Wow. Mamdani and the Left trash Cuomo for not loving Islam enough

The most polished, eloquent, and articulate voice on the Left right now is no longer the greasy used-car salesman Gavin Newsom.

It’s the next mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani.

He has Obama‑level charisma and speaking ability, which is terrifying, because it means his political career won’t stop with New York City.

I watched the mayoral debate between Mamdani and former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo— of daytime Emmy fame for delivering pandemic briefings while murdering nursing homes residents with his COVID policies.

But after being cast out by his party over #MeToo allegations, this was meant to be Cuomo’s big political comeback.

It will not be.

Last night’s debate made it painfully obvious the fix is in. The moderators gave subtle advantages to Mamdani, like allowing him to respond to questions last, giving him ample time to think through his responses and hear what his opponents said.

They even joined in on the beat-down of Cuomo over not being pro-Islamic enough.

The fact that Cuomo could not name a single mosque he had visited, Mamdani said, is why so many New Yorkers have lost faith in politics.”

Wow. It’s not the crime, the trash piling up in the streets, the homelessness, crumbling infrastructure, noise, illegal parking, or the absolute unimaginable infestation of rats that have overrun the city.

It’s because Cuomo can’t name a mosque.

Those problems, by the way, Mamdani openly admitted urgently need to be solved… including the rats. In fact he ranked New York’s rat infestation as one of the top two problems in the city (the other being noise).

Yet in almost the very next sentence, when asked how he would pitch corporations on relocating to New York City, he looked in the camera and said with a straight face, “The quality of life.”

Because nothing says quality of life like a medieval infestation of plague rats.

The debate was so absurd, I kept waiting for an announcer to declare, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday night!”

But that didn’t happen.

Instead, when asked how he’d pay for his utopia of free buses, free childcare, city-run groceries, and state-sponsored everything, Mamdani pointed to a shining beacon of fiscal competence and economic magnetism: New Jersey!

He said, if New Jersey can tax corporations more, why can’t New York City?

Because nothing says high growth, business-friendly fiscal responsibility like New Jersey.

When the discussion turned to crime, Mamdani blamed Donald Trump. But the solution is definitely not Trump sending in the National Guard. That was only a good solution when Governor Kathy Hochul did the exact same thing last year.

Insead Mamdani wants to hire a legion of social workers to stop New York’s violent criminality, and pay for everything by raising taxes. Apparently he’s completely blind to all of the people and businesses who have fled the city over high taxes, rampant crime, and… rats.

I get into all of this, and many other jaw-dropping debate moments, in today’s podcast.

And I also discuss why this doesn’t have to be America’s future.

There are actually places that are solving problems— and no, not New Jersey.

Look at Florida. It went from heavily indebted to budget surpluses in about fifteen years.

Today the state is so fiscally stable that they’ve paid down half of their debt, and now they’re talking about eliminating property taxes altogether. There’s already no state income tax in Flodia, yet the government still manages to keep crime under control, maintain functioning infrastructure, and enjoy a booming economy.

America’s problems are substantial. Florida is a great example of how they can be solved. New York City is proving to be an astonishing tale of how they can become much worse.

Which way will the country go?

You can listen to the full podcast here.

The podcast transcript is available here.

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What if gold crashes to $3,000 per ounce?

A little over a month ago, in early September, after careful analysis and detailed study, my team and I reached an important conclusion. And we started telling our audience almost immediately.

Gold had just crossed $3,500 per ounce, silver had just crossed $40, and many gold and silver mining companies had experienced astonishing gains.

Of course none of this came as a surprise to our readers. We’ve been saying for the past few years that gold in particular was going to go much higher, specifically because foreign governments and central banks were buying up gold by the metric ton as a way to diversify their strategic reserves away from the US dollar.

That extra demand from central banks totaling a few hundred billion dollars sent gold prices rocketing higher. And we also said this trend would continue.

Similarly over the past couple of years, as we were predicting higher gold and silver prices, we also predicted that mining companies would benefit, and generate record revenues and record profits as a result.

At the time those mining companies had been left for dead in financial markets, with share prices so cheap they were practically being given away.

We told our audience over and over again in print and in our podcasts that this wouldn’t last, and that mining companies would surge in value.

And that’s exactly what happened. In fact, many of the companies we featured in our premium investment research are up 3x, 4x, 5x, even 6x this year alone.

But early last month we realized there was another near term catalyst that would likely send these companies’ share prices even higher. These businesses are all publicly traded, and so they have to report their earnings, usually every quarter.

Q1 earnings were great. Q2 earnings were fantastic. But we realized that gold and silver had been rising so quickly, that Q3 earnings—which would be reported sometime in October—would just be out of this world.

We did the math and crunched the numbers ourselves, and based on our analysis, even companies that had risen 4 or 5x were still undervalued based on projected Q3 earnings.

And we anticipated that for many of these companies, their share prices would jump after their Q3 earnings were announced.

The first of those companies reported its earnings earlier this week, and we were absolutely right. Its record profit dazzled investors, and its share price jumped nearly 20% in a day.

It’s also up almost 52% since we made this prediction a month ago.

We’ve also done the math to see what would happen to these businesses if there were a sudden drop in precious metals prices.

Well, to give you an example one of the companies we featured in our investment research, which is up more than 5x, would still be incredibly undervalued.

Based on our analysis, even if gold were to drop below $3,000—roughly 30% from here—that company would still be making money hand over fist, and based on its current share price, still trading at around 5.5x earnings.

Oh, and did I mention they pay a substantial dividend?

It’s not that every mining company is in the same boat. There are thousands of companies out there, and many are just terrible businesses with pitiful management and terrible balance sheets.

