From the creators of The Daily Reckoning, I.O.U.S.A, Empire of Debt and The Daily Missive
From the creators of The Daily Reckoning, I.O.U.S.A, Empire of Debt and The Daily Missive
May 15, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
A $36 trillion dollar bombshell has just been dropped. You need to prepare now to protect your wealth and save your future.
October 23, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
Even as the U.S. wrestles with debt and credit downgrades, the dollar’s reserve status keeps global capital tethered to its orbit. The Fed’s recent “payments innovation” initiative — opening dialogue with the DeFi sector — signals how policymakers hope to future-proof that privilege.
By embracing blockchain-based settlement, the U.S. effectively brings private-sector ingenuity under its own monetary umbrella. Innovation isn’t just a hedge against China; it’s an insurance policy for the dollar itself.
October 22, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
October 21, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
October 24, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
Leverage is a two-way street. Investors get a tailwind on the way up. But small drops become a considerable problem – leading to “margin calls” when an investor is forced to settle the debt for a loss.
Forced sales are a downside feature of stock market bubbles. The forced sale of stocks and hard assets like gold push prices lower even if the participants don’t want to sell.
October 23, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
October 22, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
October 23, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
When the government has to spend the bulk of its tax revenue just to service the debt, it means there’s substantially less money for everything else, from military spending to border patrol.
Now, the White House hopes to be able to reduce its annual interest bill by slashing interest rates.
Think about it— even with a $38 trillion national debt, if the average interest rate is just 0.5%, the annual interest bill (at < $200 billion) is extremely manageable.
October 22, 2025 • Lau Vegys
U.S. government debt is edging closer to the $38 trillion mark — now well over 120% of GDP. That puts the U.S. in the same league as basket-case economies like Venezuela, Sudan, and Lebanon. Not exactly the kind of company you want to keep.
But it makes sense: history shows that once a country crosses this threshold, things start to break — and it’s rarely just one thing. I’ve talked a lot about that in the past.
October 21, 2025 • Ian King
Trillions of dollars are already being transferred and tracked on the tokenized rails that Visa, JPMorgan, Mastercard and other major financial institutions plan to scale globally in the next 12 months.
Meaning, there’s no longer such a thing as “crypto vs. the banks.”
Because the same financial giants that crypto once tried to replace are taking the best parts of blockchain — speed, transparency and programmability — and fusing them into the system they already control.
And as each domino falls, it brings us closer to a world where money moves as easily as data.
It means that by the end of 2025, digital dollars could settle more value than PayPal ever has.
So if you’re still treating digital money as “the future,” you’re already a step behind.
October 21, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
Some historic irony, here.
China invented paper currencies in the Tang Dynasty in the 7th Century. Known then by the Mandarin characters that mean “flying cash,” the currency, like all paper money, lost its value.
Today, as the rest of the world goes all-in on fiat, and begins to digitize the dollar, China’s rediscovery of gold as an asset suggests that gold’s run isn’t over… yet.
October 20, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
The “No Kings” crowd might one day discover that the tyranny they fear doesn’t wear a crown. It wears a smile, signs checks, and calls itself “the common good.”
And like all monarchs in the end, it will demand obedience — long after the cheering stops.
If history rhymes, as it seems to, we’re somewhere between the late 1930s and the late Roman Republic. The crowds are restless, the debt insatiable, the elites insulated, and the reformers convinced they can vote their way to virtue. The yachts are still in the harbor; the customers are still swimming.
“No Kings”? Fine. But remember: every time the crowd dethrones a monarch, it tends to crown a bureaucracy. And bureaucracies, unlike kings, never die.
October 20, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
Wall Street will always sell tickets to the parade—radio in 1929, dot-coms in 1999, GPUs in 2025. Some parades end in confetti; others in subpoenas. Schwed’s wisdom still stands: you don’t need to time the last note, just keep your seat close to the exit.
If the boom continues, your portfolio participates. If it falters, your ballast buys you time—and maybe your own modest “yacht,” which Schwed would remind you is simply a sturdy rowboat, with good oars and a sound hull.
October 20, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
Wall Street traders have a term for this phase: the wall of worry. As long as investors get fearful enough, the market top isn’t in.
At the top, investors will go all-in – in what’s known as the “blow of top”, like they did with dotcom stocks in 1999, or as many did with SPAC companies in 2021.
We haven’t quite gotten to the “this time is different” mentality that causes investors to throw on the blinders – yet.
October 17, 2025 • Adam O'Dell
Regardless of anyone’s personal opinion on Trump, it’s clear that the international community is translating his “Putting America First” agenda as something more like “Every Man for Himself.” That could have a profound impact down the line, not just for our future trade prospects, but for the health of the economy and the U.S. dollar at large (which is still the world’s dominant reserve currency, for now).
At the same time, this is all very bullish for gold, as central banks are likely to continue buying for years to come. In this kind of situation, gold hitting $4,300 and continuing to rise higher was a foregone conclusion, and it’s clear that Trump’s agenda is locked in and unlikely to change.
October 17, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
Shares of regional banks and even investment bank Jefferies were hammered Thursday after fresh revelations from Zions Bancorporation and Western Alliance Bancorp.
Zions dropped more than 13%, Western Alliance fell 10%, and the SPDR S&P Regional Banking ETF (KRE) plunged over 6%, with all but one member ending the session in the red. It’s not the size of the losses — it’s the pattern that’s unsettling, in what are ongoing ripple effects from the banking crisis that rocked regional banks in early 2023.
October 17, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
Yesterday, Zions Bancorporation and Western Alliance Bank dropped 13% and 10% respectively, dragging the S&P 500 down with them.
In pre-market trade this morning, the broader banking sector also got whacked. JP Morgan was down 1.5%, while Citi fell 1.9% and Bank of America was down 2.9%. In Europe, meanwhile, the regional Stoxx Banking Index fell almost 3%.
The Federal Reserve stopped tracking “unrealized losses” at regional banks in 2022. But occasionally, a snippet of data will come to light, like this piece from the FDIC earlier this year.
