Treasury bills at 5.25% are an acceptable core holding for conservative portfolios; however, this should not be viewed as a permanent strategy—investors should not rely on T-bills alone for long-term wealth preservation.

Investors should own US electrical infrastructure equities, US industrial equities, and energy equities because they benefit from government stimulus spending and are positioned to profit from the dollar weakness and inflation that will follow Fed monetization.

For sovereign duration exposure, investors should own gold rather than 10-year US Treasuries; a 0% real yield on gold with appreciation potential is preferable to negative real yields on Treasuries.

Gold wins in both dollar tightening and dollar loosening scenarios: in tightening, it wins because rising rates create questions about US solvency; in loosening, it wins because the Fed will have to print money rather than allow rates to spike and bankrupt the government.

The historical inverse correlation between gold and US real tenure rates broke in Fall 2022 for the first time in Groman's 29-year career, indicating that the US debt and fiscal position has crossed a tipping point where rising rates now signal future monetary debasement rather than tight money, making gold responsive to fiscal stress rather than monetary tightness.

Investors should hold a small position in Bitcoin (1-2% of portfolio) because of its volatility, but the asymmetric upside in a monetary debasement scenario justifies the exposure.

The $1.3 trillion global bond market will eventually recognize that it is the 'sucker at the card table' and systematically shift assets away from middle and long-duration sovereign debt ($65 trillion in equities, $4 trillion in gold, and $1 trillion in Bitcoin), with those asset classes rising as bond yields fall or bond prices crash.

The demographic claim that America has better demographics than other developed nations is conditional on AI and robotics not fundamentally altering the productivity of young populations; if AI does compress wages broadly, then young populations become a political liability (protests and instability) rather than an asset.

If policymakers devalue the debt and currency, inflation will accelerate, but the S&P 500, the broader economy, growth, and jobs will 'rip' (surge strongly), creating a new set of winners and losers different from the winners and losers of the past 40 years of dollar strength.

As the dollar strengthens due to crowding-out effects from high US deficits, foreigners will sell what they can (not what they want) to defend their currencies, particularly treasury bonds, which sends yields up and further slows both the US and global economy in a self-reinforcing cycle.

The Fed cannot march the dollar down gradually AND keep inflation at 2%—it must choose one or the other; Groman believes the Fed will move the inflation target to 3% and let actual inflation run to 3.8%, then claim success.

Over the past 5-6 years, the dominant investment dynamic has been simple binary: if there is enough dollar liquidity, go long the dollar, long gold, and long everything else for strong returns; if there is not enough dollar liquidity, own the dollar and gold but nothing else to preserve capital.

We are currently entering an environment of insufficient dollar liquidity, evidenced by economic slowdown and increased deficit spending, similar to conditions seen in Q3 of the previous year, Q1 of the last year, and Q3 two years ago, which will produce significant volatility across asset classes until policymakers inject more dollar liquidity.

If foreigners attempt to sell $100 billion in treasuries daily for just four or five days, the treasury market becomes dysfunctional, volatility spikes too high, and violent asset class selloffs occur globally, triggering Fed/Treasury intervention because such dislocation is 'simply not allowed to occur.'

The Fed and Treasury can create enough dollar liquidity to manage crises through swap lines and other tools, but the real governor on their ability is the level of inflation their interventions drive and the political reaction to that inflation domestically.

The math of the US fiscal situation is such that cutting defense and entitlements by 25-30% immediately and permanently is the only way to avoid needing to keep real interest rates negative indefinitely, and since that is politically impossible, the government will instead inflate away the debt burden.

The government's playbook involves creating Super Bubbles in stocks, houses, cars, and other assets to drive up tax receipts through higher incomes and asset sales, which temporarily reduces the ratio of interest expense plus entitlements to receipts, buying time before having to choose between defaulting and inflating.

The ratio of entitlements plus interest expense to tax receipts is currently at 92-93%, meaning the big three (entitlements, defense, interest) consume 110-111% of receipts compared to just 67% eight years ago, putting the fiscal situation late in the game structurally.

Policymakers effectively use two tactics to manage the political sustainability of currency debasement: (1) discrediting objective measures of inflation and encouraging reliance on government statistics ('lying eyes' fallacy), and (2) focusing public attention on divisive social issues (left-right, climate, justice) rather than the underlying currency mismanagement that hurts everyone.

Both current major US presidential candidates are running fundamentally the same economic policy—just different types of alcohol—so regardless of who wins the election, the underlying fiscal and monetary course will remain unchanged, making the election primarily a question of divisive social issues rather than substantive economic direction.