Bad Smells – Page 2 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

The Double Debt Mountain of 2026

“It’s just a metaphor, dude.” – Guardians of the Galaxy

I had bad credit, so I asked my high school geometry teacher if she’d cosine for me.

The economy looks “fine” on the surface. Fine, that is, if you believe the headlines. I sense, though, underneath it’s a double debt mountain that’s getting closer to a landslide every day, and someone is planting bombs along the slope. Okay, that’s a lot of metaphor. Let me see if I can pilot this ship home.

Damn. Another metaphor.

One bomb is the wallets of the kids.

The other bomb is in Washington.

Both are set to blow up the same people: Millennials and Gen Z, generations already hammered by housing costs, stagnant real wages, hordes of legal and illegal aliens soaking up employment, and women who forgot that the main reason they exist is to make more humans.

Good news? Yeah, there’s a tiny sliver. Credit card delinquencies on some non-housing debt leveled out in late 2025 according to the New York Fed®. But that’s like saying the fire department showed up and has the fire down to burning one house an hour in the neighborhood. The real picture is as ugly as an Antifa swimsuit pageant.

Yeah, it’s grim.

And all of their older women are coming down with prostate cancer.

Credit cards have become the new paycheck for millions of young Americans, and new companies have shown up to monetize even the smallest debts. Want to go to Taco Bell™ and pay for that Super Crunchwrap Supreme Bellgrande™ over the next six months?

You can do that.

Total credit card debt hit a record $1.28 trillion in 2025, up $44 billion in just three months. That’s not a blip: that’s paying for groceries on credit cards and only paying the minimum monthly payment. Delinquencies on household debt overall jumped to 4.8 percent, led by the kids. For people under 39, the transition into serious delinquency on credit cards is nearly double the national average.

Surveys show 56 percent of Gen Z are forced to use cards just to make ends meet because prices keep climbing. Sixty-six percent of Millennials say they rely on plastic to get through the month. Thirty-five percent of Millennials are carrying more than $10,000 in card debt.

Credit card debt, the gateway drug of insolvency. Sure, payday lenders and “buy here, pay here” car places are the crack cocaine and meth of debt, but it all starts somewhere.

Gen Z is running around $3,500 in average balances, while Millennials are pushing $7,000. They’re not buying yachts or avocado toast, they’re financing groceries, gas, and rent.

It’s Avocado’s number.

Here’s why this mess is worse than it looks:

First, real wages aren’t keeping up, and the system is rigged against the young. Gen Z and Millennials entered the workforce during the pandemic hangover, got crushed by housing prices we already talked about, and now face interest rates that make every purchase a long-term loan. The GloboLeftElite told them to “follow your passion” and rack up student debt for useless degrees that qualify them for entry-level retail jobs in malls that don’t exist anymore.

And they listened.

Credit cards fill the gap at 20-25 percent interest. For those that didn’t choose wisely and avoid jobs taken by Jugdish, life is not luxury. It’s debt, roommates, and used couches that smell vaguely of fish. Forever. One bad month due to a mandatory car repair, unexpected medical bill, or if Egyptians convince them to invest in a pyramid scheme, and they’re in the hole they can’t climb out of.

Chuck Norris had a grizzly bear carpet in his bedroom. It’s not dead, just scared to move.

Second, banks and card companies love debt. People don’t get poor because they don’t make enough money, they get poor because they give it away to everyone else: ask the Amish.

Banks are making fat margins on revolving debt while pretending everything is peachy. Delinquency rates are rising, but not fast enough for the suits to panic yet. They know the game: extend and pretend and as long as we get this quarter’s bonus, it’s all copacetic. Just like with the housing market in 2008.

Meanwhile, the official unemployment rate looks fine because more paper-pushers are getting hired in the last growth industry: government jobs.

The real economy? Productive private-sector work is stagnant. Young people are borrowing to eat.

Third, this consumer debt bomb feeds right into the bigger federal debt bomb. Washington has its own plastic problem, except it’s measured in trillions. National debt sits north of $38.5 trillion. Net interest payments are projected to hit $1 trillion in fiscal year 2026 and interest payments are already bigger than defense spending in the first quarter of this year.

Interest already eats 19% of all federal revenue. By 2036, CBO says it doubles to $2.1 trillion and consumes nearly a quarter of everything the government takes in, but the CBO is always low, because they have to use the assumptions that Congress made up. Yes. AOC is responsible for the rules of the game.

But what do we want to spend our money on?

Defense? Medicare? Infrastructure? Sorry, the interest check has to clear first.

What you get when you cross a human with a moose? Arrested, apparently.

Fourth, the GloboLeftElite solution is always the same: print more, borrow more, kick the can. National debt doubles every eight years. The Fed and Congress act like debt is free because they control the printer and don’t have to worry. Higher debt, though, means higher interest rates, which means even more debt service, which means . . . you get it. It’s a doom loop.

Every time they “stimulate” to keep the economy looking good for the next election, they make the next crisis worse. And who pays? Not the politicians. Not the connected class in D.C.

It’s the taxpayers, especially the young ones who haven’t built wealth yet, but yet were forced to watch the abomination that is Scrappy Doo™.

Fifth, the generational theft is obvious. Boomers got cheap debt, rising home values, and that long summer of the 1980s and 1990s. Oh, and pensions that actually worked. Millennials and Gen Z get 24 percent credit card APRs, $1 trillion in federal interest payments crowding out future programs, and a promise that “we’ll import more workers” to fix the birth rate collapse caused by imported workers, interest payments, and . . .

Female empowerment.

Female hypergamy and economic despair already delayed families, and they’ve reached civilization-ending levels with Gen Z and Millennial female solipsism. Now add maxed-out cards and a government that can’t even pay its own interest without borrowing more.

The kids who should be having kids are busy paying Visa® instead.

Before I was adopted, my selfies were called “family photos”.

The result? Gen Z and Millennials fall even further behind. They delay marriage, delay kids, delay life. Birth rates keep dropping. The GloboLeftElite flips from “stop having babies, save the planet!” to “import babies, we’re not having enough!” in one generation because their policies broke the math.

Young couples look at the spreadsheet listing rent, cards, future taxes for Boomer pensions and federal interest and decide “maybe later.”

Or never.

But me? Debt mountains? Debt landslides? I think I need to stop with my metaphors because they’re making me sneeze. Metaphors really set off my analogies.

Iran So Far Away: Million-Dollar Bombs Versus $3,000 Drones and Day 23 of the 4 Day Operation to Liberate Iran

“This film is only for Madagascar and Iran, neither of which accept American copyright law.” – Bowfinger

I’ve heard that if a golf ball lands on a house, it’s scored as a home-in-one. (all memes as-found)

If you were sleeping under a rock (not the iRaq©, which has been officially purchased by Apple®) The United States and Israel dropped a surprise airstrike package on Iran like it was Amazon Prime® Day for regime change.

Supreme Leader Khamenei? Gone.

Nuclear sites? Smoking craters.

Military bases? Swiss cheese.

Iran fired back with hundreds of drones and ballistic missiles at Israel and pretty much every country in the neighborhood from Bahrain to Qatar. I’m especially offended by Qatar, because if a word has a “Q” in it, it should have a “U” as well. Qatar. That’s just wrong, man. It bothers me enough that I think they should kick Qatar out of the UN, but the argument against that is that it’s an unnecessary Qatar solo.

