Tuesday, June 16th, 2026

Bill Bonner, from Youghal, Ireland

AI...AI...ai yi yi!

In the Financial Times there appeared a well-meaning piece of nonsense.

“AI will do 80% of the economically viable work that humans do today, for 80% of all jobs, faster than most people believe,” writes Vinod Khosla, who claims to have spent decades brooding over the manner in which innovations upset the human animal.

Brace yourselves for “mass underemployment,” he warns. And then he settles down to the true vocation of world-improvers everywhere — angling for a cut of the action. We require a “policy framework,” says he.

Why? Cannot the people work out for themselves how, and whether, to make use of the thing?

Apparently not. They want busybodies of the Khosla stripe to arrange it all on their behalf, to rob the liquor store and then share out the gin. So, at least, Mr. Khosla believes.

More precisely, he would have the federal government seize a fat slice of the profits and the ownership of the AI industry — on the cheerful supposition that the casta politica will prove a wiser steward of the new marvel than the men who have poured billions of dollars and their whole careers into conjuring it up.

How likely is that? AI is run, at present, by some of the keenest minds on the planet — and even they have yet to show that it can turn a profit. Hand it over to the political hacks and you very nearly guarantee its ruin. Under Biden, the chief of the program might have been a diversity hire; under Trump, one of the family cronies. Either way, the odds of success grow slimmer by the hour.

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The whole performance is the usual political smash-and-grab, dressed up in the time-honored uniform of problem-and-solution. Khosla holds that AI is a monstrous problem, since it will fling ordinary folk out of work while “juicing” the returns of the capitalists. We must, therefore, overhaul the tax code. And here the poor fellow betrays a truly remarkable poverty of imagination. Did the unemployed teamsters “juice” the earnings of the canal companies? Did the automobile makers fatten their books by putting the manure collectors out of business? Did the clothiers swell their returns by rendering the bobbin boys redundant? Of course not. No man “juices” his profits by throwing his customers out of work. Where would the juice come from?

So we begin by observing — modestly — that the dread now being peddled by these earnest soothsayers is misplaced. Only Washington and Las Vegas prosper by impoverishing their customers. The rest of capitalism, whatever its sins, makes the proletariat richer along with itself. Henry Ford doubled the wages on his assembly lines and made Detroit the best-paid city in the Republic. Today the highest wages are paid in Silicon Valley — again, very nearly double those of other towns.

Even with AI hard at its labors — and here we speak with our fullest confidence — people will go on wanting things, and go on finding things to do to earn the money to buy them.

This is not to say the contraption arrives without its warning labels. No great innovation ever came to market without its risks. Every last one of them is, in the fullness of time, turned to the defrauding of men — or the killing of them. The first controlled flight took place at Kitty Hawk in 1903. Less than ten years on, Captain Carlo Piazza was dropping bombs on Turkish troops from his Blériot monoplane. America made the first successful test of an atom bomb in July of 1945; four weeks later it dropped one on the civilians of Japan.

The real danger of AI is that it will do something wicked — by design, or by accident. But that plane, dear reader, is already aloft — and at the controls sit the very people upon whom Mr. Khosla would bestow his “policy framework.” They are using AI to drop bombs and steer drones across the Middle East at this moment. And those same worthies have already ordered a ban on Claude 5, on grounds of “national security.” If anyone is going to bend the technology to scamming people, killing them, or robbing them blind, in short — it is going to be us.

Khosla’s economic menace is largely a fiction. His remedy is a fraud besides. And here, again, our confidence runs high — for the simple reason that both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have signed on to it. Sanders would nationalize the AI companies outright, that the common citizen might share in the spoils. And Trump throws in his two cents:

‘I’m going to have meetings with the top 12 or 15 executives very shortly, and we’re talking about giving back something to the public, and if we do that, the public will become very rich.’

Yes — they are counting the money already. Khosla and his fellow dreamers fancy that a blend of AI-linked taxes and an ownership stake in “public” hands will haul in “an estimated $150 — $200 billion within five years.” In ten years, it will be such a triumph as to furnish a “trillion-dollar annual kitty” to fritter away however we please.

Oh, how it carries us back. We recall a callow youth, ready to swallow very nearly anything. In 1969 we turned twenty-one, and Americans set foot on the moon. Surely it was only a matter of time before we kept a permanent colony up there — and pressed on to Mars.

Fifty-seven years have since rolled by. There is still no permanent station on the moon. But Elon Musk pledges to plant a colony on Mars.

And now the President himself assures us that Americans shall grow “very rich” — because the feds propose to poke their long noses into the AI business.

How likely is that?

Tune in tomorrow...

Regards,

Bill Bonner

Monday, June 15th, 2026

Bill Bonner, from Youghal, Ireland

Another merry week has clattered by. And what did we learn from it? Anything new?

From Monday through Tuesday and on into Wednesday, we watched the assault on Iran gather its head of steam — and the oil market was flung about like a rag doll in the jaws of a puppy.

The President vowed to hit the Iranians “very hard.” Why we were hitting them at all remained, as ever, a mystery wrapped in fog. But no matter: by Thursday the price of oil was sliding again, and we were hitting them no longer. Fox:

Iran latest: Trump cancels tonight’s airstrikes, says deal has been approved

Really? Was the war truly over, we wondered? Had Trump TACO’d yet again?

By Friday the press declared the deal genuine. Pakistan said so. The trouble was that it bore no resemblance to a meeting of the minds — either because the parties never met, or because no minds were on hand to begin with. Antiwar.com:

Tehran and Washington have publicly offered different details for the agreement. According to Iranian media, the deal does not include any restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program, Tehran retains control over the Strait of Hormuz, a ceasefire that includes Lebanon, and the unfreezing of Iranian assets.

After the report, Trump claimed it was false. “The terms that Iran leaked out to the Fake News have NOTHING to do with the terms that were agreed to, in writing,” the President wrote on Truth Social Friday. “What they said, including their weak and pathetic statement on having a deal, bears no relation to the truth. Very dishonorable people to deal with.”

It is now Monday morning, and the terms of the deal — if a deal there be — remain a secret, at least from us. But connecting the dots — the “peace agreement” will probably turn out to be the very twin of the war that bred it: nobody knew what Iran did to make us want to bomb it, and nobody knows what it does to make us stop.

But the grandest spectacle of the week arrived on Friday. The Financial Times:

SpaceX soars 30% in historic debut

To the moon! The company was valued at better than $2 trillion, with Mr. Musk’s personal hoard vaulting past $1 trillion. Speculators craved a slice of it so ravenously that they cheerfully paid the loftiest prices ever.

And the other AI biggies are queuing up. OpenAI and Anthropic are both readying mighty IPOs of their own, hoping to scoop up billions so they may go on pouring money into an almost miraculous technology of uncertain value.

Should it all unfold as planned, these offerings will heap some $4 trillion onto the value of America’s publicly traded companies.

“It’s hard to believe,” said Musk of the IPO. “If people had told me this was going to happen, I was like, man, you must be smoking some really good crack, because I think this company is going to fail.”

Musk may yet prove the truest prophet in the room. There is no plausible road to profit for SpaceX — at any rate, no profit that could justify this morning’s price. Our own guess is that the price will adjust — downward — long before any profitable business model is unearthed.

Another grand event fell on Sunday, when POTUS turned eighty and celebrated with a pageant worthy of Caligula. That Roman emperor adored mass entertainments — the more lurid and low-brow the better; he also waged pointless wars, raised extravagant monuments, persecuted his enemies, and drained the treasury dry. In one famous turn, he proposed to make his horse a consul — whether out of madness or merely mischief, the historians have never settled.

Meanwhile, the New York Times published a piece laying bare how desperately all the President’s men — and women — labored to keep the Epstein files from the light.

“In their public statements, Trump’s advisers were full of bravado, dismissing the crisis. In reality, it was consuming the highest ranks of the administration as no issue had for the president’s team since the Russia investigation in his first term. His aides were determined to keep their rising sense of panic out of public view,” the New York Times reporters wrote.

There is “chaos in the White House,” cries the press — not so much because the President’s men are striving to mislead the public and obstruct the course of justice, but because some traitor in the inner circle is spilling the beans. MSN:

Trump’s fury over Epstein book fuels massive leak hunt

Perhaps the whole Trump menagerie will be waterboarded, one by one, until the leaker confesses.

Our own guess is that the Deep Throat belongs to JD Vance. With one eye already cocked toward the 2028 primaries, he fears that Trump is driving off the independent voters he will need to seize the White House. And so, he feeds the press a version of events in which he alone plays the intelligent voice in a conspiracy of dunces. Whispering to the Times about the goings-on in the situation room is his way of putting a little daylight between himself and POTUS.

By and large, it was a good week. When it ended...and we were still alive. The liquor stores were open. And the show, as jolly and alarming as ever, goes on.

Regards,

Bill Bonner

Research Note, by Dan Denning

While the SpaceX IPO went off the launchpad without a hitch, last week raised serious doubts about whether Anthropic (Claude) and OpenAI (ChatGPT) will be able to sell shares to the public and realize the trillion dollar valuations everyone expects. What happened?

On Tuesday of last week, Anthropic launched Fable, the public version of its Mythos software I wrote about in early April. Anthropic has been famously and publicly concerned about ‘ethical’ and ‘safe’ AI. Fable is/was the most powerful version of its model yet, designed to prevent cyber crime, but with ‘guardrails’ to prevent ‘bad actors’ from using it for nefarious purposes (sussing out software vulnerabilities in systems that could be exploited).

It was all going swimmingly until one of Anthropic’s vendors, Amazon Web Services (AWS) called the federal government and said that it was possible to ‘jailbreak’ Fable (force it to do bad things) because AWS programmers had done just that. The US Commerce Department promptly reacted on Friday afternoon by slapping export controls on the Fable model, banning it for all non-US users. This forced Anthropic to not only disable access to the model not only for all its own foreign employees but for all of its current users as well.

There may be more that meets the eye going on here. Anthropic and the Department of War have been engaged in a month’s long back-and-forth over whether its tools come with ‘strings attached’ (restrictions on how the US government can use them). But the kerfuffle couldn’t come at a worst time for Anthropic’s plans to raise cash by going public.

