Why Central Banks Are STILL Dumping Dollars for Gold

Why Central Banks Are STILL Dumping Dollars for Gold

Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black/Sovereign Man)  April 22, 2026

In late February 2022, days after Russia invaded Ukraine, the United States responded by freezing billions of dollars of assets owned by the Russian government.

Whether or not that action was justified is beyond the point. US government bonds had long been considered the safest asset on earth. But every central banker on the planet learned an important lesson that day– US Treasury bonds were only safe as long as their country stayed on America’s good side.

Consequently, foreign governments and central banks began quietly moving a portion of their strategic financial reserves into assets that Washington could not freeze or sanction. And the most important of those assets was physical gold.

Within months, the collective buying of foreign central banks was running faster than at any point in modern history.

Compared to a previous baseline of about 650 metric tons per year in 2018 and 2019, central bank gold purchases jumped to over 1,000 tons starting in 2022.

It stayed there through 2023. It hit a record 1,100 tons in 2024. Even in 2025, when gold went parabolic to $4,500 an ounce and they could have paused or even taken profits, they were still net buyers of roughly 800 tons.

Holding Treasury bonds requires trusting that the US government  will not freeze their assets, will not weaponize the dollar, and will not run deficits large enough to force the debasement of the dollar itself.

None of those three conditions holds anymore.

The United States ran a $2 trillion deficit last year— no recession, no economic crisis, no war, no bailouts. It was just business as usual. Congress won’t lift a finger to cut even the most blatant fraud and graft.

Consequently, the national debt is now pushing $40 trillion, with interest costs eating $1.2 trillion per year— nearly a quarter of total tax revenue. And foreigners are rapidly losing confidence.

In the first quarter of 2026, the dollar's share of global foreign exchange reserves fell 2.3 points, a quarter of the previous decade's entire decline in ninety days. Non-dollar transactions gained ground quickly on the SWIFT payment network, rising from 18% to 31% in the Middle East and from 35% to 42% in Asia.

And for the first time since 1996, the world's central banks now hold more gold than they hold US Treasury securities.

The big picture is that foreign governments are setting up for a new monetary order, one in which physical reserves matter more than paper promises from Washington.

So governments are securing as many physical reserves as they can. 

It’s not just gold, either. Energy, fertilizer, industrial metals, and shipping are all getting the same treatment as gold: repatriated, stockpiled, or rerouted to suppliers inside friendly borders.

Countries across the Western Hemisphere are rebuilding domestic production for fuel, uranium, copper, and food, because they can no longer count on the old, postwar order to deliver the goods on schedule at a price they can live with.

We can already see the early signs– the same loss of trust that has driven central banks to buy so much gold is starting to lead to bulk buying of other real assets… which means that the prices of these strategic resources will likely rocket higher.

This means that the companies which produce those real assets (as well as their shareholders) are likely set to make a LOT of money in the future. 

With assets like gold or silver, you could buy the metals outright. But today that means paying near all-time highs. 

In our analysis it’s a much better deal to own the companies that produce them. As real asset prices rise, margins expand and profits multiply. 

For example, gold has roughly tripled in three years. But one mining company we featured in Strategic Assets (Schiff Sovereign's monthly investment research service), is up 5x in the same period. And a silver miner we featured went up nearly 10x.

Energy, industrial metals, and shipping can offer the same leverage.

We look for profitable, well-managed real asset businesses with clean balance sheets and clear catalysts, trading at a low multiple of free cash flow, positioned to benefit from the exact shift central banks are already executing.

None of this makes us permabulls on gold, silver, or anything else. The environment is too volatile for certainty, and our edge is not in calling the next move. Our edge is applying the same disciplined criteria to very well run businesses and adjusting when the facts shift. 

We chase returns, not attachment to any particular company or commodity.

And our approach has worked. Out of 20+ companies we have featured, one we sold at 10x and another at 6x, several current positions are up 2-4x, and only three are in the red. However we think those three have substantial upside from here.

To your freedom,  James Hickman   Co-Founder, Schiff Sovereign LLC

https://www.schiffsovereign.com/trends/why-central-banks-are-still-dumping-dollars-for-gold-155053/?inf_contact_key=cbbfc08c656f7335f081e6407c560cc6a86d4ea02565bdbf3e4c8b49b33caf0f

Argentina Got This Warning Before Its Collapse. America Just Got It Last Week.

Argentina Got This Warning Before Its Collapse. America Just Got It Last Week.

Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black / Sovereign Man)  April 20, 2026

In early December 2001, ‘normal’ life very suddenly ceased to exist in Argentina— anything that remotely resembled a functional society came to an abrupt end. And that is by no means an exaggeration.  The banking system collapsed. Financial transactions ground to a halt. Desperate people looted supermarkets for food, and then grocery shelves emptied. Energy ran short.  Riots broke out in the streets, and police were shooting citizens in the face.

The crisis raged so much that the President of Argentina fled the country by helicopter. Five presidents rotated through the office in two weeks. Then the country defaulted on $93 billion in sovereign debt— the largest default in history at the time.

Argentina was left in such a deep constitutional crisis that it didn't even have the money or the legal framework to hold an immediate election.

This wasn’t exactly a surprise.

For years leading up to the crisis, Argentina had been struggling. The country was in the midst of a major economic depression. Unemployment was high. GDP was shrinking. Inflation was increasing. Crime was rising.

And yet, even with all of that negativity, life was at least in the ballpark of normal.

Basic services still functioned. Grocery stores had food. Banks were open and had money. And, even though unemployment was high, the vast majority of people still had jobs.

But it all collapsed in the span of three weeks. Poof. All because of too much debt.

To its credit, one of the groups that saw this coming was the IMF, which had warned the Argentine government multiple times about a looming crisis.

Even in early 2001, the same year as the crisis, IMF reports flagged Argentina’s soaring debt-to-GDP ratio, citing its "sharp deterioration in the public finances," and deficits running well above the targets Buenos Aires had agreed to.

Well, the United States just received the same warning from the IMF last week. Even the language in the report is eerily similar.

In its 2026 Article IV consultation on the United States of America, the IMF warned that America's “persistently high fiscal deficits [and] the continued rise in debt‑GDP ratio” creates a "growing financial stability tail risk" for both the US and the global economy.

They stressed "the pressing need to address the US's longstanding fiscal imbalances through a frontloaded fiscal adjustment."

That last part means that Congress must make critical spending cuts NOW. Not later. Time is running out.

The IMF cites US government debt reaching 123.9% of GDP and deficits equal to 7.5% of GDP. More importantly, they point out that the US government has no credible plan to reduce them.

To be fair, America is not Argentina, and the US boasts major advantages— including one of the world's most innovative economies and the deepest capital markets on earth.

But it’s nearly impossible to argue that the US isn’t heading towards a major debt crisis. The rest of the world has already figured this out— and the data prove it.

