This morning, we&rsquo;re broadcasting more never-before-seen footage from Paradigm&rsquo;s meeting of the minds in Baltimore on December 12.
In this ten-minute segment, colleague Chris Cimorelli of our Microcap Millionaire service explains how the next revolutionary tech stock also happens to be&hellip;
&hellip; the best-performing stock of all time. 
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A quantum leap in computing is on the horizon, Chris tells us, comparing this game-changing scenario to the transistor&rsquo;s replacement of the vacuum tube. But on a much grander scale.
While other Big Tech companies are in the race, Chris reveals why ONE company is poised to lead the quantum revolution.
Uncover this groundbreaking information before the race truly escalates in 2025&hellip;
Best regards,
Emily Clancy Paradigm Pressroom&rsquo;s 5 Bullets

chris-presentation

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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

A quantum leap in computing is on the horizon, colleague Chris Cimorelli explains. 

The Race to Quantum Computing 

<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" />Baby Formula Blackmail
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Aries-Reign Peterson lived for only 79 days.
Born premature on Jan. 30, 2018, he got by on breast milk at the start &mdash; &ldquo;thriving and growing for several weeks,&rdquo; recalls his mother, Anika Hunte.
According to a lawsuit filed by Hunte against Abbott Laboratories (ABT), the boy&rsquo;s health started going downhill as soon as he was given a formulation of Similac made specifically for preemies. And it got worse after doctors added a Similac fortifier.
Then came the diagnosis: Necrotizing enterocolitis, or NEC &mdash; an inflammation of the intestinal tissue, a condition that kills on average one premature baby every day in the United States. Aries-Reign went on life support and died on April 18.
Hunte&rsquo;s lawsuit is among hundreds now making their way through the courts &mdash; all of them alleging that Abbott&rsquo;s preemie version of Similac raises the likelihood of NEC. One of those cases resulted last year in a $500 million judgment against Abbott.
In response, Abbott has gone to Capitol Hill &ldquo;to press for a law that would throw out all pending suits and shield it from any future ones,&rdquo; according to an infuriating Bloomberg article.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Here&rsquo;s the plot twist: Abbott says if Congress doesn&rsquo;t accede to its wishes, it will pull the Similac preemie formula off the market.
Alternatively, Abbott is proposing the federal government take over sales and distribution of the product.
It&rsquo;s an odd tack to take given the company&rsquo;s insistence there&rsquo;s nothing wrong with the product.
&ldquo;Numerous studies and NEC authorities have made clear that preterm infant formula does not cause NEC,&rdquo; says a statement given to Bloomberg by Abbott PR flack Scott Stoffel. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the absence of human milk that increases NEC risk rather than anything harmful in formula &mdash; a product that&rsquo;s been helping infants thrive and survive for nearly 50 years.&rdquo;
Fine. If the studies and authorities say there&rsquo;s nothing to back up a link between the formula and NEC, rely on those studies and authorities in court and let the chips fall where they may. You shouldn&rsquo;t need special favors from Washington.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Make no mistake: What Abbott wants is the same sort of sweetheart deal the makers of the COVID jabs got.
Weeks before the first lockdowns in March 2020, the feds invoked the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act of 2005 &mdash; offering a liability shield against any developers of a future COVID shot.
&ldquo;For the next four years,&rdquo; said a CNBC article in December 2020, &ldquo;these companies &lsquo;cannot be sued for money damages in court&rsquo; over injuries related to the administration or use of products to treat or protect against COVID.&rdquo;
That was during the first Trump administration. A year ago, on its way out the door, the Biden administration extended those protections through 2029.
Yes, there&rsquo;s a government-instituted compensation fund &mdash; but getting money out of it is like getting the proverbial blood from a stone.
Per Bloomberg, Abbott&rsquo;s lobbyists &ldquo;are pushing for a similar fund that would give a payout to people who claim harm from its products, but would bar them from suing Abbott in court, according to a one-pager the company has given congressional staff.&rdquo;
The liability shield made its way through a House committee during the summer, but its future is murky.
No, there&rsquo;s no obvious investment angle here. ABT shares have gone nowhere this year; they don&rsquo;t look attractive either on the long or short side.
As an old colleague once said, sometimes we go in search of new investment ideas &mdash; and all we find instead is outrage.
<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" />Every Time This Happens, the Market Rallies
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;The recent action by the Federal Reserve to cut their benchmark fed funds rate with the S&amp;P 500 near all-time highs is relatively rare,&rdquo; says Paradigm trading pro Enrique Abeyta.
Indeed it&rsquo;s happened only 10 times since 1994. &ldquo;One year later the stock market has been up 100% of the time!&rdquo; he says. And per figures from Bespoke Investment Group, the average gain is 14.9%
Curiously, eight of these 10 instances have occurred under the current Fed chair Jerome Powell. &ldquo;The other two,&rdquo; Enrique says, &ldquo;were under Alan Greenspan during the last technology bubble&rdquo; in the 1990s.
Historical data like this affirms Enrique&rsquo;s position that the AI boom is destined to end badly &mdash; but not yet!
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />In the meantime, it&rsquo;s one of those four days each year when weirdness can ripple through the stock market.
It&rsquo;s a &ldquo;quadruple witching&rdquo; Friday, when four types of derivatives all expire at once &mdash; stock options, stock futures, index options and index futures.
But there&rsquo;s no evidence of weirdness at the moment. At last check the S&amp;P 500 is up 0.9% on the day at 6,835. The Dow&rsquo;s rally is weaker, the Nasdaq&rsquo;s stronger.
In the commodity complex, silver is on track to end the week in record territory, the bid currently $67.21. Big brother gold is also looking stout at $4,350 although it hasn&rsquo;t experienced the furious run-up that silver has in recent days. Crude is up 41 cents to $56.56.
The major cryptos are treading water, Bitcoin a little over $87,000 and Ethereum at $2,961.
<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" />TikTok: The Final Chapter
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />It appears the TikTok deal is nearly across the finish line.
As mentioned here on Wednesday, the Trump administration has issued repeated extensions of the deadline set out by federal law for TikTok&rsquo;s Chinese owners to either sell to American buyers &mdash; or shut the platform down.
Yesterday, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew sent a memo to his staff: Parent firm ByteDance has signed binding agreements with a group of buyers.
Per the memo, the new ownership lineup looks like this&hellip;
<ul>
<li>ByteDance will retain a 19.9% stake</li>
<li>Oracle (ORCL) will own 15%</li>
<li>The U.S. private equity firm Silver Lake will own 15%</li>
<li>MGX, an investment fund owned by the United Arab Emirates government, will own 15%</li>
<li>The remaining 30.1% will be held by affiliates of existing ByteDance investors.</li>
</ul>
Presumably that latter category includes Pennsylvania billionaire and GOP donor Jeff Yass.
Under the old ownership structure, he owned 7% of TikTok parent ByteDance. By many accounts he persuaded Donald Trump to oppose the TikTok ban when it was rushed through Congress in the spring of last year.
Perhaps in the fullness of time it will emerge that Yass was the glue on the TikTok deal &mdash; which is set to be concluded on Jan. 22.
Before we close the book on this story, it&rsquo;s worth briefly revisiting a couple of angles discussed in this space at the time the TikTok ban was moving through Congress last year&hellip;
First, the law grants sweeping powers to the president to ban apps and websites that he determines to be controlled by a &ldquo;foreign adversary&rdquo; &mdash; not just TikTok.
Donald Trump&rsquo;s future AI-and-crypto czar warned as much at the time.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/47OqFW6FVqpknTyvh1GlvC/b35c4552203a281317895017749c39a7/david_sacks_x.png" alt="David Sacks X" />
Second, the number of new TikTok users plateaued roughly two years ago. And most of those new users are folks in their 30s and 40s.
Perhaps Larry Ellison &mdash; the Oracle co-founder who&rsquo;s been the &ldquo;face&rdquo; of this deal &mdash; will come to regret his acquisition?
<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" />Because it appears the Trump administration is still enamored with the idea of a 50-year mortgage&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2wHuGSpgW684YaRZkWmnZ7/dc8d75787c13415c193a6553b92d8bad/50yr_mortgage_meme.png" alt="meme" />
<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: Second Jobs, &ldquo;Echoes from Hell&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />We heard from a handful of readers after our item <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/taco-or-world-war-iii" target="_blank" rel="noopener">in Wednesday&rsquo;s edition</a> about a record number of Americans working second and third jobs. 
&ldquo;Our family employs college students with primary school education focus (preschool, kindergarten, early grade school) as babysitters for our young boys.
&ldquo;Many of them stay on and help with our family (or with others) even after graduating with a full-time teaching position because the salary isn&rsquo;t enough to make ends meet. These young teachers earn $35,000&ndash;45,000/year and they have to pay for their own school supplies, travel, etc&hellip;
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a demanding job, underpaid and underappreciated and most have to take on a second job tutoring, babysitter, etc.&hellip; in order to survive.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;In the early &rsquo;60s the minimum wage for us high school graduates was $1.00 per hour,&rdquo; writes another.
&ldquo;To pay my way through college, I had to have as many as four part-time jobs during the school year and at least one extra part-time job plus a full-time job during the summer (refused to borrow money for college).
&ldquo;Since then inflation makes $1 per hour back then equivalent to about $13 today, which is still below the poverty level of about $17 today and why so many now work two jobs.
&ldquo;Easy to see why the birth rate is so low for married couples and why many singles are renting rooms from homeowners.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Still, for some people working more than one job is a choice.
&ldquo;I work as an insurance agent about 40&ndash;50 hours a week. This job more than covers our living expenses.
&ldquo;I also run 200-plus head of cattle mostly on the weekends. My wife and I have six rental properties as well.
&ldquo;My side hustle is grinding stumps on the side for spending money.
&ldquo;I enjoy the physical work outside the office, and it provides a nice additional source of income.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Dave's article about the 58-year hypothesis and its link to various historical events was very informative and insightful,&rdquo; a reader writes after <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-boomer-freak-out-of-2026">yesterday&rsquo;s &ldquo;Echoes from Hell&rdquo; edition of </a><a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-boomer-freak-out-of-2026" target="_blank" rel="noopener">5 Bullets</a>.
&ldquo;From an English professor's perspective, Bravo! Keep up the good work.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The section of the issue dealing with the Tet Offensive drew a couple of impassioned responses.
&ldquo;I get very tired of hearing that we lost the WAR with Vietnam; the Military did NOT lose the War; the politicians are the ones that lost the war. McNamara and his numbers math plus all the restrictions on what could be bombed was ridiculous.
&ldquo;How do I know? I was there in 1968 and flew 120 Reconnaissance missions in an RF-4C and had access to all the Top Secret information. Whether or not we should have even been in the war in the first place is another issue.&rdquo;
&ldquo;We did win Tet,&rdquo; says another, &ldquo;and had the NVA beat after Linebacker II, then gave it away in peace negotiation followed by Congress pulling the funding for our allies; 58,000 dead while many at home got rich and we created a great debt. They beat us because of TV, weak leadership and terrible war plans.&rdquo;
Dave responds: This isn&rsquo;t the first time I&rsquo;ve pointed it out, but there are interesting/disturbing parallels between Vietnam and Ukraine.
Richard Nixon won the presidency in 1968 in part by touting a &ldquo;secret plan&rdquo; to end the Vietnam War.
It turned out the plan was to fight the war for four more years&hellip; then send Henry Kissinger to Paris to sign a peace deal at the start of his second term that was no different than the one he could have gotten at the start of his first.
Donald Trump, meanwhile, promised to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict on &ldquo;Day 1&rdquo; of his presidency. Yet the war still rages, with a steady pipeline of U.S. aid to Kyiv and Trump threatening to amp up the sanctions on Moscow.
For the sake of young Ukrainians being sent into the meat grinder, let&rsquo;s hope this time the war isn&rsquo;t dragged out all the way until January 2029.

