<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />No Balloons. No Chips
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> You might have been planning on green balloons for your St. Patrick&rsquo;s Day festivities. 
Here&rsquo;s some bad news: The same geopolitical shock that&rsquo;s reshaping global energy markets may make all balloons an endangered species in 2026. And that&rsquo;s genuinely the least important part of this story.
Here to add context to our reporting last week, Paradigm&rsquo;s Matt Badiali has been tracking natural resources through booms, busts and geopolitical shocks for decades.
This week, he&rsquo;s sounding the alarm on helium.
It all goes back to events in Qatar on March 2. That&rsquo;s when Iranian drones struck the Ras Laffan Industrial City complex &mdash; one of the world&rsquo;s largest LNG and helium production hubs.
QatarEnergy declared force majeure on its existing helium supply contracts on March 4, legally freeing it from delivery obligations to customers worldwide.
At the time of writing, no restart is planned, and the facility has been offline for nearly two weeks, removing roughly 30% of global helium supply from the market in a single stroke.
Most people hear &ldquo;helium shortage&rdquo; and think party supplies. Matt wants you to think semiconductors.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Helium is vital for making computer chips because it lets factories run their machines extremely hot, clean and precisely without messing up the tiny circuits,&rdquo; Matt explains.
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a noble gas, so it doesn&rsquo;t react with the materials used to build chips. That helps keep the environment inside the machines very pure.&rdquo;
It also does something less obvious: &ldquo;It carries heat away really well, so it cools wafers evenly during intense processes, preventing them from cracking or warping.
&ldquo;It helps stabilize the plasmas used to carve out the microscopic patterns on chips and is used to check for leaks in the vacuum systems, since its small atoms are easy to detect.&rdquo;
Chipmakers now consume 20% of the world's helium supply &mdash; eclipsing MRI cooling as the primary industrial use.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSM), which controls over 50% of the global chipmaking market, is the single largest consumer.
And unlike most industrial inputs, there is no substitute. &ldquo;Like copper in electric motors,&rdquo; Matt says, &ldquo;there isn&rsquo;t any substitute for helium in that role.&rdquo;
The consequences of losing it aren&rsquo;t just expensive; it&rsquo;s a terminal risk. &ldquo;Without enough helium, you can't make the chips at all.
&ldquo;It's like water in bread making. The cost of the water is nothing compared to the price of the bread&hellip; but you can&rsquo;t make bread at all without the water.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The nation with the most to lose right now is South Korea. According to data from the Korea International Trade Association, Qatar supplied 64.7% of South Korea&rsquo;s helium imports in 2025.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3capq4DQOOjZhUI1hXaWL7/e9b1f7ceb0f587d746572ff76ec89441/FMF-Issue-031726_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" /> Hmm&hellip; Rain in the forecast for the <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/trump-seeking-escorts#3">&ldquo;Woodstock of AI&rdquo;?</a>
Samsung and SK Hynix together account for about 18% of global semiconductor output. SK Hynix has said it diversified supplies and secured sufficient inventory &mdash; but the clock is ticking.
Helium consultant Phil Kornbluth warned at a Gasworld webinar that if the outage extends beyond two weeks, industrial gas distributors could be forced to relocate cryogenic equipment and revalidate supplier relationships &mdash; a process that could stretch over months.
If the damage to Ras Laffan is severe, recovery could take far longer. &ldquo;The current shutdown in Qatar could significantly reduce global chip manufacturing if plants can&rsquo;t get enough helium,&rdquo; Matt says. &ldquo;A shortage of AI chips will dramatically increase prices.&rdquo;
For traders paying attention, the VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH) &mdash; which holds most of these companies &mdash; is already well off its February highs. Matt sees a potential short opportunity in either SMH or TSM if the situation deteriorates further.
A war in the Middle East. A drone strike on a gas complex. No balloons. And maybe no chips.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;There&rsquo;s no sugarcoating it &mdash; geopolitical tensions are creating some real [macro] headwinds right now,&rdquo; says Paradigm&rsquo;s wealth-and-income authority Zach Scheidt.
&ldquo;Right now, it seems that traditional, heavy-industry names are taking the brunt of the damage,&rdquo; he notes, &ldquo;with the Dow suffering consecutive drops as the [Mideast] conflict intensifies and capital derisks.
&ldquo;But while the Dow takes on water and the headlines scream panic, a much more resilient story is playing out in the tech sector.
&ldquo;Despite the intense geopolitical pressure, traders have been stepping in (albeit timidly) to buy the dips here and there on tech names that have been heavily pressured.
&ldquo;Even on down days,the Nasdaq has fought its way back to close well off its lows, showing a clear unwillingness from buyers to completely capitulate.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;The most encouraging sign of relative strength this week has been in software,&rdquo; Zach says.
&ldquo;Recently, the sector suffered an aggressive, overblown sell-off driven by a flawed narrative: the idea that AI would somehow allow every company to easily write their own software from scratch.
&ldquo;The current market environment is proving that thesis wrong. Established, bulletproof software platforms aren&rsquo;t going anywhere,&rdquo; he adds.
&ldquo;Amidst the surging oil prices and Dow weakness, the software sector has held up decently well.
&ldquo;After intense selling, it feels like these stocks have successfully carved out a hard floor of support, dismissing the AI fears and signaling that the previous wave of selling has largely exhausted itself.&rdquo;
Zach&rsquo;s takeaway: &ldquo;We&rsquo;re in the middle of a massive stress test; some sectors are feeling the squeeze. But if you look past the surface-level panic, the price action is actually telling a pretty interesting story.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Turning to the markets today, the iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF (IGV) &mdash; a benchmark for software stocks &mdash; is up 1.50%. 
That might not seem like much, but in early February, IGV was down more than 20% YTD. The sector seems to be steadily climbing its way out of bear market territory.
The three major U.S. indexes are all seeing green on this St. Patrick&rsquo;s Day. The Dow, Nasdaq and S&amp;P 500 are all up about 0.50% to 47,180, 22,430 and 6,730 respectively.
As for commodities, crude is up over 1%, priced at $94.50 for a barrel of WTI. It&rsquo;s a mixed bag, however, for precious metals. Gold&rsquo;s up 0.25% to $5,015.50 per ounce; at the same time, silver&rsquo;s down 0.55% to $80.25.
The crypto market? Bitcoin&rsquo;s up 0.35% to $74,310, and Ethereum&rsquo;s barely hanging onto green at $2,330.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Rickards: Pre-FOMC Prediction
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The Federal Reserve meets this week, and our macro expert Jim Rickards says the decision itself is almost pre-written. &ldquo;The expected outcome for the Fed meeting on March 18 will be no change in the Fed&rsquo;s target rate,&rdquo; he says.
Accordingly, rates will likely stay parked at 3.75%, where they&rsquo;ve been since December 2025.
The Fed&rsquo;s broader dilemma is familiar by now. Inflation has cooled but remains above the central bank&rsquo;s 2% target &mdash; while the labor market is starting to weaken.
The latest employment report shows the U.S. lost 92,000 jobs in February, pushing the unemployment rate up to 4.4%. That was a surprise for economists, who expected modest job gains instead.
Ordinarily, a weakening labor market would push the Fed toward cutting rates. But a geopolitical shock has complicated the picture.
When the U.S.-Israel war with Iran sent oil markets into chaos, prices briefly surged from $65 to $120 per barrel before settling lower &mdash; but still far above prewar levels. Gasoline has followed the same path.
&ldquo;Higher energy prices increase the price of almost everything, not just gas at the pump,&rdquo; Jim notes. That inflation risk is enough to keep the Fed on hold for now.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The real drama isn&rsquo;t the interest-rate decision. It&rsquo;s Jerome Powell&rsquo;s final stretch as Fed chair, unfolding against a backdrop of war, politics and a brewing economic slowdown.
Powell&rsquo;s term as Fed chair expires in May, and President Trump has already nominated former Fed governor Kevin Warsh to replace him.
At the same time, the White House is publicly pressuring Powell to cut rates immediately &mdash; something he has resisted.
Jim sees the Fed&rsquo;s decision this week as part economic judgment, part institutional showdown. &ldquo;Powell will have good reason to hold rates steady&hellip; but he will have the added satisfaction of poking a stick in Donald Trump&rsquo;s eye.&rdquo;
For now, the Fed chair still holds the gavel, in a matter of speaking. &ldquo;Powell will have won the feud, but the economy will have lost the war,&rdquo; Jim concludes.
We&rsquo;ll know more when Powell takes questions after Wednesday&rsquo;s announcement &mdash; and we&rsquo;ll break down the fallout for you afterward.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Tech Turning Point 2026
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Peter Steinberger spent 13 years building PDF tools in Austria. Then, in November 2025, he sat down and built a prototype in roughly one hour. 
&ldquo;He wasn&rsquo;t trying to change the world. He was just annoyed that something didn&rsquo;t exist &mdash; so he &lsquo;vibe coded&rsquo; it into existence.
&ldquo;That one-hour experiment became OpenClaw &mdash; the fastest-growing repository in GitHub history, with over 175,000 stars,&rdquo; says Paradigm editor, and James Altucher&rsquo;s close colleague, Chris Campbell.
GitHub is the world&rsquo;s largest platform where developers share code &mdash; think of it as a public library for software. Linux, the operating system powering most of the world&rsquo;s servers, &ldquo;took 30 years to reach similar milestones,&rdquo; Chris says. &ldquo;OpenClaw did it in three weeks.&rdquo;
So what actually is OpenClaw? While every AI assistant you&rsquo;ve ever used &mdash; ChatGPT, Siri, Alexa &mdash; is reactive, OpenClaw is different. Chris describes it as an &ldquo;autonomous agent.&rdquo;
You connect it to messaging apps (for instance, WhatsApp or Telegram). &ldquo;Give it access to your computer, your files, your email, your calendar. And then it just... runs.&rdquo;
According to Chris: &ldquo;It feels less like using software and more like texting a very capable friend who happens to have root access to your computer.&rdquo;
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang framed the bigger picture from the GTC stage yesterday: &ldquo;The last prompt was what is, when is, who is. This new prompt goes create, do, build, write.&rdquo;
Chris&rsquo; verdict: &ldquo;AI went from answering questions to taking actions. That&rsquo;s the whole ballgame.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Here's the investment angle &mdash; and it&rsquo;s enormous,&rdquo; Chris continues.
&ldquo;A normal AI conversation uses a modest amount of computing power,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;[But] continuous OpenClaw agents running in the background may consume up to 1 million times more [units of work].
&ldquo;This is why Nvidia is celebrating a software project it didn&rsquo;t build.
&ldquo;Every OpenClaw agent [is] another reason to buy more chips. More agents = more compute = more Blackwell GPUs = more revenue.&rdquo;
Chris underscores: &ldquo;The hardware thesis just got a second wind.&rdquo;
But there&rsquo;s a caveat: &ldquo;For agents to truly work &mdash; to help manage your inbox, run your experiments, coordinate your team, operate your business &mdash; they need to remember.
&ldquo;Persistently. Across sessions. Across tasks. Across time.
&ldquo;Right now, the entire agentic AI industry is built on a foundation that doesn&rsquo;t (yet) have this solved.
&ldquo;Whoever cracks it first doesn&rsquo;t just win a product category,&rdquo; Chris summarizes. &ldquo;They become the connective tissue of every agentic deployment on Earth.&rdquo;
[That&rsquo;s the conversation James and Chris will be having at exactly 2:00 pm EST TODAY, live at GTC 2026 in San Jose, California.
Beyond that, James and his team have an incredible lineup covering all things related to AI, robotics and so much more.
<a id="5"></a>
If you&rsquo;re serious about understanding where technology is heading &mdash; and where the real money gets made &mdash; you need to be in the room.
<a href="https://paradigmpresslive.com/TechTurningPoint2026">Here&rsquo;s your access to this FREE event: Tech Turning Point 2026.]</a>
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Farewell, for Now
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> After nearly nine years, this is my last regular issue of 5 Bullets &mdash; and I find myself struggling to find words to mark the occasion.
This chapter began with a leap of faith &mdash; Dave Gonigam&rsquo;s leap of faith, really. He took a chance on someone who had spent almost 13 years away from the workforce raising children. That was not a small thing. It was a risk, and he took it anyway. Everything that followed flows from that one act of generosity.
Dave has been a mentor, a teacher, a sounding board and a friend. I came to work for him as a complete novice. What I leave with &mdash; the instincts, the love of the work &mdash; I owe in no small part to him.
I also want to shine a light on the people you never see but without whom none of this would exist: copy editor Erik, marketer Colleen and the email team &mdash; Tyler, Heather and Oscar &mdash; who keep the whole machine humming, issue after issue. This newsletter has always been a group effort. I just happen to have a byline.
I&rsquo;ve been incredibly fortunate &mdash; in my husband, my family, my friends. Yes, I count Dave and the Paradigm team among them, without hesitation.
As for what&rsquo;s next, I&rsquo;m not going far. I&rsquo;ll still serve as contributing editor at our 5 Bullets highlight issue every Saturday. Plus, I&rsquo;ll be deepening my craft on Jim Rickards&rsquo; team, a new role I&rsquo;m genuinely excited to grow into.
And then there&rsquo;s you, reader. Some of you I know by first name from the mailbag. A few of you I&rsquo;ve had the rare pleasure to meet in person. You have made this work feel like a conversation rather than a broadcast.
Thank you. For your time, your trust and your loyalty. It has meant everything.

FMF-Issue-031726(Featured)

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Paradigm Pressroom’s 5 Bullets is a daily e-letter covering the economy and the markets, reaching 120,000 paying subscribers of the renowned financial publishing firm Paradigm Press.

Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

One Noble Gas, No Substitute 

FMF-Issue-031626(Featured)

