Category: simonblack

There’s been a lot of buzz lately surrounding the UK’s Online Safety Act. While it originally passed back in October 2023, it’s been back in the headlines recently because several key provisions just came into force over the last few days.

And not surprisingly, a lot of people are worried.

One of the major concerns is that the British government could potentially gain access to personal files, documents, and photos that are stored in the cloud.

To be clear, the Online Safety Act does not explicitly grant the government direct access to cloud-stored files. But it does impose a legal responsibility on cloud storage providers to monitor and detect certain types of content.

That, in turn, has raised widespread fears about so-called “back doors” being built into cloud services—essentially allowing the government a hidden key to your entire digital life.

Here’s the bottom line: virtually every major cloud storage provider already works with government agencies and will comply with any valid legal request or subpoena for user data.

This includes everything from your emails and private messages to your cloud-stored documents and photos. And we’re talking about some of the largest tech companies in the world—Google, Facebook, Dropbox, Microsoft, Apple, and so on.

This is nothing new.

If you use Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft for your email, those companies already have complete and total access to every email you’ve ever sent or received. Even if you “deleted” an email from your inbox or trash, they retain copies. They keep everything. And when they receive a valid legal request, they won’t hesitate to turn it over.

The same applies to services like Dropbox. They have full access to your files stored in the cloud. If authorities come knocking with the right paperwork, they’ll hand over your files.

Even Apple, which has a reputation for privacy and data protection, began hashing every photo uploaded to iCloud in an effort to detect known illegal content; it’s the digital equivalent of taking fingerprints of your photos.

Apple also holds the encryption keys to most users’ data by default. Unless you’ve gone out of your way to enable Advanced Data Protection, Apple can access your email and iCloud files.

Some people, of course, brush this all off with the tired old excuse: “Well, I have nothing to hide.” But that logic completely misses the point.

If people have nothing to hide, why have passwords at all? Why not post the last 12 months of bank statements and medical records to Instagram? Or install a camera in your bathroom and live stream that to the world?

Privacy is not about hiding anything. It’s a basic human right.

So with that in mind, the easiest recommendation I could make to boost your online privacy is to use Proton.

With cloud services, Proton Mail, Proton VPN, and even new documents features, they’re essentially a one-stop shop that provides all types of encrypted services.

This is definitely not a sponsored article and we gain nothing from mentioning them here. It’s just that this is one of the only providers that designed its service so that they cannot access most of your content.

To be clear, Proton does cooperate with law enforcement— specifically the authorities in Switzerland (where they are based). In fact, they’re very transparent about it and publicly explain what kind of information they can hand over—which includes IP addresses, email subject lines, and certain metadata.

But the actual contents of your files and emails? They don’t have access at all. This has been tested multiple times in Swiss courts, and each time it’s been confirmed—Proton cannot turn over data they don’t possess.

A lot of people also talk about VPNs, which can help by masking your IP address and making it appear as though you’re browsing from another location.

But be careful—VPNs are not a cure-all. Some providers, like PureVPN, have in the past claimed to offer total privacy, only to be caught logging user data and turning it over to authorities.

There are plenty of other options out there too, depending on how secure you want to be. Personally, I like to self-host on my own encrypted file server. But that requires a bit of technical skill—and while it’s not that hard, it’s not for everyone.

But the point is, there are threats out there to your personal privacy, and it is better to do something about it sooner rather than later. Otherwise, you’re allowing big tech companies and governments to amass all sorts of data on you that they will forever have access to.

And we just don’t know what they will do with that, or who will control it, in the future.

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She will never admit to it. But according to recently-released federal disclosures, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is one of the wealthiest people in Congress.

And it’s easy to understand why; she completely dominates every other member of Congress when it comes to fundraising. In fact her total fundraising haul just in the first half of 2025 was a whopping $15.4 million (whereas most politicians are lucky to bring in a few hundred thousand).

So AOC is on pace for more than $30 million in total fundraising for 2025.

Some people might argue, “but that’s not AOC’s money. That money is donated to her political campaign.”

Come on. Let’s not be naive here, folks. Politics is business. Big business. And it’s a business that provides tremendous personal benefit to members of Congress.

Politicians often arrive to office nearly flat broke. During their tenure they have access to inside information that positions them for lucrative bets in real estate or the stock market… which is why the average Congressman’s net worth skyrockets during their time in office.

Then, whenever they do finally step down, they fall ass-back into highly lucrative board positions or six-figure speaking fees in the very same industries that they used to regulate.

And if you had a business that brought in $15.4 million in the first half of this year alone (with hardly any expenses, by the way), that would make you a pretty darn successful individual.

In short, at $30+ million (annualized), AOC is about as successful as a person can be. The fact that she doesn’t put the money directly in her pocket isn’t terribly relevant given that she has complete control over the funds and can direct them to maximize her long-term benefit.

The irony is that AOC even sells wildly overpriced merchandise— like a $27 “tax the rich”.

Most people would consider having complete discretion over $15.4 million to be pretty rich.

