There was a popular legend from medieval Venice about an impoverished orphan from the island of Torcello.

The boy came to Venice at a young age, found a job, and worked tirelessly and energetically-- enough to impress some of the city’s wealthy patricians.

Eventually the boy-- now a young man-- had built up enough credibility that some local noblemen entered into a commenda contract with him, i.e. a sort of proto-limited partnership. The idea was that the investors would finance a trade voyage (and stay comfortably at home in Venice), while the young man would risk life and limb on the high seas.

The investors would take 100% of the financial risk in exchange for 75% of the profit, while the orphaned entrepreneur would earn a 25% cut in exchange for risking his life.

The young man went off to sail the known world and came back with 10x his investors’ money. Ecstatic at the tremendous return on capital, the investors backed several other voyages… until eventually the young orphan boy with no prospects became one of the richest men in Venice.

No one knows if this particular story is true. But it’s emblematic of the incredible rise and peak of the Republic of Venice. 1,000+ years ago, it was truly the America of its day.

While the rest of Europe was toiling away in poverty due to the constraints of the ridiculous feudal system, Venice was like a rocket ship far ahead of its time.

Its entire society was built on economic freedom. ANYONE, from anywhere in Europe, could come to Venice, work hard, take risks, and make a fortune. It was the American dream seven centuries before there was an America.

Venice also prided itself on a strong rule of law, not to mention unparalleled political and financial stability. It became the richest place on the continent, by far, and its ducato (ducat) gold coin eventually displaced the Byzantine gold solidus as Europe’s major reserve currency.

But eventually, like most great civilizations, it peaked. Venice’s swashbuckling, risk-taking, hard-working entrepreneurial culture became complacent.

Rather than finance new trade routes and keep innovating, the great moneyed families of Venice were happy to sit at home and spend their fortunes on art and architecture. The government became clogged up with an entrenched political class that remained in elected office year after year. They became lazy, then incompetent, and then ultimately ran the place into the ground.

Meanwhile, other rising powers emerged on the geopolitical horizon-- among them, the Ottoman Empire.

In the 1300s, the Ottoman Empire came out of nowhere as a ferocious competitor, ruthlessly conquering everyone who stood in their way.  They were also shrewd at trade and commerce, and they posed a direct threat to Venice.

It was a classic historical case of a rising power against a declining power. And it seemed like war was inevitable.

And to be fair, the two countries did cross swords a number of times; history records these as the “Ottoman-Venetian Wars [note the plural]”, though realistically they were extremely limited conflicts, i.e. not full-blown total war in which both sides tried to obliterate one another.

The reason for the limited nature of the conflicts is simple: trade. Both Venice and the Ottoman Empire did a LOT of business with one another, and they both knew that destroying their adversary would be self-destructive.

So instead, they fought small, limited conflicts while continuing to engage in trade and commerce.

This is very similar to the US-China conflict that has already been going on for a number of years. We can’t even count the number of cyberattacks that China has waged on the US and US infrastructure. There will be more.

The most polished, eloquent, and articulate voice on the Left right now is no longer the greasy used-car salesman Gavin Newsom.

It’s the next mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani.

He has Obama‑level charisma and speaking ability, which is terrifying, because it means his political career won’t stop with New York City.

I watched the mayoral debate between Mamdani and former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo— of daytime Emmy fame for delivering pandemic briefings while murdering nursing homes residents with his COVID policies.

But after being cast out by his party over #MeToo allegations, this was meant to be Cuomo’s big political comeback.

It will not be.

Last night’s debate made it painfully obvious the fix is in. The moderators gave subtle advantages to Mamdani, like allowing him to respond to questions last, giving him ample time to think through his responses and hear what his opponents said.

They even joined in on the beat-down of Cuomo over not being pro-Islamic enough.

The fact that Cuomo could not name a single mosque he had visited, Mamdani said, “is why so many New Yorkers have lost faith in politics.”

Wow. It’s not the crime, the trash piling up in the streets, the homelessness, crumbling infrastructure, noise, illegal parking, or the absolute unimaginable infestation of rats that have overrun the city.

It’s because Cuomo can’t name a mosque.

Those problems, by the way, Mamdani openly admitted urgently need to be solved... including the rats. In fact he ranked New York’s rat infestation as one of the top two problems in the city (the other being noise).

Yet in almost the very next sentence, when asked how he would pitch corporations on relocating to New York City, he looked in the camera and said with a straight face, “The quality of life.”

