The Money Detectives #06 — Who Gets the New Money First?

When new money enters the economy, it does not reach everyone at the same time.

This comic introduces the Cantillon Effect—the idea that early recipients of newly created money can spend or invest before prices fully adjust, while later recipients may face higher prices before their own income catches up.

What This Comic Introduces

After reading, learners should understand that:

• New money enters the economy through specific people, businesses, and institutions first.

• Early recipients can gain additional purchasing power before prices fully rise.

• Later recipients may face higher prices before receiving the same benefit.

• This uneven process can contribute to a wider wealth gap over time.

• Creating more currency can also dilute its purchasing power—much like adding more water to lemonade makes each cup weaker.

Money Detective Question

If prices rise before your income does, are you really better off?

Encourage learners to think about why the path new money takes through the economy can matter just as much as the amount created.

For deeper study: Continue with MLMF’s lesson on Money Creation & the Cantillon Effect and explore the Cantillon Effect Simulator.

The Money Detectives #05 — Why Does My Money Buy Less?

You can have the same number of dollars and still be able to buy less with them.

This comic introduces the idea of purchasing power—the amount of goods and services your currency can actually buy. It also shows why a raise in dollars does not always mean a real improvement if prices are rising even faster.

What This Comic Introduces

After reading, learners should understand that:

• Purchasing power means how much your currency can buy.

• The number of dollars you have can stay the same while their buying power falls.

• Rising prices can reduce the real value of wages and savings.

• A larger paycheck does not always mean greater purchasing power.

• Inflation can make the same amount of currency buy less over time.

Money Detective Question

If your allowance rises 5%, but the things you buy rise 10%, did you really get richer?

Encourage learners to think about the difference between having more dollars and being able to buy more with those dollars.

For deeper study: Continue with MLMF’s lessons and tools on inflation, purchasing power, and how changes in the currency supply can affect prices.

The Money Detectives #04 — Money or Currency?

People often use the words money and currency as if they mean exactly the same thing. This comic introduces an important distinction.

Currency is designed to make buying, selling, and pricing things easy. It is portable, divisible, durable, fungible, and useful as a medium of exchange and unit of account.

Money performs those functions too—but it also serves as a store of value through time.

What This Comic Introduces

After reading, learners should understand that:

• Currency is a token designed for exchange.

• Currency helps us price and purchase goods and services.

• Money performs the functions of currency while also preserving value over time.

• Inflation can reduce the purchasing power of currency.

• Gold has historically been used as money because it has maintained value across long periods.

Money Detective Question

If something is easy to spend but continually loses purchasing power, does it pass the full test of money?

Encourage learners to think about the difference between something that is convenient for exchange and something that preserves purchasing power over time.

For deeper study: Continue with MLMF’s full Money vs. Currency lesson.

The Money Detectives #03 — What Did the Bank Actually Loan?

When someone gets a bank loan, it is easy to imagine that the bank is simply handing over money it already had.

This comic introduces a different way to understand the transaction.

When the borrower signs the loan agreement, the borrower issues a promissory note—a promise to repay. The bank accepts that note as an asset and creates a new deposit in the borrower’s account.

What This Comic Introduces

After reading, learners should understand that:

• A bank loan is more than simply handing over existing money.

• The borrower signs a promissory note promising repayment.

• The bank records that note as an asset.

• The bank creates a matching deposit in the borrower’s account.

• The new deposit becomes newly created bank currency.

Economist Richard Werner describes this legal relationship as the bank purchasing a security from the borrower rather than lending out another customer’s deposited money.

Money Detective Question

If the bank created a new deposit for the borrower, what did the bank actually receive in exchange?

Encourage learners to answer in their own words before moving on to the full banking lesson.

For deeper study: Continue with MLMF’s lesson on how bank credit creation works and what happens on the bank’s balance sheet.

The Money Detectives #02 — How Is Currency Created?

Where does new currency actually come from?

Most people imagine that banks can only lend money that already exists. This comic introduces a different part of the modern monetary system: new bank deposits can be created when a commercial bank makes a loan.

It also introduces how central banks can create new currency when purchasing assets such as government bonds.

What This Comic Introduces

After reading, learners should understand that:

• Much of the currency used today exists electronically rather than as physical cash.

• Central banks can create new currency through transactions such as purchasing government bonds.

• Commercial banks can create new deposit currency when they make loans.

• The newly created deposit is added to the borrower’s account rather than being transferred from another customer’s deposit.

• Creating additional currency increases the amount of money circulating through the economy.

Economist Richard Werner has demonstrated this process by following the accounting of an actual bank loan: when a bank approves a loan, it can create a new deposit in the borrower’s account.

Money Detective Question

If the bank did not take the new loan money out of another customer’s account, where did the new deposit come from?

Encourage learners to explain the process in their own words before moving on to the full lesson on bank credit creation.

For deeper study: Continue with MLMF’s lesson on how commercial banks create currency when they make loans.

The Money Detectives #01 — Where Did My Deposit Go?

What actually happens when you put money into a bank account?

Many younger learners naturally imagine that the bank simply stores their money somewhere until they come back for it. This short comic introduces a different idea: when money is deposited into an ordinary bank account, it becomes the bank’s money, while the bank records an obligation to repay the depositor.

What This Comic Introduces

After reading, learners should understand that:

• A bank deposit is not the same as placing money in a personal storage box.

• The deposited money becomes the property of the bank.

• The bank records a corresponding amount that it owes the depositor.

• The depositor therefore holds a claim against the bank.

Money Detective Question

If the money you deposit becomes the bank’s money, what does the balance shown in your bank account represent?

Encourage learners to explain the answer in their own words before continuing to the related banking lessons.

For deeper study: Continue with MLMF’s lesson on why a bank deposit is legally a loan to the bank.

Richard Werner Explains How Banking Really Works

Banks are commonly thought of as deposit-taking institutions that lend money. The legal reality is different: banks do not take deposits, and banks do not lend money.What is a “deposit”? It is not actually a deposit. It is not a bailment, and it is not held in custody. At law, the word “deposit” is...

Read the full article →

The King Dollar Myth: The Numbers Tell a Very Different Story

Maneco64 — October 27, 2026

Tuesday, October 27th, 2026. Maneco64, home of alternative economics and contrarian views.

Well, today we're going to look at King Dollar. Is it a reality or a myth?

And I'm going to recommend a really good video, which I'll put here right now, that Francis Hunt made recently, three days ago, where he dissects an interview that Jim Rickards did with a Bitcoin channel.

I think you'll love it. I love this video that Francis Hunt made, and he really rips apart Jim Rickards' view that the dollar is king, that the Treasury market is the place to be, that there's no bond market in China, that they're backward.

And my purpose today, though, is not to rip apart Jim Rickards, even though I'd like to, but it's to look at the numbers, look at the charts, and let you decide whether King Dollar is a reality or a myth.

And of course, by King Dollar, I don't mean the $20 dollars in gold in a $20 gold piece, or the $1 in silver.

I mean these trashy bank notes that are issued on behalf of the Federal Reserve by the Bureau of Engraving, these Federal Reserve notes. That's what I mean.

And it's what actually the late and former Fed Governor John Exter called "I owe you nothings."

And he actually pointed out that it's not just the dollar, the King Dollar since 1971, that are "I owe you nothings," but all fiat currencies.

Anyway, I actually like to thank one of you guys, one of the viewers that sent me these ten $2 Federal Reserve notes. They're crispy and new. Unfortunately, they're not worth as much as this $20.

---

Before we look at some charts about the dollar versus other currencies, before we actually look at China as well and whether they have a government bond market, I want to look at the dollar index because it's an indicator that people like Jim Rickards, people like Brent Johnson—yes, I said his name—even people like George Gammon, I think the dollar milkshake guys, they always point to the dollar index.

And I've spoken about this many times in the past years.

And I think what we need to do, though, is go back to 1973, and that's when the dollar index was invented or created.

And the reason for that was that the era of fixed exchange rates that we had up until August 15th, 1971—and actually they tried to keep the fixed exchange rates after Nixon closed the gold window, but it didn't work because there's no discipline anymore.

It was everyone for himself.

Each country started printing, and it was the race to the bottom.

And that's why a lot of these fiat currencies, the dollar included, and we're going to look at that, haven't done really well versus gold since 1971.

But what I want to do here is compare the King Dollar, this "I owe you nothing" dollar, to the other "I owe you nothing" currencies.

So, the dollar index basically is a basket of the major European currencies, the Canadian dollar, and the Japanese yen.

And I've added up the euro, which is basically a recent creation. And the euro, of course, as per the dollar index, was made up of the major legacy currencies in Europe, like the Deutsche Mark, French Franc, Dutch Guilder, Italian Lira, and so on.

But yeah, the euro, the Japanese yen, the pound sterling, and the Canadian dollars—and that's by order of how important their weightings are—make up 92.2% of the dollar index.

And back in 1971, of course, the Chinese economy and other economies in the Global South were nowhere to be seen in terms of GDP or trade.

But yet the dollar index doesn't include them.

The GDP of China now is greater than the GDP of the Eurozone, and it's not even in the dollar index.

And if you look at the Chinese yuan versus the dollar, the dollar has dropped quite a bit in the last two years versus the Chinese yuan.

But yeah, so is the dollar really king? Is the dollar index really king?

Because the dollar index was started at 100 back in March of '73. And right now, I think we're just above 101.

So that's 1% in 53 and a half years.

Gold at the time, of course, one ounce of gold used to buy around $85 to $90. Now, as I speak here, we can buy about $4,004.

But what I wanted to show you, even within the dollar index, if we look, for example—and you can do this by going to fxtop.com, and I'm going to put a link to that in the description. This is where you can get these charts.

If you look at, let's say, the dollar versus the Deutschmark, and you can still calculate the Deutschmark because its exchange rate versus the euro was fixed back in, I think, 1999.

So, since August 15th, 1971—and I picked that date because it was a really important date. It was the date where the United States and the world's monetary system crossed the Rubicon, and there's been no way back from August 15th, 1971.

Well, the dollar's down 48% versus the Deutschmark.

So much for King Dollar.

Versus the Swiss franc, it's even worse. The dollar's down 80%.

Versus gold, the dollar is down 99%.

And I would add, and you can do this yourself, I'm not going to do it here. If you do this for all the other currencies versus gold, you'll get more than 90% loss as well.

So, this shows you, in my opinion, that the real king is gold, but let's continue.

Versus the yen, even versus the yen, which is supposed to be collapsing right now, the dollar's down 56% since convertibility was stopped of the dollar into gold.

And the reason I'm doing this is not to bash King Dollar or bash Americans.

This is to warn you in the United States and around the world, because a lot of people still use King Dollar, that it's very dangerous to keep a lot of fiat dollars because they're going to continue to lose value versus real money, i.e. gold.

And it wasn't me who said that gold was money. It was J.P. Morgan when asked what gold was.

He said, "Well, gold is money, everything else is credit."

Why do these people keep pushing this agenda?

And I mean, I've had Jim Rickards on this channel six years ago. I interviewed him. I've read some of his books. He's even got a case for gold.

So, I asked Jim Rickards, "How can you be for gold and at the same time believe that the dollar is king?"

It's impossible because the higher the gold price goes versus the dollar, the less of a king the dollar is.

There's also Currency Wars. So, yeah, I actually recommend these books.

But I think the only thing I can say—people like Jim Rickards and the dollar milkshake people and people who push this agenda that the dollar is king, that Treasuries are the best safe haven, and at the same time they pay lip service to gold.

I think these people have an agenda.

They're trying to protect Wall Street and the fiat dollar. They're trying to protect the deep state.

We know that Jim Rickards admits that he works with the CIA. I don't know about Brent Johnson and other guys.

So, that's why I'm warning you, not because I want to bash Jim Rickards or Brent Johnson. It's because I don't want you to buy into this narrative.

---

And the other thing I wanted to talk to you about—and I had Luke Gromen on, who's really objective about the dollar, and he's an American. He hasn't bought into the milkshake theory.

I'm going to put a link to an interview I did with him recently. I highly recommend it.

And one thing he mentioned to me that I hadn't really looked closely at is the United States' net international investment position, or NIIP.

And what he told me is that the U.S.'s net international investment position was around negative $23 trillion.

And I've looked through here on ChatGPT, and this is what it says here.

If you don't understand what this means, the United States has by far the world's largest negative net international investment position, meaning that foreign investors own substantially more American assets than Americans own foreign assets.

The NIIP measures the difference between U.S. assets abroad—foreign stocks, bonds, businesses, real estate, and other investments owned by American residents—versus foreign-owned assets in the U.S.: American stocks, Treasury bonds, corporate debt, businesses, and other assets owned by foreign residents.

So yes, United States citizens, or Americans, own just under $47 trillion of foreign assets, $46.97 trillion, but foreigners own $69.39 trillion of U.S. assets.

