Yesterday Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent proudly announced that the US was abruptly increasing the scale of its intervention in the US bond market, stating that “we will at least double the purchase of bonds.”

Uh oh.

This comes only weeks after he once again tried to reassure us that America’s gold is still sitting safely in Fort Knox. The two are connected. Despite the US dollar no longer being backed by anything but more debt, the idea that America still has its gold serves as a sort of security blanket for frightened bond holders.

But that bluff is wearing increasingly thin. In the same week that the US announced plans to ‘support’ their bond market, US debt topped $40 trillion dollars. It’s hardly reassuring, and each new announcement only reinforces the sense that, behind the scenes, things are deteriorating—and fast.

Bessent’s smug, overconfident style may have worked for a while, but he is quickly learning that bluffing your way through catastrophe does not work nearly as well in the debt markets as it does in geopolitics.

As an aside, have you ever seen anything more cringe than this?!

Put simply, when every other week requires you to announce a new level of ‘intervention’, and take another imaginary trip to Fort Knox to pretend-look at the gold, market confidence starts to evaporate rather quickly. To misquote Shakespeare: ‘the ladyboy doth protest too much.’

With a slew of unexpected maneuvers this year, Scott Bessent has emerged as the most interventionist Treasury secretary in financial markets in decades — putting his credibility on the line in an effort to quell a potentially damaging rise in US borrowing costs.

—Yahoo Finance, Bessent Becomes Most Interventionist Treasury Chief in Decades

Obviously, it is not just America. The entire system is now beginning to seize up after decades of radical central-bank intervention designed to prop up asset prices. Just last week, Japan hit the headlines after being forced to repeatedly intervene in its own currency, as the yen began another phase of meltdown.

As we know, the US was then forced to step in with emergency dollar liquidity. Why? Because Japan holds an enormous amount of US debt, and if its own sovereign debt crisis worsens, one of the quickest ways for it to raise dollars is to start selling those Treasuries. That would create an even bigger problem for America.

So the US effectively moved to give Japan access to dollars, reducing the pressure on it to dump US debt into an already fragile bond market.

Washington fears that Japan could try to prop up the yen by selling some of its $1 trillion-plus reserves of US Treasury bills – which would have a destabilising effect on America’s public finances and the dollar. It would push the cost of serving America’s national debt even higher, and a weak dollar would also have inflationary consequences in the US.

—The Independent, What’s the Japanese yen crisis and why does it affect Britain?

The two nations now share the same problem and both are trapped between a rock and a hard place: allow the bond market to implode as foreign holders dump the debt, or defend it through increasingly exotic interventions and watch the world dump your currency instead.

Heads you lose. Tails you also lose.

But because the US is the largest issuer of debt in the world, there is nobody coming to save them as they attempted—and failed—to do with Japan. Nobody, that is, except the Fed, which will soon have no option but to monetize the debt outright. Don’t fall for the Kevin Warsh tough talk rubbish, it’s all smoke and mirrors at this point.

Indeed, the old mantra of “our dollar, your problem” has finally flipped as those chickens come home to roost. In essence, it is now a case of: other nations selling Treasuries, America’s problem. And markets are beginning to realize there are an awful lot of Treasuries out there available to sell.

It is not overstating it to say that the West is about to experience a sovereign debt crisis unlike anything anyone alive has seen. One that will ultimately be resolved with a complete financial restructuring. The Great Reset. These ever more frequent interventions are certainly not fixing anything, because they do nothing to cure the underlying disease. Which, spoiler alert, is not chickenpox.

It’s plague.

Adding more plague to the plague does not improve the situation. Those on the inside are finally beginning to understand what many reading this already knew: this system is living on borrowed time. Just look at the US 30-year yield today. It has already resumed its climb higher just 24 hours after it was announced the US would be stepping up their purchases.

As a further kick in the teeth, gold soared 3.5% on the day as the Dollar Index collapsed. In other words, the intervention has failed. Money is moving out of dollars, out of US debt, and into gold. Clearly the ‘intervention’ has been rejected. The markets want more. Much more.

It is worth remembering that this latest intervention was not the first warning sign that things were weakening beneath the surface. In December last year, the Federal Reserve were already acknowledging that liquidity in the commercial banking system was tightening, before announcing it intended to increase its holdings of short-term T-Bills in response.

And increase them it did.

Those holdings soared from $195 billion in December to more than $511 billion by July. I warned about this months ago because the dynamic is almost identical to what we saw before the Scamdemic.

During the Repocalypse of September 2019, the overnight repo rate exploded from around 2% to as high as 10%. At that point, the Federal Reserve was forced to step in and inject liquidity into the system. One of the mechanisms it used was buy short term government securities. The fact that this mechanism is now back in play should be setting alarm bells ringing.

Of course, that was only the beginning, much more was needed. Enter the Scamdemic, and its massive fiscal response. So the question we should be asking is: are we now treading the same path? Is another major crisis imminent? I believe it is, and that all of these interventions we’re seeing now are merely the opening act of something much, much bigger.

I think we are in exactly the same place now. Their interventions are not enough and behind the scenes, they already know something massive is needed to give them cover for one final mega-print. QE, helicopter money, enormous bailouts—you name it. At this point, they need all of the above.

I believe this could well be the explanation for the completely artificial disruption in the Strait of Hormuz. It has been allowed to drag on for so long, that we are now guaranteed a crisis in the back half of 2026. The consequences have already bled into farming, the production of high-end lubricants and multiple areas of manufacturing.

To be clear, this was obvious from the get-go. When I called the top in oil a week before the market crashed 35%, it wasn’t because I thought the crisis was over. Quite the opposite. I said in that piece that I expected major shortages later this year, and that I believed much of this was likely by design.

So I am not surprised that all of these narratives are now converging: a fiscal crisis paired with an impending social crisis, just like in 2020. Because tremendous and extraordinary fiscal measures require a tremendous and extraordinary crisis to justify them.

So in this article, I am going to explain why I believe now is the time to prepare—and, more importantly, how I am positioning across metals, miners and beyond for what comes next. Nobody can predict the future exactly, but it should be obvious to anyone reading this that we have now hit almost every milestone you would expect to see before something nasty arrives.

So here are the things you need to know to make sure your portfolio is crisis-ready.

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The smelter itself consumes a staggering 12% of all the electricity used in New South Wales, a substantial portion of which was already being subsidized by the state. But with that subsidized energy contract due to expire in 2028, a new arrangement was needed. With Rio-Tinto threatening to close the smelter if they don’t get a good offer.

The agreed-upon “solution”? Hand Rio Tinto $2.5 billion of public money. No strings attached. No guarantees required. No stake in the company or share of future profits. Essentially, the citizens were just robbed by the government, for the benefit of a private corporation. One which produced a $10 billion profit after tax last year.

Whilst that in itself is an astonishing story, there is much more going on here than meets the eye. The smelter produces around 590,000 tonnes of aluminium a year, 90% of which goes to China. This didn’t come up in the public debate around the smelter. What the government told the public that by bailing out the plant, they are protecting Australian jobs and Australian manufacturing from being stolen by—China.

A clear misdirection. As is the notion that the $2.5 billion will be used to make it possible for the Tomago smelter to run entirely on renewable energy by 2033. Of course. This too is another gift to China. But wait, there’s more. Because the company at the heart of this deal, Rio Tinto, while officially presented as a British-Australian mining company, is anything but.

So in tonight’s video, I dig into the deeper meaning of the story and explain why the real headline is not that Australia bailed out Rio Tinto, but that Australia bailed out the CCP. Which itself raises a much bigger question: just how deeply has the land down under already been infiltrated by China?

For paid members, I’ll be publishing a report in the coming week on how the mining landscape is changing as governments increasingly intervene in the sector and, in some cases, look set to take direct stakes in their nations largest miners.

I will explore what does this mean for us as investors? Where are the risks that might destroy your portfolio of miners, and equally, where are the opportunities? How does all of this connect to the financial reset?

If you’re an investor in gold and silver miners or commodity plays, this is one of the most important reports you’re going to read this year.

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IS YOUR PORTFOLIO READY?—SUMMER STRATEGIZING CONSULTATIONS

As we move into Autumn, the risk of a major market correction is rising. That brings danger, but also significant opportunity for those who are prepared. For that reason, I am offering a special members-only discount for my Summer Strategy Consultation.

This is a one-to-one consultation designed to help you assess your portfolio risk, discuss the opportunities I am preparing for heading into autumn in gold, silver, the miners and commodities.

The consultation can also be used to ask questions about the Great Taking, gold and silver miners, precious metals, or broader Plan B strategy.

Spaces are limited. To secure your spot please use the link below.

Book a Summer Strategy Consult with Mike

The reality is, the narrative gets weaker and weaker, not stronger and stronger, with each passing year. That is not how “truth” works. When something is true, it becomes more obvious the more time advances (see the truth about the Scamdemic). When something is a lie, however, the opposite happens (see the Bitcoin narrative). So let’s remind ourselves. We had already discovered that, during some of the most crucial years of Bitcoin’s evolution, Epstein was literally funding three of the five lead Bitcoin developers through MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative, which became the new institutional home for Bitcoin Core following the collapse of the Bitcoin Foundation.

Interestingly, another MIT-linked figure would later emerge as the loudest Bitcoin salesman on earth: Michael Saylor, son of a US Air Force Chief Master Sergeant (the highest possible enlisted rank) and government-contractor extraordinaire. His company—which has gone on to become one of the largest holders of Bitcoin in the world—sprang out of connections he made whilst studying at MIT. In many ways, it looks like another company that exists mostly as a ‘private arm’ of the US deep state apparatus. His company’s IPO was even taken up aboard a rocket to the International Space Station (apparently). Why? Anyhow, back to my point, Saylor is not trying to take down the US dollar, the central banks, or hurt American interests. He is a loyal servant of Uncle Sam.

After leaving high school, Saylor followed his dream, joining the Air Force and earning a degree in aeronautical engineering from MIT, where he studied spaceship design and learned how to fly. But his plan was derailed in the final semester of his senior year when he was misdiagnosed with a benign heart murmur, disqualifying him from combat air duty.

Shortly after that, Congress cut the defense budget. So, instead of going on active duty in the military as an engineer, he served in the Air Force reserve weekends and summers and went into the civilian world. Saylor told us this story as he proudly showed us a plaque in his office. It had recently been given to him by Astronaut Greg Johnson, a high school friend who was a pilot, not just once but twice, on the space shuttle Endeavour.