Vlad the Impaler’s favorite joke starts this way: “So this bar goes into this guy…”

Back to the war. Er, special military operation. It’s still early in the game, but in true 2020s fashion, the winners so far seem to be no one except the guys selling missile insurance and the printers at the Federal Reserve©.

Are we done yet? No, we’re not. So, let’s look at The Bad and The Good, at least so far.

The Bad

Energy prices are exploding upward faster than a Houthi suicide bomber on Red Bull®.

Oil is headed toward levels so high I won’t be able to bathe in it anymore, feeling the luxury of 10-W40 as it coats every inch of my skin. I remember when crude oil was cheap enough I could afford to fill my pool with it.

Sadly, those days are gone. Brent crude (a proxy for crude oil that shows up on a ship) is up over 40 percent since the strikes started. Analysts are whispering $110-plus if they have bought futures, and I’ve heard that it might go higher, still.

High energy prices act like an immediate tax increase on everything except paper straws in plastic wrappers in California. Periodically purchased Pringles®? Pricier. Pickles? Pricier. Plaster of Paris? Pricey. PEZ® is even presently a pretty penny purchase.

Oh, wait, pennies are too expensive to make.

I think King Arthur would be interested in this, since at either end they’d need a place to park, which would mean two places called Camelot.

Meanwhile the United States is burning through billions of dollars of precision munitions that take years to manufacture just to turn perfectly good Iranian concrete into expensive Iranian gravel. Concrete costs a few hundred bucks per cubic yard and you can pour a bunch in an afternoon if there are enough Mexicans around.

Our missiles? Millions per missile and the supply line is months to years for even the ones that keep missing the Iranian missiles.

I make it a point never to scream into a colander, since it might strain my voice.

Iran, on the other hand, is lobbing $3,000 drones that somehow managed to damage a $14 billion natural gas facility that took a decade to design and build. We brought a sledgehammer made of gold. They bring the fly swatter made of spite after decades of sanctions required that they work with nothing.

The policy is deeply unpopular with the American public. Polls show most people want nothing to do with this adventure except the tar and feather merchants who are prepping for higher tar prices, but think that feathers may come down enough so they can make a profit.

That face you make when you swap out something 80% of the American public are for versus something that 16% are for.

Iran is sucking all the oxygen out of the room and taking the focus off domestic issues like making beer cheaper or figuring out how to get illegal aliens and H-1B visa holders to stop turning the United States into either Guatemala or Mumbai.

Instead? We are arguing about whether blowing up another desert dictatorship is worth another trillion we do not have, which is gonna go great at the polls come November.

The Good

Every cloud has a silver lining, even when the cloud is radioactive fallout.

This mess is making my prediction (it’s in writing here on the site, but I’m too lazy to look it up) that the national debt doubles every eight years look less like a prediction and more like a weather forecast. In truth, it is that, since I can do math and see that, yeah, every 8 years the national debt has doubled since 1973.

The bright side of this debt? At least half of us get shiny new dollars to spend every eight years instead of those boring old dollars. Inflation is just another word for free money!

Last year, I could walk into the store with $100 and walk out with 50 pounds of ribeye. Not now. They installed security cameras.

I have been rough on Qatar so far, but one citizen from that nation may be of use in regime change in Iran due to the dire straits of the current situation. They should check out Qatar George, he knows all the Kurds.

If we play our cards right, Iran may follow through on its threats to take India, Africa, and the Pakistanis off the Internet, and remove them from all electronic communications. Hey, that is a public service more useful than anything Congress has done in years. No more spam scam calls from overseas call centers.

As a bonus, Pakistan has already hinted that since it cannot hit the United States directly it will nuke India instead if things get spicy. So, what exactly is the downside of that?

India would probably try to scam free Internet from Australia, which would come from a LAN down under.

Another bright spot is that we now know that Chinese air defense systems are as effective as barbells on a space station. Iran uses plenty of Beijing’s hardware and it did not exactly shine against American and Israeli jets. People in Taiwan should sleep easier tonight. If the Chinese who would invade them are equipped with the same made-in-China wonders, the invasion fleet might sink when it hits the water.

Shipping is getting a makeover too. Many tankers are now taking the long way around Africa instead of the Strait of Hormuz. This will be nice because it will allow cheese to age properly on the extra weeks at sea. Real cheddar needs time, and is not a rush job. The downside? Somalian pirates will not be able to steal and hijack as much cargo, so they will be forced to open more Learing Centers®.

Melons have traditional weddings. They cantaloupe.

Finally, what happens if the A.I. boom collapses because the market tanks and liquidity dries up? This is perfect. The Federal Reserve© could print even more money to paper it over. Then they could roll out trackable Central Bank Digital Currency to replace the failed dollar. Who could lose with that? My every purchase monitored for wrongthink while the dollar dies like a good idea on Facebook®.

It’s a win-win for the surveillance state, we’re all poor and can’t have privacy!

The real bright spot after all this is that I did find out the difference between Qatar and Abu Dhabi. In Qatar, watching The Flintstones is not allowed, but the people of Abu Dhabi do.

The Housing Mess of 2026: At Least We Have Ramen

“They’re only noodles, Micheal.” – The Lost Boys

I entered a contest and won a lifetime supply of ramen. I took the $20 instead.

Let’s start with the sliver of good news, because in this market it’s rare enough to mention: Many illegals have left the country. Not enough, mind you, but enough to show just how fake this economy is. The result is real. Rents are down where illegals live.

At least a little. I found a great place to rent, fully furnished, but then the clerk told me it was a liquor store.

Sigh.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development to straight-up say illegals drove up to two-thirds of rental demand growth in recent years, so when .gov admits the problem, you know it’s really worse. After years of unrestricted immigration flooding the rental market, the brakes got tapped. Studies show that renter household growth cooled once immigration restrictions hit.

Average rent that hovering around $2,000 a month are finally showing some give instead of the nonstop 36% climb we saw the last five years. This is, at least a small win for the working guy who just wants to keep the roof over his head while he eats ramen and smokes recreational weed.

Now the bad news.

And there’s plenty of bad news.

Housing is now unaffordable to Gen Z, and it is far worse as a percentage of their income than for any previous generation. 67% of Gen Z adults say they’re struggling to cover housing costs. That’s higher than Millennials (53%), Gen X (54%), or Boomers (36%).

When I grounded my Gen Z kids, their punishment was to go out and socialize. (meme as-found)

Homeownership for Gen Z sits at just 27.1% in 2025 data rolling into this year, which is a tiny bump from the year before, but miles behind where previous generations stood at the same age. Zoomers need to earn over $112,000 a year to afford the median house.

The problem? Median household income lags by about $25,000. Nearly two million young households simply vanished from the market in 2025 because the math doesn’t work. Housing is chewing up 40-50% of take-home pay. That’s not a stepping stone to a family and 2.6 kids. That’s a millstone.

Let’s delve deeper into the problem.

First, housing areas are limited, and the mass blight of urban hellscapes led to the creation and flowering of suburbia, where people could move and raise a family in relative safety. Let’s be honest, a huge part of suburbia was economic segregation from . . . economic factors. Suburbs? You have to have a certain income level to live there.

When I think about the meaning of life, I think about three factors: 2, 3, and 7. (cartoon as-found)

Good schools. Low crime. Space to breathe. No economic factors.

That flight from the cities created the demand, but supply never kept up. Zoning, NIMBYs, and decades of stupid policy turned safe family neighborhoods into a scarce luxury good. Housing prices have risen much more than inflation. While wages wobbled along like me on a Saturday night, home values sprinted like me out of the office on Friday afternoon. Suburbia went from attainable dream to gated fortress most young people can only stare at through the fence.

