Category: Wealth Tips

Click to view the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sarU3BZYuOs

Legendary investor Stanley Druckenmiller reveals a critical financial warning about the banking system and why many investors may need to reconsider how much money they keep in banks before April 2026.

In this video, we break down the risks facing the financial system including unrealized bank losses, commercial real estate debt, and rising government borrowing. Learn the strategy Druckenmiller suggests to protect your savings, diversify bank deposits, and prepare for potential financial stress in the coming months.

Click to view the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iRoQ5miFBY

International Man: Whether it’s at the grocery store, the mall, restaurants, or airports—anywhere you turn—people are finding inferior goods and services at higher prices.

Living standards have taken a big step backward recently and are trending even worse.

What is really going on?

Doug Casey: People have a natural inclination to blame the producers—the butcher, the baker, and the gasoline maker—for higher prices. But that’s a huge mistake. Higher prices (barring a natural catastrophe that destroys real wealth) are 100% caused by increases in the money supply. It’s perverse that producers are blamed for price inflation while the Fed and the government are lauded for fighting inflation. The public’s perception is the exact opposite of reality.

Producers fight the effects of government currency debasement. Surprisingly, few people confront the fact that the government doesn’t create anything of real value; it doesn’t weave, spin, or sew. It only produces regulations, taxes, fiat currency, and fiat credit. These things take prices higher. Inflation of the currency, which is to say increasing the amount of purchasing media above the increase in real wealth, amounts to the State subtly stealing capital and wealth from its subjects.

But reality be damned. The average citizen sees his government not as a predator, but a protector. He’s been taught that in “our democracy,” the government is “We the People.” Producers are blamed as exploiters. The real enemy, however, is the State and its central bank, the Fed.

There are only two ways to survive: By producing and trading, or by stealing what others have produced. Currency inflation doesn’t “stimulate” the economy; it’s a fraud permeating society. It works to overturn trust and standards of morality. It’s a poison that creates a class of parasites and eats away at the middle-class citizen’s standard of living.

In a truly free market society, prices would drop constantly, and the standard of living would rise. The Fed’s target of 2% inflation is not only crazy but evil.

International Man: How does inflation erode ethical standards? You mean it leads people to cut corners, lie, cheat, or even steal as they try to maintain their living standards?

Doug Casey: Absolutely. The prime directive of all living things is: survive! That’s true whether we’re talking about governments, corporations, individuals, or amoebas. They’ll do whatever necessary to survive. In the case of individuals and corporations, survival is about producing.

Inflation is about theft—not production. It’s a subtle form of theft, like embezzlement, that’s hard to diagnose. Theft discourages production. If there’s less and less production, more and more people resort to theft in order to survive. Theft breeds more theft.

Economics is the study of how men produce and consume in order to survive. The average person may not understand much about economics, but they have an intuitive understanding of morality. When the currency loses value they sense a theft. Especially if they see the “elite”, the heads of governments and large corporations, becoming wealthy. The elite set a country’s moral tone. They’re also in a position to profit from inflation. It’s said that a fish rots from the head down; the same is true of a country.

Currency inflation leads to violence, revolution, and overturning of civil society itself.

International Man: How does inflation contribute to a more litigious society, with people increasingly looking to take money from others through the legal system?

Doug Casey: Although the average person doesn’t understand economics very well, he does understand that some people are getting rich without producing anything. In today’s US, a certain class of people have gotten rich because of inflation (theft), not production. How so? They’re wired to the government and the Fed. When fiat money is created, it goes to them first and in the largest amounts. The average guy doesn’t benefit from trillions of government spending. The “elite” and members of the Deep State, however, benefit immediately and directly from fiat currency creation.

The broad public suspects a theft is going on. They just can’t quite figure out who the thieves are. So they blame the producers. Which suits the government perfectly; they can “step in” and pretend to be the hero.

A society based less and less on production and more and more on the theft of pre-existing wealth inevitably becomes a Hobbesian warzone of all against all. The legal system is supposed to protect society from theft by offering an alternative to physical violence. However, as society is increasingly captured by non-producers, they corrupt the legal system. Millions of laws and regulations have made the US legal system a vehicle of theft and a playground for parasites.