The plaque featured MicroStrategy’s IPO prospectus and pictures of Johnson in space holding it. He had taken it with him on Endeavour’s last flight. So, it had been to the space station and circled the Earth for two weeks.

—Georgetowner, Michael Saylor: Riding The Mobile Wave (2012)

Beyond Saylor, a few years later we then saw a sudden institutional U-turn, with the likes of Larry Fink, Howard Lutnick, Donald Trump and a range of other less than encouraging faces suddenly pushing Bitcoin on the masses, telling us they had it all wrong and that digital tokens are “the new gold.” Eyebrows should certainly have been raised at that point. But for those who remain capable of critical thought, it was clear long before any of this that the narrative was deeply flawed.

‘You will know them by their fruits’ comes to mind. And off the back of Bitcoin, the whole dystopian technocracy emerged, which now includes the mass tokenization of assets. Put simply, if they didn’t invent it, they sure as hell thank their lucky stars that somebody did! It has advanced their agendas in ways that would have been impossible had the governments of the world openly brought them forward. At this point, you can certainly see a convergence of Bitcoin with broader agendas around digital surveillance, digital IDs and transhumanism.

In his most recent interview, Michael Saylor really laid his own cards on the table when he cheerled for implantables and chips placed under the skin of newborn babies. Something that wouldn’t affect him, of course, because like so many of the key ‘technologists’ advancing dystopia, he is childless.

Saylor’s words didn’t surprise me, given he has spent his entire life advancing technocracy and advocating for Transhumanism. Just like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Larry Ellison, Sam Altman—and all the other faces that have somehow come to suddenly dominate companies and narratives shaping our future. I was warning people about this as far back as 2021 when Saylor entered the Bitcoin space. Here are a few of his Facebook posts from the pre-Bitcoin days.

Saylor is clearly an advocate for digital IDs and the greater project of Transhumanism and technocracy. So why didn’t people question his sudden reversal on Bitcoin? He went from being a complete opponent to suddenly having a revelation that led him not only to buy a little, but to turn his company into a Bitcoin ponzi scheme. Personally, I don’t think Michael Saylor is dumb or reckless, he is clearly smart. Which is why what he has done over at Strategy — essentially pyramiding debt in order to buy the most volatile mainstream asset in history — does not make sense. Which begs the question: was he instructed to do so?

Of course, that is hugely speculative, so I won’t waste my time trying to prove or disprove it. I merely want to reiterate that he has spent his life working alongside government agencies and the military-industrial complex in the US. Are we really expected to think he betrayed his pay masters by pushing an asset we were told was designed to usurp their power and return sovereignty to the masses. Or is the far more likely scenario that he is pushing it to further their overall agenda? In the words of Joe Biden: “C’monnnnn mannnnn.” But listen, none of this really matters. I am not trying to convince anyone of anything. I just feel the need to reiterate these important points every time I talk about Bitcoin, because otherwise I’ll get a whole host of people telling me to:

“Do my homework.”

“Trust math.”

“Have fun staying poor.”

So, back to the recent cold wallet hack. This is one of the most significant incidents in the history of Bitcoin. Not because the Bitcoin narrative wasn’t already deeply flawed—but because this one goes right to the heart of the illusion surrounding the technology. It also introduces an incalculable risk. Because this time, people who did “everything right” lost 100% of their wealth in an instant.

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IS YOUR PORTFOLIO READY?—SUMMER STRATEGIZING CONSULTATIONS (20% discount for Members)

As we move into summer, the risk of a major market correction is rising. That brings danger, but also significant opportunity for those who are prepared. For that reason, I am offering a special members-only discount for my Summer Strategy Consultation.

This is a one-to-one consultation designed to help you assess your portfolio risk, discuss the opportunities I am preparing for heading into autumn in gold, silver, the miners and commodities.

The consultation can also be used to ask questions about the Great Taking, gold and silver miners, precious metals, or broader Plan B strategy.

This special discount is available for members during the first two weeks in July. Spaces are limited. To secure your spot please use the link below.

Book a Summer Strategy Consult with Mike

The headline number is that “global wealth” has skyrocketed to $1.8 quadrillion. Now, that is a big number—one that is almost impossible to grasp without some kind of reference point. So, let’s deal with a single quadrillion rather than the nearly two quadrillion dollars the global asset base is supposedly worth.

In digits, a quadrillion looks like this:

1,000,000,000,000,000.

To better conceptualize what that means, imagine you’re about to drive one quadrillion meters of road. If you were driving at 100 km/h, nonstop, day and night, it would take roughly 1.14 million years to cover the distance. And that’s just one quadrillion.

But perhaps a visual reference is easier:

So, let’s break down the $1.8 quadrillion figure.

The report explains that real assets—including factories, land, machinery, gold and silver, forests, commodities, real estate, intellectual property, and so forth—accounted for just $620 trillion of the total sum. Layered on top of that productive base was an almost equally large pool of financial assets held by households, governments, and non-financial companies.

The financial sector—including banks, insurers, pension funds, and other institutions—held a further $550 trillion in assets, equivalent to roughly 90 percent of the entire real-asset base. Yet once the corresponding debts and liabilities were deducted, net global wealth amounted to only around $600 trillion. What is important to note, is the rate of growth in the perceived value of the financial layer. Up 60% in a single year!

Essentially, what the recent McKinsey report shows is that while the collective value of “global wealth” continues to rise, most of that increase now comes from paper gains on pre-existing financial assets—not from an increase in real assets. Over the past 12 months, factories did not suddenly produce 60 percent more goods. We did not build 60 percent more roads or infrastructure, and the housing stock did not expand by 60 percent.

What changed was the price assigned to a narrow group of AI companies—and the absurdity of those valuations only gets worse. Just recently I exposed the insanity of a $2.5 trillion market capitalization for the loss-making company SpaceX. A valuation so outrageous that it can only be compared with the worst excesses of the dot com mania, when non-existent companies dreamed up in mom’s basement were IPO’ing with multi billion dollar valuations.

That still did not stop Elon Musk from recently announcing that SpaceX might eventually become more valuable than Earth. There’s that good old Elon Musk ‘genius’ the propagandists keep talking about. Does anyone believe this slop? Really?

But this is what makes the McKinsey wealth report so important. Even though it’s mainstream publication, it actually puts hard numbers on the widening gulf between the wealth claimed by the financial system and the productive reality beneath it. Clearly the global economy has nothing close to the wealth it claims to possess. Even many of the collection of “real assets” are part of the hyperbubble, such real estate and commercial property—both of which sit a historic highs in terms of valuations vs salaries. Then we have the enormous and opaque private credit bubble to factor in.

The reality is that beneath the supposed $1.8 quadrillion in global assets may lie just $100 trillion—or less—of genuine, unleveraged wealth.

We can say this because combined value of the world’s entire gold stock is only around $29 trillion, 62 times smaller than the total valuation of global wealth. That means at present, only a tiny pool of real money is supporting this impossibly large mountain of notional value. I am betting this is going to reverse heavily in the coming years.

Obviously there are only two ways to balance the books on this front: gold must be revalued dramatically higher, or the perceived value of these ponzi assets must collapse. My view, is both will happen simultaneously until eventually a new equilibrium is found. One which recapitalizes the system, and enables the next epoch of capital accumulation to begin. In 2025, we got our first real taste of this rebalancing, but we have long way still to go.

So before leaving, a few key takeaways from the report:

In 2025:

• US equity valuations reached an all-time high.

• Their value relative to GDP was nearly double the historical average.

• More than half of the increase in S&P 500 market capitaliztion between 2021 and 2025 came from the seven giant companies associated with the AI boom.

Of the wealth growth recorded in 2025:

• Only 20% came from net new real investment.

• Nearly 60% came from additional asset-price gains above inflation and deteriorating net-worth positions elsewhere.

• Another 42% reflected prices rising broadly with inflation.

• Net international lending and borrowing subtracted from the total.

In terms of the “divergence” discussed in the report’s title, this becomes apparent when you recognize that the epicenter of this paper wealth growth is the United States. Again, this is no surprise. Ultimately, the report shows us that we truly are at the peak of the greatest financial bubble the world has ever seen—and that we have no excuse for failing to see it.

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IS YOUR PORTFOLIO READY?—SUMMER STRATEGIZING CONSULTATIONS (20% discount for Members)

As we move into summer, the risk of a major market correction is rising. That brings danger, but also significant opportunity for those who are prepared. For that reason, I am offering a special members-only discount for my Summer Strategy Consultation.

This is a one-to-one consultation designed to help you assess your portfolio risk, discuss the opportunities I am preparing for heading into autumn in gold, silver, the miners and commodities.

The consultation can also be used to ask questions about the Great Taking, gold and silver miners, precious metals, or broader Plan B strategy.

This special discount is available for members during the first two weeks in July. Spaces are limited. To secure your spot please use the link below.

Book a Summer Strategy Consult with Mike

Welcome to our monthly Members Q&A, where I answer questions submitted by you, the PM community. As always, Part 1 is available to all subscribers, while Part 2 is reserved for paid members.

Just a quick FYI, I have a few spaces left for my upcoming Group Coaching for Investors available. It will be the final time I run the live coaching so …

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Welcome to the August edition of my Monthly Investors’ Mastermind private call.

This video contains market analysis normally reserved for my 1-2-1 and group coaching clients. As a Founding Member, however, you get exclusive access to the recording to help you prepare for what may be coming next.

In the call, I break down what is happening a…

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In this episode, we discuss:

▪️ China’s decision to ban leveraged paper gold, funneling citizens into physical metal
▪️ The surge in central bank gold buying—and how it connects to the financial reset

Please let us know in the comments what you think of the show, and which topics relating to gold and silver you would like us to cover in future episodes.

SHOW NOTES:
Andrea’s Substack: https://substack.com/@andreacecchi
Mike’s Substack: https://substack.com/@parallelmike

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Survive & Thrive In The Coming Financial Reset—Group Coaching with Mike (Member Discount!)

In Group Coaching for Investors, I teach the financial skills and strategies I am using—as well as the psychology required to apply them—to protect and grow your wealth during the financial reset.

Ahead of us lie enormous risks—but also enormous opportunities. That is why it has never been more important to take control of our wealth, not entrust it to a system that seeks to devour it.

