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There is nothing like gold for privacy!

We have warned from time to time that Central Bank Digital Currencies pose an almost unprecedented threat to your freedom.  Now the head of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, says the digital euro will arrive in October.

A European CBDC is a stalking horse for a Federal Reserve digital currency.

Your financial privacy will evaporate when the State introduces a CBDC.   You will be subjected to State control in everything you do.  CBDCs enable the State to track every transaction, block payments at will, unilaterally deduct taxes and fines at will, and even force you to spend by implementing expiration dates on the currency.  CBDCs are the perfect tool for total State control of your life.  

Gold, on the other hand, is without equal, the sine qua non, of financial privacy!

Here’s are just a few observations from people who are watching and warning about the approach of CBDCs.

Chris Martenson, economic researcher:  “If you have anything you’d like to say or protest, now’s the time, because later ‘your’ money won’t work unless you submit to the totalitarian ideologies.”

Daniel Lacalle, economist and fund manager:  “In the European Union, where limits to freedom of expression and the cancellation of elections are already a concern, a CBDC can be seen as surveillance masquerading as currency.

“CBDCs are not just digital versions of existing currencies; they are issued directly to accounts held at central banks, allowing for unprecedented oversight of financial transactions. This direct issuance means that central banks can monitor every transaction, including spending habits, savings, and borrowing activities. We can compare this system to having a police officer in your kitchen, underscoring the intrusive nature of digital currency.”

Wayne Lusvardi is a water and energy policy analyst:  “Americans are not aware that we are on the verge of the elimination of a transactional economy based on two-party free market exchanges (using cash and checks) to be replaced by all-digitized crypto script that will allow a third-party into all transactions in the U.S. –the Bank of International Settlements — through its largest “stakeholder” the New York Federal Reserve Bank.  What this means is that money as free market currency will die and be replaced with an electronic totalitarian system of controlled transactions by central banks. 

“Central bank digital currencies are coming.  Central bankers can hardly wait.  Lacalle describes them as “surveillance disguised as money.”

Find out about threats to your financial privacy and well-being by visiting with a gold and silver professional at Republic Monetary Exchange.  You can protect yourself and profit with precious metals.

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By now, just about everyone we know has learned to view the mainstream press through skeptical side eyes.  So, today’s message is very short.

Here’s the front page of the financial section of the Wall Street Journal two and a half years ago.  Gold was $1,678 at the time that “the world’s leading business publication” announced that the undisputed preferred money of the ages and around the world had somehow managed to lose it’s safe haven status.

As we write this, gold is quoted at $3,019.  In other words gold is up 79 percent in 30 months.  Pretty good for an investment that has lost its safe haven status.

Meanwhile, the stock market is, in the Journal’s word, a “mess.”  As for the bond market, the ten-year US treasury yield is up more than 200 basis points since the article was published.  Ouch!

If you’re not skeptical enough about the financial press consider this:  When gold was only $1,150 an ounce in 2015, someone wrote disparagingly in the Wall Street Journal that gold was nothing by a “a pet rock.”

Gold investors have had a good laugh about that ever since!

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President Trump’s 25 percent tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada might or might not be in effect soon.  As we write this, tariffs are on hold for goods that are covered by the North American trade agreement.  If and when a general tariff kicks in, Canada has promised to retaliate with 25 percent tariffs on $100 billion worth of US imports. Mexico is will likely to do the same.  

Trump also introduced an additional 10 percent tariff on Chinese imports just days ago, bringing the total tax to 20 percent following a similar increase last month. China swiftly retaliated with tariffs on US food and agricultural products and an export ban on some defense firms. 

According to the Peterson Institute for International Economics, calculating the full Trump tariff proposal, “the direct cost of these actions to the typical, or median, US household would be a tax increase of more than $1,200 a year.”

Treasury secretary Scott Bessant minimizes the impact of the tariffs over time, saying that price hikes will be offset by cuts in regulation and cheaper energy.

Warren Buffet disagrees about the impact of tariffs.  “We’ve had a lot of experience with them. They’re an act of war, to some degree,” he says.

We want to be sure our friends and readers make the distinction between inflation, which is the result of increasing the supply of money and credit, and simple price increases which are often called inflation.  If freezing conditions slam citrus growers this winter, the prices of oranges will rise.  But that is not inflation; it is just a rising price. Tariffs are price increases across many goods, but are not the result of money printing.  Even so, you will still want to protect yourself from lost purchasing power.  Many will turn to gold and silver right away, while others will follow.

With that said, and as others argue back and forth about who pays the costs of tariffs, we thought we should offer a couple of simple examples that add clarity to the discussion.  Let us imagine a farmer in Mexico who regularly sells a crate of his products to a family across the border in Arizona.  To make our example easy to understand, we will leave out middlemen like truckers, distributers, and grocers.

BASELINE  – Before Tariffs

In their long-established custom, we imagine the farmer sells a crate of produce to the family for $100.   It is a straightforward and regular transaction.  The government gets nothing.

EXAMPLE 1 – Trump’s 25 Percent Tariff

When the new tariff takes effect, to maintain his same income, the farmer will have to charge the family $125 dollars.  The government takes $25 of that, while the farmer would still get his accustomed $100.  But the family has just seen the cost of these groceries climb by 25 percent.

That is a pretty steep increase.  What will they do?  Will they pay it without complaint? Will they buy less?  Look for substitute foods or a lower cost producer?

EXAMPLE 2 – The Farmer Pays

The farmer doesn’t want to lose his long-time buyer.  Maybe he thinks he can absorb the cost of the tariff himself, at least for a while.  So, the farmer cuts his price for the crate of goods by 20 percent.  Now he charges $80 dollars, to which the government adds on 25 percent.  The final price to the family is the same, $100, leaving the farmer worse off by $20.  The government gets that $20.

EXAMPLE 3 – Splitting the Difference

If the farmer can’t absorb the full loss of income, perhaps he will try to split the difference with the buying family.  He agrees to charge just $90.  The tariff adds 25 percent  or $22.50 to the transaction, so the family now must pay $112.50.  In this case, the farmer is worse off than before the tariffs arrived on the scene.  The family is worse off, too.  But the government is making out on this deal. 

We offer these examples to settle the ongoing argument of who pays for the tariffs, the producers or the buyers?  The only honest answer is no one can say.  In a complex economy of a myriad of producers of competing products and millions of buyers, there are countless individual decisions to be made.  They are never made uniformly, and today’s decisions may change tomorrow.  

What we can tell you is that in two out of our three examples, once the tariffs begin, the family, the consumers, will see prices rising.   Unless sellers can absorb the entire cost of the tariff which is simply not always possible (Example 2), consumers will be worse off.  Their dollars, their earnings and savings will buy less. The Consumer Price Index will rise.  The government will have more money.  People will have less money.

“Over time,” says Warren Buffett, “[tariffs] are a tax on goods. I mean, the tooth fairy doesn’t pay ’em!”  

In such instances, when the consumer’s dollar doesn’t go as far and the CPI rises, they begin to look for proven, reliable alternatives.  Like gold and silver.

We hope that helps.

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The Worldwide Turn to Gold Continues!

If you are adding gold to your profit and protection portfolio, you are in good company!

The price of gold hit new highs in February in all the world’s major currencies, according to the World Gold Council, a London-based industry trade association.

The cross-currency performance is important to note, so that the bull market is not incorrectly attributed just to the US dollar market.  The dollar has been in decline for most of the year.

The WGC shares our repeated warning about the re-inflation in the pipeline now and the return of stagflation.  It finds that “there are several factors that could reinstate the thorny problem of higher inflation, especially at a time when deteriorating economic conditions may necessitate interest rates staying low. The US economy is likely in ‘stagflation’ and consumers appear to see it that way.” 

The WGC’s assessment of risk and reward in today’s gold price comes down heavily on the side of “reward.”

• The “Trump trade” – stronger dollar and US stocks – has taken a back seat amidst concerns about tariffs and hawkish foreign policies, conditions that will likely remain.
  
• As governments look to increase military spending, budgets deficits are likely to increase and credit ratings to fall.
  
• At the same time, despite inflationary pressures, markets expect a more dovish Fed, pricing in at least two full rate cuts by the end of the year.
  
• These factors combined are creating a particularly supportive environment for gold.

To learn more about the prospects for gold in our rapidly changing global environment, speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange gold and silver professional today.  He can help you create a portfolio designed to protect your family and your wealth. 

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The Worst of Both Worlds!

Is the Stagflation Train pulling into the station?  Bringing both inflation and a depressingly stagnant slow growth or shrinking economy with it?

If you listen carefully, you can hear its whistle blowing.  It’s coming around the bend!

The Stagflation Train brings carloads of economic misery, but at the same time as we know from experience, we can protect ourselves from stagflation and profit with gold!  

Bigly!

Stagflation has two components, inflation and stagnation.  Rising prices in slow or no growth economy means the cost of living goes up, but the opportunities to make money go down.  And that is a bad combination!

The inflation case is quite simple, and we have been made it often recently.  We are already experiencing re-inflation.  The highest inflation in 40 years that we experienced during Biden’s term never really went away.  The Consumer Price Index for January has climbed for the fourth straight month.  The month over month numbers, increase for the same period one year earlier have risen for the seventh straight month.  

What is the evidence of the stagnation part of stagflation?   With this headline, “US Economic Growth Falls Back Below Average,” the Wall Street Journal just reported that falling activity in production, personal consumption, and housing are to blame for weaker activity in 2025.

There is much more.  More and more commercial real estate loans for offices and apartments are in distress.  Housing sales are down as is consumer spending. Consumer confidence is tanking.  Consumer credit card delinquencies have risen to a 13-year high.

Here’s one more indicator of trouble ahead for the stock market and the economy as a whole.  It’s one we note seriously.  America’s favorite stock picker, Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway can’t find much worth buying.  He’s stockpiling cash, $334 billion, to weather the storm.  That is up $100 billion since the pandemic.  Berkshire sold a net $6.7 billion in the fourth quarter.

A brand-new stagflation decade will mean a gold and silver bull market that will be much bigger than the one your grandparents remember.  

So here is what actually happened in the last Stagflation Decade.  In the period from 1970 through 1979, the Dow Industrials rose 11.5 percent. 

Silver climbed 1,699 percent.

Gold was up 1,820 percent.  

Speak with your Republic Monetary Exchange professional advisor about stagflation.  Prepare yourself now without delay.

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The Inflation outlook… Grim!

Our adjoining post this week STAGFLATION HERE AND NOW? focuses mostly on evidence of the slowing US economy.  That is the stagnation part of stagflation.  Now we look a little more closely at the inflation component of stagflation.

Let’s start here.  The Consumer Price Index has been higher than the Federal Reserve’s entirely arbitrary two percent target for 16 consecutive quarters, for 47 months in a row!  From the first quarter of 2021 until now, the Fed has been unable to reach its own inflation target.

Meanwhile… lingering, prolonged inflation has now turned into reinflation.  As we have noted, the Consumer Price Index for January has climbed for the fourth straight month.  The month over month numbers, increase for the same period one year earlier have risen for the seventh straight month.  

Reporting that inflation is moving up again, Bloomberg News writes that, “No matter what metric you’re looking at, US inflation is moving in the wrong direction again.”

Americans are convinced reinflation is real.

Here is some of the evidence that they are right from Bloomberg:

• Costs of materials like lumber and steel have been high for several years coming out of the pandemic and are moving up even more. A measure of input prices for manufacturers this month reached the highest since October 2022, according to S&P Global.
  
• Businesses surveyed by the Dallas Fed in February reported that an index of prices for raw materials doubled to the highest since September 2022….
  
• Groceries have come back into the spotlight again largely because of record-high egg prices, due to the worst-ever bird flu outbreak in the US. 
  
• Persistent price increases in areas like food, as well as other big expenses like housing, healthcare and car insurance, are hindering progress on broader inflation.

Gold’s remarkable rise of about 11 percent in just the first two months of this year, combined with its stellar performance last year has triggered Wall Street speculators take some quick profits.  The resulting pullback in prices provides you an opportunity to build your profit and protection gold holdings at more favorable prices.  To learn more and to take advantage of what may be a fleeting opportunity, speak with an RME gold and silver professional today.

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We Ask: Higher Than Expected by Whom?

One headline blared:  “Inflation comes in hot!”  

We have been urging our clients and friends for several months to expect re-inflation.   Inflation never went away and now it just keeps climbing.  The January CPI is the fourth straight monthly increase and the seventh straight month over month increase from the prior year.  Both the “headline” CPI and “core” CPI were up.

This latest report is for January, and as Trump duly noted, reflects Biden numbers.  Bear in mind that they do not yet reflect higher prices from Trump’s China tariffs and others to come.

Producer price increases in January were hot as well, climbing to a level not seen in two years, giving us a peek at prices in the pipeline headed toward consumers.

While we’re at it, we should give you the equally bad – if not worse news – about our fiscal situation.

The fiscal year 2025 began on October 1, so we now have four months or one-third of the year under our belt.  During those four months, the deficit hit $840 billion.

In the same period, interest on the national debt was $392 billion; for the 12 months interest of the debt amounted to $1.167 trillion. In the month of January a year ago, Washington spent $500 billion.  Somehow spending shot up 29 percent this January to $642 billion! 

It is self-evident that this cannot go on.  We are not shocked, although we should be, at the way much of Washington is resisting the discovery by DOGE that the budget is stuffed with billions of dollars of illicit spending, with concealed cronyism bleeding the people dry.   

It is a sign that much of officialdom doesn’t care about the survival of the Republic.  They are too busy stealing everything they can get their hands on.  And their collaborators in the media portray the people who are catching the thievery in action as villains.

How does this end?  The Fed is powerless to control interest rates, which will continue to rise to reflect not just inflation, but the uncontrollable debt.  But there is always the printing press to devalue the dollar at an increasing rate.  

We’ve seen this drama before.  It has played out hundreds of times and in hundreds of places.  You can’t stop it, but you can protect yourself with the enduring money of the ages:  gold and silver.

As we like to say, they can’t print gold!

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“Gold is going to continue to rise!”

“You’ll see gold double, triple, and quadruple if we don’t do the right thing. Those who want to cut spending and tie it into monetary policy have a very important job,” said Dr. Ron Paul in a recent interview. 

And soon Ron Paul may have a very important job!

After a long congressional career as gold expert and Washington’s leading voice for sound money, liberty and prosperity, Dr. Paul may finally see the Federal Reserve subjected to an audit – and may serve as the audit’s chairman! 

 At least Elon Musk, the head of President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, thinks that would be a very good idea.

And what an appropriate appointment for Ron Paul, who year after year tried to get Congress to pass an Audit the Fed measure.  So great was the demand to have the Fed audited that when Paul ran for President, he was met on college campuses by thousands of students chanting “End the Fed!  End the Fed!”

That popularity moved 270 congressmen to sign on as co-sponsors of Paul’s Audit the Fed measure in 2012.    Yet such is the power of the Fed, that on the vote for final passage, eight House Democrats who co-sponsored the bill voted against it.

“All aspects of the government must be fully transparent and accountable to the people. No exceptions, including, if not especially, the Federal Reserve,” Musk said in a recent post on X.

In other recent posts, Musk was asked if Ron Paul should head the Fed audit.  “That would be great!” he replied.   Another post asked who would like to see Ron Paul as the Federal Reserve Chairman, to which Musk replied, “That would be awesome.”

The Federal Reserve has desperately resisted an audit. It doesn’t want the American people to learn the inside story of its destruction of their wealth, in their name and with their currency.  For example, Senator Bernie Sanders wrote that a 2011 Government Accounting Office inquiry found that the Fed:

… provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression…The Fed outsourced virtually all of the operations of their emergency lending programs to private contractors like JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo.  The same firms also received trillions of dollars in Fed loans at near-zero interest rates. Altogether some two-thirds of the contracts that the Fed awarded to manage its emergency lending programs were no-bid contracts. Morgan Stanley was given the largest no-bid contract worth $108.4 million to help manage the Fed bailout of AIG.

 An audit of the Fed would be a blockbuster revelation.  It will have Americans demanding a return to gold.

Meanwhile, Dr. Paul points out that, “In the last year, there was an explosion of interest in gold. Gold is going to continue to [rise]. When gold exploded in the 1970s, it went from $35 up to $800.”

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Who is going to dominate global affairs in the future?

As we have said on ample precent many times, nations that are net acquirers of gold rise in the affairs of the world. 

Nations that are net dishoarders sink. 

Some people think that rising nations become acquirers of gold because they are prosperous. But they become prosperous because of sound economic views.

Disbelievers of gold grow poorer because they don’t have absurd economic views like these:

• We can print our way to prosperity.
• Our national debt is not a problem because we owe it to ourselves.
• A nation that prints its own money can afford whatever it needs. 

Those absurd views and variations on, them have been heard in the schools, in the marbled halls of power, and in the lapdog press in America for generations.

With that thought in mind, you might note that while the US government has tried to make gold ownership difficult for almost a century, we should look at which nation(s) place a priority on gold.  It is there we are likely to see the emergence of the future of global dynamics.

With that in mind, here are just a few stories that popped up as we sat down to write this note.

• The People’s Bank of China has reported a 5 tonne increase to its gold reserves in January – the third consecutive month its gold holdings have risen according to the data. Last month’s purchase helped lift gold reserves to 2,285 tonnes.
• China discovered gold deposit worth over US$80 billion
• Bloomberg:  China’s Central Bank Buys More Gold as Prices Hit Record
• China will allow insurance funds to buy gold for medium and long-term asset allocations as part of a pilot project, the country’s financial regulator said on Friday.

And while China is aggressively adding to its gold holdings, we can report that it is doing as part because of an almost subterranean flow of gold from the West to the East.  

For days, gold has been withdrawn from the Bank of England.  It is leaving London in this case to beat the threat of tariffs by the US.  If it is abandoning one of the most important gold trading centers for centuries in the West, at least in this case it is going to the US.  For now.  Here’s the CNN headline:

The world’s second-largest gold storage suddenly has very long lines to withdraw bars.

If you’d like to go with the flow of history, speak to us a Republic Monetary Exchange about adding gold to your investment portfolio.

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Gold keeps hitting new record highs!  It’s evidence of serious turmoil.

Gold is a sensitive indicator of trouble.  Sometimes the price of gold starts moving before the actual evidence of trouble becomes clear.  

But then the dust settles!

Foreign central banks loading up, gold shortages, currency wars, and overseas exchanges scrambling to get their hands on more gold, along with one new high after another… these are important signs that changes are underway.  They are wake up calls!    

In the US buyers are wondering about eventual tariff pressures, so gold is being delivered to the US from both Europe and Asia.  435 tons of gold has been recalled from London to New York.  That is $82 billion of gold moving to the US where many buyers are taking physical delivery on futures contracts.  

Delivery bottlenecks are widely reported.  A Dubai-based bullion dealer told Reuters,
“The U.S. is like a gold magnet right now, pulling in gold from all over the world.” 

These are classic signs of a short squeeze.  Shorts, speculators who have taken a market position betting on lower prices, eventually have to pay higher and higher prices to deliver the metals they have borrowed. A short squeeze is a market development that can drive prices to stratospheric heights.   

Signs are beginning to appear that a short squeeze is in development in the silver market as well.  There are signs of stress in a leading silver Exchange Traded Fund (ETF).

The Silver Academy, a Substack letter, reports, “The silver market is experiencing unprecedented turmoil, with recent developments in the iShares Silver Trust (SLV) ETF painting a picture of extreme market stress.”

The letter describes a volatile imbalance in the SLV options market: “With 4.7 million shares potentially needing to be delivered and a mere 10,000 available to borrow, the imbalance is profound. This situation could force short sellers into a corner, potentially triggering a significant short squeeze and driving silver prices higher.”

We continually advise people to avoid needless risk and to own real, tangible gold and silver rather than ETFs and other paper representations found in gold and silver market.  

Remember that unlike paper representations of gold and silver, physical gold that you can hold in your hands is not anyone else’s liability.

In times of turmoil, you will want…  you will need to own precious metals!  And with all the signs of possible short squeeze that can drive prices to stunning new heights, now is the time to protect yourself and profit with physical gold and silver.  That is the safety zone!  

Call, make an appointment, or stop by today.  Republic Monetary Exchange in Phoenix, on Camelback just east of 40^th Street.   Just a phone call away at 602-682-GOLD.

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Here is What the World Gold Council Says!

“Gold is a highly liquid asset, which is no one’s liability, carries no credit risk, and is scarce, historically preserving its value over time. It also benefits from diverse sources of demand: as an investment, a reserve asset, gold jewelry, and a technology component.”

That is a short description of gold’s leading financial attributes according the World Gold Council, and international gold industry trade association. 

Here are some of the key takeaways from its just released report Gold as a strategic asset: 2025 edition:

A long-term source of return
Gold is, on the one hand, often used as an investment to protect and enhance wealth over the long term, but on the other hand it is also a consumer good, via jewelry and technology demand. During periods of economic uncertainty, it is the counter-cyclical investment demand that drives the gold price up. During periods of economic expansion, the pro-cyclical consumer demand supports its performance.

Diversification that works
[During the Global Financial Crisis 2008-9] equities and other risk assets tumbled in value, as did hedge funds, real estate and most commodities, which were long deemed portfolio diversifiers. Gold, by contrast, held its own and increased in price, rising 21% in US dollars from December 2007 to February 2009. And in the most recent sharp equity market pullbacks of 2020 and 2022, gold’s performance remained positive.

A deep and liquid market
The gold market is large, global, and highly liquid. We estimate that physical gold holdings by investors and central banks are worth approximately US$5.1tn, with an additional US$1.0tn in open interest through derivatives traded on exchanges or the over-the- counter (OTC) market.

The gold market is also more liquid than several major financial markets, including euro/yen and the Dow Jones Industrial Average, while trading volumes are similar to those of US T-Bills.

Return, diversification, and liquidity.  For investors in today’s demanding and inflationary environment, those qualities are pure gold.

For portfolio protection or just to have gold and silver off the grid for time of uncertainty, contact Republic Monetary Exchange Phoenix today.  

How high will gold go in the next four years?

The price of gold has risen under every US presidency since 2000.

This graphic from Visual Capitalist reflects the gold price action from 1989 until August 2024 using World Gold Council benchmark prices.  That month gold broke above $2,500 for the first time ever.  To update the figures, when President Biden was packing up to leave the White House on Friday, January 17, the price of gold was $2.715.  

Using WGC benchmarks, the chart reflects gold having risen by 53 percent in Donald Trump’s first term, rising from $1,208 to $1,841 in the four years.