The net international investment position of the U.S. is minus $22.42 trillion.

And the reason I'm talking about this is that a lot of people like Jim Rickards, Brent Johnson, and others in the dollar milkshake world say that foreigners will rush to buy dollars because they owe a lot in dollars and they don't have any dollars.

But according to this, foreigners are net long $22.42 trillion.

So keep that in mind.

Hopefully this will help you decide whether you think King Dollar is a reality or a myth.

I'm leaving it up to you. I'm giving you the numbers.

---

The other thing I wanted to talk about is China.

And again, not trying to bash the U.S. or King Dollar, even though I don't think it's king.

I'm not trying to cheerlead for China. I'm just trying to paint the reality for you so you can make sure that you protect your savings and your wealth.

Well, Jim Rickards comes out and says, "Well, there's no government bond in China. The yuan or renminbi will never be a reserve currency. It's going to take decades. There's no government bond market in China. There's no repo market. There's no rule of law."

Even though in '08 none of the bankers on Wall Street went to jail.

I see that in China, when people in the financial sector or any other sector commit massive frauds, they don't only get jail; sometimes they get capital punishment.

So I'm not too sure what Jim Rickards meant by the rule of law.

And I checked on ChatGPT, and you can check it yourself. And ChatGPT has the sources. You can click on the sources.

I asked ChatGPT, is there a functioning government bond market in China with a repo market?

And this is the answer I got.

Yes, China has a fully functioning government bond market and a large, sophisticated repo, or repurchase agreement, market.

In fact, China's repo market is central to how the People's Bank of China, or PBOC, manages liquidity in its banking system.

It says here, as well, China has one of the world's largest bond markets, second only to the United States.

Its principal government-related debt instruments include:

Number one, Chinese government bonds, CGB, sovereign debt issued by China's Ministry of Finance, comparable to U.S. Treasuries.

And I checked that also. I think they have about $6.5 trillion equivalent outstanding.

And they've got local government bonds issued by provincial and municipal governments.

So, they even have a muni market, how the Americans call their municipal bond markets.

And they've got policy bank bonds issued by institutions such as the China Development Bank, Agricultural Development Bank of China, and Export-Import Bank of China.

These are not sovereign bonds, but are important high-quality collateral in China's financial system.

China has an established sovereign yield curve, including 2-, 5-, 10-, 30-year government bonds and even longer maturities.

And Jim Rickards said that the rising yields and dropping prices of Treasuries is a sign that people need dollars and that Treasuries are still a safe haven.

Even though, as Francis noted, the 30-year bond price has gone down like 50% in the last four or five years.

And actually, Chinese 10-year government bond yields and 30-year government bond yields are going down, which means their prices are going up.

---

There's a lot going on politically, geopolitically.

We've got the midterms in about a week. Well, in exactly a week.

We've got elections in Israel today. I don't think that really is going to change much in terms of the war against Iran.

And yeah, we've seen oil up and down. Brent is still—spot Brent is still around $111.

Gold is right around $4,000. It's just above $4,000 right now.

Silver, yes, it's getting bashed around, unfortunately.

It's still above $50. It's at $52.82 right now, down over 100 cents, down 2%.

I don't know why. I guess there's a lot of paper out there.

And with that, I'm going to wish you all a very good day.

Take care. Bye.

Host — Bald Guy Money

Hello everyone, welcome to Bald Guy Money and we start this one off talking about fear as higher oil prices and a potential restart of the war with Iran dominates the minds of investors across all sectors pushing sentiment as you can see here into the extreme fear zone according to the fear and greed index. Now, due to these latest developments that basically dictated what the market did this past week, we have completely obliterated all of the positive signals we were seeing develop in the price of gold with a new weekly closing low for 2026 below $4,000 an ounce this past week.

And although we still haven't taken out the July low on an intraday basis, I want you all to pay close attention to these weekly candles on the screen right now. And notice that we didn't see the same end of week buying that we saw during the summer around these price levels as indicated by the tails or the wicks at the bottom of the candles. And that is bad news that supports the possibility of some more selling earlier in the week for gold that I want you all to be aware of.

With silver, as I said in last week's video when I showed you all the gold to silver ratio data, possibly headed back to $50 an ounce, maybe even as low as $48. I don't want to sugarcoat it as we broke the July lows this past week, closing just above $53 an ounce. Now, some of you watching may be wondering what happened to the worst case scenario of a double bottom for metals, specifically for gold, since I warned you all about silver moving lower last week. That I've been talking about in recent videos. And it's a valid question because I think we're still going to see it play out.

And although it seems, at least for now, that we're not going to make a higher low like we did between 1999 and 2001, which is the scenario I favored, we may be in the process of making a lower low type of double bottom, also known as a liquidity hunt, as Wall Street players inflict maximum pain and maximum fear on retail investors while quietly loading up in the background with ETF inflows, espec especially in North America, which is the dark blue color you see on the chart here, remaining relatively positive going all the way back to mid July.

So, don't get fooled or scared out here because the big secret behind a liquidity hunt is this.

Although they only happen about 40 to 45% of the time, they are the most explosive double bottoms, usually undercutting the previous low by about 3%, which means gold may still come back as far as $3,824 per ounce before making a more explosive move to the upside, similar to what the S&P 500 did, admittedly on a longer time frame, but one that led to a 17-year bull market for stocks with this week's Federal Reserve decision and speech by Kevin Walsh, which he gives right after the decision is made, potentially being the catalyst for a final flush out in gold and silver,

even though the market gives a 90% chance of the Fed holding rates in this meeting, which I will of course cover in a midweek video. with the real expectations of a recovery from my side. And I've shared this on X as well as in my recent roadmap updates starting no sooner than after the US midterm elections with the war topic also weighing heavily on the market as we saw this past week. So since the market is so completely shaken and uncertain in this video, I want to speak directly to two groups of people.

Number one, people who are afraid, maybe even mad, and want to give up on metals right now, I want to show you why you would essentially be selling the bottom here. And number two, I want to speak to people who are patiently holding metals but may not fully understand why the setup is so bullish for both gold and silver right now, despite the weakness in price.

And to do that, I sat down with my friend, author, investor, and speculator Don Durant to discuss why this time is no different to any other time in the past, what the setup you should be watching is, and why smart money is literally lining up to buy gold right now. I have kept in only the most important parts of our conversation because I understand time is valuable, time is money, but I encourage you all to watch to the end because this is an important video. Now, before we get started, please remember that you don't have to be allin on metals, but there is such thing as not enough.

And if you're a buyer, Summit Metals has great prices and great service with gold and silver selling at very affordable prices right now. And please also check them out on whatnot. They do auctions there. They're meant to be fun and yes, as I've said in the past, sometimes prices get bid up, especially on collector coins. But there are deals to be had, sometimes even below spot. And when you sign up with the Summit Metals link, new accounts get $15 to put towards their first purchase, meaning your chances of getting a deal are even higher.

So, use the QR code on the screen or link in the video description to take advantage of that. It is worth checking out. So, I want to thank Don Durret for joining me in this video. And instead of doing a long drawn out intro, I just want to jump right into it with you, Don. Now, we just made new lows for gold and silver in 2026. Oil seems unstoppable right now. Consumer sentiment is hovering around 10-year lows, and sentiment for the precious metals is lower than really I ever remember it.

Now, I shared my point of view on this in the video intro, but I want to ask you right off the bat, are you at all concerned about what's happening with gold and silver right now? And what do you think of some of the lower price targets for gold and silver that are circulating online right now?

Don Durrett

Um, I guess I'll start with the targets. So, there's basically a gap. Um, if you look at the charts, there's kind of a gap between 3500 and 3950 there because basically we went kind of went straight up on the breakout. So, there's basically very little support below 3950. Um, and so everybody seems to think we're going to go down to 3500 and which is a possibility, but that would be a little bit over a 10% drop from here, which would be pretty brutal considering how how far we've fallen. And you know, gold's down 29%. You go down another 10% or more. So 10% takes you to 3600.

So they're talking about like a 12% drop from here. Now there's a ton of support at 3,400 to 3500. So that's kind of a worst case scenario, I think. But I don't think we're going there. Um, and here and let me and let I I think I'm going to pull up a chart. Before I do that, I want to talk about I think it's more likely that we only fall 5%. So 5% is about 3,800 and if you drop 5% basically the the worst of it is over. We're at 675 on the HUI. The low is 580 in June. So we're not even close to the low there.

Although gold and silver are at their lows, which is really interesting. The miners have not. So, a lot of people the minor are usually a tell that we're close to we're close to bouncing here. People don't want to give up their miners. Um, so if you lose 5% that takes it from 675 down to 643, which is really kind of a nothing burger drop from here. So, I'm not really worried too much as long as that 30 3,800 holds. I think that's important. Let me share my screen.

I'm going to show you one of the reasons why I'm very confident that we are we're we're basically um at the bottom um or very very close. So this is the gold chart monthly and this big red uh candle here. This is this is the the the March uh candle, but we fell down. We closed June at $4,000, which is exactly where we're at right here. And if you look at those five candles, we've been basing at $4,000 for five months. This is actually quite healthy correction, if you will, as long as it doesn't break down.

And you can see uh this is the monthly I but there's basically this is this kind of this big candle which c which created that gap. Um and so this breakout in September was so massive, such a big candle, there's basically nothing no support here. Um, and so I don't I think my hunch is that we're only going to go down this area here, 3,800, which will be fine. Now, this month uh that we're in right now in October, we're at 4,000. We have one week to go. I'm hoping that next week we can stay here at this 4,000 level. That'd be very healthy.

Um, and then the next month if we get a green candle, um, I think we're we're off to the races situation here. Uh, I think leg two could begin. That's what I'm I'm hoping for. So, I since I have this this chart up here, I I want to I'll go I'm going to go ahead and tell you my expectations of what's going to unfold.

I I think that and we talked a little bit about the macro and the stock market, but I think that this basing that's been occurring here um and this whole correction, if you will, in the in the in the in gold has been occurring during a period when the stock market has been very strong. And so I think that the stock market, we're starting to see weakness there. And so I think that the stock market which is currently at 7,600 the 200 day moving average is 7300 and as you know and as you're the people that are watching this know 200 day moving averages are very important levels.

You don't want to go below those levels. That's a technical wash out. You go you can get a significant bare market. You go below 20%. Uh we haven't had a 5% correction in in the stock market since March. 5%. And we're we're only a little bit above the 200 moving average, which is 7,300 on the S&P. So, I think we're going to go down there and test that 7,300 level. Um, and if we do, and the reasons why, we'll talk about it about all all the factors of why I think that's going to happen.

And if that happens, I think gold I think the fear trade in gold is going to finally trigger. I've been waiting for this fear trade in gold. The fear trade in gold is when people buy gold because they don't want to buy anything else. They don't want to buy bonds, they don't want to buy stocks, and they're not especially happy to put their money in cash with interest with inflation up. Um, and so gold is the go-to asset. That's never happened before, ever in history. Gold has been the go-to asset. And so this is a this is a unique situation.

Um, and so I think that that fear trade is coming. And the fear trade in my opinion will push if we do get this, you know, 4,000 close here in October. I think November is going to be a positive month for gold. So I think we're going to close November above 4200. This is the key thing. This is the key to it all. I'm calling it leg two. So leg one is kind of on the screen here. When you look at August, these these big green candles, you know, this August breakout, these this was leg one. This is the big leg one up.

Um leg two is going to be similar to this. Um and I and I think that that if you we close November above 4,200, I think December is going to be the leg two breakout. And I think we could close December close to 4500. And if that happens, we go into the new year. I think January this we could get another big green candle and I think we could close January close to 5,000. If that happens, you're in a upward momentum situation um leg two and then you're going I think you're going all the way to 6,000 by June. That's my take that's my call. But the key is November.

You got to close November strong. If if we're still under 4,000 at the end of November, we're gonna have a prolonged correction and we're we're we're it's going to be very nasty. Somebody was calling this correction we're in right now the big nasty. But trust me, the big nasty is it hasn't happened yet. The big nasty is if you stay below 4,000 for like three or four months because if that happens, that's your wash out. That's when you're going down to 3500 and you know you're stuck down there and everybody's selling their minor. Nasty, nasty, nasty.

But if you close this month at 4,000 next week and then you close November 4,200, everything's fine. So that's where we're at.

Host — Bald Guy Money

So you're striking a pretty optimistic tone, but there are a lot of bears out there saying that January of this year was the 2011 style top. Now, I don't personally see how a top in metals is made with the stock market at all-time highs. And we can go back to 1980. Metals made their top in 1980 with the S&P 500 still below the 1973 highs. In 2011, Metals topped with the S&P 500 below its 2000 and 2007 highs. Don, I'd like to ask you with respect to your optimism, what specifically are you looking at that tell you the really big bears out there on the metals are wrong?

