Doug Casey

Best-selling author, world-renowned speculator, and libertarian philosopher.

[Doug Casey's International Man @intlmandotcom]

The World Order Is Breaking Down—and Your Portfolio May Not Survive It

As the US-led world order fractures, the forces that wipe out fortunes can create new ones.

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[Doug Casey's International Man @intlmandotcom]

Conscription and Capital Controls: A Warning You Can’t Afford to Ignore

The push toward conscription raises the prospect of capital controls that could trap savings and restrict financial freedom.

https://t.co/hCPCgbkd37

[Doug Casey @RealDougCasey]

Full article here:

Doug Casey on the Midterm Election Aftermath: Is a Market Meltdown Ahead?

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[Doug Casey @RealDougCasey]

The only changes I expect are towards more taxes, more regulation, and more inflation.

The U.S. reminds me of a man who’s jumped off the top of a hundred-story building and, as he passes the ninety-fifth floor on the way down, says, “So far, so good.”

The government is underwater, well over $40 trillion, and essentially half of the country is on welfare. The situation has taken on a life of its own. Things are out of control. There’s nothing they’ll do about the K-shaped economy where the rich have gotten much richer, the poor are struggling, and the middle class is gradually ceasing to exist. The only solution is to return to a free market, but that’s out of the question.

The Dems are unlikely to make much of a change in the so-called “defense” establishment, which has built the world’s best 20th-century military—but this is the 21st century. There’s not much that they can do to turn around the antagonism between the blacks in the central city and the whites who live in the suburbs and the countryside. There’s not much they can do to avert a variety of civil wars that are brewing.

It’s a question not of “if” the stock market will suffer a serious meltdown, but when.

By all conventional parameters, stocks—particularly tech stocks—are insanely overpriced. That’s been true for years. Maybe it’ll stay true for a few more years, but I sincerely doubt it. I certainly wouldn’t plan my life around stocks staying where they are. In fact, we’re probably at the edge of the precipice right now.

What the government and the Federal Reserve fear most is a repeat of what happened in 1929. So when the house of cards starts to collapse, they’ll do everything they can to prop it up by printing trillions more of fiat dollars. And probably taking more direct equity positions in companies. The Trump regime has already done so with about 40; the Dems will accelerate that trend.

You should expect the dollar to lose value at an accelerating rate.

[Doug Casey's International Man @intlmandotcom]

Let’s start with three assumptions that we consider rock-solid.

1. Government spending will continue to grow.

2. The government will need more currency debasement to finance that spending.

3. Wages will not keep up.

If we had to distill this into a single point, it would be:

You can’t outrun the money printer by working harder. You need to own the right assets or fall behind.

Owning inflation-resistant assets matters more than income, though income still matters.

Let’s zoom out and look at the big picture.

The following chart tracks gold, the S&P 500, the money supply (M2), median housing prices, wages, and the CPI over the past 62 years.

According to the rigged CPI, prices rose 977%, while wages rose 1,179%. The official numbers claim that wages have outpaced inflation since 1964.

Yet anyone with eyes to see and a functioning brain knows that claim is false. Reality lies in a different ballpark.

The government uses the CPI as misleading propaganda to conceal its atrocious currency debasement.

The growth in the money supply provides a better measure of the damage. It grew 5,775% over the same period.

In other words, wages kept pace with about 20% of the currency debasement. Relative to the money supply, wages lost about 80% of their value.

To us, this better reflects reality and provides a sound benchmark and hurdle rate.

If your wealth does not grow at least as fast as the money supply, you are losing ground and heading down the road to serfdom.

Median housing prices rose 2,070%. Housing outpaced wages but failed to keep pace with currency debasement.

Gold and the S&P 500 outran currency debasement.

Now let’s look at the same data starting in 1999.

It tells a similar story.

According to the CPI, prices doubled, rising 100%.

Wages rose 140%, outpacing the government’s official inflation measure.

Housing rose 156%, beating wages but falling far short of the 427% increase in the money supply.

The money supply has grown to more than five times its 1999 level. That is why $1 million does not buy what it once did.

The S&P 500 rose 523%, with currency debasement driving much of that increase.

Gold won, rising 1,549%.

This illustrate the main implication of the currency debasement megatrend:

You can’t outrun the money printer by working harder. You need to own the right assets or get left behind.

