ALWAYS CONSULT YOUR INVESTMENT PROFESSIONAL BEFORE MAKING ANY INVESTMENT DECISION
January 2, 2024 | Art of the Collapse, January 2024
In December, some prestigious universities made the (in retrospect) horrendous mistake of letting their presidents testify before Congress. The result was not pretty — except for meme creators, who had a field day: But the Ivy League’s public humiliation wasn’t the only novel thing to happen in a federal government building last month, as staffers were […]
December 30, 2023 | Thanks For a Great First Year
Hi everybody, On January 3, this newsletter will be one year old. Amazing how fast the time went by! Thanks for a great experience. Being part of this growing community and hearing your thoughts about the crazy world we’ve inherited has been both fun and educational. Going forward, there are several things I’d like to […]
December 29, 2023 | Gold Is Now Definitely An Impulse Buy
Recently, Costo began selling gold bars on its website (see Did Gold Just Become An Impulse Buy?). The bars were a big hit, generating revenues of $100 million in the most recent quarter. Now Walmart has opened its own Precious Metals Shop: Who’s next? If gold works for the biggest-box retailers, expect Target and other similar chains […]
December 26, 2023 | People We Should Know: Vivek Ramaswamy
The US presidential campaign is like a boxing match where the undercard is way more interesting than the main event. On the Democrat side, RFK Jr. is stomping all over Establishment verities like open borders and vaccine mandates while stealing a big chunk of what was once seen as Joe Biden’s base. On the Republican side, Donald […]
December 24, 2023 | Skill Stacking, Part 1: Handymen Will Inherit the Earth
There’s a debate over the best way to achieve career success: Should you become great at one thing or good at multiple things? The first strategy is obvious — get a Ph.D. in a useful subject and do that one thing better than almost anyone else. But the second strategy — known as “skill stacking” […]
December 20, 2023 | Becoming Invisible, Part 11: Privacy Land Trusts
The Nestmann Group is doing great work on privacy-related topics like second passports and offshore investing. Here’s their take on “privacy land trusts” that make it possible to own real estate anonymously — which sounds useful in this increasingly litigious, authoritarian world. What is a Land Trust and How Does it Work? (Mark Nestmann) – You […]
December 19, 2023 | Geopolitical Risk and the Case For Physical ETFs
In November, Panama’s government caved to growing protests and shut down a large copper mine. This was serious but survivable for one of our portfolio’s royalty companies (see Just How Bad Was Franco-Nevada’s Bad News), but it’s an existential threat for First Quantum Minerals, which owns and runs the Cobre Panama mine. The new normal? Until recently, an event […]
December 18, 2023 | Brighteon Covers “The Great Taking”
Readers have been asking me to check out and comment on David Webb’s The Great Taking. It’s on the to-do list. But in the meantime, other people have started covering it. Brighteon’s Mike Adams just posted a video that uses Webb’s insights as a launching point for a discussion of real assets and why they’re more crucial than ever. […]
December 14, 2023 | A Glimpse Of The Future For Gold/Silver Miners
One of the (many) disappointing things about the gold/silver miners has been their failure to respond when precious metals have gone up. Gold, though not exactly on fire for most of 2023, did touch a new all-time high in early December. But (as far as I know) not a single gold/silver miner was anywhere near […]
December 13, 2023 | Are We Too Dumb To Survive?