Let me paraphrase Al Capone. “One thug with a gun can steal $100 from a store. If he’s caught, he’ll go to jail for years. But a lawyer with a pen can rob a country of millions, never get caught, and become a leading citizen.” That’s what’s going on.

The US legal and monetary systems have become corrupt. The fact that the US has almost 1.4 million practicing lawyers is a symptom of corruption. They’re used as weapons to steal from producers. The law has become so complex and degraded that its extreme costs and slowness throws sand in the gears of the economy.

International Man: What are some historical examples of inflation leading to significant social and cultural degradation, and what lessons can we learn from them?

Doug Casey: The destruction of the currency always leads to a social upset. That’s because people who produce typically hold their savings in the national currency. But if the national currency is destroyed, a huge portion of what they’ve worked for throughout their lives is also destroyed.

Inflation upsets the entire basis of civilized society. It was a major reason why Chiang Kai-shek’s regime collapsed in China after World War II. That’s a major reason why the Communists—whatever else they’ve done to China—have been reasonably competent managers of their currency.

The Weimar Republic in Germany after World War I completely destroyed the Mark, and the social upset that inflation caused led to rioting in the streets between the Nazis and the Communists throughout the 20s, followed by a Nazi victory in 1933 via a democratic election.

Some countries suffer from perennial inflation, which results in constant attempts to take over the government. Why? The same reason Willy Sutton robbed banks: “That’s where the money is.”

When real wealth becomes hard to produce, a certain type of person is drawn into politics. They realize they can become wealthy through political power, as opposed to producing things. It’s why countries with unstable currencies become unstable socially, economically, and politically as well.

International Man: You have frequently discussed how to protect yourself from inflation’s financial and economic effects with gold and other hard assets.

However, aside from the financial effects, how do people protect themselves from inflation’s negative social, cultural, and political effects we’ve discussed today?

Doug Casey: The most important thing you can do is gain skills. Lots of skills, both in breadth and in depth, so that no matter how things sort out, you’ll always be in a position to produce things that people want.

Let me share my favorite Robert Heinlein quote about this.

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

For many years, I’ve considered college to be a complete misallocation—even worse, a counterproductive waste—of four of the best years of your life and a lot of money. Why pay to have your head filled with incorrect ideas? Once planted, they’re corrosive and hard to wash away.

So the answer to the question: What should one do right now? Prepare yourself intellectually, psychologically, physically, financially, and skill-wise for tough times.

Put yourself in a position to produce more than you consume. Save the excess in precious metals, and learn to invest and speculate with that capital. Keep your wealth from being inflated away by your government.

Editor’s Note: As inflation continues to chip away at purchasing power, it will steadily undermine savings, create distortions, and punish the people who worked hardest to build real wealth.

But it’s not all bad news…

For those who see the danger coming and want to position themselves before the next wave of turmoil hits, Doug Casey and Father of Reaganomics, David Stockman just released a report which reveals how to take prudent steps to defend purchasing power, protect your capital, and potentially come out far ahead as the economic reset unfolds.

It also includes a specific, actionable speculation designed to help investors potentially profit as governments continue inflating away the value of paper wealth.

Click here to see it now.

Source: https://internationalman.com/inflation-proof-asset/

Dear Reader,

There is an old saying on Wall Street: “In a crisis, all correlations go to one.”

Most people hear that and nod politely. Few understand what it actually means for their savings.

Here is what it means. In normal times, your stocks move one way, your bonds another, your real estate another. They don’t march in step. That gap between them is what people call “diversification.” It is the whole idea behind the modern portfolio — spread your risk across different assets, and when one falls, the others hold you up.

It sounds smart. It even works right up until the moment it doesn’t.

Economists measure how closely two assets move together using a number called correlation. It runs from -1 to +1. A correlation of +1 means two assets move in perfect lockstep — if one goes up 5%, the other goes up 5%. A correlation of -1 means they move in perfect opposition. A correlation of zero means they’re independent of each other.

In the real world, nothing is that clean. But here is a useful example. Think about an oil company like ExxonMobil and a consumer staples company like Procter & Gamble — the people who make Tide detergent and Gillette razors. Their correlation is somewhere around 0.3.

What does that mean in plain English?

It means they mostly do their own thing. When oil prices surge and ExxonMobil climbs, Procter & Gamble may not move much at all. After all, people buy soap and razors no matter what crude oil costs. Some weeks they move together, some weeks they don’t. The connection is loose and unreliable. That looseness is exactly what makes owning both of them safer than owning just one.

