Some Clear Thinking About This Weekend’s Strike In Venezuela
Some Clear Thinking About This Weekend’s Strike In Venezuela
Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black) January 5, 2026
It’s hard to imagine America being intimidated by a guy named “Little Turtle”. And yet, in the year 1790, he was about as terrifying as it could get.
Little Turtle was the war chief of the Miami nation, one of the Algonquian-speaking tribes in the Great Lakes region, and he had made a name for himself fighting against the United States during the Revolutionary War.
Some Clear Thinking About This Weekend’s Strike In Venezuela
Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black) January 5, 2026
It’s hard to imagine America being intimidated by a guy named “Little Turtle”. And yet, in the year 1790, he was about as terrifying as it could get.
Little Turtle was the war chief of the Miami nation, one of the Algonquian-speaking tribes in the Great Lakes region, and he had made a name for himself fighting against the United States during the Revolutionary War.
(At one point he literally butchered his captives after a lopsided battle.)
More than a century before, Little Turtle’s people had waged a long war against the Iroquois over control of the land in what is today Indiana and western Ohio. So, when the American Revolution was over, he continued fighting against settlers that he felt were encroaching on his tribe’s territory.
Roughly 1500 American settlers were killed between 1784 and 1789. And when it finally became clear to the US government in 1790 that the violence would not stop, they sent an expedition under the command of General Josiah Harmar to fight the Miami.
Little Turtle was ready. And on October 21 at the Battle of Kekionga in northeastern Indiana, Little Turtle vanquished American forces.
In terms of casualty percentages, it was one of the worst defeats in US history. More importantly, given how small America’s military was at the time, the defeat became a national security nightmare. The US essentially didn’t have an Army after the battle.
In response, Congress passed a series of laws known as the “Militia Acts”, which, among other things, federalized state militias for use by the federal government.
But the new laws also gave the President sweeping authority to take command of these forces under certain circumstances, including invasion or threat of invasion “from any foreign nation or Indian tribe”.
Fast forward more than two centuries, and these Militia Acts are among the foundational legal arguments in favor of the Trump administration’s actions in Venezuela over the weekend.
Now, tremendous amounts of ink have already been spilled over Venezuela in the past 48-hours.
What I found so interesting, however, is that most of the legacy media articles, not to mention social media commentary, devolved into typical ignorant tribalism, i.e. people are frequently for/against something based on whether or not they’re for/against the person doing it.
In this case, the Left is predictably howling that the President’s use of the military was illegal and unconstitutional-- an assertion that is being repeated and reposted by millions of people.
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Why A Desperate America May Soon Annex Its 51st State
Why A Desperate America May Soon Annex Its 51st State
Notes From The Field By James Hickman (Simon Black) December 22, 2025
Today we’re continuing our look back at past articles that foresaw today’s headlines years in advance. Last week, we highlighted three early pieces tracing the decline of US credibility—its unsustainable debt path, the erosion of reserve currency privilege, and the rising global demand for real assets like gold.
Today we look back at this podcast I recorded on March 31, 2023. I laid out a theory that Venezuela—sitting on the world’s largest oil reserves—might one day be absorbed into the US sphere of influence, not through war, but through corporate proxies.
Why A Desperate America May Soon Annex Its 51st State
Notes From The Field By James Hickman (Simon Black) December 22, 2025
Today we’re continuing our look back at past articles that foresaw today’s headlines years in advance. Last week, we highlighted three early pieces tracing the decline of US credibility—its unsustainable debt path, the erosion of reserve currency privilege, and the rising global demand for real assets like gold.
Today we look back at this podcast I recorded on March 31, 2023. I laid out a theory that Venezuela—sitting on the world’s largest oil reserves—might one day be absorbed into the US sphere of influence, not through war, but through corporate proxies.
Drawing parallels to the East India Company and the US-backed creation of Panama, the idea was that a private entity could step in amid Venezuela’s chaos, secure its oil, and quietly serve American strategic interests.
Now, with tensions escalating, the threat of an invasion could be the method of securing this kind of control. Maduro has discussed terms for stepping down, and recently US authorities seized a Venezuelan oil tanker.
And Venezuela’s opposition leader, María Corina Machado, is now openly pitching the country’s energy sector as “a $1.7 trillion opportunity,” promising, “We will open all [oil], upstream, midstream, downstream, to all companies.”
It felt like the right time to revisit this episode.
At the center of Sovereign Man’s core ethos is the indisputable view that the United States is in decline.
I take absolutely zero pleasure in writing that statement. But it’s incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to objectively appraise the bountiful evidence at hand and not reach the same conclusion.
Consider the following:
US government finances are appallingly bad. The national debt exceeds 100% of GDP, annual deficits run into the trillions of dollars with no end in sight, and major trust funds for Social Security and Medicare will soon run out of money.
Political incompetence is mind-blowing; politicians fail to be able to even identify problems, let alone understand them, let alone reach compromises to solve them.
Ditto for central bank incompetence. These people simply cannot understand how, by keeping interest rates at zero for nearly a decade and conjuring trillions of dollars out of thin air, they engineered record high inflation. And they also fail to understand how their actions to ‘fix’ inflation are causing widespread havoc in the economy and financial system.
Social divisions across the country are extreme. Censorship and cancel culture prevail, and corporations now wag their fingers at their own customers to “be better”.
The education system is in pitiful shape, with many politicians and school board officials turning classrooms into activist training camps.
The population is terribly unhealthy. Obesity and drug addiction are epidemics. Plus there’s an obvious mental health crisis that drives far too many people to commit horrific acts of violence on innocent people, including children.
National security is in decline. Military readiness is down, yet top officials seem more concerned about diversity and inclusion rather than the ability to prevail in war.
The rule of law has been perverted, including for political purposes and self-aggrandizement. We just saw another example of this yesterday.
Even the national fertility rate continues plummeting-- an indication of the rising cost of living and social apathy.
The Wall Street Journal recently published a series of polls indicating that most Americans doubt their children will have a better future; pessimism is strong.
They also found that certain values which once defined American culture, including a sense of community, hard work, and civility, are no longer important to the majority of people.
This is all happening at a time when adversaries are circling. And that includes China.
Now, usually whenever I bring up China, there are always people who are quick to assert that China cannot possibly replace the US as the dominant superpower because they have just as many problems.
And it’s true that China has a ton of problems. They have their own debt issues, financial system chaos, and economic problems. They have social challenges, a major demographic crisis, and even a serious issue with childhood obesity.
But no civilization or empire throughout history has ever been problem-free.
Ancient Rome, even during its early republic days, had enormous problems.
They had to deal with constant revolts, civil war, the genocidal dictatorship of Sulla, famine, war, plague, and more.
Yet there’s an enormous difference between taking on challenges while you’re on the rise… versus succumbing to them while on the way down.
Rome was able to deal with its challenges and continue its rise to become the dominant superpower. China may be able to do the same.
The US finds itself in a precarious position where they have a mountain of compounding problems… and no ability to even slow them down, let alone solve them.
I’ve written before about what I call the “Four Forces of Decline”, which I define as:
1) Forces of History-- the inevitable, cyclical nature in the rise and fall of Empire. No empire, no civilization in human history has ever retained the top spot forever, and most tend to experience similar challenges on the way down.
2) Forces of Society-- the vicious way in which a society eats itself from within, vanquishing the ability and inclination to solve complex problems.
3) Forces of Economy-- the debilitating toll that enormous debts, deficits, and currency inflation take on a nation and its people.
4) Forces of Energy-- when energy is cheap and abundant, prosperity reigns. When energy is expensive, prosperity wanes. The relationship couldn’t be more clear.