What’s included in group coaching:

• 12 live Zoom sessions with Mike and a like minded group of people

• Each session focuses on a key topic, including surviving financial resets, protecting pensions and 401(k)s, gold and silver strategies, ratios, market cycles, the Great Taking, contrarian investing, risk management, and more.

• Live group discussion and Q&A after every session

• Learn the wealth-preservation skills and strategies I am actively using to protect and grow my own family’s wealth going into the reset.

• Direct access to Mike’s investment ideas, research and strategies

• Additional workshops to watch in your own time

• Nine months of post-coaching access to Mike’s monthly Investor Mastermind, where we continue to assess market risks, identify opportunities and discuss how to position as conditions change.

For more information on group coaching, please click here. Alternatively if you would have any questions, please message Mike directly, or email parallelsystems@protonmail.com

The billionaire class loves nothing more than telling us how much money they give away. Yet the causes always seem to lead back to the same place: global governance, “healthcare” in the form of mass vaccination, digital control, and the supposed problem of there being too many people.

In this episode, Monica breaks down what she uncovered during her own investigation into elite philanthropy—from the special tax structures that protect billionaire wealth to the real purpose behind their so-called charity.

Help me spread this important message…press ♥️ and restack to alert others.

Listen to Parallel Mike Podcast on your favorite podcast app: PodBean / Spotify / Apple / ParallelMike.com

IS YOUR PORTFOLIO READY?—SUMMER STRATEGIZING CONSULTATIONS (20% discount for Members)

As we move into summer, the risk of a major market correction is rising. That brings danger, but also significant opportunity for those who are prepared. For that reason, I am offering a special members-only discount for my Summer Strategy Consultation.

This is a one-to-one consultation designed to help you assess your portfolio risk, discuss the opportunities I am preparing for heading into autumn in gold, silver, the miners and commodities.

The consultation can also be used to ask questions about the Great Taking, gold and silver miners, precious metals, or broader Plan B strategy.

This special discount is available for members during the first two weeks in July. Spaces are limited. To secure your spot please use the link below.

Book a Summer Strategy Consult with Mike

In recent months, the markets have felt a lot like being stuffed into a barrel and thrown off the back of a boat during a violent storm. After a stellar 2025, in which gold, silver and the miners all produced spectacular returns extending into the first month of 2026, many precious metals investors were caught swimming with their pants down.

By that, I mean they mistakenly extrapolated recent returns into the future without factoring in the likelihood of a substantial correction. Believing in an asset is no excuse for bad risk management, and I started warning people about this heading into 2026, especially with the miners, because it was obvious that we were over our skis.

Speculative money was piling into the space, and the usually dour and depressive mining sector was suddenly filled with optimism and glee. That’s not normal. Most of the time, people who own gold and silver miners are nursing their wounds and talking about ‘someday’. Instead, it seemed we had total consensus that things could only go higher.

But anyone who studies the history of the space knows that only for brief periods do these companies produce spectacular returns. If you want to succeed with gold and silver miners, you have to be a contrarian—even to the point whereby you might eventually disagree with other investors in the gold and silver mining space.

Unfortunately, most people don’t know how to handle the cyclicality of miners, or cyclical companies period. Thus, they treat them like growth stocks or buy and holds. They are not, they are buy and sells! Even when they produce great profits, hold them long enough, and they eventually give most of them back. Then the cycle repeats.

The fact that most companies in the space are down 50% since February has been, for some people, their first real lesson in the cyclicality of miners. It’s normal for the space, however, and the good news is that we are now well into the decline, meaning the next great buying opportunity will arise soon enough.

There is one caveat: the opportunity will arise only for those who are ready.

On that front, my next cohort of Group Coaching for Investors begins at the end of August. This is where I teach people the strategies I use to navigate the cycles in gold and silver miners, identify when the risk-reward equation has changed and move into opportunities before the wider market catches on.

Those same strategies proved invaluable this year. While the miners and oil rolled over, I was already looking elsewhere—finding a number of deeply overlooked companies that continued rising while almost everything around them was falling. These forgotten stocks are now benefiting from the great rotation of capital out of the AI bubble.

This includes one major company whose shares are up 30% this month—a stock almost everyone had ignored until recently. But more on that in a moment. First, if you would like more information on the upcoming coaching group, please check the bottom of the post or DM me here on Substack.

Shameless plug over, now we will move onto the focus of this weeks article: what do we actually do during times like these? When markets are sitting at record overvaluations, speculative mania is at its peak, and even the usual contrarian assets—gold, silver and the miners—are already correcting.

Buying the same stuff you always buy, and simply hoping things turn around, is not the answer. The risk of a major market correction is now extremely high. Likely a major crash. Just take a look at the South Korean KOSPI to see what I am talking about. This is a domino that eventually leads to the S&P 500. The AI bubble is one gigantic interconnected cesspit, that has now engulfed pretty much all major indices.

Meaning when one indices goes, the others will eventually follow.

Unfortunately, those kinds of crashes result in everything going down together. It does not matter what you hold during the initial selling. You could own the best company in the world, with the strongest profitability and the best management team. In a market crash, all correlations go to one for a time, and everything gets hit.

Of course, capital will then rotate rapidly out of the toxic, phony narrative companies that produce no profit and into genuinely good, viable businesses whose profitability is going nowhere.

A handful of names—what I call the Forgotten Few—are already benefiting from this great rotation of capital. These are the only companies I want to own right now. But you might be thinking: but wait a minute, Mike. If you believe a crash is coming, surely you want to be completely out of stocks?

The answer is more nuanced than a simple in or out.

Now is certainly the time I want to be positioned mostly in the bottom two tiers of my Wealth Preservation Pyramid. That means long-term holdings of metals, which protect me no matter what happens. These are not positions you trade in and out of, and I am adding to gold at the current level. But this is not an investment. For me it is protection, and a long term savings vehicle.

Beyond the foundation, I am also heavily positioned in the liquidity tier. This is where I place anything I plan to deploy within the next six to twelve months. With market risk now so extremely high, I have transitioned almost, but not entirely, out of the top two tiers and sitting in liquidity, waiting for the big opportunities I believe lie ahead.

Again, “big opportunities” really depends on how you are positioned going into a crash. If you are fully allocated to stocks, you do not have a huge opportunity ahead of you. Not historically speaking and not in light of the warning signs springing up everywhere.

What you have is massive risk and potentially great loss ahead of you. So right now wealth preservation is the main goal. For me, the first rule of investing is not to lose money. Even if that means missing an opportunity here and there.

And right now, the probabilities are not in favor of great returns, at least not at the mean. On the other hand, I would be lying if I said I knew exactly what comes next. Nobody does. But the signs are there that they have run out of runway, and now we are simply waiting for the next excuse for a big, BIG print. That excuse will almost certainly include a sharp correction in the markets.

This is not pure guesswork. It is based on my study of financial history, market cycles and what is unfolding in real time. So why wouldn’t you want to be 100% out of stocks?

The answer is contained in the above: because we do not have a crystal ball. I am certainly heavily positioned towards what I believe happens next. The last time I was this heavily skewed towards a crash was when I sold all my stocks in October 2019. Come March, I was glad I had.

Having said that, there are always opportunities and despite the massive overvaluation of the wider market, some sectors are already trading at generational lows. I am talking about strong companies trading at or close to the the lowest valuations in their entire history. That creates an exceptional risk-reward opportunity.

To be clear, these are not tiny, speculative commodity producers. In fact, they are not commodity producers at all. They are defensive stocks—companies I singledout both because of their exceptional value, and because I know that as the AI bubble unwinds, these are precisely the kinds of companies mainstream investors will be forced rotate into.

Stable, defensive companies, many of whom are also offering dividends over 6%.

During the dot-com crash, we saw precisely the same setup. Going into the peak of the bubble, these kind of companies had been forgotten, and Warren Buffett was considered washed up for sitting mostly in cash and holding a handful of these neglected businesses.

So what happened next? Who was correct? The herd, piling into dot-com IPOs for companies producing zero profits, or Buffett, the old laggard who had underperformed for three straight years? I think you all already know the answer to this one.

From 2000 to 2010, technology companies went nowhere. It was a lost decade. Meanwhile, the “forgotten few” that had fallen 90% in the years leading up to the 2000 crash became some of the best performers in the index. Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway went from underperforming the market in 1998 and 1999, to massively outperforming it in the years that followed.

My bet is that exactly the same thing happens this time. In fact, it is already happening. The three companies I bought recently are substantially outperforming the S&P 500. Like during the early part of 2000, right now, these companies are not on most people’s radar, and only a handful of early movers are paying attention.

They see the tide beginning to turn and are quietly diverting their capital, while the masses (see: bag holders) remain fixated on the bubble. This is great news, because it means there is an enormous upside ahead of us. These companies remain deeply undervalued.

So, in today’s article, I am going to discuss my three most recent purchases—what I bought and why I bought them. Given the market risk, these companies make up only a small part of my overall portfolio, but I believe all three offer significant upside over the next 12 months as the AI bubble continues to unwind and capital rotates into neglected, highly profitable businesses.

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Overnight, the system ceased to exist. Every property and every acre of land was suddenly open to dispute. Who owned what? With the records gone, property could no longer be bought or sold. Ownership could not be proven, except by those who had retained physical copies of their deeds.

That is the precise form of ownership they have spent the past century eliminating—not only with land and real estate, but with stocks and bonds. This is how the Great Taking was constructed.

Stocks and bonds were dematerialized, paper certificates were removed, and ownership was centralized at Central Securities Depositories like the DTCC. During that transition, citizens quietly had their full legal ownership revoked.

Their stocks, bonds and the assets in their retirement accounts were converted into a “security entitlement”—an inferior form of possession that allows those assets to be pledged as collateral for the massive derivatives complex and ultimately taken by the too big to fail banks.

Now comes the push to tokenize everything: land, real estate, physical property, financial assets and even human identity. An entirely digital mark of the beast system in which assets are no longer owned through possession, but through tokens held on a blockchain. Meaning in an instant, it can all be frozen, transferred, or taken.

Sound crazy?

It is already happening. This year, the DTCC—the same institution at the centre of the dematerialized securities system—has begun to tokenize bonds and ETFs. Meanwhile, Larry Fink openly promises that every asset will be tokenized. And so will you.

