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Ripple Effect

Meager Pickings for Shoppers

Loading ...Addison Wiggin

October 2, 2025 • 1 minute, 12 second read


Shipping

Meager Pickings for Shoppers

Stocks and gold are at all-time highs. But the real economy is flashing crisis-level warnings.

One source of alternative data — cargo rates — shows that physical goods aren’t in demand.

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Cargo container rates from Asia to the U.S. are back near pandemic-era levels  (Source: Zerohedge)

The cost to ship cars, refrigerators, and Christmas toys has fallen back to numbers we last saw when the economy was on lockdown.

For these rates to rise, demand for goods needs to rise…. unlikely as President Trump’s tariff strategy is intended to reshore domestic production of these goods in the U.S.

Until factories come online, there will be fewer goods on the shelves. Combined with declining jobs and stubborn inflation, however, that fact may go unnoticed this holiday season.

~ Addison

 

P.S. We’re going live with Mark Jeftovic shortly in Grey Swan Live! today at 2 p.m. ET. We’ve received a bevy of questions about Dollar 2.0 and the future of the world’s reserve currency. Mark, Andrew and I will field them all and review your options as the U.S. dollar enters the digital age with the Trump administration’s full support.

Your money is changing as we speak. You don’t want to miss today’s Grey Swan Live!, sign up now if you haven’t done so already.

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If you have any questions for us about the market, send them our way now to: feedback@greyswanfraternity.com.


When Debt Strangles Growth

October 22, 2025 • Lau Vegys

U.S. government debt is edging closer to the $38 trillion mark — now well over 120% of GDP. That puts the U.S. in the same league as basket-case economies like Venezuela, Sudan, and Lebanon. Not exactly the kind of company you want to keep.

But it makes sense: history shows that once a country crosses this threshold, things start to break — and it’s rarely just one thing. I’ve talked a lot about that in the past.

When Debt Strangles Growth
Dunning-Kruger and The Greatest Fool

October 22, 2025 • Addison Wiggin

An admission: we’re mildly obsessed with the private credit markets.

When there’s a bull market in everything — AI stocks, financials, rare earths, gold and silver — it helps to keep an eye on the plumbing.

One chart tells the tale: since 2015, bank loans to non-depository financial institutions (NDFIs) — think private equity and private-credit funds — have soared nearly 300%.

Consumer loans, residential mortgages, commercial real estate? Flat as Kansas. Post-2008, Basel III and Dodd-Frank made leveraged and middle-market lending so capital-intensive that banks stepped back.

Dunning-Kruger and The Greatest Fool
Source of the “Debasement Trade”

October 22, 2025 • Addison Wiggin

Gold dropped nearly 2% yesterday. But with the massive increase in fiat currencies globally, that’s an opportunity to buy more cheaply.

With that much cash sloshing around the system, the “debasement trade” is a go.

Source of the “Debasement Trade”
The Dominoes Keep Falling in the Move to Digital Money

October 21, 2025 • Ian King

Trillions of dollars are already being transferred and tracked on the tokenized rails that Visa, JPMorgan, Mastercard and other major financial institutions plan to scale globally in the next 12 months.

Meaning, there’s no longer such a thing as “crypto vs. the banks.”

Because the same financial giants that crypto once tried to replace are taking the best parts of blockchain — speed, transparency and programmability — and fusing them into the system they already control.

And as each domino falls, it brings us closer to a world where money moves as easily as data.

It means that by the end of 2025, digital dollars could settle more value than PayPal ever has.

So if you’re still treating digital money as “the future,” you’re already a step behind.

The Dominoes Keep Falling in the Move to Digital Money