I was still just a kid as the US headed into the 1992 US Presidential election, but I remember the excitement around my home town as Ross Perot entered the race as an independent candidate.

Perot was from Dallas, where I grew up. And he was one of the first tech billionaires, long before the dot-com boom.

Like Elon today, Perot knew that America was heading down a dangerous fiscal path. At the time, the US government was spending about 28% of its annual tax revenue just to pay interest on the national debt.

It wasn't because the debt was so vast. Actually back then it was just a fraction of today's debt.

The real problem was that sky-high interest rates from the 1980s (15%+) had pushed the government's borrowing costs and annual interest bill to the moon.

So Ross Perot decided to run for President under a promise to fix the deficit.

Few people understood anything about the deficit back then. So Perot used his vast fortune to buy TV time where he would explain the problem in hour-long presentations. I remember  learning things from him that I'd never even heard about before-- Treasury markets, bond yields, government accounting, mandatory spending, and more.

Perot single-handedly dragged America's deficit issue to the front page and started a national conversation; so even though Bill Clinton ultimately won the election, Perot succeeded in making deficit reduction a top priority.

It was interesting times politically. Clinton was rocked by scandals, impeached, and deeply hated by the other party... quite similar to the situation today. They didn't have social media back then, but 'talk radio' pundits raged 24/7 with the same ferocity of today's Twitter mob.

Yet even with such conflict and division, Congress and the White House managed to work it out. And over the next decade, interest costs fell from 28% of tax revenue down to 18%. And by the end of the 1990s the government was posting strong budget surpluses.

How did they do it? It wasn't rocket science or black magic. They simply took a common sense approach to spending-- they held spending increases to minimal levels, all while tax revenue soared thanks to a tech-fueled economic bonanza.

Over the ten-year period between 1991 and 2000, government expenditures only rose by 35%. Adjusted for inflation that's just 5.5% over the entire decade.

Meanwhile tax revenue nearly doubled over the same period. Poof. Problem solved. And America stormed into the 21st century with a record budget surplus, and its interest costs and national debt under control.

Could this happen today? Maybe. There are a lot of similarities. The US government currently pays roughly 22% of tax revenue just to cover the annual interest bill on the national debt, and this amount is growing rapidly. Not to mention, interest costs plus mandatory entitlements (like Social Security and Medicare) already consume 100% of tax revenue.

If they don't solve this problem, America is going to be looking at a major fiscal crisis in the coming years.

Unfortunately few people in power seem to be taking this seriously. The White House is far more focused on tariffs and trade rather than the obvious problem-- excessive spending. And when it comes to deficit reduction, their approach is to seize control of the Fed to push through interest rate cuts.

Congress, meanwhile, seems completely oblivious to the problem.

One of my major concerns is that American voters tend to oscillate from one side to another. So if the guys in power now don't solve this problem now, voters could swing hard to the Left in 2028, quite possibly to a card-carrying socialist.

There are certainly a lot of socialists emerging in American politics.

To the surprise of absolutely no one today, the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee chose to do nothing at the close of its two-day meeting.

The White House is furious about the decision; the President believes that the Fed should be slashing rates, and that the current “high” rate of interest is costing the US government hundreds of billions of dollars each year in excess interest.

(I put “high” in quotes because interest rates are still well below historic averages...)

Now, I am no fan of the Fed. Quite the opposite— the organization is a total failure.

Just consider that section 2A of the Federal Reserve Act (passed in 1913) states that the Fed is supposed to maintain a stable currency. Yet the US dollar has lost 97% of its purchasing power under the Fed’s stewardship over the past 112 years.

Personally I think it’s difficult to find another organization that has been so terrible at its core mission for so long.

Yet even with that scathing criticism in mind, it’s still not the Fed’s job to bail out the US government’s finances.

If Congress and the White House want to pay a lower interest rate on the national debt, then they can make the hard decisions to cut spending, balance the budget, and attract foreign investment by acting like responsible adults.

Unfortunately none of that seems to be in the cards.

So instead there seems to be a clear plan being hatched: Project “Hijack the Fed”.

Let’s start from the basics:

In order to fund its roughly $2 trillion annual budget deficit, the US government has to sell debt (bonds) to investors to plug its funding gap. And this responsibility falls to the Treasury Department.

Ordinarily, Treasury would sell a mix of US government bonds, ranging from ultra-short-term 28-day T-bills, to very long-term 30-year bonds.

Lately, however, the Treasury Department has been focused on selling mostly short-term bonds... simply because those rates are lower. The yield on a 12-month T-bill, for example, is just 3.86%, whereas the yield on 10-year Treasury is almost 5%, so it’s a difference of roughly 1%.

In some ways it’s sensible to take the lower rate. But it’s a risky strategy.

If interest rates suddenly rise, then the US government could wind up paying even MORE interest in the next few years, just to save 1% today.

So clearly the Treasury Department must have some confidence that rates won’t be going higher... and will probably be headed lower.

