Speaker 1This is the Commodity Culture Podcast, where we interview prominent investors, fund managers, analysts, and company CEOs to give you an edge when it comes to investing in the commodity space. Matthew Pipenberg, great to have you back on Commodity Culture. Now, we've spoken a lot in past conversations about the potential for a sovereign debt crisis and things seem to be accelerating on that front in the U.S. with Treasury Secretary Scott Besson announcing a doubling of Treasury buybacks with even more repurchases potentially ahead. Trump literally commenting that he could use the military to intervene in bond markets. Now, I don't know if he misheard the question there, but kind of interesting and concerning. And the U.S. now announcing an economic war on Iran and all nations transacting with Iran, with Besson even threatening. To remove such countries from the dollar system and to top it all off, the U.S. national debt just surpassed $40 trillion. How are you interpreting all of this or for, is it $40 trillion at this point? Is that where we are? Yeah. I think we are now, officially. Yeah, officially we're at $40 trillion. How are you interpreting all of this? Is it signaling to you that the U.S. bond market and wider economy is in dire straits at this point in time?
Speaker 2Yeah, dire straits. The straits of Hormuz. The straits of stress and pain and losing friends and hearts and minds as we speak. And a bond market, I don't think threatening to get off the dollar is much of a threat anymore to many countries. But it's an excellent question, Jesse. It's going to be a long answer. But I think for those new or familiar to macros and to precious metals and to bond markets, this will be helpful because I think it's such an important time right now. We have a vice president. We have a vice president openly questioning the world-reserved currency status of the U.S. dollar. We have a treasury secretary who's really a closeted gold bug, talking Hamiltonian economics and a desire for protectionism in a weaker dollar. That's a hidden agenda. We just pulled $2 billion from the short end of the curve to save the long end of the curve. Besson is talking about another $1 trillion from the treasury general account because the yields on the 30-year are the highest since the great financial crisis. To your point, we have a lot of money. We have a president trying to save the petrodollar with bombs and bombast. And we have Gulf allies secretly telling Iran that being a friend of America is really not much fun. And we also have, and even Besson knows this, he said it out loud recently, and he said it before he was a treasury secretary, we have an undeniable de-dollarization problem and a record high gold stacking in central banks is a preference over the U.S. treasury and the U.S. dollar. This is not gold bug cuckoo. This is just happening in the headlines. And all of this is because the U.S. or the American system has shot itself in the foot, the kneecap and, frankly, in the chest. And I got to say that, you know, Egon von Greer's and von Greer's enterprise has been warning of all of these themes for years. They're just accelerating. All of us in the gold space and sound money space have been talking about this. We've been warning about debt levels, about where bond markets are. We've been warning, we've been warning, we've been warning, we've been warning, we've been We've openly talked about dollar debasement and in government twits, this island of misfit toys, left, right or center, all of which are pointing to gold longer term. And whether that was true 20 minutes ago or 20 years ago, it was fairly mathematical, fairly inevitable. I think Egon, the partner and founder of our company, von Greer's, you know, he was at a wedding in 2000 for one of his daughters was getting married. And gold was then at $300. And he was trying, even in the wedding speech, to just remind everybody, you know, guys, get some gold and didn't give a full macro analysis. But he built an entire enterprise about holding gold outside of the banking system and as an obvious necessary hedge against dying fiat money, against banking risk and geopolitical risk. This was over 25 years ago. And it's all basically coming true. The narrative of 2000 is just as true today as it was then. It's just happening more obviously. And rather than just say that to promote us or Egon or these farsighted thinkers about history and sound money, let's just look at the facts. Again, try to take, if you can, my bias and conviction as an executive selling gold and pet rocks out of Switzerland. And let's just look at the debt spiral the U.S. is in today. I mean, today, our costs in the U.S., the home of the world reserve currency and the sacred 10-year risk-free return. Are rising faster than our ability to grow or pay. You know, when you have a debt to GDP at 120% and a current account deficit of 6% to 7%, you have a problem. This isn't a gold bug argument. David Hume said in the 1750s, when your debt to GDP passes 100, you mathematically can't grow your way out. And then if you look at the facts on the ground in 2026, we have Social Security, Medicare, veteran benefits and interest expense on our existing debt. That are 105% of tax receipts. And these tax receipts are coming at a time of market highs. Can you imagine if per impulsible, we actually have a market mean reversion? So we're living on very thin ice and U.S. growth is growing at, they say 4%, but our expenses are growing at 7%. And so, okay, these are numbers, but they're meaningful numbers. But I think to really, really make this stick, regardless of anyone's views on precious metals or selling your book, you know, my parents, our generation still, if you go to any bank, any RIA, industrial complex, registered investment advisor, they're going to tell you, you know, you need an allocation to bonds, especially in the long end, they're risk-free return, they're safety, they're a hedge against the volatility in equities or stocks. But think about this for a second. If you bought long-term bonds just 12, 15 years ago, in gold terms, you would have lost 90% in gold terms. So measuring your returns in dollars in a brokerage account, they conveniently ignore what that means, these nominal returns. And the story is just as scary for stocks. And again, this isn't just a statistic window pulled out to make a point. It's almost as scary. If you look at the NASDAQ 100 in the last five years, they're up 95%, but priced in gold rather than dollars, that same NASDAQ 100 is down 23 to 25%. And the same is true of the S&P, and that includes reinvesting dividends. It's actually down 30%. It's down 30% since 2022, and actually 50% since 2000. And it's not just in