Fable, we have a problem. Will AI pop its own bubble by warning about public safety? Will a ‘two-tier’ AI world where the public gets a ‘safe’ version and the government gets the powerful version generate enough revenues to justify valuations of AI companies? Or did the bubble find its pin last week?

Friday, June 12th, 2026

Laramie, Wyoming

By Dan Denning

What a day for a space dream. As epic bubbles go, this one’s been a doozy. And if the SpaceX IPO marks the symbolic (if not the actual) top of the AI/tech boom, well at least it’s made some cafeteria workers and janitors into millionaires. That’s more than Bernie Sanders and Liz Warren have ever done for American workers.

The company began trading today at $135/share. It raised $75 billion at that price, for a market capitalization of $1.77 trillion. After finishing up 19.2% on the day, the market cap is now $2.1 trillion. That makes it the sixth-largest American company by market cap. Add in the other five and you have $21 trillion worth of new tech ‘wealth’.

The miserable communists and envy merchants of the world can’t stand that Elon Musk is the world’s first trillionaire. Sanders wants to use Musk as the poster boy for lifting the cap on taxable income for Social Security. Having never had a real job his entire life or created an ounce of value for anyone, Sanders says if billionaires and trillionaires pay their ‘fair share,’ Social Security can be saved for the next seventy-five years.

The US government spends around $1 trillion every 50 days. You could confiscate all of Musk’s net worth and it would buy you about seven weeks of spending. And in any event, as numerate people understand, net worth tied to the value of stocks is not cash. Why?

It’s not liquid. And if we’re right about this IPO marking a high-water mark for the bubble, Musk won’t be a trillionaire for long. Enjoy it while it lasts! And don’t forget that all the valuation metrics on our dashboard are screaming ‘danger!’

It’s tempting to pop up some corn, add some butter, and kick back to watch the coming calamity. But you can’t help but be a little impressed about the SpaceX hype and what Musk has managed to achieve (in the face of hostile politicians and carping legacy media). That doesn’t make me optimistic that a ‘Big Loss’ isn’t coming. Our mission is to avoid it.

But there WILL be a future after the bust. And on the optimistic and opportunistic side, uranium is going to be a part of it. After all is said and done in the Strait of Hormuz, nuclear will be the big winner of the Iran war. That’s worth keeping an eye on.

The World Nuclear Association updated its ‘reference case’ for uranium demand in its 2025 report. It reckons uranium demand will double to 390 million pounds a year by 2040. That figure is a 55 million pound increase from the ‘reference’ case in the 2023 report. What’s driving demand?

New reactors.

Trouble is, there aren’t enough new mines!

Current annual mine supply is around 155 million pounds. The big three producers, geographically, are Namibia, Canada, and Kazakhstan. With some valuable advice from our friend Rick Rule, Tom Dyson made a simple ‘long’ uranium position the first one in BPR’s Official List (make sure you don’t miss the new position Tom added, with a Canadian angle, in his note on Wednesday).

Then there’s this chart.

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Friday, June 12th, 2026

Bill Bonner, from Youghal, Ireland

“I love it. The numbers were great. You know what I really love? I love the inflation.”

--Donald Trump

MSN reports:

US oil reserves sink to 22-year low as Hormuz crisis deepens

Crude oil inventories in the United States decreased by 8.0 million barrels during the week ending May 29, according to new data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released on Wednesday. The decrease brings commercial stockpiles to 433.7 million barrels, according to government data, which is now 3% below the five-year average for this time of year.

The EIA’s data release follows API’s figures that were released a day earlier, which reported that crude oil inventories saw a draw of 6.75 million barrels in the period.

Mr. Trump does not commute to work in a pick-up. Were he a normal working stiff, with an honest income, inflation might not be so agreeable. Nexstar:

Americans are paying, on average, 27 cents more for a gallon of gas since Sunday, data from AAA shows. That increase was partially fueled by a 10-cent jump that happened overnight Monday into Tuesday, the largest single-day rise since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

Taking a longer view, in January of this year, a gallon of gas cost about $2.60. Today, it’s $4.30. That’s $1.70 more.

The average commuter logs 37 miles per day, 13,500 per year. At an average of 25 miles per gallon, this means he is paying almost $1,000 more per year. Not a big number, if you’re a Trump. But if you’re an average worker, you earn about $50,000 and, after taxes and health insurance, take home about $40,000.

At $4.30 a gallon, your driving costs you $2,300....not to mention the costs of the vehicle itself. And if you stop for a coffee and a donut, it will be another $1,700 or so, per year...leaving you with only $36,000 to live on.

But Mr. Trump assures us that the war will be over soon. And then gas prices will drop ‘like a rock.’ CBS:

“And now we’re in the final throes of what will be a very very good deal that will not allow any way shape or form nuclear weapons,” Mr. Trump told reporters after attending the third game of the NBA Finals at New York’s Madison Square Garden. “And the strait will open up right away. It will open up immediately upon signing, which could be in two or three days.”

By our count, since March 1st, that was the 23rd time he has said the war would soon be over.

We have our doubts. The International Energy Agency:

With Hormuz tanker traffic still restricted, cumulative supply losses from Gulf producers already exceed 1 billion barrels with more than 14 mb/d of oil now shut in, an unprecedented supply shock.

Semafor:

The US oil industry has dwindling options to offset losses from the shuttered Strait of Hormuz. …Since the Iran war began, US oil exports have reached a record high and have helped stave off extreme global price spikes. But the precipitous drawdown since March essentially erases the stockpile built up since the 2010s shale boom.

Higher prices, such as they are, cause ‘demand destruction,’ where people simply decide to drive less. That helps to hold down prices too. Informed Comment:

The IEA says that in Q2, ending June 30, world demand for petroleum will be down by 2.45 million barrels a day....People are just using less petroleum because it is more expensive than it was before the US and Israel attacked Iran on February 28. In the US, gasoline is up by 35% to 50%. In Europe, diesel, which runs trucks, was the equivalent of $6.78 a gallon in February, and is now $8.02 per gallon (€1.82 per liter). If you are running a fleet of trucks over thousands of miles, that is a huge loss, and you might consolidate and cut out less remunerative routes.

You can cut the fat, but pretty soon you reach the muscle. Informed Comment describes what happens next:

Airlines have cancelled tens of thousands of flights and ticket prices have risen, so some passengers are cancelling or postponing trips. Trucks deliver goods to retail stores, so prices of commodities have gone up, and some customers have put off buying things they don’t desperately need right now. If the retailer doesn’t sell a product, it doesn’t order more, so the trucks don’t roll as often. And if the goods aren’t selling, the factories scale back production, so they use less petroleum, too.

We don’t want to start a panic, but there’s bound to be some kind of hazard on the road ahead. And this could be it: an oil slick. Even if the Strait of Hormuz were opened tomorrow, it would still take months for oil inventories to recover. The US economy depends on cheap gas…and cheap credit. Both could become much more costly.

Stay tuned...

Regards,

Bill Bonner

Thursday, June 11th, 2026

Bill Bonner, writing from Youghal, Ireland

What a jolly little war…as long as you are not in the middle of it…or have to pay for it…or buy gasoline…The Washington Post:

US launches strikes on Iran after downing of Army helicopter, prompting retaliation

Next at bat, Reuters:

Iran strikes US bases in Gulf after Trump orders attacks near Hormuz

The press goes on to explain that the Iranian bombing is retaliation for the US bombing of Iran…which was in retaliation for the Iranians shooting down a US helicopter, which was loitering over the Strait to enforce a siege which was imposed in retaliation for the Iranians’ siege which was in retaliation for the US bombing which was meant to demolish the Iranians’ nuclear bomb program…that America’s own spy organizations said didn’t exist…and which Donald Trump claimed to have demolished a year ago, even though the spooks said it didn’t exist then either.

Got that?

Hope so, because we’re not going to repeat it.

Instead, we’re going to move on. We’ll fade all the bombing and besieging …as distracting as they are…to focus instead on what we’re supposed to ignore: that the feds have made an unholy hash of US finances….and every day the stench grows stronger.

Opinion: The true national debt just hit $1 million per U.S. household

Marketwatch:

The effective U.S. national debt just crashed through $100 trillion for the first time in history, and now stands at an extraordinary 400% of annual gross domestic product — but almost nobody seems to care. The shocking news is (as usual) buried in the footnotes of the annual report from the Medicare Trustees. In Table V. F2 on page 218, right where everyone will see it, the federal government reports that the commitments of Medicare and Social Security now exceed their assets by an eye-watering $97 trillion, which is more than three times U.S. gross domestic product.

This tally includes, of course, only the feds’ own obligations. But all through the economy, the funny money regime has inflated asset prices…and the debt that supports them.

Somehow, someday…all that gaudy debt and rococo valuations will be squared up…to what they are really worth. The prevailing assumption is that the excesses will be inflated away. While that is probably right, we need to be cautious. It may not be that easy.

Stimulating an economy is like stimulating an old mule. Sometimes, no amount of prodding or coaxing will get him to move. You can lay on the lash, too…but like bombing Iran; the stubborn SOB might dig in his heels.

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American consumers and investors – like the Japanese before them – might dig in their heels too. Having grown older and more cautious since the last crisis, they might not be so eager to do it again. They may not party like it was 1999…or 2007…or 2021, for example. They might not buy the dip at all.

So, what may be approaching is not just a stock market correction…but a correction of the entire capital structure…not to mention the empire that heaved it up. This could be a serious reckoning that rolls through the whole economy. Almost everything has been whipped to a froth by the fake ‘money.’ It is fake because it – and all the assets quoted in it – masquerade as purchasing power for goods and services that aren’t there.

While the situation is endlessly complicated, it leads us to a homey insight: come the crisis, either goods and services get priced much more highly…or, asset prices go way down. One way or another, the two sides of the national balance sheet need to zero out.

And while we do not pretend to know exactly what is coming, we are sure we have the leaders we need to make it worse. The feds are already on the hook for $40 trillion. Plus, the unfunded obligations of Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. Then, there is the additional $2 trillion per year (assuming no increase!) in deficits.

Where is all that money to come from? Thanks to bombing, sanctioning, seizing, tariffing….and generally acting like a jackass…fewer foreigners will be in the room when America auctions new debt.

Over the last five years, for example, the Chinese have reduced – not increased – their UST holdings, by some half a trillion dollars. Overall, foreigners bought 14% of US Treasury offerings in 1995. The total peaked out at 60% in 2008…and has been going down ever since.