At the same time, the World Economic Forum continues threatening us that a major worldwide cyberattack is coming—one capable of freezing the entire system.

So how do all these pieces connect—tokenization, the Great Taking, the financial reset, the debt collapse, digital IDs and the cyberattacks that are now happening with ever increasing frequency?

In tonight’s show, I connect the dots and explain why the recent attack on Romania’s land registry is another warning shot that the Great Taking could be closer than people think.

Help me spread this important message…press ♥️ and restack to alert others.

IS YOUR PORTFOLIO READY?—SUMMER STRATEGIZING CONSULTATIONS (20% discount for Members)

As we move into summer, the risk of a major market correction is rising. That brings danger, but also significant opportunity for those who are prepared. For that reason, I am offering a special members-only discount for my Summer Strategy Consultation.

This is a one-to-one consultation designed to help you assess your portfolio risk, discuss the opportunities I am preparing for heading into autumn in gold, silver, the miners and commodities.

The consultation can also be used to ask questions about the Great Taking, gold and silver miners, precious metals, or broader Plan B strategy.

This special discount is available for members during the first two weeks in July. Spaces are limited. To secure your spot please use the link below.

Book a Summer Strategy Consult with Mike

Hi Everyone,

We’re back with another episode of Cognitive Dissidents. As always, I am joined by Monica Perez (host of The Monica Perez Show) and Hrvoje Moric (host of Geopolitics & Empire) for our roundtable discussion where we cover the descent into the abyss, one psyop at a time.

Take care,

Mike

As a paid member, you’ll unlock weekly articles on wealth preservation and finance, my exclusive financial newsletter, full access to the entire archive, and the ability to join the conversation with commenting privileges on every post. Your support makes this work possible—and gives you direct access to the insights, analysis, and community that matter now more than ever.

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If you want to learn more about the hosts, see Hrvoje’s work @ https://geopoliticsandempire.com/

Geopolitics & Empire

The Geopolitics & Empire Podcast conducts interviews with prominent international experts on a wide-range of topics. The broadcast seeks to gain insight from guests who come from the left, right, and beyond.

Also check out Monica’s work: Monica Perez Show @ https://monicaperezshow.com

Monica Perez

open-source journalist & podcaster trying to stay one step ahead of Them™️ while maintaining hope and humor www.monicaperezshow.com/about

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Hey everyone,

This is a call for questions for the upcoming Q&A show. If you have a question you'd like me to answer, please leave it in the comments section below. I'll do my best to get through as many as possible. Whilst I can answer most types of questions, for obvious reasons please avoid requesting specific financial advice. If your question is related to financial decisions, framing it more generally will mean it's more likely to be answered.

Take care,

Mike

To leave a question, become a paid subscriber of the Parallel Systems Broadcast, were you can also take part in members only livestreams, receive Mike’s audio newsletters, and exclusive articles.

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But the stories coming out of the country o…

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If you are not invested, they tell you, you are going to lose out. Sitting in cash is for idiots! Don’t you know that over the long term, markets always go up?! Well, yes, but over the long term all companies eventually fail, all currencies collapse, everybody dies and the Earth is eventually destroyed in a fiery inferno as our sun explodes.

So what now?

The real purpose of their permanent-exposure doctrine is obvious: they do not want you taking your money—and their fees—away from them. Anyone who understands financial history knows there are decades when you absolutely want to be overallocated to equities, such as the 1920s and the 1990s. There are also decades, such as the 1930s, the inflation-ravaged 1970s and the 2000s, when you absolutely do not.

This is not an argument for abandoning the stock market forever. It is an argument for getting out of a grotesquely overvalued market before the forced liquidation begins, so that you still have the capital to return when good assets are being thrown away with bad ones.

When the stock market collapsed in 1929, after a decade of leverage and momentum investing, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by 89 percent. The crash itself was brutal. There was no “buying the dip”.

As bad as the crash was, even the most pessimistic market commentators were not prepared for what followed. The market collapse paved the way for the Great Depression and an implosion of the world economy. In terms of the Dow it took 24 years for it to regain its September 3rd all-time high.

Twenty-four years!

But even this still fails to capture just how devastating the collapse really was. In certain sectors, it took more than half a century for prices to move decisively beyond their 1929 peak and stay there. Take the Dow Jones Utility Average, for example.

The index was created in 1929, when utility companies were removed from the broader Dow Jones Industrial Average and placed into their own separate index. It could hardly have been launched at a worse moment. After peaking at 144.40 in September 1929, it collapsed to just 10.58 by April 1942—a decline of more than 92 percent.

The index “recovered”, if you can call it that, when on April 20, 1965, it closed at 163.32. Just a tad over its previous nominal high. After 36 loooooong years, investors could finally point to the chart and declare that, yes. the stock market really does always go back up! The old peak had been surpassed! The nightmare was over!

Except it wasn’t.

By September 13, 1974, the index had collapsed back down to 57.93. Almost 65 percent of its value had disappeared in just nine years. Anyone who bought the supposed breakout in 1965 was destroyed, while anyone still holding from 1929 watched decades of recovery vanish all over again.

These are the stories the financial industry leaves out when advising you on your pension. It took from 1929 until 1986 for the Dow Utilities Index to finally break above—and remain above—its previous peak. That’s 57 years, and even then, if measured in gold, investors had still lost over 90 percent of their wealth.

Happy days.

The first collapse destroyed the leveraged bubble. The second destroyed the valuation investors had placed upon supposedly safe, dependable earnings. Electricity remained essential. The companies continued operating, but the shareholders were still ruined.

That is what extreme overvaluation does. It can turn an essential business into a terrible investment and clearly, the lesson is not confined to 1929 or to utility stocks. The same applies to technology stocks. A company may be at the centre of a genuine technological revolution, yet still be a disastrous investment at the wrong price. As the dot-com crash showed, when valuations become obscene, even the companies driving ‘the new thing’ can lose 90% of their perceived value, and destroy the capital of those foolish enough to “stay invested” come hell or high water.

Right now, we are once again being told that valuation no longer matters at a time when the broad market is more expensive than at almost any point in its history. By the Buffett Indicator, US equities are now valued at 238 percent of GDP—the highest reading on record. The Shiller CAPE is sat at 42, almost two and a half times its long-run average and exceeded only during the final months of the dot-com bubble. This won’t last much longer. Just like in 1929, a reckoning is due.

Meanwhile, the same financial class demanding permanent exposure to stocks has spent the past quarter-century dismissing gold as dead money. Even though gold has outperformed the S&P 500 price index over that same period. Measured in ounces of gold rather than depreciating debt notes, the supposed stock-market boom looks much more like another secular collapse. At the turn of the century, the S&P 500 was worth just over five ounces of gold. Today, it is worth less than two—a decline of roughly 63 percent. Bearing in mind, this is before the crash!

Now just wait and see what happens next.

But good luck getting a traditional financial adviser or pension-fund manager to discuss any of this with you. Even if they understood it, their employers would never allow them to encourage a meaningful allocation to physical gold, because physical gold generates no fees. There is no annual management charge on coins sitting in your possession. They earn no commission when you retire the debt notes and transfer your capital into real money.

Fortunately, more people are beginning to wise up and take control of their own destiny. Covid had its benefits. Millions suddenly discovered that doctors working inside the death-care system exist largely to prescribe drugs that enrich Big Pharma. My goal has long since been to expose that the world of finance is no different.

The role of the mainstream financial professional is to push you into buying and holding the financial equivalent of those poison shots. The longer this continues, the more people are going to be harmed. Do these people actually care about your financial future? No. Just as the doctors injecting people with those “vaccines” didn’t care about the damage they were causing, the financial advisers and pension fund manager have little to no concern for millions of retirees they’re helping destroy.

The common denominator is not simply incompetence. It is incentives. In both systems, the approved professional is paid to push the product, not to question the structure behind it. Whether in medicine or finance, these people are the useful idiots of the Great Reset and the coming transition from a bankrupt legacy system into a digital financial panopticon.

Make no mistake, many of them know what they are doing and are perfectly happy to play this role, because it makes them rich.

The Financial Times recently reported on the enormous fees wealth advisers have generated by steering ordinary investors into private-market funds. Sixteen funds managed by companies including Blackstone, Blue Owl, Apollo and KKR produced more than $2 billion in servicing fees for advisers from 2017 onwards, before lucrative upfront commissions were even counted.

Essentially, advisers operated inside an incentive structure that aligns their behavior with pushing these products onto clients. In other words, they sold people whatever paid them the most. Yes, this is the same private credit I have been warning about. Now this trash is buried inside pensions, retirement accounts and managed portfolios, but retail investors are already discovering that getting their money back is considerably more difficult than handing it over.

Many of these semi-liquid or “evergreen” vehicles only permit withdrawals at set intervals and can cap the amount redeemed when too many investors attempt to leave at once. Handing the money over is easy. Recovering it during a crisis is impossible. Heck, recovering it before the crisis is proving impossible! Imagine what happens when all markets are flashing red.

The warning signs are there that we’re in a great transition, one in which simply protecting what you already have may itself become the greatest creator of wealth, given the collapse that is bearing down on us. Just think about what holding gold meant during the Great Depression. If an asset falls by 90 percent against gold, the same ounce can buy ten times as much of it. If you transitioned from one to the other on September 1, 1929, you made the trade of a lifetime.

This time will be no different. If markets collapse by 70, 80 or 90 percent, you win by simply stepping out, at the right time. You do not need to produce spectacular returns beforehand. You simply need to avoid being destroyed alongside everyone else. Preserve enough capital in gold, and the collapse in other asset prices will increase your relative purchasing power without you doing anything.

Remember, ponzi schemes do not work in reverse, and the purpose of preserving capital—and holding the correct kind of capital—is to ensure that when forced selling begins and everything is liquidated together, you are among the small number of people still able to act.

This is where people should now be directing their attention, particularly those with a lifetime of savings trapped inside pensions, retirement accounts and financial products they do not truly own. It should also matter to those who, like me, entered the game during the bad years and had to find a way to catch up. In both cases, the answer begins with the same decision: stop allowing the financial industry to define success as permanent exposure to its products.

You do not need to extract every last percentage point from the bubble. You do not need to sell at the exact top, and you certainly do not need to remain fully invested simply because some fee-collecting dummy has told you that stepping aside is irresponsible. What matters is that you still possess capital when the bubble is gone. And increasingly, that you have the means to fend for yourself too. That’s how big this is.