A correlation of 0.3 is what diversification is built on. It’s what your advisor is betting on when he tells you your portfolio is “balanced.”

The problem is that 0.3 is a peacetime number.

The Moment the Safety Net Disappears

When real fear (not a little dip) hits a market, something ugly happens. All those “different” assets start moving the same way. Down.

In calm times, the average correlation between two stocks is about 0.3. Low enough that owning both gives you some protection. In a full panic, that number jumps to 0.7 or higher. Bonds, commodities, and real estate all start falling in step with stocks, too.

Your carefully built portfolio, the one your advisor told you was “diversified,” starts sinking like a single ship.

Why does this happen?

Because the big players aren’t selling by choice, they’re selling because they have to.

Hedge funds get margin calls. Banks hit their risk limits. Mutual funds face a wave of redemptions — people pulling money out all at once. These institutions don’t get to sell what they want. They sell what they can. And what they can sell is whatever is large and liquid enough to find a buyer — the biggest stocks, bond ETFs, and yes, even gold and long-term Treasuries.

This is what traders call the “dash for cash.” In that phase, no one cares about long-term value. They want dollars. Safe, liquid, boring dollars. And to get them, they dump everything else.

Even Your “Safe” Stuff Can Drop First

Many investors think they are protected because they own gold or government bonds. In the first leg of a panic, that comfort is a lie.

In 2008, gold fell more than 30% at one point. Not because gold was bad. Because big players needed cash, and gold was one of the few things that still had buyers. In March 2020, stocks fell. Corporate bonds fell. Gold fell. Even many government bonds fell. All at once. All for the same reason.

The system wasn’t broken. It was working exactly as a leveraged market works. When you owe money right now, you don’t think about what an asset is worth in five years. You think about what it will sell for in the next five minutes.

This is the part that surprises people. Safe havens aren’t safe on Day One. They are safe across the full arc of a crisis — after the forced selling stops and the real story takes over.

Take gold. Yes, it can get hit hard in the initial panic. But once the dust settles and central banks start cutting rates and printing money — which they always do — gold tends to shine. It finished 2008 up about 10% for the full year, even after that terrifying mid-year drop. It surged after the dot-com bust. It ran hard after the Great Recession.

The pattern is clear: gold gets sold first, then bought hard.

What Has Actually Worked

If everything falls together in a crisis, what actually holds up in the worst of it?

Two things: cash and short-term Treasury bills.

Not long-term bonds, as those can fall sharply when interest rates spike. Not money market funds that own risky debt. Plain cash and T-bills: the kind of money that is there, that is safe, and that no one is forced to sell.

T-bills have almost no interest-rate risk. The U.S. government backs them. You can turn them into cash fast. During recent bouts of market chaos, when stocks and long bonds both fell, T-bills barely moved.

Think of it this way:

T-bills help you survive the crash. Gold helps you survive the money printing that comes after.

Both have a role. Neither one alone is enough.

What to Do Now

We have a war. We are seeing rising tensions across the Middle East. And we have a stock market that, as of this writing, is still priced for a world where none of that matters much.

That gap between what is happening and what markets are pricing won’t last forever. It never does.

Here are the moves worth making now, while you still can:

Build a real cash buffer. Several months of living costs, in actual cash or T-bills, not in some “safe” fund that quietly owns risky long-term bonds. This is what keeps you from becoming a forced seller.

Shorten your bond exposure. If you hold bonds, lean toward short maturities. Long-term bonds can fall just as hard as stocks when rates spike. We have seen it happen.

Split your money into two buckets. Survival money — cash, T-bills, maybe some physical gold. And risk money — stocks, real estate, longer bonds, anything that can swing around. Know which is which. Keep them separate in your head and in your accounts.

Hold gold as insurance, not as a trade. A modest, steady slice of gold isn’t a bet on the next headline. It’s long-term protection against what almost always follows a major crisis: governments printing money to fix the mess they made.

Ask the brutal question. If all your risky assets dropped 30 to 40% at the same time, would you be ruined? If the answer is yes or even maybe, cut your positions now while markets are still open and buyers still exist.

Avoid leverage. The “dash for cash” is driven by people who borrowed too much. Don’t be one of them. Margin debt turns a bad drawdown into a wipe-out.