A similar increase during his new term would carry gold to about $4,153. 

Gold’s biggest moves in this century have come during Republican presidencies.  There are several reasons for this.  In Democratic administrations, congressional Republicans will occasionally – although not too reliably – muster some opposition to the growth of taxing and spending.  Or as Grover Norquist observed, “”the only reason for Republicans to exist is to stop new taxes.”  Republican opposition to fiscal recklessness seems to mysteriously fade away in a Republican administration.

But of course, the picture is vastly more complicated and depends on monetary policy and well as fiscal policy.  Check back with us often here at the Republic Monetary Exchange blog for more about both monetary and fiscal policy in the months and years ahead.  

Gold a shade under $4,000?  Silver at $51, a new all-time high?

We don’t publish a lot of predictions for future gold and silver prices.  We do know what happens to unbacked paper or fiat money: it eventually goes to nothing.  The US has gone a long way down that road already.  

That means the price of gold and silver eventually goes “to infinity and beyond,” since the paper money that they are quoted in becomes worthless.

Market veteran Chris Weber of the Weber Report was called to our attention this week.  He points out that our old friend and market legend Jim Rogers is selling all his stocks.  And what is Jim buying?

Silver.

At the same time, President Trump’s designated Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (who came up in the market business under Rogers) names gold as his number one position going forward.

But here is some speculation from the first couple of weeks of the new year by Weber:

Silver started this short year with a bang. It was up over 6% from end-2024 until profit taking set in. This has cut the gain in half. But if it only continues to rise by 3% every two weeks, then 2025 will see silver soar by over 77%, and end the year at over $51, a new nominal record.

Silver has outpaced gold so far this year, as we thought it would. Gold is up ‘only’ 1.7%.  Still, if gold does this every two weeks for the rest of the year, it will end the year at $3,797.20, up by 44.6% to a shade under $4,000.

Weber notes the important silver supply/demand fundamentals.  “One big reason I’ve been so bullish on silver is that for many years now, the new supply has lagged demand. I’ve never seen a situation like that. There have been allegations of large short positions keeping silver down. But this cannot last forever. It is like a coiled spring that can only be pushed down so far and for so long. At some point, my view is that silver will explode. In real terms, silver is extremely cheap.”

We’ll close with Weber’s general predictions for 2025.  There are only a few:

• 1.Silver will be higher a year from today. 
• 2.Silver will outperform gold. 
• 3.Interest rates will also be higher. (The 30-year yield is now 4.786%.) 
• 4.Stock Indexes will be lower.

Those are safe and reasonable observations.  We will just note that if there is a crisis – something that is very likely – all bets are off and gold and silver prices will rocket to levels that are unexpected by most people.

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“I want to just obey the Constitution.  The Constitution says only gold and silver can be legal tender.” – Ron Paul

He’s an icon of the sound money movement, the former Congressman who knows more about gold and money than others in Washington, and the elected official who tried valiantly year after year to have the Federal Reserve System audited.

Now Dr. Paul offers up some advice for the year 2025.  

He advises Congress to act responsibly and pass a budget in a Constitutional manner.  “Return to the normal legislative process and pass individual, clean appropriations bills with open rules that allow maximum participation from each Member or Senator.”

“Then spend the rest of the year renaming post offices, if you want. The American people will thank you for it.”

With major sections of Los Angeles still fighting fires that have claimed the homes of thousands and 12,000 Americans in North Carolina still living in tents four months after Hurricane Helene swept through, Congressman Paul points out that billions of dollars have been stolen by a corrupt regime in Ukraine, while Congress refused to demand monitoring of the money sent to the Zelensky regime. “Americans are rightly furious that President Biden has sent as much as $200 billion to fund Ukraine’s futile war with Russia, but where did Biden get that money? From Congress.”

“So why are we draining the US treasury and draining the population of Ukraine for a lost cause?” he asks.

Ron Paul also warns about a major economic crisis.  “The Federal Reserve should resolve to stop enabling excessive federal spending by purchasing Treasury bonds, thus monetizing the federal debt. The Federal Reserve’s monetization of federal debt enables the federal government to amass trillions in debt while running a global empire abroad and a welfare state at home.”

“The American people feel the effects of the Fed’s debt monetization in the form of the regressive inflation tax.”

Dr. Paul would also like to see the media straighten up.  “The media should resolve to stop gaslighting the American people with misinformation. For example, the media should stop repeating the lie that a failure to raise the debt ceiling will lead to a government default on its debts. The truth is a refusal to raise the debt ceiling would force Congress to reduce present and future spending — just like most people do when they find themselves in debt.”

Dr. Paul began buying gold in the 1960s when it was only $35 an ounce.  And he says he wishes he had bought more!  

“Here’s what I believe: by owning gold, I’m protected against inflation and the ongoing, frenzied money-printing that devalues the dollar.”

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What they are saying about the gold, stocks, and the year ahead…

Another hike in the debt ceiling.  That’s highly correlated with higher gold.  And there are a host of things that threaten the stock market which is already in dangerous territory because of fundamentals like high price/earning ratios in a rising interest rate environment.

Those market interest rates keep climbing despite Fed rate cuts.  

Among other concerns worth noting are delinquencies on securitized office mortgages which are at a new high; credit card defaults are at a 14 year high; inventories of spec home inventories keep climbing.

What are astute observers saying about the stock market under these circumstances?  Here are a few examples.

James Rickards write in the Daily Reckoning that currency wars are back, and trade wars are coming.  But the loudest alarm bell ringing is the stock market:

“We are now positioned for an historic crash. The specific cause does not matter – it could be war, natural disaster, a bank or hedge fund collapse or another unexpected event. What matters is the super-fragility of the market when the trigger is pulled. This is why Warren Buffett has over $300 billion in cash and why central banks are buying gold. Prepare now. Don’t be the last one to know.”

David Stockman says the stock markets “have every bit the feeling of March 2000 when the stock indices peaked on March 10 and then proceeded to plunge by 30% during the next 18 trading days.”  Stockman calls the situation a “time bomb,” writing in International Man: 

“We are referring to the mother of all fiscal crises that will be triggered within months when the US Treasury runs out of both cash and borrowing authority under the $36.1 trillion reinstated debt ceiling. And that may not even be the first inning. The stock market has now reached a point of such extreme “irrational exuberance” that even Alan Greenspan couldn’t have imagined it when he invented the term several decades ago.”

Our final word of wisdom come from economist Steve Hanke, economics professor at Johns Hopkins University, puts his conclusion in no uncertain terms in a few words on X:

“The US stock market is OVERPRICED, OVERVALUED, and OVERHYPED.”

We think this is a good time to move the safety zone of gold and silver.  Speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange precious metals professional today.

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(Although they never really left!)

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China’s central bank resumed buying gold for its reserves in November after a six-month pause, official data by the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) showed on Saturday.

That’s Part One of the story. 

Here’s Part Two:

(Business Standard.com) – China added gold for a second straight month as it bought 10 tons of gold in December, that took its gold reserves from 72.96 million ounces in November to 73.29 million ounces. China buying gold at historically expensive levels is being seen as a positive signal for the yellow metal.

China is serious about gold and that is not going to change even if the People’s Bank appears to be out of the market for a while.  China remains both the world’s largest official sector buyer of gold and the world’s largest gold producer.

Reuters reports that China’s central bank bought 160 thousand troy ounces of gold in November.  The official institutions of China may not have been entirely absent from the gold market during the reported pause.  It is widely believed that in addition to its central bank, the Red Army, the Communist Party, and other nominal owners may be stockpiling gold outside of the official numbers. 

When Chinese authorities got tired of impoverishing and punishing their population with communism, Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese reformer, cracked open a door to the middle class for a great number of the world’s people.  It was at that point that China became a powerful force in the global commodities markets.  That means that it became an important source of demand for the things that things are made of: copper for power lines, steel for automobiles, aluminum for refrigerators and other appliances, zinc for paint, and lead for batteries.

And gold for money!

India, with an economy now growing at an enviable 6.5 percent rate, gets it too – about gold that is!  It is the second largest gold market.  Even if we leave central bank buying out of the equation, Asia accounts for 60 percent of gold demand.

Recently the global financial news portal FX Empire reported that “a growing consensus of Wall Street’s most powerful institutions believe China is planning to increase its Gold holdings by an estimated 15%, if not 20%, of its total bullion reserves by 2028.”

Even as China adds to its gold holdings, its US dollar reserves keep shrinking.  With President Trump’s tariff fanfare and the weaponization of foreign dollar holding by the US State Department, China is clearly positioning itself for troubled waters in the months ahead.

When China is in the market to buy gold, we want to be buying gold as well! 

Now, with gold price having dipped in response to the Federal Reserve’s latest interest rate cut and  premiums low, is a very inviting opportunity to acquire gold for the inflationary months ahead! 

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Things to reflect on in the new year!

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It is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one does not realize that it was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments. Ideologically it belongs in the same class with political constitutions and bills of rights.

-Ludwig Von Mises

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Commodities such as gold and silver have a world market that transcends national borders, politics, religions and race. A person may not like someone else’s religion, but he’ll accept his gold.

 — Robert Kiyosaki

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. . . of silver no one ever yet possessed so much that he was forced to cry “enough.”

—Xenophon

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In contrast to political money, gold is honest money that survived the ages and will live on long after the political fiats of today have gone the way of all paper.

—Hans F. Sennholz

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The Fed took a dollar and eliminated 98% of its purchasing power and they’re doing that more rapidly than ever but it just hasn’t been fully discounted. When it is, gold is going to be much, much higher.

—Ron Paul

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Gold was not selected arbitrarily by governments to be the monetary standard. Gold had developed for many centuries on the free market as the best money; as the commodity providing the most stable and desirable monetary medium.     

—Murray Rothbard

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In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. 

— Alan Greenspan

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Gold will be around, gold will be money when the dollar and the euro and the yuan and the ringgit are mere memories. 

— Richard Russell

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Gold’s superior nature is honored in our daily usage of terms like gold prizes, golden ages, the golden rule, golden mean, and good as gold. In the East gold figures prominently in holy places and sacred occasions: rituals, festivals, and marriages.

— Jim Clark, Real Money for Free People

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If you don’t own gold, you know neither history nor economics.

— Ray Dalio

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Each year, we like to wrap up the end of December with some important quotes about gold and silver. This year is no different… here is our list of things worth remembering about gold and silver…

●●●

Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem…  When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy.  And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense and myrrh.

• Matthew 2

●●●

There has been a significant increase in demand from central banks to replace dollars with gold, and we’re just at the beginning of that trend. Gold will go up and the dollar will go down, so you’d be better off keeping your investment reserves in gold at this point.     

• John Paulson

●●●

In order to back all outstanding currency with gold reserves, the price of gold would have to reach $8,800 per ounce, roughly five times higher than it is today.

If gold were to cover all money created by the Federal Reserve (which is equal to its current liability of $8.4 trillion) the price of gold would have to be upwards of $32,000 per ounce (nearly eighteen times the current price of gold).

• Alex Gloyy, Eurasian Review

●●●

“True, governments can reduce the rate of interest in the short run. They can issue additional paper money. They can open the way to credit expansion by the banks. They can thus create an artificial boom and the appearance of prosperity. But such a boom is bound to collapse soon or late and to bring about a depression.”  

• Ludwig von Mises

●●●

“We now understand better how little we understand about inflation.”

– Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell

●●●

Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, gives each of his grandchildren a gold coin for every holiday and birthday. The yellow metal is the best way to get young people excited about saving, he says.

But the gift comes with special instructions. “They can’t spend the gold coin. They have to save that gold coin and only use it in an emergency,” he tells Barron’s. “In their lifetime, the goal is to pass the coin onto their kids.” 

Dalio says the gift helps the next generation appreciate the value of saving.

• Barron’s

●●●

Gold’s superior nature is honored in our daily usage of terms like gold prizes, golden ages, the golden rule, golden mean, and good as gold. In the East gold figures prominently in holy places and sacred occasions: rituals, festivals, and marriages.

• Jim Clark, Real Money for Free People

●●●

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SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China’s central bank resumed buying gold for its reserves in November after a six-month pause, official data by the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) showed on Saturday.

That’s the story.  China is serious about gold and that is not going to change even if the People’s Bank appears to be out of the market for a while.  China remains both the world’s largest official sector buyer of gold and the world’s largest gold producer.

Reuters reports that China’s central bank bought 160 thousand troy ounces of gold in November.  The official institutions of China may not have been entirely absent from the gold market during the reported pause.  It is widely believed that in addition to its central bank, the Red Army, the Communist Party, and other nominal owners may be stockpiling gold outside of the official numbers. 

When Chinese authorities got tired of impoverishing and punishing their population with communism, Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese reformer, cracked open a door to the middle class for a great number of the world’s people.  It was at that point that China became a powerful force in the global commodities markets.  That means that it became an important source of demand for the things that things are made of: copper for power lines, steel for automobiles, aluminum for refrigerators and other appliances, zinc for paint, and lead for batteries.

And gold for money!

India, with an economy now growing at an enviable 6.5 percent rate, gets it too – about gold that is!  It is the second largest gold market.  Even if we leave central bank buying out of the equation, Asia accounts for 60 percent of gold demand.

An recent on the global financial news portal FX Empire stated that “a growing consensus of Wall Street’s most powerful institutions believe China is planning to increase its Gold holdings by an estimated 15%, if not 20%, of its total bullion reserves by 2028.”

Even as China adds to its gold holdings, its US dollar reserves keep shrinking.  With President Trump’s tariff fanfare and the weaponization of foreign dollar holding by the US State Department, China is clearly positioning itself for troubled waters in the months ahead.

When China is in the market to buy gold, we want to be buying gold as well! 

Now, with gold price dipping in response to the Federal Reserve’s latest interest rate cut and  premiums low, is a very inviting opportunity to acquire gold for the inflationary months ahead!   

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Massive Increase in Debt Signals Another Reason to Buy More Gold

This is serious.  “Trillions are flying by so fast they’re hard to see!”

That the description of the skyrocketing national debt  from Wolf Richter at WolfRichter.com.  He is right.  The US national debt just topped $36 trillion.  It broke through $35 trillion just four months ago!  It flew past $34 trillion like a bat out of the hot place only 11 months ago!

It’s not just serious.  It’s deadly serious!

The astounding thing is, says Richter, “that the government has been racking up these huge debts despite the strongly growing economy. No one wants to even imagine how this debt would balloon if there’s ever a recession with falling tax receipts and surging outlays. It’s just nuts to have this during the good times.”

Let us repeat that last point.  What happens in a recession?  Government tax receipts fall.  Social spending increases.  Deficits explode.

Right now, the average interest rate on Uncle Sam’s $36 trillion debt portfolio is 3.30 percent.  It is that low because much of the debt was issued when lower interest rates prevailed.  But as those old debt instruments mature and are redeemed, they have to be replaced by new borrowings at now higher interest rates.

Bear in mind that as recently as 2001, the average interest rate on Uncle Sam’s debt portfolio was 6.5 percent.  That is almost twice as high as today’s average rate!

Some people believe that the late-Everett Dirksen, a senator from Illinois from 1959 – 1969, remarked of escalating government spending, “A million here and a million there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money!”  

Others think he must have said, “A billion here and a billion there…”

But thanks to inflation, we have to employ “quotation inflation” as well.  Today it would be, “a trillion here and a trillion there…”

A statement from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget makes an important point about human psychology: “It’s often said that the more times you say a word over and over, the more it starts to lose its meaning. With so many trillion-dollar debt milestones in recent years, it’s easy to forget that each of them has real-world consequences.”

As we have said many times, the debt has now grown so huge that it can only be paid by inflation – legal counterfeiting of ever more dollars that devalue every dollar already in existence.

And that is a certainty.  The monetary superiority of gold, throughout the ages and around the world, is an unchallengeable certainty as well.

You will need it as debt continues to grow “out the wazoo!”

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In a recent post, Silver Shines, we asked if you are ready for the silver shortage.  

We have repeatedly cited leading financial institutions that foresee big moves in silver.  Among them are calls for silver to trade at $38-$40 and $40 per ounce by mid-2025.  We think these market calls from major banks have silver’s direction exactly right, but they seem to have underestimated the power of the markets.  Throughout the year we have warned that they would have to raise their silver price targets, and many of them have. 

Our friend Robert Kiyosaki just told his millions of Rich Dad Poor Dad followers that silver is the best asset buy today: “Buy it before it hits $50.00.”

More recently in our post WAR AND SILVER, we made the point that war is bullish for silver.  That is thanks to its dual role as both a monetary and an industrial commodity.

Coincidentally we saw a recent report in the Jerusalem Post that focused on military applications for silver, a story we felt we must bring to your attention.  It made points that are often under-reported or omitted from official data:

The hidden military demand for silver could potentially outpace industrial applications as we progress through time and technology advances. Escalating geopolitical tensions and potential conflicts may drive this increase, making silver’s role in military applications increasingly significant. This shift could have a substantial impact on the overall silver market, potentially influencing prices and supply dynamics.  

A recent (Oct. 29) Wall Street Journal headline makes our point clear again:

“Pentagon Runs Low on Air-Defense Missiles as Demand Surges“

“Large number of interceptors used to strike missiles, drones in Middle East raises concerns about U.S. military readiness in Pacific”

So even  if you are following silver closely, and you are also only too aware of the spread of kinetic warfare, you may not be getting the whole picture.  But following silver and watching a shortage as it begins to develop is not enough.  You must act as well!

Resolve to speak today with a Republic Monetary Exchange gold and silver specialist about establishing a profit and protection portfolio.

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We Hope You’re Watching!

You may have heard about the popular poster back in the 1970s that read “War is not good for children and other living things!”

But war sure seems to be good for silver.

It was good for silver in the 1970s.  And you may have noted how silver prices took off after the Hamas attack on Israel in October 7,023.  Silver had closed on the trading day prior to the attack at $21.72.   As we write, it is almost $10 per ounce higher and has traded as high as $35.   

The following chart shows the performance of silver during that period.  You will note that the silver price was below the 200-day moving average at that time and has been mostly above since.

With that in mind, here’s a quick description of the gathering of war clouds now.

After Biden gave Ukraine the go-ahead to fire missiles into Russia, Ukraine launched US ATACMS and British Storm Shadow missiles into Russian territory.  Russia says the use of those long-range missiles from Nato risks nuclear war, and it has fired off its new hypersonic ballistic missile.

Meanwhile the US has evacuated its embassy in Kiev and is providing Ukraine with widely-banned anti-personnel mines.  The US has newly opened a missile defense base in Poland, which Russia has declared is “yet another provocative step in a series of deeply destabilizing actions by the Americans and their allies in NATO in the strategic sphere.”

Warfare drives people to seek protection in gold and silver as a monetary safe-haven to begin with, but silver is also essential to the weapons of modern warfare: in radar systems for detecting and tracking targets; for secure and efficient military communication hardware; in guidance systems; and in sensors and drones.

The threat of wider war on several fronts is real.  Things are grim and escalating fast.  You would probably push the STOP button if you could, but you can’t.

In the meantime, take steps to protect yourself and your family with silver.

Silver’s uses in modern warfare and technology grow year after year.  Couple that with the safe-haven demand for precious metals in times of war, along with a silver supply – demand deficit year after year, and you will agree that silver has an important place in your investments.  

With missiles flying and war clouds gathering, it’s time to add silver to your holdings.

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Beware the next round of big bank loses!

America’s biggest banks are sitting on mountains of distressed and non-performing commercial real estate loans.  They have squeezed their eyes tightly shut, hoping the problem will somehow just go away, a strategy called “extend and pretend.”

A report inside the Federal Reserve describes this practice of delaying the recognition of losses as a buildup of “financial fragility.”

From the report Extend-and-Pretend in the U.S. CRE Market:

The post-pandemic period is characterized by a deterioration of CRE valuations and monetary tightening. In this environment, banks have to manage their CRE loan portfolio while seeing their marked-to-market capital being eroded by losses on securities. 

We document that, since 2022: Q1, banks have extended the maturity of their distressed CRE mortgages coming due and pretended that such credit provision was not as risky to avoid further depleting their capital.  

Consistent with this interpretation, we find that this extend-and-pretend behavior is driven by banks with weak marked-to-market capitalization, is absent before 2022:Q1, and is also present in bank lending to REITs that hold large CRE portfolios.

Or, stated more succinctly, “The delayed recognition of losses exposes banks (and all other holders of CRE debt) to sudden large losses which can be exacerbated by fire sales dynamics and bankruptcy courts congestion.”  [Empasis ours.]

Fire sales.  Bankruptcy courts.  When people start to notice the cracks in banking, some make cash withdrawals, others close their accounts completely.  

The farsighted line up to protect themselves with gold and silver.   

We’ve seen it before.  In March ’23, Silicon Valley Bank went under just 14 days after the Big Four accounting firm KMPG gave the bank a clean bill of health.  During the spate of bank closures, our offices were crowded early to late day after day with people taking steps to protect themselves with gold and silver.

They were doing the right thing.  Gold is up about 45 percent since then; silver has soared, too, up 50 percent.

Now the Fed’s own report “Extend and Pretend” (or as we like to call it, kicking the can down the road in the hope that something will magically solve their problem) has us on high alert.  Warren Buffett may be another leading indicator of bank troubles brewing.  At our last check Buffett had sold more than 266 million shares of Bank of America stock just since July.

Avoid the rush.  Come see us at Republic Monetary Exchange today.  

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…But they will keep digging!

A few years ago we warned that the Republicans and Democrats were acting like they had signed a mutual suicide pact!  That’s because they were digging us into a debt hole so deep that eventually they wouldn’t be able to climb out.  

Our advice at the time:  “STOP DIGGING!”

But they didn’t. 

Total US debt has jumped by $473 BILLION over the last 3 weeks alone, to a record $35.8 trillion. What is your share?  Well, at the risk of shocking you, your share of America’s debt has climbed by $1,450 in just the last three weeks.  

How about interest on the national debt?  

The US now holds a record $103,700 of debt for every American. That means you!  In 2024, interest on the national debt soared to $1.16 trillion.  That’s the first time it has raced above $1 trillion.  Uncle Sam now owes $103,700 for every American citizen, including you, and paid interest of $3,360 for every citizen in the just finished accounting year.

So after decades of falling interest rates, the worm has turned.  With exploding levels of unpayable debt around the world, interest rates have begun rising.  That means the cost of servicing America’s debt will climb.  Your cost will climb.

What is the long-term plan here?   There isn’t one!

