Three decisions -- first Fischer, which is of immediate importance to quite a few people.

This case turned on the DOJ's decision to abuse Sarbanes-Oxley as a means of charging Jan 6 defendants with obstruction of justice based on, to quote the opinion

...imposes criminal liability on anyone who corruptly “alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding.” 18 U. S. C. §1512(c)(1). The next subsection extends that prohibition to anyone who “otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so.” §1512(c)(2)."

This was a "novel theory" that was clearly not envisioned when Congress wrote the law.  If you recall this law was enacted after Enron had prosecutions fail because the alleged guilty party didn't commit an offense directly, but basically told someone else to who had no other liability and they would have been  liable if they did the same thing themselves, but managed to evade it via this mechanism.

I'd argue that evasion was improper but it is what it is and SarBox was passed to close that method of obstruction, making attempting to prevent an official proceeding via an act of either fabrication or destruction of something (directly or indirectly) that evidences corrupt intent but isn't itself a crime illegal -- if the outcome obstructs an official proceeding.

Ok, as far as it goes and in that realm.

But the January 6th defendants didn't destroy or fabricate evidence by their actions, nor did they induce anyone else to do so, which is the element of criminality that SarBox explicitly addressed.

In other words the DOJ tried to extend the statute beyond the four corners of the page and the clear intent from Congress when it was passed, but Congress never ratified that extension prior to the acts in question on January 6th.  Ratifying it now could only encompass future acts, since the ex-post-facto clause prohibits making something illegal later that wasn't at the time it occurred, and in any event thus far (more than three years in) Congress has declined to act in that regard.

The statutory analysis is quite clear and in no way implicates any sort of "new" holding.  In fact to the contrary as it was the DOJ that maliciously sought to find a statute that they could abuse through their own interpretation which is simply not a power they have.

Congress makes laws and the Executive enforces them; the Executive, of which the DOJ is a part, cannot write its own laws or amend existing ones.

This likely impacts many people already sentenced for acts undertaken on January 6th along with a large number of pending cases and is a slap in the face to the DOJ's attempt to reimagine SarBox to suit their purposes, remanding the case in question that reached the court.  It doesn't, however, exonerate anyone who, for example, trespassed or committed what amounts to vandalism; physical damage and trespass remain illegal of course, but the fact pattern for each person in the case of trespass is different (many of the Jan 6 defendants were literally waved through an open door by a police officer, which makes a claim of "criminal trespass" laughably defective.)  Indeed it also impacts some of the pending Trump indictments and, in combination with the immunity claim which is still to come as to a decision, essentially all of them.

That this took nearly four years to reach the Supremes is an outrage, and so are those who were sentenced (and presumably have served time) on a serious felony charge that is now declared legally void.  I suspect there will be an attempt to hold people accountable for that but I have no odds on success in that regard.  However, an attempt to do this sort of "creative interpretation" in the future now comes with an attendant risk of personal liability for malicious prosecution, and thus should pretty-much stomp on any future DOJ attempt to do so.

The second, Loper Bright, is a jurisdictional earthquake long overdue.

I put these together (along with the third) as one Ticker because they're fundamentally the same thing.  All three cases turn on the question as to whether an Executive Department or Administrative Agency can effectively color into a law that which is not clearly there, when the Constitution sets forth that it is the exclusive purview of Congress to craft laws and the Executive is required to enforce them as-written, not as they might prefer they be written.

Specifically this case addresses what is known as The Chevron Deference for the case in which it arose, where the Supremes found that a reasonable Administrative interpretation where ambiguity was believed by an agency to exist was presumptively correct.  That didn't mean you couldn't challenge it but it did mean you had a very difficult road to travel in doing so because it was presumed the agency both acted in good faith and had the right interpretation as they saw it, and that was valid.

In other words rather than entrust Judges and Juries to interpret the fact pattern in the fact of a potential case or controversy and assign the duty to interpret the law to said courts as the Constitution provides and which traces directly to The Federalist and, I might add, in the American era as held valid in Marbury .v. Madison this doctrine instead usurped that authority into unelected members of the Executive Branch and away from both Judiciary and Congress.

The 1984 decision in Chevron in fact turned the APA itself and all precedent prior on its ear.  The problem is that the APA, an act of Congress, said the exact opposite and in fact even an act of Congress can't change this as the Constitution delegates this authority!

Indeed when there is controversy the alleged "expertise" of an agency is far less reviewable and public than that of a courtroom.  Judges deal with this every day in the process of evidentiary hearings; various experts, many of them at odds with one another, testify and offer evidence that is weighed.  The Chevron decision essentially destroyed that process of review in favor of allowing an administrative agency to present its exclusive view of such an interpretation without any capacity to examine the evidence, sources, and potential conflicts of interest, declaring that because it was from an Executive Agency it was above reproach and thus presumptively correct, forcing the challenger to prove it either wrong or corrupt.

Tossing this decision is decades overdue, particularly given the wild-eyed expansion of this decision's reach over the last few decades.  The Justices were, however, quite-careful to state that no, this doesn't automatically void everything done under the former view in that "stare decisis" controls in those cases and thus if someone wishes to bring an attempt to reverse one or more of those decisions they still will have to show both standing and cause to believe the former interpretation is wrong.