fmf hero 121925

Baby Formula Blackmail

fmf-hero-121825

The Boomer Freak-Out 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" />TACO or WWIII
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Either the president will back down from his declaration of a blockade against Venezuela&hellip; or World War III starts this week.
It&rsquo;s one or the other.
As you might have heard, last night Donald Trump declared &ldquo;a total and complete blockade&rdquo; of all &ldquo;sanctioned oil tankers&rdquo; entering or leaving Venezuela.
&ldquo;Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America,&rdquo; he said on his Truth Social platform. &ldquo;It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />For decades, if not centuries, statesmen have looked upon a blockade as an act of war.
One of the things that made <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/doubling-down-on-armageddon" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962</a> so dangerous was that President John F. Kennedy imposed a U.S. naval blockade of Cuba.
But he was careful never to call it a &ldquo;blockade&rdquo; &mdash; knowing the nuclear-armed Soviet Union would see it as a declaration of war. (He used the euphemism &ldquo;quarantine&rdquo; instead.)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Around the same time Trump declared the blockade last night, a sanctioned Russian oil tanker began approaching Venezuela.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6d4ZmzSW56tsD0sS0gehdZ/160313ef1adcc380a02f8c1a10dea696/dd_geopolitics_x.png" alt="Tweet" />
The Hyperion is called a &ldquo;shadow tanker&rdquo; because while it flies a Gambian flag &mdash; the better to evade U.S. sanctions &mdash; it appears to have substantial Russian ownership.
A U.S. attack on this ship would be a U.S. attack on Russia.
Your move, Mr. Trump.
For months now, financial observers have invoked the term TACO &mdash; short for &ldquo;Trump always chickens out.&rdquo; It seems Moscow just called his bluff&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Meanwhile on the economic warfare front, the Trump administration is ready to impose yet another round of sanctions on Russia &ldquo;should President Vladimir Putin reject a peace agreement with Ukraine,&rdquo; according to a Bloomberg report.
It appears existing sanctions on Russia&rsquo;s &ldquo;shadow fleet&rdquo; would be stepped up &mdash; as well as sanctions on &ldquo;traders who facilitate the transactions.&rdquo; Bloomberg says Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent discussed the move last week with European diplomats.
Hmmm&hellip; Only last month, Bessent was being interviewed by Kristen Welker on NBC&rsquo;s Meet the Press &mdash; slamming the European Union for planning an additional round of sanctions on top of the 18 already imposed.
&ldquo;The Europeans tell me, &lsquo;Oh, we are doing our 19th sanctions package.&rsquo; In my mind, Kristen, if you're going to do something 19 times, you failed.&rdquo;
Perhaps American sanctions have some sort of magic pixie dust that European sanctions lack?
Yesterday, the price of oil sank to its lowest level since early 2021 on silly rumors that peace was about to break out between Russia and Ukraine. Today it&rsquo;s up nearly a buck to $56.10.
<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" />DIS and AMZN and OpenAI
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />After Disney announced it would sink $1 billion into ChatGPT maker OpenAI last week, Amazon just said, &ldquo;Hold my beer.&rdquo;
We should back up a bit. Last week at the big annual gathering of the Paradigm editors at our Baltimore headquarters, trading pro Enrique Abeyta forecast what he called the &ldquo;OpenAIpocalypse.&rdquo;
Enrique has long thought that OpenAI&rsquo;s head honcho Sam Altman is all hat, no cattle. He thinks 2026 is the year it will all come crashing down &mdash; in catastrophic fashion. Enrique even compares OpenAI&rsquo;s likely fate to the collapse of Enron in 2001.
So&hellip; The big AI headline today is that Amazon is discussing a deal to invest $10 billion into OpenAI. In exchange, OpenAI would adopt Amazon&rsquo;s Trainium series of AI chips and use Amazon Web Services&rsquo; data center capacity. At least that&rsquo;s what the tech website The Information is reporting.
AMZN&rsquo;s reported $10 billion gambit comes on the heels of a mere $1 billion investment in OpenAI announced last week by The Walt Disney Company. Under the deal, ChatGPT users would get access to Disney and Marvel characters to create their own AI-generated images and videos.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Well, the devil is in the details,&rdquo; Enrique writes this morning on the daily-feed section of the Paradigm Press mobile app.
&ldquo;Now it has come out that OpenAi is paying DIS not in cash, but with warrants to buy OpenAi stock.
&ldquo;Those are likely well in the money and Disney would only put the $1 billion investment in IF they were so &mdash; in fact &mdash; while Disney WOULD be investing $1 billion into OpenAi, they likely would be making much more money than that.
&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t believe the headlines!&rdquo;
The reality check is having zero impact on DIS stock this week &mdash; trading near a one-month high. Meanwhile AMZN is up three-quarters of a percent a day after its own OpenAI announcement. Go figure&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The big market story once again today is&hellip; silver. The white metal is up $2.82 at last check &mdash; a whopping 4.4% &mdash; to $66.49.
&ldquo;Mr. Slammy&rdquo; &mdash; the mysterious forces in New York and London that can depress the silver price &mdash; is nowhere to be found today after another round of furious buying in Shanghai.
Gold, meanwhile, is tightening its grip on the $4,300 level &mdash; the bid now $4,338.
The major U.S. stock indexes are all in the red &mdash; the Dow holding up best, the Nasdaq faring worst. The S&amp;P 500 is down nearly two-thirds of a percent at 6,757. If that holds by day&rsquo;s end, it&rsquo;ll be the first sub-6,800 close since Nov. 25.
Crypto appears stuck where it was 48 hours ago &mdash; Bitcoin under $87,000 and Ethereum under $2,900.
<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" />About Those Job Numbers&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Hustle or desperation? The number of Americans working more than one job is now its highest in records going back more than 30 years.
Digging a little deeper into the government job numbers released yesterday, we see that 9.3 million Americans reported working two or more jobs last month &mdash; 5.7% of all job-holders.
&ldquo;Only in the mid-1990s, when the workforce was considerably smaller than it is today, was the share of multiple job holders higher, peaking at 6.5% in November 1996,&rdquo; writes Felix Richter at Statista.
&ldquo;But whereas in 1996, around two-thirds of multiple jobholders were not college-educated and presumably worked in low-wage occupations, half of those working more than one job now do hold a college degree, indicating that even an advanced degree no longer guarantees a job that pays well enough to make ends meet.&rdquo;
The number of multiple job-holders in November of 2025 is substantially higher than it was in November 2019, ahead of the pandemic &mdash; as well November 2008, the nadir of the financial crisis.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7fBIw5dc6VWQkCRmLYFE2I/54065bbf89202a11fbb6a53dbc96976a/multiple_job_chart.png" alt="multiple jobs -chart" />
&nbsp;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Meanwhile, even by the new 2020s standard of what constitutes a healthy job market&hellip; job creation is looking punk.
Time was that it took 150,000 or even 200,000 new jobs every month for the economy to keep up with population growth.
But population growth has slowed to a crawl. The border has been effectively closed since last spring, illegal migrants already here are being deported and the native-born working-age population is stagnant.
Experts like demographer Neil Howe and Bianco Research founder Jim Bianco say the &ldquo;breakeven&rdquo; number of new jobs needed to keep up with population growth is now perhaps as little as 30,000.
But poring over the numbers released yesterday&hellip; the average for the last six months is less than 17,000. Not great.
That said, the Bureau of Labor Statistics acknowledges that because most of its personnel were furloughed for 43 days during the partial government shutdown, its data for October and November might be subject to &ldquo;slightly higher than usual standard errors.&rdquo;
Not that it was ever super-reliable to begin with, but that&rsquo;s a story for another day&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" />TikTok: Still Not In U.S. Hands
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />For the record&hellip; TikTok ownership still hasn&rsquo;t passed into American hands.
Maybe you don&rsquo;t remember now&hellip; but the social media platform used by half of the U.S. population was in danger of disappearing earlier this year.
In fact, it did disappear <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/two-executive-orders-trump-must-sign-now/#2" target="_blank" rel="noopener">for a few hours on the eve of Donald Trump&rsquo;s inauguration</a> &mdash; thanks to a law that overwhelmingly passed both houses of Congress last year and was signed by Joe Biden. Under the law, TikTok&rsquo;s Chinese owners had to sell its U.S. assets to U.S. buyers.
Upon taking office, Donald Trump gave TikTok a 75-day reprieve to find a buyer. Then came another reprieve. And another&hellip;
As you might recall, an American consortium led by Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison was all set to take over. Trump himself made the announcement on September 20. The whole thing was supposed to be buttoned up when Trump met with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the end of October.
But it wasn&rsquo;t to be. Beijing still looks upon TikTok as valuable leverage in ongoing talks with Washington about a host of issues including trade.
The most recent deadline was Dec. 16 &mdash; yesterday. And now it&rsquo;s been pushed back to Jan. 23 of next year.
"We're just standing by and waiting to see what happens," says Frank McCourt &mdash; the former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers and part of the U.S. consortium.
"But if the moment arrives,&rdquo; he tells the BBC, &ldquo;we're prepared to move forward... we've raised the capital to buy it &mdash; we'll see."
<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: Silver Hoarding
<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 silver hoarding broached in Monday&rsquo;s edition, a reader writes&hellip;
&ldquo;Back when the Hunt brothers attempted to corner the silver market I understand they had purchased a lot (tonnes) of physical silver.
&ldquo;When this was discovered, who advised, or &lsquo;required&rsquo; them to get rid of their vast holdings? Do they still have possession of it?
&ldquo;If they were required to divest themselves, how was this accomplished, and wouldn't that have caused the price of silver to decrease by dumping all of that physical silver? Or did they simply offer it to their like-minded &lsquo;friends&rsquo; like JP Morgan and others who may have been happy to &lsquo;take it off their hands&rsquo; as an investment?
&ldquo;I recall buying silver dollars through the mail for $2&ndash;3 each in the early &rsquo;90s.&rdquo;
Dave responds: What wrecked the Hunt brothers&rsquo; attempt to corner the silver market in 1980 was that the rules of the game were suddenly changed. The Comex changed the margin requirements on silver futures.
That&rsquo;s the short story. Colleague Adam Sharp told the story <a href="https://dailyreckoning.com/the-untold-story-behind-silvers-30x-move/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">in more detail</a> over the summer at The Daily Reckoning. (Spoiler alert: It wasn&rsquo;t all about the Hunt brothers&hellip;)

