Few people understand how the Federal Reserve actually works— and frankly, I’m not sure the President or Treasury Secretary are among them. That’s not an insult, just based on what they say. Let me explain. Most people think the Fed sets “the interest rate” for everything—mortgages, car loans, 10-year yields. But that’s not how it works. The Fed only sets a very narrow rate—the overnight lending rate between banks. Everything else, from your mortgage to the government’s long-term borrowing costs...
Aug 19, 2025•59 min
I was still just a kid as the US headed into the 1992 US Presidential election, but I remember the excitement around my home town as Ross Perot entered the race as an independent candidate. Perot was from Dallas, where I grew up. And he was one of the first tech billionaires, long before the dot-com boom. Like Elon today, Perot knew that America was heading down a dangerous fiscal path. At the time, the US government was spending about 28% of its annual tax revenue just to pay interest on the na...
Aug 12, 2025•55 min
To the surprise of absolutely no one today, the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee chose to do nothing at the close of its two-day meeting. The White House is furious about the decision; the President believes that the Fed should be slashing rates, and that the current “high” rate of interest is costing the US government hundreds of billions of dollars each year in excess interest. (I put “high” in quotes because interest rates are still well below historic averages…) Now, I am no fan of th...
Jul 30, 2025•50 min
The US owes a LOT less money to China today than it did a few years ago. As recently as three years ago, for example, China held $1.3 trillion worth of US government bonds. Today they’re down to around $750 billion. In other words, China’s government has decided to cut back on its US dollar Treasury holdings by more than 40% over the past three years. And at first, that might sound like a good thing— HOORAY! More independence from foreign creditors! America is better off without that Chinese mon...
Jul 23, 2025•16 min
Bitcoin today is trading at around $120,000. If you’re willing to pay double the price, i.e. $240,000, please contact me immediately. I’ll happily sell you some of mine. Why would anyone do that? I don’t know. But that’s exactly what investors are doing when they buy shares in “Strategy,” formerly known as MicroStrategy. The company currently holds about 580,000 Bitcoin, worth roughly $69 billion. But the market values the company at more than $124 billion. In other words, investors are paying n...
Jul 17, 2025•13 min
It’s “Crypto Week” on Capitol Hill with all sorts of crypto legislation on the docket— including the so-called GENIUS Act that aims to regulate stablecoins. I’m not sure the GENIUS Act is in fact genius, but it might be a pretty clever given its potential benefit to the Treasury Department and government bond market. On its surface, the bill aims to provide a formal regulatory framework for anyone who wants to issue stablecoins, i.e. digital assets that are typically pegged to the US dollar to m...
Jul 16, 2025•16 min
Many of our readers know that I was an Army intelligence officer, and so I want to start by clearing up some basic terminology. When people talk about intelligence work, they often confuse terms like asset, agent, and operative. An asset is someone who provides intelligence—intentionally or not—to an agency. Even a guy who’s bragging in bed to some woman he doesn’t realize is part of a honeypot intelligence operation. He’s spilling secrets and doesn’t even know it. That’s an asset. An agent , by...
Jul 14, 2025•21 min
In today’s podcast, we take on a provocative question from a reader: What is the single root cause behind America’s decline? You might think it’s overspending, or the Federal Reserve, or career politicians. But what if it’s something even more fundamental… like letting just anyone vote? Should someone be allowed to vote if they don’t understand basic concepts like what a deficit is, or how the government even works? This episode digs deep into the consequences of letting uninformed masses steer ...
Jul 09, 2025•47 min
In our latest podcast, we dissect one of the most toxic patterns in American governance: total abandonment of principle the moment it’s politically inconvenient. In 2022, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan criticized the idea that a single lower court judge could block an entire federal policy from taking effect across the whole country—saying it “wasn’t right.” But last week, she voted to preserve them… because they could be used to block Trump. Meanwhile, Senate Republicans—once furious over Pe...
Jul 01, 2025•1 hr 1 min
I can understand why so many people are worried about World War 3 breaking out. It’s a completely rational concern. I just don’t happen to share it. Why? Because regardless of the debate over whether the US strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities were a good idea, or a reckless risk of another expensive foreign entanglement, one thing is indisputable: America reminded the world of its immense military capabilities. There’s not a single adversary nation that wants to risk armed conflict with th...