Today’s podcast puts all of these together, with a particular focus on #4, Forces of Energy.
Part of being the dominant superpower in our modern world means having access to abundant energy. Yet the US government has spent the last few years trying to destroy its energy (oil and gas) industry.
They’ve been pretty successful. The President of the United States hardly misses an opportunity to bash oil companies. Politicians pass new rules and taxes to punish them. The media beats up on them. Investors have pulled funding for them.
So it shouldn’t be a surprise that US oil production, while not in terminal decline, is failing to keep up with growing demand.
Shale oil is especially problematic given that most of the highest quality “tier 1” sites have already been drilled. Many are already in decline.
This is a big deal. Shale oil is the reason why the US achieved near energy independence. With shale in decline, the US will be forced to import a LOT more energy (which, again, is critical for prosperity) from places where they have an increasingly adversarial relationship.
Russian oil is obviously off the table. So is Iranian oil. Saudi Arabia is rapidly becoming cozy with China; in fact the Saudis are now publicly considering to sell their oil in Chinese currency, the renminbi.
This is an enormous threat to the US. Saudi Arabia has been selling oil in dollars for decades; they’ve even had their currency, the riyal, pegged to the US dollar since 1986.
This concept of selling oil in US dollars is known as the petrodollar, and it’s one of the key reasons why the US dollar is the global reserve currency.
Anyone who wants to buy oil needs to own US dollars. And that pretty much includes every country on the planet. So foreigners are forced to stockpile dollars, and by extension, US government bonds… simply because they need dollars to buy oil.
As a result the US government is able to get away with the fiscal equivalent of murder. They can run multi-trillion dollar deficits every year. They can wage expensive wars in foreign lands. They can go into debt to pay people to stay home and NOT work…
… and they’ve always had a bunch of suckers overseas-- foreigners who have no choice but to buy US government bonds, simply because oil is priced in US dollars.
But what if Saudi Arabia started selling oil in renminbi?
Most likely a LOT of foreigners would dump at least some of their dollars and start holding renminbi as part of their official reserves.
America’s biggest privilege and benefit-- its reserve currency-- would vanish, practically overnight.
Suddenly the US government wouldn’t be able to run multi-trillion dollar deficits. It wouldn’t be able to go into debt to pay people to stay home and NOT work.
They’d have to be like almost every other country-- act with some fiscal responsibility.
Think about it-- if the President of Mexico shook hands with thin air, investors would be rightfully terrified and panic-sell Mexican government bonds. If South Korea ran a multi-trillion dollar deficit, its currency would probably plummet.
Back in September we saw the British pound and UK government bonds practically collapse… and the Prime Minister of one of the world’s largest democratically elected sovereign governments was forced to resign... simply because investors didn’t like her economic revival plan.
These issues are all linked. If the US continues to demonstrate incompetence and weakness… if they continue to subvert and destroy the energy industry… and if Saudi Arabia starts selling oil in renminbi…
… the consequences will be life-changing.
This is one of the biggest stories of our lives. It’s easy to miss because it’s playing out over a period of years. It gets lost in the day-to-day noise and the crisis du jour.
But rest assured this is happening in front of our very eyes; it’s a slow motion crash that’s already started.
The outcome isn’t inevitable yet. But nothing about these people’s actions demonstrate that they have the slightest clue what’s going on.
Join me in today’s podcast as we dive further into this… and I outline my “51st state” theory-- a ‘solution’ that I wouldn’t be surprised to see in the near future.
To your freedom, James Hickman Co-Founder, Schiff Sovereign LLC
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Flashback: $2,000 Gold Is Just The Beginning Here’s What Might Happen Next–
Flashback: $2,000 Gold Is Just The Beginning Here’s What Might Happen Next–
Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black) December 17, 2025
Today we’ll continue to look back at past articles that have become especially relevant, as many of the trends we warned about are now playing out in real time.
Yesterday we talked about how, back in 2022, we encouraged readers to move into real assets at a time when the dollar was irrationally strong. Gold was cheap, interest rates were near zero, and most people were still drinking the Kool-Aid.
It was one of those rare moments when the writing was on the wall, but the price tags hadn’t caught up yet.
Then in November 2023, gold crossed $2,000 for the first time. And we said: this is just the beginning.
Flashback: $2,000 Gold Is Just The Beginning Here’s What Might Happen Next–
Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black) December 17, 2025
Today we’ll continue to look back at past articles that have become especially relevant, as many of the trends we warned about are now playing out in real time.
Yesterday we talked about how, back in 2022, we encouraged readers to move into real assets at a time when the dollar was irrationally strong. Gold was cheap, interest rates were near zero, and most people were still drinking the Kool-Aid.
It was one of those rare moments when the writing was on the wall, but the price tags hadn’t caught up yet.
Then in November 2023, gold crossed $2,000 for the first time. And we said: this is just the beginning.
Not because we’re gold bugs or speculators—but because we saw the early signs of the US dollar's 80 year reign of global dominance starting to shift. We were pointing to the long-term, systemic forces driving it. Out-of-control debt, eroding trust in institutions, and the creeping de-dollarization of global finance.
We said, “we could easily see central banks around the world ditching their US dollars and loading up on gold as part of a new, de-dollarized global financial system.”
“This could potentially trigger trillions of dollars worth of capital inflows into the gold market, causing a surge in gold prices.”
We said $2,000 was the beginning. Now with gold trading over $4,300, we’re not going to say this is the beginning. But it’s certainly not the end.
Public Law 93-373 was supposed to be so boring that Congress didn’t even bother to give it a name.
You know how most laws passed by Congress have some fancy name-- like the “Inflation Reduction Act” or the “USA PATRIOT Act” or some such nonsense?
Well, on November 7, 1973, US Senator James Fulbright introduced a very short bill-- it was only ONE page-- that didn’t even have a name. But Fulbright’s unnamed bill ended up being one of the most important pieces of legislation in US history.
By the time Fulbright introduced his bill, it had been two years since the legendary “Nixon Shock” of 1971. That was when US President Richard Nixon implemented wage and price controls, and canceled the US dollar’s convertibility into gold.
Nixon famously promised the American public that there wouldn’t be any negative consequences from his actions. Yet inflation hit 3% the following year, in 1972. Then 4.7% in 1973. Then 11.2% in 1974.
Simultaneously, gold prices around the world were surging… from $35/ounce before the Nixon Shock, to more than $170 in 1974.
But individual Americans weren’t allowed to benefit from those gains thanks to a forty year old executive order that had been signed in 1933 by then President Franklin Roosevelt.
Roosevelt’s Executive Order 6102 criminalized the private ownership of more than $100 worth of gold in the United States. Roosevelt also gave Americans just 25 days to turn over their gold to the Federal Reserve… or else face up to ten years in prison.
Naturally, plenty of Americans were outraged, and a number of lawsuits were filed claiming that Roosevelt’s order was unconstitutional.
Roosevelt was rightfully worried that the Supreme Court would overturn his order. And at a certain point he considered packing the court, i.e. appointing several sympathetic judges to the Supreme Court to ensure his victory. He also considered issuing another order which would make it illegal to sue the federal government.
Fortunately for Roosevelt, however, he didn’t have to implement any of those actions; the Supreme Court very narrowly ruled in his favor, and his Executive Order stood as law of the land for four decades… until Senator Fulbright’s no-name law was finally passed on August 14, 1974.
It went into effect the following year, and Americans were suddenly free once again to exchange their rapidly-depreciating US dollars for gold.
Unsurprisingly, gold prices started rising dramatically in the second half of the decade... from about $180 in 1975, to a whopping $850 in January 1980.