But if you’re willing to do the hard work and find the highest quality management, and the most pristine balance sheets, there are still undervalued gems out there.

This is what we focus on in our premium investment research.

And we believe that many of them could see similar upside over the next few weeks as they report bonanza Q3 earnings.

If you want to learn more about our premium investment research and all the high quality real asset companies that we feature, we’re offering a limited time promotional discount of 40%. Click here to learn more.

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Honest question: what did you get for $30+ trillion?

Some of us are old enough to remember life in 1999.

That Prince song– party like it’s “1999”– was constantly on the radio in anticipation of the year 2000. Plenty of doomsayers were predicting the end of the world because of the ‘Y2K’ software bug. (Spoiler alert: it didn’t happen.)

And in general, it was an exciting time. The economy was doing great, the world was more or less at peace, and America was the undisputed global superpower. No one else was even close.

So, on a hot August day in the summer of 1999– The Sixth Sense (“I see dead people”) was the #1 movie at the box office– the US Treasury Department issued a rather mundane statement that its “net market borrowing” for the July through September quarter that year was estimated at MINUS $11 billion.

In other words, the Treasury Department was paying down a small portion of the US national debt.

Fast forward 26 years and such a statement is almost unimaginable.

The Treasury Department routinely makes these announcements; typically, once each quarter, Treasury estimates its total net borrowings for each quarter, then updates those estimates throughout the year.

In April 2025, for example, the Treasury Department estimated that it would borrow a whopping $547 billion in the July-September quarter this year.

$547 billion is a ridiculous amount of money to borrow. And yet, barely three months later, they revised their estimate and said the US government would borrow $1.007 TRILLION for the July-September quarter. It’s a difference of 84%… in the wrong direction.

Now that the July-September quarter is over, we can see the actual amount that Treasury borrowed. And the answer is… $1.4 trillion. That’s 40% more debt than they estimated just three months ago, and nearly THREE TIMES as much as they estimated in April.

America’s debt is growing so quickly that it’s hard to even keep up anymore. The national debt breached $37 trillion on August 8, just over two months ago. Today it’s already $37.9 trillion, about to hit $38 trillion. So that’ll be roughly $1 trillion in just ~75 days or so.

This is a fiscal abomination, plain and simple.

Going back to 1999 when the government was actually paying it down, the US national debt was about $5.5 trillion. That’s an increase of $30+ trillion in 26 years.

What exactly did America get for that $30 trillion? Well, there was a very, very long and expensive war in Iraq and Afghanistan… which ended abruptly when Joe Biden decided to abandon tens of billions of dollars of military equipment to the Taliban.

There was an enormous bailout of the financial system in 2008. And then a historic series of bailouts and spending bonanzas during COVID.

But is the average American any better off? Is the US more secure, more powerful, more free, more affordable, more prosperous, and safer as a result of all that debt? I think the answer is clearly no. In fact, quite the opposite.

Despite $30+ trillion in debt, crime is far more rampant. Critical infrastructure is crumbling. Long-term inflation has made life largely unaffordable for the middle class. Housing prices are astronomical. Food prices are unrecognizable. New cars cost nearly as much as a small house used to. University can cost six figures annually.

And while medical care was never a bargain, it is now prohibitively expensive. Plus, insurance costs  continue rising.

$30+ trillion should have been enough to do everything. And yet there is realistically nothing positive to show for that money.

It also keeps getting worse.

Fiscal Year 2025 just ended on September 30th. And while the full numbers from the Treasury Department haven’t been published yet (due to the government shutdown), the Congressional Budget Office estimates that net interest on the debt in FY25 surpassed $1 trillion– more than Medicare ($987 billion), Medicaid ($669 billion), and Defense spending ($869 billion).

Furthermore, the CBO estimates that interest payments on the national debt grew by 8% year-over-year, far outpacing growth in tax revenue and the US economy.

Social Security and Medicare spending– two of the other largest line items in the budget– are also growing at a nearly double-digit rate.

To say that this is all unsustainable is almost a joke at this point. It will come to an end, one way or another.

One option is that American voters elect representatives who understand the urgency and magnitude of this problem; and they work together to cut waste, substantially reduce the size and scope of government, and reform entitlement spending (especially Social Security and Medicare).

I’m not exactly holding my breath for that option. It’s incredible how some of the dumbest human beings alive manage to become Congressmen. They can’t even spell deficit let along understand the fiscal emergency.

The other option is that there will be a default. Not necessarily that the US defaults on its debt, but that it defaults on the promises– whether implied or explicit– that it made to voters.

Voters expect the US military to be well-equipped and ready to fight. They expect Social Security to be there for them at retirement. They expect to pay a reasonable amount of tax. They expect a basic, functioning government to provide essential services.

Unfortunately, the math just doesn’t add up. The US government simply doesn’t collect enough money to pay for all the things that it has promised.

For now, it makes up the difference by borrowing more money– roughly $2 trillion in Fiscal Year 25. But sooner or later that money is going to run out. In fact, it’s already happening.

Foreign investors– primarily governments and central banks– collectively used to be among the largest owners of US government debt. They believed in America, and it was a no-brainer to buy Treasury bonds.

But foreign ownership as a percentage of the national debt is falling quickly. Governments are diversifying rapidly, including selling their Treasury bonds (or redeeming them at maturity) and using the proceeds to buy gold.

It’s not because they’re ‘gold bugs’. It’s because gold is one of the only asset classes in the world that is universally accepted and has a truly global market. Plus, it’s a large enough market that it can absorb hundreds of billions of dollars in capital flows.

Gold has surged higher at an absurd pace over the past year, so, sure, there may be a temporary pullback.

But realistically the only thing that can stop its long-term ascent is the United States government suddenly getting a case of fiscal responsibility. And you can make up your own mind whether or not that’s likely to happen.

