Regulatory Monstrosity

~~ Lau Vegys, Doug Casey’s Crisis Investing

The federal government is out of control.

If you’ve been with us for a while, that’s not exactly news to you. But if you ever needed a visual to show someone who doesn’t get it, here’s one. Take a look at this week’s chart below—it shows the relentless growth of federal regulations over the past 70+ years.

This monstrosity has ballooned from under 10,000 pages in 1950 to a staggering 190,260 pages by 2023. That’s thousands upon thousands of pages of rules, dictates, and mandates, crafted by unelected bureaucrats, cramming their tentacles into every nook and cranny of American life and business.

And the costs are staggering. According to a report by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, federal regulations cost the U.S. economy $2.1 trillion per year. That’s an invisible tax of about $15,000 per household. And guess who shoulders this burden? That’s right—the American consumer, worker, and entrepreneur.

Now, if you remember, $2 trillion also happens to be the amount needed to balance the budget today—and it’s the same figure Musk himself claimed he could cut from federal spending through his DOGE initiative (the Department of Government Efficiency).

Of course, as I mentioned in a piece last month, DOGE isn’t an actual government department. It’s just a Federal Advisory Committee with no real power to act directly (except to provide recommendations and advice to the President and federal agencies).

So, as much as I’d love to see a smaller government, a reduced deficit, and a less expensive foreign policy (all desperately needed given the state of U.S. finances), I’m not holding my breath for DOGE to deliver these changes.

Still, whether it succeeds or not, the goal is undeniably noble.

Because this regulatory explosion you see above isn’t just about the economic toll. It’s about lost freedoms, crushed innovation, and the constant distortions it forces on the market. Every new page added to this monster is another blow to liberty, another barrier for hard-working Americans, and another chain on the invisible hand.

Have a great rest of the weekend!

Lau Vegys

~~ Lau Vegys, Doug Casey’s Crisis Investing

The federal government is out of control.

Still, whether it succeeds or not, the goal is undeniably noble.

Have a great rest of the weekend!

Lau Vegys

Private education and health services accounted for the bulk of job creation over the past year.

Over the last twelve months, that category added roughly 780,000 positions. Excluding those gains, the economy shed approximately 350,000 jobs.

Manufacturing, the purported object of Trump’s tariff strategy, declined by about 100,000 in 2025. Transportation and warehousing fell by more than 100,000. Professional and business services contracted. Information and financial activities declined.

Federal employment dropped again in January, down 42,000. The civilian federal workforce now sits roughly 11% below its October 2024 peak.

Most investors are familiar with the price-to-earnings, or PE, ratio. But what if you invert that, and divide earnings by price? You get what’s called the “earnings yield.”

Earnings yield on the S&P 500 is near a 100-year low.

Moody’s Mark Zandi urged restraint. “I wouldn’t exhale,” he wrote. The data coming out of the Bureau of (be)Labor(ed) Statistics (BLS) is still undergoing an overhaul from years of wonky miscalculations.

Downward revisions erased much of last year’s gains. Since April, aggregate job growth has barely moved.

Over the past twelve months, private education and health services added roughly 780,000 jobs. Remove those gains, and the broader economy shed about 350,000 positions.

In 2025, the top 10% of households owned 93% of U.S. stocks, driving wealth concentration to 60-year highs. Those high-income households accounted for nearly 60% of total personal spending by the third quarter of 2025.

Wage disparity and an asset wealth gap define fractious politics in this midterm year. And help explain why both parties appear to be talking only to themselves.