And the declining dollar was just one reason for gold’s popularity; remember, the United States suffered a deluge of troubles during the 1970s and early 1980s.
The world found out that the US President was a criminal during the Watergate scandal of 1974. Then there was the humiliating US withdrawal from Vietnam in 1975, complete with a helicopter evacuation of the American embassy in Saigon.
Iran seized 52 US citizens in 1979 and held them hostage for more than a year.
Inflation raged, peaking at 13.6%. The economy stagnated and fell into recession. Troubles in the Middle East (including conflict with Israel) led to energy shortages and rising fuel prices.
Civil unrest and ‘mostly peaceful’ protests were a constant problem in the 70s and 80s. Meanwhile, criminals rampaged across American cities, and the murder rate soared. Major cities like New York, LA, and Chicago became synonymous with violent crime.
The world stopped making sense. And gold became a safe haven from that chaos.
There’s an old saying (originally a Danish proverb) suggesting that if history doesn’t repeat, it certainly rhymes. And I think it’s obvious that we’re facing many of the same challenges today.
There are major problems in the Middle East. Energy is becoming scarce (especially in Europe). The US military suffered a humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan. Civil unrest and crime rates are totally unacceptable. Inflation continues to rage. And the President, a.k.a. “the Big Guy” appears suspicious A.F.
Just like in the 1970s, gold represents a safe haven from this chaos. And even though it’s hovering at a near-record around $2,000, I think that there is still a long way for gold to rise.
The US national debt is now $33.7 trillion; that’s up more than HALF A TRILLION just in the month of October.
The people in charge have absolutely zero fiscal restraint. Zero responsibility.
Zero sense of how destructive their actions are. They spend money and go deeper into debt as if there will never be any consequences, ever, until the end of time. They’re disgustingly ignorant, and dangerous.
The truth is that there are serious consequences to all of this debt. And we don’t have to guess what they are.
The Congressional Budget Office is already projecting that, by 2031, the US government will spend 100% of its tax revenue just on mandatory entitlements (like Social Security) and interest on the debt.
This means that, after 2031, the funding for literally everything else in government-- from the US military to the light bill at the White House-- will have to be funded by more debt.
That’s only 7 years away.
Then, two years later in 2033, Social Security’s primary trust fund will run out of money; this will cost the government an additional $1 trillion in additional spending each year to keep the program running. Naturally they’ll have to borrow that money too.
Eventually the national debt will become so large that simply paying interest each year will consume more than 100% of tax revenue.
The Federal Reserve will most likely attempt to bail out government by creating trillions upon trillions of dollars. But just as we saw over the past few years, such actions will most likely result in much higher inflation.
Disgusted with their financial circumstance, voters across America will likely turn to Socialist politicians who blame all the problems on the evils of capitalism, rather than their own incompetence. And with a majority of leftists running the country, they’ll only make things worse.
I also anticipate more conflict in the world, thanks in large part to the continued decline of America’s stature and reputation for strength.
It’s also quite likely that the US dollar could lose its royal status as the world’s dominant reserve currency by the end of the decade.
I don’t necessarily believe that the dollar will simply vanish from global trade.
But it won’t be “King” dollar anymore. Perhaps more like “Earl” or “Viscount” dollar, alongside other currencies and exchange mechanisms-- including gold.
In fact we could easily see central banks around the world ditching their US dollars and loading up on gold as part of a new, de-dollarized global financial system.
This could potentially trigger trillions of dollars worth of capital inflows into the gold market, causing a surge in gold prices.
And these are just some of the reasons why gold could still have a long, long way to rise from here.
Bear in mind that I’m not thinking about the gold price next month, or even next year. I think long-term, and my views on gold are based on trends that will likely continue to unfold over the next decade.
I’m not a ‘gold bug’. I don’t have a fanatical view about anything other than my own children. I’m not a gold speculator either.
But it’s obvious to me that in an upside down world where there are such obvious long-term threats to the US dollar, it makes sense to look for real stores of value.
And that’s why $2,000 gold could just be the beginning of a much bigger story.
To your freedom, James Hickman Co-Founder, Schiff Sovereign LLC
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Flashback: The US Dollar Is Irrationally Strong Right Now
Flashback: The US Dollar Is Irrationally Strong Right Now
Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black) December 16, 2025
As we wind down 2025, we’ve been reflecting on some of the biggest long-term shifts that defined the year.
Last week, we highlighted three: First, Charlie Kirk’s assassination —
Second, 2025 marked the start gun for the US debt crisis—with the refusal to cut the deficit, central banks rushing to dump US Treasurys for gold, and signs of stagflation.
Flashback: The US Dollar Is Irrationally Strong Right Now
Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black) December 16, 2025
As we wind down 2025, we’ve been reflecting on some of the biggest long-term shifts that defined the year.
Last week, we highlighted three: First, Charlie Kirk’s assassination —
Second, 2025 marked the start gun for the US debt crisis—with the refusal to cut the deficit, central banks rushing to dump US Treasurys for gold, and signs of stagflation.
And third, a bright spot: a competent, strategic approach to nuclear power from the Trump administration, finally laying the groundwork for a productivity boom fueled by cheap energy.
As we head into the holidays, we’re revisiting some of our earlier work that speaks directly to these themes—articles that warned about the direction things were heading, long before the headlines caught up.
I wrote this article in October of 2022 during a time when the US dollar was irrationally strong, interest rates were still near zero, and gold was cheap— less than $1,700 per ounce.
I suggested that readers, “think about turning at least a portion of your irrationally strong dollars into another asset that can stand the test of time.”
The message was that reserve currency status breeds arrogance. The dollar’s dominance allows Washington to behave recklessly—binge on debt, stoke inflation, and still count on foreign demand for its bonds.
But, as history shows, no reserve currency lasts forever. The Spanish real, the British pound… they all had their day. This article reminds us: so will the dollar.
By the summer of 1497, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain were presiding over a rapidly growing empire.
Christopher Columbus had already claimed most of the Caribbean islands on their behalf. Plus Pope Julius II had awarded virtually all of the western hemisphere to Spain in the infamous Treaty of Tordesillas.
Spain was quickly on its way to becoming a global superpower. Ferdinand and Isabella knew it, and they realized that they needed a strong currency to match their strong empire.
So on June 13, 1497, they announced a major monetary reform called the Medina del Campo, named for the site of a popular medieval banking conference at the time.
The monetary reform was sweeping; they abolished most other coins in their domain, and re-established the real as the primary currency across Spanish lands.
The real was a silver coin, weighing about 0.1 troy ounces or roughly 3.2 grams. And coins were minted in denominations of ½, 1, 2, 4, and 8 real.
Over time, the 8-real coin (real de ocho) became the most popular; it was known as a “Piece of 8”, and eventually the “Spanish dollar”.
By the mid-1500s under King Charles I of Spain, the Spanish dollar had become the world’s primary reserve currency. From the Americas to Europe to Asia, global trade and commerce were quoted and often settled in Spanish dollars.
Dutch and Portuguese traders visiting Macau in the 1600s, for example, would frequently buy goods from Chinese merchants using Spanish dollars.
In 1704, Queen Anne of Great Britain decreed that the Spanish dollar would be legal tender in the American colonies. And in 1792, the newly independent United States passed the Coinage Act which defined the US dollar as equivalent to the Spanish dollar.
The Spanish dollar’s dominance in global finance was unparalleled. But like all reserve currencies that came before, it too lost its luster.
Eventually the Spanish Empire’s strength faded. The government defaulted on its debts, confiscated private wealth, and suffered embarrassing military defeats.
