Videos Of The Week
Precious Metals And Geopolitics & Two Great Podcasts Comparing The US To China
I wanted to talk briefly about precious metals because I have had three people mention gold, silver, or both to me in the last week, and two of them are not finance guys. When a guy brings up gold in the sauna at the gym unprompted, without me bringing up anything related to finance or investments, that’s an interesting signpost to me. Gold has been up for nine straight weeks, which has only happened a couple times, and it has never been up ten weeks in a row. Of course gold will probably keep ripping this week because I mentioned it, but I have talked about precious metals a couple times on the RogueNews podcasts I have been doing recently.
I have started to take a look at a couple miners, including one that a subscriber said I should take a look at. I’m not in any hurry to buy anything precious metals related after the run over the last couple months, but I think there are still plenty of opportunities if you think that we are in for a durable precious metals bull market (like I do). The move in precious metals over the last couple months makes me a little uneasy, because if we keep rallying at this rate, I will start to wonder if something underneath the surface is different this time.
It fits in with the “debasement trade” that I have been hearing about nonstop for the last month or so. I like to think I’m pretty good at pattern recognition, but I start to take notice any time I start hearing the same topic or phrase repeatedly. Earlier this year it was the end of US exceptionalism, and a couple years ago it was safe and effective. From there, it goes back to the question “Why I am hearing (or reading about) this now?” Just some food for thought, and the mainstream media sources that focus on politics aren’t the only news sources with an agenda.
Venezuela: The Latest Geopolitical Issue
On the geopolitical side, I keep hearing more and more about Venezuela in the last month or so. It has been easy bounce from one geopolitical topic to the next in 2025, whether it’s tariffs in April, Iran and Israel, Ukraine and Putin’s trip to Alaska, and now Venezuela. I’m curious to see if this blows over relatively quickly, or if it turns into something bigger. There’s some debate on if this is about oil, or drugs, ties to China, or some other motivation, but it’s safe to say that the US is looking to exert influence over the Western Hemisphere.
TFTC w/ Luke Gromen
This was my favorite podcast of the week, and Marty does a good job asking a couple original questions on where things might be heading. They spent a lot of time focused on US and China relations, and why China has more leverage than some of the so-called experts in the West might think. Gromen points out that gold’s recent move is saying something about the current situation. They get into the importance of rare earth inputs for military technology, the US taking a good hard look at the supply chain for rare earth metals, and why he thinks it’s not aggressive enough.
He also said that if we got the worst case economic outcome of a complete split with China, the Treasury market would blow up in a week. It would be the April tariff tantrum but worse. They also covered Bitcoin, and how stablecoins have played an important role in providing demand for short term treasuries. The most interesting line from the podcast discussed the end of the dollar, and how gold and the dollar going up together is the signpost to look for. It won’t happen tomorrow, but that’s how he thinks it will happen. If you need some food for thought about several big picture financial system changes, this one is for you.
Hidden Forces w/ Dan Wang
This one isn’t focused directly on financial markets, but it is a great comparison of two competing civilizations of the US and China. Wang lays out his view that China is an engineering society while the US has turned into a legal society since the 1960s. He gets into the different societal attitudes towards problems, and how the hyperfinancialized economy of the US compares to China, which is more focused on building things. The competition between the US and China is shaping up to be an important issue in coming years, and this podcast is worth a listen for anyone interested in that topic.