Thursday, October 29

By Tom Dyson, Investment Director

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Thursday, October 29th, 2026

Bill Bonner, from Ardmore, Ireland

Money don’t get everything it’s true
What it don’t get I can’t use

I need money
That’s what I want
That’s what I want
That’s what I want

–Barrett Strong

All money has a bit of the Trickster in it. When everyone is richer, no one is richer. But give them enough free money — even real money — and they will all be poorer.

The wealth that counts is relative. You probably have air-conditioning...maybe even central air. Does that make you feel superior to Ramses II, who must have sweated through the Egyptian summers?

No? We didn’t think so.

Productivity increases can make us all better off. But our shabby little hearts want money — more of it than our neighbors have. Yeah, that’s what we want.

Trump offers to give Americans more dollars — 5,000 of them — if Republicans are re-elected. CNBC:

With Election Day less than a month away, President Donald Trump is touting two federal cash payment programs already underway while renewing a much larger $5,000 check promise contingent on Republicans retaining Congress.

On Friday, Trump announced one-time $90 payments to 20.8 million Medicare beneficiaries. A day later, he revived an earlier promise to give every adult U.S. citizen $5,000 — but only if Republicans retain control of Congress in November.

People will feel richer when they get the money. They may even feel richer before they get it — which is what Donald Trump seems to be counting on.

But, once again, we have to ask the question that ruins every political giveaway: where does this money come from?

Trump isn’t planning to part with his own money. And he wouldn’t have nearly enough, even if he were willing to share it.

The feds are already running over budget by $2 trillion a year. They don’t have any money to pass around, either.

All POTUS could conceivably give to the voters is newly-minted, ‘fake’ money — money backed by wealth that has not been earned yet...and probably never will be. That’s how inflation works. You have a certain number of enchiladas...and a certain number of pesos to buy them. Double the number of pesos; the number of enchiladas remains the same. But now there are twice as many pesos per enchilada — rough result: prices double.

So, even if he made good on his promise — which is very unlikely — it wouldn’t have nearly the effect that people expect. This is just classic, textbook inflation. Trump can print all the new money he wants; he can’t make people richer...or better off. He can’t add a single enchilada.

The promise is a fraud.

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But here’s something worth considering. For the last fourteen years, the Fed has maintained that a little bit of fraud — 2% inflation per year — is good for the economy. It reduces the value of debt...and nobody seems to notice or care about small price increases. We’re getting ripped off. We expect it. We accept it.

But if the rate of inflation goes much above 2%, the plain people begin to gripe. Inflation has been running hot for many years. And the losses — to consumers — are cumulative.

Over the last seven years, for example, coffee is up 124%. Fuel oil is 84% more expensive. And ground beef is up 79%. And so on, all up and down the aisle. It adds up. And even if inflation were stopped cold tomorrow...those higher prices would remain.

As we saw last week, in the early stages of ‘inflation’ the Fed can wag the tail of debt and scratch the head of interest rates. But as the debt grows, the playful pet becomes vicious. It growls and the Fed tosses it some red meat. Now the debt controls the Fed, not the other way around.

What can the poor Fed do? It cannot raise interest rates; the nation can’t afford it. But it can’t lower them either. Lower rates would unleash more borrowing…leading to more inflation...causing interest rates to rise on their own.

Throughout the land, households are squeezed. But on Capitol Hill, Wall Street and in the White House the funny money spending spree goes on. Already, there’s some $13 trillion in federal debt to finance or refinance next year. If Trump keeps his pledge, that will be another $1.3 trillion.

That’s when we see the razor claws and sharpened teeth of this monster. In the beginning, the feds surprise the public by ‘printing’ more money than it expects. In the end, the public surprises the feds by spending it so fast the feds can’t keep up. The presses melt down...and the whole ‘inflation’ scheme blows up.

In those later stages, the nominal currency is devalued so fast that real prices — in real money — actually go down. Go to a high-inflation country with real money in your pocket and you can see for yourself; you can live like a sultan in a madhouse.

And here’s another surprise. Occasionally, societies have suffered from too much real money. That is what happened in Spain in the 16th and 17th centuries. So much gold and silver came back from Spain’s conquests in the New World that its money supply went up dramatically. Prices rose too.

That was real money...and real inflation. Prices rose to meet the increase in the money supply. This money wasn’t ‘printed.’ It was stolen or mined. And when it ran out...the inflation stopped.

But even real money can ruin a nation — if there is enough of it. Like America in the late 20th century — which uses its reserve currency status to run persistent trade deficits — the Spanish and Portuguese used their new money to buy what they wanted from other countries. They ‘neglected their own industries,’ say the historians, and the Iberian Peninsula became the ‘sick man’ of Europe for the next 200 years.

Regards,

Bill Bonner

Vol. 5, Issue 11

By Tom Dyson, Investment Director

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Wednesday, October 28th, 2026

Bill Bonner, from Ardmore, Ireland

‘Oh, and by the way...it could be the end of all life as we know it.’

‘But don’t bother coming after us. We warned you.’

That was the gist of perhaps the strangest disclosure ever issued by a company preparing an IPO. Normally, disclosures are written by lawyers who cover every possibility but with the pizzazz of instructions on how to use your new vacuum cleaner.

But in this case, the warnings are so apocalyptic...we can scarcely wait to see what happens.

The company is Anthropic. Its stock-in-trade is AI. And it could kill us all. The Independent:

In a long list of potential dangers for the company, it warns that its systems could “pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity, particularly if such systems were misused, replicated, weaponised, or allowed to operate with a high degree of autonomy”.

The IPO documents point to a whole range of ways that Anthropic’s systems could pose a threat. They include models that have already been shown to be able to help people “develop chemical, biological, or other dangerous weapons”, and the use of its models in “high-risk or sensitive contexts, such as healthcare, scientific and biomedical research, drug discovery and development, legal, finance, government, or other critical decision-making environments.”

In addition to possibly causing the extinction of the human race, Anthropic may wipe out your money. Daily Mail:

The company behind the chatbot Claude reported a net loss of $80m.7 billion in the first half of 2026. That compares to a loss of $13 billion in the same period a year earlier.

Despite the losses, Anthropic, valued earlier this year at $965 billion by private investors, is reportedly set to see that value rise to $1.5 trillion or possibly $2 trillion, although its final valuation has not been established.

This is not an investment offer...it is a Doomsday Prospectus. A single company worth more than $1 trillion? A company that has, as of yet, not earned a dime? The whole idea is absurd. But whatever else can be said about it, it’s one for the record books — one of the many strange things that are happening in the money world.

Most peculiar is the money itself. As far as we know, no paper money has held up so well as the dollar. It’s lost 96% of its value since the Federal Reserve was set up to protect it. But it is still in use. And perhaps no other currency has so thoroughly distorted and disjointed an entire world economy.

In order to be worth so much, Anthropic would have to look forward to annual earnings of $50 to $100 billion per year — almost forever. But forever is a very long time for anyone. For a tech investor it’s about three months.

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And how is Anthropic going to earn so much when a better product can be had for free? Already in a Front End Code Arena (whatever that is!) China’s Open Source Kimi-K3 beat Claude Fable 5...and every other US for-profit contender. That is probably why Anthropic is rushing an IPO. It is like a grocery store that marks down its inventory on Saturday; by Monday, the bread will be stale and the bananas will be rotten.

And something else for the record book, Anthropic could lose as much as $200 billion this year...marking it as the biggest money loser of all time. By comparison, Tesla’s losses are peanuts. Since its founding in 2003, it lost only $7 billion until it reached profitability in 2020.

There is so much cash, credit and claptrap in the asset markets. Like a giant sea surge — companies like Anthropic, Tesla, and others are lifted up far beyond what they are worth. Anthropic may come to rest on an Everest, with a value of $2 trillion, say some speculators.

Remember our dictum: The more you inflate prices, the less things are really worth.

We brought up the subject yesterday. You may say that these prices are ‘inflated’ by the feds’ funny money. But what does that mean?