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There was once a time when Congress cared about literally every penny–

As the clock struck midnight on July 1, 1848, Ohio Congressman Samuel Vinton probably started having a minor panic attack.

Viton was Chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, the Congressional body that, at least at the time, was responsible for all taxation and spending appropriations. Anything that got spent– or didn’t get spent– was Vinton’s domain.

The United States was just coming out of a war in the year 1848– the Mexican War, in which the US invaded Mexico and wound up with 525,000 square miles of new territory as a result.

Several members of Congress thought the war unjust and unconstitutional. One critic, in fact, was a little-known politician from the state of Illinois named Abraham Lincoln, who often spoke passionately on the House floor against what he viewed as clear aggression.

Others in Lincoln’s party– the Whigs, who were essentially proto-Republicans– winced at the immense cost of the war.

By 1848 the costs of the Mexican War were at least four times what the Democrat-controlled War Department had originally promised. And the Whigs were tired of it.

In one heated exchange that took place on March 20, 1848, after a senior Treasury official had meekly described the enormous war costs as “mistakes” and “miscalculations”, one conservative senator blasted his colleagues saying,

“Our [federal government] expenditures have become so enormous that a few ‘mistakes’ in the    calculations of the Treasury Department– a few mere slips of the pen– involve a larger amount than the whole annual expenditure during the administration of [President Andrew] Jackson [in 1836].”

In other words, simply the cost overruns for the year 1848 were MORE than the entire federal budget just twelve years earlier.

The Whigs put their foot down and refused to vote on any further appropriations until there was a full audit of the war costs.

At the time, the federal government’s fiscal year ran from July 1 through June 30 (as opposed to now, the fiscal year runs from October 1 through September 30).

So as the June 30 deadline became closer, House Ways and Means Chairman Samuel Vinton became increasingly anxious.

Back then the federal government was much smaller, so there weren’t anywhere near as many programs that required Congressional funding as exist today. But there were still important government functions that needed money– including the Army.

Vinton knew that he was responsible for passing the Army’s funding bill. So in session after session, he practically begged his colleagues to PLEASE vote on it.

Yet his cries fell on deaf ears. And at 12:01 am on July 1, 1848, the 30th United States Congress the Army was ‘defunded’ for the first time.

Ultimately the Whigs wanted greater financial accountability of war costs, plus a drastic downsizing of the Army back to peacetime levels– two perfectly reasonable asks. The Democrats finally caved several weeks later, and the stalemate ended on August 7, 1848, when Congress passed HR 618– “an act making appropriations for the support of the Army [for Fiscal Year 1849].”

It’s notable that the Army’s entire budget from that appropriations bill was less than $8 million, with some ridiculously specific line items– like $1,127,428.56 for food, subsistence, and provisions. They seriously added the fifty-six cents! It’s amazing that Congress actually cared about literally every penny back then.

Unfortunately, 1848 wasn’t the last time that Congress had a budget stalemate; in fact, it became typical for Congress to NOT pass appropriations bills before the Fiscal Year-end.

But whenever this happened, most federal agencies (including the military) had leftover money from the previous year to keep themselves funded for an extra month or so. Worst case the Treasury would advance them funds.

The bottom line is that no one ever had to ‘shut down’.

This changed in 1980. For most of his Presidential administration, Jimmy Carter had been at odds with Congress. And on April 25th that year, he asked his Attorney General, Benjamin Civiletti, to issue formal guidance about the possibility of a government shut down.

Civiletti complied and reinterpreted some obscure legislation from 1884 to conclude that no government agency would be allowed to operate unless it received formal appropriations from Congress.

Carter intended to use this legal interpretation as leverage to pressure Congress about proposed FTC legislation. Instead it backfired, and the first-ever government shutdown took place on May 1, 1980.

And ever since, thanks to Carter and his Attorney General, the US government is now under the threat of shutdown every single year.

In the past, most shutdowns (or at least funding gaps) have been because of specific disputes; in 1980 it was about the authority of the FTC. In 1848 it was over excess war spending.

But today’s shutdown is different. First– it was totally preventable. And second, it’s not about a single issue (including the supposed Obamacare tax credit, which will almost certainly be extended).

Today’s shutdown is because two sides absolutely hate each other and refuse to work together.

Personally, I’m not losing any sleep over the Department of Commerce having to furlough employees. And frankly I don’t believe that any “non-essential” government job should even exist.

But the whole thing is a gigantic stain on the credibility of the US government.

This matters. Foreigners own $10+ trillion worth of US government bonds. It’s the very basis of America’s economic power abroad, and why the US dollar is the global reserve currency. Confidence in the US government is paramount in maintaining this system.

Foreign creditors tend to notice things like a full-blown government shutdown. And the fact that Congress is willing to burn everything down just to spite the other side.

Who would possibly want to continue buying US Treasury bonds when the federal government isn’t even willing to keep itself open for business?

Confidence is waning rapidly. And frankly we can see this in the price of gold, which just surpassed $4,100 as I write this. It’s not a speculative bubble; rather it’s a sad reflection of Congress’s collapsing credibility. And that credibility probably isn’t improving anytime soon.

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Letitia James finally becomes a ham sandwich

In 1983, 25-year-old Letitia James signed a mortgage application with her father and listed him as her husband. The reason was obvious: this qualified her for better loan terms.

When she was caught years later, she claimed it was simply a clerical error. Oops! Didn’t realize my dad wasn’t my husband as we sat next to each other and signed form after form claiming we were married.

That explanation strains credibility, but hey, we could give the benefit of the doubt to an inexperienced youngster.

Fast-forward two decades. Letitia James had become a lawyer and was running for city council.