The Dutch guilder then began to displace the Spanish dollar in commerce and trade. And by the late 1800s, the British pound had become the world’s dominant reserve currency — matching the British Empire’s unparalleled size and economic power.
This lasted until the mid-20th century when, after World War II, the United States dollar became the world’s primary reserve currency — a status the dollar has enjoyed for decades.
Having the world’s reserve currency is an extraordinary privilege. It means that the rest of the world literally HAS to stockpile your currency.
For example, whenever a company in Peru does business with a supplier in Malaysia, that transaction is quoted and settled in US dollars. This means that the banking systems in both Peru and Malaysia HAVE to maintain substantial holdings of US dollars in order to facilitate these transactions.
This is the biggest reason why foreigners own trillions and trillions of dollars of US government bonds; bonds are the largest and most liquid financial instrument available for foreign investors who need to hold dollars.
And because of this need for foreigners to own US dollar assets, foreigners own a whopping $7.5 trillion worth of US government bonds, roughly 25% of the national debt.
This is really an enormous benefit for the US. And for an easy example, we need look no further than to the United Kingdom.
The British pound was the world’s dominant reserve currency more than a century ago. Today the UK is still a significant economy. But they no longer have the unique reserve currency advantage.
Now, you may be aware that, a few weeks ago, the British pound and British government bonds (known as gilts) began plummeting after the British government announced a series of tax cuts and economic reforms.
It turned out that the bond market wasn’t thrilled with the plan, so investors began dumping their British gilts and pounds.
It was a full blown panic. And soon, the central bank had to step in to bail out the bond market. The Chancellor was sacked. And the Prime Minister canceled her planned tax cut.
Essentially the British government had to capitulate to the demands of investors.
This is actually normal in countries that don’t enjoy reserve currency status. If a government wants to borrow money from the bond market, politicians have to appease investors and lay out a plan that will give everyone confidence.
But not in the United States.
Because the US issues the global reserve currency, the government can engage every ridiculous antic imaginable.
They can fail to pass a budget (multiple times) resulting in a government shutdown. They can lock down the entire economy and pay people to stay home.
They can pass a multi-trillion dollar spending package and insist it “costs nothing”. They can slash interest rates to zero or engineer record high inflation.
And yet foreign investors will STILL buy US government bonds. And the dollar actually becomes STRONGER.
It’s totally insane. None of that would be possible if the US dollar weren’t the world’s reserve currency.
The curse of the reserve currency, however, is that policymakers usually believe their status will last forever. Spanish, Dutch, and British leadership never envisioned that their currencies would falter and be displaced by a rising power. And yet it happened.
The same fate awaits the US dollar.
Reserve currencies are usually displaced when economic power is in decline. Given the mountain of debt owed by the US government, the stagflation surging across the US economy, and the complete ineptitude to do anything about it, it certainly looks like that decline is taking place right now.
In general it would be foolish to think that the dollar will remain the dominant global reserve currency forever. And its displacement may take place sooner rather than later.
Once that happens, things will become a LOT more difficult for the US government. They’ll most certainly have to raise taxes. The central bank will have to print more money, sparking more inflation.
And we’ll likely see revolts of the bond market, just like what happened in the UK; just imagine the US government forced to capitulate its sovereignty to the demands of foreign lenders.
But that’s the future. For now, the dollar is still the top dog, only because it hasn’t been displaced (yet).
In fact, at the moment, the US dollar is irrationally strong.
Despite inflation that has reached multi-decade highs, and the growing national debt, the dollar is near an all-time high against the British pound. It’s at a 20+ year high against the euro. It’s strong against many major currencies. It’s even been strong against other asset classes including precious metals, crypto, and more.
So this may be a good time to consider the future and think about turning at least a portion of your irrationally strong dollars into another asset that can stand the test of time.
To your freedom, James Hickman Co-Founder, Schiff Sovereign LLC
Some Thoughts on Silver’s All Time High
Some Thoughts on Silver’s All Time High
Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black) December 3, 2025
The ancient people of Uruk— who lived in modern-day southern Iraq more than 5,000 years ago— didn’t seem terribly interested in bequeathing colorful stories of their civilization to history.
Rather than memorialize abundant tales of their immense works, or chisel countless tablets embellishing stories of their military victories, the main artifacts they left behind to modern historians are rather mundane market accounts and grain prices.
Some Thoughts on Silver’s All Time High
Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black) December 3, 2025
The ancient people of Uruk— who lived in modern-day southern Iraq more than 5,000 years ago— didn’t seem terribly interested in bequeathing colorful stories of their civilization to history.
Rather than memorialize abundant tales of their immense works, or chisel countless tablets embellishing stories of their military victories, the main artifacts they left behind to modern historians are rather mundane market accounts and grain prices.
It would be as if the only thing to be locked into a time capsule from our own era were the stock section of the Wall Street Journal. It would hardly be a reasonable description of our time.
Nevertheless, the ancient scribes of Uruk went to great lengths to record financial and commercial transactions. And one of the things we can see from their civilization is that they used silver (and NOT gold) as the primary medium of exchange.
It’s interesting to note that they did not bother minting coins. Rather, silver was weighed in bulk— the unit of measurement eventually becoming the shekel, around 8.3 grams— and then traded for grain.
(Just imagine paying for your groceries by piling a bunch of scrap and raw silver onto a scale.)
Gold was obviously a well-known commodity and considered extremely valuable... but far too rare to be used as everyday money. So silver remained the dominant financial standard for thousands of years.
Even by the time of the ancient Greeks, and then subsequently the Roman Republic, silver coins (the Greek drachma and Roman denarius) were the primary currencies of those civilizations.
But by then there was a bi-metallic system... a fixed ‘exchange rate’ that governments set between gold and silver.
In ancient Babylon during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II, for example, cuneiform tablets show silver being exchanged for gold at a ratio of 10 to 1.
A few decades later, in the 6th century BC, King Croesus of Lydia minted the first standardized gold and silver coins, setting an official exchange rate—again, roughly 10 to 1.
The Persians under Darius the Great fixed it at 13 to 1. The Romans under Julius Caesar set it at 12 to 1.
Even as recently as 1792, the newly formed United States established a silver-to-gold ratio of 15 to 1 in the very first Coinage Act.
It wasn’t until the late 20th century—when postwar Bretton Woods gold standard was fully abandoned—that this ratio between gold and silver was finally left to the market. Since then it’s ranged from about 25:1… all the way up to 120:1.
Right now it’s somewhere in the middle of that modern range— around 73:1... and the ratio has been falling fast, primarily because silver has been on an absolute tear.
This is pretty crazy when you think about it; gold has skyrocketed this year. But silver is up even more.
And there are a lot of people who focus very heavily on this silver-to-gold ratio and believe that it will inevitably fall to its historic average of roughly 50:1. Still others think that the ratio will fall even further to 15:1, where it was originally set by Congress in 1792.
This would mean $85+ silver, or even $250+ silver.
But here’s the problem: the gold/silver ratio is meaningless. There’s no law or financial regulation requiring the ratio to be at a certain level. Just because it has historically hovered around 50:1 doesn’t mean it can’t go to 5,000:1.
Instead, in order to understand either metal’s trajectory, we should look at supply and demand.
This is why we’ve been so bullish on gold; for the past three years, central bank demand for gold has been soaring, primarily because foreign countries have been rapidly and aggressively diversifying their US dollar holdings.
And for a sovereign government, gold makes a lot of sense. It’s portable. Universally recognized. It’s a traditional strategic reserve asset.
And most importantly, unlike US government bonds or even IMF “Strategic Drawing Rights”, gold isn’t controlled by anyone... no other government, central bank, or supranational institution.