fmf hero 121725

TACO or World War III

<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" />2026: Abundance, Crypto and Volatility Collide
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Last week in Baltimore, we put Paradigm&rsquo;s best minds in one room with a single mission: Figure out what actually matters for investors in 2026.
Not the safe consensus calls. Not the recycled talking points. The real fault lines &mdash; the ideas that make people uncomfortable before they make money.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6PIrOMPwzVRyxNTyt2wPk7/c31ec67cc95f28059cf574aca8774e29/paradigm-meeting.jpg" alt="Belvedere Meeting" />
Paradigm&rsquo;s team at the historic Belvedere Hotel in Baltimore (Dec. 11, 2025)
What followed was not a polite roundtable. It was a series of bold, sometimes unsettling forecasts that challenged almost every assumption Wall Street is leaning on today.
Here are three that stood out &mdash; and why they matter more than you might think&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Paradigm&rsquo;s science-and-technology investor Ray Blanco flipped a familiar narrative on its head. Rather than focusing on collapse or crisis, Ray outlined a year defined by abundance.
One of his boldest calls: a renewed space race in 2026, what he describes as America&rsquo;s next &ldquo;Sputnik moment.&rdquo; The driver this time isn&rsquo;t nationalism, but infrastructure &mdash; specifically data centers moving into orbit.
Projects like Nvidia&rsquo;s reported &ldquo;Starcloud&rdquo; concept are early examples of what Ray believes is coming next: orbital compute powered by continuous solar energy, reduced cooling costs and structural advantages that Earth-bound systems simply can&rsquo;t match.
If it works, the implications ripple through AI, energy and national security.
Ray&rsquo;s second prediction could be even more transformative. He&rsquo;s tracking developments that point toward a functional cure for Type 1 diabetes. &ldquo;Not treatment. Not management. A cure,&rdquo; he emphasizes.
Ray is watching companies like Vertex (VRTX) and Sana Biotechnology (SANA) closely, with a preference for Sana&rsquo;s &ldquo;superior&rdquo; approach, which aims to retrain the immune system rather than suppress it. If successful, the medical &mdash; and market &mdash; consequences would be profound.
The third pillar of Ray&rsquo;s outlook is macro&hellip; and counterintuitive. He believes the economy is drifting toward deflation through abundance, not collapse. AI and robotics increase productivity. Reshoring and tariffs eventually stabilize supply chains.
Meanwhile, demographics quietly do the heavy lifting. An aging population, low birth rates and net-negative immigration reduce long-term demand across housing, health care and consumer goods.
Ray points to the Great Deflation of 1873&ndash;1896 as historical context &mdash; a period when prices fell for decades even as innovation accelerated and living standards improved.
The takeaway: Deflation doesn&rsquo;t have to be destructive. Sometimes it&rsquo;s the price of progress.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Chris Cimorelli, AKA Mr. 10X, zoomed out &mdash; then drilled down. His starting premise was simple: &ldquo;Bitcoin is the best trade of the last century.&rdquo;
But his real focus isn&rsquo;t Bitcoin itself. It&rsquo;s Bitcoin Cash (BCH) &mdash; a 2017 blockchain fork designed to preserve Bitcoin&rsquo;s original purpose as peer-to-peer electronic cash. &ldquo;Same 21 million cap,&rdquo; Chris explains. &ldquo;Same DNA. Different execution.&rdquo;
Today, Bitcoin Cash hovers around $500 and sits just outside the crypto spotlight. Chris thinks that changes in 2026.
His thesis is that institutional investors &mdash; already stretched trying to gain meaningful crypto exposure &mdash; won&rsquo;t be able to ignore BCH much longer. Especially if Bitcoin itself continues higher.
In his framework, a move in Bitcoin toward $150,000 creates a powerful opportunity for Bitcoin Cash. At minimum, he sees the potential for BCH to triple or quadruple. In a more aggressive scenario, he sees room for significantly more upside.
His blunt forecast: &ldquo;2026: BCH 10X.&rdquo;
Whether or not that exact number materializes, Chris&rsquo; core argument is that Bitcoin&rsquo;s evolution into digital gold leaves room &mdash; and demand &mdash; for Bitcoin&rsquo;s blockchain.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />For his part, Paradigm&rsquo;s chart hound Greg Guenthner asked: &ldquo;Where&rsquo;s the volatility?&rdquo;
His answer: It&rsquo;s coming. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re somewhere in the middle of the AI bubble,&rdquo; Greg says. &ldquo;That doesn&rsquo;t mean it pops tomorrow. But it does mean the ride gets rougher.&rdquo;
After years of relatively smooth upward momentum, he sees volatility returning in force &mdash; especially in the middle of 2026. Greg is watching Q2 and Q3 closely. A brewing malaise on Main Street and midterm election seasonality all point toward &ldquo;volatility spikes.&rdquo;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7hEmrXU7pR5GJbJMcHU891/a8e7847f542a6b8e0b94ec107ac2bc0b/paradigm-meeting-2.jpg" alt="Gunner Presentation" />
Greg Guenthner&rsquo;s prize-winning presentation: &ldquo;Polls look bad for Team Trump &mdash; Ohio and Iowa just flipped&rdquo; 
Greg highlights, in particular, structural changes at the Federal Reserve, noting a new Fed chair plus a shifting mandate could alter how markets price risk.
His bottom line for investors: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s about to get weird.&rdquo; Stocks may still trend higher overall, but Greg doesn&rsquo;t expect a straight line. Instead, he sees a target-rich environment &mdash; one where volatility creates opportunity for traders willing to stay flexible.
Bonus: Paradigm&rsquo;s pro trader Enrique Abeyta reinforced Greg&rsquo;s point with a history lesson. During the 1998 tech boom, he notes, the Nasdaq index suffered multiple corrections of 10% or more &mdash; driven by the Asian Financial Crisis and the LTCM collapse &mdash; even as it marched toward its eventual peak.
The lesson? Big secular bull markets don&rsquo;t move in straight lines. They shake out weak hands first. And 2026, if our Baltimore summit is correct, will have plenty of thrills and spills.
<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" />Labor Market Loses Momentum
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />November&rsquo;s jobs report points to a cooling labor market. The unemployment rate increased to 4.6%, up from 4.4% in September and well above January&rsquo;s 4.0% level. It&rsquo;s the highest unemployment reading, in fact, since September 2021.
A wider gauge of joblessness, which captures discouraged workers and those forced into part-time roles, also moved higher, reaching 8.7% &mdash; a level not seen since August 2021.
The data also incorporated delayed figures from October, when total payrolls declined by 105,000 jobs after a surprise increase the prior month. Most of that drop came from the public sector, where government employment fell sharply as previously announced layoffs took effect. Government payrolls continued to edge lower in November.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics warned that fallout from the government shutdown is still affecting official numbers, raising the likelihood of uneven data in the months ahead.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />All three major U.S. stock indexes are in the red so far today. The Big Board&rsquo;s down most (-0.43%) to 48,215 while the S&amp;P 500 is down 0.30% to 6,795. The tech-heavy Nasdaq, meanwhile, is down slightly to 23,050.
As for commodities, crude&rsquo;s at its lowest level since 2021 &mdash; down 2.25% to $55.50 for a barrel of West Texas Intermediate. Similarly, precious metals have also slipped into red territory: Gold&rsquo;s price has slipped to $4,335 per ounce while silver&rsquo;s down 0.20% to $63.45.
Crypto, on the other hand, is attempting to scrape back some losses. Flagship crypto Bitcoin is up 2.25% to $87,780, and Ethereum&rsquo;s up 0.65%, just under $3,000.
<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" />The First AI Model Trained in Space
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Starcloud says it has trained an AI model in orbit for the first time &mdash; a proof-of-concept that some machine learning might eventually run off-planet.
Last month, Nvidia-backed startup Starcloud launched a satellite carrying an Nvidia H100 GPU, a chip roughly far more powerful than any compute previously sent into orbit. Once deployed, the satellite trained NanoGPT, a model created by OpenAI founding member Andrej Karpathy, using the complete works of Shakespeare.
The result? A model that speaks in Shakespearean English &mdash; and, more importantly, one that proves large-scale AI training can happen out of this world.
Starcloud didn&rsquo;t stop there. Its Starcloud-1 satellite is now also running Gemma, Google&rsquo;s open large language model based on Gemini, marking &ldquo;the first time in history that an LLM has been run on a high-powered Nvidia GPU in outer space,&rdquo; according to CNBC.
&ldquo;Greetings, Earthlings! Or, as I prefer to think of you &mdash; a fascinating collection of blue and green,&rdquo; the satellite wrote, reports CNBC. &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s see what wonders this view of your world holds.&rdquo;
The company&rsquo;s ambition is bigger than clever demos. Starcloud wants to show that space can support full-scale data centers as power grids, water systems and permitting processes increasingly constrain terrestrial facilities.
Starcloud CEO Philip Johnston tells CNBC orbital data centers could run at a fraction of the energy cost.
&ldquo;Anything you can do in a terrestrial data center, I&rsquo;m expecting to be able to be done in space,&rdquo; Johnston says. &ldquo;And the reason we would do it is purely because of the constraints we&rsquo;re facing on energy terrestrially.&rdquo;
The International Energy Agency, for instance, projects global data-center electricity demand will more than double by 2030.
Johnston adds Starcloud-1&rsquo;s ability to run Gemma shows that complex models can operate reliably in orbit.
&ldquo;This very powerful, very parameter-dense model is living on our satellite,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;We can query it, and it will respond in the same way that when you query a chat from a database on Earth, it will give you a very sophisticated response.&rdquo;
In a statement to CNBC, Tris Warkentin, product director at Google DeepMind, says &ldquo;seeing Gemma run in the harsh environment of space is a testament to the flexibility and robustness of open models.&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" />How SpaceX Plans to Pay for Orbit
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />While startups like Starcloud test what&rsquo;s possible, SpaceX is laying the financial groundwork to scale orbital infrastructure.
According to Reuters, SpaceX has opened a secondary share sale valuing the company at roughly $800 billion, as it prepares for a potential IPO as early as 2026. In a Dec. 12 letter to shareholders, CFO Bret Johnsen says the company is positioning itself for a public listing.
&ldquo;We are preparing the company for a possible IPO in 2026,&rdquo; says Johnsen. &ldquo;Whether it actually happens, when it happens and at what valuation are still highly uncertain, but the thinking is that if we execute brilliantly and the markets cooperate, a public offering could raise a significant amount of capital.&rdquo;
That capital, Johnsen says, would help ramp Starship&rsquo;s flight rate and support projects including &ldquo;deploy artificial intelligence (AI) data centers in space,&rdquo; alongside moon and Mars ambitions.
But the driver behind SpaceX&rsquo;s valuation is arguably Starlink. Reuters reports SpaceX expects about $15 billion in revenue in 2025, rising to as much as $24 billion in 2026, with most of that coming from Starlink&rsquo;s satellite-internet business.
Musk reinforced that point himself, writing on X that &ldquo;valuation increments are a function of progress with Starship and Starlink and securing global direct-to-cell spectrum that greatly increases our [market].&rdquo;
Put differently, Starlink&rsquo;s cash flow is what makes Starship &mdash; and future orbital infrastructure &mdash; economically credible. Starship may enable space-based computing. But it&rsquo;s Starlink&rsquo;s scale, revenue and global reach that justify the investment needed to get there.
<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 Definition of &ldquo;Slop&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />In November, Amazon Prime Video began testing AI-generated video recaps, billed as a slick way for viewers to catch up on major plot points without rewatching entire seasons. 
Think &ldquo;Previously on&hellip;&rdquo; but with machine efficiency and cinematic polish. What could possibly go wrong? Quite a bit, as it turns out.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5qYVSfUqTuRXabE4Zb5ORO/6dfe496483bac1dce63dadc7216f2dbc/verge_x.png" alt="The Verge tweet" />
Welp, that didn&rsquo;t age well&hellip; 
Fans quickly noticed the AI recap for Amazon Prime&rsquo;s hit show Fallout Season One seemed only loosely inspired by the source material.
One scene featuring Walt Goggins&rsquo; character Ghoul, for instance, was labeled a &ldquo;1950s flashback,&rdquo; presumably because it looked retro. But Fallout fans know the integral difference between the show&rsquo;s midcentury aesthetic and its setting: year 2077.
For newcomers to the series, it was confusing at best and misleading at worst. Not long after fans pointed out this and other inconsistencies online, the AI recap quietly vanished.
This episode now joins a growing list of AI run amok. Apple paused an AI notification tool earlier this year after it repeatedly mangled news alerts, for example. And Google&rsquo;s AI Overviews have been mocked for confidently wrong answers.
The machines, it seems, are excellent at sounding sure. Less so at accuracy.
In related news, Merriam-Webster crowned the word &ldquo;slop&rdquo; its 2025 Word of the Year, citing its growing use to describe low-quality, mass-produced AI content.
Timely.

