Category: simonblack

Imagine for a moment you own a small piece an old, well-established, family-owned business.

Your long-lost ancestors started this company a few centuries ago, and subsequent generations built it into a global powerhouse— we’re talking $100 billion in annual revenue and hundreds of thousands of employees.

Hundreds of years later, the family business is well past its peak and is in decline.

And at this point the ownership is in the hands of thousands of descendants of the original owners. But even with all of those different perspectives, everyone agrees that something needs to change.

The various stakeholders still believe in the company, still believe that the brand can be restored to its former glory. But it’s definitely time for new leadership.

So the company starts a search to recruit a CEO. Your fingers are crossed that they find a highly experienced turnaround specialist who knows how to restore fallen stars.

Yet, to your utter bewilderment, the executive candidate that most of your fellow stakeholders support is someone who has absolutely no business experience… someone who has never managed a single employee.

In fact, he’s never even had a real job! He’s never run a budget, let alone a large organization’s, he can barely manage his own finances, and to make matters worse, he actively hates business.

Why would anyone support such a candidate for the company’s top job?

Well he’s a fairly well-spoken, charismatic guy. He has a winning smile. He checks a bunch of diversity boxes.

He also offers some ideas that really excite your fellow stakeholders— even though none of his ideas actually survive scrutiny. His ideas remind you of the election for your high school class president where one of the candidates promised to put Coca-Cola in the water fountains…

You’ve been around business long enough to know ideas are pretty worthless. Execution is what matters. But you find yourself in the minority… and the other stakeholders end up choosing this inexperienced neophyte to lead the company.

This is what NYC did yesterday in electing Zohran Mamdani. And it’s really hard for any rational person to expect a positive outcome.

It’s easy to lament the election of a card carrying Socialist. But if we’re being intellectually honest, we can acknowledge that a lot of people are suffering. They’re struggling more than they used to—and they don’t understand why.

Voters don’t understand how years of mismanagement and waste at the city level have led to a significant decline in municipal services. Crime rates are up, and even the basics like garbage collection or the city’s rat infestation just continue to get worse.

Nor do voters understand how idiotic state policies have driven productive people and businesses away from New York state to friendlier jurisdictions like Florida, resulting in a hollowing out of the tax base (and hence reduction in services).

They also don’t understand how the blowout of federal spending—starting especially with the pandemic—has resulted in higher levels of inflation.

And they definitely don’t understand the vagaries of monetary policy, and how the Federal Reserve’s mistakes have fueled the inflation problem.

Most voters don’t understand any of these things. (Neither does Mamdani.) They only know that they’re falling further behind, and they want change.

Well, change they got. Unfortunately, it’s probably not going to be a good change.

Ironically, one of the other things voters don’t understand is Socialism.

These days, most people who like the idea of socialism skew younger—too young to remember the Soviet Union.

When they think of Socialism, they think Norway. They think it’s possible to have free healthcare, free education, robust pensions and retirement, social safety nets, low unemployment, and a strong economy all at the same time.

The reality is far different.

Scandinavia has achieved certain success in its public welfare programs because, at least until recently, they were high-trust societies with relatively low corruption and high levels of competence in government administration.

A better example of Socialism is Venezuela—a very low-trust society where you have inexperienced, corrupt, incompetent people who regulate every aspect of the economy.

The end result has been everything from widespread starvation to an endless economic depression.

With the election of Mamdani, the ingredients look a lot more like Venezuela— incompetence, inexperience, high-regulation, etc.

Yet people very naively are expecting a result that looks like Scandinavia. In other words they think they can have Venezuelan inputs and Norwegian output.

Good luck with that.

We talk about all this, and more, in today’s podcast.

We cover the lunacy of some of Mamdani’s specific policies and why he won’t be able to achieve them.

We discuss Scandinavian public welfare, and why those systems are eroding thanks to multiculturalism.

We talk about why high-trust societies require shared values and social cohesion—and New York City doesn’t have any of that.

We also discuss the biggest thing that voters are missing. One of the biggest problems in the US is that it has terrible leaders. You only need to look at AOC, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Jasmine Crockett—complete buffoons—and wonder: how do they get elected year after year?

Voters are completely naive. And it’s hard to imagine the US fixing its problems if voters continue sending incompetent, destructive politicians to represent them.

You can listen to the full podcast here.

The podcast transcript is available to you here.

Source

from Schiff Sovereign https://ift.tt/vYm0Bz5
via IFTTT

When the Fawley Refinery opened in southern England in 1921 as an offshoot of Standard Oil, the company deliberately kept a low profile.

The project was a workaround for US and UK tariffs. So there were no speeches, no ribbon cutting, not much news coverage. One day there was no refinery, the next day it was operating.

Oil was still a novelty in coal-dominated Britain, so the refining operation was relatively small at first.

But over the years, as demand for oil grew exponentially, the Fawley refinery ended up in the hands of what is today known as ExxonMobil. And soon the refinery began producing everything from jet fuel to diesel.

The refinery closed during World War II—considered a strategic vulnerability and target for the Nazis.

But after the war, on September 14, 1951, the Fawley Refinery reopened. And this time, it was a big deal.

The reopening ceremony included the largest lunch banquet in British history, attended by dignitaries and officiated by Prime Minister Clement Attlee himself.

The grand reopening was seen as an integral part of a broader postwar industrial revival.

And Fawley became a massive project, featuring state-of-the-art technology to process 270,000 barrels of oil per day and contributing over $100 million annually to British trade. It was completed two months ahead of schedule despite a harsh winter.

The fanfare encapsulated the attitude of the day: oil was a critical strategic national resource. They knew that without energy, they were lost and would cease to exist as a civilization. It also created trade benefit, prosperity, jobs, and tax revenue.

And THAT’S why the Prime Minister was honored to reopen the oil refinery. It was important to the British economy.

But it didn’t stop there. By the early 1970s, there were more than 20 refineries in the UK.

In time, however, some refineries were squeezed out by natural competitive pressures; it became hard to compete with brand-new Chinese and Indian refineries which operated at much lower cost.

Still, as recently as a decade ago, Britain had ten operating oil refineries.

And then came the war.

Not the war in Ukraine. And not the war in the Middle East either.

I’m talking about the war the British government launched on its own country—a war on their own energy sector.

In the holy name of climate change, the British government imposed a series of de-industrializing policies aimed directly at the energy sector, specifically to destroy oil and gas.