This will, however, stick a fork in (for example) BATFE attempts to claim that a "bump stock" is a "machine gun" when the term "machine gun" is in fact defined in the statute, forcing BATFE to return to Congress and get the statute amended should they wish to proceed.  (You might note that decision was overturned in this session of the court as well, which I note further on.)

The third from a few days ago, SEC .v. Jarkesy, is for all intents and purposes the same thing.  Here the SEC had arrogated to itself via Dodd-Frank the right to remove a penalty proceeding from the courts into administrative action.  The Supremes found this was a wild-eyed violation of the 7th Amendment when the finding and proposed penalty is best characterized as a penalty that would attach to a civil tort.  A purely restitutive order, that is that a malefactor had done something dishonest or otherwise in violation of SEC regulations and the order was to return to the damaged party the property they formerly had (typically money in the context of securities, of course) can be administratively handled but an action that essentially fines someone (where the proceeds go to the government) or is intended in whole or part to punish implicates the 7th Amendment right to trial by jury.

Originally the Securities Act did not permit this sort of cudgel but the 2010 Dodd-Frank law added that to the SEC's list of powers.  Jarkesy was subsequently accused of securities fraud, an offense which is at its essence identical to the common-law tort of fraud.  The 7th Amendment was written specifically because this sort of administrative adjudication of alleged torts was one of the means by which the British tormented the Colonists, who had no right of judicial review.  Again the allocation of this power dates back to The Federalist as it does in the Chevron case, and again even Congress can't change that absent a Constitutional Amendment.

There are those who are screaming about all of this but the fact of the matter is that all three cases are at their essence the same question, the same controversy and have the same answer.  The Constitution sets forth the prime "Rules of the Road" and if you don't like them then the proper method to alter that is to amend the Constitution, as we have done several times through the years.

Cases and Controversies have as their proper place of adjudication in our Constitutional system a public courtroom where experts can vie to present their opinions on the facts, if challenged they must be able to defend them in open court against attempts to impeach their testimony so the public can see what's going on, the record then presents itself in written form as precedent (particularly when such is taken up on appeal and affirmed or overturned) and thus in the future people can look to said public record with a reasonable belief that, absent a future public court proceeding they can act in accordance with that record of decisions and know what the outcome will be in advance.  Administrative entities acting behind a closed door offering an "expert opinion" that cannot be countered or impeached because it is stamped "theirs" and thus controls is unconstitutional in the first instance as is well-documented all the way back to The Federalist and original debates on our government's formation, and that is in fact at the core of all three of these holdings.

To put it in short form with regards to all three rulings (and Cargill as well since we're on the current court term's decisions, which is basically the same thing): It's about damn time.

After last night we know who isn't: Joe Biden

Trump was horrible.  He had multiple opportunities, with the most-striking being on both illegal immigration and "climate change/energy" to run Biden through with a verbal sword and leave the pieces all over the lectern. He demonstrated last night that he simply doesn't have the chops to think on his feet and while that might not be fatal for a President it isn't want you want in the office.

If you want a politician -- that is, someone who lies while staring into your eyes -- as President you certainly can pick either of these guys.  That was on full display.

But Biden, when you get down to it, wasn't there.  Despite basically disappearing for multiple days to prepare, and then throwing gasoline all over a raging fire of speculation that he'd be drugged for the debate by refusing Trump's challenge to roll up their sleeves for a blood draw and tox screen to detect any "chemical enhancement" the clear "deer in the headlights" thing was worse than I've ever seen it over the last three years.

Biden got away with this in 2020 due to the pandemic and basically campaigning from his bedroom.  That won't work this time around.

If last night showed us anything at all its that allowing anyone to set terms on who can be on the stage and the process we use today to nominate people for this office has been corrupted and broken beyond repair.

... and it does not matter what the topic is.

I've written on this before but I believe it bears repeating: You can choose the basis of evaluation for virtually anything but if the outcome matters to you then there is only one acceptable decision, and that is engineering-based.

Engineering takes the current circumstances as the "baseline" and refuses to accept any path which cannot be proved to make it better, and further expects that if you represent it will be better and it isn't you lose all the money you made and if harm comes to others you go to prison.

No exceptions are allowed.

If the bridge has a sign on it that says "10 ton weight limit" provided your vehicle does not mass more than ten tons it must be safe to drive across said bridge no matter how many other vehicles are on the bridge.  The sign didn't say "one vehicle only", it said "10 ton weight limit."  The engineer who specified that has certified that provided the materials were not fraudulently sourced and that the bridge was assembled according to his stamped plans it is safe for you to drive over it with a vehicle that masses no more than ten tons.

Period.

We must apply this to all matters of public policy, particularly when we consider same to be more than a suggestion.  The NEC works this way; you can run 20 amps on 12 gauge non-metallic wire (e.g. type NM, usually called "Romex") in a house.  If the breaker is not larger than 20 amps the wire will not overheat and catch your house on fire provided it is actually the specified 12 gauge and made out of copper.  Every wire downstream from that breaker which connects between things must be 12 gauge for this reason; the breaker protects the wire and the engineering standard says that this combination will produce a safe -- that is, the wire will not overheat and catch your house on fire -- outcome.  (Yes, this is a bit simplified and the tables have "but for" limitations, but its generally the case.)