For example, in the first quarter of 2026, the share of global foreign exchange reserves denominated in US dollars fell by 2.3 percentage points, down to 56.1%.

That’s an unprecedented move in global reserves. To put that quarterly decline in perspective, the US dollar's reserve share declined by roughly 10 percentage points over the previous decade...

... which means that roughly a quarter of that 10-year decline happened in the past 90 days! That’s evidence of a significant acceleration in the world’s loss of confidence in America.

The SWIFT international payments network tells the same story. The dollar's share of international payments dropped substantially in Q1. In the Middle East, for instance, non-dollar transactions jumped from 18% to 31% in three months. In Asia, from 35% to 42%.

Another data point: the world's central banks now hold more gold than US Treasury securities for the first time since 1996.

This comes as no surprise to our readers. We've been writing about this for the past 17 years.

Back in 2009, we were laughed at for suggesting that the United States could one day face a debt crisis. Today even the IMF is saying it.

We often cite that line from Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises — "How did you go bankrupt?" "Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly." The de-dollarization data suggests we're entering the "suddenly" phase.

To your freedom,  James Hickman   Co-Founder, Schiff Sovereign LLC

P.S.   We've been warning about the US fiscal trajectory for years, long before it was fashionable. For most of that time, these concerns were dismissed as alarmist.

Now it's a mainstream view. And the rest of the world is repositioning.

The sensible course of action is to do the same. International diversification, real assets, a second residency, an offshore bank account — these aren't doomsday preparations. They're rational responses to a fiscal trajectory that is a risk to the global economy.

That is exactly what we cover each month in Plan B Confidential — specific, legal, practical steps to diversify across borders, from second residencies and offshore banking to tax optimization and real asset strategies that make sense regardless of how this plays out.  

https://www.schiffsovereign.com/trends/argentina-got-this-warning-before-its-collapse-america-just-got-it-last-week-155037/?inf_contact_key=0e78a2143153df024cd70fe991ce4b0a0610b17be1dd28ffc304ba09276be34a

Why the Government Runs Like a Bloated Chrome Tab

Why the Government Runs Like a Bloated Chrome Tab

Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black / Sovereign Man)      April 17, 2026

I had a Commodore 64 “computer” when I was a kid. I know I’m dating myself with that reference... but I’m telling you— back in the 80s, a Commodore was pretty hot stuff.   It was basically an antique typewriter that you plugged into a television (sort of like a Nintendo or other gaming console). And they called it a Commodore “64” because it had a whopping 64 kilobytes of RAM.

"Kilobytes" is not a typo. For context, most mobile phones today have 8 gigabytes of RAM, and a gigabyte is roughly 1 million times a kilobyte.

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The average email today (without attachments) is nearly 100 kilobytes, i.e. 50% more than the entire memory of my Commodore. Yet, back in the 80s, software developers were able to do miraculous things with that tiny amount of memory.

64 kilobytes was somehow enough to play games like Pitfall and Impossible Mission, bang out a school report on a dot-matrix printer, and all sorts of other things.

And it wasn’t just Commodore— Nintendo and Sega put out hundreds of titles on consoles that had comparably tiny amounts of memory.

In order to make all of this magic happen, programmers had to be absolutely ruthless about every single line of code. Every byte mattered. There was zero bloat. Zero inefficiency.

And software teams routinely fought with each other about what features would be in a game, versus what features would be thrown out— because there simply wasn’t enough memory to include what everyone wanted.

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In short, the software industry had to live within its means. Yet despite those severe memory limitations, they put out timeless classics. It was a Golden Age for software development.

But then something happened. Technological and manufacturing breakthroughs made memory abundant... and cheap. Whereas 64 kilobytes of memory was considered a luxury in the 80s, soon megabytes of RAM... and then gigabytes of RAM, became readily available.

Memory eventually became so abundant that it felt practically infinite. No one had to make any tough decisions to optimize their code for RAM limitations... because there was always more memory available.

As a result, bloat eventually crept in. Here are a few examples.

Literally right now as I write this, I have a number of tabs open in my browser (I use Brave, by the way). ProtonMail takes up 409 megabytes of RAM... for a single tab. And a web-based PowerPoint presentation in my browser takes up 957 megabytes of RAM!

And don’t get me started on Windows.

Microsoft has been rolling out a ‘feature’ to “pre-load” data in its File Explorer application that consumes 67.4 megabytes of RAM. That’s more than 1,000x the memory requirement as my Commodore 64 had... for the sole purpose of being able to look at files and folders on your computer.

The level of bloat and memory waste is absurd (and also why I use Linux).

There’s hardly anyone in the industry today who remembers the bygone days of having to make ruthless decisions over every line of code; rather, the software industry today is accustomed to being able to publish bloated code... because memory has been so abundant for so long.

Unfortunately conditions have now dramatically changed.

Thanks in large part to surging AI demand, there is now a global memory shortage. RAM supply is scarce and has skyrocketed in price.

The industry, quite predictably, is fretting over the supply side, complaining that memory manufacturers need to build new factories and produce more RAM.

Very few prominent voices in software are saying, “Gee guys, maybe we should be more efficient in our code and use less RAM. Maybe it shouldn’t take 67 megabytes to look at our system files... Or 400+ megabytes for a single browser tab.”

In other words, there’s very little push to be more efficient and live within their means.

If you’re starting to see where I’m going, this story should sound familiar... because it’s very similar to how the government spends our money.

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Once upon a time in America, Congress fought passionately over every dollar. They knew they had to live within their means, and every budget item mattered. Politicians debated passionately about which programs stayed and which had to go.

But that was the past. America has been the world’s superpower, and the US dollar the world’s reserve currency, for eight decades.

Consequently, the US government has been able to run massive deficits and rack up a gargantuan national debt with impunity, leading politicians to believe that America’s financial resources are infinite.

Today there’s no one in government who remembers the days of responsible spending. That’s why there’s so much bloat and why deficits are so high.

But, just like the memory market, a sudden scarcity is emerging. Foreign creditors— who used to provide ample funds to the Treasury market— are starting to invest their capital elsewhere.

We can see this impact with interest rates, which are now hovering near multi-decade highs... as well as gold prices, which remain near all-time highs.

Faced with a sudden scarcity of financial resources— and the shocking realization that government spending cannot be infinite— Congress is choosing the predictable route.

Rather than look to themselves to become more efficient, to make objective and ruthless decisions about what programs stay and what programs go, to live within their means... they are instead demanding more resources.

Of course they always start with calls to “tax the rich”. But these taxes invariably trickle down to the middle class; just ask anyone who had to submit an AMT return this week.

But the point here isn’t to argue whether Jeff Bezos should or shouldn’t pay more tax. The point is that Congress’s approach is entirely wrong.