America. This is true of all the major indices. But even the Nikkei, which died in 89 and took 30 years to get back to its highs, is very excited about the last five years. And it saw about 150% return on the Nikkei, which is exciting. But measured in gold, that same Nikkei is down 31%. And what people need to understand, this isn't a gold bug statistical world. It's not a window gotcha moment. It is an objective sign that fiat money, whether it's the yen, the euro, or the dollar, may be up in terms on your portfolio or your IRA or your 401k, but you're actually losing money as you're making dollars in yen. You're losing purchasing power. And again, this brings us back to Egon circa 2000 and warning to these wedding gatherers that the exorbitant privilege of the U.S. dollar is ending due to the criminal debt level as it's taking on then and adding to every decade and year since to this completely mismanaged foreign domestic policy at the home of the world reserve currency. And again, I'm almost kind of finished with this point, but if people are wondering why this is happening now faster, it was already happening for decades. It happened because in 1971, the U.S. took away its golden chaperone. And anyone is a teenager. I've said many times when my parents were away when I was a teenager, or if the coach was away when we were on a trip to England due to a rowing race. As soon as the coach or the parents away, teenagers act really badly. And it's the same thing with presidents and Congresses and Senates. They spend like drunken kids and they spend without limit and they extend credit without limit. Meanwhile, the CEOs in American manufacturing circa 2001, 2000 offshored the American dream that China at the same time we were spending beyond our means and all these widgets that American widgets that were supposed to be bought in China are now made in China. And so we had this ripping. QE can tell on effect SMP, we had a rust belt in the Midwest, we had a D based dollar all beginning at exponential levels in 1971. You fast forward and now, meanwhile, the bond market just keeps issuing and issuing IOUs that the world was forced to buy. But remember, in 2014, as we've been warning, there's no automatic bid anymore for U.S. Treasuries. Now, the audience doesn't want U.S. Treasuries. They empirically prefer gold in favor of U.S. Treasuries. That accelerated exponentially when we weaponized the dollar in 2022. Myself, Grant Williams, Jim Rickards, I'm not alone. That moment in 2022 was a watershed moment when we weaponized this neutral reserve asset. And since then, you know, the world is stacking gold at 5x what they were pre-2022. And you now have this Bessent, getting back to the Bessent, Scott Bessent, in 2023 when he was just a humble multi-millionaire. millionaire hedge fund manager. He said it was untenable. He said this before he was politicized. He said then it was untenable to keep sanctioning the rest of the world because they're going to start hating our dollar and we're going to have a real de-dollarization problem that he said was undeniable. At that time, he was talking about the U.S. making sanctions against the French and they and Perry Bob, billions of sanctions. And he said the French are just going to look for an alternative to us. This was after we sanctioned the Russians, whatever you think of that. So he knew this as a civilian, that the dollar was being weaponized and de-loved already. When he became a secretary of the Treasury, he's changed his narrative completely. He was just interviewed this week in front of the steps somewhere on the White House or the Treasury Department. And someone said, well, aren't you going to sanction the Iranians? He says, well, I'm going to warn them of sanctions. And they said, why don't you just do this? And he said, because I don't want to blow up the global financial system. He literally said it out loud and reading between the lines. What that means is if we keep putting sanctions on more countries, more countries are going to just keep distrusting our dollar and running away from us. So, again, Besant and even and even J.D. Vance are kind of saying things they shouldn't be saying out loud. But we have one point four trillion in bond auctions in the next six months and there is no auto bid for them. In the last 80 years, we've lost that privilege because we are in so much debt. Because we weaponize the currency, we weaponize the neutral reserve asset. We're at risk of blowing up World War Three over over the Strait of Hormuz so we can freeze. We're in debt and we're distrusted. And now and I'm almost done, but this is so important. Now, our 30 years, the highest our yield on 30 year Treasury is the highest since the great financial crisis. And the 10 year yield went from three point nine to four point seven percent in a matter of two months. And all this yield means I won't get into bond complexity, but all these yield hikes means is no one. Trust our IOU is the great sacred 10 year U.S. Treasury and the great sacred world reserve currency. No one trusts it because we are so much in debt, because we've weaponized it, because we've sanctioned too much, because we are in debt up to our ears and we're causing chaos all over the world. So, you know, how do you solve this? You go to the short end, you issue, you buy some time, you put band aids on the long end. We we put two billion in from the short end. It controlled yields for less than 24 hours. And I think what we're going to do is we're going to let inflation run as we. All broke nations do. We're going to run higher inflation and we're going to lie about the inflation. We're going to crush the bondholders. We're going to issue from the TGA or the short end. But just like after World War Two, when we had negative real rates of 13 percent means much higher inflation than yield. And we're going to stick it to the middle class. We're going to stick at the bondholders. We're going to stick it to all those pension funds and IRAs and 401ks that think a 60 40 stock bond portfolio is going to save you. They're both correlated. They're both. Losing money, regardless of what they say in percentage growth, you're losing money to the purchasing power. That is why we're in such dire straits, Jess. And it's it's not a gold bug argument anymore. Everyone feels it. Even if you don't look at yield curves and you don't look at CPI or BLS labor data, we all feel it from England to Japan, to the US, certainly to the Middle East. The dollar is just losing its hegemony. It's losing its purchasing power. It's losing its credibility. And gold is not just another asset. To debate it is becoming global collateral and it is becoming no longer America's enemy, but its last best hope.
