ALWAYS CONSULT YOUR INVESTMENT PROFESSIONAL BEFORE MAKING ANY INVESTMENT DECISION
November 26, 2024 | Health Prepping: How to Offset All That Sitting
By now we’ve all seen at least one article titled “Sitting is the New Smoking.” That’s a clever title that instantly engages the reader. It’s also apparently true. People who sit for most of the day tend to have all kinds of circulatory and metabolic problems that frequently end up killing them. Here’s an overview […]
November 25, 2024 | On The Edge of World War 3
So in his last act before shuffling off the stage, the US president … greenlights Ukraine’s use of long-range missiles to strike deep into Russia. The latter then fires — for the first time ever — a hypersonic ICBM capable of delivering a nuclear payload to pretty much anywhere in a matter of minutes. And just like […]
November 24, 2024 | Rhyming History: Rome’s Hyperinflation
As the old saying goes, “History doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme.” Which means there are plenty of lessons to be learned from our ancestors’ screw-ups. This post is the first in a series covering some of humanity’s more useful cautionary tales. The logical starting point is of course ancient Rome, with its many disturbing […]
November 20, 2024 | Corporate Bond Spreads Are Flashing Red
Every once in a while, the term “bond spread” pops up in financial reporting. Most people (who aren’t money nerds) don’t know what this means and how big a deal it sometimes is. So — since it’s a major red flag at the moment — this might be a good time to discuss it: Bond […]
November 16, 2024 | Housing Bust Update: It’s Not Just the Cost of Buying, It’s the Cost of Owning
Home prices are at all-time highs, and — amazingly — are still rising. Compare today’s average price to that of 2007, which is generally thought to be the peak of America’s biggest-ever housing bubble: And mortgage rates, which were supposed to fall when the Fed started easing in September, are instead rising. 7%, here we […]
November 12, 2024 | Justice Files, Part 1: Firings, Civil Suits, and Jury Awards
Our recent drift into authoritarianism hurt a lot of innocent people. And even before last week’s election, the process of “truth and reconciliation” was gaining momentum. This is the first in a series that tracks some of the more notable cases of justice restored. 6 BART employees who refused COVID-19 vaccine to receive more than […]
November 10, 2024 | Does There Still Have To Be A Currency Crisis?
A decade ago, the world seemed like a complex place. But in retrospect, it was pretty simple: The fiat currency experiment had produced a hyper-leveraged financial system that would soon fail spectacularly. Existing currencies would be replaced via a monetary reset, probably involving some kind of gold standard. This would be a messy but survivable […]
November 6, 2024 | These Two Things Don’t Go Together Which one wins?
The election is over, and the result is pretty close to a best-case scenario. The victory margin is big enough to head off the expected civil unrest, giving us a more-or-less peaceful transfer of power. And if Trump and his team keep their promises, they’ll quickly address the existential threats of global war and mass […]
November 5, 2024 | Health Prepping: A Legit Anti-Cancer Diet?
There are a million diets out there, most of which are simply common sense combined with one marketable hook (grapefruit, red meat, etc). But one — the Ketogenic diet — just got some intriguing scientific backing. From today’s Epoch Times: Researchers Discover New Mechanism Linking Diet and Cancer Risk Epoch Times, November 3, 2024 MGO, a glucose […]
November 4, 2024 | Recession Watch: Interest Rates Spike, Warren Buffett Sells
Higher For Longer (than expected) When the Fed started cutting interest rates in September, the assumption was that rates would fall and the Fed would maintain the downward trajectory well into 2025. But interest rates didn’t cooperate. Across the yield curve, days like this one (November 2) have become the norm. A rising 10-year […]
November 2, 2024 | Becoming Invisible, Part 15: Don’t Let Roomba See You Hide Your Gold
Yes, your new car tracks your location and records your conversations. Your smart speaker listens to and records your conversations. Your TV watches you while you watch it. Virtually every new device we install in our increasingly high-tech homes collects data and (at least potentially) sends it to criminals, corporations, and/or governments to use however they like. […]
October 29, 2024 | Art of the Collapse, November 2024
It’s official: Deepfakes have made it impossible to trust anything we see online: This is epic! pic.twitter.com/pCbVOcHXvQ — Dr. Clown, PhD (@DrClownPhD) October 24, 2024 Meanwhile, there’s an election where both sides expect to be robbed: Dad Decides It’s Time To Have ‘The Talk’ With Son About Rigged Elections (Babylon Bee) – Local dad Dave […]
October 27, 2024 | Will a “Short Squeeze” Spike Silver?