fmf-hero-121625

2026 Preview: Abundance and Volatility

<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" />Silver Fantasies
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The bull market in silver has reached the stage where weird rumors come from nowhere and take over the internet.
Such as this post on X last Thursday&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5BF6cqL21N54KIWJCnkvhE/d9d59ba1cfc0769c69690298197a4a4a/fmf_121525_tweet1.png" alt="Eric Yeung Tweet" />
If you&rsquo;re a long-term follower of the precious metals markets, you know what a sea change this would be.
JPMorgan Chase inherited a massive short position in silver when it took over a collapsing Bear Stearns in 2008. JPM has been the b&ecirc;te noire of precious metals bulls ever since &mdash; blamed for every downdraft in gold and silver prices.
Alas, when you go to the link provided by the X poster, you get&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/66hQQkzl1UDyTGwGFfIkFF/67beec4825ae3aeafe800322c4139188/fmf_121525_404.png" alt="404" />
A Google search for &ldquo;Is JPMorgan hoarding silver&rdquo; turns up the following result&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3WlT9B9FyBgc8lCPkwOzuf/9419b19c11172c065fc5d9ab0d02e2bd/fmf_121525_search.png" alt="Search Result" />
But clicking on the link results in the same 404 message.
On Reddit, someone posted an annotated screengrab that appears to be the beginning of the article before it was taken down&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3vzme2XwDWFOM5TfrXVBAP/060e5e54b9c1bcb9ce5635cdab8bee41/fmf_121525_article.png" alt="Annotated Article" />
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />So what can we make of this?
The Economic Times is India&rsquo;s leading English-language business newspaper. It covers South Asia thoroughly. We&rsquo;ve cited it now and then when addressing matters in that part of the world, along with India&rsquo;s role in the BRICS grouping of countries.
As far as we can tell, no other mainstream outlet picked up the silver story. There&rsquo;s no reason to believe The Economic Times has any special insight into the activities of JPM compared with any other mainstream outlet. And for whatever reason, The Economic Times removed the story from its site no later than Saturday.
Verdict: There&rsquo;s nothing to the &ldquo;JPM is hoarding silver&rdquo; story. But there&rsquo;s also nothing stopping people on the internet from latching onto it to draw attention to themselves. (And the example we started this bullet with is just one of many.) Reader beware.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />In the meantime, silver is starting to recover its steep losses Friday.
To whatever extent JPM and other shadowy forces depress the prices of precious metals, they&rsquo;re losing their leverage.
In the last two or three years, those forces acquired a popular nickname &mdash; &ldquo;Mr. Slammy.&rdquo;
&ldquo;Did you enjoy Mr. Slammy&rsquo;s performance on Friday?&rdquo; writes Paradigm&rsquo;s recovering investment banker Sean Ring.
&ldquo;He smashed silver as hard as he could, sending the devil&rsquo;s metal from its high of $64.65 down to $60.82, before closing at $61.92. He does this the best on Friday evenings, when the Chinese are home, fast asleep.
&ldquo;Amusing. Specifically, it&rsquo;s amusing how Mr. Slammy makes it so much easier for those same Chinese to come in Sunday night and send silver back to $63.75, where it trades as I write.&rdquo;
Sean sums up the state of play like this in <a href="https://rudeawakening.info/posts/can-miners-double-again" target="_blank" rel="noopener">today&rsquo;s </a><a href="https://rudeawakening.info/posts/can-miners-double-again" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Rude Awakening</a>: &ldquo;the U.S. bullion banks have lost their power to crush the metals futures markets because there&rsquo;s always a buyer where the sun rises first.&rdquo;
Since Sean&rsquo;s dispatch this morning, silver has pulled back a bit &mdash; but it&rsquo;s still holding the line on $63. Gold, on the other hand, has lost its grip on $4,300.
<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. stock indexes are having trouble picking themselves up from their own Friday smackdown.
The S&amp;P 500 is holding up best &mdash; down 0.15% and still above 6,800. The Dow is down a bit more steeply and the Nasdaq&rsquo;s losses are steepest, a little over a third of a percent.
The recent buzz about tech valuations will likely take a back seat later this week to economic data: The Bureau of Labor Statistics is preparing two major reports delayed by the &ldquo;partial government shutdown.&rdquo; The November job figures arrive tomorrow, and the official inflation numbers on Thursday.
It seems the tech gloom has spread into crypto big-time: Bitcoin has sunk to $86,262 while Ethereum has cracked beneath $3,000 again. That said, we&rsquo;re not approaching last month&rsquo;s lows &mdash; at least not yet.
<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" />Global Shipping Free-for-All
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />At $56.63, oil prices have sunk to two-month lows even though &ldquo;we are now speeding toward a kinetic war involving seaborne commercial shipping,&rdquo; tweets the military analyst Will Schryver.
As perhaps you heard, U.S. forces seized an oil tanker last Wednesday off the coast of Venezuela &mdash; sanctions enforcement, said the Trump administration. The ship is on its way to Houston now; no word about the fate of the crew, other than they didn&rsquo;t put up any resistance.
&ldquo;Threats of more seizures have now left tankers &mdash; loaded with about 11 million barrels of oil and fuel &mdash; stuck in Venezuelan waters and fearing to venture further,&rdquo; reports the Reuters newswire.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Turns out this is not a one-off, and it&rsquo;s not all about Venezuela. 
On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that last month, U.S. special forces raided a ship several hundred miles off the coast of Sri Lanka. It had departed China, bound for Iran.
The paper cited unnamed U.S. officials who said the ship was carrying &ldquo;dual-use items, with both civilian and military applications.&rdquo;
Meanwhile, Iran seized a ship in the Gulf of Oman over the weekend &mdash; claiming it was smuggling Iranian fuel. No details about the ship&rsquo;s registry or destination.
Last month, Iran also seized a Marshall Islands-flagged tanker in the Gulf of Oman. It took the cargo and released the crew. At that time, U.S. Central Command put out a testy statement calling the seizure &ldquo;a blatant violation of international law, undermining freedom of navigation and the free flow of commerce.&rdquo;
We don&rsquo;t know where this all ends &mdash; but the proposition that commercial shipping can flow around the world unimpeded? It appears to be something we can no longer take for granted.
The new state of play might be having an impact on shipping stocks. They jumped impressively from mid-October until the start of December &mdash; only to stall out this month.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Oh, passenger air travel also appears to be at risk &mdash; at least in the vicinity of Venezuela, anyway.
&ldquo;A JetBlue flight from the small Caribbean nation of Cura&ccedil;ao halted its ascent to avoid colliding with a U.S. Air Force refueling tanker on Friday,&rdquo; reports The Associated Press. The plane was headed to New York-JFK.
&ldquo;We almost had a midair collision up here,&rdquo; said the JetBlue pilot. &ldquo;They passed directly in our flight path&hellip; They don&rsquo;t have their transponder turned on, it&rsquo;s outrageous.&rdquo;
Air traffic control agreed: &ldquo;It has been outrageous with the unidentified aircraft within our air.&rdquo;
According to The New York Times, a day after the near-collision, air traffic controllers in Cura&ccedil;ao told three pilots to keep an eye out for unidentified aircraft flying in the area &mdash; presumably referring to U.S. military aircraft whose transponders are turned off.
<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" />Update: Data Centers in Space
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />All of a sudden, &ldquo;data centers in space&rdquo; is moving from the realm of the hypothetical to the almost, kinda-sorta real.
About six weeks ago, we noted that orbiting data centers powered by the sun would solve the growing problem of earthbound data centers competing for scarce electricity and driving up everyday consumers&rsquo; power bills.
Several startups are pursuing the idea &mdash; as are several tech bigwigs like Jeff Bezos, Eric Schmidt and of course Elon Musk.
Musk&rsquo;s SpaceX is uniquely positioned to pursue the concept: His Starlink network of satellites already deliver internet access across the globe.
From there, he plans a new generation of satellites that can accommodate even greater speed and more bandwidth. Dozens of these satellites will be deployed with every Starship rocket launch next year.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />But the scale of Musk&rsquo;s ambitions came into view only three days ago &mdash; when SpaceX confirmed it has an eye toward going public next year.
Bloomberg reports the IPO would raise more than $30 billion &mdash; valuing the firm around $1.5 trillion.
&ldquo;If executed,&rdquo; says Paradigm tech-investing pro Ray Blanco, &ldquo;this would be the largest IPO in history &mdash; surpassing even Saudi Aramco&rsquo;s $29 billion offering in 2019.&rdquo;
How would SpaceX put the money to use?
In a letter to employees and shareholders, SpaceX CFO Bret Johnson said the IPO &ldquo;enables us to ramp Starship to an insane flight rate, deploy AI data centers in space, build Moonbase Alpha and send uncrewed and crewed missions to Mars &mdash; ultimately increasing the probability of making life multiplanetary in our lifetimes.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Forget Mars for the moment. The lion&rsquo;s share of the IPO money will go to &ldquo;a new generation of space-based data centers,&rdquo; Ray tells us.
That&rsquo;s where the need is right now &mdash; &ldquo;extending Starlink's role from connectivity provider into core infrastructure for cloud and AI workloads delivered from orbit.&rdquo;
Ray has a 5-year-old boy. &ldquo;By the time he's 10, those satellites won't just route phone calls. They'll run AI models powering his education and entertainment.
&ldquo;By the time he's my age, the space economy will be larger than today's tech industry.&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" />Comic Relief
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />In light of California&rsquo;s loss of population since 2020&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2UYZH2zwKjW5j9K70tRzrR/aa0e0c7771a31081945174057c4269dc/fmf_121525_meme.jpg" alt="Meme" />
<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: Silver Gains
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Due to silver's continued growth, what is the best way to profit if you hold actual Silver Eagle coins and where do you go to sell and make a profit?&rdquo; a reader writes.
&ldquo;I am sure there are many investors like myself that invested in silver and gold years ago as a safety net. I am getting ready to retire, thus my question.
&ldquo;Thank you for your input &mdash; love reading your articles!&rdquo;
Dave responds: Hmmm&hellip; At the risk of copping out, the answer is going to be different for everyone.
The answer that makes the most sense to me comes from legendary commodities investor Jim Rogers &mdash; when he was asked in 2020 whether gold was in a bubble. (At the time, gold was still oscillating around $2,000.)
&ldquo;Gold may well turn into a bubble,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I hope it doesn't, because if it turns into a bubble, I'll have to sell it and I never want to sell it. I want my children to have my gold and silver someday."
Five years since that interview, Rogers is age 83. By now his two daughters would be in their late teens and early 20s. A Google News search turns up no evidence he&rsquo;s selling!
With Rogers&rsquo; guidance in mind&hellip; your physical precious metal is what you keep 1) in the event of severe societal breakdown and 2) to hand on to the next generation.
In the latter instance, you don&rsquo;t care about price fluctuations day-to-day or even year-to-year; you just want your kids and grandkids protected because they too will experience episodes of monetary debasement like the 1970s, 2000s and 2020s.
Hopefully you&rsquo;re in a position to hold on to your physical metal for those purposes &mdash; while your metals ETFs and mining stocks are what you can draw on for retirement income.
Good luck &mdash; and congratulations on your gains to date!

