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Paradigm Pressroom’s 5 Bullets is a daily e-letter covering the economy and the markets, reaching 120,000 paying subscribers of the renowned financial publishing firm Paradigm Press.

Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

In January, Mason Sexton made a daring prediction: Vladimir Putin would not survive 2025. “We weren’t speaking metaphorically.”

Bigger Than Israel-Iran

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />&ldquo;The Street Loves Blood&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Whatever your opinion of the Israel-Iran war &mdash; or American involvement in it &mdash; one thing is evident: Chances are good it will be bullish for the U.S. stock market.
As we write this morning, about two dozen U.S. aerial refueling tankers are crossing the Atlantic toward the Middle East. The aircraft carrier USS Nimitz is also on its way to the region.
On the other hand, Iran supposedly is ready to sue for peace. &ldquo;Messages passed by Tehran through intermediaries seek a return to talks if the U.S. stays out of the fight,&rdquo; says the subhead to a Wall Street Journal article posted at midmorning.
On the other-other hand, the lead reporter on that story&rsquo;s byline has a checkered history &mdash; accused of fabricating stories during her time at Reuters.
More about the problem with the war and the media later. First, some remarkable market history&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;The Street loves blood&rdquo; is an old Wall Street saying.
And it&rsquo;s what came to mind for Paradigm&rsquo;s Mason Sexton on Friday. In a dispatch to readers of The Map, he noticed some uncanny market parallels when looking back at major Israeli wars over the last 50 years&hellip;
<ul>
<li>Six-Day War, June 1967: From a level of around 860, the Dow Industrials rallied steadily to nearly 1,000 by late 1968</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Yom Kippur War, October 1973: A short rally of only a few days, but a rally nonetheless (preceding a grinding bear market that lasted into late 1974)</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Israeli invasion of Lebanon, June-September 1982: From a level in the low 800s, the Dow launched into an epic bull market that August &mdash; running well past 11,000 before the dot-com bust arrived in early 2000. (Way back when, Mason called the start of that rally almost to the day)</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Israel-Hezbollah war, July-August 2006: The Dow began a sustained rise that summer from about 11,200 to a peak near 14,000 in late 2007 (as the early stages of the global financial crisis were underway).</li>
</ul>
So&hellip; four rallies, one lasting only a few days, one lasting 18 years, two that lasted well over a year before the market made a major top.
How will the pattern play out this time?
Or is this the time the pattern breaks?
Well, we don&rsquo;t want to give too much away. If you&rsquo;re a subscriber to The Map, you&rsquo;re already familiar with what Mr. Sexton sees just over the horizon.
If you&rsquo;re not, you should know that this week he&rsquo;s conducting a new edition of his wildly popular briefing from last March called The Prophecy.

This time, he&rsquo;s delivering what Paradigm publisher Matt Insley calls a &ldquo;terrifyingly specific prediction.&rdquo;
You don&rsquo;t want to dismiss that as hyperbole. Recall the bit I mentioned moments ago about how he nailed the start of an 18-year bull market in 1982? He forecast &ldquo;a massive rally in stocks&rdquo; on Aug. 9, 1982.
Three days later, the Dow hit a bottom that would never be seen again.
He called the top of that bull run in early 2000 as well &mdash; along with the tops and bottoms of the global financial crisis and COVID.
What&rsquo;s coming now? This new edition of The Prophecy gets underway this Wednesday at 1:27 p.m. EDT. (There&rsquo;s a significance to the odd start time &mdash; but to see why, you&rsquo;ll have to sign up to watch.)
We do ask that you sign up in advance to watch this one. <a href="https://signups.paradigmpress.me/2450494">But sign-up is as simple as clicking this link.</a> We&rsquo;ll send you an email with everything you need to know to be ready Wednesday.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />The Alfred E. Neuman Market
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />True to the pattern just described, the U.S. stock market is rallying today &mdash; as if to take a page from Mad magazine icon Alfred E. Neuman: &ldquo;What, me worry?&rdquo;
After closing last week below 6,000, the S&amp;P 500 is up 1.1% on the day to 6,042. The Dow&rsquo;s gain is about the same, the Nasdaq&rsquo;s gain over 1.5%. Bonds, meanwhile, are looking flat.
The commodity complex is taking a rest after its initial spike when Israel began bombing Iran Thursday night. At last check, crude has pulled back $2.43 to $70.55.
Gold is barely holding on to the $3,400 level &mdash; but silver is up a few cents to $36.30.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Bitcoin seems unmoved by news of a new crypto ETF announced by the media arm of the president&rsquo;s business empire.
Trump Media has filed the registration papers with the SEC: The &ldquo;Truth Social Bitcoin and Ethereum ETF&rdquo; will hold 75% of its assets in Bitcoin and 25% in Ethereum.
The ETF&rsquo;s custodian will be crypto.com. No word on what ticker symbol the ETF might trade under.
Bitcoin is holding steady this morning at $107,567. Ditto for Ethereum at $2,641.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />The Monster That Ate the Power Grid, Continued
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />For the record: AI now poses the biggest challenge to the stability of the power grid.
We&rsquo;ve been warning about <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-monster-that-ate-the-power-grid-ai">&ldquo;the monster that ate the power grid&rdquo;</a> for nearly 18 months now. It&rsquo;s one reason that large swaths of the country are <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/bungee-market#3">at risk of rolling blackouts</a> in case this summer turns extra hot.
Now comes the annual &ldquo;State of Reliability Report&rdquo; from the nonprofit North American Electric Reliability Corporation. It warns that the construction of data centers is proceeding at such a furious pace that power plants and transmission lines simply can&rsquo;t keep up.
Result? &ldquo;Lower system stability,&rdquo; says the report.
That&rsquo;s because data centers don&rsquo;t always require the same amount of juice at the same time. Already there&rsquo;s been trouble in northern Virginia&rsquo;s &ldquo;Data Center Alley&rdquo; &mdash; where voltage issues resulted in about 1.5 gigawatts of datacenters tripping offline last July, and 1.8 gigawatts this past February.
&ldquo;A loss of load of this size is comparable to a large nuclear power plant coming on-line immediately and unexpectedly,&rdquo; says the report, &ldquo;creating an imbalance due to too much generation on the system.&rdquo;
As we&rsquo;ve mentioned in recent weeks, the Trump administration is addressing some of the problem by ordering certain coal-fired power plants to remain open past their scheduled shutdown dates. More &ldquo;baseload&rdquo; power, more stability. (More about that in today&rsquo;s mailbag.)
Too, the White House is looking to revoke Biden-era rules governing the carbon emissions by power plants.
But the latter of those two steps is likely to face court challenges. To be continued&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />The News&hellip; and the &ldquo;Fog of War&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;Be wary of &lsquo;the news.&rsquo; Much of it is noise,&rdquo; warns our own Byron King about news from the war zones.
Byron is our expert on energy and mining stocks &mdash; but he says this with the authority of a 30-year background as a Navy flight officer, graduate of the Naval War College and former staffer with the Chief of Naval Operations.
He&rsquo;s seeing &ldquo;plenty of ignorant commentary from people who have next-to-zero knowledge. Even if they know something, it's not much. Plenty of disinformation.&nbsp;
&ldquo;Iran-Israel both are incentivized to spread propaganda. Innumerable outsiders have an interest in confusing everyone &amp; everything. And think of the potential for market manipulation.
&ldquo;It gets back to the old military adage about how &lsquo;first reports from the front are almost always wrong.&rsquo; Much of the war is happening at night, and/or very much cyber &amp; electronic. You likely will not know what's happening even if you are standing right there (e.g., &lsquo;on the spot&rsquo; reporters).
&ldquo;And things are happening at algorithm-like speeds because many systems are primed for things to happen at the speed of circuitry. Human eyeballs-brains are too slow. Look at every news item and begin by thinking that it's wrong, and take it from there.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />I&rsquo;ll add my own warning, drawing from 20 years practicing daily journalism before I moved into the financial publishing space.
For as valuable as X-formerly-Twitter can be as an alternative source of breaking news&hellip; Elon Musk did a grave disservice a while back when he made it nearly impossible for users to include external links in their original posts.
Musk&rsquo;s decision gave rise to thousands of slop accounts that post &ldquo;BREAKING NEWS&rdquo; &mdash; often as not just making make s*** up for the sake of clicks.
Case in point: Friday night an account called &ldquo;Merlin Capital&rdquo; posted: &ldquo;BREAKING: IRAN DECLARES STRAIGHT [sic] OF HORMUZ CLOSED.&rdquo;
Huge if true; over 20% of the global oil trade transits that slender waterway. But there was nothing to it.
Or this&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5V8Etq1YEJpZaeFj38O9wP/22639027df66267dca57dd5eaad0f1fe/HomelandSecurityTweet.png" alt="Homeland Tweet" width="540px" />
All too often, ordinarily sensible people will reflexively repost this sort of thing because it fuels their confirmation bias.
More than once, individuals I trust have reposted utter nonsense &mdash; and I have to go chase it down to see if there&rsquo;s any source behind it.
It&rsquo;s one thing when the story is about Ukraine&rsquo;s leader Zelenskyy <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/mainstream-muddies-the-waters-inflation#4">buying a </a><a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/mainstream-muddies-the-waters-inflation#4">choice</a><a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/mainstream-muddies-the-waters-inflation#4"> piece of property</a> from the British royal family. It&rsquo;s another thing when World War III is looming&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" /> Mailbag: Costly Electricity, Gold and &ldquo;Basel III&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />After our previous mention of the feds stepping in to keep coal-fired power plants open, we heard from a longtime reader&hellip;
&ldquo;Your bullet questioned the additional cost to consumers resulting from the Department of Energy order.
&ldquo;As one of those consumers (I live within driving distance from the J.H. Campbell plant in Michigan), local news reports that complying with the order suddenly creates the need for major maintenance and upgrades that weren't getting done with the facility only days from final shutdown.
&ldquo;To which I would also consider the increased cost of coal at spot prices rather than continuous contract.
&ldquo;Ignoring solar and storage, it looks like the Campbell plant had pretty much been replaced by the purchase of a gas-fired plant for the local grid (1,200 MW plus two standby units vs the 1,560 MW peak for Campbell).&nbsp;
&ldquo;While the additional baseload power could be handy as electricity demand increases, the increasing strain on my pocketbook in this instance feels like a triumph of doctrine over common sense.&rdquo;
Dave responds: All good points. It&rsquo;s the folly of central planning and top-down solutions for the Obama and Biden administrations to effectively order the shutdown of these plants. Not sure if it can be fixed with still more central planning and top-down solutions&hellip; but that&rsquo;s the route the Trump administration is going.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> While the gold price consolidates and the silver price plays catch-up, a reader writes from western Canada&hellip;
&ldquo;Will the Basel III directive on July 1 revalue central bank gold reserves?
&ldquo;Which central banks need to comply with Basel III? The Bank of England indicates it is not part of the Basel III framework for example.
&ldquo;Has the Basel III date of compliance been postponed?
&ldquo;We haven't heard much about the Basel III issue from you guys.&rdquo;
Dave: Well now, speaking of news you can&rsquo;t necessarily believe&hellip;
There&rsquo;ve been many rumors during 2025 surrounding the implementation of banking regulations known as &ldquo;Basel III&rdquo; &mdash; the third in a series of international rules drawn up over the years by the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland. (The BIS is often called &ldquo;the central banks&rsquo; central bank.&rdquo;)
Supposedly, gold was to be elevated to a &ldquo;Tier 1 High Quality Liquid Asset&rdquo; as of July 1 this year.
That would mean U.S. banks, when toting up their core capital reserves, could count physical gold at 100% of its market value. At present, it&rsquo;s marked down by 50% as a &ldquo;Tier 3 asset.&rdquo;
If true, this reclassification would mark a sea change in how the mandarins of the global financial system look upon gold &mdash; not as a &ldquo;risky&rdquo; hunk of metal, but as money.
But about a month ago, the London Bullion Market Association <a href="https://www.lbma.org.uk/articles/gold-and-hqla-correcting-misleading-online-information">poured a 55-gallon drum of ice water</a> on this chatter.
It seems gold is already a &ldquo;Tier 1&rdquo; asset &mdash; but it&rsquo;s not recognized as a &ldquo;High Quality Liquid Asset,&rdquo; nor will it be in the immediate future. The LBMA along with the World Gold Council are lobbying hard for gold&rsquo;s recognition as a &ldquo;High Quality Liquid Asset&rdquo; &mdash; as well it should be &mdash; but we&rsquo;re not there yet.
Exactly where the July 1 rumor originated is hard to say &mdash; at least while we&rsquo;re crashing deadline today. (Maybe a slop account on X?)
The point is that the rumor pulled in even some of the most knowledgeable people in the precious metals space, people who&rsquo;ve been on my radar for 15 years or longer &mdash; before the LBMA did its mid-May debunking.
That&rsquo;s how hard it is to separate rumor from reality these days. It&rsquo;s impossible to be too careful&hellip;
Best regards,
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/signatures/dave-gonigam.png" alt="Dave Gonigam" width="250px" align="left" />
Dave Gonigam Managing editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

