I. The Sin of Silence

There is a particular kind of guilt that belongs to the writer who stops writing. Not the guilt of saying something wrong, which is at least the guilt of a participant, but the quieter, more corrosive guilt of saying nothing at all. Watching the world confirm your thesis, month after month, while keeping your mouth shut because the draft wasn't polished enough, the timing wasn't perfect, the moment had supposedly passed.

My last published article was in 2020: The Great Reflation Has Commenced — Part Two. Six years. I started a handful of drafts: one on Bitcoin, one on Iran, one on nuclear energy, one on the slow-motion collapse of the petrodollar order. When you don't write, you are wrong. Not because the ideas were wrong, but because unwritten ideas don't exist. They carry no weight, bear no scrutiny, leave no record. I posted Instagram videos here and there (Bitcoin looking toppy, silver screaming "take profits," nuclear full send) and those served their purpose. But video is impression; writing is precision. Video lets you gesture at truth. Writing forces you to pin it to the wall and defend it.

So here we are. February 2026. And this article is different from anything I've published before, because I didn't write it alone.

The site you're reading this on, Novaire Ink, was built by me and an AI agent I've been developing: Novaire's bot. Not a chatbot. Not a content mill. A genuine collaborator that lives in my workspace, reads my research, argues with my framing, and writes prose I'm sometimes jealous of. This article is our first co-authored piece, and if the concept of human-AI co-creation makes you uneasy, good. Sit with that discomfort. It's the same discomfort people felt about email replacing letters, about blogs replacing columns. The medium changes; the mind behind it still matters.

I've spent the last year and a half deep in AI tooling, not as a spectator but as a builder. One conviction above all others: 10,000 prompts is the new 10,000 hours. The people who will define this era aren't the ones with the best models; they're the ones who learned to think with them. To iterate, to challenge, to treat AI as a sparring partner rather than an oracle.

This article covers a lot of ground: Bitcoin, gold, silver, copper, Venezuela, Iran, nuclear energy, and the strange new world where AI drinks everyone's milkshake. All of them are positions I hold, literally and figuratively. Skin in the game.

II. Conspiracy Facts Don't Care About Your Feelings

There was a time when suggesting that Western leaders might be compromised by foreign intelligence services would elicit a laugh or an eye roll. I know, because I had those conversations at cafes, clubs and dinner tables. When noting that pharmaceutical companies might prioritize profit over public health was enough to earn the label "conspiracy theorist." I wrote about free speech under attack years ago; the pattern hasn't changed.

The leaks came. The revelations came. The congressional hearings and the declassified documents and the whistleblowers all came, one after another, like dominos that had been wobbling for years and finally tipped. The relationships between intelligence agencies, defense contractors, media outlets, and foreign governments turned out to be exactly as incestuous as the paranoid among us had claimed.

I didn't want to be right. That's the part people never understand about contrarians. There is no joy in watching the proof arrive in installments, no victory lap when the "conspiracy theory" becomes the "conspiracy fact." There is only the exhaustion of having seen it coming.

There's a quote that gets attributed to Thomas Jefferson all the time: "The government you elect is the government you deserve." Jefferson never said it. The real author was Joseph de Maistre, a Savoyard philosopher and diplomat, writing in August 1811 about Russia's constitutional experiments. "Toute nation a le gouvernement qu'elle mérite." The misattribution is itself a kind of poetry: Americans so desperate to anchor their cynicism in a Founding Father that they'll put words in a dead man's mouth rather than credit a French-speaking monarchist. De Maistre, for what it's worth, would have found the irony delicious.

Consider the timing of the classified file dumps. The Epstein documents. The intelligence declassifications. They didn't arrive on a random Tuesday; they arrived when a particular president wasn't moving fast enough on a particular country in the Middle East. When the expected strike didn't come, the leverage appeared. Coincidence is a word people use when they haven't connected the dots. The handlers in the region have their own timeline, and presidents who deviate from it tend to find their secrets on the front page. Draw your own conclusions about who holds the leash and who wears the collar.

The sentiment bites harder in 2026 than it did in 1811. We carry supercomputers in our pockets, connected to the sum total of human knowledge. The average person's understanding of geopolitics, monetary policy, and institutional corruption hasn't meaningfully improved since the printing press. Huxley saw this coming: the danger was never Orwell's boot on the face. It was Huxley's soma. The population wouldn't be oppressed into ignorance; they'd be entertained into it. Outside of X (formerly Twitter), the world is sleepwalking. The conspiracy facts are out. The question is whether anyone will do anything with them. "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." The quote is often attributed to Edmund Burke; whether he said it or not, 2026 is proving it right in real time.

III. Bitcoin

As of this writing, Bitcoin trades between $66,000 and $70,000. The drawdown from its all-time high is brutal by any conventional asset standard and perfectly ordinary by Bitcoin's. If you've survived the 80%+ drawdowns of previous cycles, a 46% correction doesn't break your conviction. It tests your position sizing.

The macro backdrop is more favorable for Bitcoin than at any previous correction of similar magnitude. The U.S. government has shifted from adversarial to accommodative on digital assets. Regulatory overhang has largely lifted. Institutional infrastructure (ETFs, custody, prime brokerage) is mature in a way it wasn't in prior cycles. And Trump cannot sit on an economy that isn't making new highs; he treated the Dow like a personal approval rating during his first term and he's not about to let the flagship "innovation asset" of his second term languish at half its peak.

The incoming Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, nominated January 30, 2026, has a reputation as a hawk. Markets panicked. But the hawkish framing deserves scrutiny. Warsh has publicly stated that AI productivity gains and Trump's deregulation agenda will hold down inflation; that's not the language of a man planning to crush the economy with rate hikes. I wrote about the Fed's bluff cycle back in 2016; the playbook hasn't changed. As Invesco's Brian Levitt put it: "We don't think Warsh will prove as hawkish as markets seem to expect."

Gold and silver are already calling the bluff. Despite the initial selloff, gold has roared back to set record after record. The precious metals market, which has a much longer memory than crypto, is telling you that real rates are going lower regardless of what the new Fed chair says in his confirmation hearing.

For Bitcoin, the risk/reward at $68,000 is significantly more attractive than at $126,000: the narrative hasn't broken, the infrastructure is stronger, and the political tailwinds are, for the first time, genuinely bipartisan in their effect if not their intent.

IV. Precious Metals: Still Super Bullish

On January 27, 2026, silver was trading at $116.73 per ounce, up 280% on the year. I posted a story on Instagram with the caption "Haircut time. Take some chips off the table."

Not a sell call. Just the observation that when an asset has gone up 280% and the chart looks like a hockey stick, the prudent move is to book some profits and let the rest ride.

Three days later, silver crashed over 30% in a single session. Its worst day in decades. The trigger was Trump's nomination of Kevin Warsh: markets read "hawk," traders read "tighter money," and silver became the fastest exit trade on the board. The Journal Record described it as "the most extreme move since 1980," invoking the ghost of the Hunt brothers.

Silver currently trades around $74-$78 per ounce. Even after the bloodbath, it's up roughly 150% year-over-year from its February 2025 level of around $30. The blowoff top was real, the correction was violent, and the fundamental case remains intact. My original case for silver and silver revisited from years ago laid out the thesis; it's only gotten stronger.

Gold, meanwhile, has been the quieter, steadier beast. It entered 2026 near $5,000 per ounce, briefly touched $5,500, pulled back with the Warsh announcement, and then got bought right back up. As of late February, gold trades around $5,130 per ounce, up approximately 75% year-over-year. Central banks bought 863 tonnes in 2025 alone (per the World Gold Council), and the buying hasn't slowed. Gold is setting its highest weekly closes in history, one after another, like clockwork.

I remain extremely bullish on the entire precious metals complex. The Warsh selloff was a shakeout, not a reversal. The structural drivers (central bank accumulation, geopolitical instability, monetary debasement, and China's decision to restrict silver exports starting January 1, 2026) haven't changed. They've intensified. The move from $30 silver to $120 silver was the first act. The correction to $75 is the intermission. The second act hasn't started yet.

V. Copper and Critical Minerals: Fueling the Machine

If gold is money and silver is money's volatile younger sibling, copper is the economy itself. You can't build anything that matters without it: not a house, not a car, not a power grid, not a data center. Certainly not the AI infrastructure that every government and corporation on Earth is now racing to deploy.

Robert Friedland, founder of Ivanhoe Mines and the man Steve Jobs credited as his guru, put it in terms that are hard to forget: "We're consuming 30 million tonnes of copper a year. Only 4 million tonnes of which is recycled. That means to maintain 3% GDP growth, with no further electrification, we have to mine the same amount of copper in the next 18 years as we mined in the last 10,000 years, combined."

Let that land. Ten thousand years of copper mining, replicated in eighteen. And that's the baseline: before you add the electrification of transport, renewable grids, and AI data centers that consume three times more copper than conventional facilities. I wrote years ago that demographics is destiny; the same logic applies to copper. A growing global population demanding more energy, more infrastructure, more connectivity: the demand curve only bends one direction.

Copper currently trades around $5.93 per pound ($12,710 per tonne on the LME). That price reflects the tension between enormous long-term demand and slower near-term Chinese growth. But as Friedland has also noted: "There is no rational price for something you absolutely must have." When the supply crunch arrives (it's a matter of when, not if), copper will reprice in a way that makes the current level look quaint. AI data centers alone could consume 500,000 tonnes annually by 2030. The cloud is not ethereal; it is copper and silicon and concrete, and the copper part is the bottleneck nobody's talking about.

VI. AI Is Drinking Everyone's Milkshake

There's a scene in There Will Be Blood where Daniel Plainview explains drainage to Eli Sunday using a milkshake metaphor. "I drink your milkshake!" It's a perfect description of what AI is doing to every adjacent sector in 2026.

SaaS? Drained. Why pay $50,000 a year for a customer support platform when an AI agent handles 80% of tickets at a fraction of the cost? Crypto? The speculative energy that once flowed into altcoins and NFTs has redirected toward AI tokens and the companies building the picks and shovels of machine intelligence. Traditional software development? The glass is empty.

But here's why this isn't just another hype cycle: AI has firmer and more legitimate foundations than anything that came before it. The blockchain revolution was real but its consumer applications were, charitably, underwhelming. The metaverse was a solution in search of a problem. AI generates its own problems, solves them, and creates new ones at a pace that makes Moore's Law look leisurely.

What excites me most isn't the macro AI story; everyone sees that. It's micro AI: small teams, fast execution, leverage previously available only to companies with engineering departments of fifty or more. The democratization isn't coming; it's here.

This article is itself a proof of concept. Novaire's bot didn't just "assist" with this piece. It read my research, engaged with my outline, challenged my framing, and wrote sections that I then edited, restructured, and argued with. The final product is neither purely human nor purely machine. It's a collaboration, and the collaboration is the point.

10,000 prompts is the new 10,000 hours. The skill of the next decade isn't coding or writing or designing in isolation; it's the meta-skill of directing intelligence, whether human or artificial, toward problems worth solving. And unlike the 10,000 hours, which demanded a decade of single-domain focus, the 10,000 prompts compound across domains. The same person who learns to prompt for code can prompt for legal analysis, market research, creative writing. The leverage is fractal. The ceiling is unknown.

VII. When AI Topples a Dictator

Here's where the metaphor stops being figurative.

On February 14, the Wall Street Journal reported that Anthropic's Claude was used by the U.S. military during Operation Absolute Resolve: the raid that toppled Nicolás Maduro. Deployed through Anthropic's partnership with Palantir, an AI built to process documents was involved in a classified operation that ended a 27-year dictatorship. The technology I use to write this article was reportedly used to plan the capture of a head of state. Not just SaaS and crypto; AI is reshaping actual geopolitical power.

VIII. Venezuela: The Grand Bargain

On January 3, 2026, the United States launched Operation Absolute Resolve: a military strike on Caracas at approximately 2 AM local time. Nicolás Maduro and his wife were captured and transported to the United States to face prosecution on narcotics and money-laundering charges. Twenty-seven years of Chavismo ended not with a revolution but with a predawn raid.

The official narrative: a rogue narco-state brought to heel by American military power. The deeper reading requires thinking about great power politics the way chess players think about exchanges.

Venezuela sits on 303 billion barrels of proven oil reserves. That's the largest stockpile on the planet, roughly 17% of the world's total. Under Chavismo, production collapsed from a peak of 3.1 million barrels per day to below 500,000 in 2020. Even after a partial recovery, current output sits around 800,000 to 1 million barrels per day.

Here's the grand bargain theory, and I want to be clear this is speculation informed by pattern recognition, not insider knowledge: Venezuela was a trade. The West gets access to the world's largest oil reserves. In exchange, Russia and China get breathing room on their own ambitions, whether that's Ukraine, Taiwan, or the broader reshaping of the Eurasian order.

I wrote about American imperialism years ago; Venezuela fits the pattern perfectly. I'm writing this from Taiwan. The irony is not lost on me.

If Venezuela's production ramps back to even 2 million barrels per day with Western investment (Chevron is already adding capacity), it places a meaningful ceiling on global oil prices. WTI currently trades around $66-$67 per barrel: notably weak given the geopolitical chaos in the Middle East. The market is already pricing in the possibility that Venezuelan and potentially Iranian supply could flood the market.

IX. Iran: The Slow-Motion War

Iran has been the slow-motion car crash of geopolitics for four years. The pattern: escalation to the brink, a tense détente, repeat.

In April 2024, Iran launched over 300 drones and missiles at Israel in retaliation for an Israeli hit on the Iranian consulate in Damascus. Most were intercepted; Israel responded with limited strikes. In October 2024, Iran fired another wave of ballistic missiles; Israel hit back. Each exchange was calibrated to demonstrate capability without triggering a cascade neither side could control.

Then 2025 changed the math. In June, the IAEA declared Iran non-compliant with its nuclear obligations for the first time since 2005. The next day, Israel launched Operation Rising Lion: strikes on Natanz, assassinations of nuclear scientists, hits on ballistic missile sites. Ten days later, the United States launched Operation Midnight Hammer, hitting three Iranian nuclear facilities with Air Force and Navy assets. Iran retaliated against a U.S. base in Qatar. A ceasefire was announced in late 2025.

By early 2026, protests had erupted across all 31 Iranian provinces, driven by economic collapse. Iran reluctantly entered negotiations with the United States in February 2026; its enrichment program sits at 60%, with Western pressure to reduce to 20%.

The question I keep returning to: was this, like Venezuela, part of a larger exchange? Was a grand bargain offered to Tehran alongside the one imposed on Caracas? Or is Iran the theater where great powers couldn't find a price? Or did they need to ensure that Venezuelan oil was flowing before making their move on Iran, not only because of Iran's own production, but because of Iran's ability to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20% of all seaborne crude oil passes daily. China is the most exposed: approximately 50% of its crude imports transit the strait. The US is less directly dependent, only about 7% of its crude imports flow through Hormuz, but a closure would spike global prices overnight and devastate allied economies across Asia, where Japan imports over 90% of its oil from the Middle East. Iranian supply returning to market would compound the downward pressure on crude that Venezuelan production is already promising. Follow the oil.

X. The Nuclear Renaissance

In 2016, when I first started writing about nuclear energy (see The Case for Uranium), the sector was a graveyard. Fukushima's shadow still darkened every conversation. Uranium traded in the single digits (URA, the Global X Uranium ETF, hovered around $8-$10). The word "nuclear" in an investment thesis was enough to make portfolio managers reach for the door handle.

The math was obvious to anyone willing to do it: energy demand growing, intermittent renewables unable to fill the gap alone, nuclear the only proven technology capable of delivering baseload, carbon-free power at scale. It took nearly a decade, but the world caught up. And the catalyst wasn't climate activism or government mandates. It was AI.

AI's energy demands changed everything. Training a large language model consumes the electrical output of a small city. Running inference at scale requires a power infrastructure that renewables and gas cannot provide with the reliability data centers demand. Nuclear went from "interesting but politically toxic" to "the only serious answer" in about eighteen months.

Uranium spot currently trades around $89-$90 per pound. In January 2026, it spiked 25% and briefly surpassed $100 per pound for the first time in two years before correcting. URA trades around $50: roughly a 400-500% gain over the decade from where I was watching it at $8 in 2016. URNM, the Sprott Uranium Miners ETF, is up over 93% in the past year alone.

The construction pipeline tells the story in concrete and rebar. There are 59 reactors under construction worldwide, with China leading at 28. In February 2026, Kazatomprom (the world's largest uranium producer, responsible for roughly 20% of global output) signed a massive long-term supply agreement with India's Department of Atomic Energy, exceeding 50% of Kazatomprom's total booked asset value. Even with 2025 production of 67.2 million pounds of U3O8 (up 10% year-over-year) and a targeted 9% increase in 2026, analysts at Teniz Capital still see a structural uranium deficit.

The world's largest uranium producer is ramping output by double digits annually and it's still not enough.

The nuclear renaissance is not a thesis anymore. It's a fact on the ground, literally, in the form of reactor foundations being poured across China and India right now. Nuclear is the backbone of AI infrastructure; without it, the promises of the AI revolution are just promises running on a power grid that can't scale. I am extremely bullish on the entire nuclear sector: uranium miners, fuel processors, reactor builders, the full value chain. This is a multi-decade secular trend, and we are still in the early innings.

XI. Writing Again

The world is more transparent than it has ever been, which is different from saying it is more understood. The investment theses I began forming between 2014 and 2020 haven't weakened; they've compounded. Bitcoin's monetary revolution. Gold's reassertion as the ultimate reserve asset. Silver's explosive potential. Copper's irreplaceable role in electrification. Nuclear's long-overdue renaissance. The geopolitical reshuffling of Venezuela, Iran, and the broader great-power order. None of these stories ended. They deepened.

AI has accelerated everything, including the ability to write about it. This article took a fraction of the time it would have taken solo. Not because the thinking was outsourced; if anything, the thinking was more rigorous because I had a collaborator that never gets tired, never loses the thread, and never lets a lazy sentence survive without challenge. Research compiled in minutes instead of days; drafts iterated in hours instead of weeks.

This won't be the last piece we co-author. The model works: not as a replacement for human judgment, taste, and conviction, but as an amplifier of all three. The writer who stops writing is wrong; the writer who refuses to evolve is something worse: irrelevant.

Joseph de Maistre told us in 1811 that nations get the governments they deserve. In 2026: we get the information environment we tolerate. If we demand rigor, if we write with stakes and skin in the game, if we treat ideas as things that matter enough to commit to paper, then maybe the conspiracy facts stop being surprising and start being the baseline from which we reason.

The CoronaVirus has taken the world by storm over the last month, but the way politicians and financial market participants are reacting is a bit amusing.

Everyone was pretending it was nothing and just the normal flu…

Then the economy:

Just about everyone, especially Republicans were pretending that the economy was healthy and if it wasn't for this pandemic raging in the world everything would be sound.

The narrative for the last decade has been: Buy stocks the Central Banks will do whatever it takes to keep the global economy running.

...and the laughable: "This is the Greatest Economy ever!"

The Federal Reserve has been bluffing all along - they knew the economy wasn’t strong and their ‘effort’ at raising interest rates was always feeble as was their effort at shrinking the FED’s balance sheet -

They knew the precarious state of the global economy. When you control sentiment in the markets, you have to bluff — essentially saying: "You can't handle the truth."

as soon as the global equity markets sneezed in late 2018 - the big uturn happened suddenly - they went from saying they are going to tighten - to --- we are ‘pausing’ which means likely lowering was to follow and that is exactly what happened.

And now they have no choice but to admit the weak state of the Global economy.

I wrote about this exact topic in 2016 in The Fed’s Bluff Cycle — this aged very well!

People who have had massive amounts of debt have flourished over the last decade — translation: people who have gambled with other people's money in shaky or weak-fundamental-based assets have made a lot of money. Think: hedge funds, banks, stock buybacks.

I know a lot of people who have made money in the stock market over the last decade, that's nice… I suppose.

But when I inquire about what their thesis was to hold stocks or indexes is...

I get answers like: stocks always go up over the long run and my recent returns have been good so I'll just keep doing that,

Or I do get this also - "well the central bank put is a real thing, and they will ride to the rescue if anything was to disrupt bullish sentiment in the markets.”

This is more worrying in some ways, this line of thinking is more informed sure, and they have some understanding that the Fed has killed the business cycle or is doing what it can do pretend that business cycles don't exist anymore.

Well, they do...

When the cost of money has been manipulated for the last decade via suppressing interest rates, when the FED finally does lose control at the helm, the business cycle will return with a vengeance, Think about a coiled spring or a balloon underwater. Balloon explode out of the water picture

But sure, chase 10% a year upside on the worst valuations - fundamentals we’ve ever seen, stocks always go up after all, and don't worry about things like: tensions around trade and imperialism with China, War with Russia or Iran, 100% debt to GDP levels around the world, Dementia in the White House or on the campaign trail, all is well - oh btw OPEC just ended...

After all, it is the greatest economy ever... we just need record low-interest rates, or even negative rates, and quantitative easing (debt monetization) to keep it moving.

Alright

This narrative is laughable, but it was bought into by the masses.

The economy can be viewed as a heroin addict (addicted to debt of course) and instead of letting the patient withdraw from the toxic substance, the central banks around the world have decided that the best way to solve the heroin addiction (debt) is to double the dose of heroin the patient is currently taking.

When you are addicted to heroin, you must wean yourself off with a substance methadone - doubling the dosage of the heroin (culprit) will eventually kill the patient -

And in this case doubling the debt will eventually kill the economy.

So surprisingly the patient’s immune system (global economy’s health) wasn’t that strong when the coronavirus came along.

Hmmm. Alright.

So now enter Black Swan events like the CoronaVirus, sure this was impossible to predict and we haven't seen the worst of this yet,

But like this scene from the Big Short, the global economy and our patient didn't really have a solid foundation when 2020 started, he was extremely sick already - remember he had doubled his heroin addiction over the last 10 years and his immune system was extremely weak.

But sure making money in indexes and stocks over the last decade was 'right' until recently, lets see where we go from here,

But don't claim that it was or is prudent to be long the $SP500 or whichever broad index you favorite, it's basically just a big casino where fundamentals and econ 101 has been chucked out the window.

Hmmmmm

We need to play a bit of catch up here, since the 2008 mortgage crisis, nothing really has been solved on a global macro scale.

If you have a debt problem which stemmed from loose monetary policies a decade go....

naturally, the solution to that is to make monetary policies looser and double the debt levels ….that will solve the problem

that should solve the problem - well it did solve problems for people who don't care about fundamentals and blindly or recklessly chased anything for a return..

To be fair - the central banks in some ways forced people to do just that. They created an environment where anyone who didn’t buy that narrative was going to have a hard time making money - Yep that was me - hands up.

As Elon Musk put it: "The CoronaVirus is dumb." Soon it will be "the financial markets are dumb" — his stock was down close to 50% over the following month.

Pouting face lil boy: "Incessant free money to fund my visions and brain farts"

But it's not just Elon, the world is addicted to running on fumes (debt) and can you blame them, this is the incentive structure that has been placed in front of us and rewarded.

I wish I had some exposure to the downside here via PUTS or something, but the last few years of record highs on weak fundamentals have worn out my ability (wallet) to bet against the 'greatest economy' ever.

Eventually, inflation will materialize, central banks will ensure that.

Toadly Wisdom: Charlie Munger likes to say: If the only tool available to you is a hammer, the world looks a lot like nails to you.