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Speaker 2to give credit where credit is due. I've been writing about different revaluation plans, whether it was an overnight revaluation like we saw in August in 1971, where some leader comes on the TV and just says, this is about to change. We're going to do this and bang, we're going to revalue gold to 20,000. Again, I don't think that's likely, but I got to give credit. This whole revaluation that I've been thinking about for years, Luke Grohman's been ahead of the curve on this himself. I totally agree with where he's going with this. I give him credit. I give him a lot of credit for the research. It's our job to make it more understood for more and more people. But many of us have seen revaluation as an option because, as we just discussed, the income just doesn't match the expenses in this debt spiral that America's in. I mean, QE is a toxic word. We can't just keep printing trillions without destroying credibility. Everyone knows it. So we have all these indirect forms of non-QE, QE, whether it's, again, we'll get into the wonky supplementary leverage ratios, non-Basel compliance. to get liquidity for the banks, the reverse repo bailouts, the treasury general account, repurchase agreements. These are all indirect Diet Coke versions of QE, which is just dollar debasement, credit expansion, saving the banks at the expense of Main Street. Okay, blah, blah, blah. That's just another way of proof that we're broke and we're desperate and we're putting band-aids wherever we can find a hole and putting a finger in the dike. It's not working. What I'm talking about with the revaluation, and many people may know this, many have no idea, but America does have this massive piggy bank, I call it, this hidden piggy bank. We have at least, well, we can talk about the audits later, but we have at least, we say, 260 million ounces or roughly 8,131 tons of physical gold in America between New York and Fort Knox or wherever. But we have it priced at a 1973 price level of $42.21 an ounce, which is about $11 billion. That's not going to do much to help America get out of a debt spiral. So we have this hidden piggy bank valued at way below market. And for many years, the dollar, when it was in the post-70s, exorbitant privilege, our currency, your problem, we wanted the dollar to look strong, act strong. We wanted to force the world to buy oil and dollars and then use the money to buy our U.S. treasuries. We sanctioned everyone who got in our way. We punished them. We went to war with them. We took out leaders of Syria and Iraq and even Venezuela if they didn't want to buy our oil in dollars or sell our oil in dollars, et cetera. So we had this power, military dollar hegemony. And for the dollar and the military to look strong, the dollar had to look strong too. And what was the biggest enemy to a strong dollar was a rising gold price. And so three young bucks named Leo Malamud and a young Alan Greenspan and a young Milton Friedman got together with the CME in Chicago and said, let's add futures contracts to the COMEX and we'll put a permanent short on gold and silver. I'm sorry, that's not a conspiracy theory. That was modus operandi for decades from the 70s to today, till 24, where there was just legalized price fixing. And they wanted to keep the gold price down because as a young Paul Volcker then said in the 80s, gold was the enemy. What I'm trying to say today in 2026, gold is no longer the enemy. The exorbitant privilege, the strong dollar, the strong military, all of that is openly falling in front of us for all the debt reasons and mismanagement reasons. So dollar is no longer our enemy. It's kind of our last salvation. And what I think is going to happen, and it's an opinion, it's shared by many, and it makes sense. It's what I would do. Frankly, I don't know what else other choices they have, but it clearly is a pro-gold case. I'll say that. But if you have $42 per ounce gold in a piggy bank and you market to market today, you're going to have well over a trillion dollars that you can direct deposit into the treasury general account as per the Fed's financial accounting manual. You can do it. You can just remonetize it, market to market, whipsaw fact, you've got a trillion and a half dollars that you can now spend on saving the yield curve and buying some interest expense on US debt. But what I'm arguing is, why would you want to just let gold stay around $4,000 and keep it repressed like in the Volcker era? When we're this much in debt, when QE is no longer credible and the world is catching on to us, it'd be far better now to just let gold run. You don't have to reprice it overnight. Just let it run naturally as the Chinese are doing in Hong Kong and they're starting to do now. Instead of using paper claims to short the gold and silver price, get out of its way. For the first time, let natural price discovery happen because it's in America's best interest. to see gold run. Because if we revalue our gold to market, we can use gold as QE. In other words, as we can use our golden piggy bank to pay down massive amounts of debt. And gold gets to $15,000, $17,000, $20,000, which it will. I don't know the date. It's not tomorrow. It's not next week. It's the incremental running of gold through natural supply and demand. $20,000 gold gets us well over $5 trillion to basically monetize the long end of the debt curve. It certainly helps us deal with our interest expenses and get us out of the QE trap we're in. And it buys us a lot of time and credibility with our M0 money supply, blah, blah, blah. But I'm saying my argument is it is actually in the U.S.'s best interest to let gold run. I think Besant knows this. I think he knows his Hamiltonian approach of tariffs are going to save us, aren't going to save us. I don't think stablecoin, even if it gets to be a $2 trillion market in the next few years, is going to be a big enough sponge to be the new oil to buy enough U.S. treasuries. We need some other help. There is no reason to let our gold and piggy banks sit there at $11 billion valuation. So gold will no longer be the enemy. It will become our last best hope. And I think that's a very real possibility. I know Lou Grohman thinks it. I think the thing you have to realize, though, as you're listening, that's very good for Washington, D.C. It will