Last week, Trump named former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and Tesla CEO Elon Musk to lead the presidential advisory commission, DOGE. Their work must be completed no later than July 4, 2026, Trump said in his statement.

Ramaswamy told Fox Business on Sunday that “there is massive waste, fraud, and abuse right now.”

“Federal contractors are really exploiting the federal government,” he said.

When Fox host Maria Bartiromo asked him whether entire government agencies will be closed, he responded in the affirmative.

“We expect mass reductions. We expect certain agencies to be deleted outright,“ Ramaswamy said. ”We expect mass reductions in force in areas of the federal government that are bloated. We expect massive cuts of all federal contractors and others who are overbilling the federal government. So, yes, we expect all of the above.”

As a presidential candidate, Ramaswamy had called for totally eliminating or restructuring of several agencies, including the FBI, the Department of Education, the Internal Revenue Service, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Elaborating on Fox, Ramaswamy said that “failures of the executive branch need to be addressed.”

“Unelected bureaucrats in the administrative state that was created through executive action” are running the government, he said, which needs to be fixed by the executive branch.

“This is about restoring self-governance and accountability in America as well. Elected leaders, if they make the wrong decisions, voters have a great choice. You can vote them out and remove them,” Ramaswamy said.

“Most of the people making these decisions from health care to the Department of Defense are failing on effectiveness because they have no accountability. Historically, it’s been the view of many scholars to say that those people could not even be fired. Now, we take a different view with the environment the Supreme Court has given us in recent years, and we’re going to use that in a pretty extensive way to move quickly.”

DOGE will not be an official government agency, meaning that both Ramaswamy and Musk are not considered Cabinet members in the incoming Trump administration and therefore not subject to the Senate confirmation.

Both Ramaswamy and Musk, as well as Tulsi Gabbard, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. joined the president-elect at a UFC event at New York City’s Madison Square Garden on Saturday night. Gabbard is Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence, while Trump nominated Kennedy to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

On Thursday, DOGE’s account on social platform X, which is owned by Musk, posted a job listing announcement that is calling for individuals to work 80 or more hours per week ahead of Trump’s return to the White House.

Musk and Ramaswamy both threw their support behind Trump this year.

The article below from The Epoch Times represents an analysis of the facts and does not necessarily reflect the perspectives of this publication.

(The Epoch Times)—After President-elect Donald Trump won a second term, multiple defendants charged for their roles in the events of Jan. 6, 2021, asked to delay their cases because they anticipate pardons from Trump.

Many were denied, but each nonetheless raised questions about how Trump will handle the cases.

According to data collected by NPR, more than 1,500 people have been charged in relation to Jan. 6, with nearly 1,000 pleading guilty.

At least a dozen cases have been dismissed, while plenty remain with changes following Trump’s election. At the beginning of November, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia announced multiple sentences and guilty verdicts.

Various factors could determine whether these individuals end up avoiding jail time, but perhaps the most important is Trump’s eventual control of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and who will lead that department.

On Nov. 13, Trump announced Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) as his pick for attorney general. Gaetz has been critical of the prosecutions and introduced a bill in July that was intended to prevent prosecutors from retaliating against Jan. 6 defendants for seeking resentencing. Gaetz has also questioned federal involvement, stating that Jan. 6 “wasn’t an insurrection” but that it “very well may have been a fedsurrection.”

Assuming the presidency also grants Trump substantial pardon power under the Constitution: Trump has indicated that he’s open to pardoning those charged but left open the possibility that some would face punishment.

“We will treat them fairly,” he said in January 2022. “And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons, because they are being treated so unfairly.”

More recently, during an event in July, he was asked about individuals who assaulted officers. He said he would “absolutely” pardon the defendants “if they’re innocent” and added that “they were convicted by a very tough system.”

More than 70 defendants have received a mixed verdict, and so far, more than 1,000 people have been sentenced, with 64 percent receiving prison time, according to NPR data. Some defendants have also taken plea deals.

“I think there’s going to be a complete second look at all of the prosecutions,” Robert Ray, a former Trump impeachment attorney, told The Epoch Times, while noting the large number of cases brought. He added that a second look wouldn’t “necessarily yield a favorable result with regard to each and every defendant, but I think there’s going to be a pretty strenuous exercise of the pardon and commutation power to deal with overreaching [by prosecutors].”

John Pierce, an attorney who has represented Jan. 6 defendants, told The Epoch Times he expects a “blanket pardon,” while Trump–Vance transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said the president-elect “will make pardon decisions on a case-by-case basis.”

Politics of Pardons

It’s unclear which individuals Trump will consider for pardon.

“That’s the million-dollar question,” Lori Ulrich, an attorney with the public defender’s office, told The Epoch Times. She is currently representing Joseph Fischer, whose case made it to the Supreme Court this year.

Fischer and other defendants face a myriad of charges, including an obstruction charge the Supreme Court addressed this summer in Fischer v. United States. It’s unclear how Trump’s DOJ will apply that ruling, but the president-elect’s pardons could be influenced by factors such as the politics surrounding his pardons.

“If President Biden either pardons or commutes the sentences for Hunter Biden, that gives President Trump political cover to either pardon or commute the non-violent J6 offenders, [as well as] Peter Navarro, and Steve Bannon, if he chooses to,” John Shu, a constitutional law expert who served in both Bush administrations, told The Epoch Times.

Shu was referring to President Joe Biden’s son, who was convicted in September of various tax offenses. Both of Trump’s former White House advisers, Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, could be pardoned after each served a four month sentences for defying subpoenas from the House committee that investigated Jan. 6.

A CBS poll found that three years after the events of Jan. 6, 78 percent of Americans expressed disapproval toward “actions of those who forced their way into the Capitol.”

William Shipley, an attorney for one of the defendants, suggested in a motion on Nov. 10 that the election didn’t reflect well on the DOJ’s efforts.

“Defendant Baker would point out that the ‘people’ on behalf of whom the Government purports to speak made themselves heard clearly on November 5, and that should mean something to the Department of Justice without regard to what Administration is now in charge,” Shipley said in a motion for defendant Stephen Michael Baker.

That motion, which asked for a delay in proceedings, was quickly rejected by U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper this month.