She decided to buy a five unit brownstone in Brooklyn. But since four-unit buildings qualify for lower mortgage rates than five unit buildings (due to local and federal regulations), she listed stated that her five unit brownstone was, in fact, only four units.

Oops. Another clerical error. Odd how these honest mistakes always seem to financially benefit Letitia James.

Fast forward to the 2020s. By then, Ms. James had become the elected Attorney General of New York, and she decided to buy a home in Virginia. She claimed this home would be a second residence.

This allowed her to secure another owner-occupied mortgage—with lower interest rates, reduced down payment requirements, and more favorable terms.

Those weren’t obscure details buried in fine print. James had to actively check boxes on multiple forms and sign legal affidavits explicitly asserting, under penalty of perjury, that she would personally occupy the Virginia property.

But she didn’t occupy it. She didn’t even travel to Virginia to see it. She rented it out almost immediately.

For someone who’s not just a card-carrying attorney, but the senior prosecutor in the state of New York, you’d think she’d recognize that signing false statements isn’t an “error”—it’s a crime.

Yet upon being indicted yesterday, Letitia James claimed the accusations are “baseless.”

Baseless? There’s a pretty substantial amount of evidence, including multiple emails from her calling the Virginia house a “rental property” and “investment opportunity”, not to mention mountains of paperwork with her signature.

Perhaps, she might argue, something changed at the last minute. Maybe, immediately after closing on the Virginia property, she suddenly realized—oh wait, I’m the Attorney General of New York and won’t actually be living in Virginia anytime soon since my term doesn’t expire until 2027.

And, maybe that’s when she decided to rent it out. Right after closing.

A responsible person—especially someone with a legal obligation to enforce the law—would have immediately notified the bank of the mistake.

But Letitia James did no such thing. So that defense argument is completely invalid.

So would be any claim that she was ignorant of the law. Remember that, just as Letitia James was signing these documents, she was preparing for a high-profile prosecution of Donald Trump… also for bank fraud. Clearly she would have been intimately familiar with the laws.

Another incredibly lame defense her team has floated is that the amount involved is supposedly “immaterial”— just $18,933 in benefit from the lower interest rate and lower closing costs.

But what does that have to do with anything? She lied under penalty of perjury for personal financial gain. The quantum of benefit should be completely irrelevant, especially given that she committed this fraud while serving as Attorney General of New York.

If you steal a stick of gum while holding that position, you should see jail time. Public officials should be held to a higher standard, not a lower one.

I believe I’ve heard a certain phrase before: “No one is above the law.”

Funny, I don’t recall the footnote that read: “*as long as the crime is less than $19,000.”

And of course, that key figure Letitia James said over and over again was not above the law was Donald Trump.

Which brings us to the final, incredibly rich, defense: that these charges are politically motivated.

Yes, of course this is politically motivated.

But it turns out, that’s not a valid defense either.

The Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Goodwin that even if a prosecution is allegedly motivated by bad intent, it doesn’t matter—what matters is whether there’s actual evidence of a crime. If the charges are supported by facts, the prosecutor’s motive is legally irrelevant.

So it shouldn’t matter that this is politically motivated retribution for the politically motivated charges that Letitia James filed against Donald Trump a few years ago.

Coincidentally this sense of balance is what justice is all about. Even the word justice comes from the Latin iustitia, meaning “fairness”. Or another word that the Left loves to use: “equity”.

This is actually an ancient principle, dating back to the Code of Hammurabi— “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”. Multiple books in the Old Testament— Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy— also deal with this concept of equity.

In short, when someone commits a wrong, justice demands retribution to restore balance.

Yet, for years, the Left has been holding its thumb down on the scales of justice. And it wasn’t just lawfare against Trump.

The former Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals, Sol Wachtler, once quipped that he “could indict a ham sandwich”, referencing how easy it is for the government to go after someone.

Well that’s exactly what the Left did for the past several years.

They canceled people off the Internet and got them fired for wrongthink. They debanked the ideologically impure. They brought the full weight of government against anyone who posed a political or cultural threat.

Letitia James campaigned and won her public office by promising to find a reason— any reason— to prosecute a single individual.

Now, after abusing her office and authority for so long, Ms. James becomes the proverbial ham sandwich. Yet today’s case against her isn’t a fabrication; the evidence is clear and substantial.

Naturally the Left whines that her prosecution is a “travesty of justice” and an “affront to the Constitution”.

But if they actually care about justice in its true, literal sense, then the only travesty would be letting her off the hook. Justice is balance… and given the mountain of evidence against her, this is definitely balance.

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Podcast: Even at $4,000 Gold the Miners Are Ridiculously Cheap

Yesterday we wrote that with gold topping $4,000, it’s time to step back and look at the big picture—and the fundamentals haven’t changed.

Foreign governments and central banks hold about $10 trillion in US denominated reserves. But for years they’ve been trading this paper for gold— because it is their only realistic alternative.

Why are they searching for an alternative? Because they are losing confidence in the US government.

The debt, the political dysfunction, the weaponization of the dollar— these all make them less excited about loaning money to the US government.

And their steady buying of gold is what pushed it to these levels.

Those catalysts have not gone away, and if anything, are stronger than ever.

When a few hundred billion in demand can double the price of gold, imagine what happens if even a small portion of the remaining trillions rotate into gold.

Does 5% of dollar reserves shifting into gold translate to $10,000 gold? 20% re-allocation to $20,000 per ounce?

We don’t know exactly, but these numbers are not fantastical. There’s still enormous room for upside.

In the short term, of course, we can see plenty of noise.

Markets respond to headlines—like the new prime minister of Japan openly calling for more money-printing. Any environment like that naturally drives gold higher.