This episode tells us something very unpleasant about our country today.  And about our leaders.  A debt crisis like this is the stuff of third-world banana republics (like Zimbabwe, Argentina, Venezuela) and advanced economy kleptocracies (think Germany 100 years ago).  

Now we are like them.  And our leaders were either too stupid to see where we were headed, or they just didn’t care.  

We don’t know which is worse.  Maybe it doesn’t matter.

Former US budget director David Stockman says the national debt will reach $36 trillion in the next few weeks, and $40 trillion sometime in 2025.  “Needless to say, figures of those stunning magnitudes imply Roman Empire style financial ruin.”

To repeat ourselves, what is the long-term plan here?   

There isn’t one!  There is no central plan or government playbook to get this problem under control.  We are waaaay past that!

The only conceivable plan to deal with this is your plan for yourself.  Call or stop by Republic Monetary Exchange to learn why your personal profit and protection plan must begin with gold and silver.

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“Time Bomb Ticking” (which is why you need gold now)

 Just so you know, even though we have been warning that this is where we are headed, it’s now no longer just us saying that the dollar scam will end badly.  We hope all the government grifters, Fed flimflammers, cronies and crooks, Washington wastrels and political pilferers have gotten everything they wanted, because the whole system is close to blowing up.  It will take them down with it.

And now that it’s getting close to game-over, others are beginning to read the writing on the wall.  Including at the International Monetary Fund, which says the government debt problem is “worse than in looks.”

That’s pretty scary considering it looks pretty damn bad already.  

Bloomberg News headlines its account this way: “World’s $100 Trillion Fiscal Timebomb Keeps Ticking.”

In short, we’re looking at government debt exceeding $100 trillion, or about 93 percent of global gross domestic product by the end of this year!

IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva in a speech last week:  

“Our forecasts point to an unforgiving combination of low growth and high debt — a difficult future.  Governments must work to reduce debt and rebuild buffers for the next shock — which will surely come, and maybe sooner than we.”  

Let’s see.  “Time bomb.”  “Worse than it looks.” “Unforgiving.”  “The next shock.”  “Sooner than we expect.”

It’s almost like something we would have said, although we said it when you had more time to prepare.  

Now the time bomb is ticking.  Time is running out.

Here’s a succinct description of the inflation scam from Bill Bonner:

Inflation is a form of theft. But it only ‘works’ as a federal policy so long as someone gets robbed. The feds ‘print money,’ pretend it is valuable, distribute it to people… who are then ripped off by it. 

In 1971, for example, a saver might have worked hard his entire career to lay aside $100,000. By 2024, his money would have been devalued by about 90%. In other words, he was cheated out of $90,000.  

That’s why an inflationary system is unstable. People try to protect themselves. And if they succeed, the policy fails. Or, to put it differently, inflation is just an underhanded way to tax people. But it only works as long as someone ‘pays’ the tax. 

That’s the story in a nutshell except for one thing.  How do people protect themselves?  

As they have done in these situations for thousands of years, they protect themselves with gold and silver, the enduring money of the ages.

To find out more, speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange precious metals professional while you still can.

Tick… tick… BOOM! 

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You’ll need Gold and Silver to Do it!

 It’s the question the mainstream financial media should be asking but doesn’t.  While they remain behind events unfolding, year after year the Mises Institute takes dead aim at the economic realities others prefer to ignore.

This month a Mises article asks “Can America Survive Global De-Dollarization?”  We will share a couple of important points, but we prefer to reframe the question, asking if you and your family can survive de-dollarization.

The article focuses on the obvious threat that between purchasing power loss – inflation, depicted on the adjoining chart – and the use of the dollar as a tool of US foreign policy by means of sanctions rendering some foreign-held dollars useless, we could see an avalanche of de-dollarization.

We not only think it is likely as we have been warning, but we also see it as inevitable and indeed already underway.

The loss of the dollar’s preferred status as the preferred unit of global trade, what a French finance minister dubbed an “exorbitant privilege,” it spells reduced demand for dollars, making things more costly for those that need that issue dollar-denominated debt. It will cost the American people dearly:

This would shock the United States economy with massive price increases on consumer goods while crippling the local, state, and federal governments because deficit spending will no longer be possible if no one buys the debt. In this scenario, states like California and New York might find themselves turning to the federal government for some type of bailout while smaller states with more balanced budgets might find themselves wondering why they should be paying the bill for someone else’s reckless spending that they had no part of, which in turn could create a crisis of unity among the United States of America.

As the world repudiates the incredible shrinking dollar, what will replace it?  In truth there is no governmental or national currency that is any more reliable.  We recall one author telling us years ago that when the dollar fails, people will turn to the International Monetary Fund’s sketchy “Special Drawing Rights.”

Not bloody likely.

Deceived by one phony, unbacked made-up currency – the dollar – it is not even conceivable that the SDR, with which people are unfamiliar and which depends on backing by the poor American taxpayers anyway, will rise by acclamation instead.

And in fact, the Mises article notes that another monetary unit is rising instead:

Part of what is propping up the US dollar’s dominance is the fact that there is not an alternative ready to replace it. However, there has been speculation that gold—whose price is up 25% this year—could be that alternative, and the price increase is a reflection of the demand from other countries buying it to fill their central banks.

As the article notes, the end of fiat money, money made of nothing but thin air and a few digital bookkeeping entries will be at hand.  How will you and your family do in this era of a failing currency and declining American solvency?  If you have prepared with gold and silver, as foreign central banks and astute trend watchers are doing, you will have taken prudent steps to insulate yourself as much as possible from the dramatic shift away from the dollar’s exorbitant privilege.  It may have been nice while it lasted and with honest management it might have lasted longer.

But today, it is what it is.  And what it is is over!

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The disastrous economists are a signal to buy gold!

Like other disasters, hurricanes are bad for the economy.  So are most Washington economists.  The destructive effects of both are frightful and when these “disastrous economists” are making monetary policy, it is a very good time to own gold!

Year in and year out, statist economists and their followers are like an echo chamber with this nonsense touting the economic stimulus to be had from natural disasters and wars, and the benefits of rebuilding.  Some examples:

• Let’s start with former Federal Reserve Vice Chairman and New York Fed President William Dudley who explained on CNBC a few years ago that Hurricanes Harvey and Irma actually would lead to increased economic activity over the long run: 

“The long-run effect of these disasters unfortunately is it actually lifts economic activity because you have to rebuild all the things that have been damaged by the storms.”

“I would expect that by the time we get to the end of the year and early 2018, the transitory negative effects of this storm I think will be over and we actually will start to see some of the benefits of the rebuilding efforts in terms of boosting the economy,” Dudley said.

• No one can illustrate this class of reasoning more effectively than Larry Summers, himself a former World Bank chief economist, U.S. Treasury secretary, Harvard president, and Kennedy School professor. After the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami, Summers went on display:

“This is clearly going to add complexity to Japan’s challenge of economic recovery. It may lead to some temporary increments ironically to GDP as a process of rebuilding takes place. In the wake of the earlier Kobe earthquake Japan actually gained some economic strength.”

• Every disaster brings these no-nothings out.  Bush administration Labor Secretary Elaine Chao gave voice to the same view in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina:

“There is a bright spot in that new jobs do get created. And in the rebuilding.  New Orleans, for example, is going to see one of the biggest construction booms that they have ever seen. So in the aftermath and the rebuilding of a devastated area, there will be a tremendous array of new jobs that are being created. And that is going to help the economic development.”

• President George Bush expressed the belief that spending on his elective Iraq war was good for the economy, saying, “I think actually the spending in the war might help with jobs . . . because we’re buying equipment, and people are working.” 

Who are these people?  These disastrous economists pop up every time there is a natural disaster to proclaim how wonderful its impact in stimulating economic growth will be.

When government economists, Fed economists, academic economists are disastrous economists, when they are in charge of monetary policy, it is time to run, not walk, to stock up on gold!  Because they are out of their minds. 

It stems from a childish misconception as Frédéric Bastiat, the French economist and statesman, explained in an essay written more than 150 years ago.  Bastiat wrote that destruction is not profit in an easy to understand a piece known as The Broken Window.  

Bastiat’s reasoning, applied to the above situations, is this.  Before the hurricanes, the homes, the bridges, the power lines, and the roads were intact.  The money that will be used to rebuild them could have been used for new things, for additional wealth in the form of additional homes bridges, power lines, and roads.  But now it is used merely to restore what already existed.

Before the earthquakes and the tsunami in Japan, the places destroyed by them already existed.  The capital that went to rebuild those places was no longer available for additional infrastructure.  

After New Orleans was devastated by the floods, the money that went to rebuild New Orleans was no longer available to be used for new projects.  Before the flood there were both the intact city and the capital.  After the floods, the city was rebuilt, but the capital was spent on replacement bricks and mortar, on replacement lumber and asphalt, on replacement bridges and sewers, on replacement schools and homes that were in existence but were destroyed in the floods.  That capital merely restored the status ante quo, the prior state of affairs.

Before Bush’s elective war in Iraq, the schools, homes, hospitals, roads, sanitation facilities, and other infrastructure that were ultimately destroyed were in existence.  Making the US taxpayers rebuild what the war destroyed – schools, homes, hospitals, roads, sanitation facilities, and other infrastructure – left Americans with a mushrooming national debt.  

That burden of that debt doesn’t simply disappear because the disastrous economists don’t notice it.

When these people are in charge – and they dominate in both Republican and Democrat circles and administrations – you can be sure that the money system will be fraudulent, and the currency will be on a trajectory to zero.  People who think destruction creates wealth are the same people who think they can create wealth by printing more dollars.

Buy gold and silver to protect yourself from disastrous economists!

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Washington keeps piling on unsustainable costs for Americans.  Owning gold now “increasingly important!”

A new fiscal year for the Federal government began on October 1.  The acknowledged US national debt has now hit $35.6 trillion.

Let us tell you what happened during the fiscal year 2024.  It began at the beginning of October 2023 with a national debt of $33.442 trillion dollars.  Then, just days ago, on October 1, 2024, when the new fiscal year got underway, the national debt had reached $35.668 trillion.  

That means that the nation debt grew by $2.226 trillion during the just ended fiscal year.  

You can track these numbers for yourself as they change at the US Treasury’s “Debt to the Penny” website.  If you prefer you can track the change between September 30, 2023, and September 30, 2024.  But either way that’s a lot of red ink!

It’s not just because Washington is incontinent – it won’t restrain its spending – but in part the deficit explosion is now out of their hands.  Higher market interest rates have led to a near doubling of interest on the debt over the last two years.

In other words, things are starting to get real!

What you don’t see!  Death by a thousand regulations!

It’s not just the overt spending that burdens the economy and takes money from the pockets of the American people.  Regulatory costs quietly raise the price of everything so that the consumer dollar doesn’t go as far.  And under that category, regulatory costs, the Biden-Harris administration has set new world indoor records.

From a new report by The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Majority Staff:  

Since taking office, the Biden-Harris Administration has imposed an estimated $1.7 trillion in new federal regulatory costs2 in its effort to push its left-wing agenda. To place this staggering figure in context, even the highest available estimate of the cumulative costs of regulations imposed by all administrations comes in at $3.079 trillion through 2022. This means that the Biden-Harris Administration has imposed over half of cumulative federal regulatory costs—and it did so in less than four years.

As one study recently reported, the Biden-Harris Administration is on pace to impose in just four years nearly double the costs the Obama Administration imposed in its entire eight years in office.8 In present value, the Biden-Harris Administration’s excessive regulations impose costs of $47,136 per U.S. household—a shocking toll that promises to harm, not help, American households and the U.S. economy.

Someone sent us this response from an AI source on owning gold.  It’s not bad:

In light of this exploding federal debt, owning physical gold becomes increasingly important as a hedge against potential economic uncertainties. Gold has historically served as a store of value and a safe-haven asset during times of economic turmoil and currency devaluation. As the national debt grows, there are concerns about the long-term stability of the U.S. dollar and the potential for inflation. Physical gold provides investors with a tangible asset that is not tied to any government’s fiscal policies or debt obligations, offering a means to preserve wealth and protect against the erosion of purchasing power that may result from excessive government borrowing and potential currency devaluation.

To learn more about wealth and personal protection with gold and silver, visit with a Republic Monetary Exchange professional today.  Because, as we said. Things are starting to get real!

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What’s your plan for the cataclysmic reckoning?

“Only a dwindling number of denialists doubt that a cataclysmic reckoning, including double-digit damage to Americans’ income growth, lies ahead. It’s past time to prepare.”

It sounds like what we have been increasingly warning about.  Only this time it didn’t come from us.  Somehow it made it onto the Opinion page of The Washington Post.

By the time the WP notices something like this, the hour is drawing nigh!

The column didn’t pussyfoot around about the coming crisis.  Written by Mitch Daniels, a former governor of Indiana, a former director of the Office of Management and Budget, and co-Chair of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, it bore a serious title:  ‘The Day the Dollar Died’ is coming. What’s the plan?”

Of course, there is no plan.   

Here is how Daniels frames the issue:

With debts already about to surpass the nation’s entire GDP, and adding close to $2 trillion more this year, only a dwindling number of denialists doubt that a cataclysmic reckoning, including double-digit damage to Americans’ income growth, lies ahead. It’s past time to prepare….

Maybe the most likely of many possible triggering events is the day when — not if — tens of millions of Americans are told that the trust funds are not trustworthy, and that the safety-net benefits they have been receiving are about to be reduced, perhaps drastically.

Daniels says more hopefully than realistically that this country doesn’t need another gathering of central bankers at Jackson Hole or other muckety-muck meeting at Aspen or Sun Valley next year.  He’s calling for a gathering of serious, responsible people to plan what Federal assets will have to be sold, who among Uncle Sam’s countless creditors gets paid, how much of a haircut US bond holders will have to take, and what happens when there is no money for Social Security benefits and Medicare.  

Oh yes, and how to explain to the poor unsuspecting American people how this was allowed to happen. The sense of naked betrayal is likely to provoke “violent reactions.”

Of course, the perpetrators of this outrage are all right there in plain sight and have been for generations.  The are in the universities, and in think tanks, and on TV panels and running for re-election in every state in the Union.  And they will slip the dragnets and run away into the night like the thieves they are.

And most of the American people, their lives turned upside down, will wonder how this happened to them.  Our hat is off to Daniels for making clear that the money is running out.  Our only objection is that there can be no collective, political, government “plan” at this point.  Deferring to government plans is what got us in this mess.

The only hope rests in the plans of individuals, the private plans by farsighted people to arrange their own affairs themselves, and not to wait for a big central plan to ride to their rescue.

Those individual plans must rely on real money, gold and silver, because phony paper and deceitful digital dollars will be among the first things to go.

Begin making your own plan today.  Consult with a Republic Monetary Exchange gold and silver specialist about gold for wealth protection and silver for personal protection.

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Saudi Arabia joins China in quiet gold acquisitions!  Have you thought about doing the same?

There appears to be a sharp rise in secret, off-the-books gold buying by foreign central banks.  

Based on World Gold Council reports and other sources, Saudi Arabia has cranked up its gold buying machine.  Since 2022 the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority appears to have added 160 tons of gold.

Much of this activity is unreported, secretive gold buying, only able to be pieced together by comparing gold movements from elsewhere with other reported financial data.

You can be sure that with the US freezing dollar assets of sovereign nations like Russia, other countries are doing what the Saudis are doing and moving assets out of jeopardy and into non-dollar alternatives.  And much of it could be unreported.

China is leading the world in off-the record gold acquisitions, according to those that track its activities closely.  But these days it takes a little sleuthing.  And why not?  Prudent individuals like to keep their investments private, too.  Especially when theft is proliferating.

It was not that long ago that the currency reserves of many of the world’s central banks was reasonably well reported.  Those countries that didn’t disclose much didn’t matter much.  Think China before Deng Xiaoping. 

But in the decades since then China’s reserves matter very much.  Not only because it is a formidable world economic power, but also because Uncle Sam in dependent on foreign nations like China to lend him money.  

One thing is clear.  China’s US dollar reserves are shrinking.  And its gold reserves are growing.  There was a time that China held $1.3 trillion of US government debt.  This summer that number slipped to $780 billion.  Meanwhile its gold holdings have gone way, way up.

As we have reported in the past, besides what is transparent in the Peoples Bank of China, gold is being secretly held by the army, the Chinese youth league, and the Communist party.

This is an object lesson for the individual American investor.  Countries are rightfully afraid of the US stealing its assets.  Uncle Sam’s record with its own people, from bank holidays to gold confiscation, is grim as well.  But that is only a concern in times of economic and monetary stress… like these!

Speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange gold and silver specialist today.  It’s a matter of prosperity and wealth preservation.

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A picture is worth a thousand words!

The gold bull market has outperformed both stocks and fixed income indices for the past two years.  And the silver story in one word:  Wow!

As we write these observations, spot gold is $2,673.  

Here is a chart showing the history of gold prices on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange during that two-year period. It reflects a move of about 65 percent.  

It’s not hard to understand what is driving the gold market.  The highest inflation in 40 years has added to gold’s luster, not to mention Wahington’s blow-off spending and devil-may-care debt.  But it is not just domestic concerns behind the bull market.  There are global dynamics.

The turn to gold and the move by foreign central banks to de-dollarize their reserves clearly demonstrates that we are entering a new global order.  The world realizes that the dollar is not just a monetary risk, it is a political risk as well.  With that in mind we continue to warn you that global de-dollarization is still in its early stages.  It will continue to eat into the dollar’s purchasing power and do great damage to the American standard of living.

That brings us to a discussion of war.  We appear to have inched much closer to a global nightmare.  Although the mainstream media remains impervious to reality – as usual – the best-informed sources report that we are in the riskiest position we have been in since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

Spot silver as we write is $31.98.   It’s high this year is $32.63.   

Silver typically lags the gold market.  That happens in the early stages of the bull market.  But when silver, which is by nature more volatile, gets going it often outperforms gold itself, often dramatically!  

Here is a two-year silver chart from the CME.  It reflects a move of 75 percent over the two-year period.  To repeat ourselves:  Wow!  75 percent!

But take note of this.  Even with its dramatic climb over the past two years, silver is still far below its all-time highs of $50 per ounce.  Stated differently, the opportunities in silver, like gold, remain substantial.

One last picture to clarify where we are headed.  Here is a long-term gold chart, beginning in 1970, just a few months before President Nixon repudiated America’s promise to redeem its paper money with gold.

 The long-term consequences continue to unfold and will do so until at last the irredeemable US paper dollar is nothing but a historical curiosity.

A 50+ year trend!

GOLD FROM BEGINNING OF 1970 UNTIL NOW

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No Wonder Gold is Flying High!

Things are out of control and won’t get better!  That’s why gold is up more than 34 percent in the last 12 months!

Washington’s fiscal year ends in just a couple of weeks and it’s going to be a doozie!  No wonder gold is flying!

Bloomberg News:

The US federal budget deficit surged in August with one month to go until the end of the fiscal year as higher interest costs continued to weigh on the overall balance.

The $1.9 trillion gap for the 11 months through August was up 24% from the same period last year, Treasury Department data released Thursday (9/12) showed. For the month of August alone, the deficit was $380 billion.   

That story comments on the official deficit news through the end of August.  However now, only weeks later in the middle of September, the annual deficit is already over $2 trillion!  That means the Federal government is spurting red ink at the rate of $5.50 billion per day!

That is a serious deficit disorder!

Economist Stephanie Pomboy commented on X, “QE infinity coming soon. No wonder gold is flying.”

Make no mistake about the seriousness of this situation.  Uncle Sam now has to borrow money to pay the interest on its debts.  Imagine if you had to borrow money on your MasterCard to pay the interest on your Visa.  

The gross national debt is about $35.4 trillion.  That’s 123 percent of the total productivity of the US economy (GDP).  That’s a world indoor record!  It’s higher than the World War II debt to GDP ratio.  And that was the result of a war.  You know, Pearl Harbor, Iwo Jima, the Normandy invasion, the Battle of the Bulge.  

The main battle now is the one with the politicians buying every vote they can so they can get re-elected.  Only in their self-important dreams can that compare with Okinawa, the Battle of Manila, or Anzio. 

In 1980 the debt was less than 35 percent of GDP.  Even in 2000 it was only 56 percent.  Now, to repeat, it’s 123 percent. 

One of the little-known reasons the Fed has to lower rates:  Its rate hikes over the last two years have sent interest costs on the national debt soaring.  Today the interest expense on Washington’s debt is a staggering $3 billion per day. That is not just a meaningless number.  It is money that the American people have to come up with.  They pay it by one means or another:  by taxation, inflation, or shifting as much of the debt burden as they can onto their kids.  Last year interest expense on the US debt amounted to $2,868 for every person living in the US. 

But as the announcers say on the late-night TV commercials, “But wait!  There’s more!”

Despite the mind-bobbling irresponsibility of Washington’s letting things get out of hand, please bear in mind that we’re not even talking today about the hidden US debt, which is now up to about $219 trillion.  That is money Washington has promised to pay to widows and orphans, and disabled veterans and retirees.  Those are unfunded promises Washington has made to people who count on those promises to make ends meet.  

Let there be no doubt about what we are saying.  There is going to be a lot of pain. Suffering that is immeasurable is headed the way of people for relying on the most scandalous governing class this nation has ever seen.

Please get out of the way of this train wreck by keeping your wealth in the real and enduring money of the ages, gold and silver.  You won’t be able to avoid some of the flying debris of a nation undergoing a high-speed collision with monetary reality, but you will have highly desirable monetary assets in the crisis.

Most people won’t.

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Why we get deficits, debts, inflation, and why gold goes up!

“Free stuff!  Step right up!  Get your free stuff now!”

Washington politics has become nothing less than a bunch of carney barkers!  

“Quick grab your Obama phone and hurry!”

The House Budget Committee has gone through the Harris-Walz economic proposals, and it is a grab bag of goodies that would put your typical Washington wastrel to shame.  And that’s pretty hard to do!

The report notes that “since the Biden-Harris Administration assumed office, the average family of four must pay an additional $17,169 per year, or $1,431 per month, to purchase the same goods and services.  But Kamala has more of the same in store for you.

Here’s a link so you can go through their analysis for yourself if you have the stomach for it.

To save some time, here are just a couple of the free stuff bullet points selected by the Committee to Restore Prosperity:

• Free Child care: Kamala cosponsored S. 1806, the Child Care for Working Families Act, which would create new federal entitlement programs for child care. Cost: $600 billion over the next decade.
  
• Free parental leave: Kamala supported a plan to create a government-mandated parental leave, which she would have paid for by imposing new payroll taxes on families.
  
