ALWAYS CONSULT YOUR INVESTMENT PROFESSIONAL BEFORE MAKING ANY INVESTMENT DECISION
December 22, 2025 | Going (Staying) Home
Happy Monday Morning! Human QE is over. Canada’s population outright contracted in Q3, shrinking by 76,000 people. This was the only quarterly decline on record outside the pandemic. Source: IceCap Asset Management BMO’s economist Robert Kavcic summed it up well. “A major population adjustment is well underway, and it remains one of the biggest economic […]
December 22, 2025 | DDB: 2026 Outlook
Worthwhile discussion in this segment. Ted Oakley interviews Danielle DiMartino Booth, discussing outlooks for interest rates, markets, and the economy. Here is a direct video link.
December 22, 2025 | Fentanyl Classified as Weapon of Mass Destruction
Fentanyl has been classified as a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD) after it claimed the lives of 57,000 Americans in 2025. The order directs the Attorney General, Defense, Homeland Security, State, and Treasury to treat illicit fentanyl networks as national‑security targets. The Secretary of War must update military guidelines on “chemical” incidents to include […]
December 21, 2025 | The Next Fed Chair Inherits the Death Spiral
President Trump is auditioning candidates for Fed chair (to take office in May 2026), with the main criteria apparently being who will cut rates fastest and deepest. So consider a near-zero Fed Funds rate a given for the coming year. But that’s just the beginning of a very complex process. Let’s start with the fact that the […]
December 21, 2025 | Grand Supercycle Will End with Trump
The widespread notion that a U.S. president can significantly influence the economy is mistaken. In observable fact, the broad cycles that bring us good times and bad, booms and busts, are vastly larger and more powerful than the presidency, too overwhelming to even affect, let alone command. Even the radical economic policies of Roosevelt’s New […]
December 21, 2025 | Powering the AI
According to Einstein, energy is everything. Literally. Every material thing you can touch is simply energy in a different form. Sometimes we can unlock that energy via combustion – burning wood or coal, for example. That’s where physics crosses over with economics. Those chemical processes enable us to produce the things that sustain and improve […]
December 21, 2025 | The EU is Out of Control
European leaders were forced to back down on stealing the Russian assets, and have agreed to keep Ukraine funded for two years with a loan of 90 billion euros, or about $105 billion. There is growing discontent within the EU, for a few countries I speak to are starting to realize that the EU is […]
December 20, 2025 | Trading Desk Notes for December 20, 2025
Some brief comments and some interesting charts ahead of Christmas week Stocks: S&P futures closed last Friday near their lows for the week, and the selling continued Monday through Wednesday this week as investors had 2nd thoughts about the AI trade and rotated into defensive issues. The market pivoted on Thursday morning, on the “much-better-than-expected” CPI […]
December 20, 2025 | Corruption in the Regulators of Finance & Pharmaceutical
The corruption in the Pharmaceutical Industry is no different from the Financial Industry. They pay big finds giving regulators gold stars for racking in the money, but nobody goes to jail – that is not profitable because they can’t get billions in fines from individuals. Until people who deliberately make decisions that destroy industries or […]
December 20, 2025 | Tech Talk for Saturday December 20th 2025
The Bottom Line Santa Claus arrived later than usual this year! The proverbial Santa Claus Rally in North American equities from December 14th to January 6th started on Thursday December 18th Equity prices responded late last week when analysts significant increased quarterly earnings and revenues estimates. Consensus for Earnings and Revenues for S&P 500 companies […]
December 19, 2025 | Let’s Talk Money
Happy Friday!! Today, I am sharing a story from a reader, with their permission. It reminds us of the power in sharing honest, unbiased information, free of any sales pitch, especially in foundational areas like personal finance. I’ll add a few thoughts at the end. Thanks, OD, for this: Greetings! I have just finished reading […]
December 19, 2025 | AI Videos and the Shrinking Trust Horizon
Seemingly overnight, AI-generated content on YouTube and X has become almost indistinguishable from “real” human-made media. Nothing, in other words, can be trusted. How can a society function in that kind of information environment? We are, in short, at a civilization-threatening stage of history. But there is a fix. The following excerpts are from a […]
December 19, 2025 | US Government Spending Soared 10,000% in Past Century
Government spending per person in the United States has soared nearly 10,000 percent over the last century, as reported by the Federalist. The number is staggering, but the true question isn’t how much has been spent but what was bought and why the US government needs to spend at such a level. Woodrow Wilson secured […]
December 18, 2025 | The Truth About Tax Rates
Tax collection from the wealthiest individuals and corporations has fallen worldwide since World War 2, while government subsidies, bailouts and support programs favouring the wealthiest constituents have soared. The plunging US corporate income tax revenue as a portion of GDP (below since 1934) reflects a trend that has played out across all OECD countries. At […]
December 18, 2025 | Copper Hoarding
Copper prices are near record highs with spot prices above $11,000 per ton. Grid expansion projects and data centers are copper-intensive, The supply chain in constrained and investors are anticipating future US tariffs reaching 25%. The press is claiming that these projects are the reason for the recent surge in copper hoarding, but the […]
December 17, 2025 | Is An “Iceberg Order” Supporting Silver?