Second, interest rates are up. That’s the sort of thing that happens when the cash printer is on high and the oil pump is on low. Higher interest rates lead to higher home costs for the same price house, as interest eats up more and more of the (now higher) payment.

Mortgage rates eased to around 6.2% by the end of 2025, but that’s still double the pandemic-era giveaway lows. A $400,000 house that felt doable at 3% now demands a monthly payment that feels like indentured servitude. Equity builds slower. Gen Z runs the numbers on their phones and decide roommates, ramen, and the low-rizz life beat the alternative.

Third, houses are treated like an economic appreciation machine whose values never go down. This has led to many borrowers taking out loans near the peak value of their houses, and that peak value locks them in. If they sell at a loss, they lose actual money, so they can’t sell for less than they owe.

We’re actually at an all-time high for the Google® search term “can’t sell my house.” Google Trends just hit record levels in February 2026: higher than 2008, higher than the COVID frenzy. Sellers are frozen. Buyers can’t bridge the gap. The shut down like a date with a Kardashian when you tell them you’re broke. Houses stopped being homes and turned into leveraged bets on eternal growth.

Markets don’t do eternal.

“There are no mistakes, just happy little accidents.” Bob was a horrible nuclear physicist.

Fourth, banks don’t want foreclosures to hit the market. Why? It makes the rest of the loans in their portfolio worth less, so they’re incentivized to sit on houses rather than sell them and realize the loss on the books. Foreclosure filings jumped 14% in 2025 to 367,460 properties, but that’s still historically low and banks are dragging their feet with modifications and delays. How much of the current private credit crisis is due to just this? My guess is: plenty. Those balance sheets are stuffed with crappy paper because it was different this time.

Fifth, those nice suburban houses with a thirty minute to sixty-minute commute are now even more expensive because the fuel to drive to where the jobs are at is much higher thanks to Gulf War IV. Or is it Gulf War VI? I forget. That suburban split-level two towns over suddenly costs a fortune just to reach. The effective price of the dream just went up again.

The result of this mess is that Gen Z gets further behind. The kids that should be having kids aren’t. There are several factors to this, especially female hypergamy where every female (thinks she) is above average, but every male is below her standards. But the sheer difficulty in having a home in which to raise kids is massive is also killing family formation. No stability, no backyard, no “let’s start a family” talk that ends in anything but spreadsheets that fill with negative numbers.

Is a 4 with a 6-pack a perfect 10?

Birth rates keep dropping. In one generation, we went from the GloboLeftElite telling us to stop having kids because “the planet can’t handle more!” to the GloboLeftElite telling us we need to import kids because we need workers.

They break the system, then demand more system to patch the system they created. Young couples look at the numbers and decide “maybe later.” Or never. Unless they’re from (spins wheel) Somalia. In that case, it’s free fun and prizes while you bring in an alien people with an alien religion.

The good news?

This type of mess always sorts itself out. The cure for high prices is default and deflation. If the market is too far cooked, well, look out below. The United States doesn’t have magic dirt to turn Somalis into Americans, and houses aren’t magic wealth machines. When enough locked-in owners and over-leveraged banks finally crack, inventory floods, prices reset, and affordability returns.

It won’t be pretty. Foreclosures will spike. Portfolios will bleed. Credit markets may lock up. The Google® searches for “can’t sell my house” will turn into actual sales at prices that make sense again.

I used to have a really funny polio joke, but no one gets it anymore.

A housing crisis wouldn’t be big for the country, would it?

Nah. Just trillions in pretend wealth gone, generational transfers halted, and the kind of reset that makes 2008 look like practice.

Prepare accordingly. The reset is coming.

I’m glad I like ramen.

The Oil Shock of 2026: Pulp Fiction Economics

“Oh, man, I shot Marvin in the face.” – Pulp Fiction

Trump outlawed the selling of shredded cheese. He wants to make America grate again. (all memes as-found)

Am I the only one who feels like the global economy just got Tarantino’d?

One minute it’s business as usual, the next there’s blood on the walls, or in this case, oil not flowing through the pipes. We’re staring down the barrel of an oil shock that makes the 1970s look like a minor hiccup.

The Strait of Hormuz?

It was effectively slammed shut by the Iranians amid the escalating mess with the U.S. and Israel. That narrow choke point between Iran and Oman used to carry about 20 million barrels per day (liters per lightyear, for you Europeans) of crude and products.

That’s roughly 20% of the world’s daily oil consumption as of early 2026. Or I should say carried, past tense.

Now? Zilch. Null. Nada. Empty set. Nothing.

The taps are off, and we’re talking a sudden removal of around 15-20 million barrels per day (Coulombs per gram) from the global market, depending on how you slice the crude from the refined stuff.

The reason that Saudi Arabia has so much money isn’t because oil is expensive, but because they don’t let women spend money.

Oil prices are set at the margin.

It’s not just about the total supply the price is set by that last barrel that tips the scale. The world was already humming along at with supply keeping pace thanks to OPEC cuts, U.S. fracking miracles, and a dash of South American output from places like Guyana and Brazil, which apparently produce more than just horrific tropical diseases.

But shutting down 15 million barrels overnight?

That’s not a dip; that’s a crater. Prices don’t nudge up politely, they spike like a heart rate after too much coffee when this level of supply is cut. Oil isn’t just black gold for the gas tank of the Wildertruck®: it’s woven into every thread of modern life like pop culture.

When Fonzie’s motorcycle breaks does he call Triple-Ayyyy?

Plastics? Oil.

Transport? Trucks, ships, planes all guzzle it.

Heating an East Coast home in winter? Oil or derivatives.

Lubrication for machines that make everything from iPhones® to insulin? Yep, oil again.

When the price jumps it acts like a stealth tax on every single human activity that involves moving atoms around. We’ve already seen Brent crude north of $120 a barrel, with whispers of $150 if this drags on. Groceries will cost more because trucks burn fuel. Manufacturing grinds slower because inputs skyrocket. Even that Amazon® package shows up later and at a higher price.

Historically, high energy prices have been a tyrant’s best friend. Cheap energy? That’s freedom fuel. It lets people build, innovate, travel, and produce wealth without begging the government for handouts. Low prices mean less dependence on central planners I can heat my home, drive to work, and fill my tank without the state holding the reins.

But jack up those prices? Wealth creation stalls. People cut back on extras, then necessities. Factories idle. Jobs vanish. Suddenly, the masses are clamoring for subsidies, price controls, “emergency” aid.

I found out if I replace my coffee with green tea I lose 74% of my enjoyment of life.

Governments love that. It’s their cue to step in as savior, doling out favors while tightening the leash. Look at the 1970s: oil shocks led to inflation, stagflation, and a bigger welfare state.

We’re just at the front end of this beast. The 1970s shocks were bad. Prices quadrupled, lines at pumps, recessions, and worst of all, Jimmy Carter.

But back then, the world consumed only 60 million barrels per day (meters per kilogram). Now it’s almost twice that, economies are more interconnected, and just-in-time supply chains mean there’s no inventory to pick up the slack.

The Strait of Hormuz is (was) one of the most strategic spots on the planet. Easiest way to move oil? Pipelines, if you’ve got ‘em. Second? Water. It’s more convenient for collection if you use tankers rather than just pouring it on the water. And Hormuz was the biggest funnel: about 20% of global consumption squeezed through that 21-mile-wide gap at its narrowest. Talk about a speed zone.

