***** denotes well-worth reading in full at source (even if excerpted extensively here)
Economic and Market Fare:
********** Ray Dalio Explains Why Gold & Why Now...
“Gold is a very excellent diversifier in the portfolio,” Dalio said Tuesday at the Greenwich Economic Forum in Greenwich, Connecticut.“If you look at it just from a strategic asset allocation perspective, you would probably have something like 15% of your portfolio in gold … because it is one asset that does very well when the typical parts of the portfolio go down.”
............ I think most people make the mistake of thinking of gold as a metal rather than as the most established form of money, and they think of fiat money as money rather than debt and they think that fiat money will be created to prevent debt defaults. That's because most people have never lived with gold being the most fundamental money, and they haven't studied the debt-gold-money cycles that have occurred in almost all countries over almost all time.
.......... While other metals can be good inflation hedges, gold occupies a unique place in the portfolios of investors and central bankers because it is the most universally-accepted non-fiat currency-based medium of exchange and store-hold of wealth, and it is a good diversifier to other assets and currencies in these portfolios. Unlike fiat currency debt, it doesn't have the same inherent credit and devaluation risks—in fact, it diversifies against them because when they are doing worst, gold does best —acting almost like an “insurance policy” within a diversified portfolio.
While silver and platinum share some similarities with gold—particularly in terms of industrial applications—they do not possess the same level of historical and cultural significance as a store of value. Silver, for instance, is more heavily influenced by industrial demand, which can lead to greater price volatility, though it has been used as the basis of currency systems before. Platinum, though valuable, is even more constrained by its limited supply and specific industrial uses. Consequently, neither metal enjoys the same universal acceptance or stability as gold when it comes to wealth preservation.
............ As for investing, I'm more in favor of great diversification than in favor of any single market, though I tilt my portfolio significantly based on my indicators and what I think, which for quite some time has led (and still leads) me to a big tilt toward gold. If you're interested in why, my book How Countries Go Broke: The Big Cycle explains my thinking much more comprehensively than I can do here.
As far as the alternative markets you mention, it seems to me that in the case of AI stocks, in the long run their upside depends on their pricing relative to their future cash flows, which are extremely uncertain, and, in the short run, it depends on bubble dynamics. I believe that we should be mindful of the lessons that analogous cases in history provide, in which the breakthrough technology companies became very popular as they are now. I'm not saying definitively that these companies are in bubbles—though they are showing lots of signs of being in bubbles based on my bubble indicator. In any case, an awful lot about the markets and the economy hinges on the AI boom companies doing better than is discounted in their pricing, because, if they don't, their stocks will go down. These stocks have accounted for 80pct of the gains in U.S. stocks, the top 10pct of income earners own 85pct the stocks and account for half of consumer spending, and these AI companies' capital expenditures have accounted for 40pct of this year's economic growth, so a downturn would be really bad for people's wealth and the economy. It seems obvious that some diversification of one's holdings would be prudent.
..................... To me, the most simple and fundamental question that everyone should ask themselves and answer is what percentage of my portfolio should I have in gold if I don’t have a clue about the direction of gold and other markets? In other words, how much gold should I have for strategic asset allocation reasons, rather than because I want to make a tactical bet on it. Because of its historical negative correlations with other assets (mostly stocks and bonds), most importantly when the real returns of stocks and bonds are bad, the answer is that about 15pct is best because that would give the best portfolio return-to-risk ratio.
Trump tariffs pushing Canada into recession
...................... The majority of Canada’s exports to the US are still exempt under the terms of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).
...................... The majority of Canada’s exports to the US are still exempt under the terms of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).
However, Canadian businesses have also been hit hard by Mr Trump’s sectoral tariffs. The US charges 50pc tariffs on steel imports and 25pc tariffs on cars and car parts.
Canada’s car exports plummeted by nearly 25pc in the second quarter while exports of industrial machinery plunged by 18.5pc. Overall exports dropped by 7.5pc.