Because nothing says quality of life like a medieval infestation of plague rats.

The debate was so absurd, I kept waiting for an announcer to declare, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday night!”

But that didn’t happen.

Instead, when asked how he’d pay for his utopia of free buses, free childcare, city-run groceries, and state-sponsored everything, Mamdani pointed to a shining beacon of fiscal competence and economic magnetism: New Jersey!

He said, if New Jersey can tax corporations more, why can’t New York City?

Because nothing says high growth, business-friendly fiscal responsibility like New Jersey.

When the discussion turned to crime, Mamdani blamed Donald Trump. But the solution is definitely not Trump sending in the National Guard. That was only a good solution when Governor Kathy Hochul did the exact same thing last year.

Insead Mamdani wants to hire a legion of social workers to stop New York’s violent criminality, and pay for everything by raising taxes. Apparently he’s completely blind to all of the people and businesses who have fled the city over high taxes, rampant crime, and... rats.

I get into all of this, and many other jaw-dropping debate moments, in today’s podcast.

And I also discuss why this doesn’t have to be America’s future.

There are actually places that are solving problems— and no, not New Jersey.

Look at Florida. It went from heavily indebted to budget surpluses in about fifteen years.

Today the state is so fiscally stable that they’ve paid down half of their debt, and now they’re talking about eliminating property taxes altogether. There’s already no state income tax in Flodia, yet the government still manages to keep crime under control, maintain functioning infrastructure, and enjoy a booming economy.

America’s problems are substantial.

Yesterday we wrote that with gold topping $4,000, it’s time to step back and look at the big picture—and the fundamentals haven’t changed.

Foreign governments and central banks hold about $10 trillion in US denominated reserves. But for years they’ve been trading this paper for gold— because it is their only realistic alternative.

Why are they searching for an alternative? Because they are losing confidence in the US government.

The debt, the political dysfunction, the weaponization of the dollar— these all make them less excited about loaning money to the US government.

And their steady buying of gold is what pushed it to these levels.

Those catalysts have not gone away, and if anything, are stronger than ever.

When a few hundred billion in demand can double the price of gold, imagine what happens if even a small portion of the remaining trillions rotate into gold.

Does 5% of dollar reserves shifting into gold translate to $10,000 gold? 20% re-allocation to $20,000 per ounce?

We don’t know exactly, but these numbers are not fantastical. There’s still enormous room for upside.

In the short term, of course, we can see plenty of noise.

Markets respond to headlines—like the new prime minister of Japan openly calling for more money-printing. Any environment like that naturally drives gold higher.

But at the same time, we’re seeing signals that a correction could be near—a stampede of new individual investors, record inflows into large gold ETFs, and a drop off in jewelry sales.

There are some classic signs of a short-term top.

But we don’t focus on short term trading. We always look at the long term big picture. And the long-term trend remains solidly intact.

So does the most important story of all right now: the much ignored mining sector.

Even after a massive run, many gold miners are still deeply undervalued relative to the long-term intrinsic value of their businesses.

One company featured in our premium investment research is up 5x in the past year. Yet even if gold fell back to $3,000, it would still be turning enough profit to trade at just four times earnings.

It’s debt-free. It pays a dividend. And it offers massive downside protection.

So while no one has a crystal ball—and we can’t tell you what happens tomorrow—the reality is that the mining, drilling, and service companies behind this bull market remain absurdly cheap.

That’s an opportunity to take seriously.

We dug into all of this in our latest podcast which you can listen to here.

https://youtu.be/96mB4tbh9Ao

And if you want to learn more about our investment research— currently available for a limited time discount— click here.

(You can find the podcast transcript here.)

On December 26, 1933, US Secretary of State Cordell Hull sat in a conference room in Montevideo, Uruguay, chain-smoking— as usual.

It was just months into Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first term as president. In the midst of the Great Depression, the new administration was trying to turn the page from America’s imperialist era and become (what FDR called) “a good neighbor” in the region.

So Roosevelt sent Cordell Hull— a tall, austere Tennessean to build relationships in Latin America.

Hull was was polite, unshakably formal, and most importantly—stone cold sober in a room full of diplomats who treated every negotiation session like a vineyard tour.

It was perhaps because Hull might have been the only delegate who wasn’t falling-down-drunk that, by the end of the conference, a series of landmark agreements had been signed— everything from women's rights to non-intervention—including the Convention on the Rights and Duties of States.