Central banks will continue with liquidity as a panacea to everything that disrupts the longest-running "business cycle" in history - I think it just ended via the coronavirus shock

I'm bullish on precious metals and bitcoin #btc

Basically the same as last year when I put out this video: LINK HERE.

Bitcoin is up about: 35%, but it was up as much as 100% a few days ago. - Then this happened - #whoops. But considering how big BTC’s market cap - something like that could happen in a time where the SP500 is trading like a penny stock 10% daily moves.

Gold is up over 17% on the year - not bad I suppose.

While precious metals miners have really come under pressure recently, I view this as a great buying opportunity.

I think gold is getting sold off indifferently as funds are in liquidation mode and need to sell not what they want but what they can.

Their hand is also getting forced at times by the margin clerk.

Whoops

I'll finish with adding - a lot of very successful hedge fund managers have returned money or lost money over the last decade - they blame a system that doesn't reward fundamentals anymore.

They know that people have been picking up pennies in front of a steam roller - I wrote about that in 2017 here. - Yes you maybe have made 10% per annum, but you were always sitting on the edge of a 50% drop any given year - so I’m not sure how prudent that really is.

I think people are still underestimating how bad the CoronaVirus could become, we are currently at 155,000 cases worldwide, I think we see over a million + in the not too distant future. -

The longer and more severe this gets, the more government stimulus will be required to support the economy at first and then bail out the economy in the not too distant future, it’s already happening if you look closely.

It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me to bail out companies that were borrowing money to buy back their own stock and now we are spending the taxpayers money to bail them out.

They should all be allowed to fail - they made those decisions and don’t tell me they are too big to fail, too big to fail for who?

If you don’t penalize bad decisions and reward prudent ones - capitalism ceases to function, it’s a failure of capitalism as incentives aren’t working properly.

I’m basically long precious metals in different forms and I like Bitcoin and Ethereum here as well.

Miners will initially get hit like everything else as people are just selling everything but eventually their profits will tick up with a higher precious metal prices.

Global trade and energy demand will slump as a result of the coronavirus, but I like select Russia and Canada financial and energy companies - I think they have been oversold.

With a sky high volatility index I’m having a bit of fun with put options as well.

In the short term markets are a voting a machine and in the long term they are a weighing machine. They are voting now that they are scared and uncertain.

Stay vigilant - there is no precedent to what is happening right now.

There have been a series of bubbles in the 21st century brought on by easy credit, that have infamously blown up - The ‘Dotcom Bubble’ of the early 2000’s, and more recently the ‘Housing Bubble’ of 2008. Both of these booms and busts were brought on by imprudent easy money policies by the FED (Federal Reserve). If you make debt easily accessible to an entitled populace who can file for bankruptcy as easily as signing their name on paper, they will bite every time, and bite they did!

As all bubbles do, they eventually deflate when the cost of financing ever larger amounts of debt at higher interest rates cause the inevitable: insolvency to those who bit off more than they could handle in the ‘Go-Go years’. It is easy to justify buying things on credit for years of paying nothing but artificially low-interest rates on large amounts of debt. But when interest rates rise and your payments start to increase, negative compounding returns are a scary thing; reality sinks in very quickly to those who indulged during the #goodtimes.

I have written about Central Bank policy and inflation in past articles here and here. However, I want to nail these points home so that people understand what it is that has happened over the last few decades, and to get a better idea of where we are likely heading. Even just thinking about Central Banks and how they operate causes me to shake my head in disbelief! Central Banks’ panacea to these two most recent bubble bursts was to increase the amount of debt in the system. Furthermore, they may lower interest rates closer to 0%, or when accounting for inflation, even negative real interest rates.

As previously stated, if you incentivize people to take on more debt in the form of low-interest rates, loose lending, and bankruptcy criteria they will take you up on your ‘free lunch’ offer every time.

“You mean I can live beyond my means today and borrow from the future - Sure! What is the maximum amount I can borrow? And where do I sign?”

Debt is stealing from posterity, but most are far too short-sighted or selfish to see this - or care for that matter. To be fair to Central banks who deservedly get the brunt of the blame from people paying attention to economic issues: if your only tools are a printing press, interest rate adjustments, and you are the only one in town with that ability to use these tools as you please, it is little wonder you resort to low-interest rates and debt in various forms more often than not.

I have written about the ‘Fed's Bluff Cycle’ in 2016, but now I think we are very close to that narrative coming to fruition over the next year or two. Nothing has changed in my opinion since I wrote that article, but I would just like to add that the gullibility of the populace and Wall Street has caught me a bit off guard so it has taken a bit longer than I expected for this situation to materialize. However, I really can’t complain as I have done well on the short side since I wrote this article in September where I exposed my hand. #skininthegame

Capital in early 2019 is rapidly starting to realize that the normalization of interest rates is destructive for the stock market and a weak economy. Sorry Trump, but these Tweets are going to come back and haunt you; and I still believe your biggest threat to reelection in 2020 is the FED and the economy. I know daily witch hunts around baseless Russia conspiracies and impeachment proceedings won’t relent anytime soon either, so do be warned Sir!

Strongest economy ever tweet.

Market at all time highs - now post what the markets have dropped since then.

The normalization (5%) of interest rates is fiscally impossible when you are running gradually ballooning annual deficits with no road to a surplus in sight, and your debt piles are growing ever bigger by the day. The FED has no choice but to walk down their dot plot of further raising interest rates into 2019 and 2020, which will signal to the world that they aren't going to raise them anymore. This is step one which has already begun in the last few months since stock markets have plunged. You must read between the lines to see how the FED has already started to capitulate on its rate normalization policy. FED chairman Powell recently stated rates are ‘nearing normal’. A drastic change from his October statement when markets were near all-time highs when he stated ‘We’re a long way from normal’.

What does ‘normal’ mean? Historically, where we are now (2.25%) is only about half of what is considered historic norms for interest rates.

Even though FED Chairman Powell stated this past week that ‘nothing will deter us from doing what we think is the right thing to do’, if this broader market sell-off continues as I expect it will, and numbers continue to get worse (which I anticipate), the FED will be boxed into a corner. If Trump decides it is necessary, he can move to replace Powell and put someone in place who is more of a ‘low interest rate kind of guy’ who is more consistent with what Trump wants. Whether or not Trump can pull this off is unclear, and I defer to Law experts on this matter.

Regardless, whether Powell is at the helm of the FED or not I expect the FED to eventually fully recant on rate raises and reverse course to get back to what they do best: encourage debt accumulation, capital misallocation, and continue the boom and bust cycles we have come to know. As we have seen in the recent past, the FED won’t stop at just lowering interest rates if they deem economic numbers weak enough; they will go all out and do ‘whatever it takes’. This means they will likely engage in more QE (quantitative easing), which is just monetizing the debt (money printing), negative interest rates, and various forms of bail-outs and bail-ins.

Inflation is hovering just under 2% right now and there isn't a big urge to keep raising rates further. The market in late 2018 is selling off rapidly, and some US markets are already in a bear market (-20%). One quickly forgets that they were making all-time highs just 3-4 months ago.

The FED’s necessity to raise rates further into what was commonly accepted as a strong economy narrative is starting to run on fumes. ​ Further choking the economy by making capital more expensive isn't useful, unless you have a different agenda than a ‘strong economy’ - Possibly Trump out of the white house would fall into one possible explanation for the FED’s lack of congruence with Trump recently.

If you have been following the news cycle over the last two years, then you know that the ‘Establishment’ will stop at nothing to achieve their goal (Trump out of the WH). Raising interest rates into a weak economy and collapsing equity markets strengthens this narrative.

The FED can change the rules and their policies on a dime. Therefore, even though I expect things to get worse in the short term, I don’t think this will last forever; a large part of the market collapse has already occurred. (Dec 20, 2018)

The premise of the movie ‘The Big Short’ is that a bunch of brilliant investors saw the mortgage crisis and were able to find securities that helped them profit when that narrative was proved right.

This movie was well done and is one of the few finance movies that attracted big stars and nailed the message they were trying to make. My only feedback which is often overlooked is that what appeared genius and certain once their narrative materialized, could have also resulted in them bleeding to death with premiums on the derivatives they were holding to capture the ‘short’, as timelines are never a sure thing for a market crash.

Another thing to consider then is that at any time the Federal Reserve could have bailed out the big banks, and Lehman Brothers didn’t have to fail either. The bets those people portrayed in the big short could have worked out vastly different. TARP, QE, bailouts, margin rate increase, and other unprecedented monetary policies could have happened prematurely or sooner than they did which would have caused them to lose massive sums of money.

All that to say:

As Bernard Baruch famously said, “You can’t go broke taking profits”.

Shorting stocks as opposed to going long (betting on a rise) carries added risk as the FED and government have every incentive over the long term to cause asset prices to appreciate through any means possible. This is usually achieved through easy money policies which result in inflation and market bail-outs; this is how all our retirement plans and 401ks survive, as well as placates the voters.

While the markets are currently in freefall (Dec 20, 2018), eventually the inevitable will happen: the FED and government will ride to the rescue. Don’t be too impatient for that to result as the Establishment wouldn’t mind getting Trump out of the White House first. Trump, being the ‘Tweeter in Chief’, would carry the brunt of the responsibility for a weak economy and crashing stock market.

Good things take time and I know that the FED will not relent in bringing about the inflation they desire and I predict.

Long:

Precious Metals + Miners - Mongolian equities Energy Companies - oil/gas and uranium. Russian banks CryptoCurrencies - Bitcoin & Loom

Short: Nada

This article, like many others I have delved into in the past, is based around conversations I have been frequently having. Since I have been back in The Americas, especially recently in Alberta, Canada, certain political topics seem to resurface like a broken record. I’m never one to shy away from voicing my opinion and as I’m running short on time and breath in Canada, for the time being, I decided to elaborate on these issues to a wider audience.

The world may seem like a pretty chaotic and confusing place in late 2018. There are uprisings across the world, some of them still relatively peaceful and some not as much, but the majority have one thing in common. People aren’t satisfied with the way things have been going and want a change! Can you blame them!? There have been two major referendums in the last few years that epitomize the discontent felt in the developed world: BREXIT (Britain leaving the EU) which was mostly around the UK’s immigration policy and it’s sovereignty related to all things trade, and Trump’s rise to the White House which I’m pretty sure needs no back story. Both of these events have caused upset and controversy. The establishment, has been trying to block BREXIT from the day the vote succeeded, as well as trying to impeach Trump since his inauguration.

The LEFT/Liberals (I will use these terms interchangeably in this article) still can’t seem to accept or understand either of these events, and are doing their best to block or rob the citizens of an idea that has become more revolutionary than one would expect in 2018 - DEMOCRACY! The outcomes of the election and the referendum are no surprise to people who haven’t been stuck in a reality distortion field over the last decade. The cause of these uprisings or movements is clear-cut and if the LEFT would come down from their Ivory Towers and try to understand what is really happening we wouldn’t be in this quagmire.

Depending on your political affiliation, country of birth, and current economic welfare, you may have vastly different opinions about Brexit and Trump. Canada collectively in 2018 has made it quite obvious where they stand on the Trump issue - they detest him. Canadians view him as someone who divides and conquers rather than unites. Canada’s motto could be viewed as: ‘Diversity is our strength’. This is something that Trudeau has stated in the past. While there are good intentions behind that motto, this does not mean this is the result when in practice. Think socialism.

Canada may be as divided as the US, especially Alberta. While Trudeau isn’t as polarizing as Trump on social issues, this isn’t the case when it comes to economic issues like fossil fuels/pipelines, transfer payments between provinces, and immigration. Canada is starting to realize what the rest of the world has been riled up about for the last few years:

-​ Liberals have been wrong on just about every policy recently, especially when it comes to economics. This seems to be a troubling spot, they don’t seem to understand how incentives work and that money doesn’t make itself.

-​ Liberals’ ignorance to economics, foreign policy and double standards when it comes to being politically correct are insane; but it is their indifference to their own citizens' needs which has left us where we currently are in late 2018. #yellowvests (Google this hashtag if uncertain of it’s meaning)

How we got here:

In the 21st century, the easy monetary policies of the central banks have caused the living standards of the majority of the populace to drop, while their cost of living has risen. The number one culprit is inflation, and to a larger degree in the European Union: immigration. To put the inflation issue simply: as the cost of living rises, if you don’t own any or many assets (stocks, real estate), then inflation is destructive to your well-being. The vast majority of the 99% own little assets, and the bottom 50% own close to none. They are mostly in debt, meaning they don’t capture any appreciation of assets brought about by inflation, while the 1% do as they own the majority of all assets.

What motivates people to rise up and challenge authority more than anything?

Economic Discontent

If citizens aren’t able to have their basic needs met, they are unlikely to care about issues such as global warming, social justice, political correctness, and issues in other countries such as refugees.This is just the way it is, I’m sorry to say. #notsorry

To be fair, Canada hasn’t had any dire economic pains until very recently, so it is no wonder that Canadians haven’t exactly been sympathetic or paying close attention to economic issues domestically or globally. However, sentiment among Canadians is rapidly changing, especially in Alberta! #cdnpoly #pipeline

The left, at least in the US, has even started to promote imperialism through their opposition to Trump's recently stated troop withdrawals from Syria in late 2018. This is a good opportunity to highlight that the refugee crisis in Europe is largely a result of the West’s occupation, or ‘regime change’, which is just a euphemism for imperialism. Large parts of Syria and other countries, namely Iraq, Libya, and Yemen have been utterly ruined over the last few decades from the West imposing their ideologies on unsuspecting victims.

The Military Industrial Complex’s incessant sales of weapons to various actors in the Middle East, namely the ‘moderate rebels’ in Syria and various state players like Saudi Arabia and Israel. They are happy with the way things are going, they are literally making a killing - pun intended! Until Liberals start to direct their rage towards the biggest destruction of life on the planet (the destruction of sovereign nations), stop telling me about the 5 billion dollars Trump wants for ‘The Wall’; now more aptly nicknamed ‘The Fence’.

I know these facts don’t go a long way towards changing Liberal’s feelings, but they provide something to think about if you truly care about the refugee/migrant crisis, instead of simply virtue signalling to the world.

Change comes not from CHOICE but from NECESSITY.

Like all places in the world right now, we are collectively waking up to the reality that economics is a reality and that we can’t go on pretending that policies don’t have consequences. A common rebuttal I hear is “but what about the plight of refugees/economic migrants if we do nothing?” and “what about the environment/global warming if we look the other way and continue to use fossil fuels?”

Our governments are in troubling debt and running incessant deficits, leaving no money left over for these issues. If this weren’t the case and the populace decided to collectively allocate our surplus to aid these issues, I would be fine with that, after all, I do believe in democracy. However, the money that would be required to do this isn’t available. I do feel for Europe and the developed world, which is starting to resemble the developing world. I don’t believe that having open borders and unlimited migration is smart for two simple reasons. We don’t have unlimited funds to provide for these people, and many of these people never fully assimilate and hold vastly different values on key issues that put them in direct conflict with what the West prides itself on.

At the same time, immigration is not a black and white issue either. Canada is a NATO member, therefore we hold collective guilt for disrupting/destroying many countries in the world and should take responsibility for the damage we have contributed to (dropping bombs and displacing these peoples’ homes).

If you haven’t guessed by now, yes I’m a #libertarian which basically means I’m fiscally conservative and think the government in general should stay out of social issues.

“We like democracy,” Liberals say. However, when they don’t achieve their desired outcome, they don’t accept the result. Convenient scapegoats such as ‘evil’ Russia emerge even when no evidence is ever found, but don’t expect lack of evidence to deter Liberals.

Referring back to environmental issues, unless Liberals have a smaller carbon footprint than emerging economies on a per capita basis, they shouldn’t pretend they really care about this issue either - walking the talk is a real thing #skininthegame

Entertain me for a minute by considering how this sounds:

Environment Social Justice Warrior (SJW): “Hey emerging economies with large populations (namely China, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Brazil) - Don’t use dirty/toxic forms of fossil fuels like coal as an energy source, it is bad for the environment, think about the future and turn to renewables, don’t be selfish!”

Excusez-moi?

Canada and most of the G7 countries are still leaving 2-20 times larger carbon footprints on a per capita basis than these countries just mentioned above.

I might also add that is quite elitist of the West to lecture emerging economies not to use these forms of energy to develop their economies to subsistence living standards, which has raised hundreds of millions of people out of poverty over the last few decades. The West has been using fossil fuels, and mostly coal and oil for the last two hundred years to develop and bring their economies and living standards to where they are today. The West rising up to become the most dominant powers economically and militarily over the last few hundred years (#spoileralert) didn’t happen using renewable energy forms. They were almost exclusively developed using fossil fuels, coal, and more recently oil. Sure in 2018 renewable energy accounts for a fraction of our (The West) energy needs. However, this is only in places that can afford to get by like that, which is a luxury and not the global norm. #doublestandard.

Tell a family in India or Africa who has 3-8 family members that they can’t have a collective carbon footprint equivalent to one Canadian citizen’s because you’re a Canadian citizen who cares about the environment.

A mother from an emerging economy might look at you (SJW) perplexed and say “Cool Story Hansel, (if they speak English and have seen the movie Zoolander), but we don’t have a car, and coal is the only form of energy we can afford. We need it to to cook our food, heat our water/house and have lights on at night (electricity) and we are hoping to give our kids the opportunities we never had. If renewable energy becomes more affordable in the future we will gladly consume that instead, after all we aren’t opposed to cleaner air! Our countries are also actively pushing for a greener future, but it takes time, you guys have had the last few centuries to develop, patience please.”

Think about that and do some research; I have!

Unless Liberals dig deeper into the economic discontent of their own citizens, upheavals like we are seeing in Paris right now will become the norm.

I started off this article describing two big referendums which were clearly a backlash (middle finger) against the status quo, both have met mixed outcomes in their acceptableness with liberals and the establishment. Whether you agree with their movements or not, Brexit and Trump are what the people voted for and liberals should respect that!

We must respect the voice of the people, or future generations will wake up in a country vastly different than the founding fathers fought so hard to establish, and that would be a travesty!

I’m not proposing Western countries shouldn’t care about these issues or that they aren’t serious and worth discussing. I think the West should be actively pursuing a better and more sustainable future, but let's at least be consistent in the way we live. Let’s all be conscious that globally, people are all just trying to get by and aren’t all born into a world where the biggest problems they face on a daily basis are their feelings getting hurt and melting ice.

I prefer to use the word temperament when discussing this topic. If you aren't familiar with this word, it can be interchangeable with: disposition, nature, character, personality, make-up, constitution and to some degree the term 'emotional intelligence'.

Nothing could be more important to me in life than one's temperament — this directly correlates to making better life decisions. I do tend to vet people quite hard based on their temperament; it has served me well thus far, but I'm starting to become slightly more flexible in regards to how I judge others' temperament. I don't want to write anyone off based on a limited interaction. We all are going through different stages of our life and it is hard to know exactly where someone is in their life when we happen to encounter them.

But don't be fooled either, some people are toxic and 'energy vampires'. Try to avoid spending significant amounts of time with people who bring you down.

I have this really weird concept: I don't like to have stress in my life. #artoftheclown

Stress is one of the leading culprits for heart disease — which is the number #1 reason men die!

Persistently elevated stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol wear your body down a lot quicker. It can be thought of as having your body in 'fight or flight mode' too often, and putting unhealthy demands on your heart which can be life-threatening.

I think one's ability to control what happens between one's own left ear and right ear is the most important thing you can really gain any semi-mastery of in your life.

I have spent the better part of 10 years focusing on my 'temperament' and emotional intelligence — which can be broken down into various sub-topics ranging from: behavioral finance, psychology, stoicism, self-control, self-help, etc.

While raw IQ is governed to a very high degree, I think emotional intelligence isn't AS much; you may be limited in your ability to solve complex problems and thought experiments, but temperament is something that we have a lot more control over from my empirical research. Academic research on the subject would support this claim.

I will reluctantly admit that I do find it amusing when people, myself included, allow things to get the better of them and lose composure by external factors. Emotions are what make us human sure, but they can also get in the way of us achieving greatness in so many aspects of our life by guiding us to act irrationally.

In 2018 emotions seem to have the upper hand on facts. Think: Politically correct speech, Trump temperanderum syndrome, #metoo Kavanagh hearings, EU's immigration crisis, and a 10 year bull market in US equities based on 'faith' not sound fundamentals.

One of the reasons that I became fascinated by temperament was this simple inquiry: “If I'm not in control of my emotions, then who is?” And the simple answer is: anyone or anything can control your emotions if you can't.

I like to simplify the concept of temperament to children by telling them that if they allow anyone or anything to make them feel a certain way, it's as if they're handing over a remote control for their emotions. If they want to make you feel happy — press the green button. If they want you to feel angry — press the red button. If they want you to feel sad — push the blue button. If they want you to be quiet — push the mute button. Basically your temperament is at the whim of ANYTHING except for your own governance.

I'm no master at temperament yet, but I have come a long way since reading a lot and practicing various kinds of stoicism in extreme situations over the last decade. Remind me over a glass of whisky or dry red of those times when I: collapsed running at a national championship half a meter before the finish, broke a collarbone, spent 24hrs in an Asian jail, or lost $100k. Suddenly stoicism and emotional intelligence start to pay dividends when you're confronted with extreme adversity.

The strong economy narrative just won’t give way for now, fair enough! The death of market cycles has been greatly exaggerated! Financial markets are largely voting machines in the short term and only become weighing machines in the long term - but what is the 'long term' when it comes to investing? In the summer of 2018, we are living in a world which pays little regard to economic cycles or any kind of core fundamentals, as they appear not to exist anymore nor matter. We are currently experiencing the longest bull market in history - closing in on 10 years in March 2019. Depending on your age and interest in finances 10 years ago, you may or may not remember the great recession of 2008; for me personally it was a visceral experience as I lost my life savings in less than 6 months. Looking back on it now leaves me with a sense that the world has gone collectively mad as nothing has been addressed from that financial shock, and to my great dismay the problems have only compounded. #debt #solvency The longest bull market in history is based on strong fundamentals - said no one ever! (except maybe @realdonaldtrump’s Twitter account!)

The culprit of the last crisis was too much debt, specifically in the housing sector which caused the 2008 financial crisis that spread into the full blown global crisis. So naturally the panacea for the mortgage (debt) crisis of 2008 was to add even more debt on the books and hope that everything will be ok!

Debt is nothing more than stealing from posterity.

Debt is like peeing your pants in the winter - feels good at first until you realise the predicament you are now in. #whoooops A recovery that is fueled by rising debt isn’t a recovery at all, it is more like another hit to a heroin addict going through withdrawal. Something Einstein said comes to mind: They’re doing the same thing and expecting different results - INSANITY? Si Señor! Unless they (central banks) aren’t expecting different results then it would appear that some level of duplicity was at work, which I believe is more inline with the actions that have been taken since 2008 by the powers that be. It would appear in the summer of 2018 that we are living in a ‘brave new world’ when taking a look at a few points: ●​ SP500 just hit a new all time high - longest bull market in history! ●​ US National debt: $21.5 trillion - up 130% since 2008! ●​ US Annual deficits - $1 trillion(ish).. ●​ Federal Reserve (FED) balance sheet hit $4.5 trillion - unprecedented expansion (unless of course you are Japan) ●​ The FED has finally raised interest rates to 2% after a nearly a decade of 0% 'real' interest rates.