The output of Anthropic can in no way be described as ‘worth’ the prospective stock value. Its output is negative, by the aforementioned $80 billion in the first six months of this year. Speculators may guess that it will turn positive sometime in the future, but where will that money come from? From the millions of people whose jobs have been lost to AI robots? Will Claude make the accountants, lawyers, radiologists, and architects jobless...and then bill them for the benefits of AI?

Unless the industry can add to consumer incomes — which seems unlikely — its current market valuations are just more fakery caused by the funny money fever; don’t try to take it to the bank.

Worth noting is that while trillions flush down the AI dream-hole, investment in residential construction has dropped. Zillow:

Over the 12 months ending July 2026, more than 1.42 million residential building permits were issued nationwide, down 1.7% from the same period a year earlier. Compared with the pre-pandemic trajectory from 2016 through 2020, permitting is running 19.4% below where it would have been if that trend had held.

But building data centers has boomed. At present prices and mortgage rates, approximately 88 million families are said to have been ‘priced out’ of the housing market. But at least the data will have a nice place to live. Air-conditioned. Off-street parking. And no noisy neighbors.

The family of four can move in with the grandparents. And if Anthropic wipes them out…along with their town…and their country, who could complain? It was in the prospectus!

More to come...

Regards,

Bill Bonner

Tuesday, October 27th, 2026

Bill Bonner, from Ardmore, Ireland

This is the third day of stormy weather. Blow, ye wind. Crack, ye thunder. The rain comes in horizontally from the Atlantic. The mist engulfs everything. The trees bend, including a couple that we just planted; they will need to be staked and tied down, given lifelines, like sailors in a squall.

It is deliciously gloomy. Normally, we go out for a couple of hours in the afternoon to get what doctors call ‘exercise’ and our blue-collar friends call ‘work.’ We are building the stone foundation for a greenhouse...recycling the stones from a ruined farmhouse and the vinyl windows from recently remodeled houses. The only serious expense is for the roof. It could be done in polycarbonate sheets, which would have been cheaper and easier. But double-paned glass will look better, and last for longer than we are likely to enjoy them.

So, the stonemasonry has had to wait. Yesterday, we spent the whole day near the fire, sipping cups of tea, while admiring the lash of the rain and the hula sway of the treetops.

This gave us time to think, a dangerous thing to do in any weather. Specifically, we were wondering about how much the fake, post-1971 dollar has faked up the whole economy...and how hard it is to make sense of it. Every sales number seems to be wearing a false mustache. Every profit goes by an alias. And even the simplest, most obvious trends are counterfeit. As we will see...even inflation itself is not what it claims to be. As synthetic as the vinyl windows, it is useful, but not authentic. (More on that tomorrow.)

First, comes an upbeat report from Charlie Bilello:

Americans now own over $60 trillion in stocks & mutual funds, more than 3x higher than a decade ago.

And here’s more good news, Chosun LBO:

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), citing data from financial information firm FactSet on the 24th, reported that S&P 500 companies’ third-quarter net profits are expected to rise approximately 30% year-over-year. This estimate combines actual results from companies that have already reported and forecasts from those yet to announce.

The strong performance of NVIDIA and Micron is driven by surging demand for AI semiconductors, particularly memory chips. Suppliers have been able to command higher prices, significantly boosting profits.

Let’s see...a carpenter’s sales can go up when the plumber orders a new worktable. And the plumber’s earnings can increase when the butcher installs a new sink. And the butcher...well...you get the idea. Businesses can increase sales and profits by providing new tools and facilities to each other. Round and round, like a village of laundresses, washing each other’s underwear.

But ultimately, they must sell products and services to consumers...not just to their fellow producers. Paying each other for plant and equipment is just part of the aggregate cost of doing business. Businesses can exchange costs...but only so far as the profits from selling to consumers justify them. You build a new auto showroom...you have to move the wheels! Sure, you might sell a fleet of them to a neighboring delivery firm, but then...consumers still must pay for them.

Oh, if consumers only had the feds’ elastic accounts! Instead, their purchasing power and money are limited. And they are already at the limit. Charlie Bilello:

Real average hourly earnings have now declined on a YoY basis for six consecutive months, falling 0.7% over the past year. The stock market may be near record highs, but that doesn’t mean everyone is participating equally in the gains. Nearly 1 in 5 American families fell behind on debt payments in 2025, the highest share since 2010.

And it’s not as if consumers are expected to have more money any time soon. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget:

Social Security is Now Less Than Six Years from Insolvency

The Social Security retirement trust fund is now less than six years from insolvency, according to CRFB’s Insolvency Countdown Clock. Without action from policymakers, beneficiaries will face a deep and abrupt 22% benefit cut when the retirement fund is exhausted in late 2032. That is when today’s 61-year-olds will reach their normal retirement age and when today’s youngest retirees turn 68.

Since consumers can’t readily increase their consumption, a business can only increase sales and profits by taking them away from another business. Some win. Some lose. But the total amount of profits cannot, therefore, increase. Where could they come from?

Take the trucking industry, for example. There are about 3.5 million truck drivers in the country. And each one takes home about $51,000. Along comes AI...self-driving trucks. The truck drivers are out on the curb.

Bad news? No, it’s good news. Trucking companies will now save a lot of money. Plus, consumers would benefit from lower shipping costs...ultimately expressed in lower consumer prices. Shippers would be wealthier...and consumers too — since they would now be able to buy more products at cheaper prices.

But look what happens. The trucking firms’ costs go down. They compete for business by lowering their freight charges. Margins soon go back to what they were before.

We’d all be richer, right? But if we are all richer, nobody is really richer. The kind of wealth that everyone cares about is the kind you can flaunt. We’re all richer, in many ways, than the Sun King. But no one puffs out his chest and struts down the street, thinking of how much richer he is than Louis 14th. Increased productivity makes us all better off; it doesn’t get us all on the Forbes ’rich list.’

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So, let’s look back at our headlines. Investors now have $60 trillion...3x more than in 2016. Do they really have ‘more?’ Or is this just another disguise?

The Dow was around 19,000 in 2016, with GDP around $19 trillion. Forgetting the zeros, one unit of stocks was worth about one unit of output. Now, the Dow is at 52,000 with GDP at $32 trillion. Investors believe they are richer. But now, each unit of the Dow is worth one unit of GDP...plus another 6/10ths of a unit of output that never gets put out…a kind of ghost GDP that no one ever enjoys.

And then we learn that the companies producing the phantom GDP are increasing their profits at a remarkable 30% rate.

But how could profits grow six times faster than GDP...in an economy trudging uphill at a (nominal) 5% rate, while staggering under more than $100 trillion of public and private debt? Where does the money come from? Consumers are tapped out. The ‘profits’ must come from other businesses...each borrowing and spending in the hope of future sales.

But to whom? The unemployed truck drivers?

More to come.

Regards,

Bill Bonner

Research Note, by Dan Denning

Do stock market tops and infamous initial public offerings (IPOs) go hand in hand? We’re about to find out. Anthropic, maker of the Claude AI, filed it’s S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Gluttons for punishment can read it here. The company will trade on the Nasdaq with the ticker symbol ANT.

The window dressing? After five straight quarters reporting an operating loss, the company finally got in the black in the last quarter. Falling ‘compute’ costs helped. But revenues of $16.3 billion were 13x what they were a year ago.

Growth!

Non-cash losses are still enormous, thanks to the billions in future ‘compute’ commitments the company has made (an accounting reality, but still a reality). The company is looking at a $1.5 trillion market value on $16 billion in revenue. Compare that to Walmart, a company with a $965 billion market value on…$365 billion in revenue.

Investors will finally have the chance to buy directly into the AI trade. But is that the ‘top’? Bear in mind there are over 100 pages of ‘risk warnings’ in the IPO. The most stark one from the company’s owners is that inside Claude’s coding black box, the AI could grow ‘difficult for any individual or group of humans to understand and control.’ The phrases ‘catastrophic or existential risks’ appears three times (once with respect to ‘humanity’ and twice with respect to society.’)

Bill Bonner, from Ardmore, Ireland

“If he loses, I’m f----ed...how long do you think my prison sentence is going to be?”