They imposed a Zero Emission Vehicle mandate, which ramps up over the next decade until 100% of all new cars and vans sold must be zero-emission by 2035. That includes a ban on new petrol and diesel car sales starting in 2030, with limited exceptions for hybrids until 2035.

Manufacturers that don’t comply face still penalties.

In addition, the British government halted all new licenses for North Sea oil and gas exploration.

Plus they slapped a 78% windfall profits tax on oil and gas companies operating in the UK.

And those are just a few of the highlights.

In 1951, the entire British government was unified in its support for domestic energy production and refining.

In 2025, the government is doing everything it can to eliminate the entire sector—economic consequences be damned.

They are now down to a total of just four refineries, after losing two this year alone.

Fawley is still hanging on. Yet it spends between £70 and £80 million each year just to pay the British government for the crime of emitting CO₂.

Last week, the Energy Security and Net Zero Select Committee—a group of politicians from the House of Commons—held a meeting to discuss what’s happening in the energy sector right now.

One of the witnesses was the head of ExxonMobil in the UK.

He explained that Britain’s energy sector is “in existential crisis at the moment.”

He and others in the industry pointed out the obvious lunacy of the UK’s energy policy.

British demand for energy and petroleum has not gone down. The only difference is that now, they’re just importing it all.

Someone, somewhere, is still producing the CO2 emissions—whether it’s Saudi Arabia or Norway just across the sea. The carbon still goes into the atmosphere.

The difference is that Britain has gone from producing energy and capturing all the economic benefits—jobs, tax revenue, trade surplus—to simply importing it all.

In many cases, they’re importing from their own North Sea basin… only now it’s coming from Norway.

The Norwegians must be astonished at the stupidity of British policy. At this point, Britain’s energy strategy seems to be: Make Norway Great Again.

Britain is still consuming the energy, which means they’re still emitting CO₂.

The only difference is that Britain no longer produces the CO2—they’ve just outsourced the emissions to someone else. They’ve gone from energy producer to energy consumer, from somewhat self-reliant to almost entirely dependent.

The job losses are staggering. The economic decline is obvious. Energy prices continue to rise. And Britain is now dangerously reliant on foreign powers for the most vital strategic resource a country can control.

You really can’t make up this level of stupidity.

But bear in mind this is also a government that has sacrificed its citizens on the altar of multiculturalism, importing millions of immigrants who actively hate Western culture and values.

We’ve talked about this before— the groomer gangs of Pakistani Muslim men who raped underage girls across England while police, health practitioners, and social workers actively covered it up.

The British Prime Minister killed an investigation into it, calling it “the bandwagon of the far right.”

And when native Brits rise up against the destruction of their homeland, rather than accept responsibility, the government makes them the criminals.

British police now arrest people for “offensive” memes, for saying “we love bacon” near a mosque, or simply for walking through London being “openly Jewish.”

The English flag, according to the government, is now a symbol of far right hatred and intolerance.

Everything else—Islam, migrants, trans pride, Ukrainian security—is more important than delivering basic safety and reasonable cost of living to British taxpayers.

Go online to complain and you risk being thrown in jail.

Are these people evil? I don’t know the answer to that question. But after watching the four-hour committee meeting, I couldn’t believe how ignorant they were.

This is supposed to be the Energy Security Committee. And it seemed like most of these politicians knew absolutely nothing about the energy sector.

The panel had to explain what refining even was to them like they were five.

These people had no idea where crude oil comes from or how the oil trade works.

The only thing they seemed to understand was: “oil bad, wind and solar good.”

And the UK isn’t alone.

You’ve got lunatics all over the US and Europe supergluing themselves to the pavement, glitter-bombing museum artifacts, screaming into cameras about climate justice—actively trying to destroy the energy lifeblood of their own civilization.

It’s hard to think of any sector more widely despised than fossil fuel energy.

Which is one reason why we think the sector right now is so massively undervalued.

They are practically giving oil companies and oil services business away today.

More on that soon.

PS— A great example of an undervalued oil company is one we featured in our investment research newsletter, The 4th Pillar.

Even with low oil prices, it’s making money hand over fist, trades at just 3x earnings, and pays a 12% dividend.

When the anti-oil hysteria inevitably leads to shortages, we think this company will do extremely well. And in the meantime, the dividend alone delivers a solid return.

We’re running a limited-time discount on The 4th Pillar—click here to learn more.

Source

from Schiff Sovereign https://ift.tt/NUjlbBK
via IFTTT

The US hostage crisis—also known as the government shutdown—has been going on for a month now.

I’m all for limited government, but this shutdown feels incredibly vindictive, petty, and wildly unprofessional. When politicians can’t manage to compromise on something as basic as keeping the government open, it’s just a really bad look.

Plus, the shutdown continues to erode the waning confidence that foreigners have in the US government.

This is important because foreign governments and central banks own $10 trillion of US government bonds and agency securities. The Treasury Department depends heavily on foreign lenders to finance the government deficits, which now run around $2 trillion annually.

As you’re probably aware, the House passed what’s known as a “clean continuing resolution” to keep the government funded at a basic level while further negotiations take place.

It contains no conservative priorities or crazy pet projects—just a basic 20-page funding bill, as opposed to the thousands of pages they usually contain.

The Senate has attempted at least 13 times to approve the continuing resolution and send it to the President for signature. They’ve only been able to garner around 52-54 votes—which, for most things in the Senate, is not enough for a bill to pass.

This is not what the Founding Fathers had in mind.

Current Senate rules require at least 60 votes require just to end debate and bring most legislation to a final vote. Short of 60 votes, any senator can filibuster the motion—i.e., talk endlessly and run out the clock until the motion fails.

Bizarrely, almost all senators favor keeping this rule even though there’s nothing in the Constitution about the filibuster—or in any foundational document of the United States.

In fact, the Federalist Papers argue explicitly against allowing a tyranny of the minority to hijack control of Congress or the Senate. And that’s exactly what the filibuster does. It allows the minority party to drive the agenda and dictate terms.

Last I checked, that’s not what a democratic system is supposed to be about.

The Senate does have the ability to get rid of the filibuster. But they refuse to do so out of concern that it would be used against them when they are out of the majority.

I find this an absurd argument. Anyone who thinks the Left—given how vicious they’ve been over the past several years—won’t undo it themselves when they are in power is just being naive.