certainly, though, be very bad for Main Street and for investors who don't have gold and silver because that kind of slow frog boil, allowance to let gold run is also a further debasement of the U.S. dollar. It just is. And that's why I don't think we do an overnight revaluation, because if we just reprice gold using certain tricks of the Treasury and Fed to $20,000 overnight, that would kill the dollar by 80 percent overnight. That's too weak a dollar, even for the U.S. But the U.S. wants a weaker dollar. It needs stronger gold. A weaker dollar helps it with its exports in our trade wars. You've got, you know, our vice president talking about getting off the world reserve currency even faster than I expected. All of this is a burden to us now to be the world reserve currency. We have the Triffin dilemma of our dollar is too strong. We want a weaker dollar. Gold helps us get a weaker dollar, pay down our debt, letting gold run. But what it does is it helps D.C., a weaker dollar even helps the S.M.P., but it doesn't help the man on the street who's saving in paper money. And again, Egon's been warning this for decades. Not everyone who listens to everyone who listens can be a client of us, but all of you can afford a gram or an ounce of gold or silver if you can, because your paper money is objectively not helping you and your government objectively wants a weaker dollar. They objectively lie about the inflation and labor data so you don't see it right away. But whether anyone listening understands the BLS or the yield curve or spreads or swaps and all the blah, blah, blah, we all feel the debasement of our dollar. We all feel the purchasing power of our currency, and our wages aren't keeping up with that in the middle class. And we all feel the stress of the middle class and the outsourced middle class. And for Trump and Besant to reshore all the jobs that have been now made in China and the American dream that is now made in China, that's going to cost trillions of dollars we don't have. We need that gold revaluation to give us some cash back to reshore the American dream. But even while we're doing that, we're going to be debasing the currency to do it. We need, therefore, more money from our gold account. I think it's a brilliant option for DC. It pays for some of the reshoring, but tariffs aren't going to do it. And stablecoin isn't going to do it. And at some point, we're going to revalue gold to market and let gold run. I think that's inevitable. Again, it's an opinion. It's not just a gold bug case. But even if you take that out and you keep gold at $42 an ounce, well, what are we going to do, then? How are we going to pay our interest expense? How are we going to pay these war expenses? How are we going to meet these treasury auctions that nobody's showing up and it's crickets? Then we'll just have to keep printing and debasing. Either way, the dollar is going down. Either way, we're going to debase. Gold buys us some time. But either way, gold rises naturally. And so, I think this Hamiltonian project of tariffs are going to save us. It's too late. It's too late. We're not a young country anymore. We can't let tariffs save us like they did in the 1790s. I don't think stablecoin issuance is enough to be the new oil and absorb all these treasuries. I don't think Tether and Circle Internet are going to save us. The world just doesn't want our treasuries. And so, we have to use this golden piggy bank as an option, in my opinion. And I think gold will be allowed to run. And whether we like it or not, China and Shanghai and Hong Kong are already creating a settlement and clearing process. They started this summer. We're not using paper claims like we do in London or Chicago or New York to fix the gold price and have paper claims influence the price. Shanghai and Hong Kong are creating an exchange where it's going to be based on physical properties, physical supply and demand. You can't have a 200 moving day average in China that's massively different than the one in the West, which is why the flow of gold is going dramatically from West to East. These are not gold bug arguments. They're happening right in front of us. So, again, long answer to a short question. We don't have much of a choice. It's either QE to the Moon or QE to the Moon plus some revaluation of gold to help us get out of this hole that every president and Senate and Congress and central bankers since 1971 has dug for us. And it always affects the man on the street far more than it affects D.C. or Wall Street. Because a weaker dollar, you can still get better returns. You can financialize the S&P and the Dow and the Nasdaq. You can get 10 percent, 20 percent annualized. But as I said at the beginning of this interview, your return nominal is great, but what it buys you is still nothing. You are literally running uphill in roller skates, getting nowhere. And that's objective, not a gold bug case. People have to understand what Egon was saying in 2000 at the wedding. Your dollar will buy you less and less. You're measuring your wealth and a moving target that's lying to you. And again, this is no longer just a gold bug argument anymore. And it's fascinating to see after decades of these warnings, not to say I told you so, but to say, think about this more carefully. Look beyond the sell side bias of the good, the bad, the ugly in the gold space and understand the history of sound money. That's all Egon did 25 years ago. And it's proven to be absolutely correct. And it's confirmed century after century, decade after decade, currency after currency. It's not a gold bug argument, folks. This is history 101. And I think that needs to be understood.
Speaker 1Very well said. In a moment, I want to get to silver's role in all of this. But first, you mentioned audits. The follow up question would be, does the U.S. even have enough gold to revalue? Because we had Rand Paul, of course, do a so-called audit. He walked around the vaults for a couple hours. He said, guys, we're all good here. The gold's here. And now, interestingly, Venezuela is now attempting to repatriate its gold from England, from UK. It's got about $4 billion worth at the Bank of England. There's talks of it being transferred to the U.S. to audit it. So the U.S. seems to be fine with auditing Venezuela's gold, but not their own. What do you make of this whole debacle?