As we discussed yesterday, they fail to understand a very simple point: higher tax rates don’t generate higher overall tax revenue. Higher tax revenue comes from a booming economy.

So they should instead invest their energy into ensuring maximum productivity... which ultimately means fewer regulations, and in general staying out of the way.

It’s also insane that they are specifically refusing to cut spending. Despite hundreds of billions worth of documented fraud, they do nothing about it. They’ve also pledged to NOT reform Social Security and Medicare, i.e. the single biggest budget items in government.

It’s the exact opposite of what they should be doing. They still don’t have the right mentality to solve America’s #1 problem... and it’s why having a Plan B makes so much sense.

To your freedom,   James Hickman   Co-Founder, Schiff Sovereign LLC

https://www.schiffsovereign.com/trends/why-the-government-runs-like-a-bloated-chrome-tab-155025/?inf_contact_key=f28b98974a09962c873bc26a53660601dcd31c885f4ab1b34be5363d83ed1062

There Is No "Fair Share" — There Is Only “More”

There Is No "Fair Share" — There Is Only “More”

Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black / Sovereign Man)  April 16, 2026

In April 1971, Keith Richards loaded his family and his Bentley onto a cross-Channel ferry and drove south until he hit the Mediterranean. He rented a 19th-century villa called Nellcôte on a hillside above Villefranche-sur-Mer, and converted the basement into a recording studio.

Over the following year the rest of the Rolling Stones rotated through the house and nearby properties to record the double album that became Exile on Main St., while staying deliberately out of reach of the British tax authorities.

The top marginal income tax rate in Britain at the time was 75%, and a surcharge on the highest earners pushed the effective rate on the wealthiest past 90%.

Three years later, under Denis Healey's 1974 budget, the top rate on earned income would climb to 83% and the rate on investment income would reach 98%.

Britain would spend the rest of the decade watching capital flee and begging the IMF for emergency loans.

David Bowie, Rod Stewart, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, and a long line of less famous wealthy Britons eventually ran the same arithmetic as the Stones and reached a similar conclusion. Capital left the country in every form it could fit into, including bonds, businesses, luxury cars, and rock stars.

But politicians never learn.

Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey has backed legislation that would push the top federal income-tax rate to 43%.

Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland is pushing a version that lands at 49%.

Both men describe it, as they always do, as wealthy Americans finally paying their "fair share."

What exact percent is their fair share? Are we to believe they will be satisfied at 43% or 49%?

As always, that phrase is deliberately left undefined.

Never-mind that the top 1% of filers already paid 40.4% of all federal income taxes in 2022 while the bottom 50% paid roughly 3%.

They are also conveniently ignorant of the fact that raising the top marginal rate doesn’t actually raise revenue at all.

Since the end of the Second World War, U.S. federal tax revenue has averaged around 17% to 18% of GDP, dipping toward 15% in deep recessions and climbing near 20% in booms. The swings track the business cycle, not tax policy.

The top marginal rate, over that same stretch, has been all over the map: 91% under Eisenhower, 28% under Reagan by 1988, 39.6% under Clinton, 37% today. Yet regardless of whether tax rates were 91% or 37%, the IRS always collects around 17% of GDP.

The conclusion is obvious: if the government wants to collect more tax revenue, they should focus on setting the right conditions for an economic boom. In short, make the pie bigger for EVERYONE, and hence the government’s slice will grow as well.

Making the pie bigger isn’t that hard, either. America’s private economy is legendary. All Congress has to do is get out of the way. Attempt to run a balanced budget. Restore credibility. Make it easier for businesses and individuals to be productive. REMOVE idiotic laws instead of creating new ones.

But they’re not interested in any of those things.

Congress has documented evidence of hundreds of billions of dollars in fraud. Yet they  do nothing. They have also pledged to do nothing about Social Security— which is set to run out of money in six years.

The regulatory code in the Land of the Free already runs over 188,000 pages. Yet they expand it every session.

This is the opposite of what they should be doing. And instead of figuring out how to live within their means, they just demand more resources... even though it never works.

Britain tried its 98% tax experiment in the 1970s and spent a decade regretting it.

Ironically the current Labour government has forgotten that painful lesson; they recently abolished the 110-year-old "non-dom" regime, and more than 10,000 millionaires have already left the country.

In the United States, Elizabeth Warren's Ultra-Millionaire Tax proposal does not just impose a wealth tax. It bundles her wealth tax with an additional 40% exit tax on anyone who renounces US citizenship.

You do not create a 40% tollbooth at the border unless you fully expect people to try to walk through it.

These are not serious ideas to grow an economy. Rather, they are insidious policies designed to trap people in a system which steals their prosperity. That is why a Plan B makes so much sense.

To your freedom,  James Hickman   Co-Founder, Schiff Sovereign LLC

https://www.schiffsovereign.com/trends/there-is-no-fair-share-there-is-only-more-155021/?inf_contact_key=777b6710cfd255750dd3426953caeee29ee4b048ce23149d13a848abfdc3679b

The $13,000 Apartments the Government Won't Let You Buy

The $13,000 Apartments the Government Won't Let You Buy

Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black/Sovereign Man)  April 14, 2026

On May 20, 1862, Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act into law, and it essentially said: here's 160 acres of land. It's yours. For free. All you have to do is live on it and improve it.  And between 1862 and 1934, the federal government distributed 270 million acres under the program — roughly 10% of all the land in the United States.

Even as far back as the American Revolution, the Founding Fathers understood that property ownership made people more engaged, more productive citizens. Ownership meant that you had a vested financial interest in your community... and your country.

Over time, that idea fused with the concept of "the American Dream". And for decades that dream was a reality for millions of people.

After World War II, for example, America underwent a massive construction boom. Between  postwar prosperity, the GI Bill, and the arrival of the modern 30-year fixed mortgage,  home ownership surged from about 44% in 1940 to 62% by 1960.

More importantly, housing was affordable.

In 1950, median family income was about $3,000, yet the median home cost roughly $7,350. That’s just ~2.5 times median household income. Plus, with prevailing mortgage rates back then 4.5%, the monthly payments were trivial.

Because of that, families across America could easily make ends meet on a single income.

Today the median home sells for about $412,000. Median household income is roughly $83,700. That puts housing at 5x household income— double what it was in the 1950s.

More importantly, at today's mortgage rate of roughly 6.4%, the monthly payment on a median home (assuming a 20% down payment) consumes roughly 30% of household income.

The down payment is also so high these days that buying a home is nearly impossible, especially for young people or low-income workers. Even in dual-income households, homeownership is increasingly out of reach.

As we discussed on Friday, America’s housing problems go far beyond the ‘greedy’ Wall Street investors that are getting most of the blame for rising home prices.

Construction materials cost 40% more than they did five years ago, courtesy of the Federal Reserve printing trillions during the pandemic and igniting inflation.