All that said, the reason we’re being told the government is shut down is over these Obamacare tax credits and subsidies.

This, too, is a farce. Even if it were true, it lays bare how Obamacare—aka the Affordable Care Act—has been a complete failure.

It’s literally called the Affordable Care Act, and yet healthcare and the insurance plans themselves are so unaffordable that they require tax credits and subsidies just to make them financially palatable to consumers.

Since its inception, a household health insurance plan for a family of four has nearly doubled, with total costs now around $35,000 per year.

And as the “open enrollment” period begins, the health research nonprofit KFF has found that the average cost of a plan will be up an additional 26% next year.

It will be up 114% if Congress doesn’t extend the “enhanced tax credits” to make the Affordable Care Act less un-affordable.

Premiums have skyrocketed, deductibles have skyrocketed, and quality, in many ways, has gone down.

To add insult to injury, the number one reason Obama even went on this crusade 15 years ago was that too many Americans were without health insurance.

That was the main metric by which the program was meant to be judged.

No one ever asked why so many Americans were without insurance—or why care was so expensive to begin with as to require insurance.

The focus was simply on one very narrow metric: the number of uninsured Americans.

That’s what they tried to solve, even though it was the wrong problem.

They should have tried instead to figure out all the things the government was doing wrong that drove healthcare costs so high in the first place.

Nevertheless, they focused on the wrong problem—and while on the surface it looks successful, dig a little deeper and you realize they didn’t even solve that.

Officially, the number of uninsured Americans dropped from 45.2 million in 2013 to 26.4 million in 2022.

But the number of Americans on Medicaid ballooned from 51.5 million in 2010, to around 77.7 million today (after peaking around 96 million).

In other words, ALL the uninsured— PLUS around 6 million others— went on Medicaid.

Medicaid is a government welfare program for people who can’t afford healthcare and health insurance!

If you are being intellectually honest, you need to include people on Medicaid in the “uninsured” category when measuring success by that metric.

So in effect, the Affordable Care Act not only made care less affordable, but it also increased the number of uninsured.

Which means the entire premise of this government shutdown is based on a blatant and abject failure.

Source

from Schiff Sovereign https://ift.tt/9RUsvu1
via IFTTT

Leftists certainly have an interesting command of the English language.

Minnesota governor Tim Walz, former VP Kamala Harris, Illinois governor JB Pritzker, etc. among many others have routinely referred to their political opponents— ranging from Trump, Trump’s voters, and conservatives in general as “Nazis”.

Multiple CNN “experts” have called Trump a Nazi. Ditto for PBS News, the New York Times, and countless other media outlets.

AOC called republicans “Nazi sympathizers”. Bernie Sanders referred to Trump’s 2024 campaign as “Nazi-like”.

This past June, more than 400 scholars (including 31 Nobel laureates) penned an open letter entitled “Against the return of fascism”, effectively labeling Trump and the MAGA movement a revival of fascism.

A local school board member in Virginia referred to Charlie Kirk as a Nazi, saying “we used to be OK with shooting Nazis.”

Joy Reid even portrayed a desire for lower income taxes as Nazi ideology.

In short, if you’re for limited government, lower taxes, and free speech, you’re a Nazi. If you wear a red hat, you’re a Nazi. If you like law and order, or believe that violent criminals should be jailed to protect the innocent, you’re a Nazi.

Bizarrely, if you support Israel’s right to defend itself, somehow (according to Leftist logic) you’re a Nazi.

But if you are a Democrat Senate candidate with a literal Nazi tattoo across your chest? Well, that’s just an innocent little mistake. Chalk it up to a misunderstanding.

Graham Platner, the hardcore Leftist running for US Senate in Maine, endorsed by Bernie Sanders, had a Totenkopf tattoo for over a decade, before recently having it covered once it became a campaign issue.

The Totenkopf is a particular skull and crossbones used by a unit of SS Nazi concentration camp guards during World War II.

Platner claims he “didn’t know” the symbol was associated with Nazis when he got it 18 years ago. Yet acquaintances dispute this, saying he used to regularly end up with his shirt off at a bar in DC when he was student at George Washington University, and told people it was his Totenkopf.

It strains credibility that someone firmly entrenched in hardcore Leftist politics, with all their talk of anti-fascism and punching Nazis, would not have learned of the association for nearly two full decades.

But it hasn’t hurt him with young Democrats. According to a recent poll, over half of 18 to 29 year-olds still support Platner after learning of his tattoo. His poll numbers have barely moved.

This makes perfect sense, when you consider their stand—and Platner’s—on Palestine and Israel.

According to his campaign website, “I stand with all people seeking peace, democracy, and self-determination. In this moment, that means a clear-eyed condemnation of the Gaza genocide…”

Ah yes, “peace, democracy”: hallmarks of the Hamas reign of terror over Gaza.

But honestly, as ridiculous as this all is, it’s not even the biggest problem with Platner.

A much bigger threat to the US compared to Nazi tattoos and support for Hamas terrorists is that he is yet another simpleton who lacks even a basic understanding of nearly every major issue America faces.

For example, Platner’s own campaign website declares that the reason the US is becoming unaffordable is because “we have a government by, of, and for billionaires, who are building a ‘billionaire economy’ that none of us can afford.”

That’s a great tagline that plays well to his Leftist base. And certainly, affordability is the number one issue for many voters.

LOTS of people with low skill jobs are being left behind. Even white collar workers with six-figure household incomes are starting to feel the squeeze.

Pointing out problems is easy. It’s the solutions that need to be coherent.

Yet Platner merely rages against “billionaires” without actually explaining what he means. HOW exactly are billionaires making the economy unaffordable? WHO are the billionaires that are doing this?

Walmart, for example, is owned by billionaires. Yet in their earnings calls the company routinely announces price rollbacks to help make groceries more affordable. More strikingly, Walmart’s gross profit margin is actually down compared to its pre-pandemic, pre-inflation norm.

This doesn’t sound like a bunch of billionaires trying to stick it to the little guy. This sounds more like a great American business in tune with the needs of its consumers and trying to make food more affordable.

There are plenty of other examples in a variety of different industries of billionaires trying to bring costs down, ranging from technology to healthcare to energy to real estate.

Yet Platner maintains an almost cartoonish view of capitalism, complete with mustache-twirling billionaire super-villains.