Wrap Up

To be sure, I don’t want you to panic. I’m merely trying to imitate the great Wayne Gretzky by skating to where the puck will be, so to speak, in six months. Then, I think the ripples, waves, and tsunamis from this incursion into Iran will be upon us, rather than some abstract thought experiment.

When that next wave hits, most people will be shocked to learn their “diversified” portfolio was the same trade all along.

But not you. You already know better. The question is whether you act on it.

All the best,

Sean Ring
for The Daily Reckoning
feedback@dailyreckoning.com

To those who bought silver when its price was higher, or to those who want to make some capital gains… …read this.

https://www.zerohedge.com/precious-metals/silvers-endgame-almost-too-obvious

I was in Brussels three weeks ago for a closed-door meeting with European finance officials. One senior official said words that made my blood run cold: “We thought freezing their assets would bring them to their knees. Instead, we have created a monster we cannot control.”

He was right. Because what Europe did with $105 billion in Russian assets has triggered a chain reaction that will reshape global finance—and almost nobody understands what’s really happening.

In this video, we expose how the EU’s May 2024 decision to seize interest earnings from frozen Russian reserves triggered Russia’s surgical mirror retaliation—targeting $105 billion in European corporate assets including Volkswagen ($3.5B), Raiffeisen Bank ($2.8B), and dozens more. From the death of property rights to the acceleration of de-dollarization, we break down why this might be the greatest strategic blunder in financial history.

In this video, we uncover:

The $105B Seizure: How the EU’s May 2024 decision to confiscate Russian asset interest earnings—$3B annually for Ukraine—crossed a line that can never be uncrossed and broke the sacred principle of property rights.

The Mirror Retaliation: Why Russia’s decree within 48 hours to seize equivalent European corporate holdings ($200B+ exposure) is strategic genius—exploiting divisions, rewarding hesitant countries, punishing aggressive ones.

The Corporate Panic: How Volkswagen, Raiffeisen, Danone, Shell, and BP are now screaming at their governments—caught in the crossfire of a financial war they never chose.

The Global Precedent: Why every central bank from Asia to Latin America is now asking “if they did it to Russia, could they do it to us?”—and quietly diversifying away from Western assets.

The headlines say Europe stood firm. The reality is Europe sacrificed the credibility of its entire financial system for $3B/year that won’t change the war’s outcome. Watch to understand the long-term cost.

Click to view the video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDmu7Frv0Yk

What was the Bretton Woods Monetary System?

Why the international monetary system based on a fiat U.S. dollar has provided the United States with some exorbitant economic privileges.

Many central banks have been gradually reducing their stocks of dollar-denominated Treasury bills and bonds in their official reserves relative to gold.

In the United States and in other economies, lax fiscal and monetary policies could trigger financial crises and an important economic downturn.

Finish reading: https://nexusnewsfeed.com/article/geopolitics/the-coming-changes-in-the-international-monetary-system-dedollarization-massive-public-and-private-debt-levels/

Toyota vehicles are engineered to last well beyond 200,000 miles with proper maintenance, thanks to rigorous quality control at every stage of production and simplified powertrain designs that reduce potential failure points.

Finish reading: https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/toyota-remains-worlds-most-reliable-car-brand-rivian-least

The man leading Microsoft’s AI sprawling efforts is sounding the alarm over imminent mass labor disruptions, warning that the overwhelming majority of white-collar professional work could vanish to automation far sooner than most business and policy leaders are willing to admit – something we’ve been concerned about since early 2023.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman forecasted that within the next two years a vast swath of desk-bound tasks will be swallowed by AI.

“I think we’re going to have a human-level performance on most, if not all, professional tasks – so white collar where you’re sitting down at a computer, either being a lawyer, accountant, or project manager, or marketing person – most of the tasks will be fully automated by an AI within the next 12 to 18 months,” Suleyman said when asked about the time table for Artificial general intelligence, commonly known as AGI.

Source: https://www.zerohedge.com/ai/microsoft-ai-ceo-warns-most-white-collar-jobs-will-be-fully-automated-within-next-12-18-months

(Tom: And this cam to me this week.)

I strongly suggest that you read it and forward it to those you feel should have the data.

https://shumer.dev/something-big-is-happening