Upon entering office, Trump’s pardon power would allow him to commute sentences and pardon convicts who have already served time, such as Ulrich’s client, Riley Williams. Williams was accused of helping to steal then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s laptop. She was found guilty on two felony counts, but the jury was unable to reach a verdict on two other counts, including aiding and abetting theft of government property.

Non-Violent Offenders

Shu told The Epoch Times that pardons for non-violent offenders were more politically palatable.

In August, the DOJ said that approximately 140 police officers were assaulted on Jan. 6, while more than 500 people have been charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers or employees. It added that “approximately 163 individuals … have been charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer.”

Among those are Daniel Ball, who pleaded not guilty but whom the DOJ accused of, among other things, “throwing an explosive device that detonated upon at least 25 officers.” Others included a father-son pair who pleaded guilty in January, and Zachary Alam, who was found guilty last year.

David Gelman, an attorney and former Trump campaign surrogate, told The Epoch Times that re-examining the Jan. 6 prosecutions would have to occur on a “case-by-case basis” but indicated that Trump could consider violence in choosing how to exercise his pardon power.

Trump said at a town hall in 2023 that he was “inclined to pardon many of” the defendants who had been convicted. “I can’t say for every single one because a couple of them, probably, they got out of control,” he said.

Earlier this year, he started one of his rallies with a recording of the national anthem sung by Jan. 6 prisoners. He also vowed in March that his “first acts” as president would be to “Free the January 6 Hostages being wrongfully imprisoned,” he wrote on his Truth Social account.

In a motion filed just after the election, one of the Jan. 6 defendants, Anna Lichnowski, asked her judge to postpone sentencing partly on the basis that her offenses were non-violent, making her “a good candidate for a pardon,” according to her attorney.

Lichnowski was one of a series of defendants who filed motions for some kind of delay in their cases after Trump’s victory. Many of them have been denied, including by U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton, who said that Trump’s potential pardon was “irrelevant” to Lichnowski’s case.

“The potential future exercise of the discretionary pardon power, an Executive Branch authority, is irrelevant to the Court’s obligation to carry out the legal responsibilities of the Judicial Branch,” Walton said in a Nov. 7 court order.

Matthew Graves, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, similarly resisted the motions while arguing that the public is interested in a quick administration of justice.

Graves will likely exit the DOJ in Trump’s second term, experts speculated—something that is expected for many prosecutors at the beginning of a new administration. During Trump’s and Biden’s first terms, dozens of prosecutors were asked to leave.

The vast majority of defendants have been charged with a trespassing offense, the use of which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld in October. Defendant Couy Griffin, founder of Cowboys for Trump and a former county commissioner from New Mexico, had asked the court to review the DOJ’s use of this charge against him.

In a 2–1 decision, the court held that the DOJ could apply the trespassing law without proving that he was aware that former Vice President Mike Pence’s presence on the Capitol grounds was the reason for restricting that area.

Obstruction Charge

In June, the Supreme Court held in a 6–3 decision that the DOJ had misinterpreted a financial reform law in attempting to accuse the Jan. 6 defendants of obstructing an official proceeding.

The majority opinion in that case, Fischer v. United States, held that the DOJ erred in its attempt to disentangle two portions of the Sarbanes–Oxley financial reform law (Section 1512(c)(1) and (c)(2)).

The DOJ had argued that the law allowed prosecutions that targeted obstructive conduct in a catch-all way that included methods other than those mentioned at the beginning of the section.

A majority of the Supreme Court, including Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, disagreed and held: “To prove a violation of §1512(c)(2), the Government must establish that the defendant impaired the availability or integrity for use in an official proceeding of records, documents, objects, or other things used in an official proceeding, or attempted to do so.”

It’s unclear how Trump and his DOJ will apply the Fischer decision to the defendants’ unique circumstances. It carries a 20-year maximum sentence.

In November, the DOJ said that “approximately 259 defendants who, at the time Fischer was decided, were charged with or convicted of violating 18 U.S.C. § 1512 to determine whether the charge should continue to be prosecuted.”

The DOJ said that after Fischer, the government “decided to forgo the Section 1512(c)(2) charge for approximately 96 defendants, will continue to pursue the charge for approximately 13 defendants, and continues to assess the remaining defendants.”

Approximately 133 were sentenced, and more than half were convicted of that offense and other felonies, according to DOJ data from August.

Austin Alonzo contributed to this report.

Speaking at the APEC CEO Summit in Lima, Peru, on Nov. 14, Dimon criticized the regulatory environment for hindering lending, highlighting stringent capital requirements introduced after the financial crisis of 2008–09 that have forced banks to reduce their loan-to-deposit ratios.

“A lot of bankers, they’re, like, dancing in the street because they’ve had successive years and years of regulations, a lot of which stymied credit,” the JPMorgan chief said, according to a Bloomberg video of his remarks at the summit. “You could have kept the banks equally safe but had them do more credit.”

He noted that banks now lend only $65 for every $100 in deposits, compared to $100 previously, which he said stifles economic growth.

Dimon suggested that these regulations, while well-intentioned, have become a headwind for the economy.

“And if that’s what you want, if for some reason the regulators think they’re geniuses and that’s the best way to run the banking system, so be it,” Dimon said, adding that he believes it is possible to maintain financial stability without hindering lending.

Deregulation, he said, could benefit industries beyond banking. Dimon pointed to the slow permitting process for rare-earth mining in the United States as another example of regulatory inefficiency hampering economic growth.

“Ten years—they haven’t got their permits yet,” he said of companies seeking to extract critical minerals crucial for technology and defense industries. “It’s a shame. And we’re doing this to ourselves, and it’s a mistake.”

Dimon also praised President-elect Donald Trump’s proposal for a new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which aims to streamline bureaucracy.

“You could talk to any industry and they’ll give you examples of regulation that could be reduced to make it easier for them to do business while keeping the country safe,” he said.

When asked about the market’s strong reaction to Trump’s election victory, Dimon said it reflects optimism for a “pro-growth shock” as businesses prepare to make aggressive capital investments.

“You’ve already seen the markets have responded quite well,” he noted. “And I think America needs a growth strategy, so I literally applaud that,” he said.

