Oct 1, 2026

Around 155 BC, Athens sent the philosopher Carneades to Rome to plead for a fine to be lifted. He delivered a brilliant speech and swayed the audience. The next day he returned to the same square and delivered an equally impassioned speech making the opposite point, and swayed them all over again. Cato the Elder was in...

Sep 17, 2026

The US is running a 6% budget deficit in peacetime. Peacetime is now over. Interest on our debt now costs more than defense. It crossed in 2024 and has stayed there.

This is the second half of my letter to IMA clients, and it argues for an asset I spent most of my career politely ignoring: gold. The fact that I am...

Sep 9, 2026

In mid-August 2026, the 30-year Treasury yield hit its highest level in 19 years, above 5.3%, and the 10-year touched 4.75%. What happened next did not shock me, but it worries me: the US Treasury bought back its own long bonds to push yields down, financing the purchase by issuing short-term Treasuries. Yields fell for...

Jul 31, 2026

Anthropic's revenue has grown nearly 10x a year, three years running. Its losses are accelerating with it. And here is Dario Amodei in February: "If my revenue is not 1 trillion dollars, if it's even $800 billion, there's no force on earth, there's no hedge on earth that could stop me from going bankrupt if I buy that...

Jul 23, 2026

My wife and I are taking a perfectly good 25-year-old house and spending 20% of the purchase price on a sizable remodel. Parts of it are going back to the studs. I had never done a big remodel, I knew nothing about construction, and I was shocked by how many landmines, wrong decisions, and outright deceptions we had to...