So there’s zero counterparty risk, i.e. no country has to be worried about being sanctioned or frozen out of its own gold bullion holdings.
This trend of foreign governments and central banks buying massive quantities of gold has sent the metal to its all-time high. And that extra demand has been more than enough to offset weakening gold demand in the jewelry sector.
Moreover, as we regularly argue, this trend is not going away anytime soon. As long as the US fiscal situation remains dismal, foreign countries will continue diversifying out of the dollar.
Silver, on the other hand, does not have such a strong long-term catalyst.
Central banks aren’t buying it; the market is far too small, and silver far too cheap. Foreign countries can much more easily buy $100 billion worth of gold. They just can’t do that with silver.
We’ve predicted in the past that silver would likely follow gold’s run-up— NOT because it shares the same monetary fundamentals, but because investor psychology.
Obviously there’s no telling how far this speculation can go; investors could potentially push silver prices much, much higher from here.
But without that same long-term institutional demand from central banks, silver's trajectory is much harder to predict... and to justify.
It’s also noteworthy that more than half of silver demand comes from industrial applications such as solar panels, electric vehicles, 5G infrastructure, semiconductors, and medical technologies.
According to the Silver Institute, industrial demand for silver hit an all-time high of 680.5 million ounces in 2024, the fourth straight year of growth in that category.
Importantly, total silver demand has consistently outpaced supply. The global silver market ran a structural deficit in both 2023 and 2024, meaning more silver was consumed than produced.
This created an obvious catalyst for higher silver prices.
But it’s important to understand that industrial demand is not the same as central bank demand.
When central banks buy gold, they aren’t trying to time the market or flip it for a profit. They’re diversifying reserves. It’s a long-term, strategic shift—motivated by growing mistrust in the US dollar.
In short, central banks buy gold irrespective of price.
But silver doesn’t have that kind of anchor. Industrial demand is highly cyclical. It depends on global manufacturing activity, tech infrastructure, energy-sector spending, and overall economic health.
In an economic slowdown, much of that industrial demand could dry up quickly.
If the AI bubble bursts and data centers downsize, silver demand slows. If the “green energy” push implodes, and people decide they don’t want—or can’t afford—electric vehicles and solar panels, silver demand drops.
Jewelry demand, though smaller than industrial, faces the same problem. It’s sensitive to consumer spending.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that the silver price is going to fall. I’m saying that it’s important to understand the differences.
With gold, foreign central banks are a clear and obvious long-term driver of demand. Silver demand, on the other hand, is being driven by speculation and highly volatile (and unpredictable) global economic factors.
And I think it’s important to be clear-eyed about the differences.
To your freedom, James Hickman Co-Founder, Schiff Sovereign LLC
Meet the Guy Keeping Gold Above $4,000
Meet the Guy Keeping Gold Above $4,000
Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black) November 19, 2025
When you think of hyperinflation, you might picture Zimbabwe’s trillion-dollar bills, or wheelbarrows full of cash in the streets of 1920s Weimar Germany.
More recently, Venezuela’s currency collapsed under the weight of runaway printing, and Argentina has spent decades lurching from one inflation crisis to another. Throughout history, inflation isn’t an exception—it’s the norm.
Meet the Guy Keeping Gold Above $4,000
Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black) November 19, 2025
When you think of hyperinflation, you might picture Zimbabwe’s trillion-dollar bills, or wheelbarrows full of cash in the streets of 1920s Weimar Germany.
More recently, Venezuela’s currency collapsed under the weight of runaway printing, and Argentina has spent decades lurching from one inflation crisis to another. Throughout history, inflation isn’t an exception—it’s the norm.
Poland is among the many countries which suffered its own bout of inflation in 1989 and 1990, triggered by the same familiar mix of government mistakes: massive deficits, political dysfunction, and a central bank used as a printing press.
In 1990 alone, prices in Poland jumped 586%. The złoty, Poland’s currency at the time, collapsed. One American professor living in Poland at the time said a monthly bus ticket cost what an entire summer cottage had ten years earlier.
This was the inevitable result of decades of command-and-control economics.
After World War II, Poland remained independent in name only. Soviet troops never left. The Communist party ruled with Moscow’s blessing. Private property was abolished. Prices were fixed by decree. Farms were collectivized. Dissent was criminal.
To keep the illusion of prosperity going, the government promised everything to everyone—jobs, housing, healthcare, cheap food—and paid for it with money it didn’t have.
When tax revenues fell short, the central bank simply printed more. But paper currency can’t conjure real goods. The result was shortages, black markets, and, eventually, total currency collapse.
That’s the world Adam Glapiński—current President of the National Bank of Poland—grew up in.
Born in 1950, he watched his savings inflate away throughout his early career.
Having fought as part of the anti‑communist underground and witnessed the country’s currency unravel in the early 1990s, Glapiński isn’t simply a technocrat—he’s someone determined to protect Poland from repeating its past.
That’s why he’s gone all in on gold.
And he’s part of the reason that Poland is one of the healthier economies in Europe. (Another is that Poland is one of the only places that hasn’t sacrificed itself on the altar of multiculturalism.)
But they still have a problem: a significant portion of their strategic reserve assets are denominated in US dollars.
And Glapiński has been rightfully concerned. Because when you’ve lived through a currency collapse once, you start paying close attention to the early warning signs.
He’s looking at the United States today and doesn’t like what he sees. The deficits keep climbing. The national debt keeps exploding. Interest expense has now surpassed military spending. Social Security is projected to run dry in just seven or eight years.
And the only thing both parties can unite for is to chase anyone trying to solve these problems out of town— like Elon Musk and his work with DOGE.
Glapiński’s not stupid. He can see the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates, even as inflation ticks up. He sees it ending quantitative tightening early, and gearing up for more quantitative easing— AKA money printing.
He can also see a point—relatively soon—when the US dollar is no longer the world’s dominant reserve asset.
The endgame is clear: the value of US dollar reserves will decline.
So he’s been trying to get ahead of it.
But what other strategic reserve asset is there for a central banker to buy?
Not the Chinese renminbi—you can’t trust their lack of transparency, manipulated numbers, and massive debts.
Not the British pound—Britain’s a fiscal and political mess.
Poland will hold some euros, sure, but the euro-zone has plenty of structural problems of its own.
Gold is the best option left.
Not because Glapiński is a gold bug— this is a completely rational move.
Gold is one of the only assets with a large enough market that you can invest tens of billions of dollars. Then, you can hold it within your own borders, free of counter‑party risk. You don’t get that benefit if you’re holding another government’s bonds, which can be defaulted on, frozen, or weaponized as the US has shown.
Glapiński’s target was for the National Bank of Poland to hold 20% of its reserves in gold.
But when they hit that target, he raised it to 25%... which they also recently hit.
And now he’s pushing for 30%.
There are two main things to understand about this.
One, he’s far from alone.
Countries like Russia, China, and other usual suspects are buying literal tons of gold, largely because they don’t want to be frozen out of their US Treasury holdings.
But its not just them. It’s also Kazakhstan, Bulgaria, El Salvador— central banks around the world are buying way more gold than usual.
As recently as 2010, central banks added a grand total of just 79 tons of gold to their reserves.
In 2024, they added a cumulative 1,089 tons. And that’s been the trend—1,000 tons per year—since 2021. That’s about double the previous decade’s average.
The second thing to understand about demand from central banks is that they are relatively price insensitive.
They’re not buying gold to speculate and sell later for more dollars. They’re buying it to diversify away from the dollar.
While they may try to time certain purchases to go further, they’re not going to let $4,000 per ounce gold change their overall reserve strategy.