• Free Health Care: In 2019, then-Presidential candidate Harris rolled out her Medicare for All proposal, which included coverage for more than 11 million illegal immigrants. Projected to cost $44 trillion over ten years.
  
• Free College: In 2017 Harris was an original cosponsor of Bernie Sanders’ plan for free college, S.806, College for All Act of 2017. Cost: $600 billion over the next decade.
  
• Free Child Rearing Expenses: Harris proposed Expanding the Child Tax Credit (CTC) and making it fully refundable (a cash grant) of up to $6,000 in first year of life. Cost: $1.2 trillion over 10 years.
  
• Free Down payment on Home Purchase: Kamala would provide a tax credit of up to $25,000 to first-time homebuyers, further boosting demand for home ownership and lead to higher home prices. Cost: $100 billion over the next decade.

And that doesn’t even include free sex-change operations of illegal aliens.

Somehow, we don’t think that when Francis Scott Key wrote that line in our national anthem about the land of the free that this is what he had in mind!

But that is what we have become.  Now do you think the paper dollar can last?  

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If you own silver, wish you owned silver, or are thinking about owning silver some day, the headlines in a recent Jerusalem Post story should grab your attention and not let go:

CHINA’S STRATEGIC SILVER TAKEOVER: A CALCULATED MOVE TO DRAIN THE WEST

China hoarding silver, price 10% higher than West. Secret weapon or economic warfare?

Here’s the lead:

A Hidden War for Economic Dominance

While the world has been focused on the geopolitical tensions between China and the West, a more subtle battle has been unfolding in the global financial markets. China, through a series of calculated moves, has been quietly accumulating vast quantities of gold and silver. This move has signaled a potential shift in the global economic landscape and highlights the developing countries’ need for exorbitant amounts of resources.

Silver: China’s Secret Weapon

In addition to its gold hoarding, China has also been strategically increasing its silver reserves. The Shanghai Metals Exchange has seen a significant surge in silver trading volume, with prices consistently higher than those on Western exchanges. This suggests that China may be deliberately driving up the price of silver to drain the West’s resources.

China has a silver stockpile of 71,000 metric tons.  America is seventh on the list of silver stockpiles with only 23,000 metric tons.  

Peru, because it is “the silver-producing powerhouse,” is in first place with silver reserves of 98,000 tons.  China is next, followed by Poland (65,000 t0ns), Russia (45,000 tons), Australia (27,000 tons), and Chile (26,000 tons).

The Post article points to the possibility of a silver squeeze similar to the one in 1979-80 that sent prices racing to new highs: “If investors begin to panic and rush to buy silver, the price could skyrocket, causing significant disruptions to the global economy.”  

Author and commentator Doug Casey says he’s very bullish on silver based on its technological applications and the relatively small size of the silver market.  “When gold really gets underway,” he says, “silver could easily go to $200 an ounce.

If Samsung’s recent breakthrough in silver solid-state batteries matures, we think that price estimate is woefully low.  One analyst forecasts that the Samsung technology will deliver a battery with a 600-mile range and a nine-minute charge.  It would, he estimates, require as much as one kilogram of silver per vehicle.

If you own silver, you may want to add to your position.  If you wish you owned silver, or are thinking about owning silver someday, we advise you to wait no longer.

Find out more about profit and personal protection opportunities with silver by contacting an RME precious metals specialist today.

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The failures of government currencies are the rule.  They are not the exception.  There are more paper and other government money failures than we could possibly cover, but we’ve taken a close-up look at many of them over the years including the big ones like the German inflation a hundred years ago.  Or the Zimbabwe inflation.  That was one for the record books, too.

But there’s one currency failure that we haven’t written about.  The one in Russia that took place after the collapse of the Soviet Union.  One of our favorite journalists, Matt Taibbi was there, a working reporter on the scene, when it happened.

Here are some of his memories from his Substack newsletter:

In Moscow on the morning of July 24th, 1993 I fixed a cup of tea, rubbed the hangover out of my eyes, and walked out to look for breakfast. I was living then above the Metro station at VDNKh, the ex-Soviet equivalent maybe of New York’s World’s Fair grounds, and saw right away something was wrong. Old women on the street were bawling, a group of men was shouting at a beat cop, and sidewalks were full of people walking in a daze, as if a neutron bomb had gone off.

The government of Boris Yeltsin had decreed it was withdrawing all old rubles from circulation. Russians who’d stuffed rubles in mattresses for decades would be wiped out, unless they could fight through huge bank lines to exchange bills. Worse, the maximum amount was 35,000 rubles, or roughly $30-$35, about 60% of a Russian’s average monthly salary of 58,700 rubles. Those who exchanged the full 35,000 had passports stamped barring all future exchanges. I’ll never forget seeing a burly woman yelling, to no one in particular: “Vori, blyad!” (“F…ing thieves!”).

“Black Saturday” is remembered as a breaking point in the arc of post-Soviet history, the moment when many Russians stopped believing a glorious new democratic future was just around the corner, if it was coming at all. A week or so after the event, on August 6th, 1993, then-Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin burned his name in the nation’s history books. An aphorism-spewing figure whose unique place in Russian lore is like a cross of Yogi Berra and Spiro Agnew, Chernomyrdin said one of the most purely Russian things of all time: “Hoped for better, turned out as always.”

It’s always the same basic scene.  It happens when people seem least to expect it, although the signs of trouble are everywhere.  People in panic.  Crowding into banks and official offices.  Flooding into store to buy goods with currency no one wants because it has no intrinsic value.  Angry mobs with no direction.  Crime lords getting rich on sweetheart deals from their government cronies.  Old people and young alike, crying at the betrayal, wondering how they will make ends meet.

Taibbi:

With inflation above 2500% the previous year of 1992, Russia was beginning a long period of economic suffering that wouldn’t hit climax until 1998, when the country defaulted and plunged into a crisis presaging the rise of Vladimir Putin. It’s hard to describe the disaster of the nineties in terms that will make sense to Americans. Life expectancy for men dropped seven years almost overnight, from 64 in 1990 to 57 in 1994. Deaths from disease doubled. An already heavy-drinking country saw alcoholism rise by 60%. The Lancet estimated Russia that decade saw seven million “excess deaths,” whatever that means. I know what it looked like: mass poverty, spiraling crime, and sharply rising levels of fury toward the West, largely seen as a primary culprit in designing Russia’s crony-capitalist hellscape.

The Western press, like the New York Times, called it a transition to capitalism.  But it was mostly designed by a handful of liberal Harvard academics, most of whom knew little if anything about the functioning of markets and capitalism.  How could they?  Most of them learned economics from clowns like Paul Samuelson, a central planning socialist and author of the establishment’s preferred textbook on the subject.  Samuelson is the bozo that told the students using his textbook, Economics – ubiquitous on America’s college campuses for decades – that the Soviet’s economy was going to bypass the US economy.  

Right!  

And did I mention he was a Nobel prize winner?

As we say, most of them understood nothing about markets and capitalism.

Taibbi writes that he didn’t see any capitalism; what he saw was cronyism, the creation of Russia’s famous oligarchs.  They stole everything that wasn’t nailed down.  And they tried to steal everything that was nailed down, too.

It’s cronyism by another name.  It may have been called privatization by the American lapdog press, but the Russian people had another name for it: prikhvatizatsia, or “grabitization.”

“I saw nothing that resembled capitalism or democracy in my travels,” says Taibbi.  “Competition was managed by politicians who doled out zones of commercial operation like racketeers…. This was a mafia state.”

Taibbi is older and wiser now than he was in 1993.  Today he says, “After witnessing a historic financial collapse in the former Soviet Union, I thought bad advice from Western economists was a root cause. Now I think failure was the plan.”

Yep.  The Deep State wanted Russia as a perpetual enemy even then.  And the Deep State never sleeps.

There are a million stories in the world of currency collapses.  This was just one of them.

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What’s the deal with gold?  What’s going on?

Yahoo! Finance pointed out the other day that “The yellow metal has forged meteoric gains this year.”

Jared Blikre, Yahoo’s finance editor sought to explain it in an article whose headline we borrowed for this piece, “WHY GOLD IS OUTPERFORMING NEARLY EVERYTHING!”

Here is some of what he wrote:

According to BofA Global Research, gold funds just absorbed the largest inflows in four weeks, attracting $1.1 billion. Yet, the broader trend has actually seen $2.5 billion in outflows year to date, suggesting that underlying strength is coming from outside traditional fund flows.

Central banks — especially those of developing countries — have been buying the barbarous relic at a record clip. According to the World Gold Council, central banks have purchased 290 tonnes in the first quarter alone, beating out the prior Q1 record from 2023 and setting CBs on a path to record gold purchases in 2024 that are estimated to easily eclipse 1,000 tonnes.

“Not only is the long-standing trend in central bank gold buying firmly intact, it also continues to be dominated by banks from emerging markets,” wrote

In that regard, Turkey tops the buy list this year with 30 tonnes purchased in the first quarter — lifting its gold reserves to 570 tonnes. China bought 27 tonnes in Q1, making it the 17th consecutive quarter of purchases and also bringing its holdings to 2,262 tonnes. Other notable purchasers include India, Kazakhstan, the Czech Republic, Oman, and Singapore.

The central bank buying spree has solidified gold’s status as a reserve asset. According to BofA, gold has now surpassed the euro to become the world’s largest reserve asset second only to the US dollar, representing 16% of the reserve pool.

The precious metal’s performance can be attributed to its unique position as a real asset with one of the lowest correlations to stocks across asset classes, making it a safe haven from market swings and inflation.

The popular financial press doesn’t like to write about gold, and often when it does it uses disparaging terms like “gold bug.”  There are several reasons for that.  One is that Wall Street and the major banks provide the financial press and bubblevision TV channels with most of their revenue.  And big Wall Street and the banks don’t like you to own assets like gold that you take into your own possession.  The prefer you to keep your assets “on account.”  They can make money hypothecating your stocks to others and they have more opportunities to churn adjust your portfolio when your assets are in house.   

So, we are glad for the attention we get from articles like the one above.  It’s pretty hard to ignore gold as this point anyway.

We have been calling de-dollarization the most important monetary megatrend of our time, so we don’t blame others writing about gold for featuring it.  But that is the effect of our corrupted, unbacked, irredeemable fiat monetary system.  Sure, the central bankers of the world are moving to gold.  But they are doing so not just for a change or to keep busy.  They are moving to gold because they now recognize that the US dollar will go the way of all fiat currencies.  

Or to put it differently, the dollar will return to its commodity value which is paper and ink.  Used paper and ink.

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We’ve already had Third World inflation, endless wars, defund the police, socialist leaders, and a currency that the whole world is backing away from! So why not be prepared? 

Consumer prices are up 39% since 2012.  If you retired in 2012 after carefully planning your household budget, too bad for you!  You could say, as we did, that consumer prices are up 39% since then, but you could also say the dollar isn’t what it used to be.

Both are right.  Bear that in mind if you are trying to plan your future retirement right now.

If you watched the endless parade of no-win American wars – wars that were never declared like the Constitution demands – maybe you wonder about all we could have done in America with all those trillions of dollars.  Or better still, what you could have done with your own money had they not taken it from you in the first place.

Maybe you watched American cities burn under Biden and Harris.  Maybe you didn’t agree with the Vice President and the rest of the Left about defunding the police.  

Maybe you are watching the rise of American socialism and the world moving away from the global dollar, and you are asking yourself:

“What’s next?”

Here’s your answer.  Civil unrest.  Just like the burning cities of a couple of years ago.  Except everywhere.  And regardless of who wins the White House.

Hedgefunder Rayn Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, wonders what the next economic downturn will be like.  “Disparity in wealth, especially when accompanied by disparity in values, leads to increasing conflict and, in the government, that manifests itself in the form of populism of the left and populism of the right and often in revolutions of one sort or another,” says Dalio.

Look at the evidence in the UK.   Like here, political protests are treated like a crime.  Crimes are treated like political protests.  Riots spread across the UK after ten people were attacked, with three young girls stabbed to death in Southport, attacked by the offspring of immigrants.  Axel Muganwa Rudakubana, the son of Rwandan immigrants, is accused of the murders.  The government is calling protests against migrants “far-right thuggery” with Prime Minister Keir Starmer looking to silence dissent and threatening protestors with “the full force of the law.”

It doesn’t take a Nostradamus to foresee that open borders bring chaos, even here in the US:  from drugs, human trafficking, economic displacement, and increased demand for taxes, to providing immigrant medical care, education, housing, welfare, and policing expenses.  Just last year it cost an estimated $150 billion and that is after taking into account whatever taxes illegals might have paid.  

That is just one among many examples of the dry tinder awaiting a spark in today’s political environment.  Protests everywhere, faltering economies, wars and rumors of wars.  

Here’s some more fuel for the fire.  The consumer has been pounded senseless by inflation.  US credit card debt has risen by more than 48 percent since the first quarter of 2021.

A woman in Dayton, Ohio offered this comment to Fox News:  “I just want the younger generations to have a future… that’s what I’m most worried about… just because I feel like America and the world is kind of all on fire.” 

There was a time that the prosperity of the country provided money to be wildly thrown at problems to keep a lid on things.  There was the Great Society, the War on Poverty, and a host of other boondoggles and wealth transfer programs.  

Some politicians are stuck in time and think this is the same prosperous country that it was back then and the problems can be bought off.  Wrong.  But they keep proposing more spending anyway.  

Nobody ever says how it will be paid for.  But for a government irretrievably in debt like our own, it has to be by inflation.

In the US, Martin Armstrong from Armstrong Economics says, “We are looking at serious civil unrest regardless of who wins in November.”  That stands to reason.  44 percent of respondents in a recent survey said they aren’t making enough take-home pay to cover their daily expenses. 

Hello?  Read that last sentence again!  44 percent!  That’s how many aren’t able to cover their daily expenses.  

And that is now, before the recession hits.

What used to be assumed to be a social contract between the governing classes and the governed has gone the way of the winds.  As far as we can tell, the governing classes are focused on stealing everything that isn’t nailed down.  Government cronies keep asking for and getting more, more, more.

Because there is no one to stop them, much less to even insist on an honest accounting for where all the peoples’ money is going, chaos is growing.  

What should you invest in to protect yourself from civil unrest?  From economic chaos?  From monetary chaos?

If thousands of years of human experience from all around the globe are any indication (and they are for good reason), the answer is gold and silver.

Enough said.

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At Republic Monetary Exchange, we built our business with a policy of putting our clients first.  Our Best Practices Policy is designed to protect you.  

We have warned for years about gold dealers that pop like mushrooms when gold prices are rising.  As we have warned, some pop-up dealers ask customers to pay for their gold and silver now, and then… to wait until who knows when for it to be delivered.

We strongly recommend that you do not do that.  

We recommend Best Practices for your protection when you invest in precious metals.  

At Republic Monetary Exchange we are the industry leader in Best Practices for our clients.  We always make sure to have inventory on hand for your purchases.  Other dealers have made their clients wait for weeks on end to get delivery.  We don’t do that.  We make delivery immediately.   Right then and there.  No delays.  No excuses.

That’s why we are Arizona’s Premiere Gold and Silver Dealer.  For our valued out-of-state clients, we ship immediately, too.  Our signature service includes five-star packaging, fully insured, and expedited shipping.  No delays.  No waiting.

At Republic Monetary Exchange, we’re always surprised to learn that some people buy gold and silver from nameless, faceless voices somewhere.  That must take a lot of guts… to send money off to a boiler room 800 number somewhere.

Right now, there seems to be an explosion of these 800 number boiler rooms with call lists.  They may have even gotten your number.  The pitch changes, but right now the popular approach is for the voice on the other end to pretend you have spoken with them before, and they are calling with a special offer for new clients.  

What we have heard of their “special offers” don’t sound very “special” to us. 

But it seems to happen when gold is showing new strength. Calls from boiler rooms, splashy TV ads, companies that just opened their doors or just got a post office box, emails from people you don’t know, phone calls during dinner.  

We are also hearing complaints about warehouse stores that are trying to sell gold.  People are unhappy that the warehouse stores will not buy back the gold they sell!  

That is not a Best Practice!

At Republic Monetary Exchange, we think everyone should own gold and silver.  But this is real life.  Things happen and some time you may need to sell your gold and silver.  At Republic Monetary Exchange we will buy back your gold and silver even if you did not buy it from us!

And of course, since we follow Best Practices, when you need to sell, we make immediate payment.  Same day.  On the spot.  No risk, no waiting.  Best Practices always.  

One more thing.  Sometime one form of gold or silver will represent a significantly better value than another.  That’s just the way markets work.  Some day Coke is more or less expensive than Pepsi.  Or one cut of beef may be a better value than another.  We like to help our clients get great values when they occur.  But people tell us that the big warehouse store doesn’t give you a choice.  And they can’t even answer your questions about the markets and about buying gold and silver.

At Republic Monetary Exchange you can get all your questions answered by experienced professionals.  

We think our clients have a right to reliable information.  It’s just another part of Best Practices.  And that is how we have built our business.  

If you would like to learn more about investing in precious metals for wealth protection and profit, speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange gold and silver professional today. 

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The pilots flying don’t know how to fly!

We don’t know how to say it nicely.  Besides, your wealth and prosperity matter too much to pussyfoot around about stuff.  So here you go:

Far from the fabled “best and brightest,” of yesteryear, today’s Washington clowns have no idea what they are doing to our economy.  But it’s not good.

All eyes have been on Jackson Hole lately were government economists gather every August.  But it is not a gathering of great minds.  It’s a gathering of pilots who don’t know how to fly the plane.  

We remember Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell at Jackson Hole a few years ago insisting that inflation was transitory.  

Hello, must we remind anyone about inflation hitting double digits in Phoenix?

We remember the Obama economic advisor enjoying the Grand Teton weather not that many summers ago where he went to explain that all we needed was more government spending.  

Hello, let us introduce you to the $35 trillion dollar US debt!

The latest huge – and costly embarrassment – was the employment report.  Just last week (8/21) the Bureau of Labor Statistics discovered that 818,000 fewer jobs were created than it had announced. That’s a pretty big miss by any standard.  From 2.90 million to 2.082 million jobs.   And the BLS was even incompetent in releasing the news of its incompetent miss on the job number, as Zero Hedge pointed out.  As it noted, many on Wall Street began to suspect that with the inflated job numbers the Biden administration was trying to cover up a labor market recession.

In any case, market participants don’t like to trade based on faulty data.  And the Fed is setting policies based on unreliable data.

Well, it wouldn’t be the first coverup of bad economic news.  But here’s the other shoe.

Biden’s commerce secretary Gina Raimondo told ABC News that she was “not familiar” with the BLS.  (She runs the US Bureau of Economic Analysis).  Not familiar?  It was unclear from the conversation if she was unfamiliar with BLS or unfamiliar with the biggest jobs revision in 15 years.  Either way, not great.

Raimondo is another player who described Joe Biden, before his decision to remove himself from the race as “sharp, focused and insightful.”  Now she’s hot off the Democrat convention circuit telling us the Kamala Harris is “pro-business.”

 The people at the Committee Unleash Restore Prosperity beg to differ.   “Harris-Walz is the most anti-business ticket by a major presidential party in our lifetimes and perhaps in American history,” they say.  

Here is their evidence:

 Kamala Proposes $5 Trillion in New Taxes – the Biggest Tax Hike in the History of the World

The Harris tax plan would:

Raise the corporate tax from 21% to 28%

• Quadruple the tax on stock buybacks from 1% to 4%

• Double the global minimum tax from 10% to 20%

• Raise the top Income tax rate from 37% to 39.6%

• Raise the corporate alternative minimum tax from 15% to 21%

• Raise the capital gains tax from 24% to 43.5%

• Impose the first-ever tax on unrealized capital gains at 25%

• Double the number of Americans subject to the death tax

One more thing that we think nails down out case that the Washington pilots do not know how to fly the plane.  We want to show you once again Jared Bernstein, the president’s chief economic advisor, about how monetary policy works.  See the utter confusion for yourself:

America, we have a problem.  We hope we have made the case for you how dangerous this widespread cluelessness is to your wealth and prosperity.  If so, reach out to us without delay to implement a plan to protect yourself and your family with gold and silver.

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WAR!  Better be ready!  Things are getting pretty dicey on the world stage and the Biden administration doesn’t even know how to spell diplomacy!

Amid rising geopolitical tensions on multiple fronts, we’d like to make a single point.  

Iran’s leadership has been virtually assuring the world that it will retaliate for the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.  Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian insists Iran has a right to respond to aggression.  Whether it will do so, we do not know, but this much is clear:  the region is becoming increasing unstable.  Economic warfare with Iran has been US policy for some time, The US has now bolstered its military presence in the region.  Cruisers.  Destroyers.  Fighters.  Escalation is a clear possibility.

What is Iran’s defensive leverage?  The flow of energy.  Oil.  LNG.   The Strait of Hormuz.  Iran has long been clear that it will act militarily to close the Strait of Hormuz in the event of an attack.

The Strait of Hormuz is a sea-lane between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula. It links the otherwise landlocked Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea, providing access to the world’s oceans. Twenty-one miles wide at its narrowest, the waterway is a critical choke point.  88 percent of oil from the Persian Gulf moves through Hormuz.

The world economy will come to a standstill if the Persian Gulf erupts and Hormuz is shut down.  70 percent of the oil leaving the Gulf is headed to Asia.  Asia (and Europe) will panic. Energy prices will skyrocket.   

The price of gold will explode.

The US says it can swiftly reopen the Strait if it is shut down.  Maybe.  Maybe blowing up Nord Stream says something about what USGov can do.  But that’s not good enough, because oil tankers will not go there for a long time even if the Strait can be reopened in weeks or months.  Insuring them will become impossible.

We think the market may agree with our assessment.  Gold is a sensitive barometer of geopolitical risks.  Those with long memories will note the role the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and the taking of 52 American hostages played in the skyrocketing price of gold. 

The threat to energy supplies from a war with Iran may already be factoring into new record gold prices.  Never forget that gold is the world’s currency of choice in times of crisis.

Much higher gold prices can be expected if the shooting starts.

Much higher.

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…core consumer prices are up 50 months in a row!

When stock markets are in chaos…

When Warren Buffet sells half his Apple stock…

When the commercial real estate market is a mess…

When phony paper currencies like the Japanese yen get crushed…

When central bank gold buying hits one record high after another…

When the Fed starts panicking…

When the debt explodes…

When people start remembering stagflation…

When socialism is spreading…

When credit card and auto loan delinquencies are climbing…

When Warren Buffet is dumping shares of one of America’s biggest banks…

When foreign wars are growing…

When Washington won’t stop spending…

When the economy is tanking…

When all that’s happening, it’s time to buy gold!