And his ‘solutions’ are the same old idiotic socialist talking points: breaking up “monopolies”, federal intervention in the housing market, forcing companies to allow workers to unionize, wealth taxes, etc.

ALL of these ideas will only make life LESS affordable for Americans.

Breaking up large corporations eliminates efficiencies which reduce consumer prices.

Federal housing initiatives are what created soaring home prices to begin with.

Unions have become protectionist rackets that enrich union leaders, while putting up barriers to entry for new workers and unskilled labor.

And wealth taxes will almost certainly reduce productivity and innovation.

Naturally Platner offers no real explanations about what is actually behind America’s price inflation: too much government spending which generates negative returns on capital. Too many regulations which strangle business and hamper efficiency.

No. They want overly simplistic explanations: it’s all the billionaires’ fault.

(He also wants to “ban billionaires buying elections”. Does he mean George Soros, who has single-handedly financed an entire army of Leftist politicians?)

I’m an investor and entrepreneur myself, so I tend to look at the government through the lens of business.

Think of the US President as the CEO of America. The Senate and the House are like two separate Boards of Directors. And the responsibility of any Board member is to ensure that management is working to benefit the owners of the business— in this case, the citizens of the United States.

In any serious company, Board members are honest, experienced professionals who have some domain expertise in various aspects of the business— perhaps finance, technology, legal, etc.

And sometimes, if a business is in a very unique situation (like a pending bankruptcy), the Board might recruit members with unique expertise, i.e. someone who understands bank restructuring.

This is what America needs— ‘Board members’, i.e. Senators and House Representatives, who are honest professionals with valuable domain expertise who can objectively and fairly represent the interests of American citizens.

Given America’s looming debt crisis, one of the most important areas of expertise needed in the House and Senate is FINANCE. America needs people in Congress who understand debt, the bond market, central banking, reserve currency dynamics, and macroeconomic issues.

Platner doesn’t have a clue about any of that stuff. So not only would he be NOT helpful, he’ll be yet another destructive influence.

America has a lot of problems— the debt challenge being the biggest one. All of these problems are solvable. But given the cadre of complete and utter morons that the Left keeps electing, from AOC to Jasmine Crockett to Zohran Mamdani to Omar Fateh in Minneapolis, to now potentially Graham Platner, it’s getting harder to think they’re going to be able to fix it.

Source

from Schiff Sovereign https://ift.tt/KdhoGOu
via IFTTT

George Villiers should have been a nobody.

Born into a minor family from an irrelevant English village far from London in the late 1500s, young George grew up with no real prospects for his future.

But he did have one thing going for him: according to reports at the time, George Villiers was extremely handsome. Like, there’s ‘handsome’, and there’s ‘George Villiers handsome’.

But when you think of good-looking English men these days, apparently Villiers’ good looks were less Henry Cavill, and more fem-boy.

The Spanish ambassador even described Villiers as “so beautiful he seems like a woman. . .”

Villiers’ overly ambitious mother knew her son was a handsome boy. So she groomed him from the start to use his good looks to climb the social ladder.

The training worked. Villiers was 22 years old (in the year 1614) when he was first introduced to King James I, i.e. the namesake of the world’s most prominent Bible translation.

The King took an immediate liking to the young lad and immediately made him the royal cup-bearer, then nicknamed him “Steenie”– a reference to having a face like an angel. 

Within two years, the King knighted Villiers and appointed him “Gentleman of the Bedchamber”, which is pretty much what it sounds like. The title signified tremendous status, granting access to the monarch’s inner sanctuary, and it was typically only reserved for the closest confidants… or lovers.

The King was obviously smitten with ‘Steenie’, and it was an open secret in the royal court that the two were having a torrid romance.

King James reportedly would “clasp [Villiers] about the neck with his arms and kiss him” in front of other courtiers, and the two would engage in “lascivious” acts in public.

Moreover, the King sent Villiers love letters, many of which survive. In one entry, the King wrote, “I desire only to live in this world for your sake.” In others, he referred to Villiers as his “sweet child and wife” (there was a nearly 30-year age gap between the two).

By 1617, the King began granting more and more high ranks and offices upon his young lover; it was like an avalanche of noble titles– Lord Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire, Master of the Horse, Lord High Admiral, Earl, Marquess, etc.

And by 1623, the King went so far as to make him a Duke– one of the highest noble ranks in the realm.

But Villiers was apparently more than just a pretty face. He shrewdly and deftly used his new titles and vast influence over the King to consolidate power and effectively position himself as the most important person in the English government.

He single-handedly pushed for a number of ill-fated military expeditions, including invasions in Spain and France. Every one of them was a disaster, costing tens of thousands of lives and millions of pounds sterling.

One of the worst was the Ile de Re campaign in France in which 50% of the English force was killed and had to retreat under fire. The folly wasn’t just a costly tactical defeat; it was a national humiliation.

James I died in 1625, but Villiers’ power continued under the king’s successor, Charles I. Villiers at one point wrote to his new king, “Sir, I am so confident of your love that I dare undertake anything for your service.” It was a clear sign that Villiers was still in charge and free to run the country into the ground.

In time, Villiers’ corruption knew no limits. He sold offices and noble ranks. He granted monopolies to private businesses that paid him enough money. He took bribes from foreign countries– including both Spain and France at the same time!

He used the power of the state to go after his political opponents– imprisoning them, bankrupting them, or trying to ruin their reputations socially. Pretty absurd tactic for a guy who slept his way to the top. 

Everyone knew he was corrupt. Shakespeare mocked him in plays (like 1624’s A Game at Chess, which Villiers had shut down after nine days). Alexandre Dumas portrayed Villiers as a glamorous villain in The Three Musketeers.

Even Villiers’ portrait, painted by the great Rubens, portrayed the Duke as a petty, arrogant figure.

In short, the guy was an arrogant, ambitious, corrupt failure.

In the end he nearly bankrupted the nation; the national debt tripled thanks to Villiers pitiful stewardship. The military was in shambles. The government– and soon English society– became deeply divided, culminating in the English Civil War in 1642. 

Yet he never took responsibility; everything, he claimed, was done in the name of King. Villiers convinced everyone that he was speaking for the King and had the authority of the King… or that he was acting with the King’s knowledge and consent.

It was basically the modern equivalent of controlling King James I’s autopen signature.

And that includes the royal pardons that Villiers issued, including the pardon he issued to himself. In the name of the King, of course.

