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
December 3, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
A conversation with Shad Marquitz & the Grey Swan 2026 precious metals forecast.
January 7, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
In late December, just days before the controls took effect, silver in Shanghai traded near $78 per ounce, while the COMEX closed closer to $72. A six-dollar gap.
Normally, that spread would collapse almost instantly. Traders would buy cheap metal and sell it at a higher price until the prices converged.
Since January 1, 2026, that hasn’t happened.
Physical silver inside China carried a premium that paper markets couldn’t erase.
At the same time, London’s bullion market slipped into what traders call “backwardation” — buyers willing to pay more now than later, a classic signal of supply stress.
This is what it looks like when settlement frictions appear.
January 6, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
January 9, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
Interest rates are coming down, emboldening consumers to take on more debt.
The latest data highlights a central feature of the real economy. Americans no longer manage savings and income but credit cards, HELOCs, and mortgages in an effort to keep up appearances.
Day-to-day expenses, health insurance, housing, car payments and tuition will continue to plague Americans throughout the year ahead of going to the polls in November.
January 8, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
January 7, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
January 8, 2026 • Lau Vegys
Roughly 70–80% of global silver supply comes as a byproduct of mining other metals—copper, lead, zinc, gold. This means that even if silver prices doubled tomorrow, production wouldn’t automatically increase unless mining of those other metals ramped up too. You can’t just “decide” to mine more silver.
Layer China’s export controls on top of all that, and you’re looking at a supply profile that’s unusually tight—and unusually vulnerable.
January 6, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
History is clear. The “warmth of collectivism,” as New York City Mayor Mamdani wants you to believe, doesn’t come from a healthy economy. Maybe from, burning books and buildings… but not from building a prosperous society.
January 5, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
The entire process of reviewing forecasts and then issuing new ones has made us more intensely focused on our purpose. We’re not actually trying to “predict the future” to parody the disdain with which so many lazy media pundits would dismiss our approach.
Rather, we’re examining trends in the news cycle and trying to separate the wheat from the chaff. What signals are coming through stronger than the nauseating cacophony of Washington and Wall Street, amplified by legacy and social media alike?
There are years when markets feel confusing because they are volatile. And there are years when they feel confused because the old explanations no longer work.
January 5, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
To start the year, the U.S. government didn’t bother with a hangover, rather it continues to spend so profligately that if we compared it to a drunken sailor, we’d have to apologize to the sailor.
Closing out 2025, America managed to rack up over $38 trillion in “official” debt. Looking at debt relative to GDP, it’s back over 121%.
January 2, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
The Grey Swan is not the invention of artificial intelligence. It is the moment the public understands that incentives have changed.
Network economics reward different behaviors than factory economics. Platform states operate by different rules than welfare states. Coordination outruns legislation. Culture lags technology. Conflict follows the gap.
In Financial Reckoning Day, we described how systems adapt when fiscal choices narrow. The Age of Intelligence represents that adaptation in software and silicon.
By the end of 2026, most people will recognize that machines now think alongside humans in logistics, finance, and planning. Some jobs disappear. Others appear. Output improves faster than consensus expects. Politics argues. Markets enforce discipline.
January 1, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
The crack-up boom does not signal immediate collapse. Monetary policy gets a new master… inflation rages… and investors chase stocks as a means of keeping pace with their savings.
Markets may even finish 2026 higher than they begin. Many investors will still lose purchasing power along the way. Terminal velocity will feel like momentum… until reality hits.
In 2026, expect breathtaking advances, with the AI narrative remaining dominant, and sudden reversals to occur quickly. Expect liquidity to remain plentiful and erode discipline even more.
December 31, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
If the socialist agenda lands, the reaction matters as much as the results of the initial vote.
A hostile House gridlocks legislation. Investigations proliferate. Impeachment chatter returns. Executive authority stretches to compensate.
The political goal of the reactionary strategist will be to muck up the Trump realignment as much as possible to regain power in the House, the Senate (eventually), fortify the courts and ultimately take back the Oval Office.
Trump will not face a midterm defeat like past lame-duck presidents. We’ll see a host of creative efforts to assert executive authority and override the people’s House. The checks and balances bestowed by Montesquieu at the very root of the Republic will be tested as never before.
December 30, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
If the U.S. can no longer afford to police the world, it will prioritize what sits closest to home. Oil, lithium, copper, rare earths, food, and shipping lanes in the Western Hemisphere matter more to America’s economic resilience than abstract security guarantees signed eight decades ago.
The Financial Times captured this shift late in 2025, noting that U.S. foreign policy is “increasingly transactional, geographically compressed, and resource-oriented.” Bloomberg went further, describing a “hemispheric retrenchment” underway beneath the noise of global diplomacy.
We have observed passively that empires of the past, burdened by debt, stop expanding ideologically and start contracting strategically. If nothing else, this is a guide that helps decipher Trump’s comedic efforts at the podium on the second-term victory tour he’s on.
December 29, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
By 2026, all four supports will demonstrate that they’ve weakened simultaneously. As true as it may or may not be, it’s not likely to be understood, let alone covered by old-school national media.
Debt narrows choices. War hardens politics. False bureaucratic authority substitutes for something, trust, maybe. Nationalists will be more than willing to fill the vacuum.
Europe’s fracture will feel gradual. Policy coherence will erode further. Markets will adapt and look to the Middle and/or Far East to finance the Ponzi finance on display in New York and London.
December 26, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
Our forecast will feel obvious in hindsight and controversial in advance — the hallmark of a Grey Swan.
Most analysts we speak to are thinking in terms of the history of Western conflict.
They expect full-frontal military engagement.
Beijing, from our modest perch, prefers resolution because resolution compounds its power. Why sacrifice the workshop of the world, when cajoling and bribery will do?
Taiwan will not fall.
It will merge.