Note that while this table was developed using engineering any runt with a pair of lineman's pliers and some wire staples can run cable without being able to do the calculations to independently determine this.  A table is sufficient for an electrician wiring your house; he does not have to understand the math, only the rules which are clearly on the table.

Now it may be the case that in certain circumstances you may not find the performance acceptable but provided you follow that "engineering" rule in a typical residence per the table it is safe.

The standard against one judges in this paradigm is always the status quo; that is, a bridge must not fall down because while you may find it inconvenient (or even unacceptable) to not be able to cross the river without it (absent either a boat or swimming) you won't fall from height and possibly be crushed by the debris without the bridge existing, and obviously a person now under the bridge and subject to having tons of concrete and steel fall on him can't have that happen if its not there.  That is, the status quo is that you are safe from being crushed from above or dropped from height and thus that status quo must not be violated by building the bridge.  If you cannot assure that and, if it that standard is violated someone will be punished for it appropriately, including being asset-stripped, thrown in prison or even executed then you must not build the bridge.  Period.

We must apply this to the status quo when it comes to energy, medicine, appliances and everything else -- and insist that our governments do so without exception.  Further, for those who make said policy or act on it if they violate this stricture they must be held personally accountable for all of the damage that occurs without exception -- no "waivers" or "immunity" may ever be permitted in that regard.

Want a real goal for 2024 in terms of enforcing a change in our so-called "social contract"?

Now you have one.

Go on back and read the original if you'd like as I score along from last year's prognostications....

• The virus "response" is collapsing and will continue to: DING DING DING!  There are still a handful of people screaming at the top of their lungs and making a spectacle of themselves much like a 2 year old that has been told they cannot have another candy, but the uptake on the latest shots is what it is and the sales job has failed.  What's astounding are the people who are trying to re-write history, especially those who threatened others and now try to claim they didn't, or try to claim they did not prognosticate that we would go through a "winter of being dead" if we didn't comply.  Well, we didn't comply and we're not dead, and now here are in winter again.  I'll leave the rest for the -NAD side of the blog.
  
  
• That collapse and the increases it brings in cost will accelerate the detonation of the federal budget via CMS.  DING!  Over two trillion was spent there last fiscal year ending September 30th and its not stopping either; through November, which is one sixth of the fiscal year (two months) the current total is $306 billion .vs. $291 billion last year.  While that is "only" a 5% increase thus far if you think we can keep paying that, uh, no.
  
  
• Other schemes peddled as "medical advice" will be increasingly explored.  I'm going to call that a "push" and bring it forward, although I could probably take credit for it -- specifically with regard to certain medications.  But its not clear that I will "win" that argument thus far, so we'll see.
  
  
• Severe dislocations due to mandates through industry.  POINT!  Its literally all over the place from various firms screaming about "back to the office" to pilot shortages to severe military recruiting problems and, not surprisingly, nursing.  All of these had one thing in common -- they all had mandates and some of them (like the military) have now tried to say "oh, come back please, we didn't mean it."  Uh huh.
  
  
• Cost-shifting in "online shopping" will crack.  MISS. It is what it is but the prediction I made as a part of it, which was that the "order today, have tomorrow" game is getting screwed with in a big way, appears to be verifying -- at least in my experience albeit with a few exceptions.  I'd say that "time to get it to 'ya", if you're not paying specifically for speed, is up somewhere around 30%.  Nonetheless the prediction was it would blow up in people's faces and it did not, so no point for me.
  
  
• The market is not done going down.   MISS.  Surprisingly so too for me, but it is what it is.
  
  
• The Omnibus insures inflation is not over either.  POINT.  Oh I know, last few months "core" is coming in supposedly but let's cut the crap folks -- roughly double the Fed's "primary gauge" isn't "normalized" and reality is what it is.  
  
  
• Rates are not done going up.  POINT.  The IRX started at 4.32 (roughly) and is now at 5.2.  That's almost a full point higher.  The TNX is basically flat, but the curve inversion is worse, and not by a little (in fact on the TNX-IRX it is three times worse), than it was on 12/31/2022.
  
  
• Business is going to have to return to employees being functional.  MISS.  I expected a crap ton of firings and while they're starting now December alone doesn't count.  I can't take credit for it when its six months+ late, although look before because I'm carrying that one forward.
  
  
• DEI and ESG will be increasingly recognized as DIE.  NEAR MISS, but I get the point over Harvard, MIT and UPenn among others.  This one's not over either.
  
  
• Russia isn't going to be "beaten" and the Ukraine support will vanish.  Point.  The vanishing is happening (no supplemental yet eh?) and Russia definitely hasn't been beaten.  The war's not over yet but anyone who thinks Z's troops were going to stomp Putin (with our assistance or otherwise) has been sadly wrong, and plenty of Ukrainians are dead as a consequence.
  
  
• The impact of the Omnibus will be historic, and nasty.  MISS.  Some of the most-egregious provisions are still in there but not yet recognized, and thus while some have been (and even reversed, such as the near-total ban on drilling) not enough for me to take credit for it, so nope.
  