But at the same time, we’re seeing signals that a correction could be near—a stampede of new individual investors, record inflows into large gold ETFs, and a drop off in jewelry sales.

There are some classic signs of a short-term top.

But we don’t focus on short term trading. We always look at the long term big picture. And the long-term trend remains solidly intact.

So does the most important story of all right now: the much ignored mining sector.

Even after a massive run, many gold miners are still deeply undervalued relative to the long-term intrinsic value of their businesses.

One company featured in our premium investment research is up 5x in the past year. Yet even if gold fell back to $3,000, it would still be turning enough profit to trade at just four times earnings.

It’s debt-free. It pays a dividend. And it offers massive downside protection.

So while no one has a crystal ball—and we can’t tell you what happens tomorrow—the reality is that the mining, drilling, and service companies behind this bull market remain absurdly cheap.

That’s an opportunity to take seriously.

We dug into all of this in our latest podcast which you can listen to here.

And if you want to learn more about our investment research— currently available for a limited time discountclick here.

(You can find the podcast transcript here.)

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$4,000 gold: is it time to sell?

You’d think Charles de Gaulle would have been a little bit more grateful to America.

As head of the Free French Forces during World War II, de Gaulle was essentially a leader in exile, and he had to base himself in England for the majority of the war after the Nazis took Paris.

It was only because of the sacrifices made by American troops– and exceptional generosity from US general Dwight Eisenhower– that de Gaulle was allowed to enter Paris on August 25, 1944.

America had already done all the fighting. But de Gaulle marched through the streets in triumph as if he had personally won the war.

The US government then went on to cement his power, so de Gaulle became head of France’s post-war provisional government, then later French president. France also received billions in aid from the Marshall Plan, courtesy of US taxpayers.

The guy pretty much owed his entire political career, not to mention the liberation and economic solvency of his country, to the United States.

But de Gaulle’s ego was far greater than his sense of gratitude; in fact in his own memoirs he compared himself to Joanne of Arc. He even whined that he didn’t receive enough US support.

The ultimate disrespect came on February 4, 1965. De Gaulle called a press conference to criticize America’s “exorbitant privilege” in global finance, concluding that the world needed to return to a classical gold standard.

Ever since July of 1944, the world had been on the “Bretton Woods” system. Every currency was pegged to the US dollar, and the US dollar was pegged to gold at a price of $35 per ounce.

Having the global reserve currency meant that America could finance its government deficits by simply printing more money. This is still the case today. De Gaulle was jealous of this benefit, so he tried wrecking the financial system.

In addition to demanding a return to the classical gold standard, de Gaulle also insisted that the US government redeem France’s dollar reserves for gold.

The idea caught on. Governments around the world, along with financial speculators and investors, started paying attention… and many began trading their dollars for gold as well.

This trend picked up steam over the next several years until, finally, in 1971, Richard Nixon shut it down… announcing that the United States would no longer redeem US dollars for gold.

The gold price naturally started to rise. Within a few months, gold was already above $40, up 13.5%. It reached $60 in 1972 (up 42%), nearly $100 in 1973 (up 66%), and $180 in 1974 (up 80%).

It’s not hard to understand why. Inflation was soaring. The world was a geopolitical hot mess. Then there was the Nixon political scandal at home. Uncertainty abounded, and gold was the remedy.

But then something interesting happened: Congress passed a law finally allowing private ownership of gold.

It seems crazy today, but ever since 1933, it had actually been illegal for Americans to own gold. Congress reversed this in 1974.

So just imagine you’re an average American in the 1970s watching gold rise more than 5x, from $35 to $180… but you can’t do anything about it because it’s illegal to buy. Then suddenly the law changes? Almost overnight, US investors started aggressively investing in gold.

Back then, of course, people didn’t have brokerage accounts, let alone access to futures exchanges. And there were no ETFs.

So instead people bought physical gold coins– Krugerrands, Eagles, etc. And there was booming demand for a while.

But right around this time, large investors, hedge funds, etc. started feeling like gold was overbought… and that the price had risen too far, too fast. So they started selling. In fact many funds were selling as small retail investors were buying.

And as you can imagine, the gold price soon started to fall; in fact the correction lasted roughly 18 months. Gold eventually hit a low of ~$100 in August 1976– a drop of more than 40% from its record high in 1975.

Yet even though speculators were selling, the fundamentals of gold had not changed.

Specifically, foreign governments and central banks were still seeking to diversify from their US dollar holdings. And more importantly, the US government financial condition was still atrocious.

So after an 18-month hiatus, the gold price started rising again in August 1976… from ~$100 to $800+ in December 1979.

So even though gold had reached a record high in 1974, people who understood the long-term fundamentals, i.e. why the gold price was going higher, saw an additional 4x return. People that were smart enough to buy more when the price fell did even better– 8x in less than four years.

And people who sold their gold in 1975 missed the rise from $185 to $850.

Gold just hit $4,000 today. It’s up more than 50% in a year, and up 100% in two years. So is it time to sell?

In our view, this is like 1975 again. Gold may be overbought now; after all, nothing is supposed to go up (or down) in a straight line.

We’re also seeing interesting data from ETFs. The “GLD”, for example, the world’s largest gold ETF, is seeing record inflows, including more than $2 billion in a single day last month.

This is a sign that, just like 1975, individual investors are piling in to gold after sitting on the sidelines for the past few years.

Strong, sudden retail demand is often a top signal, at least temporarily. And it’s possible that there could be a short-term correction.

But even if that happens, it doesn’t change the fundamental story of gold. Just like the 1970s, foreign governments and central banks today are aggressively diversifying their US dollar holdings, and gold is the most convenient asset for them to buy.

