In the year 1025, the Byzantine Empire stood at the height of its final golden age.

Basil II had just died, leaving behind a vast and wealthy empire stretching from Southern Italy to Armenia.

At the heart of its economy was the solidus, a gold coin that had served as the bedrock of Mediterranean trade for centuries. Merchants from Venice to Baghdad had so much confidence in its purity that the solidus became the primary currency for international trade as far away as China.

And this ‘reserve currency’ status allowed Byzantium to project economic power far beyond its borders.

But as the empire declined, so did its currency. Successors debased the solidus to cover military costs, mixing in copper and silver until it was barely recognizable.

By the late 11th century, merchants could no longer rely on the Byzantine government to maintain the purity of the solidus… so traders turned to a new, up-and-coming alternative: the Venetian ducat.

This pattern has repeated itself for thousands of years: reserve currencies come and go, and are eventually displaced by another.

Before the solidus, Rome had set the standard with its denarius, but centuries of inflation and political collapse led to its demise.

After Venice, the Spanish real de ocho became the world’s preferred trade currency, thanks to galleons loaded with New World silver. When Spanish power faded, the Dutch guilder took over, only to be replaced by the British pound sterling, which reigned until two world wars left Britain financially exhausted.

Even the US dollar, during its first two and a half decades as the global reserve currency, was based on gold, until in 1971, the dollar was removed from the gold standard.

The whole concept of fiat currency (i.e. paper currency which relies entirely on trust and confidence of the issuing government) holding coveted reserve status is a new phenomenon.

That means trusting the largest debtor in the history of the world, trusting the US financial system, abiding by the US government’s regulations, and dealing with the whims of their central bank—despite its mismanagement, soaring debt, and reckless policies.

So much can go wrong. And at some point in the future—whether years or decades from now—the US dollar will lose its status as the world’s reserve currency.

No currency has ever held that title forever, and it’s naive to assume the dollar will be the exception.

When that moment comes, future historians will look back in astonishment, wondering how it lasted as long as it did. Because a system built entirely on trust can only survive as long as that trust remains.

And for most of this century, the US government has proven time and again that it cannot be trusted.

We explore this topic in depth in today’s podcast, and discuss how and why gold will be the beneficiary of the dollar’s loss.

We also discuss:

We also mention a gold company that we are profiling this month for subscribers to our investment research newsletter, The 4th Pillar, which focuses on real asset investments.

And if you’d like to learn more about The 4th Pillar, which we are offering at a discount for a limited time, click here.

You can listen to the podcast here.

https://youtu.be/ALVdo5Xu0Ms

Yesterday, Nvidia—the company which makes GPUs, including for AI— suffered the largest single-day market value loss in history.

The stock dropped 17.4% wiping $600 billion from its valuation in hours, and actually pulling the entire Nasdaq Composite down 3.4%.

To put that in perspective, this amount of value loss is like if the entire company of Netflix AND AT&T simply disappeared.

What caused this? A Chinese AI startup called DeepSeek. Over the weekend, it revealed a new large language model (LLM) that matches the output of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and similar models but at a fraction of the cost.

Here’s the kicker: DeepSeek trained its LLM with just $5 million and 2,000 low-tech Nvidia GPUs. Compare that to ChatGPT’s $100 million budget and over 100,000 cutting-edge GPUs.

Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen called this AI’s Sputnik moment.

And that’s true.

It was 1957 when the Soviets launched Sputnik into space, which made the Americans realize how much they needed to catch up.

There was a lot of panic yesterday, and it’s easy to understand why. The whole industry felt they had a competitive advantage that no longer exists.

But the reality is, this is good news for everyone. And this is the topic of our podcast today.

Many of you know that I’m the chairman of a emerging technology company which makes extremely powerful and efficient semiconductors.

It’s completely unrelated to AI, so DeepSeek doesn’t have any impact. But I reached out to a number of people in the business to help me understand this better. And overall there are a few conclusions that are pretty obvious.

One, Nvidia is still going to be able to sell all the GPUs they can produce. The difference is now they will be selling to more people. The days of Nvidia delivering GPUs by armored car are long gone. And now these professional grade chips are going to be available to even the lowliest of AI start-ups.

It also means that AI start ups can launch their businesses and develop their technology with a smaller amount of money.

Instead of having to raise half a billion dollars just to get started, they can create a viable product for just a few million dollars now.

That means more innovation, and hence more productivity for everyone.

The last thing is the market rout yesterday was classic overreaction and panic that extended to sectors that still have me scratching my head.

