By James Rickards via DailyReckoning.com. Politicians may be morons when it comes to public policy, but they’re geniuses when it comes to inventing new ways to control your life and steal your money.

Tax increases seem old-fashioned compared with new 21st-century ways to take over the financial system to your detriment and make you pay for their pet projects. Take climate, for example…

We’re all familiar with how climate alarm has been used to dictate changes in transportation, energy generation and construction codes. Of course, these efforts have been massive failures, as witnessed by the ongoing supply chain disruptions and energy shortages.

Large parts of Europe, Japan and China may freeze in the dark this winter thanks to efforts to close down nuclear and natural gas-fired electricity generation. The U.S. will be only slightly better off. We won’t freeze in the dark, but we will face much higher prices for home heating and gas at the pump.

The irony is that the U.S. will burn 23% more coal this year because of the shutdowns in nuclear and natural gas and the inability of wind turbines and solar to make up the difference. Nice job by the climate alarmists!

Will they be held to account? Will they see the error of their ways and abandon their delusions? Don’t hold your breath for either. They’ll only dig in harder.

Climate Alarmism Influencing Financial Decisions

Now the elites have a new way to use climate alarm to their advantage. They will use their existing control of the banks to force their climate agenda by dictating how banks lend and how you are allowed to spend.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) will be required to factor climate alarm into decisions on federally insured or guaranteed mortgages. The Labor Department will evaluate retirement plan managers, including 401(k) and IRA advisers, based on how they factor climate alarm into their investment decisions.

Banks will be told they cannot lend to the oil and natural gas sectors (or will face higher capital charges if they do). Risk managers at institutional investment funds and hedge funds will be required to include climate alarm models in their portfolio allocation decisions.

At a more granular level, you might be denied a line of credit or business loan if your activities do not conform to those deemed acceptable by the climate alarm crowd.

The bottom line is climate alarm is no longer limited to discussions about the power grid and electricity generation. The elites are coming for your 401(k)s, IRAs and bank accounts if you don’t conform to their deluded climate wish list.

We all end up paying for the lies of these elites through higher taxes, damaging regulations and massive economic pain. Just look at the COVID pandemic…

A Long List of Lies

The public policy response to the pandemic has been one long list of lies.

In January 2020, Dr. Anthony Fauci said there was little danger of the coronavirus making its way to the United States. In March 2020, Fauci said Americans should not wear masks. Later in the pandemic, Fauci said Americans should wear masks and later said they should wear two masks.

He was then photographed in public not wearing a mask. Off the record, he has said privately that masks don’t work (which is true). But it gets worse.

They told us to lock down for two weeks to “stop the spread.” Two weeks turned into six months or more. And lockdowns didn’t stop the spread, as multiple studies have demonstrated. They only succeeded at destroying economies and driving people into despair.

The public was then led to believe that the vaccines would stop the spread of the virus. Get your jab and you’ll be free, they said. But then they told you that you needed a second shot. Now they want you to take a third (a booster).

Oh, and sorry, you still need to wear a mask in many places even if you’ve been fully vaccinated.

Vaccines do reduce severe symptoms and deaths (at least for a few months), but they don’t stop the spread. In fact, the vaccinated can become super-spreaders because they can build up large viral loads of the infection without being symptomatic themselves.

Fauci and other public health officials have claimed that the most recent wave is a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” That’s another lie, based on highly misleading statistics.

Damned Lying Statistics

They were including the numbers of hospitalizations and deaths going back to February, when the majority of Americans were not yet vaccinated. Of course most of the hospitalizations and deaths were among the unvaccinated since only a small percentage had been vaccinated by that point.

To give a more accurate picture, they would have only used data taken after the majority of people had been vaccinated. If they had done that, the numbers would have looked far different.

In Vermont, nearly 90% of the state is vaccinated. But hospitalizations are soaring.

Overseas, data from the British government shows that the infection rate among fully vaccinated people in their 40s was 100% higher than among the unvaccinated.

The Irish counties of Waterford and Carlow, where 99.7% and 98% (respectively) of all adults are vaccinated, cases are exploding. They’re seeing the greatest case load since March.

In Taiwan, evidence indicates more people are dying from the vaccine than from COVID.

COVID cases have also exploded in Israel, which boasts some of the highest vaccination rates in the world.

The European Journal of Epidemiology finds that increases in COVID cases are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2,947 counties in the U.S.

One Yale University researcher has even argued that the vaccinated represent a real threat to the unvaccinated, rather than the other way around.

Social Media Liars

Meanwhile, the major social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter amplified the official lies by deplatforming voices who challenged the lies or offered valuable information that was at odds with official propaganda.

For example, early in the pandemic when developed economies were suffering badly, many experts said that developing countries in Africa would be devastated by the disease because their public health facilities were deficient compared to ours. That never happened, because Africans routinely use hydroxychloroquine to prevent malaria.

It turns out that hydroxychloroquine has powerful prophylactic properties for reducing the effects of COVID. If you even mentioned hydroxychloroquine on Twitter or Facebook, your account would be shut down for spreading “misinformation” when in fact you were sending highly valuable information.

Of all the official lies, the worst may have been the discussion of ivermectin. This is a drug that has been in safe use for a long time. It comes in many forms, including for human consumption and a variation used in veterinary medicine.

How Many People Have Lies and Propaganda Killed?

Many individuals have reported favorable results in the treatment of COVID using ivermectin. The Indian state of Uttar Pradesh practically eliminated a severe COVID outbreak by using ivermectin on a broad scale.

Still, in their obsession to force vaccinations with gene-modification therapies (mRNA) from Moderna and Pfizer, the government and mainstream media have trashed ivermectin as a “horse dewormer” and something used only by veterinarians.

This type of lying and propaganda has cost many lives, maybe hundreds of thousands.

The comedian and podcaster Joe Rogan had the opportunity to call out these lies from Big Media. Rogan told CNN’s medical expert Sanjay Gupta, “They’re lying at your network about people taking human drugs versus drugs for veterinary…”

Rogan went on to say, “It’s a lie on a news network… and that’s a lie that they’re conscious of. It’s not a mistake.”

Gupta even admitted it.

Think for Yourself

Rogan’s attack on media lies is commendable. This is more than a policy debate. The media lies cost lives. The entire episode is a good reminder that when the next pandemic or natural disaster strikes, you should think for yourself and use common sense.

Don’t rely on government and media lies. These days, you just can’t trust them when it comes to topics like climate and vaccinations.

Unfortunately, we’re the ones suffering the consequences of their lies.

Investmentwise, it’s a good idea to move at least part of your net worth out of mainstream investment vehicles and into asset classes that are more difficult for regulators to reach such as physical gold, silver and land.