This story of George Villiers is nowhere near the first time in history that enormous political power was hijacked by a petty, ambitious sycophant. And it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

We’ve obviously seen this in our own time, most recently with the backroom dealings during the Biden presidency, where you had an obviously incapable, enfeebled, demented man who was being propped up—both figuratively and literally in some cases—by staffers who hijacked the power of the presidency for their own vanity projects.

Power is a dangerous drug. And in modern political systems it’s far too easy for someone who is extremely incompetent to gain power.

We see that every day in the Western world. One need only look to the US congress to see the complete buffoons who manage to get themselves elected every two years.

That is dangerous enough. It’s more dangerous when people who aren’t even part of the process seize the opportunity to hijack that power for themselves surreptitiously, deceitfully, and illegally.

 We’ve seen these people use that power to make extreme, widespread changes across the country, in every realm from finance to the military to public health policy to energy policy—and yes, even issuing pardons signed by autopen. 

The long-term destabilizing effects are obvious. In England’s case, the country had to go through a civil war and a revolution for things to get back to normal.

America will probably heal more quickly, but we should consider ourselves lucky that Tony Fauci wasn’t better looking.

Source

from Schiff Sovereign https://ift.tt/KdnolNG
via IFTTT

Protestant firebrand and political activist Hugh Latimer must have known he was risking his life when he stepped into the pulpit at St. Paul’s Cross on January 12, 1549.

His sermon that Sunday morning was hardly religious in nature. Rather, Latimer publicly expressed the view– the deep, deep frustration– that nearly all Englishmen were feeling at the time, but everyone was too afraid to say out loud.

Inflation was killing them. And it was the government’s fault.

It started about seven years before, in 1542. England went to war against both Scotland and France– AT THE SAME TIME.  War is always expensive, and it’s especially debilitating when you’re fighting simultaneous conflicts to your north and south.

War costs quickly mounted, and the English government began paying for it by debasing the currency. Two years into the wars, by 1544, silver content in their coins had plummeted by about a third. Two years later by another 50%.

At peak, when Latimer gave his famous sermon, silver content had fallen 90% in just seven years. And as a result, prices across England were skyrocketing.

Latimer was witty and eloquent in the finest English tradition; he quipped at one point that “the King’s coin is become like the King’s faith– clipped and counterfeit.” And later on, “the debasing of the coin is the debasing of the realm…”

Latimer believed the debasement of the currency to be a moral issue– even a sinful act– because it was essentially theft of the commoner’s purchasing power.

He spoke to thousands of people that cold day in January. But his words went far beyond the congregation; his sermon was published and widely circulated, prompting angry Englishmen across the country to form rebel groups and demand change.

Latimer was arrested and charged for “stirring the people”, imprisoned in the Tower of London and ultimately put to death. His final words were “we shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.”

Writing in his own journal in 1551, King Edward VI himself admitted that his government was wrong.

“The debasement of the coin was the cause of the dearth,” wrote the King– with dearth in that context referring to soaring food prices. He knew his government caused inflation, and inflation caused the social unrest. Latimer was an innocent man who had the courage to say what everyone else was feeling.

Both of these are sadly common trends in history; governments often persecute those whose only crime is telling the truth. And second, governments will invariably screw up, create inflation, and cause severe devastation in people’s lives.

I’ll focus on the second topic today given that the most recent inflation numbers in the US were announced a few days ago.

And, no surprise, inflation is ticking up and moving in the wrong direction. Based on the September month-over-month numbers, inflation is an annualized 3.6%.

Bizarrely, the Fed has already begun lowering interest rates and is widely expected to cut further in the coming months… which will most likely make inflation worse.

Far more important is that Fed officials are signaling that they’re about to end their quantitative tightening earlier than originally planned.

This is crucial. During the pandemic, the Fed created $5+ trillion in new money. Poof. It’s the equivalent of England debasing its currency in the 1540s… and all that new money triggered all the inflation we’ve experienced.

Quantitative tightening is the reverse of that process; in addition to raising rates (starting in 2022), the Fed also began reducing the money supply and draining some of that money out of the financial system.

At this point they’ve removed about $2 trillion out the $5 trillion that they printed. And the original plan was to keep going and reduce their balance sheet.

But that seems to be no longer happening. So stopping the quantitative easing, combined with interest rate cuts, will really invite a LOT more inflation.

And all of this is happening just as the labor market is beginning to falter. White collar jobs in particular are being slashed at an astonishing pace.

There’s a term for this– one that economists don’t like to use very much. But it’s called stagflation– a shrinking economy combined with higher inflation.

America has been here before– most recently in the 1970s.

The US economy was in a tailspin; unemployment and inflation BOTH surged, resulting in an almost entire decade of economic misery. But there were safe havens.

Gold was an obvious safe haven. As the US economy stagnated and retail prices rose, gold prices exploded, rising more than 20x over the next ten years. The dollar, meanwhile, lost roughly 75% of its purchasing power.

We’re seeing similar conditions today, from the inflation data to the gargantuan US national debt. And if history is any guide, this isn’t a trend that reverses easily. The underlying driver—loss of confidence in US fiscal policy and the long-term value of the dollar—shows no sign of abating.

This is why we’ve written so much about gold over the past few years. And, despite its recent pullback, gold remains an incredibly sensible long-term investment.

But there are other real assets to consider as well.

Real assets in general tend to hold their value during inflationary periods—because they’re not just paper promises. They’re tangible. They’re productive. They’re the raw inputs the economy is actually built on.

One of the most obvious opportunities right now—possibly the most mispriced sector in the entire market—is energy.

The world does not exist without energy. Full stop. People have been fed a ridiculous lie that oil is going to disappear and we’re all going to drive solar-powered EVs and Exxon is going to go out of business.

What total BS. But because of this myth, many oil companies are absurdly cheap. Meanwhile oilfield services businesses have been practically left for dead.

Then there’s natural gas– which (especially in the US) remains THE cheapest form of energy on the planet—cheaper than coal, oil, and in some real-world scenarios, even cheaper than nuclear. And it’s even pretty clean.

But natural gas producers too have traded at fire-sale valuations.

We’ve been clear that the gold story is not over by a long shot.

But in our investment research, we are starting to turn to other sectors that are still at the bottom of their cycles— but won’t stay that way for long the way inflation is heating up again.

The story of inflation is as old as the story of civilization itself. It’s inevitable. And we’re seeing some pretty obvious warning signs on the horizon.