Speaker 2Well, I mean, just the way you formulated that question, you've answered it for us, haven't you? In a lot of ways, I mean, you're saying so many things that just make no sense, yet are so obvious, right? It is the height of hypocrisy to, first of all, to basically let the Bank of England just steal Venezuela's gold. That's political theft. You can argue it's the right or wrong thing, but that's Venezuela's gold, not anyone else's. But we just took it, just like we took Russia's FX reserves. It's the weaponization of our hegemonic, economic powers, which are losing friends, hearts, and minds around the world financially. Stupid mistake. But if we're going to audit Venezuela, what about the U.S.? Remember, prior to the election, again, this is not pro or anti-Trump, but remember Elon Musk standing at the White House, "We're going to audit gold. We're going to do doge. We're going to cut spending. We're going to have USAID refigured." All this was what got Trump votes. Everyone wanted that. We wanted transparency. We wanted to cut spending. We wanted an audit. And what's happened since? Crickets. On these topics. And I think the lack of an audit, you could say, raises more questions than it answers, but it also answers it for itself. The fact that we don't have one pretty much, it's like taking the fifth. Usually you take the fifth when you don't want to be caught saying something. Now, it's very possible that we have more than we say, or we have less. But, you know, you can walk through a vault anywhere. I could walk you through our vault and say, "Hey, all this gold is mine. The gold is there. It's all mine." That's just taking our word for it. Even if we have all the gold that Rand Paul says we have and walked around and saw it, how much of that has been re-hypothecated elsewhere? How much of that has been levered out? Again, a real audit, a real balance sheet would help us have the transparency to know that. I think it's very, very important that we have one. So, for me to answer the question, I'm guessing, because I don't know. We take the government's word for it. I'm pretty cynical about that, left to right. What I could also say, and I'm not alone in this, and I can't confirm it either, but I'm pretty cynical about that, left to right. What I could also say, and I'm not alone in this, and I can't confirm it either, because there's no real audit. We all know that the World Gold Council, what information it gets from China on its gold reserves is woefully inadequate. I'm not blaming the World Gold Council for that. It's like I've said many times, it's like a poker hand. If you and I are playing poker and I've got a full house, I'm not going to show you my cards until I get you to call and call and call and raise and raise and raise. China's not going to show us how much gold they have. We all know they have, just on their import levels in the last few years and the stacking quarter after quarter, year after year, 21 months of stacking. Of course, China has more gold than the World Gold Council. It's very likely they have more gold than the US, but I can't say that with a straight face because I don't know. My guess, and many others, in the space think they have more than us. And that raises the Kissinger dilemma. In the early 70s, we were worried about collectively Europe having more gold than the US. And we worried they may revalue gold or pay down their debt with gold and revalue gold higher. And we were afraid of that because what Kissinger didn't want to say out loud, he who has the most gold wins. It's a simplification. But if China has significantly more gold and the world is now objectively collateralizing more trades and net settlements in gold, and central banks are objectively stacking it more, and the Bank for National Settlements is using gold and silver more proactively over US treasuries, et cetera, et cetera, all the evidence of gold being a superior reserve asset are there, then if China has more gold than us and we reset or allow gold to run or reprice, well, then China's going to have a lot more financial leverage than the US. Again, I'm not a shill for China, but you've got to respect that. You've got to respect your adversaries, the art of war says. The art of war also says, if your enemy's shooting himself in the foot, let him keep shooting. China's watching us destroy ourselves in trillion-dollar wars and losing credibility with a weaponized credit system and a weaponized dollar. They're watching us lose hearts and minds and bomb bridges as they build bridges. And so, again, you have to respect your adversary. They're playing the long game. They probably have more gold than our audited or unaudited gold in the US. And yes, a revaluation of gold will help America, but we will no longer, we clearly are no longer anyway, be the hegemonic home of the world reserve currency, be the hegemonic power financially, because the world is moving in a sea change from paper claims and paper currencies to gold-backed collateral. Not a gold-backed yuan or ruble or dollar, but gold-backed net settling. And China is winning that game. I'm not planning on moving to Shanghai. I say this over and over. I'm a patriot. But America has made its own bed through decades of this island of misfit toys running our country for their own personal interests. Again, left or right, I'm not picking on one administration. They've all been doing it. We all know it. They're mavens to a system. They're looking for second homes in the Hamptons and Nantucket and Middleburg, Virginia, but they're not really representing Americans transparently because they're debasing the dollar. They're robbing the middle class. And only those that have stocks and bonds inflating in a QE-driven market or own physical gold are going to be protected. They don't care about 85% of the population. They tell you to be calm, carry on. They tell you we've got inflation under control. They tell you they've got the yield curve under control. No, they're just destroying the currency to save a bond market that saves DC and Wall Street. I'm saying this as a former Wall Street guy. And Egon said this 20 years ago. Those that are true fiduciaries in the precious metal space have been warning this. It's been incrementally happening. Now it's happening exponentially. Long way of saying, yeah, go ahead. Audit Fort Knox. Audit the New York banks. Audit China. But I don't think we're going to see it anytime soon. And if we did, I'm not even sure I would trust it. But I do think it raises questions. And I do think the larger question isn't just how much American gold there is that's truly not hypothecated and truly ours, and what China has. I'm fairly confident, and I think I'm not alone, that China has a lot more than the US. And I think Kissinger's threat will come true. We're not going to have the leverage we did in 1971 in 2026. We don't already. We don't already. So yeah, it's fascinating, Jesse. It's fascinating. Well,
Speaker 1let's talk about how silver plays a role in all of this. Because at this point in time, for a lot of people listening, perhaps those in the middle class, it's difficult to start stacking gold from here. But silver, of course, is still somewhat affordable. I mean, we're knocking on the door of $70 once again. I know you think at some point, $300 silver will be a real possibility. Do you think all of this currency debasement, $40 trillion in national debt and rising, and perhaps a realization by Joe Sixpack out there that his currency is evaporating could perhaps push us there sooner rather than later?