Trump Seeking Escorts

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Mortgage Rates, the War and Inflation
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> If you&rsquo;re in the market to buy a home, your shot at a sub-6% mortgage has come and gone &mdash; thanks to the Iran war.
Freddie Mac issued its weekly read on mortgage rates yesterday: The average 30-year fixed is back up to 6.11%.
For a brief moment late last month, the average rate dipped under 6% for the first time since September 2022. Then Tel Aviv and Washington launched their war on Iran and it&rsquo;s all over now.
Mortgage rates are highly correlated to the rate on 10-year Treasury notes. For much of February, the rate on a 10-year T-note was moving down, down, down. It looked as if we were headed for a sustained period under 4% &mdash; something we hadn&rsquo;t experienced since the late summer and early fall of 2024.
Then came the war. And rising oil prices. And fears of rising inflation. Rising inflation pushes long-term interest rates higher because bond investors want to be compensated for holding a fixed-income asset while inflation is rising.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5K7yBhr7HHr3GbLAxIl5Ym/de4add5d83de159982298aa75d194cbe/3.13_5Bullets_Chart.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Checking our screens, the 10-year rate is 4.28%. As mentioned here a few days ago, if it breaks over 4.3%... it could be the start of a sustained uptrend.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Even going into the war, inflation was on the rise.
The Commerce Department came out this morning with &ldquo;core PCE&rdquo; &mdash; the Federal Reserve&rsquo;s preferred measure of inflation.
It&rsquo;s the January number, delayed by the partial government shutdown. And it clocks in at 3.1% &mdash; the highest since March of 2024. The number&rsquo;s been moving steadily higher since last spring.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7zUSAldpX61bTwzG5Wpu0g/89f49f1f29cf0ff89e2b25857246cdd2/5Bullets_inflation.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
And with that, any hopes that the Federal Reserve will cut short-term interest rates is out the window. Looking at the action in the futures market this morning, traders are betting the first cut won&rsquo;t come for another six months &mdash; and even then you&rsquo;re looking at only a 50-50 chance.
Take another look at that chart and the sub-2% inflation going into the pandemic. &ldquo;This is not the 2010&ndash;2020 period,&rdquo; Bianco Research chief Jim Bianco tells the MacroVoices podcast.
&ldquo;And if we have enough inflation now because of the rise in crude oil we&rsquo;re seeing, because of the rise in gasoline that we&rsquo;re seeing now, to keep the inflation rate above 3%, the Fed is just off the table. They just cannot step in and start cutting rates under that environment.&rdquo;
That&rsquo;s even if the economy starts to wobble by conventional measures.
➢ And on that score, the Commerce Department is also out this morning with a revised reading of fourth-quarter GDP. The previous guess of an annualized 1.4% growth rate has been slashed in half to 0.7%.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Even without the war, inflation was already baked into the cake for the rest of this decade.
It comes back to <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/declare-your-independence-from-inflation">the research we&rsquo;ve been citing for nearly three years now</a>: Once inflation sails past 5% &mdash; as it did in 2022 thanks to all the pandemic money-printing &mdash; it takes an average of 10 years to get back to &ldquo;normal&rdquo; 2% inflation.
That means the winning asset classes for the rest of the 2020s will be very much like the ones of the inflationary 1970s &mdash; precious metals, base metals, energy. Commodities. Natural resources. Tangible stuff.
<a id="2"></a>
Even with gold up over 60% in the last 12 months, it&rsquo;s not too late.
Oh &mdash; did we just say &ldquo;pandemic&rdquo; a few moments ago?
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />COVID = Iran War?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> It was six years ago today &mdash; also a Friday the 13th &mdash; that President Trump declared a national emergency. 
The journalist and famed COVID dissident Alex Berenson sees ominous parallels between lockdown then and the Iran war now.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3QOns4obfiAiYiR1jIo3J5/fc69558172a1506d1191796fa7540dff/FMF-Issue-031326_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Chilling when you consider <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/covid-9-11#2">the hell that was unleashed the following Monday</a> in 2020.
What might transpire between now and this Monday, while markets are closed?
In the last week, there&rsquo;s been growing chatter in the Beltway about sending in ground troops to seize Iran&rsquo;s big oil terminal at Kharg Island.
Located about 15 miles off the Iranian mainland in the northern Persian Gulf, Kharg processes about 90% of Iran&rsquo;s crude exports. It&rsquo;s a safe bet the leaders in Tehran view Kharg as existential.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> An attack on Kharg all but guarantees Tehran will aim to retaliate by destroying as much oil infrastructure as it can in the Gulf sheikdoms.
For the moment, the problem with global oil flows is that oil is stranded by Iran&rsquo;s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
That&rsquo;s a somewhat solvable problem should the war wind down soon. It would take time to restart terminals that are currently filled to capacity &mdash; you don&rsquo;t just flip a switch &mdash; but the system can normalize over time.
On the other hand, if oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE gets blown to bits by Iranian missiles? Forget it.
Maybe that&rsquo;s what a spokesman for Iran&rsquo;s Revolutionary Guard Corps had in mind this week when he said, &ldquo;If you can tolerate oil at more than $200 per barrel &mdash; continue this game.&rdquo;
In the meantime, crude has pulled back a bit from this time 24 hours ago &mdash; a barrel of West Texas Intermediate a shade under $96. We&rsquo;re still on track for the highest weekly close since the summer of 2022.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The major U.S. stock indexes have found a floor for the moment after yesterday&rsquo;s sharp sell-off.
At last check the S&amp;P 500 is down about a third of a percent to 6,651 &mdash; a level last seen during Thanksgiving week. The Nasdaq is down about two-thirds of a percent but the Dow is slightly in the green.
Gold is slightly in the red but still comfortably over $5,000. Silver, however has been knocked down three bucks to $80.77
Bitcoin staged a huge rally starting last night&hellip; and gave back half of it in a matter of moments at midmorning. After nearly bursting past the $74,000 level it&rsquo;s back under $72K. Ethereum, for the moment, is still over $2,100.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />War Follow-Ups
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The warnings we&rsquo;ve aired in the last week about a U.S. shortage of missiles &mdash; from our own Jim Rickards and from outside experts like retired Army combat officer Daniel Davis &mdash; is breaking into the mainstream.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/58d7LN0CZkktjFGyuNjqwR/cb68dd622ef4b1aa32293ac3bf92143e/FMF-Issue-031326_4_.png" alt="pub" width="484px" />
The Financial Times is zeroing in on Tomahawk missiles &mdash; a &ldquo;massive expenditure&rdquo; of them, according to one anonymous source. &ldquo;The Navy will be feeling this expenditure for several years.&rdquo;
The Pentagon will likely go to Congress in the coming days to ask for another $50 billion to wage the war.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Depending on how you do the counting, the Pentagon has already burned through nearly 40% of that total.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/sb5T19FHj8OdSzwWWf7eX/595df16750158707ce14a2d9d2c1e4b7/FMF-Issue-031326_5_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
<a href="https://iran-cost-ticker.com/">The Iran War Cost Tracker</a> has revised its methodology &mdash; and upped its estimate of the war&rsquo;s cost to date accordingly.
Pentagon officials told Congress this week that the first six days of the war cost $11.3 billion. Add to that the previously reported estimate of $1 billion a day, and we&rsquo;re pushing $19 billion at midday today.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The mainstream is also catching up to our warnings days ago about the ongoing deindustrialization of Germany.
&ldquo;Surging Energy Costs Put German Industry &lsquo;Really in Danger,&rdquo; says The New York Times.
Gee, you don&rsquo;t say? We were saying the same thing <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/go-ask-germany">last week</a>. Actually we&rsquo;ve been tracking the slow-motion decline ever since German leaders engaged in an epic moment of virtue-signaling in 2022, deciding to wean their people off Russian natural gas.
Of course, they wouldn&rsquo;t have been so dependent on Russian natural gas if German leaders hadn&rsquo;t decided a decade earlier to shutter all their nuclear power.
Now Germany is resorting to dirty old coal to keep the lights on and the factories humming &mdash; and it&rsquo;s barely enough.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Lordy, do we need some comic relief as the week winds down. Although, really, this is too easy&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6RL1A05XckJ9UXlUnPcurI/9ae8b7bbba914b8fa24f4d81929379e8/FMF-Issue-031326_6_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Heck, let&rsquo;s do a double dose&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/52GQgpHzImtrpVwLqZyU9J/27b62bdb90afb5b0a4095e707b9dc250/FMF-Issue-031326_7_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: &ldquo;Degrading the Country&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/drill-baby-drill-california-edition">Yesterday&rsquo;s edition</a> prompted the following reader complaint&hellip;
&ldquo;Hey Dave, if you have so much angst for the country that lets you run off at the mouth and degrade it, why don't you go back to Ireland with Rosie O.? The negativity is getting a little old.&rdquo;
Dave responds:In the first place, I&rsquo;m primarily of German extraction. As far as I know, nothing traces to Ireland. You&rsquo;ll have to find another revolting celebrity with whom to tar me by association.
In the second place &mdash; <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/9-11-the-financial-crisis-and-covid">and as I showed last year</a> &mdash; any &ldquo;negativity&rdquo; on my part stems from an idealism rooted in this country&rsquo;s founding values.
And on the subject of those values&hellip; the &ldquo;country&rdquo; doesn&rsquo;t &ldquo;let&rdquo; anyone speak up. Nor does the Constitution grant that right, as many people mistakenly believe. The Constitution recognizes we already possess that right simply by virtue of being human.
Judge Andrew Napolitano clarified in a column last fall. When helping draft the Bill of Rights, James Madison &ldquo;insisted that the word &lsquo;the&rsquo; precede the phrase &lsquo;freedom of speech&rsquo; in what was to become the First Amendment, so as to reflect the views of the Framers that the freedom of speech preexisted the government. Madison believed that pre-political rights, which he enumerated in the Bill of Rights, are natural to our humanity.&rdquo;
So as long as Paradigm Press is kind enough to furnish a platform where I can &ldquo;run off at the mouth,&rdquo; I will use it from time to time to say a provocative thing or two about war and peace &mdash; mindful of the Founders&rsquo; wisdom on those topics&hellip;
<blockquote>The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible&hellip;</blockquote>
<blockquote>A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification.</blockquote>
&mdash; George Washington&rsquo;s farewell address, 1796
<blockquote>&hellip; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none&hellip;</blockquote>
&mdash; Thomas Jefferson&rsquo;s first inaugural, 1801
<blockquote>Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few&hellip; No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.</blockquote>
&mdash; James Madison, Political Observations, 1795
Our politicians <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/a-totalitarian-bureaucracy-within-our-shores">lost sight of these values</a> after World War II was won. We&rsquo;ve lived in a state of permanent mobilization for war since the advent of the Truman Doctrine in 1947.
The military-industrial complex has been &ldquo;eating out our substance&rdquo; &mdash; to borrow from Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence &mdash; ever since.
Armies, debts and taxes indeed.
And with the present war underway, former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) recognizes where it&rsquo;s all going&hellip;
<blockquote>The costs of this war will put added pressure on the Federal Reserve to&hellip; increase its purchase of Treasury bonds in order to monetize the federal debt. The pressure on the Fed will also increase as other countries reduce their purchase of U.S. debt. These reductions will be motivated by concerns over the economic instability caused by the U.S. government&rsquo;s out-of-control spending and by resentment over the U.S. government&rsquo;s hyperinterventionist foreign policy. These factors could also accelerate the increasing rejection of the dollar&rsquo;s world reserve currency status. A loss of the reserve currency status will cause a dollar crisis, leading to an economic crash worse than the Great Depression.</blockquote>
<blockquote>This crash will likely result in the end of the welfare-warfare-fiat money system. Whether this system is replaced by an even more authoritarian one or by a system of limited government and much more freedom depends on whether those of us who know the truth do our best to spread the message that the key to peace and prosperity is a system of free markets, limited government, individual liberty and peaceful relations and free trade with all nations.</blockquote>
If espousing these values amounts to &ldquo;degrading the country,&rdquo; sir, so be it.

FMF-Issue-031326(Featured)

COVID = Iran War?

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />When AI Does Your Grunt Work
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> We spilled some digital ink both yesterday and the day before about &ldquo;agentic AI.&rdquo; But it might still be too abstract, too airy-fairy, to wrap your mind around.
Let&rsquo;s remedy that today &mdash; with the help of pre-2026 AI.
I plugged the following inquiry into the Perplexity AI engine: &ldquo;Please furnish a vivid and recent example of agentic AI that would resonate for a &lsquo;normie&rsquo; whose only familiarity with AI is LLM chatbots.&rdquo;
Perplexity spat out a scenario in which you&rsquo;re flying home from a work trip &mdash; only to see your flight cancelled. Before you even open the airline app or start schlepping toward a help desk, an AI agent does the following&hellip;
<ul>
<li>Notices the cancellation in your email/airline app</li>
<li>Checks your calendar to see you have an important meeting tomorrow morning</li>
<li>Searches all possible rebooking options: earlier flights, nearby airports, even train options plus Uber to get home on time</li>
<li>Looks up your preferences it already learned (&ldquo;won&rsquo;t do red-eyes,&rdquo; &ldquo;OK with a layover if it gets home earlier&rdquo;)</li>
<li>Decides the best plan: Rebook you on a different airline tonight from a nearby airport, books a rideshare to that airport and finds a hotel near your destination in case of further delay.</li>
</ul>
Then it actually books the flight for you &mdash; using your credit card on file and applying your frequent-flyer miles. Oh, and it cancels your previous hotel booking and notifies your colleagues on Slack or Teams that while your original flight was cancelled, you&rsquo;ll still make that important meeting.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Plugging the same query into Elon Musk&rsquo;s Grok engine, I got the following: 
<blockquote>You open your laptop, fire up the Claude desktop app (Anthropic&rsquo;s tool) and type one casual sentence:</blockquote>
<blockquote>&ldquo;Hey Cowork, my Downloads folder is a total disaster&mdash;sort everything into folders by file type and date, pull out any receipts or invoices and make a clean spreadsheet summary of what&rsquo;s there with totals if it&rsquo;s money stuff. Oh, and flag anything that looks like a bill I haven&rsquo;t paid.&rdquo;</blockquote>
<blockquote>Then you walk away to grab coffee.</blockquote>
Cowork then scans every file, drags and drops them, identifies PDFs that look like invoices and builds an Excel spreadsheet detailing them. Once you&rsquo;re done swilling your coffee after 15 minutes or so, it&rsquo;s all done for you &mdash; even flagging three unpaid bills.
Sorta funny that Grok is doing free advertising for a competitor, but whatevs&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> OK now does the potential of agentic AI seem more real?
And it&rsquo;s come to the fore only in the last several weeks with the advent of an AI agent called OpenClaw.
Little wonder that AI agents were all the talk this week at Nvidia&rsquo;s annual GTC gathering in San Jose.
It was a must-see event for Paradigm AI authority James Altucher and his team &mdash; on site in California. Yesterday, fresh from the event, they took part in our Tech Turning Point 2026 online forum.
There, James explained how pre-2026 AI was simply an &ldquo;ask-answer&rdquo; proposition. AI agents differ in two huge ways: &ldquo;An AI agent is working around the clock &mdash; and it&rsquo;s taking action.&rdquo;
&ldquo;Ask-answer uses only a certain amuont of AI &mdash; a certain amount of bandwidth and computational power. But when you&rsquo;re continuously doing something and taking action you need 10,000 times more computational power.
&ldquo;The computational power required, and the companies that are delivering that power, are really important.&rdquo; Nvidia, yes, but at the same time, &ldquo;people don&rsquo;t realize there are 80 suppliers of the components in every GPU [chip],&rdquo; James says. And that&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;m really interested in.&rdquo;
AI agents were only one topic on the agenda for our Tech Turning Point 2026 event yesterday. Our experts covered the gamut from robots to outer space.
And no, there was no attached sales pitch. Just two hours and 35 minutes of insights and actionable guidance &mdash; our way of saying thanks to you for being a Paradigm Press customer. <a href="https://paradigmpresslive.com/TechTurningPoint2026">Click here to start watching</a>.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Is Oil $95&hellip; Or $150?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Has anyone suggested the price of oil is being manipulated in the futures markets?&rdquo; a reader writes.
&ldquo;The price as I write is just above $95. To me, this seems so faraway from pricing in the current and future uncertainty in the gulf.&rdquo;
Short answer: Yes. The Financial Times says only yesterday, the price of crude coming out of Oman soared to a record $150 a barrel. Never mind that those barrels depart from ports that lie outside the Strait of Hormuz!
Chalk it up to &ldquo;intense competition for the small volumes still leaving the Middle East,&rdquo; says the paper.
Among those who agree with the reader&rsquo;s thesis is the Portuguese author and one-time diplomat Bruno Macaes&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6Yu85gYXqxEoLCtJON0w2Q/4d9474a6f9dd3cf84b7c582867b19097/FMF-Issue-031826_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Checking our screens &mdash; for whatever it&rsquo;s worth &mdash; a barrel of West Texas Intermediate is up 2.4% to $98.93.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />But for nearly every other asset class, it&rsquo;s a sea of red today.
The S&amp;P 500 is down nearly two-thirds of a percent to 6,674 &mdash; giving up about half of its gains the last two days. The Nasdaq is down just over a half percent, the Dow down about 1%.
But for a real drubbing, look to the precious metals &mdash; gold down 2.8% to $4,863 and silver down 3.4% to $76.45, a one-month low.
Crypto&rsquo;s been caught up in the selling too. Bitcoin sits at $71,386 &mdash; the move over $73,000 couldn&rsquo;t stick. Ethereum has pulled back under $2,200.
The big economic number of the day is wholesale prices &mdash; up 0.7% between January and February. Literally no one among dozens of economists polled by Econoday expected an increase of over 0.3%.
No doubt that will feed into consumer inflation next month &mdash; on top of whatever&rsquo;s more costly because of the war.
As such, there&rsquo;s almost zero chance the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates today. The Fed&rsquo;s decision will be rendered by the time you read this; we&rsquo;ll follow up tomorrow.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Supply-Chain Snags, Iran War Edition
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> As for the war&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2FxG0NSae0dBk2eAUUDHYn/1ccbb73074a236e7965ff1d76771fa20/FMF-Issue-031826_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
No, the Strait of Hormuz is not open. Tehran still has full control over who may pass.
Meanwhile, Israeli airstrikes are now targeting Iran&rsquo;s vast South Pars natural gas field. As such, Tehran says it&rsquo;s within its rights to carry out airstrikes on energy infrastructure in the Gulf sheikdoms.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The longer Hormuz remains closed, the more likely we face COVID-level disruptions to the supply chain.
Certainly that&rsquo;s already the case in large swaths of Asia. Diesel shortages in Thailand. Steel production interrupted in India, for want of natural gas. Today and every Wednesday declared a public holiday in Sri Lanka, just so people won&rsquo;t burn fuel going to work.
Speaking of India, look at the threat to its fertilizer supply coming from the gulf&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5ucwN7tlxXdF2aKsmKPqJ9/838b29567fd3e98049474dfa48d7705a/FMF-Issue-031826_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
North America is not immune: We&rsquo;re hearing murmurs from the Farm Belt about how fertilizer is now so costly that many corn farmers might opt to plant soybeans this year instead &mdash; because bean plants more or less make their own fertilizer.
Reminder: Among many other uses, corn is what makes the ethanol that goes into your gas tank.
As for the view from the White House&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1H7w4oTEQ6POnrRSccugp1/5bc21d1b4f25b99067c49e8f27cb7583/FMF-Issue-031826_4_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
To be fair, White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said the reason it&rsquo;s &ldquo;the last of our concerns&rdquo; is that &ldquo;we are very confident that this thing is going ahead of schedule.&rdquo;
If that makes you feel any better&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Tariff Fallout: Costco Customer Sues
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> This tariff refund thing is getting complicated.
As you probably know, the Supreme Court struck down the legal justification the Trump administration was using for much of its tariff regime &mdash; while dodging the question of whether companies that paid the tariffs were now entitled to refunds.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of companies are now appealing to the U.S. Court of International Trade for refunds &mdash; including Costco Wholesale (COST).
Here&rsquo;s the plot twist: A Costco customer is suing the company, demanding that shoppers get a cut of any refunds the company collects. The suit filed by Matthew Sockov says it would amount to &ldquo;unjust enrichment&rdquo; if Costco recouped its tariff costs twice &mdash; &ldquo;from customers through elevated pricing and from the government.&rdquo;
"The truly injured parties possess no direct avenue for redress," says the suit filed in federal court in Illinois. Sockov is asking the court to declare his case a class action.
The BBC asked Costco for comment &mdash; but none was forthcoming.
Perhaps that&rsquo;s because the company thinks even addressing the issue is putting the proverbial cart before the horse. On an earnings call this month, CEO Ron Vachris said it&rsquo;s still fuzzy &ldquo;what refunds, if any, will be received.&rdquo;
Stay tuned&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Escorts, Swan Song
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The subject line of <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/trump-seeking-escorts">Monday&rsquo;s edition</a> elicited a couple of reader remarks, including this one&hellip;
&ldquo;Given the president's well-documented personal habits, maybe not the best wording for the 5 Bullets headline...?&nbsp;
[It was done very deliberately and you know that&hellip;]
&ldquo;I found myself thinking, OMG, it's not bad enough that he's started a war in the Middle East, but now he's after a Desert Stormy...&rdquo;
[RIM SHOT &ldquo;I&rsquo;m here all week, make sure to try the veal&hellip;&rdquo;]
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Thank you, Emily, God bless you on your next endeavor,&rdquo; says one of many replies after <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/one-noble-gas-no-substitute/#5">Emily&rsquo;s swan song</a> yesterday on the weekday 5 Bullets.
&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t believe it&rsquo;s been nine years!&rdquo; says another. &ldquo;I am a FAITHFUL reader and appreciate all of your work over the years.&rdquo;
&ldquo;Thank you to Emily Clancy for years of well-written and insightful bullets,&rdquo; adds a third. &ldquo;I've absorbed a lot of ammunition and enjoyed every minute. P.S. This is my first feedback to your newsletter, and it seems fitting.
&ldquo;I don't usually respond to things at Paradigm (I'm a relatively new member),&rdquo; says one more, &ldquo;but I wanted to tell you that I have always enjoyed your 5 Bullets. Best of luck on your future role.&rdquo;
As Emily mentioned here yesterday, she&rsquo;s not going far &mdash; taking on a new role within our Jim Rickards unit. And you&rsquo;ll still hear from her in our Saturday wrap-up edition.
As for my own sendoff, I&rsquo;ll save that for the end of the week on Friday. In the meantime, catch you tomorrow&hellip;