But viewed from a purely financial perspective, those who enter the crisis leveraged, illiquid and exposed to grotesquely overvalued companies will eventually be forced to sell. Many retirees believe they are wealthy today, but much of that wealth exists only because we are sitting near the peak of a bubble. Once prices collapse, credit contracts and liquidations begin, the illusion will disappear very quickly.

As we are already seeing in South Korea, many retirees who believed they were sitting on riches may soon discover that they were merely left holding the bag.

It will be 1929 all over again.

On the other hand, those who enter the crisis protected by real money, and with enough liquidity to buy, will be in the opposite position. They will not be begging for a bailout or selling whatever they can at whatever price they can get. They will be standing on the other side of the trade, buying assets from people who trusted the plan.

That is how wealth changes hands during a collapse.

It moves from those who thought the system could never fail, and asset prices could only go higher, to those who studied financial history. It moves from people trapped inside paper claims to those holding real assets. Ir moves from those who need the market to keep rising to those who are ready for it to fall.

I for one, am looking for coming closing-down sale of the ponzi scheme. It will produce extraordinary opportunities, but only for those who survive the destruction that comes first. There is no benefit in watching your favorite stocks fall by 80 percent if your own portfolio has also fallen by 80 percent. You cannot take advantage of forced selling when you are one of the forced sellers. You cannot buy the panic when you are the one panicking.

And you cannot prepare for a crash once the crash is already underway. So consider this your warning from me: get ready. The financial industry will tell you that walking away from these markets at this moment in history is reckless. Let them.

But do not let them control your destiny. Right now, people are either preparing to win big or being set up to lose big. For those approaching retirement, this is not the moment to hand responsibility for your future to somebody else.

It is time to take back control of your finances—while you still can. History proves that bear markets can last not merely for years, but for half a century.

Help me spread this important message…press ♥️ and restack to alert others.

IS YOUR PORTFOLIO READY?—SUMMER STRATEGIZING CONSULTATIONS (20% discount for Members)

As we move into summer, the risk of a major market correction is rising. That brings danger, but also significant opportunity for those who are prepared. For that reason, I am offering a special members-only discount for my Summer Strategy Consultation.

This is a one-to-one consultation designed to help you assess your portfolio risk, discuss the opportunities I am preparing for heading into autumn in gold, silver, the miners and commodities.

The consultation can also be used to ask questions about the Great Taking, gold and silver miners, precious metals, or broader Plan B strategy.

This special discount is available for members during the first two weeks in July. Spaces are limited. To secure your spot please use the link below.

Book a Summer Strategy Consult with Mike

To leave a question for the next Q&A, become a paid subscriber of the Parallel Systems Broadcast, were you can take part in members only livestreams and receive Mike’s audio newsletters and exclusive articles.

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Dave Ramsey.

Where to start?

Many of you will know Dave through his nationally syndicated podcast, The Ramsey Show, which has been kicking around in various forms for three decades. The basic premise is simple: people call in with financial questions, and Dave answers them. Quite frequently, he also ridicules them for daring to ask a question—even though that is literally the entire point of the show. For people to call up for advice.

In Dave’s world, the idea that “there is no such thing as a stupid question” is null and void. But few questions appear to enrage him more than someone asking whether they should invest in physical gold or silver.

Over the years, plenty have tried. Each time, they were humiliated by Ramsey for daring to ask what he clearly considers to be the dumbest question of all. “Why the hell would you want to do that?” Dave screamed at one caller in 2014 after the man asked whether he should place some of his savings into gold bullion.

Dave’s rationale for dismissing gold is always the same: it is “just a commodity,” and buying it is “pure speculation.” Since that 2014 tirade, however, gold has risen by roughly 250%. That works out at an average simple return of around 21% a year, or approximately 11% compounded annually.

And yet Dave’s view has not changed.

As gold continued to rise, callers repeatedly gave him the opportunity to reconsider. Had the evidence changed his mind? Could gold perhaps be more than “just a commodity”? Was there something important he had missed?

Apparently not.

Instead, Ramsey continued answering the question with the same contempt and certainty, using it as another opportunity to flex his financial muscles, belittle the caller and make them feel small.

It is not simply that Dave made a bad call in 2014. Everyone gets things wrong. It is that gold went on to prove him wrong for another decade, and he still refused to reconsider the argument.

Dave has not merely been wrong about gold. He has insisted on remaining wrong about it for more than two decades. That demonstrates not only that he does not understand what he is talking about, but that he is also deeply disingenuous.

Ramsey told people not to buy gold at $500 an ounce. He told them not to buy at $1,000, $1,500 and $2,000. Then, in 2023, Dave went out of his way to warn his listeners that whatever they did, they should stay the hell away from gold.

The title of the YouTube video was: Why You Shouldn’t Be Fooled by “Gold-Buying” Headlines!

Below is an abbreviated transcript of the conversation.

The video has now been viewed more than 200,000 times, and its timing was impeccable.

At the time, gold was trading at a little under $2,000 an ounce. Bear in mind, it had already risen by over $1500 dollars since Dave first began warning people to stay away from it.

What interests me most about the call, is that Dave went out of his way to issue this special warning, right before gold’s major breakout. His message was clear: if you started seeing gold in the headlines, you absolutely should not buy it, because gold is a “risky,” “volatile” and “speculative commodity” akin to oil, wheat or copper.

This warning came immediately before one of the largest moves in gold since the last great financial reset of the 1970s, when the price increased 23-fold in just ten years. Meaning it was literally the worst possible financial advice he could give, at the worst possible time.

Unfortunately for them, I imagine a great many of Dave’s listeners, with his bad advice still echoing in their ears, failed to participate in the first wave of this bull market. Appropriately, the top-rated comment beneath the video, with more than 500 likes, reads:

“In three years, I made 70% on my gold.”

Another simply says: “Well, this aged like milk.”

But knowing that Ramsey has been pushing the same line for more than 20 years, and has stubbornly refused to update either his thesis or his knowledge on gold, the question becomes: why? Is it just ego?

Or could there be another reason for it?

Perhaps, while we are at it, we should also ask how Dave Ramsey went from bankruptcy in 1986 to becoming a billionaire financial guru whose company reportedly brought in $300 million in 2025 alone.

My view is simple: you do not reach that level of wealth, influence and mainstream exposure unless, somewhere along the way, you are serving the system. Some of Ramsey’s advice may sound sensible on the surface, but as always, the devil is in the detail. And in Ramsey’s case, I believe something far more sinister is at work.

I listened to more than ten hours of Dave Ramsey in preparation for this article, so you do not have to waste your time doing the same. And once you listen closely, the omissions become impossible to ignore.

Ramsey talks endlessly about the toxicity of debt, yet never seriously examines what creates it. There is no discussion of fiat money. No explanation of how commercial banks create money through lending. No examination of the monetary system that requires debt to expand continually.

And perhaps most remarkably of all, he never talks about inflation—the mechanism quietly destroying the purchasing power of the very families he claims to be helping. Those omissions are not minor. They are the key to understanding whose interests Dave Ramsey’s advice ultimately serves.

In the following article I will breakdown the Dave Ramsey deception, and elaborate on what I am doing instead of following his advice.

Dave’s Advice on Debt

Before we examine the Seven Baby Steps Dave urges every listener to follow, we first need to understand the fundamental message underpinning his entire philosophy: debt.

Ramsey claims to approach personal finance from a biblical perspective. At the centre of that philosophy is an almost absolute hostility towards borrowing, frequently supported by Proverbs 22:7:

“The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender.”

On this point, Dave and I agree completely.

Debt is antithetical to freedom. It is a claim against your future labor. The moment you borrow currency, a portion of every hour you work from that point forward already belongs to somebody else. Your employer might pay you, but the bank, credit-card company and mortgage provider are standing behind you with their hands out.

Debt also magnifies every financial crisis.

During the Great Depression, it was not falling asset prices alone that destroyed people. It was falling asset prices combined with debt.

As property and land values collapsed, many people were left owing far more than their assets were worth. This is one of the main reasons so many family farms were lost. Farmers were trapped with debts they could no longer service, while widespread bank failures made refinancing almost impossible—even for those who still had the income to meet their obligations.

The result was foreclosure and seizure of the collateral. The same mechanism remains in place today, only the mountain of debt is vastly larger, and the assets can be taken with far greater ease.

At the end of the first quarter of 2026, total American household debt stood at an astonishing $18.8 trillion. Mortgage balances alone accounted for $13.19 trillion, while credit-card debt stood at approximately $1.25 trillion. The average American carrying credit-card debt owed roughly $6,500, often at interest rates above 20%.

Debt is a cancer that has spread across the entire world. Every currency in use today, what we save in, spend in, and are paid in, is literally debt.

So when Dave tells people to stop borrowing, cut up their credit cards and escape consumer debt, he isn’t wrong. I have no argument with the principle. Where I begin asking questions is over what happens next—and who ultimately benefits from the path he prescribes.

When Ramsey—or one of his Ramsey Show “experts”—convinces a struggling family to work three jobs, sell everything they own and repay every last cent of unsecured debt, the family may benefit from escaping the interest payments. But let us not pretend the lender does not benefit enormously as well. A debt that might otherwise have become delinquent, been renegotiated or even discharged in bankruptcy is instead repaid in full.

What begins as “get out of debt” quickly mutates into something more toxic. People are told to sell essential assets, downgrade reliable vehicles and abandon investing in their own families future—all so an unscrupulous lender receives its money slightly faster. The borrower must surrender everything. The creditor, meanwhile, is treated as though its claim is sacred. Even if default is an option, Ramsey sides with the creditor and tells his callers to pay them, even though he himself, went bankrupt in 1986.

Despite the show’s constant attempt to frame callers as the architects of their own misery, many are not reckless or irresponsible. They are simply being crushed by the system.

One recent caller was a prime example of this. He was a hard working father of four putting in 80 hour weeks in law enforcement while his wife stayed at home to care for their four children. He was not drowning because he was lazy, careless or wasting money on luxuries. He was doing everything the system tells a man to do: working relentlessly, supporting his family and even taking on a side hustle doing security work just to get by.

Yet despite all of that, he was barely surviving. We know why. The Ramsey Show apparently does not.

His wages had been hollowed out, the cost of supporting a family had exploded, and the fiat system was debasing his earnings faster than he could increase them. This was not a man who had failed. This was a man being bled dry despite doing everything right.

