Addison Wiggin / June 12, 2025
Global market valuations sit above 117% of GDP. Higher than 2000. Higher than 2007. Higher than any sane person should feel comfortable with.
Historically, market dislocations don’t resolve in tidy boxes. They end with sudden repricing — quietly at first, then all at once.
John Robb / June 11, 2025
 Packetized media, the dynamic, granular media we consume and interact with on social networks, is transforming how we think and, by extension, how we organize society. As unsettling as this transformation has been so far, it’s far from over now that AI is being used to generate media packets. To understand what will happen, let’s break it down and put all of that AI innovation (LLMs to generative images, voices, and video) we’re seeing into context.
Addison Wiggin / June 11, 2025
So, what turned America into a nation of traders? Cheaper transaction costs are a big reason. Fees earned from Robinhood accounts make up a major revenue stream for Citadel, Wall Street’s largest hedge fund.
Lower tax rates on capital gains, especially under Trump’s tax regime, have pushed investors towards faster-growth companies, which naturally lead them to take quick profits.
Addison Wiggin / June 11, 2025
The Cantillon effect still applies… even for MAGA supporters.
The Cantillon effect “describes how the initial impact of new money printed by the government or central bank is unevenly distributed, leading to changes in relative prices.”
In layman’s terms: those closest to the money supply, such as banks, financial institutions, and Wall Street, are the first to benefit from the new money. Everyone else gets higher prices, later.
And in the meantime? A fog of revisions, spin, and distractions.
What happens when that fog lifts?
Markets don’t just correct. They reprice — all at once. And in that moment, those who prepared — who saw through the illusion and moved accordingly — are the ones left standing. Or as the retiring Sage of Omaha once famously quipped:  “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.”
James Hickman / June 10, 2025
“Liberation Day” should have been the day that thousands of freedom-killing, job-killing, productivity-killing regulations were eliminated once and for all… or the day that Congress repealed pointless and expensive legislation.
Instead, everyone was liberated from inexpensive imported goods… and liberated from having a confident outlook on the future.
And at some point, in the relatively near future, Americans will also be liberated from having the global reserve currency.
It became clear at this point that the Trump/Elon relationship was strained. The “One, Big, Beautiful” deficit bill was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.
Everyone saw the war of words last week. So did Putin, Xi, and every other adversary. It wasn’t a good look for the country or for the US government’s already stretched credibility.
Addison Wiggin / June 10, 2025
You know what the ol’ timers say about history. It rhymes, right?
We’ve been following one particular “rhyme” recently.
The rise of inflation over the past four years and the prospect for another have been humming along with the same tune as the Great Inflation of the 1968-1980 period.
Right now, the data is showing a small break – in a good way.

Addison Wiggin / June 10, 2025
That’s the question at the heart of the storm.
What is money? The dollar? A promise? A bond backed by nothing but confidence? Or is it gold, silver — scarce, tangible, unyielding? Or bitcoin — decentralized, incorruptible, digital by design?
The global protests, the currency debasement, the record demand for gold and silver — all symptoms of a deeper sickness: a crisis of belief.
As Robert Kiyosaki puts it, gold and silver are “God’s money.” Bitcoin is “the people’s money.” Dollars? They’re the banker’s money. And the bankers are nervous.

Addison Wiggin / June 9, 2025
All currencies without fail have gone to zero.
What most people, including experienced investors, don’t understand is that gold doesn’t increase in value.
Gold just maintains stable purchasing power. A Roman toga 2000 years ago cost 1 ounce of gold and a tailored suit today also costs 1 ounce of gold.
So it is really totally wrong to talk about gold going up when it is the unit we measure gold in that goes down. Just as all fiat money has done. Just take gold measured in U.S. dollars.

Addison Wiggin / June 9, 2025
At the start of the year, we noted that gold supplies on trading exchanges were trending lower – a sign that someone was acquiring physical gold.
Now, a report from Goldman Sachs suggests that the mystery buyer was, as we suspected, China. And that they added a whopping 50 tonnes of the metal to their holdings in February alone.

Addison Wiggin / June 9, 2025
If history rhymes, that path leads us back to $49, a level hit in 2011 and 1980. Sure, adjusted for inflation, silver needs to top $150 per ounce to hit new real highs – but it’s the path that matters.
Forget the price target for a moment. The point is deeper. Gold and silver don’t “go up” in value — they just stand still while the dollar drowns.
A Roman senator could buy a fine toga for one ounce of gold. Today? You’ll get a tailored suit. Same metal. Same purchasing power. Two millennia later.
It’s not metal rising. It’s paper failing.
From the creators of The Daily Reckoning, I.O.U.S.A, Empire of Debt and The Daily Missive