All that is happening now.  

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The Federal Reserve Banking System is a political institution.  It is not a philanthropic institution, nor is it an academic one.  Nor is an honest bank, one that takes in money from willing depositors and makes loans to willing borrowers to make a spread.

The Fed is a political institution.  Its politics are hard left.  Its very existence is a tribute to leftist economics.  And it will tilt the scales of the economy to help the Democrats at the ballot box in November.

We have made this point repeatedly and wonder how anyone can possibly dispute it.

Although still far from its goal – itself made-up, unsubstantiated leftist claptrap – of a 2 percent inflation rate, we warn that the Fed will move heaven and earth (and maybe a few data points) to goose the economy just in time to help the Democrats.  

That means we expect an interest rate cut in September.

Here is Fed chairman Jerome Powell a couple of days ago.  “We think the time (for a rate cut) is approaching. If we get the data that we hope we get, a reduction in the policy rate could be on the table at the September meeting.”

A rate cut will give Kamala Harris, Karine-Jean Pierre, and Joe Biden something to crow about until election day.  And the lapdog press will run their rah-rah machine at full volume.  In fact, they won’t just turn the cheering for Bidenomics up to 10.  They’ll run it up to 11.  

That’s one louder!

The practical effect of forcing rates down is more money-printing to fund America’s $35 trillion national debt.  Usually the biggest debtors (Washington is the biggest debtor in the history of time!) have to pay higher interest rates to offset the risk that they will have trouble meeting their obligations.  But Washington will force rates down instead, and will have to run the printing presses.

It all looks very familiar to us.  We remember the inflation of the 1970s.  It appeared to be coming down, so the authorities did everything wrong and inflation rebounded massively.  

Here’s a chart:

The dashed orange line represents annual changes in the Consumer Price Index from 1966 – 1983.  The inflation rate fell, only to explode back to double-digit territory.

The blue line is the CPI from 2015 until now.  

Look how closely they track one another.  Eerie, isn’t it?

Gold prices skyrocketed, just as we expect them to now when the Fed reignites inflation.  It’s the same old funny money story!

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What happened to the gold in Olympic gold metals?

For hundreds of events, the 2024 Olympics handed out thousands of medals.  The Paris Mint made more than 5,000 medals, 2,600 for the Olympics and 2,400 for the Paralympics. 

When the modern Olympics began in 1896, the official US gold price was $20.67 an ounce.  

As the world’s athletes head home from the summer games (officially the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad from Paris), gold has been trading at over $2,400.  

Gold has increased by 11,666 percent.  Or you could describe it differently, by how much the gold purchasing power of the dollar has fallen.  The answer is that today’s dollar has less than one percent of its 1896 purchasing power.

The Olympic gold medals now contain only 6 grams of gold, less than one-fifth of a troy ounce that serves as the plating for the medal.  Since the Olympic gold medal weighs 529 grams, if it were gold, it would be worth more than $40,800.  But Olympic medals haven’t been pure gold since 1912.

This year’s medals are the design of French jeweler Chaumet.  The design includes an element of radiance, fine lines projected at regular intervals around the center to add a 3D effect and sparkle to a medal.  

At the center of each medal this year – gold, silver, and bronze – is a small insert of iron from the original iron of the Eiffel Tower, meant to remind the athletes of Paris and France.  

The silver medal weighs 525 grams with 507 grams of silver content.   Its value based on recent silver spot prices is approximately $450.

The bronze medal weighs 455 grams and consists of 415.15 grams of copper, 21.85 grams of zinc and 18 grams of iron. Its podium value is approximately $13.

Our congratulations to all the winners and participants.  And remember that the top prize is gold for a reason!  

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Oh, What a Tangled Web!

Let’s see.  The mainstream media has been wrong about almost everything!

So, why should we be surprised they are clueless about the economy? 

We’ll begin with the obvious.  Despite the Biden/Harris administration crowing non-stop about the great unemployment picture (and the lapdog press echoing their every word), In the last year, the economy has hemorrhaged 1.6 million full-time jobs, replacing them with 1.8 million part-time ones.

Is that good news?  

Now, we’re going to get into the weeds just a bit, but you will quickly see what is going on, that the health of the US economy is being misrepresented.  And that is just one more reason to protect yourself with gold and silver before someone points out that the King (Washington) isn’t wearing any clothes (it’s broke!).

Here’s the headline:  U.S. economy grew at a 2.8% pace in the second quarter, much more than expected.  That’s from CNBC.  

This kind of stuff is frustrating for people who know something about the economy.  Former US Budget Director David Stockman saw the same story reported on CNN.  You might want to see his take.  He is virtually at his wit’s end with this stuff.  That’s because the number that is getting all the attention distorts the true picture of US growth.  He writes:

It’s been obvious as hell for a long time that CNN is completely in the tank for the Democratic National Committee (DNC). But this AM they outdid themselves—rolling out some nincompoop economic weather-girl to claim that the Q2 GDP gain of 2.8% was “incredible” and a “high-five” for the Biden-Harris economy.

Stockman is at his wit’s end with this kind of reporting.  That’s because the numbers CNN is so excited about “doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.”

Stockman:

$71 billion or 44% of the allegedly awesome $260 billion increase in Q2 real GDP consisted of a large inventory stocking gain. Real GDP excluding the inventory swing rose by only $89 billion or a pretty limpid 1.6% at an annualized rate.

So it needs be recalled that the Commerce Department’s estimate of inventory gains and losses is one of the flakier components of the GDP in terms of its impact on the annualized headline number during any given quarter, yet its economic significance over any reasonable period of time is diminutive at best. That is to say, the impact of the inventory change figure on the headline number for quarterly GDP can be a big positive, a big negative, a nothing burger or anything in-between. Its impact on the longer-term rate of GDP growth, however, doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.

GDP numbers have plenty of other problems.  We have noted in this space for years that Washington likes to count government spending as part of GDP.  Stockman points to that as well, calling it “double-counting.”

So if you take out the double-counting that inflates GDP and inventory restocking, the economic growth picture is not something to rah-rah-rah about.

As it happened, the real government spending increase in Q2 2024 amounted to $30 billion or another 19% of the aforementioned $160 billion gain in headline real GDP. Again, therefore, if we remove the government double-count and the inventory restocking from the real GDP gain figures, the resulting increase in Q2 2024 is just +$59 billion.

That’s surely nothing to write home about. It represents just a 1.0% annualized gain from Q1 2024.

There’s more, including how the Commerce Department relies on unreliable inflation numbers in its GDP calculation.  We won’t go there because we’re already deep enough into the dismal science called economics.

However, the larger point is that the US economy isn’t what it was or should be.  Stockman points more dependable numbers that reflect the generational decline in America’s economic growth.

• Between 1953 and 1973 the economy grew at 4.0% per annum. 
• Between 1973 and 2001 the economy only grew at 3.1% per annum.  
• Between 2017 and 2024 the economy only grew at 2.28% per annum.  

And today the media is cheering about economic growth that without the rose-colored Washington eyeshades, is probably only 1 percent.  And that is nothing to cheer about.

Because a weak economy cannot sustain a reliable global currency, much less a $35 trillion debt load, you will want to protect yourself and your family with gold and silver.

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As students of monetary history, we have an advantage in the gold price forecasting game.  Based on abundant precedent we can simply say that at some point people will no longer refer to the dollar value of the gold they own; they will instead just refer to the number of ounces they own.

And what does that tell you about what will have happened to the unbacked, fiat, paper or digital, debt-laden Federal Reserve dollar?

In the meantime, here are some observations about gold prices making the rounds in the financial press.

GOLDMAN SACHS SEES $2,700 GOLD PRICE THIS YEAR!

From Investing.com:

Goldman Sachs underscores the significance of central bank gold purchases, which have seen a threefold increase since mid-2022.

While the Chinese market is sensitive to price fluctuations, the brokerage sees structural changes creating an “unshakeable bull market” for gold in China.

“We still see very significant value in long gold positions, and maintain our bullish $2,700 forecast (a 12% increase over current spot prices) for 2025,” they added.

MORGAN STANLEY SEES GOLD PRICE AT $2,650 BY THE FOURTH QUARTER!

From Investing.com:

Gold is approaching its record highs, rising 50% from its 2022 lows and 25% since mid-February.

According to Morgan Stanley commodity strategists, this surge is driven primarily by the physical market, with central bank purchases doubling in 2022/23 compared to previous trends. Retail buying has also increased this year, especially in China, where bar and coin demand is very strong….

While the recent rally has been driven by physical factors, strategists argue that financial flows will drive the next leg higher. They note this shift is “starting to come through,” predicting that gold prices could reach $2,650/oz by Q4 2024.

We note that the fourth quarter is just over two months away.  Our reader will also remember our report this time last year that Bank of America analysts called for silver to reach $35 an ounce this year.  That number is now well within reach.  At the same time they forecast $50 silver in the medium turn.  

J.P. MORGAN SAYS $2,500 NEXT QUARTER; $2,600 IN 2025! MAY OVERSHOOT THOSE TARGETS!

From JP Morgan:

“Amid fraying geopolitics, increased sanctioning and de-dollarization, we observe an increased appetite to buy real assets including gold,” said Gregory Shearer, Head of Base and Precious Metals Strategy at J.P. Morgan.

“Across all metals, we have the highest conviction on a bullish medium-term forecast for both gold and silver over the course of 2024 and into the first half of 2025…. “The direction of travel is still higher over the coming quarters, forecasting an average price of $2,500/oz in the fourth quarter of 2024 and $2,600/oz in 2025, with risk still skewed toward an earlier overshoot,” Shearer said.

We note that J.P. Morgan is an arm of JPMorganChase, the largest bank in the US and the world’s largest bank by market capitalization.  It’s chairman Jaime Dimon is on the shortlist for Treasury Secretary in a Trump administration.  

We also note that it is unusual, and we think a very bullish indicator when analysts warn that their forecasts for higher prices may actually be too low.

GOLD TO $2,700 NEXT YEAR SAYS UBS GLOBAL WEALTH MANAGEMENT!

From BNN Bloomberg:

Mark Haefele, CIO for UBS Global Wealth Management, expects the bull market in gold to continue with gold rising to $2,700 an ounce next year.

We’ve seen a lot of central banks buying in gold, which we think is going to continue because to some degree the dollar and US financial system was kind of weaponized around Ukraine and central banks realized they may want to have some alternatives,” he said.  

We take special note that the Bloomberg story points out the World Gold Council Survey finds about 20 central banks expect to raise their gold holdings.  That is a record high.  

$15,000 or $27,000 GOLD? 

Be sure to check in with Republic Monetary Exchange’s blog often.  Soon we will share the analysis of a noted gold expert who has raised his gold price forecast from $15,000 to $27,000!  You will want to see his reasoning for this stunning forecast!

AND ONE MORE.  THE TRAJECTORY OF AMERICA’S MONEY!

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Is the United States insolvent?  By that I mean is it unable to pay its debts?

The honest answer is yes.  The formal answer is no.

Let us explain.

Better yet, let Ben Bernanke, the former Chairman of the Federal Reserve System explain:

“The US government has a technology, called a printing press, that allows it to produce as many dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost.”

Dr. Bernanke was one of the great money printers of all time.  In other words, he was one of the great inflationists of all time:

“Under a paper-money system, a determined government can always generate higher spending and, hence, positive inflation.”

So, no matter how much debt the government has, it can print money to pay its creditors.  This legalized counterfeiting is a fraud.  You can’t pay off your creditors by doing the same thing without going to jail. But the government can.  Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a free lunch and there is a reason people go to jail for counterfeiting.  That is because it defrauds others.  Even when the government does it and calls it legal.

The new money the government prints takes on value or purchasing power to the extent that the existing money (your savings) loses value or purchasing power.  That loss of purchasing power is commonly called inflation.

The USGoverment ran a $1.3 trillion deficit for the first nine months of this fiscal year. It is about $1.85 trillion as we write this.   

It carries a gross federal debt of $34.9 trillion.  That is what we call the USG’s visible debt.  

(Below the waterline, like an iceberg, is the hidden debt, promises the government has made to its citizens that are not funded.  That is more than $200 trillion. Washington’s response to the hidden debt is “Never mind!”   So, we’ll move on.)

The USG’s debt today is 127 percent of the nations supposed productivity, what the government calls Gross Domestic Product.  Here’s a recent graphic illustration of the gross (visible) debt and its share of GDP.

Former US Budget Director David Stockman recently detailed what has gone on over the last 50 years that is reflected in the above chart:  “The public debt is up 89-fold, from $389 billion to $34.5 trillion. And its share of GDP or burden on the US economy has nearly quadrupled, rising from a post-war low of 36% in 1970 to an all-time high of 122% at present.”

And to circle back to the hidden USG debt, Stockman describes their growth path as well:

“Major entitlements are on a path from 10% of GDP at the turn of the century to more than 23% by 2050. And the overwhelming share of that gain will be due to a retired population that will grow from 50 million at present to 80 million by 2050, putting huge upward pressure on Social Security and Medicare outlays.”

The bottom line is that none of these debts, visible or hidden, can be paid except by the expedient of printing money.  That’s why the people on Capitol Hill seem so unconcerned.  They can spend all they want, and the Fed will make it possible by creating more dollars out of thin air.

That will destroy what is left of the dollar’s purchasing power.  It will destroy the middle class as well.  But as they say in Washington, “Never mind!”

Do you own gold?

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The Crowstrike Outage Shows How Fragile Our Digital Infrastructure Can Be

The headlines captured the story this way:

It’s like Y2K, except it happened this time!

“Largest IT Outage In History” Sparks Disruptions Worldwide!

Unprecedented IT Outage Cripples Businesses Around the Globe!

The IT shutdown impacted major banks, stock exchanges, 911 services, media, and airlines. 

Here’s the lead from the financial site Zero Hedge:  “Early Friday, a global IT outage caused by an issue with cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike disrupted flights, banks, retailers, stock exchanges, 911 call centers, and media outlets. Experts say this could be one of the largest IT outages in modern history.”.

The first question on many people’s minds was whether the outage was a terrorist strike or an act of war.  The only good news was that it wasn’t a security incident or a cyberattack, according to CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz.  

But it could have been.  It makes it a lot easier to ask, “what if,” doesn’t it?

Once again, we see just how vulnerable we are.  So, what happens to your ability to access your money when the internet goes down?  Or the power grid is attacked?  You are stuck unless you have money like gold and silver that is off the grid.

Oh, and do we need to drive the point home by mentioning that we also just learned last week about a massive hack of AT&T records in 2022?  

From NBC:  “A 2022 security breach compromised the data of ‘nearly all’ AT&T cellular network customers, with hackers stealing six months’ worth of call and text message records, the company said Friday.”

Here is what we wrote in 2019 (when gold was just over $1,300!:

Some people buy gold for privacy.  They would like to keep their financial affairs better protected.  Since the banks have become snoops for the government, reporting what you do, and since big corporations try to follow you in everything you do and anything you buy, just the peace of mind of having a little privacy is a very good reason to own gold.  

You may remember how a lot of things were shut down after 9/11.  Have you even wondered what would happen if the increasingly stressed national electricity grid went down, or if solar flares screwed up satellite functions and digital communications?

What would you do if ATM machines stopped spitting out cash?

I can tell you this.  In any of those circumstances you would be very happy to own gold and silver, the world’s most liquid commodities.

Visit with an experienced precious metal professional at Republic Monetary Exchange and learn about the importance of getting your wealth off the grid and into the world’s most enduring forms of liquidity, gold and silver.

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Is the Inflation Rate only the 3% that the Government says it is?

Here’s a wake-up call!  Yes, another one!  

The government tells us the inflation rate is currently 3.0 percent.  That’s the Consumer Price Index increase for the 12 months ending in June.  

Between January 2020 and last May, consumer prices rose 21.75 percent.  According to government numbers, that is.  

Sure.  Biden is at the peak of his game.  He’s never been better.  And consumer prices have only risen 21.75 percent over roughly the last 4 ½ years.

Why do we find this number so incredible?  

Simple.  It doesn’t square with our experience or the experience of anyone we know!

One fellow posted a TikTok video showing a Wal-Mart receipt for a grocery purchase he made in 2022.  The 45 items he purchased – he described it as a full month’s groceries – cost a total back then of $126.76.  Because the app has a “reorder all” feature, he found that the same purchase today would cost $414.39!

Hello?  Or as the fellow said himself, “Like, what?”

That’s an increase of 226 percent!  In two years!  For the same items!

Maybe Janet Yellen can deny experiencing sticker shock at the grocery store.   She has a car and driver, and a private Fed dining room.  

As off-kilter as the CPI is, the Fed prefers to use something called the Personal Consumption Expenditure Index to measure inflation.  Jeffrey Tucker of the Brownstone Institute thought to ask an AI how that index is computed:

The BEA uses the same data that creates the quarterly GDP [gross domestic product] report, which measures U.S. economic output, but the PCE price index measures consumer purchases through different calculations. It converts the prices, which are still the producers’ prices, to the end price paid by the consumer. The PCE price index includes the broadest set of goods and services compared to other measures of consumer price changes. It measures changes in a basket of goods and services, but the PCE is based on data from businesses and trade organizations while the CPI is based on survey data from tens of thousands of consumers. The BEA normalizes the data via a price deflator—a ratio of the value of all goods and services produced in a particular year at current prices to that of prices that prevailed during a base year—to get the monthly PCE index: the average monthly rate of inflation (or deflation) for the U.S. economy as a whole.

Well, that’s one way to cook the books!  There are others.  Things like “core inflation.”  Core inflation doesn’t include energy or food costs, although I’d like to see the cost of buying anything – anything at all – that doesn’t depend in some way on energy and food.

It’s all “lies, damn lies, and statistics” as Mark Twain may or may not have said.  For us, the answer is to buy gold and silver to protect yourself from all the number fudging and money printing.  And if you want to know what’s really happening to your cost of groceries, save your receipts.  

Or get the Wal-Mart reorder app!

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Your Essential Financial Survival Briefing!  The American Gold Story!

Reviewers praise Real Money for Free People!  Rich Dad Poor Dad’s Robert Kiyosaki says Jim Clark’s book is “essential reading for anyone who values their financial freedom.”

New York Times bestselling author Charles Goyette says Jim Clark’s book “explains in easy-to-understand terms what the Founders knew, that honest money- gold and silver- means prosperity and freedom for both nations and individuals.” 

Skyrocketing prices, massive new spending programs, debt ceiling puppet shows, money printing, debt up the wazoo!

How did we get here?  Where is all this headed?  Here’s an excerpt:

Our governing classes and monetary authorities] have created the conditions for an explosion of impoverishment. They are the big spenders and reckless borrowers of both parties. They are the grand councilors and academic advisors of the almighty State. They and their statist epigone and media servitors are the inevitable offspring of connivers like Franklin Roosevelt and Richard Nixon, who stole the people’s gold and betrayed the nation’s good-as-gold dollar…

There is no turning back. They must now continue to print money until the system crashes. It is the endgame of their folly.

REAL MONEY FOR FREE PEOPLE is a fast-paced review of why the Founding Fathers, to assure a free and prosperous America, built the new republic on a solid monetary foundation of gold and silver.  Learn how later politicians, those of lesser character, have abandoned that foresight by handing America’s future and prosperity over to self-serving bankers and money manipulators.

In this book, Jim Clark pulls back the curtain to reveal what the mainstream media conceals:  how the unsustainable and reckless policies of the Federal Reserve are destroying the dollar and your savings.

More importantly, it tells you exactly why gold and silver – the world’s most treasured and time-tested forms of money – are your key to protecting your wealth and profiting in the years ahead!

NOW AVAILABLE FOR THE FIRST TIME ON AMAZON.COM!  Click Here!

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They’re even wrong about being wrong about inflation!

What a bunch we have running fiscal policy in our country.  Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has distinguished herself for being wrong about inflation and virtually everything else.  And President Biden, well there’s no need to describe his abject confusion anymore.  Since everyone except a few shameless toadies in the media can see it, that would be beating a dead horse.

But their public positions are both utterly incoherent and incompatible.  When fiscal policy is this contradictory, it is time to seek refuge in gold and silver!

Yellen’s cluelessness and apologies for not understanding inflation are the stuff of legend.  But there is more, so much more…

Her support for a wealth tax, a tax not on income but on property people own, a tax on unrealized capital gains that would even require people to sell family businesses to pay, would have Karl Marx dance a commie jig!   

Equally destructive was her support for the administration’s crazy desire to have banks report people’s every transaction of $600 or more.  Imagine how utterly mentally vacant she must be to not have envisaged how much strangling bureaucracy that would have created.  Inconceivable!

Her failure to have the Treasury issue long-dated bonds before the Fed began raising rates is just one more component of our debt disaster.  Stanley Druckenmiller calls this “the worst mistake in the history of the Treasury.”

Then there is her assertion that the US can afford two wars at once.  “Absolutely!” she says.  That was eight months ago when the national debt was $33.56 trillion.  Today it is $34.68 trillion.  Up well over a trillion dollars in eight months!  

As for Biden, just as he wanders, squats, and mutters aimlessly at photo shoots, shadowed by handlers trying to cover for him, he bats about for something to say about inflation until he comes up with something his handlers prepared for him.  Bill Bonner describes him similarly: “Biden, the man, is just a cut-out… a place-holder. We’ve never heard an original thought pass his lips, nor an insight worth remembering. Instead, his pensée is just much-rehearsed blah-blah, sticking with whatever talking points his handlers suggest.”

So, what has his people had him saying about inflation?  Greed, of course.  

But greed has always been with us.  If greedy corporations are responsible for inflation, if they have the power to unilaterally raise prices, why wasn’t inflation out of control before Biden?  (Note that Washington never blames inflation on government greed!  It never points to all the money it shovels to its cronies and its favored interest groups.  It is never, ever about their greed).  

But in any case, Biden and Yellen are not even able to keep their stories straight!  The other day on CNBC Yellen contradicted Biden’s attribution of inflation to corporate greed.  “I think that inflation is about supply and demand,” she said.

Well, of course, all prices are about supply and demand.  When the government prints trillions of dollars out of thin air and distributes them to its friends, they increases demand.  Same amount of goods and services in the economy, but suddenly some people have a lot more printed money with which they buy things.  It’s like an auction:  they are bidding prices higher and higher. 