Dimon emphasized that the agenda should go beyond slashing red tape to include broader reforms like improving the efficiency of the permitting process. “Collaboration between government and business is the way to have growth,” he said.

While the Trump administration appears poised to pursue a deregulatory agenda, the administration of President Joe Biden has emphasized consumer protections and systemic risk management.

Under the Biden administration, for example, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has seen a significant restoration of its authority, reversing the more hands-off approach taken during Trump’s first term. Since 2021, the CFPB has ramped up its oversight, launching investigations and enforcement actions against financial institutions accused of engaging in predatory lending, discriminatory practices, or misleading marketing. It has also cracked down on banks for practices such as “junk fees,” unauthorized account openings, and withholding of credit card rewards.

Also, during Biden’s term, U.S. banking regulators have focused more heavily on addressing systemic risks in the financial system, with a particular emphasis on implementing the final phase of Basel III reforms, often referred to as the “Basel III endgame.”

These reforms, developed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, aim to bolster the resilience of the banking sector by increasing capital requirements, enhancing risk-weighting measures, and introducing stricter leverage ratios.

Critics, including Dimon, have said that the stricter rules would not have prevented past bank failures and could have a negative impact on the economy.

Many expect the Trump administration to enact lower taxes, lighter regulations, and reverse many signature programs of the Biden administration, including the government-mandated transition from fossil fuel energy to wind and solar, and from gasoline-powered cars and trucks to electric vehicles (EVs).

“I think a lot of CEOs in the country said enough is enough,” Andy Puzder, former chief executive of CKE Restaurants, told The Epoch Times.

“Just look at the stock market on the day after the election and you can see exactly how American CEOs and American businesses felt about Trump winning the presidency.”

Cutting Regulations

Regulatory policy is likely the area where the incoming administration could have the most immediate impact on businesses.

According to an analysis by the American Action Forum (AAF), as of August this year, the Biden administration has handed down 994 new regulatory rules, adding an estimated $1.69 trillion in costs to American businesses. By comparison, during Trump’s first four years in office, his administration wrote 1,084 new rules that mostly eased regulations and reduced costs by $99.9 billion.

“Agencies like the EPA and Department of Energy regularly acknowledge in their cost-benefit analyses how energy efficiency regulations will raise up-front product costs,” AAF director of regulatory policy Dan Goldbeck told The Epoch Times.

A July study by University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan calculated that the present value of the cost of regulations imposed by the Biden–Harris administration amounted to $47,000 for each American household, while deregulation during the Trump administration reduced costs by nearly $11,000 per household.

The new fuel economy standards set by the Biden administration, for example, are predicted to add $3,400 to the cost of new cars, trucks, and SUVs. The Biden administration similarly imposed tough new emissions restrictions on electric utilities, as well as new efficiency regulations on furnaces, water heaters, central air conditioners, dishwashers, and other household appliances.

Trump, by contrast, pledged during a campaign rally in October to “sign an executive order directing every federal agency to immediately remove every single burdensome regulation driving up the cost of goods.”

Trump has also toyed with appointing Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk to run a newly-proposed Department of Government Efficiency, with the goal of cutting $2 trillion or more from the federal budget.

“If what President Trump says about establishing a government efficiency agency with Elon Musk is in fact going to happen, and they have the fortitude to start taking a chainsaw to government bureaucracy, that would be positive for the economy long-term, but there will likely be some added pain over the short-term,” Tim Schwarzenberger, portfolio manager with Inspire Investments, told The Epoch Times.

While Schwarzenberger predicts a recession in early 2025, he says that Trump’s policies “could make that downturn less severe as he will be cutting taxes and regulations and opening up energy production, while at the same time reducing green energy programs and possibly reforming Medicaid.”

Boosting Oil and Gas Production

America’s energy industry will be the sector most heavily impacted by the change in administrations, analysts say.

“Trump is likely to remove regulations and other limits on fracking and other forms of energy production, which would be good for oil drillers, refiners, and sectors that use a lot of energy products: transportation, manufacturing, aviation and others,” Peter Earle, senior economist at the American Institute for Economic Research, told The Epoch Times.

Despite efforts by the Biden administration to restrict drilling on federal lands, U.S. oil and gas production continues to break records. The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported in March that “the United States produced more crude oil than any nation at any time, according to our International Energy Statistics, for the past six years in a row.”

However, given America’s abundance of energy resources, analysts say there is a lot of room to expand domestic production further.

“We’ve got record production of energy, but it’s all happened despite the administration, and on lands that the administration cannot control,” Dan Kish, senior vice president of policy at the Institute for Energy Research, told The Epoch Times. “We just don’t think there’s any reason to have a scarcity of affordable and reliable electricity or energy of any kind in the United States.”

Expanding energy production, particularly in oil and gas, has been a cornerstone of Trump’s economic platform.

“One of the major proposals in energy has been to ease the permitting process of drilling on federal land and encouraging new natural gas pipelines, which will ultimately create greater supply and should reduce consumer costs and have positive economic impacts,” Ryan Yonk, an economist at the American Institute for Economic Research, told The Epoch Times.

Coal plants, which are facing closures due to new emissions regulations, could also benefit under a Trump administration. According to the Department of Energy (DOE), nearly one-third of existing U.S. coal plants are scheduled to be shut down by 2035. But that may change.

Brian Savoy, CFO of Duke Energy, an electricity utility that serves the Carolinas, Florida, Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky, said his company might keep its coal plants running if the Trump administration cuts back EPA emissions regulations that were enacted under the Biden administration.

However, while it is one thing to get oil and gas companies to produce more from existing wells, it is quite another to get them to invest significant capital into exploration and building new wells and refineries. It is not only regulatory uncertainty that is holding them back, it is also the over-investment that led to a glut, which drove prices down a decade ago. By reducing the cost of regulation and providing some assurance that the industry will not be targeted by climate mandates, analysts say the incoming Trump administration might reduce the cost structure enough to entice the industry to begin investing again.

“What President Trump did in his first term, and what President Biden has been unable to do, is to get the price of oil down and have oil production continue at an increasing pace,” Puzder said. “That’s when you see an impact on inflation overall; it’s when oil companies can make a profit at a lower price per barrel.”