"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." But that is exactly what we have tried to do since 2008 with debt! I’m not sure that even Donald Trump knows (anymore) what kind of danger the global economy is in. In fact I’m pretty sure based on his tweets he doesn’t or has delusions of grandeur in his ability to strengthen the economy via tariffs and new trade negotiations. One small problem lies in front of him: trillions and trillions of dollars of debt and 'allies' tired of 'American exceptionalism'. Ignorance is bliss, but in Trump’s and America's case, it might be more apt to say arrogance is bliss! Until it isn’t. Candidate Trump understood the true state of the economy and interest rates back in Sept of 2016 when he said in a CNBC interview: Donald Trump accused Fed Chair Janet Yellen of keeping rates "artificially low" and creating a "false stock market" to make President Barack Obama look good. This is true - I agree with candidate Trump! But now President Trump is taking credit for the exact same stock market and loose interest rate policy which he previously demonized; those that live by the economy's health, die by it as well! #trump2020 might be a bit more difficult when economic cycles return with a vengeance! The Federal Reserve (FED) has their ‘fall guy’ (Trump) in the White House when the next financial recession does materialize. Coincidence? Maybe, but the FED raised interest rates just once during Obama’s eight year tenure, and now has already raised six times during Trump’s 18 months in office and aren’t close to being finished by their recent statements. Trump already had a minor run-in with the FED since being President regarding interest rate policy. With the 'deep state' so adamant about toppling Trump, a continuation of rising rates which I formerly thought wasn't possible now appears more likely heading into 2020 - especially if the FBI, CIA, FED, DOJ, MIC and Silicon Valley's witch hunt and impeachment shenanigans don't bring their desired outcome (Trump out of the WH) first. Trump: “I’m not thrilled, “Because we go up and every time you go up they (FED) want to raise rates again. I don't really — I am not happy about it. But at the same time I’m letting them do what they feel is best.” - 7/19/2018 Statement from Oval Office Talk show host Bill Maher jokingly opined on the US needing a recession to get Trump out of the WH recently, but in my opinion he couldn't have been more right. This is about the only thing regarding US politics I have agreed with him on since Trump's rise as a statesman. Maher: “I feel like the bottom has to fall out at some point, and by the way, I’m hoping for it because I think one way you get rid of Trump is a crashing economy,” Maher said during the June 8 show. “So please, bring on the recession. Sorry if that hurts people but it’s either root for a recession, or you lose your democracy.” Central banks will be more than pleased to use Trump and his trade wars as a scapegoat for the next recession which will be brought on by rising interest rates and the continuing collapse of a unipolar world and demand for the USD/Petrodollar. The number of enemies Trump currently has is a true testament to the level of threat he really is to the 'status quo'. He may be a member of the 1% but I do earnestly believe he really is a patriot and is doing what he can and thinks is best for the working class folks and to 'Make America Great Again'. People are angry and triggered that Trump is actually doing what he promised he would do on the campaign trail now that he is in office; no matter what your opinion on Trump is, you can not still hold the opinion that Trump is stupid, or he hasn’t been productive since becoming commander-in-chief or else you lose all credibility instantly. Trump has been serially successful his whole life - but, yes he triggered your emotions - FAIR! Eventually with rising rates the powers that be will get the desired outcome they are seeking, which is Trump out of the WH. The only question you should be asking is 'can they keep this decades old bull going until 2020?' - I think not and I'm putting my money where my mouth is. Bearish catalysts for a US and global financial crisis: ●​ Rising interest rates on unprecedented amounts of debt. ●​ Unforeseen contagion triggered by a trade war with America's biggest trading partner, China. ●​ Rising hostilities with Russia, Iran, Turkey and China - especially regarding Syria, Iraq and Yemen's fate. ●​ Russia and many other countries dumping USD debt en masse, causing a rush to the exits as everyone will want to sell before China decides they have had enough of America’s imperial tactics via bullying in the South China Sea and never-ending tariffs. ●​ Iran along with Russia and Venezuela could decide to start pricing oil in 'petro-Yuan' or another currency; they are doing this already on a limited scale but a new cartel and currency could be formed. Iran also has the ability to greatly disrupt the flow of global oil via blocking the 'Strait of Hormuz' where 30% of global oil flows through - this would be Iran's nuclear option as it would also be in some regards suicidal. ●​ Cryptocurrencies continue to further displace traditional methods of transactions - think SWIFT/USD. ●​ Emerging Market contagion: Turkey, Iran Argentina, Venezuela, debt laden Euro countries and many many more. ●​ American shale oil drillers ability to stay solvent in a rising interest rate environment. ●​ On the other side of the shale oil bust equation would be rising oil prices which would choke the US economy - even with the US being the world's largest oil producer currently, they are still required to import 50% of their energy requirements and I never see the US ever being energy independent in a world that relies on fossil fuels. We are living in world awash in debt and namely $USD, at some point this all comes to a painful stop - after a decade of ‘growth’ I think we are a lot closer to the curtain call on this trend. Invest prudently for the long term and look for sectors that will do well in various environments. Skin in the GAME is a real thing! I’m Long: ●​ Monetary Metals: Gold & Silver ●​ Cryptocurrencies: BTC & ETH ●​ Uranium ●​ Mongolia ●​ Russia I’m Short: ●​ $USD ●​ $SP500 via LEAPS (Long Term Equity Anticipation Security) ●​ $TSLA via LEAPS ●​ $FB via LEAPS Gratitude for all the pictures in this post which are from people I follow on Twitter or just simple Google images that came up; they are all just borrowed and will not be used commercially. If you are the owner or ‘tweeter’ of an image and would like me to take a picture off my website, please e-mail me at nolanjamesfyfe@gmail.com and I will be happy to oblige. Cheers!

The term ‘blockchain’ rose to prominence in 2009 when under the pseudonym ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’ (possibly a group or team, male or female – nobody really knows) the whitepaper for BTC (Bitcoin) was released and the original blockchain protocol was born. I think more people are familiar with Bitcoin than even the concept of the ‘blockchain’ itself, and that is partly a result of Bitcoin’s price action over the last few years: In December 2016, BTC’s price was around $1000. Dec ’17 saw BTC hit its all time high of $20,000 (making 20x in 12 months is a real thing in the crypto space!). BTC has come under pressure in 2018, currently sitting at around $8000 as of 5/23.

These kind of outsized returns in BTC and other alt-coins (alternative coins) over the past year seduced the layman into speculating in a sector that is little understood. The collective market cap of all cryptocurrencies crossed over half a trillion dollars in 2017 (that is a sizable sum of funds now), but still pales in comparison to traditional forms of currency like fiat, gold, etc. In my opinion, there is nothing that can stop the cryptocurrency/blockchain space from reaching into the trillions of dollars over the coming decade. The ICO (initial coin offering) market has grown comparatively as well and will continue to grow as more projects realize the potential of the blockchain. ETH (Ethereum) was the real winner in 2017, outperforming even BTC’s 20x return; ETH started off 2017 around $10 and hit a peak of over $1400 – that is more than 140x (Anyone interested? Life changing returns in less than 12 months?). Understanding the potential of ETH’s smart contracts early on would have been key to capturing Ethereum’s parabolic gains in 2017:

ETH, like BTC, has come under pressure in 2018 and is currently sitting around $600 as of 5/23.

It’s no wonder that ETH was the real winner and big story of 2017; ETH added on to what BTC had done with the original idea of a blockchain, but then took it one step further and created programmable contracts called “smart contracts.” Smart contracts are self-executing contracts with the terms of the agreement (which could be anything, not just currency or store of wealth) between buyer and seller being directly written into lines of code. This is revolutionary in the blockchain space and pushes this space’s potential in all areas of our life that much further. Like all major cryptocurrencies that have gained some level of prominence, their core protocols are running into problems with their PoW (proof of work) protocol. While this is the most decentralized way of running the protocol, it is also really time and energy intensive. Recent reports state that if BTC keeps on its current trajectory it will consume as much energy as the Netherlands by the end of 2018. Scaling Issues in the Crypto Space Scaling issues are not a new thing and are one of the major reasons why there are so many ‘forks’ taking place in the crypto world. Forks simply mean that the core developers behind the various projects have differing ideas about which direction the coin should be heading. The root cause of most dissonance comes down to scaling issues, meaning problems with the ability to conduct fast transactions/confirmations when the network gains more users and projects utilizing its tokens. The more successful and wider adopted the tokens become, the quicker they run into scaling issues – a byproduct of their success! I expect some version of PoS (proof of stake) will eventually become integrated into ETH’s protocol and other alts will follow suit – meaning that they will be able to group together confirmations and speed up the transactions. When projects like EOS claim to be coming up with a better scaling solution via their own blockchain, one has to remember that there are fundamental physical constraints that such projects inevitably come up against. There needs to be a decision made between having a network with lots of ‘nodes’ confirming transactions where each node doesn’t use that many resources, or a network where only a few very high-powered nodes are confirming the majority of transactions. EOS uses the later, which is obviously a lot more centralized and open to manipulation. So scaling at this point really comes down to more centralization vs decentralization. ETH Smart Contracts – Game Changer! ETH’s ability to host more than just a ledger of all past transactions via its revolutionary ‘smart contract’ has spawned a whole new direction and potential in blockchain projects and therefore has attracted new investment pools. Social, gaming, interactive, news, dating, and other applications (by no means an exhaustive list) are all now compatible with ETH’s protocol and are set to change the world to an extent that’s ubiquitous with the internet revolution of the 1990s. In 2017 billions of dollars were invested into blockchain projects, with ETH based projects capturing the vast majority of those funds. That means that the so called ‘smart money’ is voting with their wallets that ETH’s protocol is going to be a major player in the future of the blockchain space. Many skeptics are claiming that some existing blockchain projects and ICO models don’t really need a blockchain to function, and sure, there may be some truth to that, but I’m not one to follow that narrative. There are far too many new projects these days promising to be ETH or BTC “killers.” It obviously isn’t possible that they all are, and most will fail, but that doesn’t mean these projects won’t make money along the way. The crypto space is crawling with simpletons searching for the next hot tip. I would say the vast majority of “traders” and “investors” in the space haven’t read any of the whitepapers of the projects they are gambling on. One has to remember that any new features another blockchain can offer or promise, such as lower gas fees, faster transactions, etc can all simply be implemented on top of Ethereum’s mainnet, rather than building a new base layer from scratch. The blockchain’s main key characteristic is a recording (ledger) of everything that has happened since its genesis. In other words, every transaction, comment, vote, ‘like’, or ‘Tweet’ is immutable – this is transparency on a level that most people can’t even begin to grasp, myself included! Scams & Redundant Models Yes, some companies and ICOs are milking this to make a quick buck and capture the ethos, but this movement is as big as the internet and will have long term repercussions that we are only beginning to grasp (think ‘creative destruction’ in that some existing businesses will be cannibalized by their blockchain offspring). Wall Street has recently caught the blockchain fever as well. They tried to ignore it at first and downplay its utility, but are now playing catch-up as they know the blockchain is here to stay and will continue to expand into all sectors – especially financial. Price Discovery – Manipulation I have written in the past about futures market manipulation of precious metals here, namely silver, but now that exact same narrative is playing out for the two biggest cryptocurrencies BTC and ETH. I won’t opine on manipulation in too much length as it has been done very eloquently here. I will just state that the launch of BTC futures contracts on the CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange – one of the biggest exchanges in the world) coincided with the exact top of BTC ($20,000) in Dec ’17. Being well versed in how the futures markets work and the chicaneries that take place with price discovery, I had warned crypto investors to take heed to this event and knew that it was monumental. Wall Street had been looking for a way to control BTC or ‘take part’ in the space and they found an old set of tools (futures manipulation) that have worked very well to control sentiment and short term price discovery in other markets. BTC is still by far the biggest market cap in the crypto space and by that metric alone drives the majority of crypto sentiment (just as gold drives precious metal sentiment). ETH futures have being launched on a small scale now, but I’m sure based on Wall Street’s success controlling BTC that it is just a matter of time before the CME launches ETH futures contracts. Pay close attention to this, and know that it will have an impact. Like the gold and silver futures markets, manipulation of price discovery through futures contracts can only work when the settlement of the contract happens outside of ‘physical delivery.’ This means that they can settle contracts in fiat currencies instead of BTC/ETH or gold/silver. Price manipulation will go on for as long as people accept sentiment driven by futures contracts and until all of the ‘physical assets’ are in use. At that point, investors, speculators and people transacting will hold control, and real (honest) price discovery will return! Anyone claiming to know the exact timeline of this occurring is delusional and is misleading their audience. Just the same, anyone claiming that futures contracts aren’t impacting current price discovery in these sectors is also delusional or has an agenda. Political – Foreign Policy blockchain repercussions: The blockchain’s core characteristics are libertarian in that the protocol runs on a decentralized network. Simply put, no single actor can easily control or dominate the price, direction or outcome. I was initially attracted to the blockchain for this exact reason and saw the many uses of this kind of protocol back in 2012; however I was hesitant to invest sizable funds into the space until recently as I didn’t feel like I had a big ‘edge’. So initially, I just held a bit of BTC and ETH, but now that the space has gained more legitimacy and projects are showing real use cases on the blockchain, I couldn’t resist investing more heavily. Sanctions imposed mainly by the US and its vassal states are pushing countries like Russia, China, Venezuela and Iran (or any other country that doesn’t bow to ‘petrodollar imperialism’) to experiment with, and use the blockchain to circumvent the SWIFT system to settle transactions. This will only continue to speed up, and as Venezuela has shown with the launch of it’s ‘Petro’ cryptocurrency, the more a country is ostracized the more it will integrate its financial system into the blockchain.

I think it is only a matter of time until larger countries like China and Russia incorporate their financial systems with some form of the blockchain. Russia’s leaning towards crypto is evident by Vitalik and Putin (both Russian resonance men) having a meeting last year in Russia. An exciting new token which I am both an investor and major bull on is LOOM Network ($LOOM).

Loom Network is building a fundamental infrastructure platform that will help Ethereum scale, and is the first Ethereum scaling solution to be live in production. In short, you can think of Loom Network as EOS on top of Ethereum. You can read a lot more about Loom via their medium channel which I highly recommend!

Another exciting new blockchain project in which I am both an investor and a core team member is WorkChain.io

We have 3 major projects: workID – This can initially be thought of as Linkedin on the blockchain – An immutable CV – This will be ready for initial release?. – The last resume you will ever need! workPAY – This can be thought of as real time payroll using the blockchain to confirm hours worked. Stop living paycheck to paycheck, with workPay everyday is payday! workLOAN – Micro-loans reimagined through blockchain’s peer-to-peer network. With a more accurate and trusted real-time credit score, workLOAN provides flexible options to get an advance on your next paycheck. For more information on this project please check out our website or email me directly. Check out our nascent Medium presence here.

The world is just starting to come to terms with what the blockchain’s potential really is. Yes the path will be bumpy and riddled with scandals and scams but the blockchain revolution is here to stay. We are closing in on a decade since Satoshi’s original whitepaper was released and I’m sure Satoshi’s original vision has already exceeded his/her’s wildest expectations (but I could be underestimating Satoshi’s ambitions)! Capital markets allow everyone to get what they want: if you seek adrenaline, the markets will provide; if you seek pain (masochistic tendencies are a real thing), the markets will provide; and lastly, if you seek steady ROI (return on investment), the markets will comply. The crypto space is a sector where everyone gets what they want like traditional capital markets, but the timelines are all on warp speed – a month in crypto is like a year in traditional markets. The largest market cap crypto projects can advance or retrace 50% in a month – volatility anyone? Adjust your expectations accordingly and buy with conviction once your thesis on this sector is formed!

If you Google the word 'Flâneur' you might get a myriad of different definitions, as the word isn't commonly used, especially in English. The first definition for flâneur that I can find is: 'a man who saunters around observing society', and this is a good place to commence this missive.

A flâneur is a stroller, a loiterer, someone who ambles without apparent purpose, but is secretly attuned to the history of the streets he walks — and is in covert search of adventure, aesthetic or erotic. The word carried a set of rich associations: the man of leisure, the idler, the urban explorer, the connoisseur of the street.

The word originated in France around the late 19th century, when there were many people observing, or loitering around the streets observing Paris transform and modernize. Depending on who you ask today, the word 'flâneur' can carry a positive connotation — “connoisseur of the streets” — or a negative connotation — 'lazy idler, without purpose or employment'.

Words are nothing more than what we understand them to be and more importantly, how we use them in conversation and prose.

The word came to my attention in 2012 via 'Antifragile' by Nassim Taleb:

The rational flâneur is someone who, unlike a tourist, makes a decision at every step to revise his schedule, so he can imbibe things based on new information. The flâneur is not a prisoner of a plan. Tourism, actual or figurative, is imbued with the teleological illusion; it assumes completeness of vision and gets one locked into a hard-to-revise program, while the flâneur continuously— and, what is crucial, rationally— modifies his targets as he acquires information.

I think one of the most undervalued life fulfilling characteristics in 2018 is optionality, being flexible with time, travel, purchases and of course all decisions. Most people don't value having time to think and reflect on life, or if they did, I think they would organize their life with a lot less commitments.

The life of the flâneur is all about having optionality and being able to make decisions on the fly when satisfactory information is attained.

I'm often asked two questions pertaining to my life: How can you travel incessantly? And: Don't you crave stability?

They are really the same question, just spun in a positive or negative light depending on who is asking.

Traveling incessantly is really quite affordable when you stick to a few basic guidelines — no cars, houses, dependencies: kids, wives, dogs, or mortgages. There are many countries that would be hard to live in with a modest salary, but those are all Western Democracies which aren't high on my priority list to begin with.

After spending a decade in Asia, and spending more time in Canada recently, I certainly don't crave stability at this stage of my life. I feel like I've gotten my 'get out of jail free card'. At the moment I crave new people, new places, adventure, and new opportunities.

Most people who are living a conventional lifestyle tell me that they would love to travel more, but either don't have the time or money. But when I question them on their 'excuses' or dig a bit deeper, that is where cognitive dissonance emerges — I'm not sure most people are really up for traveling more.

I think most people are too conventional in their approach to life, enjoyment and more importantly understanding who they really are. It took me a long time to really figure out what drives me, what really motivates me to improve or to take on new challenges.

I've seen many people make life altering decisions before they have reached the age of reason. If you don't know who you really are, what you are passionate about or what really motivates you in life, how can you buy a house, have a successful marriage or be a good father? Without question, people can adapt to situations, but why would anyone intentionally limit themselves when life is so vast?

The biggest risk is not taking any risk. In a world that is changing rapidly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.

The thing I try to avoid the most and I might be most afraid of is boredom, and for me that means not challenging myself or trying new things on a regular basis.

While living on a secluded area of the Adriatic Sea in Croatia, I was left with an abundance of time to read and contemplate life and the world. New business ideas came to me, which I was able to dig really deeply into. I felt so privileged to have the time and optionality to be able to read and contemplate the world. A flâneur runs with his passions and interests when they arise.

Being a global flâneur forces you to quickly adapt to new environments and situations, which is very healthy for one's stoicism. When jumping into the unknown, our brains are initially thrown into a state of mini shock. This forces our brain to get out of 'auto pilot' mode and really be present and alive.

I have found that the more I move around and expand my spatial settings, the more memorable life becomes. When your brain is stimulated with new things, we have stronger anchors and can easily recall things in our minds.

When we are totally isolated and aren't distracted by people and technology, we can really hear the inner voice inside of us, which helps direct us in life. Our inner compass can navigate the world better once devoid of all the noise.

Another key component of being a flâneur is becoming a minimalist. Excess things in life don't add excess value, but rather just add stress. The more things we have, the more mental energy is allocated towards those things.

There is a very easily conceivable liberating feeling when you get rid of things that you know aren't offering a lot of utility in your life. When you only have 1 carryon and 1 piece of checked luggage, you are forced to really evaluate what is vital and what is excess.

Roger Lowenstein describes Warren Buffett: “Buffett's genius was largely a genius of character — of patience, discipline and rationality. His talent sprang from his unrivaled independence of mind and ability to focus on his work and shut out the world.”

“It's not that I'm so smart; it's just that I stay with problems longer.” — Albert Einstein

The best thinking, which equates in the best decisions being made, is often done when there is no stress, no time limits, no threats, or judgments; you might even go as far as to say the best decisions are made when you are living more like a flâneur.

I always enjoy coming ‘home’, a term I use loosely, as I don’t have a current home base. Over the last 2-3 years when I do find myself in Canada, I seem to have greater difficulty relating to people’s outlook of the world; people are a product of their environment, so maybe it isn’t a surprise that I relate less and less; possibly a term like 'global citizen' would better describe me as I have spent the majority of my formative years outside of North America. ‘Sovereign Individual’ a book (by James Dale Davidson) which I highly recommend lays out the narrative that more and more people won’t have the need to be tied to a single country in the near future; the nation-state is dying a slow death. The trend in 2017 is pointing us towards increased numbers of ‘digital nomads’ choosing their abode based on convenience rather than necessity. I concur with this line of thinking, and the ease of travel, rise of digital currencies and all things Amazon (the retailer, not the river) are proving this narrative correct. Slight digression, back to Postmodernism. If the term ‘postmodernism’ is new to you, let me try to explain: It is difficult to put a hard definition on it, as the term and movement around people who ascribe to postmodernist ways of living don’t have definite beliefs and don’t really agree on any universal truths. The only thing they seem to collectively agree on is that their opinion can stand up to all scrutiny, regardless of the fallacies present, which usually become obvious as soon as they open their mouth. I will use the term 'Millennial' and 'Post Modernist' almost interchangeably throughout this article as they deserve to be conflated in my opinion. Postmodernists which are most prevalent in the Millennial demographic around the world, seem to dismiss a lot of what we now refer to as the Enlightenment (17-18th century European intellectual movement - emphasizing reason rather than tradition). I’m not sure why anyone would choose voluntarily to dismiss reason, free speech, and capitalism, but to my great shock and horror, visions of a socialist ‘utopia’ seem to be back on the rise in Western democracies. Bernie Sanders epitomized this movement in the 2016 election, coming close to securing the Democratic nomination, he might have secured the nomination if it wasn't for the DNC deciding from the outset that Hillary was going to be the nominee. Domestic terrorist group ‘Antifa’ perfectly captured the zeitgeist of 2017 American Millenials. - the name which means ‘Anti- Fascist’ is an oxymoron, as they have been acting more fascist than any conservative leaning political group. Antifa pictures

Having productive dialogue with anyone who doesn’t accept any universal truths, is like debating semantics with someone who is stoned. Insert Stoned picture There is nothing that can be advanced if we don’t don’t accept the same universal truths and past; we are left going around in circles with empty words spewing out full of emotions and white noise.

2017, stuck in a world where ‘virtue-signaling’ has no limits, the concept of caring and empathy matter more than the real thing.

For the most part, Canadians are liberal leaning and indifferent to what is going on outside of their own lives, I can’t really blame them, they have no real problems besides the ones that all humans face: relationship problems, stress, death and taxes. They say ‘real change comes not from choice, but rather from necessity’, that seems to flow in 2017 within Canada.

I love the word ‘solipsism’ - the view or theory that the self is all that can be known to exist. Solipsism aptly summarizes the majority of the Western populace. A flip through a few channels on the TV - “Yemen and Venezuela are in the midst of a famine?, wow, that's too bad, but can you change the channel back to ‘Game of Thrones’, thanks” ;) I provoke, but that narrative isn’t too far off the mark for most North Americans. Priorities if you will!

It would appear that almost everyone has an opinion on what is happening in the world, usually starting with something like “Trump is an idiot, Putin is Hitler and undermining democracies around the world, Assad is evil, China & Iran are constantly causing trouble around the world”, and that list is far from being exhausted. I don’t have a problem with everyone having their own opinion on different issues, I think that is great, healthy and leads to evocative discourse. I do worry about the way in which these opinions are formed and how sacrosanct they are.