We don’t believe this has changed at all. Foreign governments and central banks might pull back on their purchases temporarily to see what happens in the market. But long-term they are still strong buyers of gold thanks to the US government’s terrible fiscal trajectory.

And despite any short-term corrections, this is what will ultimately drive gold prices higher over the next several years.

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The brutal math behind AI: it’s either you or Zuckerberg

Back in the mid-90s, the world was abuzz with a new technology called the Internet.

Technically the Defense Department had invented it back in the late 1960s. But by the mid-90s, Internet use was growing at an an astonishing rate among American consumers, triggering an major need for more digital infrastructure.

So in March 1997, a company called Global Crossing was born. Their entire reason for existence was to build the backbone of the Internet— thousands of miles of cables and fiber optic lines to carry all of our bits and bytes at the speed of light.

Global Crossing was easily able to raise billions from eager investors who understood that the Internet was the future; they believed that Internet usage would explode, and that, eventually, Global Crossing would generate substantial returns on its massive infrastructure investments.

They were right. Partially. Internet usage exploded. Unfortunately the part about generating substantial returns on their massive infrastructure investments… never happened.

In fact, within a few years, Global Crossing was losing billions. They had spent everything on cables and fiber optics, but they were never able to generate enough revenue to recoup their investment.

So in January 2002, less than five years after its founding, Global Crossing filed for bankruptcy.

What was left of the company was eventually sold for just $250 million during bankruptcy proceedings, representing a 99.5% loss in value from its $47 billion peak.

And most of Global Crossing’s investors suffered extraordinary losses.

Coincidentally, though, consumers ended up benefiting. Global Crossing did provide a valuable service to Internet users. They just weren’t able to make enough money from that service to remain a viable business.

So ultimately Global Crossing was a transfer of wealth from investors to consumers. Deep-pocketed, overly enthusiastic investment funds essentially subsidized all the digital infrastructure for Internet users.

(And as an early Internet user from the 90s, I appreciate them doing that!)

This type of outcome wasn’t an isolated incident. In fact it’s fairly common.

Remember WeWork? Customers were able to enjoy cheap office space at below-market rents (not to mention free tequila), courtesy of big investors like SoftBank and Goldman Sachs.

Uber was a similar story—customers enjoyed cheap rides at below-market rates thanks to investors who kept funding the company’s enormous losses.

Again, this not unusual. In a burgeoning industry, investors often get so excited about some new technology or idea that they end up subsidizing it in the name of developing the market.

They throw insane amounts of money at something, even when there’s not really a valid business or revenue model behind it.

And it’s becoming pretty clear we’re starting to see this again with AI.

Even Jeff Bezos acknowledged it over the weekend. At a technology conference in Italy, he said that while the social benefits of AI will be huge, the investment side is starting to feel a lot like the dot-com bubble. Perhaps that’s why he recently cashed out billions of dollars of Amazon stock.

Plus Sam Altman of OpenAI said back in August that investors are too “overexcited” about AI.

Ironically he’s a big part of that bubble. OpenAI is leading the charge, spending absurd amounts of money on data centers.

And they’re not alone. Every few weeks it seems there’s another tech company announcing that they’re going to build the biggest data center— Meta, xAI, etc.

They even give these projects lofty names like Stargate and Colossus—sexy sci-fi branding to match the eye-watering price tags that go into the hundreds of billions.

But when you sit back and actually look at the numbers, the math just doesn’t work.

$500 billion for Stargate? Come on. What a money pit.

A big chunk of that capital— well north of $150 billion— will be earmarked for chips and other digital components. And, sure, that’s great for semiconductor companies… not to mention their suppliers, certain commodity producers, and even utility companies.

But the tech companies themselves will likely lose a lot of money.

Look at OpenAI. They’re reportedly pulling in $12 billion in annual revenue. That’s a lot. But they also have enormous costs—electricity, cooling, maintenance, payroll.

Altman himself has said that users politely saying “please” and “thank you” to ChatGPT costs the company tens of millions of dollars in extra electricity. So if they’re really, really lucky, they’ll have a few billion dollars left over in operating cash flow.

A few billion dollars is a pretty tiny return on a $500 billion investment. What’s more, that ~$150 billion in chip costs is not a one-time thing.

Remember, those chips will be obsolete in five years. Tops. Probably more like 3-4.

So they’ll need to replace those chips (and hence spend ANOTHER $150 billion) in a few more years. This means that, on average, OpenAI’s annual capital expenditure, just on chips, is at least $30 billion. Per YEAR. For a company that only makes $12 billion in revenue, and (maybe) a few billion in Operating Cash Flow— if they’re even cash flow positive at all.

You can start to see how the math simply doesn’t add up… and why, at least for now, these investors are essentially subsidizing AI for consumers around the world.

The only way the investors can actually recoup their costs—let alone generate a return on all that data center money—is if AI revenue expands rapidly, i.e. 50x growth in a very short period of time.

Is that possible? Of course it’s possible. But it’s hardly a slam dunk.

Most consumer right now don’t pay for AI. Or if they do it’s small dollars ($8/month).

What the AI evangelists are hoping for is that the big revenue will come from major companies— large corporate clients who replace expensive, salaried human beings with $299/month AI subscriptions.

Theoretically those mass layoffs could generate enough revenue for AI investors to eek out a modest return on investment.

McKinsey estimates that there would need to be $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion in AI revenue by 2030 (up from about $30 billion today) in order to justify all the data center investment.

But that amount of revenue would require laying off over 400 million people worldwide— more than twice the size of the entire US labor force— and replacing them with AI subscriptions.

There are other possibilities, of course. Maybe a global productivity boom is able to unlock enough economic growth that the AI investments ultimately pay for themselves. I hope so. But given all the anti-AI regulation in various governments (I’m talking about you Europe!) I’m not holding my breath.

