The “Big System” Gold Spike

“An empire toppled by its enemies can rise again. But one which crumbles from within? That’s dead. Forever.” ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ April 4, 2024 The “Big System” Gold Spike “An empire toppled by its enemies can rise again. But one which crumbles from within? That’s dead. Forever.” – Zemo in Captain America: Civil War [Special Reminder: In case you missed [our recent announcement]( The Essential Investor has merged with legacy contributors to Agora Financial. The new, larger, more inclusive project is called The Grey Swan Investment Fraternity. If you’re interested in the scope and benefits of our new endeavor, please see what prompted us to merge [here](. If you’ve been a member of The Essential Investor, please keep an eye out for your new benefits.] Dear [Reader], April 4, 2024 – Nothing agitates the atoms of the fraternity quite like a spike in the price of gold. After topping $2,3oo yesterday, gold is hovering around $2,297 this morning. Still short of our $3,100 target, but trading above a 100-day trend-line established on March 22, when the rally began at $2,104. “Fed governor Adriana Kugler’s dovish comments that the Fed is still on track to cut rates this year,” Peter Schiff tweeted last night, “despite clear evidence that inflation is accelerating, sent the price of gold to over $2,3oo. The Fed is prepared to sacrifice the public to bail out the government and the banks.” Schiff’s tweet kicked off a discussion as to whether gold or Bitcoin best expresses the plight of the Fed in its “fight” against inflation. We’ll reserve judgment on the subject for now. Instead, let’s dig in with a few other members and see if we can agree on the root cause of gold’s recent rally. CONTINUED BELOW... >>ADVERTISEMENT<< 2024 – The Real Election Year Surprise In 2016, the October Election Surprise was Hillary Clinton’s email scandal… In 2020, the October Election Surprise was the suppression of all the dirty material on Hunter Biden’s “forgotten” laptop… Now, in 2024, we’re forecasting an October Election Surprise that almost no one sees coming — and this time it’ll be way more devastating than anything you’ve seen before. [Click here to learn about 2024’s real October Election Surprise »]( It’s not at all what you think. CONTINUED... “One of Wall Street’s most influential insiders,” observes Lau Vegys in Doug Casey’s take, “BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has recently voiced his belief that the ballooning debt represents a real threat to the nation’s fiscal future.” Back in February, during an interview on “60 Minutes,” Fed Chair Jerome Powell alerted viewers: “The national debt is growing faster than the economy, so it is unsustainable.” “Powell and the U.S. Congressional Budget Office (CBO),” writes Brian Lutz at dollarcollapse.com, “have both publicly warned that the national debt is unsustainable. The debt is rising... $1 trillion every 100 days. $10 billion every day. And $416 million every hour. “And that means, eventually the United States will be overcome with a sovereign debt crisis. No matter how the statistics on unemployment and inflation get jostled.” Lutz frames the Fed’s challenge in economic terms: “The economy will not be strong enough to cover the cost of paying those debts. Eventually, debt will cause less money to enter the economy, which in turn causes less trade and more unemployment. Since there is less money available to generate more trade (and create employment opportunities), the Fed will have no choice but to print more money, which leads to inflation. That is the Keynesian paradox. More fiat money cannot improve real production. Fiat money only creates more debt, and more consumption.” The Fed has a limited set of tools in its tool box. Since the days of the Greenspan Put, we know its tool of choice is to drop interest rates at every whiff of crisis. After zero interest rates (ZIRP), there’s quantitative easing (QE)… and there’s direct purchases in the market, like the subprime mortgage debt it gobbled up during and after the 2008 financial crisis. ZIRP and QE are two of the technical ways to describe money getting shoveled into the economy through the banking system. The third, of course, is wanton government spending. According to the bean counters at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, Trump’s tenure in the Oval Office added $8.4 trillion to the federal debt — $3.6 trillion came from pandemic relief laws and executive orders, another $2.5 trillion was the result of changes to the tax code, and $2.3 trillion came from spending increases. Nobody’s going to complain about tax cuts. But alongside nearly $6 trillion in spending increases… Economics 