But AOC doesn’t pay any tax on that money. Her campaign doesn’t pay any tax on that money.

Even merchandise sales are tax-free to AOC and her political campaign— because merch purchases are considered ‘donations’ rather than commercial sales.

So clearly the ‘tax the rich’ mantra is for other people… not for AOC’s wildly successful merchandise business.

She also sells cheap plastic buttons with her face on it that say “People Before Profits”. They cost $10. I imagine such a handsome prices generates a very healthy profit for her campaign… at the expense of the people who buy them.

If she really wanted to put her money where her mouth is, she could donate 90% of that money to non-profits that focus on education or foreign aid… assuming that she truly cares about the defunding of the Department of Education or USAID.

Heck, she could just write a check to the Treasury Department if she actually thought giving the government more money would solve problems.

But instead the money just piles up in her campaign account.

The other irony is that AOC hails from one of the most Leftist districts in Congress. She doesn’t have to spend a single penny to win reelection.

She clearly doesn’t even need the money. Whatever happened to the old Marxist dictum “to each according to his needs” ?

She hates the wealthy and wants to decide how much everyone else ‘needs’ (and then set a wealth tax accordingly).

But for AOC, there’s never enough money. Despite her massive cash balance, she keeps putting on fundraisers to bring in more.

And one final point: these campaign donation systems are remarkably easy to manipulate.

Just out of curiosity, I visited AOC’s campaign website while using a foreign VPN, essentially mimicking as if I were visiting her site from a foreign country. I wanted to see if it would block me for appearing outside the US, since federal law prohibits foreign contributions.

It did not. Instead the site just let me browse, shop, and donate away like I was buying socks on Amazon.

So if you’re sitting in Beijing and feel like investing in the slow-motion destruction of core American values, you don’t need a spy balloon or even a team of hackers.

Chinese state-owned enterprises (like Bank of China) already have US banking licenses, not to mention authority from Visa and Mastercard to issue credit cards in the US.

Hypothetically, the Chinese Communist Party could just spin up some bots, drop thousands of micro-donations to AOC using bank-issued US credit cards, and voilà—another socialist politician rolling in cash and pushing policies that erode the very system that allowed them to get rich in the first place.

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The US owes a LOT less money to China today than it did a few years ago.

As recently as three years ago, for example, China held $1.3 trillion worth of US government bonds. Today they’re down to around $750 billion.

In other words, China’s government has decided to cut back on its US dollar Treasury holdings by more than 40% over the past three years.

And at first, that might sound like a good thing— HOORAY! More independence from foreign creditors! America is better off without that Chinese money! Right?

But in reality this is a huge problem. Because it’s not just China.

• Going back to the years before Covid, roughly a third of US debt was owned by foreigner governments and foreign central banks.
• But then federal debt skyrocketed during the pandemic, and US government credibility plummeted. Even the government’s credit rating has been slashed.
• As a result, foreigners across the board began stepping back from Treasury securities.
• Today foreign ownership of US debt is less than 25%, and falling. This is a significant drop in just a few years.

Why it matters:

The US Treasury relies heavily on foreign capital to fund the federal government’s gargantuan (~$2 trillion) deficits. So if foreigners’ appetite to buy US government debt is waning— at a time when federal deficits are exploding higher— where will the Treasury Department come up with the money?

There are essentially two answers. Either (1) the Federal Reserve will “print” the money, or (2) domestic investors within the US economy will buy government bonds and fund the deficit.

But both of those options come at a significant cost.

Consequences of the Fed fund US government deficits:

• In order for the Federal Reserve to buy US government bonds (and essentially fund the government’s annual budget deficit), the Fed must first expand the money supply.
• We often refer to this as “printing money” even though it all happens electronically. The Fed calls it “quantitative easing”, or QE, but it’s all the same thing.
• The consequence of QE is inflation. Serious, serious inflation.
• Think about it— during the pandemic, the Fed’s QE created roughly $5 trillion in new money… resulting in 9% inflation.
• Creating enough money to fund federal budget deficits over the next decade could result in the Fed having to print $15+ trillion. So most likely that’s going to be a LOT of inflation.

Consequences of the US economy funding government deficits:

• American investors, i.e. banks, funds, corporate treasury departments, etc. could also buy more US government bonds in order to offset waning foreign demand.
• But this capital comes at a big opportunity cost
• Any private capital that goes in to the Treasury market means less money available to buy stocks, fund venture capital, or finance real estate mortgages
• The net result is lower stock prices, higher mortgage rates, and slower innovation.

 

Why China is first to ditch US government bonds:

• After sanctions on Russia, which included freezing their Treasury holdings, other countries got spooked — especially China.
• China probably fears becoming the next target of US financial weaponization.
• This may also be an indication that they will eventually invade Taiwan
• So China is hedging: they’re selling their US government bonds and buying literal metric tons of physical gold— driving gold prices to record highs.

The bottom line:

The shrinking foreign appetite for US debt is a glaring red flag. It signals waning confidence in US fiscal credibility and could lead to a capital squeeze at home — or nasty inflation spiral if the Fed fills the gap.