There was even a sell-off in natural gas stocks, which is absurd.

We talk a lot about real assets, and why they are such a smart buy right now. And natural gas companies are a great example.

Some of these businesses are well managed, profitable, dividend paying, and have pristine balance sheets. And yet the market is now giving them away.

We discuss all this and more in today’s short podcast.

https://youtu.be/iNV0PQOLSN8

PS-

Starting today we’re launching a promotion on The 4th Pillar, our premium investing newsletter that focuses on undervalued real asset businesses. Click here to learn more.

The Wall Street Journal this morning released its latest economic forecast survey.

This is where they ask leading economists what they think inflation and economic growth will be in 2025 and beyond.

The results were pretty incredible. Between the last survey, in October before the election, and this month’s survey, the predictions for US economic growth have increased dramatically.

Optimism is clearly everywhere, not just in the economic forecasts but also the labor market, stock market, etc.

One of the reasons for that, obviously, is that Americans were just promised a New Golden Age of prosperity.

We’ve written before, many times, that America’s gargantuan fiscal challenges are still fixable.

But a Golden Age? Is that really feasible?

Well, above everything else at this organization, we are intellectually honest, and we let the math be our guide. And in today’s podcast, we actually do the math at a high level and discuss whether that Golden Age actually is possible.

Spoiler alert: it is!

But it’s gong to require what I believe are modest budget cuts— roughly $300 billion— and significantly higher economic growth.

When you think about it, it’s really something to be said that the US, i.e. the most advanced economy in the world, only clocks around 2% “real” GDP growth each year.

Given America’s population growth, the literally tens of trillions of dollars of investable capital, the massive pool of talent, and innovation, 2% growth is utterly pathetic. Talk about under-achieving your potential.

It’s deregulation, ease of doing business, and tax policy that can really move the needle on that growth.

And these are all completely realistic goals.

At the same time, there are so many forces and entrenched special interests that will battle against reform. So while there’s plenty of reason to be optimistic, it’s not a forgone conclusion.

That’s why it makes so much sense to have a Plan B.

We talk about all this and more in today’s podcast, as we walk through the math on the New Golden Age.

https://youtu.be/utZXEbMAm7Y

It’s hilarious how Joe Biden spent his entire four year administration using tech companies to suppress dissent and censor critics. He now claims those same tech companies are a threat to democracy.

He just awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to billionaire George Soros, who notoriously uses his money to meddle in elections and fund ultra-woke leftist politicians. But billionaires who fund causes on the right are… a threat to democracy.

Biden further believes that he is not responsible for any of the inflation of his tenure, and he expresses no concern about his massive deficit spending and debt accumulation.

He simply doesn’t understand: the inflation we are still experiencing has literally been caused by his trillions in deficit spending. And with the national debt now at $36.2 trillion on Joe Biden’s final business day in office, the government is dangerously close to the point of no return.

Without serious budget cuts… without a massive regulatory overhaul… and without a major reset in the way the government does business… the US could quickly slip into a debt spiral.

The federal government already spends 100% of its tax revenue just to pay for mandatory entitlement spending and interest on the debt.

In fact, interest on the debt already exceeds $1 trillion per year, and could easily DOUBLE to more than $2 trillion over the next couple of years.

The incoming administration has an extremely limited window of opportunity to put the economy and government finances back on track. I think they have a good chance, and I’m absolutely rooting for them.

But success is far from certain… and for that reason it still makes so much sense to have a Plan B.

I hope you’ll join us for this discussion in today’s podcast, where we also cover:

I encourage you to listen to this super insightful conversation, which is well worth the time to understand where the US is heading.

https://youtu.be/yz-3mnjuyr8

In 1913, 24-year-old Charlie Chaplin arrived in Los Angeles, drawn by an offer from Keystone Film Company. Coming from a poverty-stricken childhood in London and a successful vaudeville career, Chaplin found in Los Angeles a place of limitless potential.

The city was largely undeveloped, surrounded by orange groves, open fields and dirt roads where coyotes still roamed. But it offered the perfect backdrop for the burgeoning film industry— mountains, oceans, deserts— and a chance to escape the constraints of traditional theater.

While San Francisco had flourished during the gold rush, Los Angeles was entering its own boom, fueled by filmmaking. Chaplin quickly became the silent era’s most famous actor, transforming the medium while the city grew into the heart of the movie industry.

Like Chaplin, Los Angeles embodied the spirit of creative freedom, shaping modern entertainment for a century.