  
• Green energy is headed for the dustbin and firms are in trouble.  POINT!  Ford, GM and similar are all running away from EVs.  So is virtually everyone else, although there's still a brave face on it coming from various quarters.  It doesn't work thermodynamically and the cars are piling up on lots among other things.  
  
  
• DeSantis will either take the RNC pole position or blow up.  The latter -- POINT.  You have to chuckle when Haley is nearly beating him, and she is.  DeSantis is losing by thirty points or more to Trump.  I'd say that's "blown up."
  
  
• Political shifts are going to increase in ugliness.  POINT!  Comity?  What's that?
  
  
• Economic and political disparities in areas between "red" and "blue" are going to produce actual fractures in supply lines and cooperation.  POINT!  Blue cities screaming about "migrants" that they refuse to get behind blocking at the border, proving without question that their "support" was in fact nothing more than a desire to screw other states?  Well.... yeah.  Among other things.
  
  
• Illegal immigration forces policy changes.  Nope.  Not yet.  There are signs of it, including rumblings about calling up the Guard and putting down crossings by "whatever means must be used" but thus far other than the fencing that Texas put up (and they won a court challenge on Biden's people cutting them too) it hasn't folded back on the government yet, but no point for me.
  
  
• Housing is nowhere near done going down.  POINT.  We ain't there gentlemen; the market continues to remain locked, although I am seeing plenty of price-cuts here it doesn't matter as they're not moving.  This is going to be a huge story forward and will be below once again.
  
  
• Auto prices, specifically used cars, are going to collapse.  MISS but just barely.  The various "feelers" at the auction level say I might be off by a month or two and it IS starting, along with the incentives coming back on new vehicles.  Nonetheless its no point for me, but I'm going to carry that one forward into next year as well.

So how's this look.... I count twelve points, 1 push and six misses for a hit rate of 12/19 = 63%.  Not bad.

On to 2024!

Let's do the two pull-forwards first and then the rest:

• Car prices - kaboom!  Its starting already, and some of the biggest collapses are going to come in the EV area.  Simply put those who want them bought them and nobody else wants them.  You can't get around the charge time and distance requirements and it matters not what you mandate; people do not want them, especially when the credits expire and suddenly they cost wildly more than a gas-powered vehicle.
  
  
• Businesses will be forced to cut those who do not produce.  The inflation squeeze is not over and the "RIP" meme stuff sounds great but only works when labor is in control of the equation.  The tide is turning on this folks, and with the below on the economy if you're one of those people who has played that game you're first to get a pink slip.
  
  
• The "great congressional reset" put forward by the current speaker, that is returning to regular order with his extensions expiring, are going to amuse -- and fail.  We'll see if he has the rocks to stand firm when the other bills fail to be completed by the end of January.  He said "no more extensions and CRs" but when he said that originally I disbelieved, said so in public and still do.  Therefore my prediction (for the point) is that no return to regular order, which means there will be at least one and possibly several more "extensions", "Omnibus" and "CRs", which in turn brands the GOP as a pack of liars.
  
  
• Silly season, otherwise known as the federal elections for November, will bring multiple surprises -- and upsets.  What this means is that to get the point either (1) someone other than Trump or Biden has to actually win (whether by oddity or being knocked out) or (2) a serious third-party challenge must actually get onto the ballot or some state-led action (e.g. barring Trump from the ballot successfully) has to occur and throw the result from what it would otherwise be.  If either Trump or Biden wins I do not get the point.
  
  
• Congress will not materially reign in spending and a secondary inflationary spike will start to hit before the end of the year.  It is what it is and right now Congress is driving a roughly eight percent inflation rate.  Oh, you think its 4% right now?  Uh, no it isn't; short-term absorption can temper what would otherwise show up but can't stop it, and that short-term stuff goes away.  Specifically there is a drawdown on excess reserves that is almost gone and will soon be gone, and there's nothing The Fed or anyone else can do about that.  It is serving as a buffer right now but that is ending, and soon.  The usual pipeline delay is still there -- which means coming into the elections things get quite interesting.
  
  
• There will not be four, five or six rate cuts.  No point if there are four or more.  Less than four and.... ding!
  
  
• There will be at least a 10% drawdown from the closing market price of the SPX on 12/31, and I get two points for a 20% or greater one.  If the market goes up in the early part of the year its not 10% from there, its 10% from the 12/31 price.  Yes, this means I might by buying some PUTs and no, that's not investment advice although I do consider them "on sale" at the moment with the VIX trading around 13.
  
  
• Housing begins to crack in a serious form.  It is too early, and this year will remain too early.  If you have to move then do so, because selling a bubble and buying one is a net zero, but for the love of God do not take on leverage to acquire real estate in any form at this time.  You're asking for it straight up the chute.  It will be years before a reasonable bottom comes -- best guess is three to five years out.
  