Many analysts predict that if a second Trump term can bring lower energy prices, this will have a ripple effect throughout the U.S. economy.

Retail gasoline prices, which were already coming down during the final years of the Obama administration, hit a low of less than $2 per gallon during the first Trump administration and remained under $3 per gallon throughout his term. Gas prices shot up to more than $5 per gallon during the Biden administration before falling back to the current range of between $3 and $4 per gallon.

“All of these things that have gone up in price significantly are affected by the input costs of energy,” Kish said. “Everything that goes into the price of eggs is affected by the price of energy—it’s heating the hen house, it’s the energy consumed in making food to feed the chickens, it’s the transportation of the eggs, it’s the refrigeration.”

Renewable Energy May Retreat

One segment of the stock market that has not responded well to Trump’s victory, however, is renewable energy.

The stock price of Sunnova Energy, a solar energy developer, tumbled from $6.90 per share on election day to $3.96 per share the following day, and continued to fall to just over $3 per share at the end of the week. More broadly, the Solar Energy Index CFD, which tracks the performance of publicly traded companies in the solar energy sector, fell from $42 before the election to $36 by week’s end.

Anticipated headwinds regarding federal regulations and subsidies that support this industry are the likely cause.

“Trump has pledged to kill the offshore wind industry on his first day in office,” Robert Bryce, energy analyst and author, told The Epoch Times. “There’s no reason to doubt that he will do just that, which will be good news for whales and ratepayers.”

In addition, “the Biden administration has opened huge tracts of land in the Western U.S. to development [for wind and solar plants],” Bryce said. “I expect Trump and his appointees will backtrack on that and may even withdraw some of the permits that have already been granted.”

Reaching net zero has been a central goal of the Biden–Harris administration, which committed in April 2023 to “achieving a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035 and net zero emissions economy by no later than 2050.”

The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 allocated approximately $400 billion in tax credits, federal loans and subsidies toward the production of “green” energy in the United States, primarily for wind and solar power, but also for nuclear energy.

However, a 2021 University of Chicago report, authored by economists Michael Greenstone and Ishan Nath, analyzed regulations, called renewable portfolio standards (RPS), which forced utilities to have at least 2 to 5 percent of their power come from wind and solar, and concluded that “electricity prices are 11 percent higher seven years after RPS passage.”

In addition, a 2021 report by Columbia University’s Climate School, found that as the share of renewables exceeds a minimal share of the energy mix, electricity bills go up.

“Continuing to push the false narrative of abundant and affordable clean energy is a huge political risk that will backfire when the public has to pony up for a bill they weren’t expecting,” the report’s author Lucas Toh writes.

Cutting Personal Taxes, Hiking Tariffs

Tax policy is another area where many expect to see significant changes under a Trump administration.

Much of the tax cutting that Trump pledged during his reelection campaign will require cooperation from Congress, and while Republicans were able to gain a majority in the Senate, they are still waiting on vote counts to see whether they will also control the House.

Particularly significant is whether Republicans will succeed in extending the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017, which is due to expire in 2025.

The TCJA cut the corporate tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent, and while this rate cut has no expiry date, both President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris had proposed increasing the corporate tax rate to 28 percent.

If the TCJA is not renewed, however, personal income tax rates will rise, standard deductions will be reduced, and the child tax credit will be reduced as well. The maximum tax bracket will go up from 37 percent to 39.6 percent; however, the $10,000 cap on deductions for state and local taxes, which largely benefitted wealthy people in high-tax states such as California and New York, will no longer apply.

To the extent keeping these tax cuts in place spurs consumption and investment, many economists favor it. Critics, however, fear it will reduce government revenue and increase the federal deficit, which is projected by the Congressional Budget Office to hit $1.9 trillion at the end of this year.

Government revenues do not always correlate to tax rates, however, and if the tax cuts lead to significant economic growth, they could end up bringing in more tax revenues. Government tax receipts have increased consistently since the passage of the TCJA, from $3.3 trillion in 2017 to $4.4 trillion in 2023, according to Statista.

Other elements of Trump’s tax plan have received less positive reviews.

This includes his pledge to impose 20 percent tariffs on most imports, and tariffs as high as 60 percent on Chinese imports, which could include EVs, wind and solar components, furniture, toys, clothes, and sporting equipment.

Import taxes at this level “would spike the average tariff rate on all imports to highs not seen since the Great Depression,” Tax Foundation economist Erica York wrote. It could hurt the retail industry and fuel inflation.

However, it is unclear how much a Trump administration will ultimately differ from his predecessor in regard to trade with China.

During his term in office, Trump imposed about $80 billion in new import taxes on thousands of products such as steel, aluminum, appliances, semiconductors, and solar panels, many of which were coming from China, according to the Tax Foundation.

The Biden administration kept most of those tariffs in place, and in May added an additional $3.6 billion in tariffs on Chinese imports, including semiconductors and electric vehicles. And while the Trump administration collected $89 billion from so-called “trade war” tariffs, the Biden administration collected more than $144 billion.

In addition, Trump’s pledge to cut taxes on tips, which Vice President Kamala Harris also promised to implement, has been met with some skepticism.

“Among the most popular proposals are those to lower or stop taxation on tips and overtime wages for service workers, or eliminate taxes on social security benefits,” Yonk said.

But these piecemeal efforts would have little overall economic benefit, while further complicating the tax code and raising questions about fairness for workers outside the service industry, York said.

“Instead, extending the tax cuts from the first term and expanding them, without narrowly targeting specific groups, would yield better economic effects and create broad-based tax relief rather than special programs for narrower groups,” he said.

That’s a lot to consider so let’s unpack this a bit.

Consider history. In October 1929, the stock market crashed. Many people on Wall Street suffered but Main Street was largely unaffected. The Hoover Administration got busy with some efforts to loosen credit but without success as credit markets slowly dried up. Throughout 1931, public sentiment toggled between pessimism and denial. Many people thought it was a temporary blip that would go away.

No one called it the Great Depression. That came much later.

By the election of 1932, enough people were concerned about the economic situation but the campaigns did not really focus entirely on that. The big issue was Prohibition. Hoover did not have a strong opinion but Franklin Delano Roosevelt spoke out loudly for repeal. His fiscal policy pushed frugality and balanced budgets, and he decried Hoover as a big spender.