—Elon Musk

The betting markets are forecasting a Democratic sweep in November.

Assuming they are right, so what?

One of the effects could be a constitutional crisis...leading to who-knows-where. The voting results could be tainted by fraud or loud accusations of diddling the ballot counts. Newly elected representatives could be told to cool their heels until the alleged election interference is investigated. But who will do the investigating? Well, Congress...including the members the voters just turned out. Truth Out:

Poll: 7 in 10 Americans Doubt Trump Will Accept Midterm Results

The president has said that he will only accept the results of the midterms if he deems them to be “honest.”

Consensual democracies only work when people trust their opponents to play fair. But when they think the other side is not just ‘wrong,’ but ‘evil,’ a whole new dynamic is set in motion. People of good faith tolerate the opinions and policies of other people of good faith. But they won’t make a deal with the devil. If you’re up against the Wicked One, you should do all you can to stop him; at least, that’s how the thinking goes.

And it was just that kind of thinking — similar to what happened in America in the 1850s, and many ‘revolutions’ gone sour — that gets resolved, as Mao put it, “out of the barrel of a gun.”

So what happens if Trump refuses to accept the verdict of the elections? Democrats would rush to the Supreme Court for judgement.

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But by that time, it wouldn’t be at all surprising if the rabble were already in the streets...setting fires...running out through smashed windows with armloads of loot. Maybe New York or Los Angeles would look a bit like Paris.

It probably wouldn’t last too long; America’s gendarmes are nowhere near as restrained as those in France. And Republicans control the guns – at least, most of them. But even if the Supreme Court rules against him, Trump — facing hostile investigations in a hostile Congress — may decide to ignore the court.

This may not be as villainous as it sounds. A lot of money is at stake. It wouldn’t be too surprising if one side or the other resorted to some hanky-panky to get at it. Holding things in abeyance while they get to the bottom of it may seem not only justified, but essential to an honest Republic. Financial Times:

Donald Trump moves to block certification of Alaska Senate result if Republican loses. Candidates’ similar names could ‘taint’ the result, argues US Justice Department

People don’t intend to have a ‘civil’ war. They don’t set out to have hyperinflation, either. Like prudent drivers, they make logical, reasonable choices — carefully staying below the legal limit — and then, screech...the car is sliding sideways on the gravel.

In the chaos and bloodshed following a contested election, most Americans would welcome a strong leader...one who would insist on law and order, first and foremost. “Elections can wait until order is restored,” he would say. Many people, alarmed by the lawlessness, would nod in agreement.

Possible? Certainly. Probable? Who knows?

And then, even if the transition to a ‘blue’ Congress happens peacefully, what then? Washington Post:

As Republicans brace for election losses, Musk prepares for war

A host of Democrats have said they are eager to wield the power of their office to investigate the tech titan and his ventures should they win either chamber in the midterms.

The newly-seated, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed representatives, eager to get on nationwide TV, will use the Congressional subpoena — against Trump, the Trump family, its associates...its deals...and its backers. The biggest and boldest of them has already said that he won’t go gently into that good night.

“Those who pick fights with me should understand that I will find out who is really pulling the strings and come for them, not just their puppets,” said the world’s richest man. “There is a large graveyard filled with my enemies,” he once posted.

One of the few amusing things about this election is that both parties are running on false pretenses.

The Republicans claim this is a ‘Golden Age’ for the US economy.

But inflation just completed its 67th consecutive month above the Fed’s 2% target. And for the last six months, real wages have been falling. The Trump Team collected $5.4 trillion in taxes in FY 2026. But it spent $7.4 trillion. What did they think was going to happen?

The national debt rose over $40 trillion. Trump and Biden, together, added half of the total just in the last ten years. And now, the Fed can no longer control the debt. Instead, the debt controls the Fed...which is forced to raise rates to avoid more inflation and higher interest charges.

Democratic candidates, meanwhile, claim they will slay the ‘affordability’ dragon. But they, along with their Republican colleagues, created the monster. They joined Republicans to support both military and non-discretionary domestic budgets — with bi-partisan support for every foolish boondoggle that came down the pike.

And now, yes, Democrats are licking their lips and rubbing their hands. They hope to regain power in Washington. But not one of them has come up with a reasonable plan to reduce deficits or protect the dollar.

We have no idea how this election will shake out.

But there’s already a whole lot of shakin’ going on. And in the coming financial storm, rocking the boat even more is sure to be disastrous.

Democrat? Republican? Either way, we’re ‘f----d.’

Regards,

Bill Bonner

Sunday, October 25th, 2026

Laramie, Wyoming

By Dan Denning

‘Follow the money.’

That’s what ‘Deep Throat’ tells Woodward and Bernstein in the 1976 movie ‘All the President’s Men.’ The line was made up by a screen writer. But Deep Throat was real. It was Mark Felt, who’d been passed over for the Director’s job at the FBI in 1972 (after J. Edgar Hoover’s death).

Felt was the Associate Director at the time (second in charge at the Bureau) and later confessed he was worried about Nixon’s obstruction of the FBI’s investigation into the Watergate burglarly. He died in 2008.

All ancient history, but good advice when it comes to following the money. On Friday, Meta joined Alphabet in being the latest ‘hyperscaler’ to report negative free cash flow on a quarterly basis. For Alphabet (Google) it was Q2. For Meta, Q3. Sales and operating cash flows for both firms are still healthy. But it’s all that cap ex spending on AI which results in negative free cash flow. What now?

Even when interst rates were historically low, money wasn’t entirely free. Depending on how you add it up, the hyperscaers have between $700 billion and $3 trillion debt. The lower figure is based on based things that are strictly debt. The higher figure—which includes ‘off balance sheet’ items—includes purchase committments, guarantees, and construction costs (all of which can, of course, be scrapped or reduced if the cash isn’t flowing).

You wonder if there are enough data centers to put all those chips in. You wonder if there’s enough copper to build all those data centers (or at what price). You wonder if there’s enough electricity to power them, assuming they were built. And you wonder if the political environment for all this is about to become a lot more toxic after the mid-term elections on Tuesday, November 3rd.

Those are problems for another day (nine days before the mid-terms). For now, the broadest definition of AI-related stocks puts their total market value at 49% of the total value of the S&P 500. As capex booms go, that’s second only to railroad boom in 1881, where the figure peaked at 63% (it was 36% for Industrials/Utilities in 1929, 40% for the ‘Nifty Fifty’ in 1972, 44% for Japan in 1988, and 41% for the dot.coms in 1999).

All those booms went bust. This one will too. The ‘hyperscalers’ can sell new equity to finance continued capex. But if they do, investors will start to wonder when all this investment is going to pay off…or IF it is going to pay off.

But it’s a big stock market out there. There are over 5,611 publicly listed US stocks. Over 1,00 of them are healthcare/biotech/pharma. There are 950 financial firms, 800 tech firms, 650 industrial firms, 600 consumer cyclical firms, 260 energy firms, 240 real estate firms, 240 consumer defensive firms, 220 basic materials firms, and 180 communication companies.

The chart at the top of today’s letter shows how the ten largest companies dominate, in terms of market cap. They get all the liquidity, especially from passive investment vehicles that allocate capital based on size. Easy come. Easy go. The chart below breaks it down further by sector (this is for the entire US market, not just the S&P 500).

What does all this mean?

It means after the ‘Big Loss’—which history tells us is inevitable in markets where mean reversion is at work—you’ll have all lot of choices about what to do with your money. Our mandate is to make sure you still have that money…and then help you make those choices (energy and basic materials are historically under-owned by Wall Street).

Paid up readers can read more on Wednesday, when BPR Investment Director Tom Dyson publishes the November Monthly Strategy Report. For new readers, that’s the fastest way to get up to speed with the ‘big picture’ as we see it. If you’re not a paid reader yet…why not?

Join up here today.

In the meantime, below you’ll find all the best research published in the last week by BPR.

Until tomorrow,

Dan

Friday, October 23rd, 2026

Laramie, Wyoming

By Dan Denning, Research Director

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Friday, October 23rd, 2026

Bill Bonner, from Dublin, Ireland

This morning, we will give a speech to an International Living group here in Dublin. We will tell them what we told you — sharing our story about getting beaten by police in a Paris riot.

