The sitting President ended his bid for a second term. His opponent was charged with dozens of made up crimes. Corporate media has become apoplectic in their coverage of the news. A presidential candidate was nearly assassinated. Twice.

But through the maelstrom of crazy circumstances remains a very stark reality: Our nation is in big trouble facing existential threats at a scale not seen since the Civil War.

I am confident in three things.

• Donald Trump will win both the popular vote and the Electoral College in a landslide — the polls are, as always, being manipulated
• The UniParty Swamp, Deep State, and Globalist Elite Cabal are doing everything in their power to steal the election, gaslight Americans, and control the fate of the world
• God’s absolute supremacy means He will choose who is in the Oval Office next January

That last note will certainly ruffle feathers. Even Bible-believing Christians might take offense for many reasons. Some take this stance as not believing in free will. But my worldview is what drives me to work harder knowing that I do not know my place in His plan and therefore all I need to do is fight the good fight with all I have.

For that reason, I want to write my final column ahead of the election as a reminder of the three issues driving voters.

Yes, It’s the Economy

James Carville was right when he said, “It’s the economy, stupid.” This is normally the most pressing issue deciding elections at the federal level. Ironically, it doesn’t always work at the state, county, and local level as we’ve seen with the most desolate voters repeating their mistakes for decades in blue areas.

Unfortunately, the campaigns haven’t put the appropriate level of effort into disseminating their actual economic plans. Trump mentions tariffs often and promises to cut taxes but his campaign should have explained the inflation issue better. They had an opportunity to educate Americans on the Inflation Reduction Act and remind them that Kamala Harris was the deciding vote.

I’m not a campaign advisor for a reason. I’m sure well-paid analysts and experts would tell me that the messaging behind inflation would be too complex if they dove into the details, but I believe in this digital world it wouldn’t have been hard to drive the message home. For whatever reason, there’s still too much emphasis on :30 second pump up pitches and 1:00 minute attack ads. Maybe it works, but I believe with the right messaging the details could be brought to light.

Regardless, the economy is a clear advantage for Trump and if we need a final day message, it should be that Kamala Harris has only promised more of the same as we’ve seen for the last four years.

The Invasion

The border crisis is apparent to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear, so there’s no need to dwell on this issue. We are being invaded and it is going to destroy this nation if it’s not stopped immediately.

The Trump campaign messaging on this has been solid. The only thing I would have added is more of an emphasis on an unavoidable fact: American citizens struggling in urban areas are the most negatively impacted by the border crisis.

It’s funny that the one time an issue truly affects the “underprivileged” is the only time Democrats are unwilling to talk about it. They’ve said climate change harmed minorities more. They said Trump’s tax cuts harmed the poor. They said just about everything is racist, misogynistic, transphobic, or otherwise detrimental to a protected class. But they won’t admit the border invasion does the most harm to the people they pretend to protect.

This is unambiguously a huge argument for Trump.

Abortion

I’ll keep this one short because I’m one of those radical pro-life purists. Yes, I want abortion banned altogether, but I know that’s not going to happen anytime soon.

I also know that the chances of any abortion legislation hitting the next president’s desk are nearly nil. The hypothetical nationwide abortion ban that Trump keeps getting asked about will never happen and, contrary to Project 2025’s wishes, no Republican in DC is seriously considering it. Trump said he’d veto it if it magically appeared.

The hypothetical codification of Roe v. Wade would only hit Kamala’s desk if Democrats control both the House and Senate and then the Senate ejects the filibuster. The massive election shenanigans required for that would be at a scale I do not believe Democrats are willing to use. I could be wrong, but I hope I’m not.

This means that all of those voters, mostly Democrats, who are voting based on the abortion issue are putting a nothingburger on a pedestal. This election will have very little impact on their rights to murder preborn babies. As we’ve seen since Roe v Wade was overturned, it’s not like abortions have been reduced. They’ve risen.

Conclusion

It’s in God’s hands. We have to do our part, vote, get the word out, and hope that we make it through this cycle unscathed. But as always, we still have to get the Word out by spreading the Gospel.

I can’t wait for this election to be over.

The economy ranks as the most important of 22 issues that U.S. registered voters say will influence their choice for president. It is the only issue on which a majority of voters, 52%, say the candidates’ positions on it are an “extremely important” influence on their vote. Another 38% of voters rate the economy as “very important,” which means the issue could be a significant factor to nine in 10 voters.