They’re not likely to get much support from the Fed either. Historically, a major buyer, now the Fed has its eye on inflation; it will be loath to ‘print’ more money just to soak up Uncle Sam’s deficits. The Wall Street Journal:

Consumer prices were up 4.2% in May from a year earlier, the Labor Department said Wednesday, accelerating from 3.8% the previous month. That was the highest year-over-year print since April 2023 and a sign that high energy costs stemming from the conflict with Iran are continuing to push up price pressures.

How this will play out, we don’t know.

We’ll stay in Maximum Safety Mode until we find out.

Until tomorrow,

Bill Bonner

Wednesday, June 10

By Tom Dyson, Investment Director

The stock market has just logged one of the all-time great rallies in history, gaining 19% over nine consecutive winning weeks.

An exciting new technology has sparked a gargantuan capex boom. Suddenly, after years of buying back stock, Google says it wants to issue $80bn in new stock to fund even more AI investment. Meta says it’s thinking of doing the same thing. So is Amazon.

But what’s this? Some businesses are complaining about token costs and telling their staff to limit their use of AI because it isn’t worth the cost. Uber blew through its entire AI budget for the year in just four months. One company — that forget to set a cap on usage — reportedly spent over half a billion dollars on Anthropic’s Claude. Ooops.

Meanwhile, they’re pumping the SpaceX IPO, by far the largest IPO in history.

Suddenly, momentum has stalled. Korea, a momentum leader, has dropped 12% in the last five days. Nvidia, another momentum leader, has dropped 8.6% in the last four days. The Philadelphia semiconductor index, a third momentum leader, has fallen 11% in five days.

And look at this final momentum leader, the outperformance of the Nasdaq100 versus the S&P 400 midcap index. It’s been one-way traffic for 25 years! It’s down 5.4% since May 29… but the peak still barely registers on this chart.

Oh…and interest rates are rising, which is a stiff headwind for growth investing. And the Strait of Hormuz is still closed.

In short, I couldn’t be more bearish. This is a classic stock market bubble in search of a pin.

Greetings from Rome!

They tied his tongue and then burned him at the stake.

This is Giordano Bruno. He believed Earth rotated around the Sun and the Universe was infinite. He was arrested by the Inquisition, and spent seven years on trial being tortured. They gave him many opportunities to recant his theories, even right up to the end when the flames were licking his feet. He still refused. So they gagged him for the last time and let him burn.

This is the exact spot where they executed him, 426 years ago.

Let me show you the simple guide I’m using to imagine what comes next for the stock market…

This chart shows the S&P 500, adjusted for inflation, going back 150 years.

The red lines show the bear markets…the long stretches where the stock market didn’t generate a positive return.

I assume that the S&P 500 will return to the uppermost red line on this chart (at 3,038), probably right where those three question marks are (sometime in the early 2030s).

As the red lines show, it would not be surprising for those buying the S&P 500 at today’s levels to be waiting four or five decades to see a positive return on their investment.

Overly simplistic? Maybe. Unorthodox? For sure. Contrarian? Extremely.

Source: Dave Collum’s Year In Review 2025

Our current asset allocation is like two separate bets against the stock market. Holding cash is a direct bet against the stock market and falling prices. We have 35% of our savings allocated to cash.

Precious metals and cheap energy stocks are also a direct bet against falling stock prices, and a devalued paper currency. History shows that when stock market values mean revert, gold and other hard assets soar.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about placing a third bet against the stock market…either by selling short or by buying long-dated put options.

I’m meeting up with Dan and Bill in London later this month and I’m going to seek their counsel. For now, I feel it’s a bad idea. Why? It’s game theory. If our two existing bets against the stock market pay off — and the Dow/Gold ratio goes to 5 — we’ll end up making a fortune.

The additional impact of buying put options or short selling seems like unnecessary risk for no clear gain.

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Bill Bonner, from Youghal, Ireland

Here are a couple, almost contradictory, news stories. MSN:

Gold hits yearly low despite recent reserve asset milestone

And here’s the more important news. The India Times:

‘Gold now ranks as the world’s top reserve asset. According to World Gold Council data, global gold reserves are approaching $4 trillion. Treasury holdings total approximately $3.9 trillion. The last time central bank gold reserves topped Treasury holdings was in 1996.’

As to the first, we have no idea. Short-term trading is an unsolvable riddle to us. Like the Riemann Hypothesis...as far as we know, no one has ever figured it out.

But the long-term Primary Trend may be another thing.

As near as we can tell, there are deep recurring patterns. Stocks rise, for example. And then...lo...they go down. On a daily, weekly, or monthly basis trying to predict these movements in the stock market is — at least in our experience — futile.

Even in the long-term you are often wrong about what is going on. But when a child is born you know the poor infant is already headed to the grave. And when a nation begins ‘printing’ money, it is just a matter of time before the money is worthless.

All we have to go on is history. So, we’ll make the most of it. Historically, there was a sober relationship between output and the value of the companies providing it. To simplify, if a company made a profit of $10...a prudent investor would pay $100 for it.

But in 1971 cometh a new money regime. Money was no longer an impartial and unassailable asset; now it was just another debit on America’s ballooning balance sheet. And since it could be created as easily as a toilet is flushed...and since the people who got it first and foremost were those in Wall Street’s credit industry...the general level of effluent rose as more of this new money washed in.

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At first it was a pleasant novelty – rising stock prices with no corresponding increase in output. But then baby boomers — via their 401(k)s, mutual funds, and ETFs — came to depend on it for their retirements.

Thus it was that the capital values on Wall Street, once at 10 times earnings, soared to...now...25. And the ratio of the stock market to GDP has shot up too...from around 0.5 to 2.3, with the stock market now worth 230% of GDP.

Recall our hypothesis...that Donald J. Trump was tapped by History Herself...to help topple the ultra-powerful USA. The pattern is without exception. Empires go up...and come down, too. They have a lifespan, on average, of about 250 years. They were usually based on naked military power. Like Napoleon Bonaparte, the conqueror rose...and then, he fell. In Napoleon’s case, it took less than 20 years to go from nowhere...to the top of Europe...to St. Helena, which was about as close to nowhere as you could get.

In 1898, Commodore Dewey won the Battle of Manila Bay, marking the US as an empire on-the-way-up. By 1999, the it bestrode the world...with one foot in North America and another trampling down foreigners wherever it chose. Its power unchallenged. Its economy unmatched. Its cultural, political and reputational influence beyond reproach.

But beneath the headlines was another story — an oft-told tale — a parable of pride and glory...vanity and ruin. America’s outsized success...combined with its funny money system...had already gnawed at the muscles and sinews needed to keep a great empire on its feet.

It was at this critical stage — when it needed to stitch the critical ligaments together again — that the nation fell under the sway of four especially block-headed leaders. George Bush led off with an expensive, pointless war. Barack Obama followed up, personally blessing the ‘kill lists’ while adding $8 trillion to US debt. Joe Biden went along with everything — stimmies, Israel’s massacre of Gazans, DEI and the goofy pronouns.

And then there is Donald Trump. Was ever a great leader more suited to the task? Full of bombast and bile, the man seemed to instinctively understand his real role — to hasten America’s decline. And while almost every policy played a helpful part — including the inane non sequiturs, the claptrap threats, the ‘crazy’ assertions — one policy stood out as a real empire buster.

US power rests on a pedestal of dollars. As the world’s reserve currency, this funny money made it possible for the US to spend more than it could afford — year after year. The system also aided and abetted the inflation of the dollar supply.

For many years the roaring conflagration of money-printing produced only a flicker of consumer price inflation. Instead, the hot new currency went into foreign coffers, where it sat undisturbed for an entire generation. And as an extra bonus, the dollars were used to buy US Treasury bonds...helping to lower borrowing costs for Americans’ domestic as well as foreign purchases. ScheerPost:

‘For nearly a century, the U.S. dollar has stood at the center of the global economy. Nations traded in dollars, stored dollars, borrowed dollars, and trusted the institutions that backed them. American power rested not only on military dominance but on the belief that the dollar-based financial system was stable, predictable, and indispensable.’

Where was the heel in the American Achilles? Where was its weakest link? What would bring the empire down faster, and more surely than anything else?

An attack on the dollar, of course. After all, the US had what we called in our 2005 book Empire of Debt. It funded itself not in the traditional ways -- conquest, looting, tribute, protection money or the slave trade -- but by borrowing and ‘printing’ ersatz ‘dollars.’

What would the best way to bring such an enterprise down? Make the dollar unreliable. Make it undesirable. Turn it into a weapon. Use sanctions, seizure, tariffs, the banking system to try to force people to do what you want. Result? They look for alternatives to the dollar. ScheerPost:

Washington Weaponized the Dollar. The World Responded by Buying Gold.

Business Standard:

‘According to the European Central Bank (ECB), gold accounted for nearly 27 per cent of global official reserves by the end of 2025, compared with 22 per cent for US Treasuries, the Financial Times reported. Just a year earlier, US Treasuries still held the top spot.’

The dollar is still the world’s go-to currency. But foreign investors and central banks are not going to it with quite as much enthusiasm as they used to have. And that means Americans — including the US government — will pay more to borrow.

The Empire of Debt staggers on; no relief in sight.

Regards,

Bill Bonner

Research Note, by Dan Denning

Our good friends—the trustees at the Social Security Administration—updated the projections I told you about yesterday. The 2026 Annual Report confirms that by 2034, the ‘reserves’ in the trust fund will be gone. Total payroll taxes of $1.9 trillion in 2034 (plus $120 billion from taxing benefits) will deliver just over $2 trillion to cover the expected cost of $2.4 trillion.

Revenues cover 83% of costs by 2034, according to the 2026 report (slightly better than the 81% projected last year). The annual ‘gap’ between benefits and revenues will be $412 billion (also slightly smaller than last year’s projection).

The bad news?

The long-term is even worse. By 2100, payroll taxes will cover just 65% of annual program costs. That means forty five cents of every dollar paid in benefits will have to be borrowed…or worse…printed. Keep that in mind when looking at gold’s recent price action, which puts it in a technical bear market and currently trading at $4,171/oz. More on that later today in Investment Director Tom Dyson’s research note to paying subscribers.