It’s also possible that these big tech companies and AI investors take a huge bath and lose hundreds of billions of dollars. And this scenario would carry adverse consequences for pension funds, retirement programs, etc. who are invested in these big tech companies.

At a minimum, while it’s pretty clear that AI is obvious the future (no to mention the present…), the financial outcome carries a lot of risk and uncertainty. So definitely take the evangelism with a grain of salt.

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Why, sadly, it may be too late for Britain to reverse course

It was 1821 when British statesman John Wilson Croker declared that “the sun never sets on the British Empire.” Croker wasn’t the first to say it, but as a lifelong naval administrator and imperial cheerleader, he gave that phrase real political weight.

And at the time it was no exaggeration. Britain’s power spanned every hemisphere. Its navy ruled the seas. Its financiers and currency ruled global trade. And its courts provided the template for modern law.

The British Empire was the indisputable center of global civilization.

But no empire lasts forever, and by the mid-20th century, America had replaced Britain as the world’s superpower.

World War II had ravaged Europe, and the British economy was in serious crisis. Sky-high debt, the destruction of its manufacturing base. And, perhaps worst of all, a major labor shortage. Too many men had been lost in combat, and there weren’t enough workers to get the economy back on its feet.

So in its efforts to boost production and get the economy moving again, the British government created incentives for foreigners to move to the UK.

Britain desperately needed workers, and people from all over the world came to start a new life and fill the postwar labor shortage.

But this immigration policy— what began as a pragmatic solution to an economic crisis in 1945— eventually became utter insanity.

Waves of arrivals from Uganda and Somalia were pouring in under humanitarian pretexts in the late 20th century and early 2000s.

The floodgates really opened in 2015 when David Cameron’s government pledged to resettle 20,000 Syrian refugees.

But why stop there? As instability in Afghanistan, Sudan, and the wider Middle East escalated, asylum claims in the UK grew every year.

Then came the small boat crossings of the English Channel—tens of thousands of people, from Syria, Afghanistan, Iran, and Eritrea, arriving illegally on Britain’s southern coast.

The result is staggering. In 2022, net migration reached an all-time high of 764,000 people.

That’s over 1% of the entire population of the United Kingdom. In ONE year. Plus they just keep coming… and multiplying at an astonishing rate. That makes it an almost impossible problem to solve.

Immigration alone is not inherently a problem— even mass migration— as the US can attest.

Between 1880 and 1920, roughly 20 million immigrants poured into the United States—Italians, Irish, Germans, Poles, and Jews from Eastern Europe. With a US population of just 76 million in 1900, that wave amounted to over one-quarter of the entire country in a single generation.

The difference, of course, is that there were no special benefits; early American immigrants didn’t receive taxpayer-funded housing or cash handouts. They came to work hard and make a better life for themselves.

Plus America’s early immigrants assimilated— often enthusiastically. They came to America to become American. It helped that most of them came from places that shared the same Judeo-Christian values.

And that is clearly not the case in Britain today.

Rather than love and appreciate their host country, Britain’s modern immigrants are actively resisting assimilation and forming their own breakaway societies on British soil.

The result is neighborhoods where English is rarely spoken and where parallel systems of law operate—including sharia councils which enforce Islamic law on British soil.

The British government loves to pretend that this policy of ‘multiculturalism’ somehow makes the country better off. But anyone paying attention knows this is simply not true.

A study by the Born in Bradford project found that 55% of the Pakistani community in Britain is married to their first cousin, resulting in vastly higher risk of inbreeding, stillbirth, lower IQ, and various recessive disorders (like cystic fibrosis or sickle-cell anemia).

Yet the the National Health Service is more concerned about Islamophobia than actual health. Which is why, last month, the NHS published guidance about the “potential benefits” of marrying your first cousin, “such as stronger extended family support systems and economic advantages.”

It stressed the importance of not “stigmatizing” cultural traditions.

This is what passes as medical science in multicultural Britain.

Oh… and did I mention the violence?

Just yesterday, a terrorist attacked a synagogue, killing and maiming Jews commemorating Yom Kippur. Strangely, police seem far more concerned about arresting people over Islamophobia and dank memes.

Bear in mind it was only a few weeks ago that British police threatened to arrest a man for being “openly Jewish” while walking past a pro-Palestine rally.

In another recent incident, police arrested a man who shouted “we love bacon” near a mosque.

Another woman was detained by police because she told Islamic street preachers that she wasn’t interested in the Quran.

And, also recently, when a British man burned a Quran on the streets as a form of protest, a nearby Muslim tried to stab him several times. It was the book-burner who faced charges, while the man with the knife walked free.

Meanwhile, it was perfectly fine for a motorcade of vehicles draped with Palestinian flags to drive through Jewish neighborhoods of North London, blasting abuse through loudspeakers, such as “F*** the Jews, rape their daughters,” alongside chants of “Free Palestine.”

Even children are not exempt. In one recent case, police officers— one Muslim woman wearing a hijab— forced their way into a family’s home to seize a child’s phone. Her crime? The child  had merely looked at an “offensive” meme.

Britons now walk on eggshells to avoid provoking jihadists—so much so that police in London arrest people in the street for even the slightest insult to Islam.

Meanwhile, immigrants commit crimes with impunity.

A migrant was filmed recently strolling into a London café, stealing food, and punching a waitress half his size in the face before casually walking away.

There are too many examples to list. Every day new videos emerge of immigrants wreaking havoc across the UK.

Yet at the highest levels of power, leaders of the UK are bowing to the migrant Left.

Aside from the NHS deciding to embrace marrying your first cousin, even Prime Minister Keir Starmer led his party to reject a national inquiry into organized “groomer gangs” of Pakistani Muslim immigrants who had been raping young teen girls for years.