Voters view Donald Trump as better able than Kamala Harris to handle the economy, 54% versus 45%. Trump also has an edge on perceptions of his handling of immigration (+9 percentage points) and foreign affairs (+5), while Harris is seen as better on climate change (+26), abortion (+16) and healthcare (+10). The candidates are evenly matched on voters’ impressions of who would better address gun policy.

Countless other surveys have told us the same thing.

The American people remember what life was like before the pandemic, and they desperately want to have that back.

In particular, U.S. voters have become deeply frustrated with the cost of living…

“It’s inflation, stupid!” wrote Bernard Yaros, U.S. lead economist at Oxford Economics, in an October 24 report, borrowing from political strategist James Carville’s famous coinage. “Inflation is the foremost issue voters are concerned about, and how it is perceived will determine the election.”

The Biden administration is being blamed for this inflation crisis, and that is going to cost Kamala Harris millions upon millions of votes.

At this moment, demand at food banks is off the charts in many of the key swing states that Harris desperately needs to win.

In Pennsylvania, we are being told that demand “is actually as high as it was at the peak of the pandemic”…

Joe Arthur, who runs the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank, told NBC News the current problem is “a hunger crisis.”

“The need that we’re seeing in our localities is actually as high as it was at the peak of the pandemic, yet there are less resources for those families today.”

At one food bank in Michigan, demand is actually “significantly higher” than it was during the pandemic…

One truck can carry enough food for up to 600 households, but some days even that isn’t enough to meet the demand, which has gone up by 18% over the past 12 months, said Ken Estelle, president of Feeding America West Michigan.

“We have never seen this level of need in the 43 years we have been serving this community. It is significantly higher than during Covid and has pressed us beyond our capacity,” said Estelle. “We’ve just seen this drumbeat increase every month of more people and more people.”

And at one food bank in Wisconsin, demand has more than doubled since 2022…

In the relatively affluent Milwaukee suburbs of Waukesha County, Wisconsin, Rochelle Gamauf said each week she is seeing new faces at her food pantry, Friends With Food, which she started during the pandemic.

The organization has gone from giving out around 420,000 pounds of food in 2022 to over a million pounds in 2023. On a recent week in September, nearly 400 families came through the door, 48 of whom were coming for the first time — a 50% increase in new families compared to last year, she said.

This is the biggest reason why Donald Trump is leading in the polls in all three states.

A lot of the people that are going to these food banks actually have jobs. But they aren’t earning enough to keep up with the rapidly rising cost of living.

If you go to the grocery store and you completely fill up your cart with food, it is going to cost you hundreds of dollars. 25 years ago, I could fill up an entire grocery cart for less than 50 bucks.

Inflation is a hidden tax on all of us, and it is suffocating millions upon millions of households all over the country.

Of course the Biden administration insists that everything is just fine.

For months, the government has been releasing numbers that look great initially, but later they are revised dramatically lower.

Let me give you an example.  Last month we were told that job openings were rising, but now we have learned that they are actually plunging…

Last month, when Kamala Harris still had some chance of winning the election, we were not surprised to learn that according to the extremely political Bureau of Labor Statistics, in August the number of job openings unexpectedly soared from an upward revised 7.7 million to 8.040 million, which was not only a 3-sigma beat to expectations, but was also above the highest Wall Street forecast. Fast forward to today, when Kamala’s chance of winning are effectively zero – as even the suddenly apolitical Jeff Bezos now admits – and shockingly moments ago the BLS reported that in September, the number of job openings  plunged from over 8 million to just 7.4 million, the lowest since early 2021…

This kind of thing has been happening over and over again.

The American people are sick and tired of being fed fake numbers when they can see that economic conditions are clearly deteriorating all around them.

Our standard of living has been steadily declining for years, and most Americans are just barely scraping by at this point.

I am entirely convinced that most of the experts will be completely shocked by the outcome of this election, and our imploding economy will be the number one reason why so many unexpected voters come out of the woodwork.

Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

The latest S&P Global U.S. Manufacturing PMI, a survey-based monthly overview of factory activity in the United States, fell deeper into recession territory in September, data released on Sept. 23 shows. The manufacturing index slumped to 47.0 in September, down from August’s 47.9 and the lowest in 15 months. Readings below 50 represent a contraction in activity.

The decline signals continued deterioration in business conditions within the manufacturing sector, which has been plagued by weakening demand and falling new orders. In particular, new orders in September fell at their fastest pace since December 2022, as manufacturers struggled with declining export demand and reduced domestic sales.