FDR won of course. But before the inauguration, the economic environment became dramatically worse. A banking crisis developed, and FDR used emergency powers to impose a bank holiday and repeal the gold standard. As part of this, he imposed a ban on private gold ownership. It was enforced with fines and jail terms.

Central planning then ensued with massive fiscal stimulus, crazed agricultural policies that required digging up crops to create artificial shortages, and price and wage controls.

All of this unfolded over the course of four years, the first three of which were not at the time thought to be much of a crisis generally speaking. Today it is obvious that 1929 marked the beginning but that was not apparent at the time.

It is not discernible in our time that we are already in recession but that is due to some brittle statistical measures. If you extend the inflation numbers to include housing and interest, plus extra fees and shrinkflation, minus hedonic adjustments, and then adjust the output numbers by the result, you end up in a recession now.

Do you remember the two successive quarters of declining GDP in 2022? At the time, it was said that this was not a recession, even though every definition of recession was two declining quarters of GDP. It was said at the time that the data was not enough to declare it because labor markets were strong.

Trouble was that this too was an illusion. Most of the job gains were in fact in part-time jobs and multiple job holders, and those gains went to foreign-born workers and not natives. Overall, jobs held by native-born workers that are full-time are down relative to four years ago. No one in the mainstream press admitted this.

The jobs report that came out last week was the first glimpse of truth because it was brazenly awful, underperforming every prediction. It also chronicled major job losses in manufacturing and professional services. Those are hard-core recession signs that are likely going to worsen.

All this data will start to be revised next year as the conventional wisdom will change. It will be widely admitted that the economy is weaker than we previously supposed. This will happen regardless of who wins. For one winner, it will serve as an attack and for another winner, it will serve as pretext for extreme intervention like the promised price controls on rents and groceries.

Meanwhile, we will be revisiting the inflation problem. The Fed has already added $1.1 trillion to the money stock over the last 12 months plus lowered interest rates. The effect of this easing has not affected mortgage rates because investors are expecting higher rates in the future. The Fed can control overnight lending but the shape of the yield curve is determined on the bond market.

If major changes are proposed in terms of spending cuts, the bond market will freak out and the United States could repeat the experience of the UK just a few years ago. New prime minister Liz Truss was quickly hounded out of office on grounds that her spending cuts had spooked the bond markets.

U.S. creditworthiness is already on a hair trigger as the debt pileup has reached astronomical levels. The entire purpose of this wild spending has been to balloon the GDP as much as possible to prevent a recession from being declared already. The debt-to-GDP level is now higher than it was in the Second World War, and getting worse by the day.

(Data: Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED), St. Louis Fed; Chart: Jeffrey A. Tucker)

The easy solution is dramatic spending cuts but that won’t happen if the bond market starts panicking with quality downgrades. There are only two private institutions that grade U.S. bonds and both are subject to being muscled by political concerns. Such an event could easily overwhelm a new administration. The political people will go into overdrive and demand that the Fed accommodate the bond market, fueling more inflation.

I truly wish that none of this would happen but the truth is that economic forces are always and everywhere more powerful than political ones. There are structural problems alive in U.S. economic life today that are not easily solved by policies of any sort.

But in U.S. political culture, whatever takes place under one president’s watch is blamed on the officeholder regardless. That the circumstances have been created by the previous administration or have nothing to do with existing policy has no relevance in the political culture. That alone makes it nearly impossible for a sitting president to plead with the public for patience.

In 1981, Reagan did make a plea for patience, and lost a great deal of Congressional support in the midterm elections of 1982. He was fortunate that the economic recovery came in time for the 1984 election that granted him a second term. But that was a very close call, and that was also under conditions that were not as structurally dire as conditions today.

As a result, the new administration will encounter pressure to achieve the impossible: immediately improve American living standards without imposing any pain at all. Such a demand is impossible to grant. As a result, whatever happens in this election will likely be reversed in the midterms of 2026, meaning that we cannot count on any kind of policy consistency for many years to come.

Maybe I’m wrong. I hope so. But from what I’m looking at, I don’t see how a frank acknowledgement of current conditions can be put off for another year.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

“North Carolina’s reliable for me,” Trump said at Dorton Arena in Raleigh, the first of four stops on Election Day Eve. “Never lost. And I don’t think we’re going to start now.”

The Trump campaign emphasized early voting across the country. In North Carolina, in-person early voting started in all 100 counties on Oct. 17 and ended on Nov. 2 at 3 p.m.

The State Board of Elections reported that more than 4.2 million residents cast early voting ballots—a record number.

The previous high for early voting happened in 2020, when more than 3.6 million ballots were cast.

Including absentee voting, 4,465,548 voters—or 57 percent of the state’s 7.8 million registered voters—cast ballots in the general election as of Nov. 3, according to the state board.

Official turnout could be even higher because of a lag between when ballots are turned in and when data is uploaded.

Lorena Castillo-Ritz, chair of the Mecklenburg County GOP in a region anchored by left-leaning Charlotte, said that the Trump campaign, conservative PACs, and her organization embarked on a “strong ground game” that targeted “low-propensity voters” who are registered to vote but did not cast their ballot in 2020.

“When we get people to vote who didn’t vote in the last election, that adds up and makes a significant impact in the overall numbers statewide,” Castillo-Ritz told The Epoch Times.

“We’re hopeful that getting the low-propensity voters to the polls in our area, and other urban areas across North Carolina, elevates President Trump to a win here.”

First in Line

Tony Caraccio is a 21-year-old HVAC professional in Asheboro. He was first in line at the Election Day eve rally in Raleigh, arriving at midnight for Trump’s scheduled 10 a.m. address. He believes that early voting numbers will benefit Trump when the ballots are counted.

“There was a widespread grassroots movement for early voting that we haven’t seen in the last few cycles. The campaign learned from its mistakes and focused on getting absentee ballots and early voting so that the election is too big to rig,” he said.

“I was too young to vote in 2020 and thought I’d never have a chance to vote for Trump. I wish the circumstances didn’t lead to him not winning then and running now, but at least I had the chance to vote for him this time.”