FMF-Issue-031826(Featured)

When AI Does Your Grunt Work

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Drill, Baby, Drill (California Edition)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Amid the flurry of oil-and-war headlines yesterday, the story got lost in the shuffle.
&ldquo;President Donald Trump is preparing to invoke Cold War-era powers to pave the way for renewed oil production off the southern California coast,&rdquo; Bloomberg reported &mdash; &ldquo;a long-shot bid to help ease the global crude supply crunch spurred by his war with Iran.&rdquo;
The plan is to invoke the Defense Production Act of 1950 to quash California state law and clear the way for an outfit called Sable Offshore Corp. (SOC) to restart production at a cluster of platforms off Santa Barbara.
Those rigs have been effectively shut in since 2015 &mdash; when California regulators closed the pipelines necessary to bring the oil onshore.
The news sent shares of SOC roaring 34% higher at their peak yesterday. This morning, they&rsquo;re trading at a five-month high.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The Trump administration&rsquo;s approach here is right in line with other steps it&rsquo;s taken in the last 14 months &mdash; leveraging the authority of the federal government to secure minerals it sees as critical for the economy and the military.
Really, invoking the Defense Production Act to goose oil output is the next logical step. Last month brought the announcement of Project Vault &mdash; a $10 billion taxpayer-backed loan to start a critical-minerals stockpile for automakers, aerospace firms and energy producers.
And of course starting last year the federal government took equity stakes in several natural-resource companies &mdash; the rare-earth name MP Materials, the copper-zinc firm Trilogy Metals and the lithium miner Lithium Americas among others.
Members of the Paradigm Mastermind Group were positioned ahead of time when the feds announced they were taking a stake in USA Rare Earth (USAR).
It was a rare instance when Jim Rickards, James Altucher and Enrique Abeyta &mdash; three experts with vastly differing investment approaches &mdash; were in consensus on a single name. During our &ldquo;All-In&rdquo; Summit back on Aug. 7, they all sang the praises of USAR.
Result? Readers bagged a 180.1% gain in a little over two months. Jim, James and Enrique recommended selling half the position&hellip; and letting the rest ride, awaiting the next profit catalyst.
For the record, the three of them passed on Sable Offshore. Sable makes headlines every few months, but the price action is just too volatile. As Bloomberg&rsquo;s story puts it, &ldquo;The company&rsquo;s shares have seen sharp swings and multiple trading halts in the last year.&rdquo; Too risky.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Besides, our trio of experts is much more excited right now about an opportunity faraway from the natural resource sector. 
They&rsquo;re expecting an announcement from Nvidia next week that will mark a huge leap in &ldquo;aAI&rdquo; or autonomous AI &mdash; where AI meets robotics and automation.
The announcement comes Monday &mdash; only four days from now, when Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is set to name the tiny software company Nvidia is partnering with to make it all possible. Profit potential &mdash; an estimated 2,566%.
Paradigm Mastermind Group readers are already positioned ahead of this announcement. And it&rsquo;s not too late for you to join them. <a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2514046"> Click here to check out this updated presentation featuring Jim, James and Enrique right away.</a>
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />So Long, SPR, Been Nice Knowing You
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;The end of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as we know it,&rdquo; quips Paradigm&rsquo;s resident oil field geologist Byron King.
As mentioned here yesterday, the 32 member states of the International Energy Agency have agreed to release 400 million barrels of oil from their reserves.
Last night, the Trump administration announced the United States would kick in nearly half that total &mdash; 172 million barrels &mdash; from the government&rsquo;s Strategic Petroleum Reserve in the salt caverns of Texas and Louisiana.
If you&rsquo;re a longer-term reader, you might be wondering: Wait, didn&rsquo;t the Biden administration drain the SPR at some crazy-unprecedented rate? And has it been replenished?
The answers are &ldquo;yes&rdquo; and &ldquo;not much.&rdquo;
Here&rsquo;s a chart of the SPR&rsquo;s level going all the way back to when the government started filling it during Ronald Reagan&rsquo;s first term.
Many presidents have tinkered with the SPR to achieve political outcomes &mdash; but Joe Biden literally took it to a whole new level amid $5-a-gallon gasoline in 2022, with midterm elections looming.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4eKAE6Gbz2lC8ZilZ2lOnL/816cb421bfbe55cdd4bbdda88cf224dc/5Bullets_SPRchart_0312.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
The Biden administration started refiling the SPR in 2024 &mdash; veeerrry slowwwly &mdash; and the Trump administration carried on at that glacial pace last year.
At present the level is a little over 415 million barrels. Draining 172 million would bring the level down to where it is on the very left of that chart.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> At which point the damage to the SPR salt walls would be nearly beyond repair. 
Byron King explains how drawing crude from the SPR actually works: &ldquo;Imagine a big glass jar filled with oil. The glass represents the salt, in that it doesn&rsquo;t dissolve due to contact with oil.
&ldquo;But it gets complicated because to move the oil upward, the trick is to pump saltwater down to the bottom of the oil column. And then, because oil floats on water due to density differences, when it comes time to withdraw oil the pumps just lift the petroleum off the top.&rdquo;
Well, the &ldquo;Biden bleed&rdquo; had the effect of cracking the glass jar &mdash; or to be precise, damaging some of the salt walls. &ldquo;The walls thinned out and weakened, which required significant, expensive and technically challenging repairs.&rdquo;
The original idea behind the SPR in the 1970s was to store a massive quantity of oil, &ldquo;then pretty much draw down in a one-and-done event &mdash; an absolute submarines-sinking-tankers emergency,&rdquo; Byron says. It wasn&rsquo;t set up for something like this.
And the damage only gets worse with a further drawdown. &ldquo;As you get down to the lower &lsquo;half&rsquo; of the barrels, you get into sediment and crud that has settled out over the years. You&rsquo;re pulling out oil that&rsquo;s more viscous, with higher solids in it.&rdquo;
It can damage pumps. It flows through pipelines at a snail&rsquo;s pace. Refineries have a hard time processing it.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> And it doesn&rsquo;t even solve the immediate problem.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright says the release will take place over a four-month span. Which works out to about 1.4 million barrels a day.
For perspective, that&rsquo;s about 6.9% of the country&rsquo;s oil consumption &mdash; roughly 20.4 million barrels a day.
For further perspective, the fastest pace at which the Biden administration was able to drain the SPR was 1 million barrels a day &mdash; considerably less than Wright&rsquo;s promise.
And the coup de grace, according to a post on X from Geiger Capital: After this release, China will have a strategic oil reserve five times the size of America&rsquo;s.
No, China is not a member of the International Energy Agency. It is not one of the 32 countries taking part in this global coordinated release.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Oil Soaring Again
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> As for progress of the war&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/l5QWXbABJjfUhSJGOvS0A/22c506c1aa7f39f2f560358c2800e16b/FMF-Issue-031226_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Iran&rsquo;s new Supreme Leader &mdash; the son of the one killed by U.S.-Israeli airstrikes &mdash; just delivered his first public statement, read aloud by an announcer on state TV.
The upshot is that Tehran will continue to use the &ldquo;lever of blocking the Strait of Hormuz.&rdquo; As such, the Iranian military has attacked at least three more foreign cargo ships in or near the Strait.
At last check, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate is up over $10 to $97.17. That&rsquo;s still lower than it was before Donald Trump&rsquo;s <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/what-if-iran-wins">&ldquo;very complete, pretty much&rdquo;</a> jawboning on Monday afternoon &mdash; but not much lower.
The aforementioned Energy Secretary Chris Wright tells CNBC the U.S. Navy is &ldquo;not ready&rdquo; to start escorting oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. (CNBC failed to ask him about <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/no-fertilizer-no-food#4">his botched market-moving tweet</a> on Tuesday because of course.)
And whenever the Navy is &ldquo;ready,&rdquo; it faces a herculean task, according to The Economist.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5Rc9LAGxAz44oXyoo2kr1o/43f9047da8c15e4f9de49bfef23b63be/FMF-Issue-031226_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
And all of this comes amid figures from the shipping-data firm Kpler that show Iran is now exporting more oil than it did before the war began.
The Financial Times describes the U.S.-Israeli effort as &ldquo;a rare joint military campaign that has little precedent. Israel since its independence in 1948 has almost exclusively fought alone. The sole exception was during the Suez Crisis, waged seven decades ago with Britain and France, two fading colonial powers forced into ignominious retreat.&rdquo;
The article let that historical tidbit hang, without elaborating on any parallels to the present moment. Draw your own conclusions&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> As for stocks, &ldquo;we should expect this choppy action to continue,&rdquo; Greg Guenthner tells his Trading Desk readers.
&ldquo;The herd is getting bearish and mixed messaging about the war that isn&rsquo;t helping investor confidence right now. We need to expect overreactions to any and all Iran headlines.&rdquo; As such, he&rsquo;s not laying on any new trades today.
As we write, all the major indexes are down 1%, give or take. The S&amp;P 500 rests at 6,710. If that number holds by day&rsquo;s end, it will be the lowest close since late November and about 4% below its record high in late January.
On the flipside, &ldquo;I'm very impressed with crypto here,&rdquo; says Greg. &ldquo;I think we could see a bigger upside move if BTC and ETH continue to hold up.&rdquo; Bitcoin continues to hover over $70,000 while Ethereum sits at $2,073.
Precious metals? Quiet by recent standards, gold still over $5,100 and silver a hair below $85.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />$100 Million Gold Mystery
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Back to the Trump admin&rsquo;s minerals policy&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3CMmbx2Qsc0pEbA0Vo1dMT/f2fa2e3407adb1a61bb128bf82b64a67/FMF-Issue-031226_4_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
There&rsquo;s not a lot of coverage fleshing out this story. As near as we can tell, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum was in Venezuela last week meeting with acting President Delcy Rodriguez and representatives of a couple dozen natural resource firms.
&ldquo;After the meeting,&rdquo; reports an Indian news outlet, &ldquo;Burgum said Venezuela&rsquo;s government had given security assurances to mining companies interested in investing in the country, where mineral-rich areas have long been controlled by guerrilla groups, gangs and other illegal actors.&rdquo;
The mind boggles with questions. Who&rsquo;s going to provide security? Who&rsquo;s going to cover the cost? Will it be the U.S. taxpayer?
As we said shortly after the administration kidnapped President Nicolas Maduro at the start of the year, it would be trivially easy for leftist paramilitaries to sabotage Venezuelan pipelines in the middle of nowhere to ensure the Yanquis are deprived of the country&rsquo;s oil wealth,
And then there was the bit about the gold: &ldquo;On Friday,&rdquo; Burgum told Fox News, &ldquo;$100 million worth of gold came from Venezuela to the U.S., both for industrial purposes and other commercial uses.&rdquo;
Really? &ldquo;Industrial&rdquo; and &ldquo;commercial&rdquo; uses of gold make up about 6% of global gold demand &mdash; electronics, dentistry, etc. (The rest is for jewelry, coins and bars.)
Again the mind boggles: Which companies are getting this gold? How is the administration choosing them? Are they paying a discounted price? And who&rsquo;s getting paid?
Inquiring minds want to know!
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Fertilizer
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> On the subject of a looming fertilizer shortage thanks to Iran&rsquo;s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a reader issues a brief and pointed proposition&hellip;
&ldquo;Great! Farmers can return to organic farming and Americans will be healthier.&rdquo;
Dave responds: Don&rsquo;t disagree in theory&hellip; but I&rsquo;m not sure that&rsquo;s very high on the agenda of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Domestically, getting from here to there would be exceptionally challenging. As former RFK adviser Charles Eisenstein wrote in his 2022 collection of essays The Coronation, widespread organic food production would be much more labor-intensive than the current practices of Big Agra.
Not that there&rsquo;s anything wrong with that. If AI is going to put legions of white-collar workers out of a job, there are worse things they could do than grow healthy food. (Whether it pays as well is another question.)
Overseas, getting from here to there would be impossible. The &ldquo;Green Revolution&rdquo; and its widespread use of fertilizers made it possible to feed hundreds of millions of mouths in the developing world, people who otherwise would have never been born or who would have starved to death at a young age.
In the present moment, former CIA officer Larry Johnson says India and Brazil are in grave danger in the event of an extended Hormuz blockade &mdash; with Bangladesh not far behind.
In contrast, the United States and Canada will fare reasonably well. Ditto for oil and natural gas.
Brings to mind the quip attributed to Germany&rsquo;s &ldquo;Iron Chancellor&rdquo; Otto von Bismarck: "God has a special providence for fools, drunkards and the United States of America."