  
• AirBNB and similar are done.  Yes, there will still be short-term rentals and places like the Smokies are not going to have them disappear by any means, but the salad days are over and all these firms and their "hosts" are in for some serious financial trouble. $200 a day for a stay and close to that base price again in fees and such, including exorbitant cleaning fees and "expectations" (e.g. "you do the laundry and take out the trash or get fined") are going to disappear as people increasingly decide that a hotel is a better deal (and a lot of the time -- it is!)  Anyone who bought one of these with leverage (e.g. has a note on it) is going to get ruined and the recent practice in places like Sevier County of assessing all said properties are commercial (they are) and subjecting them to commercial property tax and other rates should and this year will expand.  This in turn means both the revenue and expense sides of the balance sheet for these sorts of properties are going to get squeezed against the owners; anyone in them with leverage is exposed to being financially destroyed.
  
  
• A serious revolt begins as regards illegal immigrants (or "migrants" if you prefer.)  This probably does not involve mass-violence although it might.  It does involve economic revolt in all respects, particularly when it comes to those places that are Democrat-controlled (e.g. cities and similar) and it will come from those who already are trying to claw their way up, meaning already-present Black and Hispanic Americans.  Given the upcoming elections this has every possibility of not just shaping state and local elections but national outcomes as well.  This is and will remain all about economics - when all is said and done people vote their wallet and that not only never has changed it never will change.  This is the biggest threat to Democrat office-holders in November by far; their "open border and handout" policy was crafted in a way to screw Red states and areas but that was always intellectually bankrupt, particularly while Democrat-heavy places extolled their "sanctuary" status.  Now they have to deliver on their promise and to do it they must take from those who elect them which is not very popular with said electorate (big shock, right?)
  
  
• The Middle East conflict will not be settled; it will instead expand and become a serious problem.  I'm not all that good at prognosticating the twists and turns of military insanity, but if you think there's any indication that its going to calm down over the next year may I recommend a psychiatrist -- you need one.  Significant disruption to international trade is already occurring and is likely to expand and we, in America, have ceded our authority and capacity to absorb it on an inflation front, having squandered that in the little adventure over in Ukraine.  This is already leading to wild increases in container transport prices and it just takes one sunk ship for insurance to become essentially unobtainable for commercial trade.  This is not WWI or WWII where even with armed military escort transports were routinely sunk.  We lack the capacity, given the ridiculous increase in ocean-bound shipping, to provide such protection (leaky though it would be) even if we wanted to.  In short essentially all global trade relies on the lack of military action by belligerents in any focused sort of way on said trade routes and we simply cannot escort same and thus secure it.  At the same time we can "see" everything (and so can everyone else) in the satellite age so the premise of "surprise" across oceans is for all intents and purposes void as well.
  
  
• America will walk away from Ukraine; while nobody will have "won" Ukraine will have to sue for peace on essentially the terms Russia wanted originally.  You can't take and hold ground without boots being there and Ukraine simply has fewer boots available -- and plenty of theirs have run away rather than enlist and fight.  This was utterly predictable from the outset; Ukraine is not and has never been a cohesive society.  I pointed this out originally when this dust-up started -- there are four "rough" factions within the nation and they all hate each other sufficiently to be willing to slaughter the others, given even a weak excuse.  Its been that way for a thousand years and is why the USSR basically allowed them to be "autonomous."  Nonetheless whether we or anyone else likes it the Russians have their naval port and will not give it up and unless you're willing to fight a nuclear war over it you're crazy to try.
  
  
• We will be forced to deal with the realities of the medical and pharmaceutical business -- and it will start this year.  It won't be over and done this year by any means, but the hiding of the sausage is simply untenable at this point and while there is still lots of hand-waving the capacity to absorb it and drive more spending into the health care field on worthless and even harmful actions has now gone so far it threatens the fiscal survival of the nation.  The people who refuse to adapt to this and get their own health in order -- which I've been talking about for the last ten years in volume -- are going to have a very bad time of it.  Don't be one of them.
  
  
• DEI will have a rough year.  By December the winds of change will be everywhere.  Harvard's issue with Gay is the tip of a very large iceberg.  That onion will get peeled and Harvard will be essentially forced to do it by firms that, if they don't, will start boycotting their graduates.  There are already winds of this afoot in regards to Harvard's Law School and that is going to spread.  Right now these places are all saying "its not about Harvard's students" but that's false; it is very much about their students and what they become while there, whether they entered the college with that point of view or not.  This is not limited by any means to three universities and a few fields either; if you look at all the cyber break-ins over the last few years in very large, and allegedly-capable companies it should be immediately-obvious that the basic problem is that competence is absent in places where it shouldn't be.  That's the fundamental problem with "DEI" when you get down to it; you are hiring, admitting, promoting, passing and generally advancing on metrics other than competence.  This is only possible without getting destroyed by competitors when you can force others to do it too which is why the Ivys getting involved in this has been successful for this long and so has it been in "industry."  It may have taken the Israeli/Palestinian issue to force this abject fraud onto the front page but now that it has it won't go away and the notice that it does and will lead to bad outcomes across industries will get noticed.  This is not a one year thing but my bet (for the point) is that this is the year in which it gains enough currency to be "a thing" and the pendulum shift becomes unmistakable.
  
  
• The big "R" (Recession) will be evident, although possibly not yet declared, in 2024.  Note that the NBER is frequently six months or more behind on that, so anything that officially turns down from June onward is unlikely to be officially declared by the end of the year.  I will take the point if its evident whether formally declared or not, but will not take it if its nebulous or not in evident bloom by the end of December '24 (in other words, I won't cheat.)

