Gold has risen well over 100% (host says 55% year-to-date) and topped $4,000, around $4,040.

There is an unspoken understanding between the US and China to use gold as a giant liquidity sink to devalue currencies and reestablish balance sheets, evidenced by the absence of any effort to suppress the gold price.

Gold could reach the M2-implied level of roughly $23,000 by around 2030, which sounds crazy but is conservative once you understand gold used as a liquidity sink has no upper price limit, just as oil rose from a couple dollars to $12-14 a barrel in a short window in the 1970s.

College is a misallocation of time, capital and energy: the median all-in US cost including opportunity cost is about $300,000 (equal to median household net worth) merely to be able to pay rent, while a structured 16-quarter 'preparation' of real-world skills better channels an 18-year-old's peak energy and openness to novelty.

The US government taking equity stakes in companies (e.g., Intel's 10%) is effectively confiscatory theft because existing shareholders are diluted, and we should expect more such state-capitalist behavior going forward.

The US lacks domestic production of nearly all critical minerals (e.g., producing ~1% of needed lithium, near-zero despite abundance), creating an investable trend as the state pours capital into companies on the defense department's critical minerals list.

Silver and platinum will be pulled along by the devaluation but cannot replace gold as the monetary metal: silver is 'too useful' for industry, whereas gold's near-uselessness for anything else is precisely what makes it the clean liquidity sink without second-order effects.

The huge, unexplained inflows of gold into the US starting in January before Trump took office were likely driven by the Treasury or the Fed.

This is not a normal gold bull market but 'the last gold bull market' because once gold becomes money again, the arbitrage that allows bull and bear cycles in gold will disappear.

Trump's tariffs are not designed to generate income but to coerce trading partners into cooperating in a devaluation of the US dollar, leading toward a new monetary framework (the 'Mar-a-Lago accord').

Gold is the ideal liquidity sink because, unlike oil in the 1970s, soaking up world liquidity into gold accomplishes dollar devaluation without the negative second-order consequences (inflation, economic damage) that oil caused.

The real US debt problem is roughly $175 trillion in unfunded liabilities owed by Americans to each other—not the headline $37 trillion federal debt—and with tax receipts at about 5% of that annually, it is unpayable, leaving inflation as the only politically acceptable solution.

China's accumulation of roughly 27,000 tons of gold off the Shanghai Gold Exchange since ~2002, combined with yuan-to-gold redemption mechanisms, has effectively repaired the balance sheets of the Chinese people and offset their housing bust losses.

Tariffs have not been used as a genuine revenue tool in over 100 years but as a bludgeon to coerce trading partners, and historically in 1971 tariffs were announced in the same statement that closed the gold window precisely to secure cooperation in dollar devaluation.

Housing has actually fallen in price in gold terms over the last 25 years: a median US home cost around 400 ounces of gold in 2000 but only about 100 ounces today, meaning gold owners profited and the long revaluation trend is entering its final stages.

Because gold as a liquidity sink has no upper price limit, gold miners' cash flow will keep up with and exceed inflation, making them a leveraged bet on gold, while juniors—being 'pico caps'—will explode higher with any attention.

Morgan Stanley recommended 20% of client portfolios be allocated to gold, an unprecedentedly high allocation, indicating all other assets are in real trouble relative to gold.

US military action against Venezuela is a regime-change / oil operation disguised as drug interdiction, since fentanyl doesn't come from there, the boats can't reach the US, and Venezuelan heavy oil is ideally suited to US refineries that cannot process domestic shale.

Deep-sea nodule mining will not happen soon because, even if technically possible, abundant easier-to-access and easier-to-refine land-based resources (including many mothballed mines on care and maintenance) make it economically unjustifiable; such projects are mainly vehicles to attract investors.

National security objectives supersede presidents, so despite Trump's rhetoric about ending the Ukraine war quickly, US backing continues; the war could be stopped instantly by ceasing US payment of Ukrainian government salaries and pensions.