Category: simonblack

Like a lot of people, I first came across Charlie Kirk when YouTube’s algorithm started showing me short clips of him dismantling woke leftists at university campuses.

Kirk used politeness combined with simple logic and reason to demonstrate what we all already knew: the Left has no idea what they’re talking about.

That’s because everything to the Left is in the eye of the beholder. What is a woman? It’s whatever they want it to be, i.e. “anyone who identifies as a woman”.

What is racist? Whatever they say is racist. What is “hate speech”? Whatever they say it is. What is offensive? Whatever they say it is.

And most importantly, what is the truth? Whatever they say it is… at the time that they say it. Because, just as in Orwell’s dystopian classic 1984, the Left constantly changes ‘the truth’ without ever acknowledging that they moved the goalposts.

Remember when Joe Biden was “sharp and commanding” and anyone who disagreed was a right-wing conspiracy nut? Remember when the Left canceled people off the Internet for saying that people with the vaccine could still get Covid?

The list goes on and on. The Left makes iron-clad assertions about what’s true, demands everyone’s obeisance… then suddenly reverses itself and acts like their new position has been ‘the truth’ all along.

Charlie Kirk was one of the many voices who called them out, and who realized that the Left would humiliate itself if you just ask them simple questions.

Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana summarized this approach when talking about AOC: “Our plan for dealing with her is called Operation Let Her Speak.” And they’re absolutely correct– the Left doesn’t need any help in proving itself naive, corrupt, ignorant, and destructive.

And herein lies the problem: even after they’re exposed, defeated, and humiliated… despite failure after abject failure, the Left refuses to re-examine its belief system. They double down on the same policies. They shriek, howl, and rage even harder.

Sometimes it’s petty. Kirk’s videos often showed flummoxed Leftists shouting puerile insults at him– “Yeah? Well, you’re ugly!”. The formerly funny Southpark panned Kirk this season as a “master debater”, i.e. Kirk didn’t fight fair because he was too intelligent, as if that’s some sort of disease.

But sometimes the Left’s hysteria is far more sinister.

After the brutal murder of Iryna Zarutska– clearly a result of their failed DEI and woke justice policies– the Left rallied around… the murderer.

From Van Jones’s emotional soliloquy on CNN in defense of the killer, to multiple GoFundMe campaigns to pay for his legal expenses, the Left wept more for the criminal than the victim.

And everyone noticed.

Zarutska’s horrific murder lit a fuse: the Left is imploding. They know it. Charlie Kirk knew it.

But like a wounded animal, the Left is desperately striking back. They’re driven by a moral indignation that justifies everything… including the most horrific violence… because they believe their defeat will result in the end of the world.

(This is such a bizarre view given that their own policies– from massive handouts to homeless people to idiotic green mandates to open borders to defunding the cops to bowing to the unions to decriminalizing shoplifting to zero-bail justice, etc. etc. have truly destroyed some of America’s great cities…)

A deranged lunatic murdered innocent children at a Catholic school two weeks ago, believing it was justified to snuff out future conservatives. The Left closed ranks and blamed gun control laws.

They did the same after Charlie Kirk’s shocking assassination yesterday– the Left closed ranks and blamed everything from Donald Trump to January 6^th.

Naturally they make grand statements condemning political violence, insisting that it comes from “both sides”. They also claim that the “majority” of political violence comes from “right wing extremists”.

(And Congress’s newest inspired idiot, Jasmine Crockett, recently claimed that “80% of the most violent crimes in our country are white supremacy.”)

But we all know that’s BS.

Van Jones is on CNN night after night calling every White person in America racist. But he’s able to walk the streets safely and go home to his family every day. Ditto for the chorus of inspired idiots on the View, or MSNBC, or all the other discord factories in the media.

Despite the Right’s outrage over Zarutska’s murder, there are no “mostly peaceful” protests in Charlotte, North Carolina. No flash mobs. No looting. No rioting. No lawlessness. Shopkeepers aren’t boarding up their stores and abandoning the city center to anarchy. 

Same for Kirk’s assassination. There are no riots across America. There are vigils. The Left “peacefully protests”. The Right prays.

I fielded a lot of phone calls yesterday from people who needed to fume about Kirk’s murder. We were all shocked. Still are. And the knee-jerk reaction is to say, “I f*cking hate the Left.”

A lot of people believed Kirk would one day become a great President. And now he’s lost to martyrdom.

I don’t get into these sorts of things very much at all… but many people with Charlie Kirk’s Judeo-Christian values believe wholeheartedly that each of us has a purpose. Call it what you will– God, the Universe, karma, whatever. Charlie Kirk certainly believed that.

And I believe that his tragic death, whether divinely intended or not, will serve a purpose… in that countless people on the Left will be shaken from their party and from their belief system.

They’ll see their own comrades celebrating Kirk’s murder, their political and media leadership exposed as pure evil, their own extremists killing more children. And they’ll finally wake up and walk away from the toxic ideas that are destroying America.

For a man whose entire life was devoted to restoring the republic, that may be his greatest and most lasting gift.