Tuesday, June 09th, 2026

Bill Bonner, from Youghal, Ireland

‘We’ve got a duty to die and get out of the way with all of our machines and artificial hearts and everything else like that and let the other society, our kids, build a reasonable life.’

—Dick Lamm (former Governor of Colorado)

What should old people do? How should they live? When should they get out of the way? When should they die?

We ask these questions because, well…first, because we are getting old...and second, we ask with an altruistic purpose. We wonder what the old should do to help head off America’s rendezvous with catastrophe.

It is not really a ‘Golden Age’ in America. But there are plenty of ‘Golden Girls’ and ‘Golden Guys’ living longer. The codgers hang onto their teeth much longer than previous generations, but are otherwise no jollier or more content.

We don’t mind old people. But as we linger longer, it takes more trips to the repair shop to keep the engine turning over. Especially when we approach the end of the road. And there is something not only a little sad, but also a little unhealthy, about the whole spectacle. America’s older people have more wealth than ever...and more political power. And they use the political power to tilt the whole economy in their direction, so that a larger portion of GDP rolls down to meet them.

The Financial Times:

In the two decades straddling 2000, households headed by adults older than 65 improved their median net worth by 42% while the wealth of families of adults 18 to 34 fell by 68%.

Meanwhile, Social Security and Medicare are going broke. LegalClarity.org:

Social Security operates through two legally separate funds: the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) fund, which pays retirement and survivor benefits, and the Disability Insurance (DI) fund. The 2025 Trustees Report projects that the OASI fund will exhaust its reserves by 2033, at which point continuing tax revenue would cover only 77 percent of scheduled retirement benefits. The DI fund, by contrast, is in far better shape and is not projected to run out during the entire 75-year projection window.

When analysts combine the two funds for a big-picture view, the exhaustion date lands in 2034, with 81 percent of total scheduled benefits payable from that point forward.

But the geezers don’t want to hear about it. They want to keep the checks coming their way...let the next generation worry about the math.

This ‘get it while you can’ attitude is undignified, to be sure. But it is a natural reaction of homo economicus under the unrelenting spell of the Cantillon Effect, whereby the first people into a bubble, a ponzi, or inflation get a much better deal than later arrivals. And it infects the whole society. Get it — by hook, by crook or by Congress — and spend it before the well goes dry.

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In this respect, it is a good idea to remain humble...and keep things plain. Trying to prevent a debt crisis by borrowing yet more and more money is a little like trying to prevent a war by bombing your neighbors. Rarely does it work out as advertised.

And while we, and the whole choir of Doom, assume that the crisis will be met with a staggering increase in money printing...and much higher rates of inflation...we stand as a poor pilgrim in awe of the Great Mr. Market. He can do what he wants...no need to consult with us.

And remember, the initial effect of a crash is deflation, not inflation. That’s what happened in Japan. Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall in 1990. And then all the pumping, priming, and printing by the Bank of Japan couldn’t put Humpty back together again. It took 35 years just for stocks to recover their nominal, 1990 values.

And remember, too, the feds can’t ‘just print’ money. Money enters the economy by borrowing and spending — notably by the feds. Japan spent hundreds of billions — mostly on infrastructure — but it couldn’t make ordinary people want to borrow. Even NIRP (negative interest rate policy) didn’t coax the old animal spirits from their burrows. Old people controlled the Japanese government and the wealth of the nation. And old people, being antique and precious, weren’t taking any chances.

The Eskimos famously dealt with the old people problem by putting their elders out on the ice. it relieved the community of the burden of caring for them. More than that it definitively transferred all property and decision-making — no need for probate! — to the living.

In America, today, old people not only live longer...they work longer. Which means, their fat derrieres are occupying seats that might otherwise have held the firmer cheeks of a more robust, younger person. And thanks to ‘seniority,’ the cost of employing the old duffer is usually higher.

The real fault line in America is not between the aforementioned political parties. They are nothing but the two flapping wings of the same buzzard. The real contest is between those who benefit from current policies...and those who pay for them. Increasingly, that divide is a matter of age.

Regards,

Bill Bonner

Research Note, by Dan Denning

As of the end of 2025, there was about $2.7 trillion in the two ‘trust funds’ that make up Social Security. First is the Old Age and Survivor’s Insurance Trust Fund (OASI). Next is the Disability Insurance Trust Fund (DI). For analytical purposes, we’re going to treat them as one fund today.

On an annual cash flow basis, the fund began running deficits in 2010. This was a combination of two factors. First, the first Baby Boomers eligible for Social Security at age 62 (born in 1946) began claiming benefits in 2008. Then, the stock market crashed and the economy plunged into recession. This gutted the payroll tax receipts that fund Social Security and accelerated the draw-down on accumulated reserves.

In 2021 things got worse. That’s when the fund’s total income—tax receipts plus the interest earned on bonds held by the fund—were no longer enough to cover costs. When that happened, the fund is/was forced to sell bonds to cover the gap and pay benefits.

The chart above from last year’s annual report on Social Security shows that at the current rate, the fund’s $2.7 trillion in reserves will be exhausted by 2034. At that point, tax receipts will be enough to cover only 80% of expected payouts. There will be a $448 billion annual gap between income and costs. And the trust fund will be empty.

Bill Bonner, from Youghal, Ireland

AOC. Mamdani. Talarico. Platner. Communist, socialist, progressive...and who knows what.

A third of Generation Z has a favorable opinion of communism. Two-thirds look upon socialism as a kind of unsweetened muesli; they are sure it will be good for us.

These young people are warming up...ready to make the same dumb errors of previous generations.

So today, we take our eyes off of the proven failures...Bush, Obama, Biden and Trump...in order to look, however briefly and cautiously, at how succeeding generations are likely to make an even bigger mess of things.

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But to understand how the ball bounces, we need to look at the stoneheads it bounces off of. Yes, we are talking about the very numbskulls we just pledged to ignore.

The White House’s news release tells us we are “Welcome to the Golden Age.” And the hacks in the administration are going to make it shinier than ever, by declaring another war!

Yes, dear reader, blow the horns...fly the flags...beat the drums...line up at the recruiting office. This is a ‘War on Fraud’ — soon to be as glorious a victory as the War on Waste by the DOGE...or the War on Iran...or the war on drug runners:

President Donald J. Trump and Vice President JD Vance are unleashing an unrelenting, full-scale assault on the fraudsters, scammers, and corrupt operators who have looted billions from American taxpayers. The White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud is moving at unprecedented speed and ferocity to root out the waste, abuse, and criminal exploitation of government programs that have drained billions from hardworking taxpayers.

This is a direct offensive against every fraudulent scheme preying on hardworking Americans — and the results are already staggering.

Our funny bone is so tickled that we can hardly sit upright. ‘Golden Age?’ Where is it? Employment...GDP growth...real wages...life expectancy...personal liberty...purchasing power...consumer confidence — by every measurement of quality, today’s numbers are either in a dead heat with yesterday’s, or falling far behind.

This leaves the impresarios of the Golden Age but a single exhibit: the stock market. And that, too, is a fraud. A stock is not “golden” because its price is high, nor base metal because it is low. The only sound price is the one that is neither — the price that whispers the plain truth about what the underlying business is actually worth. Everything else is a blunder or a swindle. Today’s quotations, we suspect, are a generous helping of both.

This is no Golden Age. And in terms of real gold, stocks have been going down for the last 25 years...and in the last 18 months they’ve dropped sharply, losing almost another third of their value.

At the press conference heralding the new crusade, it was further alleged that scammers were preying on lonely, elderly men and separating them from their money.

We have some personal experience in this regard. A dear and ancient friend seems to have suffered a stroke. Largely immobile, he goes on the internet where he believed he found the woman of his dreams. As the relationship developed, she put aside her customary shyness to ask him for help with this or that...while maintaining that she is actually the granddaughter of J.P. Morgan...and holds advanced degrees from Harvard and MIT.

After a while, they planned to wed...though they had never actually met, ‘in the flesh,’ as they say. She claimed to have reserved Winchester Cathedral for a grand ceremony, she said. All she needed from him was to pay his share of the unspecified costs — totaling some $50,000.

Your editor was drawn into the drama when he was invited to be the best man. ‘The Wet Blanket’ is a role practically written for your editor. So, he immediately began to dribble over the upcoming nuptials. He asked for details, examined the correspondence — which was absurd in almost every respect — and informed his friend that there was absolutely no chance that Winchester Cathedral would be the site of his wedding; he might just as well get married on the moon. The whole thing is a scam, we explained, and counseled that he should in no circumstances send his beloved internet fiancée a single farthing, let alone 50,000 smackers.

The deluge was thus dammed and prevented. But the trickle of funds to the ‘fiancée’ — whom we imagined as a 250-lb. Nigerian man — continued. And to this day, our old friend half-believes that we derailed what might otherwise have been his last chance for connubial bliss.

Whatever the Trump Administration intends to do about situations like this, we don’t know. But US politics has been stroked out, by our reckoning, for many years. Every big policy move is either fraud or fantasy. But where is the wet blanket? Instead, there are more frauds...more waste...and more wars. (If either party wishes to know why the youngsters are turning to communism, socialism, and fascism, they have only to look in the mirror.)

And now, a ‘war on fraud?’ It is as if the Hershey company had made war on chocolate...or the National Football League announced a campaign against team sports. Were it not for fraud, neither party would have anything to offer the voters.

Republicans accuse Democrats of fraud. Democrats catch the charge in mid-air and throw it right back. And in this, as in so little else — both parties are essentially, emphatically, correct.

Regards,

Bill Bonner

Sunday, June 07th, 2026

Laramie, Wyoming

By Dan Denning

Maybe you’ve seen the chart above. It shows that crossover point last year where central bank gold holdings became more valuable than official holdings of US Treasury bonds and bills and notes. Makes sense. Why?

Central banks have been net buyers of gold since 2018. The gold price is up roughly 240% in that time. Russia invaded Ukraine in February of 2022 and was quickly kicked out of SWIFT, the global payments system run/enforced by the US.

This ‘weaponization’ of the dollar alerted investors to the fact that US government bonds are not ‘risk free’. They may be a reserve asset on the balance sheet. But with high inflation, political dysfunction, and the willingness to use the dollar as a foreign policy cudgel, US bonds come with strings attached.