shutterstock 2084377243

Here are some uncanny market parallels when looking back at major Israeli wars over the last 50 years… 

4 Wars = 4 Market Rallies (No. 5 Starting Now?)

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />&ldquo;The Wars We Never Get Into&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end,&rdquo; said Donald Trump on Inauguration Day 2025 &mdash; &ldquo;and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.&rdquo;
Yeah, about that&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6N7ByNjvUVY8o1oLaMm8ux/44912ca685c4e6b7b5237afe055e6b19/Michael-tweet.png" alt="michael tweet" width="540px" />
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Israel&rsquo;s attack on Iran last night has propelled the oil price to nearly $74 a barrel &mdash; a level last seen in late January.
<blockquote>➢ In contrast to the usual pattern &mdash; &ldquo;buy the rumor, sell the news&rdquo; &mdash; the reaction here has been to buy both the rumor and the news.</blockquote>
We won&rsquo;t dwell on the particulars of Israel&rsquo;s attack; either you&rsquo;ve seen them already, or if not you can read about them nearly anywhere.
Tel Aviv bills its action as &ldquo;preemptive,&rdquo; which begs the question: What looming Iranian attack were the Israelis were trying to &ldquo;preempt&rdquo;?
In any event, the last time Iran sustained an attack of this magnitude on its territory was during the Iran-Iraq War &mdash; which ended in 1988. If mainstream accounts are to be believed, Iran&rsquo;s vaunted air defenses turned out to be a bust.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> The narrative about U.S. involvement shifted dramatically in only 12 hours.
The original narrative last night was that Israel freelanced this attack &mdash; sabotaging U.S. diplomacy in the process. Talks between U.S. and Iranian negotiators were set for this Sunday; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went and wrecked all that.
This morning, Trump told The Wall Street Journal, among other outlets, that he was well aware of the Israeli government&rsquo;s intentions before the attack was ever launched &mdash; despite his own public and private warnings to Netanyahu to back off. &ldquo;Heads-up? It wasn&rsquo;t a heads-up. It was, we know what&rsquo;s going on.&rdquo;
Which is worse? Israel going behind Trump&rsquo;s back &mdash; or Israel and Trump conducting an elaborate ruse to make the Iranians think Washington was sincere about wanting to negotiate?
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1jpDqrvi33kt3EP6mudMZd/d8032e0d77ec598cf7bbc1bc4f53673a/SaagarTweet.png" alt="saagar tweet" width="540px" />
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> So now what? The Israelis are promising several more days of airstrikes. &ldquo;Israel knows it cannot eliminate Iran&rsquo;s nuclear program alone, or even set it back for more than a few months,&rdquo; tweets the independent journalist Max Blumenthal &mdash; &ldquo;so it aims to ignite a regional war that draws the U.S. into direct conflict.&rdquo;
Adds Trita Parsi of the nonpartisan Quincy Institute: &ldquo;In his speech during the attack on Iran, Netanyahu thanked Trump. He is doing his utmost to convince Tehran that the U.S. was in on the attack &mdash; hoping Iran retaliates against the U.S., so that Israel can get the U.S.-Iran war it has been pushing for since the early 2000s.&rdquo;
Reminder: For all of Trump&rsquo;s alleged antipathy toward U.S. military involvement in the Middle East, over 40,000 U.S. troops are stationed there. This map from Axios isn&rsquo;t 100% up to date, but it&rsquo;s close enough&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/185Xn0TB7AfL7YcvWOh2OB/d5e29ce0cb531beca06706c5d6ccc972/MilitaryMap.png" alt="military map" width="540px" />
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> The problem for Trump now is that there&rsquo;s been no effort to sell the American people on the necessity of putting U.S. troops at risk.
Contrast that with the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 &mdash; which was preceded by a relentless propaganda campaign lasting over six months.
It comes back to Trump&rsquo;s inaugural statement cited up top &mdash; and his messaging throughout the 2024 campaign, railing against forever wars in the region.
Escalation against Iran &ldquo;would be seen as an unforgivable betrayal by millions of American voters,&rdquo; tweeted The Federalist&rsquo;s editor-in-chief Mollie Hemingway only yesterday.
&ldquo;It would cost him real polling support that would be permanent.&rdquo;
And not just among the independent voters who put him over the top in the seven swing states on Election Day last year. Trump&rsquo;s own base is deeply split &mdash; largely on generational lines.
&ldquo;Boomercons&rdquo; with cable subscriptions who watch Sean Hannity and Mark Levin? They&rsquo;re all on board for war. But younger generations who stream videos of Xers like Tucker Carlson, and millennials like Candace Owens and Cassandra MacDonald? They want nothing to do with it.
(Yes, I&rsquo;m generalizing but you get the point. There&rsquo;s <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/majority-americans-hold-unfavourable-view-israel-pew-poll-finds">polling data</a> to back this up.)
Here&rsquo;s the scary thing: If large swaths of the American people and even Trump&rsquo;s own supporters aren&rsquo;t sold&hellip; then the risk is extreme that we&rsquo;ll soon see some kind of bogus <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident">Gulf of Tonkin</a> or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Maine_(1890)#Sinking">&ldquo;Remember the Maine&rdquo;</a> incident involving a U.S. warship or U.S. base. Works every time&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Let&rsquo;s hope and pray cooler heads will prevail. But as the saying goes, hope is not a plan. 
We said it in this space only 10 days ago after the Ukrainian drone attack deep inside Russia: However many hedges against geopolitical risk you hold in your portfolio, it&rsquo;s probably not enough.
We&rsquo;re talking oil, gold, silver, copper, uranium &mdash; tangible wealth and the companies that produce it. Personally, I still need to beef up my silver holdings via the Sprott Physical Silver Trust (PSLV) &mdash; I&rsquo;ll continue my dollar-cost averaging today, even with silver prices hovering at a 12-year high.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />The Markets Today (And Walmart&rsquo;s Bad Week)
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />In contrast with the commodity complex, stocks and bonds aren&rsquo;t taking the news from the Middle East well.
Among the major indexes, the S&amp;P 500 is holding up best &mdash; down about two-thirds of a percent and clinging to the 6,000 level by closely cropped fingernails. The Nasdaq&rsquo;s losses are steeper, the Dow&rsquo;s steeper still. Volatility as measured by the VIX has spiked to 19.61, the highest since before Memorial Day.
Bonds are likewise selling off, pushing yields higher. The yield on a 10-year Treasury note is over 4.41%, up sharply from yesterday&rsquo;s close under 4.36%. <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-real-reason-for-the-tariff-pause">As was the case in April</a>, Treasuries are not fulfilling their usual safe-haven role amid a crisis atmosphere.
Oil we covered earlier. Gold has rallied sharply &mdash; up 1.25% or $43 to $3,426. Bitcoin is also staging a solid rally after a severe smackdown yesterday; checking our screens it&rsquo;s back to $105,569.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> It&rsquo;s been a lousy week for Walmart &mdash; down 2.6% Wednesday and Thursday amid a nascent boycott campaign.
It began with a full-page ad in The New York Times for the nationwide &ldquo;No Kings&rdquo; protests against Donald Trump set for tomorrow. Paying for the ad was a billionaire scioness of the Walton family, Christy Walton.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2L8K1emfV28EEKuNErOn7k/97fd0c6e0c4b48dc3cf4a0908b3515dc/NoKings.png" alt="no kings" width="540px" />
&ldquo;Boycott Walmart!&rdquo; tweeted the MAGA-adjacent political operator Roger Stone.
Walmart, for its part, says it was blindsided. &ldquo;The advertisements from Christy Walton are in no way connected to or endorsed by Walmart,&rdquo; says a company spokeswoman.
The former Christy Tallant married into the Walton fortune in 1978. Her husband, John, was one of founder Sam Walton&rsquo;s sons; he died in a small plane crash in 2005. Christy Walton has no role in running the company or even any of the family trusts. Now 76, she lives in the well-heeled center-left enclave of Jackson Hole, Wyoming (because of course).
Hard telling to what extent Roger Stone&rsquo;s clarion call is catching on; after the beat-down the last two days, WMT shares are flat today.
But Walmart execs can&rsquo;t be happy, thinking they&rsquo;d put conservative protests behind them last year. <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/peak-woke">As we chronicled</a> at the time, the company backed away from some of its more &ldquo;woke&rdquo; endeavors under pressure from activists like Robby Starbuck and Christopher Rufo.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />&ldquo;This Is Amnesty&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Even before Israel&rsquo;s attack on Iran, this stunning news yesterday got lost in the shuffle of other events&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1qYd81Ff0AHw84fWtzyA4t/395076aea78c111b101d254d73a9d453/AFPost.png" alt="af post" width="540px" />
