The Cleveland Guardians beat TK Scooble and the Detroit Tigers in a recent game using small ball tactics, and the Guardians are now in first place.

The 1931 Germany situation is a useful roadmap for what could happen in the US, not because it will rhyme exactly but because the structural setup is remarkably similar and investors benefit from knowing what warning signs to look for.

No nation would trust storing gold in China itself because if China ever blocked gold withdrawal, it would end dollarization and the internationalization of the renminbi, representing a massive strategic loss that China will not allow to happen.

If you don't hold gold, you don't own it, making physical gold possession the true measure of ownership and justifying countries' preference for local vault storage.

The US spent $8 trillion on Middle East wars to achieve nothing and obtained a veterans liability equivalent to an asbestos liability—an obligation that must be paid no matter what and rises rapidly, with the Veterans Affairs bill now $400 billion annually and rising 10% per year.

The overall US deficit rose from $200 billion when the Iraq War began in 2003 to much higher levels, showing that the Middle East wars directly expanded budget deficits.

Long-term bonds should be avoided as an investment because they are part of the biggest bubble in the market relative to equities and will suffer from structural dollar devaluation and inflation.

The elderly (Boomers and Silent Generation) control 65-70% of wealth in the US and receive 70% plus of all-time record high tax receipts, creating a political constraint where equity markets must rise 10-15% annually to fund entitlement payments.

The trade-off for continued equity support must be that wealthy elderly pay significantly more for services (yard work, roof repair, lawn cutting, deck building, pool installation) and skilled trades workers earn higher wages.

Bondholders must experience real losses (negative real returns) on a sustained basis for the United States to resolve its wealth inequality and debt dynamics.

Unless the US implements draconian austerity or achieves a productivity miracle without massive unemployment (which Grman considers impossible), gold will continue to outperform all other assets.

The US has record all-time high tax receipts of $5.5 trillion, debt of seven times record receipts with no surplus in 24 years, and off-balance sheet liabilities of 20 times revenues in the form of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

With tight labor supply, corporations have incentives to automate to avoid paying higher wages, meaning investment in automation and capital equipment rises, creating additional economic stimulus.

If China's record 2024 trade surplus of $990 billion were settled by gold at $22,000/oz, and China imported 1,384 tons of gold in 2024, then gold at $22,000/oz would have balanced China's trade—meaning Western complaints about China's trade surplus reflect currency misvaluation, not unfair trade.

US Treasury market is the biggest bubble relative to stocks because the US has record receipts ($5.5 trillion) but 7x that in debt, hasn't run a surplus in 24 years, and has 4-20x (20x of revenue) in off-balance sheet liabilities (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security) plus $8 trillion spent in Middle East wars to achieve nothing.

Russell Napier (value investor) is right that value stocks would mitigate repatriation risk better than S&P 500 because value stocks are more cheaply valued, though this mitigates but doesn't eliminate repatriation risk.

The US industrial base has been significantly hollowed out by trade deals and the ideology of neoliberal economic globalism, which has done to the US defense industrial base what wars did to countries after WWI and WWII.

Germany in 1931 had lost a war that a significant portion of the population did not believe it had actually lost and blamed politicians for the loss, creating a fundamental political legitimacy crisis that undermined debt repayment capacity.

Grman expects the gold/oil ratio to rise substantially from current levels over the current cycle, suggesting gold is undervalued relative to oil.

When you enter a negotiation or 'card game' without strong cards and pretend to have a royal flush, you end up 'tucking' (backing down) repeatedly—analogous to Trump's position in policy negotiations.