Gold does not. Its market value can fall too. So the chart above could reverse on a big dollar rally…or big gold fall. Or—more likely in my view—the current trend, the Primary Trend, may continue. As my old friend Charlie Morris once famously quipped, ‘Gold is a zero-coupon bond with no counter-party risk, inflation-linked, and issued by God.’

Couldn’t have said it better myself. And while I’m thinking about old friends in London, Dominic Frisby writes that he has a new book about gold. He actually mentioned it a few weeks ago and I forgot to tell you. So I’m telling you now. Dominic’s told me that he’s been told it’s the best book ever about gold, which is saying something.

It’s called The Secret History of Gold: Myth, Money, Politics, and Power.

I asked Dominic if he’d give me a short summary before I got stuck in this weekend. Here’s what he wrote back:

The book is a narrative history of gold as money, power and myth, tracing its role from the formation of the solar system to the modern financial system. It argues that gold’s unique physical properties – permanence, scarcity and incorruptibility – made it the natural foundation of monetary systems for thousands of years, and explains why its abandonment in the twentieth century enabled the expansion of state power and the erosion of currency stability. It also examines gold’s future role in a shifting global order, including the likelihood that China’s true gold reserves are far larger than officially reported – potentially by an order of magnitude – with significant implications for the next monetary regime.

He’s got a point. Quite a few of them, in fact. It also made me wonder…if all those oil exporting countries in the Persian Gulf are selling gold to make up for lost energy sales…who’s buying the gold?

And where would that show up in the official data…and when will it show up in the gold price?

More on that later this week at BPR. In the meantime, please check out Dominic’s book here. And enjoy the summary below of all the best research we published this week.

Dan

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Friday, June 05th, 2026

Laramie, Wyoming

By Dan Denning

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Friday, June 05th, 2026

Bill Bonner, from Youghal, Ireland

We took our leave from our daughter and son-in-law on Wednesday. The long trip took us northeast from Buenos Aires to Amsterdam, where we are now writing. The next flight will take us home to Ireland.

If we had one useful quality in our 40-year business career it was that we could sleep on airplanes. So, with that training on our resume, we dozed as soundly as an innocent puppy.

While in Argentina, we spent a lot of time at our house in the Calchaqui Valley.

“During the day, the sun bleaches out the colors,” Maria explained. “But mornings and evenings are spectacular...and not necessarily in a show-off way. The colors of the evening are subtle...and the last night we watched the full moon rise over the Apacheta Mountains. It was marvelous. The air is so clear. And the moon is so bright.”

It is late autumn in the Southern Hemisphere. Nights are hard and cold. We made a fire in the living room chimney each evening. In the morning, the fire was already burning in the office when we got to work. And Maria spoiled us by bringing us a cup of coffee, first thing.

On Sunday, after our coffee, we set out to Molinos — a dust-blown burg of adobe and cement houses with a very old church. The Conquistadores who brought sword and cross down from Peru were here only a few years after Columbus washed up in Hispaniola. The leading families of the area today are their descendants. They may have been murderous, but they were faithful murderers and built a church here in 1557 — one of the oldest in the New World — a monument to the curious human ability to butcher the heathen on Saturday and then preach the gospel of peace to them on Sunday.

On this Sunday, the church celebrated an anniversary. What anniversary, exactly, we never found out. But Salta province is older, and much more pious and moss-backed than the rest of the country.

Almost every community, no matter how backward or remote, sent a delegation. Natalio, one of the farmhands on the job when we got here and recently retired, gave us a warm embrace. Coca leaves in his mouth, sandals on his feet, he walked all night in the company of dozens of other pilgrims, to get to the celebration.

The priests — including the bishop from Cafayate — had set up in front of the church. To the right, left, behind and in front were flags representing the national government, the local government, the parish, the town...along with several banners that defied interpretation. Also present were representatives of the Gauchos — duded up in high boots, billowy bombachos, tight vests, wide leather belts with and a knife — the cuchillo — tucked in behind their backs. They sported neckerchiefs, and wide Salta hats. The firefighters were there too, in full regalia, including shiny gold helmets. And there were junior groups too, in school uniforms, or insignia that notified us which seat of power they aimed to sit down in. There were young police-in-training...teachers-in-training...even the gauchos-to-be.

In this part of the world — unlike most of Argentina — rank and privilege are still respected and resented. They are taken seriously, in other words. Thus it was that we were planted, literally — shoulder to shoulder with the grandees — Senators, Deputies, Mayors, Priests, the Police, the Military...and a very small group of large landowners.

And there we cooked, in the second row, in the unrelenting sunshine, for two hours.

All of the notables were recognized in a long ceremony. Each was given a framed certificate attesting to his contributions, whatever they may have been.

Eventually we heard our name called, unexpectedly, and greeted it with the same solemn cynicism that we accepted the ‘Good Citizenship’ award at our high school in 1966. Even the Unabomber was a better citizen. At least he meant well. And he was good at math.

We stepped to the front of the assembly — about 600 people — removed our hat, and received an award for supporting the community for the last 20 years.

Our support for the anniversary celebration was limited to one ‘novillo’ — a young bull, who was, at the very moment roasting over hot coals. But over the years we have covered the losses on our valley farms...putting up with sabotage, insubordination and open rebellion...while we paid salaries and brought in new machinery intended to make the local people more productive and less quarrelsome.

“That award cost me a lot of money,” we remarked later to a European friend.

The stage thus set, the drums rolled and the Mass began. Public-address systems are seldom to be trusted; this one was a triumph of unreliability, and much of the liturgy came across as a kind of sacred static. But the Mass runs on rails worn smooth by use — Catholic or Episcopalian, European or South American, it is everywhere much the same — and the story it tells has altered scarcely a syllable in two thousand years. One may follow it deaf.

Once the Peace had been passed and the wafer consumed, we were ready to withdraw into the shade for the feast. The aforementioned ‘novillo’ was ready...along with two others, given by other large ranchers.

But here again, rank has its privileges. There must have been 30 tables. But only two were adorned with white table cloths, glass cups, metal forks and spoons. The others — where hoi and polloi were seated — had no such luxury. They received their meals in plastic containers to be eaten with plastic cutlery. We also had bottles of wine — which we had brought to the fiesta — to irrigate the luncheon. Everybody else had Coca Cola.

The upper ranks are not completely impermeable. The doors — stiff as they are — swing both ways. While most of the people at our table were white, elsewhere we were far outnumbered by those of mixed blood, referred to locally as ‘indio’ or ‘indigenes’ or ‘mestizos.’ The large landowners were pure white. So were the priests. But the politicians, dignitaries and merchants were of every shade. Seated near us, for example, was a young woman we’ve known since childhood; she is the daughter of our former ranch foreman, who is one of the most intelligent, dignified and honest people we have ever met. He grew up in the mountains, in a house with a dirt floor and no running water. His daughter was sent to the city for her high school...and then went on to a university. She is now in charge of the tourist office — and sits at the table with the white tablecloth next to her father’s former employer.

It has been more than 400 years since the locals were introduced to the Europeans’ yoke and lash. But they still live in ways we can scarcely fathom. Most striking is their indifference to cold. It can be freezing outside and not much warmer inside. Still, they make no attempt to heat interior spaces, instead going about their business, smothered in coats, sweaters and thick wool blankets.

Almost ten years ago, we ‘invented’ the cheapest, simplest hot water heater on the planet, fully expecting that all the locals would want one. It is nothing more than a thin stainless-steel tank, painted black...covered in glass, with internal baffles, forcing the water through a maze to heat it up (from the sun) before it comes out the other end. No power required. No moving parts. It provides enough warm water to take a bath or wash dishes in the evening. But so far, none of the families on the ranch has imitated it.

The other thing we introduced was passive solar heat to the living space. Here, with almost uninterrupted sunshine, it is easy to put a glass wall on the northern side (the sun arcs through the northern sky) and you will have so much heat you’ll have to open the windows to let it out. It will give you too much heat in the summertime, but that is easily managed by planting a grape vine or a tree in front of it.

The heat costs nothing and involves no machinery, switches, or electronics. We built a small house out of adobe, stone, mud, and glass to prove our point and expected a rush of adoption by the locals. The little house is sublimely simple, elegant and ingenious...if we say so ourselves. But, so far, both Architectural Digest and the locals are unanimous. They want nothing to do with it.

People have their own ideas about comfort and culture. Out at the furthest reaches of our farm — high in the mountains about an 8-hour ride on horseback — is a house lived in by an intelligent woman with a gimpy leg. They locals, with brutal frankness, call her ‘the cripple.’ It is freezing cold up there. But her kitchen has no door...it is as open to the weather as an eagle’s nest. Go figure.

The meat came to the table soon after we had sat down. Our neighbor tried to explain the cooking technique.

“There was too much meat to cook and serve in a normal asado (grill). They wrapped it in a wire cage and put it in the ground on top of hot coals. It slow cooks overnight and comes out very tender.”

Argentina is known for its good beef. We’ve tucked in at the finest temples of the culinary arts in Buenos Aires, as well as the humblest local dives. Generally, the neighborhood favorites give the most satisfaction; they don’t bury the taste in sauces or disguise it with complex confections. But we never had a tastier ‘bife’ than the meat that come up out of the ground on Sunday.

“Santiago!”

One of the oldest and biggest of the landowners boomed out. He, too, was a member in good standing of the gauchos’ league, dressed in a traditional gaucho get-up.

Santiago had been one of his own workers, now similarly costumed and helping to serve the multitude.

“Bring us some bread,” he commanded.

Santiago smiled and went on his mission, coming back with a woven basket with freshly sliced ‘French’ bread.

“We need some more knives, too” continued the man, clearly accustomed to giving the orders.

Again, Santiago politely complied. Four hundred years of practice, on both sides of the exchange, give such a transaction a seamless grace.

The feast completed, the small tribe of white people crossed the plaza to the ancient hotel nearby for a coffee. It used to be the residence of the ruling family...the Isasmendi...lords of a vast domain of lakes, mountains, rivers and (mostly) deserts. Except for modern conveniences, the large house has little changed from the 1700s.

There were hundreds of people outside, going hither and yon as the party broke up, but few entered the hotel. At one table there was a family group that appeared to be German. Another city couple came in dressed in hiking gear. Otherwise, no one.