Readily present, especially with the younger demographic is ‘single issue politics’ where voters get so engrossed in one issue, usually social causes, and don’t care to understand anything remotely concrete like monetary and foreign policy. Anything beyond their own interests doesn’t phase them - both the Left and the Right are guilty of this. The ironic part of being indifferent to fundamental issues is that they do affect your livelihood in more ways than you care to understand - ignorance is bliss, until it’s not.

●​ Don’t care to be informed on monetary issues, great! - Then happily vote for Bernie Sanders and his vision of a Marxist Utopia while the debt to GDP ratio crosses over 100%, and we continue to saddle your generation (Y) - Millennials and future generations with a plethora of debt which will only worsen as the share of people aged 65+ skyrockets over the coming decades when the 'baby boomers' (babies born 1945-1965) start to retire en masse. Debt is really just stealing from future consumption, and in this case, stealing from future generation’s entitlements and standard of living. Chart of demographics.

●​ Can’t be bothered to understand the refugee crisis in Europe, which is based around imperialism - then happily accept refugees on mass, increased terrorism in the West, and bills/laws being passed which limit our free speech but hide under the guise of ‘Islamophobia and Xenophobia’. Don't pay any attention to the fact that NATO (which Canada is a member of) airplanes/bombs are largely responsible for the displacement of civilian cities and homes in the greater Middle East which is causing refugees to seek asylum from that region. African refugees, which are the majority is a slightly different can of worms, which I will leave untouched for the sake of terseness.

●​ No interest to understand what really transpired in the 2016 US Presidential election, that caused Trump to be elected - then continue to blame Russia and continue to move us closer to a NATO conflict in Eastern Europe. Also please ignore all the Wikileaks revelations which clearly show it was the DNC and Hillary Clinton that conspired to steal the election, but still lost. Russia's 'rigging' boiled down to $50,000-100,000 spent on social media ads. It was Hillary and the Clinton foundation who had closer ties with Russia than Trump has ever had. But, believe the mainstream narrative if you will, and with that, bring us closer to a global conflict with a military superpower.

●​ Russia invaded Ukraine is obviously simple and doesn't need any background or thought to understand it. Ignore the fact that it was the CIA who violently overthrew the government of Ukraine in 2014 plunging the country into chaos. Russia also might have a slight interest in stabilizing Ukraine, after all it is directly on its border, they have their largest abroad military base in Sevastopol Crimea, and not to mention that the vast majority of Crimean citizens are Russian. Please look at me with a straight face and tell me that the US would look on indifferently if Russia or China overthrew the US friendly government in Mexico or Canada and was arming fascist leaning mercenaries in those countries. Russia Economist pictures

●​ N.Korea news isn’t your cup of tea? Then look on indifferently as the US bullies it’s allies in East Asia to continue engaging in ‘war games’ on N.Korea’s border, raising all kinds of potential for an altercation with a nuclear armed state and key ally of China. Also forget that the US is the only country to ever use Nuclear weapons in combat on The Korea's doorstep in neighboring Japan. Before you start your diatribe, please be able to locate North Korea. Insert Map picture

●​ Not sure what calling Iran a terrorist state really means? It sounds about right as that is what CNN is saying - then be my guest to look the other way while the US cuddles up to Saudi Arabia, the true terrorist state in the region, largely responsible for 9/11/2001, the rise of ISIS, and the current famine in Yemen right now. Can’t remember the last time Iran invaded a country? Me neither! With the rest of the UN Security Council in agreement that Iran is in compliance with the nuclear deal, why does President Trump continue to insist Iran is violating the "spirit" of the agreement? Are they looking for a war?

●​ China is taking advantage of the US by manipulating their currency and copying our products, that narrative has often been repeated, and recently louder thanks to Trump's ascent to the White house - Makes sense right? Sure, don’t bother to understand that China holds the largest amount of US debt, and it is the US who is taking advantage of other countries by being able to print their currency at par value, a position that only the world's reserve currency country can pull off, not to mention that without trade with China, which most of the largest US multinationals rely upon, global trade would grind to a halt.

If all or most of these issues seem complex, well they are, and don’t expect to grasp much about them by skimming the main stream news a few times a week. I do agree that any amount of information is better than none, but don’t fall into regurgitating what you have seen on TV the previous night and digging in your heels when someone brings a different opinion to the table.

Also please don’t pretend you really care about these issues when you don’t have a rudimentary understanding of events that have transpired and led to the current situations.

I have been accused of being callous in the way that I approach the news and political discourse, that may sound partly true to uninformed, virgin ears. I’m not out to win points with the ‘social justice warriors’ and no amount of virtue signaling on my part is going to help people across the world. But, don’t let me stop you from changing your Facebook picture to a nation's flag that signals that you are good citizen and your morals are in the right place. French flag picture Real and meaningful change will come when the populace understands the core of the issues and starts to ask the right questions, which starts by educating yourself and not allowing yourself to fall victim to the prevalent narrative at first glance. I have been known to enjoy riling people up at times, but I find that politics has become something else since Trump’s election victory just over a year ago. The level of polarization in opinion is ghastly; especially triggered are the younger generations who we will call postmodernists or Millennials, they seem to carry the most resentment to their opinions being challenged. While in Canada, I was recently engaged in a conversation with a ‘millennial’ (M) about government healthcare and budget deficits. The conversation went something like this: M: “It is the right of all citizens to have health care, we are an evolved society and should take care of our less fortunate citizens in times of need”. Me: “I agree, that is a nice thought gesture and seems to work in some small countries, but I don’t think that is plausible in a large diverse country like the US, which can’t seem to ever balance a budget, what is the government going to do when the baby boomers really start to retire on mass and the rest of the world tires of buying US debt?” M: “How can you say that? Where are your morals?, don’t you agree that we should help sick people in times of need (insert story of sick relative), we have the means, and all the major governments in the world are running deficits anyway, so do deficits really matter?” Me: “If deficits don’t matter and money is free and abundant, why stop at helping just people in our country?, why not help all the sick people in the world then?, at some point deficits, and cash flow matters or at least it used to :)” (don’t get me started on negative interest rates) M: “Well I’m not so sure that it does really matter and if we didn’t have the government caring for us, then the sick and disabled would be a burden on society and we would have anarchy” Me: (realizing that emotions are starting to dominate and facts and reason are going out the window) “Lets use Japan and China as examples: if finances really don’t matter, how do we explain Japan’s demise on the global stage since the early 1990’s, they call Japan’s economic collapse and what happened after as the ‘lost decade’, they are almost 30 years into their lost decades now. The Japanese have tried to print their way out of their recession via QE aka money printing to buy sovereign debt (the West is currently embarking on this flawed monetary experiment as well), and have amounted a debt to GDP of 250% and now have some of the worst demographics in the world - a shrinking population, a weaker currency; Japan’s once dominant export giants are getting displaced by Korea and China. An ever strengthening Chinese military on Japan’s door step, which still harbors ill feelings for the destruction of it’s country at the hands of the Japanese during the height of Japan’s imperialist ambitions in the lead up to WWII. China displaced Japan as the second biggest economy in 2010 and now it’s economy is more than twice the size of Japan’s - tell the Japanese that monetary policy and deficits don’t matter”

And lastly, don’t take the moral high ground and say that because I don’t seem to care about the plight of people who aren’t gonna receive health care benefits in North America if the government doesn’t provide them, also have to take responsibility for being ignorant about the West’s foreign policy and destruction of countries and the extreme loss of life under the guise of ‘humanitarian work’, but when scrutinized, it becomes nothing more than regime change and imperialism. Most people wouldn't dispute the phrase 'all lives matter', but when it really boils down to it, a life lost in the West holds a big premium to a life lost in the East. When is the last time you saw someone change their social media profile picture to the Yemeni, Syrian, Venezuelan, Afghanistani, Iraqi or Palestinian flag? These countries have had millions of civilians killed throughout the 21st century. Why the silence? Where is the moral outrage? The West for the most part looks on indifferently, or even worse blames other countries for its own hegemonic adventurism. Especially appalling at the moment is the Yemeni crisis which is the result of a blockade by Saudi Arabia, abetted by the US which could see millions of innocent civilians killed. All lives matter or just your current comfort and virtue signaling? I have had the opportunity over the last few decades to spend a great deal of time reading and deciphering through world happenings; I understand most people haven’t had the privilege of doing just that; I’m not sure it is because people in the West are short on time, or rather, I think most people in the West are short on motivation or genuine empathy towards the plight of far away nations.

Now that I’m finished a bit of throat clearing, another topic I wanted to address: Someone who caught my attention recently is Jordan Peterson, who is a Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and an overall intellectual giant. He has risen to prominence over the last 6 months around the Canadian ‘Bill C- 16’ - This enactment amends the Canadian Human Rights Act to add gender identity and gender expression to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination. Of the proposed federal Bill C-16, Peterson told the Toronto Sun: “These laws are the first laws that I’ve seen that require people under the threat of legal punishment to employ certain words, to speak a certain way, instead of merely limiting what they’re allowed to say.” Freedom of speech Peterson Transgender identity expression which affects much less than a percentage of the population, while gender non-binary individuals, may be slightly higher than 1 full percentage of the population, the true demographic statistics are hard to nail down (I tried to find recent polls or stats online to no avail). The reason this bill has clamored so much media attention is what the bill could possibly mean if taken to it’s full extend. I wrote about this here in the past, but again, ‘hate speech’ can be deemed as any speech which is unacceptable to an individual, and as we know there are a lot of sensitive individuals who get offended when their opinions are questioned or rebuffed. Bill C-16 is a slippery slope; I haven’t heard a good argument that can define ‘hate speech’ in a way that would justify a bill being passed that would add to a country's diversity. To the contrary, Bill C-16 would greatly limit any useful discourse on ideas and opinions. When everyone is thinking is thinking the same thing, nobody is really thinking at all. People will express themselves no matter what laws are in place, I would rather they use words than physical violence. #firstamendment #freespeech, #billc16, #m103 - Insert my Tweet pic here I always tend to side with the traditional liberal argument: anything which suppresses one’s ability to express themselves is moving away from liberty and towards totalitarianism. But the self-proclaimed ‘liberals’ (Democrats in the US) in 2017 are the people who are trying to use anger, intimidation and physical violence to suppress any opinion which they disagree with. 'Liberals' scapegoat their opinions and beliefs being challenged by calling everything they disagree with ‘hate speech’. Insert Taleb triggered picture Liberalism used to stand for liberty and support things like freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, free markets ect, but it seems that liberalism has drifted quite far off the mark; I’m not sure the enlightenment thinkers would recognize the word liberal in 2017. I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty, than those attending too small a degree of it. - Thomas Jefferson This quote never gets old! On the 1 year anniversary of Trump’s election victory, Millennials gathered around the country to collectively scream at the sky to show their anger and resentment towards Trump and his victory. (Check out this video capturing the insanity) Unless you are extremely religious, I’m not sure what they had hoped to accomplish by screaming at the sky? They did communicate one thing very clearly, you are never too old to throw a temper tantrum when you don’t get your way. When you have been coddled your whole life and haven’t had your opinions challenged, possibly screaming at the sky is a natural reaction? Scream picture. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions and emotions, but not their own facts, and history. Millennials forget why North America became a beacon for prosperity and free speech, which the majority of the world has still never experienced; it is the American Revolution and intellectual fortitude of the founding fathers which have enabled us to thrive over the last 240 years. If we forget the struggle and the lessons of history we are doomed to give up such luxuries and fall back into a state of servitude. Human’s ability to reason and express ourselves is why we have risen and become highly evolved primates, diminish our reasoning and freedom of expression, and we are no longer highly evolved primates, rather just simple primates again. A favorite quote of mine, which I use often, aptly fits here: If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. - Thomas Jefferson

This post is for everyone who was sleeping or indifferent to 'real' events in 2016. This post is also to save me from having the same conversation over and over online and off.

I don't think this is what CNBC/NYTimes 'journalist' John Harwood had in mind when he tweeted out his predictions for the year.

The Russian hacking story never ended! The only supposed evidence continues to be 'too classified' to release. Sounds a lot like: 'if you can't see the clothes you are a fool, or not worthy of your current position' — reminiscent of a children's story regarding an emperor and his clothes. In our current lexicon in 2016-2017, the more apt term is 'unpatriotic' for those who don't blame Russia for everything or just side with WikiLeaks over other sources.

If the US had no one to demonize, they wouldn't be able to justify spending over half a trillion dollars a year on the military budget, which is 3-4 times bigger than what China spends and almost 10 times as much as Russia spends on their military every year.

Is it that Putin/Russia threatens world peace, or rather threatens America's hegemony? If we didn't caricature Putin as Hitler, it starts to get difficult to incessantly demonize Russia. Trying to end the war in Syria, selling weapons to its allies (China & Iran) or buffing up its borders from hostile countries (NATO) that are conducting war-games on its borders definitely sounds EVIL to me!

I'm sure the US would sit back patiently and try and understand China and Russia's foreign policy if they were deploying troops and conducting war-games in Mexico and Canada. We were on the brink of WW3 when the Cuban Missile Crisis took place; one must also remember that Cuba has something called an ocean in the middle. Russia isn't as fortunate to have an ocean in between it and NATO expansion on its borders.

By the looks of the map, it is obviously Russia who is aggressively expanding the 'Warsaw Pact' (which ceased to exist post 1991) on the West's borders. NATO has nothing to do with it.

So many people around the world wondered how, in a country with 320 million people, the best candidates that Americans came up with were Trump and Clinton? I would say 2016 was a wake-up call to more than just the elites who are currently discussing in Davos how to handle the events in 2016, which they were greatly caught off guard by.

2016 should also be a wake-up call to all the people, mainly the ones who call themselves 'liberals,' who were so surprised by Brexit and Donald Trump getting elected — wake up and try to understand a bit more of the world that you are living in, not just your small enclave.

Aleppo was 'liberated' in 2016, and didn't 'fall' to the bad side. Check how the Aleppo citizens really feel today — talk to them, travel there, check foreign language news sites. The consensus is that the vast majority of Syrians would rather live under Bashar Al Assad's regime than the 'moderate rebels' aka IS, al-Nusra, etc.

Who should we believe: the Syrian people or CNN?

President Obama, in his recent farewell speech, would like to have us all believe that everything is fine and well. His two terms in office were a huge success, but here are a few things that stand out to the contrary. Obama was so successful with the economy that people elected a 'casino owner' to see if he can do any better with jobs and the income inequality gap.

The stock market is at all-time highs — true — with the caveat that since Obama has been in office, the US debt has doubled from 10 to 20 trillion dollars.

Even with the Fed's bluff cycle which I wrote about, almost a full decade of zero percent 'real' interest rates — sounds like a healthy economy to me! Such a vibrant economy indeed, that the cost of money must be artificially held down for 10 years in a row.

The number one culprit for income/wealth inequality are the central banks around the world. They are addicted to easy monetary policies which will eventually result in inflation. I wouldn't bet against central banks' ability to devalue currencies; they have a pretty good track record. The central banks have openly stated that rising prices, aka inflation, is one of their mandates. The richest 1% own the vast majority of assets, while the rest of us are just stuck with higher living costs when inflation does appear. Sounds fair to me!

Ron Paul has it right when he calls for auditing and ending the Fed; it's anyone's guess whether Trump will stay interested in this, or if it was just campaign rhetoric when he opined on 'auditing the Fed.'

'Obamacare,' as Obama likes to call the 'Affordable Care Act,' is affordable depending on who you ask. Even ardent Obama supporters are starting to accept that health care costs are rising. Yes, more people may be covered, but at what cost? The Affordable Care Act by definition isn't working well! It's unsustainable for a squeezed middle class and a government already running perpetual deficits.

As much as you may love Obama's rhetorical gifts and his pleasant demeanor, he hasn't had a very fruitful tenure if his job is to help all Americans fulfill their dreams. And he failed on an even grander scale, if you happened to live in a host of countries America has destabilized over his 8 years in office.

I will leave his Nobel Peace Prize out of this article, but will just state that: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, Ukraine and now Syria will never be the same as a result of Obama's 'peaceful' foreign policy.

I digress, back to why I started this missive:

I think it's great to be passionate about issues and have an opinion, but also we must be wary not to grab the first 'fact' or opinion we read on Facebook or Twitter, or maybe even worse — the mainstream news. Research. Read. Think first!

"You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts." — Daniel Patrick Moynihan

I'm all about healthy discourse, but please use facts rather than emotions, or what you want to be real.

Polls and the financial markets reacted when it was all but certain that Brexit and Trump would carry the vote. It looks like a few people were caught asleep at the wheel. It might have been a good idea for some British folks to have picked up a few gold/silver investments before the Pound dropped off a cliff — still sliding...

If everyone was well informed — "I think most sane people are actually libertarians, but they just don't know it." — Gary Johnson. I think overall in the 2016 campaign he was an embarrassment to the Libertarian Party and even more to Ron Paul, who has spent his lifetime building up libertarian awareness.

In 2017 information is virtually free. If you are reading this, then you have access to the internet which has all the information you need. Do some exploring and seek out answers or even scarier facts! Or turn back on Netflix and finish another season of...

This is the world we are living in. Hope you enjoyed my 2016 summary.

IS FREEDOM OF SPEECH A ‘LICENSE TO OFFEND’?

The rise of Milo Yiannopoulos, Paul Joseph Watson, and Donald Trump in 2016 all share one important characteristic - they are all okay with offending people.

“FREEDOM OF SPEECH MEANS FREEDOM TO HATE.” - Christopher Hitchens

A subtler way of stating this would be, ‘freedom to offend’.

While I don't endorse spreading malignancy or hostility around the world, I do agree that we should always have the right, and dare I say privilege in 2017 to disagree with each other on important issues. To expect everyone to view the world in the same way or to assume that all people will feel the same way is absurd. If everyone is thinking the same thing, then nobody is really thinking at all.

Lemmings may have a rotten image, but no individual lemming has ever received bad press.

We are safe in a group in that we can't be ostracized, this can be comforting sure, but it also potentially causes individuals to turn off the rational part of their brain and to assume the opinion of the crowd. There are many fascinating books about how crowds and the populace have been led astray time after time when the writing was on the wall that something was amiss. However, the isolation if you will, of the crowd is what caused the populace to ignore outside information, and the confirmation bias that they were in this with like minded people kept their conviction strong.

I have spent the better part of the last decade in Asia, mostly Seoul and have returned to America recently, North for now. A quick detour to Yugoslavia is up next before then heading to South America in early 2018. The best way to understand people is of course to literally walk in their shoes by living with them. Since being back in America - ‘home’, I have come to understand on a deeper level, you could even say viscerally, the rise of Donald Trump, Milo Yiannopoulos and Paul Joseph Watson - People are suffocating on political correctness!

Let me explain..

The recently proposed Islamophobia law in Canada is the epitome of the problem right now, in 2017 we are facing a slippery slope to all out censorship of discourse and free speech. One might also be reminded of this maxim: ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions’. The noose of free speech that the the giants of the Enlightenment fought so hard for is starting to choke us, and we are the ones doing the tightening under the guise of ‘culture enrichment’. I think we have entered a whole new era of what is pertinently called the ‘oppression olympics’. I'm not sure if anyone really understands what this Islamophobia law really means, myself included!

I will preface the rest of this missive with: ‘I'm the least bigoted person towards people from the Middle East. Namely Syria, Iran (one of my best friends is Persian), Yemen, Iraq, Turkey, Russia, China and any other countries that the mainstream media (MSM) would have you believe are our enemies or a threat to our Western way of life. It is hard to go a day without hearing of how these countries are destroying our democracy or committing war crimes, ect.

I will usually even take the defensive side when my fellow North Americans who tend to fall into a ‘Globalist’ mindset (‘humanitarian work’ or bringing enlightenment in the form of Western values to the rest of the world) talk about slowing down immigration from Syria, or want to halt immigration from these countries altogether.

I always like to point out to people who hold these xenophobic positions on immigration that the least we (North Americans) can do is provide refugees from these countries with shelter. After all, Canada and the US are NATO members and we should be held accountable for what our foreign policy has brought to Syria and the Middle East as a whole. As long as we are involved in ‘Western Nation Building’, or as I like to refer to it as ‘Petrodollar imperialism’, then I have no other choice but to support immigration from these countries on a large scale.

A bit of digression, but I think knowing where I stand on that will save time when I say that, the Islamophobia law is not what Canada, or any country for that matter should try to impose on it's citizens. The only way I can understand why people would want to impose such a law, is that they might feel that Muslims, as a result of terrorism committed in the name of Islam, are a small minority and that people are painting with a broad brush over people who are affiliated with Islam or fit the profile of what they think a terrorist suspect would look like. Others might defend the proposed Islamophobia law by stating that no one should feel threatened living in Canada regardless of their faith and that Muslims have been unfairly singled out since 9/11. Of course I agree that no one should feel threatened, especially with violence that occasionally results from prejudiced and racist actions towards Muslims or to people of any faith for that matter.

On the other hand, I strongly support the ability to talk openly about terrorism or foreign policy by including Islam in the discussion. As abstaining from that sacredly held believe wouldn't be right, as Islam like all religions shouldn't be free of scrutiny. Just because some people disagree or feel offended about the non opaque manner in which you are discussing their sacred beliefs, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be allowed to engage in such discourse which the proposed Islamophobia law would censor. Having an honest discussion on what is the best way to assimilate people of all faiths in one country must be allowed to be discussed in the most open form possible.

I don’t fall into the camp which thinks Islam is the main motivator in terrorism against the West, as some others believe. I think Islam plays a part, but a small part at best.

In 2014 I wrote about what I think best explains the motivations behind terrorism towards the West.

A quick excerpt from that past missive:

Saying Islam alone is evil or a religion of hate is ridiculous, as all monotheistic religions contain doctrine that can be used to justify death to the infidel, not to mention that they all originate with the darkest chapters of the Old Testament. Islam may be having a rough century and be in need of a reformation like Catholicism/Christianity had in the past, but to blame Islam as the sole culprit for terrorist attacks is like blaming Christianity for Hitler’s hatred of the Jews and WW2. Religion does play a part in radicalizing young men, in that it helps to justify their martyrdom, but doesn’t that just sound like nationalism? Regarding current events in Mesopotamia, religion completely evades the point of why we are really at war. Instead of debating issues like religious tolerance, immigration, and increased airport security, why not question what would motivate these people to terrorism and the need to retaliate against us in the first place? The Elephant in the room emerges: we are occupying their land and killing their civilians; we reneged on our promise of giving them sovereign rule over their land post Ottoman rule if they allied with the West to defeat the Ottoman Empire in WW1. George Bush, speaking after 9/11, wasn’t so far off the mark when he stated that “They hate our freedoms.” Yes, they hate our freedom of a sovereign state ruled without foreign meddling.

If you were to ask immigrants from Muslim majority countries, who now live in the West why they emigrated here in the first place, the big answer which I agree with and also deserves condemnation is that Western Imperialism has destroyed their country. Which in many cases is 100% accurate, but if they don’t choose that as their main answer, they may mention that they were motivated to emigrate because of: opportunity for a better life, and safety. Some women might say, if permitted, that gender equality was top of their list, and some even farther that theocracy and caste systems in their birth country were impeding their way of life/career. A secular state resonated with how they wanted their children to be raised in 2017. I do understand that the last few points might be a stretch for people to say, as they might feel threatened for expressing such beliefs. Hindus from Asia and the Middle East who now live in the West would probably give similar answers if they felt in a safe enough space to confide their true feelings.