Jun 24, 2025•1 hr 1 min
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-tlc4P0iDw Today’s topic is so far-reaching, deep, and important that we had to dedicate an entire podcast episode to it. Frankly, it is one of the most interesting we have ever done. With so much conflict in the world—and the potential for even more escalation, particularly in the Middle East—we have heard a lot of worry, concern, and even hyperbole in the media about “World War III.” I actually have the opposite view: that after the recent strikes and counter-s...
Jun 17, 2025•1 hr
CLICK HERE to listen to today’s podcast . “Mostly peaceful” yet “occasionally violent” protesters across the US will hit the streets for “No Kings Day” this Saturday in support of the right for illegal immigrants to break the law. No big deal, just a little looting and property damage in the name of justice. But while the media fixates on the drama and conflict, they’re not talking about how this issue was completely avoidable and the result of a desperately broken immigration system. America ha...
Jun 12, 2025•54 min
CLICK HERE to listen to our latest podcast . Think for a moment about how many times something has been whipped up into a national issue by either the big legacy media or prominent politicians. The public has been subjected to what they call “a national conversation” about everything from transgender bathrooms to Confederate monuments to abortion rights to climate change. Many of these issues only affect a few people. Sometimes more. But not once have these same media or political personalities ...
Jun 05, 2025•56 min
Travis Stice is not one of those rare corporate CEOs who is a household name around the world… like Warren Buffett. But the two share a similar ethos. Buffett famously quipped, “Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful,” which was ultimately a nod to the cyclical nature of markets and the economy. As surely as night follows day, and autumn/winter follow summer, bad times follow good… and then good times follow bad. Travis Stice understands this cyclicality all too we...
May 07, 2025•45 min
CLICK HERE to listen to today’s podcast . In today’s podcast, we explore the rare phenomenon of simultaneous declines in the stock market, bond market, and currency market —a powerful signal of capital flight out of the US. We talk about when and where this has happened before, and why the Federal Reserve’s diminishing control over interest rates won’t fix it. We also discuss what higher rates mean for the commercial real estate market, and how that reverberates through the banking system. And w...
Apr 30, 2025•47 min
In the two weeks since “Liberation Day”, we’ve received plenty of very smart, thoughtful questions from our readers. So today we recorded a special Q&A podcast to cut through the chaos and confusion these new trade measures have sparked in the markets. We answer: Is the President’s top economic adviser correct that the US dollar’s reserve status is “hurting” the US economy? What’s happening with gold? Why did it initially drop, and then soar? Can the BRICS bloc switch entirely to yuan trade ...
Apr 16, 2025•54 min
Yesterday when I was talking to my friend and business partner Peter Schiff, he made it clear: China is trying to drive a wedge between the US and Europe by dumping US bonds, and buying euros. If that’s true, it constitutes a major reset of the global financial order. I sat down to record a podcast about this because, frankly, it’s the most important thing happening right now. It’s critical to understand—not just what’s happening, but why this is no longer a trade war… It’s an economic war. Hone...
Apr 12, 2025•31 min
Governments love to tell you tariffs are about “protection”. But protection from what? More affordable goods? A higher quality of life? In today’s podcast, we dig into the many, many unforeseen consequences of the new tariff policies. For example: Examples from countries where I’ve lived which have heavy tariffs and import duties— and how those countries are vastly worse off as a result. Their citizens are poorer and less prosperous. That’s because taxing something always leads to less of it… wh...
Apr 04, 2025•31 min
Tomorrow is being billed as Liberation Day— where tariffs will supposedly free America from those pesky, parasitic foreign markets. But what’s actually going to happen? This is the subject of today’s podcast. We discuss: How odd it is that no Liberation Day details have leaked… which makes us wonder if there actually are any plans or details to leak. If this administration truly believes tariffs are so obviously great for the economy, why would they wait until now instead of doing it day one, as...
Apr 01, 2025•37 min
On June 8, 1974, President Richard Nixon dispatched Treasury Secretary William Simon and his deputy to Saudi Arabia in an attempt to strike one of the most critical—and secretive—economic deals in modern history. Three years earlier, in August 1971, Nixon had severed the final link between the US dollar and gold, officially ending the Bretton Woods system. That meant foreign governments could no longer redeem their dollars for gold, effectively turning the dollar into a pure fiat currency backed...