fmf 121525 hero

Silver Fantasies

<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 Silver Squeeze of 2025 (Update)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Silver has officially broken out again, and depending on which charts you&rsquo;re looking at, the next target is either $71 or $77,&rdquo; colleague Sean Ring writes in our sister e-letter The Rude Awakening.
Now that the white metal has broken through $60 for the first time, the mainstream is starting to notice.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> And the mainstream takes are oh-so-predictable. 
&ldquo;A mix of forces are boosting silver, including the weakened dollar, tariff politics and supply shortages,&rdquo; says The Washington Post. &ldquo;Especially critical in recent weeks, though, is the growing expectation that the Federal Reserve will announce another rate cut this Wednesday as the U.S. economy continues to slow down. Analysts say that&rsquo;s likely to further pressure the dollar lower while lifting silver &mdash; a classic safe-haven asset &mdash; even higher.&rdquo;
The BBC: &ldquo;Investors tend to move money into precious metals like gold and silver as interest rates come down and the U.S. dollar weakens. The U.S. central bank is widely expected to cut its main interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point on Wednesday.&rdquo;
Seriously? Tariffs? The Fed?
The Fed embarks on a rate-cutting cycle every few years and there&rsquo;s almost zero correlation with the price of precious metals. The Fed cut rates steadily during the second half of 2019 and the price stayed mired under $20.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;When the D.C. deep state elite start talking about a precious metal move, it means that they must be feeling the seismicity,&rdquo; observes Paradigm&rsquo;s metals-and-mining authority Byron King.
The reality is that this move has been &ldquo;decades in the making, with the kickoff under Biden and grabbing Russian assets.&rdquo;
For sure. We can&rsquo;t say it often enough: Freezing the dollar assets of Russia&rsquo;s central bank in 2022 touched off a scramble for gold among the world&rsquo;s central banks. As Jim Rickards often reminds us, &ldquo;Gold is a physical nondigital asset that cannot be stolen, frozen or seized provided it is in safe storage.&rdquo;
It was inevitable silver would catch up to gold&rsquo;s move &mdash; and then surpass it. That&rsquo;s how it always goes during an epic precious-metals rally.
Byron points out another factor that files under the mainstream radar &mdash; the industrialization of China. All those solar panels they&rsquo;re making for the rest of the world? They need silver!
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Those are long-term factors, however. In the short term, a &ldquo;silver squeeze&rdquo; is still underway.
We described the dynamics <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/silver-rumors">last Thursday</a> &mdash; silver being loaded on cargo jets for transport out of London and into New York and Shanghai. Demand for physical metal is catching up with the demand for silver futures contracts on the Comex in New York. Lease rates on physical silver are through the roof.
Six days later, there&rsquo;s no sign of the squeeze letting up.
&ldquo;A steady, orderly rise would tell us the market is adjusting to new fundamentals,&rdquo; says Sean Ring. &ldquo;But this isn&rsquo;t orderly. It smells like fear. It feels like a squeeze. And it carries the subtle warning that the plumbing behind the scenes is clogging up&hellip;
&ldquo;Silver lease rates are still elevated versus normal, with very short tenors reportedly in the midteens to several tens of percent annualized, compared with a long-run &lsquo;normal&rsquo; well under 1% per year.
&ldquo;Deliverable inventories on major exchanges are shrinking at a pace we haven&rsquo;t seen since the 2011 squeeze. And the usual liquidity providers are stepping back because the spreads are too unpredictable to quote safely.
&ldquo;When a bullion bank bleeds, it doesn&rsquo;t show up on CNBC. It shows up in the market microstructure. Banks that normally dominate the market start behaving like they&rsquo;re afraid of taking the wrong side of the trade.
&ldquo;If silver keeps rising in this jagged, disorderly pattern, someone is getting crushed behind the curtain. And once a bank is cornered, the problem is no longer price volatility, but systemic risk.&rdquo;
Word.
Back to the chart action: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll stick with $71 for now, and there it&rsquo;ll take a breather,&rdquo; Sean says. &ldquo;Once silver gets watered and fed, $102 is the next long-term price target.&rdquo;
<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" />Bubble Babble
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> When The New York Times frets on its front page about an AI bubble, you can be confident there&rsquo;s still ample time before the bubble bursts.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/440S92jYzxvIPKPvDir5VE/f9d4a781f9a0bf224139278a39f712a6/FMF-Issue-12-10-25_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
&ldquo;Share prices of some AI companies have risen dramatically in a short time,&rdquo; says the article accompanying that headline &mdash; &ldquo;and tech companies are spending billions to build data centers and microchip plants to power the boom.
&ldquo;While investors and analysts see good reasons to justify the exuberance behind the nearly 50% increase in the S&amp;P 500 over the past two years, some warn that current valuations still rest on a big bet on the future.&rdquo;
You want to know when the AI bubble will burst?
When the mainstream stops publishing articles like this and adopts the narrative that the AI economy has put the stock market on a permanently higher trajectory and trees grow to the sky.
We&rsquo;re not there yet.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Ironically, the Times article acknowledges as much &mdash; invoking the December 1996 remark by Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan about &ldquo;irrational exuberance&rdquo; in internet stocks.
Greenspan wasn&rsquo;t wrong &mdash; but he was early, and you wouldn&rsquo;t have wanted to bet against the dot-coms. The S&amp;P 500 doubled in the three years following Greenspan&rsquo;s warning. Only then came the inevitable collapse.
As John Maynard Keynes once said, &ldquo;The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> In fact, if you want to use the dot-com bubble and bust as your guide, there&rsquo;s still a long way to go.
Here&rsquo;s a chart of the Nasdaq composite index from Bespoke Investment Group. It shows the dot-com rally then and the AI rally now.
The starting point then was the release of the Netscape Navigator web browser and the starting point now is the release of ChatGPT 3.5.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6ktljmbXWsV4WQlHo1rqXu/bea025e39e81033059678e51a7166a3a/FMF-Issue-12-10-25_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
The parallels &mdash; at least so far &mdash; are eerie. Notice the dip in the red line coinciding with the market&rsquo;s 5% pullback last month. There was a similar pullback in late 1997 coinciding with a currency crisis in Asia.
If past is prologue, a steeper pullback is on the horizon next summer and fall. Back in 1998 the catalyst was the Russian government defaulting on its debt &mdash; which took down the U.S. hedge fund Long Term Capital Management.
And then comes the blowoff top in 2027.
No guarantees, but that&rsquo;s how it&rsquo;s shaken out for the last three years. We&rsquo;ll check in on this chart from time to time during 2026&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> As for today, Mr. Market is marking time until the Federal Reserve makes its next call on interest rates.
As mentioned yesterday, nearly everyone expects the Fed to trim the fed funds rate another quarter percentage point this afternoon. The drama lies in how much dissent there is among the members of the Fed&rsquo;s Open Market Committee, and how Fed Chair Jerome Powell spins that dissent during his post-decision press conference. (As always, we&rsquo;ll follow up tomorrow with the help of Jim Rickards.)
At last check the S&amp;P 500 is pancake flat relative to yesterday&rsquo;s close, sitting at 6,841. The Dow is slightly in the green, the Nasdaq slightly in the red.
While silver continues to hold the line on $60, gold is struggling to hold onto the $4,200 level. As for digital nondollar assets, Bitcoin remains over $92,000 and Ethereum has climbed over $3,300.
<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" />Venezuela: Action Imminent?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Oil has sunk under $58 for the first time this month, even as it appears Washington is closer to making some sort of military move on Venezuela.
After several days docked in the Virgin Islands, the aircraft carrier USS Gerald Ford has made its way back toward Venezuela.
Yesterday, two U.S. Navy F/A-18 fighter jets were spotted by flight trackers deep inside the Gulf of Venezuela &mdash; perhaps trying to light up Venezuelan radar. The Pentagon is spinning it as a &ldquo;routine training flight.&rdquo;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2sVyvRiCPC5Z9glFyed0Ta/2878c778c6df1e54b9d44a63e1f75d2d/FMF-Issue-12-10-25_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
As we laid out last month, an American regime-change op in Venezuela has <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/venezuela-its-not-about-drugs">nothing to do with drugs</a> and everything to do with oil and other natural resources. As we also said last month, public support for regime change is <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/only-3x-in-market-history#3">sorely lacking</a>. And unlike in the run-up to the Iraq War in 2003, there&rsquo;s been no sustained propaganda campaign to generate such support.
Trump is refusing to rule out a ground invasion, but as long as support remains lacking, it seems unlikely.
More likely are other options he&rsquo;s said to have reviewed &mdash; sending in troops to capture airfields and oil wells, or perhaps dispatching special forces to capture or kill President Nicolas Maduro.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> And then what?
&ldquo;In my estimation, it is an inexplicably stupid and highly risk-laden undertaking to try to insert SOFs [special operations] and Marines,&rdquo; tweets the military analyst William Schryver.
&ldquo;And, notwithstanding the fact that Venezuela is a minor military power, they do possess a handful of potent tools capable of inflicting damage against the U.S. Navy and U.S. aircraft.&rdquo;
Even if no harm comes to U.S. troops, &ldquo;a military intervention in the region is likely to have the opposite effect as intended &mdash; it could spur a massive refugee crisis, elevate anarchic narco groups and tempt China to quietly intervene to make Washington waste its time,&rdquo; says Curt Mills, editor of The American Conservative.
Sounds a little like Libya &mdash; where Barack Obama pulled off regime change in 2011, deposing Col. Muammar Gaddafi. It unleashed a massive refugee crisis in Europe and to this day there are still rival governments fighting for control of Libya&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" />Thought for the Day
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Ahead of today&rsquo;s Fed decision and the power struggle over Fed policy, a timely reminder&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/17EicUqc7j7bzMkNs4VrdM/eed96b768173c17a04bec1d201c5ed00/FMF-Issue-12-10-25_4_.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: Canadian Liquor, Tax-Resisting Heroine
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Alberta liquor isn't fully privatized,&rdquo; writes a reader from Canada&rsquo;s energy capital after <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/wall-streets-witch-doctors">yesterday&rsquo;s </a><a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/wall-streets-witch-doctors">5 Bullets</a>.
&ldquo;We have AGLC &mdash; Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis. &lsquo;AGLC controls the importation, manufacture, sale, possession, storage, distribution and use of liquor in Alberta.&rsquo;
&ldquo;The actual liquor stores are privately owned. I think Saskatchewan is similar.&nbsp;
&ldquo;It was our premier's choice to not do something stupid. Free trade is better for everyone.
Diplomacy (lost art) is better for everyone, and really, how do you win against a country 10 times our size that our country has become fat and lazy depending on, with Mr. Trump as leader?&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> After the subject of &ldquo;shadow work&rdquo; came up <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/wall-streets-witch-doctors">in yesterday&rsquo;s edition</a>, a reader weighed in with a blast from the past.
&ldquo;The late patriot Vivien Kellems refused to collect taxes on that basis, citing it for what it is: INVOLUNTARY SERVITUDE.&rdquo;
Dave responds: Wow, it&rsquo;s been decades since I first read about her in Murray Rothbard&rsquo;s For a New Liberty.
Born in 1896, Kellems founded her own company in 1927, manufacturing custom grips to move electrical cables through tight spaces.
But what put her on the map was her resistance to Washington&rsquo;s &ldquo;unfunded mandate&rdquo; requiring employers to collect withholding taxes &mdash; implemented in the 1940s as a wartime measure, but kept in place after World War II was over.
(Amazing how that works, right?)
Wrote Rothbard: &ldquo;As the intrepid Connecticut industrialist Vivien Kellems argued years ago, the employer is forced to expend time, labor and money in the business of deducting and transmitting his employees' taxes to the federal and state governments&mdash;yet the employer is not recompensed for this expenditure.&rdquo;
Kellems herself was more pithy: "If they wanted me to be their agent, they'd have to pay me, and I want a badge."
She fought the feds from 1948 all the way up to her death in 1975. Her heirs had to fork over $265,000 in back taxes.
Shortly before she died, Kellems told the Los Angeles Times, &ldquo;Our tax law is a 1,598-page hydra-headed monster and I'm going to attack and attack and attack until I have ironed out every fault in it."
We&rsquo;re not sure what yardstick Kellems was using to arrive at that total&hellip; but conservative estimates put it between 4,200 and 6,900 pages now.
And that&rsquo;s just the statues, not the regulations and case law&hellip;

FMF-Issue-12-10-25(Featured)

Silver Squeeze 2025 (Update)

5min-issue-12-09-25(Featured)

Wall Street’s “Witch Doctors”