Speaker 2Well, yes. Forecasting versus timing. Egon is right. It's a mug's game to time. I say silver goes to $90 by September 30th, and it goes to $120 by November 10th. That kind of timing is a mug's game. Forecasting, seeing the direction of the ball or the hockey puck, and much more simple because that's just based on history, math, supply and demand, and current headlines. And so, I can forecast over the years to come that the… Remember, just a few years ago, $50 silver was everyone's… That's just the gold bug camp. That's the precious metal camp spinning their sell side, spinning, spinning. $50 is way past the rearview mirror now. And the 100-plus levels we saw at the all-time highs before that infamous, grotesquely transparent price fix on silver Friday at the beginning of 2026. I won't get into all the details. We all know that was a bank bailout. That was a CME-engineered bailout of the banks that were caught in the short squeeze of a century. But notwithstanding the intervention by nefarious players in London and New York and Chicago, which, by the way, have lost all their silver to manipulate, and there's a whole new world coming, those games are slowly coming to an end. But the 110 prices and above that we saw in silver weren't peak silver. They're going to be the new floors because, you know, notwithstanding the manipulation, we are going to see gold allowed to run higher. When gold gets into, and I think it's only in the first chapters of its bull market, and despite that CME-engineered bank bailout in the mother of all short squeezes, we've seen those short squeezes before in 1980 with the Hunt brothers and 2011 with the margin hikes. Those powers are dissipating. But the 100 plus levels in silver are going to be new floors, just like 50 and the argument of going past 50, which everyone pooh-poohed, is way behind us. The $100 levels are going to be way behind us because there's a number of reasons. A, in the beta trade, when gold really rips, silver rips faster. It will. And so those who can afford silver far more than an ounce of gold, they will have an excellent opportunity now to catch up with the big boys, so to speak. You can't print silver, and it's a byproduct metal. There's a stock to flow that's pretty tight. It is a monetary metal, but it's also an industrial metal with rare mineral classifications that the government needs. So supply and demand still matter. The gold ripping still matters. The beta trade for silver will still matter. The ability of the New York and London and Chicago bad actors to force the price down is getting weaker. So the setup is extraordinary for silver, and it's affordable for the man on the street, which I love. But again, they have to understand that silver is not a trade or a swing trade. You have to buy it and hold it and pick your exits. I would only exit silver, not at a price target, but at a silver-gold ratio that makes sense, or gold-silver ratio that makes sense, to buy more gold then. Because silver will outperform. It will be volatile. It's not for widows and orphans, as Egon says. But when you see 32 or 17 gold-silver ratios, you can sell your silver to then buy more gold. Silver will rip higher in a bull market for gold. And then there is a point where you sell your silver to buy gold or to cash out. But it's not a trade. It's not a speculation. It's not a Nvidia stock. It's not an AI IPO. It is a monetary industrial metal that has a one billion ounce supply and demand deficit. So you've got to look at these supply and demand forces, which the COMEX can't manipulate anymore. It's a five-year supply deficit of this metal. Again, over a billion ounces. Naomi Prince, many others, Egon, myself, we talked about this on Monday, Egon and I. We should be talking more about silver. Because for many who can't afford our business or our limits, many of those listing companies can't afford silver. And it's not about trying to time the bottom or time the top. It's about getting a metal that has a supply and demand mismatch that is historical. It's got a massive tailwind in a bull market in gold coming its way. It will be a beta trade to gold. It will move faster when we get really clear signs that gold is now, again, not in a straight line, but gold is sectorally going in a much higher direction. Those who can afford silver will look at the 110 prices in the rearview mirror. Egon: It will go much, much higher. And they can pick their exits. The hardest part is knowing when to get out of a trade. But silver is not a trade. You wait for the gold-silver ratio to get the historical compressions. Then you sell your silver, and then you buy some gold. Or you cash out. But I mean, it's not a get-rich trade. It is a monetary metal in a time of monetary dysfunction. So of course, it's a good buy time right now, as this CME just handed us a fire sale. Why do you think central banks are stacking metals at historical highs? Because we engineered a short squeeze. We engineered a bailout. We price fixed the price down, and China's all too happy to buy it at a discount. I'm not a fan of the central banks, but do what they're doing. Buy the metal that they're going toward. Silver is still affordable. And I think the retail investor who gets spooked by shakeouts, if they understand the longer-term direction of metals, they won't be shaken out. And we all know that bull runs in gold have massive shakeouts along the way. From the classic example of 70 to 80, 1980, there were massive 20% corrections in gold and silver, and gold in particular, that shook out a lot of people. Halfway through that gold run in '74 to '76, gold was cut in half. Most people were shaken out of the trade. Peak gold, done. They missed out on an 8x move. For you to have the conviction to stay in a trade that's volatile and going more secularly north, you have to understand the bigger picture of supply and demand. You have to understand the bigger picture of gold now as the new collateral, as gold being trusted more than fiat money and IOUs and broken sovereigns. When you have that conviction, you won't be shaken out. And then you pick your exits, you buy more gold at the silver. But again, another long answer to a short question. I see silver and Egan and I talked about this. We need to talk more about silver because we're always talking about gold. Again, silver is volatile, but its secular direction and its price targeting is well above its recent highs. I wouldn't worry at all about that. If you stayed in it, hold it, it's going to go much higher. That's our strong, strong view.