Slumping employment also made a significant negative contribution to the downbeat manufacturing figures, with job losses accelerating at a pace not seen since June 2020.

“Excluding the pandemic, the decline in factory jobs was the steepest since January 2010 as an increasing number of firms reported the need to reduce operating capacity in line with weak sales,” the S&P Global report states.

Cracks in the labor market were behind the Federal Reserve’s decision last week to deliver a large, 50-basis point interest rate cut, with one Fed official saying on Sept. 23 that he was surprised by the pace of deterioration in employment conditions.

“Progress on inflation and the cooling of the labor market have emerged much more quickly than I imagined at the beginning of the summer,“ Atlanta Federal Reserve President Raphael Bostic, a voting member of the Fed’s interest-rate-setting council, said in comments to the European Economics and Financial Centre. ”In this moment, I envision normalizing monetary policy sooner than I thought would be appropriate even a few months ago.”

The central bank’s rate-setting body, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) of which Bostic is a voting member this year, decided last week to lower rates to within a range of 4.75–5.0 percent.

Markets are fully pricing in another rate cut when the policymaking panel meets again on Nov. 7, with the odds split roughly evenly between a smaller quarter-point cut or another jumbo half-point reduction.

But while central bank officials celebrate inflation falling closer to the Fed’s 2 percent target, Monday’s S&P Global data suggests it may be too soon to declare victory in the fight against high prices.

Inflationary pressures picked up across both goods and services, per the S&P Global report, with the increase driven mostly by rising input costs. Prices charged for goods and services rose at their fastest pace in six months, with service sector costs surging due to wage growth. Input costs in services grew at their highest rate in a year, reflecting increased labor expenses, while manufacturing input cost growth cooled slightly, aided by lower energy prices and fewer supply chain snags.

“The survey’s price gauges meanwhile serve as a warning that, despite the PMI indicating a further deterioration of the hiring trend in September, the FOMC may need to move cautiously in implementing further rate cuts,” Chris Williamson, chief business economist at S&P Global, said in a statement.

In contrast to a deepening slump in manufacturing, service sector activity grew at a solid pace in September, per the S&P Global report. The services business activity index came in at 55.4, a slight decline from August’s 55.7. Relatively robust growth in services helped lift the composite PMI measure—which combines both manufacturing and services—to 54.4 in September, a slight decline from the prior month.

“The early survey indicators for September point to an economy that continues to grow at a solid pace, albeit with a weakened manufacturing sector and intensifying political uncertainty acting as substantial headwinds,” Williamson wrote, while partly blaming election-related uncertainty for a sharp slump in optimism about business output in the year ahead.

The deterioration in output-related confidence sent the sentiment gauge to its lowest level since October 2022 and the second-lowest since the pandemic.

You have to start with the most fundamental concept here: central planning doesn’t work. That’s the first principle. Central planning of shoes doesn’t work. Central planning of wheat doesn’t work, and central planning of (fake) money doesn’t work.

Central banks in general—and the Fed in particular—are on a mission impossible. They don’t know what the interest rate should be. Nobody does. That’s an exclusive function of a voluntary market of savers and borrowers.

A politburo can’t centrally plan interest rates any more than they can potatoes. They’re inevitably going to fail and cause significant damage.

It’s also important to remember central banks have NOTHING to do with the free market. They’re actually the antithesis of the free market. In Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto, central banking is the 5th plank.

The lying media portrays central bankers as selfless bureaucrats who are just trying to save the economy. It’s a load of BS. Central bankers are the enemy of the average person.

Now, back to the rate hiking charade.

The Fed had embarked on one of the steepest rate hike cycles in history in 2022. They did so because price increases were spiraling out of control after the Fed inflated the money supply by around 40%—a staggering amount—amid the Covid mass psychosis starting in 2020.

In other words, they were forced to embark on this steep rate hike cycle to combat the inflation that they caused in the first place.

At the time, I knew they would never be able to tame inflation because of the skyrocketing federal debt load. If the Fed was able to raise interest rates to the point where it would actually defeat inflation, the rising interest expense on this exploding pile of debt would have bankrupted the US government.

The federal debt’s interest cost is already higher than the defense budget. Soon, it could exceed Social Security and other entitlements and become the number one item in the federal budget.

For context, the last time inflation was raging, Fed Chair Paul Volcker needed to raise interest rates above 17%. However, that was in the early 1980s, when the US debt-to-GDP ratio was around 30%. Today, it’s north of 123% and rising rapidly.