The late, great Ted Butler spent the final decades of his life railing against the way the silver market was manipulated on the Comex and other exchanges while capitive regulators looked the other way. In very simple terms, he accused big banks, hedge funds, and commercial silver buyers of using futures contracts to suppress the […]
October 25, 2024 | Incrementum’s Latest Gold Charts
Incrementum is out with its latest In Gold We Trust chartbook, and to call it compelling for gold and silver would be to wildly understate the case. Here are a few of the highlights:
October 24, 2024 | Do We Face a “Minsky Moment”?
Paul Tudor Jones, a well-known billionaire hedge fund manager, recently went on CNBC to warn about the impact of America’s soaring government debt. As reported by Kitco: The Tudor Investment founder and CIO expressed concerns that if the U.S. continues to spend beyond its means, a major sell-off in the bond market could ensue, leading to a […]
October 23, 2024 | Recession Watch: Bonds Don’t Trust the Fed
This first thing isn’t supposed to happen: When the Federal Reserve cuts short-term interest rates, long-term rates generally fall in tandem. But since the Fed’s “shock and awe” 50-basis point cut in September, bond yields have spiked: Bond traders appear to doubt the Fed’s ability to lower rates and hold inflation in check. That’s bad in the […]
October 18, 2024 | Silver Tests $33 — For the First Time In a Decade
The standard silver pitch is that when gold goes up, stackers note the immense number of silver coins they can get for the price of a single gold Krugerand or Maple Leaf. Then they proceed to pile into the cheaper metal, sending its price up by multiples of gold’s subsequent percentage gains. But this time […]
October 14, 2024 | Is Frugality a “Skill”?
Obviously, one of the best ways to prepare for hard times is to avoid unnecessary spending in good times. So being able to do that across an entire lifestyle might be considered a core prepping skill. Charles Hugh Smith just posted an essay on this concept. Here’s an excerpt: A Core Skill Going Forward: Frugality I ended […]
October 12, 2024 | Is Frugality a “Skill”?
Obviously, one of the best ways to prepare for hard times is to avoid unnecessary spending in good times. So being able to do that across an entire lifestyle might be considered a core prepping skill. Charles Hugh Smith just posted an essay on this concept. Here’s an excerpt: A Core Skill Going Forward: Frugality I ended […]
October 11, 2024 | More Great Gold Miner Earnings Reports Coming Soon
A rising gold price boosted second-quarter (June-August) earnings for the best-run gold miners. See: Q2 Gold Miner Earnings Might Liven Up the Summer Doldrums Portfolio Update — Q2 Earnings Edition And earnings for Q3 — which ended on September 30 and will be reported shortly — should be even better, thanks to continued gains for […]
October 5, 2024 | Broke FEMA and the Shrinking Trust Horizon
So they send the Tennessee National Guard to the Middle East and FEMA (it is widely claimed) spends its rainy day fund on illegal immigrants. And then, because that’s how the universe works, a massive hurricane hits the South and FEMA runs out of money: Now the victims seem to be on their own — further eroding trust in the […]
September 27, 2024 | College and the Shrinking Trust Horizon
Law professor Jonathan Turley just posted an article that contains a fascinating stat: “From 2010 to 2021, [university] enrollments fell from roughly 18.1 million students to about 15.4 million.” The decline is apparently continuing, and Turley blames diminishing trust in the quality of the education now offered by American schools. Here’s an excerpt from Turley’s post: What Happens […]
September 24, 2024 | Daniel Lacalle: Prepare for “Unprecedented Monetary Destruction”
Daniel Lacalle, economics professor, Mises Institute analyst, and publisher of the QTR’s Fringe Finance Substack, just posted a chilling summary of where we’re headed. Here’s an excerpt: An Unprecedented Monetary Destruction Is Coming “There is no escape from debt.” Global money supply has soared by $20.6 trillion since 2019, according to Bloomberg. Additionally, global debt surged by over $15 […]
September 23, 2024 | Watch the Housing Bust Play Out in Real-Time
Most asset classes have their own unique, repeating cycles. For housing, it usually looks like this: Demand for homes rises faster than sales, causing prices to increase. Seeing this, would-be sellers hold off to see how much more they can get a year or two hence. Would-be buyers note the rising prices and shrinking supply […]
September 20, 2024 | Art of the Collapse, October 2024
This series is monthly, which means the next one was scheduled to drop on October 1. But the first 19 days of September have produced so much absurdity that we have to go a little early this time around to avoid being swamped. Let’s start with a tip o’ the hat to those alarmists who […]