I don’t understand time zones. In Europe it’s today, in Australia, it’s tomorrow, and in Iran it’s 832 A.D.

That oil won’t stay stuck forever my 50-50 guess is two months. After that, either cooler heads prevail and it reopens, or the Saudis and others pivot hard. They’ve got some bypass pipelines already but capacity is limited. Building more is feasible, but we’re talking billions and years, not weeks. In the meantime, producers like Saudi, Iraq, Kuwait are stuffing oil into storage tanks that are filling up fast.

Economic cracks are showing everywhere. Last week, I mentioned the private credit markets imploding with funds like BlackRock® limiting redemptions because liquidity’s drying up.

Now add this oil shock?

A.I. is already sucking up capital like a vacuum on steroids. But cash for everything else has been scarce. Billions in private debt funds are wobbling because borrowers can’t refinance at these rates, and higher energy costs will be the final nail for some.

Expect more gates slamming shut, more “sorry, your money’s stuck here” letters.

Gasoline prices are up here in the U.S., sure. Last I heard we were headed to $4.50 a gallon as an average, while pushing $6 in California. Compared to the rest of the world, this is a sweet spot. Thanks to fracking, the U.S. produces about two-thirds of the crude we consume, with most imports coming from Mexico and Canada.

This hurts us, but tis but a flesh wound compared to the gut punch for Europe and China.

A question from Iran: “Is it okay to sleep with your third cousin? I mean, if you’ve stopped sleeping with the other two?”

Europe? They’re getting hammered. They were already weaning off Russian oil post-Ukraine, now Middle East flows disrupted? Natural gas prices are spiking, factories are idling in Germany, protests in France, well, there are always protests in France.

Will this force negotiations with Russia over Ukraine? Absolutely possible. “Hey, Vlad, how about we ease sanctions if you pump more to us and we’ll rough up the Ukrainian midget?”

China’s in the same boat. 70% of their oil imports are from the Gulf, but are now rerouting around Africa at huge cost.

Where does this end?

Short term: pain.

Recessions in Europe, a slowdown in Asia, inflation here at home.

Long term: resets, and the world that we live in now becomes a dream.

I once had a dream I married an invisible woman. Not sure what I saw in her. Our kids were nothing to look at, either.

More drilling everywhere feasible, and maybe a rethink on global dependencies and who uses what currency. But don’t count on smooth sailing. Shocks like this expose fragilities, and in the Fourth Turning crisis, they’ll accelerate change.

Cheap energy’s over for now.

This oil shock isn’t just economic: it’s existential.

Things flow smoothly. Until they don’t.

Just ask Marvin.

The Fourth Turning: Things Stay The Same Until They Don’t, or, Markets, Money Printing, and Earthquake Faults

“I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.” – The Empire Strikes Back

I always felt disappointed when I lost a model rocket as a kid. I guess I have thrust issues. (all memes as found)

Am I the only one who feels like the Fed© has been auditioning to play Darth Vader® in the Disney™ Star Wars: Sith on Ice cast since about 2008?

We’re well into the Fourth Turning® now, and Strauss and Howe laid it out clear as day: crisis, chaos, and a whole lot of “what the hell just happened?” And boy, did they ever deliver.

War grinding on in Ukraine.
Fresh conflict kicking off with Iran – airstrikes, oil price jitters, the works.
Tariffs flying like confetti at a parade nobody wanted.
February hits and we lose 92,000 jobs just like that.

Yet somehow the stock market just, well, keeps going. The Dow® is still near all-time highs, but it’s less than 50,000 so I guess it’s okay to ask Pam Bondi questions about Epstein now. The NASDAQ© is shrugging off bad news like it’s just another Wednesday. Prices are steady. It’s almost impressive.

Almost.

Here’s the thing that keeps me up at night: this steadiness isn’t natural. I think it’s juiced. Freshly printed money, courtesy of the Federal Reserve® and its never-ending balance sheet expansion. Tectonic shifts are happening everywhere: geopolitics, energy, labor.

Pa Wilder always told me to not spend too much on headphones. That’s sound advice.

Wall Street acts like it’s business as usual. That’s not resilience. That’s a managed decline wearing a happy face.

Think about it. The real economy? People are cutting back. Groceries are heavier on the wallet, so families skip the steak and finance Encharitos© for six months from Taco Bell®. Credit card balances are climbing while actual stuff bought is shrinking. The money printing isn’t creating wealth it’s masking the fact that the purchasing power is evaporating for regular people on the things they need to buy all the time.

But cracks are showing elsewhere.

BlackRock™. You know, the biggest asset manager on the planet. Just recently they slammed the door on their own shareholders trying to pull money out of a $26 billion private credit fund. Redemption requests hit 9.3%, so they capped it and only let a fraction of that cash out.

“Sorry, billionaires, no soup for you this quarter. Live like a wagie and crowdfund that Nachos Bellgrande©.”

Things are so tight that the Vatican is allowing tithes to be paid via PrayPal®.

This isn’t some glitch. It’s happened before with other funds, and it’s spreading. When the biggest players start gating withdrawals, it’s not because everything’s fine and dandy. It’s because the underlying assets are illiquid and selling them fast would reveal prices that don’t match the fairy-tale valuations on the books.

Translation: the music’s still playing, but the chairs are getting scarce. Where does this end?

Well, first off, it doesn’t end. Not really. Not in the neat, tidy way the TV experts promise. Markets and prices, and whole economies work a lot like faults deep in the Earth’s crust. Stress builds up slowly for years, sometimes decades, with hardly any movement you can see on the surface. The tectonic plates stay locked together.

Everything looks calm and stable. Then one day the pressure becomes too great and it all snaps like a 1980s postal worker, an 8.3 on the Richter scale. The ground rips open and the entire landscape shifts twenty feet in seconds while people are shaking like a stripper in a vat of melting ice cream just trying not to fall down. I guess that was an oddly specific metaphor wrapped in another metaphor.

Anyway.

Sam told the orphans they should play Grand Theft Auto® so they can be wanted.

When the shaking finally stops, things don’t go back to where they were. The new normal is permanently different. And when we’re talking asset prices in our funny money dollars, that shift is almost always higher than before. Markets do the exact same dance.

Silver prices? Steady as the rocks they were mined out of for years at a time. Stress builds quietly. Then inflation, crisis, or panic hits and the price explodes upward and the new resting level is higher than before.

Same story in 2008-2011: $9 to $49, overshot, pulled back, never returned to the old lows.

Gold does the same dance. Fixed at $35 an ounce until Nixon slammed the gold window shut in 1971. Then the printing started and it flew to $800, crashed to $300, but the next plateau was higher.

2000s bull run led to $1,900 gold, then a pullback, then new records above $3,000 and climbing. Each release of pressure overshoots, then settles higher when measured in our funny money.

Silver and gold and assets are telling us the story.

The money printers are holding the fault lines, sort of. The pressure underneath is still growing every day as silver and gold and A.I. bubble. Meanwhile, debt, demographics, global realignment, and the whole Fourth Turning stew.

An oracle once told me I would hit my leg at school. She was right. It was my desk to knee.