Yesterday morning, the president posted on social media that &ldquo;Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace&hellip; Changes are coming!&rdquo;
By afternoon, he was telling reporters an executive order is in the works. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re not citizens, but they&rsquo;ve turned out to be great&hellip; We can&rsquo;t take [all of the employers&rsquo;] people and send them back.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;This is amnesty,&rdquo; tweets The Federalist&rsquo;s John Daniel Davidson.
As with the Israeli airstrikes on Iran, pockets of MAGA Nation are beside themselves: &ldquo;What Trump is describing here is amnesty for illegal immigrants,&rdquo; Davidson goes on. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s also making a declaration that businesses that openly flout US immigration law (for decades!) will face no consequences.&rdquo;
Another effect is pointed out by talk show host Mike Church: &ldquo;You also will not have local and regional farmers &amp; restaurateurs able to be competitive with multinationals until EVERYONE is hiring from the same, legal pool!&rdquo;
Gee, what was it your editor was saying at the end of <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/gold-vs-bitcoin">Wednesday&rsquo;s edition</a>? When I pointed out that meatpackers and big hotel chains weren&rsquo;t getting raided by ICE?
Oh yeah: &ldquo;See how it works? The Fortune 500 skates. Meanwhile, ICE descends on a small business in LA&rsquo;s Fashion District, along with a Home Depot parking lot where migrants look for day jobs &mdash; and suddenly all hell breaks loose. Trump gets his showdown with teh libruls&hellip; large employers of illegal migrants carry on as usual&hellip; and <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/its-not-just-the-illegals">Palantir makes bank</a> while law-abiding citizens will soon be subject to new horrors of surveillance.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Gold or Bitcoin: Why Not Both?
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Time is short, but we want to expend two of our bullets on the mailbag as the week draws to a close&hellip;
On the subject of gold vs. Bitcoin <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/gold-vs-bitcoin">addressed here Wednesday</a>, a reader writes: &ldquo;Why consider them as mutually exclusive?
&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve subscribed to several independent investor newsletters for about a decade now. So I&rsquo;m no expert investor by a long shot.
&ldquo;But I thought it was good to have some diversity in your investments. Is one better than another as far as gold and cryptos go as a non-dollar asset? I think each has its benefit. I have portions of precious metals (not just gold) and some coins in the crypto space.
&ldquo;Yes, including Bitcoin. I bought some initially in the 2017 era.
&ldquo;I have made more money in just Bitcoin that far outweighs any stock I have ever owned (unrealized gains or not). This includes using financial advisers and my own independent investing. I don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;m biased. I&rsquo;m trying to be prudent.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;Best wishes for a great gathering in Nashville in October,&rdquo; a reader writes from Nashville ahead of the 2025 Paradigm Shift Summit. &ldquo;Enjoy your stay.
&ldquo;Been here 61 years and the city has changed just a bit. The weather should be getting right. Business pulls me away on that day, but enjoy the stay and keep the content coming and the presses running.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />What&rsquo;s in a Name?
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;Dave, I think those doofi at McKinsey goofed on one major point when Warner Bros. and Discovery merged, at their malignant suggestion,&rdquo; a reader writes after <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/gold-vs-bitcoin#4">Wednesday&rsquo;s foray into financial absurdity</a>.
[As an aside, this reader indicates he&rsquo;s already signed up to join us in Nashville. Click here for your invitation.]
&ldquo;The obvious error was in choosing the name of the combined company. They got it bass-ackward; it should have been named Discover Warner Bros. The name itself would have been a suggestion of what the company wanted people to do. But since it was named backward, no one was ready to listen. Instead, we were given the lamest possible name for the combined company, and it didn't even tell their stockholders what to do.
&ldquo;Also, if they did choose Discover Warner Brothers, then their stock symbol would probably have been DWB, which would be close enough to calling them &lsquo;Dweeb.&rsquo;&rdquo;
Dave: Hmmm&hellip; The problem there is that the legacy company, pre-merger, wasn&rsquo;t called &ldquo;Discover.&rdquo; It was &ldquo;Discovery,&rdquo; after its namesake Discovery Channel.
But&hellip;
Your musings do bring to mind the classic Saturday Night Live sketches called &ldquo;World of Discover&rdquo; &mdash; featuring the phenomenal Phil Hartman sending up Peter Graves.
Please, let&rsquo;s end this hell week on a lighter note&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4Re8oDtw0FJV9CBg5TRW3n/dfab713fcc9aeeae0642733710e244e1/youtube-snl.png" alt="youtube" width="450px" />
And try to have a good weekend,
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/signatures/dave-gonigam.png" alt="Dave Gonigam" width="250px" align="left" />
Dave Gonigam Managing editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

trump-wars

We won’t dwell on the particulars of Israel’s attack on Iran, but the narrative about U.S. involvement shifted dramatically in only 12 hours.

“The Wars We Never Get Into” 

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />&ldquo;Summer of Hell&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> As the day winds down, the markets face a pregnant pause &mdash; trading closes tomorrow for Juneteenth, reopening Friday. In between, U.S. forces might become fully engaged in a hot war.
We&rsquo;re coming to you a bit later than usual in the afternoon because Paradigm contributor Mason Sexton just wrapped up the Summer 2025 edition of <a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2451775">his presentation called </a><a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2451775">The Prophecy</a>.
A &ldquo;summer of hell&rdquo; he&rsquo;s expecting for the markets. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a chance stocks could drop 10&ndash;15% &mdash; &ldquo;in a matter of days!&rdquo; he says. And up to 30% additional downside after that.
It could all start as early as Friday.

If you want to see his rationale, <a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2451775">we encourage you to click here and watch a replay of the event right away</a>.

<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Here&rsquo;s what&rsquo;s sticking in your editor&rsquo;s mind this afternoon &mdash; something that haunts me from when Mr. Sexton did his spring edition of The Prophecy in March.
Then too he was expecting a steep downdraft in the market &mdash; which is exactly what happened in early April.
The catalyst turned out to be the president&rsquo;s &ldquo;Liberation Day&rdquo; tariff announcement. But as Mason explained at the time, the market was primed for a fall and the catalyst could have been anything. One day I mused over the myriad possibilities. One of those possibilities was&hellip;
&hellip; Donald Trump unleashing the U.S. military on Iran.
I cited the independent journalist Ken Klippenstein: &ldquo;President Trump&rsquo;s menu of options for dealing with Tehran now includes one he didn&rsquo;t have in his first term,&rdquo; he wrote: &ldquo;full-scale war&hellip;
&ldquo;While a range of military options are often provided to presidents in a passive-aggressive attempt on the part of the Pentagon to steer them to the one favored by the brass, Trump already has shown his proclivity to select the most provocative option.&rdquo;
Klippenstein said even nuclear weapons are on the table &mdash; according to &ldquo;a retired senior military officer who has been briefed on the planning.&rdquo;
Escalation to nukes would happen one of two ways: &ldquo;One, with the CENTCOM commander &lsquo;requesting&rsquo; the use of nuclear weapons, mostly to stave off Iranian conventional military success; and two, in a &lsquo;top down&rsquo; order, that is, by the president, mostly as a &lsquo;demonstration&rsquo; to &lsquo;signal&rsquo; to Iran.&rdquo;
And here we are, three months later.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Again, we&rsquo;re entering a delicate window with the holiday tomorrow. 
More than once over the last couple of years, major U.S. military action in the Middle East has come while markets are closed. The pattern is too frequent to write off to chance. Last year, U.S. forces launched airstrikes against &ldquo;Iran-linked&rdquo; targets in Iraq and Syria literally the instant the market closed at 4:00 p.m. Eastern on a Friday.