Here’s another apparently AI-created (performed, assisted, whatever) video that offers an interesting answer to a big question. I have no idea whether any of this is true, but it’s definitely compelling. Let’s start with an excerpt: There’s a saying in the intelligence community: the loudest threats are rarely the most dangerous. It is the quiet […]
December 17, 2025 | Lagarde: Europe Faces “Existential Crisis”
Christine Lagarde is now warning that Europe faces an “existential crisis” unless urgent reforms are enacted. What she is really admitting is that Europe has reached the end of the centralized model. These are 28 independent nations that were never intended to operate as a single homogeneous culture or economy. Europe’s problem is not monetary […]
December 16, 2025 | Is the Trillion-Dollar AI Boom a House of Cards?
The AI House of Cards: Why Today’s AI Boom Could Unravel Fast Wall Street is all-in on AI, with trillion-dollar expectations pushing tech stocks to extreme valuations. Oracle’s recent claim of a $523 billion cloud backlog – largely tied to AI infrastructure – perfectly captures the excitement. Big deals with OpenAI, Nvidia, and Meta sent […]
December 16, 2025 | All In and More
US job growth remained sluggish in November, and the unemployment rate rose to a four-year high of 4.6% (Bureau of Labor Statistics data out today), up 120 basis points (bps) from the April 2023 low of 3.4%. A 120-bps rise in the US unemployment rate has never occurred in the post-war era without a recession […]
December 16, 2025 | US Homeland Security Rescues 62,000 Unaccompanied Minors from Trafficking
Mass migration through open border policies is inhumane. I may often focus on the economic implications, but it is crucial to understand how these policies have destroyed the very people they claim to protect. Thousands of men, women, and children have died in their attempt to reach the West. Unaccompanied minors have gone […]
December 15, 2025 | Thirty Year Highs
Happy Monday Morning! As expected, the Bank of Canada held rates this past week. The relatively mundane presser could be summarized in one paragraph from Tiff. “If inflation and economic activity evolve broadly in line with the October projection, Governing Council sees the current policy rate at about the right level to keep inflation close […]
December 15, 2025 | BIS Warns on Rare Simultaneous Bubble in Stocks and Gold
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the central bank of central banks globally, warns in its December 2025 Quarterly Review that a rare, simultaneous bubble in the price of stocks and gold has increased financial risks and the prospect of a significant correction and negative or subdued future returns: A widely used statistical test to detect the […]
December 15, 2025 | Compound Interest Is Devouring the Federal Budget: It’s Time to Take Back the Money Power
from Scheer Post Albert Einstein is often quoted as saying that compound interest is “the most powerful force in the universe.” The quote is probably apocryphal, but it reflects a mathematical truth. Interest on earlier interest grows exponentially, outrunning the linear growth of revenue and eventually consuming everything. That is where the United States now […]
December 15, 2025 | Porsches Deactivated Across Russia
Porsche owners across Russia were unable to start their vehicles without warning. The German automaker claimed the sudden immobilization was due to an issue with the Vehicle Tracking System, a satellite security feature intended to protect against auto theft. In reality, Porsche admitted to the world that automakers have the ability to control modernized cars […]
December 14, 2025 | Conviction, Guts Finally Paying Off in Bullion
Just one more push could exhaust a bull market that is coming up on its seventeenth year. Although that’s only about three dog years, it equates to about 120 human years. In fact, no other bull market has lasted even remotely that long. The next-oldest, birthed at the low of the October 1987 Crash, was […]