FMF-Issue-031226(Featured)

Drill, Baby, Drill (California Edition)

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />No Fertilizer, No Food
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The original concept behind today&rsquo;s edition was to take a break from the war and turn our attention to other matters &mdash; at least for Bullet No. 1 and hopefully 2.
Then came the message from our natural resources pro Matt Badiali: &ldquo;The list of unintended consequences of this war gets longer every day. At a minimum, we are facing massive inflation by summer. High fuel prices add a cost to everything transported. And either customers pay it or the companies eat it&hellip;&rdquo;
Whelp, let&rsquo;s dive in.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> First example &mdash; fertilizer. As mentioned in Monday&rsquo;s edition, 35&ndash;40% of the world&rsquo;s fertilizer supply transits the Strait of Hormuz, which the Iranian military has now closed to Western vessels.
Great timing too &mdash; planting season in the Northern Hemisphere.
&ldquo;The effects are likely to materialize with a six&ndash;nine month lag through weaker crop yields, resulting in higher food inflation, tighter grain stocks and elevated food security risks for import-dependent countries,&rdquo; says a note from Nikos Tagoulis &mdash; senior analyst at Intermodal Shipbroking, a leading Greek shipping firm.
&ldquo;Higher fertilizer prices, shipment delays and rising freight costs, further compounded by surging bunker [fuel] prices, are likely to force farmers either to reduce nutrient application or absorb higher input costs. Unlike oil, fertilizers lack meaningful strategic reserves&hellip;&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Next example &mdash; helium. &ldquo;No helium, no semiconductors,&rdquo; says a pithy tweet from an analyst at Citrini Research that Matt spotted.
As we&rsquo;ve chronicled in years gone by, helium is useful for much more than just party balloons &mdash; everything from MRIs to, yes, semiconductors.
As it happens, much of the world&rsquo;s helium supply is a byproduct of natural gas production. About one-third of global helium production comes from Qatar &mdash; and that supply is now shut in because, again, the Strait of Hormuz is closed.
The Citrini post says South Korean chipmakers Samsung and SK Hynix are especially concerned. That&rsquo;s because two-thirds of Korea&rsquo;s helium supply comes from Qatar.
➢ Meanwhile, more than a quarter of Korea&rsquo;s helium supply comes from the United States. Presumably producers of liquefied natural gas like Cheniere Energy (LNG) would be a beneficiary should the war drag on.
Back to Matt Badiali: &ldquo;Add fertilizer and helium to the list of critical commodities now. Less fertilizer means lower crop yields and higher prices. Less helium means fewer chips made, so the cost of AI is going up. This is a massive macroeconomics lesson being learned at the world&rsquo;s expense.&rdquo;
There&rsquo;s other war-related business to attend to today, but now let&rsquo;s turn our attention to something else&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Sorry, You Can&rsquo;t Have Your Money Now (Continued)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The dirty snowball known as private credit is gathering speed as it rolls downhill.
We first tipped you off to the problem last fall &mdash; when the auto parts maker First Brands filed for bankruptcy. First Brands financed its operations through the &ldquo;private credit&rdquo; market &mdash; loans that were once the province of banks but are now dominated by players like Blackstone, Apollo and KKR. (Non-bank financial institutions or NBIFs, they&rsquo;re called.)
Then as we related last month, the private credit group Blue Owl told investors in one of its funds that they could no longer pull their money out on demand. Instead Blue Owl would pay out investors on a schedule of Blue Owl&rsquo;s choosing.
Last week, it was the turn of the giant asset manager BlackRock: &ldquo;That firm put up gates on their flagship $26 billion HPS Corporate Lending Fund,&rdquo; says Paradigm macroeconomics maven Jim Rickards.
&ldquo;As of now, investors can only withdraw 5% of their investment. The remaining 95% is locked into a sinking ship.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Much of the private credit fund industry has remained afloat by not selling assets, which means you can pretend valuations are higher than the market would support,&rdquo; Jim goes on.
&ldquo;Once the investor redemptions begin, the manager must sell assets to pay the redemptions, which quickly reveals that the bottom has fallen out of valuations. That&rsquo;s when the gates go up on redemptions.
&ldquo;The entire private credit and NBIF sector is now in a state of panic. What&rsquo;s more dangerous is that NBIFs get their funding from major commercial banks. This means bank loan losses and lower bank stock valuations are next.&rdquo;
As we said last month, the situation definitely echoes the 2008 financial crisis &mdash; but the fallout isn&rsquo;t likely to be anywhere near as severe.
But when the situation is coupled with war-related economic disruptions&hellip; the consequences could be more problematic.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />&ldquo;Real Breakthroughs&rdquo; Coming Next Week
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Helium shortages notwithstanding, an event known as &ldquo;the Super Bowl of AI&rdquo; is still on for next week.
It&rsquo;s Nvidia&rsquo;s annual GTC gathering in San Jose, California. GTC is short for &ldquo;GPU Technology Conference&rdquo; &mdash; focusing on the graphics processing units that are Nvidia&rsquo;s bread-and-butter.
&ldquo;Every year, there&rsquo;s a moment when the future of technology suddenly becomes clearer,&rdquo; says Paradigm AI authority James Altucher &mdash; &ldquo;not from headlines, not from analysts on TV, but from the engineers, founders and builders who are actually creating the next wave.&rdquo;
James will be on hand. And as soon as he gets a look at everything unfolding there, he&rsquo;ll host a livestream special where he&rsquo;ll break down what it all means &mdash; &ldquo;not just the flashy announcements but the real breakthroughs that could shape the next decade of innovation and the opportunities that could come from them.&rdquo;
Several key members of James&rsquo; team will also be on hand for this event, which we&rsquo;re calling Tech Turning Point 2026. It&rsquo;s set for next Tuesday March 17 at 2:00 p.m. EDT.
Note well: We won&rsquo;t try to sell you any of our newsletters or trading services during this event. We just want to clue you in to the tech trends that will shape your world in the years ahead. Watch this space for details in the days to come on how you can join in.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> In the meantime, the big market story today is a coordinated global release of oil reserves.
The International Energy Agency says its 32 member nations will release 400 million barrels from its emergency stockpiles &mdash; a record total, more than double a 2022 release after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
If the aim was to calm the oil trade, it&rsquo;s not working: At last check a barrel of West Texas Intermediate is up over $3.50 &mdash; back over $87.
Perhaps that&rsquo;s because traders understand the complex logistics of releasing such oil.
It&rsquo;s not as simple as opening a spigot. The math is ugly: &ldquo;IEA-coordinated releases have never exceeded 2 million barrels a day,&rdquo; says an article by economist Tracy Shuchart. Contrast that with the current amount of oil production that&rsquo;s offline &mdash; about 6.5 million barrels a day. That&rsquo;s not production that&rsquo;s bottled in &mdash; that&rsquo;s production that&rsquo;s shut down.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> As for stocks, it&rsquo;s a red day, but nothing dramatic &mdash; the S&amp;P 500 down less than half a percent to 6,751. The Nasdaq&rsquo;s losses are more modest, the Dow&rsquo;s steeper.
Gold is relatively calm at $5,166 but silver&rsquo;s on another wild ride &mdash; down over $3.50 to $84.66. Bitcoin is holding onto the $70,000 handle and Ethereum is comfortably over $2,000.
Also in the mix is the Labor Department&rsquo;s release of the consumer price index: The official inflation rate clocks in at 2.4% &mdash; unchanged from a month earlier. The number has been stuck in a channel between 2.3&ndash;3% since the summer of 2024.
Of course, that 2.4% figure is for February &mdash; prewar. As such it will likely have little or no impact on what the Federal Reserve does with interest rates at its policy-setting meeting a week from today. The betting in the futures market is that the Fed will hold the benchmark fed funds rate steady at 3.75% &mdash; and the next cut won&rsquo;t come until July at the earliest.
<a id="4"></a>
The war potentially throws another economic indicator into a cocked hat &mdash; small-business sentiment. But for the record, the monthly Optimism Index from the National Federation of Independent Business registers 98.8 for February &mdash; slightly above the index&rsquo;s long-term average.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Market-Moving Tweet
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> There&rsquo;s an old saying about how &ldquo;There are no markets anymore, only manipulations.&rdquo; (As with many sayings, its origins are murky.)
It comes to mind given the action in the oil price yesterday.
At midafternoon, Energy Secretary Chris Wright posted the following on X: &ldquo;The U.S. Navy successfully escorted an oil tanker through the Strait of Hormuz to ensure oil remains flowing to global markets.&rdquo;
A few minutes later, he deleted the post. The White House and the Navy said no escorts were underway, nor were any planned.
The whipsaw action in the oil price was extreme &mdash; a barrel of West Texas Intermediate sinking to $77, then rallying to $84.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/32Ek4u8Oe10ztQJxjQAosf/ff6c0c9bb78a4f90c2d9645280cd73da/FMF-Issue-031126_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" /> <img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5nhcfypFkYAOHtHjWHmash/2924bbd385c83c47ef43f4434cb9b6d1/FMF-Issue-031126_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
For its part, the Energy Department is pinning the blame on a flunky who put an &ldquo;incorrect caption&rdquo; beneath a video clip of Wright. Alrighty then&hellip;
The renowned oil industry analyst Anas Alhajji says political maneuvers like these always backfire. &ldquo;Traders may be fooled once or twice, but that&rsquo;s it,&rdquo; he tweets.
Worse, &ldquo;Drillers will not drill under such manipulation. They want a clear market signal. This will guarantee higher prices for [a] longer period!&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: &ldquo;Lost&rdquo; Reader, the Draft, Civil War
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;You just lost me as a reader,&rdquo; begins today&rsquo;s mailbag. &ldquo;You really don&rsquo;t understand what is happening and how. If this is all you have, you are done.&rdquo;
That&rsquo;s all the email said. Presumably it was in response to something in <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/what-if-iran-wins">yesterday&rsquo;s edition</a>? Alas we&rsquo;ll never know&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Smoking marijuana isn't the only way to flunk a military physical,&rdquo; writes a retired Air Force officer on the subject of a return to the draft.
&ldquo;Back in 1972 before the draft ended, I was in the Chicago Military Entrance and Examination Center waiting room waiting for a physical. There were also a soda and snack machines there. One potential draftee holding a Coke can told me that if you drink a Coke shortly before your physical, you will show up as diabetic and they will have you return again in a month to test again before disqualifying you.
&ldquo;Sesame seeds also have a reputation for making you test positive for drugs.
&ldquo;Depending on my mood, I can argue for and against a draft.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Seeing civil war in The 5 for two days in a row while the war in Iran is going on has got me itching to throw my 2 cents in,&rdquo; writes one of our regulars.
&ldquo;To discuss the possibility of civil war, to acknowledge its likelihood, requires the ever-so-subtle unsaid concession that ballots don't seem to have the power they are supposed to. It seems to be noticed amidst all the broken promises that lobbyists and others with big wallets get what they want when the voters don't.
&ldquo;From there it is easy enough to conclude that we live in a kleptocracy or an oligarchy and that the American Experiment is a failure and the eternal vigilance the founders named as the price for freedom is simply too high a price for the average citizen to pay.
&ldquo;After that? Who knows?
&ldquo;I think Robert Kiyosaki is probably right when he says three days after there is no food is when all hell breaks loose, but we aren't there yet.&rdquo;
Dave responds: And let&rsquo;s pray we don&rsquo;t get there.
Brings to mind another old saying, often misattributed. We made a meme out of it on Election Day 2020&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1mBnCCEwQeJaNdrtcuhjdZ/05a6be1f664dac55ba7eb88879b587e0/FMF-issue-031126_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />

FMF-Issue-031126(Featured)

No Fertilizer, No Food

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Very Complete, Pretty Much
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Rarely have four words moved markets like this.
About 40 minutes before the stock market closed yesterday, Donald Trump told CBS News: &ldquo;I think the war is very complete, pretty much.
"[Iran has] no navy, no communications, they've got no air force,&rdquo; he added. &ldquo;If you look, they have nothing left. There&rsquo;s nothing left in a military sense.&rdquo;
The market reaction was instantaneous and extreme: The oil price collapsed from over $100 to below $85. The stock market, struggling for traction all day, ended the session with the S&amp;P 500 up more than three-quarters of a percent.
The social media reaction invoked George W. Bush&rsquo;s &ldquo;Mission Accomplished&rdquo; moment from 2003.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/ioSdUvyfvhsHBSdNzlDd4/8db721aa877d70968c3c2601628c18ba/FMF-issue-031026-_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
But then, later in the evening&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5HmoRhj0gmmeuPMBLuyonh/8721cbcbd9a80fb9c7d3820d4b9ceeec/FMF-issue-031026-_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
In after-hours electronic trading the oil price leaped 10% in the space of two hours.
So it appears &ldquo;very complete, pretty much&rdquo; was not a statement about the progress of the war &mdash; but a cynical ruse to talk stocks up and oil down, at least for a while.
In that sense, &ldquo;Mission accomplished.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Before we move on, a follow-up about the Strait of Hormuz&hellip;
It&rsquo;s a head-scratcher, the start of the president&rsquo;s statement about &ldquo;if&rdquo; Tehran halts oil flow through the Strait of Hormuz.
As chronicled <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/iran-unthinkable-scenario">in yesterday&rsquo;s edition</a>, the strait has been effectively blockaded for days &mdash; except for whoever the Iranian military wants to let through. Chinese oil tankers are getting through in exchange for the Chinese government providing financial help, spare parts and missile components.
Now, according to Iranian state media, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is extending an offer of passage to vessels from other countries&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5VFZyj8VtJZTLpzkmC5qrO/82b595e6033d440a78a0fa184de85534/FMF-issue-031026-_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
So far, no takers &mdash; not that we know of, anyway.
In any event, the war continues. And so we&rsquo;re compelled to return to a question we explored on Friday, this time with the help of our own Jim Rickards&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />What if Iran Wins?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;The Scenario Washington Won&rsquo;t Discuss &mdash; Iran Winning&rdquo; was the title of a report Jim Rickards issued to his Situation Report readers last week.
We won&rsquo;t touch on all of the points he ran down to make the case that the Iranian regime is more resilient than conventional wisdom has it. But two are worth highlighting&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Westerners &ldquo;have little idea just how big Iran is,&rdquo; says Jim.
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the 17th-largest country in the world by area out of 195 countries. It also has the 17th-largest population in the world with 86 million people.
&ldquo;Iran is not a giant like India or Brazil, but it is far larger than Americans realize. The terrain is challenging with large mountain ranges and deserts. This is not a country ripe for a land invasion like Iraq or Syria.&rdquo;
We&rsquo;ll supplement Jim&rsquo;s observations with this map, courtesy of the Diligent News site&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4tPe7Zqv5zpcwx3LGpzFVL/41e4b6699fcdc9ac355338718411f4b6/FMF-issue-031026-_4_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
&ldquo;Iran is far larger than Ukraine,&rdquo; Jim continues, &ldquo;which is still holding out against Russia after four years of war. Iran has what military strategists call strategic depth, which offers the ability to retreat without surrender. Iran isn&rsquo;t going anywhere and it will not easily be subdued.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;The U.S. and Israel are running low on offensive and defensive bombs and missiles,&rdquo; says Jim.
&ldquo;This is the result of the massive bombing attacks on Iran, the need to fire thousands of anti-missiles to shoot down thousands of incoming drones and missiles, the fact that the U.S. has allowed its military industrial capacity to atrophy and the large number of weapons wasted in Ukraine.
&ldquo;U.S. industrial output of 800 cruise missiles per year cannot keep up with Israel and the U.S. launching 100 per week. Ships need to reprovision. Repairs cannot be neglected. Diego Garcia is days away from the battlespace. The U.S. will be badly stretched.&rdquo;
➢ Update: As anticipated in this space on Friday, the Pentagon is moving parts of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system &mdash; THAAD &mdash; from South Korea to the Middle East.
Here&rsquo;s some startling missile math Jim shared yesterday with Strategic Intelligence readers: &ldquo;Iran may have 10,000 drones that cost about $20,000 each. The U.S. is using missiles that cost $4 million each and has a limited supply of them. The U.S. can produce about 1,000 cruise missiles per year but is using more than 100 per week.&rdquo;
Bottom line: &ldquo;In a war of attrition, really a war for survival, victory goes to the last man standing. That may be Iran.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Oil and Stocks: It&rsquo;s Not the &rsquo;70s Anymore
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Even at &ldquo;only&rdquo; $83.19 this morning, oil is as costly now as it was last summer. But is a spike in oil prices bad for the stock market?
Not really, says Paradigm trading pro Enrique Abeyta. &ldquo;Here&rsquo;s a table from Bespoke Investment Group showing every time that oil prices have gone up at least 20% in one week since 1985.
&ldquo;It also shows how the S&amp;P 500 performed after each one of these price spikes.&rdquo;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4UoAcKO7G7dgASS4NNVDCX/7b7696700ab25841c1547a60a44b07aa/FMF-issue-031026-_5_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
We can hear the objection already: But what about the 1970s?
For one thing, modern-day oil futures didn&rsquo;t begin trading until 1983. For another thing, the Persian Gulf region accounts for far less of the world&rsquo;s oil supply now than it did at the time of the 1970s oil shock. (That&rsquo;s the made-in-America fracking revolution of the 2010s at work.)
Back to the table: &ldquo;You can see the performance of the S&amp;P 500 weeks, months and one year after these price spikes,&rdquo; says Enrique.
&ldquo;The first takeaway is that in the following few weeks and months, the performance of the stock market was choppy. One week later, it was down two-thirds of the time. Three months later, it was down 60% of the time.
&ldquo;The downward moves may not be big, but the market clearly struggles to digest oil spikes at first.
&ldquo;Looking out one year, however, the stock market was higher 86% of the time with an almost 30% return &mdash; more than double the stock market&rsquo;s average.&rdquo;
The lone exception &mdash; 2022, which registered a modest 6.5% drop.
Enrique&rsquo;s conclusion: &ldquo;This relationship is clear from the overall data: Higher oil prices correlate with higher stock prices over time.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Meanwhile, the major U.S. indexes are adding to yesterday&rsquo;s late-session gains.
The S&amp;P 500 is up a third of a percent, back above 6,800. The index has been range-bound between 6,721&ndash;6,978 for nearly three months.
Both the Dow and the Nasdaq are registering stronger gains &mdash; about a half percent on the day.
Gold has reclaimed the $5,200 level for the first time in a week. Silver is back within a buck of $90.
Crypto is once again trying to break through its recent ceiling &mdash; Bitcoin now over $71,000 and Ethereum at $2,073.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Economy Miscellany
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />If the aim of the Trump tariff regime is to throttle China&rsquo;s export machine, it&rsquo;s not working.
The Beijing government reports that Chinese exports totaled $657 billion in the first two months of 2026 &mdash; a 21.8% leap over the same period last year. That&rsquo;s nearly three times the growth expected by Wall Street economists.
Yes, Chinese exports to the United States fell more than 10%. But exports to Europe grew 27.8% and exports to countries belonging to the ASEAN consortium in Asia grew 29.4%.
The numbers put China on pace to exceed its record 2025 exports by year-end 2026.
Reminder: Donald Trump is still scheduled to meet in Beijing with Chinese president Xi Jinping at the end of this month.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Going by a measure that government statisticians can&rsquo;t fiddle with, the U.S. employment picture is the weakest in nearly 70 years.
Last Friday, we mentioned the punk February job numbers &mdash; with caveats. For one thing, ever since the pandemic, fewer business owners and individuals are responding to Labor Department surveys. Further, the stats have been rigged for decades to make the job picture look better than it really is.
But there&rsquo;s one number the statisticians can&rsquo;t game &mdash; the labor force participation rate. This is the percentage of the civilian population over age 16 that&rsquo;s either working or looking for work.
Here&rsquo;s a very long-term chart of the participation rate &mdash; going back nearly 80 years, a period encompassing 12 recessions. The February 2026 number is 62.0%.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5z49MX8bZRLrf3PrMKzYtl/056ff031aad5e1407ee208f0e56a3a35/FMF-issue-031026-_6_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Leaving aside the pandemic plunge and recovery, the last time the number was this low was March 1977 &mdash; when women were still entering the workforce en masse, the first Rocky film was the big box-office draw and Barbra Streisand topped the charts with the love theme from A Star Is Born.
Mainstream explanations are wanting: Yes, growing numbers of boomers are aging out of the workforce. The crackdown on immigration might be a factor. Gig-economy workers might not be showing up in the figures.
But is that all? Seems like something else is going on, even if we can&rsquo;t put a finger on it right now.
We&rsquo;re going to keep a closer eye on this number in the monthly jobs report throughout 2026&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Surrealism, Track Records, War Powers
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Surrealistic!&rdquo; a reader says in response to the start of <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/iran-unthinkable-scenario">yesterday&rsquo;s edition</a>.
&ldquo;Country Joe was, probably, either dead or dying as President Trump was at Dover, solemnly, receiving the remains of those valiant Americans.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;I am not an active trader, thus only subscribe to Mason Sexton's trade recommendations for context,&rdquo; a reader writes after Mason&rsquo;s accurate call about the stock market&rsquo;s recent wobble.
&ldquo;I agree his approach is unique, but you should publish his results. I will bet he has one of the best records out there and he documents it very specifically including stops, timing, etc. This is a forever letter for me; I hope he stays healthy!&rdquo;
Dave responds: He&rsquo;s not going anywhere. Meanwhile, we&rsquo;re working on ways to publicize portfolio performance without giving away valuable information that we want to limit to paying subscribers. Stay tuned&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;I've been reading your 5 Bullets about the so-called war,&rdquo; says our final correspondent.
&ldquo;When will Congress actually try to stop Trump or declare a real war? I would like to have those bridges, highways and other infrastructure upgraded.&rdquo;
Dave: As mentioned on Friday, war powers resolutions failed narrowly in both the House and Senate last week. For all intents and purposes, Congress gave the White House a blank check.
When it comes to matters of war and peace, Congress is becoming as useless as the Roman Senate during the transition from republic to empire. And so it goes&hellip;