Speaker 1Given everything we've discussed today, how would you approach portfolio construction in today's market environment? Would you be purely in physical metals and maybe cash? Are you looking at the miners at all, both gold and silver miners? Obviously, they've been performing well as of late. And if you think silver is going to go past 100 and that's going to be the new floor, then I think the silver miners in particular look very attractive here. But I'd love to hear your thoughts on how you would approach portfolio construction today.
Speaker 2You know, me, obviously at Von Greer, we're purely in this, the boring, conservative silver and gold, no equities, no leverage, no hypothecation. Just let it sit there, stare back at you and beat the dollar and beat the franc and beat the euro and beat the yen. And of course, I have friends like Frank Giustra who have done extremely well on the mining side, who just want to retire and read books and write their biographies. But even he says, come on, it's such a fat pitch right now for mining. The embedded leverage in mining is so extraordinary. If you pick your mining opportunities right, when gold really starts to rip, and it's already in the first chapters of that, the mining stocks are going to have massive multiples forward. Now, we at Von Greer's don't speculate that way. But I was just at the rules symposium this summer in Florida. The same companies that are just having massive free cash flow, and they're doing extremely well. And the spot price of gold is still infinitely higher than the production cost. But they were 40% off. And the sentiment in the mining space, was so low this summer. And again, everyone tells us to buy low and sell high. No one does it. But for smart people who understand the direction of gold and silver, the mining opportunities are huge. And you're getting 40% off this summer and still afraid, oh, we've hit peak gold or we've hit peak silver. Once you step back and understand the larger forces here, we're not even close to peak gold or peak silver. And therefore, the mining stocks, for many who have that speculation DNA and who understand gold and silver, create generational wealth. You have to pick those stocks and pick those royalty companies and pick those geographies very carefully. Pick the management very carefully. Because in the mining stocks, many years, they've had the highest free cash flowing of all stocks on the S&P. But they were the lowest sector because the street, the analysts don't trust the management of these companies. They don't trust the operations. So I'm not here to give stock picking advice on mining, but pick your minds carefully. Follow the smart money in that. And I think you'll do very well. In terms of how much gold or silver, the boring stuff that we love to own, you know, I'm reminded of a story of Egon. This was years ago. He was invited out to Australia to give a speech to an Australian audience. And before he got up on stage, there was, I think, someone from the World Gold Council there, obviously, you know, in favor of gold. This was before gold was really understood. And someone in the audience asked, what's a good allocation? And of course, like the street always says, you know, 5%, maybe 10% is a good allocation. Anything else means you're from another planet, you know. So that's what this was years ago when gold was that pawnshot asset, that pet rock. No one wanted to look further than 10 minutes ahead on where debt and currencies were going. And Egon came up right after him and he introduced himself. He said, my name is Egon von Drehertz and I'm from another planet. You know, in other words, he is Swiss. He understands gold far more long term. And 5% or 10% was not at all what he would put in gold. You know, now Egon would often say, you know, I think you should put as much money in gold as you can't afford to lose. He's highly concentrated in gold. And that's like the Swiss in general. They've survived two world wars and centuries of regime changes throughout Europe by having a minimum 20% in physical gold. And of that, you know, gold, they have about an 80-20 ratio of gold and silver. And that's very standard for the Swiss. For me, I'm not discrediting or disagreeing with Egon. I, as a Swiss, I'm not discrediting or disagreeing with Egon. I, as a former Wall Street guy, always think about the three biggest risks in any allocation. And that's timing, that's leverage and concentration risk. So I would never be totally concentrated in any one asset. But, you know, I think the 20% minimum for gold and then of that 20% have an 80-20 spread in silver is the minimum now. And I think more and more family offices, more and more commercial banks like Morgan Stanley are saying that. That's what's fascinating. That would have been unthinkable five years ago. Now Morgan Stanley is 20%. Bond traders like Jeffrey Gundlach are openly in favor of gold. Hell, our Treasury Secretary is openly in favor of gold. And I think these are just seismic shifts. In terms of other allocations besides a meaningful allocation to physical gold, well better than U.S. Treasury's, objectively better by 90%. In addition to having that strong allocation to gold, it's what you don't want to be in. Again, I used to invest with GMO and Jeremy Grantham. I've read a lot of Charlie McKay and Hussman about madness of crowds. I look at a topping S&P and I would get out of its way, even if you're years ahead and you're missing alpha in this. Because by every metric, every metric, in the sickly adjusted price to earnings ratio, by every metric, we're at 1929, pre-29 levels, almost to dot-com levels of overvaluation. Like Berkshire Hathaway, I would just get out of its way. You could argue that the Fed could just nationalize the stock market and give you returns. And the Fed, if it's loose money, if it's providing liquidity, even this historically unprecedented market bubble could go higher. What I'm saying is the downside risk in this market, this equity market, globally and in the S&P, the Dow and the NASDAQ, is so much higher than the upside risk that part of my allocation would be just to get out of its way, get out of its way. There's others who just want to chase tops. And Chase Alpha, that's up to them and their profile. I just think there's far more downside risk than upside reward. So I would get out of that market. I would go into very short duration treasuries at all as a cash equivalent. You're still not going to beat inflation. And I would wait for a mean reversion and buy low and sell high. But, you know, again, there's an argument to be made that the stock market is now immortal. Technically, you can buy every dip with printed dollars and you can get a 20 percent return in U.S. dollar terms would be