Turnout in the 25 western North Carolina counties impacted by Hurricane Helene was 58.9 percent—around 2 percent higher than the statewide total, the state board said.

Over the weekend, at a rally in Kinston, Trump praised the people who voted early in areas where homes and businesses were swept away by mudslides and flooding from Helene.

“Many of these people don’t even have a house anymore. The devastation is like something never seen. It’s largely areas where people like Trump that were affected, and even with all of that devastation, they turned out in record numbers early,” Trump said.

“The people of your state, the people of North Carolina, are amazing. I thought we would get 50 percent of the number that voted in 2020. [Instead] they broke the record,” he added.

Holding 16 Electoral College votes, North Carolina is a battleground state that both candidates covet.

Barack Obama became the first Democrat presidential candidate to win North Carolina in 30 years when he defeated John McCain in 2008. Trump prevailed in 2016 and then edged Biden by 1.3 percent of the vote in 2020.

Roy Cooper, who has served as governor since 2017, is a Democrat. He spoke in Raleigh before Harris took the stage as did attorney general Josh Stein, who is running for governor against Republican nominee Mark Robinson.

On Election Day eve, Trump held a 1.3 percent lead over Harris in the Real Clear Politics average of polls.

The western portion of the state was severely impacted by flooding and mudslides from Hurricane Helene, displacing many residents. The mountains of western North Carolina are considered a Republican stronghold.

The 25 counties that compose the disaster area have 1.3 million registered voters. In 2020, Trump won 604,119 votes to Joe Biden’s 356,902 votes in those counties, according to political analyst Ray Bonifay, who highlighted the importance of the region in an Oct. 18 commentary on RealClearPolitics.

Amid the surge of Republican early voters, the Harris campaign canceled $2 million in ad reservations in North Carolina media markets on Oct. 29, according to AdImpact. The previous day, the campaign reserved $2.7 million for an ad blitz.

The Carolina Journal reported that Harris was not abandoning the state but that she was shifting her focus to the Raleigh-Durham market.

In Charlotte on Nov. 2, Harris courted conservatives who are reluctant to support the former president.

“We know we have an opportunity in this election to turn the page on a decade of Donald Trump, who has been trying to keep us divided and afraid of each other,” Harris said.

Harris said that she will “represent all Americans, including those who don’t vote for me” and that “the vast majority of us have so much more in common than what separates us.”

Trump, she said, is focused on revenge and personal interests while she will put country over party.

“Donald Trump will walk in with an enemies list” if he is elected, Harris added.

“When I am elected, I will walk in with a to-do list, full of priorities I will get done for you the American people,” she said.

Voting Habits

Nathaniel Scripa moved to North Carolina from Syracuse, New York to live in a state that was more conservative, he told The Epoch Times.

“Now a lot of people from New York and other blue states are moving here and bringing with them their voting habits, which doesn’t make sense because the liberal policies that made their states so terrible are what led many of them here,” he said.

“That makes early voting, and getting people who usually don’t vote to get to the polls, important in this election,” he added.

Harris held rallies centered around the “When We Vote, We Win” motto. Trump believes that, in North Carolina and nationwide, the increase in Republican early voting combined with a traditional strong showing at the polls on Election Day will result in his victory.

“It’s ours to lose,” Trump said in Raleigh. “If we get everybody out and vote, there’s not a thing they can do.”

The ruling came as a recent Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa poll forecast Vice President Kamala Harris leading in Iowa by three points over former President Donald Trump, while other polling organizations estimate that Trump is still ahead in what has been a safely Republican state in recent years.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Iowa filed a lawsuit on behalf of four naturalized citizens on Oct. 30, alleging that Pate’s directive to check registered voters’ citizenship status violated the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution.

On Oct. 22, Pate directed Iowa county auditors to challenge the ballots of voters who had previously identified themselves as noncitizens to the Iowa Department of Transportation (DOT).

In its lawsuit, the ACLU argued that Pate’s list of voters whose ballots would be challenged was based on outdated DOT records, and that many of those listed have already been proven to be citizens.

It alleged that the secretary’s directive places “severe burdens” on the voting rights of the affected voters by keeping the list secret, which it said could undermine their ability to resolve their eligibility.

Pate responded that voters will be allowed to cast a provisional ballot instead, which will be counted if they can prove their citizenship.

U.S. District Judge Stephen Locher declined to grant a preliminary injunction, citing the finding that “some portion” of the registered voter names on Pate’s list have indeed been confirmed to be non-citizens.

“This portion appears to be relatively small—no more than 12 percent—but, still, the injunctive relief requested by Plaintiffs effectively would force local election officials to permit those individuals to vote,” Locher stated in a Nov. 3 ruling.

The plaintiffs had argued that Pate’s directive violates the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), which requires that states complete any program for removing ineligible voters within 90 days before an election.

However, Locher ruled that the NVRA was not implicated in this case because the state had not removed any voters from the voter rolls, and was only requiring them to cast provisional ballots.

“Secretary Pate’s letter is likely to impose a modest additional burden on at least some voters who should not have to bear that burden. All the same, those voters are still permitted to vote and have their ballots counted. The harm is therefore not irreparable,” the judge stated.

Pate last week had blamed the federal government for blocking his office from meeting the 90-day rule, saying that the audit was delayed to October by a lack of cooperation by the Department of Transport, which did not grant access to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database for confirming citizenship.

In a statement, Pate hailed the court’s ruling as a “win for Iowa’s election integrity,” emphasizing the importance of ensuring that only eligible voters can participate in Iowa’s election process.

He said that his office would continue to seek clarity on the citizenship status of voters who had previously self-reported to be noncitizens, while urging the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office to allow the Iowa field office to release information about those voters.

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird stated on X that the ruling ensured that Iowans’ votes will not be canceled out by illegal votes.

“I was glad to lead the fight in court to defend Iowa’s long-standing election integrity laws. Only American citizens can vote in Iowa elections,” she said in a statement.

The Epoch Times has reached out to the ACLU for comment but did not hear back by publication time.

Over the past month, Trump Media & Technology Group Corp, which trades as DJT, has surged by 220 percent, or about $35 per share. As of Wednesday, DJT is trading at around $51 per share.