Mar 27, 2025•1 hr 6 min
A few years ago, I was at a private conference listening to a CEO of a silver mining company explain—quite matter-of-factly—how silver prices were being manipulated. He laid out the whole playbook: how major Wall Street traders would flood the market with short positions in paper silver, drive the price down, and simultaneously accumulate physical silver at rock-bottom prices. Then, once they’d cornered enough physical supply, they’d let prices rise, selling into the momentum they themselves cre...
Mar 18, 2025•50 min
By the late 1920s, the US economy was booming and had advantages that most of the world did not yet enjoy. Manufacturing in America was extremely competitive due to mass electrification powering factories. Farmers had traded out horses and mules for trucks and tractors. US productivity was surging. Global trade was still recovering from World War I, but there was enough sense at the League of Nations (the precursor to the United Nations) to campaign against trade barriers. The final report from ...
Mar 11, 2025•57 min
Even during the darkest moments of the Biden administration—the shameful withdrawal from Afghanistan, 9% inflation, bureaucrats hell-bent on destroying the economy—I still said America’s problems were fixable. But I didn’t see any hope in the previous administration or a prospective Kamala administration to fix things and only expected them to grow worse. We’re now a month and a half into a new administration, and it’s fair to say some things are going very well. There are others that, depending...
Mar 05, 2025•1 hr 13 min
On October 20, 2022, Liz Truss resigned as UK prime minister after just 44 days in office—the shortest tenure in British history. She was brought down not by a no-confidence vote or a party coup, but by a full-scale bond market rebellion. Her government’s proposed mini-budget, featuring sweeping tax cuts, triggered a historic sell-off in UK government bonds (gilts), sending yields soaring and the pound crashing. As panic spread, the Bank of England was forced to intervene to prevent a financial ...
Feb 27, 2025•38 min
We write a lot about the US government’s dismal financial condition— $36.2 trillion in debt, $1.1 trillion in annual interest expenses, and a $1.8 trillion annual deficit. But in today’s podcast we take a closer look at the numbers and the government’s actual balance sheet as if it were a business, including all of its assets and liabilities. The government doesn’t just have debt. Offsetting that debt is a pretty substantial pile of cash, financial assets, and other resources like land or gold. ...
Feb 25, 2025•52 min
I want to present two choices for you to pick from. One is a world leader who was recently sued by a transgender prison inmate who felt that this person’s recent executive order was unfair. The second is another world leader who has suspended elections, forcibly presses people into the military, has closed his border, and has complete control over the press and the flow of information. If you were forced to label one of these two as a dictator, which would it be? Most people would probably think...
Feb 22, 2025•29 min
Last summer, the Federal Reserve wanted you to believe that inflation was a thing of the past. Sure, just about every category of consumer goods had increased in price. Electricity rates had increased 5% year over year. Rent and housing costs were up 5%. Hospital care had become 6% more expensive. Food prices were up. Fuel prices were up. Auto insurance had risen by a whopping 18.6%. Yet, bizarrely, the overall inflation average was just 2.9%. And based on that number alone, the Federal Reserve ...
Feb 19, 2025•1 hr 16 min
We recently received a question from a reader asking for my thoughts on crypto. He said we’ve been talking about gold a lot lately, the gold price, and how the price could go a lot higher. Shouldn’t we hold the same views on crypto, given everything that has happened with Bitcoin over the last year or so? We ended up doing a whole podcast about this today, We talk a lot about gold, and a lot about crypto. To clarify, I’m not anti-crypto. In fact, I brought Bitcoin to our audience’s attention bac...
Feb 11, 2025•53 min
In the year 1025, the Byzantine Empire stood at the height of its final golden age. Basil II had just died, leaving behind a vast and wealthy empire stretching from Southern Italy to Armenia. At the heart of its economy was the soli d us , a gold coin that had served as the bedrock of Mediterranean trade for centuries. Merchants from Venice to Baghdad had so much confidence in its purity that the solidus became the primary currency for international trade as far away as China. And this ‘reserve ...
Feb 06, 2025•41 min
Yesterday, Nvidia—the company which makes GPUs, including for AI— suffered the largest single-day market value loss in history. The stock dropped 17.4% wiping $600 billion from its valuation in hours, and actually pulling the entire Nasdaq Composite down 3.4%. To put that in perspective, this amount of value loss is like if the entire company of Netflix AND AT&T simply disappeared. What caused this? A Chinese AI startup called DeepSeek. Over the weekend, it revealed a new large language mode...
Jan 28, 2025•24 min