Many Americans might cheer the idea of being less reliant on Chinese or other foreign money. But in reality, foreign investment in government debt is the closest thing to a ‘free lunch’ in economics.

It means that foreigners are financing federal deficits, meaning less inflation at home, and allowing private capital to invest directly in the US economy.

Losing this benefit is a bad thing for America.

You can listen to my full thoughts on the matter in this brief Podcast.

You can access the podcast transcript here.

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When King Louis XV died in 1774, nearly all of France breathed a collective sigh of relief.

The late king, along with his predecessor— the legendary Louis XIV— had indebted France up to its eyeballs with endless war, waste, and lavish spending.

Sure, Versailles was gorgeous. But the interest payments were eating the royal Treasury alive. And everyone knew that France was in serious trouble… so when the king died, people became hopeful that change was coming.

The new king, Louis XVI, was young, bright, energetic, and wildly popular. People desperately believed that he would finally be the one to reform the system and fix the nation’s gargantuan problems.

And initially things went very well. One of the young king’s first orders was to appoint an economic libertarian named Jacques Turgot as his chief minister.

Turgot made his principles crystal clear from day one: France would not declare bankruptcy. It would introduce no new taxes. And it would incur no new debts.

In short, Turgot planned to fix the nation’s finances through massive spending cuts—something everyone acknowledged was long overdue. He also aimed to improve the efficiency of the state, and there were plenty of obvious, sensible reforms to be made there as well.

Unfortunately for France, it didn’t last long.

Turgot made enemies fast— which wasn’t very surprising given that he was threatening the political class’s taxpayer-funded gravy train. Nearly everyone— the Church, the media, the nobles— turned on Turgot and called for his removal.

So by May of 1776, just 18 months after Turgot took office, the King dismissed him.

At that point, it became painfully clear that the necessary reforms weren’t going to happen. In fact France went in the opposite direction— providing major financial support to America— until finally hitting rock bottom in 1789 at which point France suffered its own revolution, along with the Reign of Terror, multiple wars, hyperinflation, and more.

When it comes to making much needed reforms, I see a lot of similarities between 1770s France and 2020s America.

When Donald Trump won the 2024 election, there was real cause for optimism.

Trump had a strong economic record already. He talked during the campaign about the need to cut the deficit. He hammered the regulatory state. He made it clear that America couldn’t keep limping along funded by infinite debt and magical thinking.

Then he brought in real firepower.

Elon Musk was elevated to head the DOGE initiative to take a chainsaw to government waste. Like Jacques Turgot in 1774, Elon found all sorts of garbage in Washington: redundant agencies, overlapping missions, and entire programs that were taxpayer-funded scams.

Most importantly, Elon identified spending cuts that, along with a strong deregulatory push to unleash growth, could have steered the ship in the right direction again. America’s debt problems wouldn’t vanish overnight, but they could start improving.

Plus, after years of ‘leadership’ from Joe Biden, i.e. a guy who shook hands with thin air and abandoned tens of billions of dollars of military equipment to America’s sworn enemy in Afghanistan, the US had elected someone whose first instinct upon his attempted assassination was to cheer Americans to fight.

Things certainly started well. In his first days as President, Trump issued a handful of powerful executive orders. The border was closed. DOGE started to gain traction. The woke nonsense ground to a halt.

But then he went all-in on tariffs, arguing they were the solution to America’s financial problems. Instead of offering the stability that businesses need to plan and grow, however, the ‘plan’ was a chaotic mix of on-again, off-again policies with no clear objective.

Then, just as DOGE was proposing serious spending cuts, the government did a 180 and backed a massive funding bill that added trillions to the deficit. Nearly everything that Elon found was ignored.

And in the end, Congress rescinded a whopping $9 billion of waste out of the hundreds of billions identified.

Then Trump and Elon had a falling out. Elon walked. And, just like that, it started to look—once again—like business as usual in Washington.

Still, optimists could hold out hope. Maybe it was just a year-one strategy—pass the big spending bills early, stabilize politically, and tackle reform in year two.

I’ve long argued the window is still open to arrest America’s decline. But they are pushing it dangerously close to the edge.

And then came Epstein.

No, it’s not an economic issue. It doesn’t directly affect bond markets or Social Security or the Fed.

But it is a major crack— perhaps the final crack— in the illusion that anything is going to change.

They are refusing to hold Epstein’s buddies accountable, to reveal what happened, and to deliver on a key promise of transparency that they made repeatedly.

And instead of leveling with the public—even if the truth was ugly—they chose to gaslight voters.

Trust in every major institution was already near historical lows prior to this Epstein issue. Now it will only get worse.

The Swamp, the Deep State, the runaway bureaucracy— whatever you want to call it, clearly lives on.

They’re not cutting the deficit. They haven’t significantly rolled back regulations. Reforming Social Security isn’t even on the table, just 8 years from insolvency. Spending keeps accelerating, with no plan to slow down.

Meanwhile, interest on the national debt has already blown past $1 trillion annually, which could easily triple within a decade.