down negative in gold terms. But that's not the case. You can buy every dip with printed dollars and you can get a 20 percent return in U.S. dollar terms. So that's up to each investor. The other thing I would say is hard assets in general, not just precious metals, of course, precious metals. But you have to look at a graph that Ronnie Sturfield, I think it was two or three years ago, he came out and he said this could be the chart of a decade. And it was the commodities to equity ratio. I wish I had it, but you can find it. Ronnie Sturfield, the chart of the decade. And again, it was what we never see, but we're always told buy low, sell high. And it was so obvious that so few people actually have the courage to do it. They wait for confirmation and highs before they enter a trade. But it's just looking at decades of the ratio of the commodity space in general and the equity space. And when equities are high, commodities are on sale. And even then, you saw this massive disparity between equities and commodities. They were generational lows. No one wants to touch them because they have to get a return every quarter, every year to feel smart. But if you really want to play the long run, you want to play the long run, you want to play the long run, you want to play the long run, because even though there could be recessionary impacts on hard assets, they're going to outperform equities historically. So it's, again, avoiding a stock bubble, avoiding chasing tops, looking at bottoms and hard assets, obviously precious metals. I would avoid the long end of the bond curve. I would avoid private credit. I would avoid private equity, those tricks that the banks are trying to sell you. I would avoid the tech bubble now, but I would say to anyone looking at the tech bubble or AI, of course, it's revolutionary. My advice to them is look at the net income margins on those stocks. Watch them as they're going up. And as they go sideways, you can still be in that trade. The moment you see a consistent decline, moving to average decline in net income margins, get out of that AI bubble. I get the temptation to chase that bubble. But again, I think if you really want to understand this, and by the way, certain real estate, not commercial real estate, but farmland, there's other allocations you can make besides precious metals. But I think if you just go to your broker, anyone listening, go to your broker, whether it's a big bank and a private wealth management of Goldman Sachs, or whether it's a small RIA in Redding, Pennsylvania, and they show you your returns, just ask them to reprice your returns in gold and go backwards five or 10, 20 years in gold. And you'll see that what Egon said at a wedding in 2000 was absolutely spot on. This is not gold bug kooking. Build a portfolio. Build a portfolio. Build a portfolio. Around sound money, around hard assets, and avoiding paper bubbles in meme stocks and in tech trends that, again, revolutionary, but they always go from being overbought to oversold. Pick your exits very carefully and don't think this time is different.
Speaker 1It's not. Tell us about your work at Von Greyer's and what it is you do there.
Speaker 2You know, we do so many things there. We do a lot of interviews, obviously, but we're always talking to clients and we're always thinking about how to make our services better, how to improve everything from the service side to our website, to our client interaction, to our geographical models and looking at jurisdictional risks. So we do a lot of interviews. We do a lot of interviews. lot that's not seen behind the curtains we do a hell of a lot we've got partners that don't get seen on tv or on youtube uh like nicholas rodell a multilingual finance director who does so much uh and things like that or our inside inside trading desk run by johnny beck who's a genius trader that gives us much better price on the metals out of the swiss refiner most of the gold and silvers are fine in the world we've got logistics teams so we're there's so much more than just macro views but we want to educate egon myself advisors like grant williams or ronnie stirfle or alistair mcleod we want to also be good fiduciaries not just to our clients but to anyone who can understand sound money so we do a lot of interviews we write a lot of articles to keep people educated informed rather than confused partisan or emotional and it's easy to be emotional right now how can you not be emotional right now but we want to keep it simple because we want to educate people it's usually a derivative of economics military and economics and politics are all tied together currencies are all tied together so our website has a whole insights page where you can read articles look at old interviews you can go to our why gold page and look at some white papers and educate yourself and you can also fact test and challenge our opinions which i recommend on any asset class but um the more you do that the more you won't feel like you're being talked to by the sell side the more you realize sound money makes sense the more you're realize debt has an impact on currencies the more you realize that any politician whether they're santa claus or trump or mother teresa can't save you from the currency debasement that's already happening the more you realize that you'll have more conviction in your allocations and in your decisions at our website and what we do there on the forward-facing public facing education education inform inform inform behind the scenes it's just a lot of client servicing and it's a lot of careful jurisdiction discussions interest rate discussions talking more about silver right now because we see a trend there uh it's a lot of client interaction but we have a we have a very concentrated high net worth client base and they deserve our individual attention that's what's not seen it's talking to the clients it's helping them make decisions that's why our services are so unique and why our minimums are so high again we're not for everyone but everyone can get educated on gold and silver and uh that's what egon myself all of us all our partners are trying to teach people
Speaker 1right now great well i'm going to put a link in the description below to the von grayer's website check that out as always matthew fantastic insights thank you so much for coming on the show
Speaker 2as always it's a pleasure talking with you jesse i look forward to it thank you for joining us
Speaker 1today on commodity culture earn up to a four percent annual yield on your physical gold paid in gold ounces through monetary metals go to monetary dashmetals.com slash commodity to find out how to put your gold to work for you link is in the show notes below
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