A Tale of Two Countries

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.

Let’s compare two countries. Poland, rising out of collectivism, and Venezuela, forced into the delusion:

Turn Your Images On

Twenty years ago, the economic prosperity of Poland and Venezuela were, all things being equal, identical. (Source: Our World Data)

Poland spent decades behind the Iron Curtain as a vassal state as part of what Reagan called the “Evil Empire”, the USSR. Venezuela did not, enjoying growth and economic freedom to become one of the wealthiest countries in South America.

However, Venezuela’s shift towards collectivism in the early 2000s led to a massive decline in the standard of living.

Meanwhile, once the people of Poland unshackled themselves from the collectivist delusion, it has become a thriving success story.

Since 2000, Poland’s GDP per capita has more than doubled after adjusting for inflation.

In 2025, Poland surpassed Switzerland on the global who’s who of thriving economies, joining the G20.

In the same time span, Venezuela’s GDP has declined by two-thirds.

~ Addison

P.S. Grey Swan Live! returns from its holiday hiatus this week. Our guest this week will be Matt Smith, publisher at Casey Research. Matt and co-author Doug Casey have just released a new book titled “The Preparation.”

Quick hit: Both Matt and Doug are raising cattle in Uruguay. The Preparation has some very strong opinions on the value of Western education and how to prepare the next generation to participate in a strong, thriving economy.

If you have requests for new guests you’d like to see join us for Grey Swan Live!, or have any questions for our guests, send them here.

Let’s compare two countries. Poland, rising out of collectivism, and Venezuela, forced into the delusion:

Turn Your Images On

Twenty years ago, the economic prosperity of Poland and Venezuela were, all things being equal, identical. (Source: Our World Data)

However, Venezuela’s shift towards collectivism in the early 2000s led to a massive decline in the standard of living.

Meanwhile, once the people of Poland unshackled themselves from the collectivist delusion, it has become a thriving success story.

Since 2000, Poland’s GDP per capita has more than doubled after adjusting for inflation.

In 2025, Poland surpassed Switzerland on the global who’s who of thriving economies, joining the G20.

In the same time span, Venezuela’s GDP has declined by two-thirds.

~ Addison

If you have requests for new guests you’d like to see join us for Grey Swan Live!, or have any questions for our guests, send them here.

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.

The U.S. dollar is being dethroned from the global monetary system in real time.

While many have pointed out – correctly – that the buck is still the global trading currency of choice, the rise of gold for savings is the real story here… even with Dollar 2.0 digital assets rebooting global finance.

Following gold’s 60% rally in 2025, we expect gold’s uptrend to remain intact.

This is the confidence paradox in motion.

The legitimacy of the action remains contested. The legality may be debated for years. Yet capital immediately priced the outcome as useful.

Pundits on Fox Business immediately began explaining the complexities of processing “heavy, sour” crude oil that the refineries in Texas and Louisiana used to be tooled up for, versus the “light, sweet” variety the shale boom gushed forth.

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.