Foreign governments and central banks—once the biggest buyers of US debt—are quietly backing away.

The White House is already planning on installing their own yes-men to the Federal Reserve, virtually guaranteeing a money-printing bonanza in the years to come… with the obvious effect being tons of inflation.

If you had put your Plan B on hold, it’s probably time to dust off the cobwebs.

The world’s not ending. America will not cease to exist. But it’s becoming ever more likely that the fiscal, social, and inflationary challenges ahead cannot be ignored.

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In January of 1843, a local entrepreneur in the city of Philadelphia named Alexander Simmons launched a weekly publication called the Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper.

(It was named that because the subscription price was a whopping $1… per YEAR.)

There was a lot of competition in the media industry back then, just as there is today. So in order to make a splash, Simmons decided to hold a contest where writers from across America could submit short stories. The winner would receive a cash prize and have his story published in the paper.

Well, the winner of the prize was none other than Edgar Allen Poe— who was already an established name in American literature at that point. And his story was published on June 21, 1843.

The plot revolved around William Legrand, a reclusive intellectual who discovers a mysterious new insect with a golden metallic appearance. In studying the beetle, Legrand finds clues to a hidden treasure which ultimately consumes him and drives him mad.

It’s a story of intrigue, dark psychosis, and cryptic puzzles. And it became one of Poe’s most popular works during his lifetime.

He called it The Gold-bug after the insect that Legrand discovers.

Fast forward a few decades to the 1870s, and there was vigorous debate in the United States about whether to return to the gold standard—a system that had been temporarily suspended during the Civil War.

At the time, some people advocated for a pure gold standard. Others pushed for a bimetallic standard using both gold and silver. And a few just wanted to keep using paper money backed by nothing.

Those in favor of gold were often derisively labeled “gold bugs”, which implied an irrational obsession with gold, similar to the main character William Legrand from Poe’s short story.

And the term is still occasionally used today to mock investors who invest in physical gold.

Personally I’m not fanatical about anything, aside from my children. So I’m not a ‘gold bug’. I don’t think that gold has any special voodoo mystique, nor the ability to perform miracles.

I am, however, a gold bull. I believe the case for higher gold prices is obvious given the clear trajectory of US government debt.

Foreign governments and central banks have been loading up on gold over the past two years precisely for this reason. They aren’t “gold bugs”. They simply view gold for what it is— a commonly-held strategic reserve asset.

For individuals, gold is a solid long-term inflation hedge. It’s also very useful for holding wealth outside the banking system, which also makes it great for estate planning and asset protection.

There are also times when gold isn’t just a good hedge—it’s a smart investment with significant upside. And we’re living through one of those moments.

We’ve been aggressively writing about this for the past few years— starting in early 2023 after the gold price bottomed out. Since then gold has more than doubled in price.

We’ve also written extensively about the other obvious opportunity: gold stocks.

Physical gold prices soared because central banks were buying gold. But those central banks don’t buy gold companies.

So for most of the past two years, there has been a bizarre disconnect between the rising price of gold and the sagging share prices of the companies which produce gold.

We said over and over again that this disconnect would come to an end. And it is starting to do just that, with many gold companies seeing absurd gains this year (including many of the companies featured in our premium investment research publication, The Fourth Pillar).

At this point everyone knows that gold is on a tear. It’s no big secret anymore. But today I want to tell you about another strategic asset… which is very cheap at the moment but poised to rise dramatically in price.

I’m talking about tin.

Hardly anyone talks about tin. There are no TikTok “tinfluencers” breaking down its fundamentals. No one is accused of being a “tin bug”.

Yet tin is absolutely essential to our modern digital economy. Every iPhone, every data center, every AI chip depends on it—because tin is the essential component in solder, i.e. the glue that binds circuit components together.

There simply is no substitute for solder, and hence for tin.

Yet it’s a strange relationship, because while tin is absolutely critical, it’s also dirt cheap. Only a few cents’ worth of tin goes into an iPhone that Apple sells for more than $1,000.

This means that the price of tin could increase by 10x and Apple wouldn’t blink. Consumers wouldn’t notice either.

Yet tin investors would make a fortune.

But why would tin suddenly rocket up in price? Because the market is tiny, and most production comes from a few politically unstable regions where mines get shut down all the time.

In the past, these supply challenges were always balanced out by drawing down old tin stockpiles that date back to the Cold War era. But those stockpiles are now nearly depleted.

Moreover, there are very few tin mines coming online anytime soon. So most likely any production shortage in the near future will result in rising tin prices.

There’s also a strong case to be made for rising tin demand as AI, electrification, and cloud infrastructure continue to scale.

This is the kind of opportunity we tend to focus on in our investment research—critical real assets in tight supply and rising demand which are totally overlooked by mainstream investors.

Tin definitely qualifies. Again, I’m not a tin bug. But I am a tin bull.

And the kicker is that our downside is covered; the tin producer we found is debt-free, profitable, and trading at less than 3x earnings. That’s not just cheap—it’s ridiculous.