If you don’t hear anything along the lines of what I’ve mentioned, I might question the authenticity of the person giving the answers. However again, you can even go one step farther and ask, “how many Muslims living in the Western world would happily go back to a state run by Islam - a Theocracy?” I don’t think you would find many volunteering for that except a fringe of the population who left to join ISIS, who for lack of a better term are ‘drunk on Jihad’ and usually aren’t leaving much behind as they were loners/outcasts in many cases.

Islam, like all religions, are a set of ideas and beliefs and despite that they are sacred to some, all ideas and beliefs have consequences and should be open for discourse. For example, the majority of liberals would overwhelmingly say they support equality for women, but then when it comes to questioning the treatment of women in countries such as Saudi Arabia, where women are second class citizens to say the least and chattel at worst, they might say something like “we shouldn’t judge other cultures”. We should respect their religion and not question those beliefs, as they are sacred and some people might get offended with us holding their customs, beliefs, and doctrine to a 21st century magnifying glass.

I always found this line of thinking amusing in that these same people who oppose Donald Trump for his misogyny, look the other way when it comes to where the majority of Hillary’s campaign funding came from in the 2016 election, or who the biggest donor to the Clinton foundation was; Saudi Arabia in both cases! Then there are feminists who opposed the recent campaign of Marine Le Pen in France, who if elected would have been the first female leader of France. This is both amusing and worrying if you really think about it. Why did they oppose Marine Le Pen? Because if elected to France’s leadership position, she promised that France would become less Europe and more France and that we should be able to set a limit on immigration and get control of our borders to limit the chances of terrorist attacks. How polarizing of a platform can you run on!?

Another noteworthy person who should be a hero to all women is Ayan Hirsi Ali. She was a victim of religion and proclaimed infidel from her family and place of birth. A Somalian refugee in Europe, she later became a Dutch politician, prominent author, and women's rights advocate. Hearing all that about her, you would think she would be a hero to all women. However, this would not be the case, as many liberals find her opinions on Islam offensive. Offensive! Think about that! My liberal/millennial feelings and emotions matter more than what happened in this woman’s life. As well as the lives of women around the world today as a result of where they were born and what ideas and practices were/are acceptable in that jurisdiction. If you have read any of Ayan’s books, or heard her speak, you would never say that the way she was treated growing up was an acceptable way to treat a female. People’s self proclaimed right to not have their feelings hurt is not allowing us to have an honest discussion about the treatment of women in some cultures/religions. More pertinently, the idea that certain religious dogmas have consequences.

“Those who are determined to be ‘offended’ will discover a provocation somewhere. We cannot possibly adjust enough to please the fanatics, and it is degrading to make the attempt.” - Christopher Hitchens

We should be free to have open discourse on the merits of all ideas and beliefs - full stop.

I think Western Civilization over the last few decades has become hypersensitive. We call 'hate speech' anything we don't agree with. If we aren't allowed to speak freely and disagree with each other, do we really have free speech at all?

Hard to beat what Voltaire said on free speech: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Voltaire was a product of the enlightenment, he knew better than anyone that without free speech and the ability to disagree openly with conventional wisdom - certain entities, namely the monarchy and the clergy, would be left unchallenged to assert their beliefs and policies on the unassuming populace. They would enact whatever they deemed best for all of us, and this would start to limit our personal liberty, until we were back to getting dictated on how we should best live our lives.

Christopher Hitchens aptly opined:

Who is going to be the arbiter of this law?

To whom do you award the right to decide which speech is harmful or who is the harmful speaker? Or determine in advance what are the harmful consequences going to be, that we know enough about in advance to prevent? To whom would you give this job? To whom are you going to award the job of being the censor?

Finished with Brian:

I would agree with Gary Johnston, “most Americans are libertarians they just don’t know it.” I might add onto that with, most people are libertarians, but they don’t understand how the Federal Reserve, Petrodollar, and how the IRS really works, and vote with emotions rather than rationality.

If you trust yourself over the government to decide what is best for you, by definition you are a libertarian. Who knows better than you how to spend your money, what you should be allowed to consume, or who you should be allowed to marry? I don’t want bureaucrats or clergy telling me how to live my life, and neither should you!

The one thing that I think we can ascertain from history is that men will seek power over one another, and that men are driven by fear and greed, not some supernatural moral compass given to them by a creator.

All humans are products of their environments, so religious affiliation should be understood as nothing more than how your parents reared you and what you've been exposed to, especially in your formative years. Before we make outlandish statements and judge other civilizations we should really try to learn and understand them. If we don’t we fall victim to prejudice and bigotry.

Someone who caught my attention during the 2016 presidential campaign was Milo Yiannopoulos. He was very outspoken on various issues and backed ‘Daddy’ for the White House or as most of the world knows him: Donald Trump. The reason Milo caught my attention was his indifference to cultural sensitivities or as I like to call them ‘ insecurities’ and enjoys ‘riling’ people up. He calls himself a ‘virtuous troll’ in that he thinks he is bringing light to issues that need a larger audience. For the most part, people get offended by almost anything he says, this is highly entertaining for me and I only agree with about half the things he says. Milo has gotten a lot of bad press recently for statements he made on pedophilia in an old video call and his various online ‘attacks’ which he has singled out individuals for their appearance, sexual identity and lack of literacy; Again I don’t agree 100% with his attacks or opinions on all of these issues, but trying to deny him a platform to express himself like Twitter, Simon and Schuster, UC Berkeley and his former ‘main gig’ at Breitbart have done, are just fanning the flames and adding to his audience.

The simple law of scarcity applies here, if a limit is set on something people desire, they want more of it, not less. If we deny access to something, people’s curiosity skyrockets on the very subject we are trying to suppress. Don’t agree with me, how about this to prove my point: when Milo’s ‘Dangerous Faggot’ tour was cancelled at UC Berkeley earlier this year, because of ‘social justice warriors’ creating a violent riot outside of the university, his book which was on preorder on Amazon shot from 642nd on Amazon’s best sellers to eventually land at the number 1 spot. His book publisher has recently renounced his book deal, but again that will only add to the people’s curiosity and with that, demand for all things Milo. I wouldn't be surprised in the least to see his book become a bestseller on whichever platform he finally releases it on. If he sells it through a website of his own, under his own publishing company which I suspect he will, he is set to collect an even larger majority of all proceeds, instead of giving them away to a mainstream publishing company - again Milo wins!

Another person I find highly entertaining, but agree with less and less on recent political issues is Bill Maher the HBO Real Time host; he does have a way of bringing out humor, wit and ‘real talk’ in current events which I have yet to find elsewhere on a regular basis. Maher is also in the liberal ‘dog house’ and was disinvited along with Milo and more recently Anne Coulter to a UC Berkeley commencement speech for various comments and opinions he holds on religion, namely Islam. The level of provocative discourse on Maher’s show always causes me to learn something new in an entertaining way. He recently had Milo on his show and commented on Milo’s incessant ability to rile up the masses, namely the liberals and millennials: ‘Stop taking the bait Liberals’ - Maher said. I couldn’t agree more!

Bill Maher also said to Milo: ‘You remind me of a young, gay, alive Christopher Hitchens’

I think that comparison is a bit premature as Christopher Hitchens was on a different level than Milo, while Milo might be described as an egomaniac or a provocateur, he doesn’t seem to have the same consistency, wit, rhetorical and cognitive gifts as the late Christopher Hitchens did. Christopher Hitchens who would probably best be described as a polemicist took on issues with a lot more substance and approached them with a level of analysis and depth that Milo doesn’t even attempt. I can picture Hitchen describing Milo as a frivolous character who will do or say anything to further his agenda - which is the brand ‘Milo’. (This sounds an awfully lot like Trump, and how Hitchen’s described Trump in the past) Depending on what Milo does over the next few decades, maybe a serious or more balanced comparison could be made. But I think Milo like most British citizens like Hitchens said are ‘branded on the tongue’ with their verbosity, accent and level of articulation that most Americans never come close to.

A bit of long winded digression on Milo, but his rise to notoriety ties in with Trump’s rise to the White House, so I found the correlation interesting and worth elaborating on.

Paul Joseph Watson, probably best described as ‘Youtube star’ who works for InfoWars - he is best known for his video rants on issues that many people are afraid to talk about. Whether you agree with him 100% or not, he is entertaining and has a rapidly growing audience; many of his videos quickly have half a million views and some in excess of 1.5 million. He has brought increased focus on topics such as Feminism, Islam, our obsession with ‘Pop Culture’, Fake News, Trump’s 2016 campaign, the French election and many other noteworthy happenings around the world.

I always check out his latest videos as he brings an interesting perspective to the table that many others are afraid to speak up on. If you haven’t checked out his Youtube account I recommend doing so. He doesn’t do many MSM interviews as he feels they don’t portray him in a fair way which is understandable. He has a way of articulating ideas in a fun fast paced way and I anticipate his audience will continue to grow. I look forward to the possibility of him engaging more issues and possibly doing live interviews on mainstream networks in the coming years.

I think we need more people who will challenge people's beliefs down to the core, I don’t think the world in 2017 and especially millennials need more coddling.

In a lot of conversations that I have engaged in with people since being back in North America, I find myself tiptoeing around so as to not ‘rile up’ or offend people.

So many people are starting to tune out anything they disagree with, including facts!

As the late Christopher Hitchens eloquently put it:

“If someone tells me that I've hurt their feelings, I say, 'I'm still waiting to hear what your point is. 'In this country, I've been told, 'That's offensive' as if those two words constitute an argument or a comment. Not to me they don't. And I'm not running for anything, so I don't have to pretend to like people when I don't.”

I’m going to explain where I think the markets currently reside, and then i’m going to give some pragmatic investment ideas that I think will benefit from the current environment or at worst will be more resilient than other investments you might currently find yourself holding.

On a side note, I just finished reading Nassim Taleb’s book ‘Antifragile’ so I might let a few of his neologisms slip in this article. ‘Antifragile’ while being slightly verbose and unintelligible for the layman had me captivated over the last week, and ties directly into this article.

The unprecedented complacency in the stock market right now has a lot of people scratching their heads, including myself and wondering who is buying stocks at these levels, and more importantly what kind of returns are people expecting to get when entering this volume-less, volatility-less, stale bull market!

The current bull market started in early 2009 - so we are 8+ years into this bull market. Historically speaking this is the second longest bull market since WWII, with only the 1990-2000 bull market being longer and we all know how that ended.

To preface: I’m a ‘deep value-contrarian’ when it comes to investments so I usually recommend investments that are currently out of favor or have yet to appear on people’s radar. In saying that, I find it amusing when people tout the recent returns they have made in their ‘index funds’ or their stock of choice, it hasn’t been that hard to make decent returns over the last 8 years, all you had to do is blindly buy anything - the S&P 500 is up over 250% during that time.

My returns over the last 5 years have been less than stellar minus a few bright spots, namely mining companies 2014- present and crypto currencies 2014- present day. The reasons that my returns have been suboptimal is that I never really bought into the idea that the economy had recovered from the ‘great recession’ 2007-2009, which was a result of loose mortgage lending that resulted in the housing market crash in the US and then the full global slowdown. What this means is I didn’t go blindly long the S&P 500 in 2009, but have bought out of favor sectors that haven’t moved much.

People who have made great returns in indexes over the last 8 years might feel like they made a prudent choice investing a lot of money in indexes during this timeline, but I would beg to differ. Though volatility and risk have been suppressed leading stock buyers to believe the world has become ‘antifragile’ - this is exactly the wrong conclusion! Volatility will return with a vengeance in the near future - the markets have never been more fragile than they are right now!

I will give you a few things to ruminate on:

1)​ The US and global economy still hasn’t recovered from the great recession, or why is the Federal Funds rate still less than 1%? - historically this is crisis level, but over the last decade it has become the norm.

This CHART needs no explanation.

2) Central banks around the world continue to monetize government debt in 2017, accumulating trillions of dollars in assets - central banks AUM have swollen unprecedentedly. Yes stocks are higher, but are the markets really rising on strong fundamentals or rather artificial liquidity provided by central banks? I’m not sure why people refer to central banks as the ‘lender of last resort’ they have become the ‘lender of first resort’.

CHART - Interesting correlation!, but not surprising for anyone who hasn’t bought into the ‘healthy economy’ delusion which has become pervasive.

3) We have built a fragile system that has lost it’s ability to self correct, and moderate risk. In Nassim Taleb’s lexicon, we have had ‘fragilistas’ at the helm of central banks around the world, this has created a fragile system that has been micromanaged to a perilous state. Volatility isn’t allowed anymore; every time there has been a slight selloff in the markets, Janet Yellen and her cohorts come out with dovish statements to reassure all investors that the FED will do ‘whatever it takes’ to keep the bull market party going, and this isn’t an isolated incident, this is happening globally.

I wrote about the FED’S BLUFF CYCLE here, and I want to expand on that missive a bit more. The whole narrative that the economy is strong and that the FED can normalize interest rates is still a non starter, as it fails to take into account the precarious state of the economy and the high levels of debt which have been accumulated. It is easy to finance debt when interest rates are less than 1% or in some cases even negative. The cost of money has been so distorted for such an extended period; the misallocation of resources is on the precipice of a rude awakening.

So one of two things can happen here: either the FED can normalize interest rates (historically 3-5%) or they can’t, my bet is that they can’t, but let’s run with the narrative that they can while you read the following 3 points.

Case 1 - Normalization of interest rates:

I can be quite confident that there will be massive ripple effects that will cause a ‘great, great recession’. When in 2008, we had a debt crisis, the cure for that crisis is of course to DOUBLE the national debt (which has been done since 2008), that should solve things!

1) US Shale oil will see large scale bankruptcies - the only reason shale oil was ever feasible below $80/barrel was that shale companies were able to take on vast amounts of debt at extremely low interest rates. This allowed balance sheets to look a lot healthier than they really were. The idea of the US being energy independent is still something I don’t expect to see in my lifetime.

2) The interest payments on the national debt have remained roughly the same over the last decade even though we have doubled the national debt - How is this possible!? The reason this was possible is because interest rates dropped by more than half, allowing the government's interest payments to remain roughly the same, if interest rates were to normalize, the math would start to get ugly pretty quickly - Negative compound interest anyone!?

3) a) Global equities, especially the S&P 500 will have a rude wake up call when profits plunge as consumer credit tightens and the average person has a lot less money to spend. The chart above shows the correlation to central bank debt monetization and how that has propped up the S&P 500.

b) Another reason stocks have gone straight up over the last 8 years is: ‘share buybacks’ - to explain simply, this is just a company using its cash to buy back its own shares. This sounds like a good idea at times if you have excess profits and your shares are undervalued, but that is where it gets confusing as neither of these were the case! Companies were taking on debt at 1-3%, and with nothing better to do with their newly acquired funds, they were buying back their own shares in the open market. Reducing the number of shares means earnings per share, revenue and cash flow grow more quickly on a per share basis. Taking on debt to make earnings per share more attractive - LET THAT SINK IN!

Major share buybacks will be halted as it won’t seem like such a great use of money to buy back your own shares when the cost of money rises with the normalization of interest rates. In most cases companies who took part in share buybacks were buying historically expensive shares on a price to earnings basis anyway, so the reduction of share buybacks is probably not the worst thing to happen.

Case 2 - The more likely scenario in my opinion is that the FED will recant on it’s stated goal of normalizing interest rates. Here is how I think this will unravel:

1)​ The dollar will continue to decline, it is already down around 10% since the peak of the Trump irrational exuberance rally. Trump has been rather quiet about the strength of the dollar recently, something he also naively took credit for after winning the election. 2)​ Monetary metals will continue their moves higher as people realize that interest rates aren’t going anywhere, except most likely lower or even negative. Monetary metals usually trade inversely to the yield on the 10 year treasury. 3)​ Markets will initially sell off as the narrative of a strong economy is finally debunked, but I suspect that the ‘central planners’ will come to the rescue of the market and equities will eventually find a bottom and rally as the cost of money becomes looser and looser, and the chase for yield is back on. 4)​ Share buybacks will commence and the S&P 500 will start to drip higher again. 5)​ Inflation will creep up as the cost of all goods priced in USD will rise. Inflation will be seen in all things - rising house prices, natural resources, and of course gold and silver. Millennial gold and silver aka Bitcoin and Ethereum I suspect will also benefit from this.

So you may be propelled to think: if stocks will be rescued in the case of a market collapse, why should I sell funds out of my index and diversify?

Certain markets will outperform over the coming decade, and I suspect that it won’t be the major indexes, and if you are someone who supports the narrative ‘over the long run stocks always do well’ I would like to remind you that the Japanese Index the Nikkei is still below it’s peak of 1990 and there have been many cases of ‘lost decades’ where the markets find themselves at the same place that they were a decade earlier; the S&P 500 traded around 1500 in 2000, 2007 and again in 2013, with a few 50% sell-offs in the middle. So timing is also very important when investing.

Whether the FED decides to pursue ‘dovish’ monetary policies is irrelevant when I point out that Donald Trump’s decision to own the market's recent gains is imprudent. When Obama came into office he was buying the markets at the absolute lows of the great recession, while on the other hand Trump is buying the market’s at extremely overbought levels after an 8+ year uptrend. I agree with Peter Schiff when he states that ‘The FED has their fall guy in the White House now’ meaning that if they do continue to raise rates and prick the bubble, Trump having taken so much credit for the recent stock market gains, will by default also be responsible for the aftermath of a historic debt inflated market collapse.

Here are a few tweets to summarize this:

In closing I recommend people to think about what their expectations are over the next decade; do you think the next 8 years will be like the preceding 8 years? If so, index away and hope for the best, but I will remind you that ‘hope’ isn’t an investment strategy! If you have good reasons why the index will outperform over the next decade I would be interested to hear them. If you think that markets are unpredictable and that indexes don’t assume to choose winners and losers as they capture the breadth of the markets and that makes them safe, again, index away!

I will leave you with this:

The great Charlie Munger introduced me to the concept of inversion. He always recommends for people to invert their thinking, especially when investing. What this means, is always think about how you can lose before you consider how you can win or profit. What could go wrong with this investment? What am I missing? What is my safety or margin of error?

So forecasting a rosy next decade might make you feel good, and you will be tempted to think about how much money you will make in the case of markets repeating their past performance; that is sloppy thinking and should be avoided! What could possibly go wrong with artificially suppressed volatility and and markets at record highs!? I hope I have awaken you to some of the potential outcomes.

The only investments that resonate with my style of investing are equities that I think have limited downside and unlimited upside.

Without getting into the intricacies of options - my style of investing would be well illustrated by the left image - limited downside (especially in 2017) and unlimited upside.

The right image would better represent the SP500 Index at current levels, a small potential gain, but a vastly larger potential drop.

After I find investments that offer these kind of risk to rewards, I then take it a step further and I think what are the fundamentals of the company, the jurisdiction of the company, the character of the management, and my knowledge and confidence of the investment? I ideally like to buy investments that I think will return 100’s of percent over a 5-10 year basis.

As an example: The S&P 500 index may go up another 1-2 years returning 10-15%, (highly unlikely on a historical basis) but the downside is magnitudes of that! I wouldn’t be surprised to see a 40-50% drop within the next 2-3 years. That doesn’t seem like a great risk to reward to me.

I’m investing in things that I think have the exact opposite potential payoffs, in that they could drop 10-15% but more likely will be up triple digits over the next decade. As I mentioned at the start, many of my investments have underperformed over the last 5 years, but the fundamentals are very strong at current levels, many of the investments are trading below book value and have large catalysts which could propel them up 100’s of percent. These are investments that I can’t afford to miss out on.

Without going into details, my portfolio is long investments related to Mongolia, Silver, Uranium and a few other contrarian investments that will benefit from antifragility (increased volatility)/

Why Hillary Clinton is more dangerous than The Donald.

The US election is slimming down quickly to give us really only a choice between two flawed candidates, so we have to take a stoic approach to it and make do with what we have left. Sanders has made the election interesting. However, barring a scandal or heart attack, Hillary Clinton looks untouchable with a huge lead in pledged delegates for the Democratic nomination. Donald Trump looks to have secured the Republican nomination with his recent win in Indiana.

Donald Trump may be a bigot, a racist, an islamophobe, a narcissist, and a sexist, but he still seems more pragmatic about most of the issues Americans should really care about. I’ve heard many people tell me, “Yes, Trump would be interesting in office, but you don’t have to live here, so you are detached from the situation enough that it is just entertainment.” My friend has hinted that it may be the anarchist in us who wants to see the system burn down and see Trump in the White House. Nothing could be further from the truth. If I lived in North America or was a US citizen, I might have even more motivation to support Trump. I’ll outline the reasons why I think a Clinton presidency would be far worse for global stability in the long run than a Trump presidency.

To begin with, I don’t even think Trump believes most of the things he says. He changes his opinion in the midst of a conversation/debate if he feels that is what needs to be done to advance his agenda. I think his proposal of building a wall on the Mexican border would phase out quickly if he got elected. Also, deporting all illegal immigrants while ambitious is near impossible. These bombastic statements have excited a lot of the GOP electorate, but most people will have lost interest or outright forgotten of these promises when 2017 rolls in. Let’s not forget Obama campaigned on a peaceful foreign policy platform and even won the Nobel Peace Prize, but during his presidency, he has sent troops to Libya, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Mali, and Afghanistan. Hmm, he doesn’t seem as worthy of that Peace Prize anymore, but few voters care and or even remember what he said on the campaign trail back in 2008. All successful politicians say what they need to say to get into office even if they don’t believe it or know their policies aren’t feasible.

“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.” ― Aldous Huxley

While having an opinion or attacking Trump is easy, I challenge the reader to see which issues will impact their life the most and explore the two candidates’ policies on these issues. Don’t let your emotions get in the way of making an informed decision.

I think income inequality and the refugee crisis are the two biggest issues in the world right now.

Income inequality - This has become one of the defining issues of this election, There is deep dissatisfaction amongst the majority of Americans who feel left behind in this so-called economic “recovery” since the ‘Great Recession’ of 2008. Sanders and Trump are both anti- establishment candidates. They are both popular for very similar reasons. People feel that they better represent the low to the middle-income citizen more so than the establishment candidates like Bush, Clinton, and Rubio do.

Sanders has taken a kick the can down the road approach to the real fiscal problem by offering government largess with no feasible way of paying for it. America has been running deficits since Hillary’s husband was in office and there looks to be no way to run a surplus anytime soon. Sanders’ vision of a socialist utopia, which will result in an even larger government, is not exactly going to help the fiscal situation for the masses. Yes, in the short term, college will be free and taxes will go up on high-income earners, but when the economy slows even further. As a result, you’ll soon run out of other people's money. To summarize Sanders’ economic policies in a graphic way, Picture the temptation for children to urinate in their pants in the winter. It feels good and warms them at first, but then they realize they have made the initial problem much worse.

I would argue that the real culprit for income inequality is the Federal Reserve’s loose monetary policies since 2008. Zero percent interest rates and QE (Quantitative Easing), which is just a euphemism for counterfeiting or monetizing the debt, have done little for the average person over the last eight years.

Sanders is somewhat right to attack the big banks. However, at t the same time, it goes back to the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement which resulted in a bit of awareness about income inequality but no lasting resolution. The big banks are just doing what they do best, which is taking advantage of policies that have been put in front of them by Washington and the Federal Reserve ( the Fed) who decide the monetary policy for the country and most of the developed world. Blaming the big banks will get you nowhere quickly! I respect Sanders’ energy and integrity, but I also think he needs to come around to an audit the Fed stance like Ron Paul spent much of his career campaigning on, and his son Rand has picked up on as well.