101 teaches us that more money and less stuff to spend it on equals… rising prices. What’s the Fed to do? “Artificially low interest rates are a problem in themselves,” writes Bill Bonner on the same theme this morning. “They distort the real cost of capital, tempting people to borrow too much money. Debt increases... leading to a debt crisis of some sort.” In a lengthier piece, Bonner identifies Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the only serious candidate for president who has a handle on the issue. “The long-term issue is government spending,” RFK Jr. argued in a recent interview on Fox News, “because inflation and high interest rates are just medicine and they both are poisonous medicines.” As a result, Kennedy suggests that “we need to get spending under control and dramatically reduce military spending.” In the third edition of our book [Empire of Debt]( (now available for pre-order at[Amazon]( and[Barnes & Noble]( Bill and I spend a fair amount of time analyzing Dwight Eisenhower’s now infamous farewell address given in 1961. Not only does Eisenhower warn about the outsized influence of the military industrial complex on domestic politics, but on foreign policy, too. For good measure, the 34th president warned of a rising tech elite and its influence on the whole kaboodle — politics, the media, foreign wars. Bonner puts Eisenhower’s conundrum into close perspective during the election of 2024, and those bidding to replace the 46th president: “Kennedy is right. The feds spend too much. They borrow too much. They need lower interest rates to support the debt. And they ‘print’ money to help keep rates low. Low rates... high rates... inflation... inflation control – all are linked to excess spending. The dots connect. And if the problem is to be addressed, intentionally, spending is the place to begin. It has to be brought under control. It would be nice if a real reformer — maybe like Milei in Argentina or Kennedy in the U.S. — could solve the problem in an orderly... sensible... way. The wars could be stopped. The budget could be balanced. Peace and prosperity could be restored to the land.  But it seems unlikely. Biden and Trump are the front runners. Neither has any interest in the problem — or even any awareness of it. And the whole Beltway, Wall Street, University, Media, Military Establishment benefits from the system as it is.” We recall, too, another long-time fraternity member, Dr. Ron Paul, being interviewed ago by Tucker Carlson on ‘X’: “America needs to go through rough and tumble times because the price always has to be paid,” Paul said. “You know we can’t walk away from the debt. How do you liquidate it?” Dr. Paul’s response to his own question: “You print money, and every time you print money, the value of the dollar goes down. So the value of the debt goes down. If you double the money supply and prices go up by 50%. That’s inflation. But if you do that, the real debt, it goes down. So, it’s a theft, it’s a tax. It’s evil.” The government has no choice but to inflate its way out of debt. And “that’s what will happen,” Paul told Tucker. “Really, the most important thing you can do is study and understand what’s going on.” And “own gold.” So it goes, Addison Wiggin, The Wiggin Sessions P.S. “Very wealthy people don’t have to worry about the cost of a loaf of bread,” Paul concluded. “They do, however, have to worry about the ‘big system.’ Because when the big system goes on, there’s not many people who are going to escape it.” On June 10th, 1963, not long after Eisenhower’s farewell address, his successor, John F. Kennedy — RFK Jr.’s uncle — gave a commencement address at the American University in D.C. The speech outlined a vision of peace – non-aggression, personal responsibility, and individual liberty – all ideas anathema to the “big system” Dr. Paul refers to. That speech, Paul suggests, sealed JFK’s fate. He was assassinated 165 days later in Dallas. Dr. Paul, in the interview with Carlson, refers to the event as “a coup.” “At the end of the day,” Paul says, “the Republic is gone.” The “big system” – [Empire of Debt]( – remains. (You can pre-order[Empire of Debt: We Came, We Saw, We Borrowed]( now available for pre-order at[Amazon]( and[Barnes & Noble]( or if you prefer one of these sites: [Bookshop.org]( or [Target]( Please send your comments, reactions, opprobrium, vitriol and praise to: addison@greyswanfraternity.com. The Daily Missive from The Wiggin Sessions is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. We do not rent or share your email address. By submitting your email address, you consent to The Wiggn Sessions delivering daily email issues and advertisements. 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