Don Durrett

Yeah. Uh, a lot of times people get caught up in the narratives um, and they basically miss the forest for the trees. And and what I mean by the narratives is basically Wall Street ba basically if you watch television kind of mainstream media you get this feeling that everything is fine. We got high we got strong earnings. We got the best economy in the world. America's the leader. There's nothing to worry about here. We've been in a 17 years. We haven't had a we haven't had a recession for 17 years. So everybody has this kind of this mindset this normal uh mindset that everything's fine.

nothing to worry about and and nobody and it's hard for people to basically jump out of that box and see and look at reality of what's really happening, right? And can and kind of connect the dots. And it's kind of that 8020 rule where only about 20% of the people can really have vision and can really connect the dots. Well, not everybody can do it. and and so when you can't do it, you you just you you you basically start following kind of the narratives. You get stuck in that box. Now, you mentioned a couple of really important factors, but we we'll dig into this a little bit.

Everything I just said, I I'll I'll basically put some meat on the bone here. So, if you go back to 1980, right? Um when when gold when gold basically hit its top when gold was rallying from 1972 to 1980 the stock the the economy was was stinking. We had two recessions. The stock market was doing nothing. Stock market was actually you know bottoming in 1980 and then we went on a 20-year tear. It's the complete opposite of what's happening today. This one we had the stock market's been on a 17-year run and now gold's going up. Complete opposite. Same thing happened in 2011.

From 2000 from 2000 to 2011, the stock market was was stunk. We basically had two recessions in that period. 2001 2007 and the stock market was taking off in 2011. The opposite the exact opposite of what's happening today. in in 2007 and the last recession in 2007 nobody wanted in 2008 excuse me 2008 when we when it hit when basically that was really the last recession it ended and let's call it Q2 2009 um nobody wanted to own gold then nobody the central banks were sellers of gold sellers they nobody nobody was buying gold in 2008 nobody um today.

Um they basically did a poll recently about family, you know, family offices and 70% had no gold and the other 30% that did have gold had averaging under 1%. That's today. Back then it was worse, right? So here we have a a stock market going, you know, ready to go down, which is basically what happened in 2000. That's when gold went up, right? And so, and you 1972 again, gold is down. Gold is getting ready to go up. It's gold is set up here to go higher, not to go lower. The only thing gold's nemesis, gold's kryptonite is a strong economy. You only buy gold when you need gold.

So, right now, the argument against gold is that the economy is going to get stronger, right? [laughter] If we are seven, we're in a 17-year run, the economy going to get stronger and people are go, I don't need no stinking gold. That's not the trend at all. I mean, open your eyes. It's not the trend at all. The trend is kind of what the hell's going on. Look at fiscal dominance in the US. The reason why gold's at $4,000, the reason why gold went to $5,000 is because the US has a debt problem. And central banks are going, "Okay, I'm sitting on all these treasuries.

I'm sitting on all these US dollars." And US the US is getting ready. The US is they have a debt problem. I need to defend. I need to little have a little hedge against that. So the hedge is to sell some of that debt and buy some gold. Everybody knows we have a debt problem. Everybody. But everybody but Wall Street, their job is to sell stocks and bonds. So the narrative out of Wall Street is everything's fine. They don't when you if you turn on the TV they they basically pick the data points that make everything look rosy. They ignore the consumer confidence numbers, right?

Which are basically we're almost the worst of all times. They ignore the housing numbers which are, you know, basically the housing market is kind of stuck. If you're a real estate agent, you're not happy right now. High interest rates, the cost of living problem, all these serious serious problems. But the one problem they ignore the most and ironically the Fed ignores it. We're going to talk a little bit about the Fed. Iron the irony of ironies is that the bond market is the heart of the economy. Literally, it's the it's the beating not the stock market, the bond market. The bond market is much more important.

When when the Treasury needs money, they don't go to the stock market. The Treasury ignores the stock market. The Treasury goes to the bond market. The bond market is the heart and soul of the whole thing. If the US government couldn't borrow $2 trillion a year, our whole our economy comes to a standstill. So the the bond market has to be healthy. Well, we've we've reached a point now. We we've ignored it. People that like me who've seen it coming for years and years and years, we basically see this fiscal dominant situation. It's an inevitability. I call it a doom loop.

And basically what happens is is that the debt gets so big that you can't do anything about it. The right fiscal dominance is when the US government is forced literally forced to borrow money to stimulate the economy because if they don't if they if they basically cut spending the economy goes down. So they're they're in a dominant situation where they have no choice but to spend money. This is the reason why we had the big beautiful bill and nobody pushed back because you if you start cutting you're just gonna basically destroy the economy and you you that's the situation we're in right now and that's the doom loop.

The doom loop is you don't have a choice. What whatever whatever you decide is not going to work. If you fight inflation by by basically cutting stimulus you destroy everything. And if you stimulate and print to keep everything going, which what we've been doing for 30 years, you just get the you just make it a worse problem. So that's the kick in the can that we've been doing. But guess what? We're in an end run now. Now it's over. This is the reason why I'm so bullish because it's over. I raised my my targets in July when basically interest rates started heading higher.

So we had in July we had rates at 4.8. The 30-year was at 4.8 in July. It ripped from 5.7 and then the 10-year went from 44 to 53. So rates just took off. And simultaneous to that, Japan had a had a problem and the U and the Treasury started manipulating the bond market. And I basically said that's it. Game over. We it started. There's no there's there's no way out out from this. And now we've seen it. France their 30-year was at zero in 21. In 21 it was at zero. Today it's at five. Um, so the bond markets are burnt on fire. They're not going away.

Um, our US economy, if if you pay attention, if you will, you need to look at look at look at everything from a holistic standpoint and from a historical standpoint. And from a holistic standpoint, you don't want to use aggregate gate data. This is what Wall Street confuses you. Wall Street says, "Let's just look at GDP, you know, and unemployment numbers in the aggregate, and we'll we'll pretend that if the aggregate is good, we're good." But if you look underneath the covers, 60% we're at all almost near all-time highs at at um on the stock market and 60% of the stocks are in correction right now.

How in the hell does that happen?

Host — Bald Guy Money

No, I I [clears throat] think you're absolutely right. I mean, even look at staples of the stock market like McDonald's, right? This is clearly telling a a completely different story than what we're hearing when, for example, Kevin Walsh takes the podium when he gives his monthly Fed speeches. Now, you mentioned your path forward for gold and kind of this TINA idea, there is no alternative, and I think we got a really great taste of that in 2025. I talked about it in my last video where when the tariffs were announced, we saw the S&P 500 dump significantly from top to bottom. It was actually 21%.

Gold languished a little bit for the first week, week and a half, two weeks and then really bucked the trend and started moving up. But on the other hand, silver, it took it a little bit longer to start reacting to that. So knowing kind of what your path forward with respect to gold is uh 4,200 in November, 4500 if I remember what you said correctly in December and then moving up in 2027 potentially as high as 6,000 by the summer of next year. I'd like to ask you what does that path look like for silver for all of those watching this video who are very interested in that topic.

Now, just before we get to the path for silver, and Don will also talk a bit more about gold. Before he gets to that, I want to remind you all that channel partner Land of Land is offering a $300 discount on any purchase of land to all of my viewers when they use the discount code bald guy. I've said it many times now, but I recently purchased some land myself for prepping purposes. And I've been collecting walnuts on that property, as I've been showing you for the last month or so. And I want to use this fact to remind you all that land is a valuable asset to own.

Not only for preppers like me in times of supply chain uncertainty, but also in times of inflation, both of which we are experiencing right now. So check them out at landofland.com. They have properties all across America with some starting right around $1,000. You can now buy directly at their marketplace or search for deals at their auctions page. And remember to use code bald guy for $300 off of your purchase.

Don Durrett

Yeah, I'm I'm going to share my screen. I want I just want to show you one more. I want to go back to this chart one more time. I I want you to know that when this when this took off at $2,000 24, this green candle, this was kind of the breakout. The stock market was going up here and the dollar was strong here. So, gold was a was correlated to the stock market.

this when the when the when it broke when the correlation stopped that's when I'm going to stop here stop my share here when the correlation stopped when this when basically gold stopped following the stock market up what caused that was the war and if we wouldn't had that war in Iran I think that gold would be above $5,000 right now and that war started right when the correction so we had the correction in basically end of January early February the war started in February [snorts] this this This war was a complete nemesis of gold and the reason why it was the nemesis for for for several reasons that war is

still occurring today and I really believe that was one of the reasons gold is having trouble. Um and the war creates the big the biggest problem there's like about several issues that impact gold because of this war and the biggest one is the flow of money. Oil is kind of the lifeblood of the economy. But if you look at dollars, how much money dollars gold the flow of money for gold for dollars, it's huge because when you when you look at how how much how many millions of barrels are used globally on a daily basis, most of that cash flow goes to the Middle East. Well, guess what?

The Middle East is trapped right now. So, the flow of money has basically been totally trapped, if you will. So those countries are like, you know, those are like investors who who accumulate gold, buy gold. Instead, they've been selling gold, net sellers, and and they haven't really gotten back on their feet yet, right? Um and so that then that there's that. So it's basically the supply demand dynamics of gold got impacted severely by this war and it's still going on. When you slow down the demand of gold, just slow it down a little bit, Wall Street, they start to control the narrative.

And the narrative is that negative real rates are bad for or positive real rates are bad for gold. Negative real rates are great. And so if you have high inflation, you have high rates, that's bad for gold. Sell your gold. Sell your gold. So that narrative works when the supply demi demand dynamic is weak. But when demand is strong, which I showed you that chart, you know, you know, that correlation, the dollar was high, you know, and people were buying gold. They didn't care if the dollar was high.

But when but when you when the dynamic is weak, a strong dollar, we're at 101, which we're this is a strong dollar. Strong dollar and high interest rates will actually will slow gold down. That's what's happening today. But that narrative, that's not the the number one driver of gold. That narrative only works when the dynamic is is somewhat weak. If the demand is higher, that those those don't work. And when the what pushes gold higher, and I'm going to show you now another chart. What pushes gold higher is fear. That's your number one driver is fear. And so this is my favorite chart for gold and silver investors.

This is gold versus the S&P 500. This is from Northstar bad charts. And this goes back to 1957. Again, this is gold divided by the S&P. So if we took if we basically say use let's use round numbers right now. If the S&P was at 8,000 and gold was at 4,000 that would be 0.5. So you take the 4,000, you divide it into 8,000. It's 0.5. We're currently at 0.52, but you lose 0.5, right? Well, we came out of this base at three. We based all the way here at the bottom at three, and now we're now we're this we're done. That 3 is over.

Gold now is basically starting to rally. So now we we haven't entered this this channel right here. We got into this channel in January of this year. we got to 7 and the top of the channel is 77 and kind of the middle of it is about 7 and you can see this line that line went all the way up to the top and touched it and bounced off. That's where we got in January. Um, and now we backed off. We're now below the channel and we're at 0.52. You probably can't see it, but the first number below these block uh black boxes is 050.

So about 65 is the bottom of that channel. Um and we're going to go all the way up to 20. Now we're going to we're this is this is going to be leg two is going to be stage one and leg three is going to be stage two. This this is when we win. This is when the fear trade starts. What pushes gold higher. Now these these movements up. This is the 1970s. This is the 2000. What pushes gold up is fear. We just we're just starting the fear. You only buy gold when you're in fear.

So this is the 1970s and the fear was, you know, this, you know, the economy is just going to get worse. I need I need some hedging and let's buy some gold, right? And then this is the the 2000s when you had the two recessions. So these are recessions. Recessions. Get ready for a recession. So gold runs when you have recessions. Get ready for a recession. That's what's coming. That's the fear trade. That's what I've been waiting for.

And so once the recession is going to happen right at the right right about now, right when we get ready when gold starts out performing the S&P 500 again three was the was our base and now we're at 0.5. So we're starting to climb out. We're not going back to three. We're going to go higher. Once we get to 7, it's kind of a game-on situation. So, we're getting really close here. So, now I'm going to tell you about silver. Silver's an easy answer. Silver right now, I like the Michael Oliver method of using the the silver gold ratio. We use percentages.

So, if you you right now, if you divide silver into gold, it's 1.3. I think I think the base not the base the floor of silver the reason why it's low 1% that's when silver is is not a monetary metal it's basically considered a base metal um basically considered a commodity but once silver is recognized as a monetary metal once people are buying silver for the same reasons they buy gold I believe the floor is 2%. So right now if you use a $4,000 gold 2% it should be 80 bucks but it's not. It's 53 and I think that's because it's basically trading as a base.

But I believe that once this next leg two comes um I think we'll get above 2% and I think we'll stay there. So, if you use 2% of $8,000, it's $160, which is I which I think will be the floor at $8,000. And then at 3%, it's $240. So, at $8,000 gold, I think a good range is 160 to 240. Now, you can go a little below it, which would be 150. A little above it, 250 somewhere in there. Now it's $7,000 gold. It's $140 at the bottom and 210 at the top. And so I think a good range is like 125 to 250 is it somewhere in there.