Why? Because he said an investigation was, “the bandwagon of the far right.”

If you call out this destruction of British culture, you are arrested, or labeled racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic, or “far right.”

The hilarious part is that, not only do the migrants resist assimilating, they absolutely despise the local Brits who support them.

At one of London’s endless pro-Palestine marches in 2024, a group of “Queers for Palestine” activists came to join the fray.

But a hijab-wearing woman wasn’t having any of it. And she turned to the Queers for Palestine idiots, with their rainbow flags, and chased them away shouting “Shame on you! Shame on all of you!”

The spectacle was almost comic, proving that Lefist activists have pledged solidarity with people who openly despise them.

On Monday, I wrote about America’s long history of ideological division—how every generation has been torn apart by some cultural conflict. But America always recovers and moves forward.

That cycle has repeated so many times in the United States that I am confident the US will move past its current culture wars. (It’s also why I’m far more concerned about America’s economic challenges).

But the UK is in a much worse position. It has been radically transformed by throwing open the doors to people who despise western civilization. They do not embrace their host nation, they despise it. And they seek to remake it into the dysfunctional mess from whence they came.

Britain has opened the gates to people who want to destroy their way of life. And, from a historical perspective, this never turns out well.

To counter the threat of the Huns in the late 300s, countless Goths were invited to cross the Danube and settle in Roman territory. The Goths eventually betrayed the Romans’ trust and sacked the city of Rome in 410.

From the Aztecs and the Spanish to the Song Dynasty and the Jurchen, caring for your invaders is a one-way road to ruin.

This isn’t a cyclical ideological battle that the country will one day grow out of.

This is an irreversible cultural invasion that threatens Britain’s existence… and why I believe, sadly, it may be too late for the UK to reverse course.

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Crazy data shows wildly profitable gold miners are still on sale

Gold is on an unbelievable tear, now resting above $3,900 per ounce. And the reason is simple.

Most foreign governments and central banks around the world have traditionally held the overwhelming majority of their strategic financial reserves in US dollars.

And that made sense. The US dollar has been the undisputed global reserve currency for more than 80 years, backed by unshakable confidence in America’s wealth and governance.

But that sentiment has changed rapidly over the past few years.

Whether it’s the $37+ trillion national debt, or politicians’ inability to pass a budget (resulting in yet another government shutdown), or the weaponization of the US dollar, or the downgrade of the US sovereign credit rating, or a laundry list of other embarrassments, pretty much every finance minister and central bank around the world has reason to doubt American.

And that’s why they’ve been diversifying their strategic financial reserve away from the US dollar.

Unfortunately for these foreign officials, they have very few options to diversify. In fact, as it stands right now, gold is realistically the only choice: it’s the only asset that ticks all the boxes needed in a strategic financial reserve: it’s globally accepted, highly liquid, and with a large enough market to absorb hundreds of billions of dollars of capital flows.

We’ve been writing about this for the past two years, explaining to our readers not just WHY gold was going up… but predicting that it would continue to do so… when gold hit $2,000, then $2,500, then $3,000, then $3,500. The surging gold price has always been about central banks.

But now it’s no longer just central banks piling into gold. Even small, individual investors are gobbling up gold as well— which is an enormous shift from even just a couple months ago.

In May, for example, the largest physical gold ETF, GLD, saw net outflows of gold, i.e. individual investors in the US were selling.

But that trend has reversed hard. By mid-September, in fact, the GLD gold ETF saw a $2.2 billion inflow in a single day— the highest in its 21-year history. And those inflows translate into physical gold purchases.

Here’s something that’s really bizarre, though:

While record amounts of capital inflows are going into ETFs that buy and hold physical gold, there are net capital outflows from gold miner ETFs.

The most prominent among them is the VanEck Gold Miners ETF, ticker symbol GDX. The GDX holds the world’s major gold producers like Barrick, Agnico Eagle, Newmont, Kinross, etc.

And yet while those individual mining companies have been doing exceptionally well, GDX continues to see net outflows to the tune of nearly $2 billion over the past several months.

This is pretty crazy when you think about it. Gold miners’ revenue is denominated in gold. And given that, for many of them, their production costs are relatively fixed right now, these mining companies are making money hand over fist given gold’s meteoric rise.

Gold companies are raking in record profits. Yet the GDX saw $600 million in net outflows just last month alone (September 2025) .

In other words, net outflows from the ETF that owns ridiculously profitable gold miners… but record inflows into the ETF that is buying gold at its all-time high.

This doesn’t make sense to me. While we think the case for higher gold prices (over the long term) is very strong, at the moment we believe there’s a LOT more value in the shares of gold mining companies.

Some of the smaller gold producers that we focus on in our investment research are still trading a laughably cheap valuations; I’m talking about profitable, dividend-paying businesses with huge growth potential trading for less than 5x forward earnings.

The really crazy part is that many of these companies have already seen legendary gains.

Some of the companies featured in our premium investment research service have seen gains in excess of 4x this year alone. And yet their earnings are growing so rapidly that these companies’ shares STILL trade for less than 5x forward earnings.

That kind of disconnect doesn’t usually last.

These companies will be reporting their Q3 earnings over the next few weeks. And our assessment is that their share prices will surge even higher on the news of their record profits.

We put an extraordinary amount of effort into picking great businesses, i.e. deeply undervalued yet wildly profitable gold (and other real asset) companies that have pristine balance sheets, huge growth potential, top quality management, and more.

If you’d like to find out more about our research and take advantage of a limited time promotional discount— especially before these companies report what we believe will be record Q3 earningsclick here to learn more The 4th Pillar investment research newsletter.

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