The cluelessness is not limited to just Biden and Yellen.  It is systemic in the administration and, frankly, in both parties and throughout Washington and the governing classes.  Take for example the cluelessness of Jared Bernstein, the president’s chief economic advisor, about how monetary policy works.  See for yourself:

The ship of state is being run by the intellectually deficient.  It is a ship of fools.  They are incapable of steering us out of a currency storm.  They will destroy the dollar and leave your prosperity wrecked upon the reefs.

The need to own gold is growing more critical by the day. Because something will happen!

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What are the major forces driving gold prices up?

We spotlight four of them:

WAR

It is our view that the mainstream media ignores or underplays the significance of all of the forces destroying our currency and prosperity.  But it seems most clueless about the way war destroys both.  However, our hands-on experience goes back a long way.  We remember the Vietnam War and the role it played in ending the gold-backed dollar, just as we remember the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the revolution in Iran, and the fire they lit under gold prices.

So, we are not willing to turn a blind eye to war drums beating today.  We note that the situation in Ukraine is escalating with the attack on Sevastopol, Crimea.  Russia blames the US and promises to retaliate.  The widening of the Mideast war to include Lebanon is another fuse that appears about to be lit.

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DE-DOLLARIZATION

 The move away from the dollar and to gold is very real and a key driver of higher gold prices.  It can only accelerate.  Note for example that a Russian court has approved the seizure of hundreds of billions of dollars of assets from Western banks, a response in kind to the theft of Russian assets by the sanction regimes.  It goes without saying that this makes dollar-holders around the world very nervous indeed and heightens gold’s allure as an asset whose value is not subject to the whims of some issuing government.

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INFLATION

Inflation teaches everyone that eventually made-up government money loses value.  The highest US inflation in more than 4o years is beginning to drive that lesson home.  Average weekly earnings have risen over the last 3 ½ years, but rising prices have undone any advantage, as the average real (constant dollar) income of working families has fallen $2,300.  

Some get it already, but eventually, almost everyone will realize that this is not because of cosmic rays or the greed of corporations, but because the money itself is being managed specifically to lose purchasing power.  Then what can today be called a slow diversification by some Americans into gold and silver will become a stampede.

DEBT

All inflations are the result of dishonest governments spending money they do not have and running up debts that they cannot repay.

Even the Congressional Budget Office, which tries its best to downplay the real debt debacle, expects the budget deficit to skyrocket, from $1.9trillion this year to $2.8 trillion by 2034.  

As for the national debt itself, it will hit $35 trillion in a few weeks, and $37 trillion by the end of this year.  In fact, on our current path, the debt will reach a stratospheric $60 trillion at the end of the ten-year budget window, according to David Stockman.  And that, he adds, is with the happy face the CBO is putting on its projections:

Even that depends upon the latest CBO iteration of Rosy Scenario, which envisions no recession ever again, just 2% inflation as far as the eye can see and real interest rates of barely 1%. And that’s to say nothing of the trillions in phony spending cuts and out-year tax increases that are built into the CBO baseline but which Congress will never actually allow to materialize.

David Stockman

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So, there you have the four biggest drivers of higher gold prices now and in the foreseeable future:  war, de-dollarization, inflation, and debt.  All four are hopelessly intertwined, each powering the others.

Other less visible developments will add to the fuel-propelling gold higher, little-noticed financial annoyances like the war on cash and major destructive forces like the unstoppable spread of state socialism.

Don’t wait any long to protect yourself, your family, and your wealth with gold and silver.

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If it is so strong, why does it buy less and less?

Headline, the Wall Street Journal, June 4, 2024:   The Dollar Is at Its Strongest Since the 1980s. Can It Last?

Sorry, but it’s flapdoodle.  Gobbledygook.  Gibberish.  Bafflegab.

Or to put it in more serious terms, it’s Newspeak.

George Orwell coined that term in his uncannily prescient novel 1984.  Newspeak is a language of simplified grammar and limited vocabulary designed to narrow the range of critical thinking.

The WSJ provides a caption to a photo in its “strong dollar” story: “The U.S. dollar has defied analysts’ expectations and appreciated again this year relative to a basket of other currencies.”

It should have said “The U.S. dollar depreciated again this year relative to a basket of groceries.”  

The WSJ can get away with calling it a strong dollar because they are a financial newspaper.  And it is true that if you are importing Mercedes, the exchange value of the dollar matters.  Chances are if you are importing foreign goods, or exporting US goods, you are very much aware of currency differentials and that you are hedging them when you need.  

But for the sake of clear communication, the term “strong dollar” should go in the deleted file.  Especially since most of us at any given time aren’t importing Mercedes.  

The financial press gets away with it as a sort of faux sophistication: “Our readers know what we mean!”

Some do.  But the real damage is done when the rest of the financially clueless media pick up on it.  So, the rest of then repeat ad nauseum on talk shows and general newscasts that the dollar is strong.  The people who hear that pass it on in conversation at work or to their neighbors.  

But even the financial press should be careful not to sound like toadies of the government.  After all, they don’t say Tesla was “strong” today or Ford was “weak.”  They say those stock prices are up or down, higher or lower.

To call the dollar strong is wildly misleading.  The dollar can only be said to be strong when compared to other currencies that are constantly losing real value.  The WSJ story came hard on the heels of Mexico electing some hard leftist president.  Her father was a communist and it is not clear where she differs from Karl Marx.  Because people like her destroy wealth and ruin currencies, the Mexican peso immediately fell, down as we write about 9 percent.  A peso down would mean the dollar, comparatively speaking, is marginally higher. But because Mexico elects a socialist (more trouble on our southern border!) the dollar is strong? Don’t kid yourself!

If currencies were ships, and Mexico’s ship was sinking at a nine percent rate and the US ship was sinking at a 3 or 4 or 5 percent rate, would you say the US ship is seaworthy?

The dollar isn’t strong at all.   It is weak.  Extraordinarily weak. 

That is because the function of a currency is to allow people to purchase things.  With that in mind, here is a 10-year chart of the US dollar’s purchasing power:

It doesn’t look particularly “strong,” does it?

Nevertheless, they say, “the dollar is at its strongest since the 1980s.”  When it bought a heck of a lot more than it does today.

So, when you hear the media tell you the dollar is strong, you’d better compare it to something real like the price of gold.

Those who do that are thinking for themselves despite the media’s Newspeak.  And they are buying gold.

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Here is just a short list of the major – some might say existential – threats we Americans are facing.  

They all have the same cause.  It’s not hard to figure out.  It‘s not because of the alignment of Jupiter and Mars.  It’s not because of subversion by space aliens.  

They are all caused by Washington and our growing left-wing national ethos.

All of them.

Here’s a rundown.

Our lifespans appear to be growing shorter.  “The numbers are shocking.”

Harvard School of Public Health, April 13, 2023 – U.S. life expectancy has declined to 76.4 years, the shortest it’s been in nearly two decades, according to December data from the CDC….

[Dean Michelle Williams] noted that younger people in America are dying at higher rates than their counterparts in other high-income countries and that the U.S. also has among the highest maternal and infant mortality rates among upper-income countries.

American IQs are falling.  “The first time ever.”

The New York Post, May 3, 2024 – A report from 2023 revealed the depressing reality — that the average intelligence test score fell from 100 to 98, a dismal, two-point decline after a previously uninterrupted 30-point rise that began in 1905.

American public schools are a national disgrace.  “In public education, we reward mediocrity and discourage excellence.”

The Discovery Institute, July 11. 2023 – Detroit Public Schools [are ranked] the worst performing of all 26 large city districts, with just 5 percent of their eighth-grade students rated proficient in reading and only 3 percent in math. What is surprising is the Detroit Public Schools Community District rated 99 percent of Detroit’s teachers as “highly effective” or “effective,”

Teacher[s] cannot be fired for poor performance. Consequently, evaluations have little or no meaning. Not only can teachers not be fired, but incompetent teachers will make more money next year as they gain another year of seniority and an automatic raise.

The American Dollar Is Worth Less Each Year – “Inflation hits 20 percent under Biden.”  

The Hill, May 15, 2024 – Inflation under President Biden hit a cumulative 20 percent. The dollar’s value has plummeted under his watch. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also confirmed that the consumer price index is resurgent and growing faster than average wages. Combined with weak GDP growth, this data shows the U.S. economy is reentering stagflation.

You can’t personally do much about most of these problems.  Crowded hospital waiting rooms and strained facilities can be your problem in an emergency.   You can be victimized by falling IQs and failing schools if underqualified candidates are made airline mechanics, air traffic controllers, or are given a host of other jobs.

And you can’t possibly do much about America’s economic destruction.  Millennials are expected to be the first generation to earn less than their parents.  Two of three middle-class respondents say their income is falling behind the cost of living.

But you can do something – and do it at once! – about the collapse of the US dollar’s purchasing power.

It’s like emergency medical workers performing triage:  They sort out and prioritize the injured.  What must they immediately treat?  What comes first?

In the case of these existential crises, the first and more urgent problem that can be addressed immediately is to protect yourself from ongoing currency failure.  You can insulate yourselves from the criminal mismanagement of the dollar, its quantity and quality, by investing in gold and silver.  Both have records of superior performance as money that goes back thousands of years.

Speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange precious metals professional.  He can help you achieve the protection you need in the days ahead.  

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It’s a purchasing power calamity!

Brace yourself!  Another huge wave of inflation is approaching!  The purchasing power of your savings is about to get swamped once again.  

So far the purchasing power of the US dollar has lost about 20 percent of its value during the Biden presidency.  But the Biden presidency is not over yet!  Brace yourself for more Biden inflation and brace your savings with gold and silver.

The gold and silver markets are saying another wave of inflation is about to hit!

Here’s what is going on:

Wholesale prices are running hot.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported recently that the Producer Price Index accelerated to its highest level in a year.  Producer prices are a leading indicator of coming consumer prices because producers pass along their higher costs.  Stated differently, today’s wholesale prices are tomorrow’s consumer prices.  

Rising commodity prices mean higher consumer prices, too.  

Copper is one of the leaders in rising commodity prices, but others include coffee and chocolate, coal, natural gas, soybeans, wheat, coal, milk, orange juice, and butter.

Reporting that the Commodity Research Bureau index just hit its highest level in 13 years, the Committee to Unleash Prosperity remarks that “anyone who thinks we have turned the corner on Bidenflation – and we know that includes at least half the economist in Washington – should have their head examined.”

Get ready for another wave of Biden inflation and for the purchasing power of your savings to fall even more.  

Don’t get caught.  Make sure to protect yourself with gold and silver.  See us now!

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Suppose a hundred years ago some far-sighted benefactor, someone a few generations back, wanted to leave some wealth for their descendants – including you.  Would you be better off if they left you $10,000 cash in bills or $10,000 in gold?

A hundred years ago American money was gold. Americans commonly carried and conducted commerce in $20 gold pieces.  They were the coins of the realm.  But if you thought carrying them around – especially in great quantities – was inconvenient, you could use paper money.  A US $20 note issued by the Treasury was just a claim check or a warehouse receipt for gold.  If you wanted to, you could walk into any bank or go to the Treasury and exchange that paper $20 note for real gold.  No questions asked.

So your benefactor would have had a choice.  Which would you have wanted then to leave, paper or gold?

You probably don’t have to think about it too hard.  The US paper dollar has lost about 95 percent of its purchasing power since 1924.  

Someone naïve argued about that with us once.  “That’s impossible,” he said.  But figure it out for yourself.  Inflation officially reduced the dollar’s purchasing power by 3.4 percent last year.  It reduced it by 6.5 percent in 2022. And so on, year in and year out.

Here’s a shortcut.  Consumer prices are up about 20 percent since Biden was sworn in.  That means today’s dollar only retains 80 percent of the purchasing power it had in January 2021.

Add in more than a few years of year-after-year inflation along the way, and soon you will find that the loss of purchasing power really adds up!

If a thief broke into your bank account and stole 3.4 percent of it last year and 6.5 percent of it the year before and has been stealing from it every year of your lifetime, you might be upset.  You might call the authorities.  But there is no point in calling the authorities on what is happening to the dollar because it is the authorities who are doing it!

The $20 gold piece contained just a little less than an ounce of gold, at exactly .9675 ounces. Based on a recent gold price of $2,350, just the gold content of a $20 gold piece would be $2,274 ($2,350 x .9675 = $2,274).

So the price of gold has increased close to 113 times ($20 x 89 = 2260)!  Think about that in percentage terms.  Your gold has increased by 11,300 percent!  That’s an average of 113 percent a year!

(The story is even better than that because, thanks to their rarity, desirability, and for other reasons, investors and collectors prize those beautiful U.S. gold coins beyond just their gold content.  Ask your Republic Monetary Exchange gold and silver professional about this.)

As for the paper money?  Well, it lost most of its purchasing power.  That is the common fate of unbacked paper money throughout time.

So by now, even if you had never thought about our question before, you will have doubtlessly concluded that you would have wanted your would-be benefactor a hundred years ago to leave you real gold instead of paper money.  

Our story says something about real money and wealth preservation in this day and age. 

That’s only part of the story, that honest precious metal currencies hold their value.  So with the clear interest that the people have in a reliable form of money that holds its value, why do governments hate gold and silver money?  Why is it that the more dishonest and corrupt they are, the quicker they turn to printed or digitally printed money?

That, as they say, is the rest of the story.  We’ll write more about that one of these days, but if you’d like to cut to the chase and get the answer to that and your other questions about wealth preservation, speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange precious metals advisor today!

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The headline on Yahoo! Finance reads, “Living on Edge: Nearly 90% of Retirees Worried Inflation Will Eat Away Savings.”

The story reports that a third of retired Americans are worried that they haven’t saved enough.  No surprise there.  89 percent describe themselves as deeply concerned about the erosion of their purchasing power by inflation.  As well they should be. You can not reply on a dollar-dependent retirement.

Add to that a crisis of confidence over the future of Social Security.  44 percent of non-retired Americans are afraid that Social Security will run out.  

Will it run out?  It already has run out!  The money you and millions of Americans paid into Social Security over your lifetime has been spent.  In its place, the politicians left an IOU.  

Great.  A government that can’t even pay its on-the-books visible debt of almost $35 trillion is whistling past the graveyard if it is pretending that it can pay its off-the-book hidden debts like Social Security.  Those hidden liabilities, conservatively estimated, come in at about $215 trillion – more than 6 times more than the already unpayable visible debt.

That is why we say don’t even think about a dollar-denominated retirement!

Consumer prices are up 20 percent – at least – since Biden became president.  We say at least because except for ever-changing statistical modeling price gimmickry, the inflation rate would be much, much higher.  John Williams at ShadowStats.com continues to track the inflation rate on the same statistical basis that prevailed before sketchy “hedonic” adjustments were figured in.  On that basis, the real inflation rate is 8 percent, which certainly tracks much closer to the real-world experience of families today.   An 8 percent inflation rate doubles the cost of consumer goods in just 9 years.   Try to maintain a retirement budget with that going on.

Let us illustrate the point one more way.  Between December 2019 and March 2024, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says the CPI increased by 21.5 percent.  How much has the price of a Big Mac gone up in the same period?

87.7 percent.

If we have made the point clear that one should not even thing about trying to survive a dollar-dependent retirement, we recommend you make an appointment with a Republic Monetary Exchange gold and silver professional to discuss a plan to prepare for the monetary crisis ahead with the world’s most enduring, most prized, and most desirable forms of money: gold and silver.

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It’s not something that people generally want to talk about – widespread civil chaos, lawlessness, and social collapse.  

But it goes hand in hand with the failure of the monetary system.  And it doesn’t take a Nostradamus to see the sign of something like that on the horizon.

Just the other day we noticed that hedge-funder Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, is noticing the same things.  Dalio told the Financial Times that he sees a 35 to 40 percent chance we incur a civil war. 

“We are now on the brink,” he said.  

The publishers’ description of the book The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future reveals that the battle plans for the next civil war have already been drawn up. “Not by novelists, but by colonels.”

In times of chaos, the governing authorities will do anything to keep themselves in power and to expand their power. Under cover of calamity, governments do all kinds of unthinkable things and invoke unimaginable tyrannical powers.  They will target your wealth, bank and retirement accounts, and your property.  

But this discussion provides a good opportunity to reiterate that your core position in both gold and silver should consist of real metals in your possession.

Ron Paul believes that the developing economic crisis, the ending of the dollar’s global reserve status, unpayable debt, and the Fed printing money to cover the Washington scoundrel’s spending will be the triggering event for what many expect is coming.

“This will result in massive public unrest potentially resulting in violence, the rise of authoritarian movements on the left and right, and increasing authoritarianism,” says Dr. Paul.

Providing for yourself and your family with gold and silver in a period of lawlessness and economic chaos is essential.  A Republic Monetary Exchange precious metal expert can help you review and structure your portfolio for the fraying of social order.

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Sorry, too late.

You just can’t turn a $24 trillion economy over to someone a clueless as Joe Biden and expect things to go well.

How many examples do you need?  It was just last week the President claimed that inflation was 9 percent when he took office, but he got it on the run.

Not even close!

The big Biden lie was too much even for in-the-bag media outlets like CNN and the Washington Post which had to set the record straight.  To wit:

Inflation was 1.4 percent when Biden took office.  It raced to a 43-year high of 9.1 percent in a year and a half.

You just can’t entrust a $27 trillion economy to someone like Biden and expect a financial crisis to be averted.

A couple more examples?

Okay:

Biden wants to drive people out of internal combustion engines and into electric vehicles.  But at the same time, as analyst Michael Shedlock puts it, “Biden wants EVs so badly that he will quadruple tariffs on them.”  That makes a lot of sense.   The same kind of sense that in a housing affordability crisis, Biden slapped tariffs on Canadian lumber.  So, are we surprised that lumber prices have risen 32 percent? 

You just can’t turn a $27 trillion economy to someone like Biden and expect a financial crisis to be averted.

You’ve probably seen this video of Jared Bernstein, the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors.  If you haven’t, please watch it and share it with everyone you know.  Bernstein is utterly confused about how US monetary policy works.   He is Biden’s chief economic advisor.

If the blind lead the blind both shall fall in a ditch.

You just can’t turn a $27 trillion economy to someone like Biden and his advisors and expect a financial crisis to be averted.

You cannot trust a monetary system run by these clueless people.  Gold doesn’t need a Chairman of Economic Advisors.  Its value is intrinsic and enduring.

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Ron Paul says, “Massive public unrest… violence… authoritarianism!”

Make sure you have plenty of gold and silver, because it’s not going to be pretty!

No one has a better track record than former Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul when it comes to foreseeing the results of government interventions.  Whether it is foreign policy like the Iraq war and the other regime change calamities, or economic like the housing bubble and inflation.

Now Dr. Paul is warning about the next economic crisis.  

“Disappointingly, but not surprisingly, Congress was too preoccupied spending billions more on military aid for foreign countries and banning TikTok to pay attention to the looming bankruptcy of the two largest federal entitlement programs,” says Dr. Paul.  “Many in Congress no doubt believe they can ignore the impending bankruptcy of Social Security and Medicare because they can count on the Federal Reserve to do the ‘dirty work’ of cutting real benefits and raising taxes. This result can be produced via the hidden, and regressive, ‘inflation tax.’”

Both the Social Security and Medicare funds covering hospital expenses will begin running red ink in 2035 and 2036, according to fund trustees.

Dr. Paul says that even though interest on the debt is now the third largest item in the federal budget, behind Social Security and Medicare and ahead of military spending, few in Congress are serious about cutting welfare or warfare. They believe the Fed will cover things over by printing money.  

The Federal Reserve’s purchase of federal debt will result in price inflation, says Paul.

It will also encourage more government spending by reinforcing the uniparty delusion that, as former Vice President Dick Cheney said, “deficits don’t matter.” The Federal Reserve’s inflationary policies artificially lower the interest rates, which are the price of money. The artificially low interest rates distort the signals sent to investors and entrepreneurs, leading to malinvestment. This creates bubbles resulting in illusionary prosperity. Eventually, economic reality will catch up with the Fed-created illusions and the bubbles will burst, causing an economic downturn.

The next economic crisis will likely either be caused by or result in a rejection of the dollar’s world reserve currency status. Congress will be forced to make drastic cuts in spending while the Fed will be enabled to monetize the debt. This will result in massive public unrest potentially resulting in violence, the rise of authoritarian movements on the left and right, and increasing authoritarianism.

-Ron Paul

During his long tenure in office, Ron Paul was the foremost monetary and gold authority on Capitol Hill.  “Those who truly want a monetary system free from political interference should join the movement to restore government’s constitutional limits and separate money and state.”

Until the Constitution is back on top, own gold and silver!

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Something is beginning to bubble in the silver market!

The year isn’t even half over and silver is already up more than 15 percent.  And yet it is still unbelievably inexpensive!  

But first, there is more going on in the silver market than just the insanity of Bidenomics.  More than Washington’s unpayable $34.6 trillion national debt.  There’s more than just the global dollar standard beginning to fray.

There’s all of that.  It’s all rocket fuel for the next big silver move.  But there are also the supply/demand fundamentals for silver.  They are equally explosive!

The totals from 2023 are in. Industrial demand for silver is setting records.  Here are a couple of numbers that grabbed our attention.  

Industrial demand for silver rose 11 percent in 2023 to a new record high.  At the same time, overall silver supplies are down, including the biggest supply component, mine production.  

You might easily have predicted that silver for photovoltaic applications (solar cells) would be higher.  But would you have guessed that photovoltaic demand would jump an incredible 64 percent?  In just one year?

China figures heavily in the PV sector, and indeed total industrial silver demand from China climber 44 percent in 2023.

Earlier this year we cited one analyst who described silver as “stupidly cheap!”  The rising silver price confirms that he’s right.       

Silver is still way below its all-time highs.  Silver was $50 an ounce in 1980. That was 44 years ago.  Are there any other major industrial commodities that are 40 percent below their price of 44 years ago?  Don’t kid yourself! 

Silver reached highs of about $50 in both 2011 and 2012.

Our point is that silver today is more than 40 percent below its old highs last set a dozen years ago.  And there is one thing you need to know about the silver market.  When it takes off, it really takes off and even outperforms gold itself! 

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So now the Federal Reserve has had to backpedal on its presumed interest rate cut this year.  That’s due to “a lack of further progress” on inflation says the new policy announcement.

The Deep State Money Manipulators are in one hell of a fix!  Again.

If they cut rates and loosen money, prices will keep climbing.  If they don’t cut rates, the economy could begin to stall as the decline in GDP suggests.