<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" />Change We Must
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;One of the most difficult concepts to accept in the economy and markets is change,&rdquo; says Paradigm trading pro Enrique Abeyta.
Enrique is the first to acknowledge that investors have lost untold amounts of money by saying This time is different.
But at the same time, you can also lose money by witnessing change that&rsquo;s taken place&hellip; and denying it&rsquo;s real.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Which brings us to a classic observation of Warren Buffett&hellip;
"You have to be wildly optimistic to believe that corporate profits as a percent of GDP can, for any sustained period, hold much above 6%."
Corporate profits as a percentage of GDP is one of the metrics Buffett has long relied on to determine whether the broad stock market is over- or undervalued.
That quote, by the way, comes from an interview with Fortune in November 1999. It&rsquo;s become legendary because, as it turned out, the dot-com bubble was only weeks away from bursting. The Nasdaq slid 78% from early 2000 through late 2002.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Now&hellip; check out a chart Enrique spotted over the weekend &mdash; going all the way back to the end of World War II, when Buffett was still a teenager.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/47eBmXLPPR8sd2919dIckU/c575835d9aee8d248928106084186a93/FMF-Issue-12-08-25_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Look what&rsquo;s happened since the rebound from the 2007&ndash;09 financial crisis. Corporate profits as a percent of GDP have been far over the 6% level and indeed have spent most of that time over 9%.
&ldquo;We are now at 16 years and counting,&rdquo; Enrique says. &ldquo;Is that &lsquo;sustained&rsquo;?&rdquo;
I can hear an objection already: Yeah, look at all the funny money printed by the Federal Reserve since 2008&hellip; and all the wild federal spending since 2020. Of course the money would find its way into financial assets.
And your point?
Object to the policy all you want, but the S&amp;P 500 has grown over 10X from its March 2009 lows.
Like or not, that&rsquo;s change.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;You have to invest in the market environment you have&hellip; not the one you want,&rdquo; Enrique reminds us.
&ldquo;A strong technical picture is supported by falling interest rates, strong earnings and lower energy prices.
&ldquo;On top of that, the Trump administration has plummeting approval ratings and a midterm election next year that will define his legacy.
&ldquo;My view is he will do anything &mdash; legal or illegal &mdash; to get this stock market higher and secure a victory in the midterms.
&ldquo;It may end badly, but that&rsquo;s where we are right now.&rdquo;
<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" />Market Miscellany
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Gee, what was it we said here Friday about the Netflix-Warner Bros. tie-up being anything but a done deal?
Last night, Donald Trump told reporters &ldquo;there could be a problem&rdquo; with the deal owing to Netflix&rsquo;s existing &ldquo;big market share.&rdquo;
This morning, Paramount launched a hostile bid &mdash; offering $108 billion for the entirety of Warner Bros. Discovery. That contrasts with Netflix&rsquo;s agreement to pay $72 billion for the WB movie studio and HBO Max &mdash; excluding the cable channels like CNN and Discovery.
Paramount CEO David Ellison tells CNBC that his is the &ldquo;superior alternative&rdquo; and is more likely to meet with regulators&rsquo; approval.
On the theory Paramount has the inside track, Paramount shares are up 7.3% on the day while Netflix is down 4.3% (on top of Friday&rsquo;s losses). WBD, the object of this bidding war, is up 4.9%.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> As for the major indexes, they&rsquo;re all starting the week in the red &mdash; if only a bit.
The S&amp;P 500 is down about a third of a percent at 6,847. The Dow&rsquo;s losses are similar, while the Nasdaq is down less than a quarter percent. &ldquo;Large caps only need one solid trading day to post new all-time highs,&rdquo; observes The Trading Desk&rsquo;s Greg Guenthner.
Congratulations are in order for Catalyst Trader readers. This morning Ray Blanco urged them to sell half their position in the developer of an oral weight-loss drug. That&rsquo;s a 182% gain in seven months. Plus, on Friday Rickards&rsquo; Strategic Intelligence readers took a 78% gain on B2Gold Corp.
Not much movement in precious metals with gold just under $4,200 and silver a few pennies under $58. Crude has tumbled back below $60, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate down nearly a buck to $59.15.
Bitcoin is holding the line on $90,000 and Ethereum is sitting tight just over $3,100.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> U.S. tariffs haven&rsquo;t put a dent in China&rsquo;s export machine.
China&rsquo;s customs administration reports that exports in the first 11 months of the year have topped $1 trillion &mdash; exceeding 2024&rsquo;s all-year record total.
The figures show November exports rose 5.9% year-over-year. That&rsquo;s even though Chinese exports to the United States have fallen 29% during the same period. Clearly the rest of the world is stepping up to buy the consumer-y crap that&rsquo;s become more expensive for Americans.
<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" /> Lights Out
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> It turns out 2024 was a terrible year for power outages.
The U.S. Department of Energy is out with a report showing U.S. electricity consumers experienced an average 11 hours of power outages last year.
That&rsquo;s nearly twice as many as the annual average during the preceding decade.
Of course, averages are deceiving: Many people caught up in Hurricanes Helene and Milton went without power for days or weeks. Hurricanes accounted for 80% of the total lost hours.
&ldquo;Interruptions attributed to major events averaged nearly nine hours in 2024, compared with an average of nearly four hours per year in 2014 through 2023,&rdquo; says the report. &ldquo;Service interruptions that aren&rsquo;t triggered by major events routinely average about two hours per year.&rdquo;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/fykICAb4jhCqjKVTeICUV/e53b9c135823d0425329d36c4d417839/FMF-Issue-12-08-25_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
We&rsquo;ve been warning about the fragility of the power grid since mid-2022. Much of the grid is 30 years old, and portions are 50 years old.
And with the intense demand from AI data centers &mdash; a phenomenon we started discussing nearly two years ago &mdash; the situation is sure to get worse.
Paradigm readers have profited throughout 2025 playing the &ldquo;independent power producers&rdquo; that are not regulated utilities, and more opportunities are likely to present themselves in 2026. Stay tuned&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" />Stop, Thief! (Self-Checkout)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Maybe we&rsquo;ve reached &ldquo;Peak Self-Checkout.&rdquo;
LendingTree recently commissioned a survey revealing 27% of consumers who&rsquo;ve used self-checkout say they&rsquo;ve purposely taken something without scanning it &mdash; up from 15% two years ago.
Generationally, millennials lead the way &mdash; with 41% saying they&rsquo;ve done it, followed by 37% of Gen Z adults. Only 2% of Boomers fessed up to it.
As the NewsNation network reports, &ldquo;When asked why they stole, 47% said the current financial climate has made it difficult to afford essentials. Nearly as many (46%) cited higher prices.&rdquo; Meanwhile, 35% say self-checkout amounts to &ldquo;unpaid work,&rdquo; so taking a small item &ldquo;feels like compensation.&rdquo;
Several retailers are rethinking self-checkout &mdash; notably Dollar General, which said last year it removed self-checkout from 12,000 stores. The company was upfront about the reasons &mdash; the &ldquo;ongoing challenge from shrink.&rdquo;
&ldquo;I get that people are frustrated,&rdquo; says LendingTree analyst Matt Schulz, &ldquo;but no one should encourage people to walk away from a retailer without paying for something.&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: Spinning a Gold Scenario
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;What if the U.S. Treasury were to intentionally cause the avalanche in physical gold demand &mdash; spiking prices in order to revalue its gold holdings at substantially higher prices?&rdquo; a reader muses.
&ldquo;They could create $2 or $3 trillion of balance sheet headroom to enable the Fed to buy longer-term treasuries managing the long end of the yield curve.
&ldquo;Combined with the Fed bringing down the overnight rate and the GENIUS Act creating demand for short-term Treasuries, borrowing costs for consumers, businesses and the U.S. government could be reduced substantially.
&ldquo;If done before the midterm elections, it could be the answer to the whole affordability conversation (until the inevitable inflation sets in later).&rdquo;
Dave responds: Can&rsquo;t rule anything out, I suppose.
That said, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been fairly clear. He got a lot of buzz earlier this year when he promised the administration was hatching a scheme to &ldquo;monetize the asset side of the U.S. balance sheet for the American people.&rdquo;
Asked later about whether that included revaluing the gold &mdash; still officially on the Treasury&rsquo;s books at $42.22 an ounce &mdash; he said that&rsquo;s &ldquo;not what I had in mind.&rdquo;
Plus, a high gold price almost always correlates with a lack of confidence in either the U.S. dollar, U.S. Treasury debt &mdash; or both. That&rsquo;s probably not the message the administration wants to telegraph, however unintentionally.
Still, there&rsquo;s no shortage of other catalysts to trigger a supply squeeze. Keep stacking!

FMF-Issue-12-08-25(Featured)

