Videos Of The Week

A Busy News Week For The US Election And Offshore Oil Services & Videos On The Big Picture For Financial Markets And Geopolitics

I spent some time with family last week boating around the San Juan Islands in Washington, doing several hikes and seeing the sights. I’ll be heading to the Grand Canyon next weekend, so I should have some more pictures in a couple weeks, but it has been good to take some time to slow down and decompress.

Taken From The Observation Tower At Mount Constitution On Orcas Island, WA

It’s been a very interesting week for several reasons, but the biggest piece of news is again focused on the US presidential election. Things seem to be accelerating on the geopolitical front as the circular firing squad in the Democratic Party has decided the Biden is out. It looks like border czar (sorry, Vice President) Kamala Harris will be the Democrat candidate for the 2024 Presidential election (barring any funny business between now and the Democratic Convention). We will see if they let Biden finish out his term or if they dust off the 25th Amendment, but I don’t think the political drama before the election is over. Not by a long shot.

What this means for financial markets is difficult to map out, but I think a lot of pieces will fall into place in the second half of this year. A couple news items stood out to me this week that warrant a more in depth writeup as far as financial markets go. I’ll be back in Boise for a couple days this week, and I’m planning on writing an update on the offshore oil services after some of the recent news on day rates from several companies in the sector. One of the videos this week focuses on the big picture for financial markets and commodities, while the other zeroes in on the ramifications of the failed Trump assassination.

Palisades Gold Radio w/ Chris MacIntosh

I enjoyed listening to this conversation on the big picture for financial markets with Chris MacIntosh. They talked about commodities, market distortions from passive indexing, and a variety of other topics. They discuss big picture societal trends and what could be on the horizon, as well as The Great Taking. While the framework for a mass confiscation event like the Great Taking is in place, Chris comes to a similar conclusion that I have held: there are too many powerful and influential people invested in the current system, which makes it very unlikely (though not a 0% probability). It would lead to chaos across the world, and the incentives don’t line up for many influential people and institutions to flip the game board in that fashion. If it does come to that, worrying about our investment portfolios will be probably be pretty low on the list of priorities.

TFTC w/ Tom Luongo

This was my favorite video of the week and it was very thought provoking on a variety of topics. I talked about things accelerating, this video talks about what comes next after the failed assassination attempt on Trump. The short version is that we are a couple inches from a very different timeline for politics. They also cover the information war and how it fits into markets, geopolitics, and current events. One of the quotes that stood out was this: “This was the first Trump rally that CNN covered live all year.” Call it a coincidence if you want, but there are a lot of coincidences around what happened with Trump.

I’ll be talking more about this in my mid year update on the 2024 predictions, but I think investors should be asking some difficult questions about recent events and what it means for where we are. What happens if they take another run at Trump? What happens if they miss again, and what happens if they don’t? I don’t like asking these questions, but if we are in the middle of the Fourth Turning, investors can’t ignore what is happening on the political stage in my opinion. They also discuss bitcoin as a strategic asset, Jamie Dimon and Jerome Powell’s influence behind the scenes, and the potential pick of Jamie Dimon as Treasury Secretary in a Trump administration. It’s worth a watch and should be food for thought for anyone remotely interested in politics, markets, and current events.

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