Born out of border disputes in South America, this document established the modern legal definition of statehood, with four main pillars:

* Permanent Population – A stable group of people living in the territory.
* Defined Territory – Clearly recognized borders, even if not fully settled.
* Government – An organized central political authority that exercises control.
* Capacity to Enter into Relations with Other States – The ability to engage diplomatically and sign treaties.

I found this interesting this week as the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Australia, and other countries formally recognized Palestine as a sovereign state during the UN General Assembly.

At a minimum, Palestine doesn’t meet the definition of having an effective central authority—one part of the West Bank is run by the Palestinian Authority, while the other is run by the Israeli military, and Gaza is run by Hamas— a terrorist group that openly targets civilians and uses its own people as human shields.

In the end, this recognition was just more destructive derangement from the Left.

It’s ironic that countries like Britain are so concerned about Palestine when they have already utterly destroyed themselves with immigration. So much so, that they now have to cover their mistakes by arresting people for posting online, threatening to arrest others simply for being openly Jewish, or even just looking at the wrong meme.

Despite this endless track record of failure, the Leftists in charge change nothing.

Even while holding near-total power in many countries, and dominating single-party cities and states in the US, their policies and ideas are proven failures.

Yet they still blame the other side while refusing to make a single adjustment or course correction.

And if you call them out, they won’t argue on the merits of ideas. Instead, they’ll label you a racist, a fascist, or “far-right”.

If that doesn’t work, they’ll resort to outright violence.

Today we dive into a number of these failures—from Palestine to Jimmy Kimmel to Iryna Zarutska—and come away with a conclusion.

To be frank, I’m not sure the UK and Europe are going to recover.

But America is going to get past this deep ideological divide.

America has been through worse.

Back in the early 1900s, anarchists, Bolsheviks, and socialists were blowing up buildings, assassinating politicians, and planting bombs in public squares.

You might remember the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti from history class—two anarchists convicted of murder in 1920. That wasn’t some isolated case. The left-wing violence of the era was widespread and organized.

And yet, the country pulled through.

As crazy as the world seems today,

It pays to think long-term—and to recognize major trends and opportunities before they become obvious.

Some of the greatest wins in history stem from long-term thinking. Some of the richest people on Earth, like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, had to commit to decade-long visions to accomplish their goals.

At the same time, there’s no shame in recognizing short-term, time-sensitive opportunities right in front of us. Especially in finance and investing, it’s critical to balance both views.

Long-term, we’re watching a clear trend unfold: foreign governments and central banks are losing confidence in the US government and the US dollar. They’re selling Treasuries and buying gold—driving gold prices to record highs.

Why gold? Because it fills the vacuum— no other currency is appealing to replace the US dollar.

But the price of physical gold is only part of the story.

For the last couple of years, we’ve pointed out the massive disconnect between rising gold prices and the underperformance of gold-related companies.

That gap is finally beginning to close. Gold and silver producers—especially the ones with low costs and high margins—are now seeing record revenue growth. And many of their share prices have surged 3x, 4x, and even 5x.

Yet we still believe there’s significant room to run.

This is the part of the cycle where investor capital floods in—especially institutional money that needs larger market caps. And with Q3 earnings about to reflect record-high gold prices, we expect many of these companies to report blowout quarters over the next couple months.

We think there’s still a short window—likely just a few months—where these companies remain undervalued despite strong performance. The disconnect between gold prices and gold company valuations is closing fast, but hasn’t fully closed yet.

Once the broader market catches on, we expect a surge of capital into the sector—especially from institutional investors—which could push prices much higher in a short period of time. That kind of rush often leads to a mini-bubble. And while the long-term case for these businesses remains strong, the short-term opportunity lies in getting in before that final wave of excitement hits.

In the long term, we think gold could easily go to $5,000–$10,000, driven by a global shift away from the dollar. That doesn’t mean it will be a straight line up— there will likely be pullbacks. But the long term trend is clear.

But in the short term, gold-related businesses are poised to benefit from the surge in revenue and capital inflows right now.

And that’s a short term opportunity.

We discuss this dynamic in more detail in today’s podcast.

We also cover:

* The historical parallels between today’s U.S. dollar and the fall of the Roman denarius
* Why there’s no real alternative to gold as a reserve asset in today’s geopolitical landscape
* How Congress’s dysfunction is accelerating the loss of global confidence in the dollar
* The key differences between physical gold and gold companies—and why that gap created an overlooked opportunity

You can listen here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozLLSx-TML4&lc=UgyHTIXs7-c9Ye5xdzR4AaABAg

You can also access the podcast transcript, here.

