Maintaining Sanity in the Spin-cycle Reality

A “Give your head a shake” interlude

Dec 03, 2024

Not sure to what extent AI, crypto, right wing extremism, interest rates and inflation, whack-a-mole investing and government corruption is infecting your day-to-day. But thought a conversation about maintaining clarity and priorities was in order.

Keep scrolling, as they say, if this is of no interest to you.

In my case, keeping tabs on what I see as threats to my way of life has become the largest screen-time contingent of the daily information mix.

It would become a major cause of anxiety if I was wired differently. Instead, it’s all just a distraction.

It is said that anxiety arises from contemplation of the future, while depression comes from dwelling on the past.

Both of these mental conditions occur within one’s own head, as part of the non-stop internal dialogue that we maintain.

As somebody who writes on a daily basis, it is natural to spend a great deal of time inside my head thinking thoughts that are hopefully maybe relevant…or even insightful. Trying to describe through writing what is happening in the world is an exercise ultimately in talking to one’s self.

But what I’ve learned at the ripe age of 60 is that the best things in life tend to happen outside of one’s head. Like, in the real world.

Walking around in the forest with no particular thoughts, observing and inhaling and touching the indifferent life forms for whom the entire human enterprise is only the source of all noise and destruction is a form of cleansing of the spirit.

The Japanese refer to this exact practice as Shinrin Yoku; literally “forest bathing”.

I only learned about this Japanese practice after a lifetime of emulating it without having a formal definition of it. It has been a rule of mine to prioritize exposure to forest settings every day far and above the pursuit of material wealth.

But not just intentionally immersing myself in nature.

There is immense peace of mind and gratification that comes from chopping firewood, milling timber into lumber, building goofy outdoor furniture, making chimichurri, or bread, or mucking about with irrigation pumps and pipes and filtres and washers and valves and gardens and machinery. This similarly derived from a contemplative application of the physical body to the physical world with only minimal input from the brain.

Within the mundane tasks of the physical world lies the path to mental serenity.

For this reason, no matter the burden of imagined obligations, deliverables, follow-ups, revisions, scheduling and zoom calls, I make sure to take at least a couple of hours in the middle of the short winter day and go outside, breathe deeply and forget about that fabricated mental static and relax with a menial chore or two.

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I now have two choices in creating original written content with financial and political themes: parrot the sanitized zeitgeist of the day, or wax full conspiracy theory/doomsday predictions. Everything else is just not click-worthy. Apparently.

Or worse.

If the editorial tone comes across of too political, or (especially) too critical of tech companies or their egomaniacal CEO’s, the post is deleted, or else shows up in no one’s feed, rendering the author and the sentiment invisible.

Censorship has never been more thorough or more easily triggered.

And there is nothing more triggering of agitation than to see a piece of content one has agonized over for hours or in some cases days be arbitrarily cancelled because it offends some poor billionaire’s sensibilities to the point where he has enlisted algorithmic agents of search and destruction to sniff out and suffocate them.

Truly original, controversial, or critical arguments cogently presented are now so efficiently snipped out of the media feed (thanks to Google, Apple and Facebook) that there are only chocolate and vanilla to choose from.

And so, the Closing of the American Mind (1987, Allen Bloom) has been perfected to such a degree that there is no diversity of opinion any more; there are just variations of the same opinion.

Take, for example, the “tariff” canon Trump fired that rattled Canadian PM Justin Trudeau so thoroughly that he jumped on a plane for a pilgrimage to Mar-a-lago, ostensibly to educate Trump.

The success of that mission had about as good a chance as teaching a donkey to poach eggs.

Yet why do we care? Trudeau’s smoke-blowing “we gotta take this guy seriously” posture only serves to cement his relationship with Trump as subordinate.

Anybody with a sense of even recent history knows that Trump uses shock and awe language to scare weak targets into submitting to lesser demands. If anything, Trump is the reincarnation of Machiavelli, if not his unwitting apprentice. Actually, Trump is more like Machiavelli and Nero rolled into one.

But see?

This is what I’m talking about. Under the threat of 25% tariffs, everybody in Mexico and Canada is getting all worked up and wondering “what does it all mean” for me and mine and us and ours?

Is my life about to get 25% more expensive? Am I going to pay 25% more in taxes? Are there bad men coming to take me away?