“Not many clients,” we said to the manager whom we’ve known for many years.

“No...poco.”

Turning to another landowner, “I wonder why more people don’t come in...at least to have coffee.”

“Different people,” came the answer.

And there, in two words, was the whole of it — four centuries of distance between the white tablecloth and the plastic tub.

Regards,

Bill Bonner

Bill Bonner, from Gualfin, Argentina

‘The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.’

--Antonio Gramsci

When the money goes, everything goes. And when the money is fraudulent at its root, it’s not long before every branch and leaf is contaminated.

But one of the wonders of a corrupt age is that the public doesn’t seem to mind. The voters are flogged, fleeced, and sent home in their underwear — and then, when the next election rolls around, they line up at the polling station and clamor for another beating. There is perhaps no spectacle in all of democracy quite so edifying as a free people demanding, with tears of gratitude, to be robbed again.

Politico:

Trump pardons real estate developer indicted under his own DOJ

Tim Leiweke was charged with conspiring to rig a bid to build a Texas sports arena.

Bloomberg:

SpaceX’s initial public offering will likely make President Donald Trump’s already wealthy administration even richer. Ten officials ranging from special envoy Steve Witkoff to Small Business Administration head Kelly Loeffler reported financial interests in Elon Musk’s rocket company or in xAI, the artificial intelligence and social media firm it merged with in February, according to their most recent public financial disclosures.

Alternet.com:

Trump Jr. made $1.8 billion on a startup that got White House-ordered funding

When the Pentagon announced a $620 million loan last year to a small North Carolina startup linked to Donald Trump Jr., defense officials and the company tried to tamp down suspicions of cronyism.

Interviews and Defense Department records reviewed by ProPublica show that the request to loan hundreds of millions of dollars to the firm linked to Trump Jr. was made by Peter Navarro, a White House adviser to President Donald Trump and a friend of Trump Jr.’s.

“The call came from the White House: We have to get this done,” the [source] said.

No capital allocator in his right mind would touch a deal blessed by Pete Navarro. The man is a monument to bad judgment, a walking museum of failure and muddled thinking, with a record nearly as gaudy as that of his patron in the Oval Office. But it would be unsporting to single him out. He is merely one barnacle on a very large ship, now riding very low in the water.

The political/business world of 2026 seems to have achieved a crescendo of con...a fortissimo of fraud. Like a carnival barker, it bellows from the highest platform — the White House itself — and bends down to whisper sweet come-ons to every bumpkin, yokel, and naïve lout who passes by.

The president’s family is said to have enriched itself by billions since The Donald was elected for the second time. An exact accounting is beyond us...and anyone else. Were the $6 billion put into Jared Kushner’s fund because foreign investors saw in his unblemished mug the makings of a money genius? Or because he is married to the president’s daughter? We don’t know...but influence peddling has never been such a thriving trade. And no one has ever had so much influence to sell as the 46th president of the USA.

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Yet the truly astonishing thing — the thing that would have set Mr. Barnum himself back on his heels — is the temper of the marks. The people at whose expense all this influence is hawked do not merely tolerate the grift. They admire the grifter. They love him for it. A full third of the population — and we must assume a few among them can still add two and two without using their fingers — would ask for nothing finer than to be skinned, personally and lovingly, by the First Family.

Occasionally, of course, they suffer buyer’s remorse.

Those who curried favor with Trump by joining his Board of Peace, for example, may wonder what they actually get for it. MSN:

“Several countries that pledged billions of dollars have not actually given any money,” The Daily Beast adds, noting that it “has no real funding despite receiving billions of dollars in pledges.”

“Zero dollars have been deposited,” into the Board of Peace’s World Bank-backed fund, a source told the FT, The Daily Beast reports.

Those who bought into Trump’s Liberty Financial (run by crony Steve Witkoff’s son) may have their doubts too. The Funny Money Era seems to have bent the republic towards Trump...and here, in what must be counted among the more delicious episodes in history, Trump sells them — even funnier money! CoinMarketCap:

Investments in Liberty Financial have faced significant challenges recently. The company has experienced a $4.84 million loss across various assets, with its crypto holdings showing unrealized losses.

And even the luxury swag buyers may be less than happy, The Mirror:

MAGA supporter in tears after buying Trump watch

The poor man paid $640 for a MAGA watch. He then felt not only disappointed, but insulted. The watch came with ‘Rump’ on its face.

But these are mere glitches in the machine — stray pebbles in an otherwise smoothly grinding mill. By and large the griftees are delighted. They have found professionals at last, virtuosos of the swindle, and they stand in line with their mouths open, their wallets unfurled and their hats in their hands, happy beyond measure to have their pockets picked by such accomplished scalawags.

Regards,

Bill Bonner

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Wednesday, June 3

By Tom Dyson, Investment Director

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Wednesday, June 03rd, 2026

Bill Bonner, from Gualfin, Argentina

But wait...hold on. Won’t the younger generations benefit from all the nifty tech improvements made in the last few years? Won’t they have self-driving cars? Won’t they have AI to tell them what to think...and help them avoid thinking altogether?

Won’t they be able to live on Mars with all the comforts of Hoboken, thanks to one of Elon’s great rockets?

Maybe most important, won’t this new technology send the economy into escape velocity...freeing it from the zip-ties of $110 trillion in accumulated debt...making sense of the Nvidia’s 23x price/sales ratio...

And allowing the politicos — without even breaking a sweat — to balance the budget and make good on all those promises they made to credulous voters?

Could be...PWC:

AI adoption could boost global GDP by an additional 15 percentage points by 2035

But this is where the complexity comes back into the picture. We know that if you earn 10 shillings and spend 11 shillings...you are going in the hole. Keep it up and you will go broke.

And we also know that if you raise your income to 11 shillings…you’re very likely to spend 12!

But who knows? Maybe you’ll invent the 21st century equivalent of the wheel...or the hula hoop.

Better than that, says Wall Street; this is not just an investment opportunity...it’s the technical equivalent of the Big Rock Candy Mountain. In that great and glorious world of the future, AI will increase output for everybody. We’ll all get rich...pay off our debts...and never have to change our socks.

The idea, roughly, is that computers will mimic human thought. But somehow, they will get us out of the hole human thought dug. We will all have our AI ‘butlers’ waiting on us...directing us...helping us avoid mistakes, right? Will they tell us to stop spending those 11 shillings? Will we listen? These are known unknowns.

Among other known unknowns are the many things that AI will help people do that would be better left undone. AI, made by Palantir, for example, is helping US and Israel assassinate foreign leaders. Will it be an advance for humankind when AI geniuses on the other side murder our own leaders? And what about the time wasters? Already, you can fritter away hours following AI-induced clickbait. Down one rabbit hole and into the next one. Whee!

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AI is getting better and better at organizing and presenting information. But it also organizes and presents fakes, propaganda, and outright lies. Will it be like the internet itself...vastly easing the flow of blah blah, but ultimately not making us any smarter or more productive?

In order to avoid a debt debacle, the new tech would have to increase productivity...not just add complexity and novelty. Will AI do that? So far, there is no sign of it.

And there’s SpaceX blasting off. More complexity. Not one investor in 1,000 understands how to send rockets into space...or how anyone will make money at it.

But millions of them seem to be hyped up, so much so...that normal, usually-sober investment pros place their bids as if they were the dot.coms in 1999...or the Japanese stocks of 1989. The price hardly matters, the chorus chants: this is a chance of a lifetime. MSN:

Space stocks and ETFs surge ahead of SpaceX IPO

And who knows? Maybe they are right; maybe the whiskey will come tumbling down the rocks. But until we get a taste of it, we’ll stick with the basics. It’s a bubble. Bubbles blow up.

Regards,

Bill Bonner

Research Note, by Dan Denning

Do you want to speculate on the commercial development of outer space by some public and some pre-public companies? There’s an ETF for that! It’s the Tema Space Innovators ETF [NASA]. See chart above. Highly speculative…and out of this world.

The ETF has $2.5 billion in assets under management, despite only launching in late March of this year. It’s actively managed and includes publicly listed companies like Rocket Lab, AST Space Mobile, and Intuitive Machines (companies all directly or indirectly involved in rocket propulsion, satellites, and the infrastructure required for commercial space flight and operations).

The fund also gives you pre-IPO access to some companies through Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs). The second largest space-related ETF is the Procure Space ETF [UFO]. It tracks around 50 companies that make up the S-network Space Index. Buyer beware…and buckle up.

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2026

Bill Bonner, from Gualfin, Argentina

In 2007, just as the financial crisis was taking shape, households faced about the same interest rates as today. But between that crisis and today, total debt has doubled.

Yesterday, we were focusing on simple things. For example, as consumer debt, prices and interest rates increase, those who don’t own Nvidia stock gets squeezed. Simple enough.

But the feds feel the vise tightening too. Instead of paying interest at below 2% on new debt, with the total debt at $27 trillion as it was in 2020...they’re now paying 5% to borrow, with a debt load $13 trillion heavier.

And while much of America’s debt was contracted at low rates, that ‘old’ debt will gradually be replaced by ‘new’ debt at higher rates.

At today’s 5% long-term rate, the after-inflation yield is only 1% or 2% — which is historically low...and almost certainly too low to attract new lenders. In order to give investors a real rate over 3%, the nominal rate on US bonds would have to be around 7%.

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So, looking a few months into the future...when US debt has been rolled over at the new rates....we will have $40+ trillion in debt and interest payments rising to $2.5 trillion — and beyond.

And returning to the poor folks on the downward stroke of the K-shaped economy, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget projects that in 10 years the interest cost — per household — on federal borrowing could reach $17,000 per year.

That is pretty easy to understand, too. You spend more than you can afford for too long and pretty soon it’s out of your control. Then, lenders — sensing a train wreck — want more interest to protect themselves. And you can’t go on.

Pretty obvious too is what you should do about it. Stop…while you still can. But the feds — both Republican and Democrat — show no signs of being aware that the bridge is out...or, if they are, no willingness to put on the brakes.

Why not? That’s where it gets complicated. But to simplify, the money they are spending goes to people who don’t want to see it stop. They have power. They have influence. And they want more.

What, you’re not one of them? Too bad.

