• Ukraine is the second-largest nation in Europe. Nearly half of Europe's gas comes from, or through, Ukraine. Oil & Gas are global commodities.
• Direct payments to poor families began under Trump and were continued by Biden & Congress approved both rounds from both administrations.
• Trump's "America First" tariffs are a tax on us and a disruption to the global supply chain, especially to American manufacturers. Biden has kept nearly all of Trump's tariffs. The scarcity of goods makes prices higher.
• Cheap interest rates created a housing bubble again.

It is about a perfect storm for inflation. The Fed is, and should be, independent of the President. We would not like politicians manipulating the dollar for short-term gain, although I'd not say the firewall is perfect, it should be there. The Fed has done much more than just raise interest rates, the Fed has mostly closed the "window" by which banks and insurers have been getting free funds to speculate in the market. The loss of the banks and insurers using Fed money has been responsible for much of the decline of the equity markets and I am surprised more media outlets have not reported that fact to the public. In sum, the Federal Deficit is down, shrunk by around $2 trillion. Financial conservatives and dollar hawks should be cheering, but the personal pain of seeing a quarter of their 401K's evaporate has tampered enthusiasm for deficit reduction. Biden is about as unlucky as any politician could possibly be and his administration has been slow, too conservative, in its reactions. He has done some things like employing the Defense Production Act to deliver baby formula, but removing all of Trump's tariffs should have been almost the first action to lower inflation.

January 6th was much more serious than most people treat it. We came down to maybe a forty-foot space: The distance between the Proud Boys who stated they would have killed Mike Pence had they captured him. In the weeks that followed almost everyone disavowed "the big lie." Then as politicians figure out their base really liked "the big lie" they started to find ways to incorporate their base's demands so that they would not kill their own political ambitions on the hill of honesty or rule of law.

The parallels between America-first faith-based fascism and the rise of the NAZI movement are both striking and terrifying. Germans in the Weimar Republic grew increasingly frustrated with inflation; mad at foreigners, directing their antipathy at immigrants. Hitler rose in popularity by giving voice to these grievances, tried to pull off a putsch and after failing got banned from Twitter. No seriously, he got banned from public speeches. After the ban was lifted Hitler came back stronger than ever. The stock market crash of 1929 had the knock-on effect of freezing German capital markets. The NAZIs were elected to office. Then they just kept those offices. Many Americans were supportive of their cause including many churches in the United States.

We are approaching a perfect storm of economic transition. Long term, the rise of alternative energy supplies will employ many more Americans in better jobs than our pump and burn operations today. Long term I am an optimist.

But I am not sure we will keep our democracy. I think keeping "we the people" in charge hinges on whether rule-of-law conservatives can take back the Republican party. The politics of personality and frustration with the bureaucrats are forces too strong to hold out against. The grievances are too strong. We need an Eisenhower and I'd take a Ronald Reagan. We need a leader with both respect for law and rhetorical ability.

Authoritarian regimes tend to be corrupt and inefficient. We might be at the point where we figure out what our lives are going to be like in the post-Democratic United States.

YOU think the "destruction" of the US would be bad. That feeling isn't universal. Furthermore well meaning people charging toward your and my idea of destruction think they are saving the world, society, pick a cause. How many pilots have crashed a perfectly good airplane because they were "right", but didn't see what was happening.

You think I'm building a bunker and stocking it with supplies? My concrete is acres of foundations stocked with lumber, copper and steel. I'm building another couple acres of concrete foundations next year. I'm out of the bunker, freely roaming the surface, profiting wildly from the wealth transfer enabled by failed economic policy. The only thing falling from the sky is money. Voicing concern for the future of the country while freely sharing how I am exploiting the system for personal financial gain isn't a conspiracy theory, its a PSA.

Nah. I didn't go that far, but I have pulled out a bunch and gone to cash. Gold has always been a ****ty investment anyway. I bonds are a good deal right now, and I think with the clown show in DC that inflation will be with us for awhile so those returns will be good for the forseeable future. Good for you that you have a long time horizon that you will be able to recover from what (for me anyway) has been a net reduction of almost 30% in my net wealth. But one man's 'crisis' is another man's challenge I guess. But don't worry, I will be fine. My 401k which is only a part of my post flying income will recover eventually as well. TVM though is a real thing and it sucks when you realize that your particular 'T' part of the equation ain't so big anymore.

I am only going to address 2 things since I stopped reading at "January 6th".
1. The tariffs were not a tax on Americans if you take the long view. They were designed to inflict pain on the Chinese by forcing AAPL and all the other companies that use child labor in China to move and use child labor elsewhere. And it was starting to work too. AAPL has moved some of it's manufacturing to Vietnam. ( I will see if I can find the reference)
2. January 6th. LOL Sorry, but it pales in comparison to the damage done in the summer of love. Not. even. close. But maybe you feel that members of the government are irreplaceable. I don't.

Love it ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

This is why I wrote, "Americans are not taking it seriously enough."

Mostly everyone is down a similar amount but are we really down if we don't sell and have a long term timeline? Same thing happened in 2000 and 2009 , I didn't sell either time and came out pretty good. This time I have a bunch of cash from selling a California house at the start of Covid and see this as a potential buying opportunity. The problem I have is the same as everyone else - when to start plowing money back in?

Scoop

Just stop. We didn't almost lose anything.

Close the 40 foot space between Mike Pence, the President of the Senate and the Proud Boys; then what?

• Proud boys say "hey we were just kidding" and they go home?
• Arizona's alternate slate of electors also leave their DC Hotel and also just go home?
• Someone files a lawsuit, gets it to the US Supreme Court, argues the case and gets a ruling certifying the vote?

In what alternate reality do you not find the actual sacking of our Capital and execution of a plan to maintain power, by every definition a coup, not serious?

Are you disappointed that Pence and other genuine conservatives stood their ground despite the very proximate threat?

Hitler, Putin, and recently Viktor Orbán won their popular elections then just decided to stay in office. That is exactly what Trump intended to do.

I'm doing the same thing I did through all the other times the market has gone down or we've gone into a recession. Stay the course. I've got an asset allocation that's aggressive but I'm comfortable with given my time frame left until retirement and continue to DCA into my accounts. In fact usually I throw a little extra in when things are on sale. Worked out very well for me so far and I don't think anything is going to change. This time isn't different.