Plus the regulatory permitting maze adds enormous costs. In Fremont, California, development fees alone run $157,000 per home before a single nail is hammered. And that doesn’t even include additional permitting costs and utility connection fees.

The government used to give away 160 acres for free. Now local governments charge six figures for permission to build.

Go figure that California, with its endless lip service about affordable housing, is also the epicenter of American homelessness.

But it turns out there's a ready-made solution staring policymakers in the face.

The office property market is a complete bloodbath right now. Between the sluggish economy, AI reducing demand for workers, and the lingering work-from-home paradigm, the prices of office properties across the country have tanked.

More than 200 distressed office buildings changed hands across the country in 2025, with average sale prices down 37% from 2019. In Manhattan, a 920,000-square-foot tower sold for $8.5 million, down from $332.5 million. That’s a 97% decline!

Then there’s 401 South State Street in Chicago, a 485,000-square-foot office building that sold last October for $4.2 million, down from $68.1 million in 2016. That’s less than $9 per square foot.

Housing in Chicago isn’t cheap. So just imagine you’re young, fresh out of college, and staring at the prospect of paying $1,200 per month to live in a cramped apartment with three roommates.

Instead, you could pay about $13,000 for 1,500 square feet worth of space in the 401 South State Street office building that would be yours to own.

Yes, duh, it’s an office building. So it wouldn’t have the conveniences of a traditional home— like private bathrooms and kitchens. But for $13 grand?!!? Who cares. You'd have your own private space, a roof over your head, and a door that locks.

Frankly, that's not so different from military barracks and university dorms. Americans manage just fine with communal facilities when the price is right.

That's the beauty of capitalism. Such living accommodations aren’t for everyone. But at a low enough price, a LOT of people would happily trade convenience for affordability. Shower at the gym. Eat at the fast-casual spot around the corner. Live with walking distance to work downtown.

Most 20-somethings might think that’s pretty cool— especially compared to the alternative of paying out the nose for rent and never managing to save enough money to buy a house.

Same logic for a family of six crammed into a two-bedroom public housing unit in decrepit conditions; they could have a few thousand square feet to themselves.

Here’s another scenario. Let’s say a family in Topeka, Kansas locked in a 2% mortgage during the pandemic. Dad got laid off and can't find another job locally. But they don’t want to sell the house to move across country, uproot the kids, and buy a new house somewhere else at a 6% rate. So they're stuck.

Instead, Dad buys 1,000 square feet in one of these bankrupt office buildings for less than $10k. His family stays home, he commutes to his new job in a new city, and flies home on the weekends to see his kids. They make it work... which they wouldn’t be able to afford with hotels or an AirBnb.

This would be a genuine ‘starter home’— a place where someone could actually save money and build toward a proper mortgage, instead of hemorrhaging rent to Blackrock every month while still falling behind.

But the government won't allow it.

Zoning codes, building regulations, occupancy requirements— a labyrinth of rules that forbid you from such options.

Let grown adults decide for themselves. That's how capitalism is supposed to work.

Nobody would pay $400,000 for a unit with no bathroom. But $13,000? For a lot of Americans, that's not a sacrifice— it's an opportunity.

The same politicians who claim to care about the poor, the homeless, and young people priced out of the American Dream have the obvious solution sitting right in front of them.

But they won't take it, because that would mean getting out of the way.

To your freedom,   James Hickman   Co-Founder, Schiff Sovereign LLC 

PS — Another way to opt out of America's housing affordability disaster is to look elsewhere.

There are plenty of countries where you can buy a beautiful home in a major city for a fraction of what a starter unit costs in the US, and several of those purchases also qualify you for residency or eventual citizenship. So you're not just buying a home, you're buying optionality. We cover the best programs, exact thresholds, and on-the-ground intelligence in Plan B Confidential. 

https://www.schiffsovereign.com/trends/the-13000-apartments-the-government-wont-let-you-buy-155002/?inf_contact_key=be1b45181a64d92a5aa6bded0feed2af75c74c6d80b7c7d7ab87b128387eaee0

Two Weeks to Stop the Spread of War

Two Weeks to Stop the Spread of War

Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black/Sovereign Man)  April 8, 2026

On August 15, 1945, after two of their cities had been obliterated by the world's first nuclear weapons, the people of Japan heard the voice of their young Emperor for the first time ever.

Hirohito went on what was a relatively new communications medium at the time—the radio— and gave one of the most bizarre speeches in all of human history, in which he told his subjects that "the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage."

Talk about an understatement.

It's one of the more famous examples in a long list throughout history of speeches that have ended conflicts, where leaders paint whatever picture they want.

Perhaps even more famously, Richard Nixon promised "peace with honor" in Vietnam on the campaign trail in 1968.

It was one of the most brilliant political statements of its era, because everyone heard what they wanted to hear. Those who wanted an end to the war heard "peace." The war hawks heard "honor." Everyone got what they wanted out of it.

But ultimately there was neither peace nor honor. The war dragged on for seven more years, resulting in a humiliating withdrawal from Saigon in April 1975, complete with desperate helicopter evacuations from the US Embassy rooftop.

This is the sort of stuff that peace deals and conflict resolutions are made of— situations where you can talk out of both sides of your mouth, and both sides of the conflict can declare victory.

And if both sides can claim victory, that's actually a good thing. Because the only other way to end a war is to have the other side so utterly demolished that they have no choice but to accept defeat.

The alternative is to give both sides an out.

That's what's happening with Iran.

It's a strange situation from a military and strategic perspective given that Iran has been objectively obliterated; major infrastructure is demolished, key leadership was assassinated, the military is weakened, the government is vulnerable— and yet Iran actually thinks they are winning. Or at least they act like it.

It reminds me of when Charlie Sheen was on a three-day cocaine binge giving live interviews and talking about "winning." That's Iran right now.

The reason is because the American media is so deranged, so pro-Iran and anti-Trump, that they have managed to convince the Iranians that they are much stronger than they actually are.

But at this point the political realities have started surfacing in the US. The administration is worried about high gas prices and the midterms, and there’s a lot of pressure to end the conflict.

Now there’s an arrangement where both sides can declare victory. The US can say they accomplished their objectives — dismantled Iran's military and defense capabilities, degraded their nuclear program, eliminated key leadership, and dismantled their ability to fund and spread terror.

And the Iranians can say they stood up to the ‘evil empire’ and forced the Americans to walk away.

That is essentially what both sides are saying right now. And while the full implications remain to be seen, this is where the proverbial rubber meets the road.

We've been saying since this war started that it could end up being a very big deal for the fate of the United States... so what happens during negotiations over the next few weeks is crucial.

On one hand, there is a possibility they could strike a deal to lift sanctions against Iran and allow Iranian oil to be sold on the global market— as long as it's priced in US dollars.