If I were giving advice to a young person starting out today, here’s at least part of what I’d say:

Buy stuff that’s real. Physical silver and gold, every single year, with at least part of whatever you save. Doesn’t have to be a ton. An ounce of gold here, a few ounces of silver there. Stack it. Hold it. Treat it like insurance, not a get-rich-quick scheme.
Land if you can swing it and cover the taxes and upkeep dirt doesn’t print more of itself and if it blows up at least you own a hole in the ground.
Stocks? Sure, invest in them too, as long as there’s still a stock market that isn’t just a government-sponsored casino.
Diversify, but never forget: paper assets only work while the system that backs the paper holds together.
The real key? Build skills. Learn to produce something useful. Grow food. Fix things. Trade with neighbors. Get out of debt that isn’t productive.
Avoid crowds. Get out of cities if you’re still there: a year too soon beats thirty seconds too late.

Because here’s the truth nobody on CNBC® wants to say out loud: the managed decline might buy time, but it doesn’t buy forever. The money printing is papering over cracks that are getting wider. When the next quake comes, and it will, gold and silver won’t just hold value. They’ll ratchet higher again, overshooting on the way up, then settling at a new, higher plateau. It’s default, but just enough to bleed you a little.

It’s the same pattern every cycle. History’s a harsh teacher, and she doesn’t offer extra credit.

The Fourth Turning isn’t here to be fair. It’s here to reset. The people who see the pattern coming, who stack real assets quietly every year, who prepare instead of panic are the ones who come out the other side with options.

There’s no way that this can go bad, right?

The rest? They’ll be financing their next Taco Bell® run on a maxed-out card while wondering why the market “suddenly” stopped cooperating.

Things stay the same, until they don’t.

Stack accordingly. And pray the deal doesn’t get altered any further.

Disclaimer: I write funny things, and you should know that by now so this isn’t investment advice. I do have positions in silver and gold, because I’m not completely allergic to reality. Do your own homework. Talk to a professional who isn’t trying to sell you the next hot ETF® or his children.

Wilder Weekly News, War Edition

“Because I am good at three things: fighting, screwing and reading the news. Now, I’ve already done one of those today. So, what’s the other one gonna be?” – Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

Breaking news: huge accident at the day care while playing peek-a-boo. All were rushed to ICU. (all memes, clips as-found)

Even though it took longer than one of my usual posts, I thought I’d do another weekly news recap like I did last week. The last one was fun. This won’t be an all the time thing, but I’m going to continue it from time to time on Fridays.

Top Story

It’s war! Or not. No one can seem to figure out if it’s war. Regardless, many Americans have mixed feelings, since approximately 80% of Americans don’t want war with Iran. After really looking at the map, I can see the point of the 20% who want to bomb Iran into oblivion, send all of its citizens home, and cut it off from the Internet and international commerce.

Say what you want, I think this war has legs. And yes, I know that a woman wasn’t in command, because if Trump asked a female commander where to bomb Iran for the greatest strategic impact, she would have said, “I don’t know, you choose.”

China has jumped out to positively indicate that in some cases that if the situation is right that they totally, completely support Iran in a moral sense if it’s okay with everyone else.

China had previously provided support to Iran, giving them a cunningly designed set of targets designed to look exactly like air defense missiles.

It turns out that Iran bought them at a discount, so at least they were a bargain.

Best Korea is waiting on the bench, still trying to get the coach’s eye so they can be sent in.

A United States Navy submarine put an Iranian frigate to the bottom of the ocean. The Pentagon released the footage (below) and described the torpedo trajectory as one of the best attacks from ever, describing it as sub-optimal. Iranians cried foul, since they felt it was unfair that the United States would sink one of their harmless warships that’s filled with guns and missiles.

Wall Street pundit Jim Cramer has invoked the Cramer effect and notes that this will be a short war.

Moving away from war, the United States shocked Canada by having learned how to play hockey for the first time since the Soviets were in charge, and won the gold medal. Canadians were furious, and very upset at the loss and if we could speak Hindi we might be able to understand their pain.

India has plans to introduce an additional 60 million Indians to Canada, but the good news is that will only mean they need 17 apartments and two more toilets.

Thankfully, the GloboLeftElite and the ChamberCommerceElite have decided that everyone is a natural American and their policy was leaked on /pol/.

Great Britain has already adopted a variant of this policy.

And from the “How did The X-Files become a training video?” desk, we find that The X-Files was again a training video:

The moderation group of Black People Twitter, a Reddit© subreddit, got together for a meetup, showing that black culture has produced a great group of keyboard warriors!

And Gavin Newsom continued his outreach to black people, meeting a group of them for some blunts and purple drank prior to going out to shoot up a hookah bar. From Gavin, “I just can’t wait to go shoot up some Juneteenth parties!”

In another shameful display of trans-hatred, a magazine posted the picture on the left instead of the actual picture of the stunning and brave trans-woman who was forced to swim with men instead of actual women.

And, Sydney Sweeney certainly was outclassed by a woman, Grugdra the Hungry, made entirely of adipose and Play-Doh® who showed Ms. Sweeney what a real woman was like. You sure showed her, Grugdra!

In political news, EyePatch McCain was defeated in his primary race by someone who had not seen coming.

In other news, a woman voting for the Leopards Eating Faces Party was surprised when, in fact, a leopard ate her face.

Finally, a solution for one of the most vexing questions related to medically assisted suicide has been solved. Who should decide if a person can end their life? A.I. Specifically, Tay®.

Jugaad And The Mumbai Mafia

“India’s a black hole.” – World War Z

I never got scammed by the Nigerian Prince. His version of Purple Rain was awful.

When I did the first Indian post, I didn’t expect to do a second. And now, what, is this the third? Why a third post?

Indians are speedrunning themselves into being the most hated minority in the United States. And they’re doing it in record time, like they’re trying to beat the low score record on “Wheel of Karma®.”

Indians used to call themselves the “model minority.” Cute. But let’s be real, they never stacked up very well against the Swedish Bikini Team or the Japanese Waifu Squad. Okay, the Indians will never be able to be loved like those groups, but what are they doing to make themselves so hated?

I heard a Waifu is like the square root of -100. A perfect 10, but imaginary.

Well, let’s start with jugaad. What’s jugaad?

Not as in “joo gaadda see this,” like Tony Soprano might say. Jugaad is, well, an Anon from /pol/ nailed the definition:

“Jugaad is the dishonest and deliberate bending of the rules and laws to one’s favor. In India, such underhanded and self-serving behavior is celebrated, especially among the upper/middle classes. It can also mean ‘doing the bare minimum to get by’ which is why Indian coding, craftsmanship, etc., is so terrible.”

Ouch. Kicked straight in the Microsoft©.

But we see jugaad continually exhibited by the Indians who have fled that paradise of the world’s largest trash mountain stunning Mumbai skyline and open sewage the Ganges. They cheat everyone at everything. And when there are bunches of them, they cheat in organized groups that would make the Mafia blush.

What do cheaters do after they die? They lie still. (as found)

When one Indian is hired, immediately their main goal is to hire other Indians, which increases their Izzat (link below). But it also gives them co-conspirators. Recently it’s coming to light that many H-1B visa holders are sharing their visa with trainloads of Indians. They all come here and work in substandard conditions, at least by American standards.

Izzat: How An Indian Concept Is Destroying The West

Why would they do that? Living six to a room in the United States is still 1000 times better than being in a nice place in India. And Americans, they’re so easy to cheat, coming from that high-trust culture. I’ve pointed out before how at least some of the hotels are engaged in human trafficking, drug trafficking, labor abuses, and (probably) money laundering (link below). I mean, illegals from South America, Africa, and even jihadis from the Middle East come to the country and the GloboLeftElite and CommerceChamberCohorts can’t get enough of them.