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It pays to think long-term—and to recognize major trends and opportunities before they become obvious.

Some of the greatest wins in history stem from long-term thinking. Some of the richest people on Earth, like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, had to commit to decade-long visions to accomplish their goals.

At the same time, there’s no shame in recognizing short-term, time-sensitive opportunities right in front of us. Especially in finance and investing, it’s critical to balance both views.

Long-term, we’re watching a clear trend unfold: foreign governments and central banks are losing confidence in the US government and the US dollar. They’re selling Treasuries and buying gold—driving gold prices to record highs.

Why gold? Because it fills the vacuum— no other currency is appealing to replace the US dollar.

But the price of physical gold is only part of the story.

For the last couple of years, we’ve pointed out the massive disconnect between rising gold prices and the underperformance of gold-related companies.

That gap is finally beginning to close. Gold and silver producers—especially the ones with low costs and high margins—are now seeing record revenue growth. And many of their share prices have surged 3x, 4x, and even 5x.

Yet we still believe there’s significant room to run.

This is the part of the cycle where investor capital floods in—especially institutional money that needs larger market caps. And with Q3 earnings about to reflect record-high gold prices, we expect many of these companies to report blowout quarters over the next couple months.

We think there’s still a short window—likely just a few months—where these companies remain undervalued despite strong performance. The disconnect between gold prices and gold company valuations is closing fast, but hasn’t fully closed yet.

Once the broader market catches on, we expect a surge of capital into the sector—especially from institutional investors—which could push prices much higher in a short period of time. That kind of rush often leads to a mini-bubble. And while the long-term case for these businesses remains strong, the short-term opportunity lies in getting in before that final wave of excitement hits.

In the long term, we think gold could easily go to $5,000–$10,000, driven by a global shift away from the dollar. That doesn’t mean it will be a straight line up— there will likely be pullbacks. But the long term trend is clear.

But in the short term, gold-related businesses are poised to benefit from the surge in revenue and capital inflows right now.

And that’s a short term opportunity.

We discuss this dynamic in more detail in today’s podcast.

We also cover:

• The historical parallels between today’s U.S. dollar and the fall of the Roman denarius
• Why there’s no real alternative to gold as a reserve asset in today’s geopolitical landscape
• How Congress’s dysfunction is accelerating the loss of global confidence in the dollar
• The key differences between physical gold and gold companies—and why that gap created an overlooked opportunity

You can listen here.

You can also access the podcast transcript, here.

P.S. While gold has doubled in recent years, many of the companies we’ve been following in our investment research newsletter The 4th Pillar—especially miners, royalty firms, and service providers—are up 2x, 3x, even 5x just in the past few months. Their costs are steady, but as gold prices surge, revenues and profits skyrocket.

Even after big gains, we still think several of these companies could double again as earnings roll in and investor interest explodes.

If you want to see the names we’re watching now, click here to check out our premium investment research service, on sale for a limited time.

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In the late third century BC, the Roman republic was locked in a long and brutal war with its mortal enemy, Carthage.

Hannibal had only recently cross the Alps with his legendary elephants and humiliated the Roman military at the Battle of Cannae in southern Italy.

Yet in the midst of all that war and chaos, Rome’s republican government believed that if they wanted to have a powerful army, they also needed a strong and reliable currency to pay for it.

So in the year 211 BC, Rome created a silver coin known as the denarius— roughly 4.5 grams with a silver purity of more than 95%.

The whole point of the denarius was to be able to pay soldiers; in fact the coin was initially valued so that a Roman could buy a full day’s worth of food, cover modest lodging, and still have a bit of silver left over. So it was essentially a fair day’s wage for soldiers and skilled laborers alike.

That’s why the denarius became so highly trusted… and why it lasted for centuries.

Long after the war ended and Rome had vanquished Carthage, the denarius remained their primary currency for centuries; and as Rome grew and expanded its borders, the denarius became a de facto reserve currency across the empire and beyond.

The denarius was trusted across three continents— accepted from the bazaars of the Middle East to the frontiers of Britain—precisely because its silver content was consistent and its value unquestioned.

But after centuries of stability during Rome’s republican era, the denarius began to be debased in the early days of the empire.

Nero reduced the size by nearly 25% (which meant 25% less silver). Subsequent emperors reduced the silver purity, until, by the mid-3rd century AD, the denarius contained roughly 5% silver.

And while it still bore the same name and the emperor’s face, its purchasing power had collapsed. What once covered a worker’s daily wage could, within a few generations, hardly buy basic staples like bread.

As a result, entire regions—especially across Western Europe—fell back into barter. The value of Rome’s money had become so untrustworthy that it was safer for workers to trade their labor for chickens rather than coin.

And this is what makes the fall of the Roman denarius such an interesting historical example: there was nothing to replace it. No rival currency rose to dominance to replace it.

Eventually, yes, the Byzantine Empire’s gold solidus did eventually become the de facto reserve currency several centuries later.