Between Iran and Venezuela, that could create a massive financial incentive for the whole world to continue to hold US dollars, and thus to buy US government bonds.

But it could just as easily go the other way if the Iranians continue to think they are in a position of strength and that they have the advantage.

One thing we can be pretty sure about is that there probably won't be a resolution in two weeks.

I couldn't help but think of the infamous "two weeks to stop the spread" when COVID first emerged. That was an unrealistic timetable then, and two weeks is an unrealistic timetable now.

International negotiations are extremely difficult, and the tried and true tactic of rogue-nation geopolitics is to let negotiations drag on.

The Soviets perfected this approach. Their strategy was always to exhaust the negotiation partner. Westerners tend to like quick and speedy deals, but rogue nations in general tend to use that impatience to their advantage. So it's hard to believe in the two-week time frame.

But the clock has certainly started, however long it takes. And by the end we should have a very good sense for what this means for America.

The consequences could be massive— for inflation, for the dollar, for bond markets, for the trajectory of the entire US economy.

This could still be a deal that helps prop up the dollar and US government bonds for years, if not decades, to come. But if that doesn't happen, the best-case scenario is probably a stalemate where both sides walk away, flip the switch, turn off the war, almost pretend it never happened. And hopefully the world just ignores it and gives America a pass.

Time will tell. But probably not in the next two weeks.

To your freedom,   James Hickman   Co-Founder, Schiff Sovereign LLC

https://www.schiffsovereign.com/trends/two-weeks-to-stop-the-spread-of-war-154964/?inf_contact_key=73e2aaa2627e078969bc72431c5e1e4cb35f7cb4f843dbaf82489fd4b96e6293

Phone Service for 94,000 Dead People, and Other Things Congress Won't Cut

Phone Service for 94,000 Dead People, and Other Things Congress Won't Cut

Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black)  April 1, 2026

Earlier this year, the House DOGE Subcommittee pulled spending records from the Department of Transportation and discovered that the agency had spent $55 million on office furniture over the past few years.  That’s about $1,000 per employee, which might not sound so crazy, until you realize that this was during a period when only 9% of DOT employees were actually showing up to the office.

But the furniture budget of the Department of Justice was even worse— $408 million on furniture in four years, with an average attendance rate of just 35%.

DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) dropped $250,000 on a single "refresh" of Herman Miller chairs. My only hope is this was part of developing some new revolutionary bulletproof chair cushion.

All told, federal agencies have spent $4.6 billion on furniture since 2021 — much of it for offices that have sat empty while employees work from home on Zoom.

If this were an isolated case of waste, you might write it off as bad management at a couple of agencies.

But it is not.

In February, the Government Accountability Office calculated the final cost of the Employee Retention Credit— a COVID-era program that ended in 2021. Total payout: $283 billion.

But 83% of that money ($235 billion) was paid out YEARS after the pandemic ended; the fraud mills kept filing bogus claims, and the IRS just kept writing checks.

Also in February, the FCC's inspector general discovered that Lifeline phone providers in California had been billing the government to provide phone and internet service to 94,000 dead people— $3.8 million worth of calls that were never made, to phones that were never used, for people who were no longer alive.

The examples never stop.

Senator Joni Ernst recently uncovered Pentagon-funded research projects that included studies on octopus hypnosis, monkey mind-reading, snail mucus, and elephant seal sleeping habits, all funded through a contracting loophole called "Other Transaction Agreements".

These OTAs allow agencies to spend money without competitive bidding, standard oversight, or public disclosure of costs.

How much did each project cost? That's the beauty of the system — the government doesn't have to tell you. But the GAO found that $77.5 billion flowed through these agreements between 2021 and 2025 without proper public accounting.

The National Science Foundation spent $14.6 million teaching monkeys to play a video game inspired by ThePrice Is Right. USAID spent $20 million producing Sesame Street in Iraq and $69,000 on dance classes in Wuhan, China.

And every single year, the federal government makes hundreds of billions of dollars in improper payments— money sent to the wrong person, in the wrong amount, or for the wrong reason.

Last year's total: $186 billion. That includes payments to deceased individuals, ineligible recipients, and programs that can't even verify whether the money should have gone out at all.

Since 2003, the cumulative total has reached $2.8 trillion, i.e. a full 7% of the national debt that simply would not exist if the government was minimally competent.

The Pentagon, meanwhile, has failed its own audit for eight consecutive years. Auditors could not verify more than 60% of the department's $4.65 trillion in assets.

Congress's response? Hand the Pentagon its first-ever trillion-dollar budget. They cannot account for the money they already receive, so why not give them even more?!?

Then there's the end-of-year ritual. Under "use it or lose it" rules, agencies that don't exhaust their budgets risk getting less money next year.

So in the final five days of fiscal year 2025, the War Department spent $50.1 billion in grants and contracts, including $6.9 million on lobster tail, $2 million on Alaskan king crab, $15 million on ribeye steak, $225 million on furniture, including a $98,329 Steinway grand piano for a general’s home.

Makes sense. Perhaps a stirring rendition of “Great Balls of Fire” is just what we need to defeat Iran.

For context, only nine countries on Earth spend more $50 billion on their entire annual defense budget. The Pentagon spent that in five days.

None of this is secret. DOGE found it. Inspectors General found it. The GAO found it. Senators publish it in annual reports that make headlines for about a day.

And then nothing changes.  Congress doesn't cut a dime.

They act like it is simply impossible, that children would be starving in the streets, national security would be at risk, and farms would lay fallow, that we would all burst into flames if they cut the budget.

This might be one of the most effective lies ever perpetrated on a population— that we simply cannot, must not cut a dime in spending, for the consequences would be catastrophic.

The federal government spent $7 trillion in fiscal year 2025. $2 trillion of that was borrowed. $1.2 trillion was spent on interest to service the $39 trillion national debt.

And over the next decade, the CBO expects Congress to add another $23.1 trillion to the debt. It will almost certainly be much more.

This is arguably the single greatest threat to America. Not China, not hysteria over AI, not any of the foreign adversaries that dominate the headlines— but the slow, compounding, mathematically inevitable consequences of a government that cannot stop spending money it doesn't have.

And the most infuriating part is that it should be so easy to cut the most obvious, most indefensible waste. The $600 billion in outright fraud Secretary of Treasury Bessent estimates in the budget every single year. The $200+ billion in improper payments. The $100+ billion in legal graft that flows to political allies.

That alone would cut nearly half the deficit, without even touching the furniture for empty offices or octopus hypnosis experiments.

But if Congress is unwilling to even lift a finger for such obvious absurdity, what are the odds they'll tackle Social Security’s impending insolvency, just six years away? Or give foreign countries the confidence to keep investing in US government bonds? Or behave in a way to keep inflation in check?