As always I reserve the right to amend and add things from now until 12:01 AM January 1st at which point it is what it is and we go forward with the scoring from there.

There is a collapse coming.

We can either try to mitigate it or not.

Either way its going to be bad, but if we do nothing -- or worse, do more destructive things or continue those we're doing now, it will be catastrophic.

Its simply the mathematics of the problem; at a 1.6 fertility rate (when 2.0x is required) in 20 years you're in trouble, and in 40 you're in really, really serious trouble.

No, you can't fix it with immigration. That's a trope and it doesn't work because if the situation that led to it is still present bringing in more, new people simply result in them making the same decisions in a generation or two and you've accomplished nothing.

You have to change the paradigm in a way that reverses the disincentives and threats.

It takes a full generation before what you do will bear fruit.  Why?  Because that's how long it takes for the generation growing up now to reach adulthood and have a good childhood themselves, and thus want to have children.

Musk is crowing about screwing like a rabbit; he has the analysis correct but he's one successful sperm in a vagina and thus the odds of him personally making a difference, even if his mantra was to catch fire with every other billionaire, is zero.  He'd do a lot more for humanity if he managed to get every such billionaire to tell the government of the United States to stop importing people via both illegal immigration and H1b/H2 visas and shut down all deficit spending, collapsing both asset prices and the cost of living or else he and the rest of the billionaires will take their money and production to a nation that does.

Of course he won't do that because his little fiefdom and billions requires said outside people and schemes, all of which are a disincentive for ordinary folks to have kids as those "imported" bodies compete for jobs, drive up housing costs by presenting additional demand for same and slam downward wages -- and every one of those actions makes the calculation for all thinking people of ordinary intelligence and gifts, when it comes to the decision to have kids, worse.

But for those things he wouldn't have any money at all -- and he knows it.

Let's face facts folks: Nobody who you want to have children will bring said children into a world where they believe said kids will get screwed.

That doesn't mean kids won't come anyway; they will, for some.  Some adults don't care what happens to their offspring, some actually use them as meal tickets and more.  Some people are also always going to be eternally optimistic and therefore none of this will factor into their decisions.  And some will have "accidents" and for personal or religious reasons decide to bear and attempt to raise said kids.  But none of that changes the basic facts: People who are of decently-competent intellect and of good character, in a world of technology where one can choose when and whether to reproduce, will only do so voluntarily if they believe it makes sense AND their offspring will get a fair shake.

Destroying the fiscal health of the nation by emitting 8% of GDP in unbacked credit via deficit spending is the exact opposite of such.  Simple mathematics tells us that this results in you losing half your standard of living in less than ten years and it takes about 20 years to decide to have a kid, have said kid and raise him or her to adulthood.  Run those fiscal deficits and you've told all the thinking adults that child's standard of living, when they reach adulthood, will be one quarter of yours today assuming your children are as competent and intelligent as you are.

Would anyone who has two IQ points to rub together have children in that situation, when the options facing said kid 20 years hence are privation to this degree or civil war (and the attendant risk of being dead!) to overthrow said government?

NO.

Importing millions of unskilled workers who then drop kids who have parents with no skills, and thus no realistic means of learning much from said parents yet are citizens in the gambit to cheapen labor screws the next two generations sequentially.  Oh sure, in two generations or so those kids having their own kids will "outgrow" that but then they are able to compute the same odds and they won't have children either!  Think I'm wrong?  The data says I'm not; within two generations those who were the children of illegals stop having lots of babies too and its for the same reason, I'll wager: They're convinced their children will get screwed and have one quarter of THEIR standard of living -- and they remember living eight to a one bedroom apartment!

You think all those glorious "vacation venues" bringing in H2 workers, and all those "tech" places with H1bs, mean parents have a great experience for their kids at lower cost?  Maybe, but in addition they have seen the destruction it wreaks on said kids.  Please explain how many of Americans you saw of college age working scooping ice cream or similar this summer to make enough money to go to college in the fall.  Zero -- or nearly so -- right?  That's what I saw all over the country.  Now if I'm 20, and thinking about making some kids, where are my kids going to be in 20 years?  Unable to get a summer job and unable to afford college too.  Many see this, keep their pants on and both Trojan and the birth control pill companies keep having decent quarterly reports.

Good jobs with nice pay tend to be concentrated around cities.  How's Chicago doing these days?  Yeah, getting mugged while walking around North Michigan Avenue (assuming you don't get shot, which is of course even worse) is great.  Do you want to expose children you might have to that risk?  Hmmmm..... probably not.  Oh, and speaking of which how are you going to afford a place to live with said kids when the cost of housing and property taxes have skyrocketed by more than double over the last decade or so -- and there's a new round of screwing headed for you in this upcoming year's bill, all so you can be a "sanctuary" for a bunch of Venezuelan fighting-age men who illegally came to the US!  All of this is very conducive to choosing to bear children, right?  I mean its not like you're going to have to pay those property taxes at an ever-escalating rate for the next 20 years if you choose to have kids, right?  Oh, wait.... you are!