FMF-issue-031026-(Featured)

What if Iran Wins?

FMF-Issue-030926(Featured)

Iran: “Unthinkable Scenario”

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Unconditional Surrender
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> File this one under &ldquo;Life comes at you fast.&rdquo;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3g1XVt1AhhZKIhnOabZQM1/415caf51c2cb200c4e03fb25ac305a2f/dailyfeed-030626_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Really, though, The Wall Street Journal&rsquo;s coverage of the markets this week begs the question: Whatever gave &ldquo;investors&rdquo; the notion the Iran war would be &ldquo;brief and relatively contained&rdquo;?
At the outset last weekend, we were told it would be over in a matter of days. By Monday, that became four or five weeks. By Wednesday, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said eight weeks.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1M7OIs516sANaXtiyYGIsN/04623b9945b2eed41da7ac9d875096c6/FMF-Issue-030626_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Then yesterday: &ldquo;U.S. Central Command,&rdquo; reported Politico, &ldquo;is asking the Pentagon to send more military intelligence officers to its headquarters in Tampa, Florida, to support operations against Iran for at least 100 days but likely through September.&rdquo;
Overnight, the energy minister of Qatar warned the Financial Times that every Persian Gulf energy exporter is only days away from shutting down production &mdash; and the oil price might leap to $150 a barrel.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Then this morning, Donald Trump trotted out &ldquo;unconditional surrender&rdquo; again &mdash; a demand that conceivably stretches the timeline well past September.
&ldquo;There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!&rdquo; he said on social media.
And with that, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate has shot up 11.4% to top $90 for the first time since the autumn of 2023. And the stock market is sinking into the red for a second day running.
It wasn&rsquo;t the first time he invoked that term, by the way. He said the same during the &ldquo;12-Day War&rdquo; last summer.
And so we&rsquo;re compelled to briefly return to a theme we visited back then&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Unconditional surrenders are so rare they are almost unheard of,&rdquo; wrote Richard Maybury more than two decades ago.
Maybury is one of the graybeards of the financial newsletter biz &mdash; and a veteran of Washington&rsquo;s dirty wars in Central America during the 1960s. The following is gleaned from his 2002 book World War II: The Rest of the Story and How It Affects You Today.
&ldquo;In an unconditional surrender, the losers are required to lay down their arms with no guarantees at all. They must simply put their fate in the hands of the winners, and the winners can do anything they please, including hang them.&rdquo;
President Franklin Roosevelt demanded unconditional surrender of Germany on Jan. 24, 1943.
At the time, the Nazis were on their heels &mdash; only a week away from getting totally curb-stomped by the Soviets at Stalingrad.
But FDR&rsquo;s demand steeled the Germans&rsquo; resolve.
&ldquo;The effect of this brutal formula on the German nation, and above all on the army, was great,&rdquo; German Gen. Heinz Guderian wrote in his 1951 memoir Panzer Leader. &ldquo;The soldiers, at least, were convinced from now on our enemies had decided on the utter destruction of Germany.&rdquo;
On the flip side, unconditional surrender devastated the enthusiasm of the German underground: One of its members, Gen. Franz Halder, lamented he could no longer attract new recruits. As he put it, even Hitler&rsquo;s fiercest opponents understood that &ldquo;the same frightful fate awaited us with or without Hitler&hellip; The only thing to do was hold out until the end.&rdquo;
The war dragged on for two more years &mdash; with more than one million dead per month.
Then again&hellip; the timeline now might be much shorter than anyone expects. Read on&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />It&rsquo;s All About the Interceptors
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;We have got to get this done in the next couple of weeks or we&rsquo;re going to start getting into some real trouble, because we don&rsquo;t have enough interceptor missiles and we don&rsquo;t have enough offensive missiles to sustain this combat for months.&rdquo;
So says retired Army combat officer Daniel L. Davis, now a senior fellow at the Defense Priorities think tank.
Compared with Washington&rsquo;s ever-changing war aims, &ldquo;The Iranian side, their objective is much more attainable and much less complicated &mdash; which is to just survive,&rdquo; Davis says in an interview with Libertarian Institute cofounder Scott Horton.
&ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t matter how many planes you have, how many ships you have, how many the other side has. What matters is how many [interceptor] missiles or long-range drones can you fire in a sustained manner, and how many does the other side have. Because the one that runs out of interceptor missiles first is the one that&rsquo;s going to be losers.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Even mainstream think tanks understand that the U.S. inventory of interceptor missiles has been depleted by years of Washington&rsquo;s aid to Israel and Ukraine.
&ldquo;The United States either needs to pay the table stakes to build up AMD interceptor capacity or bear the risk of being forced to sit out future conflicts,&rdquo; said a report issued last December by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The report says the 12-Day War alone burned through a quarter of Washington&rsquo;s supply of THAAD anti-ballistic missile interceptors. Other analysts say the report miscounted and the percentage is even higher.
Fast-forward to this week: According to several South Korean media outlets, the Pentagon has begun talking with the South Korean government about taking some of the THAADs currently deployed on the Korean Peninsula&hellip; and moving them to the Middle East.
&ldquo;I struggle to arrive at a logical conclusion for this gross mismanagement,&rdquo; tweets the independent military analyst Will Schryver. &ldquo;It almost seems to be deliberate malfeasance, for reasons I cannot fathom.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;It is almost impossible for me to see how Israel and the U.S. win this war,&rdquo; writes John Mearsheimer, the distinguished foreign policy scholar from the University of Chicago.
&ldquo;It seems that victory for this aggressive tag team requires not only regime change in Iran, but replacing the regime with new leaders who are subservient to Israeli and American wishes. If those two things do not happen, Iran will surely keep its nuclear enrichment capability; keep building ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, &amp; long-range drones; and keep supporting Hamas, the Houthis and Hezbollah.
&ldquo;The likelihood of this war producing an Iranian regime that is subservient to Israel and the U.S. is close to zero in my estimation.
&ldquo;For Iran to win, all it has to do is survive and not end up as a pawn of Israel and the U.S. Even if its missile inventory is greatly diminished, its nuclear enrichment capability is crippled and its infrastructure is badly damaged, it matters little if the regime survives or is replaced by a regime that refuses to kowtow to the tag team.&rdquo;
Don&rsquo;t dismiss Mearsheimer&rsquo;s outlook out of hand: He&rsquo;s the guy who opened the eyes of millions when Russia invaded Ukraine four years ago: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4">His 2015 lecture</a> titled &ldquo;Why Is Ukraine the West&rsquo;s Fault?&rdquo; went viral on YouTube in the days that followed. Later, when the mainstream kept telling us Ukraine was destined for victory and Russia for collapse, Measheimer knew better.
Let&rsquo;s turn to the markets today&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Jobs, Gold, Bonds
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Aside from the war, there&rsquo;s a punk jobs report on Mr. Market&rsquo;s mind.
This morning the wonks at the Bureau of Labor Statistics conjured a loss of 92,000 jobs for the month of February. No one among Wall Street economists saw that one coming: The most pessimistic guess was a 35,000 job gain.
In addition, the job gains in January and December were revised downard by 69,000.
The official unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4%. It&rsquo;s been hovering between 4&ndash;4.5% since mid-2024.
How believable are the numbers? Well, in one sense they&rsquo;ve been gamed for decades &mdash; as we showed one day last summer. (<a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/trump-lets-blow-this-taco-stand">Click here</a> and scroll down to Bullet No. 3.) But ever since the pandemic years, matters have been made worse by the fact that fewer business owners and individuals are responding to the Bureau of Labor Statistics&rsquo; surveys.
In any event, the numbers aren&rsquo;t moving the needle on the likelihood of interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve: Futures traders still assign a 50-50 probability of one cut by midyear, and not until June.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> And so the S&amp;P 500 approaches the end of the week sitting at year-to-date lows &mdash; down 1.1% as we write to 6,753. The Nasdaq is holding up slightly better, the Dow slightly worse.
Gold has been stuck in a channel ever since a very odd $400 sell-off during a 12-hour span earlier this week: At the moment it&rsquo;s up 1.1% or $57 to $5,137. Silver is again proving to be more volatile &mdash; up 2.5% or two bucks to $84.19.
Crypto&rsquo;s midweek gains don&rsquo;t seem to be sticking &mdash; with Bitcoin at $68,429 and Ethereum back below $2,000.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Gold&rsquo;s activity this week has been curious &mdash; and bonds, curiouser. Recall during times of geopolitical and financial stress, hot money usually floods into bonds &mdash; pushing prices higher and yields lower.
That&rsquo;s not happening now: After sinking below 4% last week for the first time since November, the yield on a 10-year Treasury note has shot up to 4.15% &mdash; smack in the middle of its trading range the last six months.
We&rsquo;ve chronicled this before &mdash; but as far as foreigners are concerned, U.S. Treasuries are increasingly becoming a toxic asset, seeing how the U.S. government froze the Treasuries held by Russia&rsquo;s central bank in 2022. Amid a newly volatile geopolitical environment, the fear might be for a similar shock announcement from Washington.
Consulting with Paradigm chart hound Greg Guenthner, a break above 4.3% will likely send the yield substantially higher. On the other hand, a retreat below 3.95% would signal a meaningful drop.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />The Costs of War
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> For the record, here&rsquo;s a rough estimate of the Iran war&rsquo;s cost as lunchtime approaches on the East Coast&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7pFz6tvO9EP3ozo0UyklCM/4120c880ce60507c9eb2402cc42bb910/FMF-Issue-030626_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
That&rsquo;s according to the <a href="https://iran-cost-ticker.com/">Iran War Cost Tracker</a>.
We don&rsquo;t know who&rsquo;s behind the website &mdash; a Whois lookup reveals only that it was registered on Monday &mdash; but its methodology is transparent and simple: Veteran journalist Nancy Youssef, working these days for The Atlantic, <a href="https://x.com/nancyayoussef/status/2029260834564604070">cites</a> a congressional source as saying the early Pentagon cost estimate for the war is $1 billion a day.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> But a billion dollars a day pales in comparison with the cost to constitutional government. &ldquo;The Constitution is a dead letter,&rdquo; asserts the aforementioned Daniel Davis.
Both the House and Senate voted down war-powers resolutions this week aimed at halting the Iran war without congressional authorization.
Near as we can tell, this is a first in American war-fighting.
To be sure, Congress has not issued a declaration of war since World War II. President Harry Truman crossed a Rubicon in 1950 by sending American troops to fight and die in Korea with no such declaration.
Nor has there been a declaration for any war since. But at least Congress would go through the motions by passing &ldquo;authorizations&rdquo; and &ldquo;resolutions&rdquo; to make it look as if the legislative branch was doing its job.
And when Barack Obama carried out his regime-change op in Libya in 2011, the Republican-controlled Congress passed several resolutions opposing what he did. Not that it changed anything, but at least it put the legislative branch on record.
Now a Republican-controlled Congress has effectively told the president: &ldquo;Do what you want, we&rsquo;re checking out of all our responsibilities.&rdquo;
This is brand-new territory.
Perhaps realizing what they&rsquo;re doing, some Republican congressmembers are bending over backward to avoid calling the present situation a war. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re not at war right now,&rdquo; says House Speaker Mike Johnson. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not a war,&rdquo; says Rep. Randy Fine (R-Florida).
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6brtIdh7GITEwx6CSF7uT3/7c8d483f2986dd4cc81139095072f564/FMF-Issue-030626_4_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
We&rsquo;ll give the last word for now to Edward Feser, a philosophy professor at Pasadena City College in California: &ldquo;&lsquo;Operation Epic Fury is not a war&rsquo; is the new &lsquo;Trans women are women&rsquo;.&rdquo;
Love how Feser&rsquo;s critique scrambles the culture-war divide. Speaking of which&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Civil War
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Let&rsquo;s turn from overseas war to civil war: We got a handful of reactions to <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/civil-war-now-with-drones">yesterday&rsquo;s edition&hellip;</a>
&ldquo;Your article overlooked one important aspect of a potential American civil war: the ideological lines are not identified by states or regions.&nbsp;
&ldquo;The battle would be urban versus rural, not state versus state, eliminating any possibility of a geographic resolution.&nbsp;
&ldquo;Socialist Democrats occupy the major cities, which dominate states like Illinois, Minnesota, Colorado, Virginia and even New York, putting them into Democrat territory. Conservatives (both pro-Trump and anti-Trump) occupy the rural areas making up 90%-plus of the nations&rsquo; counties, dominating what exists of a &lsquo;well regulated militia&rsquo; (the original definition, not the National Guard). This makes such a war unlike any of the examples you cited, or any war in history.
&ldquo;The only hope of a peaceful resolution (before or after mass casualties) is a consensus of tolerance to allow opposing political opinions in a desire for peace, decrying the personal hate spewed by the media and amplified by social media since Trump first won the Republican nomination in 2016.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &rdquo;One major flaw in your American blue/red map is your apparent failure to reflect what many (the majority?) believe.
&ldquo;If and when actual investigations discover the levels of voter fraud, it seems likely that a lot of blue will disappear in favor of red, or at least in favor of a considerable amount of purple. This would seem to suggest that any &lsquo;civil war&rsquo; will be much &lsquo;muddier&rsquo; than the article portrays.
&ldquo;My prayer is of course that it won't come to that. One factor that appears to never be considered in your articles is what I will refer to as &lsquo;spiritual implications &amp; effects.&rsquo; Speaking as a pastor chaplain, I believe that in reality, this factor carries much greater influence and weight than many think.
&ldquo;Presuming, as i do, that there is a God who has ultimate oversight on everything, that Influence can decimate all our human prognostications.&rdquo;
Dave: The map is from the 2024 election. Who asserted fraud in the 2024 election?
Anyway I tried to go out of my way to say that state lines as shown on the map settle nothing.
Living in one of the seven &ldquo;swing states&rdquo; from the 2024 election, I&rsquo;m keenly aware of that fact. And I share both of these readers&rsquo; fervent hope that the worst-case scenarios do not materialize.