But for literally hundreds of years there was a monetary vacuum— no standard coin or currency that was used across the Mediterranean and Middle East for trade and commerce.

This vacuum is unusual. Later on, for example, once the Byzantine gold solidus became the most popular coin for cross-border trade, it was eventually displaced by the Venetian ducat.

The ducat, too, was eventually displaced by other currencies. The florin, escudo, Spanish real de ocho, Dutch guilder, British pound, etc. displaced one another as the dominant global trade currency, i.e. reserve currency.

But the Roman denarius wasn’t really displaced by anything. People had to figure out for themselves what goods and services to use for trade. Again, it was a vacuum.

The world may be approaching a similar vacuum now.

We’ve been warning for years that foreign governments and central banks are losing confidence in the US dollar.

And it’s not hard to see why.

US politicians run multi-trillion-dollar deficits and couldn’t care less. The national debt has surged past $37 trillion and is projected to climb by another $25 trillion over the next decade.

Congress is bitterly divided and dysfunctional even within parties, while lurching between government shutdowns. And the Federal Reserve, once viewed as the sober guardian of stability, is caught between its own policy failures and becoming a political puppet.

On top of that, US leaders have turned the dollar into a weapon.

Throughout the last several administrations, sanctions against foreign countries have been used at an unprecedented scale. This makes foreign governments far less incline to hold US dollars or US government bonds.

As a result, the amount of global trade conducted in US dollars has declined; and the percentage of US dollars held as reserve assets around the world has declined.

But at the moment there is nothing on the horizon that could replace the dollar.

No one trusts China or its renminbi. The Russian ruble is a nonstarter. The euro is fragile with no unified fiscal backing. And the so-called BRICS currency is still nothing more than a talking point.

Which leaves the world in a uniquely Roman moment: the dollar is fading, but there’s no rising, trustworthy currency to take its place as the global reserve.

That’s why foreign central banks are turning to the one asset that isn’t political, cannot be printed, and has stood the test of time over thousands of years—gold.

Central banks’ confidence in the US dollar is declining, so they have bought up hundreds of metric tons of gold. In fact, foreign central banks now hold more gold than US dollars.

It is this massive demand from foreign central banks that has driven the value of gold to an all time high— over $3,600 per ounce.

But this trend is just getting started.

Central banks have only converted a small percentage of their US dollar reserves into gold so far. And we believe this trend will continue (unless Congress suddenly wakes up and becomes fiscally responsible. I’m hot holding my breath.)

Which is why we believe gold could easily hit $5,000 and then $10,000 per ounce within a few years.

Yet while we have been absolutely right in our prediction for higher gold prices over the past few years, we have been particularly bullish on the companies which produce gold and other precious metals, i.e. mining, royalty, and service businesses.

And that prediction has also been spot on.

While gold has doubled over the course of three years, many of these stocks are up 2x, 3x, even 5x in just a few months.

The reason is simple: their costs are steady, but revenues explode as gold rises. And because so many of these firms were debt-free, profitable, and trading at dirt-cheap valuations, the gains have been extraordinary.

Even now, they still look inexpensive given how much money they’re making and how fast earnings are growing. We think many could double again as more investors rush in.

If you want to see which precious metals stocks we believe could double in the coming months, check out our premium investment research service, The 4th Pillar.

We’re offering a limited-time discount, and you can click here to find out more.

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They got him! British police finally made the arrest of the century.

No, not a terrorist they welcomed across open borders. Not the leaders of the immigrants who organized “groomer gangs” to sexually abuse young girls while the British government covered it up for two decades.

The heinous criminal was one of Britain’s most famous comedy writers. Graham Linehan, a household name in British television comedy, was swarmed by five armed police officers as he stepped off a flight at Heathrow.

His crime? Three tweets criticizing transgender activists.

One tweet read: “If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and, if all else fails, punch him in the balls.”

Another mocked a trans rally with the caption, “A photo you can smell,” and a third called trans activists “Misogynists and homophobes.”

For this, Linehan was treated like a terrorist— and only released on bail on the condition he no longer post online.

He described it himself: “The moment I stepped off the plane at Heathrow, five armed police officers were waiting… I was arrested at an airport like a terrorist, locked in a cell like a criminal… and banned from speaking online—all because I made jokes that upset some psychotic crossdressers.”

Linehan is far from alone.

In just a single school year (according to data from the UK’s Department for Education), 94 students in primary school were disciplined for some alleged transgression against the woke / trans narrative.

This includes ten pupils from year one (aged 5-6), plus at least one a child as young as three years old who was suspended from nursery school for “abuse against sexual orientation and gender identity.”

These are supposed to be professional educators who are supposed to make sure that the kids know how to read… and to not run with scissors.

Instead they’ve become full-blown thought police ready to pounce on any potential wrongthink, even when it comes from a child who can’t even form complete sentences.

It’s also alarming to see the rapid evolution of what is considered wrongthink in the UK; British law punishes “grossly offensive” content— without bothering to define what that actually means.

