New Year, New Record High

Household debt continues to rise, not just in total dollars, but as a percentage of gross disposable income:

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Households continue to increase their total debt (Source: Goldman Sachs)

Interest rates are coming down, emboldening consumers to take on more debt.

The latest data highlights a central feature of the real economy. Americans no longer manage savings and income but credit cards, HELOCs, and mortgages in an effort to keep up appearances.

Day-to-day expenses, health insurance, housing, car payments and tuition will continue to plague Americans throughout the year ahead of going to the polls in November.

~ Addison

P.S. We just wrapped our first Grey Swan Live! of the year, with Matt Smith, publisher at Casey Research. Matt and co-author Doug Casey have just released a new book titledThe Preparation.

Quick hit: Since 2021, Matt has been operating a “regenerative” cattle ranch in Uruguay.

The Preparation: How to Become Competent, Confident and Dangerous lays out a 16-cycle skills-based alternative to traditional 4-year college degrees.

Maxim Smith, Matt’s 20-year-old son, is on his way to Thailand for an intense training course in martial arts. That’s part of cycle number 4 in the program.

Last year, he crewed a sailing vessel on a journey across the Atlantic from the Falkland Islands to the southern tip of Africa.

Our conversation with Matt was on a different plane than our usual Live! themes. It’ll be well worth your time to listen to the replay, which will be posted to the Grey Swan Live archive in the members’ section later today.

We also recommend members buy a copy of The Preparation for a young man in their lives.

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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.

Household debt continues to rise, not just in total dollars, but as a percentage of gross disposable income:

Turn Your Images On

Households continue to increase their total debt (Source: Goldman Sachs)

Interest rates are coming down, emboldening consumers to take on more debt.

The latest data highlights a central feature of the real economy. Americans no longer manage savings and income but credit cards, HELOCs, and mortgages in an effort to keep up appearances.

Day-to-day expenses, health insurance, housing, car payments and tuition will continue to plague Americans throughout the year ahead of going to the polls in November.

~ Addison

P.S. We just wrapped our first Grey Swan Live! of the year, with Matt Smith, publisher at Casey Research. Matt and co-author Doug Casey have just released a new book titledThe Preparation.

Quick hit: Since 2021, Matt has been operating a “regenerative” cattle ranch in Uruguay.

The Preparation: How to Become Competent, Confident and Dangerous lays out a 16-cycle skills-based alternative to traditional 4-year college degrees.

Maxim Smith, Matt’s 20-year-old son, is on his way to Thailand for an intense training course in martial arts. That’s part of cycle number 4 in the program.

Last year, he crewed a sailing vessel on a journey across the Atlantic from the Falkland Islands to the southern tip of Africa.

We also recommend members buy a copy of The Preparation for a young man in their lives.

Turn Your Images On

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.

The “Donroe Doctrine,” the White House is calling… because Trump hasn’t yet stamped his name on every facet of U.S. political life.

America in the Americas. China in East Asia. Russia, where Russia still can.

There is a certain gangster logic to it. Not the UN Charter. Not the Magna Carta. More Godfather than Geneva.

Markets, predictably, shrugged.

Oil stocks rallied. Defense stocks jumped. Consultants booked flights to the oil fields near Lake Maracaibo and the Orinoco Belt.

Roughly 70–80% of global silver supply comes as a byproduct of mining other metals—copper, lead, zinc, gold. This means that even if silver prices doubled tomorrow, production wouldn’t automatically increase unless mining of those other metals ramped up too. You can’t just “decide” to mine more silver.

Layer China’s export controls on top of all that, and you’re looking at a supply profile that’s unusually tight—and unusually vulnerable.

The High Yield Bond Distress Index measures levels in the junk bond market, including liquidity, market functionality, and how easily companies can borrow.

A reading this low signals extremely healthy borrowing conditions for high-yield issuers. It’s also where we would look for distress in the corporate AI build out debt issuance.

And if the high yield bond market isn’t worried yet, stock market pullbacks are likely to be short and shallow – and will likely play a role in a midyear “crack-up boom.”

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 “Donroe Doctrine,” the White House is calling… because Trump hasn’t yet stamped his name on every facet of U.S. political life.

America in the Americas. China in East Asia. Russia, where Russia still can.

There is a certain gangster logic to it. Not the UN Charter. Not the Magna Carta. More Godfather than Geneva.

Markets, predictably, shrugged.

Oil stocks rallied. Defense stocks jumped. Consultants booked flights to the oil fields near Lake Maracaibo and the Orinoco Belt.

Layer China’s export controls on top of all that, and you’re looking at a supply profile that’s unusually tight—and unusually vulnerable.

The High Yield Bond Distress Index measures levels in the junk bond market, including liquidity, market functionality, and how easily companies can borrow.

A reading this low signals extremely healthy borrowing conditions for high-yield issuers. It’s also where we would look for distress in the corporate AI build out debt issuance.

And if the high yield bond market isn’t worried yet, stock market pullbacks are likely to be short and shallow – and will likely play a role in a midyear “crack-up boom.”

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.