“It was a good time to be someplace else,” we will conclude. What follows is a much-abbreviated version of what we will say next.

Imagine that you were living out in one of the western counties of Ireland...a poor tenant farmer, barely scraping by, with a spade and a hog, like millions of others. And then, one year, 1845, your potato crop comes up green and promising...only to wilt suddenly. In just a matter of days, the plants died.

You would get through that year as best you could — eating the pig and pawning your only coat — and look forward to next year’s crop. And once again, the plants came up out of the ground as usual but blacken and die. And now, you have nothing. Even the few farthings in the jar over the fireplace have been spent.

The thing to do was to get out...as soon as possible. About 1.5 million people starved to death or died of the kinds of diseases— like sharks after shipwrecked sailors -- that follow hunger. Another million left the country. Which were better off?

Share Bonner Private Research

That was a natural disaster. But man has caused plenty of disasters, too — intentional famines, wars, mass murders, genocides, religious massacres.

One of the worst of the sort in history occurred during our lifetimes. In Cambodia. The leader was a man named Pol Pot who had learned Marxist theory. Guess where? Yes, in Paris, where he went on a scholarship.

Once in power, Pol Pot tried to create a real workers’ paradise. Which meant levelling the population. If you had any wealth...or ever read a book...or even wore glasses, Heaven help you; you were considered a class enemy and eliminated. The city slickers were herded out to the country where they could be purified by hard work and fresh air on a collective farm. It was an ambitious application of theory to real-life ...and ended up by killing a third of the entire population, who were either murdered, or died from overwork, starvation, or disease.

The corner of the Boul’ Mich and the Boulevard St. Germain was not the best place to be when riots broke out in Paris in 1969. Ireland was not the place to be a farmer in the mid-19th century. Cambodia was not the place to be in the 1970s.

Where is not the place to be now?

At our financial publishing group — Bonner Private Research — our main goal is to protect against the Big Loss. It’s what happens when your money, like potatoes in a field with Phytophthora infestans, is in the wrong place at the wrong time.

We’ve all seen the videos of Paris burning. Maybe the Big Loss will come from there?

But today you can buy the leading French stocks in the CAC 40 for just two ounces of gold.

Looking at it historically, the last time the CAC 40 sank to the two-ounces-of-gold level was in 1970. From there, it went down for the next six years to under one ounce of gold. Investors may have been so depressed they were ready to jump off the Eiffel Tower...but if they held on for another 20 years, they would have made a 1,000% profit — in real, gold terms.

That’s how the system is meant to work. You get in when the risk of the Big Loss is low. And you stick with it until you make the big gain. In our approach, in the US, we buy the Dow at five ounces of gold, or less. We sell when we get stopped out over 15 ounces. But that leaves us with long, lonely periods while we’re waiting for the Dow to go down again.

What to do? Should we buy into the French market, at only two ounces of gold for the CAC 40? Maybe. French stocks may not go up, but they don’t look like they will hand you the Big Loss either.

Over the long term, in theory as well as practice, it’s not gold...or silver...or futures...or AI or options...or any other trick, technique or investment genius that adds to wealth. It’s profit-making enterprises. They take raw materials and labor and use them to create products that are worth more than the costs that went into them. That difference is profit. The world then has something it didn’t have before; it is a richer place. The feds take some of it in taxes. The managers squander a fair portion of it, as they always do...and the rest goes to the people who own the company.

We want to own those companies...profit making companies...not resource and capital consumers. Companies like Philip Morris (now Altria) — which, by some reckonings has created more wealth for shareholders than any other company in America.

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But wait...how do we know which companies will be successful...and which will bite the dust?

We don’t. Individual companies can go ‘to the moon’...or they can go broke. We mortals can never know for sure which will be which. Buy the wrong one and you will take the Big Loss.

Instead, we buy ‘the market’...using the Dow as a proxy. The 30 Dow stocks are very unlikely to go broke...all of them at once. So, we avoid the risk of the Big Loss in a single company. And we buy only when ‘the market’ is cheap — in gold terms.

Markets go up and down. And they tend to go up and down for long stretches of time. They get very cheap. And then they become very expensive. That’s the only piece of the market action we want to own -- when they are going from cheap to expensive, not the other way around. And we measure it in gold.

Nominal prices don’t tell you if you’re making money or not making it. In the 1970s, for instance, stock prices went up — in dollars, but in gold terms, they went down. So, we wait for the market to go down in gold terms...and then we can buy without worrying too much about the Big Loss. Someone else has already taken it for us.

But let’s go back to the key question. Where is the Big Loss most likely to come from today?

The general rule is that the pricier an investment is...in terms of its real-world earnings...the greater the risk that it could give investors a Big Loss. By that measure, AI-related stocks are an unexploded grenade. They have a market value of tens of trillions, but relatively little in real earnings, so far.

More broadly, the biggest risk to US investors is probably the US itself.

Officially, the dollar from 1971 is worth only about 13 cents today. But they changed the way they calculated it in the ‘90s so it wouldn’t look so bad. The real value of the dollar today is probably only about three cents, compared to one from 50 years ago.

And now, it appears that pretty much everyone is ready for more of the same…more inflation. The US is running deficits of 6% of GDP. That’s two or three times faster than the economy is growing. The feds are going to have to do something. Debt can’t grow faster than GDP for very much longer. Either they let inflation run hot. Or they default by suddenly devaluing the dollar. Our guess is that they will do both. And it won’t be the first time.

Most likely, the feds will simply ‘print’ money to cover the $2 trillion-a-year deficits. And they will also have to refinance about $11 trillion of existing debt, over the next twelve months. But when you have to print so much money, the bond markets — that is to say, the people who lend money to the federal government — get very nervous. They see the feds’ IOUs becoming substantially less valuable in the future. So, they — the bond vigilantes — demand higher interest rates to protect themselves.

Higher interest rates are a death sentence to debtors. They have to pay more and more to refinance their loans. And the biggest debtor of all is the federal government. So, when they ‘print’ to cover their deficits, the feds can end up paying more in interest than they printed. In other words, they end up worse off.

Yes, this is a very different kind of arithmetic. When you owe fairly little...and better yet, when interest rates are falling...you can ‘print’ a little extra money...and inflate the money supply by, say, the Fed’s 2% target. Nobody gets too upset about it...even though you are stealing from savers year-in and year-out.

But when you have $40 trillion in debt...and interest rates are rising...it’s a whole different ball game. The Fed no longer controls the debt; the debt controls the Fed.

And it just gets worse and worse. The feds print. Interest rates go up. And they have to print more. The gains they get from printing money are largely erased by the bond market.

And here’s the punchline. The only way the feds can get ahead is by printing more than the bond market expects.

Inflation only really works as an ambush. Otherwise, investors and consumers take a different route home. The authorities need new tricks...new traps. And what they end up with — what almost no American is prepared for...or can even imagine -- is hyperinflation. The velocity of money speeds up like a NASCAR racer...and the rate of price increases comes even faster than the new money.

And here’s the other part of that surprise. Big price increases increase the demand for big wads of cash. In the early stages, moneyprinting CAUSES inflation…later, inflation takes the lead, and the feds NEED to ‘print’ money to keep up with rising prices. When prices double, the consumer needs twice as much money to stay even.

None of this is new. Other countries had their PhDs just as we do. Many of them went to the same schools — Harvard, Yale, the London School of Economics. They were all smart. They all had studied the same theories.

But when inflation got revved up, they couldn’t control it. One of our partners in Sao Paulo told us what it was like:

“Dad would come home from his job. He was paid in cash, every day. We’d take the money and rush over to the supermarket to buy everything we could before they marked the prices up. Nobody wanted to hold cash overnight, because everything would be more expensive the next day.”

Americans are prepared for steady, docile, housebroken inflation — 2%...maybe even 4% or 5%. They are not prepared for runaway prices. So, that is what they might get.

And, much worse than people expect, it will also crash the stock market...if not in nominal terms, almost certainly in gold terms.