This is similar to US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s view on pornography— “I know it when I see it”, which makes “grossly offensive” the exclusive domain of the accuser.

This is an extremely dangerous standard because the whiny crybullies on the left are offended about everything. And they’re constantly moving the goalposts.

Jokes that people laughed at a few years ago could easily get someone thrown in jail today.

Last month a young man was arrested in a sleepy market town in rural Cumbria under these vague laws for chanting “we love bacon” at a protest.

Obviously the guy didn’t just wake up that morning feeling kinky about pork products. He was at a protest against a new mosque being built in his community, and the “we love bacon” chant was essentially saying “We don’t like your religion, and we don’t want your mosque here.”

And so what? If Muslims are allowed to declare jihad against people who oppose their beliefs, is a Brit not allowed to oppose Islamic beliefs?

(Moreover, even as a legal technicality, how is chanting “we love bacon” considered “racially aggravated”, which is what they charged him with? Islam is a religion, it’s not a ‘race’.)

British authorities are even starting to consider the flag of England, the St. George’s Cross (which is different than Great Britain’s Union Jack), to be offensive hate speech.

Politicians refuse to acknowledge that their open-door, open-border, multi-cultural, far-left ultra-woke policies have been abject failures, and even resulted in the literal rape of the British people.

Because in the warped priorities of Britain’s rulers, it is less dangerous to silence a man chanting “We love bacon,” or gag a comedy writer for offending trans activists, than to admit they sacrificed their own daughters and wives on the altar of ideology.

If you point out that mass immigration brought organized rape gangs, you are “far right.” If you point out that men in dresses don’t belong in women’s spaces, you are “inciting violence.”

Rather than admit their mistakes and work to fix the mess they’ve created, Britain’s government is criminalizing the truth to cover up their lies and failures.

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In our April edition of our premium investment research service, we told subscribers about a highly promising precious metals company— one that we thought was deeply undervalued.

The company had rapidly grown its production nearly 20x in just a few years, not to mention they had also paid off ALL of their debt. Yet they were still trading at just a few times earnings.

With strong cash flow, solid management, and rising gold and silver prices, it was precisely the kind of deep-value setup we look for. This company is now up 5x just since April.

We’ve been very bullish on the precious metals story for the past few years; we have been writing very consistently that gold prices would continue surging higher because central banks around the world are losing confidence in the dollar.

Just this week we told you that foreign governments and central banks now own more gold than they own US government bonds; it’s the clearest sign yet that foreign powers are lining up against the dollar.

Yet while we have been predicting higher gold prices for years, we have been particularly bullish on gold (and other precious metals) companies, i.e. mining, royalty, and service businesses.

And this prediction has also been correct; while precious metals prices are rocketing higher, shares of the companies which produce these metals are performing even better.

Silver, for example, has increased by 33% since April, while one of our silver companies has increased by 400%.

Another silver company we highlighted in March is up 230% in six months.

A gold company we highlighted more than a year ago has increased by 300% in the same time frame that gold has shot up 100%.

We said this would happen. And we said that when investors realized what they were missing, the rise in these companies’ values could happen very quickly. This is precisely what we’re seeing now.

Month after month through our premium investment research service (called the 4th Pillar), we have presented our subscribers with companies that were debt-free, well-managed, extremely profitable… yet trading at laughably cheap valuations.

While the general stock market right now is trading near record-high price/earnings ratios, our featured precious metals companies were trading at multiples as low as TWO.

There’s just one problem: the market is starting to notice. After all, these are all publicly traded companies.

Everyone can see their quarterly financials. Quarter 1 of 2025 was solid. Q2 was exceptional. Q3 earnings are coming out soon, and they will be even better.

What we have been saying for years is no longer a secret. It’s all out in the open now, and investors are piling in to these gold and silver businesses.

The thing is, these companies still look pretty cheap, simply because they are making so much money and their earnings are growing rapidly.

So despite rising by up to 5X, we believe many of these precious metals companies could still double again in value over the next few months as countless investors start piling in.

We want to make sure our readers still have the chance to participate in this rally over the next few months.

So if you haven’t yet invested in this historic boom, we think the next few months are set to be absolutely enormous… and could be the last opportunity to get in during this phase of the cycle.

That’s why we really want to encourage you to join our our premium investment research, the 4th Pillar.

In just this month’s edition— which comes out tomorrow— you’ll read about several undervalued gold and silver companies which our chief analyst believes are still primed for major growth over the next few months.

You’ll also hear about another unique real asset company that has a storied history going back to George Washington in the 1790s.

If you’re interested in joining the 4th Pillar and learning more about our tremendously valuable investment research, please click here for more.

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You might be surprised to know that the government is facing yet another shutdown at the stroke of midnight on September 30.

A lot of people might be thinking two things: First— “again?” And second— what about the “One Big Beautiful Bill”?

The One Big Beautiful Bill, signed into law on July 4, did not, in fact, contain all the necessary resolutions to fund the government for the next fiscal year (which starts on October 1).

As a result, Congress still needs to pass 12 appropriations bills in order to avoid a shutdown at the stroke of midnight on September 30.