But there are some compelling safe havens out there which have almost NEVER been cheaper. They’re worth considering.

We’d also encourage you to consider joining our premium investment research service, which features these deeply undervalued, highly profitable, well-managed real asset businesses– we’re offering a limited time promotional discount and an iron-clad money back guarantee.

Click here to learn more.

Source

from Schiff Sovereign https://ift.tt/Ov3A2mI
via IFTTT

There was a popular legend from medieval Venice about an impoverished orphan from the island of Torcello.

The boy came to Venice at a young age, found a job, and worked tirelessly and energetically– enough to impress some of the city’s wealthy patricians.

Eventually the boy– now a young man– had built up enough credibility that some local noblemen entered into a commenda contract with him, i.e. a sort of proto-limited partnership. The idea was that the investors would finance a trade voyage (and stay comfortably at home in Venice), while the young man would risk life and limb on the high seas.

The investors would take 100% of the financial risk in exchange for 75% of the profit, while the orphaned entrepreneur would earn a 25% cut in exchange for risking his life.

The young man went off to sail the known world and came back with 10x his investors’ money. Ecstatic at the tremendous return on capital, the investors backed several other voyages… until eventually the young orphan boy with no prospects became one of the richest men in Venice.

No one knows if this particular story is true. But it’s emblematic of the incredible rise and peak of the Republic of Venice. 1,000+ years ago, it was truly the America of its day.

While the rest of Europe was toiling away in poverty due to the constraints of the ridiculous feudal system, Venice was like a rocket ship far ahead of its time.

Its entire society was built on economic freedom. ANYONE, from anywhere in Europe, could come to Venice, work hard, take risks, and make a fortune. It was the American dream seven centuries before there was an America.

Venice also prided itself on a strong rule of law, not to mention unparalleled political and financial stability. It became the richest place on the continent, by far, and its ducato (ducat) gold coin eventually displaced the Byzantine gold solidus as Europe’s major reserve currency.

But eventually, like most great civilizations, it peaked. Venice’s swashbuckling, risk-taking, hard-working entrepreneurial culture became complacent.

Rather than finance new trade routes and keep innovating, the great moneyed families of Venice were happy to sit at home and spend their fortunes on art and architecture. The government became clogged up with an entrenched political class that remained in elected office year after year. They became lazy, then incompetent, and then ultimately ran the place into the ground.

Meanwhile, other rising powers emerged on the geopolitical horizon– among them, the Ottoman Empire.

In the 1300s, the Ottoman Empire came out of nowhere as a ferocious competitor, ruthlessly conquering everyone who stood in their way.  They were also shrewd at trade and commerce, and they posed a direct threat to Venice.

It was a classic historical case of a rising power against a declining power. And it seemed like war was inevitable.

And to be fair, the two countries did cross swords a number of times; history records these as the “Ottoman-Venetian Wars [note the plural]”, though realistically they were extremely limited conflicts, i.e. not full-blown total war in which both sides tried to obliterate one another.

The reason for the limited nature of the conflicts is simple: trade. Both Venice and the Ottoman Empire did a LOT of business with one another, and they both knew that destroying their adversary would be self-destructive.

So instead, they fought small, limited conflicts while continuing to engage in trade and commerce.

This is very similar to the US-China conflict that has already been going on for a number of years. We can’t even count the number of cyberattacks that China has waged on the US and US infrastructure. There will be more.

China has been buying up land across the United States left and right to stage military assets for further conflict. They’ve engaged in election interference. Stolen intellectual property. Flooded the US with Fentanyl. Brazen espionage, complete with honeypot sex scandals of high-ranking bureaucrats, business leaders, and politicians. And let’s not forget about the balloons flying over US military bases.

Over the weekend the US Navy announced that two military aircraft– a MH-60R Sea Hawk helicopter  and F/A-18F Super Hornet jet– both crashed in the South China Sea while conducting “routine operations”.

Fortunately no one was killed, and all crew members were safely recovered. But aside from that, the Navy provided no further details.

Realistically there are two possibilities.

Either, one, it’s amateur night at the Navy again, where poor training, bad leadership, or DEI quotas resulted in yet another preventable accident. And if that’s the case, it’s even more embarrassing given that it took place in China’s backyard.

The more sinister possibility is that the Chinese navy disabled the aircraft.

China regularly deploys its extensive (and highly advanced) nuclear-powered submarine fleet throughout the South China Sea to deliberately frustrate global shipping and control the region.

They engage in electronic warfare, including signal jamming that takes out radar, navigation, and communication systems for commercial shipping vessels… which encourages them to avoid the South China Sea entirely.

The US military, on the other hand, routinely conducts counter-jamming operations, along with submarine tracking, in an effort to keep the South China Sea open.

The two militaries are essentially engaged with one another every single day… but without firing a single shot. It’s a very limited conflict.

This weekend it might have crossed a line. And it’s possible that China’s jamming operations might have taken out certain flight and navigation controls of the US military aircraft, causing them to crash.

That would be a blatant escalation, especially as President Trump and Xi are set to meet.

Having said that, I still think full-scale war is a remote possibility. Just like Venice and the Ottoman Empire, China and the US still need each other. China actually needs the US far more than the US needs China at this point, and in truth the Trump administration has worked hard to make sure that’s the case.

Frankly, war with China doesn’t even crack what I would consider the top five concerns facing the US right now—maybe not even the top ten.

We break this all down in today’s podcast—why these latest incidents matter, but also why the odds of all-out war are extremely low.

And I also weigh in on what I actually think is a much bigger concern for the US.

You can listen to the podcast here.

You can access the podcast transcript here.

Source

from Schiff Sovereign https://ift.tt/drbhUC4
via IFTTT

In October 2024, a sitting justice of the New Hampshire state Supreme Court, Anna Barbara Hantz Marconi, was indicted on seven criminal charges related to corruption and abuse of power.

According to prosecutors, Justice Marconi abused the immense power of her office to squash a separate criminal investigation that had been initiated against her husband (another high ranking state government official in New Hampshire).

Justice Marconi herself acknowledged that there was sufficient evidence to convict her of the crimes.

But instead, two weeks ago, she was able to orchestrate a sweet plea deal in which she plead no constest, i.e. no admission of guilt, to a single misdemeanor charge— criminal solicitation of misuse of position. All other charges, including the felony charges, were dropped. She served no jail time and paid a $1,200 fine.