Wall Street knows that the stock market is driven by the creation of money and credit by the Fed, so the players are obsessed with the game of tea-leaf reading and “dot plots” that are supposed to be indications of what the Fed will do with rates at its next meeting and the one after that and the one after that…  They are so good for nothing, they make us laugh!

As recently as March the conventional wisdom was that the Fed would treat Wall Street to three interest rate cuts this year.  But what can it do when inflation is in rebound mode and the rest of the world, especially China, wants gold?

So here’s how the Fed hopes to walk the knife edge without falling off.  On the one hand, it intends to forego the rate cuts it has been dangling in front of the markets.  But on the other hand, beginning in June the Fed is actually going to ease back on “Quantitative Tightening,” its attempt to roll back some of the most frenzied money printing in US history.  From the Fed statement:

Beginning in June, the Committee will slow the pace of decline of its securities holdings by reducing the monthly redemption cap on Treasury securities from $60 billion to $25 billion.

For perspective, from 2008 to this time in 2022, the Fed’s assets – basically the money it “printed” digitally, the money it made up to buy things – ballooned by $8 trillion.  Realizing that all that money printing would create new world indoor record inflation, the Fed has been trying to undo some of it while it still can.  They set out a long-term schedule for tightening, but now have announced they intend to back off.  This means they want to loosen money and credit, but they are afraid that doing so with interest rates will be all too transparent, spurring faster price increases.  So, they’re going for the sleight-of-hand rate cut.

At the same time, Chairman Powell sent a clear signal the Fed intends to keep a close watch on the employment numbers.  “The employment goal now comes back into focus. So we are focusing on it,” said Powell.  That’s Fedspeak for “don’t forget this is an election year!”  A weak labor market would be very bad for President Biden and you know our assumption:  the Fed will heavily tilt policy to help Biden win reelection.

Monetary policy resembles an old-fashioned pinball machine as it bounces from bumper to bumper.  The Fed bounces from inflation to employment, from easing to tightening.  All along the way it essentially admits that it doesn’t know what it is doing.

There is no way out.  High rates are taking their toll.  The cost of funding US debt is soaring.  US manufacturing is in contraction, as is employment.  But prices keep climbing.  Crude oil is up by double-digits since the first of the year.  Gas is up more than 20 percent.  

“There is a lack of further progress” on inflation.  That’s not us.  That’s the Fed’s official statement.

Now, doesn’t owning gold make all the sense in the world?

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A Former Treasury Official Says You Already Don’t!

In YOU WILL OWN NOTHING, Part I, we shared a video of a Canadian man trying to withdraw a few thousand dollars from his bank account.  The bank wanted a document of some sort to show what he was going to do with his money.

There is more of this sort of thing going around than most people suspect.  It is not just happening at the level of local banks.  A former US Treasury official suggests that you may have already lost ownership of your retirement and investment accounts on a national level.  You will own nothing!

Meanwhile, the US government is making clear to the rest of the world that their dollar holdings are only theirs when Washington says they can have them.

Locally.  Nationally.  Internationally.  Title to assets and control of monetary resources is under assault.  You don’t have to be Carnac the Magnificent to see where this is headed.

On the international front, Congress didn’t just pass a bill to give away $95 billion in foreign aid money we don’t have, it also included a provision that will allow Washington to steal billions of dollars owned by Russia.  Bill Bonner says that the measure is the equivalent of if France, in response to the US invasion of Iraq (remember the Weapons of Mass Destruction that didn’t exist?) had seized the bank accounts of Americans in Paris.

This is what is meant by the weaponization of the US dollar.  It is why US dollar owners around the world are growing wary of the dollar.  They fear correctly that they will own nothing!  

That fear is driving a move to more trustworthy alternatives.  It explains the move by foreign central banks to own more gold. Gold is the most trustworthy money in the world. It depends on no one’s promise.  Gold is its promise!

The US is undermining its own currency.  Washington is shooting itself and you in the foot.  That is because the value of the dollar has long been buttressed by its international reserve status.  Pull out the support system, and everything will cost you even more.

What about your ownership of your investment and retirement accounts?  Paul Craig Roberts says, “you may have already lost ownership of your banking, pension, and investment accounts.”  

Roberts was an assistant secretary of the US Treasury in the Reagan administration and an associate editor of the Wall Street Journal.  He explains:

Your “ownership” has been reduced to permission to use your assets until the financial intermediary holding them gets into financial trouble. At that moment, they cease to be your property and become the property of the creditors of the intermediary that holds your accounts, whether it be Merrill Lynch, Schwab, Wells Fargo, TIAA, or whoever. Your dispossession was done quietly over many years by regulatory agencies. This is what Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum means when he tells you that “you will own nothing.” You already don’t.

So, there you have it.  Faith is collapsing in the property rights the people must have in their financial assets.  Internationally.  Nationally.  Locally.  You’ll own nothing… unless you own gold.

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The only money you own is gold and silver in your personal possession!

You better watch this video.  Especially if you think you own what is in your bank account.

Ownership is the ability to call upon and dispose of assets as you desire or as agreed upon.  When you deposit your money into your bank account do you think you still own it?

Better watch this video from Canada…

Apparently you can’t even withdraw your own money from a bank in Canada without being thoroughly interrogated. How is it any of their business what you do with your money? pic.twitter.com/qU0Ktubq9k

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) April 15, 2024

During the collapse of major banks last year – Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, First Republic Bank, and others – clients reported personally intrusive inquiries and difficulties in making bank withdrawals.  It is a problem that we expect will only grow worse.

Gold is the most liquid financial asset in the world.  It is not dependent on counterparties, fund managers, bank managers, or Fed officials.  It is not susceptible to being frozen by bank holidays or by institutional bankruptcies.  

But this only applies to physical gold and silver you have in your possession.  It does not apply to “paper gold” or gold substitutes.  To learn more about the safety of gold, speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange precious metals professional today!

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Gold is going through the roof because the already unpayable US debt is, too!

After all, if there is no hope for US debt at $34 trillion today, how about when it reaches $141 trillion in 2054?  And that is where the Congressional Budget Office says we are headed!

$141 trillion is a lot of money!  How does a national government even begin to pay the interest on a debt that big?  You know the answer:  money printing!

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was both candid and shameless about it just a few years ago:  “The US government has a technology, called a printing press, that allows it to produce as many dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost.”  

Look, from 2024 to 2054 the annual deficits will average 6.7 percent of GDP.  That is almost double their average over the last half-century!

By 2054 the deficit will hit 8.5 percent of GDP.

Says the CBO, apparent master of understatement, “Such large and growing debt would have significant economic and financial consequences.”

Among its other effects, it would slow economic growth, drive up interest payments to foreign holders of U.S. debt, heighten the risk of a fiscal crisis, increase the likelihood of other adverse outcomes, and make the nation’s fiscal position more vulnerable to an increase in interest rates.

When we want to print something, we have to buy inkjets, make sure there is plenty of paper in the printer and hit Control P.  Today the Fed’s legalized money printing is mostly digital.  It’s so easy now!  They don’t even have to cut down all those trees for paper like they used to do!  They must be environmentally friendly!

Make sure you have plenty of US gold coins, Maple Leafs, Krugerrands, other favorite coins, and gold bars!  And don’t forget the silver – bars and coins!  You’ll need it!

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Here’s a story we have told before, but with gold hitting so many all-time highs lately, it is one that deserves to be told again.

It begins with a serious economic crisis that is fast approaching.  Here’s a snippet from Fred Hickey (The High Tech Strategist) on April 2 that highlights just how fast things are spinning out of control.  In just the last 20 days, he writes, US government debt increased by $168 billion.  That is equal to the entire US deficit in 2002!  

This unrelenting gusher of red ink ensures that something like a “Crack-Up Boom” is fast approaching today.  

That is the name the great free-market economist Ludwig von Mises coined to describe the last stage of a currency breakdown:  The Crack-Up Boom.  In German, it is “Katastrophenhausse,” a catastrophe boom.

Because we think our friends and clients will need to know very soon, from his work Human Action, here is Mises’ description of the breakdown of a currency:

The characteristic mark of this phenomenon is that the increase in the quantity of money causes a fall in the demand for money…. The monetary system breaks down; all transactions in the money concerned cease; a panic makes its purchasing power vanish altogether. People return either to barter or to the use of another kind of money.

The course of a progressing inflation is this: At the beginning the inflow of additional money makes the prices of some commodities and services rise; other prices rise later. The price rise affects the various commodities and services, as has been shown, at different dates and to a different extent.

This first stage of the inflationary process may last for many years. While it lasts, the prices of many goods and services are not yet adjusted to the altered money relation. There are still people in the country who have not yet become aware of the fact that they are confronted with a price revolution which will finally result in a considerable rise of all prices, although the extent of this rise will not be the same in the various commodities and services. These people still believe that prices one day will drop. Waiting for this day, they restrict their purchases and concomitantly increase their cash holdings. As long as such ideas are still held by public opinion, it is not yet too late for the government to abandon its inflationary policy.

But then finally the masses wake up. They become suddenly aware of the fact that inflation is a deliberate policy and will go on endlessly. A breakdown occurs. The crack-up boom appears. Everybody is anxious to swap his money against “real” goods, no matter whether he needs them or not, no matter how much money he has to pay for them. Within a very short time, within a few weeks or even days, the things which were used as money are no longer used as media of exchange. They become scrap paper. Nobody wants to give away anything against them.

It was this that happened with the Continental currency in America in 1781, with the French mandats territoriaux in 1796, and with the German Mark in 1923. It will happen again whenever the same conditions appear. If a thing has to be used as a medium of exchange, public opinion must not believe that the quantity of this thing will increase beyond all bounds. Inflation is a policy that cannot last.

“Inflation is a policy that cannot last.”  

That is why gold has broken out for new higher ground at the same time Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has admitted once again that the Fed doesn’t really know what it is doing.

China, once America’s leading creditor, is fleeing US government bonds like they have the plague.  It is doing so at the same time that the governments need to borrow more money than ever.  

The Crack-Up Boom is nearing.   Do you have all the gold and silver you need?

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Washington is squirting red ink out from every pore.  The budget year is half over, finishing with a deficit of more than a trillion dollars.  

This will end badly.

We have been sounding an alarm in these posts about US debt and the fear that it would get away from us.  A few recent examples:

Another Ominous U.S. Financial Update

Time to Take a Look at the U.S. Fiscal Situation!

Uncle Sam’s Credit Score Keeps Falling

We believe the price of gold is confirming that Washington’s debt is every bit as bad as we have said.

Our opinions don’t have the force of law, but to us the US national debt is a matter of criminal negligence.  Washington has been indifferent to the debt as it grew, and now it is too late:  the national debt has gotten away from us!

From the Wall Street Journal: 

The Congressional Budget Office reported Monday that the federal budget deficit for the first six months of fiscal 2024, ending in March, was $1.064 trillion. Enjoy it, because you’ll eventually pay for it in higher taxes.

The problem isn’t a shortage of tax revenue, which rose 7% from a year earlier to $2.19 trillion. Individual income-tax and payroll-tax revenue both rose 6%, while corporate income taxes rose 35%. Is a 7% increase what President Biden would call a “fair share” increase? Probably not, because he wants to raise taxes even higher if he’s re-elected.

Interest on the national debt is now a trillion dollars a year.  That will go up as older debt, money borrowed at lower rates, matures and is refinanced at today’s and tomorrow’s higher rates.  

If Washington has to borrow more and more and more to keep itself afloat, it will have to attract borrowers at much higher interest rates, especially now with the world already beginning to express skepticism about the US dollar.  Jaime Dimon at JPMorgan Chase is talking about rates rising to 8 percent.  That’s nothing, but financing today’s US debt at 8 percent would cost $2.75 trillion a year,

There is no solution to the debt overhang.  Except legal counterfeiting.  The debt can only be paid by printing money.

It is a critical situation, one best met by owning gold and silver.  A US debt crisis and the soaring interest rates that will accompany it will crash banks, financial markets, real estate, small businesses, and consumers around the world.

As we wrote about the worsening debt situation last year, “Gold and silver are the only monetary assets that are not someone else’s liability. They are not dependent on someone else’s solvency, promises to perform, or honesty. Their value does not depend on the endorsement, propriety, or honesty of any State or institution. They are not like empty government promises.  They have no counterparty risk, no risk of rule changes, nonpayment, default, or bankruptcy by individuals, companies, financial exchanges, institutions, and banks—quite apart from being insulated from the risks of the Fed’s fiat dollar as well.”

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Lew Rockwell Explains it All!

“The power to create money is the most ominous power ever bestowed on any human being. This power is rightly criminalized when it is exercised by private individuals, and even today, everyone knows why counterfeiting is wrong and knavish. Far fewer are aware of the role of the federal government, the Fed, and the fiat dollar in making possible the largest counterfeiting operation in human history, which is called the world dollar standard. Fewer still understand the connection between this officially sanctioned criminality and the business cycle, the rise and collapse of the stock market, and the continued erosion of the value of the dollar.”

Those are the words of one of the most important champions of sound money in this age.  

Lew Rockwell has been extraordinarily effective in the fight, on the front lines of the battle, and always in key positions.  Lew was a former editorial assistant to the great free-market economist Ludwig von Mises, and later chief of staff for Congressman Ron Paul who was for many years the most knowledgeable monetary expert and gold standard supporter on Capitol Hill.  In addition, Lew is the founder and chairman of the Mises Institute, executor for the estate of Murray N. Rothbard, and editor of www.LewRockwell.com.  He is the author of Against the State and Against the Left.

Quite a resume. 

We want to share a few words from Lew’s recent piece on LewRockwell.com called Bring Back Gold!:

I would venture to guess that a sizeable percentage of even educated adults would be astounded to discover that the Federal Reserve does more than manage the nation’s money accounts, that, in fact, its main activity consists in actually creating money that distorts production and creates inflation and the business cycle. In fact, I would go further to suggest that many educated adults believe that gold continues to serve as the ultimate backing of our monetary system, and would be astonished to discover that our money is backed by nothing but more of itself.

We have our work cut out for us, to be sure, mainly at the educational level. We must continue to state the obvious at every opportunity, that the fiat system is exactly what it is, a system of paper money backed by nothing of real value. We must continue to point out that because of this, our economic system is not depression proof, but rather highly vulnerable to complete meltdown. We must continue to draw attention to the only long-term solution: a complete separation of money and state based on the commodity that the market has always chosen as money, namely, gold…

What has been true for hundreds of years remains true today. The clearest path to the restoration of economic health is the free market undergirded by a sound monetary system…. 

We want to tip our hat to Lew Rockwell, a great spokesman for both real money and free people.  As Lew says, “Let’s do everything we can to end the Fed and restore the real gold standard!”

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As Zimbabwe’s latest attempt at a currency collapses – this would be the sixth one since 2008 – the country’s leaders are watching it fall and hinting that the next Zimbabwe dollar will be gold-backed.

Riiiight!  Of course it will!!!!

Bloomberg News:

The country’s local dollar has weakened against the US dollar every day in 2024, sending the price of a single loaf of bread from Z$6,105 to Z$19,357 in a mere 11 weeks. Such a loss of purchasing power has historically pushed the central to intervene bank and arrest the slide, but this time, there has been no action….

President Emmerson Mnangagwa announced this February his government will introduce a “structured currency.” Then, Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube said it may be backed by gold and the central bank postponed its monetary-policy statement to give final touches to the plan.

There are no gold-backed government currencies anywhere in the world.  None.  It is a symptom of the dishonesty of our age.  While it is inevitable that people – given enough government currency debauchment – will start to trade in gold among themselves around government’s monetary systems – there is zero chance that Zimbabwe will introduce a gold-backed currency.  

Of course, Zimbabwe is a stunning case history for the brazenness of its monetary crimes, its policies are only different in degree and not in kind from those of the US.  And for the same reasons that economist Peter Earle with the American Institute for Economic Research identified in the above epigram:  inflation is a tool for giving favors to cronies and buying votes, and because the people don’t understand it, governments and politicians can blame it on outside forces.

Bloomberg:

Even when people want to use it, the Zimbabwe dollar can hardly buy anything. The highest denomination, the Z$100 note, must be carried in large wads to carry out the smallest of transactions….

Zimbabwe suspended publishing inflation figures after July 2008, when the measure reached an annual 231,162,000%.

If you want to read the story of the currency inflation that made Zimbabwe the world’s laughingstock, read my book REAL MONEY FOR FREE PEOPLE!  The American Gold Story.   It’s an important guide to wealth protection and profit in these troubled days.  Stop by our office, we’ll give you a complimentary copy.

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It’s time again to update our friends and clients on the financial situation of the US government.  

We are neither surprised nor pleased with what we have to report.  While no one likes to be the bearer of bad news, despite what the lapdog press tells you the situation is growing grim.

We have already shared the headline story with you, that US debt is growing by a trillion dollars every one hundred days.  

The deficit, just for February alone, was $298 billion, up $36 billion, or 14 percent over February 2023.

Meanwhile, as we write, a $1.2 trillion 1,012-page omnibus spending bill covering an estimated 70% of discretionary government spending, is before the House of Representatives.

Michael Shedlock, MishTalk, calls it a Republican humiliation:

• Republicans said no more omnibus massive bills: Failure
• Republicans demanded budget cutbacks: Failure
• Republicans said they would restore order: Failure
• Republicans said they would pass bills without Democrats: Failure
• Republicans said no more continuing resolutions: 3 Failures

It is a legislative horror story, loaded with leftist pork, woke spending, and transfers overseas of wealth from the American people.  It is simply impossible to describe in a short space what an outrage it is.  Here are a few details reported by Jesse Waters:

• $850k for a gay senior home
• $15 million to pay college tuition for Egyptians.
• $400k for a gay activist group to teach elementary kids about being trans
• $500k for a DEI zoo
• $400k for a group to give clothes to teens to help them hide their gender.  That includes giving 13-year-old children chest binders, tuck equipment, and “counseling” without parental consent.

Go here to see some additional details.

As if that is not enough, the new fiscal year, FY2025, is only about six months away, with a White House budget proposal that increases federal spending to $7.3 trillion, a jump for 4.7 percent over the current year.

Q.  Does Washington think money grows on trees?

A.  Yes.

The Congressional Budget Office projections that the debt will reach $50 trillion by 2033 and $60 trillion in 2034.  Former Reagan budget Director David Stockman is more realistic.  He expects the Washington UniParty to drive the debt to $100 trillion in the early 2040s. 

Other indicators:

The cost of auto insurance is skyrocketing, up 21 percent last year.  The Wall Street Journal reports that credit card interest rates are near record highs.  Delinquencies are rising.

At the same time, home affordability has collapsed to the lowest level on record.

One other dirty little secret is the situation at the Federal Reserve.  After the private chefs and limousines, the palatial offices and private jet travel, an incredibly bloated staff of bureaucrats, and the money it throws at the economics profession to keep them all endorsing its fiat monetary fraud, the Fed is supposed to send to the Treasury the money it makes in its monetary operations.  How is it doing on that front?  Not well.  As economist Judy Shelton wrote recently, it is actually helping to widen the deficit:

The Fed’s main tool for raising its target interest range is to increase the “administered rates” it pays to commercial banks and money-market mutual funds on the roughly $4 trillion they hold in cash accounts at the Fed. Last year the Fed’s interest expense amounted to an unprecedented $281 billion—exceeding its $164 billion in interest income—with the difference paid out of funds that would otherwise be remitted to the U.S. Treasury.

To appreciate the fiscal effect of the Fed’s operating losses: The Biden administration’s budget for fiscal 2023 projected $516 billion in Federal Reserve “earnings” to be included as receipts for the 2023-32 period.

How America’s financial situation has been allowed to deteriorate so fast is a story for future historians.  But the story for today is how can so few people see how fast it is falling apart.  

For now, buy gold and silver.  And hold your breath.  Things are moving very fast.

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Some are leaving the dollar.  You might want to think about it, too!

Charles de Gaulle, the former Premier of France, called the global dollar system America’s “exorbitant privilege.”  Or maybe he didn’t.  Maybe with was a French finance minister.

But if de Gaulle hadn’t said it himself, he could have because he understood that it would end up fleecing the rest of the world.  In fact, de Gaulle sent his navy to pick up the French gold that was being stored by the United States.

The dollar’s exorbitant privilege of being the reserve currency of the world made Americans a little better off in some ways than they might have been.  It created an artificial demand for dollars, allowing the US treasury to borrow more cheaply than it otherwise could have done.

But such privileges don’t last more than a couple of centuries.   And now our privilege is expiring in half the usual lifespan.  Why?  Because the Deep State has weaponized the dollar.  Instead of being a neutral unit of accounting and trade, like gold, the US freezes, appropriates, and confiscates dollars belonging to other countries.  It prohibits them from using, spending, or disposing of dollars they own.  

To the extent foreign nations hold dollars, they are vulnerable to the whims of Uncle Sam and its often senseless foreign policy.  And they know it.  A “substantial percentage” of foreign central banks surveyed by Invesco reported concerns about the way the US and its minions froze almost half of Russia’s $650 billion gold and foreign exchange reserves.   

No country wants to keep wealth in a currency that can deprive it of its use unilaterally.  Like the dollar.  Imagine agreeing to keep money in a bank or brokerage account that can suddenly just shut you out.

Now Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell is being cagey with one congressman, Alex Mooney, R-W.Va., who is asking specific questions about foreign nations’ repatriating their gold and how much gold the Fed is holding.

We’ll let HeadlineUSA tell the story:

The Fed chairman told Mooney that the Federal Reserve does not own gold but holds it as a custodian for other entities—a fact the congressman presumably already knew. Powell also said that the Fed serves as a custodian for a “small portion” of the U.S. government’s gold, telling Mooney that “any questions you may have about such gold are best directed to the Treasury Department.” Rep. Mooney’s questions were not about the Treasury’s gold [emphasis added].

To Chris Powell, secretary-treasurer of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee, the Fed chairman’s responses to a sitting member of Congress are not only unacceptable but also telling.

“The refusal of the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board even to acknowledge, much less reply to, the questions of a member of Congress about the repatriation of gold from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York confirms that something really big is going on with gold internationally,” Powell said in an email to Headline USA.

President Biden recently announced the imposition of an additional 500 financial sanctions on Russia.  Altogether the US has some 4,000 sanctions in place against Russia.  Russia has developed workarounds for most of them.  It is clear that sanctions have hastened the development of alternatives to the US-controlled, dollar-based SWIFT account settlement system.  The effect of the American sanctions being wielded so promiscuously makes it appear that the global dollar standard is not so much failing as it is committing suicide.  