Now that's a big big range, right? But I think you know 120 125 you know when gold rips you know gets to $7,000 gold basically gold takes off right and I which I think is going to happen. I think the floor of gold will absolutely be $100. But I think that floor silver, yeah, it'll be $100, but it will slowly inch its way up that floor, you know, 120, 130, 150 somewhere. We we kind of won't know, but the floor is going to I think it's going to inch up.

Um, and so I think you can use 150 as a conservative number for analyzing silver miners and 200 for moderate and 250 for aggressive. I I those those are the three numbers I would use as a range of valuing silver miners. For gold, I use 7,000 to 8,000. 7,000 conservative, 7,500 moderate, 8,000 aggressive. you can and basically you can throw a range out there and that's kind of what you expect. And so

Host — Bald Guy Money

and that's why I was really looking forward to this call because I I like the way you think in the sense that even my targets which I was I've been sharing since last year put silver between $150 and $200 an ounce and gold between $7,000 and $7,500 an ounce. But I guess what I want to ask you is do you think considering what you said about gold in the month of November and then how we finished the year.

Is silver just going to follow gold up or is it going to take gold really stabilizing in that base and proving to the market that the correction is over before silver takes off? So basically do you think silver can kind of chop sideways or languish a bit longer while gold starts this recovery process?

Don Durrett

First of all, keep it really simple. Your targets are dead on. They're they're right with me and they're they're right with a lot right with a lot of people. I think these are very common sense targets. And the reason why we've come to this conclusion is everything I said earlier about the trend of gold. The reason why gold's going higher, there's there's really strong reasons why gold's going higher and not going lower, if you will. Gold goes up when you have economic problems. We haven't had any economic problems in 17 years. So connect the dots there. We're going to have problems. And when we have them, gold's going higher.

So it's it's kind of a really simple simple story, if you will. You don't The other thing is you don't focus on silver, you focus on gold, the big dog. The reason why is because gold's market is just so much bigger than silver. And gold gold is what the central banks buy. They don't buy silver, they buy gold. and silver. All you have to do is remember, okay, we now we have three examples. Three, you know, example number one, it was 1980, right? Silver outperformed gold in a big way.

It went it went to six, I forget, it's 850 divided by 50, but basically silver outperformed gold in a big way in 1980. Same thing happened in 2011. Silver went um you know it ripped when silver rips it rips fast right that we had that example it was basically um 50 divide by 19 1900 but silver outperformed gold in a big way now we have the third example was last year silver went from $35 to 120 right it went up 4x almost 4x in six months gold did gold went up didn't even go up 1x right

Host — Bald Guy Money

I think a lot of people lose sight of that don to be perfectly honest.

Don Durrett

So we have three examples of silver absolutely outperforming gold in a massive way. The same exact thing is going to happen. Silver is going to go from right now it's at 53. [laughter] So we'll call it 60 and it it's basically going to basically go up, you know, double to 120 and then double, you know, six time it'll go 3x to 180. Gold will not even double. So s that's what's going to happen. Silver is going to outperform gold. And I explained this earlier. The reason why it's very obvious is that when silver is valued as a commodity, it languishes. Right now $53.

When it's treated as a commodity, it languishes. When it's treated as a monetary metal, it rips. And the psychology turns. and and people all this it's like people are ignoring silver ignoring silver ignoring silver you know I don't need that I don't need it and then silver prices go up and they go oh that's that's an asset that's money give me some of that they it's a completely different psychology and that's that's it always happens you know now we have three examples so it's not going to be a shocker when silver outperforms gold by 2x that's what it's going to do maybe two and a halfx

Host — Bald Guy Money

I completely agree but That's also the moment I'm telling a lot of my viewers to say, "Hey, that's a moment when you should be trading into gold because of that relative long-term stability in gold versus silver." So, I just want to add that bit of spice to to the conversation for for those viewing and and really, you know, just to add also a little bit of my perspective there.

I think gold needs to kind of reprove itself in the market like you said, start regaining that momentum before that switch kind of triggers in people's minds and they start looking at silver as a monetary metal again as they did at the end of last year and early this year as the DXY was was coming down significantly. And I think that's um that's the moment again where it's going to happen but potentially again with a little bit of lag versus gold. So, it's obvious for any of the viewers, Don, we're both big bulls on on the precious metals.

And I think it's to uh important to point out that we're long-term bulls. Uh we're not trading in and out of a broader bull market. And I say that because, you know, I've received a lot of mixed comments uh lately uh especially from people who clearly interpreted my message of owning physical gold and silver for long-term financial stability in a bit of a different way. So, I just want to be clear before I ask the next question with uh respect to where I stand on that and and and why I remain bullish.

Now, uh what I'd like to ask you, Don, is what would make you change your bullish thesis on gold and silver? With all the bears out there watching potentially even this video, there are going to be some bears watching this video. What is it that would make you change your thesis to join their camp?

Don Durrett

very simply a solution to the debt problem which I don't see that happening if so if the Treasury the US government could could basically solve their debt problem get the bond market healthy again I would basically turn bearish gold and that's it that's the only thing the only only thing that would change my mind I want to go back to the two things you just mentioned talked about trading gold for excuse me trading silver for gold I absolutely agree and the reason why is because Gold is a monetary metal at all times and silver isn't and it and so this is very cyclical.

So you kind of want to get out of silver and into gold. Um but the problem is if you don't have a tax burden I absolutely so so I don't I don't stack gold. I hope hopefully I'll I'll begin. But I stack silver because until you until it's 2x I'm getting 2x of my money. Why am I stacking gold? But I would trade in a heartbeat if there was no tax implications. So, I don't know when I would do it. 250 silver, 300 silver, but if there was no tax implications, I'd swap. I I just want to mention that the the tax

Host — Bald Guy Money

a lot of people who have an IRA, for example, can make that swap within their IRA. You know, a lot of dealers offer these IAS. I'm obviously affiliated with Summit Metals. They offer IAS. There are plenty of good IAS out there. And just to everybody watching this, look out for those scammy IAS that try to sell you numismatic stuff or have, you know, uh, famous personalities, former NFL players, television personalities promoting them. That's usually a red flag if you're looking to have uh have an IRA.

Um, now, you know, we've been talking about medals publicly, the both of us, for years now, and you've been doing it much longer than I have. uh at the end of last year and obviously January of this year too, I think we saw one of the largest influxes of new metals and mining stock buyers in the retail space that at least I remember, you know, maybe rivaling what happened in the fallout of C19 when a lot of people started stacking precious metals.

And to the people out there watching this video who entered metals and mining stocks late and maybe in some cases bit off a little more than they could chew and and by the way that happens to a lot of us especially early on in our investing uh voyages, let's say. So, you know, don't feel ashamed about that. It happens to everybody. Uh a lot of these people are sitting potentially in losses right now and they're looking Don at what their alternatives are. And we touched on it a little bit earlier, but what I'd like to know is what you would tell those people.

What do you think their real options are? And you know, why their future, considering also some of the things you've already built on is if there's anything you've missed, why their future should include metals as well as some of these mining stocks.

Don Durrett

Well, that's two questions. Um, now before I answer this question, I I I when you when you were giving the question, I just want to give you props at how eloquent you are at asking questions. You you're a real pro at this. Um, much better than the average podcast host, if you will.

Host — Bald Guy Money

Thanks,

Don Durrett

you you you do a hell of a job. Your qu the way you ask your questions, how f how fast, the way you an, you know, spread them out and explain, very eloquent. You do a fantastic job. I just want to bring that up. Okay. So, now we're going to talk about people. There's basically three things I want to talk about here. The first one is your question about people that got in late and they're underwater. What the hell do they do? Right. The second one is, do I stay in this? You know, what wheel forward.

Before I do that, I wanted to talk a little bit about you said earlier about that gold needs to basically get its mojo back, right? This weak sentiment right now. I don't think that's the case at all. Um, I I I think that gold it, as we speak right now, I think it is the go-to kind of hedge, if you will. It's I think the whole dynamic around gold has shifted. I think the number of eyeballs on gold right now, I think, are absolutely huge. Huge. And and it's only going to get better. I do not think there's weak sentiment in gold. I think it's an illusion.

I think I think it's kind of that Eddie Murphy thing where, you know, trading places when he goes, I I hear that, you know, in his intuition, it's coming. You watch. Here it comes. Here it comes. I feel like here it comes. I feel like sentiment in gold is much much better than people think. Now sentiment in miners absolutely in the toilet. It's been in the toilet since 2011. It hasn't the sentiment never came back. But I think I think sentiment for the for physical gold I think is is is roaring right now. I I think I really do.

Host — Bald Guy Money

If I could add, if I could just interrupt you there because something also came to my mind and it's funny you mentioned that because I see your point completely because on one side you have the retail crowd that's looking at the price action and completely let's say demotivated by what's happened since January. On the flip side and I'm in a contact with a lot of professional investors, people who are running, you know, those family offices, etc. And they're all they they all have a different price target in mind. Some of them them they have 3,800.

Some of them it's as low as 3500 but very few of them are you most of them are talking about buying gold and getting into it. They're just waiting for that key moment. Now are some of those price targets going to hit? Who knows? But to me, I get the sense that they're coming in at at one point or another. And that one point or another is within the next 12 months.

Don Durrett

Yes, it is the go-to asset. Like I I mentioned earlier about that poll that family offices, 70% had zero. That's going to change in a big big way. Okay. Now, let's talk a little bit about the people that are underwater. These are the people that came in late to the party and they basically started like August of last year. they've been got in the last 12 months, but if you got in in August, September of last year, you're probably okay. Um, and but November forward, somewhere in there, um, actually all the way to October. November forward, especially December forward, um, you're probably underwater.

Um, and so, and the later you got in, the more underwater you are. Um, and so it's a difficult situation, but the key here is do you have more powder? Do you have more capital to spend? If you do, man, this is a beautiful time to buy. A beautiful time to buy the dip if you have capital. The reason why is the key. Now, again, I'm a speculator in gold and silver minor stocks. I'm not an investor. I do not care about the next 12 months. I don't really care about the next 24 months. I I I've been doing this for 20 years and I've been accumulating mining stocks.

Accumulating them. I have 165 I think mining stocks and then another 10 ETF mutual funds and plus physical. I'm basically all in on gold and silver but trying to make money on gold and silver miners collecting stocks, collecting them for a specific trade. It's not an investment. I don't do this you you know to make money on a 12-month basis. I don't care. Like I said, I ignore the next 12 months. It's all for me, it's all noise. I'm trying to hit a thesis. It's very similar to the Michael Bur trade when he basically he was a value investor.

He sold all his value investing stocks and put all of it into market back securities. You know, it was a trade for him. He's basically but he was he basically he basically one day he basically said this is this is going to work. He he basically and I came to the same conclusion with with gold and silver miners. this is gonna work. I don't know. Now, he basically had a time range around 2000, like three, two to three years was his expectations for this whole thing to crash. I don't have a timeline.

My my timeline is I mentioned this earlier that the bond market is the heart of the US economy and the bond market is is basically flawed because you can't live on debt. Eventually, your bond market's going to break. And so I that's my thesis. My thesis is the bond market's going to break. I firmly believe that and I'll just keep collecting miners. And so so since since that's my thesis, I have something I call buy smart, sell smart. And buying smart is basically getting as low entry as you can get, as good an entry as you can get. You don't want to get a bad entry.

And the best entries are when you have deep corrections. I remember when the hui was under 200. I was like, you know, I was a pig in mud. Whenever the hi got under 200. So the hy is at 600 now. So I buying stocks when it was under 200. Whenever it got under 200, I'm like bye bye bye, you know, and I'd run out of cash and have to, you know, reload kind of thing. But I I usually buy monthly and I'm lucky because I've always had income. And so every month you have income, you know, you basically I buy a stock. I try to buy a new stock.

And so I I and I accumulate.

Host — Bald Guy Money

I'm going to share a little bit of an anecdote that some of my viewers probably aren't going to like, but some of the people who have been watching me since I started on YouTube, you you might appreciate this one. So, back in 2019, I found out actually in back in 2017, I found out about Bitcoin and I started buying it in 2019 and I wrote it basically all the way up to the top in 2021 and I didn't sell and wrote it all the way back down.

Now, back then I had this thesis and I did a video about it on YouTube and the thesis was and it was a thesis that I believed in was that Bitcoin was going to be kind of adopted and made official within the the financial system and we'd see ETFs launched for Bitcoin and and I'll pull up the the image on the screen just to show you all that I'm not full of it.