The Invasion of the Industry Snatchers: Patel Motels and the Trucking Singhularity

Why are Indians different and liked less than violent criminals who eat cats? The Indians coming to the West have committed several unforgivable sins:

First, they are going after exactly the same sorts of jobs that the GloboLeft rank and file love: jobs where they can be gang hired and protected by big systems, be it screwing up software at Microsoft® or working for the government or working in an HR department or selling stock in a company with a non-functional Alzheimer’s drug.

Looking at you, Ramaswamy, since that is classic jugaad.

Vivek was going to give a seminar on how not to be defrauded, but cancelled it. Tickets are non-refundable.

These are the safe, air-conditioned hiding spots where pierced-hair-color activists planned to coast until they gender-transitioned. Now? They’re filled with Indians doing the bare minimum at with half the hair dye and double the relatives.

These are things that GloboLeftists want to do with their own weirdly pierced and unnatural hair color gang, and to watch Indians poach their jobs is, well, triggering for them.

What’s a Leftist’s favorite film? Minority Report. (as-found)

Second, Indians do commit crimes, it’s just that they’re not particularly endowed with height or power, so they have to do everything in parties of 10 or more because a single adult white guy could take on quite a few. And guns? I don’t think they have the upper body strength to hold one up, let alone carry it for any distance. GloboLeftist are much more in tune with importing actual bombers and murderers and people who pay back for the grift they take, like the Somalians.

True fact: India does really well at the Special Olympics®. And, India did beat Michael Phelps who only has 28 Olympic medals, but Phelps has more gold medals than India has silver and gold, combined. (as-found)

Third, GloboLeftism is inherently feminist. And women love strong and attractive men, and Indians . . . well . . . aren’t.

I saw one post by a woman who was crying. She had been on Tinder® and had received a funny, smart, well-thought-out message. The problem? It was an Indian that wrote it to her. She felt that if an Indian had taken that kind of time, that the Indian actually thought that he had a shot with her. If that was the case, she felt she must be pretty unattractive.

Ouch. She would have rather had a message from a broke criminal on parole than an Indian.

Not at all creepy. (as-found)

You can be anything you want to a GloboLeftist woman, but don’t be unattractive. Even worse, don’t be needy, creepy, or trigger a disgust reaction. Indian males tend to put check marks into all of those boxes for Western women.

Remember, women and feminized men make up the footsoldiers and the pocketbook of the GloboLeft. They’ll put up with anything that they can mentally morph into a child for them to care for, likely out of guilt from the kids they’ve murdered before birth, but they simply can’t look at Indians and see them as something they’d want to care for.

This is what happens when you come for their lazy white girl jobs. (as-found)

The final point: Their customs are alien.

Not “worship a rock in Mecca” alien.

Not “bat-soup for breakfast” alien.

We’re talking covering themselves in cow poop on purpose, drinking pee and eating poop, worshiping a blue monkey-god that looks like a rejected Marvel™ character, and treating streets like the world’s largest public restroom.

Shoes? Optional.

Hygiene standards? Also optional.

Forget microplastics: macroIndians are more of a hazard.

How rousing! (as-found)

We built the greatest high-trust society in history on the assumption that people would mostly play fair because reputation mattered and neighbors noticed. But they exploited the same system the GloboLeft created to destroy high-trust America. The results are predictable: broken software, ghost employees, and chain-migration apartment complexes that smell like disappointment and curry.

Indians are exposing, at scale, how fragile the whole “just let anyone in” experiment really is. And the GloboLeft? They’re not mad at the Indians. They’re mad they got out-jugaaded at their own game.

Well, it’s not all bleak. Maybe Tony Soprano could pay one $20 to start his car every morning?

How To Break A Society, Part I

“Half measures are the curse of it. A rational society would either kill me or put me to some use.” – Red Dragon

The Andrew formerly known as Prince.

Picture this: I leave my keys in the truck overnight. Windows down. Wallet on the dash. Next morning? Still there. Nothing missing, though a cat might have explored an empty burger wrapper. No viral TikTok™ of some “youth” doing donuts in my F-150®.

Absurd? No.

And not because Big Brother has cameras up the backside of every squirrel, but because back in the day people just didn’t do that crap. The neighbors would have known who did it. Moms would have heard about it at church, and the father of the kid would have heard about it from his boss.

Shame, accountability, and consequences work better than ankle monitors.

That was the power of societal norms. Invisible fences made of “What will people think?” And the Founding Fathers knew it. They told us so.

Benjamin Franklin walked out of the Constitutional Convention and some lady asked what they’d given us. “A republic,” he said, “if you can keep it.” Not “if the government keeps it for you.” Not “if we pass enough laws.” If you can keep it.

John Adams was even blunter in 1798: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

They weren’t kidding.

I shocked the postman by opening the door completely nude. I think what surprised him the most was that I knew where he lives.

Just like the Constitution, the libertarian dream only works when people self-circumscribe their own behavior. An 85,000-page federal code of regulations telling me not to steal if my conscience (and the fear of my neighbors shunning me like a rabid raccoon with diarrhea at a picnic) already does the job. The Constitution assumed a pretty genetically homogeneous people who spoke the same language, mostly went to the same church, read the same Bible, and agreed that punching your neighbor over a fence line was a last resort, not the premise of a YouTube™ video.

Some people broke the rules. Always have, always will no matter the civilization. But back then the system didn’t turn justice into a CBS® series lasting twenty years. The mean time from sentence to rope?

Often weeks or a few months, not the decades-long death-row vacation with three hots, cable, and taxpayer-funded lawyers we enjoy today. Were innocents sometimes executed?

Almost certainly.

But swift, mostly impartial justice beat the hell out of vigilante posses or letting killers out on technicalities to murder yet again. A society that can’t punish the guilty quickly loses the ability to protect the innocent at all.

I stand behind Alec. It’s safer than standing in front of him.

Fast-forward to post-World War II America. Streets were so safe kids rode bikes until the streetlights came on. Doors stayed unlocked. Factories hummed, wages rose, and the biggest scandal in most towns was somebody skipping the church potluck. Prosperity wasn’t just money: it was a stable and predictable life.

That bored the revolutionaries of the 1960s half to death.

They looked at this overwhelmingly safe, secure, prosperous society made of families in traditional family roles and said, “Nah, too square.” The GloboLeftist project kicked into high gear with the Great Society.

Lyndon Johnson and his crew didn’t just want to help the poor. No. They wanted to remake society. The guardrails of conformity had to go. Why? Because the norms of self-restraint, local reputation, and actual community stood in the way of central control.

Take lending, for example. Let’s say I wanted a home loan in 1955. My local banker didn’t just run a credit score, because they didn’t exist. He would have called my pastor: “Does Wilder show up on Sundays,? He does? Any rumors about his behavior? PEZ®, eh? That’s a bit odd.”

Local money stayed local. My mortgage would have literally been made from the savings of the people I saw at the grocery store. Or, rather that The Mrs. saw at the grocery store, since why would a married man go to the store?

Good families got a break if junior was speeding? Sure. Outsiders had to prove themselves? Absolutely. But it worked because everyone was playing the same cultural game.

If King Charles was anymore inbred, he’d be a sandwich.

Then came the 1960s and beyond.

Mass migration became deliberate policy. Civil rights were the noble public excuse, but the real play was splintering the old society so it could be replaced with something more compliant. Free association?

Gone.