From what we can tell, the Trump administration seems to be pushing for spending cuts this time around, which is great. I sincerely hope they are successful, because the country desperately needs fiscal restraint.

But at this point, it’s up to Congress—and that’s far from a foregone conclusion.

The most likely scenario is they’ll just punt any real decision-making and instead pass a stopgap continuing resolution that will merely add to the deficit.

In short, America will remain on its current trajectory—which the Congressional Budget Office estimates about $25 trillion in additional deficit spending over the next ten years.

This is why so many foreign governments and central banks are aggressively working to establish some kind of alternative to the US dollar as the global reserve currency.

Most likely, they won’t be very successful—simply because nobody trusts the Chinese or the Russians. India has far too many capital controls. So does Brazil. And as large as these countries may be in combined economic power, they have completely different economic priorities. Plus they don’t even trust one other.

So the prospect of some “BRICS dollar” emerging as a serious competitor to the US dollar’s reserve status is laughable.

But there actually is a serious competitor already—and that’s gold.

The reason why is simple: no single country controls gold. There’s no supranational agency that can regulate the gold price. Gold is a free market, all about supply and demand, and it happens to be an asset nearly every central bank on the planet already owns.

This is the reason why gold has surged to an all-time high—because foreign central banks just keep buying so much of it.

And they’re doing it to reduce their exposure to the US dollar, and to reduce the hold and power the US government has over them.

We think this trend is absolutely going to continue.

And that’s why we’re still in the early days of this gold boom.

In today’s podcast, we discuss all this, as well as:

• The global sell-off of US Treasuries and the pivot by foreign central banks toward gold.
• Why foreign governments and central banks now own more gold than US Treasuries for the first time in decades.
• Historical lessons—from the Byzantine empire to Venetian gold ducats—on what happens when trust in a currency breaks down.
• How central banks are also eyeing platinum and strategic assets as alternatives to the dollar.
• Why well-managed gold and silver producers could deliver outsized returns compared to the metals themselves.
• How owning gold today is a hedge against US fiscal chaos and a way to offset the increased costs of inflation.
• Why we’re still in the early innings of a gold bull market, even with prices already at record highs.

You can listen to the full podcast here.

Podcast transcript is available to you here.

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For centuries, the Byzantine Empire’s gold coin, known as the solidus, had been the backbone of global trade in the medieval world; nearly pure gold, the solidus was trusted by merchants from Baghdad to London.

But by the 11th century, multiple emperors had chipped away at its gold content—watering it down to pay for wars, bureaucracy, and the costs of an empire in decline.

By the time Alexios I took power in 1081, the solidus was barely 40% gold, and merchants never knew which version they were getting or how much real gold it contained.

Alexios tried to restore confidence by minting a new coin in 1092, one he call the hyperpyron—which literally means “super-refined” in Greek.

At 85% purity, it didn’t have the same purity as the old solidus, but the hyperpyron was credible enough to restore trust… for a little while.

But then history repeated itself over the next century; later emperors debased the hyperpyron, just as their predecessors had debased the solidus. And by the late 1200s, there was no more trust in the currency.

When Venice launched the ducat in 1284— at over 99% pure gold— it also came with a pledge that the Venetian government would never debase it.

Combined with Venice’s trade power and rapidly growing wealth, the ducat quickly became the literal gold standard for international trade.

So much, in fact, that by the mid-1300s, the once-mighty Byzantine Empire was pawning its imperial jewels in exchange for Venetian ducats.

(It would be the loose equivalent of the US government selling off national parks in exchange for Swiss francs…)

That was the moment it became obvious to everyone that the Byzantine Empire was no longer the world’s dominant superpower… and that the world’s reserve currency had changed hands.

This pattern repeats itself throughout history. Most reserve currencies have a long, slow decline, as well as clear moments that stand out.

Today, the US government isn’t quite pawning Mount Rushmore for Swiss francs… but we are witnessing a clear moment that demonstrates a loss of confidence in the US dollar:

Foreign governments and central banks now own more gold than they own US Treasury securities.

That means that foreign nations trust in gold more than they trust in the US government.

We’ve been saying this for years: foreign central banks are selling their dollars, and using those dollars to buy gold.

Why? Because the US government’s massive debts make it a less trustworthy lender. While it’s unlikely that the US would outright default, it is very likely that Uncle Sam will eventually turn to the money printer as the “solution” to its debt challenge.

And any foreign central bank which owns a ton of US debt doesn’t want to be paid back with inflated dollars. Better to minimize that exposure now and pare down their dollar holdings.

What do they buy instead? Gold.

Not because central bankers are ‘gold bugs’. But because gold has a 5,000 year history of maintaining value. Because it is dense wealth they can hold physically in their vaults. And because there is a large enough global market to be able to buy or sell metric tons at a time.

This growing gold demand from foreign central banks has been the main driver of gold’s massive bull run— from $1,700 per ounce just three years ago, to over $3,500 per ounce today.