Moments ago during The Prophecy, Mason said <a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2451775">there&rsquo;s still time to take protective measures</a> in your portfolio &mdash; but not much. By the time the market reopens on Friday morning, it could be too late.
Of course, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. <a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2451775">We invite you to watch the replay of </a><a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2451775">The Prophecy </a><a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2451775">right away</a> and decide for yourself.

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />The Thing About &ldquo;Unconditional Surrender&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />And so the markets are on tenterhooks awaiting the next big development &mdash; more likely from Washington than from the war zone itself.
&ldquo;Nobody knows what I&rsquo;m going to do,&rdquo; the president told reporters this morning.
Which is not exactly new &mdash; on this matter or any other &mdash; but the present moment is more serious than whether Lower Slobbovia will be subject to 10% tariffs or 20%.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> In retrospect, it&rsquo;s a fair question whether Donald Trump was goaded into threatening hot war because of all the TACO talk.
In case you hadn&rsquo;t heard, over the past few weeks there was increasing chatter on both Wall Street and social media about &ldquo;TACO&rdquo; &mdash; short for &ldquo;Trump always chickens out.&rdquo;
At first, it was applied to the on-again, off-again tariffs. But soon, leading Democrats picked up on it to needle the president about&hellip; negotiating with Iran.
Here&rsquo;s the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, 16 days ago&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/39PfWsk95F4r0beJgz7uEL/f96d6bb697b3de9b503e05bf190df24c/ChuckTweet.png" alt="chuck tweet" width="540px" />
<blockquote>➢ Program note: Paradigm Publisher Matt Insley had the lowdown on this MAGA rift in <a href="https://newsyoucanacton.com/posts/tucker-trump-and-magas-rift">this morning&rsquo;s edition of </a><a href="https://newsyoucanacton.com/posts/tucker-trump-and-magas-rift">The Rundown</a>, and The Daily Reckoning&rsquo;s Adam Sharp will also take on the topic later this afternoon.</blockquote>
As you&rsquo;re likely aware, a series of increasingly manic social media posts by the president climaxed yesterday with a demand for &ldquo;UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER&rdquo; from Tehran.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;Unconditional surrenders are so rare they are almost unheard of,&rdquo; wrote Richard Maybury more than two decades ago
Maybury is one of the graybeards of the financial newsletter biz &mdash; and a veteran of Washington&rsquo;s dirty wars in Central America during the 1960s. The following is gleaned from his 2002 book World War II: The Rest of the Story and How It Affects You Today.
&ldquo;In an unconditional surrender, the losers are required to lay down their arms with no guarantees at all. They must simply put their fate in the hands of the winners, and the winners can do anything they please, including hang them.&rdquo;
President Franklin Roosevelt demanded unconditional surrender of Germany on Jan. 24, 1943.
At the time, the Nazis were on their heels &mdash; only a week away from getting totally curb-stomped by the Soviets at Stalingrad.
But FDR&rsquo;s demand steeled the Germans&rsquo; resolve.
&ldquo;The effect of this brutal formula on the German nation, and above all on the army, was great,&rdquo; German Gen. Heinz Guderian wrote in his 1951 memoir Panzer Leader. &ldquo;The soldiers, at least, were convinced from now on our enemies had decided on the utter destruction of Germany.&rdquo;
On the flip side, unconditional surrender devastated the enthusiasm of the German underground: One of its members, Gen. Franz Halder, lamented he could no longer attract new recruits. As he put it, even Hitler&rsquo;s fiercest opponents understood that &ldquo;the same frightful fate awaited us with or without Hitler&hellip; The only thing to do was hold out until the end.&rdquo;
The war dragged on for two more years &mdash; with more than one million dead per month.
Something to think about at a time the War Party is once again invoking Nazi analogies to whip up public support for a regime-change op. (So far, <a href="https://libertarianinstitute.org/news/poll-americans-support-talks-with-iran-oppose-involvement-in-israels-war/">it&rsquo;s not working</a>.)
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Standing Pat
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Amid a gathering World War III storm, a Federal Reserve meeting seems positively anticlimactic.
To no one&rsquo;s surprise, the Fed opted to keep the benchmark fed funds rate at 4.5% &mdash; where it&rsquo;s sat for the last six months.
The Fed&rsquo;s statement characterized unemployment as &ldquo;low&rdquo; and inflation as &ldquo;somewhat elevated&rdquo; &ndash; which suggests Fed&rsquo;s focus is still more on inflation than on the job market. That&rsquo;s exactly what Paradigm&rsquo;s Jim Rickards has been anticipating for weeks now.
As was the case in March, Fed officials still project they&rsquo;ll cut the fed funds rate twice before year-end &mdash; just not yet. Not surprising if the Fed now projects 3% inflation for 2025.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> The S&amp;P 500 has been oscillating around the 6,000 level in the aftermath of the Fed decision this afternoon &ndash; little higher than yesterday&rsquo;s close. The gains in the Dow and the Nasdaq are likewise modest.
Gold is little moved at $3,380. The bigger mover is silver, back below $37 in a much-needed consolidation.
Copper is steady at $4.79 a pound &ndash; nowhere near the March highs over $5.30 but attractive enough for copper thieves who pulled some internet fiber cables in Southern California. They knocked out service to big swaths of Los Angeles and Ventura counties last weekend.
Crude&rsquo;s movement is muted by the standard of recent days &ndash; up 48 cents to $75.32. Still, that&rsquo;s the highest since late February.
The crypto market appears unimpressed by the passage of landmark legislation in the Senate yesterday &ndash; perhaps because passage in the House might take a few more weeks. (We&rsquo;ll have much more on the implications of this crypto legislation in the days ahead.) Bitcoin is back below $104,000 after making a run toward $109k only two days ago.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />It&rsquo;s a heavy issue of our 5 Bullets today. We need a respite &mdash; if only long enough to behold a meme lamenting dozens of obnoxious business buzzwords&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1UgzV1aKxh1KYHJxS9wsyM/e6677a4bb6ce018c7bc6a70bfa302393/Comic.png" alt="comic relief" width="540px" />
The great thing about working for Paradigm Press is that I almost never hear any of them! We&rsquo;re too busy trying to make happy customers.
Speaking of which, we heard from two in the inbox this morning&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Readers Old and New Sound Off
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;Having lived retired for two decades out of the U.S., 5 Mins. and 5 Bullets was my primary source for US and world economic news,&rdquo; writes a longtime reader.
&ldquo;Now that I have returned to live in California for a few years, it continues to be my most reliable and enjoyable news source. As soon as possible I will be moving to Arizona, because of favorable facts that I have learned about taxes, politics, and grid reliability there from reading 5 Bullets. Having once lived in Santurce and worked in Hato Rey [Puerto Rico], I find that I also prefer warm weather and Latin friendliness.&rdquo;
Addressing Emily after <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/bigger-than-israel-iran">yesterday&rsquo;s edition</a>, he adds, &ldquo;I much enjoy the softer style that shows in your articles, contrasting so well with the sharp insights from Dave. I intend to continue reading 5 Bullets for the rest of my days.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;Hi Dave, thank you for supplying the link to the options information, which I read and understood,&rdquo; writes a reader we heard from last week looking for beginner&rsquo;s guidance on options trading.
(We have just the thing for that &mdash; <a href="https://concierge.paradigmpressgroup.com/post/paradigm-press-presents-the-ultimate-beginners-guide-to-stock-options">The Ultimate Beginner&rsquo;s Guide to Stock Options</a>.)
&ldquo;It was sooo much easier to follow than the article that Schwab insisted I read before applying for options access - my eyes glazed over! But hopefully they will approve me, so that I can get away from merely buying stock.
&ldquo;Having said that I did want to give feedback that the shares I bought/sold/rebought actually made me a 93% profit. Nowhere near the percentage others were making on options, but hey, I was pleased with the result. I also put $5k into the five cryptos James mentioned, as a long-term investment.&rdquo;
Dave responds: Great to hear all around!
Altucher&rsquo;s True Alpha, the trading service to which this individual belongs, has been on a roll lately &mdash; registering options gains this month of 604%... 1,078%... and 919%. One of those gains materialized in just over a week.
Alas, this premium advisory is closed to new subscribers at this time. Watch this space for when it reopens&hellip;
Best regards,
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/signatures/dave-gonigam.png" alt="Dave Gonigam" width="250px" align="left" />
Dave Gonigam Managing editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

NYSE-FMF

We’re entering a delicate window with the holiday tomorrow and U.S. markets closed. 

“Summer of Hell” 