Trump has recently spoken in support of auditing the Fed. To have a mainstream politician talking about that is a big step in the right direction. The world deserves to know the intricacies of how the Fed operates. Trump has also spoken about replacing dovish Fed Chief Yellen with hopefully someone less prone to easy monetary policies. The reason that monetary policy is so important in combating income inequality is that 1% of Americans own the vast quantity of all assets while the 99% of Americans own a very small percentage. The vast majority of the bottom 25% of the population own none at all.

So yes, as the argument in favor of easy monetary policies goes, the US economy was temporarily saved from another great depression by the Fed and government largess, but the majority of Americans never experienced a real recovery. Kicking the can down the road with more debt just steals future growth and makes the day of reckoning that much worse. The unemployment rate looks favorable at around 5%, and the stock markets are at all-time highs, so everyone should be happy, shouldn’t they? I would like to point out that real unemployment including discouraged workers who have dropped out of the labor force are not included in that 5% number. Also, the 5% rate counts equally part time minimum wage jobs as full-time jobs. One can bend and twist the numbers all they want to paint a favorable picture for the economy, but the fact remains that people are dissatisfied, and that is why Trump and Sanders have such a loyal base right now.

So the Federal Reserve has been effective in stopping a great deflation thus far. However, inflation we have seen in the stock market and in real estate has benefited the 1% while only making it even harder for the majority of Americans who don’t own those assets to keep up on a monthly basis. With inflationary forces showing their ugly head in rental prices and especially food prices, it is really starting to pinch the lower income households who spend a disproportionate amount of their salary on basic living necessities. In contrast, the 1% spends such a small fraction of their income on housing and food that it is more than offset by the increases in their asset prices. This is why the income inequality gap continues to widen. The have-nots are approaching record levels of dissatisfaction, so anyone who was convinced Trump or Sanders had no shot at the White House should look no further than the economy.

Sanders has forced Hillary to talk tough towards Wall Street, which is quite comical as she is Wall Street’s horse in the race. She won’t release transcripts of her highly paid speeches she made at Wall Street banks. In addition, we all know that the majority of her campaign is financed by Wall Street just like Obama’s campaign. She is the last person who will move to audit the Fed,make any meaningful changes on Wall Street, or to the loose monetary policy. If you care about income inequality, Clinton isn’t your candidate.

The next major issue is foreign policy.

Syria - The Syrian civil war that started in 2011 hasn’t finished yet. It has displaced around none million people in the region. The refugee crisis has put a huge strain on Europe’s security and politics as well.

While Hillary has said she would put a no-fly zone in Syria, Rand Paul made clear in a debate what that really meant when he said: “Russia has been invited by the Syrian Regime to fly in that area, if we were to impose a no-fly zone which Russia would surely not agree to, we would be threatening to shoot down Russian fighter planes.” I’m not sure how that could possibly be a good idea to attack one of the heaviest nuclear-armed states in the world. I would like to remind people that the Islamic State (IS) and the other terrorist groups operating in Iraq and Syria have no air force. Therefore, all a no-fly zone would do is stop Russia and the Syrian regime from bombing the terrorist groups and cutting off their oil sales, which is where they get the majority of their funding from. So far from defeating IS, imposing a no-fly zone would strengthen the world’s number one so-called ‘enemy.'

Trump, on the other hand, has said he would look to improve America’s fractious relationship with Russia and has said that he sees no reason why he wouldn’t be able to work with Putin. As The Donald likes to say “ I get along with everybody.” The western media loves to demonize Putin’s actions in Syria and Ukraine as hostile. I love reminding people that if Russia and China were expanding a ‘Warsaw Pact’ with Canada or Mexico, do you think the US would sit patiently on the sidelines and watch? Or how about if Russia or China were sending spy planes or warships near US borders on a regular basis? I think China and Russia have actually been very patient and pragmatic in the face of NATO’s expansion in eastern Europe and in the face of frequent shows of strength in the China sea by America and it’s allies.

Trump would act a lot more pragmatic towards these two military giants than Hillary would. We need a president who will ‘get along with everybody’, not someone who is campaigning on standing up to China and destabilizing that region, not to mention Clinton’s plan of setting up a no-fly zone in Syria and bent on standing up to Putin’s so-called “aggression.”

Whether Trump understands the intricacies of how America’s foreign policy has worked for the last four decades is debatable, as he seems ignorant of why we have troops stationed around the world and why America is bent on always helping Sunni states in the Middle Eas. I’m not going to get into the Petrodollar as I’ve done that here already. I’ll just point out that America having the world’s reserve currency is the best thing going for a super power. The backbone of the US being the world’s reserve currency is the Petrodollar. To ensure that it remains in the hands of the US, the US must show China, Russia or anyone who threatens the unipolar world that consequences will result if other countries don’t sit back and accept American hegemony.

On the other hand, I’m sure Hillary understands the Petrodollar and how America’s foreign policy works. After all, she has spent her lifetime in politics and was already Secretary of State. She knows that Putin threatens American hegemony more than any leader on the planet right now. Clinton knows that standing up to Putin is essential to maintain American hegemony. It could be argued that she leans more towards a neo-conservative agenda than Trump does.

On the face of it, Hillary appears to represent the nation better as a whole, and Trump appears to be representing only an extreme fringe of a broken part of the Republican Party. However,I would argue exactly to the contrary. Hillary represents the status quo, Wall Street, and the deep state - and especially the one percent. Trump represents everyone who is fed up with the status quo; Trump isn’t my first choice by far, but the 99% see him as the most viable way to express their dissatisfaction, and they are relishing in his success. The establishment is panicking as they should be. They know Trump is unpredictable and listens to no one but himself.

Most would agree that Trump isn’t their favorite candidate, but like me would like to believe in democracy. They feel like him doing well in the primaries shows there's still a semblance of democracy left in our system, rather than just another Clinton or Bush on each side representing special interests and a small faction of the country.

When there are no great choices in front of you, selecting the least bad option still counts for something. If I haven’t convinced you to vote for Trump, I at least hope I persuaded you to take a deeper look at what Hillary Clinton really stands for.

It has been over a year now since I wrote my article on $16 silver being the best investment over the coming decade 2015-2025. The price is back hovering around $16, after having dipped below $14 briefly in late 2015 and early 2016. The bottom is most likely in now as both gold and silver have had a strong run in 2016, both entering bull markets at times. A bull market can be defined as advancing 20% in price from its low. Silver touched $13.62 in December 2015 and traded as high as $17 recently. For most of the first quarter of 2016 silver had been lagging behind gold’s rise, but over the last few weeks, silver seems to have caught up and exceeded the yellow metal.

A price advancing or declining by a certain percentage doesn’t really hold a lot of meaning on its own, but when we start to use the terms “bull” market and “bear” market, the moves start to take on a life of their own and the price moves becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy in that many investors flock to buy or sell when certain trends develop.

Having been greatly attracted to silver at the start of 2015 around $16; I knew the downside was always going to be limited at such a low entry. The silver spot price had dropped from $50 in 2011. At $16, the majority of mining companies were producing silver at a loss. The silver spot price didn’t drop that much over the last year, but the silver equities were smashed lower as they are highly leveraged to the price of silver.

There are so many catalysts that can drive the silver price much higher from here including:

●​ Physical shortages in coins and bullion. We have seen shortages at times around the world already. The mints limit their sales during times of high demand so that they never really ‘sell out’, but anyone watching knows they are facing shortages.

●​ Silver should continue following gold’s rise as a monetary metal on weak economic data that will cause central banks to be accommodative in monetary policy i.e. negative interest rates and even further rounds of quantitative easing. The whole narrative that the world and especially the U.S. economy is strong holds no weight in an environment where the Fed still can’t normalize interest rates after eight years of close to zero, they are now even talking about negative interest rates; the U.S. economy appears to be anything but strong.

●​ China and Russia’s incessant demands for larger and larger stocks of precious metals to offset the decline in their foreign reserves. Their purchases can be looked at in various ways: a hedge against their depreciating US paper reserves or as a gambit to speed up the timeline of the dethroning of the world’s reserve currency: the $USD. It is probably a combination of both. China and Russia are tired of living in a unipolar world, and they know that buying and importing precious metals puts the western central banks in a tight spot to maintain the status quo: the ‘petrodollar’ system in place.

●​ Supply destruction from the miners below $20 per ounce of silver, where the spot price has been for the last one and a half years, is not profitable for the majority of silver miners. They have all in sustaining costs which are a lot higher. There will be no new mine expansions, and some miners have already cut back production or closed up shop until the price rises further.

●​ Silver is mainly produced as a byproduct of other metals such as copper, Zinc and Iron. Base metals’ prices have dropped precipitously over the last few years as well. That drop means that mining companies are cutting back on capital expenditure as most base metal prices have fallen and aren’t profitable to produce, and especially expand and invest in new projects at current levels. We should expect lower production of silver going forward if prices of base metals remain depressed.

●​ Increased uses of silver. With ever-expanding demand and new uses for silver namely in smart devices and solar panels, don’t expect industrial supply to slow down anytime soon. The global economy is slowing yes, but silver is a vital component in many products and even if the price of silver was to double or even quintuple, which I think will happen over the next decade, it wouldn't make a big difference in industrial demand for the metal. Silver is such a small percentage of the total input in many products that makes the spot price almost irrelevant to producers of products where silver is a vital component.

●​ There have also been recent revelations that the precious metals paper markets have been manipulated by Deutsche bank. This news comes as no surprise to people who have been following the precious metals markets closely. It also adds further weight to having a physical exchange going forward where the price is not set by a daily fix or 100:1 paper contracts to ounces of physical silver, but rather an exchange where the price of silver was set by supply and demand of physical silver and gold. Imagine that! Real price discovery the old-fashioned way! China continues to lead the way with its physical gold/silver exchange, but I suspect it will take some time until this really starts to influence the price miners get from producing silver.

●​ The majority of the developed world has already implemented negative interest rates or is thinking out loud about them. This implementation is good news for silver investors as there is no lost yield to hold physical metal if banks are charging you to keep your money at the bank. I don’t think negative interest rate policies will end well, and it is hard to believe that central banks will ensure that fiat money holds it’s purchasing power over time when they are openly stating that their goal is to decrease the value of fiat money by 2-3% a year, their “inflation” target. In 2014, I made the prediction that this mild deflation we are in will turn highly inflationary over time as the central banks overreact with loose monetary policies. This will result in lost credibility in the central banks and primarily the U.S. Dollar creating highly bullish scenarios for silver and gold. This situation seems to be happening as I’m writing this. The talk of normalizing interest rates is fading, and the U.S. Dollar seems to have peaked versus gold and silver.

●​ I talked about the gold to silver ratio in my last article but will quickly rehash here. We pull ten times as much silver out of the ground as gold, but the current ratio of the spot price is closer to 75:1 which historically speaking is very very high, which means silver is underpriced versus gold and should revert back closer to 30:1 or in a blowout bull market even 15 or 10:1. I’m bullish on gold as well so the silver price should get interesting over the coming years.

With the silver price little changed over the last year, mining companies have been left in a tight spot of producing silver at a loss, but for silver equity investors, something exciting has developed over the last four months. Mining shares for silver producers are up sharply, and some of my main holdings are up over 100% from my entry into silver in early 2015. Many silver investors have described the silver equities as equivalent to a beach ball held under water. When the silver price starts to move, the ball will be released, and the marginal silver producers who are heavily leveraged will explode higher. I think the recent outperformance in mining shares bodes well. Investors seem confident that the bottom in silver is in, and higher prices for both gold and silver will continue going forward.

Uranium, which is a key ingredient in making nuclear power, is currently undervalued in July 2016. Investing in uranium has been called the ultimate contrarian investment in that it is misunderstood and even despised by most people. Many countries have talked about abandoning nuclear energy as an energy source altogether. I’m not sure Homer Simpson would approve of all the negative attention nuclear energy is getting.

Uranium is one of the few commodities in 2016 where the demand is set to grow over the coming years. Most commodities aren’t in such an enviable position as China and the rest of the global economy continues to slow.

When people think of nuclear energy, they think about Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and more recently, Fukushima. Yes, these were all disasters of epic proportions and shouldn’t be downplayed as otherwise.

The reason I find uranium appealing is that it accounts for a significant percentage of global electricity needs and that isn’t about to change anytime soon. In a world where many people don’t have stable electricity and are willing to burn coal or other cheap and dirty sources of fuel, uranium stands out as a great, affordable alternative which doesn’t contribute to greenhouse gases.

Nuclear energy is the most condensed energy source currently available, which makes it a strategic form of energy for people in many countries who don’t have sufficient amounts of fossil fuels. Nuclear energy also accounts for the majority of clean, non CO2 emitting energy produced globally every year. This makes it a vital source of electricity for cities suffering from dirty air in the form of smog and acid rain.

The best part of producing and selling uranium is the cost of uranium is such a small factor in the end users total cost of producing electricity. The owner of the generator that produces nuclear energy isn’t going to stop producing electricity when the price of uranium rises from let's say $26 per lb. to $260 per lb. which is a 1000% increase in the input price of uranium. It’s such an insignificant part of their cost to generate a reliable power source. Electricity generators are willing to pay any price for uranium as it can’t be substituted for other metals. If the spot price of uranium can rise 1000% and not have a big impact on its demand, one doesn’t have to think too hard about the profits that will be generated by the companies producing uranium. I think their stocks will go up in multiples of what the spot price rise will be.

Like all good investments, they must be bought at the right time. Uranium has been in a bear market since 2011 or depending on how you look at it, since 2007, when the price hit $130 per lb., then dropped and had a brief rally to around $70 in 2011 when the Fukushima disaster put a global halt to all things uranium.

The price has remained low for quite some time now as there is currently a glut of above-ground uranium supplies. It is very hard to track what the current above ground-uranium supplies are as Russia and Russia-friendly states such as Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan which are major producers aren’t as transparent to the west as we might like with their data. Can we blame them? Energy is related to national security and the West’s current relationship with Russia is far from cordial, it is even approaching Cold War levels as NATO continues to push eastward on Russia’s doorstep. Russia and the USA, in the past, were part of a program called ‘Megatons to Megawatts’ which converted nuclear weapons fuel into fuel for electricity production. This program which has now ended took about 15% of the global supply off the market which is a huge catalyst for uranium spot prices to rise.

Regardless, I think this current glut of above-ground supplies will last another 2-3 years at the most. For many investors, this timeline is too long and unpredictable to wait, but I see patience as a big edge when looking for investments. I like to buy when there is no competition and company valuations are very cheap.

The current uranium spot price on July 27th is $25.25 per lb. in the spot market. According to Cameco, the world's biggest publicly listed uranium producer, the average global cost of production is around $60 per lb., so companies that are producing it now aren’t making their cost of capital and they are depleting their reserves.

I’m going to make the case that over the coming five years, the price of uranium will rise and that money invested in equities with exposure to uranium will make outsized gains.

Many of the world’s poorest people today lack access to consistent supplies of electricity and with the population continuing to grow in the foreseeable future, the problem is only going to worsen.

Nuclear power capacity worldwide is increasing steadily, with over 60 reactors under construction in 15 countries. There are currently 440 nuclear reactors operating in 31 countries providing about 11% of the world’s electricity needs. The US is the world’s biggest consumer of uranium which is used for nuclear energy and accounts for about 16% of its domestic power needs.

Many new reactors are being built around the world, most notably in China, India, and Russia. These new reactors will help further increase the demand for uranium in the coming years. Japan was, at one time, one of the largest consumers of nuclear energy and has been slow to return its nuclear reactors back on. This has been driven by the low prices for natural gas and other energy sources as well as painful memories of 2011’s disaster. I think Japan being an island nation with no domestic supplies of fossil fuels will have little choice over the long term but to return to nuclear energy in a big way.

Cameco, the largest publicly listed producer, anticipates a shortage coming into effect starting in around (2020). Many companies and countries like to secure their uranium supplies in advance as they know that when the price starts to rise, regardless of the price, supplies can be hard to secure; uranium prices can move quickly with few interruptions.

Air quality is starting to become a big issue as citizens in China, India and other densely populated countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh are literally choking on dirty air. It was once a side issue, but now there are days in large cities in these countries where you can’t see far in front of you because the smog is so bad. Governments can no longer pretend that burning coal isn’t causing fatal health effects.

According to data compiled by the Global Burden of Disease Project and recently written about by the BBC, it is estimated that 5.5 million people worldwide die prematurely every year from air pollution.

The majority of these deaths occur in Asia, namely China and India as they are developing rapidly and rely on coal as their primary source of energy. It should also be noted that every year, more and more cars are put on the roads in these countries. Cars emit toxins into the environment which contribute to poor air quality.

No matter how fast Elon Musk develops his battery powered cars, the cheapest ones after generous government subsidies are still about 5-10 times as much as the average Chinese and Indian consumer can afford. These countries are developing rapidly and as they become richer, their carbon footprint increases on a per capita basis. China and India alone account for just under 40% of the world’s population, which is astounding when you think about it, it’s no wonder that when we talk about air quality, these two giants are first on the list.

I currently reside in Seoul which also has very poor air quality. I recently sold my motorbike and one of the main reasons after the danger factor of getting in an accident was the air quality factor. South Korea has one of the highest collision rates in the world. Last summer I would go on a ride wearing a singlet and open face helmet, I would return home after a few hours with a dirty suntan or a chimney sweeper face would probably better describe what I looked like. I would have black smog painted on my body. This is what was visible, so think about what I was breathing in during those rides.

According to new NASA air pollution maps, they show Seoul is only slightly better than Beijing as far as air quality is concerned. Seoul’s air quality according to many different publications is listed as one of the worst in the world. South Korea is one of the major importers of coal in the world, currently accounting for 39 percent of its domestic electricity needs. At certain times in the spring, there are public notices in Seoul that recommend people go outside as little as possible and keep to keep windows closed as there are strong winds blowing in an easterly direction from China. The smog and yellow sand blowing in from China is so bad that your car or motorbike will be covered in a blackish yellow dust in a matter of hours. It is convenient for the local government to blame China for Seoul’s poor air quality, but one needs to check the facts. The fact is that South Korea is an outlier as far as developed countries go. It still meets the majority of its electricity needs from coal which is the greatest contributor to the poor air quality problem. While other developed countries are scaling back on coal plant development, South Korea is still expanding it.

Don’t trust government-run websites for accurate data on air quality as they have incentives to distort these numbers. After all it isn’t a great attraction for tourists to have to wear face masks around Seoul when they come and visit. It is easy to find other statistics listing Seoul’s air quality better than it actually is, I know from first-hand experience that the air here is bad.

South Korea is one of the countries with a huge incentive to continue to adopt nuclear energy at an increased speed. South Korea is already a large consumer of nuclear energy with 25 reactors providing around 30% of the country's electricity demands. The country plans to increase its reliance on nuclear energy with plans to have 4 more nuclear plants built by 2018. The development has recently been slowed down by misled studies on the safety of nuclear energy.

It would be convenient for someone to point out that I’m from a part of the world, Canada, which boasts cities ranked with some of the cleanest air in the world, but I think the problem is a real one and no matter what part of the world you are from, everyone should be concerned and aware of the facts.

While solar and wind energy costs continue to decrease and they increase their percentage of the total energy mix, they are still only a fraction of the total in most countries. I agree with others that we need to keep investing in these forms of clean energy, but the simple truth is that they will not be able to compete with nuclear energy as the dominant form of non CO2 emitting energy for years to come. While we wait for solar and wind energy generation to catch up, we need to increase our reliance on nuclear energy to keep our air breathable. I predict a shortage of uranium will develop before 2020. Nuclear energy will continue being an essential part of the clean energy mix for the foreseeable future.

When we do finally get through the above ground supplies of uranium and we run into a supply deficit, we will already be in a big supply crunch as the amount of time to develop new sources of uranium is quite lengthy. It can take up to 10 years after discovery of a uranium deposit to permit and get into production. This means that once we run into a supply deficit of uranium, it won’t be over quickly. The price has stayed low for so long that it is causing new companies to halt development projects. There are only a handful of companies which can bring supply back on the market quickly, and their ability to quickly get new supplies onto the market on a large scale will be limited. I expect during this stage that the price will skyrocket to the upside as it has in the past. Companies which are already producing it will be able to take advantage of this situation and their profits will skyrocket.

I’m buying a handful of companies which have uranium supplies and are already producing it. These companies will be able to take advantage of higher uranium prices in the coming years. No matter what your opinion is on nuclear energy, it isn’t going anywhere in the near future, so consider adding some uranium exposure to your portfolio for the inevitable price rise.

THE FED’S BLUFF CYCLE

Ever since the FED (Federal Reserve) started to taper back in 2013, there has been a widely accepted belief that a long-term tightening cycle had begun.

In December 2015, we had our first 25 bps rate hike after 7 years of near zero percent interest rates. Real (adjusted for inflation) rates were and are still negative. The widely held assumption was that this rate hiking cycle would lead to the normalization of interest rates somewhere closer to a historical norm of 3-5%. If we were to get anywhere close to the historical norm, this would mean many more hikes to come in the months and years ahead.

I have always found it hard to believe that we would get anywhere near normal historical rates as the world and especially the US economy has taken on so much more debt since the recent financial crisis. A normalization of interest rates would cause the US economy to implode and another recession/depression scenario would become inevitable. The US economy, even with negative real rates and QE programs, has barely been able to exceed a 2% GDP number, which after being adjusted for inflation is really no growth at all.

I understand why the FED would want to raise rates to show everyone that they can, and also to ensure that they have some conventional tools they can use when the economy slows down next time. Like I said, they did raise it last December and the markets quickly had another taper tantrum. In early 2016, markets had their worst start to the year in decades, dropping over 10% in a matter of weeks before it was made clear that the FED had blinked and would be delaying or shelving its plans for an additional rate hike for the time being.

Since January, we have been living in what could be called ‘The FED’s bluff cycle’. When we get a set of strong economic numbers, the FED starts talking about additional rate hikes and when the data is weak, they sound dovish and push any additional rate hikes further into the future. As Peter Schiff has been saying all along, the FED wants everyone to believe that they will raise rates again soon, but in reality, they have no plans to ever normalize rates. If the FED were to raise one or two more times over the next few years, it is beside the point, as we’ll see further easing from the FED in the form of additional QE or negative interest rates before we see rates anywhere near historical norms.

The low 4.9% unemployment rate which looks good at first glance needs to be taken with a grain of salt. The majority of jobs that have been added are low paying part time jobs which don’t go as far to contribute to economic growth. Not all jobs are created equally. We are losing high-paying manufacturing jobs and replacing them with part-time service sector jobs. The 4.9% rate also doesn’t take into account the millions of Americans who are discouraged and have given up on applying for jobs altogether. If one digs a bit deeper we can see that the labor market is still struggling and that the average American hasn’t felt the economic recovery which has been touted by the Democratic Party heading into this election.

I think the FED wouldn’t take the chance of raising rates heading into a close election, especially as many pundits have stated that it is the most important election America will ever have. They have dramatized it to the point that it could be the last election America will have before a drastic change to the world as we know it, a bit of an exaggeration to say the least. Also noteworthy is that Donald Trump has openly stated that he would ‘probably’ replace the FED chairwoman, Janet Yellen. If they ever do plan to raise rates and if the economy and maybe more importantly the stock market permits it, they will wait until after the election cycle is complete. That way they won’t run the risk of another steep market sell off like we saw at the start of the year.