The city, especially Hollywood, became synonymous with the film industry, and perhaps took that for granted.

Like California in general, LA assumed that however poorly it treated its residents, however burdensome the regulation, however high the taxes, people would still come flocking like there was gold in the hills.

If you ever wanted to be the author of your own decline, follow the example of California, and Los Angeles in particular.

Hollywood has chased away its own industry to burgeoning film locations like Georgia, New Mexico, and Toronto. Georgia especially is raking in the benefits from LA’s decline.

Los Angeles was a one industry town, and they chased it away.

They forced countless lockdowns on the city during COVID, even threatened to cut off water to those who dared to invite guests over. They declared themselves a sanctuary city against federal law, inviting illegals to enjoy a multitude of free benefits— then expected federal dollars to pay for it.

They cut police, and refused to enforce basic laws against things like shoplifting, or keep even serious criminals in prison. They destroyed education, from elementary to university.

And every business and individual is absolutely drowned in useless permitting.

Oh, and with all their idiotic spending priorities, somehow fire fighting, in an area prone to wildfires, seems to be the only thing they were unwilling to properly fund.

Who would want to continue doing business there? Or invest there? Or live there?

And tax revenue and talented workers are part of the exodus.

California ran things into the ground until they no long had money for basic services.

But hey, at least people can still get private insurance when the government fails them!

Oh wait, California has also run them out of town. Because of California’s regulatory burden many insurance companies no longer do business in the state. And that has left a number of people, including those whose homes have burned down, without insurance.

California has long relied on federal bailouts to fund all these idiotic policies. Their COVID lockdowns were paid for with federal tax dollars, and they’ve received bags of cash from the Biden administration to help pay for migrant care.

The damage from these fires could easily exceed $50 billion, and again, since they have chased away insurance companies, I have a funny feeling that California is going to have its hand out to the federal government once again to help people rebuild form a crisis that was not only preventable but a direct result of political incompetence.

Would you be surprised if the federal government came to their rescue, and US taxpayers ended up paying for poor Paris Hilton’s burned out mansion, because no one would give her insurance?

There used to be a saying, “As California goes, so goes the nation.”

And to be frank, I think that’s right. The US itself has some deep challenges brought on by the last several years of horrific leadership and terrible priorities.

There is, starting next week, an opportunity to makes things right and get it back on track. And I am certainly rooting for them to pull it off.

If they don’t, we don’t have to wonder what the future of the US looks like— the whole world can see the failures of the left, in Los Angeles today, laid to waste.

And it is a snapshot of what might come if the incoming leadership isn’t able to right the ship.

Tune in to today’s podcast where we talk about this in greater depth, including at the end explaining our whole ethos on building a Plan B.

https://youtu.be/Egp1_VOjU1k

In the year 500 AD, just a few decades after the fall of Western roman empire, the standard of living for a typical European peasant was pretty grim.

Squalid hovels. No sanitation. Short life expectancy. Even food was by no means guaranteed.

If you go forward in time, even 1,000 years, the standard of living of a typical medieval peasant in the year 1500 was little changed from his predecessor an entire millennium before.

Human civilization barely budged, in fact, until the late 1700s and the advent of the Industrial Revolution, where the combination of new technology, and cheap, abundant energy propelled our species into an era of unprecedented prosperity.

As technology became even better, and energy even cheaper, that upward trend has accelerated.

On the table in front of us right now are a handful of key technological trends that have the potential to drive human prosperity at warp speed.

One of those in particular is the cheapest and most boundlessly efficient energy the world has ever seen. So naturally the US government is doing everything it can to block it and obstruct its progress.

It’s obvious that the US, and the world, is for the most part, a big mess. The sheer volume of debt in the world is a major concern and one that creates more inflation, and less prosperity. It’s also a problem that is growing each year at an exponential rate.

But this energy issue is a perfect example of how easy it should be to get things moving back in the right direction: just stop going out of your way to deliberately harm your country and its economy.

Think about it. If you had to set the table with four key pieces and resources that were necessary to grow out of a gargantuan debt problem, and create widespread prosperity:

That’s pretty much what’s in front of us right now.

On the other hand, if your goal was to make things as bad as possible, you would probably engage in a massive debt bonanza and spending blowout, hobble highly beneficial emerging technology, obstruct conventional energy production, and block win/ win foreign investment deals.

These are all things we’ve seen the outgoing administration do just in the last couple weeks.