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Apple&rsquo;s &ldquo;AI Gap Year&rdquo; Is a Ruse
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Apple just shocked Silicon Valley &mdash; but most people aren&rsquo;t paying attention. 
The Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) is where Apple unveils its latest software, hardware and, most importantly, its vision for the future.
This week, however, the tech press called WWDC 2025 Apple&rsquo;s &ldquo;AI gap year.&rdquo; Meanwhile, Wall Street fretted over Apple losing ground to other Big Tech companies. But if you listen to Ray Blanco, Paradigm&rsquo;s science-and-tech expert, you know better.
&ldquo;Steve Jobs had a favorite saying: &lsquo;Good artists copy, great artists steal,&rsquo;&rdquo; notes Ray. &ldquo;But there&rsquo;s something Jobs didn&rsquo;t mention. The greatest artists wait.&rdquo; And right now, Apple is waiting &mdash; strategically.
Ray&rsquo;s observed this strategy before. &ldquo;Let others build the crappy first versions. Study what actually works. Perfect the integration and ecosystem. Launch and dominate.&rdquo; That&rsquo;s Apple&rsquo;s secret sauce, and it&rsquo;s worked every time&hellip;
<ul>
<li>Take the iPod. &ldquo;Diamond Rio came first. Creative Nomad had the features. Apple was a computer company with no clue about music. Result: iPod launched three years later and killed the entire category&rdquo;</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Or the iPhone. &ldquo;BlackBerry owned business. Palm ruled PDAs. Microsoft had the enterprise. Result: iPhone destroyed them all&rdquo;</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Tablets? &ldquo;Microsoft had tablet PCs since 2001. Everyone said the market didn&rsquo;t exist. Result: iPad created a $100 billion market overnight.&rdquo;</li>
</ul>
In other words, Ray sees what most are missing&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;While Google and OpenAI are burning billions on cloud computing, Apple is doubling down on what they do best: building premium hardware that just works,&rdquo; Ray emphasizes.
&ldquo;Apple&rsquo;s vision for on-device AI &mdash; intelligence that works locally, without relying on the cloud &mdash; comes with real engineering challenges,&rdquo; he adds.
&ldquo;To pull it off, Apple needs new kinds of chips. Not the ones powering data centers, but ultra-efficient processors designed to run AI models directly on phones, earbuds, watches, etc. without draining your battery in five minutes&hellip; or using even more power to send data off device and into the cloud.&rdquo;
This is a radical departure from the industry. &ldquo;Apple isn&rsquo;t trying to build another ChatGPT for the cloud. They&rsquo;re interested in making every device in your ecosystem intelligent without sending data anywhere.
&ldquo;That means your AirPods understanding context without internet. It means your Apple Watch making health recommendations without the cloud. It also means your iPhone translating conversations without connectivity.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;On-device AI beats cloud-dependent AI,&rdquo; Ray concludes. &ldquo;On-device processing beats cloud processing because it&rsquo;s faster, more secure and more reliable. And ecosystem control beats platform fragmentation &mdash; this is Apple&rsquo;s classic moat.&rdquo;
So while the tech world is obsessed with cloud AI, Apple is quietly building the future. That you can tuck in your pocket. &ldquo;If history is any guide, it&rsquo;s [something] that Apple has pulled off before,&rdquo; Ray reminds us. &ldquo;The second mouse gets the cheese.&rdquo;
Every other competitor might be chasing the latest AI hype, but Apple is setting the stage for the next big leap &mdash; and Ray is scrutinizing the company&rsquo;s every move. &ldquo;The greatest artists wait. And right now, Apple is poised to change the game all over again.&rdquo;
To help make it happen, though, Apple is likely to make a strategic acquisition. At least that&rsquo;s what Ray&rsquo;s colleague James Altucher believes, based on his proprietary financial AI that&rsquo;s flagged a potential buyout target.
<a id="2"></a>
James&rsquo; system proved enormously lucrative this week for subscribers to his True Alpha trading advisory &mdash; a staggering 1,077% gain on a quantum computing play that materialized in less than 90 days.
Thing is, James says this Apple story is a fast-moving opportunity. By tomorrow he believes it could be too late to act &mdash; for reasons he&rsquo;ll show you when you <a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2449785">follow this link.</a>
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Central Banks: Gold Surpasses Euro
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Late yesterday, U.S. oil prices jumped over $3 &mdash; almost 5% &mdash; to close at $68.15 per barrel, mainly because tensions between the U.S. and Iran have escalated. For instance, nuclear-deal talks stalled, the U.S. withdrew some diplomats from the Middle East citing safety concerns and Iran threatened possible attacks on U.S. bases. In other words, just another Wednesday.
As for stocks, Boeing (BA) shares are down about 4.5%...
<ul>
<li>Earlier today, an Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner, carrying more than 240 passengers and crew, crashed shortly after departing from Ahmedabad, India. The aircraft went down near the airport in a densely populated area; initial reports indicate no survivors among those on board. Local authorities are assessing possible ground casualties as well. This incident marks the first fatal crash involving the Boeing 787 model.</li>
</ul>
Taking a look at the broader market, the three U.S. stock indexes are in fair shape: The Nasdaq and S&amp;P 500 are both about 0.25% to 19,665 and 6,040 respectively. In third place, the DJIA is up about 0.05% to 42,890.
The crypto market, on the other hand, is in the red at the time of writing. Bitcoin&rsquo;s down 1.15% to $107,500 while Ethereum&rsquo;s lost almost 3% to $2,735.
When it comes to precious metals, it&rsquo;s a risk-on day: Silver&rsquo;s up 0.25% to $36.35, and the price of gold&rsquo;s up almost 2% to $3,407.70 per ounce. For more context on gold, read on&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> According to the European Central Bank (ECB), gold&rsquo;s more important than ever for central banks around the world. 
At the end of 2024, for example, gold made up about 20% of official global reserves &mdash; surpassing second-place reserve asset, the euro, which accounts for 16%. This shift happened because central banks have been buying gold at record pace, while gold prices have also reached new highs.
Last April, gold hit an all-time high over $3,500 per ounce; the price of gold climbed almost 62% since the start of 2024, driven by global uncertainty, market ups and downs and, yes, intense demand from central banks.
Over the past three years, in fact, central banks have added more than 1,000 metric tons of gold to their reserves each year. That&rsquo;s about double the average amount bought each year during the 2010s.
Nevertheless, the U.S. dollar is still central banks&rsquo; top reserve asset. According to the latest data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the U.S. dollar&rsquo;s share of total allocated foreign exchange reserves fell to 57.8% at the end of 2024 &mdash; its lowest level since 1994. This marks a decline of about 7 percentage points over the past decade.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/FMRYZ4Yrb50rbBmFEZLim/f2c62fa4f13bad14a2c064ee881b3067/Dollar-share.png" alt="dollar share chart" width="540px" />
Since Russia&rsquo;s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, demand for gold as a reserve asset has taken off. Countries facing sanctions or those with ties to China and Russia have especially increased their gold holdings. The biggest buyers in 2024? Turkey, India, China, Azerbaijan and Poland.
Globally, central banks now hold about 36,000 tons of gold &mdash; close to the record set in 1965 &mdash; as gold steadily reclaims its place as the world&rsquo;s go-to financial safety net.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />The EPA&rsquo;s Power Play
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced plans this week to undo air-pollution standards for mercury and to eliminate carbon dioxide rules for power plants. 
These changes would <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/tesla-tanks-google-gasps-now-what#3">roll back policies</a> put in place during the Biden administration and are part of a broader effort to reduce the EPA&rsquo;s role in regulating climate change.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, who took office in January, has made it a priority to ease rules on American industries and encourage more fossil fuel-based energy production, including coal. The proposed changes follow executive orders from President Trump to expand coal mining and increase coal-fired power generation.
Supporters of the new rules say they will save American families about $1 billion a year on electricity bills and help ensure a reliable supply of power. Industry groups argue that the previous regulations were unrealistic and hurt the economy.
&ldquo;Today&rsquo;s announcements are a welcome course correction,&rdquo; says Jim Matheson, CEO of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. Lawmakers from coal states, like Rep. Carol Miller (R-WV), also praise the move for helping coal miners and local economies.
However, environmental and public health groups argue that rolling back these protections will harm public health. The American Lung Association and other groups, for instance, are urging the EPA to keep the Biden- and Obama-era safeguards in place.
Expect legal challenges as the agency reviews public comments before issuing a final rule. The debate centers on whether the economic benefits &mdash; and grid stability &mdash; outweigh the potential health and environmental risks.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Outlaws at the Border
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The long-running border dispute between Venezuela and Guyana over the oil and gold-rich Essequibo region has gotten more volatile in recent months.
<a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/is-biden-planning-another-war">The standoff</a> we first brought to readers&rsquo; attention in late 2023 is increasingly marked by armed incidents, organized crime and high-stakes resource competition.
Venezuela continues to assert its claim over Essequibo &mdash; a region that makes up roughly two-thirds of Guyana and is home to about 125,000 Guyanese &mdash; insisting that nothing should be done in the area until the two countries settle the border dispute.

<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4dZD33LYgQcr1wnvVObMYl/b40a64b849e9a223c0601548cf6a83d3/Guyana.png" alt="guyana map" width="400px" />

Source: U.S. Southern Command
&ldquo;Any initiative involving that area should avoid assuming a settled territorial status,&rdquo; says Venezuela&rsquo;s vice foreign affairs minister for the Caribbean. Meanwhile, Guyana maintains that Essequibo is its sovereign territory and that the issue is before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), whose rulings are legally binding.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> On the ground, the situation has become more dangerous. Armed groups &mdash; many linked to illegal mining and criminal networks in Venezuela, have been crossing into Essequibo, setting up checkpoints, extorting miners and even clashing with the Guyana Defense Force (GDF) along the Cuyuni River.
These groups, known as sindicatos, operate with apparent impunity and are suspected of having support from Venezuelan authorities. Their presence has made the region a hotspot for smuggling, drug trafficking and violence, with Guyanese officials noting criminal networks from Venezuela, Colombia and Brazil are all active in the area.
Venezuela has also taken provocative political steps, holding elections for a &ldquo;governor&rdquo; and lawmakers for Essequibo &mdash; despite the fact that none of the region&rsquo;s actual residents participated. The ICJ has ordered Venezuela to halt these election plans, calling them a violation of international law. Nevertheless, President Maduro has used the issue to rally nationalist sentiment and shore up domestic support.
In the meantime, Guyana&rsquo;s oil industry is booming, with current production around 650,000 barrels per day and projections to reach 1.3 million barrels per day by the end of the decade.
This has made the country a strategic partner for the United States, which has pledged to support Guyana&rsquo;s security and territorial integrity. U.S. officials have warned Venezuela against any aggression, and Guyana is now open to hosting foreign military bases if necessary.
With both sides digging in, and criminal and political interests overlapping, the risk of broader conflict in the Essequibo is real.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />The French Saga of Hazelnut Spreads
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Every July, France&rsquo;s great summer migration &mdash; les grandes vacances &mdash; turns highways into parking lots and airports into obstacle courses.
Among the millions heading out are families with roots as far away as Cameroon, Turkey and Algeria, all eager for le retour au bled, the annual &ldquo;return to the homeland.&rdquo;
But what&rsquo;s brought back in overstuffed suitcases? Last summer, the hottest contraband wasn&rsquo;t designer knockoffs &mdash; it was El Mordjene, an Algerian hazelnut spread that set off a frenzy across France.