The company is now valued at more than $10 billion after its shares more than quadrupled since late September.

Meanwhile, X Holdings is valued at around $9.4 billion, based on the most recent value the investment group Fidelity assigned to its stake in the company formerly known as Twitter.

Since it went public in March, Trump’s company stock has been especially volatile, often depending on news updates related to the former president. When a jury convicted him on 34 counts of falsifying business records in New York on May 31, the company’s shares also saw a drop.

Meanwhile, in mid-September, the stock plunged to a low of about $12 per share, which put the company at a value of about $3 billion. But since then, it has posted steady gains on a daily basis.

After the attempted assassination of Trump on July 13, the company’s stock jumped by more than 60 percent.

The recent surge in the company’s stock could be attributed to the proximity of the Nov. 5 election between Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, and his Democratic challenger, Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump owns around 115 million shares of the company, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. With the stock surge, Trump’s net worth has also been on the upswing, according to Forbes magazine, and he’s now worth about $8 billion.

When Musk took over Twitter in October 2022, the company was valued at around $44 billion. At that time, Fidelity Investments valued its stake at $19.7 million. In a recent regulatory filing, Fidelity’s Blue Chip Growth fund said its stake in X Holdings was worth about $4.2 million.

Other companies that Trump Media is now bigger than include Caesars Entertainment, Match Group, Walgreens Boots Alliance, and Hasbro, the maker of the Monopoly game.

Musk has become one of Trump’s most prominent supporters in the former president’s bid to get reelected. Musk has committed more than $70 million to boost Trump and has recently held a number of town halls in support of the former president.

Trump launched Truth Social in 2022, months after his Twitter account was suspended by Twitter’s previous management before Musk took over and renamed the platform X. The former president often uses Truth Social to deliver updates on his campaign, provide endorsements to Republican candidates, and provide his commentary on his legal and civil court cases.

But in recent months, Trump has returned to X and is now heavily using the site to promote his campaign. Musk endorsed the former president in July and has been campaigning for him, namely in the battleground state of Pennsylvania.

Based in Sarasota, Florida, Trump Media has been losing money and struggling to raise revenue, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It lost more than $16 million in the quarter ending June while generating only $837,000 in revenue, according to the filings.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

As of Sunday afternoon, data provided by the University of Florida’s Election Lab shows 41.2 million voted by mail or early in person in the vast majority of states, with only a few states not reporting data.

Compared with four years ago, Republicans are returning more mail-in ballots and voting early in-person. Party affiliation does not mean that voters cast ballot for their party’s nominated candidate, meaning there is no way to definitively know what presidential candidate is ahead.

In states that report votes by party, registered Democrats have a 3.8 percent lead over registered Republicans, with 40 percent to 36.2 percent, respectively. Independent or minor party voters make up about 23.8 percent of the remainder, according to data provided by the lab.

Republicans have a 9-point advantage over Democrats during in-person early voting, while Democrats have a more than 11-point lead over Republicans for mail-in ballot returns, the data show.

As of Oct. 25, only 24.5 percent of mail-in ballots returned were from Republicans, while about 52.3 percent of Democrats did so, according to the Election Lab. Some 22.6 percent of returned mail ballots were from independents or those registered with minor parties.

Republicans in 2020 also had a smaller lead voting in-person early, the data show. At the time, some 40.2 percent of Republicans voted in-person early, while 37.5 percent were Democrats.

States that have reported no data so far include New York, Alabama, New Hampshire, and Oklahoma.

Swing-State Breakdown

In Nevada, Republicans have a 5.1 percent early voting lead—or 31,000 votes—over Democrats, the Election Lab’s data show. That state was called for President Joe Biden over Trump in 2020.

Meanwhile, Republicans have a 6.9-percent advantage over Democrats in Arizona, a state that only reports mail-in ballots. Biden was also certified the victor in Arizona by a slim, 10,000-vote margin four years ago.

Voting by mail is extremely popular in Arizona, with nearly 90 percent of voters having cast their ballots early, most by mail, in 2020. Election officials in Arizona can begin processing and tabulating mail ballots upon receipt, but results cannot be released until one hour after polls close.

Late last week, Republicans pulled ahead in North Carolina, a state won by former President Donald Trump in 2020. By Sunday, the lead increased marginally to about 1.1 percent, or about 30,000 votes, over Democrats, data show.

Earlier this month, Trump visited areas in North Carolina that were ravaged by Hurricane Helene, saying that some Americans in the region “felt helpless and abandoned and left behind by their government.”

“In North Carolina’s hour of desperation, the American people answered the call much more so than your federal government,” he said.

And in mid-October, Vice President Kamala Harris held a rally in Greenville, North Carolina, and told a crowd that she wants to “fight for the ideals of our country and to fight to realize the promise of America.”

Pennsylvania has only reported mail-in ballots as of Oct. 27, showing that Democrats have taken a more than 330,000-vote lead over Republicans. However, Democrats’ lead has narrowed in recent days, down about 19,000 votes since Oct. 24, data show.

Pennsylvania did not have a clear winner in 2020 for four days after Election Day, as officials sifted through a huge backlog of mail ballots. The state is among only a handful that do not permit election workers to process or tabulate mail ballots until 7 a.m. ET on Election Day, which means it will likely again take days before the outcome is known.

Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin do not report party affiliation via the Election Lab website.

Reuters contributed to this report.

(The Epoch Times)—Who doesn’t know them: the blood-sucking vampires, the eerie undead, immortalized in countless films, and inspired primarily by Bram Stoker’s novel “Dracula” (1897). Just think of iconic movies like the silent film “Nosferatu—A Symphony of Horror” (1922), “Dracula” (1958) with Christopher Lee, Roman Polanski’s parody “The Fearless Vampire Killers” (1967), or “Nosferatu—Phantom of the Night” (1979), starring Klaus Kinski as Count Dracula.

Vampires are demons who rise from their graves at night, seeking to drain the blood of innocent victims. Not only do they steal the life force that sustains them, but they also spread their curse. Many victims, bitten by vampires, are “turned,” becoming undead themselves, thus joining the vampire’s dark domain.