I take no pleasure in pointing this out, but it is becoming clear that foreign governments and central banks simply no longer have the confidence in the US that they once did.

You can see the momentum building; just this week in China, Putin, Xi Jinping, and India’s Modi stood before the world urging trade in national currencies and laying the groundwork for a new financial system designed to chip away at the dollar’s dominance.

And it’s not hard to figure out why.

According to its own projections, the US Treasury will need to sell over $22 trillion in new debt over the next ten years. That’s not a worst-case scenario—that’s the baseline forecast.

Foreign governments and central banks are traditionally one of the largest buyers of US government debt. Yet they’re clearly starting to back away from Treasury bonds… and the US dollar.

This means that the Treasury Department will struggle to find lenders over the next several years… which very likely means relying on the Federal Reserve to ‘print’ the money they need… which of course would be highly inflationary.

This isn’t a doomsday prediction. It’s not a partisan argument. It’s just the reality that America is facing.

Most likely nothing catastrophic will happen tomorrow. Or this month. Or this year. But America is clearly running out of time.

This is not a time for panic; in fact it’s critical to understand that there are rational ways to prepare for the challenges down the road.

We’ve been suggesting gold (and silver) for a number of years, both of which have proven to be excellent shelter.

At $2,000 gold we said this was just the beginning. At $3,000 gold we said that the story was still in its early days. At $3,500 gold, I’m still telling you that this story has much longer to play out.

Nothing goes up or down in a straight line, so there will always be pullbacks and corrections. But the case for gold easily goes to $5,000… and potentially well over $10,000.

That’s not based on any idolatry or fanaticism… but rather a cogent, rational understand of how global central banking works.

The bottom line is that the world is losing confidence in the US dollar as the global reserve currency. And, right now, there is no alternative. Except for gold. And for that reason central banks (over the long run) will keep stockpiling it… and driving the price higher.

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I’m sure we all remember the 2020 “Summer of Love.”

After months of lockdowns, “mostly peaceful” protesters were in the streets screaming to defund the police. And no one was allowed to have a contrary opinion.

Of course, you could support the #DefundPolice movement all you wanted— on Twitter, with Facebook profile pictures, or even raging in the streets.

(Hilariously, the same public health officials who told us to isolate and avoid any public contact simultaneously supported the protests and said that systemic racism was a greater public health threat than Covid-19…)

But when University of Chicago economist Harald Uhlig criticized the Black Lives Matter movement on Twitter, the woke mob sprang into action.

Uhlig wrote that BLM had “just torpedoed itself, with its full-fledged support of #defundthepolice,” adding, “Time for sensible adults to enter back into the room and have serious, earnest, respectful conversations about it all.”

Professor Uhlig offered his opinion that America needs more police, and they need to be paid better, and he compared the BLM leaders to “flat-earthers,” for being totally unrealistic about what de-funding or abolishing the police would actually mean.

He was promptly denounced by the likes of Paul Krugman, the Nobel-winning economist whose brilliant ideas include faking an invasion from space aliens to fix the economy.

Then the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago ended its consulting relationship with Uhlig.

Then the University of Chicago placed Uhlig on temporary leave from his role as editor of the Journal of Political Economy.

… all because he thought that there should be public discourse over the #defund movement.

But according to at least one fellow university professor, those consequences against Uhlig didn’t go far enough.

Besmirching his character and threatening his livelihood were woefully insufficient penalties for such heresy.

Rather, this other professor argued, Uhlig’s comments amounted to “racial harassment,” and that he should not only be removed from the editorial board of the Journal of Political Economy, but also that he should no longer be allowed to interact with students.

After all, we can’t have someone exposing young people to ideas that don’t conform to the woke narrative.

This other professor also Tweeted that “free speech has its limits” in reference to Uhlig’s comments.

Bear in mind that all Uhlig said was that there should be “respectful conversations” about defunding the police. Yet this other professor howled that Uhlig “used your words and your power to spread hate” and “violate the dignity of other people”.

Who exactly was this other university colleague who was out for blood?

None other than Lisa Cook— a fellow economics professor who was later nominated by Joe Biden to join the Federal Reserve.

It’s worth pointing out that Cook had ZERO experience in monetary policy when nominated.

Her academic career focused on racial and gender issues… NOT interest rates, or the bond market, or economic growth, or banking supervision, or any of the other areas that the Fed manages.

Look, I have no problem if someone wants to spend her career writing about “The Mortality Consequences of Distinctively Black Names,” as Lisa Cook has.

But we should be intellectually honest that such topics have nothing to do with stagflation risks in the US economy.

Elevating an unqualified activist to one of the most powerful central banks on the planet carries serious risk.

A more competent Fed appointee, for example, might have sounded the alarm about Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse in 2023. Or called out the risks of signaling rate cuts too early. Or noticed the Fed’s diminishing influence in the bond market.

Yet Cook possessed the only qualification that mattered to Joe Biden— a female person of color. So Dementia-in-Chief nominated her in 2022.