You can’t choose who you hire or rent to without risking a lawsuit. Schools?

Prayer out, social engineering in.

Education standards?

Lowered faster than a politician’s principles.

Family?

Oh, boy.

Women used to save themselves for marriage. Even when I was a kid, that was still the norm in most places and led to more than one frustrating Saturday night.

Body count back in the 1950s? Usually one, and it came with a ring and a white dress. Fast-forward one lifetime from the Great Society: sophomore year of college and some girls are racking up body count numbers higher than a Call of Duty™ leaderboard.

No-fault divorce, welfare that paid better for single moms than married couples, and a nonstop cultural drumbeat that “settling down” was oppression led not to the Great Society but the Great Breakdown. The nuclear family, once our bedrock, got nuked. Fatherless homes exploded. The Great Society didn’t cure poverty: it subsidized it while making dads optional and government mandatory.

My WIFI router is in the basement. You could say this post comes from a LAN down under.

Every facet of life got the treatment.

Religion was pushed out of the public square. “Under God” became hate speech. Local norms replaced by federal mandates. You couldn’t even form a private club without worrying about quotas.

The explicit goal?

Fragment the connections that made America 1960 a powerhouse. Replace them with government strings. Make people dependent on D.C. instead of their neighbors, their church, or their own character.

And it worked.

One generation. That’s all it took.

We went from “mind your own business but don’t be a jerk” to needing sensitivity training to say “good morning” without committing a microaggression. We went from “your reputation follows you” to “my truth” where accountability is optional and consequences are for white men.

The absurdity peaks when you realize the same people who tore down the norms now act shocked at the results.

“Why is crime up? Why are families falling apart? Why can’t we have nice things?”

Because they spent 60 years telling people the guardrails were bigotry. They replaced “don’t do that, people will talk” with “do whatever feels good, you slay, queen.” They swapped local bankers who knew your grandma for algorithms that approve loans based on your zip code, skin tone, and whether your social media likes the right causes.

A fragmented society built on ephemeral values: “my feelings, my identity, my government check” cannot magically produce the disciplined, self-restrained people who built the 1960 powerhouse. We can’t have a republic of free men when half the population thinks “freedom” means no consequences and the other half thinks the Constitution constrains the government too much.

The fall wasn’t accidental.

I ate in an all-you-can-eat Italian restaurant buffet. There were endless pastabilities.

It was engineered during a time of plenty, when people were fat and happy enough to believe the sales pitch. “Break the old norms, they’re oppressive!” Turns out the oppression was mostly keeping humans from doing what humans do when they’re not in a civilization and are left unchecked.

I don’t think we can keep the republic Franklin talked about from where we are. Adams knew the reason: paper and ink don’t enforce morality. People do.

Or they don’t. And when they don’t, the government is happy to step in with a smile and a 10,000-page regulation.

The norms are gone. The absurdity remains. And the bill?

It’s due, with interest.

Why Henry VIII Would’ve Killed for Your Tuesday

“Dying in our sleep is a luxury that our kind is rarely afforded. My gift to you.” – Kill Bill: Volume 1

I guess he had a bad heir day.

Henry VIII could have anyone killed in England killed, whenever.

That’s a historical level of flex, right?

“Off with his/her/their/xir head!” and boom, problem solved. The only way he could have had a more complete solution is if he had ye olde Hellfyre Missyll that he could have obliterated the parts with. Hank had more wives than most guys have pairs of underwear, threw parties that made Vegas look like a church potluck, and ate so much roasted swan he probably needed a crane to get out of bed.

Yet the poor bastard was miserable. Hank’s leg was a festering horror show of oozing sores that never healed. Doctors, if you could call them that, mashed it with hot pokers and prayed to Saints who were clearly not looking out for Henry.

Summers? Hank oozed sweat in every royal crevice like a Somalian in a daycare because air conditioning hadn’t been invented yet. Winters? Drafty castles that made your average Motel 6® feel like the Ritz™.

Fresh vegetables in January? Forget it, unless you counted the mold on last year’s turnips. Antibiotics? Nope. He died at 55 looking like a bloated, angry grape because a simple infection laughed at him.

Bill Gates claimed that it was hard to give away $100 billion. Then he discovered divorce.

Meanwhile, the poorest person reading this right now has:

Climate-controlled comfort (except when the power goes out and we all act like it’s the apocalypse)
Aspirin that kills headaches faster than Henry could yell “treason”
Strawberries in February flown in from well, wherever, for $2.99 a pint
A phone in their pocket with more computing power than NASA used to put men on the Moon, back when they still did that sort of thing

And we complain the Wi-Fi is slow.

As a society, we’ve lost the plot. We chase the next luxury like it’s the last helicopter out of Saigon, never noticing we’re already living better than every king who ever lived.

Marie Antoinnette didn’t like the chopper that took her out of France.

That’s where fasting, prayer, and meditation come in.

They don’t add luxury. And they’re not anti-luxury, either. Instead, they intensify life real life by pulling away things that dull it. They rip the blindfold off so you can finally see the ridiculous abundance that’s been hiding in plain sight.

Take camping, which is another life-intensifier. Or better yet, backpacking, because backpacking is camping for people who like suffering without a car nearby. You hike ten miles with everything you own on your back. Hot shower? Nah. Cold beer? Dream on, pal.

Clean socks after three days? Suddenly they feel like silk sheets at the Four Seasons®. That lukewarm instant coffee at sunrise after a 14,000-foot summit? Nectar of the gods. And that single cigar you packed for the top?

It tastes better than the $80 Cuban some hedge-fund guy is smoking in his climate-controlled man cave. The Luxury Meter resets. Hard. The stuff I took for granted becomes decadent again.

I felt motion sickness on the airplane yesterday. It didn’t help having all of those people screaming for lifejackets and rafts.

That’s exactly what fasting, prayer, and meditation do as I get older, except I don’t have to carry a 40-pound pack or sleep on rocks.

Let’s start with fasting, because I actually do this every week and some of my happiest days are while I’m doing it.

Yes, I’m the weirdo who smiles while hungry. Judge away. After 72 hours without food, that first bite of whatever I eat next hits different. It’s not “dinner.” It’s a religious experience.

Last week I broke a fast with a salad of lettuce, and my own dressing (olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and Frank’s Hot Sauce™.

I swear the lettuce tasted like it was grown by angels on Mount Olympus. I actually said “thank you” out loud to vinegar. The Mrs. asked me, “Are you planning on starting a cult?”

“No, it’s too hard to find enough people who are willing to shave off all the hair on their bodies. Just no commitment nowadays.”

Fasting reminds me that food isn’t a background app: it’s a miracle, a gift. My ancestors fought wolves for scraps, and won. That’s why I’m here.

Right now I’m so hungry I could eat my watch, but that would be time consuming.

Henry VIII had entire forests of deer murdered for his gouty pleasure and still died angry. Me? I can open the fridge and there sits last night’s leftover steak and a bag of midget tomatoes.

Fasting turns the volume down on “I want more” and turns it up on “Holy crap, this is amazing,” when one of those ripe tomatoes explodes flavor in my mouth as I bite into it. Prayer does the same thing, but with gratitude instead of hunger and with fewer seeds.

I’m not talking about the fancy stained-glass, organ-music version. I’m talking about the five-minute reciting the “Lord’s Prayer” or just sitting there praying “thanks” for all the little miracles in my life, like cigars. Thanks for the roof that doesn’t leak. Thanks for the truck that started this morning. Thanks for antibiotics that would’ve saved Henry’s leg and probably at least one of his marriages if the Habsburgs weren’t trying to kill him. Thanks for the fact that I can complain about gas prices while eating pineapple from Costa Rica on a pizza in February.