Last month Secretary Bessent even said this out loud: “What I’m going to do is, I’m going to go very short-term. . . Wait until this guy [Fed Chairman Jerome Powell] gets out, get the rates way down, and then go long-term.”

In other words, he’s going to keep selling the lower-interest short-term debt. Then, once Jerome Powell’s term as Fed Chairman ends next year, the Treasury Secretary thinks that HE will be able to “get the rates way down”, at which point he’ll start selling long-term debt to lock in lower rates.

This is a stunning admission that the Treasury Secretary (and by extension the White House) think that they will be able to steer interest rates much lower through their new Fed pick next year.

Coincidentally, Treasury Secretary Bessent also happens to be on Donald Trump’s shortlist to be the next Fed Chairman.

So let’s skip over the obvious legal and reputational issues involved in such a move.

The bigger problem is that there’s only one way for the Fed— even if Secretary Bessent becomes Chairman— to “get the rates way down”... and that is by expanding the money supply, i.e. what we often refer to as printing money.

And just as we saw during the pandemic when the Fed printed $5 trillion,

The US owes a LOT less money to China today than it did a few years ago.

As recently as three years ago, for example, China held $1.3 trillion worth of US government bonds. Today they’re down to around $750 billion.

In other words, China’s government has decided to cut back on its US dollar Treasury holdings by more than 40% over the past three years.

And at first, that might sound like a good thing— HOORAY! More independence from foreign creditors! America is better off without that Chinese money! Right?

But in reality this is a huge problem. Because it’s not just China.

* Going back to the years before Covid, roughly a third of US debt was owned by foreigner governments and foreign central banks.
* But then federal debt skyrocketed during the pandemic, and US government credibility plummeted. Even the government’s credit rating has been slashed.
* As a result, foreigners across the board began stepping back from Treasury securities.
* Today foreign ownership of US debt is less than 25%, and falling. This is a significant drop in just a few years.

Why it matters:

The US Treasury relies heavily on foreign capital to fund the federal government’s gargantuan (~$2 trillion) deficits. So if foreigners’ appetite to buy US government debt is waning— at a time when federal deficits are exploding higher— where will the Treasury Department come up with the money?

There are essentially two answers. Either (1) the Federal Reserve will “print” the money, or (2) domestic investors within the US economy will buy government bonds and fund the deficit.

But both of those options come at a significant cost.

Consequences of the Fed funding US government deficits:

* In order for the Federal Reserve to buy US government bonds (and essentially fund the government’s annual budget deficit), the Fed must first expand the money supply.
* We often refer to this as “printing money” even though it all happens electronically. The Fed calls it “quantitative easing”, or QE, but it’s all the same thing.
* The consequence of QE is inflation. Serious, serious inflation.
* Think about it— during the pandemic, the Fed’s QE created roughly $5 trillion in new money... resulting in 9% inflation.
* Creating enough money to fund federal budget deficits over the next decade could result in the Fed having to print $15+ trillion. So most likely that’s going to be a LOT of inflation.

Consequences of the US economy funding government deficits:

* American investors, i.e. banks, funds, corporate treasury departments, etc. could also buy more US government bonds in order to offset waning foreign demand.
* But this capital comes at a big opportunity cost
* Any private capital that goes in to the Treasury market means less money available to buy stocks, fund venture capital, or finance real estate mortgages
* The net result is lower stock prices, higher mortgage rates, and slower innovation.

 

Why China is first to ditch US government bonds:

* After sanctions on Russia, which included freezing their Treasury holdings, other countries got spooked — especially China.
* China probably fears becoming the next target of US financial weaponization.
* This may also be an indication that they will eventually invade Taiwan
* So China is hedging: they’re selling their US government bonds and buying literal metric tons of physical gold— driving gold prices to record highs.

The bottom line:

The shrinking foreign appetite for US debt is a glaring red flag. It signals waning confidence in US fiscal credibility and could lead to a capital squeeze at home — or nasty inflation spiral if the Fed fill...

Bitcoin today is trading at around $120,000. If you’re willing to pay double the price, i.e. $240,000, please contact me immediately. I’ll happily sell you some of mine.

Why would anyone do that? I don’t know. But that’s exactly what investors are doing when they buy shares in “Strategy,” formerly known as MicroStrategy.

The company currently holds about 580,000 Bitcoin, worth roughly $69 billion. But the market values the company at more than $124 billion. In other words, investors are paying nearly double just for the privilege of owning Bitcoin through a corporate intermediary.

Crazy, right? Yet Strategy’s Executive Chairman and co-founder Michael Saylor has managed to convince legions of investors to do just that— pay 2x the Bitcoin price.

He does so by presenting a bunch of made-up metrics to investors— terms like “Bitcoin Yield”, “Bitcoin Multiple”, “BTC $ Income”, and my personal favorite, “Bitcoin Torque”.

One of Saylor’s most clever ideas was to borrow money from investors to buy Bitcoin; the company issued billions of dollars of corporate bonds (which are supposed to be a ‘safe’ and stable asset), then used all the money to buy Bitcoin— an extremely volatile risk asset.

