๐ฉ๐ช๐บ๐ฆ๐จโผ๏ธ A Ukrainian family came to Germany and received everything from the state.
This woman rented her fully furnished house to them โฆ and they stole EVERYTHING, even the doorbell, then ran back to Ukraine.
โThey received social payments, child support payments and this house.โ
Now she is trying to get help to compensate for the damage.
Our media will not show these NATO-funded military recruiters in Ukraine, as the public would start to question why "standing with Ukraine" translates into boycotting diplomacy and fighting to the last Ukrainian in the NATO proxy war.
I think of BlackRock & co as the new East India Company. Theyโre not โpositioningโ like Peter Thiel buying an exit option in LATAM.
They win by owning the debt, infrastructure, trade routes, recovery etc. Europe after Russia/energy/security madness looks like an obvious play.
On Iran, I wonder if the failed โturn Iran into Iraqโ strategy produced Plan B: integration rather than destruction, Iran as the East/West trade node, but still inside USD architecture.
Conveniently, hardline IRGC layer was eliminated during the war.
The real question: is the conflict still real, or increasingly theater masking integration?
I still think there are competing interests, the US is agreement incapable and weโll see a fight: the real war is amongst global elites. But the simulation is getting thick.
I can think of only one way why not all roads lead to gold: deflationary crisis like the 1929 without money printing; the US is allowed to default on its debt, though highly unlikely.
The question becomes central when thinking of the kinds of bet you and I like: small/mid cap value bets in energy.
If we live in a simulation, theyโll crash oil even harder, use policy like Covid lockdowns and bankrupt our beloved small producers to strip and buy (consolidate) the assets for a penny on the dollar.
If not, those are the best plays of the century.
Thatโs why I am looking for the right diversification, not an easy task.
Gavin, I believe looking at this on a day-by-day, week-by-week basis is the wrong moving forward.
If we look at the big picture, the U.S. is entering into debt (death) spiral in the next couple of years, and we are certainly going to change, or at least adjust the world orders (financial and military).
The administration has tried through multiple levers to force dollar hegemony and alleviate its debt problem: financial/trade war, energy blockades and sabotage (Russia through Ukraine, Russian shadow fleet, Venezuela, Iran, Nord Stream 2).
Some have worked (NS2, pushing Europe towards U.S dependence, Venezuela, etc.), others like Iran are more questionable.
The questions now with Iran and Hormuz:
- Are we assisting at the Suez crisis moment for the U.S.? If so, are elites positioning for a transition to the East?
- Or, are we assisting at a controlled rebalancing from unipolarity to multipolarity, or from West to East?
- Or, are we paving the road for more dollar denominated trade, integrating the East (Iran is the frontier, as is Russia) towards world governance? and this is all just theater.
Of course, I believe those are not completely written in stone, and global elites and interest groups will probably fight for their own interests and visions.
And different outcomes lead to different timings or sequence of events.
So we should expect the answers to those questions to evolve in different stages/movements, and one of the end states could well be total world war.
Now to discuss more directly your points, market structure operates through the usual assumptions of the last 40 years:
- The last big currency and commodity shock was in the 1970s and then with the Plaza Accords in 1983. Most investors don't even understand how currencies are supposed to work with fiat vs. gold-backed.
- Almost no one, expect elites positioning and central banks, understand the transition that is happening.
- We have a Treasury under Bessent, that understands perfectly market structures and how to influence them for short term goals, or even, as we've seen with Trump's posts, positioning markets to better steal value and resources from them.
- We're still looking at markets under false assumptions.
Whatever happens, as debts are high everywhere and devaluation will certainly be part of the equation. We're assisting at the "musical chairs" game on several layers:
- USD availability, say M2 vs. stocks market (when everyone wants USDs, then they fight for a limited resource to liquidate stocks)
- Gold vs. fiat, as often, most institutional investors and retails are late to the party. It is now an elite, central banks war, than sovereign wealth war and then the rest will be too late).
At this stage, I expect a lot of fraud and extracting as much value as possible from the markets to turn it into first currency, then hard assets.
Add to that liquidity crisis for countries and central banks, which could be exacerbated if we renew conflict, or if our long oil thesis materializes.
This is why I expect moves to look irrational for a long time, as the global narrative will catch up once its too late and we have no more chairs.
And that's why we might be seeing such erratic moves, and we'll continue to. Even if we are at record deficits since the start of the war and M2 is expending fast.
Since all roads lead to more currency devaluation, I just apply this principle:
The more physical gold is down, the more I buy it.