I think that if I do this regularly my brain chemistry changes. I cease envying the guy with the bigger bank account and start noticing that I’ve never missed a meal, except on purpose.

And then there’s meditation, which I used to think was for hippies in hemp pants smoking hemp and praying to a bong with hi-fi playing sitar music in the background.

Turns out it’s just shutting up for five minutes. Sit. Breathe. Notice the thoughts racing around like caffeinated squirrels.

After a few minutes the squirrels calm down. And suddenly I notice things. The warmth of the coffee mug. The feeling of my head against the back of my chair that just happens to adjust six ways. The ridiculous luxury of quiet.

Only self-aware people will understand this joke. You know who you are.

Henry VIII never had five minutes of peace: someone was always trying to poison him or marry him or overthrow him or he had another wife to kill.

I can have it peace and quiet whenever I want, and it costs exactly nothing.

When I do all three together it’s like a factory reset on my soul. The constant “I need more” noise fades.

I’m not saying sell everything and move to a cave and become a monk. I like my truck, my cigars, and my central heat as much as the next guy. But I’m not going to let “luxury” make me the modern version of Henry VIII: rich in stuff, poor in joy, angry at the world because the sores never heal and the wives won’t die. These things remind me that the real luxury isn’t the next thing, it’s realizing the things I already have would’ve made kings weep with envy.

Though say what you want about Henry, he did have a cure for wives who had headaches.

The Next Default, Gold, Bras, and Confiscation

“The wealth of Moria was not in gold or jewels but mithril.” – Fellowship of the Ring

Steel suppliers are facing high iron prices and low finished steel prices. They say it’s a terrible ore-deal.

What we call money was for the longest time gold. For . . . a long time, really. It has never quite been valueless and even jungle savages and pyramid builders (who had, I must remind you, no iPhones™ used it for trinkets because it was pretty.

But cash has gone to zero.

The phrase “Not worth a Continental” came about because the Continental Congress decided to print a lot of cash to fight the Revolutionary War. It worked, but the cash became valueless because they printed too much.

How bad was it?

Bad enough that a wheelbarrow of Continentals might buy you a loaf of bread, if the baker was using them to start his fire. It was a bad enough experience that the Framers of the Constitution tossed in the whole, “No State shall make anything but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.”

Then we went to gold because the Constitution said so. Gold worked for a while. There was a reset during the Civil War with the National Banking Act, which made paper “greenbacks” official tender. Lincoln needed cash to fund the Union army, so they cranked up the presses again. By war’s end, greenbacks were worth about half their face value, and people grumbled, but hey, at least the North bankers won.

I’m in shape for that, though. I exorcise regularly.

Then in the awful year of 1913, the Fed® was put into place, and the monkey business began anew. Another currency reset, first for World War I, where they suspended gold convertibility to print for the war machine. Huh. It’s like I’ve heard that before. When the value of the dollar started to increase in the Great Depression, Roosevelt came in and made owning significant amounts of gold illegal.

I mean, illegal for the plebs. Rich dudes could still own all they wanted, because, well, they’re rich. What don’t you understand about that, pleb? FDR’s Executive Order 6102 forced folks to turn in their gold at $20.67 an ounce, then he jacked the price to $35 overnight.

Instant 69% profit for Uncle Sam. Nice work, if you can get it.

Eventually, LBJ took all of the silver out of the money, too. In 1965, quarters went from 90% silver to clad junk, because Vietnam wasn’t going to fund itself. People hoarded the old real silver coins, and Gresham’s Law kicked in: bad money drives out good.

Finally, Nixon took the dollar off of the gold standard as a “temporary emergency measure” in 1971. Temporary, my foot. It was the final nail in the gold coffin, all because we were spending like drunken sailors on wine, women, wars and welfare.

Was there panic? Confusion? Market turmoil? Riots in the streets?

Nah. None of that happened at any of these currency resets. Partially because people are distracted. Back then it was Vietnam protests or bra burnings or Watergate scandals.

Despite the name, when I wore The Mrs.’, I couldn’t do any more than usual.

And, partially because people still had dollars to spend that were worth something, right? I mean, until the inflation of the 1970s hit. People adapted, grumbled, but kept chugging along because what else were we gonna do? Start a revolution over milk prices?

All of these resets, every single one of them, happened because the United States government (or its precursor) had spent way too much, had too much debt, and didn’t want to pay it. It’s the old, “Hey, let’s you and me split the bill. Half is fair right? I mean, I had the steak and lobster and you had a salad, so 50-50 works.”

Except you don’t get to object.

This confiscation is what gold (and silver) holders, real physical metal holders, now worry about: the government coming for their gold and silver.

I am here to tell you that will never happen.

Never.

What’s the zodiac sign for a donut? Torus.

Why bother with door-to-door confiscation when they can just make it painful to use? History shows they prefer the sneaky route. What will happen is, say, that .gov will tax people who sell gold at a profit at a huge rate. 70%? 90%? Heck, maybe 110% if they get creative with penalties.

And no one will care. Why? Well, rich people will have insulated themselves from this by offshoring those investments: think Swiss vaults or Cayman trusts. The tax will probably only apply to individuals (so those with corporations won’t care, they’ll just LLC their stack), and the people who don’t have silver and gold will think that anyone who had any silver and gold probably deserves such a high tax rate.

That’s one way. What’s another?

Mandate reporting on all precious metal sales over, say, $100. Turn your local coin shop into a snitch for the IRS®. Or tie it to “anti-money laundering” laws, making grandma’s heirloom coins suspicious. It’s not confiscation; it’s just “regulation for your safety.

“You can sell your gold and silver. And dollars, even, into a new currency!”

And only into that new currency. This new currency will be great! We’ll call it a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). It’s like crypto, but now the Fed® controls it!

I have a friend who is half-Indian. His name is Ian.

What could go wrong?

Well, from the perspective of the Fed©, absolutely nothing. They can make your CBDC evaporate unless you spend it: like digital milk in the fridge with an expiration date enforced by big brother. “Use it or lose it, citizen!”

They can track every cent (oops) dime that you spend. Bought too much ammo? Flag. Donated to the “wrong” cause? Freeze. They can stop transactions they don’t like. “Sorry, no more red meat, your carbon score’s too high today.”

They can use it to create an activity profile: “John’s been buying survival gear again; better send the social worker. Have her bring cigars and scotch to calm him down.”

It will, of course, all be for your own good. It’ll stop crime. And money-laundering.

And those rich people! It will stop them. I mean, sure they’ll have the fancy estates in France and Bill Gates will own half of the farmland in the country and also own Picassos and Renoirs and Monets and Manets and a Chinese antibiotics manufacturer, but it’ll really get him.

Bill Gates caught a very strong STD: Herpules.

Us plebs? We’ll get the full surveillance package.

Boy, those rich people are sure going to suffer if we force them to use CBDC.

So, we can keep our gold and silver. It’s just a barbaric relic. And we’re awful if we want to keep it since it’s probably anti-patriotic or pro-colonialism (depending on who is in office) to keep the gold and silver, which should be safely stored.

In a Central Bank.

For your own good.

And the CBDC? That’s as good as gold. It’s not like the Continental at all. And, it comes with a new iPhone® app.

What a deal!