But there’s good news, too. The coming hyperinflation will cause millions of people to take a Big Loss. So will the crash of the stock market. But — if we’re able to stay on the sidewalk...and not get beaten up by the police or the rioters — we could have the opportunity of a lifetime...to buy real companies at the cheapest real prices we’ll ever see.

Regards,

Bill Bonner

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Thursday, October 22nd, 2026

Bill Bonner, from Ardmore, Ireland

Young people are sharing a frustration that opportunities for their generation are becoming scarcer and their future increasingly insecure.

—El Pais

As promised, another way to ‘connect the dots’ on Europe’s riots.

Blame neither immigrants, free-spending liberals, nor tight-fisted conservatives. Or blame them all. The problem is deeper. It is not the collapse of Western Civilization...but the collapse of the post-WWII European welfare state. New York Times:

It’s Not Just France. Europe’s Political Center Is Crumbling

The phenomenon has been building for years, with the perceived failure of liberal democracy to make good on its promises of a better future, especially for the young and the salaried working class.

There is a growing perception among many Europeans that traditional parties of the center-left and center-right do not offer real alternatives and are led by an educated elite that has lost its connection to the poor, the workers and the young. Facing rising deficits, expenses and interest rates, governments feel constrained in what they can do to respond.

The Times is, of course, a ‘liberal’ journal. It believes the problem is fundamentally a matter of money. If not for deficits, governments would be able to ‘respond’ (spend more money) to salve the hurts suffered by the poor and the workers. El Pais makes the same point:

The debt crisis leaves the French government with no room to respond to social demands

A penniless sugar daddy is just a dirty old man. He lures the young with promises, but has no way to make good on them. Voters are disgusted, giving up not only on mainstream political parties, but on democracy itself. A Pew Research poll shows 69% of the French population is ‘dissatisfied with democracy.’ In the US the dissatisfaction is the same — 69%.

In Europe, but not yet in America, disgruntled citizens have taken to the streets. Some are hoping for a change in government policies. Others are hoping to loot a pair of sneakers. And some are just out to cause trouble.

But the real trouble is not something any of them can change. The basic model is broken. In this regard, the old-time conservatives are right. You can’t really improve a society by handing out money. And you especially can’t do it when you don’t have any real money to distribute.

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“When I got out of school,” an old friend in France once told us, “...that was 1970. I could walk into almost any business in the country and get a job. The economy was booming. I had trained, but only briefly, as a machinist. But you didn’t have to worry about having certificates...and signing contracts...and all the other [BS] you go through today. I worked as a pastry chef for a while...and then as a plumber.

“And if I didn’t like my job, I could cross the street and get a different one.”

In France, as in America, people expected life to get better. Not because the government would give them more money, but because technology was racing ahead, and taking everyone with it. You could get a decent job and, as the economy grew, you would earn more. Soon, you’d be able to buy your own automobile...and maybe another one for your wife.

But Western economies have slowed down. The industrial revolution has run its course. Newer technologies — the internet and AI — have not, so far, panned out in the same way. Governments — promising more and more free stuff — have gone deeply in debt. And in their zeal to reward friends and punish enemies...they have erected such a high wall of rules, regulations and the aforementioned BS, that it is very hard for entrepreneurs to get over it.

Brett Holmes, in the New York Times, says France has become ‘unglued.’ Bad word choice. It is actually stuck, mired...gummed...in its own sweet fixes, like a fly gone to sleep in the jam pot. The Knowledge channels Holmes:

[In France] employers are discouraged from hiring by statutory social costs higher than anywhere else in Europe. The last time the World Bank published its “ease of doing business” rankings, in 2020, France came 32nd, just ahead of Turkey and Azerbaijan. A succession of prime ministers has tried to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64, to bring it more in line with the EU average and address the “crushing fiscal burden” of the country’s bloated pension system. No dice. American liberals often used to tout France as a model of what life should be like in the US: universal health care, strong worker protections, lower economic growth but “lots of joie de vivre”. Not anymore.

And now, interest rates, and inflation, are rising worldwide. France’s consumer inflation is 3.4%. In the US, it’s 3.7%. France’s cost of borrowing — the yield on its 10-year bonds — is 5.01%. US borrowing rates are already at 5.12%.

In both Europe and America, the glue has stiffened up. Governments can still borrow, but when they do, they drive up interest rates, which ends up costing them even more money.

The ‘liberal’ agenda — the operating model for the welfare state, spending more and more money, with more and more rules, and more and more elite do-gooders living at public expense — seems to have reached its brick wall.

It was always a Ponzi finance scheme, needing more and more new contributors to keep up with the promises made to the earlier ones. The first in — the baby boomer generation — did tolerably well...but the late arrivals are, pardon our French, ‘dans la merde.’

Regards,

Bill Bonner

Wednesday, October 21

By Tom Dyson, Investment Director

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Wednesday, October 21st, 2026

Bill Bonner, from Ardmore, Ireland

This is what awaits Europe with Islamo-leftism. Barbarians ravaging all that remains of beauty and civilization.

—Spanish Vox party leader Santiago Abascal

What to make of the riots in France...Italy...Portugal…Albania?

What set them off? A temper tantrum by Millennials and Zoomers? Or the death rattle for Western civilization?

The media loves fires burning and cops swinging their truncheons. Especially in the streets of Paris, such a photogenic city. The rest of the world looks on in horror...and relief. ‘At least that’s not happening here,’ people tell themselves.

The commentariat, meanwhile, struggles to make sense of it. The rioters, what’s their beef? And what does it mean for the rest of us?

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As always, there are opinions on the ‘right’ and on the ‘left.’ Sympathy for the mob can be found in ‘leftish’ circles, based on envy. Some people have a lot of money. Many have little. Surely that is the cause of so many of our social ills. Crime, lack of medical care, substandard housing...and so forth...all can be traced back to an unfair distribution of wealth, no?

That is the explicit appeal of socialism, generally, and New York mayor Zohran Mamdani in particular. The solutions are obvious — transfer the wealth from the rich to the poor. The feds should be taxing the rich, they say...and spending more for better schools, environmentally-correct housing, free medical care, cradle to grave — the usual ‘liberal’ agenda, in other words, an ancient tree that has never actually borne fruit. Maggie Thatcher explained the problem with it, ‘you soon run out of other peoples’ money.’

The contrary of the ‘liberal’ agenda is the ‘conservative’ agenda. You don’t hear it very often, because there are few conservatives still compos mentis. But those few will tell you that the problem is not too little funding for the young and the poor, but too much.

While the ‘liberal’ point of view is based in materialism, the ‘conservative’ outlook leans heavily on traditional morality...as in ‘the moral of the story.’ ‘People should get what they’ve got coming to them,’ says the old-time conservative. The grumpy old fellow is ready to share the judgement of time, experience...and scraped knuckles: ‘as ye sow, so shall ye reap,’ he says. The French have spent so much on ‘social services,’ he believes, that they now have a substantial population that is idle and, naturally, discontented. ‘What do you expect,’ says the graybeard, ‘they don’t have to get up in the morning and go to work.’

He is about to tell us what use the devil has for idle hands, but he knows he’s said it many times already; we’re probably getting tired of hearing it. ‘Nobody feels good about sitting around all day,’ he says, speaking from the experience of a retiree. ‘You’ve got to learn a skill...and feel the satisfaction of a job well done. They’re cheating these people out of a decent life. No wonder they’re upset.’

There’s also a third interpretation. Neither liberal nor conservative, there are those who think the fault lies not in our stars nor in ourselves...but in immigrants. The Independent:

Trump and Kremlin both claim French riots caused by ‘mass immigration’ in similar statements

“Close your Borders and take control, before it is too late!” the US president added. Russia’s presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev, meanwhile, said he thought it was “Western civilisation’s suicide through migrant chaos.”

This is a popular explanation because it puts the blame squarely on others...and suggests a simple solution: deport them.