<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6FVRrBNgGfhdiuXvsoosrP/bc0fc6a96c7f5ef2a4eac533902ab96e/El-Mordjene.png" alt="El-Mordjene" width="300px" />

Courtesy: eBay
El Mordjene&rsquo;s suddenly became a symbol of identity and pride for many French-Algerians, with fans declaring it &ldquo;better than Nutella&rdquo; and playgrounds erupting in chants of &ldquo;Who wants El Mordjene? Woop woop!&rdquo;
But the buzz triggered more than just sweet-tooth cravings&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> French customs banned El Mordjene, citing dairy import rules &mdash; even after it was revealed that the powdered milk in question was actually sourced from France itself!
Algerian commentators called the ban &ldquo;disguised protectionism&rdquo; and &ldquo;flagrant injustice,&rdquo; arguing that the ban was a thinly veiled move to protect Nutella&rsquo;s market dominance.
France, by the way, is the world&rsquo;s largest consumer of Nutella, and its producer &mdash; the Italian company Ferrero &mdash; runs one of its biggest factories near Rouen, France.
Since the customs ban went into effect, the clash between El Mordjene and Nutella has become a stand-in for deeper tensions between France and Algeria, bound by a long and painful history of colonialism.
In the end, the El Mordjene affair is a reminder that even something as simple as a jar of hazelnut spread can carry the weight of history&hellip; and spark a diplomatic incident.
Take care, reader! Until next time&hellip;
Best regards,
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/signatures/emily-clancy.png" alt="Emily Clancy" width="250px" align="left" />
Emily Clancy Associate editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

sleepy-apple

Apple just shocked Silicon Valley — but most people aren’t paying attention. 

Apple Asleep on AI? Hardly!

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Gold or Bitcoin?
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> It was a remarkable event in our firm&rsquo;s history. For sure, our art department outdid itself&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/36osy5ipeuRQBfD9H3w4xc/276478837cb5ff556db11470af0ac9c2/goldvsbitcoin.png" alt="gold vs. bitcoin" width="450px" />
In early 2018, we convened a debate over which was the better non-dollar asset &mdash; gold or Bitcoin.
Paradigm&rsquo;s two heavyweight gurus faced off &mdash; Jim Rickards arguing for gold, James Altucher arguing for Bitcoin. Fox Business anchor Cheryl Casone served as referee.
Jim agreed to fight on enemy territory at James&rsquo; comedy club, Stand Up NY. Jim thought Bitcoin was useful only to money launderers and drug dealers. James thought gold was a useless shiny rock.
Jim emerged victorious by a split decision among the crowd.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Of course, in the interest of full disclosure, we&rsquo;re compelled to chronicle what&rsquo;s happened since.
On the day of the debate in January 2018, gold was testing a high it had last seen in late 2016, trading for $1,355.
Today, the bid is $3,336 &mdash; within reach of April&rsquo;s all-time high, and a respectable 145% gain in seven and a half years.
Meanwhile in early 2018, Bitcoin was coming down hard from its late-2017 peak of $20,000. On the day of the debate, it was around $11,500 &mdash; a level that wouldn&rsquo;t be revisited until early 2021!
Today? $109,654 &mdash; also within reach of a recent all-time high. It&rsquo;s a stunning 850% gain &mdash; assuming you could stomach the volatility.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6eJdKEnkmDA5RvtYrABfRJ/264652ffb5bb5271395c4fc6697deb36/6.11_5_Bullets_Chart.png" alt="after the debate" width="540px" />
End of the story? Hardly&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> The amount of change that&rsquo;s taken place since January 2018 is staggering. 
In 2022, central banks around the world lit a fire under gold when they started accumulating the Midas metal in record quantities &mdash; and they&rsquo;re not done yet. In addition, gold emerged as the go-to asset earlier this spring when stocks and bonds sold off together (something that rarely happens).
Meanwhile, Bitcoin is nearing the peak of a reliable four-year cycle. Time to sell? Maybe not this time with the arrival of a crypto-friendly administration in Washington.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Amid this backdrop, we&rsquo;re holding a rematch this year &mdash; on neutral territory.
After an election-year hiatus in 2024, the Paradigm Shift Summit is back by popular demand. And the marquee event will be an all-new face-off between Jim and James. Gold and Bitcoin. Mano a mano. No holds barred.
Our 2022 and 2023 gatherings in Las Vegas were a huge hit with your fellow readers. This time, we&rsquo;re swapping Sin City for Music City: We&rsquo;ll gather Thursday, Oct. 9 at the Renaissance Hotel in Nashville.
Will there be a livestream of the gold-Bitcoin debate, you ask? Afraid not. The only way to watch is to be in the room.
But there will be so much more than just the debate to make the trip worth your while.
We&rsquo;ve beefed up the speaker list as we&rsquo;ve beefed up our team the last couple of years. In addition to Jim and James, our existing favorites of&hellip;
<ul>
<li>Tech and biotech specialist Ray Blanco&hellip;</li>
<li>Mining and energy authority Byron King&hellip;</li>
<li>Recovering investment banker and Rude Awakening editor Sean Ring&hellip;</li>
<li>Income and value investing maven Zach Scheidt&hellip;</li>
<li>and options pro Alan Knuckman&hellip;</li>
</ul>
Will be joined by&hellip;
<ul>
<li>Hedge fund veteran and trading pro Enrique Abeyta</li>
<li>Chart hound and Trading Desk editor Greg Guenthner</li>
<li>Microcap specialist Chris Cimorelli</li>
<li>and Mason Sexton, the sui generis editor of The Map.</li>
</ul>
I hope you can join me and the rest of our team in Nashville this October. If you want to learn more, <a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2449042">here&rsquo;s your formal invitation from our VP of publishing Doug Hill. No long video to watch</a>.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Cross-Currents: Trade and Inflation
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The two market-moving stories today are a renewed U.S.-China trade truce &mdash; assuming it exists &mdash; and the official May inflation numbers.
U.S. and Chinese negotiators wrapped up two days of talks in London yesterday.
At the end of those talks, the narrative that emerged is that tensions over China&rsquo;s rare earth exports and other issues are over. The clock is being wound back to May 12, when an earlier round of negotiations ended with Washington imposing 30% tariffs on Chinese imports and Beijing imposing 10% tariffs on U.S. imports &mdash; a 90-day truce opening the door for more extensive negotiations.
Except that this morning, Donald Trump took to social media and said the tariff on U.S. goods from China is actually 55% &mdash; not 30%.
So what&rsquo;s the deal? At this point, you know what we know.
Doesn&rsquo;t do much to help businesses make long-term plans, does it?
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Meanwhile, to hear the Labor Department tell it, the inflation rate is 2.4%.
That&rsquo;s up from last month&rsquo;s 2.3% reading&hellip; but it&rsquo;s lower than the typical Wall Street economist&rsquo;s expectation for 2.5%. As always, any resemblance to your own cost of living is purely coincidental.
Lower energy prices (down 3.5% year-over-year) were more than offset by higher shelter prices (up 3.9% year-over-year) and higher food prices.
None of this makes any difference for Federal Reserve policy: The Fed will once again leave short-term interest rates alone at its meeting next week, much to the consternation of the president.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Amid these cross-currents, the major U.S. stock averages are inching higher.
The S&amp;P 500 is up another quarter-percent to 6,054 &mdash; only 90 points away from its record close in February.
We noted the gold and Bitcoin prices earlier. Silver is taking a rest, but still over $36.
Crude is screaming higher after the release of the Energy Department&rsquo;s weekly inventory data &mdash; up $1.54 to $66.52, another level last seen in early April.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Taiwan: War Over Before It Began?
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Now for a stunning development from overseas that Western media are only starting to pick up on: Four top members of Taiwan&rsquo;s ruling party have been indicted for spying on behalf of mainland China.
Until Reuters <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/china/taiwan-indicts-four-suspected-spies-china-case-reaching-presidential-office-2025-06-10/">picked up the story</a> yesterday, Westerners knew about it only via the X feed of the well-traveled internet entrepreneur Arnaud Bertrand &mdash; an astute observer of the global scene who lived in mainland China for several years.
The accused include a one-time top aide to President Lai Ching-te and a top aide to the former foreign minister.
What makes this such a bombshell is that all four belong to the ruling Democratic Progressive Party &mdash; the anti-CCP faction that&rsquo;s most in favor of declaring independence from the mainland. (For decades, Taiwan has claimed to be the legitimate government of the mainland &mdash; just as the mainland claims to be the legitimate government of Taiwan.)
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> The implications are mind-blowing, Bertrand writes: &ldquo;It's safe to assume that every major Taiwanese defense plan, every diplomatic initiative, every presidential movement and every strategic assessment has been an open book to Beijing for the better part of a decade.&rdquo;
Oh, as well as all communications between Taipei and Washington.
&ldquo;The conclusion is devastating for Taiwan: China might have just achieved the ultimate expression of its own strategic doctrine - they have conquered Taiwan's strategy so completely that conquering by fighting becomes unnecessary.&rdquo;
<a id="4"></a>
The good news for everyday Americans is that a shooting war between Washington and Beijing might well be off the table now. As your editor wrote <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/no-blood-for-chips">two years ago</a>, there&rsquo;s nothing about the fate of Taiwan that&rsquo;s worth the sacrifice of U.S. troops &mdash; much less risking nuclear war and the loss of Tampa or Tucson for the sake of saving Taipei.
Now if only Zelenskyy and Netanyahu would stop trying to drag America into their wars. (That is, more than is already the case&hellip;)
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Consulting Is a Lucrative Grift
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />It&rsquo;s good to be McKinsey &amp; Co. &mdash; the bloated consultancy that over time has cursed us with everyone from <a href="https://5minforecast.com/2018/12/10/how-harvard-business-school-wrecked-the-world/">Facebook&rsquo;s Sheryl Sandberg</a> to former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas).
Case in point: McKinsey&rsquo;s work for the media giant Warner Bros. Discovery. This week, the company announced it would spin off its cable channels like TBS and CNN into a separate company.
It&rsquo;s the culmination of a three-year saga that went like this&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4PqOYAjo3feiSomGUIvJHo/fd69a7ef69f0935c04ebfe1163374d9e/Chris-Tweet.png" alt="chris tweet" width="540px" />
As the humorist Dave Barry often says, you can&rsquo;t make this stuff up&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Caught in the Crossfire
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> After <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/its-not-just-the-illegals">yesterday&rsquo;s edition</a>, one of our regulars saw fit to chime in&hellip;
&ldquo;I appreciate that you look for genuine answers, Dave. So here is something to think about:
&ldquo;Follow the money.
&ldquo;Why are Trump and his cast of clowns manufacturing so many emergencies? Why the onerous tax regime of tariffs to fleece the working class? Why the taxpayer-funded propaganda on national TV? Why rush to eliminate the debt ceiling and push a multitrillion-dollar, deficit-blowing bill through Congress?
&ldquo;Trump is burning through cash at a staggering rate. They are blowing up the checkbook as they blow up the country.
&ldquo;Trump is used to living large, and he's got a whole stable of miscreants to pay. He certainly isn't going to pay them with the money he's collecting in bribes and tribute.
&ldquo;Congress can't unshackle the public checkbook fast enough for Trump.
&ldquo;Trump and his allies aren&rsquo;t governing &mdash; they&rsquo;re looting. This is a fire sale of the American republic. And it&rsquo;s happening in plain sight.&rdquo;
Dave responds: Always remember, Trump is first and foremost <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/trump-vs-the-15">a result of the Establishment&rsquo;s failures</a> &mdash; not that the Establishment is capable of any introspection, of course.
The problem now is that normie Americans who don&rsquo;t live and die by politics are caught in the crossfire of people who do live and die by politics. By now I&rsquo;m getting a vague sense of what it must have been like to try living a normal life in South Central LA in the 1980s while the Crips and Bloods were fighting it out.
And as long as I brought up LA&hellip;
Notice how the administration is pursuing the route of performative confrontation&hellip; rather than actually addressing the immigration issue?
The independent reporter Lee Fang spotlighted this phenomenon a few weeks ago&hellip;
<blockquote>Consider the likeliest destinations of illegal migrants. Those without documentation tend to make up a significant portion of the workforce in construction, slaughterhouses, restaurants, hotels, janitorial work and gig delivery services. Yet businesses in these industries have reported few significant raids from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. These pillars of the economy are virtually untouched by the supposed crackdown.</blockquote>
<blockquote>What&rsquo;s more, despite ample laws that exist to prosecute employers for knowingly employing or recruiting illegal labor, Fortune 500 American executives have faced no scrutiny. You might expect the largest homebuilder in the country, KB Home, to have been bothered by ICE agents since the change in administration. But Robert McGibney, the company&rsquo;s president, told investors on a recent call that &ldquo;we&rsquo;ve seen nothing at all related to immigration.&rdquo;</blockquote>
See how it works? The Fortune 500 skates. Meanwhile, ICE descends on a small business in LA&rsquo;s Fashion District, along with a Home Depot parking lot where migrants look for day jobs &mdash; and suddenly all hell breaks loose.
Trump gets his showdown with teh libruls&hellip; large employers of illegal migrants carry on as usual&hellip; and Palantir makes bank while law-abiding citizens will soon be subject to new horrors of surveillance.
Hopefully people wake up sooner rather than later. I&rsquo;m doing my small part&hellip;
Best regards,
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/signatures/dave-gonigam.png" alt="Dave Gonigam" width="250px" align="left" />
Dave Gonigam Managing editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets
P.S. Remember <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/what-if-trump-breaks-this-promise">my outlier scenario from January</a>? The one about Trump abandoning his &ldquo;no CBDC&rdquo; campaign promise on the pretense that it would stop illegal migrants?
Starting to look a little more plausible now, no?