And what was the advice? Sell your vehicle. Buy an old banger. Find another job on top of the 80 hours you already work and the side hustle you already have. Spend even less time with your wife and children. Become an even more obedient pawn in the debt ponzi game.

There was no discussion of why a hardworking father could no longer support a family on a full time salary. If this man had been supporting the same family in 1970, he would almost certainly have enjoyed a comfortable standard of living. In 2026, after working himself into the ground, he was approaching breaking point.

The Ramsey Show’s answer?

Work harder, pleb!

The Seven Baby Steps: Who Really Benefits?

At the heart of Dave Ramsey’s entire financial philosophy are what he calls the Seven Baby Steps—a supposedly simple path designed to take ordinary families from debt, stress and financial insecurity to solvency and, eventually, wealth.

On the surface, much of it sounds sensible. Pay off debt. Build an emergency fund. Save for retirement. Clear the mortgage. It is easy to understand why millions of people have embraced it.

But once you look beneath the surface, a different picture begins to emerge. The Seven Baby Steps may help people become more disciplined, but they also keep them firmly inside the financial system Ramsey appears to be protecting. Your savings remain in the bank. Your retirement wealth is handed to Wall Street. Your investments remain exposed to custodians and placed entirely withing the debt-based monetary system itself.

So let’s examine each of the Seven Baby Steps in turn—and expose how Ramsey’s supposed roadmap to financial freedom ultimately funnels your wealth straight back into the pockets of parasitical bankers, replacing debt dependence with investing in debt dependence.

Baby Step 1: Save $1,000 for a Starter Emergency Fund

Dave’s first Baby Step is to save $1,000 in cash before beginning the aggressive repayment of debt. The purpose is to prevent a relatively minor emergency—a broken appliance, unexpected bill or vehicle repair—from forcing the borrower straight back onto a credit card.

There is nothing objectionable about building an initial cash reserve. The problem is that $1,000 is no longer a meaningful emergency fund. It might cover one modest repair, but it will not carry a household through a job loss, illness, a major home expense or any serious disruption to the financial system. After years of inflation, the figure has become almost meaningless.

More importantly, Dave’s idea of emergency liquidity begins and ends with currency. It is supposed to protect somebody from a financial emergency but assumes that the currency, banks and payment system themselves remain perfectly functional. It’s completely blind to counterparty and systemic risk.

My approach for those just starting out is working towards my 3-4-5 Strategy: three months of salary held in cash, four months in silver and five months in gold. It is designed to provide a family with genuine protection against a major crisis.

It may take longer to build than Dave’s $1,000 emergency fund, but it can be accumulated gradually over time and will actually create some meaningful protection. It also protects against inflation, providing not just emergency liquidity, but an initial form of investment in the metals. Sorry Dave!

Mike’s 3-4-5 Strategy Explained: Each part performs an important function. Cash is trash over the long term, but it remains important during the early stages of a financial shock, or during an intermittent disruption in which shops and businesses are stilling willing/ able to accept the currency. Three months is sufficient, and will see you through most crisis situations.

Silver forms the second layer. If electronic payments stop working, banks restrict withdrawals or the currency begins to hyperinflate, silver provides a practical medium for smaller transactions, trade and barter. You are unlikely to use an ounce of gold to buy groceries, but fractional silver can bridge that gap. Especially with local farmers and food producers who have no choice but to sell their food, but could well be unwilling to accept currency if it becomes obvious it’s entering hyperinflation.

At that point, they will accept real money only.

Gold is the final layer and the foundation beneath the entire structure. It is not there to pay next week’s electricity bill. It is the final bastion of wealth.

If you manage to protect it, gold becomes the bridge between the existing monetary system and whatever replaces it. In a worst-case scenario, it remains the most trusted and desired form of money, immediately convertible into any other currency, anywhere in the world. In that sense, it is the ultimate form of liquidity.

Between the three, you have every base covered for at least 12 months of disruption.

It is also important to remember that spending falls sharply during a genuine crisis. Holidays, restaurants, new vehicles, subscriptions and most discretionary purchases disappear. Three months of ordinary salary held in cash could therefore fund six months or more of essential expenditure, while the silver and gold reserves could be stretched in the same manner. So whilst my 3-4-5 Model contains twelve months of salary, under crisis conditions it could feasibly provide two years or more of genuine liquidity.

Compare this with Dave’s $1,000—which he now advises people to keep in a bank savings account. In other words, his emergency fund is designed to cover the financial equivalent of a broken washing machine, and remaining exposed to a banking system that could freeze or confiscate it.

Baby Step 2: Pay Off All Non-Mortgage Debt

Dave’s second Baby Step is to clear all non-mortgage debt, beginning with the smallest balance and working upwards. As already discussed, I broadly agree with his philosophy of getting rid of debt. Consumer debt strips people of their independence, consumes future income and leaves them vulnerable to creditors at precisely the moment they most need flexibility.

It is worth reiterating, however, that much of the debt Ramsey urges people to repay is unsecured. If the borrower defaults, the bank is forced to absorb a loss on a loan it chose to make. Sometimes, that is exactly what should happen. Ramsey’s approach instead demands that the borrower sell possessions, slash spending and work additional hours until the lender is repaid in full. The borrower is expected to sacrifice everything to protect the creditor from the consequences of its own decision.

What is right will differ from one person to the next. For most people, escaping consumer debt is one of the best things they can do. But Ramsey strips the issue of its moral context entirely, even while claiming to follow a “scriptural approach” to finance.

The Bible warns repeatedly about usury, debt bondage and the use of financial power to reduce human beings to servitude. The New Testament even speaks explicitly of the “synagogue of Satan.” Yet Ramsey has almost nothing to say about the morality of the lender, the corruption of the money changers or the deliberate use of debt to enslave entire populations.

Nor does he ever explain the debt mechanism itself: why nations must borrow their own currency into existence, then repay that debt—with ever-rising interest—to private bankers.

Has Dave ever read The Creature from Jekyll Island? I doubt it. Does he ever engage with the forces driving the global debt explosion? Does he ever ask who creates the money, who collects the interest, or why the entire system requires exponentially more debt merely to remain standing?

No, my friends, he does not.

Because Dave will condemn the borrower all day long, but he does not dare confront the forces operating behind the system. Instead, whether knowingly or not, he protects them.

Read more

Welcome to Episode 1 of The Gold Heist — a new bi-monthly podcast in which Andrea and Mike will be discussing the most important stories related gold, silver, and the financial reset.

In this episode, we share our views on:

▪️ Rumors of America revaluing gold in July
▪️ Tether’s mysterious gold buying spree

Please let us know in the comments what you think of the show, and which topics relating to gold and silver you would like us to cover in future episodes.

SHOW NOTES:
Mike’s Article: Tether Are Creating a ‘Gold’ Backed Frankenstein

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For years, I have argued that the existing fiat financial system is finished. Not struggling or temporarily wounded, but totally unsalvageable. Finished. I know this to be true because every debt-based monetary system eventually runs into the same brick wall we have now run into, and the pattern is always the same.

The system begins with real money, then gradually reverts to claims against real money, and finally moves to paper currencies backed by zero real money. At that point, the debt balloons far beyond any possibility of repayment. This continues for as long as the exponentially rising debt can still be absorbed, or until confidence in the paper currency begins to fail. Once either occurs, the entire system collapses. Game over. Start again.

This cycle has been repeated hundreds of times throughout history. What we’re living through right now is not an exception to the rule. It is the rule.

Revolutionary France printed the assignats into oblivion and forced the public to accept this worthless paper under threat of state murder. Weimar Germany destroyed the mark under the crushing yoke imposed on her by the international banking cartel. In America, Roosevelt confiscated citizens’ gold in 1933, forcing them to use only Federal Reserve debt notes. Then, in 1971, the United States defaulted on foreign lenders when Nixon closed the gold window, ending the dollar’s convertibility to gold.

This, in turn, laid the groundwork for the expansion of the greatest ponzi scheme the world has ever known. One that is now on the verge of collapse, as evidenced by the fact that all major fiat currencies have already lost 97–99% of their purchasing power versus gold.

Ah yes, gold. That most hated of metals. Hated because it exposes their lies and reveals the worthlessness of the paper. For this reason, during the final, purely fiat phase of the system, we often see gold heavily suppressed. Confiscation, threats, price manipulation, propaganda, or as was the case in Revolutionary France, out and out force — whatever they can do to keep people trapped in the fiat money illusion.

With gold and silver no longer formally part of the monetary system, and with investors drowning in other assets to choose from, force is no longer required to stop people fleeing paper and rushing into physical metals. But that does not make gold any less threatening. While they quietly ferry gold into central banks, and the ruling class transitions from paper wealth into real assets, they are doing everything possible to convince us to do the opposite: to trust paper, electronic digits, and today, worthless cryptographic tokens.

That, I believe, is exactly where we are now. The “don’t look over there, look over here” phase of the reset. You can see how most of their cards have been played already. Bitcoin, the AI bubble, SpaceX, crypto mania. They’re running out of rope, which is why the bread and circuses are being thrown at us at an ever increasing in pace — all of it serves, or has served, to distract people from the reality of what is really taking place: a financial reset versus gold.

Important to note, historically, gold only ever returns to the monetary system after the destruction of the old order is complete. Not before the collapse, and not during it. But after. The reason is obvious: gold gives you an escape hatch. But that doesn’t mean they won’t use the allure of gold as bait, to steer people away from physical bullion.

The problem they have right now is that gold is becoming impossible to ignore. The price keeps rising, central banks keep buying, and fiat currencies continue losing purchasing power at an accelerating rate. Forcing sharp pullbacks at opportune moments, just as the public begins to notice gold, can only work for so long. The price will inevitably surge once again, rising even higher, as fiat circles the drain at an ever quickening pace.

Meanwhile, the loss of faith in the dollar is reaching panic levels, threatening to bring the system down ahead of schedule. An everything bubble, a sovereign debt bubble, a private credit bubble, collapsing demand for long-dated bonds — the entire structure is now dangerously destabilized. At any point, the whole thing could begin to unwind, bringing down the curtain on yet another fiat money system.

This is where Tether has become extremely important.