Conservative Senators took issue with Cook’s lack of professional experience in monetary policy and banking supervision… not to mention her views on free speech.

They also pushed back against another unqualified diversity hire in government. So the Senate split 50-50 on Cook’s confirmation.

Unsurprisingly, Vice President Kamala Harris— the ultimate unqualified diversity hire— cast the tie-breaking vote in favor of Cook.

Lisa Cook is now accused of mortgage fraud three years into her Fed tenure, and President Trump wants to fire her. They’re not making it up— the evidence is pretty strong.

In response, Cook has sued the President, saying he lacks the authority to do fire her.

This is quite interesting given that Cook thought Harald Uhlig’s “free speech” was a fireable offense. Not only did she call for him to be terminated for cause, but she also wanted to restrict his access to students.

Yet strong evidence of an actual crime is apparently NOT a fireable offense.

On cue, the Left has assembled its ‘experts’ to defend Lisa Cook. This includes old faithful Paul Krugman, who claimed on live TV that for cause termination would require Cook to be “drinking on the job”.

I find this completely absurd.

Mortgage fraud is potentially a felony— and one that people commit for their own personal financial gain.

In other words, there are credible allegations that a key member of the most important central bank on the planet (who is already unqualified for the job) told a bold-faced lie— to the very same banks that she is supposed to supervise— for her own financial benefit.

This absolutely matters for a Fed official who makes policy decisions that affect literally billions of people; a central banker’s integrity should be pristine and unassailable— especially when it comes to financial matters.

Voters are generally afforded the opportunity to assess allegations against elected politicians, and to determine for themselves whether potential misconduct is a disqualifier for office.

In electing Donald Trump last November, for example, voters clearly expressed indifference over his felony convictions.

But voters have no such input when it comes to Fed officials… because Fed officials are not elected.

A few years ago, two key Fed officials were found to have been trading the stock market while on the job. After the impropriety was discovered, they resigned immediately… because the public needed to have confidence in the integrity of the institution.

Cook’s alleged misconduct similarly maligns the Fed’s integrity. And at a minimum, she ought to acknowledge the seriousness of the allegations and voluntarily step aside, at least temporarily, while the truth comes out. Plenty of institutions have this standard, including the police.

Yet she refuses to step aside and acts like she is entitled to her position. Shocker.

To be clear, I am not some hardcore MAGA guy. The President is doing plenty of things with which I wholeheartedly agree, and others with which I disagree.

More specifically, I don’t think the White House or Treasury should have control over the Fed.

But there’s no sugarcoating this issue: it’s another scandal involving a key Fed official. And if Chairman Jerome Powell wants to maintain Fed independence, then he should restore confidence in the integrity of his institution and sideline Lisa Cook immediately.

The dollar already has enough challenges without serious ethical concerns at the Federal Reserve.

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Podcast: Asset Price Inflation, Retail Price Inflation, or Both?

President Trump is currently testing the legality of firing a key Federal Reserve official his administration has accused of mortgage fraud.

Earlier this year, he looked into whether he could fire Federal Reserve Chairman Powell— who has so far ignored Trump’s demands to cut rates.

This isn’t the first time a President has clashed with the Federal Reserve. Back in the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson was furious when Fed Chairman William Martin refused to play along with his spending spree.

Johnson wanted guns and butter—funding for the Vietnam War and his massive “Great Society” welfare expansion. When Martin warned that the economy was overheating and refused to cut interest rates, Johnson lost it. He even asked the Attorney General if he could fire the Fed Chair. He couldn’t.

So instead, Johnson used the bully pulpit to apply pressure. He undermined Martin publicly, pushed for lower rates, and demanded more spending from Congress.

The result? A short-term boom that quickly turned to stagflation. Growth flatlined. Inflation soared. Bond yields spiked. And foreign governments started dumping dollars for gold.

If that sounds familiar, it should.

I predicted a couple weeks ago that with pressure from the White House mounting, the Fed would eventually fold.

And after Friday’s speech at Jackson Hole, that prediction is coming true.

Chairman Powell didn’t cut rates yet. But he cracked the door wide open. The central bank is capitulating.

And this is music to the Treasury Department’s ears.

The US government will spend over $1.2 trillion this fiscal year just to pay interest on the national debt. So naturally the White House and Treasury Department are keen to bring interest rates down as quickly as possible.

So it seems like a foregone conclusion that the Fed is going to use its key policy tool and cut the Federal Funds rate. Unfortunately that’s probably not going to be enough.

We’ve talked about this before. Rate cuts alone won’t get the job done—especially not with long-term yields still elevated. The Fed can nudge the short end of the curve, but they can’t just snap their fingers and bring the 10-year or 30-year down to 2%.

We ran the numbers, with the help of Grok, and the bottom line is that it would take about $10 trillion in newly ‘printed’ money to push average rates down to 2%.

Even then the annual interest bill would be ~$750 billion. But even that’s more manageable than $1.2 trillion.

So my latest prediction is that the White House will soon start calling for the Fed to begin a new round of Quantitative Easing, i.e. money printing, to make this happen.

