This year promises to be the most challenging and risky since the Global Financial Crisis! Europe is becoming more unstable politically at a time when vast amounts of government debts have to be financed/refinanced. The following negative trends are reasserting themselves: return to high inflation in the U.S., growing distance between Western World and BRICS+ countries as well as emerging conflicts between U.S. and European leadership. Like the 1970's gold and many commodities on price uptrends indicating increasing global instability and shortages. In particular, the U.S. is seriously challenged to find new rare earth materials to support the aviation, defense, battery, and IT industries as China controls 90%+ of these materials globally while restricting or disallowing their shipments to the U.S.