P.S. While gold has doubled in recent years, many of the companies we’ve been following in our investment research newsletter The 4th Pillar—especially miners, royalty firms, and service providers—are up 2x, 3x, even 5x just in the past few months. Their costs are steady,

You might be surprised to know that the government is facing yet another shutdown at the stroke of midnight on September 30.

A lot of people might be thinking two things: First— “again?” And second— what about the “One Big Beautiful Bill”?

The One Big Beautiful Bill, signed into law on July 4, did not, in fact, contain all the necessary resolutions to fund the government for the next fiscal year (which starts on October 1).

As a result, Congress still needs to pass 12 appropriations bills in order to avoid a shutdown at the stroke of midnight on September 30.

From what we can tell, the Trump administration seems to be pushing for spending cuts this time around, which is great. I sincerely hope they are successful, because the country desperately needs fiscal restraint.

But at this point, it’s up to Congress—and that’s far from a foregone conclusion.

The most likely scenario is they’ll just punt any real decision-making and instead pass a stopgap continuing resolution that will merely add to the deficit.

In short, America will remain on its current trajectory—which the Congressional Budget Office estimates about $25 trillion in additional deficit spending over the next ten years.

This is why so many foreign governments and central banks are aggressively working to establish some kind of alternative to the US dollar as the global reserve currency.

Most likely, they won’t be very successful—simply because nobody trusts the Chinese or the Russians. India has far too many capital controls. So does Brazil. And as large as these countries may be in combined economic power, they have completely different economic priorities. Plus they don’t even trust one other.

So the prospect of some “BRICS dollar” emerging as a serious competitor to the US dollar’s reserve status is laughable.

But there actually is a serious competitor already—and that’s gold.

The reason why is simple: no single country controls gold. There’s no supranational agency that can regulate the gold price. Gold is a free market, all about supply and demand, and it happens to be an asset nearly every central bank on the planet already owns.

This is the reason why gold has surged to an all-time high—because foreign central banks just keep buying so much of it.

And they’re doing it to reduce their exposure to the US dollar, and to reduce the hold and power the US government has over them.

We think this trend is absolutely going to continue.

And that’s why we’re still in the early days of this gold boom.

In today’s podcast, we discuss all this, as well as:

* The global sell-off of US Treasuries and the pivot by foreign central banks toward gold.
* Why foreign governments and central banks now own more gold than US Treasuries for the first time in decades.
* Historical lessons—from the Byzantine empire to Venetian gold ducats—on what happens when trust in a currency breaks down.
* How central banks are also eyeing platinum and strategic assets as alternatives to the dollar.
* Why well-managed gold and silver producers could deliver outsized returns compared to the metals themselves.
* How owning gold today is a hedge against US fiscal chaos and a way to offset the increased costs of inflation.
* Why we’re still in the early innings of a gold bull market, even with prices already at record highs.

You can listen to the full podcast here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDiueo1tfc4

Podcast transcript is available to you here.

William Martin probably knew he was in deep trouble when he boarded the plane to President Lyndon Johnson’s Texas ranch.

As Chairman of the Federal Reserve, he had just warned that the US economy was overheating—and that the boom could end in a crash.

But he probably didn’t expect the visit to end in a physical altercation, with the President of the United States literally shoving him against a wall and shouting: “Boys are dying in Vietnam, and Bill Martin doesn’t care!”

It was 1965. The Vietnam War was raging. Johnson was desperate to keep funding the war effort and his expansive “Great Society” domestic programs. He needed low interest rates to keep the borrowing cost manageable and the economy growing.

Martin refused to play ball. So Johnson resorted to raw, personal pressure. He couldn’t fire the Fed Chair, but he could humiliate him, bully him, and try to bend him to his will.

That wasn’t even the first time a US president went to war with the central bank. The tradition goes all the way back to Andrew Jackson, who practically fought to the death against the Second Bank of the United States—and even believed an assassination attempt on his life was connected to his war against the Bank.

Now, here we are again.

Like Johnson, President Trump is a big personality with a big agenda. He wants to stimulate the economy. But more importantly, he wants to bring down the federal government’s interest expense, which is $1.2 trillion this fiscal year.

And rather than physically assaulting Jerome Powell, Trump has been figuratively shoving him around on social media, hammering the Fed for keeping rates too high, too long.

He’s also been turning to the hundreds of thousands of pages of US regulatory code to find ‘cause’ to oust sitting Fed officials—and replace them with loyalists committed to the cause of lower interest rates.