Housing has not kept pace, and we do not expect it to.

You need to own gold and the right stocks if you want to outpace currency debasement.

Remember, this process compounds. Year after year, asset prices and capital gains grow faster than wages. Over time, this dynamic has created a deep divide between asset owners and wage earners. We expect that divide to widen.

In this age of ever-increasing currency debasement, your top financial priority should be to join the asset-owning class, where your wealth grows and compounds with currency debasement. Otherwise, you remain a wage earner chasing fiat dollars that lose value each year.

In the fiat system, owning assets pays better than selling your labor.

And it’s not even close.

[Doug Casey's International Man @intlmandotcom]

In the fiat system, owning assets pays better than selling your labor.

And it’s not even close.

[Doug Casey's International Man @intlmandotcom]

America’s Debt Trap: Washington Is Running Out of Time

Runaway federal spending and rising interest costs are pushing America toward a debt crisis that tax cuts cannot solve.

https://t.co/1vRZ7sMkZL

[Doug Casey @RealDougCasey]

Doug Casey on How Artificial Intelligence Will Radically Transform the World

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[Doug Casey's International Man @intlmandotcom]

Riots in the Streets, Repression in the Markets: Europe’s Collapse Enters Its Next Phase

Europe’s debt spiral, industrial decline, and demographic crisis threaten savers as governments turn to inflation and financial repression.

https://t.co/ghfkGU6oMT

[Doug Casey @RealDougCasey]

Full article here:

Doug Casey on Wall Street’s New 3X Commodity Funds—and When Leverage Makes Sense

https://t.co/rf0kciTUgW

[Doug Casey @RealDougCasey]

By far the biggest area where people use leverage is in buying their house. Most see it as fairly low risk. They view buying land or a house with borrowed money as normal. But buying a house with a mortgage is very much like buying stock on margin.

Of course, since you need a place to live and store your “stuff” (as George Carlin observed), houses are a special situation. You need a house, and you don’t “need” stocks.

That said, my advice is that unless you pay cash—which is how most people bought their houses before the last Great Depression—you should do so with the longest-term fixed-interest-rate mortgage possible. There are tax advantages, and currency debasement is helping to pay off your mortgage. But, at 8%, a mortgage is no longer a gift—even though I expect rates to continue up for the indefinite future. Plus, although most people consider a house an investment (see the four definitions we discussed earlier), it’s really just a long-lived consumer good with some aspects of a speculation. But that’s a different subject.

About the only way I’m involved in leverage today is with the shares of small resource companies. Should the markets go the direction I expect, they offer well over 10-1 returns from here, with no debt involved. On deals with warrants, it’s usually possible to sell the underlying stock after four months, retaining the warrant at no cost for the next two or three years.

[Doug Casey's International Man @intlmandotcom]

In 1999, ABC launched Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? with Regis Philbin.

The show became a national obsession.

Its premise rested on an assumption that needed no explanation: If you won $1 million, you had made it.

Later that year, a contestant reached the final question with one lifeline left.

He used it to call his father.

But he did not need help.

He called to tell his father that he was about to win $1 million.

The call became an instant television moment because America watched an ordinary man cross what felt like the finish line of personal finance.

A million dollars meant freedom.

It meant a house, a secure retirement, and escape velocity from the financial concerns of ordinary life.

In 1999, the “millionaire” label meant something.

However, a generation of currency debasement has hollowed it out since then.

A million dollars is still a lot of money today. It can provide security, flexibility, and a strong foundation. But it no longer represents a clear dividing line between the wealthy and everyone else.

According to official Consumer Price Index (CPI) data, $1 million today has roughly the purchasing power of $497,000 in 1999 dollars.

However, this understates the problem in a big way.

It is important to remember that the CPI is the most politically manipulated statistic in all of government. That is saying something because many government statistics are completely manipulated, but inflation, as measured by the CPI, is perhaps the most manipulated.

The CPI is a basket of prices trying to measure the average price changes for 340 million Americans.

It’s an impossible task because every individual has a different price basket. Consider someone who lives in New York City compared to someone who lives in rural Montana. They have totally different price baskets.

Using the CPI as a measure of price increases for 340 million people is even more preposterous than taking the average temperature across 50 states in the US as a meaningful statistic to determine what clothes you should wear today.