Yes to all of the above. Which is why you need chill TF out and go outside and find some forest and build some shit and go all in on XRP. Breathe.

~~ James West, Midas Letter

A “Give your head a shake” interlude

James West

Dec 03, 2024

Keep scrolling, as they say, if this is of no interest to you.

In my case, keeping tabs on what I see as threats to my way of life has become the largest screen-time contingent of the daily information mix.

It would become a major cause of anxiety if I was wired differently. Instead, it’s all just a distraction.

It is said that anxiety arises from contemplation of the future, while depression comes from dwelling on the past.

Both of these mental conditions occur within one’s own head, as part of the non-stop internal dialogue that we maintain.

But what I’ve learned at the ripe age of 60 is that the best things in life tend to happen outside of one’s head. Like, in the real world.

The Japanese refer to this exact practice as Shinrin Yoku; literally “forest bathing”.

But not just intentionally immersing myself in nature.

Within the mundane tasks of the physical world lies the path to mental serenity.

*****************

Or worse.

Censorship has never been more thorough or more easily triggered.

And so, the Closing of the American Mind (1987, Allen Bloom) has been perfected to such a degree that there is no diversity of opinion any more; there are just variations of the same opinion.

Take, for example, the “tariff” canon Trump fired that rattled Canadian PM Justin Trudeau so thoroughly that he jumped on a plane for a pilgrimage to Mar-a-lago, ostensibly to educate Trump.

The success of that mission had about as good a chance as teaching a donkey to poach eggs.

Yet why do we care? Trudeau’s smoke-blowing “we gotta take this guy seriously” posture only serves to cement his relationship with Trump as subordinate.

But see?

This is what I’m talking about. Under the threat of 25% tariffs, everybody in Mexico and Canada is getting all worked up and wondering “what does it all mean” for me and mine and us and ours?

Is my life about to get 25% more expensive? Am I going to pay 25% more in taxes? Are there bad men coming to take me away?

Yes to all of the above. Which is why you need chill TF out and go outside and find some forest and build some shit and go all in on XRP. Breathe.

~~ James West, Midas Letter

As copper flowed into the United States, LME inventories thinned and backwardation steepened. Higher U.S. pricing, tariff protection, and lower political risk made American warehouses the most attractive destination for metal. Each new shipment strengthened the spread.

The arbitrage, once triggered, became self-reinforcing. Traders were not participating in theory; they were responding to the physical incentives in front of them.

The United States had quietly become the marginal buyer of the world’s most important industrial metal. China, long the gravitational center of global copper demand, found itself on the outside.

Under the frost-crusted shrubs, the bears are sniffing around for scraps of bloody meat.

They smell the subtle rot of credit stress, central-bank desperation, and debt that’s beginning to steam in the cold. They’re not charging — not yet. But they’re present. Watching. Testing the doors.

Retail investors, last in line, await the Fed’s final announcement of the year on Wednesday. Then the central planners of the world get their turn: the Bank of England, Bank of Japan, and the European Central Bank.

Treasuries just suffered their worst week since June. And in Japan — the quiet godfather of global liquidity — something fundamental is breaking.

Silver continues its blistering ascent. Gold and bitcoin have settled in at $4,200 and $92,000, respectively.

It’s absurd, really, for any politician to be talking about “affordability.”

The data is clear. If higher prices are your goal, let the government “fix” them.

Mandates, paperwork, and busybodies telling you what you can and can’t do – it’s not a surprise why costs add up.

In contrast, if you want lower prices, do nothing– zilch. Let the market work.

For 30 years, Japan was the land where interest rates went to die.

The Bank of Japan used yield-curve control to keep long-term rates sedated. Traders joked that shorting Japanese bonds was the “widow-maker trade.”

Not anymore.

On November 20, 2025, everything changed. Quietly, but decisively.

The Bank of Japan finally pulled the plug on decades of easy money. Negative rates were removed. Yield-curve control was abandoned. The policy rate was lifted to a 17-year high.

Suddenly, global markets had to reprice something they had ignored for years.

What happens when the world’s largest creditor nation stops exporting cheap capital and starts pulling it back home?

The answer came fast. Bond yields in Europe and the United States began climbing. The Japanese yen strengthened sharply. Wall Street faltered.