That may or may not be a good idea, but it doesn’t explain the season’s riots all over Europe. Why are the immigrants rioting now? They’ve been in Europe for many years. Nor does it explain how France, for example, was able to field even larger mobs — in May 1968...in the Paris Revolution of 1848...and in the French Revolution of 1789 — with very few immigrants in sight. They — like Americans — are fully capable of burning down their own town halls; they don’t need foreigners to help them.

But the more dangerous and reckless the rioters become, the more voters will want to get rid of them. The Independent again:

Germany’s Alice Weidel, leader of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), described the clashes as an “attack on Western civilisation by migrant mobs and far-left agitators,” arguing that “open borders and mass immigration” were responsible for the destruction.

And back in France, Middle East Eye forecasts:

France is on the precipice of a far-right landslide

People don’t like to see shop windows smashed. Especially when it is an ‘immigrant’ doing the smashing. We don’t know if deporting whole groups of people will really make life better for those who are left. But there are several groups we’d like to propose.

More tomorrow...including another explanation for Europe’s riots.

Regards,

Bill Bonner

Tuesday, October 20th, 2026

Bill Bonner, from Ardmore, Ireland

[Tariffs] are paid by parents trying to provide for their families. They are paid by students saving up to buy their first car. They are paid by anyone who seeks to spend money on any conceivable product.

—Rand Paul

Two big surprises coming your way. But first, the news.

Amidst the misery and mystery of last week came a report on tariffs. Washington Post:

The New York Federal Reserve released a study last week about the effects of tariffs on prices. As it turns out, by February this year the import taxes that Trump announced in 2025 “contributed 2.9 percentage points to goods price inflation,” the issue that remains the top concern among voters. Without the barrage of tariffs, the New York Fed says, “goods prices would have fallen slightly.”

Perhaps it is because tariffs hit businesses (who pay the levy directly to the feds) first, producers are being whacked by much more inflation than consumers. This from Wolf Richter:

Inflation in prices that businesses pay each other and charge each other – tracked by the Producer Price Index (PPI) – accelerated to 6.3% year-over-year in September, the worst inflation in the realm of businesses since December 2022 (red in the chart).

Inflation has been far more aggressive for businesses than for consumers, though it has also been getting worse for consumers: The Consumer Price Index yesterday accelerated to +3.7% year-over-year. GDP tracks inflation that all economic participants face – consumers, businesses, non-profits, and governments.

Tariffs make a nice target. Partly because they are stupid and partly because they don’t work. Fox:

Manufacturing — the industry the tariffs were intended to help — fared particularly poorly, according to the damning report. Researchers estimate the sector lost roughly 75,000 positions during the policy’s first year, or about 6,250 jobs per month.

“We can say with an over 90% confidence level that manufacturing lost jobs because of the tariffs,” Richard Stern, vice president of the Plymouth Institute for Free Enterprise at Advancing American Freedom, told Fox News Digital.

No surprise there. Modern factories do not just sell to foreigners...they buy raw materials from them too. Tax their inputs and their outputs go up in price. That’s how producer prices rose 6.3% over the last twelve months.

Nor did tariffs reduce the trade deficit. CEPR:

By December [2025], the deficit had risen back to $100 billion a month, roughly the same as the pre-election level. The deficits have increased sharply again in 2026, driven in large part by a surge in semiconductor chips due to the AI boom. The August level of $132.6 billion is the second-highest deficit on record, topped only by last year’s March deficit.

Tariffs are a self-imposed problem that is easy to fix. Just drop them. Tout de suite. Problem solved.

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Inflation itself is easily solved too.

Just eliminate the tariffs and put the government on a pay-as-you-go basis...including paying down the debt. No borrowing. No funny money.

Why not? Every farmer, widow, and half-wit voter can do it.

But not if they can avoid doing it. And not when they still think they can ‘inflate the debt away.’ You might as well ask the wolf to give up meat for Lent.

This is where the first surprise comes in. The kind of inflation they see coming — slow, mild, house-trained inflation, at…say…the Fed’s 2% target rate — will work tolerably well...but only so long as the accumulated debt remains under control. The upward limit seems to be about 100% to 130% of GDP.

Thanks to Joe Biden and Donald Trump, who together added $20 trillion to US debt in the last ten years, we have reached the death zone. Now, even small increases in interest rates can spin out of control. Deficits cause borrowing, which causes higher interest rates, which raises the feds’ budget, which causes them to borrow more. As Tom points out, the “inflate” part of ‘inflate or die’ no longer rescues you...it finishes you off.

Investors and consumers are already alert to the swindle. They expect it — but at fairly civilized rates...certainly, less than 10% per year. Surprise number one is that inflation — that adorable pet curled up in front of the fire — will go feral. Maybe next year. Maybe ten years from now. It will eat your lunch. Your dinner. The furniture. Wolf-like...monstrous...and ravenous, it will devour your savings.

‘Hyperinflation!’ the press will shriek. ‘No one saw it coming.’

This will cue the Treasury for the second big surprise. The dollar will be devalued, perhaps 100 to 1. Or perhaps a new form of money will be inaugurated...invented by Elon Musk; it will do back-flips...and land in your bank account. AI-enhanced, crypto money — we will be happy to get it! The feds will declare your ‘old’ dollars void and worthless...an empty gesture, since it will have already become worthless.

The president will make the announcement, crossing his heart and hoping to die if ever again we see such high inflation. Most surprising of all, many voters will believe him.

Regards,

Bill Bonner

Monday, October 19th, 2026

Bill Bonner, from Ardmore, Ireland

Another fun-filled, wacko week!

Poor Katie, we hardly knew ye. CNBC:

Katie Zacharia out as Trump’s White House press secretary

The poor girl had barely finished stumbling through her first and last press conference when she was shown the door.

Ms. Zacharia had just told us about Kimberly Guilfoyle’s fall from grace...and then, it was just a matter of hours before she joined Ms. Guilfoyle tumbling down with the MAGA outcasts.

The Trumps had tried to get rid of Guilfoyle by sending her to Athens. But even there she made a nuisance of herself. Commentators said that Kimberly had ‘gone too far.’ That seems unlikely, since the Trump Team has thus far shown a remarkable tolerance for incompetence and self-dealing. More likely, Guilfoyle was viewed as an embarrassing and expendable small-time crook — unworthy of the company of people like Witkoff, Kushner and other pros. Women must be either useful or decorative, say the misanthropes. Ms. Guilfoyle had become neither.

We feel more sympathy for Zacharia. Is she a liar? Of course, she is. That is a job requirement. Asked where she had practiced law, she replied ‘um...in China,’ an obvious fib. Her problem was not that she lied, but that she wasn’t able to do it to White House standards.

On her first day on the job, Ms. Zacharia was visibly nervous and painfully aware that she was in over her head. That at least left her with a certain vulnerable charm, which couldn’t be said for many of the rest of the rejects — Kimberly, Pam, Kristi, Tulsi...et al.

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While this drama was playing out, came a report on Friday, that the US deficit for the fiscal year hit the $1.99 trillion mark. We’ve been saying for months that the deficit for the year would be $2 trillion. Okay, we were off by 0.5%. We’ll try to do better. Business Line:

US budget deficit rises to nearly $2 trillion in 2026, highest in five years

Record federal outlays and rising debt servicing costs weighed on US finances, while tariff refunds and higher defence spending added pressure .

And then came word that the situation was even worse than we thought. Fortune:

US debt interest payments hit $3 billion a day and jumped 8% in fiscal 2026 — faster than total federal spending, revenue and GDP growth…

At this stage what voters are probably hoping for is reliability and predictability. A steady and sensible hand on the tiller! Alas, those are not Mr. Trump’s best qualities. Perhaps that is why his poll numbers are going where few poll numbers have ever gone before. Daily Beast:

Trump Hits Worst Poll Numbers Ever

No president has posted a higher disapproval rating since George W. Bush left office.

This is shocking...shocking! Not that his numbers are so bad; that is what you’d expect. The shock is that they’re not worse.

And then came this from USA Today:

A new NBC News Decision Desk poll – taken with SurveyMonkey – found that 71% of adults think the country is on the “wrong track,” which marks the highest margin of Trump’s second term.