The tin price doesn’t have to explode for this to be a winning bet. But if it does—if we see even modest supply disruption, or if investors finally wake up to how critical this metal is—the upside potential is enormous.

You can learn all about this opportunity in our latest issue of The 4th Pillar— we’re currently offering a subscription to our monthly investment research newsletter at a 40% discount.

Click here to learn more.

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Bitcoin today is trading at around $120,000. If you’re willing to pay double the price, i.e. $240,000, please contact me immediately. I’ll happily sell you some of mine.

Why would anyone do that? I don’t know. But that’s exactly what investors are doing when they buy shares in “Strategy,” formerly known as MicroStrategy.

The company currently holds about 580,000 Bitcoin, worth roughly $69 billion. But the market values the company at more than $124 billion. In other words, investors are paying nearly double just for the privilege of owning Bitcoin through a corporate intermediary.

Crazy, right? Yet Strategy’s Executive Chairman and co-founder Michael Saylor has managed to convince legions of investors to do just that— pay 2x the Bitcoin price.

He does so by presenting a bunch of made-up metrics to investors— terms like “Bitcoin Yield”, “Bitcoin Multiple”, “BTC $ Income”, and my personal favorite, “Bitcoin Torque”.

One of Saylor’s most clever ideas was to borrow money from investors to buy Bitcoin; the company issued billions of dollars of corporate bonds (which are supposed to be a ‘safe’ and stable asset), then used all the money to buy Bitcoin— an extremely volatile risk asset.

And this is why I think Michael Saylor should be the next Treasury Secretary— or at least be tapped to save Social Security.

I’m only half joking. Because Saylor’s idea to borrow money to buy Bitcoin might be one of the only ways to save Social Security without a serious tax hike or other financial pain.

Let me explain—

The Social Security system was built on a simple formula: workers and businesses pay taxes into the system, and those taxes fund the retirement checks to beneficiaries.

For decades, Social Security ran a surplus—more payroll tax revenue coming in than benefits going out. And that surplus was parked in a giant trust fund.

Unfortunately, though, Social Security’s trust fund was only allowed to invest in one thing: US government bonds.

The result? Pitiful returns averaging a measly 2%.

Now Social Security is running a deficit— the monthly benefits are exceeding payroll tax revenue. So the program’s administrators make up the difference by dipping into the trust fund.

The Social Security Administration officially estimates the fund will be fully depleted by 2033. And when that day comes, benefits will be automatically slashed by about 25%.

Cutting Social Security benefits would be political suicide. So the most likely solution is a major increase to the payroll tax.

But there may be another way.

What if the government were to borrow a bunch of money to start a Sovereign Wealth Fund… And that fund could invest in a diversified, real-world portfolio run by America’s many talented investment managers. Real estate. Commodities. Equities. Precious metals. Crypto. The kinds of assets that can actually grow.

This is exactly what Michael Saylor did. He borrowed heavily from the bond market to buy risk assets. Maybe the US government should do the same.

If the fund could manage, say, 9% annual returns over the past few decades— they could easily pay 6% to bond holders and pocket the extra 3%. Mathematically it works— such a return would reverse Social Security’s looming insolvency if the fund were of sufficient size.

There’s obviously risk in the plan, which is why I’m half-joking. But Social Security is in dire enough shape that all options ought to be considered.

Coincidentally, Congress is discussing setting up a Sovereign Wealth Fund this week… Though I’m not holding my breath on this, let alone any meaningful reform on Social Security.

Peter and I both believe that the inevitable outcome here is that the Federal Reserve will step in to print money and bail out both Social Security AND the Treasury Department.

In fact the White House is already identifying potential candidates to replace Fed chairman Jerome Powell when his term expires next year, as well as other members of the Fed’s board.

It’s pretty clear they want people at the Fed who will cut rates, print money, and bow to the President. So there’s a very good chance that, next year, the Fed will become much more subservient to the White House.

Such a Fed would not hesitate to engage in ‘quantitative easing’ (i.e. ‘money printing’) to the tune of trillions of dollars in order to save Social Security, or to finance massive US government deficits.

The end result will almost certainly be a major bout of inflation— probably similar to 1970s style stagflation.

It’s why we continue to assert that real assets are very sensible investments because they tend to perform so well during inflationary times.

You can hear my complete thoughts on this wild idea in today’s short video, which you can watch here.

You can access the podcast transcript here.

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It’s “Crypto Week” on Capitol Hill with all sorts of crypto legislation on the docket— including the so-called GENIUS Act that aims to regulate stablecoins.

I’m not sure the GENIUS Act is in fact genius, but it might be a pretty clever given its potential benefit to the Treasury Department and government bond market.

On its surface, the bill aims to provide a formal regulatory framework for anyone who wants to issue stablecoins, i.e. digital assets that are typically pegged to the US dollar to maintain a “stable” value.

But beneath the surface, the GENIUS Act is a way to funnel more money into US government bonds.

I’ve written about this many times before: the US government is hopelessly addicted to irresponsible spending. Multi-trillion-dollar deficits are no longer the exception—they’re the baseline.