They know they need to continue buying gold for one simple reason: they’re losing confidence in the US government.
And that demand alone is probably enough to continue to push prices even higher.
To your freedom, James Hickman
Co-Founder, Schiff Sovereign LLC
“Oops! We’re a Major Silver Producer Now”
“Oops! We’re a Major Silver Producer Now”
Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black) November 20, 2025
When mining superintendent Marcus Daly arrived in Butte, Montana in the late 1870s to evaluate a cluster of silver prospects, it was a mundane business trip— the mad western gold rush was over by then.
The area was known for its patchy silver veins, and Daly’s job was to decide whether there were still any mines worth buying. All the ‘experts’ thought the boom was over. Gold and silver had fallen out of favor... and mines were selling for less than the value of the dirt.
“Oops! We’re a Major Silver Producer Now”
Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black) November 20, 2025
When mining superintendent Marcus Daly arrived in Butte, Montana in the late 1870s to evaluate a cluster of silver prospects, it was a mundane business trip— the mad western gold rush was over by then.
The area was known for its patchy silver veins, and Daly’s job was to decide whether there were still any mines worth buying. All the ‘experts’ thought the boom was over. Gold and silver had fallen out of favor... and mines were selling for less than the value of the dirt.
So when Marcus Daly went underground at a modest site called the Anaconda, he noticed the ore didn’t look like a typical silver deposit... and that something much bigger was hiding below.
Daly pushed for the property’s purchase—about $30,000 which would be about $1 million today. His reasoning? Beneath the silver veins, Daly had spotted a massive copper system.
The timing couldn’t have been better for a nation racing into an industrial age.
Telegraph lines, electrical wiring, motors, early power systems — America was devouring copper as fast as anyone could pull it out of the ground. And Daly’s discovery pushed the Anaconda operation from a forgettable silver claim into one of the engines of American industrial growth.
For years, that copper carried what became the Anaconda Copper Mining Company.
Output scaled, profits climbed, and Butte became synonymous with industrial metal.
But the silver never went away. As miners pulled the copper out of the ground, they were also extracting silver... which was sort of ‘in the way’ of the copper.
At first the silver was just an afterthought; Anaconda was a copper company, plain and simple. They just happened to mine some silver, almost begrudgingly, as an afterthought. And throughout the early 20th century and the Roaring 20s, nobody paid attention.
Then the Great Depression hit.
Copper demand—and prices—collapsed almost overnight as factories slowed, construction stalled, and electrical projects were shelved indefinitely.
Anaconda took a beating like everyone else—but it didn’t fold.
The “accidental” silver kept generating revenue even as the industrial economy stalled... and that silver revenue kept Anaconda alive when competitors were going out of business left and right.
It gave the company the diversification it needed to survive the worst phases of the worst commodity cycle — and stay standing when others didn’t.
This is far from an isolated incident—the mining industry is no stranger to these necessary pivots.
And it’s also not just a quirky footnote— it’s the kind of setup that gives investors a chance to buy into something most investors write-off.
For example, the latest edition of our premium investment research newsletter featured a company that ordinarily mines a critical industrial metal—one that’s necessary for all modern technology.
Funny thing is, this company also just happens to produce gold and silver.
They never set out to be precious metals miners. In fact, the company has been extremely successful in its core industrial metal business.
But with gold and silver prices hovering near all-time highs, the company is now minting profits from precious metals. Revenue is through the roof, but shareholders of the business are basically getting all of it for free.
That’s because, right now, the company’s stock is trading at a fairly low multiple JUST based on its industrial mining revenue... which means the market is valuing all the gold and silver production at zero. That’s completely absurd.
Overall this company trades at just FOUR times earnings. At that valuation, even if it were just an industrial producer, it would still be undervalued.
But it also produces enough silver to be close to a top 10 producer in the world.
There’s no rational reason for this business to be selling for such a cheap price. Yet the recent selloff in gold and silver prices only made it cheaper. Some mining companies fell 30%, even though they're still raking in record profits.
To your freedom, James Hickman Co-Founder, Schiff Sovereign LLC LINK
Record High Debt = Record High Gold Price
Record High Debt = Record High Gold Price
Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black) November 11, 2025
Barrick Mining Corporation—one of the world’s largest and most established gold producers—just reported its third quarter earnings yesterday— and it was an absolute blowout.
The company reported third quarter profit of $1.3 billion, nearly triple last year’s Q3 earnings.
And for the first nine months of 2025, Earnings per Share is up a whopping 132% over the same period last year. Free Cash Flow is up an astonishing 176%.
Record High Debt = Record High Gold Price
Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black) November 11, 2025
Barrick Mining Corporation—one of the world’s largest and most established gold producers—just reported its third quarter earnings yesterday— and it was an absolute blowout.
The company reported third quarter profit of $1.3 billion, nearly triple last year’s Q3 earnings.
And for the first nine months of 2025, Earnings per Share is up a whopping 132% over the same period last year. Free Cash Flow is up an astonishing 176%.
The company further announced that they’re raising the dividend by 25% and expanding the company’s share buyback authorization by an additional $500 million, after already repurchasing $1 billion worth of shares under the prior program.
And what’s perhaps even more striking is that these record profits were based on an average gold price of $3,200. This means that the company’s Q4 earnings (which we’re nearly halfway through) should be MUCH higher given that gold has averaged $4,041 so far this quarter.
Our readers won’t be surprised to hear any of this; we’ve been saying for the past few years that gold was going to go much higher— specifically because foreign governments and central banks have been buying gold by the metric ton to diversify their strategic reserves away from the US dollar.
This trend isn’t going away.
Between the government shutdown fiasco, the rising $38+ trillion US national debt (up $500 BILLION just in the last six weeks), extreme political dysfunction in Congress and the courts, etc., foreign governments and central banks are continuing to literally buy tons of gold, even at record high prices.
We also wrote that gold companies (including miners like Barrick) would benefit substantially from rising gold prices.
So, just as we predicted, Barrick (among other gold miners) is raking in record profits, and its stock price has doubled this year alone— outpacing gains from Oracle, Nvidia, Palantir, and pretty much every major large cap company in the market.
But here’s what’s really amazing— despite such stellar performance, many of these gold companies are still cheap.
Barrick stock, for example, is near its all-time high. Yet the company is still valued at less than NINE times forward earnings— and that’s assuming gold doesn’t go up further from here.
(And even if the gold price tanks, Barrick will still be a profitable, dividend-paying, modestly valued business. Remember, Barrick’s record profits are based on $3,400 gold!)
Smaller gold companies— the ones that we focus on in our premium investment research— are even cheaper.
One of the gold miners we’ve featured is already up 4x this year. Yet it still trades at just 3.5 times forward earnings. The company is extremely shareholder-friendly and has a pristine balance sheet with zero net debt. Oh, and did I mention they pay a substantial dividend?
The gold price could collapse to less than $3,000 and this company would still be wildly profitable.
Could that happen? It’s possible. Even during the 1970s when gold rose from $35 to $850, gold suffered a major pullback in 1975. The pullback was temporary, and gold rose over 8x from there.
That’s because the fundamentals driving gold’s rise during the 1970s hadn’t really changed.
After Richard Nixon formally ended the Bretton Woods system in August 1971, foreign governments and central banks rapidly began selling their US dollars for gold.
As the decade progressed, foreigners became increasingly concerned about US deficits, government dysfunction (Watergate in 1973), global instability, waning US power, and more.
And despite a brief pullback in gold prices, this trend continued until the early 1980s, when the election of Ronald Reagan restored confidence in America’s might and fiscal discipline. It was only at that point that gold prices started to fall.