goldvsbitcoin

Gold or Bitcoin? It was a remarkable event in our firm’s history… 

Gold vs. Bitcoin? 

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />It&rsquo;s Not Just the Illegals
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> The following meme I saw a while back comes to mind as I try to make sense of events in recent days&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/46G9nkY4TmKvSxo4CVbHaj/e1e46c8085c13a28f9fb1463fcfb4384/noticing.png" alt="noticing" width="540px" />
(To be clear, that&rsquo;s not actually a line from The Big Lebowski. At least not that I recall&hellip;)
Let&rsquo;s rewind to last week. As we chronicled <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/trump-musk-all-kayfabe#2">in Friday&rsquo;s edition</a>, everyday conservatives were learning for the first time about the extensive surveillance powers of Palantir Technologies (PLTR) &mdash; and the company&rsquo;s ties to the deep state. Two decades ago, the feds effectively outsourced illegal spying to Palantir &mdash; on the theory that there are no constitutional issues if a private company does it and then turns over the data to the feds.
The gathering outrage was such that Palantir CEO Alex Karp went on CNBC last Thursday to defend his company. The interview was a disaster &mdash; torched by right and left alike. PLTR shares tanked 7.8% that day.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> The very next day, the trouble in Los Angeles started breaking out &mdash; and conservative &ldquo;influencers&rdquo; like Laura Loomer soon went to work.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/L0NT69DPp7JVa9Pwwz3Ib/15b96532072f6a57c2083f96264af458/laura1.png" alt="laura tweet" width="540px" />
For Loomer in particular, it was quite the heel turn. Check this out from two years ago, Loomer calling out Palantir and its &ldquo;Gotham&rdquo; tool &mdash; as well as both Karp and Palantir chairman Peter Thiel&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5i3bBuBM6FFQdkNr9cUiaO/1ccf9412ba38de0dd50551e24dad7194/laura2.png" alt="laura tweet" width="540px" />
As one observer on X pointed out, &ldquo;MAGA spent years railing against surveillance states and big-data tyranny. Now it wants to deploy Palantir on U.S. soil.&rdquo;
By the end of yesterday&rsquo;s market action, PLTR shares had recovered all of their losses after Karp&rsquo;s CNBC debacle. Amazing how that works&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Meanwhile, it turns out Gotham was already in use in Los Angeles before the protests and riots broke out.
Gotham was originally put into service during Washington&rsquo;s forever wars in the Middle East and South Asia &mdash; supposedly enabling the U.S. military to anticipate insurgent attacks. Mission planners in Afghanistan drew on Gotham&rsquo;s purported ability to cross-reference maps, intelligence briefings and incident reports.
&ldquo;Local law enforcement agencies are also making use of Gotham,&rdquo; independent journalist Kit Klarenberg writes at The Grayzone.
&ldquo;The total number of forces worldwide using the technology is unknown, but leaked Los Angeles Police Department training documents on Gotham, including an &lsquo;Intermediate Course&rsquo; and an &lsquo;Advance Course,&rsquo; shed significant light on the tool&rsquo;s internal workings.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;The sheer volume of data collected on citizens &mdash; whether they are law-abiding, are suspected of having committed a crime or are simply connected to individuals accused of wrongdoing &mdash; is staggering,&rdquo; Klarenberg writes of the LA documents.
&ldquo;This includes sex, race, names, contact details, addresses, prior warrants, mugshots, surveillance photos, personal relationships, past and current employers, tattoos, scars, piercings and other identifying features.
&ldquo;Such a cutting-edge service doesn&rsquo;t come cheap, and Gotham subscriptions run to millions of dollars annually. The vast windfall reaped from multiple state entities since Palantir&rsquo;s inception has made the firm&rsquo;s founders very wealthy indeed &mdash; Karp&rsquo;s personal worth alone is currently estimated at $12.2 billion&hellip;&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Note well what Klarenberg said there: Citizens. Not illegal migrants. And it&rsquo;s already going on.
Loomer and the rest are simply manufacturing consent for abuses that have been taking place for years, while they demand still more surveillance and still more control &mdash; using the riots and protests as cover.
The story is as old as it is infuriating. &ldquo;You never want a serious crisis to go to waste&rdquo; is the famous saying of Barack Obama&rsquo;s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.
Chris Rossini, senior fellow at the Ron Paul Institute, puts it pithily&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3rgCecrF23uYGQeaKI21pH/edf7a6e69ba17ef4cb1ef68f92f442f5/chris.png" alt="chris tweet" width="540px" />
Never forget: The Patriot Act was written years before 9/11. It was just pulled off the shelf the instant it became convenient.
The ensuing &ldquo;War on Terror&rdquo; gave rise to Palantir. What new surveillance-state horrors might arise from the present moment?
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />A Silver Opportunity
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> For the first time in several days, silver is in the red. But it&rsquo;s still over $36. Heck, last week $34.85 marked a 12-year high!
But it&rsquo;s not just the rise in price, Paradigm&rsquo;s recovering investment banker Sean Ring writes at the Rude Awakening: &ldquo;Over the past week, silver has outperformed gold significantly.
&ldquo;The gold-to-silver ratio has collapsed from over 100 to 90, with more room to fall. That ratio has only been this high during a few key moments of panic in history &mdash; the early 1990s recession, the 2008 global financial crisis and the COVID-19 collapse. Each time, silver screamed higher in the recovery.
&ldquo;When silver outperforms gold, it&rsquo;s usually a sign that confidence in paper assets is cracking, not just among the gold bugs, but among the broader class of capital allocators.
&ldquo;Silver's rise coincides with Bitcoin&rsquo;s recent breakout, oil&rsquo;s unexpected surge and a global rejection of negative-yielding (return-free risk) assets masquerading as sovereign debt. While the Fed pretends to have things under control, the market is hedging in real-time, with commodities.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> And don&rsquo;t overlook the law of supply and demand. That too ison silver&rsquo;s side, according to Paradigm&rsquo;s resident geologist Byron King.
&ldquo;Begin with the fact that many of the world&rsquo;s long-established silver districts and mines are on the backside of their productive life,&rdquo; he writes today for the Daily Reckoning. &ldquo;From Argentina to Mexico, to Idaho, to the Yukon, many large-scale old districts and mines have been producing metal for many decades; but they are playing out for a long list of reasons.
&ldquo;Now the silver search goes further afield, looking for smaller deposits, often with lower grades, and deeper in the earth, which means more expensive to exploit, either with surface mining or via mine shafts. The takeaway is that the silver supply is tight and getting tighter.&rdquo;
And then there&rsquo;s demand: &ldquo;At industrial scale, more and more silver goes into new products, meaning items that didn&rsquo;t exist in decades past,&rdquo; Byron goes on. &ldquo;Consider the ubiquity of electronics (which contain silver, of course) in everything from smartphones to microwave ovens to automobiles. Now add exploding silver demand from solar panel manufacturing.
&ldquo;On top of that, there&rsquo;s a global-scale level of silver accumulation in various forms of stockpiles. Some of it is industrial buying by companies and nations that are thinking a decade and more ahead to feed their industries.
&ldquo;Other silver buys come from central banks, such as state-level actors in Russia, India, China and more. Evidently, the leadership cadres of these nations foresee silver as a future component of a new monetary system of global trade and finance.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />And why wouldn&rsquo;t they at a time Congress is on the verge of another budget blowout?
Back to Sean Ring: &ldquo;Silver isn&rsquo;t just an industrial metal. It&rsquo;s money. Always has been. Always will be.
&ldquo;In a world awash in fiat, bloated deficits, negative real rates and exploding debt-to-GDP ratios, the case for hard money is stronger than ever. Gold gets the spotlight, sure. But silver is the canary in the monetary coal mine.&rdquo;
Sooner or later, Sean says we&rsquo;re headed back to the 2011 high at $50. &ldquo;The world is on the verge of another commodity supercycle, and silver is the cheapest ticket on the ride.&rdquo;
Beyond $50, you wonder? Adjust that 2011 figure for inflation and you&rsquo;re looking at $71.64. Just sayin&rsquo;...