Seems pretty low to us. Which is why it makes so much sense to have a Plan B. 

To your freedom,

James Hickman
Co-Founder, Schiff Sovereign LLC

PS- If you're worried about what this all means for your savings, your retirement, and the purchasing power of the dollar — we built Plan B Confidential for exactly that.

It's our flagship research service covering second citizenships, foreign residency, international banking, tax strategies, and boots-on-the-ground intelligence from 120+ countries.

Everything you need to make sure your family's future doesn't depend on Congress suddenly discovering fiscal discipline.

https://www.schiffsovereign.com/trends/phone-service-for-94000-dead-people-and-other-things-congress-wont-cut-154926/?inf_contact_key=3329ffb7eb228b5fb4537dac41fa99eedf50326a1e561daba0ba774a8ec98964

What If This Is All Part Of The Plan?

What If This Is All Part Of The Plan?

Notes From the Field BY James Hickman (Simon Black)  March 24 2026

You don’t have to look very hard these days to see widespread criticism of the conflict in Iran.

Obviously, there are the usual suspects like the New York Times and Washington Post who have called it “folly” and “rotten”. But plenty of voices on the right have joined in the criticism as well.

Tucker Carlson calls it “absolutely disgusting and evil”. Thomas Massie says it is “not America First”. Joe Rogan says it’s “insane”. Joe Kent, formerly the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, resigned his post because Iran was not “an imminent threat” and there was no “clear path to a swift victory”.

In short, there are plenty of respectable and informed views that Iran is (1) not going well, and (2) not in America’s interests. And I can certainly understand their points of view.

Personally, I see this from a lot of different angles– some positive, some negative. But at the same time I also think there’s a possibility that what’s happening right now might actually BE the plan.

Just consider: the US national debt is $39 trillion. Deficits are piling on an additional $2 trillion per year. Social Security is only six years away from running out of money. And the vast majority of United States Congressmen couldn’t possibly care less.

It doesn’t make you unpatriotic or unAmerican to understand this simple truth: US government bonds are simply not as attractive as they used to be for foreign investors.

The leadership of every foreign country on this planet recognizes that they could wake up tomorrow morning and find out that their Treasury holdings have been frozen. Or they could be sanctioned. Or there could be another tariff escalation. Or their alliance terminated. Or another military strike.

They also believe that Congress will continue to do nothing about America’s spiraling debt and budget deficit. Interest on the debt already exceeds 22% of federal tax revenue, and the problem is rapidly becoming much worse.

They also know there’s a good chance the Federal Reserve will fail to achieve price stability, and that inflation could easily go much higher from here.

All of that spells plenty of risk, especially for foreign governments and central banks. Given that US Treasury securities pay a measly 4%, it hardly seems worth their investment.

That’s why so many foreign governments and central banks around the world started moving a portion of their strategic financial reserves away from the US dollar… and into gold. This has been a trend for a few years now– central bank gold purchases surged in 2023, 2024, and 2025.

That’s a huge problem for the US government, which critically needs foreign investors to continue buying Treasury bonds. Treasury demand from foreigners helps keep interest rates down and inflation in check.

Conversely, if foreigners ditched the dollar entirely, inflation and interest rates would both skyrocket.

So, what better way to prevent this than to give foreigners an extremely compelling reason to buy US Treasurys and hold US dollars?

Oil is the most widely traded commodity in the world. Every country needs it, and despite the cries of deranged teenagers who superglue themselves to the pavement, demand for oil keeps growing.

Oil has traditionally been bought and sold in US dollars… even when neither buyer nor seller are American. So, when Australia sells oil to India, that transaction takes place in US dollars.

The sheer volume of the oil trade means that every country stockpiles US dollars in order to participate in global energy markets. And they typically hold US dollars by buying Treasury bonds.

This war might possibly have been a ploy to gain control over Iran’s oil: punch them in the face, decimate their leadership, destroy much of their military capabilities… and then offer a peace deal:

“We will lift sanctions and allow you to sell oil on the global market, and even line up investment to expand your production, as long as everything is denominated in US dollars. No oil will be sold in any other currency. Better yet, we’ll push you to peg your currency to the US dollar, just like other countries in the region.”

Obviously, they would never communicate such a strategy in public; they’d never stand on stage and tell CNN what they’re really trying to accomplish.

But in the end, maybe they don’t really care if there’s true regime change in Iran. Maybe they don’t really care about Israel’s objectives either. Perhaps the singular American goal is to boost foreign demand for the US dollar.

And it’s possible they might just pull that off.

Again, I’m just speculating. The only thing we can say for sure is that there’s a lot riding on this outcome.

If they succeed, the resurgence of the dollar could buy the US enough time to fix its problems. If they fail, it could be the proverbial nail.

That’s why this war in Iran could end up right alongside 9/11, the GFC, and Covid as one of the most consequential events of our time.

To your freedom,   James Hickman   Co-Founder, Schiff Sovereign LLC

https://www.schiffsovereign.com/trends/what-if-this-is-all-part-of-the-plan-154866/?inf_contact_key=ea20b5f58b204b2657e43786923567ea6b52fb27a108dfee299ccbafe321d99b

Ever Wonder Where $7 TRILLION Goes? So Does the Government

Ever Wonder Where $7 TRILLION Goes? So Does the Government

Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black)  March 17, 2026

On March 10, a nonpartisan Washington think tank called the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget published a report called: "Break Glass: A Plan for the Next Economic Shock."

It points out that the United States has never entered an economic downturn as indebted as it is today— meaning there is essentially zero fiscal space to respond to the next crisis.  When the financial crisis hit in 2008, national debt stood at roughly 35% of GDP. By the time it was over, debt had ballooned to about 70%.

Then, when COVID hit in 2020, debt was already at 80% of GDP. By the time that was over, it had surged past 100%.

Today the official national debt is almost at 130% of GDP. That's well beyond the World War II record.

Each economic crisis starts from a worse position, requires more borrowing, and leaves the country deeper in the hole.

None of this should be surprising to anyone who's been paying attention. We've been writing about this for years.

We said it in 2019 when everything was going great— record stock market, record tax revenue, healthy economy— and the government still ran a trillion dollar deficit.

We wondered out loud— if the government still runs a $1 trillion deficit when everything is great, how bad will the deficit be when there’s an actual crisis?

We didn’t have to wait long to find out; Covid hit shortly thereafter, causing the government deficit to surge to $5+ trillion.

So what happens when the next recession hits? Where does the money come from?

The CRFB's proposed emergency plan gives you the answer. First, freeze Social Security, Medicare, and all discretionary spending — no cost-of-living adjustments, no growth, nothing.

Then, freeze tax brackets too, so that inflation quietly pushes more Americans into higher brackets.

And on top of all that, phase in a brand new "deficit reduction surtax": an additional tax on income above $100,000 that ratchets up every year until deficits fall to 3% of GDP.