Washington is killing American prosperity.  It long ago killed the good-as-gold US dollar.  It is doing untold harm on many other fronts in addition to now destroying the dollar reserve standard.  It has declared foolish wars on the internal combustion engine, free trade, individual meritocracy, financial privacy and much more.  

Our political classes have the Midas touch in reverse.  They are turning everything they touch into toxic waste.  They will bring the dollar down and impoverish the American people.

We are in the business of helping people like you protect your wealth and yourself from their madness. Let us help.

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“You know the Founders wrote the Constitution “to bind down the government from mischief,” said Jefferson.  Then they added the Bill of Rights, and you know what those ten amendments say:  The government shall not… shall not… shall not… shall not… all the way up to the marvelous Tenth Amendment that said if we forgot anything, you can’t do that either!”

– John F. McManus, speaking at the Ron Paul Presidential Campaign 
“Rally for the Republic,” 2008.

It is with great personal sadness that we note the passing of John F. “Jack” McManus on March 4.

Jack was a friend of more than 50 years.  He was also a great patriot, a mentor, a client, and a personal inspiration. 

Upon graduating from Holy Cross with a degree in physics, Jack served his country proudly as an officer in the US Marine Corps.  In 1966 Jack took a position with the John Birch Society as a teacher, a writer, and a speaker.  He rose to become the organization’s President from 1991 – 2015 and President Emeritus thereafter.

The John Birch Society is one of the most misunderstood political advocacy groups in modern American history.  It is sufficient here to say that when you see American sovereignty subordinated to multinational organizations, and promiscuous and unconstitutional American regime change wars around the world that cost the American people their future well-being, you are seeing something the JBS fought valiantly against for many years.  When you note the ascendency of a few powerful corporate entities exercising undue influence over Washington and seeking always to suppress the free speech rights of Americans, you are noting the very crony capitalism that the JBS warned of.  When you watch the Federal Reserve’s long-term destruction of the US dollar and the bailout again and again of the influential money center banks at the people’s expense, you should remember that the JBS stood firmly against all of this corruption and abuse long before others began to awaken.

Jack McManus was at the forefront of all of these battles.  He was the right man for the job.  He was a tireless champion of American freedom and prosperity, and he was – as they say in the area around  Boston where he lived – “wicked smart.”

I last talked with Jack some months back when his wife of 65 years, Mary, passed away. It is a reminder to me and perhaps to others not to allow the busy activities of daily life to prevent us from being in more regular contact with those we love.  

In addition to our long friendship, I will always be grateful to Jack for his supporting me in devotion to the traditional Roman Catholic faith we shared.  At the same time, Jack often said, when a fellow patriot preceded him in death… “America has lost one of its sons”.  I echo his sentiments of him.

Please pray for the repose of the soul of John F. McManus, who entered into eternity this week.  

St. Ambrose once wrote:

“We have loved him in this life; let us not abandon him in death but rather by our prayers, let us conduct him to the bliss of eternal glory.” 

O Gentlest Heart of Jesus, ever present in the Most Blessed Sacrament, ever consumed with burning love for the poor captive souls in Purgatory, have mercy upon the soul of Thy servant. 

Be not severe in Thy judgment but let some drops of Thy precious Blood fall upon our beloved departed and do Thou O merciful Saviour send Thy angels to conduct the soul of Thy servant to a place of refreshment, light, and peace.

May the angels lead you into Paradise.

May the martyrs receive thee at your coming and take you to the holy city.

May the choirs of angels receive you and may you have rest everlasting. 

V. Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord.

R. And let perpetual light shine upon him.

V. May he rest in peace.

R. Amen.

V. May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

R. Amen.

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Global debt is soaring!  Up $15 trillion last year!

Uh oh!  Unpayable debt leads to money printing.  That’s just the government playbook.

 The Institute of International Finance, a global association of financial institutions, tracks and analyzes global capital flows and debt trends.  It reports that “over $15 trillion of additional debt was added to the global debt mountain just last year.  That brings total global debt to a new record high of $313 trillion.”

Let us remember J.P. Morgan’s words, that gold is money. Everything else is credit. 

All of this debt, not to mention other undisclosed leverage like derivatives that can come topping down in a crisis, represents a lot of precarious credit resting on a tiny amount of real liquidity, gold.

Economist Daniel Lacalle calls this a “ticking time bomb for the global economy.”  He writes:

Bloated public debt is a burden on the economy, making productivity stall, raising taxes, and crowding out financing for the private sector. With each passing year, the global debt figure climbs higher, the burdens grow heavier, and the risks loom larger…

Citizens are led to believe that lower growth, declining real wages, and persistent inflation are external factors that have nothing to do with governments, but this is incorrect. Deficit spending is printing money, and it erodes the purchasing power of the currency while destroying the opportunities for the private sector to invest. The entire burden of higher taxes and inflation falls on the middle class and small businesses.

Lacalle concludes, “The end of the United States dollar will not come from external threats but from the irresponsible actions of its own government. Cheap debt is always exceedingly expensive.”

At the risk of repeating ourselves, they can’t print gold.  

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The following graphic is from Visual Capitalist.  It displays the top 11 countries by gold reserves as of September 2023, based on data from Central Banks, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Gold Council.  It says, “In 2023, amid uncertainty about US interest rates and continued geopolitical risks, the metal once again demonstrated its importance by hitting a new record in December.”

These are the conventionally accepted numbers.  We want to note our reservations.  First of all, the Federal Reserve strenuously resists auditing.  Similarly, the US government’s gold holdings, such as those at Fort Knox, go unaudited.  We find that especially peculiar since by law every public company in the US must submit financial statements each year audited by certified auditors.

Shouldn’t the same be required of the government?  If it is sauce for the goose, it should be sauce for the gander.

Secondly, the is a widespread belief among knowledgeable people that China goes to a great deal of trouble to conceal its gold holdings.  For more on that see our post from the past year CHINA KEEPS BUYING GOLD!

We think the reason China and other nations are turning to gold in the waning dollar economy are also good enough reasons for individuals to do the same!

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And then stake out a long-term gold and silver position!

“Any way you look at it, interest costs on the national debt will soon be at an all-time high!” 

So says the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to addressing America’s long-term fiscal challenges.  They provide the following illustrations of the problem Washington has created.

Other major items in the 2023 national budget were easily bypassed by rising interest expenditures which totaled $659 billion.

As outsized as that interest expense is, the Congressional Budget Office says that this year, 2024, it will rocket 32 percent higher, to $870 billion. 

Interest expense will soon be the single largest US budget item – even bigger than Social Security, Medicare, or the war budget.

The Peterson report on rising federal interest expenses concludes with this warning: “By any measure, interest costs as part of the federal budget are at an all-time high, and trending even higher in the years ahead.  Securing our nation’s fiscal and economic future will mean getting these interest costs under control.

We simply do not believe that the federal budget will be reined in.  Period.  We have no way of knowing exactly what Washington will do other than by looking at the propensities of the governing classes today.  We are sorry to report that we see little but fiscal and monetary irresponsibility at every turn.  There simply is no meaningful coalition for fiscal rectitude in Washington at all.

Under the circumstances, informed people will want to protect themselves now with a substantial position in physical gold and silver.  It is the prudent thing to do at the end of an empire. 

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PICK ONE:  Central bank purchases, stagflation, or a deep global recession!

You could see gold surge by 50 percent according to Aakash Doshi, Citi’s North America head of commodities research.  He and other Citi analysts wrote in a recent note to clients that among the pathways to $3,000, gold would be a ramp-up in de-dollarization by central banks.

That could lead to a US dollar crisis.

And that is not the only avenue to much higher gold prices in the next 12 – 18 months, he said.  

Reporting on an interview with Doshi, CNBC says another trigger that could drive gold to $3,000 would be a “deep global recession” that could spur the U.S. Federal Reserves to cut rates rapidly.

“That means the brakes have been cut, not to 3 percent, but to 1 percent or lower – that will take us to $3,000,” Doshi said.  

More from CNBC’s report:

Stagflation — an increasing inflation rate, a slowing economic growth and rising unemployment — could be another trigger, though Doshi said there’s a “very low probability” of such a scenario….

These three potential triggers aside, Citi maintains that their base case for bullion is $2,150 in the second half of 2024, and the price of gold to average a little over Doshi added.

A widely followed J.P. Morgan analyst, Marko Kolanovic, and his team have also raised the prospect of a return to 1970s-style stagflation.  “There are many similarities to the current times,” they write.  “We already had one wave of inflation, and questions started to appear whether a second wave can be avoided if policies and geopolitical developments stay on this course.” 

We think Citi’s calls are fine as far as they go, but that they don’t go nearly far enough.  Other forces on the immediate horizon include a move by Washington to create a central bank digital social credit surveillance currency, a widening of America’s many wars, serious civic strife over the election and its manipulation, an implosion of China’s economy, and banks tipping over the brink here in the US.

The ducks are lining up for much higher gold prices.  If you are not sufficiently prepared, come see us at Republic Monetary Exchange.

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It was not quite a year ago that banks started tumbling down.  You remember the names:  Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and First Republic, all American banks.  But it wasn’t just an American problem as the presence of Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank on the troubled list attested.

Rising interest rates were tanking the banks’ holdings of US Treasury debt instruments and mortgage-backed securities.  Many Americans – although not most – made withdrawals from their banks.  It was only prudent.  Why keep your money parked in troubled institutions?  It’s your money.  Protect it!

Even though the Fed’s balance sheet is upside down (that’s another story!), the central bank rode to the rescue with another Big Bank Bailout Bonanza.  Don’t be surprised.  The Fed was created by the Big Banks in the first place to do Bailout Bonanza whenever Big Banks needed them.

The Fed said, “Even though as a matter of law, accounts at Big Banks are only insured to $250,000, we will create a new program known by the acronym BTFP to create the impression that the Fed will bail out all the banks – or at least the Big Banks that are in on the Bailout Bonanza!”

So, bank depositors started moving money to Big Banks that would be the beneficiaries of the Bonanza Bailout.  That was not good for small banks, but they didn’t create the Fed, so tough!

None of this fixed anything.  It was just designed to forestall the en masse withdrawals of deposits from banks (and into gold, by the way).

Now the other shoe is dropping, one we have been warning about:  Commercial Real Estate.  The delinquency rate on office building mortgages is climbing at a fast clip, putting the screws to private leaders and banks alike. 

New York Community Bancorp is in such bad shape that its picture belongs on the back of milk cartons.  

WolfStreet.com:

A lot of these CRE loans are coming due this year and next year, and need to be refinanced, or extended, but interest rates have jumped, and many of these office properties are dealing with the structural collapse of demand for office space, so refinancing is going to be tough, and extending-and-pretending is going to be tough, and banks are going to have to deal with losses.

The problem is structural and won’t just vanish when the mood changes or rates drop.

Appearing on CBS 60 Minutes recently, Fed Chairman Powell said there will be losses, but he thinks they are manageable (of course he does!):

You know, we’re working with them. This is something we’ve been aware of for, you know, a long time, and we’re working with them to make sure that they have the resources and a plan to work their way through the expected losses.

Right.  Where do the resources come from to manage their losses?

They come from you.  It’s not magic.  They devalue the people’s money.  It is what they have always done.  That’s how the Big Bank Bailout Bonanza works!

Last year, people wanting to move assets out of banks and into gold and silver were waiting for us when we opened the doors in the mornings.   Our lobby was crowded from early to late.  

This year we think you would be wise to beat the rush!  Speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange specialist today.

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Their financial situation is worse than alarming!

“Twitching like a finger
On the trigger of a gun.”

-Paul Simon

Uh oh!  China is making things feel twitchy!

We are always on the alert for the most likely trigger of the coming economic calamity.  The thing that ends the made-up, manipulated money system and remonetizes honest money.  There are many candidates today.  War.  US banks.  Bidenomics.  A debt crisis.  A Fed screwup.  

But if we had to guess, it looks like China.

We are very concerned that this could be the one.  The block in the Jenga tower that makes the whole thing tumble.  The straw…

There is generally a trigger, a single event that sets the whole house of cards collapsing.  It was the failure of Creditanstalt 1931, Austria’s largest bank, that was the first major bank collapse of the Great Depression.

Today it looks like China.  

For some background, please review our recent article China’s Coming Collapse.

Kyle Bass notes that Chinese real estate developers Evergrande and Country Garden together have $500 billion in debt.  

Think about that.  Two real estate companies, both in default, a half trillion dollars in debt!  “Every single property developer in China, listed property developer, is in default today,” says Bass.  “This is just like the US financial crisis on steroids.  They have three and a half times more banking leverage than we did going into the [2008] crisis.”

“China has 20 plates spinning and all the plates are crashing right now!” 

This looks like the trigger event.  It looks far too big to contain.  It has the prospect of bringing the global economy to its knees!

The seriousness of the situation has China scrambling for gold.  The people in China seem to know it and are trying to prepare themselves.  Here’s one Japanese newspaper’s headline and lead:  

China gold purchases soar 30% on economic anxiety

Chinese gold purchases rose 30% in 2023, as the country’s central bank bought the commodity to replace its dollar holdings amid tensions with the U.S. and individual investors sought a haven for their assets as the economy stumbled….

As China acquired more gold, the country cut its holdings of U.S. Treasurys to around $782 billion as of November, about 10% less than the previous year, the U.S. Treasury Department reports. The figure is roughly $230 billion less than China’s holdings immediately after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

China is a hot mess.  There’s not much they can do about the popping of their real estate bubble.  But they want to land on their feet.  They want to have some real enduring assets on the other side of the mess.  That’s a good idea for individual American investors right now, too.  Especially since this looks very much like the trigger!

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First the NY Times!  Now Chase Bank?

If you aren’t panicking about the US debt picture, you may not be paying attention!

Now even the most establishment of establishment figures are starting to show signs of panic.  Including the most establishment banker of America’s most establishment bank.

Jamie Dimon is the chairman and chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the US.  They like him a lot.  He’s been in that role since 2005, a job that has made him a billionaire.  

Maybe Dimon isn’t panicked, but he sure as heck is worried that we are at the brink. “It is a cliff. We see the cliff. It’s about 10 years out.”

The US national debt is currently more than $34 trillion.  Throughout its history, US debt has averaged 30 percent of total US economic output. Today, it is 123 percent, more than four times the average. It is more than the entire annual productivity of China, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy combined. 

Dimon says the US is going to face “a rebellion” around the world when our debt trajectory turns straight up. 

Dimon underestimates the debt-to-GDP ratio at 100 percent.  It is 123% of GDP which means the cliff is much closer than he says.  And while everyone is trying to act like there is no panic, the panic is beginning to spread even at central banks around the world. 

Dimon is not the only establishment voice to express concern about uncontrollable US debt.  As we reported recently, even some at the reliably big government, big spending New York Times are getting religion.  And that tells us that the crisis is about to boil over.

From the lead of a recent Times piece: “For years, many economists believed the country’s debt was not a problem. Interest rates were low, which held down debt payments. Inflation was also low, which suggested the debt wasn’t hampering the economy.

“But times have changed, and federal deficits now look scarier.”

We prefer “unpayable,” but “scary” is a good word for the debt as well.  After all, the national debt amounts to $102,400 per person.  How can retirees, fast-food workers, and the American middle class manage that kind of debt burden?  They can’t.

Here’s the “Debt out the Wazoo” chart from WolfStreet.com:

Call our debt spiral a death spiral.  That’s what Nassim Taleb calls it.  We don’t accuse Taleb, the author of The Black Swan, of being an establishment today.  Far from it.  

Here’s his take: 

So long as you have Congress keep extending the debt limit and doing deals because they’re afraid of the consequences of doing the right thing, that’s the political structure of the political system, eventually you’re going to have a debt spiral.

A debt spiral is like a death spiral.

Nassim Taleb

What do you do when the issuer of your currency is in a death spiral?  You protect yourself with gold and silver as people around the world have learned to do for thousands of years.

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Forget what the Fed chairman says.  Forget the Consumer Price Index and the Producer Price Index.

Pay no attention to core inflation and the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index.  Pay no attention to any of Washington’s price indices.  

Instead, trust your own living experience.  Is your cost of living going up or down?  Does feeding your family cost more or less?

Here’s just one example among millions of what is actually happening.  Take a look!

Skrinkflation strikes again, this time at the Raceway. Being this case of shrinkflation occurred at a sporting event, does this border on Funflation? Funflation is a recent economic trend that is hitting concert and sporting eventgoers hard. Have you noticed the face value of a concert ticket recently? The cost to attend a ballgame? Remember when taking the family to a baseball game was somewhat affordable?

Forget the Super Bowl, as it gets closer and closer to only being affordable by either the super-wealthy or the super fiscally irresponsible. A single ticket for next week’s Super Bowl is averaging close to $10,000. This is up almost 70% from last year’s big game! The crazy part? It will still be sold out!

Shrinkflation and Funflation are merely tactics by greedy corporations to fight the pressure inflation is putting on their profits. Instead of raising the price and risking consumer backlash, companies are hiding this behind inferior products, smaller sizes, and lower quantities.

It’s everywhere.

Remember how when you were a teenager you could easily attend a concert with a little money saved up? It sure is unfortunate, but today’s teenager has to (have their parents) pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars to go and see their favorite act.

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See for yourself, it’s US against them!

Having ignored the Constitution and subverted our once good-as-gold dollar, the American elites hope to complete their betrayal with Soviet-style policies (for you, not for themselves, of course).  

That includes eliminating freedoms (yours that is), gas stoves (yours that is), air travel (yours that is), parental rights (yours that is), and more.

They have benefitted from the era of debt-driven government growth, unprecedented money printing, and government power grab.  They are better off because of it.  And they know it.  

The rest of us have not similarly benefited.  And we know it.  

None of this is just made-up argumentation.  These are not mere assertions.  Thanks to survey research by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, we can show you the real numbers, what the American elite believe, and what they support.

You won’t like it.  They don’t care.

First, who are the elite whose views we are about to share?

The American Elite is defined as people having at least one post-graduate degree, earning at least $150,000 annually, and living in high-population-density areas (more than 10,000 people per square mile in their zip code).  They represent one percent of the population.  

To zoom in a little closer, the survey also includes a sub-sample of elites it calls “Ivy League Graduates.”  About half of the “elites” attended these schools. 

Their views are then compared to those of all voters.

Now if you have a qualifying income and went to an Ivy League school, it doesn’t mean that you are a leftist, socialist, woke, or delusional.  But many of your peers certainly are.

But they are doing well, and they know it.

We recommend you view the entire eye-opening report  Them vs. U.S.  But here are just more charts of their findings, about your freedom and rationing.

Those described in this survey as elites cluster in places that have an outsized impact on public policy:  in government, media, and academia.  They run the show.  They run monetary policy.  As we pointed out recently, for every Republican economist at the Fed there are 10 Democrat economists.  

That is why you have to protect yourself from them.  

Speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange gold and silver specialist and make sure you are prepared for more government control and more monetary shenanigans run by the elite.

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Once again Republic Monetary Exchange’s Jim Clark joins Robert Kiyosaki’s panel of experts to complete the four-part series that Robert calls “the most important show ever!”

The Rich Dad Poor Dad radio show panelists – all veteran gold professionals – have been called together to explore the significance of gold as a timeless form of currency and a safeguard against economic turbulence. 

They discuss gold’s unique properties, its historical role as a reliable medium of exchange, and the dangers of relying on fiat currency. The conversation also addresses central banks’ gold acquisitions, the possibility of government gold confiscation reminiscent of the 1933 U.S. event, and the diverse views on its probability and consequences. 

The episodes offer a comprehensive analysis of gold’s value in the face of contemporary financial challenges and its importance in investment portfolios for wealth preservation.

Here are all 4 episodes that make up the series…

Part 1 of 4:

Part 2 of 4:

Part 3 of 4:

Part 4 of 4:

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In our effort to make sure our friends and clients are always well-informed, we work our way through mountains of information.  We were surprised and happy a few days ago to see that The Market Oracle was quoting our friend and colleague Charles Goyette from his New York Times bestseller The Dollar Meltdown:

The Market Oracle:  Consider that fifteen years ago Charles Goyette author of “The Dollar Meltdown” (2009, Penguin Group) came to a conclusion with respect to the repayment of our national debt when, by comparison, it was only $11.9 trillion.  He states then: “The gross federal debt is 80 per cent of GDP.  That’s the highest it’s been since the 1950s.  But that percentage of debt was much more manageable then because fifty years ago America was a creditor nation, now America is a debtor nation. Fifty years ago, it maintained a trade surplus, now our trade deficit, having grown for a generation, is immense.  Fifty years ago, America was the world’s manufacturing hegemon, now America’s manufacturing base is being lost to the world.  Fifty years ago, Americans were savers. Now the Chinese have shown us what it means to defer consumption and save.”

He continues: “America’s debt at any level – $12 trillion, $59 trillion, or $99.3 trillion – won’t be paid.  They will simply be rolled over again and again until America’s creditors are unwilling to loan any longer. To recapitulate, inflation in the United States is a result of the Federal Reserve turning government debt into money. The Federal Reserve is central to America’s most devastating bubbles and is responsible for almost a hundred years of criminal-scale dollar destruction.  By debt monetization, government acquires money to spend without debate, legislation, or vote, by commensurately devaluing the currency held by the people.  No wonder critics say, this amounts to nothing less than taxation without representation.  In truth, the nature of the U.S. debt is so enormously understated that it amounts to accounting fraud.

Today, the US debt remains an accounting fraud.  The only difference is that today the numbers are so much bigger, and that time is running out on the US government’s fiat money Ponzi scheme.

The following chart for the fourth quarter of the last fiscal year makes our point, illustrating that the federal took in more money from borrowing than from any other revenue source.

If you believe Washington can borrow America’s way to prosperity, then there is nothing to worry about.  If you are not that naïve, you will want to own gold and silver.  Speak with a Republic Monetary Exchange precious metals specialist today to create a sensible plan to protect yourself from Washington’s mounting and unpayable debt.  

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Rich Dad Poor Dad author Robert Kiyosaki presents a four-part program that he calls “the most important” show ever.

Today we present Part 1, The Good News and Bad News about Money.  It features Jim Clark on a panel with other veteran precious metals experts including RME associate Charles Goyette.

The discussion addresses the historical context of the US dollar and explores how global economic shifts could influence personal wealth.  Robert’s guests share their knowledge and personal experiences, emphasizing the role of precious metals in safeguarding assets.

Enjoy Part 1 of this very important 4-part series.  We will post Parts 2, 3, and 4 as they are released.