7 Grey Swan Predictions

January 1, 2025 • 40 second read

Ironically or not, the thread that binds all of these Grey Swan events is a reliance on debt at all levels of society and a consumer culture that favors short-term gratification. Political violence is just a f’d up way of expressing dissatisfaction with a culture that values material goods over some kind of weird spiritualism. Both of the assailants in New Orleans and in Las Vegas were military and in financial distress.

Grey Swan #7: Debt Binge Ends

Grey Swan #6: Banks Go First

Grey Swan #5: BRICS Bucks Continue To Challenge the US Dollar

Grey Swan #4: The China Wild Card: Tariffs and Chips

Grey Swan #3: Death of the Middle Class

Grey Swan #2: Mutant AI and the Death of Free Speech

Grey Swan #1: Return of American Political Violence

Bonus Grey Swan: Rise of the American Police State

Beneath the Surface

7 Grey Swan Predictions

Addison Wiggin

January 1, 2025 • 40 second read

Grey Swan #7: Debt Binge Ends

Grey Swan #6: Banks Go First

Grey Swan #5: BRICS Bucks Continue To Challenge the US Dollar

Grey Swan #4: The China Wild Card: Tariffs and Chips

Grey Swan #3: Death of the Middle Class

Grey Swan #2: Mutant AI and the Death of Free Speech

Grey Swan #1: Return of American Political Violence

Bonus Grey Swan: Rise of the American Police State

Grey Swan #4: America’s Covert Resource War in South America

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.

Grey Swan #4: America’s Covert Resource War in South America

Grey Swan #5: The European Union Fractures Under the Weight of War, Debt, and Bureaucracy

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.

Grey Swan #5: The European Union Fractures Under the Weight of War, Debt, and Bureaucracy

Grey Swan Forecast #6: China Annexes Taiwan — Without a Shot Fired

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.

Grey Swan Forecast #6: China Annexes Taiwan — Without a Shot Fired

Grey Swan Forecast #7: A Global Debt Crisis Will Reprice Democracy

December 24, 2025 • Addison Wiggin

Wars, technology races, and political upheavals — all of them rest on fiscal capacity.

In 2026, that capacity will tighten across the developed world simultaneously. Democracies will discover that generosity financed by debt carries conditions, whether voters approve of them or not.

Bond markets will not shout so much as clear their throats. Repeatedly.

Grey Swan Forecast #7: A Global Debt Crisis Will Reprice Democracy