Of course this would all be so politically toxic that the report concedes nothing will be done until... a crisis forces it.

But that doesn’t mean Americans aren’t already feeling the consequences of higher deficits.

Last year, a Yale Budget Lab report found that federal deficit spending since 2015 has pushed interest rates up by nearly a full percentage point.

The government borrows so much money that it crowds out private lending, forcing everyone else to pay more. You’re essentially competing with the government for a loan.

For a new homebuyer, that single percentage point adds $76,014 in extra costs over a 30-year mortgage — roughly $2,534 per year, or about $211 every single month. Auto loans cost an extra $670. Small business loans cost an extra $7,723.

So when a young couple can't afford their first house, or a small business owner pays more to expand, part of that cost is a direct, measurable consequence of Washington's borrowing binge.

The national debt isn't an abstract number on a screen in Washington. It's higher interest rates on mortgages, auto loans, and credit cards.

And the government borrowing is only accelerating.

Over the past year, the debt grew by $2.7 trillion; that’s a sharp increase from the $1.8 trillion federal deficit in fiscal year 2025.

So not only is the national debt growing, but the rate at which the national debt is growing... is growing. (If you’re a math wonk, the second derivative is positive.)

At the current trajectory, the debt will cross $39 trillion by the end of this month. And $40 trillion by the summer... not long after America celebrates its 250th birthday. 

What’s crazy is that the people in charge of tracking all of this spending can't figure out where the money goes.

On March 5, a government auditor reported that the Office of Management and Budget cannot even produce a complete inventory of federal programs, despite being legally required to do so.

It’s not that the OMB is lazy or incompetent; it’s that there are simply too many federal programs... and the complex web of spending makes it virtually impossible to tally up all the various offices, agencies, sub-departments, committees, special advisory boards, emergency programs, etc. that exist in the federal government.

Congress makes things much worse when they appropriate annual funding for some program— sort of ‘fire and forget’. So decades go by since a program was originally created...yet it continues to receive money each year even though nobody knows what it’s for.

Bottom line, the government now spends $7 trillion each year. And they can’t figure out where it goes.

We've spent the last 16 years helping people build a Plan B— because even back in 2010, the trajectory of fiscal spending was obvious.

Look, the world’s not coming to an end. But it would be naive and foolish to think there won’t be consequences to such a dismal financial situation. There already are.

And it’s important to think about this, because the earlier you start preparing, the more options you’ll have to mitigate the consequences.

To your freedom,   James Hickman   Co-Founder, Schiff Sovereign LLC

https://www.schiffsovereign.com/trends/ever-wonder-where-7-trillion-goes-so-does-the-government-154545/?inf_contact_key=a3ee63261483ba74a1c4730f60702e786b52fb27a108dfee299ccbafe321d99b

Why I have doubts about the supposed “next Global Financial Crisis”

Why I have doubts about the supposed “next Global Financial Crisis”

Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black)   March 11, 2026

It was the early 2000s, and poor Monty was down on his luck.

 An aging, out-of-work game hunter and security guard, Monty had been unemployed for quite some time. Fortunately, he was getting by, but living off the generosity of a family in southern California who had taken him in. Without them Monty would have almost certainly been living on the street.

 But things started to change for Monty on a fateful day when his host family received a letter in the mail from a local bank-- addressed to Monty. They eagerly ripped open the letter to find that the bank had pre-approved old Monty for a substantial line of credit!

They all found this extraordinary… and not just because Monty had no job, no income, no assets (i.e. a classic “NINJA loan” from the early 2000s). What was particularly unique about this case is that Monty was a dog.

 We’ve talked about this a lot over the years-- but in case you’re too young to remember, the early 2000s was a decade in which anyone and everyone was able to borrow money.

 The Federal Reserve had slashed interest rates to zero-- which made borrowing look cheap… even free. And government policy was prompting banks to ignore all common sense and underwrite loans to anyone with a pulse… and occasionally some people without a pulse.

 The stories covered in books like Michael Lewis’s The Big Short are hilarious-- dead people, homeless people, unemployed people, prison inmates, canines and cats… they were wall approved for mortgages despite having no ability to make monthly payments.

 There were so many loans being issued that the US mortgage market quickly ballooned to $11 trillion.  Investment banks packaged up these dubious loans and dressed them up as special investment-grade bonds… and then the big Wall Street ratings agencies (like S&P, Fitch, etc.) slapped the highest quality “AAA” rating on them as if they were risk-free.

 The whole system blew up in 2008, causing multiple financial institutions to collapse-- triggering the Global Financial Crisis.

 The warning signs were there all along. But very few people paid attention.

 My friend and partner Peter Schiff was one of the few voices of reason who accurately predicted this crisis years before it actually happened; Peter used to go on live television and get laughed at by CNBC’s panel of ‘experts’. But in the end, Peter was right… and the whole system blew up.

 It turns out that lending money to broke, unemployed people who cannot pay is a pretty stupid lending policy.

 Now, you may have heard about new trouble emerging in the financial sector. And gee what else is new. Finance guys almost invariably find ways to generate short-term profits while creating long-term risk.

 And the latest brewing financial crisis of the day is the so-called ‘private credit market’.

 Private credit is what it sounds like-- funds and investors (i.e. NOT banks) underwrite private loans to companies. This isn’t particularly controversial; private lending is one of the cornerstones of capitalism.

 And usually these loans are asset-backed-- just like a real estate mortgage-- so the lender has collateral.

 Private lending was initially brought on by the ultra-low interest rates of the pandemic era (when companies could borrow for 3%); and it also ballooned-- estimated at roughly $3 trillion. That’s a pretty chunky number, even in the $30+ trillion US economy.

 But, just like the subprime market in the years before the GFC kicked off, there are starting to be warning signs that private credit is cracking.

 One of those-- most notably-- is that a major private lending fund (run by Blackstone, one of the world’s largest asset managers) has capped redemptions, i.e. they have limited the amount of money that investors can withdraw.

 This is a pretty clear sign of strain. Perhaps not the proverbial canary in the coalmine… but it’s a big deal that an investment firm with the size and reputation of Blackstone isn’t letting its investors out of their fund.

 (In fairness, the fund documents do stipulate redemption limits. But it’s pretty unusual for an asset manager to have to exercise this clause.)

 Another sign of strain is that default rates are up dramatically. Fitch (the same guys who slapped AAA ratings on NINJA loans 20 years ago) estimated that roughly 10% of US private loans are in default. That’s a big number, and it could go a lot higher.

 A key reason is that interest rates are MUCH higher today than when many of these loans were originally underwritten. So, any borrower that needs to refinance (which is likely the vast majority) will see a massive spike in monthly payments.

 That will be unaffordable for a lot of borrowers, resulting in even higher defaults. Plus, general economic malaise could contribute to higher default rates too.

