Navigating cynical politics and rigged markets to investment profits

It’s a cliché that gets repeated every four years: This is the most important election of our lifetime!

Perhaps this one, a national referendum on the presidency of Donald J. Trump, will prove to be so. What we can say with more certainty is that this will be the most cynical election of our lifetime.

American politics and the mainstream media’s coverage of it have descended into non-stop tribal spitefulness and vindictiveness. No longer is there any pretense that elections are about what’s best for the country as a whole.

What’s bad for the country is often good for politicians, and they can be counted on to do whatever is politically expedient for them.

This election will be about which sets of Americans get rewarded and which get punished. In the aftermath, reckless spending commitments will continue to drive record budget deficits and threaten to destroy the credibility of the U.S. dollar.

Since no political party has shown itself willing to practice spending restraint, it is difficult to imagine any electoral scenario that would fundamentally alter the country’s current fiscal path.

With a national debt of over $26.5 trillion and skyrocketing coupled with a GDP that has contracted sharply due to coronavirus lockdowns, both Republicans and Democrats know there is only one endgame. They will enlist the Federal Reserve to print currency in unlimited quantities.

The supposedly “independent” monetary policymaking body has embarked on a campaign to buy up everything from U.S. Treasuries to junk bonds at the demand of politicians and bankers. Meanwhile, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell cynically tells the public the central bank is merely fulfilling its dual mandate of “full employment and stable prices.”

We all know his real “mandate” is to lift asset prices and bail out his financial and political masters.

The Fed’s trillions now determine the fate of markets and the economy. But former Vice President Joe Biden apparently thinks central bankers aren’t doing enough to centrally plan outcomes.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the largest “racial gap” in median household income in 2018 was between Asian-Americans ($87,243) and African Americans ($41,511). Biden would apparently task the Fed with somehow suppressing Asian incomes and/or directing race-based monetary stimulus to blacks.

"Biden will work with Congress to amend the Federal Reserve Act to require the Fed to regularly report on current data and trends in racial economic gaps – and what actions the Fed is taking through its monetary and regulatory policies to close these gaps," according to a handler for the presumptive Democrat nominee.

Biden has also been pushed by the AOC wing of the Democratic party to embrace the Green New Deal. Under his “clean energy” and “environmental justice” plans, the government would spend $2 trillion over four years.

For his part, President Trump is backing the GOP Senate’s new $1 trillion COVID-19 relief bill and is vowing to boost military and infrastructure spending if re-elected.

So determined are some in the media to help defeat Trump that they are demanding more economic lockdowns while at the same time cheering on often violent (and never socially distanced) anti-police protests. It doesn’t get more cynical than that.

Regardless of what you may have thought of Barack Obama and his policies, there’s no denying that he had built up some genuine enthusiasm for his “hope and change” campaign of 2008. At that time, millions of Americans believed in the possibility of electing a charismatic unifier.

Nobody in 2020 is inspired by Joe Biden. Even his supporters admit he is just an instrument to get rid of Trump.

The young radicals who are burning down buildings and tearing down statues don’t care about Joe Biden’s decades in politics.

The fact that Biden would be 82 years-old by the end of his first term and appears to no longer be at the top of his game mentally is fine with them, though. That means his more “woke” aids and his “diverse” Vice President will be mostly running the show.

Yes, they really are that cynical.

In these tumultuous and politically fraught times, investors need to avoid becoming jaded themselves.

Up until this summer, the precious metals markets left many longtime investors feeling frustrated, even defeated. But those who threw in the towel because they believed gold and silver prices would continue to be suppressed at every turn missed out on gold’s recent rally to a new record highs – and silver’s biggest price surge since 2011.

Cynics can justifiably point to rigged markets and a corrupt monetary system that makes investing based on fundamentals alone impossible.

But opportunists know that artificially suppressed markets represent hidden value – and that under our inflationary monetary system, prices of precious metals will inevitably rise over time in terms of depreciating Federal Reserve Note dollars.