What I said was that my my price target for when this happened and I believed it was going to happen, which is why I'd never exited the trade, was that that would bring the price to between 85,000 and I believe it was 125 or $130,000 per Bitcoin. And I said, that's my sell place. So, I wrote it all the way back down and I started accumulating again heavily in the 20s in around 20,000. My Patreon members will remember me beating the drum on on that one.

And last year in November, basically, I believe [clears throat] it was November at 111,000, I came on to YouTube and I said, "Okay, we've we've we've achieved what what I believed in." Now, do I think that, you know, for those of you who are are metals metal heads as well as Bitcoiners? Yeah, sure. I I think on a speculative basis that Bitcoin can even go higher than that and that's why when I when I sold out I kept one bitcoin on the side that I basically have no at no cost to myself.

So that that's also a bit of an anecdote to those of you out there watching this who are so concerned about this and and building on what Don said really either you believe in those higher gold and silver targets and that a major correction in the stock market is happening that the bond market is weak and that debt is unsustainable or you don't believe those things and I think that's an important question everybody watching this video needs to ask themselves in order to remain uh in the trade, if you look at it as a trade, I don't look at the precious metals as a trade.

I look at it as kind of a long-term thing. Um, and I look at the at the miners as a speculative trade. Uh, but since I mentioned Bitcoin, I noticed before we started the call, Bitcoin was briefly fell below $80,000. I don't know where it is right now, but anyways, it's been experiencing a bit of a correction this weekend. I wanted to ask you, Don, if you think the correction that we're seeing this weekend in Bitcoin is potentially a canary in the coal mine that we're going to see the markets coming down still heading into the Federal Reserve meeting, which is happening, of course, on Wednesday.

And I will be doing a a bonus video midweek to talk about the fallout of the Federal Reserve decision. Uh for those of you who want to see that and are expecting that, I will do such a video.

But I want to ask you, Don, do you think what we're seeing this weekend in Bitcoin is kind of telling us that at least in the first few days of of next week, we're probably going to see markets, including potentially metals, come down a bit more, which would kind of be a sign for people who are really eager to hit the buy button this weekend to say, "Hey, let the trading start this week before you do your DCA this month." for example,

Don Durrett

as far as physical gold um and and and and Bitcoin right now, I I think we can I I think there's a really good chance because a lot of times when you buy those, you basically make pretty big purchases. I I I would be a little I think silver right now at 53 is a really good entry. Even if we go to 48, you're not going to miss it by much. But um with it's tough Bitcoin, I would I would be a little patient. I would wait for sub 75, maybe sub 70. Um, gold, you know, I think we're going to see 3,800.

I would probably, if I was going to buy some physical gold, I would probably be patient here and and try to get it at 38. 30. I would be a little patient on Bitcoin and gold, and I'd basically be aggressive on silver right now.

Host — Bald Guy Money

I appreciate it. It was great. And thanks for taking this on such short notice. I really enjoyed the the call. I was telling my wife earlier today like I'm really looking forward to talk uh to talking to Don because our last call I just enjoyed it so much. So thanks again for coming on and I hope we can do it again soon. Maybe in the new year. Let's see, you know, obviously what happens after these midterm elections, November into the end of the year and early next year and let's get together again and and take stock of the situation.

Don Durrett

Yeah. Yeah. January would be great. Middle of January.

Host — Bald Guy Money

Excellent. Take care, Don.

You own nothing. Those are all intangibles. They are all inside the system. If those overvalued intangible assets fall, you take the loss.

Because the real question isn't how many investments you own. It's how much of your wealth you actually control.

Take a look at this Bloomberg headline. High earners are actually choosing not to max out their 401(k)s because they want more control over their money.

Now look at the Schwab chart. Savings accounts, IRAs, brokerage accounts, health savings accounts. Look at all those choices.

But you want to know something that I really want you to recognize?

You own nothing. Those are all intangibles. They are all inside the system.

And this is what I really want you to recognize: Most of these are different forms of money or wealth. They're different ways of holding financial claims inside that same system.

And every one of those accounts comes with rules, restrictions, and somebody standing between you and your wealth—and taking lots of pieces of it, by the way.

So think about that. You worked for that fiat money. You gave up hours of your life that you can never get back. And now, to access the value of that labor, you have to go through somebody else's system, and they're also dictating the value.

Here's the reality: If you don't hold it, you don't own it, and you need permission to access it. Period.

And governments understand exactly how to encourage people to keep their wealth inside that system.

Look at what Ireland just announced: a brand-new savings scheme. Doesn't that sound wonderful?

Well, wait a minute. This isn't about putting fiat money aside and keeping it safe. Heck no. It's designed to encourage people to move their savings into stocks, bonds, and investment funds.

They call it democratization. Pay attention to that word. I hear it all the time.

I call it expanding the pool of people whose savings can be pulled into the system.

Because a debt-based financial system needs fresh capital to keep asset prices elevated, debts financed, and promises intact.

In other words, there always must be new money coming into every Ponzi scheme, and the public must have confidence in the system so they keep using it.

But listen to this scheme.

The first 50,000 euros gets favorable tax treatment. Above that, there's a proposed annual 1% tax on the excess account value.

And that tax isn't based on whether you made money or lost money. It's simply based on the excess account value.

Now, let's look at the full cycle. And I want you to expand your thought process on this.

The central bank expands the fiat currency and credit supply, pushing up the fiat-denominated prices of financial assets.

But at that same time, inflation is reducing the purchasing power of your labor and your savings.

And then you're encouraged to move those savings into financial assets whose prices have already been inflated by that same system.

Do you see what I'm saying here?

They encourage you to go into a system, reduce the value of your labor by inflicting inflation on you, and then, on top of that, tax the inflated value.

If those overvalued intangible assets fall, you take the loss. If their fiat value rises because the government did this, the government can tax that higher valuation.

And I know it's complicated. That's why I've tried to explain it a few different ways, so you can see what's happening.

I mean, it's evil genius. There's no doubt about it.

But through all of it, you still do not hold the real asset. You need permission from the bank, brokerage, custodian, or platform to access it.

Think about that.

Your labor is devalued. Your savings are pushed into potentially overvalued financial claims. The government taxes the inflated fiat value, and you still need permission to access what you supposedly own.

Well, I'm sorry. To me, that's not a savings incentive.

That's a wealth transfer mechanism disguised as an opportunity to save.

And who determines the rules? Who would that be? Oh, yeah. The government.

Who holds the assets? Financial intermediaries.

And whose markets benefit when more fiat money flows in? Not yours.

Now, let's go to Mexico, because this is where you can really see what's happening to retirement wealth.

Oh my goodness, look at this chart.

Mexican pension funds hold approximately 4.3 trillion pesos in government debt.

Where did all that fiat money come from?

The workers. People spending their lives working, putting fiat money aside, and believing they're building financial security for retirement.

Look what happens. The retirement funds become buyers of government IOUs.

And in case you think that doesn't happen everywhere, what do you think is in Social Security?

When there were excess funds, the U.S. government borrowed them. There are just IOUs in there now.

So here it's simple.

The government gets a market for its debt, and the workers get a promise that they'll be paid in the future with fiat money that has less and less purchasing power.

And down the road, what are they going to be paid in?

More fiat money. More fiat currency that governments and central banks can expand, reducing what each unit buys over time. And as we're seeing with sticky inflation, it doesn't take very long.

So the worker takes all the risk while the system benefits from access to that accumulated capital.

And here's the part that I really want you to think about.

Your retirement savings can be supporting government borrowing and corporate borrowing while you're counting on those same financial promises to support you.

And that brings us to the most important question of all.

Whose financial stability are you really working for?

Who decides what you can buy?

Who actually holds your assets?

Who benefits from your labor?

And what happens when you need access during a crisis?

Because here's the truth.

Having five different accounts inside the same financial system is not true diversification.

You're still dependent on financial institutions, government rules, and a currency that, by design, loses purchasing power.

And remember what purchasing power represents: the value of your labor, those hours of your life you've already spent.

That's why I'm such a strong advocate for physical gold and silver.

When you personally hold physical gold and silver, you're holding monetary assets that are not somebody else's promise to pay. You don't need anybody's permission to possess them.

And that's what true diversification is about.

Holding wealth outside the financial system and, if you're so inclined—or because you may not have any choice—inside the financial system as well, rather than depending entirely on financial claims.

Here at Zang International, we help you create and build protection before the system forces that decision on you.

Physical gold and physical silver that you own, control, and hold outside the financial system.

So give us a call today, because once urgency becomes an emergency, frankly, your choices get smaller, not bigger.

Because the real question isn't how many investments you own. It's how much of your wealth you actually control.

So thank you for being part of this extremely important conversation. And wherever you are in the world, please be safe out there.

And remember, sovereignty begins with what you choose to own.

Imagine the purchasing power of your currency suddenly falls by 50%, but your salary and bank balance remain unchanged. What would you change first? Bonus question: who might actually benefit from such a dramatic change?

Was there a particular purchase, experience, or moment when you noticed your dollars weren't going as far as they used to? Maybe it was groceries, housing, or simply comparing prices from your childhood. I'm curious what first made people question the purchasing power of their money.

If you own property in California, you're not safe. A new ballot measure will empower the state to confiscate a percentage of the assets of any resident, even though its initial provisions don't communicate that intent. California's "One-Time Wealth Tax for State-Funded Healthcare, Education, and Food Assistance Programs Initiative," which has already qualified for the November ballot, is even worse than it appears.

It's not as if appearances aren't bad enough. The explicit intent of the initiative already chased at least six billionaires out of the state in 2025. Moved to Florida are Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, along with PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. Nevada is now home to billionaire Don Hankey, and Texas has welcomed former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick. Famed director Steven Spielberg has moved to New York, apparently concluding even that deep blue state is a safer bet than California. Just the departure of these six men has lowered the potential take from the wealth tax by an estimated $27 billion.

A Hoover Institution study claims that another 20 California billionaires have already made departure plans and will leave immediately if the initiative is approved by voters. One of the initiative's many diabolical provisions is that it will apply retroactively to anyone living in the state after January 1, 2026, but unlike the six who got out in 2025, this next tranche of would-be exiles have been advised by their attorneys that the initiative's retroactivity will not survive a constitutional challenge.

Other details of this initiative are likely to survive court challenges, and they reveal a stunning level of aggression toward wealth. If you live in California, and this bill is approved by voters, you will have to pay a "one-time" tax of 5 percent of your "covered assets" valued over $1 billion. "Covered assets" include unrealized gains in the value of stock owned by employees of private companies. It is unlikely the framers of this initiative didn't understand the implications of this provision. Valuations of private companies are subjective, volatile, and illiquid. An employee with stock options valued at a few billion in the last private equity round could be assessed tens of millions of dollars in wealth tax on money they don't actually have access to, based on a value that could plummet at any moment.

It gets worse. The language of the wealth act provides for what amounts to unrestricted escalation of its reach, something that will surely become necessary when high earners are driven away, taking their taxable assets with them. Built into the 2026 Billionaire Tax Act is the right of the state legislature to amend its provisions with a two-thirds vote. That would include lowering the $1 billion threshold, replacing "one-time" with an annual assessment, and eliminating the exemptions currently present for real estate and retirement accounts. The wording of this initiative is purposely designed to give the state legislature the authority to override the property tax protections afforded by Proposition 13, passed by voters in 1978 and one of the only obstacles left that prevents the state from stripping the state's middle class of assets they've earned and stewarded over generations.

It is ridiculous to think California's state legislature cannot muster a two-thirds vote, anytime they wish, in order to extend the reach of the "Billionaire Tax Act" down to "millionaires," which, in California, is almost anyone who has owned their own home for more than a decade. In both houses of California's state legislature, 75 percent of the seats are held by Democrats. The overwhelming percentage of Democrats in California, and, for that matter, a sizable portion of the state's dwindling contingent of Republicans, are controlled by the state's powerful public sector unions. And more than anything else, these unions have one guiding principle: grow government, because bigger government means more membership, and more membership means more dues revenue. That's the reason that the top 10, if not the top 50, largest contributors to winning campaigns for seats in the state legislature are all public sector unions.

To grow support for more government, you must grow dependency on government, and to that end, California's state legislature has engineered a perfect storm. Every decade, more regulations buried small emerging competitive businesses, allowing the biggest and most politically compliant businesses to gain captive markets. And in complying with the state's overregulation, lacking competition, these politically favored businesses passed the increased costs of regulatory compliance on to their customers. Voila, California's energy, water, transportation, higher education, housing, and all government services became increasingly unaffordable. And as households, by the millions, could no longer afford to survive economically, government aid stepped in to fill the gap.

The numbers support this assessment. Between 2010 and 2025, when the state's total population only increased incrementally by about 1.5 million people, the number of participants in California's taxpayer-funded food aid benefits soared from 3.7 million to 5.5 million, and the state's Medi-Cal enrollment exploded from 7 million to 15 million, over one-third of the population.