The question is—what happens when they do it? What happens when QE begins again?

In today’s podcast, we break this down by looking at two recent episodes of inflation.

After the 2008 financial crisis, the Fed printed trillions of dollars. But what we really saw was asset price inflation. Stocks, bonds, crypto—everything rocketed to all-time highs.

Retail prices, on the other hand, remained flat. In fact inflation was so tame during that period that Businessweek magazine eventually ran a famous cover story proclaiming the death of inflation.

Then came the pandemic. Same script—massive printing. But during that 2020-2022 period, we saw both asset inflation and retail price inflation.

In today’s podcast, we explore some of the key differences between those scenarios. And we discuss whether the 2026 Fed Quantitative Easing cycle will result in asset price inflation, retail price inflation, or both.

We talk about:

• The post Global Financial Crisis Energy Boom: After 2008, US shale discoveries brought the energy equivalent of multiple Saudi Arabias online in just a few years. That flood of cheap energy helped keep production costs—and consumer prices—low, even as the Fed printed trillions.
• The lack of global dollar competition in 2008: Back then, there was no BRICS coalition, no widespread de-dollarization, and no credible alternative to US Treasurys. Foreign central banks eagerly bought US debt, soaking up the excess dollars and keeping inflation in check.
• That meant massive international demand for dollars: Quantitative Easing worked in part because much of that liquidity got exported. Dollars flowed overseas, where they inflated asset prices in global markets—but didn’t push up rents or groceries in Topeka, Kansas.
• The Pandemic-era ‘printing’ was different:
•     The money went directly to consumers, not just into bank reserves
•     Energy policy turned anti-supply, driving up input costs
•     Dollar dominance is now openly challenged—less demand, more inflation pressure

Given these differences, we think the case for retail price inflation is strong.

What kept prices in check after 2008—like cheap energy and strong foreign demand for US debt—simply aren’t there anymore. This time, the dollars are more likely to reach consumers.

But we’re also expecting asset price inflation, especially in real assets.

Gold could easily triple in price as faith in fiat currencies deteriorates. Gold miners—still trading at bargain-basement valuations—stand to benefit even more, with many still paying high dividends and trading at low single-digit earnings multiples.

And energy will be critical. For now, with new supplies constrained, it will contribute to inflation. But we also discuss the possibility that as new sources— such as nuclear— are brought online, it could provide the same relief as the shale boom of the 2010s.

You can listen to the full podcast here.

You can access the podcast transcript here.

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Welcome to Alligator Alcatraz— the detention center in the middle of the swampy Everglades, surrounded by razor wire, armed guards, and actual alligators.

Formally known as the Everglades Transitional Detention Center, it was built by the state of Florida inside federal land managed by the National Park Service, designed to detain illegal immigrants apprehended under Florida law.

The facility went up in record time— especially for a government project— complete with fences, floodlights, sewage and power systems, and modular housing pods for hundreds of detainees.

Then came the lawsuits.

Environmental groups and the Miccosukee Tribe filed a case earlier this year claiming the facility violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), interfered with tribal land use, and posed ecological risks to the surrounding wetlands.

And on August 21, US District Judge Kathleen Williams of the Southern District of Florida issued an 82-page ruling granting a preliminary injunction.

It orders Florida to stop using the Everglades detention site, prohibits new detainees, mandates the removal of all infrastructure, and requires the relocation of current detainees within 60 days.

To save the endangered Florida bonneted bat and snail kite… allegedly.

Allegedly, because what activists actually want Alligator Alcatraz shut down for is holding illegal immigrants.

Clearly there is no standing to argue that people who broke the law entering the country illegally cannot be detained for their crimes.

But lucky for far-left activists, there are 200,000+ pages of federal regulations that surely every single person, property, project, and business in America has violated in some way.

So all they have to do is find the crime, and they can obstruct, harass, arrest, sue, or charge anyone they want!

That’s one problem, but another is the power of one judge to unilaterally road-block this facility.

In July, the Supreme Court limited the scope of nationwide injunctions that allow activists to find any federal judge in the country that might agree with them, and obstruct anything the executive branch tries to do.

But activists can still find judges within their federal district to handicap executive actions at every turn. And again, because the government is clearly allowed to detain illegal immigrants, they had to think up some other excuse.

This whole situation is just so emblematic of why America is completely unable to solve its problems.

First of all, not only will the money spent creating Alligator Alcatraz be a total waste, but the government will have to spend more money tearing it down, transporting illegal immigrants, and finding new accommodations for them.

Stopping the runaway spending and borrowing is one of the most crucial problem America needs to solve to avoid catastrophic economic consequences and intense inflation.

The other issue is that there are so many federal laws, rules, and regulations, that even the federal government can’t take a step without tripping over red tape.

So how do they expect the private sector to fare any better when the potential presence of the Florida bonneted bat can cause all progress to come crashing down?

They need to take a chainsaw to federal regulations if they want to spur the type of economic growth America needs in order to grow itself out of its debt problem.

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