It seems like a Supreme Court justice who is punished for criminal misuse of position… or realistically ANY crime… ought to lose his/her job.

Yet Justice Marconi went right back to work… as a New Hampshire State Supreme Court Justice… back on the bench, presiding over cases, as if none of it had happened.

Instead of being held to a higher standard as public officials should be, she was spared from the standards that she applies to everyone else.

She’s part of a growing list of public officials who seem to live by a different set of rules.

Earlier this year, Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook was accused of mortgage fraud—lying on loan documents to secure personal financial gain.

For someone charged with safeguarding the integrity of the financial system, even the appearance of financial misconduct should have resulted in at least a temporary suspension pending further investigation. If you can’t be trusted to tell the truth on your own mortgage application, you shouldn’t be setting interest rates or supervising banks.

And then there’s Letitia James, whose conflict of interest was baked into her campaign platform. She ran for Attorney General of New York on a promise to go prosecute Donald Trump.

But now that she’s been indicted herself—for lying on mortgage documents to obtain better loan terms—suddenly it’s political. Or racist. Never mind the stack of paperwork bearing her signature.

But it got even worse the more we learned.

Why was James lying on those forms? To secure a hideout for a fugitive family member.

The property she swore under penalty of perjury she’d occupy as a second home? Turns out it was being used by her grand-niece—who, at the time, had a criminal record and was wanted on outstanding charges.

So while the Attorney General of New York was busy lecturing the nation about how “nobody is above the law,” she was personally committing crimes to help her felon family member dodge it.

You can’t make this stuff up.

But this is a pattern in government.

Take Judge Hannah Dugan in Milwaukee, who earlier this year helped an illegal immigrant escape from ICE agents inside her courthouse.

According to a federal indictment, she misled federal officers and sent them on a wild goose chase to the chief judge’s office, then ushered the defendant out a back jury door with his attorney.

And by the way, the illegal immigrant wasn’t in court for illegally crossing the border. He beat his roommate, and then attacked his roommate’s girlfriend when she tried to break up the fight.

THAT is the man this judge helped escape from federal agents.

The list goes on.

James Comey lied to Congress about authorizing a leak that damaged a sitting president’s reputation—an inexcusable betrayal of public trust for the man who once led the nation’s top law enforcement agency.

Then there is Stacy Davis Gates, the head of the Chicago Teachers Union who opposed school choice, but sends her own kid to a private school!

She just got promoted to head of the Illinois Federation of Teachers.

Maybe there she can make all the state’s schools fail just as miserably as Chicago’s public schools are failing.

These are the people in charge of justice, finance, law enforcement, and education—and their conduct is the opposite of what their positions demand. It’s not just hypocrisy. It’s open contempt for the roles they’ve been trusted to fill.

America has a lot of problems— big problems. They’re still fixable. But before these major challenges can even be tackled, it seems like priority 1 is getting rid of the public sector officials who routinely abuse their positions.

Source

from Schiff Sovereign https://ift.tt/xiMWq4n
via IFTTT

In light of this week’s roller-coaster gold ride, I thought it would be useful to turn once again back to the lessons of history and revisit what we discussed recently about the 1970s.

Foreign governments and central banks around the world had been becoming increasingly concerned about the US government’s outrageous fiscal deficits as early as the mid-1960s.

French President Charles de Gaulle sounded the alarm about America’s costly war in Vietnam, combined with historic welfare spending, and he began demanding that the Treasury Department redeem a portion of France’s US dollar holdings for gold.

Decades ago, that was his right because under the post–World War II Bretton Woods system, the US dollar was convertible into gold at a rate of $35 per ounce.

By 1971, foreigners’ demands to exchange their dollars for gold had become so great that Richard Nixon formally ended the convertibility once and for all.

Nixon downplayed any impact, telling Americans on August 15, 1971, “your dollar will be worth just as much tomorrow as it is today.”

The reality is the dollar went on to lose 75% of its value throughout the course of the decade. And if anything, Nixon’s move only encouraged foreigners to dump their dollars at an even more rapid pace.

As a result, the price of gold skyrocketed fivefold as governments and central banks around the world diversified out of the dollar and into gold.

We’ve been seeing this same move over the past couple of years—insatiable foreign and central bank appetite has driven gold prices from $1,800 a couple of years ago to over $4,000 today.

Obviously, over the past few months, there has been a lot of individual investor capital flowing into ETFs, hedge fund speculation, and similar vehicles. But in the long run, gold’s rise has been—and will continue to be—driven by foreign government and central bank diversification out of the dollar.

In 1975, gold hit a temporary peak at around $185 per ounce. After a period of consolidation, in which there was a significant price correction, gold then resumed its ascent, rising all the way to $850.

The point is that regardless of any short-term price correction, the fundamental driver—foreign governments and central banks diversifying out of the US dollar—hadn’t changed.

It took the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 to finally restore credibility in the US government’s finances. Reagan, of course, campaigned on cutting the deficit, sparking a long-term trend which culminated in multiple budget surpluses in the late 1990s.

This renewed confidence in US government finances is what ultimately reversed the trend on gold prices, causing the price to collapse below $300 by the end of the 90s.

I believe we’re in a similar situation today as in 1975.

Gold had a significant correction earlier this week, but the price remained above $4,000.

Perhaps this is the start of a lull period, or even a correction phase as in 1975, but it doesn’t fundamentally change the story right now: foreign governments and central banks are aggressively trying to diversify their US dollar strategic reserves, and gold is one of the only assets that makes sense.

I’m not here to say “buy gold” at $4,000. But based on the trajectory of the US government’s finances, the price of gold should go much higher over the next few years.

I don’t say this because I’m a “gold bug.” I don’t have any irrational fascination with a piece of metal. Rather, my outlook is based on a clear understanding of global central banking and strategic reserve assets, coupled with the obvious deterioration in the US government’s fiscal condition.

But I also understand that after an almost uninterrupted and astonishing rise to nearly $4,400, gold may be due for a correction—similar to what happened in 1975.

The reality is, no one knows for sure. Gold could just as easily rise to $5,000 as drop to $3,500.

I’d point out, however, that there are still a number of high-quality gold, platinum, and silver businesses that are wildly undervalued and extremely profitable—and they will continue to be extremely profitable even if there is a steep decline in gold prices.