Everything California's state government has done over the past 15 years has exploded commensurately. The state General Fund in 2010 was $87 billion. In 2025 it was $228 billion. Even adjusting for inflation, spending more than doubled when the total population barely budged. And what of this population?

Over the period from 2010 to 2025, nearly 10 million people moved from California to other states. The people moving into California and the people choosing to remain in California are increasingly characterized as either high-income residents who can withstand the high cost of living or low-income residents who depend on government assistance. California's Gini Coefficient, at 0.49, puts it in a virtual tie with New York and Connecticut as the states with the worst income inequality in the nation. To claim this is the fault of billionaires is a convenient lie, promulgated by the very politicians whose own policies were the true cause.

It ought to be clear to anyone who has spent any time in sunny California, a place blessed with literally every scenic amenity imaginable from alpine peaks to sandy beaches, the best wine on earth and spectacular coastal cities, that the only thing that could possibly induce them to not want to live here permanently would be an overtly hostile government. And that's exactly what has happened. Every major challenge California faces is the product of a government that has decided to serve itself instead of the people.

The model of "democracy" that California has perfected can be summed up in one sentence: overregulate an economy to make life unaffordable without government handouts, then win elections by promising more government handouts to people who can't live without them. It is unsustainable, because as the old cliche goes, pretty soon you run out of other people's money. The exodus of California's wealthiest residents is the latest iteration of this doom loop.

Far removed from idealistic fantasies sold to voters, this is the reality of progressive politics in California. Given half a chance, it will be exported to the rest of the nation.

https://amgreatness.com/2026/06/03/californias-wealth-tax-is-coming-for-everyone/

Statism is the gradual replacement of civil society, markets, savings, and individual choice by political control, public spending, regulation, taxation, and monetary intervention.

In most developed economies, and increasingly in the United States since 2008, the dominant force is not free-market capitalism but a model of big government, chronic deficit spending, high debt, rising taxes, monetary debasement, regulatory obstruction, and political interventionism that protects insiders while penalizing new entrants. That is why so many millionaires and wealthy people support socialism. It is the perfect way to eliminate a merit-based system, obliterate competition, and keep privileges provided by political affiliation while demanding even more government control. Few people are richer and more powerful than socialist tyrants and their enablers. Meanwhile, socialism needs poor people that stay poor and remain submissive to the state.

Artificial money creation is never neutral. It disproportionately benefits governments and owners of assets that can protect themselves from monetary inflation. At the same time, it always hurts real wages, deposit savings, and those with no assets. Socialism is often sold as a rebellion against privilege, but in practice it is one of the most effective tools ever designed to entrench it. The bigger the state, the more valuable political access becomes. The more interventionist the system, the easier it is for large incumbents, bureaucracies, and connected interests to dictate regulation, capture subsidies, suppress competition, and decide who receives favors.

Brij Khurana, a fixed-income portfolio manager at Wellington Management writes in the Financial Times: “Perhaps there is no better example of the K-shaped nature of the US economy than the fact that employee compensation has fallen to 50 per cent of GDP, its lowest level since 1947, while household net worth is close to an all-time high of 546 per cent relative to GDP. This dichotomy helps explain the resurgence of socialism among younger Americans. Gen Z depends disproportionately on wages, whose purchasing power has been eroded by inflation, while baby boomers hold much of the country’s accumulated wealth. It is this wealth effect that is increasingly responsible for the inflation that remains in the US economy. Excluding shelter, core inflation has been relatively stable at about 2 per cent for the past three years. The stickiest components of inflation are related to housing, restaurants, travel and other services where demand is tied to wealth.

Socialism replaces success-driven inequality with a politically directed one. However, in statism inequality is a matter of price, not availability. Socialism leads to hyperinflation and scarcity because it ignores economic calculation and uses the debasement of currency to expropriate the wealth created by the remains of the private sector and keep citizens dependent and submissive, while the political leaders enjoy the perks of privilege. When the state spends too much and the central bank disguises the consequences, citizens are told they are being protected. However, they are being impoverished through currency dilution and asset inflation.

Howdy everyone,

My name is Shawn.

I’m 42 years old, a married guy, living in Illinois (USA).

I joined because I’m interested in this topic and would love to learn more about it as a skill.

I’m a big forum guy and am even on the support team that powers this forum. I run a few myself and blogs, too. I love blogging.

Other than that, I’m really into the outdoors and you can usually find me somewhere on a trail.

Thanks for having me! 🙂

Host:

Hi, welcome back to the Della Cambona show with a blockbuster interview. Today we have Mitch Vexler back on. He’s been exposing what he calls a clear pattern of fraud in property tax appraisals and the trillions in school district bonds built on top of them. Today we’re digging into his latest report, Who Watches The Watcher? — the illusion of oversight, the compromised review boards, and how political fixes keep changing the subject while the real allegations stay uninvestigated. This also connects to the bigger market risk. In my recent conversation with Michael Pento, he warned about his models and the U.S. dollar. Mitch is going to challenge those models head-on. What happens when you force in the fraud data? The school bonds lose all credibility and the panic hits Treasuries. He argues a controlled demolition of those bonds is better than a greater depression. We’re going to dig in right now. Mitch Vexler, welcome back. It’s a big one.

Mitch Vexler:

Yes, it’s been very busy. We’re about to get filed more than likely within the next 10 days. The Supreme Court of the United States claim is fairly simple: Does any state Supreme Court have the authority to deny, via deprivation of rights under color of law, any citizen’s access to both state constitutional law and federal constitutional law? The obvious answer is no.

What we’re asking the Supreme Court of the United States to do is reverse and remand. There’s also a follow-up petition going to the Sherman Federal Court under U.S. Code 42 sections 1983, 1985, and 1986. It’s a civil claim going after the chief appraiser and the entire bench of the Supreme Court of Texas individually for deprivation of rights under color of law. We’re doing that civilly, but deprivation of rights under color of law, sections 241 and 242, is also a federal crime.

Host:

A big part of the puzzle that happened since the last time we spoke is that President Trump is aware of this. Walk us through what he knows.

Mitch Vexler:

When I did the Fraud Fighters presentation, I had no idea what to expect. I was simply told there were people there who had access. It turns out they had more than access — they had President Trump on speed dial, including Peter Thiel himself. I spent several hours with Peter Thiel in the back room, off the floor where it was quieter, speaking with him every 20 minutes or so. It was a crazy event, but he understood what was happening.

At that same meeting with Peter Thiel was David Kenny, a bar-licensed Supreme Court of the United States appellate attorney. He has a sister case in California about the bond fraud. His dollar amounts are much smaller than what I’ve discovered, but the pattern and practice to defraud is identical.

When you mentioned Michael Pento and he used the word “model,” that was right up my alley. Around 2:00 in the morning I got an idea: “Okay, you want a model? I’ll give you a model across the United States.” This pattern and practice is occurring everywhere, and it’s not by accident — it’s by intent.

Over the last year to year and a half I’ve been collecting audits from attorneys general across the United States who are auditing school districts and/or central appraisal districts. We’ve quantified the problems. We haven’t quantified them for every jurisdiction, but the pattern of practice is excruciatingly real and identical. We proved it in Volume One and Volume Two of the Pattern in Practice. Danielle is the only one who has the copies right now, but within about four or five hours those two documents will be posted to my website. There’s no way out. I didn’t invent this.

Attorneys general for different states had their own audits. I simply mapped it out. It took a couple of days, then I used AI to identify the common thread. One document is about 35 pages, the other about 39 pages — down from over 3,000 pages of audits. I went after the common thread: the laws that were broken. Even the attorneys general themselves don’t have this compiled this way. This documentation is going to be used in court.

Host:

These are bombshell documents. Have you heard back from the president’s office? Has there been feedback?

Mitch Vexler:

Not directly. There are meetings happening today. There was a meeting yesterday with various people. The goal is simple: I need Solicitor General Sauer’s signature on one piece of paper I’ve already prepared — the Motion for Expedited Hearing. With that one piece of paper, this case should be heard within 60 to 90 days at the Supreme Court of the United States.

This is a national security risk. This is not a property tax case. Imagine if another state did what the Texas Supreme Court did: deny a citizen access to the courts — deprivation of rights — not just one citizen, but 32 million Texans. That is what the Supreme Court of Texas did. They violated their oath of office. They violated the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Texas. They prohibited adjudication of a known, proven, deemed-admitted fraud.

Host:

It is happening in other states.

Mitch Vexler:

Think of it this way. What happens if Oklahoma, or any state, does the same thing the Texas Supreme Court did? The Constitution of the United States vanishes. It’s deemed meaningless by rogue courts. Who would have thought the biggest rogue court at the moment is here in Texas?

Multiple people are now reaching out. I’ve reached out three times, left messages. They have the emails. I’m even sending it through their Supreme Court channel. They could look at it and say they’re busy. They’re not that busy. This may very well be the largest case Solicitor General Sauer has on his plate right now. It comes down to two paragraphs:

Does the Supreme Court of Texas have the right to deny any citizen or citizens their constitutional rights?

The answer is no. Reverse and remand. That’s what we need the Supreme Court of the United States to do. Very simple.

The balance of the case under 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983, 1985, and 1986 will be heard in the Sherman Federal Court. This isn’t going away. It’s getting bigger and compounding.

Back to Michael Pento’s point: Model this, everybody on Wall Street who thinks you’re so smart. How does your model look when you take into account $5.1 trillion? That number is light — admittedly extremely light — but it’s quantifiable. Take $5.1 trillion into your bond model numbers and figure out how it’s going to get paid for. It isn’t.

Models on bonds are based on credibility. Mathematically, the $5.1 trillion could in theory work at 13 cents on the dollar and be paid off over time if all expenses and interest were frozen today — which isn’t going to happen. But when this blows, what goes with it simultaneously within hours? U.S. government bonds — the 2s, 5s, 7s, 10s, 30s. They will drop in value within hours.

Markets are about price discovery. When an algorithm gets nervous and sees the words “credibility” and “bond” in the same sentence, you’re talking hours for virtual complete destruction. The algorithm builds speed based on volatility. Volatility will spike because the credibility is gone.

This problem could be resolved by repealing all property taxes in favor of a uniform state sales tax and immediately wiping out the bonds. You kill the $5.1 trillion. It’s like giving up the queen to save the king. The king is U.S. government bonds. You cannot let them get infected by the school district bonds.

Model that into everybody’s current bond portfolios and you start seeing the panic. When the algorithms pick up the panic, everything goes bad real fast and nobody can stop it.

Host:

That’s an excellent analogy. The obvious question is: of course they’d want to save the king, right? But do they see it as too much of a risk right now to sacrifice the queen?

Mitch Vexler:

At that presentation I knew there were federal officials in the room. I laid the case down simply and spent an hour in front of about 780 people. I said: if you can disprove anything I’ve said in this presentation or anything in the Second Amendment to the criminal complaint delivered to the FBI, DOJ, SEC, and IRS, I’m begging you — please. If anything is wrong, we’ll fix it. But I know you can’t. You also can’t disprove the 403 pages of the Second Amendment, the First Amendment, or the original criminal complaint. If you can’t disprove it, then it happened.

All of this is a matter of getting the case heard. Had the first court said, “Vexler, we’re going to hear this case,” we wouldn’t be having this discussion. What this case has done is lay bare the criminality of the courts themselves protecting known, proven, deemed-admitted fraud.

Hence the piece Who Watches the Watcher? Volume One covers how many audits occurred and the common thread. Volume Two maps the local level — not just state, but local taxation and local school district bond levels. No matter how you slice this, they knew these bonds were toxic. That word “toxic” appeared in the California Policy Center document in 2015. The State of Texas knew it was bad in 2015. They kicked the can down the road to the point where this is more than likely going to blow up in fairly short order.

Host:

If it does blow up, is that the “reset” so many other experts speak of?

Mitch Vexler:

When they say “reset,” let’s bifurcate it. On one hand you have currency — make no mistake, we are in a currency war. If we weren’t, we wouldn’t be doing these tariffs. That’s one column.

On the other column, the word “reset” pales in comparison to the reality. The reality is that $5.1 trillion is 80 times bigger than Enron. Enron shook the globe.

These school district bonds — or any bonds for that matter — are paid for within the Federal Reserve system itself. The Federal Reserve has a reverse repo that can take bonds at face value. I’ve already stated the school district bonds are worth in theory 13 cents on the dollar. In truth they’re a liability, because when this blows the lawsuits will run rampant. They are not an asset. Yet the Federal Reserve will accept them at face value. I believe the Federal Reserve is completely clueless about how the impact of these bonds will actually work.

Let’s use a simple school bus example. A bus bought 20 years ago had a five-year shelf life. They built bonds upon it. Over 20 years the debt load on that bus is up 4x the original cost. Every time they issued a new bond — say a seven-year bond — they never paid off the first one. They rolled it into a new bond, then another, then another. I don’t believe this can be undone. There’s no system that can go backwards because they don’t hold the CUSIPs that long.