CBS News just conducted a poll that paints Americans as too economically illiterate to deserve a future of freedom and prosperity. Here’s how Tom Woods, author of Diary of a Psychosis: How Public Health Disgraced Itself During COVID Mania, addressed it in a recent mailing: Sometimes you look around and see signs of hope. And you’re not being […]
December 12, 2023 | Recession Watch: Forget About That Soft Landing
Americans have spent the past few years putting ever-bigger parts of their day-to-day lives on plastic. And now the stats are brutal: Total credit card debt recently pierced $1 trillion while personal interest expense has gone parabolic. Credit card usage, as a result, has dropped back below pre-pandemic levels: Meanwhile, default rates on credit cards […]
December 11, 2023 | Strategic Relocation, Part 2: The “Big Sort”
A question is haunting the dwindling tribe of blue state conservatives: What happens when all their like-minded friends leave and the entire state becomes an impoverished, crime-ridden version of San Francisco? It seems that a growing number of people aren’t sticking around to find out. From today’s Zero Hedge: “Escape Liberal Hell”: Oregon, Washington Republicans Flee […]
December 8, 2023 | Gold: $2000 Might Still Be Resistance
One of the fun things about bull markets is watching resistance levels turn into support. Gold, for instance, spent three years banging into $2000/oz and recently broke through, touching $2125 on December 1. Then the selling started, pushing the price down to, as this is written, $1997. If the “$2000 is now support” thesis holds, buyers will […]
December 6, 2023 | De-Dollarization Watch: It’s Definitely Happening
De-dollarization events that would once have been a big deal have become common lately. Some examples: UAE officially stops using dollar for oil trades (Watcher) – The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is asking BRICS countries to settle oil trade in local currencies and not the U.S. dollar. The Middle Eastern nation is aiming to diversify […]
December 5, 2023 | Art of the Collapse, December 2023
Henry Kissinger died in November, launching a zillion memes: Back in the land of the alive but hungry, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman declared that inflation is not nearly as bad as ignorant Americans believe. Some begged to differ: A big holiday thanks to the FBI for protecting us from an upsurge in terrorist activity: FBI Closely […]
December 1, 2023 | Someday This Will Happen To Silver And Everything Will Change
In March 2022, there was a disruption in the nickel market that spiked the metal’s price. The lucky investors and market-makers who owned long futures contracts made fortunes. Just kidding. The exchange on which the futures traded canceled them and stiffed the contract owners. Some of the victims understandably brought suit and were awarded a […]
November 27, 2023 | Next Year’s Housing Crash, In Charts and Anecdotes
Signs are multiplying that the US housing bubble is about to pop. To start with the headline number, home sales are back at Great Recession levels: Declining sales are no surprise when viewed against a backdrop of the worst affordability in American housing history. The following chart explains why Boomers are such a cocky generation: […]
November 24, 2023 | Is Gold A Manipulated Market?
Some readers responded to last Wednesday’s post on gold’s trading pattern (Gold: Resistance Is … Finite) with shock that I didn’t know gold is a manipulated market where technicals don’t matter. This gives us a good jumping-off point for a look at several forms of gold manipulation that have been practiced over the years: Wall […]
November 22, 2023 | Gold: Resistance Is…Finite
The human mind likes big round numbers. Which is why, when a tradable asset is rising, sell orders tend to cluster in predictable spots. The frequent result is a repeating pattern of strong gains running into waves of selling that knock the price back down. Traders refer to this as “resistance,” and it’s maddening for […]
November 21, 2023 | Your First Gun
“Your only rights are those you can defend” — Thomas Jefferson or someone similar Many readers of this newsletter are already well-armed. If you’re one of them, this article is not for you — though you might want to check it out and post constructive criticism or pro tips in the comments. Anyhow, here goes: […]
November 16, 2023 | Recession Watch: Wow, That Was Fast
One of the many surprising things about the Everything Bubble was the way interest rates kept rising. A lot of observers (including this one) believed that in each successive bubble, the “terminal” interest rate — that is, the rate that starts to break things, causing a crash — would be lower because the amount of […]
November 14, 2023 | Uranium Stocks: What Just Happened to SMRs?
Nuclear power is back in favor, the price of uranium has more than tripled from its 2020 lows, and the technology’s future looks even brighter than its recent past. But there’s more. A new reactor design, the “small modular reactor” (SMR), is set to turbocharge the industry. Where traditional nuclear plants are huge, expensive, and […]
November 8, 2023 | Are There Too Many People Or Too Few?
With financial collapse and global war inching closer every day, you’d have to be an anxiety junkie to worry about distant things like demographic trends. Still, the population debate is interesting, with economists, statisticians, and techies disagreeing over whether the world of 2100 will have too many people, too few, or just the right number. […]
November 7, 2023 | Mark Nestmann: The War On Cash, Past And Future
The Nestmann Group just posted a useful primer on the historical roots and likely future of the war on cash. Governments have been at this for a long, long time. Next up: CBDCs. The War On Cash Escalates Economists and governments have long had a very low opinion of the cash you carry in your wallet or […]
November 6, 2023 | This Is What Inflation Does To Our Kids
Mainstream economics portrays inflation — defined as a currency that loses a bit of purchasing power each year — as necessary to lubricate the gears of commerce. What they don’t seem to understand (or would like the rest of us to not understand) is that inflation is also a tool for redistributing wealth from one […]