind of revenge.

Instead of taking the lying media’s word for things, it is usually a good idea to go directly to the source.  In this case, Tucker gave us the source.  He allowed a long interview for Putin to give his positions, which are not something that the corporate media will give you.

If Tucker were still at Fox News, I don’t think this interview would have happened.  Maybe Fox did us a favor by firing their most popular host.

The S&P 500 index closed above the 5,000 mark for the first time in history today.  The Nasdaq closed just short of 16,000.

The yield curve is still mostly inverted with the 3-month yield considerably higher than the 10-year yield and 30-year yield.  It has been inverted for over a year now.  Does this mean that the coming recession will be much bigger than normal?

And while the Fed has seemingly stopped hiking its target interest rate, it is still draining its bloated balance sheet.  The Fed balance sheet peaked at about $8.965 trillion in April 2022.  It now stands at about $7.63 trillion.

Even though the balance sheet had exploded from about $4 trillion in early 2020, we have still seen well over a trillion dollars drained in almost the last 2 years.  The correction is going to come sooner rather than later if the Fed doesn’t do anything drastic.

It is still the Fed’s policy to allow maturing debt to roll off the balance sheet to the tune of $95 billion per month.

Bullish Investors

But none of this matters to the bullish investors.  They are pushing stocks to their all-time highs while ignoring the Fed monetary deflation and the inverted yield curve.  They think the party will keep going.

Maybe some aren’t ignoring it and just figure they can get out at any time.  You can get out at any time, but at what price?  Only a select few can get out at today’s prices.  It doesn’t take a lot of sellers, relatively speaking, to drive down the prices.

Of course, this is why almost nobody gets rich by timing the market.  If the market goes down 5% next week, what does that tell us?  Is it the start of a bad bear market?  Or is it just a little blip down before the bull market resumes?

I continue to believe that a recession in 2024 is likely.  The problem is that investors are completely irrational at this point.  They are bullish because others are bullish.  They feed each other’s optimism.  When the optimism breaks this time, it is going to break hard.

I think of the people who have retirement plans in the near future and are still heavily invested in stocks.  I hope they have a Plan B.

The Correction

A major correction could actually help much of middle-class America if the government and the Fed don’t intervene too much to stop it.  We need a correction to get some rational prices.  We need a correction so that consumer prices can come down.  We need a correction to set the stage for some real growth and rising real wages in the future.  It would also help people who have been priced out of the housing market.

Most of all, we need a correction in order to force the government to cut back on its wasteful and destructive spending.  It seems like there is no limit to what the government can spend, but there are political limits, even if it doesn’t seem to be the case right now.  We just haven’t quite reached those limits yet.