This same trend is unfolding today, and it’s not hard to understand: the record high US national debt = record high gold price.
Foreign governments and central banks remain deeply concerned about America’s fiscal condition, and gold is one of the few assets available for them to diversify their US dollar holdings.
Just like in the 1970s, we expect this trend to continue until Congress proves that it can act like grownups and be fiscally responsible.
In the meantime, we anticipate gold— and gold companies— to continue to perform very well. Again, many are posting record profits yet are still insanely undervalued. We do not expect this anomaly to last.
To your freedom, James Hickman Co-Founder, Schiff Sovereign LLC
Podcast: These three Central Banks are SELLING Gold
Podcast: These three Central Banks are SELLING Gold
Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black) November 12, 2025
We sincerely hope the House of Representatives can pull itself together and get the government back open this week.
Not because we love federal bureaucracy—but because this shutdown is embarrassing, and it continues to chip away at the rapidly declining confidence that foreign governments and central banks have in the United States.
This matters. Foreign governments and central banks collectively own $10+ trillion of US government bonds and other agency securities.
Podcast: These three Central Banks are SELLING Gold
Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black) November 12, 2025
We sincerely hope the House of Representatives can pull itself together and get the government back open this week.
Not because we love federal bureaucracy—but because this shutdown is embarrassing, and it continues to chip away at the rapidly declining confidence that foreign governments and central banks have in the United States.
This matters. Foreign governments and central banks collectively own $10+ trillion of US government bonds and other agency securities.
And given how rapidly the national debt is rising, the Treasury Department needs every lender they can get.
Up until recently, foreigners have always happily stocked up on US government bonds— which were traditionally viewed as THE world’s “risk free” asset.
But over the past few years, they’ve seen endless financial chaos and political dysfunction.
They watched Joe Biden shake hands with thin air. They watched the humiliating US withdrawal of Afghanistan. They watched millions of migrants stream across the US border with impunity, then be showered with taxpayer benefits. They watched TWO assassination attempts on a Presidential candidate.
Then, even after last year’s election, they watched the richest guy in the world willingly roll up his sleeves to help eliminate federal waste and cut the deficit— only to get chased out of town by politicians who are addicted to fraudulent spending.
They’ve watched extreme political dysfunction, with two sides who can’t agree on anything... including the most basic task of keeping the government open.
They’ve watched deficits grow and the national debt spiral to $38 trillion. They watched the debt grow by HALF A TRILLION dollars just over the past SIX WEEKS when the government was supposedly closed.
In short, if you were a foreign government or central bank, there’s little chance you would look at Congress and think, “these are serious, responsible people.”
Quite the opposite. In fact you would probably think that it’s time to start cutting your Treasury holdings and back away from the US dollar. After all, the United States Congress doesn’t exactly look “risk free” any longer.
Foreigners understand that a time is coming—sooner rather than later—when the US dollar will no longer be the dominant global reserve currency. Many central banks still hold nearly 100% of their reserves in US dollars. They know they need to diversify.
And we’ve written about this many times before— the #1 asset that they’re purchasing right now is gold.
It’s not because these foreign central bankers and finance ministers are irrational gold bugs. Instead, they understand that gold is nearly the only asset that (1) is universally accepted, (2) carries zero counterparty risk, and (3) has a large enough market to absorb hundreds of billions of dollars in capital flows.
That’s why, from Poland to Ghana to Kazakhstan, central banks have been buying gold in record quantities. It’s not just China.
China is the most desperate. They hold hundreds of billions in US dollar assets as part of their strategic financial reserves, and the Communist Party is extremely concerned—because they see a real possibility that they could be at war with their own borrower in the future.
Only three central banks were selling gold last quarter—and their reasons are easy to understand.
Russia was one—not because they love the dollar. But because they need to fund a war. Frozen out of the global financial system, gold has become almost a medium of exchange for the Russian government.
Singapore was another. Most central banks only buy strategically; they don’t try to turn a profit. Not Singapore. Their financial institutions are filled with sharp traders who would sell high into record trading volume, with the intent to buy gold back at a lower price.
In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if the Singaporean government picked up more gold during the recent price dip earlier this month.
The third was Uzbekistan, whose central bank already holds about 80% of its total reserves in gold. With gold prices up, the value of their holdings ballooned—so selling some is simply a way to re-balance.
The problem for most countries is that they have too many dollars and not enough gold. Uzbekistan is the lone example of a country with too much gold and not enough dollars. So their gold sales, while unusual, make sense.
We keep talking about this because it truly is one of the most important trends of our time.
The US government's fiscal condition is atrocious. Almost no one in Washington is willing to take it seriously. But foreign governments and central banks are—and that's exactly why they’re buying gold.
That trend won’t reverse unless, miraculously, everyone in Washington starts treating the national debt like the emergency it actually is.
I’m not holding my breath.
That’s why we believe $5,000 to $10,000 gold is a completely valid future scenario—and why mining companies, precious metals producers, and real asset businesses are so well positioned.
We discuss several of these miners in today’s podcast, including Barrick, Newmont, and Franco-Nevada.
And we also highlight some of the overlooked smaller gold companies that, right now, are just absurd bargains.
You can listen to the full podcast here.
For the audio-only version, check out our online post here.
Finally, you can find the podcast transcript for your convenience, here.
To your freedom, James Hickman Co-Founder, Schiff Sovereign LLC
PS – We write about this because we’re extremely proud of what we do.
We provide extremely high-quality research, and the results speak for themselves. Four of our precious metals companies are up 3-4x, even after recent pullbacks. Another seven are up 35–150%.
The Debt Has Increased By HALF A TRILLION Since The Shutdown Began
The Debt Has Increased By HALF A TRILLION Since The Shutdown Began
Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black) November 10, 2025
By the autumn of 1648, England had been embroiled in a chaotic and bloody civil war for more than six years. Extreme ideological tensions in England had been building for decades over freedom of religion, plus the balance of power within government.
King Charles was wildly unpopular. And a majority of politicians in parliament saw it as their sole mission to resist him. Many believed adamantly that parliament should rule over the king and ultimately dictate all laws in England.
The Debt Has Increased By HALF A TRILLION Since The Shutdown Began
Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black) November 10, 2025
By the autumn of 1648, England had been embroiled in a chaotic and bloody civil war for more than six years. Extreme ideological tensions in England had been building for decades over freedom of religion, plus the balance of power within government.
King Charles was wildly unpopular. And a majority of politicians in parliament saw it as their sole mission to resist him. Many believed adamantly that parliament should rule over the king and ultimately dictate all laws in England.
On the other side, a number of traditionalists thought parliament to be a corrupt body of liars and thieves, and they wanted to preserve the power of both church and king.
Tensions erupted into war in 1642, eventually resulting in Charles’ capture and imprisonment.
At that point the majority of parliament didn’t have any desire to extend the crisis any further. They felt like they had won sufficient concessions. Enough was enough. So they negotiated a peace treaty to end the civil war, much to the relief of people across England.
Unfortunately there were a number of radicals who pledged to continue the fight no matter the cost. They viewed any compromise as failure.
One of those was a little known Member of Parliament named Oliver Cromwell, who, on December 6, 1648, sent more than a thousand troops to surround the palace of Westminster and block the entrance of Parliament.
Only the most radical members were allowed entry; the rest were either blocked or arrested.
Cromwell’s aim was to prevent the peace treaty from being ratified; he felt that it was too soft with too many compromises. And as a result, the English Civil War continued, followed by Cromwell’s personal dictatorship, for more than a decade.
I hope I’m wrong but I think the US is in store for a similar head fake. After more than a month of the shutdown, there were signs over the weekend that a compromise had been reached in the United States Senate.
