Insights

Independent thinking for uncertain markets.

Essays on valuation, market cycles, monetary policy, gold, concentration risk, and retirement — written to look beneath the headlines and ask what matters next.

THE LATEST THINKING

Read what I’m watching — and why it matters.

The newest essay appears first. The archive below is intentionally broad: markets, policy, risk, history, and the decisions that matter most when retirement capital has less room for error.

Empires Don’t Announce It. They Just Get Charged More.

Policy & Debt

September 4, 2026

Empires Don’t Announce It. They Just Get Charged More.

Doug Casey says the era of American hegemony is ending and points to Rome’s third century. The reserve data says something narrower and far more useful to a household: the dollar is not being replaced, it is being hedged — and a hedge shows up as a higher cost of money for decades, not as a date on a calendar.

They Didn’t Plan It. That’s the Worse Answer.

Policy & Debt

August 27, 2026

They Didn’t Plan It. That’s the Worse Answer.

Jim Quinn says the elites engineered the coming collapse. He is right about almost every number and wrong about the only thing that matters. A plan has authors you can remove. What we actually have is worse.

Policy & Debt

August 25, 2026

The Cliff Is a Price, Not a Date

Jacob Hornberger says America is heading toward a fiscal cliff and that nobody can say when we go over it. He is right about the direction. But the reckoning is not a future event. It is a price, it is being charged now in the long end of the bond market, and last week the Treasury Secretary tried twice to talk it down and was overruled both times.

The Strait Can Reopen. The Wells Might Not.

Markets

August 23, 2026

The Strait Can Reopen. The Wells Might Not.

Everyone is watching whether tankers can cross the Strait of Hormuz. The bigger question is whether 8 million barrels a day of Gulf production ever fully comes back — and the diesel market is already answering it.

Hormuz Isn't Closed. It's Expensive. That's the Point.

Markets

August 22, 2026

Hormuz Isn't Closed. It's Expensive. That's the Point.

Martin Armstrong says the Strait of Hormuz has become a tax on the whole world economy. The bond market already agrees — and the receipt is arriving in places Armstrong doesn't name.

Economy

August 14, 2026

The Scan Happens. The Surgery Doesn't.

Hospitals are reporting a strange split this summer: office visits and MRIs are up, but the surgeries that normally follow are not happening. The most likely reason is cost. That has happened before, and the history is not comforting.

The Fed

August 3, 2026

Three Dissents and a Terse Statement

The Fed held rates steady on July 29 and the headlines moved on. The story was the vote: three officials wanted to raise. Hawkish dissents at that scale are rare, and the bond market read them the same way I did.

254 Days of Oil: The Same War, Six Different Economies

Markets

July 27, 2026

254 Days of Oil: The Same War, Six Different Economies

One shock hit every economy on earth on the same morning. The outcomes were wildly different, and what separated them was not luck. It was buffers, diversification, and how much of the load rested on a single point of failure.

The Crisis Doesn't Arrive. It Accumulates.

Policy & Debt

July 22, 2026

The Crisis Doesn't Arrive. It Accumulates.

Martin Armstrong says America's sovereign debt crisis has already begun. The more useful question isn't whether he's right about the label — it's what the arithmetic underneath it is already doing to interest rates, currencies, and retirement plans.

Policy & Debt

July 21, 2026

Dalio Just Moved to Stage Six

For years Ray Dalio warned the U.S. was in the “pre-breakdown” phase of his Big Cycle. Earlier this year, he moved his own dial — and the reasoning matters more than the headline.

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