The enemies and hunters of vampires face a formidable challenge: vampires can disguise themselves, transforming into creatures like wolves or bats, and often display immense, superhuman strength. They can only be repelled by traditional defenses—garlic cloves, rosaries, holy water, or the Christian cross. But truly destroying a vampire requires decapitation, driving a wooden stake through its heart, or bright sunlight that turns them to dust.

The vampire is an ancient and widespread myth. The image of a blood-sucking undead creature, or similar concepts, has existed across many cultures. This demon embodies superstition—acting as a projection of primal fears, the inexplicable, and evil as the counterpart to good. The notion of a creature that emerges at night, drains its victims’ blood, and draws them from light into darkness is undoubtedly a profoundly threatening one.

When you reflect a little longer on the horror story of the vampire demon, you will inevitably begin to see parallels (or at least points of contact) with the fiat money system that exists worldwide today.

Under Cover of Darkness

It takes place under the cover of darkness: It is fair to say that the vast majority of people are unaware of how today’s fiat money system is structured, how it operates, or what its effects are. Students in schools and universities are, for the most part, left in the dark about it, and the consequences of the fiat money system, therefore, take most people by surprise—unprepared and relentless. Indeed, how many people know that our current fiat money system is a system in which the state’s central bank holds a coercive monopoly on the creation of fiat central bank money, while commercial banks issue their own fiat commercial bank money based on central bank fiat money.

Who knows that fiat money is literally created out of thin air, representing a form of money creation that has no connection whatsoever to “real savings”? And who explains to people that, from an economic perspective, expanding the fiat money supply is inflationary, leading to uneven higher prices for goods and services compared to a situation where the money supply had not been increased? It is also unknown to many that the issuance of fiat money via the credit market causes a misallocation of capital, initially triggering a boom, only to be followed by a bust; that it drives economies into excessive debt; and that it allows the state to grow ever larger at the expense of the freedoms of citizens and entrepreneurs.

In short, for most people, the damage caused by fiat money is unknown; it creeps upon them under the cover of darkness, like a vampire.

Vulnerable Victims and Life Sucked Away

The victims are often helpless and unaware, with the fruits of their labor effectively being siphoned away. Fiat money has something vampire-like about it, enabling one group (those allowed to create fiat money) to live at the expense of others (those forced to use the monopolized money). The first recipients of newly-created fiat money are the beneficiaries. They can use the new money to purchase goods and services whose prices have not yet risen, making them wealthier.

As the money changes hands, it increases demand, and prices of goods rise accordingly. As a result, the late recipients of the new money can only buy goods at higher prices, leaving them at a disadvantage. The first recipients improve their position at the expense of the late recipients. The most severely affected are those who receive nothing from the newly-created money supply—they are, in effect, the ones “sucked dry.”

The vampire-like redistributive effect of fiat money, which operates in the shadows, particularly benefits commercial banks that create fiat commercial bank money, as well as those in a position to take out new bank loans in fiat money.

First and foremost, it is the state and those who benefit from it who are among the biggest winners of the vampire fiat money system. The state finances a significant portion of its expenditure with newly-created fiat money, using it to pay its representatives, employees, and their pensions, as well as the companies from which it purchases goods and services. The state and its beneficiaries are among the early recipients of the newly-created fiat money, making them the primary beneficiaries at the expense of the many who are not closely connected to the state.

One might argue that a redistribution of income and wealth, brought about by the increase in fiat money, would also occur in a commodity or precious metal money system. This is true in principle, but the increase in, say, a gold money system, would be less pronounced than in a fiat money system. The fact is that the latter was deliberately chosen for its vampire-like nature. It benefits the state, banks, and big business at the expense of the general population, keeping them below their economic potential.

Creating Minions

Like a vampire, fiat money infects its victims, turning them into accomplices of the fiat money system. Fiat money quite literally enslaves its users, making them dependent. For instance, fiat money incentivises firms and private households to incur debt and live beyond their means, made possible through artificially low interest rates. People are also encouraged to invest in assets (such as houses and companies) because the chronic inflationary nature of fiat money ensures a continual rise in asset prices. Once people are lured into exposure to fiat money, their economic and financial well-being becomes dependent on the continuation of the inflationary fiat money system and on it being “rescued” by the state and its central bank during times of crisis—even at the expense of those who do not benefit from the system, or benefit much less.

Politicians, bureaucrats, bank employees, and companies that receive government contracts all develop a vested interest in ensuring that the fiat money system is maintained. In this sense, they become fiat money vampire thralls, feeding off the lifeblood of those engaged in productive work by claiming a share of their income.

Moreover, holders of fiat money are the ones who lose out, as fiat money continually loses its purchasing power. In a fiat money system, the central bank ensures that interest rates are kept artificially low—often negative after accounting for inflation—so that savings in time deposits, savings accounts, and bonds are effectively eroded.

Aversion to Light

The vampire and the fiat money system cannot withstand the bright light of day; both will crumble to dust when exposed to sunlight. If people truly understood the negative effects of fiat money and the damage it causes to the world, they would likely reject it—along with the production and employment structures it creates. This is likely why so little is taught about fiat money in schools and universities. Its darker aspects are concealed, with the statist education system as particeps criminis ensuring the bright light of knowledge does not shine on the fiat money system.

Remember that central bank councils are typically referred to as “the guardians of the currency,” and it is said that they “fight” inflation. Nothing could be further from the truth—much like a vampire who welcomes his guests and engages in witty conversation without revealing his true nature. Just as sunlight kills a vampire, sound economic knowledge would destroy the fiat money system, especially when coupled with a simple, well-understood ethic like “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Until that day comes, investors should be aware of the serious economic and ethical flaws of fiat money. The uncomfortable truth is that long-term prosperity and peace cannot be sustained under a fiat money system. Therefore, it is in everyone’s best interest for the bright light of truth to expose and thus end the fiat money system. But how can this be achieved?

By proactively and honestly informing people about the evils of fiat money; by advising them to reduce their dependence on it, both in their lives and their savings; and by promoting a free market for money, while encouraging technological innovations in the monetary sphere that lie beyond the state’s control. Together, these efforts will act like a ray of sunlight striking the vampire-like fiat money system—ultimately causing it to crumble to dust.