For most households, the news just gets worse. The latest job numbers are so low, we haven’t seen anything like them since 1969. CNBC:

According to the Department of Labor, seasonally adjusted initial claims fell to 189,000 for the week ending April 25, down 26,000 from the previous week’s revised level of 215,000. The four-week moving average also dipped to 207,500.

Bloomberg reported that the figure marked the lowest level since 1969. Economists had expected 212,000 claims — meaning the actual number came in far below forecasts.

Yesterday, we mentioned how tariffs and the attack on Iran are pushing up prices. Almost everyone assumes that these problems will soon be behind us.

Maybe not. “You ain’t see nuthin’ yet,” argues the Ashland Chronicle:

We are running an economy this week on the country we were in February. The shelves still look mostly normal. The shipping bays still seem mostly full. The cargo still appears mostly on time where it is supposed to appear. None of this is the world we are actually living in. We are spending down the last inventory of the country we used to have and we are spending it down on a clock.

Inventory is mercy. Inventory is the cushion the world leaves you between the moment a thing breaks and the moment you feel it break. The blast wave is real, but the blast wave is also delayed by the length of a supply chain, by the contents of a warehouse, by the days it takes a tanker to cross an ocean.

Inventory is a pile of firewood...a well-stocked supply chain for food and medicines...oil reserves...and cash in the bank.

But who looks at the woodpile until the temperature drops?

Regards,

Bill Bonner

Monday, June 1st, 2026

Bill Bonner, from Gualfin, Argentina

Our problem, and here we speak for the human race, is that we can’t understand things that are complicated and we can’t remember things that are simple.

How the Funny Money system works, exactly, we don’t know. It’s too complicated to understand it fully. Few people try. And those that do, generally lose their money, their friends, and their marriages — in that order.

But it’s too easy to forget the basic dynamic of it: as the feds ‘print’ more and more money, each dollar is worth less than the last one. That’s why the patient math of an inflationary bubble dooms late arrivals. And it’s why the boomers are more likely to appreciate the status quo than their children and grandchildren — the geezers got there first.

Last week, we saw that the feds’ spending and their attempts to lower it were both fraudulent. The spending rarely achieves anything close to what was advertised. The latest evidence, the New York Times:

Blowing Up Boats Hasn’t Slowed Cocaine Traffic to U.S., Experts Say

Almost nine months into the operation, epidemiologists, addiction scientists and public health experts say cocaine, by far the top drug smuggled out of South America, is as easy to get in much of the United States as it was before the strikes began.

And efforts to bring some measure of sanity to federal spending are usually fraudulent and fruitless, too. How much did DOGE cut out of US deficits? Not a penny.

The result is bipartisan rip-off...in which the empire goes broke while Democrats and Republicans blame each other.

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Richard Cantillon noticed that the insiders who got John Law’s new money — based on shares in the (mostly mythical) Mississippi Company — did well. They could pass along the money at par value. Then, the supply of ‘money’ increased and the value of it decreased, leaving later recipients holding an empty bag.

The boomers defenestrated Thomas Massie for the cardinal sin of actually being a ‘conservative.’ They did so to preserve the status quo, not to upset it. Their houses paid for...their Soc. Security checks in the mail...they’ve become the guardians of the rot...the Imperial Guard of a dying empire.

But how many more elections will they control? They are disappearing...dropping from the electoral rolls into quilted silk-lined caskets. Meanwhile, the younger generations peer at the corpses with mixed emotions; it was those old SOBs who fouled the economy.

Tom cued us in to what could be an important warning. Walmart has dropped 14% in the last two weeks. And Costco is down 13% since May 19^th.

These are where people buy stuff. The fall in the stock could be telling us that consumers are buying less stuff. Which wouldn’t be at all surprising.

Grosso modo, the Cantillon Effect...put in motion a long time ago...moves towards its conclusion. And Donald Trump gives it a push. It seems almost impossible, but when Donald Trump was elected in 2016, US government debt was around $20 trillion. Now it’s almost $40 trillion.

And here’s where simplicity comes back into the picture. As debt rises, interest payments are harder to make. Here’s Mishtalk:

Consumer Credit Stress Is Comparable to the Great Recession

Auto delinquencies are at a new record and credit cards are near record high.

In nominal dollars Autos, credit card, student loans and other are higher now than in the Great Financial Crisis (GFC).

Excluding housing there is about $621 billion in 60-day or longer delinquencies.

People are paying their mortgages but struggling mightily everywhere else. Somehow the DOW isn’t helping.

And it’s not likely to get better before it gets worse. Treasury bond yields bottomed in 2020. They’ve been going up since then and are now at levels last seen just before the GFC.

But rising interest rates and higher debt levels aren’t the only things bending the bottom leg of the K-shaped economy downward. Morningstar:

Consumer and wholesale prices are rising at the fastest rate in three years due to the Iran war. The surge in gasoline prices tied to the Iran war is set to drive U.S. inflation to a three-year high — and it might get worse before it gets better.

Tariffs are also driving up prices. WarontheRocks:

The reduced quality and shrinkflation effects are self-evident from bags of chips on grocery store shelves to shirts whose materials feel cheaper.

The latest Consumer Price Index report indicated prices had risen 3.8 percent year over year for April 2026. If you isolate tariff-hit industries, you can clearly see higher prices due to the goods on shelves having tariffs added months ago. Footwear prices, for example, rose 4.2 percent in April — the fastest in 43 months — driven by tariff costs. Previously, prices were slowly rising as retailers worked through tranches of inventory at various tariff rates, but now footwear prices are rising faster than overall inflation directly because all shoes at retail have the full weight of tariff costs.

Higher interest rates. More debt. Higher consumer prices.

Simple analysis: not good. But as expected.

Regards,

Bill Bonner

Below you’ll find an essay published last week by our colleague Edward Bonner at Sprott Money. Please enjoy.

May 27th, 2026

Dear Reader,

It has been 82 days since the war began. In my last letter, I urged caution—favoring quality equities, cash, and oil. In the weeks that followed, markets did the opposite: the S&P 500 made new all-time highs, throwing caution to the wind.

Now, reality appears to be catching up.

We expect choppier waters heading into the seasonally weak summer months as investors adjust to higher bond yields and the possibility of renewed rate HIKES. Ultimately, however, we believe central banks will have little choice but to ease in order to support growing deficits and rising debt burdens. When that pivot comes, it should serve as the catalyst for hard assets—particularly against a backdrop of worsening structural scarcity.

In this letter, we’ll walk through the current macro environment and examine some of the most compelling opportunities today. But first, a quick note: I’ll be attending the Rule Symposium in Boca again this year. This one looks to be gearing up to be the best one yet. If you’ll be there, please shoot me a line so we can connect and share ideas.

Do The Opposite

Markets continue to behave as though geopolitical risks are contained and monetary policy will soon ease. Positioning today feels less like a debate and more like a consensus: inflation fades, rates fall, geopolitics normalize. Nice and tidy.

May’s Bank of America Fund Manager Survey reflects exactly that. Positioning is now the most bullish since January 2022. Semiconductors remain the most crowded trade (73% of respondents), and expectations for double-digit earnings growth have surged. Meanwhile, just 16% of investors foresee rate hikes in 2026, and 66% expect the Strait of Hormuz disruption to resolve within months. Only 4% of respondents expect a hard landing as cash balances have fallen sharply, from 4.3% to 3.9% - the largest monthly decline since Feb-24.

Despite one of the largest supply disruptions in modern history, equity allocations have risen at a record pace. Because why stop a good party?

The issue in crowded markets isn’t that fundamentals suddenly collapse—it’s that liquidity becomes one-sided when the narrative shifts. When flows reverse, they tend to do so quickly.

This risk is amplified by extreme concentration. Today’s index performance is increasingly driven by a narrow group of mega-cap stocks. Since the March 30th lows, roughly 70% of the S&P 500’s gains have come from just ten names. At times, the majority of stocks have moved in the opposite direction entirely.

Narrow leadership masks deteriorating breadth—and when positioning unwinds, it increases the likelihood of sharp, air-pocket declines.

Priced for Perfection

This narrow market also reflects a bifurcated economy—the so-called “K-shaped” economy. All’s well for those at the top, while those at the bottom are struggling to make ends meet. In fact, a recent survey form Goldman Sachs estimated that 41% of American households earning between $300K-$500K are living paycheck to paycheck. Hardly a sign of a healthy economy.

There is effectively no margin for error. Many segments of the market—particularly technology—are priced for perfection. Ironically, when positioning already assumes good news, even positive developments can be met with indifference… or selling.

The Shiller CAPE ratio is not a timing tool, but it is a powerful framework for setting expectations: when starting valuations are extreme, forward 15-year returns tend to be almost nil.

Valuations are so out of whack, Berkshire Hathaway now holds roughly 32% of its assets in cash, representing about 5% of the entire U.S. Treasury bill market. Here’s Buffett speaking at the annual shareholder meeting in Omaha: “It isn’t our ideal surrounding area or environment... in terms of deploying cash for Berkshire.” Adding: “The most likely time to buy things is when nobody else will answer their phones.”

So for now, we wait. Eventually, something’s gotta give.

Under Pressure

Recent inflation data suggests that pressure is building again. Both CPI and PPI surprised to the upside, reinforcing the “sticky inflation” narrative. Energy alone accounted for roughly 40% of the CPI surprise, while PPI strength points to continued pipeline pressures—particularly within services. And you can be sure these will eventually be flowing to the end consumer.

As a result, long-end yields are once again testing critical levels. The U.S. 30-year yield recently touched 5.19%—its highest level since 2007. Japan’s 30Y yield hit an all-time high of 4.17% and across the G7, long-term yields are spiking, with the 10Y surpassing the 2008 Financial Crisis peak.

Technically, the long end of the curve is pressing against resistance. Repeated tests of this ~5% level raise the probability of a breakout—particularly if inflation remains persistent or if investors demand higher term premia to finance growing deficits.

A sustained move higher in long-end yields would tighten financial conditions, compress valuation multiples, and increase the risk of a rapid, flow-driven de-risking event. In short, it would reintroduce friction into a market that has grown accustomed to operating without it.

Running on Oil

Energy remains the key swing factor—both for inflation and rates.

And there is little relief in sight.