 A chief concern about private credit is that many loans were like subprime “NINJA loans”, i.e. private loans that were way too big, issued to borrowers who were not creditworthy.

 I doubt anyone will shed any tears that Blackstone might lose money in a bad deal. But there could be knock-on effects-- specifically to banks.

 I know the whole point of ‘private’ credit is that the loans are NOT issued by banks. But in a rather peculiar twist, banks often loan money to private credit funds, who in turn loan that same bank money to the final borrower. Strange, right?

 Bottom line, banks are exposed.

 A few prominent voices lately have been warning that this private credit fiasco has all the hallmarks of the early 2000s subprime bubble… and that the next GFC is upon us.

 And there are definitely similarities. But a LOT of major differences too-- most notably size. The private credit market is MUCH smaller than subprime was, and it’s difficult to see how those losses would take down the US financial system again, let alone the entire global economy.

 But there are also significant existing risks in the banking sector-- like rising defaults in traditional office and commercial loans, and mark-to-market losses in banks’ bond portfolios.

 We’ve talked about this before-- US financial institutions are collectively sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars in unrealized losses, and most of those losses ironically come from Treasury bonds. So, another ~$100+ billion hit from private credit could definitely hurt banks.

I’ve been looking at this pretty hard, but at the moment I don’t see some epic crisis emerging from private credit.

 That said, one EASY Plan B option to safeguard your capital is to hold funds at Treasury Direct.

 Through Treasury Direct, any US citizen is able to set up an account and hold virtually any amount of money through ultra-short-term T-bills; it’s like keeping your money in a 4-week certificate of deposit, but without any bank counterparty risk.

 As we’ve discussed many times before, the US government is in pretty dire financial straits. But even I don’t think they’re going to default in the next four weeks.

 So, this is a safer alternative to hold cash--and you can quickly link your Treasury Direct account to your bank for easy back & forth transfers

To your freedom,   James Hickman    Co-Founder, Schiff Sovereign LLC

https://www.schiffsovereign.com/trends/why-i-have-doubts-about-the-supposed-next-global-financial-crisis-154498/?inf_contact_key=f96c323f9cc8163cafd9dc76d0a66125df50326a1e561daba0ba774a8ec98964

The Precipice

The Precipice

Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black)   March 2, 2026

“OK, so now I just want a bunker,” a close friend of mine texted over the weekend. And I get it. Fear, apprehension, unease… these are completely normal feelings right now.

 Google Trends shows that searches for “WW3” and “nuclear war” spiked over the weekend.  Similar hashtags on social media (#WW3, etc.) also surged.

 It doesn’t help that much of the legacy media has been stoking these fears, as they almost always do.

 Now, I suspect most people already have very strong opinions on the conflict. I certainly do. So there’s no sense in spending time today trying to litigate whether the military action was a good idea; we’ll all find out soon enough.

 Instead, I want to focus on two key points:

The first is that—regardless of how someone feels about this conflict— World War III is LESS LIKELY today than it was on Friday. And it’s not hard to understand why.

 US military capabilities have been on full display this year— first in Venezuela, where special operations forces managed to extract one of the world’s most tightly protected dictators… and it was over in a matter of hours.

 Only weeks later we see total dominance of Iran’s air defense systems— most of which are Russian or Chinese technology.

 In other words, China and Russia saw their military technology completely embarrassed by the United States. And this unmitigated defeat makes them both less interested in taking on America’s military.

 More importantly, Russia is completely depleted after four years of war in Ukraine. China’s military has almost no combat experience and has never had to project power beyond the South China Sea.

 So while they’ll certainly phone in their condemnations and strongly worded tweets, these countries have neither the capacity nor the inclination for war.

 It’s also noteworthy that the US rolled out a new weapon against Iran— a ‘kamikaze drone’ which was first pioneered by the Iranians themselves.

 Over the past several years the Iranian military developed its low-cost Shahed-136 drone— and sold vast quantities of them to Russia for use in Ukraine.

Well, an Arizona-based defense startup reverse engineered the Shahed-136… and made major improvements with respect to range, firepower, networking, cybersecurity, and more.

 It’s also dramatically more cost effective and can be manufactured in America at less than half the price as the Iranian variant.

 This shows how valuable the US private economy can be in war— managing to best the Iranians at their own game in less than a year. Foreign adversaries cannot ignore this.

 Look, nothing is impossible. But in terms of probabilities— at this moment, the specter of world war, nuclear war, etc. is actually lower… and adversary nations’ appetite for direct military conflict is diminishing by the day.

The second point is what’s really at stake.

 Military action of this scale brings almost infinite permutations. And, yes, there are many possibilities which result in the US subduing Iran’s military and a new, America-friendly regime takes control of the country.

 China has already lost access to Venezuelan oil. Now they stand to lose access to Iranian oil. This is bad news for China’s domestic economy.

 More importantly, by exerting de-facto control (or at least significant influence) over most of the largest oil supplies on the planet—Iran, Venezuela, the US, most of the Gulf states— America would be able to re-establish the US dollar’s dominance.

Every country that wants to buy oil— which is pretty much everyone— would need to own and hold US dollars to pay for it. This means that foreign countries must continue buying vast quantities of Treasury bonds—helping to finance America’s deficit and keep interest rates down.

 But there are other outcomes as well.

 If the remaining military campaign does not go well— if the Iranian regime manages to suppress the protestors, survive the bombings, and maintain their grip on power— then the US could be in trouble.

 US casualties at that point will be mounting. Munitions will be depleting rapidly. And most media attention and political opposition will pounce on the President.

 Frankly I’d expect to see more well-funded protests and professional agitators making a stink across American cities, i.e. the Left will fall back on its Minneapolis/ICE playbook to force a military withdrawal.

 China and Russia would likely take advantage, capitalizing on US weakness and the fact that America’s relations with Europe are heavily strained.

 Between the tariff chaos, domestic social divisions, Congressional intransigence, constant government shutdown threats, etc., adding in a humiliating military defeat in Iran might just be the final straw.

 Led by China, other nations could come together and say, ‘enough is enough’, then force a new Bretton Woods style convention to formally establish a new order that strips the US of its power.

 Again, there are nearly infinite ways in which this could play out. But regardless of where someone stands on this weekend’s airstrikes, it’s important to acknowledge the stakes.

 A successful outcome could provide major benefit to the dollar for decades to come. Defeat could trigger the end of US geopolitical dominance.

 America might just be on a precipice. And we’ll find out which way it goes over the coming weeks.

To your freedom,   James Hickman   Co-Founder, Schiff Sovereign LLC

https://www.schiffsovereign.com/trends/the-precipice-154465/?inf_contact_key=071abd843b06b43578c03e94b61a801bdcd31c885f4ab1b34be5363d83ed1062