Trump’s approval rating fell to 34% among U.S. adults, a second-term low in NBC polling, while his disapproval rating sat at 66 percent. Fifty-one percent of respondents said they “strongly disapprove” of Trump’s performance, a second-term high.

Out on the Eastern Front, the war between the Ukraine and Russia has been a flop from almost every point of view. Russia hasn’t won. The Ukraine hasn’t lost. And billions of dollars are spent keeping it going.

The US chose to root for the Ukrainians; Mr. Zelensky was greeted by a joint session of Congress, on its feet, cheering his defense of ‘freedom,’ and declaring that the Ukraine’s borders — established by Stalin and Khrushchev — were sacred and inviolable.

But Mr. Trump is not restrained by matters of principle, even when they are genuine. Last week, he ‘flipped the flop’ and made a deal with Putin...hoping that a few more barrels of diesel fuel will leave him in better shape after the midterm election. CNN:

Trump waives Russia-related sanctions before they even kick in as Ukraine ties worsen

He also seems to have acquiesced to Russia’s request for the US to stop aiding Zelensky with SpaceX Starshield tracking of Russia’s incoming attacks. True or not, we don’t know, but it was reported that more of Putin’s missiles were finding their targets.

But back in the financial news, AI debt got more attention. CNN:

Nasdaq sinks more than 2% as investors raise questions about AI debt

The AI companies have borrowed billions — far more than was required for the canals or railroads or any other technical advance. The money can only be repaid if AI proves not only clever and amusing...but extremely profitable. So far, there are few signs of it. AI can write sonnets, of that we have proof. But can it pay the rent? Probably not.

While stocks sank, oil rose. The Hill:

Oil hits $110 per barrel for first time since May

And finally, September’s inflation numbers came out last week, the last report before the election. Washington Post:

Inflation rose to a 3.7 percent annual pace in September, extending a relentless climb this year pushed by surging energy prices, which have soured Americans on the economy as they head to the polls. Gas and energy prices spiked sharply, driving a hotter-than-expected increase…

What else could go wrong?

That’s what we’ll find out this week!

Stay tuned.

Regards,

Bill Bonner

Sunday, October 18th, 2026

Laramie, Wyoming

Earnings season…a Fed meeting…and rumors of a blown up hedge fund. It promises to be another big week on Wall Street. Things are getting creepy.

BPR’s paid subscribers should be sure to check out Investment Director Tom Dyson’s note earlier this week on closing out a trade (see below). If you made money on that trade and want to share your story, feel free to do so below, or send us a note at BPR@bonnerprivateresearch.com

Finally, our friends at International Living just finished hosting their wealth conference in Dublin, where BPR founder Bill Bonner spoke. More Americans than ever are looking at a second home abroad, or retiring overseas altogether. If the thought has ever crossed your mind and you wonder what it takes, you might be surprised. They explain here.

Until Monday,

Dan Denning

Dear Reader,

In the 1990s, we bought a chateau in need of renovation in central France and decided to move the family there. I wanted to improve my French before we left, so I invited Jen Stevens, who was a young editor at International Living, to join me at the Maryland Club in Baltimore for lunch each Friday. We’d walk the few blocks from the office and spend an hour or so speaking French over a good meal...

She recently described this experience to me as a “7 out of 10 on the terror scale”... but these lunches proved useful for both of us, I’d say. She’d lived in France and French-speaking Africa for years and spoke well—so the conversation helped open my ears to a language I’d studied many years before.

And it was an opportunity for her to learn about why I started International Living in 1979 and gain an understanding about how I think it can best serve readers interested in living better, retiring sooner, traveling smarter, and investing in more interesting (and potentially profitable) ways overseas.

International Living remains in Jen’s good hands today—nearly 30 years later. She recently recorded a video from France, where she spent much of this past summer, with some insights about just how accessible a more international life can be for you now, even in these uncertain times.

I encourage you to watch it...

Bill

Dear Reader,

As Bill mentioned up top, he and I got to know each other over lunches in French. And, once the Bonner chateau had been renovated, I started bringing small groups of International Living readers there for a week at a time in the summers to soak up the local culture and get a sense for what life in La France Profonde really feels like.

Which is to say: slow days... the most succulent peaches you’ve ever tasted... light that glows warmly on stone walls at dusk... fresh lavender cut from the garden... goats’ milk cheeses produced on nearby farms... pineau, a sweet local fortified wine, served as a cocktail... and the regional macaron, a delightfully cakey almond cookie.

Life in France is good. I’ve been reminded of just how good this past summer, when I was there with my husband... visiting old friends, checking out some towns new to us, and putting eyes on our kiddo #3, who was studying in Lacoste, and who we hadn’t seen in a few months.

I recorded this message in the Luberon in the south. This is Provence in all its glory: green hills planted with grapes, tiny hilltop villages with chapel steeples outlined at dusk like fairytale illustrations, a big sky so dark at night you can see the Milky Way clearly...

I made this video because I wanted to show you what a more mobile, more international, more interesting life can look like... and how possible it really is to create one for yourself without breaking the bank.

Tune in here.

A month-long stay in an Italian villa... a winter spent in the Caribbean sun... gourmet dinners out... your own housekeeper and gardener...

Despite what most people assume, you don’t have to be super wealthy and famous to live a high-flying international life... to enjoy a retirement that’s rich with experiences you’ve always wanted to have...

It is 100% possible to live in comfort, travel often, and not worry about whether you’ll outlive your nest egg...

You just need to know the shortcuts.

When you do, you can live and travel like a king... and do it on a working-class budget.

I walk you through a bunch of those shortcuts, here.

Warmly,

Jennifer Stevens

Executive Editor, International Living

P.S. A lot of people like you—thoughtful folks who are interested in living a more international life and curious about the opportunities out there in the wider world—won’t ever actually take the steps necessary to embrace those opportunities.

But you can. And you should.

Here’s why.

Friday, October 16th, 2026

Laramie, Wyoming

By Dan Denning

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Friday, October 16th, 2026

Bill Bonner, from Ardmore, Ireland

The trouble with growing old is this. As the years go by you pile up more and more bits of useful real-life experience and wisdom...but you can’t remember where you left them.

But the recent news from France brought back memories! The wail of ambulances and police sirens. The acrid smell of burning rubber. The sight of mobs in the streets...and gendarmes teaching them a lesson. Smoke. Noise. The madness of crowds and the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie.

Videos showed the battles between French students, along with the usual professional agitators, pitted against the forces of law and order, otherwise known as ‘les flics.’ Yes, in the immortal words of Yogi Berra, it was ‘déjà vu all over again.’

You shouldn’t believe everything you see on the internet, of course. The details are often invented or misunderstood. The ‘analysis’ is usually self-serving or superficial. And today, what you’re seeing with your own eyes could be a complete AI invention.

Here at Bonner Private Research we don’t trust any ‘fact’ unless we made it up ourselves. So, with no claim to absolute truth or moral uplift, we will just tell you what happened. Then, we’ll try to remember why we wanted to mention it.

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We were a very poor student in the late ‘60s. And, at the University of Maryland, we were having a very poor student experience. Then came what looked like a way to fix both problems...at least temporarily. And here, we have no confidence in the numbers, since we dredged them out of our memories from more than half a century ago. Tuition at the University of Maryland was about $1,200 a semester. To that, we had to add living costs. We shared a humble apartment with other students in College Park...and worked in the kitchen of a sorority house, washing dishes in exchange for lunch and dinner. This arrangement — working amid 50 or so co-eds — gave our imagination a workout, but never amounted to much ‘in the flesh’ shall we say. The ‘sisters’ wanted nothing to do with the poor boys sweating in the kitchen.

But we partially repaid their contempt, at mealtime. We ate before they did and wolfed down such heroic quantities of food, so fast, that there was relatively little left for the sorority sisters. They should have thanked us.

The cook was a cheerful, middle-aged black woman named Hattie. She encouraged our mischief by looking on with an approving smile.

“I likes to see a man eat,” she said. We were all too eager to make Hattie happy.