And these massive deficits require the Treasury Department to borrow more money from the bond market.

Problem is that some of the biggest buyers of US government debt securities— specifically foreign governments and central banks— are starting to lose their appetite to invest more money in Treasury bonds.

So Uncle Sam is feverishly trying to drum up more lenders.

Enter the GENIUS Act— which requires stablecoins to be backed by “safe” assets, like… US government bonds!

The Treasury Department is probably hoping that some of the crypto wealth tied up in Bitcoin’s latest all time highs will flow into stablecoins… and thus into the US Treasurys backing them.

But if they think this is the silver bullet to fix America’s fiscal mess, they should think again.

Unlike traditional long-term bond buyers who help lock in funding for decades, stablecoin issuers (according to the GENIUS Act) will only be able to buy the shortest term US government debt, like 90-day T-bills.

This means that the Treasury Department will face constant pressure to refinance a major chunk of its debt every few months.

We discuss this in today’s podcast— where we also answered some reader questions about stablecoins.

One reader, for example, asked if stablecoins are a good way to diversify out of the US financial system.

My answer? Not really.

Once the GENIUS Act passes, most of these stablecoins will be issued by US-based companies and regulated by US government agencies. And over time, more and more agencies will likely encroach into the stablecoin industry— the SEC, IRS, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, etc.

That means if the government wants to restrict, freeze, or confiscate your digital dollars, they won’t even need to break a sweat. It just takes a phone call and a compliance letter.

More importantly, even if the coin maintains its 1:1 dollar peg, it’s still tied to the dollar. And if the dollar loses value due to inflation—which it is and will almost certainly continue to do—then your stablecoin will depreciate right alongside it.

Bottom line— holding a stablecoin doesn’t matter if the underlying currency is unstable. You’re not really diversifying any sovereign or currency risk.

If you’re looking for real diversification—something that actually hedges against the US dollar and protects your purchasing power—stablecoins aren’t the answer.

Gold, productive assets, other crypto, foreign stocks and financial accounts… those are the tools for genuine financial diversification.

If you want to hear my full thoughts on the GENIUS Act, stablecoins, and the implications to the US Treasury market, listen to this short podcast here.

You can access the podcast transcript here.

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Tucker Carlson spoke at a conservative political conference over the weekend and didn’t hold back on his diagnosis of America’s serious problems.

But at one point, he also railed against having a second citizenship.

Initially the question from the audience was about US politicians who also hold Israeli citizenship. Tucker found that “obviously absurd”. He said that “no man can serve two masters” and that a politician “can only really pledge your loyalty. . . to one country, and that’s just a fact.”

That’s a perfectly valid assertion. But Tucker then went beyond politicians having dual citizenship and brought up members of the military:

“Anybody, by the way, who serves in a foreign military should lose his citizenship immediately. There are a lot of Americans who served in the IDF [Israeli Defense Forces], they should lose their citizenship. . . You can’t fight for another country and remain an American. Period.”

Well, in that case we’d have to posthumously take US citizenship away from John Paul Jones, the Revolutionary War hero who is known as the Father of the United States Navy; he later served as a rear admiral for Catherine the Great to help defeat the Ottoman Empire.

Then there was Eugene Bullard, America’s first black fighter pilot who had to join the French Foreign Legion in World War I because of racial discrimination in the US military. He flew dozens of combat missions and was highly decorated for his service to the Allies.

Then there are legendary figures like Davy Crocket and Jim Bowie– both American citizens who fought and died at the Alamo to help Texas win its independence against Mexico in 1836.

The list goes on and on. Seriously? Davy Crocket isn’t an American patriot? Give me a break.

But then Tucker went even further– beyond politics and the military. “Everyone can see that America’s in trouble. . . the country is decaying, its cities are falling apart. . . but there’s something about being lashed to the mast. . . that totally changes your thinking.”

His central idea is that patriots should be “all in” on America… which means having no other options, no choices, and no Plan B. Just accept the consequences that are coming and take it in the teeth.

He got a lot of applause… a lot of “wooooooo’s” and “U-S-A” from the audience. But I just don’t find his logic to be rational.

America does have a lot of problems. Undeniable, gargantuan problems. The national debt is $36 trillion and rising. By 2033– the same year that Social Security’s major trust funds will run out of money– the national debt will be well over $50 trillion, at which point interest alone could consume more than 40% of tax revenue.

The Federal Reserve will have to step in to bail out the Treasury Department by expanding the money supply (i.e. ‘printing’ money) to the tune of $15 to $20 trillion, likely resulting in the worst inflationary episode in US history.

Tucker earned $10 million per year at Fox News and probably has quite a fortune socked away, so he can afford to be “lashed to the mast” of a sinking ship. Inflation could reach 20% and it wouldn’t affect him too much.

But most people don’t earn hundreds of thousands of dollars for a 30-minute speaking gig. Most people don’t get flown into a political conference on a private jet. Rather, most people have to worry about the rising cost of food, or how in the world they’re ever going to be able to afford retirement, or whether their streets and schools are safe.

