Early in the pandemic, Dr. Fauci said, “there’s no reason to be walking around wearing a mask.” He said masks might cause more harm than good.
In the kind of pirouette for which he’s now famous, Fauci later told us all to wear masks indoors and out. Fauci himself starting wearing two at a time. (Why not three?) His baffled boss, Joe Biden, wears them for Zoom calls – even though he’s been fully vaccinated.
As it turned out, Fauci lied about his reason for initially telling us not to wear masks. The real reason was that he wanted to save them for doctors such as himself.
Fine, Fauci didn’t want to spark mask hoarding similar to the toilet paper hoarding we saw early on. (By the way, how’s that closet full of toilet paper working out for you hoarders?) In short, they lied to us to protect us.
But lying is not the way to manage grownups. Fauci should have explained that masks are probably effective to some degree, but that for a few weeks we needed to save them for front-line health workers who were in daily contact with the virus.
Then there were the apocalyptic COVID predictions. Real scientists knew all along that COVID was very selective in its victims. It seldom struck people under 60 and rarely killed them. For young people, COVID remains less dangerous than the flu.
But we weren’t told that. Instead, as in the case of the masks, they lied in order to manipulate behavior. The behavior they wanted was isolation and lockdowns, and so they deliberately scared people.
Lying often produces collateral damage, apart from a loss of credibility. The COVID fears stoked by the establishment have been ammo for teachers’ unions, for example. On the pretense of safety, teachers refuse to work unless they get more money and less work (at which point their fear of dying apparently vanishes).
Less work and more money brings us to the topic of inflation. Democrats have pumped unprecedented taxpayer trillions into the COVID economy, largely in the form of free money for people who vote for them.
The most notorious example is the COVID unemployment benefits. Unlike traditional unemployment benefits (and contrary to what Biden believes, or says he believes) you don’t even need to seek work. Bank of America says that a person making less than $32,000 a year is better off quitting and collecting COVID benefits.
The result is that job openings are at record levels, even as hiring is sluggish. People are simply refusing to go back to work.
Biden offers a “solution.” He says businesses should offer higher wages to wean these lazy people off the unemployment teat to which they’re addicted.
He contends, Canute-like, that these higher wages – coupled with his proposed massive increase in the corporate tax rate – will not be passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices.
But they already are being passed along. Anyone who buys gas, groceries, lumber or real estate knows that prices are going through the roof. After being kept in check for a generation, inflation is roaring back.
Inflation is difficult to manage. If you’re an investor, you don’t want to be in cash because the value of that cash decreases daily. You don’t want to be in the capital markets because the treatment for runaway inflation is profit-killing high interest rates. Real estate is good, for a while, but I have a hunch that the easy gains in real estate have already been made.
Gold? Maybe, but cryptocurrency might be a game changer.
Meanwhile, they tell us not to believe our lying eyes. They say inflation won’t happen, even as it does.
But of course that’s what they have to say. Once we know inflation is back, the psychology of inflation takes hold and it spirals. People become willing to pay inflated prices today because they fear more-inflated prices tomorrow. Inflation begets more inflation.
So, to their benefit and our detriment, they lie to us about COVID inflation just as they lied about COVID masks and lied about COVID dangers to young people.
That works for only so long. The stock market this week finally recognized that printing trillions of dollars to give to people for not working causes them not to work. Investors and economists know that the wealth of the country has not increased by trillions of dollars. What has increased is an endless supply of printed money chasing a shortage of goods and services produced by a dwindled workforce.
When we had real inflation last time, in the 1980’s, it took years of painfully high interest rates and a prolonged recession to get us back to price stability. It will be even worse this time because the money over-supply and the work disincentives are much greater.
The hard left that owns the Democratic Party doesn’t recognize this. They still figure there’s such a thing as a free lunch. Or maybe they just figure that a lunch paid for later is the same as a free one.
Or maybe they do know it, and they like it for the same reason they like rioting, racial strife and pandemics – because it’s bad for America.
So, hold on to your hat. As for what to do with your money, I don’t know.
the Aspen beat 
Damaging historical precedents in economics, politics , and culture, and now technology, are coming to a head, worldwide.
I suggest those who know this realize that none, or few, of those currently in control, anywhere, are interested whatsoever in your individual well being or freedoms.
Its time to get your house in order, for your protection.
The above isn’t hype, or paranoia.
Anyone who gets thier info outside of the mainstream propagandists knows it, deep down.
Historical human behavoir proves that until things get very, very bad, that the type of people needed to straighten such messes out dont arise until the nincompoops bail out when they lose all credibility , power, and support.
Excellent column Glenn. Spot on. Thank you!
Glen, Jesus said to the swamp people, “You are doing he deeds of your father…….You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” (Gospel of John chapter 8) One doesn’t pick apples from a cottonwood tree.
Bob Cross
Fort Worth, Texas
But . . . but . . . but Biden’s “a devout Catholic”!
A a recent (local) poll found that biden was voted the Ninth Best President ever!!
The results are listed below
1. George Washington
2 (tie) Jefferson and Lincoln
4. (tie) 19 others
5. (tie) 20 others
6. Nixon
7. Carter
8. Obama
9. Biden
Love it!
Thanks — it’s only 9:00 in the morning, and I’m depressed already, getting ready to rummage through my liquor cabinet. Yes, “things fall apart,” but must they do so with such speed? This government is inducing a cytokine storm, and the patient’s prognosis ain’t good.
How is it that, as a nation, we capitulated so easily to the grand larceny of the Covid Election? That we abandoned so readily the “America First” policies that imposed such relative order and sanity upon the world?
Because 40% of the population believed the MSM lies about Trump, numerous courts including SCOTUS have no spine, and most of the Republican leadership stood on the sidelines for fear of being called rascists or seditionists.
First time in history a presidential election count was halted with one candidate far ahead, with the promise the count would resume in the morning, only to have us wake up with the race called by MSM, with 90 % of the overnight votes going to Biden.
A mathematical impossibility.
It will go down in history as one of the largest scams ever perped.
. . . assuming that we regain the authority with which to write history. Otherwise the greatest scam ever perped will be known as The Glorious Revolution.
The Trump and Biden Administrations have both lied about Covid, about domestic and foreign policies, about almost anything whenever it’s politically convenient or whenever they thought it’s for our own good. Ditto for every every administration back to GW. (I mean the original GW,) The same seems to be true, to varying degrees, for almost any government in any country regardless of the form that government takes. So, maybe it’s actually adaptive behavior. Maybe the general public couldn’t function with full truth. Maybe governments would fall apart and chaos would ensue ig full truth were known to everyone. Maybe . . . Be that as it may, do you really believe that ” . . . they do know it, and they like it for the same reason they like rioting, racial strife and pandemics – because it’s bad for America” Kind of an oversimplification, I think.
The agenda is to abolish our Republic & Constitution, and substitute Communism. And the so-called “Fourth Estate” is completely complicit.
Bingo.
Too many Americans have been through our Education system and are incapable of seeing what you have written, Irony is lost on the ironic. Robert Reich is teaching College economics, what could go wrong.
Debt is easy when interest rates are near zero, but it will be interesting to see how the free spending Democrats and their Republican enablers will deal with interest on the federal debt when the government is forced to pay 5, 6, 8, 10% interest on Treasury Bonds. The financial institutions holding 30 year fixed rate mortgage debt paying 2 to 3% interest are also going to be in a lot of pain when interest rates head up towards double digits, and any house flippers who thought they would make a killing will also be in for a rude awakening when they see what high interest rates do for house prices.