Further, the government gets to cherry-pick what items go in the CPI basket and their weightings. It’s like letting a student grade his own paper.

In short, the CPI is rigged. It is nothing more than misleading government propaganda intended to conceal the government’s atrocious currency debasement.

If measuring currency debasement in CPI is a dishonest measuring stick — and it is — then how do we accurately measure it?

The best option is to measure it in honest money—gold.

Before the adoption of a fiat currency standard, gold had been mankind’s most enduring form of money—for over 5,000 years—because of unique characteristics that made it best suited to store and exchange value.

Gold is durable, divisible, consistent, convenient, scarce, and most importantly, the “hardest” of all physical commodities.

In other words, gold is the one physical commodity that is the “hardest to produce” (relative to existing stockpiles) and, therefore, the most resistant to debasement.

Gold is indestructible, and its stockpiles have built up over thousands of years. That’s a big reason why the growth of new gold supply—typically 1-2% per year—is insignificant.

In other words, nobody can arbitrarily inflate the supply.

That makes gold an excellent store of value and gives the yellow metal its superior monetary properties.

People in every country of the world value gold. Its worth doesn’t depend on any government or any counterparty at all. Gold has always been an inherently international and politically neutral asset. This is why different civilizations around the world have used gold as money for millennia.

When it comes to measuring currency debasement, gold is the mirror of truth.

And when we view the situation through a gold lens, that truth becomes impossible to miss. Gold reveals one of the most important financial trends of our lifetimes.

In 1999, the median American household earned $40,816. At that year’s average gold price of about $279, a full year’s income represented about 146 ounces of gold.

The latest reported median household income stands at $87,460. At a gold price of about $4,200, it buys about 21 ounces.

The paycheck more than doubled in nominal dollar terms. Yet its purchasing power in gold collapsed by about 86%—a staggering decline.

That, in short, is why ABC couldn’t run Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? today.

The show’s title would slap viewers with an uncomfortable reminder: A million dollars no longer means what it once did. Some might begin to wonder why. That question would create problems for the politically connected insiders who benefit most from this rotten system.

In any case, this monetary system governs our financial lives. You need to recognize it, understand it, and take action to protect yourself.

The main lesson is simple: You can’t outrun the money printer by working harder. Your wages will not keep pace with currency debasement. They won’t come close.

The ugly truth is that this dynamic will accelerate and drive down living standards for millions of people.

To keep pace with currency debasement—and outpace it—you need to own the right kinds of assets.

Currency debasement transfers wealth from people who work for dollars to those who own the right assets.

One asset stands out as the fastest horse in the race to outpace the money printer.

We explain what it is—and why we favor it—in my free special report, The Most Dangerous Economic Crisis in 100 Years… the Top 3 Strategies You Need Right Now.

To get your free copy, click below.

https://t.co/cb4eTfiFTj

[Doug Casey's International Man @intlmandotcom]

The Diamond Collapse—and the Dangerous Myth of “Safe” Assets

The diamond price collapse offers a warning about government bonds and the danger of trusting an asset’s reputation to protect your wealth.

https://t.co/YFxOhPWkoi

[Doug Casey's International Man @intlmandotcom]

The 10-year Treasury yield is perhaps the most important financial benchmark in the global fiat system, as it drives valuations and market trends worldwide.

It is widely—and erroneously—regarded as the risk-free rate of return.

The 10-year Treasury yield can be thought of as a key barometer of the US dollar-based fiat system—a critical measure akin to its beating heart.

Bond yields move inversely to bond prices. When bond prices fall, bond yields rise.

A rising 10-year Treasury yield signals trouble for the US dollar because it means investors are selling Treasuries, which pushes up the US government’s borrowing costs. That is why the 10-year Treasury yield is a major pain point for the US government.

The 10-year Treasury yield was 3.97% in late February 2026. Now it is around 5.26%, an increase of roughly 129 basis points. 129 bps might not seem like much, but with over $40 trillion in debt and growing, every basis point matters.

At today’s debt levels, every 1 basis point increase in the government’s average borrowing cost adds roughly $4 billion in annual interest expense.

So a 129 bps rise is not trivial—it translates to nearly $516 billion in additional yearly interest costs, materially widening a budget deficit that was already around $1.8 trillion.

We expect the 10-year Treasury yield to keep climbing over the coming weeks and months—until it forces the Fed’s hand.