And it almost looks deliberate, by a petty fool, angry he was pushed out by his own party, and lashing out at the country.

There is a lot of upside potential on the other side of this, but it is by no means guaranteed, and there is still plenty of risk ahead.

That’s why it still makes so much sense to have a Plan B.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12v_EGhl2_Y

Listen in to today’s episode here.

If you examine the anatomy of a crisis, it seems like almost all of the big ones start with a completely false belief system.

“Two weeks to stop the spread”.

“Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.”

“We’ll be greeted as liberators.”

“The debt doesn’t matter because we owe it to ourselves.”

One of my favorites was the faulty premise that underpinned the 2008 Global Financial Crisis: “real estate only goes up in value.”

Nearly every “expert” believed it. The Fed. Major commercial banks. Wall Street analysts. Big hedge funds. Ratings agencies.

In retrospect it seems ludicrous. Of course real estate can lose value. It’s an asset. There’s risk. And that’s what happens after the crisis— people look back and wonder “how could anyone have believed something so stupid?”

Today, we’re in the midst of several other false belief systems. And one of those— as I wrote to you yesterday— is about the Federal Reserve.

In yesterday’s letter I explained that the Fed is THE most important central bank on the planet, because it is the primary custodian and issuer of the US dollar, i.e. the world’s primary reserve currency.

Yet at the same time, the Fed is hopelessly insolvent with over $800 BILLION in unrealized losses versus capital of just $44 billion. This makes the Fed the MOST insolvent bank that has ever existed in the history of the world.

Yet, so far, no one seems to care. The false premise is “It doesn’t matter that the most important institution to the global financial system is hopelessly insolvent. They can always just print more money…”

Future historians will not look kindly on this false logic. And people will wonder how anyone could have believed something so stupid.

This is the topic of today’s podcast.

We walk through the hilarious history of recent financial crises— how various entities failed, how the government responded… and how everyone keeps repeating the same mistakes over and over again.

It’s as if these banks are just begging to fail.

They’re literally now on the third iteration of repeating the same mistakes since 2008.

And you won’t want to miss the end, where we conclude with a great way to think about how to protect yourself from the fallout of this next brewing crisis.

We also talk about the way out— how high-speed economic growth could help the Fed (and the US government) out of its gargantuan financial problems. But in case this doesn’t happen, we walk through some very sensible strategies to deal with the potential fallout.

You can watch the video here, or listen to the audio here.

What does it really mean to have a Plan B— especially these days?

We’ve used the term Plan B for almost the entire 15 years since I started this business in 2009.

Back then the national debt was really starting to become a major problem. The Federal Reserve was printing trillions of dollars to bail out irresponsible bankers. The economy was on the ropes after the Global Financial Crisis.

Plus a guy who told business owners, “You didn’t build that,” had just become President of the United States— and then bizarrely awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

So the need for a “Plan B” seemed pretty obvious.

Today there is a lot more reason to be optimistic. There’s people coming to power that want to take a wrecking ball to the rot, corruption, and inefficiency that has been plaguing the country for far too long.

Frankly, I’m rooting for them. I’m even willing to pitch in and help. To be frank, I’m not comfortable with a world where China is the dominant superpower.

And there certainly seems to be a real opportunity right now to get the country back on track.

Let’s not be naive though. There are still serious challenges ahead. And the people coming to power have a very narrow window to get things back on track.

But we haven’t had this much reason to be optimistic in quite a while.

This isn’t just about an election or single individual, but rather a clear sign from the entire country, sick and tired of being lectured by out of touch “experts.”

Voters practically demanded a return to sanity and prosperity, even if it means dismantling large chunks of a broken system.

In today’s podcast, we talk about what it really means to have a Plan B in this kind of environment, where there’s reason to be optimistic, yet major challenges remain.

This, after all, is the entire point of a Plan B; to put yourself in a position of strength, and take advantage of great opportunities, while hedging clear and obvious risks.

We talk about that a lot in today’s episode.

We actually start with our CEO Viktorija, fresh off of a Total Access trip to El Salvador, telling us about the VIP treatment our group received from senior levels in both the public and private sector.

Then we transition into things that America needs to get right in short order. And the consequences if this doesn’t happen.

We then discuss the concept of a Plan B, versus having a dangerous “bunker mentality”, and how to think about hedging those risks, both in terms of investments, as well as non-financial solutions.

https://youtu.be/HGNFy5IU7CM

One of the key ideas is taking steps that make sense, regardless of what might or might not happen int he future. And one example of this is building strong relationships with people who share your values. That’s the whole idea of what “community” is supposed to be.