With the Strait largely closed, roughly 20% of global oil supply has been disrupted. For context, the 1973 oil embargo removed approximately 4.5 million barrels per day from the market. Today’s disruption is closer to 20 million barrels per day—three to four times larger in volume terms.

Despite a more resilient modern market structure, the current level of optimism appears misplaced.

Oil markets have begun pricing deficits—but not yet outright shortages. As seasonal demand increases, that distinction may become critical. Already, major producers, such as Qatar Energy, Kuwait Petroleum Corp, and Bahrain’s Bapco Energy, have declared force majeure, and global inventories are drawing down at a record pace.

Strategic reserves offer limited relief. After accounting for recent exchange agreements with major oil producers, by August U.S. SPR levels could be at their lowest level since the early 1980s (roughly around 280Mbbls). And replenishment isn’t likely until winter—assuming no further disruptions.

The situation is dire. And the pinch is being felt all over the world. Global oil inventories are depleting at record pace. Our market strategist writes: “Sometime in early June operational stress will be very evident.” Heaven forbid this lasts until September…

Even in a best-case scenario where the Strait reopens, normalization will take time. Infrastructure damage, delayed shipments, labor constraints, and elevated insurance costs all point to a prolonged recovery. As Saudi Aramco’s CEO recently noted, a full return to pre-conflict supply levels may not occur until well into 2027.

Getting Scarce

It’s a challenging backdrop—but not without opportunity.

If broad equity indices offer limited upside from current levels, where should investors look?

We continue to favor commodities and real assets, where the risk-reward asymmetry remains compelling. The setup is defined by tightening supply, rising demand, and increasing strategic competition for resources.

The energy transition is accelerating, driving sustained demand for copper, nickel, silver, uranium, tungsten, rare earths, and other critical materials you’ve probably never heard of. At the same time, supply remains constrained by years of underinvestment, permitting challenges, and geopolitical complexity.

Scarcity is no longer a theory—it is becoming embedded in the system.

Demand is being reinforced on multiple fronts:

• Structurally, through electrification and renewable buildout

• Politically, through supply chain security and strategic stockpiling

• Monetarily, through rising debt burdens and the long-term risk of currency debasement

Together, these forces create a durable tailwind for real assets. Some more than others.

Go Gold

In the near term, gold may face some pressure.

Macro correlations between gold, equities, yields, and the U.S. dollar are near extreme levels—suggesting positioning is heavily dominated by systematic flows. If yields and the dollar move higher, gold could see a short-term pullback as algorithms de-risk.

However, this dynamic is unlikely to persist. When central banks eventually pivot to stabilize bond markets, gold should respond accordingly—much as it did following similar conditions in 2022.

In other words, any weakness should be viewed as an opportunity within a broader structural bull market.

The Opportunity

We remain cautious on broad equity markets given extreme concentration, crowded positioning, and a rates backdrop that may prove less forgiving than the consensus expects.

At the same time, we see a compelling opportunity set in scarcity-driven assets and commodity-linked equities, where fundamentals are supported by multi-year supply deficits and durable demand growth.

One area where we’ve been actively leaning into this theme is our private placement fund. Over the past several months, we’ve participated in more than a dozen financings—often in companies that are difficult to access through traditional public markets and remain underfollowed.

Performance since inception has been strong, and we would be happy to share further details upon request. We invite you to reach out for a discussion about suitability and how this exposure may complement a broader natural resource allocation.

As always, I am available for a call if you have questions about your portfolio.

Best regards,

Edward

Edward Bonner
Investment Advisor, Geologist

Direct:  +1 760 444-5262
ebonner@sprottglobal.com

Important Disclosure

Relative to other sectors, precious metals and natural resources investments have higher headline risk and are more sensitive to changes in economic data, political or regulatory events, and underlying commodity price fluctuations.  Risks related to extraction, storage and liquidity should also be considered.

Gold is referred to with terms of art like store of value, safe haven and safe asset. These terms should not be construed to guarantee any form of investment safety. While “safe” assets like precious metals, Treasuries, money market funds and cash generally do not carry a high risk of loss relative to other asset classes, any asset may lose value, which may involve the complete loss of invested principal.

Past performance is no guarantee of future results. You cannot invest directly in an index. Investments, commentary, and opinions are unique and may not be reflective of any other Sprott entity or affiliate. Forward-looking language should not be construed as predictive.  While third-party sources are believed to be reliable, Sprott makes no guarantee as to their accuracy or timeliness. This information does not constitute an offer or solicitation and may not be relied upon or considered to be the rendering of tax, legal, accounting or professional advice. 

Friday, May 29th, 2026

Laramie, Wyoming

By Dan Denning

‘The rocket worked perfectly,’ Werner von Braun reportedly said. ‘Except for landing on the wrong planet.’

He was talking about the Nazi’s V-2 rocket, which terrorized London in the last year of World War II. After the war, and via Operation Paperclip, Von Braun would make his way to Alabama, where he began his long role in developing the US space program, including the famous Saturn V rocket that sent men to the moon.

That’s the thing about rockets. Some of them go to the moon. And some of them blow up on the launch pad. You may have seen the spectacular footage of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket going up in flames last night in Florida. It destroyed the rocket, the launch pad, and possibly Jeff Bezos’ dreams of competing with Elon Musk (the New Glenn rocket was due to launch the first 46 satellites for Project Kuiper, Bezos’ version of Musk’s Starlink).

You can learn from a bit of research that yesterday’s mis-hap was not an explosion. Nor was it a conflagration. It was a deflagration. What’s the difference?

In a detonation, the fuel ignites at supersonic speeds as a shockwave compresses all the fuel at once. You get an explosion. In a deflagration, the reaction is at subsonic speeds. The fire spreads rapidly. But it doesn’t explode like a bomb. Which brings me to our updated valuation dashboard this week.

You might argue that if Elon’s main competitor for commercializing space has gone up in flames, that’s good news for SpaceEx. It will IPO with a $2 trillion valuation. All the index trackers will buy it. In fact, it will be so large that market-cap driven index trackers will HAVE to buy it.

Up! Up! And away!

But let’s continue with the thought that the largest IPO in human history may happen at the same time we have the most expensive stock market in US history. The Buffet Indicator–the stock market’s market capitalization as a percentage of GDP–hit 236% this week. Robert Shiller’s Cyclically Adjusted Price Earnings (CAPE) ratio is 42.55, just below the all-time of 44.19 in December of 1999.

Maybe it’s a bit on the nose to say that the stock market is like a giant rocket, fueled with speculative liquidity that’s ready to go up. But in a controlled ascent to higher highs? Or up in smoke and fire?

And if we have a problem on the pad, will it be a detonation, destroying trillions in value quickly and sending shockwaves through the real economy? Or will it ‘just’ be a fire in the sectors that have gone up the most? Hold that thought and look at this chart.

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Friday, May 29th, 2026

Bill Bonner, from Gualfin, Argentina

‘Based on what I’ve heard, we could balance the federal budget if only the dollars that went out of the Treasury went to individuals who were lawfully, correctly entitled to receive them.’

--Stephen Miller

What in the world is he thinking?

He is one of the most powerful figures on the Trump Team. And it is this administration which is in charge of sending out the checks. If he believes the bookkeeper is embezzling the public’s money, why not call him into the office and give him a good thrashing?

The ‘experts’ were quick to point out that while the evidence of widespread waste, corruption and incompetence is unimpeachable — what fool would argue against it? — the sums don’t come anywhere near the amounts needed to balance the budget.

What the ‘experts’ didn’t say is that while the cast of scoundrels and scalawags changes every four years, the spectacle itself — with all its plots, subplots, and plotters — continues almost unaltered. Nor do they mention that the whole show is a farce. The villains of unnecessary spending...and the heroes who pretend to stop it...are all frauds.

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Talk about money going to the wrong people...the Pentagon doesn’t even know where it goes. Military.com:

‘The Pentagon failed its eighth consecutive financial audit and says it is still working toward a clean opinion by 2028, keeping pressure on defense accountability and oversight.’

Our own tour of duty during the Vietnam War confirmed it. The officers and sailors were competent and well-meaning, but they were placed upon a multi-billion dollar battleship, with the latest firepower, and the most sophisticated and expensive materiel. Then, we were all sent out into the vast Pacific to protect the nation against an enemy that didn’t exist. (The Viet Cong had no heavy cruisers. It had no navy at all. China, then, was still recovering from the Cultural Revolution; it had no meaningful navy either. And neither did Russia. What were we protecting the Homeland against? Nobody knew.)

The source of the waste, as every swabbie knew, was the casta politica — the same clowns and pretenders who claim to be protecting the taxpayers’ money with every breath they take. Even back then — and that was half a century ago — the real idea was to spend money, not save it.

And God forbid that you didn’t spend all the money you were allocated! The following year, your budget might be reduced.

But along comes Team Trump...with a new cause for hope and hosannas. The famous DOGE. The Department of Government Efficiency — was set up with the smartest, most competent human being who ever lived — Elon Musk — at its head.

And then the fur flew...as Musk’s young geniuses began poking their heads into the feds’ warrens, nests, and hidey holes. They dug into the accounts...and pored over the organization charts. Surely, it was just a question of time until the federal budget was balanced. TimesNow:

When Donald Trump took office in 2025, DOGE’s head at the time, Elon Musk, had pledged to cut spending by $2 trillion

DOGE claimed billions in government savings through cancelling contracts, terminating grants and renegotiating leases. According to its website, the department reached $214 billion in savings as of November 24, [2025] estimating this to be worth $1,329.19 per taxpayer.

And what was the result? The New York Times:

‘Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency said it made more than 29,000 cuts to the federal government — slashing billion-dollar contracts, canceling thousands of grants and pushing out civil servants.’

‘But the group did not do what Mr. Musk said it would: reduce federal spending by $1 trillion before October. On DOGE’s watch, federal spending did not go down at all. It went up.’

DOGE failed to make even a dent in federal deficits. And now, with the last conservative in Congress out of the way, what’s to keep the Big Man’s Big Government from its Big Spending rendezvous with a Big Fat Financial Blow-up?

If Miller were right, all it would have to do would be to stop sending checks to people who weren’t supposed to get them. That won’t happen. But Mr. Trump did not invent this arrangement; he merely succeeds, as he succeeds at every spectacle, in making it gaudier.

Stay tuned.

Regards,

Bill Bonner