Change We Must 

fmf hero 120525

Sorry, No $20K Pickup Truck for You

<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" />Here We Go Again
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The rumor surfaces every few years. And every few years we have to smack it down here in these virtual pages.
The rumor has to do with an imminent catalyst for a steep jump in precious metals prices.
Fair warning: We&rsquo;re going to get a bit into the weeds today. But we owe it to you to do a little debunking just in case you run across this rumor on your favorite social media feed.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />In recent days the rumor has caught on again because of the tightness in the silver market we mentioned on Tuesday. 
Since October, huge quantities of physical silver have been moving around the world. The Grok AI engine, drawing from nearly a dozen articles in the business press, summarizes it like so&hellip;
<blockquote>In October 2025, a severe supply squeeze gripped London's silver market &mdash; the world's largest trading hub &mdash; triggered by earlier outflows of metal to New York amid U.S. tariff uncertainties, compounded by surging global demand from industrial uses, ETF inflows and seasonal buying in India ahead of Diwali.</blockquote>
<blockquote>This created a historic arbitrage opportunity, drawing nearly 54 million troy ounces (over 1,600 tons) from U.S. Comex warehouses (down 697 tons) and China's Shanghai Futures Exchange (17 million ounces withdrawn), replenishing London vaults with the largest inflow in nine years and easing local borrowing costs from over 30% to around 5%.</blockquote>
<blockquote>However, this redistribution strained other hubs, with Shanghai inventories plummeting to 920 tons &mdash; the lowest since 2015 &mdash; amid ongoing structural deficits exceeding 600 million ounces since 2021, keeping one-month lease rates elevated and underscoring silver's persistent tightness.</blockquote>
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />This &ldquo;silver squeeze&rdquo; is what propelled the spot silver price from about $46 only two months ago to over $57 this morning.
Demand for physical metal is catching up with the demand in the &ldquo;paper silver&rdquo; market &mdash; that is, silver futures traded on the Comex in New York.
For the time being, traders are content to roll their contracts forward or take a cash payout when those futures expire. But hypothetically, they have the right to demand delivery in physical metal.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Predictably, several observers of the precious metals markets are stepping forward with lurid predictions that all hell is about to break loose.
Case in point: Bill Holter, a veteran of A.G. Edwards among other firms. In a recent interview on the USAWatchdog podcast, he points out that annual global silver production of about 850 million ounces isn&rsquo;t enough to keep up with demand.
&ldquo;The rumor is somebody has put in a $20 billion order, which would mean 400 million ounces,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;If that is the case, that order cannot be met, and that will create shark-infested waters... If somebody stands for delivery and it looks like it may be difficult for them to get delivery, then everybody is going to stand for delivery because they know that their contracts are worthless.&rdquo;
From there, &ldquo;One day you will see a huge [price] spike, but markets won&rsquo;t open after that. That will cascade. What will happen is all the Comex contracts for both silver and gold will default.&rdquo;
Silver futures would be effectively worthless &mdash; while real hold-in-your-hands silver would be worth hundreds of dollars an ounce.
But there&rsquo;s a problem &mdash; several problems, actually &mdash; with this scenario. 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" />&ldquo;Stand for Delivery&rdquo; (Yeah, Good Luck With That)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;For years, gold bugs implored futures traders to &lsquo;stand for delivery&rsquo; on the Comex,&rdquo; Paradigm macro maven Jim Rickards wrote in 2016 &mdash; when rumors of this sort were rippling through the gold market.
&ldquo;If every long in the futures market put in a notification that they wanted to take physical delivery instead of closing out or rolling over their contracts, the result would be one of the greatest short squeezes and price spikes since &lsquo;Big Jim&rsquo; Fisk and Jay Gould tried to corner the private gold market in 1869. (Fisk and Gould&rsquo;s corner failed when the U.S. Treasury unexpectedly made public gold available to bail out the shorts.)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;But this scenario is unlikely to play out in the way the gold bugs wish, for several reasons,&rdquo; Jim went on.
&ldquo;The first is that the Comex has emergency powers to prevent longs from taking delivery in a way that disrupts the orderly functioning of the market. The Comex rule book makes it clear that a futures exchange is for hedging, price discovery and legal speculation, but is not a source of supply. (Physical delivery is permitted, but only enough to keep the paper price &lsquo;honest.&rsquo; The irony, of course, is that the paper price is anything but honest, due to manipulation.)
&ldquo;Another rule allows Comex officials to change the rules as needed in emergencies (something the Hunt brothers experienced when they tried to corner the silver market in 1980). The fact that longs know they cannot take delivery in the end is a major deterrent to the attempt.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />There&rsquo;s one more reason the precious metals longs don&rsquo;t squeeze the precious metals shorts. Jim sums it up in two words: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s illegal.&rdquo;
&ldquo;Most major participants in the gold market (banks, dealers and hedge funds) are regulated by one or more of the Federal Reserve, U.S. Treasury, SEC or CFTC,&rdquo; he explains. (And he&rsquo;s been a lawyer for banks, dealers and hedge funds, so he&rsquo;d know.)
&ldquo;Applicable laws contain strict anti-fraud and anti-manipulation rules, including jail time in cases of willful and knowing violations.&rdquo;
So a rogue hedge fund manager out there might want to call BS on the whole Comex scheme&hellip; but he thinks better of it, lest the full weight of Uncle Sam&rsquo;s prosecutorial apparatus comes crashing down on him.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Don&rsquo;t get the wrong idea: Precious metals could still experience a super-spike &mdash; just not for the &ldquo;stand for delivery&rdquo; reasons you hear from the usual suspects.
It comes back to &ldquo;avalanche theory&rdquo; &mdash; Jim&rsquo;s popularization of the science called complexity theory.
&ldquo;A single snowflake,&rdquo; he reminds us, &ldquo;can turn a seemingly stable snowpack into a roaring avalanche that destroys everything in its path. Once the snowpack is arranged in an unstable way (like the gold market today), a single snowflake can unleash carnage. Of course, a single snowflake is so small you never see it coming.
&ldquo;What this means is that the super-spike in gold [and silver] prices will not come from any of the obvious sources but from an unexpected source.&rdquo;
It could be the bankruptcy of a medium-size gold dealer. It could be lawmakers in Washington talking about new reporting requirements for gold dealers. Or it could have nothing to do with gold: It could be a war or another pandemic that frightens people into safeguarding wealth.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t matter,&rdquo; Jim sums up. &ldquo;Once the avalanche begins, there&rsquo;s no stopping it.
At that point, the hedge funds can demand physical delivery of gold without fear of prosecution. If a hedge fund tries to start an avalanche, it&rsquo;s manipulation. But if the avalanche starts from another source, then a hedge fund piling on is &lsquo;normal&rsquo; market conduct.