Tether is no longer just a crypto company issuing dollar tokens. It has become one of the most important shadow monetary institutions in the world. In a previous newsletter, I explained how it had become a de facto central bank, because that is what it increasingly resembles: a private issuer of offshore digital dollars, with USDT functioning as a major parallel dollar system. This is set to expand dramatically through 2026 and 2027 as a result of the Genius Act.

Despite still having never been audited, we are told Tether is backed by a range of assets, especially US Treasuries. Which is by design, and almost certainly why the company hasn’t been destroyed. By turning it into a black hole for US debt, it now serves a major strategic purpose. Reuters recently reported that Tether had $189.5 billion worth of USDT tokens in circulation by March 2026, with $117 billion of Treasury bills in reserve, alongside some Bitcoin and, importantly, an ever-growing hoard of gold. Around 154 tonnes in total.

During Q1 2026, they have been buying gold at a rate of $1 billion dollars worth, each and every month. A staggering amount, but one they can easily afford. Tether’s profitability has exploded in the past five years. It reported $6.2 billion in net profit in 2023, more than $13 billion in 2024, and more than $10 billion in 2025. All of this from minting imaginary tokens, out of nothing, and promising the world they were backed by ‘real assets’—just don’t ask them to prove it!

Tether, the company behind the world’s largest stablecoin, has been buying physical gold at a pace of up to two tons a week as it builds one of the world’s largest bullion stockpiles.

The company’s CEO, Paolo Ardoino, told Bloomberg that Tether intends to continue purchasing gold at that rate for at least the next few months. At current prices, that equates to more than $1 billion in buys every month.

The purchases are delivered to a high-security former nuclear bunker in Switzerland, which Ardoino described as “a James Bond kind of place.”

Tether’s gold holdings now total around 140 tons, worth an estimated $24 billion, making it one of the largest known holders of gold outside of governments, central banks and major ETFs. Most of that gold represents the company’s own reserves, while some backs its gold-backed stablecoin, tether gold (XAUT), which currently has a $2.7 billion market capitalization according to CoinGecko.

The company’s gold-buying pace has exceeded that of countries such as Greece, Qatar, and Australia, the firm said. In the last quarter of 2025, it added 27 metric tons of gold to its fund exposure.

“Through Tether Gold, we are operating at a scale that now places the Tether Gold Investment Fund alongside sovereign gold holders, and that carries real responsibility,” Ardoino said in a press release. “XAU₮ exists to remove ambiguity at a time when confidence in monetary systems is weakening.”

—Tether Is Buying Up To $1 Billion of Gold Per Month, Coindesk

So just to recap.

• Tether is now one of the largest holders of US Treasuries in the world, holding more than most nations.

• They have become one of the largest buyers of gold in the world, with gold now making up 15% of their overall reserves.

• As a result of the Genius Act, their digital tokens will make up the next iteration of dollar system.

Clearly this is not a side story.

This is the story.

For those who are confused, the process works as follows. Stablecoin companies create fresh demand for US Treasuries because each coin issued must be backed 1:1 with a designated reserve.

Payment stablecoins must be backed at least 1:1 by permitted reserve assets. Those assets can include cash, insured bank demand deposits, central-bank reserve deposits, short-dated US Treasury bills/notes/bonds with 93 days or less remaining maturity, Treasury-backed repo/reverse repo, and money-market funds invested only in those permitted assets.

Essentially, the Genuis Act has created a permanent source of demand for government debt. Stablecoin issuers mint the tokens, buy US Treasuries to hold in its reserves, then use the profits from said Treasuries, to buy either more Treasuries, or real world assets. This turns the entire stablecoin complex into a giant offshore debt machine. It also enables the companies to literally ‘print money’, albeit digitally.

Stablecoins processed $8.82 trillion in adjusted volume during the first six months of the year. That is already above the $5.8 trillion recorded across all of 2024 and puts 2026 within $2 trillion of the $10.8 trillion full-year record set in 2025.

—Yahoo Finance

Much like the Petrodollar system was designed around oil-producing nations recycling their oil profits into US debt, the Techno-dollar system, as my co-host on Cognitive Dissidents, Hrvoje Morić, recently dubbed it, is designed around companies like Tether recycling profits from their digital dollar ponzi schemes into US debt. The goal is to ensure the architects of the even greater debt ponzi scheme are able to keep the train on the tracks that bit longer.

But why would anyone trust this proposed digital dollar system, led by Tether? One of the least transparent companies in history? Telling the public, “you can trust us, bro, because our permissioned tokens are now fully backed by US government debt,” is hardly going to inspire confidence. Not when people are already doing everything possible to escape that very same US government debt. Many thought Bitcoin was the solution, but that illusion has been shattered. So where will people turn next?

For those who missed the memo the first time, they’re going to turn to gold.

This is where Tether’s gold buying suddenly begins to make sense. They are not accumulating gold at a rate comparable to central banks for fun. They are building the credibility layer for the Techno-dollar system. Inevitably, they will use that gold to claim some form of “gold backing” for their digital dollars. Perhaps they will even back it in a literal sense, through tokenized gold, in order to manufacture trust in the new system.

The real genius of this scam is that the US government does not need to take ownership of it, or put up any of its own gold in an effort to restore trust in the dollar or government debt. Nor does the Federal Reserve have to undergo the credibility destroying humiliation of openly monetizing the debt, as the dollar enters its final, hyperinflationary stage.

Tether can do that job instead. The US government creates the legal framework, Tether does the dirty work, and the Fed continues to sit in the background appearing to be the legitimate source of monetary policy. Together, however, the stage is set for one final, hyperinflationary, blow off top.

To get the public and institutional finance to buy in, Tether are going to sit their pyramid scheme on a pile of gold. Just like in days of old. It will be a ‘gold-backed’ system. Or at least that’s what they’re going to claim. Yes, my friends, the fake Golden Age is here. The one they keep promising us. And behind the scenes they have already done their beta test.

Tether’s Gold Heist

In June 2024, Tether launched Alloy, a platform for creating digital assets backed by Tether Gold (XAUT). Its first product was a digital dollar called aUSDT.

Tether described Alloy as a “class of digital assets backed by gold and tethered to a reference fiat currency.” Stripped of the jargon, this meant a token designed to behave like a dollar while using tokenized gold as collateral behind it. In other words, this was not gold money. It was a synthetic digital dollar wearing a gold wrapper.

To fully understand aUSDT, you first need to understand XAUT.

According to their own website, Tether Gold/ XAUT is like gold, only easier!

Tether Gold is like gold, but easier. Tether Gold (XAU₮) is a token that provides you ownership of real physical gold. By putting gold on a Blockchain, we unlock a variety of characteristics that typically only crypto assets possess.

They go on to claim it is easy to transport. Easy to redeem. And more secure.

Boys, sounds like we got ourselves one of them there unicorns!

To be clear, Tether Gold is a tokenized gold product. Each XAUT token is presented as a digital claim on one troy ounce of physical gold, supposedly held in storage by Tether. Just as a single USDT is supposedly backed by a full US dollar, each XAUT token is supposedly backed by a full ounce of gold.

In theory, this allows someone to own gold exposure on a blockchain, move it digitally, trade it like any other crypto token, and then redeem it for physical bullion whenever they choose.

What’s not to love?

Or at least, that is what they want you to think.

XAUT is nothing like physical gold in your possession. It is a tokenized claim on gold held somewhere else, by someone else, under terms and conditions you do not control.

Tether Gold (XAUt), Tether’s tokenized gold product, crossed $3.3 billion in market cap during Q1 2026, according to the company’s latest quarterly report. The figure represents a 36% increase over the three-month period, equivalent to roughly $1.1 billion in added value since January.

A total of 707,741 XAUt tokens were in circulation at the close of Q1. Each token is backed by one troy ounce of physical gold held in reserve, bringing total holdings to 154 tons. Tether said demand strengthened as investors moved toward hard assets amid geopolitical tensions and uncertainty over Federal Reserve interest rate decisions.

—Tether Gold Hits $3.3B as Bullion-Backed Token Demand Climbs, Coinmarketcap

There it is, the magic number! Another clue.

While the claim is that XAUT can be redeemed at any time for physical gold, the reality is very different. For ordinary holders, that redemption right is almost impossible to exercise.

For a start, buried in their terms and conditions you discover that whilst users can hold tokenized ounces of gold, Tether does not redeem small amounts of XAUT. Redemption only takes place in full gold bars. These are the large institutional “400 ounce” bars used in the professional gold market, but even that number is approximate. Tether’s own document says the bars usually range from around 385 to 415 fine troy ounces, meaning anyone seeking redemption is asked to deposit at least 430 XAUT.

At the time of writing this requires a person to own at least $1.74 million in XAUT to be eligible for redemption! And even then, the process is loaded with conditions. You must become a KYC Verified Customer. Tether have the right to reject that application. Redemption carries a 0.25% fee and a verification fee. Delivery is only offered to a location in Switzerland. Any onward transport is your responsibility.

Alternatively, you can ask Tether to try to sell the bar in the Swiss market and return the dollar proceeds, minus fees, but Tether says it has no obligation to repurchase either the tokens or the gold bars. So yes, XAUT is technically redeemable. But only at institutional scale, through Tether’s process, under Tether’s terms, and inside Tether’s permission structure.

In reality, XAUT is designed so that holders never seek redemption. It is the classic fractional-reserve banking scam reinvented for the modern era, where the redemption option exists only to create the illusion of integrity for what is, in reality, a worthless digital token.

XAUT gets away with pretending it is as good as gold because almost nobody will ever try to redeem the tokens for physical metal. People use tokenized gold as collateral, or buy it as an efficient way to “own gold.” But when they need liquidity, they do not redeem for bullion. They redeem back into digital dollars. Which is exactly what Tether intended all along and is where aUSDT came in.

aUSDT was not the same thing as XAUT. XAUT was Tether’s tokenized gold. aUSDT was a dollar token that could be created against it. The idea was simple. Instead of selling your XAUT when you needed dollars, you could lock it inside Tether’s Alloy platform and borrow a digital dollar against it. That digital dollar was called aUSDT.

So the structure looked like this: Tether claimed the XAUT was backed by physical gold in Switzerland. You bought some XAUT and deposited that into Alloy. Alloy then allowed you to mint aUSDT, which was supposed to track the value of one U.S. dollar. In plain English, Tether created a pawn shop for tokenized gold. You handed over the gold claim, and they gave you a digital dollar claim in return.