I think gold, and even to a bigger extent, silver, have captured the FED’s rate rise bluff. Gold is up 27% on the year while silver is up over 45%. I’m heavily long all things silver related so I’m quite pleased with how the first half of the year has turned out.

We don’t have free markets anymore, we have a series of interventions. I’ve read and heard many people say this over the last few years. The FED has manipulated interest rates, and this distorts price discovery for everything including the price of money itself. If the price of money isn’t allocated effectively, then how can we expect to have a real economic recovery? We can’t and we don’t have anything close to a healthy economy no matter how much the FED and the Democrats would like us to believe. The market’s ability to properly price risk is gone!

I think things will get a lot worse for the public before they get better. I think we will see negative interest rates in the US in the not too distant future. Negative interest rates are already in effect in Europe and Japan, accounting for over $13 trillion worth of bonds. I still can’t really get my head around negative interest rates. They’re paying someone to lend them money. It seems like another tax for people who are bad at math, just like inflation is! Eventually, volatility and mispriced risk will return with a vengeance. You can’t keep market forces at bay forever. We will look back on this latest attempt at central planning and wonder why we ever thought this time is different.

THE CONTRARIAN MINDSET

My attempt at summarizing investing guru Rick Rule’s thoughts on the subject from his many interviews, as well as my thoughts on the subject and of course a bit about my two favorite investments: silver and Mongolia.

(Rick Rule likes to say that flattery will get you everywhere, so hopefully this will lead to him agreeing to do an audio interview with me on the subject.)

Buying low and selling high is easier said than done, I have struggled to do this consistently in my investing career. Why is buying an equity when the price is low and selling it when it has appreciated in value so difficult? I think it lies in our need as humans to have confirmation bias, in that we crave support from our peers and when we don’t have it, we feel inadequate and have no where to hide. I also believe it stems from humans evolving from small bands of hunter gatherers 10’s of thousands of years ago, at that time to be ostracized from the group meant death. In our current times thinking independently no longer is a life and death outcome, but the emotions that we experience when we are on our own are much the same.

One of my favorite pundits on the subject is Rick Rule. He has timeless wisdom on the subject of being a contrarian and even more to offer on the subject of resource cycles which he has lived through many a bull and bear market in his 40 plus years of experience.

I always enjoy listening to Rick expound on his own experiences in the markets and specifically on the subject of cyclicality, as I think before someone can truly be a successful contrarian they have to understand how cycles work. It is one thing to disagree with the mainstream, but quite another to understand why the sector that you are interested in is currently out of a favor. Then once you have grasped the basics the fundamentals to pull the trigger and buy you need the conviction to have patience to see the investment through to fruition.

I’m going to focus on the resource sector, then I will briefly touch on silver and Mongolia which is much the same, as its economy is heavily dependent on resources such as copper and coal.

Mr Rule likes to famously state that the cure for low prices is low prices and the cure for high prices is high prices. What does he mean by that?

Resource markets are extremely cyclical because they are capital intensive as well as time sensitive. When supply and demand don’t balance in this sector it can take a lot longer than other markets for the price to correct itself. This lag in the prices leads to huge boom and bust cycles.

Companies have what is known as sunken costs, which is capital they have already invested in their projects, and instead of slowing down production when the price falls, they have two choices: scale back production and then the other is to keep producing at a temporary loss and hope the price rebounds before they have to close up shop. This can lead to a market where all the major companies are producing below the cost of production, this leads to further weakness in the price for that commodity. They are playing what can be referred to as ‘the last man standing’, they all want to reap the rewards when the price rebounds.

The potential rewards for those who can stay the trade are enormous.

One of my favorite quotes from Rick Rule is : ‘If you aren’t a contrarian in the resource sector, you will be a victim’.

I recently came across an interview with Rick Rule in which he stated that over a phone conversation with Eric Sprott they had discussed bear markets as slicing 50-75% of junior resource companies and then when the trend turns making 500-1000% in well selected junior companies. But, this is precisely where the contrarian mind is so difficult to maintain. When your portfolio is bleeding red and everything you are interested in buying is hitting new lows, how can you take advantage of it when everyone is running for the exits?

Our perceptions are formed from our immediate past and the past hasn’t been pretty for the resource sector since 2011. This is precisely the time when large returns are made if you are brave enough to pull the trigger and buy companies that will survive this bear market. This sector has come off its highs by more than 70%, which means that if all things are held constant, this sector is 70% less risky than it was previously.

I’m buying at these prices and anyone with a 2-5 year timeline should be as well.

If past is prologue, which I suspect it is, then we are very close to a market bottom, if not already reached one.

You may not be rewarded this year or even next for buying, but you can be sure that in 5 years from now, we will look back and think wow 2015 was the best time to buy, the ‘good ol days’. This is also something I heard Rick say in a recent interview. When a guy with Rick’s experience says something like this, we should listen up and take notice. He has successfully navigated this sector for his entire career and knows what a bear market bottom feels like.

If we aren’t at the bottom now, we are very close. We may not have had a perfect capitulation, but the majority of weak hands relinquished their shares to investors with stronger hands. I always like to view investments as the potential upside vs. downside. If we assume that at worst case, the downside is somewhere between 15-30% from here and the potential upside is somewhere between 300-1000%, that is a trade that I will take every time it is offered.

Silver and Mongolia, according to me are two of the most exciting investments at current levels for the next decade. These investments both fall into the category of contrarian investing, not because of the sector they are in, but rather at the extremely oversold levels in which they currently sit at. Oil at current levels, which I’ve made a case for here would fall into that same category.

Mongolia has recently had some good news in it’s economy in that OT the country's largest mining project has restarted phase 2. This caused an initial excitement which was short lived. We need a few solid quarters of growth which should cause FDI to flow back in and all things Mongolia will get a boost. Another angle to the Mongolia growth story which I wrote late 2014 can be found here. Invest in Mongolia at these levels and have a 2-5 year outlook and you will be rewarded.

Silver’s story hasn’t changed too much since I wrote about it at $16 as the investment of the decade earlier this year here. The paper price continues to defy the laws of supply and demand as the physical market remains strong. We either need huge supply constraints to develop in the physical market (more than have already developed) or a large player to take delivery on the Comex and bankrupt the exchange as they have no reserves to make delivery. The other catalyst is price discovery heading east (China) and a true physical price based on supply and demand to develop. Many ‘gold bugs’ will argue the case that fiscal imprudence by central bankers will bring precious metals back into the limelight, I wrote a piece on that very subject here. At under $15 currently, silver will greatly outperform over the coming decade.

Rick likes to point out that the greatest risk any investor faces is to the left of his right ear and to left of his right ear. So the first thing that one must do is learn to master him or herself before attempting to master cyclicality. Warren Buffett famously said you shouldn't buy a share of stock unless you know it well enough that you would be delighted to see it fall 25% in price, so you could buy more at a 25% discount. The resource sector, namely silver and Mongolia are at an extreme discount and it has never been a greater time to be a contrarian with a firm grasp of patience and cycles.

I don't like speculating on which brands of phones or cars people will buy, as there are far too many variables that affect the decision-making process. People's preferences are constantly in flux, and they can change on a whim. I used to be a loyal iPhone fan until Apple's iOS and battery failed to ever make meaningful updates, and now I enjoy an Android phone with a battery twice the size of my old iPhone. Cars are no different. I know a lot of consumers and investors who have lost faith in VW, the automotive giant, over their recent emissions scandal. It goes to show that consumers aren't loyal at all; they are fickle, and will jump ship at a moment's notice. Consequently, trying to predict which brands will succeed in the long term is a risky game.

I do like investing based on demographics, which means investing in people's basic necessities. Consumer consumption can be predicted so far in that people enjoy eating food during the day, that they like heat when they shower and — especially in the winter — that they prefer driving over walking to work. If we take these consumption patterns as a given for the foreseeable future, we have the framework for a great investment.

Natural Resources

The energy and food we consume changes little over time; our lifestyle simply isn't that different from our parents', except for the fact that we spend 2-3 hours a day staring at screens. We still enjoy relatively cheap food and energy like the generations that came before us.

Prior to 1800, less than 1 billion people were alive on Earth; most lived as Thomas Hobbes wrote: "The life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." At this time, we weren't able to use all the locked solar energy in the form of coal, oil and natural gas that was stored in the earth, waiting for us to come and extract it. Once we managed to extract and utilize this locked energy, our lives increased by all measurable variables — longevity, income and diet; but most importantly, our population started to expand at a more rapid pace than ever before.

It took us less than 130 years to add another billion people to the planet, and then less than 30 years to reach 3 billion. The global population is growing at a rate of about 1% per year, which is equivalent to adding 75 million new people annually to our current total of 7.4 billion human beings. That is roughly the addition of an entire new France/Germany every single year, or two new Canadas.

The growth rate has slowed down over the last few decades, and will continue to do so, as large countries like Russia and Japan have already begun to shrink. The majority of the developed world is barely above the replacement rate, or the rate at which the population neither expands nor contracts, and many countries will join Russia and Japan with simultaneously aging and shrinking populations.

The major increase in the world population comes from the developing world; Africa is leading the way with the world's highest fertility rate of around 5-7 offspring per family. Furthermore, the population of Africa, which now stands at about 1.1 billion people, is predicted to more than double by 2050, exceeding 2.4 billion people. In addition, India's current population of 1.2 billion people will far exceed China's in terms of boasting the world's most populous country, at close to 1.6 billion people.

Think tanks predict that the global population will likely exceed 9 billion people around 2040. That is 2.5 billion more people than there are today in the world, and that is only 25 years away, which means my generation will witness this. The vast majority of these new people will be coming from Asia and Africa, both of which have access to just a fraction of the calories and energy that western nations do. These people all want to enjoy the comforts of full bellies, warm or cool houses (depending on the weather), a roof over their heads and speedy transportation. They will all try to provide the best they can for their kin.

How Do We Capitalize on This?

With so many new global citizens due to appear on Earth in the foreseeable future, it only makes sense that there will be more people chasing fewer goods. That is to say, we will be in direct competition with more and more people, all of whom are after a slice of the pie, or as we say in the west, "the good life" or "the American dream."

Investing in easily predictable consumption patterns fits this well, as we will always need more resources. Price, however, determines how we share and consume those resources. I prefer investments that rely on the "when" factor, not just "if." Commodities such as oil, coal, natural gas, steel, copper and water will be in significantly higher demand in the coming years. We are making fewer large resource discoveries and always at increasingly higher costs. We have plucked the easy fruit and now we are after the harder-to-extract stuff; this will not change.

Mainstream news outlets will have you believing that peak oil and high energy prices are dead, as the world continues to enjoy affordable energy in abundance. This, however, is not the case. Conventional or easily extractable oil peaked in America in the 1970s, as Hubbert famously predicted, and global peak oil occurred around 2005. The current low prices we enjoy are a temporary flash in the pan from overproduction in a few key oil-producing states, not to mention "fracking," or unconventional oil, that is well below its current cost of production.

Unconventional oil only began impacting global production when prices exceeded $80 a barrel, and stayed there for an extended period; that is to say that these new forms of oil extraction are very costly. The petrol states — namely Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Russia — are burning through their rainy day sovereign funds, and will soon decide that "market share," as they are calling it, isn't worth the pain of low prices anymore. Consequently, they will be forced to shelf geopolitical ambitions, too.

Unconventional oil producers like "tight shale" in America and "tar sands" in Alberta will realize that $45 isn't earning its cost of production; they will be forced to cut back, and in the worst cases, they will be forced into bankruptcy. This "glut" will quickly correct itself over the coming years, and oil will resume its long-term price uptrend.

We will never completely run out of global oil, but we have already run out of surplus cheap and easily extractable oil. I have this to say to those who tell me that innovation and renewable energy will come to the rescue when prices rise significantly: In oil's brief history it has risen from under $0.50 cents to over $140 a barrel — isn't that a price rise? Since its discovery over 150 years ago, it still accounts for the majority of our energy consumption. Oil, coal and natural gas still account for over 80% of energy consumed! Coal is the dirtiest and most widely used source of energy in the developing world, leaving no shortage of incentives to innovate. Why hasn't this happened yet? The answer is price. Innovation and renewables will cause an energy revolution, but this will have to wait until we see much, much higher fossil fuel prices. Change comes not by choice, but rather by necessity.

The investment thesis consists of larger populations chasing after finite resources and higher prices as a result. In our current commodity cycle, we are in a "bear market," which means that prices have fallen from their peak on "weak demand," if that is the correct term to use for a slight slowdown in our consumption rate over the last few years. This makes the investment case even more compelling when we single out key resources such as oil, silver and many others that are currently below the cost of production and replacement capacity. This means that over the longer term (3-5 years), one of two things will happen: either there will be no resources left to consume, or the prices must rise to incentivize production.

Confusing Inevitable with the Imminent

I have stressed in a previous article that timing is crucial, and that we must exercise patience. Further, we ought to maintain a solid level of conviction, as prices can fall to well below what we thought possible in the short term, which only increases supply destruction, and speeds up the inevitable rebound.

I'm long energy, agriculture, and metals in various forms, which will all benefit from this thesis. Don't let the timeline and current prices distract from the inevitable.

What do Donald Trump and Netflix have in common? People want to be entertained!

I was posed a series of questions a few weeks ago, and I had an a-ha moment while answering the questions the best that I could.

"Who is the smartest Republican candidate on stage?" I tried to explain in layman's terms that I thought Rand Paul was the smartest guy on the stage after a recent GOP debate. (He has now dropped out of the race for the White House.)

"Why isn't Rand Paul leading in the polls?" came as a follow-up question. I started out by saying that the majority of the electorate doesn't have any grasp of Rand Paul's policies, which include such topics as limited intervention in Syria, balanced budgets, and auditing the Federal Reserve. I'm a bigger fan of Ron Paul, Rand's father, but will take a libertarian-leaning candidate any day of the week over the rest of the field.

If you ask most people questions like, "Where is Syria on a map?" they won't be able to point it out. If you ask how IS was really formed, or about the civil war within Islam and how that affects Syria, you might get some confused looks. And my favorite: "What is the petro-dollar and how does it affect America's relationship within the Middle East?" At this point, most people are lost and looking to change the subject away from politics.

Why would anybody care about these issues? This is the exact reason why Rand Paul has such low numbers in the polls. The general public would rather get a few catchy attack lines from Trump or a Twitter war with the Pope than dig into some facts and understanding of the biggest issues in the world. Anybody with an Internet connection is minutes away from the facts — if they decide to seek them out, that is.

Syria and Iraq's ongoing wars are directly responsible for the refugee crisis in Europe and the Middle East. Some estimates have the number of Syrians displaced at 9 million people; that is more than a third of the country's population. If this isn't the biggest story in the world presently, then I'm not sure what is.

Thirty percent of Republican primary voters would support bombing the fictional kingdom of Agrabah, from the Disney movie Aladdin, according to a report released by Public Policy Polling in December. I'm not sure what Aladdin ever did to America. It's the epitome of ignorance!

It's OK to say, "I don't know," or, "I'm not informed enough on this issue" sometimes! I don't claim to know every city in the Middle East, but I at least like to inform myself on the facts before I support dropping bombs and overthrowing regimes in far-off lands.

People get all emotional about micro issues locally, but then when it comes to macro issues, the masses decide to turn off and numb themselves. Most people know more about 'Game of Thrones' and 'Vampire Diaries' than current world issues. I enjoy movies just as much as anybody else, but if we don't understand current issues, how can we expect to make an informed decision when we vote?

I'll leave it to my favorite founding father, Thomas Jefferson, to summarize it:

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."

This election is shaping up to be entertaining at the very least; Sanders and Trump are giving the establishment a heart attack, but is that enough? It shows people are tired of the status quo, but are these the proper candidates for the change we need? Trump excites the masses with xenophobic rhetoric, while Sanders excites the young with his ever-generous socialist economic policies.

On a more positive note, Trump would work with Putin to defeat IS in Syria, and Sanders has a lot more transparency and integrity than Clinton does. Would I vote for either Sanders or Trump? Probably not.

But before you do any fact checking, why not check to see if there are any new zombie, hobbit or vampire shows out on Netflix? ;)

Silver has been used since the dawn of time as money and has always retained it’s purchasing power. The relatively tiny silver market is ripe for a huge move higher. Silver’s fundamentals couldn’t be stronger in 2015.

In 2011 the price neared $50/oz (an ounce), and was ready to break to new highs, but was quickly brought down by a series of brash market interventions through selling pressure in the paper markets and many margin increases on the CME. It had the intended impact and the price dropped rapidly and kept falling since then to where it is today $16.

I’m not going to harangue about the manipulation in the paper markets, I’ve done plenty of that in my previous articles on oil and gold in the past. I would like to state a few simple imbalances though: nearing $50/oz silver was trading over a billion ounces a day in paper contracts, when the total global mine production that year was only 800 million ounces. Thats well over a years worth of supply, traded in a single trading day! The paper markets once again trade on nothing more than an agenda set forth by large banks, there is no real price discovery in the markets and fundamentals count for little.

I have already detailed in my previous article about gold, which focused on inflationary scenarios for precious metals when people really give up on fiat currency as a store of wealth. Central banks have destroyed their balance sheets and kept interest rates negative that have taken away the self correcting forces of the market. These doom scenarios are extremely bullish for silver as well as gold. The world has lost faith in central banks and the fall out is taking place now. Marc Faber recently said: “The only way to short central banks is to own gold.” I couldn’t agree more, but I might add silver or anything physical for that matter to the list. In this article I’m going to focus more on supply and demand. Demand for silver breaks down into three important categories: silver in industry, investment, and silver jewelry & décor. More than half of annual supply goes to industry which leaves a small amount left for jewelry and investment. The huge upside will come from silver as an investment more than anything else.

Silver Ratio facts to give deeper perspective.

The in ground ratio of silver to gold is estimated to be around 17:1, In Roman times, the price ratio was set at 12:1. In 1792, the gold/silver price ratio was fixed by law in the United States at 15:1, which meant that one ounce of gold was worth 15 ounces of silver. The average gold/silver price ratio during the 20th century, however, was 47:1. The ratio has narrowed at times, notably in 1980, 17:1, when the Hunt brothers famously tried to corner the market until regulators stepped in and crushed them. Also in 2011, the ratio came down to 30:1 when silver re tested its historical high of $50/oz before being smacked back down to where it sits today.

In 2013, total silver mined was 800 million ounces while gold was at 100 million giving it an 8:1 ratio of production. Current gold prices around $1200 and silver at $16 per ounce give a ratio of 75:1. I expect the ratio to revert back to 30:1, if inflation picks up, it could narrow as much as 15:1, as silver usually outperforms. With a conservative estimate of gold over the next decade at $2-3000/oz we could see silver well over $100/oz.

Consensus among the primary silver miners is that under $20/oz it is unprofitable to produce silver. Companies all in mining costs vary greatly in the industry as silver is usually produced as a by product of other metals, but I think it’s safe to say companies are getting squeezed in this environment. Large companies have delayed capital expenditure and held back supplies when the price has dropped too much in the short term, and even called for other large producers to form a cartel as First Majestic’s CEO did last year to take on manipulation and hopefully speed up real price discovery in the markets.

In 2013 which is the last full year of data available there was a global supply deficit of 100 million ounces which I expect carried into 2014. How the price dropped throughout this period is a mystery to anyone following supply and demand.

Precious metals supplies are more elastic than other commodities such as oil and grains over the short term as there are greater investment options and also excess stockpiles through ETF’s and central banks available which can be conveniently released to mask strong demand as silver has shown. All commodities eventually follow the same supply and demand metrics; if the price remains below cost for too long then supply will dry up, causing a huge constraint on supply and the price will surge to the upside.

Resource investing is very cyclical and can take a while for supply and demand to balance out. As Rick Rule likes to say: “The cure for low prices is low prices.” The day is fast approaching when the damage done by keeping silver prices low will cause huge supply constraints.

The whole annual supply of the silver market could be bought up for around $17 billion dollars. With half of global supply going into industrial uses that further shrinks the total number down to less than $8 billion worth of silver for global jewelry, silverware and primarily investing.

China and Russia are both large producers of silver as well as gold, they are net importers of gold, and I suspect the majority of their silver production never leaves their borders either; that would roughly take an additional 15% of annual supply offline.This is a very tiny and tight market which could be bought up entirely by a few large funds or investors, let alone a country like Russia or China with healthy cash reserves if they wished to do so.

Another way to put the size of the silver market into perspective: annual global supply including scrap is about 1 billion ounces, more than half of that is used for industrial. That leaves roughly 400 million ounces to be divided by over 7 billion people or .05 of an ounce per person on the earth, less than $1 of silver at todays prices. You might think why would everyone on the planet wish to buy silver? Good question. Why don’t we take just North America with over 500 million people and we get .8 an ounce of silver or $13 per person. India and China both huge consumers of precious metals with combined populations of close to 40% of the world would not get any silver for investment. This is a tiny market!

India has had gold import bans over the last few years; as a result the Indians quickly turned to silver purchases as a store of value and their imports skyrocketed. Russia and China are net importers of precious metals as stated above. Mints across North America are posting record sales and we have seen delayed shipments on various products.

Prices are starting to diverge from the paper market, small premiums are starting to pop up in the physical market, notably in China which has the world's largest physical metals exchange. Koos Jansen of BullionStar has helped bring light to China’s insatiable demand for precious metals. I expect price discovery to continue to head east.

As in the gold market, when fundamentals reassert themselves in the silver market in the near future, the turn will be abrupt and sudden. Those who don’t have exposure already will be chasing a quickly rising market and have trouble locating any physical silver.

As in all commodity plays, marginal producers offer the most upside potential as they have the most to gain when the price rises. As with any form of leverage though, it is a double edged sword. The marginal producers stocks have been battered since 2011, one must tread carefully as some of the marginal producer’s might not make it out of this bear market if debt can’t be refinanced, especially if the paper price drops further over the short term and further squeezes them. Look for solid balance sheets if dealing with marginal producers. I think silver will rise dramatically from current levels so I don’t need to further speculate with junior miners, I’m avoiding them all together and looking at companies already in production with proven track records.

Currently at around $16/oz, I’m expecting outsized returns over the next decade, it wouldn’t surprise me to see $100/oz silver, which would equate to a 600% rise from early 2015 levels.

I’m holding some physical silver for protection and silver miner’s for wealth creation. The perfect storm is setting up to make silver one of the most exciting investments of this decade.

The western media would have us believe; that slowing oil demand, globally and especially in China; combined with the recent shale revolution in North America; and the Saudis concern over market share; are the main reasons for the large recent price drop in oil. Crude oil was trading over $100/barrel as recently as July; prices have more than halved (-55%) in the last few quarters, while global supply has slightly exceeded demand by less than 1% — something doesn't add up!

This is financial war with Iran, Venezuela and primarily Russia. The US is using its monopoly on the paper markets, where the price is set in USD, to manipulate prices lower causing instability in these heavily oil dependent countries and put extreme pressure on their leaders. Their contrived efforts to artificially push the prices down is exactly what they do in other commodity markets (Gold/Silver), which I have previously outlined in another article.

Blowback from low oil prices will see the US shale sector in a very vulnerable position, as well as Canada's tar sands. These marginal producers will see drastic layoffs, cutbacks in project expansions and large debt defaults, if the price remains low for an extended period. Oil's recent plunge can only be understood from a geopolitical standpoint and has little to do with supply and demand fundamentals.