And this is why I think Michael Saylor should be the next Treasury Secretary— or at least be tapped to save Social Security.

I’m only half joking. Because Saylor’s idea to borrow money to buy Bitcoin might be one of the only ways to save Social Security without a serious tax hike or other financial pain.

Let me explain—

The Social Security system was built on a simple formula: workers and businesses pay taxes into the system, and those taxes fund the retirement checks to beneficiaries.

For decades, Social Security ran a surplus—more payroll tax revenue coming in than benefits going out. And that surplus was parked in a giant trust fund.

Unfortunately, though, Social Security’s trust fund was only allowed to invest in one thing: US government bonds.

The result? Pitiful returns averaging a measly 2%.

Now Social Security is running a deficit— the monthly benefits are exceeding payroll tax revenue. So the program’s administrators make up the difference by dipping into the trust fund.

The Social Security Administration officially estimates the fund will be fully depleted by 2033. And when that day comes, benefits will be automatically slashed by about 25%.

Cutting Social Security benefits would be political suicide. So the most likely solution is a major increase to the payroll tax.

But there may be another way.

What if the government were to borrow a bunch of money to start a Sovereign Wealth Fund... And that fund could invest in a diversified, real-world portfolio run by America’s many talented investment managers. Real estate. Commodities. Equities. Precious metals. Crypto. The kinds of assets that can actually grow.

This is exactly what Michael Saylor did. He borrowed heavily from the bond market to buy risk assets. Maybe the US government should do the same.

If the fund could manage, say, 9% annual returns over the past few decades— they could easily pay 6% to bond holders and pocket the extra 3%. Mathematically it works— such a return would reverse Social Security’s looming insolvency if the fund were of sufficient size.

There’s obviously risk in the plan, which is why I’m half-joking. But Social Security is in dire enough shape that all options ought to be considered.

Coincidentally, Congress is discussing setting up a Sovereign Wealth Fund this week... Though I’m not holding my breath on this, let alone any meaningful reform on Social Security.

Peter and I both believe that the inevitable outcome here is that the Federal ...

It’s “Crypto Week” on Capitol Hill with all sorts of crypto legislation on the docket— including the so-called GENIUS Act that aims to regulate stablecoins.

I’m not sure the GENIUS Act is in fact genius, but it might be a pretty clever given its potential benefit to the Treasury Department and government bond market.

On its surface, the bill aims to provide a formal regulatory framework for anyone who wants to issue stablecoins, i.e. digital assets that are typically pegged to the US dollar to maintain a “stable” value.

But beneath the surface, the GENIUS Act is a way to funnel more money into US government bonds.

I’ve written about this many times before: the US government is hopelessly addicted to irresponsible spending. Multi-trillion-dollar deficits are no longer the exception—they’re the baseline.

And these massive deficits require the Treasury Department to borrow more money from the bond market.

Problem is that some of the biggest buyers of US government debt securities— specifically foreign governments and central banks— are starting to lose their appetite to invest more money in Treasury bonds.

So Uncle Sam is feverishly trying to drum up more lenders.

Enter the GENIUS Act— which requires stablecoins to be backed by “safe” assets, like... US government bonds!

The Treasury Department is probably hoping that some of the crypto wealth tied up in Bitcoin’s latest all time highs will flow into stablecoins... and thus into the US Treasurys backing them.

But if they think this is the silver bullet to fix America’s fiscal mess, they should think again.

Unlike traditional long-term bond buyers who help lock in funding for decades, stablecoin issuers (according to the GENIUS Act) will only be able to buy the shortest term US government debt, like 90-day T-bills.

This means that the Treasury Department will face constant pressure to refinance a major chunk of its debt every few months.

We discuss this in today’s podcast— where we also answered some reader questions about stablecoins.

One reader, for example, asked if stablecoins are a good way to diversify out of the US financial system.

My answer? Not really.

Once the GENIUS Act passes, most of these stablecoins will be issued by US-based companies and regulated by US government agencies. And over time, more and more agencies will likely encroach into the stablecoin industry— the SEC, IRS, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, etc.

That means if the government wants to restrict, freeze, or confiscate your digital dollars, they won’t even need to break a sweat. It just takes a phone call and a compliance letter.

More importantly, even if the coin maintains its 1:1 dollar peg, it’s still tied to the dollar. And if the dollar loses value due to inflation—which it is and will almost certainly continue to do—then your stablecoin will depreciate right alongside it.

Bottom line— holding a stablecoin doesn’t matter if the underlying currency is unstable. You’re not really diversifying any sovereign or currency risk.

If you're looking for real diversification—something that actually hedges against the US dollar and protects your purchasing power—stablecoins aren't the answer.

Gold, productive assets, other crypto, foreign stocks and financial accounts… those are the tools for genuine financial diversification.

If you want to hear my full thoughts on the GENIUS Act, stablecoins, and the implications to the US Treasury market, listen to this short podcast here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isApDBrYwp4

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