The median household income doesn’t exist to pay this off under any circumstance. This is the abject definition of bankruptcy. When I say the bonds are worth somewhere between 13 and 30 cents on the dollar in theory, I’ll take the opposite side and tell you these things are a liability. There’s no asset here.

It’s worse because the Federal Reserve can use the reverse repo window to cover the banks at face value. Remember 2008 and the big to-do about rating agencies? These are the same rating agencies today claiming these bonds are worth AA or BB. These bonds are sub-junk. The simple reason: mom and pop don’t have the money to pay this off. This is compound cumulative interest on top of compound fraud. It’s a Ponzi scheme.

Host:

For the middle class, for the mom and pops — does everyone just go broke? What does life look like?

Mitch Vexler:

It’s not necessary. This can be fixed more than likely within 10 days. At the federal level, via executive order for example, repeal all property tax. Wipe it out. You have to replace it with something, so replace it with a uniform state sales tax. In Texas it might be 15% total; in Montana 9%. It’s only going up 3 or 4% from where you are today. But mom and pop get their properties back. Every institution gets their property back. When you pay that property off, it’s yours. You own it. That’s your retirement.

Right now what you have is equity stripping. The amortization that should go back into your pocket is being transferred into the pockets of the central appraisal districts and the school districts. They’re equity-stripping your mortgage. Not only do you not fully own the property because of the property taxes, but more money is coming out of your pocket.

We broke it down recently: if you had a $220,000 home five years ago, based on Federal Reserve rates it might reasonably be worth around $270,000. That isn’t what happened. Through the fraud they said your $220,000 home is now worth $440,000 — up 100% in five years. Property owners think they’re happy. Happy on what? They’re broke. The person who owned that $220,000 home just wrote a check over five years for the fraud component, not the real estate. The $400,000 or $600,000 number isn’t real. It’s a fraud. The rating agencies are dead wrong.

Host:

Speaking from a Canadian perspective — I know you’re Canadian and now live in Texas — if you take a city like Toronto, it’s amplified. You cannot buy a home today without $160,000 income and live comfortably. Canada has the same Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice. They just put a “C” in front of USPAP. Same document.

Mitch Vexler:

USPAP isn’t the problem. The problem is nobody ever read it. They’re not using it. They claim they do — go to any central appraisal district website and it says they adhere to USPAP. Mass appraisal standards require adherence to USPAP. It isn’t happening. This is fraud by intent. This is no accident. That’s what Volume One and Volume Two of the Pattern of Practice prove through the attorneys general audits themselves. I didn’t make this up.

Within 60 to 120 days there are going to be major political shifts. The Canadian people have had enough. The American citizens I’m speaking to — and I’m getting emails by the hour — have had enough. The money simply isn’t there.

If the Supreme Court of the United States allowed the Supreme Court of Texas to get away with deprivation of rights — and it’s not even up for debate that is what happened — what would be the net result if the American people no longer had the privileges under the Constitution? The answer is civil war. That was the founding of the United States. The War of Independence was fought over this exact issue: taxation without representation. Representation means the law.

Canada has the same problem. They don’t have the same constitutional structure, but they have an awful lot of very angry people and a lot of very poor politicians. Something bad is going to happen. The reason I’m doing this is because I saw it coming in 2016–2017. We started calculating the math in 2017. The goal then was to stop that something bad from happening.

You’re now seeing these problems play out live in London, Ireland, Germany. They have the exact same problem: the calculation of taxes stripping citizens’ money. It’s the property taxes that are the problem. And USPAP is global.

The truth is a very simple fix: get rid of the property tax in favor of a uniform state sales tax and wipe out the fraudsters. Look at what’s happening in Minnesota. The national press hasn’t figured out that the nexus of where that money comes from to create the fraud is mom and pop. Mom and pop are paying for the fraud to be committed against them. It’s the property taxes.

The only answer is repeal the property tax in favor of the uniform state sales tax. Get rid of the central appraisal districts. Get rid of the tax assessor-collectors. Get rid of all these boards that claim to know what they’re doing.

Host:

Those people want to hold on to their positions.

Mitch Vexler:

You can’t hold on to something that wasn’t yours to begin with. Or you end up in something 80 times worse than 2007 — or worse — because now it will infect U.S. government bonds due to one word: credibility.

If the U.S. government doesn’t stand up and say “enough — $5.1 trillion, bankrupt the school districts that participated in the fraud,” that is the credibility. Letting this fester and blow up means U.S. government bonds go with them. I don’t know what the trigger could be — it could be Japan; Japan is in a world of hurt on their bonds right now. No one knows the exact trigger or the exact damage. But what we do know is quantifiable: these school district bonds and the property taxes.

People sell these bonds under two words: “unlimited tax.” There’s no such thing. It’s a bald-faced lie. I defy anybody on this planet to show me an unlimited tax. The entire structure is 100% fraudulent.

At that presentation four weeks ago in Vegas I showed a chart called the Infection Rate Spreadsheet — the same infection-rate math used in COVID to determine how fast a disease rolls through a community. If you have three bad property comparisons, within 60 days you’re at about 12% corrupted data at the central appraisal district. On tape, Don Spencer, the chief appraiser of Denton Central Appraisal District, stated they took 60,000 properties outside of the database, manipulated them in Excel, and put them back. Take 60,000 plus the three and you’re at roughly 50% corrupt within 60 days. Take that out three years and you have a 100% corrupted database.

That one document proved there is not a single central appraisal district in the United States that can adhere to USPAP. It’s a mathematical impossibility. The fraud is up and down the chain, all the way into the Supreme Court of Texas itself.

The goal is to stop a disaster from happening. Recognize the disaster. This is fixable very quickly — probably within 10 days the switch can be flipped so the damage is minimized. Those who invested in these bonds are going to lose. Sue the people who sold you this garbage if you want. But even though it’s $5.1 trillion, we haven’t seen a portfolio that holds more than 2% of these school district bonds. The real mom-and-pop economic damage is minimal. But you cannot keep paying on something that’s bankrupt for the next 30 years while they keep ordering more bonds “for the children.” None of this money — the operations and maintenance or the interest and sinking fund — is going to any children. We’ve even found hidden investment pools. The teachers themselves are getting ripped off and have no clue those pools are there.

It’s up and down the chain. The two largest purveyors of fraud on the planet are the Federal Reserve and the school districts.

Host:

You started working on this in 2017. I’ve been with you on this journey for a little over a year now, and it’s pretty terrifying to see the trajectory. We have the bond risk and the fraud risk, but now you’re talking about the risk to the U.S. Constitution and the risk of civil war. This is a whole other ball game.

Mitch Vexler:

That’s why when Michael Pento mentioned the word “model,” I said fine — we’ll prove it, and we’ll prove that the people using these models don’t have access to this information. They don’t know I exist. They don’t know the website exists. Everybody should go look at the amount of evidence on the website.

You mentioned the word “reset.” Reset of what? The only thing that is truly secure is something in your hands. You’re right back to the metals. Even if the government said we’re going to back currency in motion (M1 and M2) at 40%, gold goes somewhere around $40,000 an ounce.

Could they do a basket — gold, silver, corn, oil? Absolutely. Would I like to see that? Sure, because it lends credibility. This whole thing really comes down to credibility. We have a U.S. Constitution that does not just guide the United States — we’re the backbone for the globe. If that Constitution is rendered meaningless, we have an extraordinarily serious problem.

This itty-bitty thing people perceived as a tax case has turned into something Solicitor General Sauer has nothing more important to do. This is the biggest case right here, right now. This is a national security risk.

We’re way past a tax case. They should have left this alone and said “we’ll let this go.” The first judge didn’t, and the other judges allowed it to happen all the way up the chain. There’s no defense because the law exists. Deprivation of rights under color of law is real — both civil and criminal. The math clearly exists. We’ve provided every stitch of it. The facts exist.

What we haven’t hit yet is a judge willing to take this on. We’re now at the point where we have to go to the Supreme Court of the United States to reverse and remand the Supreme Court of Texas before the bonds blow up and we end up in civil war.

Host:

Mitch Vexler — you can learn more at Mockingbird Properties. He’s fighting the good fight. God bless Mitch and all the work you’re doing.

To the people on Wall Street: you have power, you have reach. Study the website. Go look at Volume One and Volume Two of the Pattern in Practice. Tell me your models take this into account — I tell you they don’t. Reach the politicians you know, all the way to the top. Now is the time. This case needs to be heard at the Supreme Court of the United States.

Thank you, Mitch. We’ll bring you back soon and hopefully have some good news the next time we speak. Thank you all for watching.

Mitch mentioned metals, and of course we both believe you should be owning physical metals in times like this. Mitch, do you get bogged down by the price? Are you chasing the price of gold and silver every day?

Mitch Vexler:

No. There’s somebody you and I both know, and there’s a standing order a little bit below where we are now, but it’s big enough to fill a pickup.

Host:

That person is now heading the global division of ITM Trading. We’ve gone international, so we’re able to service Canadian clients, clients in Europe, wherever you are in the world. We’re trying to help people outside the U.S. take back some control by holding physical gold and silver. Reach out to my colleagues at ITM Trading. Mitch, we’ll see you soon.

Mitch Vexler:

Perfect. I appreciate it. Thank you very much.

Host:

Thank you all for watching. We’ll have more great content coming your way.

VPNs are extremely popular these days, lots of people use them while browsing the internet. I've only used Proton's free VPN in the past but I honestly don't use a VPN that often. I probably should start using one though. Anyways do you currently use a VPN and if so which one do you use?

Economic students today have access to more information than any generation before them. Inflation figures, interest rates, employment data, government debt, GDP, bond yields and central-bank announcements can be accessed almost instantly.

But having more data does not necessarily mean having better information.

With AI-generated articles, social-media commentary, revised government statistics and economic charts being shared without context, knowing where a figure came from is becoming just as important as understanding the figure itself.

This raises an important question for monetary-policy education:

Should students be taught how to verify economic data before they are taught how to interpret it?

For example, students researching inflation or interest rates might compare information from sources such as:

• Bank of England

• Office for National Statistics (ONS)

• Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED)

• International Monetary Fund (IMF)

• World Bank

• OECD

• Bank for International Settlements (BIS)

• Government and central-bank historical archives

Historical data is particularly important. Looking only at today's economy can make a policy decision appear unusual, while comparing it with the inflation shocks, recessions, banking crises and interest-rate cycles of previous decades can completely change the discussion.

There is also another problem: economic data gets revised.

The GDP figure reported today may not be the same figure recorded several months later. Employment statistics, productivity estimates and other major indicators can also change as better information becomes available.

That means students should arguably learn to ask:

Who produced this data? When was it published? Has it been revised? What methodology was used? Is the chart showing nominal or real values? Is the source reporting facts, estimates or forecasts?

These questions are becoming even more important as AI tools make economic research faster. AI can help compare decades of information, explain economic concepts and identify patterns, but it can also repeat outdated figures or unreliable claims if the underlying sources are poor.

Discussion

What economic data sources do you consider essential for students studying monetary policy?

And more importantly:

Should modern economics education place much greater emphasis on source verification, historical datasets and data literacy before students begin drawing conclusions about inflation, interest rates and monetary policy?

Share the databases, archives, central-bank resources or research tools you believe every economics student should know about.

Wednesday, August 19th, 2026. Maneco64, home of alternative economics and contrarian views. We’re going to look at the bond market today. It’s the most important market for our current monetary system — the fiat debt-based system.

I worked in the bond market for over 20 years. That’s my specialty from my time in the financial sector in the City of London. I started out in Geneva, Switzerland. For the last few years I’ve been telling those of you who have been around that the bond bull market is over, and that is highly significant.

We had 40 years of plain sailing, downwind sailing, with bond yields and interest rates going ever lower. It was the cycle, and central banks took advantage of it with their money printing and artificially induced low interest rates. Now that’s over. The bond market is sailing windward, against the wind. I used to sail as a kid back in Brazil, and it’s a lot easier sailing downwind than windward. Unfortunately it’s going to be tough. All it means is that debt creation is going to be a lot harder. That’s a real problem, and we’re going to look at that.

Many people think this is going to be negative for gold, silver and commodities, but I think it’s going to be the other way around because they are going to implement financial repression. They will try to keep official interest rates always below the rate of inflation — and by inflation I mean the supply of money and credit. The inflation they tell us is 3% or 4% is not really inflation. That’s a highly doctored number called CPI, which is the consequence of the inflation. It’s going to be much worse than the 1970s because in the 1970s they didn’t really lie about what was going on in terms of inflation and prices. Now they do, and a lot of people are going to get fooled. If you’re stuck in the bond market you’re going to be losing out even though you think you’re not.