I predicted this two weeks ago.

And just a week later news broke that Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook had allegedly committed mortgage fraud. Today Trump attempted to fire her.

Suddenly it makes sense why another Fed official, Adriana Kugler, resigned without notice or explanation. The White House immediately filled her seat with a trusted insider: Stephen Miran, a Trump economic advisor and vocal advocate for a weaker dollar.

I also predicted the Fed would cave quickly under this pressure.

And after Chairman Powell’s speech on Friday at Jackson Hole, that capitulation is now a fait accompli. He didn’t cut rates yet. But he opened the door to a rate cut as early as next month.

But cutting rates won’t be enough. If the goal is to bring long-term interest rates—and with them, the average cost of federal borrowing—down to 2%, the Fed is going to need Quantitative Easing.

With a lot of help from Grok, we calculated the Fed would have to create roughly $10 trillion in new money to achieve that target.

And as we’ve argued many times before, that level of monetary expansion will be very inflationary.

But inflation doesn’t always show up the same way.

For example, from 2008 to 2015, the Fed printed trillions… and yet retail price inflation remained muted. Food, rent, and gas prices didn’t spike dramatically. Instead, we saw asset price inflation—stocks, real estate, crypto, even fine art soared to record highs.

Then came 2020 to 2022. The Fed printed again—this time even faster—and we got both asset inflation and retail inflation. Grocery bills skyrocketed. Rent exploded. Insurance premiums multiplied. All while stocks and housing hit new peaks.

And if you look back to the 1970s, monetary accommodation triggered mostly retail price inflation, while stocks languished for a decade in real terms.

Few people understand how the Federal Reserve actually works— and frankly, I’m not sure the President or Treasury Secretary are among them.

That’s not an insult, just based on what they say. Let me explain.

Most people think the Fed sets “the interest rate” for everything—mortgages, car loans, 10-year yields. But that’s not how it works. The Fed only sets a very narrow rate—the overnight lending rate between banks.

Everything else, from your mortgage to the government’s long-term borrowing costs, is determined by the bond market. And as America’s debt spirals past $37 trillion, the bond market—not the Fed—is in control.

This misunderstanding matters. Because when Treasury Secretary Bessent says he’s going to “get rates down,” what he really means is printing money.

That’s the only lever left: the Federal Reserve creates money electronically and uses it to buy government bonds.

The consequence of that is inflation: more money in the system means higher prices. Sometimes it shows up in financial assets—stocks, bonds, real estate—can also surge to record highs as a result of inflation. Other times inflation hits the grocery store, your utility bill, or your insurance premiums.

Lately, it’s been both. Inflation is everywhere.

But this administration is also openly floating the idea of a sovereign wealth fund—borrowing billions (or trillions) and putting that money directly into the stock market. Intel. Nvidia. Strategic stakes in American companies.

It’s not socialism, and it’s not free markets. It’s something in between: a blending of state and corporate power. Call it National Capitalism.

If that sounds far-fetched, remember—they’re already talking about taking a stake in Intel. Why would they stop there?

This administration is full of people whose entire background is borrowing massive sums of money at low interest, pouring it into enormous projects, and pocketing the spread.

There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s what they know. That’s what they do. Trump is a very successful real estate developer who has personally borrowed billions of dollars throughout his career.

So of course when they look at the economy, their instinct is to repeat the same playbook on a national scale—borrow cheap, buy big, and hope the gap between cost and return pays for everything.

But when the government itself becomes one of the biggest stock buyers, what happens to markets? They explode higher.

And you’re going to want to own assets when that happens.

This is the subject of today’s podcast.

We dive into:

* Why the Fed’s “rate cuts” don’t control the 10-year or 30-year Treasury yields—and why the bond market is now in charge.
* How the U.S. is spending $1.2 trillion a year just on interest payments, and why refinancing old debt at today’s higher rates keeps driving costs up.
* The Fed’s true method of lowering rates: creating new money, buying bonds, and fueling asset bubbles—at the cost of more inflation.
* The absurdity of how the US banking system works.
* How every time the Fed “prints money” to bail out a crisis—9/11, 2008, the pandemic—it ends up inflating specific bubbles: housing, stocks, crypto, collectibles, and now consumer prices across the board.

And we wrap up with a quick look at Total Access—our highest level membership built around forging lasting relationships with other members in extraordinary settings. It combines world-class networking and internationalization strategies with unforgettable, once-in-a-lifetime travel experiences.

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