Today’s higher debt load and accompanying interest expense are why the Volcker option is not on the table. There’s no way the Fed could raise rates any near 17%. They barely took rates above 5% this time before capitulating—not even 1/3 of what Volcker did.

In short…

1. The federal interest expense exceeded $1 trillion for the first time recently.
2. The federal interest expense has recently exceeded national defense spending for the first time and is poised to become the largest item in the budget.
3. The US government is now borrowing money to pay the interest on the money it has already borrowed.

Considering all of this, Fed Chair Powell’s recent announcement that the rate hike cycle is officially over shouldn’t have been a surprise. Now, we’re going back to monetary easing.

The Fed’s Propaganda Victory

The Fed and its apologists in the lying media are trying to gaslight you and tell you inflation has been defeated, which is absurd.

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is the most politically manipulated statistic in all of government. That is saying something because a lot of government statistics are completely manipulated, but inflation, as measured by the CPI, is probably the most manipulated.

The CPI is a basket of prices trying to measure the average price changes for 340 million Americans. It’s an impossible task because every individual has a different price basket. Consider someone who lives in New York City compared to someone who lives in rural Montana. They have totally different price baskets.

Using the CPI as a measure of price increases for 340 million people is even more preposterous than taking the average temperature across 50 states in the US as a meaningful statistic to determine what clothes you should wear today.

Further, the government gets to cherry-pick what items go in the CPI basket and their weightings. It’s like letting a student grade his own paper.

In short, the CPI is a worthless statistic. It’s misleading government propaganda intended to conceal the government’s atrocious currency debasement. So, according to their own rigged CPI metric, has the Fed accomplished its inflation goal? Nope.

They didn’t even reach their totally arbitrary 2% CPI target before they declared a fake victory. By the way, targeting 2% inflation is a nonsensical concept. Inflation is poisonous at any level. Think of it like a bucket that continuously leaks 2% of the water it carries.

That’s the kind of outcome the clowns at the Fed are trying to engineer for the economy—but they couldn’t even do that.

In short, the Fed’s narrative that inflation has been defeated is so laughably ridiculous that the only explanation is deliberate deception.

Here’s a way to think of it.

Imagine you used to weigh 180 pounds in 2019. In 2020, you gained 10 pounds and are now 190 lbs. In 2021, you gained 25 pounds and are now 215 lbs. You tell concerned friends and family not to worry about your weight gain because it’s just “transitory.”

In 2022, you go on a diet but still gain 20 pounds. You are now 235 lbs. In 2023, you continue on your diet and gain 10 pounds. You are now 245 lbs. In 2024, you have gained 5 pounds so far and are now 250 lbs.

The rate at which you gain weight is down, but your weight has increased around 40%, from 180 lbs to 250 lbs. You now declare victory, end your diet, and go back to the lifestyle that caused the weight gain surge in the first place.

This is the same kind of “victory” the Fed is declaring with inflation and the money supply, which also grew around 40% over a similar period.

In short, they are gaslighting people and spewing propaganda. So, why are they attempting to deceive people? Nobody knows for sure except them.

But if I had to guess, they are desperately trying to conceal the massive economic destruction they have already caused and the coming destruction they will cause, which could be much worse than anything we’ve seen so far.

It could all go down soon… and it won’t be pretty. It will result in an enormous wealth transfer from savers to the parasitical class—politicians, central bankers, and those connected to them.

Unfortunately, there’s little any individual can practically do to change the course of these trends in motion.

The best you can and should do is to stay informed so that you can protect yourself in the best way possible and even profit from the situation.

That’s why I just released an urgent new PDF report with all the details.

It’s called The Most Dangerous Economic Crisis in 100 Years… the Top 3 Strategies You Need Right Now.

Click here to download it now.

However, the Bureau of Labor Statistics published the latest CPI at 2.9%, despite annual inflation being 1.4% when she took office. Inflation is a disguised tax and accumulated inflation since January 2021, when the Biden-Harris administration started, has increased more than 20%.

Of course, Democrats blame inflation on the war, the pandemic, and the science-fantasy concept of “supply chain disruptions.” No one believed it, because most commodities have declined and supply tensions disappeared back to normality, but prices continued to rise.

As a result, Harris invented the concept of greedy grocery stores and evil corporations to blame for inflation and justify price controls. Is it not ironic? She blames grocery stores and corporations for inflation, but when price inflation drops, she proudly takes credit.