FMF-Issue-030626(Featured)

Unconditional Surrender

FMF-Issue-03-05-26(Featured)

Civil War (Now With Drones)

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />A Deindustrialized Germany
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Every generation gets its wake-up call. Ours is playing out right now in the Strait of Hormuz.
Twenty million barrels of oil transit that narrow corridor every single day, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. About one-fifth of all petroleum consumed on Earth. Worth about $500 billion annually. When that passage closes &mdash; as Iran has now threatened &mdash; the world doesn't simply reroute.
The Middle East has always been a theater of energy power dressed up in the trappings of ideology. The 1973 oil embargo. The Iran-Iraq Tanker War, which damaged or destroyed over 500 vessels in the 1980s. Desert Storm. Iraq 2003. Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping in 2023.
Every chapter, the same story: Whoever controls energy &mdash; and its routes &mdash; controls the world.
Here&rsquo;s the lesson we still haven&rsquo;t learned, even the hard way: Industrial economies that outsource control of their critical inputs to geopolitical rivals eventually pay a catastrophic price.
Germany is a prime example.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> We&rsquo;ve covered Germany&rsquo;s energy catastrophe in these pages before &mdash; when a strategic explosion severed the Nord Stream pipelines in 2022 and when Germans were told to <a href="https://5minforecast.com/2022/10/14/suck-it-up-and-double-sweater/">put on a sweater (or two)</a> while households and factories went cold. We said then the situation was going to get uglier.
Germany &mdash; once the engine of the eurozone &mdash; has now endured two consecutive years of economic contraction. The Handelsblatt Research Institute calls it the &ldquo;greatest crisis in postwar history.&rdquo;
Since 2019, 245,000 manufacturing jobs have already disappeared, according to a 2025 EY study. Car output has dropped from roughly 5.1 million vehicles annually in 2017 to around 4 million today.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1oN2uqlgVEMIBrQAdk6W4w/9ab27ef77ef1bd0ea7ff21ddafa374cd/FMF-Issue-030426_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
BASF, the world&rsquo;s largest chemical company, is shifting operations abroad, explicitly citing energy costs. And Siemens told German parliament: &ldquo;There is nothing that would speak in favour of investing in Germany.&rdquo;
In 2024, Landesbank Baden-W&uuml;rttemberg (LBBW) projected Germany would rank 39th out of 41 advanced economies in growth. By early 2025, the IMF had cut Germany&rsquo;s growth forecast, ranking it among the worst-performing industrialized nations. The ifo Institute warns of one million jobs lost by 2030.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> How does a modern industrial superpower hollow itself out? In three moves.
First, disconnect your nuclear plants in a post-Fukushima freakout.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/18VMRPwCZw1lhlcLEGpCgP/656f86306d0b7a5e05649249e92380b8/FMF-Issue-030426_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Next, bet on wind and solar in one of Europe&rsquo;s cloudiest, coldest, most energy-hungry climates.
Then build your entire manufacturing model on cheap natural gas piped from Russia&hellip; which incites the wrath of your NATO frenemies. (Intentionally vague.)
Germany all but handed Joe Biden the <a href="https://5minforecast.com/2023/02/10/the-c-word-conspiracy/">kill switch.</a> When he flipped it &mdash; and the Nord Stream pipelines exploded &mdash; there was no backup plan. The engine of Europe seized.
Now here is where the story stops being about Germany and starts being about the U.S&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" /> Same Trap, Different Resources
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The same trap &mdash; outsourcing control of a critical industrial input to a geopolitical rival &mdash; is aimed directly at the American economy. The resource is different. The dependency is identical.
The U.S. is 100% import-reliant for 12 minerals the USGS deems critical. China dominates production or processing for 29 of those.
The IEA&rsquo;s Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2025 found that for 19 out of 20 important strategic minerals, China is the leading refiner, averaging 70% market share. It processes around 80% of the world&rsquo;s lithium.
It controls more than 90% of the downstream rare earth value chain, including the permanent magnets found inside every EV motor, cellphone and missile guidance system.
Since December 2024, Beijing has been methodically restricting exports of gallium, germanium, antimony, tungsten and seven heavy rare earth elements to the U.S. &mdash; and the controls keep expanding.
The Pentagon is moving &mdash; becoming the largest shareholder of MP Materials, committing to a $1 billion strategic stockpile &mdash; but these are early moves in a very long game.
Germany built its economy on Russian natural gas. When the supply was decimated, a trillion-dollar industrial base began to dissolve. In the same way, the critical minerals that power American industrialization are now concentrated in Chinese hands.
Energy dependence shocked Germany. Mineral dependence could shock the U.S. &mdash; and the world.
Germany put on a sweater and hoped for the best. We know how that&rsquo;s going.
[Note: When the Trump administration invoked Section 232 for critical minerals, it didn&rsquo;t just signal a shift in national-security policy.
It also may have set the stage for a major move inside the global mining industry.
According to our colleague James Altucher, one of the world&rsquo;s largest mining companies &mdash; Glencore &mdash; could announce a massive company buyout as soon as Saturday, March 7.
If that happens, it could reshape the supply chain for one critical resource.
James believes investors may still have a brief window to position themselves.
He notes in past mining buyouts, certain stocks delivered potential peak gains as high as 2,350%&hellip; 5,130%&hellip; even 7,100% in just six days.
There&rsquo;s no guarantee anything like that happens again.
But James believes this developing situation could represent a rare opportunity in the resource sector &mdash; one that may disappear quickly if and when the deal he&rsquo;s expecting is announced.
<a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2512618">You can access his full research right here.]</a>
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Boots on the Ground at PDAC 2026
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Two Paradigm Press editors &mdash; veteran geologists Byron King and Matt Badiali &mdash; are on the ground this week at the world&rsquo;s largest mining gathering. 
The annual convention hosted by the Prospectors &amp; Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) draws tens of thousands of investors, miners and geologists to Toronto each year. This year, the message from the floor is unmistakable: Capital is rushing back into the resource sector.
Byron describes the mood: &ldquo;Metals, minerals, mines and me, plus about 35,000 of my nearest friends,&rdquo; he writes from Toronto. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s crowded&hellip; and there&rsquo;s much to report.&rdquo;
One of his first encounters set the tone. Upon entering the exhibit hall, Byron ran into legendary resource investor Rick Rule.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/76CLuXXM7VBZUTep3zxVH8/84098c58277e61ebabbb76d65183fd90/FMF-Issue-030426_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" /> Day One: Byron King (left) with Rick Rule (right) Courtesy: BWK
&ldquo;There&rsquo;s a heck of a lot of money here, competing with me to write checks,&rdquo; Mr. Rule tells Byron.
That observation matches what Byron&rsquo;s hearing from sources across the event. &ldquo;Every day, we take in cash out of Asia,&rdquo; says a senior investment banker, citing Singapore, Korea and Japan, alongside funds from Australia and the Gulf states.
American money is likewise shifting toward the sector. &ldquo;Much of it comes from tech, AI, crypto and the rest of the big markets,&rdquo; the banker explained. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s sector rotation.&rdquo;
For Byron, the contrast with earlier PDAC conferences is striking. For much of the 2010s, the sector struggled with weak metal prices and scarce capital. &ldquo;This year, though? The money dam has burst.&rdquo;
&ldquo;I recall writing, back in 2024, that &lsquo;gold leads the way,&rsquo;&rdquo; Byron adds. &ldquo;And the numbers speak for themselves: Gold moved from the $2,000 range in early 2024 to the current price over $5,000.
&ldquo;And it&rsquo;s not just gold. We&rsquo;ve seen big price increases for other metals used in industry.
&ldquo;Producing companies have seen significant increases in revenues and internal cash flows,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;At the end of the day, much of that cash flow lands on the bottom line to become earnings. And stock markets like to see earnings.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Matt Badiali arrived Sunday afternoon and quickly began meeting with companies exhibiting at the conference.
One stop stood out: a visit with CEO Rob Carpenter of Prospector Metals, whose team brought a core sample from a new discovery to PDAC&rsquo;s &ldquo;Core Shack.&rdquo;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3Go910Ab41dvBLYVNuZU3M/1442fca2ef0fa6fa93b6bb864cb9d264/FMF-Issue-030426_4_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" /> Prospector CEO Dr. Rob Carpenter discusses the ML Project core Courtesy: Matt Badiali
The core came from drill hole ML25-031 at the company&rsquo;s ML Project in Yukon Territory of northern Canada&mdash; and the results were impressive.
About 62 meters underground, the drill hit a 44-meter-thick zone of rock rich in metals &mdash; averaging 13.8 grams of gold per ton, along with 1.9% copper and 38.1 grams of silver.
Matt examined the rock himself. &ldquo;I held a piece,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;It was really, stupidly heavy.&rdquo;
What makes the discovery even more intriguing: &ldquo;As you go deeper, you get visible gold in the core,&rdquo; Matt explains. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s unusual and really exciting.
&ldquo;The idea is that metal-rich fluid came from deep in the earth,&rdquo; Matt says. &ldquo;It moved up the cracks and found rock that it could infiltrate.&rdquo;
The drilling program is still early, but the geology suggests the discovery could grow significantly. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t wait to see the results,&rdquo; Matt says.
The takeaway from Toronto: From Byron&rsquo;s conversations about the flood of new capital to Matt&rsquo;s firsthand look at fresh discoveries, the message from PDAC 2026 is clear.
After years of underinvestment, the mining sector is drawing serious money and attention again &mdash; and the next wave of discoveries may already be emerging.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Pawn Shops and Silver
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Rick Harrison has spent his career lowballing people over grandpa&rsquo;s coin collection, but lately the Pawn Stars boss is the one who can&rsquo;t get enough. Silver vanishes from his Las Vegas Gold &amp; Silver Pawn Shop practically the moment it arrives.
&ldquo;Silver bullion, especially, we cannot keep in the showcase. Literally, if I buy some across the counter, or I get a shipment in, I got salespeople arguing who gets it, because all they have to do is pick up the phone to sell it.&rdquo;
For the past five years, there&rsquo;s been a global 200-million-ounce-per-year deficit. Silver happens to be the best conductor of electricity on the planet &mdash; possibly the universe &mdash; and data centers, electric cars and solar panels are all ravenously consuming it.
The kicker: There are almost no dedicated silver mines. Most silver comes as a byproduct of gold and copper mining &mdash; a reluctant hitchhiker, not the main event.
Harrison &mdash; apparently an Adam Smith devotee? &mdash; believes the market will self-correct eventually.
&ldquo;Economic Darwinism will happen,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;and with the price of silver way up, there will be more dedicated silver mines... The unseen hand will do what it has to do.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />&ldquo;I Was Wrong&hellip; I Love It!&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;I never thought I&rsquo;d use it, but I was wrong!&rdquo; emphasizes a reader about her own ChatGPT usage.
&ldquo;We use ChatGPT in our yacht sales dealership for marketing purposes, to create listings for YachtWorld, our MLS system.
&ldquo;I can feed an image into ChatGPT, and with a little human instruction (very important), it will give me a detailed description about the picture/space.
&ldquo;I can also give it my text and ask to enhance it, making it more technical or softer. It will reorder my document if I ask it to, creating an entire YachtWorld listing and a Word or PDF document.
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s amazing, but it does need direction from someone who has knowledge &mdash; a human &mdash; or it will get confused from one brand to the next or when it comes to specific trade terms.
&ldquo;I learned how to use it from my daughter, who is an interior designer. She uses it very effectively in her business on a daily basis&hellip; I love it!&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;I use ChatGPT as a professional support tool for research, document drafting, organization and strategic analysis,&rdquo; writes another contributor.
&ldquo;Specifically, I rely on it to help draft and refine correspondence, summarize complex materials, analyze financial and investment topics, assist with legal document preparation and provide structured guidance on business and personal projects.
&ldquo;It serves as an efficiency tool that helps me organize information, evaluate options and improve clarity in written communication.
&ldquo;ChatGPT does not replace professional legal, financial or medical advisers, but it is a valuable resource for research support, idea development and drafting assistance.&rdquo;
Thanks to our correspondents for their AI insights&hellip; If you haven&rsquo;t done so already, maybe you&rsquo;ll give it a whirl.
Bye for now, reader!
P.S. Investors seem to be shrugging off drama in the Middle East. Call it a risk-on day.
The three major U.S. indexes are paring recent losses. At the time of writing, the tech-heavy Nasdaq is up 1.60% to 22,880. In second place, the S&amp;P 500 is up almost 1% to 6,880. In last position, the Big Board&rsquo;s up 0.60% to 48,790.
Taking a look at the commodities complex, crude&rsquo;s up 0.30% to $74.75 for a barrel of WTI. &ldquo;Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the Trump administration will provide support to oil tankers transiting the Persian Gulf and announce more measures in the coming days,&rdquo; according to CNBC.
The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) &ldquo;will provide the insurance for both the crude carriers and the cargo ships operating in around the Gulf,&rdquo; says Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
What could go wrong?
As for precious metals, gold&rsquo;s up 0.35% to $5,141.30; silver, on the other hand, is down 0.20% to $83.30.
In sympathy with stocks, digital assets are in the green. Bitcoin&rsquo;s up 8% to $73,860 while Ethereum&rsquo;s up over 10% to $2,180.