At that point, the intervention will be sold as “stability,” but the mechanism will be familiar: suppress yields by debasing the currency.

That feedback loop could become one of the defining investment stories of the years ahead.

[Doug Casey's International Man @intlmandotcom]

America Looks Richer Than Ever. What Happens When the Fed’s Asset Bubble Bursts?

The Fed’s asset bubble has pushed household wealth beyond income growth, widened the wealth gap, and put decades of paper gains at risk.

https://t.co/cfDSQWx8Ze

[Doug Casey @RealDougCasey]

You’ll recall what Mark Twain said many years ago. Something along the lines of “the most dangerous month in the stock market is October. The other dangerous months are November, December, January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August and September.”

And that was before the October crash of 1929, which permanently queered people’s perception of the month.

I tend to look at the stock market from a long-term historical perspective. And by absolutely any parameter, it’s now insanely overpriced and in bubble territory.

But that’s been true for several years, as it powered from one height to the next. So, is there any special reason the bubble should break now as opposed to next month or next year?

One reason it may continue is because the government and the Fed, which prints the money, will do anything they possibly can to prevent a crash.

About 35% of the stock market is concentrated in just the so-called “Magnificent Seven” hyperstocks. They’re betting the farm on AI and data centers. Not only are they deploying all their cash and mortgaging their cash flow, but they’re borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars in addition. That’s on top of OpenAI and Anthropic going public at, presumably, trillion-dollar-plus market caps very soon.

I remain of the opinion that whenever that much money goes into one place that quickly, it absolutely guarantees big problems.

But the biggest problem for the stock market is war. Any of the three ongoing wars on the other side of the world could, and likely will, spin out of control into World War III.

Full article here:

Doug Casey on What Could Shock the Markets Before Election Day

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[Doug Casey @RealDougCasey]

Full article here:

Doug Casey on What Could Shock the Markets Before Election Day

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[Doug Casey @RealDougCasey]

We’re at the edge of a precipice in many ways.

If something nasty happens this month, I’m not going to be surprised. In fact, I’ll be surprised if something really nasty doesn’t happen before the year is out.

The current diesel and energy crisis is not getting better for a lot of reasons. It’s going to get worse. Much worse. There will be cascading effects throughout the economy.

I expect the Ukraine-Russia war to drag on and the Iran war to heat up after the elections, as Trump has promised.

Of course, after the Republicans lose the elections, Trump will be impeached again. That’s only one of a half dozen reasons why I doubt he will complete his term.

But those are just the obvious problems we all can see.

Meanwhile, black swans the size of Pteranodons are circling.

[Doug Casey's International Man @intlmandotcom]

On February 15, 2006, Congressman @RonPaul delivered a little-known but prophetic speech on the floor of the House of Representatives called “The End of Dollar Hegemony.”

He identified the signal investors should watch for:

“The chaos that one day will ensue from our 35-year experiment with worldwide fiat money will require a return to money of real value. We will know that day is approaching when oil-producing countries demand gold, or its equivalent, for their oil rather than dollars or euros. The sooner the better.”

We discussed this subject with Ron Paul at an investment conference years ago. He stood by that assessment.

His point was simple.

Watch the oil producers.

The day they start moving away from dollars and toward gold—or a monetary system that gives them access to gold—the foundation beneath the dollar-based financial system starts to crack.

We may now be approaching that point.

[Doug Casey @RealDougCasey]

Full article here:

Doug Casey on Effective Altruism: Who Really Benefits From “Doing Good”?

https://t.co/zJMYYMiC2u

[Doug Casey @RealDougCasey]

Now we have to ask ourselves, what’s the most important thing about a person?

His IQ? His education? His parents and background?

Of course those things are important, but they’re a relative distraction.

The most important thing in sizing up a person is his morality, his character, his sense of ethics, and what he believes is right and wrong.

If someone self-identifies as a socialist, communist, a Peronist, a progressive, a Democrat, or an effective altruist, I suggest you walk the other way.

The most dangerous kind of criminal is one that finds a philosophy to rationalize and justify everything he does as a positive moral good.

Good people result in good business. Bad people give bad results.

If someone lacks critical thinking skills, a basic moral core, or doesn’t acknowledge property rights—don’t walk, run.

The end result of theft is economic disaster, personal unhappiness, and social discord.