And this is exactly the type of community that we have developed with our Total Access group.

There are incredible VIP trips, exclusive investment conferences, compelling private investment opportunities, in-depth research, world class discounts, and a whole lot more.

But ultimately, the thing we are most proud of is the community and camaraderie among members.

That is consistently what our Total Access members rate as the biggest benefit to our organization. Many say they have found their tribe.

We usually keep membership closed, and only open up enrollment a few times each year.

We are doing that right now, and you can check out more about Total Access here.

Right at the beginning of the year in early January, I wrote to you about one of the dumbest laws to hit the books in the Land of the Free in a VERY long time. It’s called the Corporate Transparency Act.

The article was called, “Get ready to spend two years in prison,” because, two years in prison is literally the penalty for noncompliance.

You see, the do-gooders in Washington decided that there is too much criminal money laundering taking place in the US banking system. Nevermind that these brainiacs have already passed countless other laws to combat money laundering… all of which seem to be dismal failures.

So they decided to pass yet another anti-money laundering law, which requires every company in America to file a special report to the federal government disclosing the names of its owners.

So if you own a Delaware LLC, for example, to own your family investments, then they wanted you to file this report… even though you ALREADY report the exact same information to the IRS each year.

Well that doesn’t matter. The government wants you to send the same info— but in a different format— to another agency within the Treasury Department. And if you don’t file the report, they threatened everyone with up to two years in prison.

Obviously “ignorance of the law is not an excuse”. They just expect you to keep up with the flood of new laws, plus agency rules, plus court decisions which might modify or nullify all the rules and laws.

Case in point: earlier this week, a VERY sensible federal judge thankfully issued a nationwide injunction on the Corporate Transparency Act, suspending compliance requirements until a final ruling.

This is great news; it means that, at least for now, you do not have to comply with the CTA. But it also illustrates how quickly the laws change. Like literally every single day.

It’s practically a full-time job to keep up with all the changes… and it’s virtually impossible to have a functioning society when the rules are so fluid.

This is the topic of this weekend’s podcast— we hope you enjoy and look forward to speaking with you again next week.

On November 20, 1945, an international tribunal first convened in the Bavarian city of Nuremberg to prosecute key leaders of Nazi Germany for crimes against humanity.

The Nuremberg Trials were a key aspect of holding individuals accountable for the brutal acts and genocide committed under Nazi rule.

High-ranking officials, including Hermann Göring and Rudolf Hess, faced charges, and they tended to grab most of the headlines.

But plenty of lower ranking officers, and even doctors, faced trial as well. Naturally they tried to defend themselves by claiming they were “only following orders”.

But the Nuremberg Trials established a clear precedent that moral responsibility falls on the individual who committed the crime. “Only following orders” is simply not a valid justification for blatant wrongdoing.

It’s always dangerous territory to bring up the Nazis in any intellectual argument because it’s just so sensational. But in this case the analogy is an important one because we’re ultimately talking about accountability.

Bureaucrats and politicians in the US government commit outrageous, egregious acts of wasteful mismanagement on a daily basis. A lot of it is even deliberate.

And yet no one is ever held accountable. The conservative writer Thomas Sowell once argued that “it is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.”

People in the private sector pay for their mistakes all the time. Businesses who don’t deliver value soon find themselves without customers. Employees who don’t do good work find themselves out of a job.

But government officials have squandered trillions of dollars. They locked down businesses, forced experimental vaccines on children, censored free speech, and violated just about every right imaginable.

How many have been truly held accountable?

At the moment the answer is precisely zero. Fauci retired to a multi-million dollar book deal. Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi will be honored throughout the rest of their lives. Marty Gruenberg (head of the FDIC and worst human being in government) still has his job.

Even most of the worst Members of Congress won their reelections.

That’s where today’s discussion begins. We actually recorded a podcast talking about this idea of government accountability.

I’ve written a lot that America has, right now, a very narrow window of opportunity to fix its mountain of challenges, or at least get seriously on the right path.

Those challenges will be difficult to fix without fundamentally addressing the culture of failure, the standard of mediocrity, and the habit of waste in the federal government.

Even if the economy starts growing by leaps and bounds, the US government still won’t be able to fix its gargantuan fiscal crisis if an unaccountable bureaucracy is still there to suffocate progress.

This is a MUST FIX for America to have a real chance at success.

You can listen to the full discussion here.