Thinking about options that might improve your life, improve your children’s lives– whether those options are at home or in a foreign country– is a completely sensible thing to do. Having a Plan B doesn’t mean you’re unpatriotic; it means you are rational.

A Plan B is essentially like having an insurance policy– a way to mitigate the consequences of a wide range of sovereign risks.

And yes, part of that insurance policy might mean obtaining legal residency in a foreign country where you and your family enjoy spending time, or a place where you could see yourself retiring because of the great weather and ultra-low cost of living.

It might mean looking at your family tree to discover that you are entitled to Irish (or Polish, Italian, etc.) citizenship through ancestry– citizenship gives you the right to live, work, travel, and invest virtually anywhere in Europe.

You might never use it. You might never need it. But if the day ever comes and you do, you’ll be much better off for having extra options.

Now, you might love your home, but you still have an insurance policy to protect yourself financially in case the house burns down. Having an insurance policy doesn’t mean you love your home any less… and it certainly doesn’t mean you are praying for a hurricane.

Bottom line, being patriotic doesn’t mean forcing your kids to suffer because of other people’s stupid decisions.

You can love your country and still have a ‘sovereign risk’ insurance policy that will keep you and your family in a position strength through the obvious challenges ahead.

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Many of our readers know that I was an Army intelligence officer, and so I want to start by clearing up some basic terminology.

When people talk about intelligence work, they often confuse terms like asset, agent, and operative.

An asset is someone who provides intelligence—intentionally or not—to an agency. Even a guy who’s bragging in bed to some woman he doesn’t realize is part of a honeypot intelligence operation. He’s spilling secrets and doesn’t even know it. That’s an asset.

An agent, by contrast, knows what they’re doing. They’re actively, willingly working with an intelligence agency. They’re recruited, trained, and they know who they’re talking to.

And an operative is someone actually doing the work—on the ground, collecting the data, running the missions. When people say “CIA agent,” thinking of a James Bond style spy, what they probably mean is an “operative.”

Which brings us to Jeffrey Epstein.

Is it plausible that Epstein was in the intelligence business, either as an agent or even an operative? Of course. It is extremely likely.

This was a guy with deep access to powerful people in politics, finance, science, and media. He was inside every major institution and had personal relationships with celebrities, billionaires, royalty, and heads of state.

Clearly the intelligence community would take an interest in someone like that. Epstein had access, influence, dirt, connections—and he knew how to use them. Combine that with his ability to blackmail people who committed the most vile crimes imaginable and you’ve got leverage more powerful than aircraft carriers and nuclear warheads.

And that may be why no real information has been released.

If Epstein was working with US intelligence, the implications are beyond horrifying.

We’re talking about the federal government—funded by your tax dollars—knowingly enabling a long-term blackmail operation built on the exploitation of children.

If they admit Epstein was one of theirs, they’d be admitting that senior officials knew what he was doing, who he was abusing. They let it happen, and they used it as a tool of statecraft.

That kind of admission would light a match to the powder keg that is American distrust in government. And they know it.

There’s also the possibility, that Epstein worked for a foreign intelligence service— and the US intelligence and law enforcement establishment didn’t even realize it.

Which would mean the entire US intelligence community—the CIA, FBI, DOJ, NSA—missed the fact that a foreign service was running a massive blackmail operation on US soil, targeting US officials, abusing children… and they did nothing about it.

That’s not just a failure. That’s catastrophic incompetence.

And their motivation to cover that up would be similar to the UK “Grooming Gangs” cover-up that I recently wrote about.

In the UK, grooming gangs operated for years while the government and media looked the other way. Why? Because investigating them might have been politically incorrect. It might’ve been an admission that mass migration and multicultural policies went horribly wrong.

So instead, they gaslit the public, censored speech, and criminalized dissent.

The same pattern is happening here. A massive scandal implicating the highest levels of government, media, academia, celebrity, and global finance is being buried—because admitting the truth would mean admitting failure on a colossal, nation-destroying scale.

I ask a couple other questions in today’s brief podcast, such as:

Where are the investigative journalists? Do you remember the clowns at ProPublica who got their hands on Warren Buffett’s tax returns and paraded them like it was the scoop of the century?

Why haven’t they gone after Epstein’s hedge fund, his financials, his filings? Where’s the Pulitzer Prize-winning exposé?

Same with The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the rest of the self-righteous media establishment. These were the same outlets that spent years on the Russia hoax—yet they can’t be bothered to find out who funded a billionaire trafficker with mysterious money inflows and deep ties to intelligence?

Let’s believe, for a moment, there is no “client list.” What about the IRS data? The FinCEN filings? There’s NOTHING? If there were really no evidence, why did they even bother arresting the guy to begin with? How were they going to convict him?

Or perhaps, did the Trump administration look at what Epstein had and decide to weaponize it for national leverage?

Maybe the files are being used to squeeze foreign leaders into signing trade deals, backing US policy, or bending the knee on global negotiations. That kind of leverage could be seen as a strategic asset in the cold calculus of geopolitics.