&ldquo;Since every gold market participant knows there&rsquo;s not enough physical gold to go around, everyone will demand physical gold at once. No one wants to be left holding the bag.
"What happens when there's a panic and everyone demands their gold at once?" he goes on. "And how does this end?
"There are a few ways&hellip; and none of them good.&rdquo;
Unless you have physical gold and silver in your possession already. Act accordingly.
Now on to other matters&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" />Bad News Is Good News (Jobs)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />In the absence of official government jobs data, Mr. Market and the Federal Reserve are glomming onto whatever private-sector data can be found. And it&rsquo;s all bad.
Because of the 43-day &ldquo;partial government shutdown,&rdquo; the Bureau of Labor Statistics won&rsquo;t even try to assemble an October jobs report. And the November numbers &mdash; which ordinarily would come out tomorrow &mdash; won&rsquo;t be released until Tuesday, Dec. 16.
That&rsquo;s after the Federal Reserve makes its next decision about short-term interest rates on Wednesday the 10th.
Yesterday we mentioned how the payroll firm ADP found that private-sector employers cut 32,000 jobs in November &mdash; contrasting with expectations for 20,000 jobs added.
Today brings another discouraging number: The Challenger Job-Cut Report from Challenger, Gray &amp; Christmas finds that U.S. employers cut 71,321 positions in November.
To be clear, this report does not attempt to figure out how many jobs might have been added. Still, it&rsquo;s concerning that this job-cut number is up 24% from November 2024.
And the cuts took place in every industry group other than utilities.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />But on the theory that a weakening job market translates to Fed interest-rate cuts, stocks have rallied both yesterday and today.
All of the major U.S. stock indexes are in the green as we write, the S&amp;P 500 up a tenth of a percent at 6,856. The S&amp;P is only a half percent away from reclaiming its record close notched on Oct. 29.
And why not? Activity in the futures markets shows an 87% likelihood the Fed will trim the benchmark fed funds rate next week &mdash; which would be the third cut since September.
Elsewhere, gold is holding steady just over $4,200 &mdash; but Mr. Slammy came for silver big-time today. The $57 handle we mentioned off the top? That&rsquo;s down nearly $1.50 from yesterday. Crude is up over 1% but still under $60.
Crypto is consolidating after yesterday&rsquo;s big gains, Bitcoin a little over $92,000 and Ethereum at $3,163.
<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" />Economic Warfare Blowback
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Now a follow-up to <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/this-is-how-the-dollar-dies" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tuesday&rsquo;s edition</a> &mdash; all about governments around the world thumbing their noses at the economic dictates of Washington, D.C.
In October, the Trump administration tried to amp up the pressure on Russia to reach a cease-fire with Ukraine by imposing sanctions on Russia&rsquo;s two biggest oil producers &mdash; Rosneft and Lukoil.
Last month, the Treasury Department issued a statement crowing that the sanctions &ldquo;are having their intended effect of dampening Russian revenues by lowering the price of Russian oil and therefore the country's ability to fund its war effort against Ukraine."
Not so much, says a tweet from Bloomberg&rsquo;s straight-shooting energy and commodities reporter Javier Blas&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6NcE5yj3Y9dHTusk4BglpT/db8f46128be3a99b6c3faa0741144e59/javier_blas_tweet.png" alt="Javier Blas tweet" />
Where there&rsquo;s a will there&rsquo;s a way, right?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Meanwhile, Russia&rsquo;s President Vladimir Putin got an exceptionally warm welcome today from India&rsquo;s Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Modi greeted Putin at the New Delhi airport &mdash; something he&rsquo;s done only a handful of times with other heads of state since becoming prime minister in 2014 &mdash; before piling into a Toyota Fortuner to head into the city.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5so0YEoONPc08GSVGp0CD9/e17df352ed22d1c6e1a64056438c53f2/modi_putin.png" alt="Modi and Putin" />
Best of friends [as posted on the @narendramodi X account]
It was three months ago when our Jim Rickards went semi-viral on X with <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/tariffs-on-trial/#2" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a post spotlighting the smiles and handshakes</a> among Putin, Modi and China&rsquo;s President Xi Jinping at a summit in China. Together they&rsquo;re forming a formidable anti-Washington bloc capable of withstanding sanctions and other forms of economic warfare.
It was an avoidable outcome if Donald Trump and Joe Biden had exercised smart diplomacy &mdash; but it was not to be.
Now, as mentioned here Tuesday, Washington imposes a 50% tariff on imports from India to punish India for its Russian oil purchases&hellip; and India just keeps on keepin&rsquo; on.
And that Tuesday edition continues to draw reader reaction&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: &ldquo;My Constructive Suggestion&hellip;&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />For a second day running, we&rsquo;re taking heat from a reader who interpreted <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/this-is-how-the-dollar-dies" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tuesday&rsquo;s </a><a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/this-is-how-the-dollar-dies" target="_blank" rel="noopener">5 Bullets</a> as a slam on the current president.
&ldquo;It became quite clear throughout the article that there is a strong critical stance taken regarding a particular political figure,&rdquo; she writes.
&ldquo;While personal opinions are certainly valid, I believe some of the language used, specifically when addressing political affiliations or leadership, might be perceived as overtly partisan rather than purely objective or analytical.
&ldquo;In my experience, many professional audiences and clients hold a wide range of political views. When professional content incorporates what could be interpreted as strongly politically charged commentary or critiques, there's a risk of inadvertently alienating a significant portion of your readership or client base.
&ldquo;Maintaining a degree of political neutrality or presenting observations in a more universally acceptable and less confrontational manner can often help in fostering broader appeal and ensuring your professional message is received without immediate political filters.
&ldquo;My constructive suggestion would be to consider moderating the explicit political leanings in your professional writing.
&ldquo;This approach could help in preserving an image of impartiality and ensure that your valuable insights reach and resonate with an even wider, more diverse audience, without risking the alienation of potential or existing clients who may hold differing political perspectives.&rdquo;
Dave responds: Thank you for your feedback.
So a couple of things: One, it&rsquo;s impossible to assess markets and the economy without assessing the actions of politicians and central bankers. As it happens, almost all of them are fools, knaves or both &mdash; drunk with hubris that they can push a button here, pull a lever there and get a predictable result with no second-order effects or unintended consequences.
In that light, I&rsquo;m thoroughly impartial &mdash; my contempt is universal. Thus, in the current politically polarized climate I&rsquo;m going to offend someone no matter what I say.
Inevitably there will be &ldquo;drive-by&rdquo; readers who get the idea I take one side or another &mdash; and there&rsquo;s nothing I can do about that.
The alternative is to crank out material that&rsquo;s bland, vanilla, milquetoast &mdash; which is a sure way to put myself out of work!