ALWAYS CONSULT YOUR INVESTMENT PROFESSIONAL BEFORE MAKING ANY INVESTMENT DECISION
April 5, 2024 | Gold Porn, Part 1: Gold Bugs Are Suddenly Cool
Suddenly the rest of the world is “gold curious.” With the current spot price piercing $2300/oz this morning … … we long-suffering stackers (and gold/silver mining stock investors!) can be forgiven for wanting to enjoy the moment. So let’s survey the headlines. Start by Googling “gold price” and note that even CBS’s audience is wondering […]
April 4, 2024 | Is This “Silver Squeeze” For Real?
How long has it been since silver generated any real excitement? So long that even most stackers would have to look it up to say for sure. The answer is mid-2020, when a bunch of online traders called “Redditors” decided to chase the metal like it was a meme stock, nearly doubling its price in […]
March 31, 2024 | Art of the Collapse, April 2024
Gold is interesting again … … because everything else is terrifying: New Boeing 737 Toy Features Wings That Really Fall Off (Babylon Bee) – A new airplane toy modeled after the Boeing 737 features “real in-flight damage” in which the jet’s wings really fall off. “Wow! The wings really fall off, just like in real […]
March 28, 2024 | How Inflation Hurts Our Kids, In 5 Charts
In 1971 the US, along with most of the rest of the world, tried something new. They ditched their previously gold-backed money in favor of “fiat” currencies backed only by citizens’ trust in central banks and politicians. The results were profound, as the dollar lost about 90% of its purchasing power. But the real damage […]
March 25, 2024 | Elites, Commoners, And The Shrinking Trust Horizon
Charles Hugh Smith is doing a great job of covering inequality and the pathologies it creates. Here, he explains why the trust horizon is shrinking for some but not others: Why Social Trust Is Cratering: The Difference Between Elites and Commoners We trust what we own / control, and the difference between elites and commoners is […]
March 20, 2024 | Becoming Invisible, Part 13: Glenn Meder Explains “De-Googled” Phones
Three days after privacy expert Glen Meder offered a free cryptocurrency seminar (to which I posted a link here), he published a primer on removing Google’s malign presence from Android phones. The guy is on a roll. Below is an excerpt from that post. But first, the usual disclaimer: I don’t profit in any way from highlighting other […]
March 17, 2024 | Welcome To The Third World, Part 3: Just Leave Your Keys Where The Car Thieves Can Find Them
This video from Toronto, Canada is both chilling and self-explanatory. Here you go: “Toronto Police advise the public to reduce the risk of home invasions aimed at car theft by placing their key fobs near the front door. This strategy is suggested because culprits are primarily entering homes to access cars, not to steal other […]
March 14, 2024 | Accidentally Funny CNBC Grapples With Costco Gold Sales
The legacy media has never understood gold, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that Costco and Walmart stocking precious metals — to booming demand — would seem a bit odd. But CNBC just outdid itself with a piece that can be divided into two parts: A befuddled but more or less factual accounting of the trends and numbers, followed […]
March 13, 2024 | Welcome To The Third World, Part 2: When The Cops Don’t Come
Most Americans call or otherwise interact with the police very infrequently. So our sense of how that public service works may not be up to date. For instance, it’s generally believed that if you call the cops, they’ll respond. But that’s not always how it works these days. One 2023 study found big increases in […]
March 12, 2024 | Welcome To The Third World, Part 2: When The Cops Don’t Come
Most Americans call or otherwise interact with the police very infrequently. So our sense of how that public service works may not be up to date. For instance, it’s generally believed that if you call the cops, they’ll respond. But that’s not always how it works these days. One 2023 study found big increases in […]
March 5, 2024 | Monsters We Should Know: Victoria Nuland
Dig into any of the US Empire’s recent crimes you’ll find a bunch of familiar monsters. Dick Chaney composed the lies that sold the invasion of Iraq (WMDs!!), engineered the actual war, and then oversaw the “rebuilding” that enriched his business partners. John Bolton pops up in pretty in every administration of the past four decades, always agitating […]
March 4, 2024 | Doomberg: Will The Shanghai Gold Arbitrage “Empty Vaults In London and Europe”?