For example, one of the companies we featured in our premium investment research service is producing gold at a price of just $1,000 per ounce. This means the price of gold could fall below $3,000, and this company would still be making money hand over fist—and trading at just 5x earnings based on today’s stock price.

Did I mention they pay a handsome dividend?

To me, the long-term case for gold is crystal clear—foreign governments and central banks will continue to by gold unless there is a fundamental change in Congress’s attitude toward the US budget deficit. And I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

The short-term case for gold over the next couple of months is anyone’s guess. It could go higher, it could go lower. And that’s why I think some of these ultra-cheap, highly profitable, well-managed, largely debt-free gold companies are really worth considering.

When the long-term case for gold is so obvious, it’s a sensible strategy to own a business that has so much gold exposure, pays a dividend, and can continue to be extremely profitable—even if there’s a short-term gold correction.

If you want to learn more about our investment research, now is a great time—because we are offering a limited-time discount. Click here to learn more.

Source

from Schiff Sovereign https://ift.tt/CvrnIUT
via IFTTT

It was only ten weeks ago that the US national debt crossed $37 trillion for the first time. Now, less than three months later, the national debt is set to surpass $38 trillion this week.

That’s a simply insane rate of increase— another $1 trillion added to the debt in just ten weeks.

This should be front-page news everywhere in America. The fact that it barely registers a mention, even in the most prominent financial media, suggests a dangerous level of complacency about the US national debt.

The complacency is so high, in fact, that the venerable Wall Street Journal published an article back in July essentially poking fun of people who are concerned about the debt.

The article quoted conservative deficit hawks in the 1980s and 1990s who warned that America’s excess debt (even decades ago) would lead to a major financial crisis.

The newspaper’s implication seemed to be that, because the big debt crisis never occurred 30-40 years ago, any fears about today’s debt burden must also be wrong.

One of the most common lies that the complacent class likes to recite about America’s gargantuan national debt is that “it doesn’t matter because we owe it to ourselves.”

This assertion is, quite simply, an outrageous falsehood. Let’s start with the facts:

Approximately $7.4 trillion out of the $38 trillion US national debt (19.4%) is what’s known as “intragovernmental holdings”.

This is the money that people claim “we owe to ourselves”, and it is primarily comprised of money that is owed to the likes of Social Security, Medicare, and various other trust funds ranging from veterans care to military retirement to the highway trust fund.

Let’s consider Social Security— which just itself is owed trillions of dollars. For decades, Social Security brought in more income (via payroll tax revenue) than it spent on retiree benefits. And that extra surplus was invested in US government bonds.

So in other words, the Treasury Department owes Social Security (i.e. every current and future retiree in America) trillions of dollars.

By saying “the debt doesn’t matter because we owe it to ourselves” almost suggests that it’s somehow OK to default on Social Security, i.e. to rob current and future retirees of their promised benefit.

That doesn’t seem OK to me. But if that’s what the complacent class truly believes, I wish they’d have the guts to just come right out and say so.

Ditto for military retirement, Medicare, etc. Defaulting on the debt that the government “owes to itself” means defaulting on US citizens, veterans, etc.

Yet still, even if one still concludes that defaulting on intragovernmental debt is harmless, there’s still the tiny issue that upwards of 80% of the US national debt is owed to others.

Nearly $10 trillion is owed to a handful of foreign governments and central banks including Japan, China, Norway, etc. Defaulting on foreign creditors would trigger a severe global financial crisis, not to mention the US dollar would cease being the world’s reserve currency practically overnight.

Trillions more are owed to US commercial banks, money market funds, pension funds, and insurance companies. Defaulting on them would cause a US financial crisis that would make the Great Depression seem mild by comparison.

The bottom line is that debt is debt. It doesn’t matter to whom it is owed— Social Security, the FDIC, Wells Fargo, the European Central Bank, or my own mother— it must still be paid. Failure to pay would result in catastrophic consequences.

Unfortunately given the government’s current spending trajectory, the debt will become much worse.

By the way, this isn’t some doom-and-gloom analysis or wild conspiracy theory. The Congressional Budget Office’s own “Long-Term Budget Outlook” forecasts America’s debt-to-GDP ratio rising “every year” for the next thirty years.

Today, in 2025, America’s ratio of public debt (which disingenuously excludes intragovernmental holdings owed to Social Security, Medicare, etc.) to GDP stands at 100%.

By 2035, just a decade from now, they forecast the public debt to GDP at 118%. Then 136% by 2045. Then 156% by 2055.

So even after adjusting for US economic growth (and hence rising tax revenues), the national debt just keeps getting larger.

The reason this matters so much is because the debt has to be serviced. Interest must be paid each year.

In the fiscal year that just ended on September 30ths (Fiscal Year 2025), the government spent more than $1.2 trillion… just to pay interest on the debt. That’s 23% of tax revenue.

And by the way, another 50% of tax revenue was spent on Social Security and Medicare… which doesn’t even include all the other “mandatory entitlement” spending like welfare.

These numbers all grow each year. Interest payments in particular are growing at an alarming rate. At current trajectory, in fact, the government’s annual interest bill will likely eclipse 40% of tax revenue within 8-10 years.

The implications are obvious— when the government has to spend the bulk of its tax  revenue just to service the debt, it means there’s substantially less money for everything else, from military spending to border patrol.

Now, the White House hopes to be able to reduce its annual interest bill by slashing interest rates.

Think about it— even with a $38 trillion national debt, if the average interest rate is just 0.5%, the annual interest bill (at < $200 billion) is extremely manageable.

But realistically the only way to do this is for the Federal Reserve to ‘print money’ (i.e. expand the money supply through Quantitative Easing). This would essentially require the Fed to create tens of trillions of dollars to refinance the national debt.

Remember when the Fed created ~$5 trillion during the pandemic? We got 9% inflation. How high will inflation go if the Fed has to print $30 or $40 trillion? No one knows, but it’s probably not going to be 2%.

 

PS– This is exactly the reason why gold is rising. Foreign governments and central banks in particular are worried about the national debt, and what that means for their dollar holdings.

But I know for a lot of people it’s hard to buy gold at $4,000— which is why in our investment research we have focused on finding wildly profitable deeply undervalued gold companies.

One of our favorites will be making money hand over fist and trading at 5x earnings even if gold drops to $3,000 per ounce.

Click here to learn more and lock-in a limited time discount.

Source

from Schiff Sovereign https://ift.tt/78OQpye
via IFTTT