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

Back in April, when we published what we called the Trump Great Reset Strategy, we described the grand realignment we believed President Trump and his acolytes were embarking on in three phases.

At the time, it read like a conceptual map. As the months passed, it began to feel like a set of operating instructions written in advance of turbulence.

As you can expect, any grandiose plan would get all kinds of blowback… but this year exhibited all manner of Trump Derangement Syndrome on top of the difficulty of steering a sclerotic empire clear of the rocky shores.

The “phases” were never about optimism or pessimism. They were about sequencing — how stress surfaces, how systems adapt, and what must hold before confidence can regenerate. And in the end, what do we do with our money?!

Relative to GDP, the net international investment claim on the U.S. economy was 20% in 2003. It had swollen to 65% by 2023. Practically every type of American company, bond, or real estate asset now has some degree of foreign ownership.

But it’s even worse than that. As the federal deficit has pumped up the GDP figures, and made a larger share of the economy dependent on government spending, the quality and sustainability of GDP have deteriorated. So, foreigners, to the extent they are paying attention, are accumulating claims on an economy that has been eroded by inefficient, government-directed spending and “investments.” Why should foreign creditors maintain confidence in the integrity of these paper claims? Only to the extent that their economies are even worse off. And in the case of China, that’s probably true.

As global government interest expense climbed, gold quietly followed it higher. The IIF estimates that interest costs on government debt now run at nearly $4.9 trillion annually. Over the same span, gold prices have tracked that burden almost one-for-one.

Silver has recently gone along for the ride, with even more enthusiasm.

Since early 2023, Japan’s 10-year government bond yield has risen roughly 150 basis points, touching levels not seen since the 1990s.

Over that same period, gold prices have surged about 135%, while silver is up roughly 175%. Zoom out two years, and the divergence becomes starker still: gold up 114%, silver up 178%, while the S&P 500 gained 44%.

According to the American Association of Individual Investors, the average retail investor has about a 70% allocation to stocks. That’s well over the traditional 60/40 split between stocks and bonds. Even a 60/40 allocation ignores real estate, gold, collectibles, and private assets.

A pullback in the 10% range – which is likely in any given year – will prompt investors to scream as if it’s the end of the world.

Our “panic now, avoid the rush” strategy is simple.

Take tech profits off the table, raise some cash, and focus on industry-leading companies that pay dividends. Roll those dividends up and use compounding to your overall portfolio’s advantage.