Gold is suddenly fun again. We should probably just relax and enjoy it, but if you’re curious about why this is happening, Doomberg, publisher of the top-ranked Substack financial newsletter, has a plausible answer. Here’s a (lightly edited) transcript from a just-released Doomberg interview with Soar Financially’s Kai Hoffman, followed by the full video: Two big gold market […]
March 1, 2024 | Art of the Collapse, March 2024
Obviously, we have to start with Google’s epic Gemini AI faceplant. It’s not often that a new product launch crashes a company’s stock, but this one shaved $96 billion from the parent company’s market cap in a single week. The responses to Gemini’s … um … lack of attention to historical detail, run the gamut from funny […]
February 28, 2024 | Recession Watch: Deficits And AI Versus The Real World
Two things are keeping the US economy afloat right now. First is massive deficit spending, as the US dumps about $2 trillion of borrowed money into the banking system each year: Second, the AI “instant bubble,” is sending huge amounts of capital into a handful of tech stocks, thus levitating the entire market. See the […]
February 27, 2024 | Getting To $100 Silver, Part 1: Rising Solar Demand, Stagnant Mine Supply
I visited a local coin shop last week to see what they had in stock. And the answer was…nothing. They had not a single silver bullion coin. How can a coin shop function without its most basic product? “Everyone wants to buy silver, and no one is selling,” explained the owner. So instead of maintaining […]
February 23, 2024 | Strategic Relocation, Part 3: Whales Fleeing Weaponized Courts
In January, a Delaware judge forbade Tesla from paying its CEO, Elon Musk, an amount to which the board and shareholders had previously agreed. Musk responded by moving the corporate registration of SpaceX from Delaware to Texas and threatening to do the same with Tesla. “Never incorporate your company in the state of Delaware,” Musk posted on X following […]
February 21, 2024 | Inequality In 9 Charts And One Amusing Image
Graphs and charts showing America’s fatal case of financial inequality have become almost a separate art form: What Happens Now? Is railing against inequality just envy on the part of the less successful? Or is there a fundamental, functional reason that a society can’t be comprised of a handful of super-rich and a vast herd […]
February 17, 2024 | People We Should Know: Mike Benz
Sorry to deluge you with new people to check out, but this video just dropped, and I’m going to go out on a limb and call it the single most important thing currently available online. The source is Mike Benz, a former State Department diplomat “responsible for formulating and negotiating US foreign policy on international communications […]
February 17, 2024 | Mainstream Money Tiptoes Into Gold Miners
The appeal of mining stocks is that they’re “leveraged bets on the underlying commodity.” So you’d think that with gold not far from an all-time high, the big gold miners like Newmont and Barrick would be crushing it. But the opposite has been true lately, as these stocks have become almost ridiculously unloved. Two possible conclusions can be […]
February 16, 2024 | People We Should Know: Elon and RFK Jr
These two need no introduction. Just kidding. You’ve heard their names, but if you’re mostly consuming legacy media, you only know them as caricatures. So here’s a video where one interviews the other. Two quick spoilers: They trash both the pharmaceutical companies and the military/industrial complex in the first 15 minutes. And their understanding of […]
February 14, 2024 | Recession Watch: Inflation Won’t Die Until The Economy Kills It
A previously obscure inflation metric called Core Services CPI shocked the world this week by rising at an annual rate of 8%. This pretty much rules out a Fed rate cut in the near term. Responding to the prospect of “higher for longer,” the 10-year Treasury yield spiked back up to 4.3%, guaranteeing 7%+ mortgages and 10%+ […]
February 11, 2024 | Good News For A Change, Part 1: Independent Media Is Replacing the MSM
Sports Illustrated recently shut down. The Los Angeles Times laid off a fourth of its staff, including its entire Washington bureau. CNN’s viewership has fallen to that of a modest YouTube channel. From media tracker Deadline: In the 25-54 demo, Fox News averaged 219,000, down 8%, compared to CNN with 124,000, down 14%, and MSNBC with 106,000, off by 3%. In […]
February 9, 2024 | Becoming Invisible, Part 12: Even Your Car Is Spying On You
Say you want to organize an anti-war rally or buy some controversial medicine. You’re reluctant to do this from home, where Google and Amazon are listening and (possibly) forwarding your plans to all the acronym agencies. So you round up your co-conspirators and hop in your car for a ride, during which you plan your […]
February 7, 2024 | What’s Cheap — And What’s Cheaper — In 8 Charts
Incrementum, creator of the epic annual In Gold We Trust chart-fest, just posted its monthly Gold Compass update. As usual, the charts tell an interesting story: Let’s start with the fact that no “strong” fiat currencies are left out there. All are evaporating when measured against real money, just at different rates (though the yen is clearly one to watch […]
February 1, 2024 | Time For A Trust? If So, What Kind?
Let’s say you own a bunch of uranium stocks and your nest egg is becoming an “estate.” Well done! Now it’s time to avoid excessive taxes and make the eventual transfer to your kids and grandkids seamless and stress-free. One way to do this is via a trust, a legal entity that holds and disburses money while […]