FMF-Issue-030426(Featured)

Go Ask Germany

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />The Biggest &ldquo;Underground&rdquo; M&amp;A of 2026
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> There&rsquo;s a scene that plays out at big industry trade shows that most people never hear about. The main floor is all noise and spectacle &mdash; gleaming displays, flashing lights, cocktail receptions.
But down the hallway, in a private suite with a closed door and two suits standing outside, that&rsquo;s where the real business gets done. That&rsquo;s where billions of dollars change hands.
2025 was that kind of year for the global mining industry.
According to the law firm White &amp; Case, the aggregate value of global mining M&amp;A hit $93.7 billion last year &mdash; the highest annual total since 2012.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5SGql76X0CYw00msucOiqW/dd44a7b5b1433bce15c9c9cf7bce6f57/FMF-Issue-03-03-26_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
That wasn&rsquo;t a fluke. It was the inevitable collision of three forces building for years:
<ul>
<li>Surging demand for critical minerals</li>
<li>A Washington policy environment determined to reduce dependence on foreign supply chains</li>
<li>And over $1 trillion in private equity dry powder looking for a home.</li>
</ul>
The policy piece is the one most investors are still underestimating.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> On Jan. 14, 2026, President Trump issued a presidential proclamation directing negotiations under Section 232 on critical minerals &mdash; invoking a national security authority typically reserved for steel and aluminum.
The official list of covered minerals &mdash; 50 in 2022; expanded to 60 in 2025 &mdash; includes zinc, gallium, germanium and dozens of others essential to defense, energy and technology.
The message to the market was hard to miss: Washington considers these materials a matter of national defense, not just industrial supply.
Rebecca Campbell, global head of mining and metals at White &amp; Case, foreshadows: &ldquo;In 2026, strategic partnerships between governments, government agencies and the private sector are likely to be the backbone of growth M&amp;A in the sector.&rdquo;
Translation: The deals getting done this year won&rsquo;t just be driven by commodity prices. They'll be driven by geopolitics.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> China, in particular, currently acts as the world's predominant critical minerals refiner &mdash; and has already weaponized that position by restricting exports of gallium and germanium in recent years.
For mining companies sitting on domestic deposits of these materials, that geopolitical pressure is doing something remarkable: It's making them acquisition targets almost by default.
For a major mining conglomerate that needs these minerals and can't reliably source them from China, buying an American producer outright is faster, cheaper and safer than building a new mine from scratch.
Bain &amp; Co., the global management consultancy that tracks dealmaking across every major industry, captures the mood: &ldquo;The next wave of dealmaking will be bigger, more complex and far more decisive in determining who wins the forthcoming super cycle.&rdquo;
Global M&amp;A across all sectors surged to near-record levels in 2025, with megadeals above $5 billion accounting for the lion&rsquo;s share of value growth.
Which tells you something important: In a buyout boom, the big money doesn&rsquo;t get spread around evenly. It concentrates. And the investors who captured it weren't the ones who owned a little of everything &mdash; they were the ones already holding shares of the right target when the announcement hit.
But targeted companies don&rsquo;t announce it in advance. Deals are assembled quietly, in private suites, on encrypted calls between lawyers.
By the time a buyout hits the wire, the easy money is already made. Unless, of course, you know what to look for before the announcement.
[Editorial Note: Chinese smelters are warning that escalating tensions in the Middle East could disrupt global supplies of a key rare mineral.
Iran ranks among the world&rsquo;s top 15 producers &mdash; and Seatrade Maritime News reports the Strait of Hormuz is now &ldquo;effectively closed to almost all international commercial shipping.&rdquo;
If trade flows remain constrained, availability of this mineral could tighten suddenly.
That matters here at home. President Trump recently invoked Section 232 authority, designating this mineral as &ldquo;critical to national security.&rdquo;
In the U.S., a single mine accounts for roughly 70% of domestic production. Even before developments in Iran, James Altucher&rsquo;s proprietary models outlined a scenario where shares of the company involved could deliver gains as high as 925% in the months ahead.
<a id="2"></a>
Given the potential for supply disruption, James and his team have updated their projections. Under certain conditions, his analysis now indicates upside that could reach as much as 2,464%.
Of course, outcomes depend on how events unfold. But if a supply shock takes shape, the opportunity may not remain overlooked for long.
<a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2512377">You can review the full details here.]</a>
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />The 60/20/20 Portfolio
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Per market cap, the largest bank in the world just moved its gold target higher.
JPMorgan Chase (JPM) raised its 2026 forecast from $5,055 an ounce to $6,300, even after last month&rsquo;s 11% pullback &mdash; a drop that ranks among the sharpest in modern gold history, comparable to declines in 1980 and 1983.
The bank&rsquo;s view hasn&rsquo;t changed. &ldquo;Even with the recent near-term volatility, we remain firmly bullishly convinced in gold over the medium term,&rdquo; its analysts wrote, pointing to what they describe as a structural shift in capital toward real assets.
The bigger call is even more striking. JPMorgan outlines a path to $8,000&ndash;8,500 gold if household allocations rise modestly.
Private investors currently hold about 3% of portfolios in gold. A move to 4.6%, they estimate, would create meaningful new demand in a market already constrained by limited mine supply and steady central-bank buying.
By historical standards, gold ownership remains low. Western investors on average hold less than 1%.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Last fall, Morgan Stanley&rsquo;s chief investment officer Michael Wilson suggested rethinking the traditional 60/40 stock-bond mix in favor of a 60/20/20 model, with 20% allocated to precious metals.
According to CNBC, JPMorgan strategist Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou said households are substituting &ldquo;duration risk&rdquo; in bonds with gold exposure &mdash; a shift away from yield sensitivity toward purchasing-power protection.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5Fk8EHui782VS46OIBUA8i/26d8dd8b982c4c1c54ac867e040f9289/FMF-Issue-03-03-26_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" /> Courtesy: Sbcgold.com
Central banks are reinforcing that trend. Net purchases have doubled since Russia&rsquo;s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, as reserve managers diversify away from the dollar.
Gold is up more than 170% over the past five years. JPMorgan argues the drivers behind that move &mdash; reserve diversification, inflation concerns and fiscal strain &mdash; are not exhausted.
We&rsquo;ll see how that thesis lines up with the latest market action below&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Today&rsquo;s session: Equities are selling off hard as energy prices spike and inflation expectations reset. The surge in WTI crude &mdash; up 6.35%, near $77 per barrel of WTI &mdash; underscores how precarious supply risk has become, and it&rsquo;s feeding through to risk assets from tech stocks to crypto.
As for the three major U.S. stock indexes, each is down about 1.5% with the Dow, S&amp;P 500 and Nasdaq at 48,200, 6,785 and 22,400 respectively.
The price of gold today suggests the dollar&rsquo;s strength and rate expectations are moderating safe-haven demand. The yellow metal, in fact, is down 3.95% to $5,103.60 per ounce. At the same time, silver is getting hammered: down almost 7% to $82.65. (Buying opportunity!)
As for digital assets, Bitcoin and Ethereum are down 1.30% and 3% respectively; at the time of writing, priced at $68, 250 and $1,975.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Critical Minerals: Optimus Prime
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;If you are bullish on Optimus and the future of robotics, you are a mining bull too. You must be, because without these weird metals, none of it can happen,&rdquo; says Paradigm editor and resource-investing expert Matt Badiali.
Tesla began mass production of its Optimus humanoid robot at its Fremont factory on Jan. 21 this year. Elon Musk has committed to selling them to outside customers by 2026 &mdash; eventually, a million units a year. The rollout is no longer hypothetical.
Optimus, however, requires a staggering list of raw materials: tin, manganese, copper, dysprosium, lithium, cobalt, terbium, graphite, tantalum and more. &ldquo;The bad news,&rdquo; Matt notes, &ldquo;is that few of these come from the U.S.&rdquo;
<ul>
<li>Tin: Recycled only, no mined supply</li>
<li>Dysprosium and terbium: No domestic production</li>
<li>Manganese, graphite and tantalum:</li>
</ul>
And China controls most of it. &ldquo;China mines or refines the bulk of these metals,&rdquo; Matt writes. &ldquo;China built that industry out over a decade or more. And so it holds the keys to those metals today.
&ldquo;China boxed out the world, so everyone else is spending whatever it takes to catch up.&rdquo; When demand soars and supply doesn&rsquo;t follow, prices go up &mdash; and right now, demand is soaring. &ldquo;As investors, we need to jump on that train. It&rsquo;s a great way to make money.
&ldquo;The disconnect for investors,&rdquo; Matt says, is &ldquo;they all want to own Tesla, but don&rsquo;t know a thing about the companies that produce the materials needed for the Optimus program.
&ldquo;If you are a tech bull,&rdquo; he concludes, &ldquo;it makes sense to invest in the metals that drive the development and production of technology.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />AI Bros Are Butthurt
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> There&rsquo;s a strange social expectation surrounding the AI boom: Not only must we accept it, we must rally round it. 
&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t really remember a boom with such active hostility to it,&rdquo; says William Quinn, co-author of Boom and Bust: A Global History of Financial Bubbles.
Quinn contrasts AI with past breakthroughs like electricity and automobiles, which stirred fear, yes &mdash; but also wonder. AI, he suggests, is &ldquo;notable, perhaps unique, for the lack of enthusiasm.&rdquo;
(Mr. Quinn might profit from a brief detour into the early 19th century &mdash; specifically, the chapter that introduced the word &ldquo;Luddite&rdquo; into the English language. But I digress.)
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang &mdash; with a net worth of $164.1 billion &mdash; says criticism of AI has been &ldquo;extremely hurtful,&rdquo; arguing the technology is taking &ldquo;a lot of damage&rdquo; from &ldquo;doomer&rdquo; narratives.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2LJ2Mm3biXlSYYca9HMyNE/16d06245172a6b662d33e88632c20f18/FMF-Issue-03-03-26_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Sam Altman has similarly expressed frustration at what he sees as surprisingly slow &ldquo;diffusion&rdquo; and &ldquo;absorption&rdquo; of AI into daily life.
The hesitation isn&rsquo;t imaginary. A 2025 Pew Research survey found about 60% of Americans want more control over how AI is used in their lives, while just 17% are comfortable with it being concentrated in the hands of a few tech billionaires. (Honestly, that much?)
Even more telling: Industry estimates suggest that by mid-2025, only about 3% of global AI users were paying for premium AI services.
If this is a revolution, it&rsquo;s a very bumpy one. And when even the users won&rsquo;t open their wallets, maybe the problem isn&rsquo;t insufficient gratitude &mdash; it&rsquo;s simply unresolved doubt.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />AI vs. a Six-Figure Invoice
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;My company has been using Perplexity.ai to disentangle the international regulatory framework that makes it difficult to export radioactive substances from Australia to an overseas company,&rdquo; writes a new contributor &mdash; in response to Saturday&rsquo;s 5 Bullets roundup issue: &ldquo;America&rsquo;s ChatGPT Map Tells a Story.&rdquo;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/48fIo7fJyRNKZrLBcsIYnl/a8e82c4be66504127c9fbc2326468ee5/FMF-Issue-03-03-26_4_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" /> It&rsquo;s not just who is using AI&hellip; It&rsquo;s why. <a href="https://sherwood.news/tech/the-way-different-states-use-chatgpt-could-tell-us-a-lot-about-their/">Click to view the interactive map</a>
&ldquo;We have been totally amazed by the clarity and depth of the information this has provided my company,&rdquo; he continues. &ldquo;We have saved weeks of research and high-competence work.
&ldquo;Had we hired one of the major consultancies and international law firms, we could have incurred a six-figure invoice for a result that would likely be inferior.
&ldquo;AI is clearly a massive productivity revolution.&rdquo;
Emily: We dare not ask which radioactive materials&hellip; Thanks for writing in!
Yes, AI can dismantle export controls, draft legal briefs and compress weeks of research into an afternoon. But revolutions are rarely judged on capability alone.
They&rsquo;re judged on whether ordinary people feel empowered by them&hellip; or replaced by them. The verdict is still pending.
Take care, reader! Join us tomorrow for another round of 5 Bullets.

FMF-Issue-03-03-26(Featured)