But if that’s the play, then I’d expect the President to level with the American public. If you’re going to make the morally repugnant decision to use evidence of unspeakable crimes as a tool of statecraft rather than bring the perpetrators to justice, then admit it. Own it.

Ironically, the clearest voice of reason I’ve heard on this came from Rob Schneider. Yes, the actor from Deuce Bigalow.

He said, “Release all the Epstein files, no matter the consequences. This is America. We’ll deal with whatever happens.” And he’s right.

The fact that they are not releasing any information makes me believe that the truth is so bad,  the consequences of doing so would be truly Revolutionary— with a capital R.

You can listen to my complete thoughts on the matter here.

You can access the podcast transcript here.

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In the woke, radical left fantasy world that Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson lives in, reducing the federal bureaucracy is the ultimate Constitutional crisis.

It started back in February when President Trump issued Executive Order 14210, directing federal agencies to lay off government workers and shrink the size of government.

Naturally, the lawsuits flooded in almost immediately. Honestly it’s crazy to think that the President of the United States can’t even lay off his own employees without getting hit by multiple lawsuits.

The American Federation of Government Employees—a union that exists to protect even the most destructive and useless government jobs—filed one such lawsuit. And surprise! A district court in Northern California (where else?) happily obliged, issuing a nationwide injunction to freeze the executive order while the legal battle played out.

The case rocketed up to the Supreme Court, and on July 8, the Court did the unthinkable: it applied the law rationally.

The Justices reversed the injunction, which will allow the Executive Order to proceed while the case works its way through the lower courts (which could take years).

It’s important to note that the Supreme Court didn’t make a final ruling on the legality of the President’s executive order— they left that to the lower courts.

However they did say explicitly that the President “is likely to succeed on its argument that the Executive Order and Memorandum are lawful”. And therefore the Court overturned the injunction so that the federal layoffs could proceed unhindered.

Even more importantly, Court’s decision didn’t cut on ideological lines. EIGHT of the nine justices voted to lift the injunction and allow the President’s order to proceed.

Only one voted against it— Ketanji Brown Jackson.

While the other eight justices took only a page and a half to explain their position, Justice Jackson saw fit to write a FIFTEEN PAGE manifesto that puts even AOC’s ignorance to shame.

Jackson accused her colleagues of being “hubristic,” and “senseless.” She said that, “for some reason, this Court sees fit to step in now and release the President’s wrecking ball.”

Yes, a “wrecking ball” that may reduce the federal government by 5%.

Then it actually started to become comical.

Everyone knows the Supreme Court is the highest judicial authority in the land. But, according to Jackson, it should defer to lower courts, which she believes are somehow closer to the common people.

According to Jackson, the lower district court “carefully reviewed the evidence” and produced a “detailed 55-page opinion.” Oh, well Geez. I guess 55 pages automatically means that the lower court is beyond reproach.

The Supreme Court, in contrast, is on a “lofty perch far from the facts or the evidence.”

“Lower court judges have their fingers on the pulse of what is happening on the ground and are indisputably best positioned to determine the relevant facts…”

Of course! Whenever you think of which government officials are most in touch with the common man, surely a woke federal judge in northern California is first thing that comes to mind.

By Jackson’s argument, why even bother having a Supreme Court if the lower courts are so much more equipped to decide local issues— like firing some overpaid bureaucrats.

In fact, maybe cases should start at the Supreme Court, and work their way down to the district courts to be applied differently in each jurisdiction, according to whatever the local judges feel the ‘people on the ground’ need.

Jackson then waxed philosophical about the precious federal programs at risk, noting that:

“What one person might call bureaucratic bloat is a farmer’s prospect for a healthy crop, a coal miner’s chance to breathe free from black lung, or a preschooler’s opportunity to learn in a safe environment.”

You’d think Trump ordered agencies to start burning libraries and salting the fields. In reality, he’s cutting jobs in agencies where half the staff couldn’t even tell you what their department does—because nobody’s asked them in 30 years.

This is exactly how the federal budget has grown so enormous. As soon as anyone in Congress thinks up a program, people act as if cutting it would collapse civilization.

Anything the government decides to pay for today must forever and ever into eternity remain government programs, regardless of how many tens of trillions of dollars worth of debt accumulate paying for them.

And yet, according to Jackson, allowing the layoffs to proceed is an “aggrandizement of one branch at the expense of another” that leaves “the People paying the price.”

She even went as far as accusing her two liberal colleagues, leftist Justices Kagan and Sotomayor, of “greenlighting” President Trump’s agenda.

Sotomayor couldn’t take that lying down and had to correct Jackson, clarifying that “the [layoff] plans themselves are not [the matter] before this Court, at this stage”. In other words, the Court’s ruling was solely about lifting the injunction, not the righteousness of the layoffs themselves.

Not to mention the fact that it is not up to Supreme Court justices to opine on the cost or benefit of any Presidential or Congressional ruling.

They have one job: to determine whether or not it is legal and Constitutional.

Yet Justice Jackson doesn’t even understand this basic principle of her job; and her unhinged rant reads like she was absent the day they taught law in law school.

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