Before I start I want to give a shout-out to my precious metals dealer affiliates. In the US it’s Miles Franklin — they always have specials. You can look them up through my landing page; there’s a link below in the description. Here in the UK it’s Gold Investments. I’ve been dealing with them on a personal basis since the beginning of this century, around 2002, when I first started stacking. All the details are below in the description and they have promo codes you can use. With Gold Investments you can deal online or make an appointment and go up to their office in the City of London.

The bond market is really important, and I’m not saying this just because I worked in it. It’s important because of the system we’ve been under since President Nixon closed the gold window on August 15th, 1971. We’ve been under a debt-based fiat currency system. That means the currency that circulates is purely backed by debt. Therein lies the problem: debt cannot be extinguished with more debt. We can extinguish our personal debt with the debt-based currency, but for the system as a whole it is an impossibility. That’s why they have to keep the debt growing — they can’t pay it off.

We’re at almost $40 trillion in US national debt, and it’s really high here in the UK and everywhere else. I’m not just having a go at the US. That’s without adding all the unfunded liabilities, which run into hundreds of trillions. It’s an impossibility to pay off the debt.

From 1981 to 2021 we had the bond bull market. Cycles matter. From roughly 1942 to 1981 we were in a bond bear market. Interest rates bottomed during World War II under yield curve control — the 10-year was capped below 2%. Then especially in the early 1960s interest rates started rising, and we had a really bad bear market in bonds that culminated with the 10-year yield going up to about 15% in 1981. The Fed funds target or base rate went up to 20%. That helped save the dollar. The debt burden at the time wasn’t as bad as it is now. Federal public debt to GDP was around 33% because they had financial repression throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, combined with the baby boomers and population growth. The debt came down and inflation ate away at it.

Now we’re in a position where the debt is so huge it’s as big as if we were fighting a major world war. The cycles turned in 2021–2022. The rate we saw during the COVID crisis — 0.3% for the 10-year yield and about half a percent for the 30-year — that was the bottom. A lot of people, even so-called experts, bond fund managers, and Wall Street and City of London economists, thought we were going to keep having this bond bull market forever. On this channel I’ve been warning since 2020–2021 that the bond bull market was over. That’s a huge problem because it means it’s going to be really hard to finance everything.

The value of bonds is going to go down because instead of decreasing yields and interest rates like we had from 1981 to 2021, it’s going to go the other way. We were sailing downwind from 1981 to 2021. Now we’re sailing windward and the winds are going to be really tough.

Why do I say that? Globalization seems to be over. We’re not going to have the benefit of most foreign nations, including countries like China and others in the global south, being very willing to finance the deficits and the debt in the US and the West. They realize what’s going on. They realize that having too much of their monetary reserves in our government bond markets is dangerous because it can be frozen. That’s why they’re going into gold.

The other thing that 40 years of a bond bull market did is that it allowed the US economy and the UK economy (we’re like a mini-me here) and to a big extent Europe to become financialized. That means they became heavily dependent on debt and outsourced their industry to the rest of the world, especially China, starting with the WTO deal that let China in. We became heavily dependent on China and other countries for manufacturing, mining, extraction and processing of raw materials. This part of the economy in the West has been totally neglected. Now we have to get back to a real economy, but it’s going to take a while. It’s not something you can do in six months.

Coupled with that, we’re sailing windward against the wind with really tough storms ahead in the next few years. The debt is huge — not just public debt but corporate debt, personal debt, unfunded liabilities, and also the over-the-counter and exchange-traded derivatives. We’re talking trillions. With the cycles turned they can’t bring back a bond bull market. They’re going to have to try to keep interest rates and bond yields as low as possible. They’re going to do whatever they can. They’re going to lie about the CPI so that people think they’re getting a good deal in the bond market. But the smart money sees it, and that’s why people are turning to gold, silver and hard assets. I’ve been talking about this since the beginning of this decade because cycles turn.

What 40 years of easy credit has also done is lead to a massive growth in the welfare state, especially here in the UK and in Europe. Even in the US, which is supposedly more free-market oriented, you have loads of unfunded liabilities. That’s a huge problem now with interest rates going higher.

Since 2021–2022 bond yields in the US and the West have been going up relentlessly. We had a kind of respite from late 2023 until recently, but the other day the 30-year T-bond yield reached the highest level since 2004 — over 20 years. It’s going to keep going. This is not just something related to the US and the UK. Even German government bond yields — the 10-year is at the highest level since 2011. That’s very significant because prior to 2020 the Germans were very frugal. Their debt to GDP was under control and they were actually running budget surpluses. Now that’s all going out the window. This is not happening in isolation only in the US and the UK. It’s happening everywhere in the West.

What about China and other countries? China has a lot of debt, but I think they’ve been preparing for this because they’ve been accumulating gold — not just in the public sector (People’s Bank of China and state-owned enterprises) but among the general public. They’re pushing their people to have the safety of physical gold, not paper, because they know what’s coming. When you look at the reserve assets that foreign countries hold now, the amount of gold has gone above Treasuries, and I think that’s going to continue. Even allies like South Korea and Japan are going to wind down their Treasury holdings because the storm is coming. When the storm comes, everyone looks after themselves.

Unfortunately I think the UK is not well prepared for this because we have so little gold as a government — only about 310 tons. Gordon Brown sold half the gold back in the early part of the century, but even if he hadn’t sold that we’d still only have around 600 tons, which is not as much as other countries.

Most people don’t realize that the debt burdens are astronomical and the cost of financing this debt is going to increase. It’s not going to be an era of easy money and Goldilocks like from 1981 to 2021. A lot of people are going to be shortchanged because the people who work in the bond market, the pension funds, the fund managers, and the regulators are not going to give up on bonds. They’re going to keep the vast majority of the public investing in the old 60/40 portfolio. Yes, Morgan Stanley diluted that to 60/20/20 last year with 20% to gold and hard assets, but I think they’re just going to drag their feet.

One of the ways the state is going to wipe out the burden of the debt is through a soft default. Those people who depend on the state — here in the UK it’s about 30 million people, almost half the population — might still get the nominal amount they’re promised in pensions, benefits and public-sector salaries, but those amounts are going to become worth less and less. That’s how they get away with it. It’s going to happen across Western Europe, the US, Canada, Australia and the other Western countries.

Unfortunately it’s going to be really tough. Most people don’t know this is coming. Hopefully some of you will be prepared. I’ve been warning about this since I started the channel and even before that, when I used to warn colleagues at work, friends and family. A lot of people won’t listen, of course. I can’t do anything about that. I can only warn people.

So what do you do in this environment of ever-increasing rates, governments trying to keep interest rates as low as possible through financial repression, and diluting the value of the currency? You try to pay off as much debt as you can. You try to stay away from debt as much as you can. You try to create value for yourself and your family, and you try to put a little bit of sound money aside — physical gold and silver.

To conclude, the most important thing we have to realize is that we’re in an era where borrowing is going to be a lot tougher. People who have borrowed and need to roll over a mortgage or other debt are going to find it a lot harder. It’s going to be like prior to 1980, when it wasn’t easy getting credit. People are going to have to adjust to that, and governments are going to have to adjust to that. Our governments and central banks have a really tough few years ahead. Eventually things will turn and get better, but if you’ve been frugal and avoided having a lot of debt you can be fine. Some people will keep the debt and it will be debased, which in a way is good, but the problem with keeping debt is that you never know whether you can service it. I’d rather neither be a borrower nor a lender. That’s why I think hard assets are going to be the way forward, especially gold and silver.

With that, I’m going to wish you all a very good day. Take care. Bye.

Are we creating two different economies without realising it?

Central banks influence the economy through interest rates, liquidity and monetary policy. Yet there is a growing question worth debating: what happens when financial markets respond positively to monetary policy, but the benefits take much longer to reach households, workers and small businesses?

Imagine a situation where stock markets are rising, investors are becoming more confident and borrowing conditions are improving for major corporations. At the same time, a small business is struggling to obtain a loan, a first-time buyer cannot afford a mortgage and households are still paying high interest rates on existing debts.

Both realities can exist within the same economy.

This raises a fundamental question about the modern financial system: is the transmission of monetary policy becoming increasingly unequal, and what does that mean for long-term economic stability?

1. The hidden problem with interest rate changes

When a central bank changes interest rates, financial markets often react immediately. Bond yields move, currencies adjust and investors reconsider the value of shares and other assets.

However, the transmission of those changes into the wider economy can take considerably longer.

A household with a fixed-rate mortgage may not experience a change in its monthly payments until its existing deal expires. A business might face higher borrowing costs despite a reduction in the central bank's policy rate, particularly if lenders believe its industry has become riskier.

This creates an interesting situation in which monetary policy can be restrictive for some parts of the economy while financial conditions are improving for others.

The Bank for International Settlements has also highlighted how the growing importance of market-based finance makes financial conditions more sensitive to market prices and international shocks.

Bank for International Settlements

2. What the 2026 financial data tell us

The UK provides an interesting example of how different borrowers can experience the same financial environment.

In its July 2026 Financial Stability Report, the Bank of England projected that a little over five million UK households would face higher mortgage repayments by the end of 2028. This was a conditional projection based on the interest-rate expectations and mortgage data available at the time, not a guaranteed outcome.

the UK's central bank

Its second-quarter 2026 Credit Conditions Survey also reported that lenders had slightly reduced credit availability for small and medium-sized businesses, while availability for large businesses was unchanged.

the UK's central bank

These findings raise an important issue about how we measure economic recovery.

If financial markets recover before households and smaller businesses experience better borrowing conditions, does that necessarily mean the economic recovery is incomplete?

There is another side to this argument. The Bank of England's July report also found that UK households and businesses remained resilient in aggregate and that the banking system continued supporting the real economy. Financial stability and individual financial hardship are related, but they are not identical measures.

the UK's central bank

3. Could the changing financial system make this problem bigger?

Traditional banks are no longer the only major providers of finance. Investment funds, private credit providers and other non-bank financial institutions play an increasingly important role in global capital markets.

This can diversify funding sources, but it also creates different channels through which economic shocks can spread.

The IMF's April 2026 Global Financial Stability Report highlighted vulnerabilities associated with leveraged non-bank investors, sovereign debt markets and cross-border capital flows.

IMF

Consider what might happen during a sudden international financial shock. Investors may sell risky assets, lenders may reassess creditworthiness and businesses may delay investment.

Even if central banks provide additional liquidity to stabilise financial markets, that does not automatically mean every business will receive affordable credit.

It is therefore worth examining whether the increasing role of non-bank finance changes how effectively monetary policy supports the wider economy.

4. The wider consequences for the next generation

One of the most important aspects of this discussion is its potential long-term effect on younger people and future entrepreneurs.

A person who already owns financial assets may benefit from rising share prices or property values. Someone without substantial savings may instead face higher housing costs and greater difficulty building wealth.

Similarly, an established corporation may have access to bond markets and several financing options, whereas a new business may depend on a bank loan or its owner's personal savings.

These differences are not necessarily evidence that monetary policy itself is failing. They do, however, raise questions about whether the financial system transmits economic opportunities evenly.

An effective monetary policy framework must also consider inflation, employment and financial stability. Making credit cheaper for everyone without regard to risk could encourage excessive borrowing and create new vulnerabilities.

The challenge is understanding where legitimate risk management ends and structural barriers to productive investment begin.

Questions for the community

1. Are stock markets still reliable indicators of economic health? Should we give greater weight to household disposable income, business investment and access to credit when assessing the economy?

2. Should central banks pay closer attention to who receives affordable credit? Would this improve monetary policy, or would it risk drawing central banks into decisions better left to governments and commercial lenders?

3. Is the growth of private credit and non-bank finance making the financial system more resilient or introducing new vulnerabilities? Could it help businesses that traditional banks are unwilling to finance?

4. What happens if financial markets recover but the cost of living remains high? Could a prolonged difference between asset-market performance and household finances weaken consumer demand and future economic growth?

5. How should monetary policy respond to another major supply shock? If rising energy costs push up inflation while weakening household spending, what trade-offs should policymakers consider?

Final thought

Perhaps the most important question is not simply whether central banks should raise or lower interest rates. It is whether we properly understand how those decisions travel through an increasingly complex financial system.

A strong stock market, a resilient banking system and improving economic growth can coexist with significant financial pressure on particular households or industries. Understanding those differences is essential when analysing the financial news.

I'd be particularly interested in hearing whether members think the biggest obstacle to economic recovery is the price of credit, the availability of credit or something more fundamental, such as weak productivity and investment. Which do you believe matters most, and what evidence would change your view?

Study Tools Upgraded to Learning Dashboard

Study Tools Just Became the Learning DashboardLearning about the monetary system is not something most people finish in a single sitting.A lesson leads to a question. A question leads to an article. An article leads to a documentary, a glossary term, or a book worth returning to later. Before long,...

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