The reality is that the Kamala Harris plan, like all interventionist governments, creates and strives for inflation. Inflation is a hidden tax. Governments love it and perpetuate it by printing money through deficit spending and imposing regulations that harm trade, competition, and technological creative destruction. Big government is big inflation.

Inflation is the way in which the government tricks citizens into believing that administrations can provide for anything. It disguises the accumulated debt, quietly transfers wealth from the private sector to the government and condemns citizens to being dependent hostages of government subsidies. It is the only way in which they can continue to spend a constantly depreciated currency and present themselves as the solution. Furthermore, it is the perfect excuse to blame businesses and anyone else who sells in the currency that the government creates.

Kamala Harris will do nothing to cut inflation because she wants inflation to disguise the monster deficit and debt accumulation. In the latest figures, the deficit has soared to $1.5 trillion in the first ten months of the fiscal year. Public debt has soared to $35 trillion, and in the administration’s own forecasts, they will add a $16.3 trillion deficit from 2025 to 2034. It is worse. The previously mentioned figure does not include the $2 trillion in additional debt coming from Kamala’s economic plan.

Harris is aware that her proposals to impose an unrealized capital gains tax, an economic aberration, and other tax hikes will not generate the $2 trillion in additional taxes she seeks. So, she needs the Fed to monetize as much as possible, eroding the US dollar’s purchasing power and making all Americans poorer in the process, only to blame corporations and grocery stores later. Furthermore, it is a way to present the government as the solution to the problem they create, promising the lunacy of price controls and enormous subsidies in a constantly depreciated currency.

It is a perfect plan to nationalize the economy in the style of Peronist socialism in Argentina.

Increase spending, deficits, and debt, making the size of government larger on the way in. Monetize as much debt as possible and cut rates to make it easier for the bankrupt government to borrow. When deficits balloon and inflation soars, increase taxes to the private sector and hike rates, which increases further the size of government in the economy. And you blame corporations?

Governments do not reduce prices. Governments create and perpetuate inflation by printing currency that loses value every year.

Corporations, landlords, and grocery stores do not create or increase inflation; they reduce it through competition and efficiency. Even if all corporations, grocery stores, and landlords were evil and stupid at the same time, they would not make aggregate prices rise and consolidate a constant trend of increases. For the same quantity of money, even a monopoly would not be able to increase aggregate prices. The only one that can make aggregate prices rise, consolidate, and continue increasing, although at a slower pace, is the government issuing and printing more currency than the private sector demands.

By admitting that the deficit will soar by $16.3 trillion in ten years in a budget that expects record revenues, no recession, and continued employment growth, the Harris team is conceding that they will strive for inflation to dilute the currency in which that debt is issued… and make you poorer.

Interventionists argue that the government does not have a budget constraint, only an inflation constraint, and can always tax the excess money in the system. Beautiful. This implies an increase in the size of the government during periods of economic expansion and further government expansion during periods of perceived normalcy. The government receives an enormous transfer of wealth from the productive sector, resulting in the creation of a dependent citizen class.

High taxes are not a tool to reduce debt. High debt and high taxes are tools to confiscate the productive sector’s wealth and create a subclass of dependent citizens.

Socialism redistributes middle-class wealth to bureaucrats, not rich to poor.

Massive government spending, constantly increasing taxes, and printing money. A plan to reduce the economy to serfdom.

Harris’ economic plan is not aiming to reduce inflation but to perpetuate it. Indeed, this economic policy mirrors Argentina’s 21st-century socialism, and it threatens the US dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency. The government does not determine the level of confidence in a currency. When confidence in a currency declines, it does so quickly. Saying it will not happen in the US because it has not occurred yet is the equivalent of driving at 200mph and saying, “We have not killed ourselves yet; accelerate.”.

About the Author

Daniel Lacalle (Madrid, 1967). PhD Economist and Fund Manager. Author of bestsellers “Life In The Financial Markets” and “The Energy World Is Flat” as well as “Escape From the Central Bank Trap”. Daniel Lacalle (Madrid, 1967). PhD Economist and Fund Manager. Frequent collaborator with CNBC, Bloomberg, CNN, Hedgeye, Epoch Times, Mises Institute, BBN Times, Wall Street Journal, El Español, A3 Media and 13TV. Holds the CIIA (Certified International Investment Analyst) and masters in Economic Investigation and IESE.