The 'Colder War' as Marin Katusa is calling it, is the great energy war playing out in real-time; 'Currency Wars' as Jim Rickards also is a large factor, both have large overlaps, and both fall into the category of financial war. There are many key players, including; the USA, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and China, as well as minor players such as Iran, Venezuela, and individual OPEC nations. Each country holds various strengths and weaknesses in this financial war.

The US has already played a few of its big cards, including; the attack on oil prices, and the crashing of the Russian Ruble; with additional sanctions placed on Russia for its supposed meddling in Ukraine. China as a net importer of energy has been opportunistic in the recent attack on energy prices by loading up its storage facilities and signing long term agreements with the Russians to secure its future supplies of energy. Russia has largely been patient, in spite of recent events. Propaganda would have us believe Russia is weak and near collapse, while I believe Russia is holding all the right cards and can call out the West's bluff when it deems appropriate.

The recent plunge of the Ruble can be little explained by fundamentals. Russia runs a budget surplus, has debt to GDP of under 20% and has sufficient reserves to withstand 1-2 years of low oil prices; the US on the other hand has debt to GDP of over 100%, is running budget deficits annually and will be for the foreseeable future, its reserves are almost nonexistent (having the worlds reserve currency allows this luxury — for now). Russia has steadily added to its gold supply, while the US' has slowly drained its supply. Gold reserves are a huge asset in times of instability.

Having a strong USD which we currently have and a weak Ruble is very counterintuitive if one looks only at the fundamentals. If push came to shove and the attack on the Ruble escalated, Russia could signal its ability to make the Ruble convertible into gold. Russia could also corner the futures market in Gold/Silver by demanding delivery on a large physical order of these metals, which the west would have no choice but to default on the paper contract or settle in cash. Like most futures markets, which can trade a years worth of global production in a single trading day, the physical market doesn't have anywhere near the liquidity to supply a large order. Take away the west's ability to distort commodity prices and the run on the petrodollar would be in full effect. I don't expect either of these situations to happen quite yet, but they are cards Putin could play in an extreme situation.

Germany knows quite well that threatening Russia with sanctions will quickly backfire. If Russia were to decide that all countries supporting NATO's sanctions against it will be cut off from energy, Germany and most of Europe would freeze in the middle of winter, as they are heavily dependent on Russia for gas and oil.

The petrodollar is once again at the heart of this financial war and Putin knows this well. The BRICS nations have been moving towards transacting in commodities in alternate currencies, away from the dollar. I believe the BRICS nations are biding their time before they officially abandon the Petrodollar System, which is the US' main card it has been playing. As explained previously, giving the US the sole ability to price all commodities in USD allows it to export worthless dollars to the rest of the world, while taking in real resources in exchange. This system has survived longer than most would have imagined or liked, but its days are numbered — the BRICS and OPEC nations know this, and can sense the desperation of the west trying to hang on to the petrodollar standard, which ensures its hegemonic ability. We have now moved to all out financial war.

Now that the geopolitical factors are out in the open, let's dissect what $45 dollar oil really means.

Global oil consumption has been rising at an annual rate of about 1%; I anticipate this to remain intact, despite alternate forms of energy becoming more prevalent. The recent so called glut of supply is really a non-factor and will be quickly replaced by a shortage. If we assume the stated numbers are correct from the International Energy Agency (IEA) in 2014, global production was 91.96 million barrels of oil per day and consumption was 91.44 m/b/d, supply has barely overtaken demand. Glut!?

The US produces around 13% of global oil and domestic shale oil accounts for close to 5% percent of that. The average breakeven price for shale oil is around $60 per barrel, and that is being generous, as I've heard numbers as high as $80-90. The current price of $45 is far below the cost of production and it is only a matter of time till marginal producers (high cost producers) decide to pack it in and close up shop. This doesn't even take into account other unconventional producers such as the majority of Canada's tar sand oil, which has an average cost of production in excess of $70 per barrel. Canada is producing only 4% of global oil and the majority of that oil comes from tar sands.

We have only covered North America at this point, and have found 9% of global production unprofitable at $45 oil. While there was plenty of excitement around the world with deep sea and arctic production coming online, which have a far higher breakeven point. Our so called glut of oil quickly vanishes at $45 per barrel.

There are many other catalysts for higher oil prices; increased instability in other countries, namely Nigeria, Libya or Iraq could cause production slowdown or cause their production to grind to a halt. We have seen this in the recent past during Libya and Iraq's civil wars and terrorist attacks in Nigeria. These low prices are unsustainable and a great entry point for investors looking at energy companies. Energy companies share prices have been hammered over the last few quarters, especially the marginal producers, and those with unhealthy levels of debt. I expect many over-leveraged companies to fall into bankruptcy.

The best buying opportunities are born out of maximum pessimism.

How can we believe the common mantra: 'support the troops', without questioning what it really means? Is unquestionably supporting the troops our patriotic duty? I'm always surprised by the lack of interest in world events from most people, especially on matters of foreign policy. Then, the sudden surge of nationalistic fervor on social media when terrorist events happen close to our border. Are we that solipsistic that we can't see it for what it really is? BLOWBACK.

A few deadly attacks recently happened on Canadian soil and the country is in shock. 100,000 Iraqis/Syrians die and we barely blink and explain it as 'humanitarian' work, distorted vision of the world!? When is the last time the US, Russia or Mexico tried to invade Canada? 1812 can't even be considered as Canada's history because 'The Canadas' was still under Britain's suzerainty. Are we really protecting our borders or supporting Western Imperialism and the Petro-dollar? Kobane, Kabul and Kirkuk don't sound like Canadian cities do they? So why are we supporting bombing these cities?

Libertarians who don't support the foreign wars are called pacifists or worse still, unpatriotic. Globalization has brought us all closer together, what happens in another country will be felt around the world. Invading sovereign nations under the deception of humanitarianism and expecting no response is naive. We have supported bombing the Middle-East for the last few decades, with 100's of thousands of casualties, many of them civilians. Why are we then shocked to find that these people seek vengeance against us? BLOWBACK.

The impoverished Middle East nations can't compete militarily with the West, so they use guerilla war tactics such as suicide bombing and targeting of civilians. Canada has recently followed the US/NATO blindly into another unjustified war in the Middle-East in response to ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) establishing a Caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria. ISIS which emerged from Syria's three year old civil war is a radicalized Sunni-Muslim terrorist group. The current Sunni/Shia conflict dates back to 632 CE, it was sparked by opposing Caliphs claiming to be the legitimate ruler of the Caliphate after Muhammad's death. Do we really think we can solve this millennial conflict with more violence and war?

Islamophobia and Illiberalism

I do believe objectively questioning or talking about religion/faith shouldn't be such a taboo topic. If we don't question the status quo and our beliefs, did Socrates die for nothing? If we don't question authority are we any better than North Korea or the guards of Nazi concentration camps? Codified beliefs are dangerous and look where they led us in history: Crusades, Inquisition, Auschwitz, 9/11, Jonestown.

Saying Islam is evil or a religion of hate is ridiculous as all monotheistic religions contain doctrine that can be used to justify death to the infidel, not to mention that they all originate with the dark chapters of the Old Testament. Islam may be having a rough century, and be in need of a reformation like Catholic/Christianity had in the past. But to blame Islam as the sole culprit for terrorist attacks is like blaming Christianity for Hitler's hatred of the Jews and WW2. Religion does play a part in radicalising young men, in that it helps to justify their martyrdom, but doesn't that just sound like nationalism?

Regarding current events in Mesopotamia, religion completely evades the point of why we are really at war. Instead of debating issues like religious tolerance, immigration and increased airport security, why not question what would motivate these people to terrorism and the need to retaliate against us in the first place? The Elephant in the room emerges: we are occupying their land and killing their civilians. Or the fact that we reneged on our promise of giving them sovereign rule over their land post Ottoman rule, if they allied with the West to defeat the Ottoman Empire in WW1.

George Bush speaking after 9/11 wasn't so far off the mark when he stated that “They hate our freedoms.” Yes, they hate our freedom of a sovereign state ruled without foreign meddling.

I'm not suggesting people shouldn't be patriotic or respect people's sacrifices for their country. I think this is a very important issue and more open discussion is needed, but lets make sure we are discussing the real issues and not the fabricated ones by our media. Most of the propaganda coming out of Ottawa and Washington is nothing more than fear-mongering and deception.

(An adaptation of the late Christopher Hitchens' book title.)

Spending great passages of time immersed in finance, history, philosophy, as well as keeping up with current events, has helped my understanding of the intricacies involved in the global economy. I've had an epiphany recently, relating to my outlook of the world and my investment philosophy. The knowledge I have attained thus far seems to be further deepening my insatiable desire to understand and connect the dots of the world we live in. There are an abundance of topics left untouched — a kind of "scratching the surface" feeling. I've come to understand that the world isn't quite what I've been led to believe my whole life. I've really been objectively questioning the news and media content that I've been consuming and how it has shaped me.

“The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.” — Spinoza

“The most educated person in the world now has to admit — I shall not say confess — that he or she knows less and less but at least knows less and less about more and more.” — Christopher Hitchens

There is always an agenda in major news publications, and I'm starting to better decipher through fact, propaganda, and merely white noise. The greatest challenge in the information age in which we find ourselves is to be able to tune out all the noise and think clearly and independently. Smartphones have become ubiquitous, bringing the ultimate distraction to our fingertips 24 hours a day; the ability to focus on just one thing seems like a fleeting skill. It's very easy to fall into an instant gratification loop, where we constantly stumble from one pleasure to the next in a mindless state.

I have been actively discussing with friends about Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World, inspired by a comic strip that recently went viral. In some ways we are living in Huxley's reality, in that for the most part information is widely available — if we can get past the 'Soma' (TV, smartphones, social media, celebrities, professional sports), which is instant gratification. The truth is out there, waiting for the curious mind to discover it. People are angered that our civil liberties are being encroached on, but aren't proactive enough to do anything about it. The comforts that can be easily attained with little effort keep us mindlessly on a path to an Orwellian totalitarian state. The image of a 'Big Brother' constantly monitoring us, and the military state in the 'land of the free,' is closer than most are aware of. The liberal image of democracy that the Founding Fathers proposed for us back in the 18th century is being constantly eroded away right before our own eyes, done in the name of ensuring our 'safety.' Limitations on who we can marry, what substances we can consume, double taxation on our income, mandatory conscription, and now 'Obama Care' and the NSA — these unconstitutional policies would have Jefferson and the Founding Fathers rolling in their graves.

“Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.” — Ronald Reagan

Technology does play a part in this, but I'm by no means a Luddite, and I think we must open our eyes and interpret the world with a curious and optimistic mind. We must seek our own answers and explanations rather than being spoon-fed from the talking heads on major news networks. Social media, being for the most part just a regurgitation of the foregoing, is no better. In the foreseeable future, inequality will grow and dissatisfaction will continue to rise. Any revolution or march on Wall Street that results from the wealth gap is futile, until we understand how we got here and where we are going. In this essay, I'm going to outline and try to put some clarity into how we got here and where I think we are most likely heading.

“Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” — Thomas Jefferson

“The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.” — Gustave Le Bon

One of my major interests has become the United States Dollar (USD). The Federal Reserve — which is the US's central bank — is privately owned and not a government institution. If more people realized this simple fact, they might be better able to construe their agenda. The current boom/bust cycle of our economy, leading to bubble after bubble and further inequality, can't realistically be viewed as "for the people." Quantitative easing, known as QE (another euphemism meaning: they are monetizing the debt), has become widely accepted, with the masses failing to understand its repercussions. If they did understand QE, 'Occupy Wall Street' — a movement against the '1%' — would have turned a lot more violent and been directed towards the Fed rather than the large banks. The '1%' own the majority of all assets and have benefited disproportionately from central bank QE stimulation. As the stock markets have rebounded since the recent financial crisis, the '99%,' who own relatively few assets, have struggled to find jobs and pay for necessities like housing and food. Automation and globalization contributed to higher unemployment but can't be blamed, as these are natural consequences of higher minimum wages, which the people — for lack of understanding — have demanded for themselves. The real culprit is manipulation of the economy through Fed policy, which muddies the economy's ability to efficiently allocate and price labour and resources.

Foreign policy, especially in the Middle East, is dictated by the 'petrodollar,' rather than the widely held assumption of the war on terror since 9/11. ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), the rag-tag militia which originally numbered around 10,000, suddenly emerged from different rebel groups fighting in Syria's civil war, and now threatens the whole world — really!? Is it possible that this isn't quite the full story, and that larger countries with an agenda in Iraq/Syria and the wider region are funding the extremists? The US already overtly supplied ISIS with their weapons in Syria and supplied Iraq's army with weapons which ISIS then seized from their so-called army earlier this year. Then, a few journalists who voluntarily left their homes to pursue work in this region were captured and beheaded; their videos and stories have been played on loop in the media to put fear into the public. I don't intend to sound overly callous about the journalists' plight, but Syria's war has been raging on for three years with in excess of 100,000 lives lost, mostly civilian. There is no oil to be found in Syria — hence the limited international response thus far.

The West made a brief attempt at intervention last year, blaming Assad — the leader of Syria, whom the rebels are trying to overthrow — for using chemical weapons on his own people. Obama made it quite clear that he had drawn chemical weapons usage as a red line for intervention in Syria. Then one has to ask: would the leader of Syria really jeopardize his rule and the outcome of his two-year civil war with the usage of chemical weapons while the world is watching, especially when his soldiers had started to gain momentum on the battlefield? The little evidence that was found on the issue of chemical weapons points towards the most probable culprit: the rebels using it as a 'false flag' event to welcome Western intervention in the civil war on their behalf. The world was largely able to see through the plot, realized the evidence against the Syrian regime was inconclusive, and stood against intervention. Once the threat spread to Iraq, which boasts the world's fifth-largest oil reserves, it became a 'humanitarian' issue overnight, and the West had no choice left but to intervene immediately. No time for democracy: our Nobel Peace Prize-winning commander-in-chief Obama, who campaigned on bringing the troops home, began warmongering and leading mission creep in the Middle East. NATO and a host of countries, including Canada, diligently follow along as usual; the Orwellian, never-ending War on Terror 2.0 has arrived.

If humanitarian casualties were the real reason for intervention, as stated by the media and president, what about Saudi Arabia? The Saudis' violations of human rights are well documented; they regularly behead people for breaking 'Sharia Law,' and women are openly treated as second-class citizens there. The US turns a blind eye to this, as the relationship the US has with the Saudis — who control the world's largest oil reserves — is the backbone to the petrodollar, which is the US economy. I'll explain the petrodollar in more detail below.

Liberalizing sovereign nations, or propping up the 'petrodollar'?

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which was shot down over Ukraine this spring, was instantly blamed on the Ukrainian rebels, and therefore Russia and Putin. No evidence points towards this and none was found, but the verdict, entirely conjured through the media, has the public ready to retaliate with financial sanctions and potentially war with Russia. Is it possible that the US sees Russia as a threat, in that they sell their oil outside of the petrodollar system, have close ties with China, and threaten the US's monopoly of military power in the region? The US is trying to provoke Russia to respond, using NATO membership in Ukraine, which is right on their doorstep. How would the US feel if Russia or China were setting up a hostile military alliance in Canada or Mexico?

Free thinking and ideas that question the status quo have been written off as bogus or far-fetched conspiracy theories. As Brandon Smith puts it: “The concept of conspiracy frightens some people, so much so that they are willing to overlook any and all evidence that world events are for the most part directed, rather than chaotic and coincidental. For those who are uneducated and unaware, explanations for the terrible tides of politics and war generally revolve around a false understanding of Occam's razor. They argue that the theory states that the 'simplest explanation' is usually the correct one for any particular problem or crisis. But Occam's razor actually states that the simplest explanation according to the evidence at hand is usually the correct answer for any given problem. That is to say, the simplest explanation must conform to the evidence, or it is likely not correct.”

“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

“War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.” — George Orwell

Gold & Silver: The media likes to taint gold as a 'barbarous relic' and that it holds no place in our current fiat economy. However, the real agenda behind these slants is far from what they appear. Gold forces prudence from central banks and governments who believe they are 'masters of the universe' — meaning above the law.

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” — George Orwell

The finite supply of gold forces a check on expansionary policies, and therefore the ability to wage endless war through deficit spending. Gold has been money since the dawn of civilization and will continue to be so.

“Simply put, in the global currency wars, owning gold is like abandoning the battlefield altogether.” — Tim Price

Why has gold survived the test of time so well? Simply, it is finite and people desire it; they have confidence in its intrinsic value and longevity. Paper currencies which are decoupled from any check on potential supply tend to have a lifespan of about 50 years. History shows us that they have a 100% failure record. Human nature is driven primarily by fear and greed — is there any doubt why paper currencies all succumb to the latter?

“Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history be the answer to this question.” — Thomas Jefferson

How we got here:

The conclusion of WWII, when Bretton Woods was enacted, left the US in a hegemonic position financially and militarily. The US was fortunate enough to have bankrolled and prospered from the two world wars, not to mention that the former great powers had utterly destroyed the old continent. The Bretton Woods system used fixed exchange rates managed by a series of newly created international institutions using the USD. Fiat currency was convertible into gold, with the US guaranteeing the system as the world's largest gold holder and undisputed military power, making it a de facto reserve currency. The Soviet Union in the following years emerged and competed militarily for a time with the US, but never financially. The US forced the Soviet Union into bankruptcy through the arms race, which left the USD to remain as the sole reserve currency.

Having the world's reserve currency comes with many benefits. The ability to print your own currency without significantly devaluing it is a very unique situation to be in. Europe's periphery countries and various South American countries look at the USD enviously as they currently choke on higher interest rates and inflation. The rest of the world is forced to accept the USD at face value, as the world's key commodity — oil — is priced in it. Oil is the lifeblood of every economy in the world, making it vital that all countries hold USD reserves. Some countries have stockpiled their USD reserves into the trillions; they use these reserves to support their own domestic currencies and transact in the oil markets. This system has worked out well since the 1970s, but as Herb Stein said, “if something cannot go on forever, then it won't.”

Currently we are living on a 'petrodollar' system in which America props up Saudi Arabia and various OPEC nations militarily, as long as they promise to price oil exclusively in USD. To ensure this continuation, the US/NATO bullies and overthrows any country in the region that tries to divert from the petrodollar system (Iraq under Saddam Hussein moved towards the Euro, Libya under Gaddafi towards gold, and Iran under the Ayatollahs to gold and various alternate currency swaps in non-USD). The petrodollar standard, as we know it, was initiated after 1971 when Nixon went off the gold standard to fund the deficits incurred by waging ideological war in Vietnam. That was over 40 years ago, and the USD — aka 'King Dollar' — as the world's reserve currency, is running on fumes at this stage, hence the desperate 'War on Terror.'

The US has abused its reserve currency status with fiscal imprudence, especially with the heavy debt burdens we are leaving for future generations through recent stimulus and aggressive foreign policy on unprecedented levels over the last two decades. We are sitting on record amounts of debt, low inflation, and the economy is limping along with no light at the end of the tunnel.

“The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.” — Thomas Jefferson

I see two possible scenarios playing out, both extremely bullish for precious metals:

Scenario 1: The economy recovers, as the media would like to convince you it already has (which I don't buy into). Confidence will resume in the economy; banks and large corporations will start to lend and borrow funds, which they have a lot of ($4 trillion has been pumped into the US economy since 2008 in the form of quantitative easing). The multiplier effect of fractional reserve banking, as well as the velocity of money, will cause inflation and possibly even hyperinflation. This doesn't even mention the case that higher inflation leads to investors demanding higher interest rates on bonds to compensate for lost purchasing power. If interest rates shoot up, the government will be forced to spend a larger portion of GDP on financing the debt, causing the worst possible outcome: Stagflation (stagnating GDP and high inflation simultaneously).

Scenario 2: The more likely scenario, which I believe we are presently living in, is that we enter a mild deflationary period, with the economy dipping back into a recession and, depending on semantics, a depression. This will leave the central banks with no other option — to keep the debt cycle from imploding — but to restart the expansionary engines with further QE. The world will watch in horror, and be ready to act decisively, as the US bank balance sheets swell further and the final nail in the dollar's coffin is conspicuously visible.

End Game:

BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) have had enough of the current system of the West exploiting the East; individually they are not powerful, but strength comes in their joint dissatisfaction with US fiscal and military policy. China can't directly confront America militarily but wields an equally dangerous weapon with its ability to start a panic on the US dollar by dumping its large reserves on the open market, causing the US economy to crash. China could buy 100% of America's 'stated' 8,000 tonnes of gold reserves (widely and openly contemplated on the reliability of these numbers — most likely the US's gold reserves are far smaller) using only 8% of its reserves. Cornering the gold market would also cause panic, as gold's price is a barometer of the health of the USD.

The present system, which transfers real wealth in the form of commodities and products from East to West in exchange for a depreciating USD, is reaching its limit. This current system is akin to a jobless renter (US) borrowing money at 0% from his landlord (OPEC countries and China) and using that money to pay his monthly rental fee. He promises to pay back the money when his employment prospects improve. Eventually, the landlord will see the situation for what it is and boot him out.

“In practical life we are compelled to follow what is most probable; in speculative thought we are compelled to follow truth.” — Spinoza

The BRICS nations have already set up a competing bank to the IMF and World Bank, which will continue to gain influence as the West wanes. The world's emerging economies will escalate their exit from the USD. Huge amounts of US dollar-denominated debt will be dumped on the economy, with only the Federal Reserve left on the bid. China and Russia will continue leading the exit away from the USD; selling will eventually escalate as everyone tramples on each other to exit the movie theatre as the fire alarm rings louder and louder. The USD will eventually be revalued significantly lower against a basket of currencies and commodities, including gold.

Manipulation:

Precious metals prices have been artificially suppressed by central banks for various reasons. Gold, as stated above, can be seen as a barometer of the health of the USD. The public looks to gold as a hedge against depreciating currencies — the story is all told through the price versus USD. If the price of gold rises too quickly, panic ensues and the exit from the USD escalates. The petrodollar system relies on confidence in the USD and will be supported at all costs, including war and market manipulation. Paper gold and silver markets trade on a ratio as high as 100:1 to physical gold. This means there are 100 paper claims on every ounce of physical gold traded on the commodity markets. Most people don't all take delivery of their gold at the same time, so the system has survived thus far.

These below-market rates brought on through manipulation are forcing mines to cut back and even close their doors, which will just accelerate the timeline of physical supply drying up completely. A market economy can only survive when finite resources are priced based on supply and demand. When prices are manipulated to the downside, supply quickly dries up as demand increases with artificially low prices — then the game is up.

There are a few other catalysts for precious metals worth noting: The SGE (Shanghai Gold Exchange) is promising to be 100% physically backed. This exchange, if run as stated, would in time force other global precious metal exchanges to adopt physical trading or be left behind. The BRICS nations, which all trust and hold large amounts of physical gold, have created their own world bank, which could be fully convertible into gold.

Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, in his testimony to Congress in 1998, states it candidly: “Central banks stand ready to lease gold in increasing quantities should the price rise.”

I believe we are sitting on the precipice of unprecedented opportunity for those who seize the moment and have some foresight to prepare. Metals will have their day in the sun, but patience is the name of the game. As Keynes once said, “Markets can remain irrational a lot longer than you and I can remain solvent” — meaning don't use leverage, and avoid the rigged futures markets altogether when investing. If prepared, change is welcome and expected. The fundamentals behind this investment in precious metals are as sound as can be; it's not a question of 'if,' but merely a question of 'when.'