"You can't have free immigration and a welfare state."So argued the very late Milton Friedman.We believe there is vast justice in his claim.If the world's impoverished swamp a nation's shores and are thrown upon public relief they impose impossible burdens upon the nation.Yet the government of the United States is out to disprove old Milton... evidently.Both free immigration and a welfare stat...Read More

As I look out the window of my new study, I thank the Good Lord I can live in the middle of rural Italy and still do my job.My parents are downstairs watching television, while my wife just made me a fantastic lunch. My son, Micah, is at school, and we'll pick him up shortly.It's truffle season here in Il Piemonte, and I've already sampled the goods. Since the weather has cooled, we lit up my fire...Read More

Is the election over already?Sure, Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 5. But the election is happening in real-time and will mostly be over by the end of this week because of early voting, mail-in ballots, drop boxes and ballot harvesting.These votes won't be counted until Election Day, but they are being cast now, so hopefully somebody will be watching this time.It goes state by state, so different st...Read More

Have you ever been caught in a set of gnarly waves at the ocean? The kind where you get smashed by a breaker, come up for air and there's another big one waiting for you at the surface?This is a solid metaphor for inflationary periods. They don't happen like a single big tsunami.They are typically processes that play out in stages over a decade or more. Policymakers try various fixes, and most fai...Read More

I'm not superstitious.I don't cross my fingers or avoid stepping on cracks in the sidewalk. I don't turn my baseball cap inside out to help my team eke out a win in extra innings (RIP Orioles World Series hopes). And I certainly don't wear a lucky pair of socks to help improve my trading results.Yet despite my focus on price and all things real and tangible on my stock charts, it would be foolish...Read More

Economist Richard Duncan is credited with fabricating the term "creditism."Many still insist ours is a capitalist system. Yet Mr. Duncan tells them to have another guess.He argues that the capitalist system went into the grave when the gold standard went into the grave.They share a common plot.Credit that is, debt took over. Credit is king of the post-capitalist system.All economic growth, in...Read More

Janet Yellen gave a speech on Sept. 26 at the 2024 U.S. Treasury Market Conference in New York. The speech was largely about risks in the banking system and the market for U.S. Treasury debt.In a pre-speech interview with Politico, Yellen was asked about risks related to a smooth presidential transition in this election cycle. While that may seem like a straightforward question, it contained a par...Read More

During the misnamed and mostly preposterous debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, a moderator fact-checked Trump's claim that crime is up.In contrast to Trump's claim, moderator David Muir said that the FBI reports that crime is down, a claim that likely struck every viewer as obviously wrong.Shoplifting was not a way of life before lockdowns. Most cities were not demographic minefields o...Read More

"We lose total control…" she said.Hillary Clinton was recently on CNN calling for censorship of social media. Here's her full quote:We should be, in my view, repealing something called Section 230, which gave, you know, platforms on the internet immunity because they were thought to be just pass-throughs, that they shouldn't be judged for the content that is posted.But we now know that that...Read More

Over the past century, monetary systems change about every 30-40 years on average. Before 1914, the global monetary system was based on the classical gold standard.Then in 1944, a new monetary system emerged at Bretton Woods. Under that system, the dollar became the global reserve currency, linked to gold at $35 per ounce. In 1971 Nixon ended the direct convertibility of the dollar to gold. For th...Read More

In Tuesday's reckoning we argued with our tongue plastered to our cheek that a libertarian dictator may best serve the United States at this time.That is because the stability of the American constitutional order, a fantastic virtue when the nation is in whack, becomes a vicious vice when the nation is out of whack.In our telling the nation is presently out of whack. And the inefficient govern...Read More

"It's only a few AK-47s!" will one day be up there with "I only had one!"Let me explain.Chick Baller Arrested For Pot in RussiaWhen Griner was arrested in Russia in 2022, I wrote a Rude Awakening piece called "From Russia with Mowie Wowie." I thought it'd be fun to write about two things I don't give a toss about: cannabis and women's sports. I presciently concluded that article with this wrap-up...Read More

Cycles surround us. In markets, astronomy, and our lives.Every day is a circadian cycle for us all. Our bodies move through phases based on our exposure to light or darkness.Markets are also remarkably cyclical, responding to the environment around them. Interest rates, regulation, monetary policy and investor psychology all play important roles.Precious metals are no different. The sector’s...Read More

Does a fantastic American strength... double as a crippling American weakness?The nation's Founders erected a governmental apparatus so unwieldy, so inert, so plodding, it is exceedingly difficult to budge.That is, it is exceedingly difficult to "get things done."Imagine an automobile with merely two gears first gear and reverse gear.Imagine further that once the thing attains 10 miles per hour...Read More

Hurricane Milton is slicing across the Gulf of Mexico, intensifying into a monstrous Category 5 storm that's now threatening to lay waste to Florida.If you're keeping score at home, this will be the second major storm to make landfall in the US in a matter of weeks. Tampa residents haven't even finished clearing debris from Helene - and now many are forced to evacuate ahead of Milton's landfall.Un...Read More

It's hard to believe, but the election is now under a month away. How does the race look today? Let's talk about the polls.Polls are an indispensable tool in election analysis and forecasting despite many flaws. The first thing to say about polls is that they're snapshots, not movies. They help you understand where the contest stands today, but not necessarily where the race is going.I recently di...Read More

A great many people have immense faith in political solutions to looming crises: If only we elect new leaders, if only we replace current policies with new policies, everything would be fixed and the crises will all dissipate.There are powerful reasons for this faith and equally powerful reasons why political solutions fail in crisis. Our faith in politics is nurtured by recency bias in eras of re...Read More

The conversation around environmental, social, and governance ESG considerations in mining has grown increasingly sophisticated over the last decade, giving rise to an evolving set of requirements that companies must meet in order to secure funding. In the past, projects were primarily evaluated on their financial viability and resource potential. Now, many investors require a comprehensive ESG st...Read More

Is the United States enduring a "Quiet Coup"? Economist Peter St. Onge:In the wake of the 2008 Financial Crisis, former chief economist of the IMF Simon Johnson warned that the same dysfunctional policies he saw in his basket-case banana republics had taken hold in the United States.Johnson warned that if America didn't act fast, we would plunge into a "Quiet Coup" as the American financial system...Read More

I remember the 2011 silver bull market like it was yesterday.We had already experienced two rounds of money printing (QE) by then, and the bank bailouts were still fresh on everyone's mind.Silver prices shot up from $9.40 per ounce in October 2008 to over $49 in April 2011.It was a beautiful run, but ended much too quickly for my liking. Silver stayed above $30 for almost two more years, but as th...Read More