Think about the process of bearing said kid as a microcosm of the hosing you may well get on an entirely-arbitrary and 100% out of your control basis.  You (or your wife if you're a guy) is facing an unknowable bill from the hospital for having said kid and you will get GRILLED about whether you own a car seat before the child is even toweled clean!  Answer "wrong" and CPS gets called and crawls up your backside.  Oh, and they will jab said newborn before you can object yet if what they give that kid seriously screws him or her they're immune from being sued over if it and you are forced to pay that bill too.  That's the first of seventy such immunizations you must give to said child or they cannot go to school at all, the manufacturer and the doctor are absolutely immune from liability if said drug seriously injures or kills your child and of course you get the bill and possibly a lifetime of needing to care for and support said child if that injury occurs.  If something goes wrong during birth you are looking at an instant six-figure bill and the possibility of being financially ruined; if you already have a kid that event will wreck their life too.  Yes, the risk of injuries or worse is always part of having children and we all know that, but this is a thumb on the scale and a demand that you accept the risk of someone else screwing up and then abusing you financially because they can -- not because you did something stupid or accepted a reasonable cost for what was bad luck came your way.  Does that put a thumb on the scale when it comes to your decision to have the child in the first place?

Said child gets to be about six and its time for school.  You've been paying property taxes funding said schools all along except..... the kids in said schools are not managing to learn anything.  This isn't new, by the way -- in the 1990s more than eight out of ten who came to try to get a job at MCSNet, all holding High School diplomas or better, couldn't perform basic arithmetic with a paper and pencil nor write a simple basic English language business letter explaining that a customer had to pay their bill to restore their service.  I gave all applicants those two basic tests and kept all of them in a large file cabinet as it was the only reasonable way to guard against being unjustly accused of "discrimination."  What is the forward earnings capacity of an 18 year old who can't do both of those things -- other than gang-banging related criminal activity, of course.  Blame this on whatever you'd like but the facts are what they are, so your options are to suck it up and take the risk that your child fails to learn or you pay twice -- once in the property taxes and then again for private education.  Meanwhile your neighbor is a school teacher who gets paid and has a nice house to live in irrespective of the fact that you can't trust your kid to actually learn anything in that classroom and whether its because she can't kick out the three little monsters who like to throw chairs in class or that she herself can't make change for a $20 doesn't matter -- she gets paid anyway and so does everyone else who works there even though they repeatedly fail to teach anyone anything at all.

Then you think about the child getting older.  He or she is rather bright and would perhaps like a college education.  You see the bills pile up on those who are there now, and the growth of that price over the last 20 years.  You see $100,000 or more in debt larded up on someone who studies gender or black history and a "professor" who claims that capitalism is horrible -- while pulling down a six-figure salary and forcing your child to pay the next kid over's tuition in Calculus class because you, not your child, have more money than his parents do.  You think "oh, my kid is a math whiz and will study programming" which sounded great 20+ years ago but then you remember the many H1bs that multiple large firms brought in to replace all of their American citizen programmers, forcing said Americans to train their replacements before being fired in order to get any severance at all!  Thus that $100,000 taken on in debt to go to college, you realize, can be rendered worthless by said corporations even if your kid makes good choices as soon as someone from India will do the work for less money.  This wild escalation in the cost of an education is not by random luck either, which would be a risk everyone has to take -- three decades ago there was no Internet and colleges were the only real place you could learn a lot of things.  Today anyone can learn anything from literally anywhere with nothing more than a $50 cellphone, a $200 laptop and $50/month for Internet service so why has the cost of learning and proving it at a college level of competence gone up by five or more times in the last 30 or so years instead of costing almost nothing to simply take a set of proctored tests and prove competence?  Reality is that all of this is due to the deliberate policies and actions of universities, governments and corporations which will screw your child without any possibility of redress when he or she grows up -- and there is no evidence that it is slowing down or will be stopped.

You buy another box of Trojans.

You walk into the grocery store and see a single woman with four kids, no Dad, and she whips out her EBT card at the checkout.  She's got a nicer car than you do and she pays nothing for her residence, nor for her phone and Internet service -- all because she dropped four kids with no father she'll name.  Of course there is a father, probably a different one for each kid.  She gamed the system by using children as an ATM machine.  Even worse the kids are all obese and the cart is full of sugared soda and Doritos, all of which you are being taxed to pay for and she's probably on six prescription drugs which you're paying for too.  You contemplate that your skin is the wrong color to get away with that and you recognize that children are best-served by having two parents in the home but actually striving to provide the best possible environment for children to be born into and thrive means you won't get the EBT, free housing, free medical care or free phone and Internet service and in addition you have been forced to pay for her four births, all the economic tyranny imposed by your local hospital on society for each on top of everything else and thus you don't have the money to put extra groceries in your cart to reasonably feed even one child.

You buy two more boxes of Trojans and your girlfriend renews her birth control prescription just to be sure.

Never mind the sociological factors -- like the quality of the dating pool due to self-inflicted personal health damage that those on both sexes have inflicted on themselves.  In the extreme we have young people being encouraged to take drugs or undergo surgeries that are likely or even guaranteed to permanently destroy their fertility and adult sexual function, but it hardly beings or ends there; that's just an extreme example but one that we're all expected to support and acknowledge as "normal" and "good."  If you don't "affirm" someone ruining their capacity to ever have an ordinary adult sexual relationship even before they reach adulthood and thus can possibly contemplate what they're giving up (and produce children, I remind you), in many cases while forcing the costs on either their parents or society as a whole you're called a bigot.

