ALWAYS CONSULT YOUR INVESTMENT PROFESSIONAL BEFORE MAKING ANY INVESTMENT DECISION
March 27, 2023 | De-Dollarization Just Got Real
Since the 1970s it’s been virtually impossible for a country to function without access to US dollars. And Washington maintained this highly-favorable status quo by putting various kinds of pressure — from sanctions to election theft to outright invasion — on anyone who stepped out of line. This weaponization of the world’s reserve currency has, […]
March 25, 2023 | People We Should Know: James Howard Kunstler
There are a lot of writers in this — let’s call it the “rational” — space, where limited government, individual freedom, and sound money are considered basic common sense. Stylistically, most of us fall into the journalist category, which is to say we convey what we hope is useful information as clearly and accessibly as […]
March 23, 2023 | The World’s Best Chartbook, A Preview
Incrementum (profiled in this post from January) is about to release the 2023 version of its massive chartbook. Click here to download a preview, or scroll down for nine sample charts that point to a great decade for precious metals.
March 21, 2023 | And Just Like That, The Tight Money Era Is Over
At the beginning of last week, everyone expected central banks to “tighten until something breaks”. By the end of the week it was clear that they’d already broken everything. Two middling US banks imploded, European mega-bank Credit Suisse finally died a well-justified death, and “who’s next?” speculation ran wild. And just like that, the era of […]
March 17, 2023 | Morons We Should Know: Janet Yellen
Watching almost any U.S. policymaker try to explain what they’re doing these days is a surreal experience. Whether it’s foreign policy — especially our multi-front plan to start World War 3 — or public health or border security, it’s clear that these guys have absolutely no idea how their tools work or what the result […]
March 16, 2023 | Deep Fakes, Artificial Intelligence and the Shrinking Trust Horizon
Some astoundingly consequential things have just happened, and in coming years they’ll reshape — if not end — our connection to the virtual world. Two examples: Deep Fakes It is now apparently possible to create videos of people doing and saying things they haven’t actually done or said. Imagine a YouTube video of a politician […]
March 10, 2023 | People We Should Know: Marjory Wildcraft
While we’re thinking about prepping, let’s segue from bugging out to staying put, with the following premise: In a world where we can’t trust factory farms, Big Pharma, or any regulatory agency, a family that makes most of its own food and medicine has a vastly better chance of surviving and thriving than one that’s dependent on […]
March 9, 2023 | Are We As Prepped As We Think?
My wife and I live in a place that’s pretty but hazardous. Earthquakes (there’s a big offshore subduction zone), forest fires (lots of trees), war (a nearby military installation), and civil unrest (a city a couple of hours away) are all at least theoretically possible here. And of course there’s the shared American problem of […]
March 4, 2023 | How a Country Goes Bankrupt, In 10 Steps
The past few decades of unnaturally easy money have created a world of “moral hazard” in which a ridiculous number of people borrowed far more than they should have. Now, with money getting tighter, not just businesses and individuals but some governments are staring at the “suddenly” part of that old saying about bankruptcy. Japan is […]
February 28, 2023 | Imminent Bankruptcies, Part 1: Carvana and Beyond Meat
One of the signposts on the road to recession (or in today’s case Depression) is a sudden increase in the number of former Wall Street favorites going bankrupt. The reason this happens when it does is that when money is easy, new companies are able to finance their emergence by selling a “disruptive” story to […]
February 27, 2023 | Is The Copper Story As Good As Everyone Says?
How does “energy transition metal in chronic shortage” sound? Copper is about as old-school as it gets. A metal that was used as low-denomination coinage from the Roman Empire through modern times and as an electrical conductor since the invention of the light bulb, it’s been both in demand and relatively easy to find, basically […]
February 26, 2023 | Will 7% Mortgages Crush Housing?
Between 2020 and 2022 houses in America’s hottest real estate markets went from unaffordable to 50% above unaffordable. Put another way, they did what would have been impossible in an economy where market forces determined interest rates and home prices. But ours was not that kind of market. Central banks around the world had lost […]
February 25, 2023 | People We Should Know: Catherine Austin Fitts
These days we all have our theories about how and why the 1% have become so rabidly predatory (find my recent take here). But the most sophisticated – and scariest – analysis comes from Catherine Austin Fitts. As an Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in the Bush Jr administration, Catherine noticed that huge […]