The Underground M&A of 2026

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />The People Who&rsquo;d Vote on War
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> If events in Iran spiral into a larger conflict, it&rsquo;s Congress that must vote to authorize war.
By now you&rsquo;re aware of the U.S.-Israeli airstrikes over the weekend that reportedly took out Iran&rsquo;s supreme leader and dozens of senior commanders &mdash; a dramatic escalation that&rsquo;s now spread throughout the Middle East.
That said, the Constitution is unmistakeable: Both the House and the Senate would have to pass an authorization before any prolonged conflict became formal war. That&rsquo;s the system.
Cold comfort, considering the &ldquo;incorruptibility&rdquo; of our elected representatives.
Take Rep. Kevin Hern (OK-R), for instance. On Jan. 22, 2026, he filed paperwork revealing he&rsquo;d sold up to $500,000 of UnitedHealth stock. Three days later, UNH crashed 20% after the Trump administration proposed slashing Medicare Advantage payment rates.
The timing was, as one headline put it, &ldquo;super suspicious.&rdquo; The transaction date? Dec. 23, 2025 &mdash; a month before the disclosure, meaning Hern actually missed the January rally. Still, the optics were bad enough to make news.
Tracking congressional stock trading has now become one of America&rsquo;s least favorite pastimes. Every filing brings a fresh round of questions.
While much of the attention focuses on stocks and suspicious timing, in the case of Rep. Ilhan Omar (MN-D), an equally interesting story lies in the sprawling ecosystem of LLCs, venture capital and business valuations that populate these financial forms.
Particularly when valuations balloon overnight.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Rose Lake Capital and the Phantom Winery
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> In May 2025, Rep. Ilhan Omar filed her annual financial disclosure for 2024. Among the listed assets: Rose Lake Capital LLC, valued between $5 million and $25 million. 
This represented a dramatic increase from the previous year's filing, which listed the same company between $1 and $1,000.
Congressional disclosure forms report assets in ranges rather than exact figures, but even using the most conservative math &mdash; $5 million compared to $1,000 &mdash; that's a 500,000% increase in a single year.
Rose Lake Capital is co-owned by Omar&rsquo;s husband, Tim Mynett, and his longtime business partner Will Hailer. The firm&rsquo;s website describes it as focused on &ldquo;unique global opportunities&hellip; in more than 80 countries working across business, politics, banking and diplomacy.&rdquo;
The site once listed an impressive roster of employees, including a former ambassador to Bahrain. But as scrutiny intensified in late 2024 and 2025, the company scrubbed its website of team members&rsquo; names and biographies.
Here&rsquo;s where the numbers get interesting. In June 2024, court filings claimed Rose Lake Capital had a bank balance of $42.44. Six months later, the same firm would be valued up to $25 million on Omar&rsquo;s disclosure form.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The second major asset on Omar&rsquo;s disclosure is eStCru LLC, a California winery. Its reported valuation: $1&ndash;5 million in 2024, up from $15,000&ndash;50,000 the previous year.
According to reporting by the Minnesota Reformer and Rhode Island Current, the winery has a truly bizarre origin story.
Mynett and Hailer had been paid in grapes by a former political consulting client (more on that in a moment). The business partners hired a Sonoma winemaker and sought investors for a wine venture.
In fall 2021, D.C. restaurant owner Naeem Mohd was approached with what seemed like an incredible opportunity. Invest $300,000, the pitch went, and receive $900,000 back in just 18 months &mdash; a 200% return. If payment was late, 10% monthly interest would accrue.
Mohd was advised by attorney Faisal Gill, himself a Democratic political operative who previously worked with Mynett on campaigns for Minnesota&rsquo;s Attorney General Keith Ellison. On Gill&rsquo;s advice, Mohd wired the funds.
&ldquo;I trusted Tim,&rdquo; Gill told the Rhode Island Current. &ldquo;If it was not for Tim, the deal would have never happened.&rdquo;
Eighteen months came and went. Mohd eventually received his $300,000 principal back &mdash; about a month late &mdash; but no profits, no interest. He filed a lawsuit in California seeking at least $780,000, claiming the pair &ldquo;fraudulently misrepresented&hellip; that eStCru LLC was a legitimate company.&rdquo;
Mynett and Hailer denied wrongdoing. Hailer blamed pandemic woes, telling the Minnesota Reformer: &ldquo;EStCru LLC like many wineries is living invoice to invoice, sale to sale to stay afloat given the economic conditions of the industry.&rdquo;
Yet somehow, between 2023 and 2024, this invoice-to-invoice operation apparently increased in value by at least 20-fold, depending on which ends of the disclosure range you use.
Today, the winery&rsquo;s website shows no functioning purchase portal. Its last social media post dates to January 2023. The listed phone number doesn&rsquo;t work. The intellectual property is reportedly for sale.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />A Sordid Pattern Emerges
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Before Rose Lake Capital and eStCru winery, there was the E Street Group &mdash; a political consulting firm Mynett co-founded with Hailer in 2018. The firm&rsquo;s website consisted of a single landing page and accepted new clients only by referral.
During the 2019&ndash;2020 election cycle, Ilhan Omar&rsquo;s congressional campaign paid E Street Group $2.78 million, making the firm the campaign&rsquo;s second-largest recipient of funds, behind only the Minnesota Democratic Party.
The spending was legal. But it drew scrutiny because of who was being paid, how much and when.
In August 2019 &mdash; while the payments were ongoing &mdash; Mynett&rsquo;s then-wife filed for divorce, alleging that he was having an affair with Omar. Both denied the allegation, but they married in March 2020, shortly after finalizing their divorces.
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) &mdash; the independent agency that enforces U.S. campaign-finance law &mdash; reviewed complaints alleging the payments improperly mixed campaign and personal expenses. The agency ultimately found no legal violations.
After the 2020 election, Omar severed all campaign ties with the E Street Group. Even so, the episode left lingering questions about optics and Omar&rsquo;s judgment.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Tim Mynett is Omar&rsquo;s third legal husband. But her marital history has been the subject of extensive reporting and investigation, though many key facts remain disputed or unproven.
<ul>
<li>In 2002, Omar religiously married Ahmed Abdisalan Hirsi (not legally). They had two children but separated in 2008 and obtained a religious divorce</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>In 2009, she legally married Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, a British citizen. They separated in 2011</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Omar reunited with Hirsi in 2012 and had a third child</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>She divorced Elmi in 2017, then legally married Hirsi in 2018</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>She filed for divorce from Hirsi in 2019 and married Mynett in 2020.</li>
</ul>
The most explosive allegation &mdash; that Omar married Elmi, who some claim is her brother, to commit immigration fraud &mdash; has been investigated by multiple outlets. None found rock-solid proof.
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Omar&rsquo;s hometown newspaper, spent months investigating, ultimately reporting it &ldquo;could neither conclusively confirm nor rebut the allegation.&rdquo;
Much of the evidence was sourced from social media posts that were subsequently deleted. Screen grabs exist, but verification has proven impossible. Plus, Somalia &mdash; Omar&rsquo;s birthplace &mdash; had limited government record-keeping during the civil war era, making definitive proof elusive in either direction.
What is documented&hellip;
In 2019, Minnesota&rsquo;s Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board found that Omar filed joint tax returns in 2014 and 2015 with Hirsi &mdash; while she was legally married to Elmi &mdash; a violation that resulted in a reimbursement around $3,500 to her campaign committee, plus a $500 penalty.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Minneapolis and Net-Worth Controversies
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Allegations against Omar don&rsquo;t exist in a vacuum. Minnesota &mdash; and Minneapolis specifically &mdash; has been rocked by revelations of massive fraud recently, especially involving state and federal programs.
The &ldquo;Feeding Our Future&rdquo; scandal, centered in Minneapolis&rsquo; Somali community, allegedly defrauded federal child nutrition programs of approximately $250 million during the COVID-19 pandemic. Federal prosecutors have described it as one of the largest pandemic fraud schemes in the nation.
Though Omar did sponsor the MEALS Act of 2020, which temporarily eased oversight rules on school meal programs, there&rsquo;s no evidence Omar knew of or profited from the subsequent fraud.
FBI Director Kash Patel has called the $250 million child nutrition fraud &ldquo;the tip of the iceberg.&rdquo; State and federal authorities estimate potential losses across various Minnesota fraud schemes could exceed $9 billion. Much of this involves child care assistance fraud, Medicaid fraud and pandemic relief fraud.
Omar has faced criticism for her response &mdash; or lack thereof &mdash; to the fraud revelations, particularly given that much of it occurred in her district.
Her defenders note she&rsquo;s not accused of any connection to these schemes. Her critics argue that as the representative for the affected communities, she should be demanding accountability.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Last month, President Trump claimed on Truth Social that federal investigators were &ldquo;looking at&rdquo; Omar&rsquo;s finances, suggesting her net worth had reached $30&ndash;44 million. The number spread quickly &mdash; and, in all likelihood, inaccurately.
That rough figure comes from adding the maximum disclosed values of the two businesses tied to her husband: Rose Lake Capital (up to $25 million) and eStCru winery (up to $5 million).
When Omar entered Congress in 2019, it should be noted, she reported a negative net worth, largely due to student loans and other debts.
Today? Quiver Quantitative, which aggregates congressional disclosures, places Omar&rsquo;s net worth over $18 million. That figure isn&rsquo;t definitive, but it highlights the real issue &mdash; the public is left guessing.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3FSKXnmd0c1pBH7oLckajL/02d1f9fe9e84ca4e06d25e57ba3ea0ec/FMF-Issue-030226_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" /> Courtesy: Quiver Quantitative
Omar&rsquo;s office says her husband, Tim Mynett, is one of several partners in his business ventures, meaning his actual stake could be far smaller than the headline valuations suggest. But the disclosures don&rsquo;t say how much he owns. No percentages. No clarity.
That omission isn&rsquo;t illegal.
But other members of Congress, including Reps. Cory Mills and Suzan DelBene, routinely disclose exact ownership stakes in closely held businesses. Omar does not. The result is a filing that complies with the letter of the law while frustrating its supposed purpose: transparency.
At the same time, Omar&rsquo;s congressional salary &mdash; $174,000 a year &mdash; does not explain the appearance of eight-figure household wealth on its own.
That gap isn&rsquo;t proof of wrongdoing. But it does warrant explanation.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />The Accountability Question
Lawmakers are allowed to trade stocks. They&rsquo;re allowed to hold private businesses. And they&rsquo;re allowed to report those interests in vague ranges and move on.
If they get caught late filing, they pay a fine smaller than some dinner receipts and keep going. That&rsquo;s not a real deterrent.
Kevin Hern&rsquo;s UnitedHealth trade wasn&rsquo;t transparent. It came to light because the STOCK Act (2012) forced disclosure &mdash; weeks later and after the trade was already done.
Ilhan Omar&rsquo;s disclosures present a different problem. Not necessarily suspicious timing, but suspicious opacity. Companies that appear dormant on paper suddenly carry multimillion-dollar valuations. Ownership stakes aren&rsquo;t specified. Numbers jump, but explanations don&rsquo;t follow.
The public is left squinting at paperwork that technically complies with the rules while failing to answer the obvious questions.
Congress, meanwhile, likes to tell itself that disclosure equals accountability. It doesn&rsquo;t. Disclosure without enforcement is theater. 
The paper trail is there. What&rsquo;s missing is a system that insists on straight answers &mdash; and hard consequences.
P.S. In case you&rsquo;re wondering how Rep. Ilhan Omar might vote, if the matter&rsquo;s brought before Congress:
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1q5NWUn8rvkAueqIHsKOpT/3958db153a8b3ef3a4cfd2f48b210962/FMF-Issue-030226_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
It&rsquo;s also fair to point out that Iran and Somalia have two very different historical interpretations of the Islamic faith. In Iran, the dominant branch of Islam is Twelver Shia &mdash; the state religion for centuries &mdash; whereas in Somalia almost the entire population adheres to Sunni Islam.
On less metaphysical matters, the market is rebounding at the time of writing. The S&amp;P 500 (+0.10%) and Nasdaq (+0.40%) have flipped into green territory. And the Big Board&rsquo;s just a fraction of a percent in the red.
Predictably, the price of crude&rsquo;s up 5% to $70.45 for a barrel of WTI. While silver&rsquo;s getting slammed &mdash; down 5.50% to $88 &mdash; gold is up 1.25% to $5,314.50 per ounce.
As for crypto, it&rsquo;s taking news from the Middle East in stride. Bitcoin&rsquo;s up 5.75%, approaching $70K; Ethereum&rsquo;s bounced 6% to $2,035.

FMF-Issue-030226(Featured)

The War Vote Roster

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />It Was Four Years Ago&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> We neglected to note a crucial anniversary yesterday in the annals of the U.S. dollar&rsquo;s demise as the world reserve currency.
On Saturday, Feb. 26, 2022, Joe Biden announced what were touted as &ldquo;crippling&rdquo; economic sanctions against Russia. The Russian invasion of Ukraine began two days earlier.
Washington froze the dollar-based assets held by Russia&rsquo;s central bank &mdash; $300 billion worth. The &ldquo;thinking,&rdquo; if that&rsquo;s what you want to call it, is that the move would put sand in the gears of Moscow&rsquo;s war machine. Biden bragged that &ldquo;the ruble is almost immediately reduced to rubble.&rdquo;
&ldquo;Joe Biden crossed a critical red line on Saturday and the world will never be the same,&rdquo; our Jim Rickards said in this space the following Monday. Already, he knew the score&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1pxNQYZQh5tAkbZAjXbT3h/168644122300c5594f02fa6e14dad7c9/FMF-Issue-02-27-26_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
For the next 12 months, the Biden administration and the corporate media gaslighted the American public about how Ukraine was totally winning and Russia was on its last legs.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> But on the one-year anniversary, the mainstream had to bow to the inevitable: &ldquo;How Biden&rsquo;s Shock-and-Awe Tactic Is Failing to Stop Russia,&rdquo; was Bloomberg&rsquo;s headline.
&ldquo;Sanctions have inflicted damage, but they haven&rsquo;t induced Putin to stop the war &mdash; raising wider questions about a tool that&rsquo;s become increasingly central to U.S. foreign policy.&rdquo;
Russia&rsquo;s economy shrank in 2022 &mdash; but not by nearly as much as Western economists guessed. From there it went on to experience a wartime boom &mdash; notching a higher GDP growth rate than the United States.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> And it wasn&rsquo;t just about Russia: The moment the sanctions were imposed, dozens of governments around the world on less-than-friendly terms in Washington began wondering Are we next?
And they acted accordingly &mdash; trying to get out from under the thumb of the U.S. dollar.
The dollar&rsquo;s share of global currency reserves took an unprecedented one-year drop &mdash; from 55% in 2021 to just 47% in 2022.
A one-year drop of eight percentage points is &ldquo;equivalent to 10 times the average annual pace of erosion in the USD's market share in the prior years," said a report from Eurizon SLJ Asset Management. Eurizon&rsquo;s researchers attribute the plunge to Washington&rsquo;s &ldquo;exceptional actions&rdquo; against Moscow.
On the flip side, global central banks began accelerating gold &mdash; an asset that, as Jim Rickards always reminds us, &ldquo;cannot be stolen, frozen or seized provided it is in safe storage.&rdquo;
The jump in this chart that began in 2022? There&rsquo;s no coincidence. The number was down in 2025, but still way higher than any year before 2022.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5fQUOsNqW6owQCkV4nmqBf/ec2efdbd0ebf0622b70204b9ce2adc56/FMF-Issue-02-27-26_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
This buying will keep a floor under the gold price for years to come. (More about the gold price&rsquo;s near-term prospects in Bullet No. 2.)
Sometime in the 21st century the dollar will lose its role as the globe&rsquo;s reserve currency &mdash; as the British pound did in the 20th century, the French franc in the 19th, the Dutch guilder in the 18th and so on.
The best defense will likely be&hellip; gold. Certainly that&rsquo;s been the case so far in the dollar&rsquo;s slow-motion dethronement.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Another Week, Another Gold Milestone?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Gold is on track for another record weekly close &mdash; up $46 as we write to $5,229.
Interesting pattern here &mdash; a potential close over $5,200 this week, after a close over $5,100 last week and a close over $5,000 the week before.
That&rsquo;s bullish. Even a close over $6,166 at day&rsquo;s end would be bullish according to analysts who pay heed to Fibonacci numbers.
Silver is screaming higher &mdash; well past that $90 barrier we&rsquo;ve been watching all month. At last check the bid is up over $5 to $93.44.
And the mining stocks are inching still higher into record territory, the HUI index approaching 970.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> As for the stock market as a whole, it&rsquo;s another red day on top of yesterday&rsquo;s post-earnings letdown from Nvidia.
The S&amp;P 500 is down 0.6% to 6,866. The Nasdaq&rsquo;s losses are steeper, the Dow&rsquo;s steeper still. Bloomberg is trying to chalk it up to &ldquo;persisting concerns about an AI bubble&rdquo; &mdash; but if that were the case the Dow would be holding up better than the tech-heavy Nasdaq.
Among the big movers today is Netflix &mdash; up 12% on relief that the company is backing out of its proposed takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent of HBO and CNN among other assets.
<a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/sorry-no-usd20k-pickup-truck-for-you#2">We said in early December</a> this blockbuster deal might never come about. It was evident the Trump administration favored a rival takeover bid by Paramount Skydance. PSKY kept raising its hostile bid to a point where yesterday WBD said the offer was superior to that of Netflix.
Game over. Now the Ellison family will control CNN and CBS News and TikTok &mdash; every one of those acquisitions the result of government pressure. Very healthy for civic discourse in our country!
PSKY shares are rallying even harder than NFLX &mdash; up 22% as we write. WBD is down 2%.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The big economic number today is an inflation reading that came in hotter than expected. The producer price index jumped 0.5% last month, while the typical Wall Street economist figured on 0.3%.
Assuming wholesale prices feed through to the retail level, that means a coming uptick in consumer inflation. As such, futures traders assign only a 50-50 likelihood the Federal Reserve will cut short-term interest rates before midyear.
➢ Lest we forget, the latest crypto rally had no staying power: Bitcoin is back under $66,000 and Ethereum has sunk well below $2,000.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Don&rsquo;t Try This at Home
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> In another instance of traders hedging their bets against a U.S. attack on Iran while markets are closed this weekend, crude is up $1.54 to $66.75.
Iran&rsquo;s foreign minister says yesterday&rsquo;s U.S.-Iran talks in Switzerland &ldquo;made very good progress&rdquo; and more talks are in the works next week. The only headline news from the Middle East today is the State Department authorizing the departure of nonemergency government personnel from Israel.
Any reaction in the oil price to a U.S. attack will be sharp &mdash; but potentially short-lived, says Paradigm trading pro Enrique Abeyta.
Consider Russia moving into Ukraine four years ago: &ldquo;Despite sanctions and hostilities, Russian oil continued flowing to global markets, often at discounted prices.
&ldquo;Prices may spike initially, but they often settle once traders assess actual supply disruptions rather than worst-case scenarios.&rdquo;
Ditto for the impact on the stock market: &ldquo;Stocks did fall sharply at first,&rdquo; Enrique says of events in 2022. &ldquo;Within months, however, many major indexes had recovered a significant portion of their losses.&rdquo;
Looking forward, &ldquo;the key question for long-term investors is not whether volatility will rise for a few days. It&rsquo;s whether the event changes the long-term trajectory of corporate earnings and economic growth.
&ldquo;In most historical cases, the answer has been no.&rdquo;
And it&rsquo;s hard to trade around short-term volatility: &ldquo;These trades are complex. They require precise timing and a deep understanding of options pricing.
&ldquo;For most investors, trying to trade around geopolitical headlines is more likely to cause stress than generate profits.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Cuckoo Cocoa Prices
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The wholesale price of cocoa has collapsed. Your retail price of chocolate will be slow to follow suit.
Cocoa futures traded under $3,500 per metric ton all the way from 1980 up until 2022. They soared beginning in 2023 and went vertical in early 2024.
It was supply and demand at work: Extreme weather and widespread crop disease hit cocoa farms in West Africa hard. Now crop yields are rebounding, sending prices down 68% &mdash; approaching pre-2022 levels.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6f9ZChvEi9PWxOavm7Gb9T/aae22f2993bdd315213d17f3f0c418fb/FMF-Issue-02-27-26_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
But don&rsquo;t expect the price of your chocolate fix to come down anytime soon.
&ldquo;Manufacturers are still working through inventories purchased when cocoa was trading at elevated levels,&rdquo; says the Demography Unplugged Substack.
&ldquo;Analysts expect those higher-cost stockpiles to last until at least mid-2026. And given the extreme volatility of West African agriculture, producers remain cautious about cutting prices too quickly.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Your Bank Wants Your Passport
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;I don't usually start my emails off this way, but this is a FRESH, STEAMING PILE OF B***S**T!!!!&rdquo; a reader writes after <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/your-bank-wants-your-passport">yesterday&rsquo;s edition</a>.
(And to be clear, she&rsquo;s talking about the policy &mdash; not your editor&rsquo;s analysis of the policy!)
&ldquo;You are absolutely right, Trump's latest tease about signing an executive order mandating banks to collect proof of citizenship is just another excuse to subject legal citizens to more government surveillance. And it shows just how much Trump knows about the daily lives of the &lsquo;little people.&rsquo;
&ldquo;You hit the nail on the head when you suggested, &lsquo;If the goal is to encourage self-deportations, the simplest and most effective way to do that is to strip illegal migrants of welfare benefits.&rsquo;
&ldquo;Right?
&ldquo;If he were really serious about encouraging illegal immigrants to self-deport, that executive order would require them to show proof of citizenship to cash a check or put money on a Visa gift card at Walmart, not at the banks.
&ldquo;Thanks for elevating my bloo&hellip; er, keeping us informed! Kinda gives 5 &lsquo;Bullets&rsquo; a whole different connotation. 😄&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;I bet <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/not-since-covid-has-this-happened#4">the new super duper &lsquo;Real ID</a>&rsquo; will not be enough,&rdquo; chimes in another.
&ldquo;I needed my birth certificate for a SECOND TIME at the Oregon DMV, my Social Security card, two pieces of proof of address (recent bills or bank statements with my name and address) to get my &lsquo;Real ID&rsquo; in Oregon.
&ldquo;A few months back I tried to freeze my credit due to suspicious activity and was told my &lsquo;Real ID&rsquo; was not sufficient to prove I was who I said I was!&rdquo;
Dave responds: Yeah but the state has your biometric data now and the feds can ask for it at any time. Because it&rsquo;s about their convenience, not yours.
That&rsquo;s it for this week. Come back tomorrow for an interesting glimpse into how people are using AI &mdash; and where they&rsquo;re located.