Bubble Fare:
There is a distinction between good investment and bad speculation — the likelihood is we are experiencing both
.................. Way back in 2011, I tried to create a checklist of how to spot a bubble in real-time.2 It is 14 bullet quantitative points that should allow you to see if any market is exhibiting bubblicious tendencies.
Let’s go through those 14 points to see how they hold up today: (Spoiler: Lots of expensive stocks, and pricey bubbly tendencies, but we are not quite there yet): .............
Analysts warn of rise in ‘circular’ tech deals as more businesses cancel chatbot subscriptions
Tweet of the Week:
Hartnett’s point is that the traditional investing playbook doesn’t work in the environment we’re in, every major asset class is priced for perfection, but the fundamentals underneath them are stretched to the limit. Normally you’d hide in Treasuries when growth slows or stocks… https://t.co/1uSeRmoHo4 pic.twitter.com/dRJQ9furbZ
— EndGame Macro (@onechancefreedm) October 19, 2025
Charts:
1:
3: Average New Car Price In U.S. Tops $50,000 For First Time Ever
(not just) for the ESG crowd:
.............. “The agencies do not believe principles for managing climate-related financial risk are necessary because the agencies’ existing safety and soundness standards require all supervised institutions to have effective risk management commensurate with their size, complexity, and activities,” a joint release from the three regulators said.
********** Welsh: There’s A Reason I Say “Climate Change and Environmental Collapse”
A lot of people lump all environmental issues under “climate change.” It’s the big bad boogeyman, the easiest to observe, and the first that’s likely to cause catastrophe. This also leads some to think that the problem is relatively easy to deal with. We can simply do aerosol injections into the upper atmosphere, and that will reduce the temperature. (Once we start, however, we can’t ever stop.)
But this isn’t the case, the environment is under assault in many ways, and simple solutions may help, but won’t deal with the issue as a whole and may even make parts of it worse. Sulfate Aerosol injections would reduce the temperature, but actually cause acid rain and increase ocean acidification. That means phytoplankton still die off, algal blooms still happen, and we still lose most of the phytoplankton oxygen production ...............
There’s no free lunch here. This is a system with complicated feedback mechanisms which was more or less in homeostasis (it was actually tending to cool down very slowly and the long term trend was to another ice age. A little bit of extra CO2 was a good thing, but only a little.)
But the real issue is that climate change is only one issue out of a large number. The Earth has a bunch of systems in homeostasis, which have been that way since the end of the last Ice Age, or much longer. Each of them is required to sustain life. When they get knocked out of balance too much, mass extinctions follow and in every mass extinction, the top predator dies.
The”planetary boundaries” system is one way of thinking of it. Here’s the 2025 visualization:
................................... Just continuing with “damn the torpedoes” is beyond stupid. I have lived a life in a society determined to self-destruct. Much of this blog’s output over the last few years has covered the end of Western hegemony, a colossal fuck up on the part of Western elites (and grats to China for playing our elites like the pathetic losers and suckers they are.)
But that issue really only matters to humanity as a whole if it descends into nuclear war. Hegemons change. It happens. Living thru it sucks if you’re on the losing side or get caught in the collateral damage, but whatever, humanity goes on.
Environmental risk is truly existential. Despite what some very bright people believe, it could kill us all. ..................
Sci Fare:
Hundreds of thousands of kids in America are struggling with an illness that many doctors and schools refuse to recognize
U.S. B.S.:
Curtin: The Masks Have Come Off
If you believe what is written on those hats worn in the Israeli Knesset – “Trump the Peace President” – you are deluded beyond hope. Halloween may be coming, but you don’t need a frightening mask to realize the horrors that confront us. Trump is the culmination of a long developing horror story. Unlike his predecessors who prepared the way for him and who generally wore traditionally allaying masks to hide their evil actions, he is the greatest blatant fraud to ever occupy the White House. He is a war monger, a genocidal killer, and an enemy of people home and abroad so obvious, so capricious, so erratic – a man of endless threats – that no one should be surprised to wake up one morning to news that might seem “shocking.” Everyone should expect surprises, not treats but tricks.