Look back at the last three years and I'll give you just one tiny example I can personally cite.  On Halloween night in 2020 a neighborhood girl I'd seen around here, I would guess 10 years of age, came up trick-or-treating.  She had a mask in her hand and asked me (unmasked, handing out candy on the porch -- better than half the houses were dark with the people cowering in fear inside!) "Sir, you're not scared of me?"  I told her "Not in the least; my health is my business and, if it fails me that's my issue."  Her reply back to me?  "Its all bullshit."  Realize that she was being force-masked in school here in this county, in a "red state" and county that is so red you're wasting your time running as a Democrat, for nearly two years and the people who did it to her, six years from now when she reaches adulthood, will still not have lost a thing.  Some of those in higher office and thus in position to make policy for HER KIDS will likely have been the very teachers and school administrators who forced this ignobility on her; some of them even got commendations for bravery.  Will her knowledge of this and the screwing she personally took with such mandates by those very same people make her more or less-likely to have kids as an adult and will she assume that if she has children her kids are likely to get screwed in the same sort of way or even worse?

What could reverse that belief?  We might decide to hold those people who did all of that accountable by ejecting them from public office and any seat of power on a permanent basis -- or even jailing them and confiscating their assets along with passing iron-clad laws prohibiting anything of the sort with a private right of enforcement.  In other words we could give that formerly-screwed kid and now adult woman confidence her kids will not be screwed as she was without warning or cause.  We haven't and won't do any of that so there will be another generation of lower birth rates.  This outcome in another five or six years is our responsibility as the adults of today because we're not about to hold anyone accountable for those last three years!

Now add to this that there are two groups of politicians in "high office": Those who are geriatric and thus will be dead before the really bad outcomes from their policies occur and those who are narcissists and thus don't care if you and your kids get hosed as they believe they'll be immune from the bad effects even though they know you and yours won't.  If you think that's just a lawmaker thing you're dead wrong; my own father, who was a CPA and thus knew darn well what he was advocating and voting for and what it would mean, ran that crap on me during Thanksgiving one year while his grand-daughter was still at the age of crawling around on his living room carpet.  I was disgusted enough to get up from the table, gather our things, along with my kid, and immediately drove a few hours to get back home.

I could go on for hours with this but I think you get the point.  People don't choose to have fewer or no children because "that's how it is" as technology improves.  Technological improvement adds choice but society molds opinions and incentives -- for good or bad, like it or not.

People make the decision to not have children not because they're "selfish" but rather on an entirely-rational basis because they look back at their childhood for the baseline and then forward in time and what they see is not improvement but impoverishment, not prosperity but privation, forced compliance and costs shoved upon them while the mandating parties are immune from consequence even when they're later proved wrong or worse, someone is injured or killed, rampant illegal immigration and destruction of the common person's standard of living without boundary along with a documented history of forcing the voluntary costs taken by others down their throats along with myriad scams across the board.  When projected forward 20 years they recognize that any child they produce today is highly likely to be screwed blind and has a very low probability of having a good life, say much less a better one than they had.

Indeed if they judge that their childhood sucked they may well expect their kids' childhoods to suck worse and nobody who actually cares about a child they're contemplating bringing into the world voluntarily signs them up for that.

The people you want to bring children into the world are those who value children and have reason to believe their children will have at least as a good a life as they grew up with and enjoy now, with hope for even better, never mind a belief that their kids will have a fair shake and rational odds of success if they choose to apply themselves.

All of the policies of the last few decades of both government and industry have demonstrated beyond doubt that none of this is likely to be true and thus only those who don't give a wet crap about their children's future, or are so rich they believe they can guarantee it even if everyone else has their standard of living go straight to Hell, choose to reproduce.

Then there's the inescapable fact that a woman has a window for fertility that peaks in her late teens and early 20s.  By age 30 fertility is on the decline and by the time she's 35 that decline becomes precipitous; a woman who wants more than one child and is 35 is odds-off to be able to have both, and by 40 you may as well forget it entirely.  Leave aside the fact that most 55 year old people of either sex today can't possibly keep up with a teen, especially when they have an extra 100+lbs on their body and the risk of death due to said lifestyle choices before you can raise said child to adulthood begins to rise at an unacceptable rate as you pass your 50th birthday.  That, in turn, means that no, you can't wait another 5 or 10 years to fix this stuff because the women currently of child-bearing age won't be able to have children by then and if we don't cut the "healthy at any size" and "destroy your fertility on purpose by surgery or drugs" crazy nonsense today too many of those women who are of reproductive age at that point will be incapable of bearing children anyway.

That's why we're where we are, and if we don't stop it now in another 20 years it won't matter because for those who today are in their 40s and 50s, say much less older (many of the folks in my bracket will already be dead) there won't be anyone to pay the taxes that keep the government operating, there won't be any federal money for health care subsidization (e.g. Medicare) and there won't be anyone willing to wipe your butt when you can't do it anymore on your own.