Even though Tether controlled both sides of the trade, users still had to deposit $100 worth of Tether Gold to mint up to $75 of aUSDT against it. The sales pitch was as follows: keep your exposure to gold, but unlock dollar liquidity. Hold the asset that protects you, while using a digital dollar that can move through the crypto and legacy financial system with ease. Of course, this was all theoretical, the reality was all of this requires total faith in a single entity—Tether. They controlled all parts of the process, and users were expected to simply trust it was all as described.

That trust was clearly misplaced, because recently, Tether pulled the rug. And this is where the story becomes much more important.

Tether has announced in June that aUSDT is being wound down. Users can no longer open new positions or mint new aUSDT through Alloy. Shockingly, existing users have only until 17 September 2026 to return their aUSDT and remove their XAUT collateral. After that date, Tether says customers who have not returned their aUSDT will no longer be able to recover their XAUT through the Alloy platform. In essence, they have their ‘tokenized gold’ confiscated.

Just to be clear, the product being shut down is not USDT, Tether’s main dollar stablecoin. It is aUSDT, the gold-collateralized synthetic dollar built on top of XAUT, as laid out above. So what was the point in this whole escapade? In my opinion, this was Tether’s test run for a gold-backed digital dollar. Tether Gold, or XAUT, is not going away. Which means the end of aUSDT sets the stage for Tether to now back some portion of its flagship dollar token with gold, right in time for the explosion of digital dollars in the global economy.

That is why Tether have accumulated over 150 tonnes of gold.

The aUSDT experiment will go largely unnoticed because it was small and never mattered as a product. But that does not mean it was unimportant. It revealed the structure. A private company issues a gold-backed token, and provides only the illusion of ownership. But they control the platform. The redemption process. And the rules. Nobody really knows how much gold sits behind the structure, where every claim ranks, or who ultimately has control over the metal in the event of a financial crisis.

But the rules are clear, Tether can deny any claim, at any point. Undermining the entire rationale for owning gold. At any point, tokens can be frozen, convertibility can be suspended, or the terms can change. Between the holder and the gold itself sit countless layers of custody, contracts, smart contracts, legal terms, compliance rules, redemption thresholds and issuer discretion. That is the precise opposite of what gold ownership is supposed to be.

Physical gold, held in your possession, is sovereign. There is no debt attached to it. No issuer. No hierarchy of claims. No fallible technology. No redemption window. Its value does not depend on a platform staying online, a company honouring its terms, or a custodian allowing you access. It is a truly trustless system. Because if you hold it yourself, it cannot be frozen, retired, defaulted on, inflated away, or digitally erased. In truth, the only way it can be taken from you is by force, which history has shown is almost impossible to achieve at scale.

What Tether is doing with XAUT is a million miles away from sovereign gold ownership. It takes the credibility of gold and strips out the sovereignty. But this is not really about aUSDT. It is not even really about Tether. It is about the death of the dollar system. My speculation is not that Tether launches another obscure side product to sit alongside its main token. It is that Tether is preparing to present USDT itself, its flagship dollar token, as backed by gold reserves.

As confidence in fiat continues to fail going into the back half of 2026, I expect at some point Tether will say: USDT is not just another digital dollar backed by debt. Ours is different. This one is backed by our gold reserves. At which point they could allow convertibility of USDT into, you guessed it, XAUT.

That is the likely plan, in my opinion. And if it happens, it will be marketed as a major triumph: gold being put back into the system.

Most people will fall for it, because they always fall for it. Even the supposed contrarians will fall for it, because it will play directly to their biases. It will certainly satisfy all the 5D chess gold bugs who genuinely believe Trump is here to save ’Merica. They will point to it and say, “Look, the Golden Age really has arrived.”

Of course, it will be a great deception.

The public gets the comfort of the word “gold” while remaining trapped inside a completely controlled, surveilled, digital dollar system. Which was always the plan.

It will do nothing to save the existing system, because it is not intended to. When the time comes to implode the legacy system and move everything fully digital, I suspect Tether will be collapsed, taking with it vast swathes of unpayable debt and trillions of dollars’ worth of claims on USDT and, inevitably, gold.

And when that happens, no gold confiscation will be required, because you never really owned any gold, did you?

They do not need to announce that the gold is gone. They simply wind down Tether, let it go bust, and leave tokenized gold and gold-backed Tether holders with what they really owned all along.

Tokens.

Bon voyage, suckers.

Tokenization Turns Ownership Into Permission

What I am speaking about here extends far beyond tokenized gold. The entire financial system is moving toward tokenization. This year marks a huge acceleration towards what Larry Fink of BlackRock says will be ‘Tokenization of all financial and physical assets’. This is being sold as innovation and increased efficiency. Lower costs. Better transparency.

But the true meaning is something far darker. Tokenization transforms ownership into a controlled ledger entry. Once the ledger becomes the recognized source of truth, the person who controls the ledger controls the asset. This is why tokenization is so dangerous. It trains people to think of digital tokens as equal to real world assets. They are not. But if you were trying to create a literal mark of the beast financial system, this is precisely how you would do it.

Currency, land, houses, shares, bonds, commodities, pensions, insurance contracts, carbon credits, artwork, gold and silver, vehicles and machinery, and eventually identity itself …will have their ownership represented by tokens. At that point, all assets everywhere, and all people everywhere, can be controlled via a central authority. Every transaction can be surveilled, monitored, permissioned, blocked or reversed.

AI makes this even more dangerous.

Once AI is inserted into finance, the system no longer needs a human bureaucrat to deny you access. It does not need a person to review your case, hear your argument, or make a public decision. It simply needs to classify you as non-compliant. That classification then follows you everywhere. Because once your identity, finances, property records and online behavior are all linked together on the same digital system, punishment can be automated. Your bank account can be restricted. Your insurance can be cancelled. Your assets can be reassigned or frozen. Your ability to buy, sell or borrow can be switched off.

Even assets you own in the physical world become vulnerable to digital enforcement. You may physically possess the real asset, but if the tokenized version says ownership has been reassigned, the system will treat you as a thief. The ledger can be changed and the tokens transferred, so somebody else legally owns it. Now you have seven days to surrender it before further action is taken against you and your family. This is the reality of their ‘tokenized world’.

Forgetting about Tether’s plan for a moment, what I have shown you in terms of how they wound down aUSDT gives us a small but important insight into how this system can be so easily weaponized against the public. In this case, the tokenized gold people believe they owned, and were using as collateral, became confiscatable overnight.

Convert before September, or it’s gone.

They are not hiding what our digital chains will look like.

This is why the co-opting of gold by these token creating fraudsters must be called out. They intend to convince people they have escaped counterparty risk when in reality they have multiplied it. Of course, when these reforms are announced, I already know what many people will say.

“But Mike, surely it is better than the alternative? At least there is some gold involved”

“Why are you such a doomer Mike? Can’t you see this is progress?”

Ah yes, the lesser-of-two-evils argument. I have heard it many times before. And yet those people always fall silent when the narrative eventually plays out. Because they wind up on the losing side… yet again.

Hannah Arendt made the point better than I ever could:

“In their moral justification, the argument of the lesser evil has played a prominent role. If you are confronted with two evils, the argument runs, it is your duty to opt for the lesser one, whereas it is irresponsible to refuse to choose altogether. Its weakness has always been that those who choose the lesser evil forget quickly that they chose evil.”

The Fools Gold System

Tether’s gold buying is not ending. Tether now holds close to 160 tonnes of gold in total, and Paolo Ardoino has said the company plans to allocate 15% of its investment portfolio to physical gold. This will be on top of the gold already backing products like XAUT. Reuters asked the right question in November 2025: “Has gold been Tethered?”

Its report noted that Tether had become one of the most important marginal buyers of bullion, with Investment Bank Jefferies estimating that Tether’s gold buying had exceeded official central bank purchases for two quarters through September 2025. They say Satan is a master of deception, and indeed, this is a masterstroke: a structure that uses gold to temporarily restore confidence in a dying fiat system without returning monetary sovereignty to the public.

Whether through a gold-backed currency, or a gold-backed Treasury product paid out in Tethers tokenized gold XAUT, I believe we will soon learn about the next phase of this plan, likely before the end of 2026. One last illusion, designed to convince people the old order has been stabilized, when in reality they are being enrolled in a system of tokenization ahead of the full reset and switchover.

The endgame is not that Tether saves the dollar. The endgame is that Tether, and their tokens, are destroyed. With Tether itself being exposed as nothing more than a shell company. A modern day Lehman Brothers whose reserves vanish at the point of failure. This is the moment people realize what counterparty risk truly means.

What about gold they held in reserve?

Sorry, my friend. It’s all gone.

We don’t know where, the cyberattack destroyed the digital records. Your retirement accounts…we don’t know what to say… the assets were taken, your beneficial ownership didn’t count for much, after all. Do not worry, however. We have a solution already waiting. A government bailout for everyone. A new set of tokens. A new digital wallet. A new system.

A brave new world.

But like the Hotel California, once you enter this sytem, you can never leave.

This is why physical gold and silver matter more than ever. Real metal. In your possession, outside the banking system and needless to say, outside the tokenized system. Now is not the time to trust in some fantasy digital structure, implemented by crooks and swindlers. For 5,000 years, people have survived monetary resets by holding real assets, not promises. This time will be no different.

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Hi Everyone,

We’re back with another episode of Cognitive Dissidents. As always, I am joined by Monica Perez (host of The Monica Perez Show) and Hrvoje Moric (host of Geopolitics & Empire) for our roundtable discussion where we cover the descent into the abyss, one psyop at a time.

Take care,

Mike

As a paid member, you’ll unlock weekly articles on wealth preservation and finance, my exclusive financial newsletter, full access to the entire archive, and the ability to join the conversation with commenting privileges on every post. Your support makes this work possible—and gives you direct access to the insights, analysis, and community that matter now more than ever.

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If you want to learn more about the hosts, see Hrvoje’s work @ https://geopoliticsandempire.com/

Geopolitics & Empire

The Geopolitics & Empire Podcast conducts interviews with prominent international experts on a wide-range of topics. The broadcast seeks to gain insight from guests who come from the left, right, and beyond.

Also check out Monica’s work: Monica Perez Show @ https://monicaperezshow.com

Monica Perez

open-source journalist & podcaster trying to stay one step ahead of Them™️ while maintaining hope and humor www.monicaperezshow.com/about

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