Trump is like an advertisement that tells you its characters are not ordinary people but actors and their spiel isn’t true – only to tell you to buy the product they are pitching. Every pitch Trump throws is a curve ball.
The only way his schtick can be explained is that he is the culmination of a decades’ long development in American culture where acting is presented as so fake that the audience thinks it’s real because of its fakery. He is a dangerous joke, and all the more dangerous because he fits so comfortably into the larger cultural development that Neil Postman in 1985 aptly termed Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business and Neal Gabler later called Life:The Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality.
He is the culmination of the latent stream of despotism that has flowed through American history, especially during the last twenty-five years, but which many see as only a battle between political parties, the so-called good and bad. They fail to see that fascism is like a castle that takes years to build from the foundation up, and it necessitates the slow acceptance by all shades of political opinion of the gradual loss of fundamental freedoms, the acceptance of a corporate warfare state, and a secret government lodged in “intelligence” agencies such as the CIA, the NSA, and the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency), working hand-in-glove with the major media and Silicon Valley corporations in their partnerships to propagandize and spy on the public.
Someone like Trump is not hatched overnight. His progenitors are all those bipartisan sycophants who have accepted the official explanation of 9/11 and the immediate institution of the Patriot Act (prepared during the Clinton administration), the national state of emergency declared by George W. Bush on September 14, 2001 and renewed annually since, the wars against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Russia, Iran, the Palestinians, etc. (wars launched and supported by Republicans and Democrats), the bailout of the Big Banks and financial institutions in 2009, the 2014 U.S. coup against the Ukrainian government, the so-called war against terror, the Russiagate fraud, the extrajudicial murders by U.S. presidents, the endless propaganda, the growth of Public/private “partnerships” that have privatized government services, the COVID lies, the new Cold War, and the enormous influence of Israel within the U.S. government, etc. The list is extensive. Trump the chickenshit despot did not hatch overnight; he is the chicken come home to roost. .....................
Geopolitical Fare:
Fourth and final part of my comprehensive critique of the EU’s supranational model of integration, analysing its structural, economic and geopolitical shortcomings
In October 2024 a Lebanese writer named Lina Mounzer wrote, “ask any Arab what the most painful realization of the last year has been and it is this: that we have discovered the extent of our dehumanization to such a degree that it’s impossible to function in the world in the same way.”
I’ve thought about that line a lot over the last year.
I thought about it as Israel hammered Lebanon with at least 20 airstrikes during a supposed “ceasefire”.
I thought about it during the Gaza ceasefire negotiations when the western political/media class kept calling the Israelis held by Hamas “hostages” while calling the innocent Palestinians held captive by Israel “prisoners”.
I think about it as the IDF continues to murder Palestinian civilians every day during the Gaza “ceasefire” when they are deemed to be traveling into forbidden areas, because Palestinians are so dehumanized that Israel sees bullets as a perfectly legitimate means of directing civilian foot traffic.
I think about it as these daily ceasefire violations and acts of military slaughter barely make a blip in the western news media, while any time anything happens that makes western Jews feel anxious or upset it dominates headlines for days.
I thought about it while the western political/media class solemnly commemorated the second anniversary of the October 7 attack, even as the daily death toll from the Gaza holocaust ticked along with its victims unnamed and unacknowledged by those same institutions.
I thought about it when all of western politics and media stopped dead in its tracks and stood transfixed for days on the assassination of Charlie Kirk while ignoring the genocide he had spent the last two years of his life actively manufacturing consent for.
Day after day after day we see glaring, inexcusable discrepancies between the amount of attention that is given to the violent death of an Arab and the attention that is given to the violent death of an Israeli, a western Jew, or any westerner. ..............
.......... all I can think is, why would anyone want to defend the west if this is what the west has become? .................
Other Fare:
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