People are feeling Trapped

In talking to our kids over the weekend it became apparent of the choices being made in the country. We have 4 kids and their spouses between 40 and 50 years old, prime working age. They are in a wide range of fields from software/tech, healthcare, and agriculture/ranching. The good thing, all are working, either remotely or jobs that automatically have distancing. All work for someone else. What became clear to me is that they are feeling a lot of pressure from their employers to take health risks.

My wife and I are unlucky in one way, we are over seventy and by age and a couple of health issues, at high risk. On the other hand we have the ultimate safety factor, our common sense in what we do. No one can tell us what to do. We are not going to increase our risk when the top COVID 19 tracking service, IHME, is almost doubling death risk estimates for the next 3 months, let alone what the fall estimates will be.

So the political environment is running things. Trump is willing to increase health risks to try and win in November. He is betting that more blacks and minorities, who won’t vote for him, are going to die. The other group that will die, the people over 70, are a group where the majority are Trumpers, but it is a smaller group than the other group who will die.

All this makes trading stocks and gold kind of pointless, especially with the FED and Treasury Dept playing games at unheard of levels. Three trillion dollars of Government debt is going to be auctioned this week, much which will be bought by the FED, so just a balance sheet transaction, probably because they want the government to get cash before the election and before interest rates rise.