But sometime in the autumn of 1968 we learned that the tuition at France’s prestigious ‘Sorbonne’ was only about $90. And they had a special program for foreigners with intensive French lessons. We had taken French in high school, for four years. We figured we could get by at a French university. France also fed its scholars with special student cafeterias where you could get a full platter of food for about 50 American cents. And many students lodged in what they called ‘chambres de bonnes,’ or maids’ quarters, for about $30 a month. No heat. No private bath. And no elevator (these rooms were almost always sixth-floor garrets in Haussmannian apartment buildings.)

As we calculated it, the savings — even after a transatlantic flight, on Iceland Air — would be substantial. And as it turned out, we got more than we bargained for.

So, thus it came to pass that we were among fellow students, in the Latin Quarter of Paris in the spring of 1969. The uprising that had happened the year before seemed like a lark to us. Students and leftists had pried up the paving stones to erect barricades. Windows were smashed. Fires were set. Pitched battles raged in the streets. But remarkably few people were seriously hurt.

“C’est la lutte finale...” It’s the final struggle...the ‘Internationale,’ the anthem of communists, anarchists, syndicalists, anti-capitalists and utopianists of all sorts. It expresses the hope of a worldwide revolution, where the working classes finally rise up and throw off their yokes.

The battles of ‘68 were over when we got there, but the tune of the ‘Internationale’ still echoed in the streets and meeting halls, even as the authorities were putting asphalt over the cobblestones to prevent them from being pried up again.

But beneath the calm, the spirit of rebellion still burbled. Students plotted in the cafes. The press earnestly warned of the need for ‘reform.’ The French were well schooled in Marxist theory; they considered it only a matter of time before the inevitable victory of the proletariat.

We were only just beginning to understand the cast of characters when a new wave of violence sloshed over the Latin Quarter. A large group of demonstrators took to the streets near where we were studying, on the Boulevard St. Germain. We were too ignorant and too naïve to understand what it was about, but we were curious. We followed along to see what would happen. But by this time the gendarmes of Paris were battle-hardened veterans who knew what to do. They formed a line in the street in front of the mob. Students threw rocks, which bounced off the plastic shields carried by the front line of police. For what seemed like a long time, the two armies remained in place, with the students lobbing insults and projectiles on one side...while the police, like cattle in a hailstorm, stood their ground.

Then, without warning, the police dropped their shields and charged. The protesters had let down their guard. They had gotten too comfortable. The police swung their truncheons, beating up several of the students, whacking them to the ground and then kicking and pounding away with their rubber clubs.

We watched this neither with alarm nor satisfaction, but like a tick wondering where the old dog would go next. After the demonstrators had fled, we continued watching as the police finished their business with the protesters they had collared, herding them into vans with grated windows.

It was time for us to move on too. But the route was now blocked by police lines. This was 1969. And to the police we must have looked little different from the hooligans and idealists they had just thrashed. So, naïve as we were, trusting in the good faith and training of the constabulary, we just walked right up to politely ask if we could pass.

We had barely gotten to the conditional mood of the French verb when the answer came good and hard — a truncheon blow to the jaw. Knocked to the ground, two of the gendarmes began repeating the performance they had just rehearsed on the protestors — beating us up. We used our arms to protect our head and were able to scramble away.

Our face was bleeding. Our body was battered. Worse than that, still lying in the street was our sense of justice. We burned to get even, but had no way to do it. We might as well have been a cat complaining about the local dogs.

What lessons can we draw from this experience?

The obvious one: there are times when it is better to be somewhere else. You can’t control what goes on around you. And, often, you can’t prevent something bad from happening to you — except by not being present when it happens. Whether an armed invasion or a stock market crash, better to watch from the sidelines...and then slip away unnoticed.

Regards,

Bill Bonner

Tom Dyson, Investment Director

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Thursday, October 15th, 2026

Bill Bonner, from Ardmore, Ireland

A whole flotilla of news bobs around a whirlpool of funny money finance. The Financial Times:

Top economies heading for biggest budget deficits since Covid, IMF warns. At its annual meeting, the fund calls for ‘urgent’ action to rebuild public finances

Newsweek adds the personal touch:

Eight months into the war in Iran, the average American household is nearly $2,000 worse off, according to economist Mark Zandi. This adds a fresh economic pressure as the midterms approach.

“Nearly $2,000. By my calculation, that is what the Iran war has cost the average American household since the war began nearly eight months ago. Nationwide, that adds up to $265 billion,” Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, wrote on social media.

That is seven times more than what Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told Congress the war had cost the nation between February 28, when the U.S. and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran, and late July.

Seven times? A mistake? The Independent follows up:

American families are falling behind on their bills at a rate not seen since the Great Recession, according to new federal data.

One in five households are behind on a loan payment, reported the Federal Reserve in its three-year survey of 4,367 U.S. families.

“Between the 2022 and 2025 surveys, the share of families that reported being behind on loan payments sharply increased from about 12 percent to almost 20 percent,” the report said.

The number of families at least two months late on a bill has increased 60 percent in the past three years, according to the report.

Outraged young people in France are in a lather...disappointed older people in America are in a sulk...and a lot of people in-between don’t know what to think. Look more closely, and the storm stretches out...like a vast hurricane centered in the North Atlantic, threatening to soak us all.

Someone must have made a colossal mistake. But the voters can always be trusted to make the right choices...after they’ve exhausted all the wrong ones...can’t they?

“The Republicans really made a mess of things,” some are likely to say. “Oh yeah? Well, if we let you Democrats run things the whole country will soon be bankrupt before Christmas.”

And now...approaching the mid-term elections, US voters are girding their loins for a battle royale. They hope to correct a big mistake and set things right. They may get rid of one scoundrel. But they are sure to find another.

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Mistakes are what you call rational choices that don’t work out. All the major political parties of the West went along with the funny money, even welcoming it. It was the Original Sin of modern democracies. And at first, like all sins worth committing, it seemed not only like a ‘good idea,’ but like it might be fun. Spending money you never had to earn...whoopee!

And then, when the storm clouds gathered, other mistakes were made, intended to fix the first one. And now, thoughtful people are beginning to realize that the whole fake money system was a mistake. But it is too late to correct it; the Republic is in the grip of powerful winds it cannot control.

Last week marked the 25th anniversary of America’s war on Afghanistan. The first drone attack was meant to kill a leading terrorist. It failed. He survived — a ‘ghost,’ they called him. Others did not survive. But terrorism flourished. Consortium News:

Strikes did not only create ghosts. They also created recruits. Researchers, journalists and Afghan elders have long described the same pattern: A village is hit, a family is destroyed and the Taliban offer the survivors the only form of justice made available to them. By the end of the war, entire districts had made that choice, not out of ideological conviction but out of grief.

Was the war a mistake? Certainly, the deciders didn’t think so.

While the US spent billions recruiting for the Taliban, Europe spent far too much on ‘social’ programs for its own voters. Now, with a ‘budget crisis looming’ it takes a page out of America’s thick catalogue of errors. After eight decades relatively ‘war free,’ it summons its drones. Strategic Culture:

Barely a week passes before [Ursula von der Leyen] makes another crackpot policy announcement, gives herself a salary increase, or makes a statement about needing to give even more money to Ukraine. But in recent months these announcements have become more radical and existential, and we are seeing a new dawn now in the EU where the only solution to cover up the feral spending and borrowing is to fabricate a war with Russia and then blame Putin for the whole fiasco.

No half-bright person really thinks Russia is much of a threat. It can barely prevail against the Ukraine in its own backyard. A real war with NATO would be a disaster for Russia.

But the purpose of the war is not to protect Europe from Russia, but to protect its elites from a half century of ‘mistakes.’ A foreign enemy is the oldest alibi in the book. And still the most reliable.

Back in North America, the US has long enjoyed a strategic advantage. It has only two neighbors, north and south, neither of which poses any threat.

So, what does it do? It establishes an American presence — mainly military bases — thousands of miles away. And it takes sides — such as entering a ‘special’ relationship with Israel. Now, it has enemies all around.

A mistake? Maybe not. One man’s blunder is another man’s vacation home on the Outer Banks.

Regards,

Bill Bonner

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