But the theater began almost immediately after, with the radical Left vomiting all over the deal and insisting that they would “continue to fight.”
My sense is that while a lot of people may believe that the government shutdown is nearly over, this may in fact just be another miss, just like England’s ‘almost’ peace treaty in 1648. There’s a good chance this compromise will be blocked by aggressive radicals in Congress.
To say this is a national embarrassment is a massive understatement. And at this point it’s nearly all branches of government and institutions chipping away at the remaining dignity of America.
One of the things that I find most bizarre is how many prominent radicals seem to think their shutdown is “winning the hearts and minds of the American people.”
They believe this because of last week’s gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia in which the candidates from their party won.
Now, the combined margin of victory of both candidates was about one million people. There are roughly 350 million people in the United States.
Yet, in the mind of a Leftist radical, one million voters in two states speak for 350 million Americans in 50 states, and therefore they have a moral mandate to keep “fighting” while the government remains closed.
This raises a key question: fighting for what?
Well, they claim to be fighting for healthcare affordability. Coincidentally this is the same party that passed Obamacare more than a decade ago— during which time the cost of health insurance in the US has soared above and beyond the already uncomfortably high rate of inflation.
Strange, considering that the actual name of the legislation was the Affordable Care Act. Yet it seems to have only made healthcare less affordable.
Stagflation Is Back—And the Fed Is Asleep at the Wheel
Stagflation Is Back—And the Fed Is Asleep at the Wheel
Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black) October 29, 2025
Protestant firebrand and political activist Hugh Latimer must have known he was risking his life when he stepped into the pulpit at St. Paul’s Cross on January 12, 1549. His sermon that Sunday morning was hardly religious in nature. Rather, Latimer publicly expressed the view-- the deep, deep frustration-- that nearly all Englishmen were feeling at the time, but everyone was too afraid to say out loud.
Inflation was killing them. And it was the government’s fault.
Stagflation Is Back—And the Fed Is Asleep at the Wheel
Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black) October 29, 2025
Protestant firebrand and political activist Hugh Latimer must have known he was risking his life when he stepped into the pulpit at St. Paul’s Cross on January 12, 1549. His sermon that Sunday morning was hardly religious in nature. Rather, Latimer publicly expressed the view-- the deep, deep frustration-- that nearly all Englishmen were feeling at the time, but everyone was too afraid to say out loud.
Inflation was killing them. And it was the government’s fault.
It started about seven years before, in 1542. England went to war against both Scotland and France-- AT THE SAME TIME. War is always expensive, and it’s especially debilitating when you’re fighting simultaneous conflicts to your north and south.
War costs quickly mounted, and the English government began paying for it by debasing the currency. Two years into the wars, by 1544, silver content in their coins had plummeted by about a third. Two years later by another 50%.
At peak, when Latimer gave his famous sermon, silver content had fallen 90% in just seven years. And as a result, prices across England were skyrocketing.
Latimer was witty and eloquent in the finest English tradition; he quipped at one point that “the King’s coin is become like the King’s faith-- clipped and counterfeit.” And later on, “the debasing of the coin is the debasing of the realm…”
Latimer believed the debasement of the currency to be a moral issue-- even a sinful act-- because it was essentially theft of commoner’s purchasing power.
He spoke to thousands of people that cold day in January. But his words went far beyond the congregation; his sermon was published and widely circulated, prompting angry Englishmen across the country to form rebel groups and demand change.
Latimer was arrested and charged for “stirring the people”, imprisoned in the Tower of London and ultimately put to death. His final words were “we shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.”
Writing in his own journal in 1551, King Edward VI himself admitted that his government was wrong.
“The debasement of the coin was the cause of the dearth,” wrote the King-- with dearth in that context referring to soaring food prices. He knew his government caused inflation, and inflation caused the social unrest. Latimer was an innocent man who had the courage to say what everyone else was feeling.
Both of these are sadly common trends in history; governments often persecute those whose only crime is telling the truth. And second, governments will invariably screw up, create inflation, and cause severe devastation in people’s lives.
I’ll focus on the second topic today given that the most recent inflation numbers in the US were announced a few days ago.
And, no surprise, inflation is ticking up and moving in the wrong direction. Based on the September month-over-month numbers, inflation is an annualized 3.6%.
Bizarrely, the Fed has already begun lowering interest rates and is widely expected to cut further in the coming months… which will most likely make inflation worse.
Far more important is that Fed officials are signaling that they’re about to end their quantitative tightening earlier than originally planned.
This is crucial. During the pandemic, the Fed created $5+ trillion in new money. Poof. It’s the equivalent of England debasing its currency in the 1540s… and all that new money triggered all the inflation we’ve experienced.
Quantitative tightening is the reverse of that process; in addition to raising rates (starting in 2022), the Fed also began reducing the money supply and draining some of that money out of the financial system.
At this point they’ve removed about $2 trillion out of the $5 trillion that they printed. And the original plan was to keep going and reduce their balance sheet.
But that seems to be no longer happening. So stopping the quantitative tightening, combined with interest rate cuts, will really invite a LOT more inflation.
And all of this is happening just as the labor market is beginning to falter. White collar jobs in particular are being slashed at an astonishing pace.
There’s a term for this-- one that economists don’t like to use very much. But it’s called stagflation-- a shrinking economy combined with higher inflation.
America has been here before-- most recently in the 1970s.
The US economy was in a tailspin; unemployment and inflation BOTH surged, resulting in an almost entire decade of economic misery. But there were safe havens.
Gold was an obvious safe haven. As the US economy stagnated and retail prices rose, gold prices exploded, rising more than 20x over the next ten years. The dollar, meanwhile, lost roughly 75% of its purchasing power.
We’re seeing similar conditions today, from the inflation data to the gargantuan US national debt. And if history is any guide, this isn’t a trend that reverses easily. The underlying driver—loss of confidence in US fiscal policy and the long-term value of the dollar—shows no sign of abating.
This is why we’ve written so much about gold over the past few years. And, despite its recent pullback, gold remains an incredibly sensible long-term investment.
But there are other real assets to consider as well.
Real assets in general tend to hold their value during inflationary periods—because they’re not just paper promises. They’re tangible. They’re productive. They’re the raw inputs the economy is actually built on.
One of the most obvious opportunities right now—possibly the most mispriced sector in the entire market—is energy.
The world does not exist without energy. Full stop. People have been fed a ridiculous lie that oil is going to disappear and we’re all going to drive solar-powered EVs and Exxon is going to go out of business.
What total BS. But because of this myth, many oil companies are absurdly cheap. Meanwhile oilfield services businesses have been practically left for dead.
Then there’s natural gas-- which (especially in the US) remains THE cheapest form of energy on the planet—cheaper than coal, oil, and in some real-world scenarios, even cheaper than nuclear. And it’s even pretty clean.
But natural gas producers too have traded at fire-sale valuations.
We’ve been clear that the gold story is not over by a long shot.
But in our investment research, we are starting to turn to other sectors that are still at the bottom of their cycles— but won’t stay that way for long the way inflation is heating up again.
The story of inflation is as old as the story of civilization itself. It’s inevitable.
And we’re seeing some pretty obvious warning signs on the horizon.
But there are some compelling safe havens out there which have almost NEVER been cheaper. They’re worth considering.
We’d also encourage you to consider joining our premium investment research service, which features these deeply undervalued, highly profitable, well-managed real asset businesses-- we’re offering a limited time promotional discount and an iron-clad money back guarantee.
To your freedom, James Hickman Co-Founder, Schiff Sovereign LLC