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />The View From Small-Business America
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />If it weren&rsquo;t for uncertainty about tariffs and taxes, American small business would be thriving right now.
At least that&rsquo;s the takeaway from the latest Small Business Optimism Index compiled by the National Federation of Independent Business.
The headline number for May is 98.8 &mdash; up from 95.8 in April and slightly above this venerable survey&rsquo;s 51-year average.
&ldquo;Although optimism recovered slightly in May, uncertainty is still high among small-business owners,&rdquo; says NFIB chief economist Bill Dunkelberg &mdash; obliquely referring to on-again, off-again tariffs and an uncertain fate surrounding the tax provisions of the &ldquo;big beautiful bill&rdquo; on Capitol Hill.
Amid that backdrop, taxes now top the part of the survey where respondents are asked to identify their single most important problem.
Taxes were cited by 18% of respondents, the highest since December 2020. &ldquo;Quality of labor&rdquo; was identified by 16%, suggesting good help is still hard to find. Inflation is in third place at 14%.
Four categories were tied for fourth place, each cited by 9% &mdash; labor costs, regulations, cost/availability of insurance and poor sales.
Hmmm&hellip; It&rsquo;s been over four years since &ldquo;poor sales&rdquo; registered that high. Something we&rsquo;ll be watching&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> As for big business, at least the publicly traded ones, the major U.S. stock indexes are all in the green today.
At last check the S&amp;P 500 is up a quarter percent to 6,021. The Nasdaq&rsquo;s gain is likewise about a quarter-percent. The Dow&rsquo;s gain is less than a tenth of a percent.
While silver is losing ground, gold is holding steady at $3,320. Crude is up nearly 1% to another two-month high at $65.85.
Bitcoin seems to be coiling for another run at its $112,000 record, currently fetching just under $109k.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Grim Chuckle
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> What can one possibly add to this?
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4J2yok1vHp6u6z5q1hbWsB/d8b95f77d154470c57483771f63666bf/Hana.png" alt="hana tweet" width="540px" />
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Investing&hellip; and Ethics
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />We love hearing from new readers (as well as our longtimers, of course!) and we especially love seeing emails like this.
&ldquo;Hi Dave, I&rsquo;ve recently started trading stocks and I&rsquo;m so new to it that I haven&rsquo;t even managed to set up my Schwab account for options trading yet. So currently just buy and sell. But I have just read your latest newsletter and it was so refreshing.
[The reader&rsquo;s referring to <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/trump-musk-all-kayfabe#2">Friday&rsquo;s edition</a>, where we first took up the outrage against Palantir.]
&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve read so many articles by people like [analysts for one of Paradigm&rsquo;s competitors], and some of the things they say so gleefully make me want to cringe. It&rsquo;s all about the money. They&rsquo;re pleased that our government is looking at ways of gathering CONFIDENTIAL personal information without our consent for AI purposes, or that our national land will basically become a free-for-all &mdash; and by all, I mean of course, the wealthiest amongst us.
&ldquo;So the fact that you recognize some of these limitations makes me feel a bit better. Do I want to make more money from my cash savings? Abso-blooming-lutely! But I&rsquo;d like to do it without harming our environment or just completely obliterating people&rsquo;s right to privacy!
&ldquo;Just FYI, I did buy [ticker symbol deleted] stock, and sold every day just to take my profit and rebought. For my $2,700 investment, I made a 47.93% profit. Not bad, huh!&rdquo;
Dave responds: Wow. Pretty sure you&rsquo;re referring to a recent play in Altucher&rsquo;s True Alpha. James Altucher and Zach Scheidt recommended call options on the company in question, but how nice to hear that you piggybacked the performance with plain-vanilla shares. Well done!
(We&rsquo;re withholding the name and ticker because it&rsquo;s still a live trade&hellip;)
As for ethics and investing&hellip; I&rsquo;ve long cited a passage by the late newsletter legend Harry Browne: &ldquo;Maximizing profits and conforming to social policies are separate endeavors,&rdquo; he wrote in 1995. &ldquo;You can cater to one endeavor only at the expense of the other.
&ldquo;The stock exchange isn&rsquo;t a pulpit. If you want to promote a particular environmental policy, political philosophy or other personal enthusiasm, do it with the profits you make from hardheaded investing."
But everyone&rsquo;s got a red line, or should.
Remember that when you buy stock, you buy partial ownership in a company &mdash; however tiny that portion might be. If the company is engaged in activity that&rsquo;s glaringly at odds with your conscience, don&rsquo;t own it.
On the other hand&hellip; playing options on an objectionable company leaves your hands clean.
With options, you&rsquo;re not investing in these companies or funding their operations. A call option is, to use the classic definition, &ldquo;the right but not the obligation&rdquo; to buy shares at a certain price within a certain timeframe.
You&rsquo;re engaged in a speculation; the profits you make come entirely from the individuals or institutions on the other side of the trade.
So you might want to get going on options sooner rather than later. Paradigm has the perfect guide to get you started &mdash; <a href="https://concierge.paradigmpressgroup.com/post/paradigm-press-presents-the-ultimate-beginners-guide-to-stock-options">The Ultimate Beginner&rsquo;s Guide to Stock Options</a>.
Read and enjoy &mdash; and good luck!
Best regards,
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/signatures/dave-gonigam.png" alt="Dave Gonigam" width="250px" align="left" />
Dave Gonigam Managing editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

shutterstock 1680278362

Conservative “influencers” are manufacturing consent for surveillance abuses, while using the Los Angeles riots and protests as cover.

It’s Not Just the Illegals

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Fort Knox Fake-Out
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Now it can be told: There was never going to be a Trump-Musk audit of the gold at Fort Knox.
Remember that?
In February, Elon Musk picked up on social media chatter about an audit &mdash; even suggesting a live video walkthrough. Donald Trump was receptive, broaching the subject publicly on at least four occasions that month.
It had been over 50 years since the feds made even a nod toward transparency when it came to the government&rsquo;s gold stash at Fort Knox, Kentucky. We commemorated the 50th anniversary last fall&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6AZPc3HucvrXo4wOVJOCkl/ab64b36aba7489307c1919e80f5d4b40/1974tweet.png" alt="1974" width="540px" />
It was strictly a photo-op. Not an honest-to-goodness audit. The last time that happened, according to the Sound Money Defense League, was in 1953.
So hopes were high when Musk and Trump played up the possibility of a joint visit.
But as long ago as Feb. 27, our Jim Rickards said in this space that the event would be no more than another photo-op, bereft of any substance.
And of course, any chance even that much would take place has gone bye-bye &mdash; now that the Trump-Musk partnership has broken up in acrimony.
Today it&rsquo;s worth exploring two reasons Jim says a real audit was never in the cards&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> For starters, &ldquo;the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve do not want to call attention to gold&rsquo;s role as a monetary asset,&rdquo; says Jim.
&ldquo;The Fed (along with commercial banks) has a monopoly on the money printing press.
&ldquo;The government has done everything possible to diminish and deny the role of gold as money, beginning with FDR&rsquo;s confiscation of gold from U.S. citizens in 1933 and continuing through Nixon&rsquo;s closing of the gold window for foreign trading partners in 1971. At this point, we have three generations of students since 1971 who know almost nothing about gold.
&ldquo;Gold is not taught in economics classes. Gold is not discussed in economic or Fed policy circles. Younger students don&rsquo;t even know that the U.S. was ever on a gold standard or that gold once circulated freely as a form of money (usually in &frac14;-ounce or 8-gram coins). The government has eradicated any memory of gold as money. Why bring it back to life with a high-profile visit to Fort Knox? Better just to ignore gold if you want to maintain your money monopoly.&rdquo;
Among the powers that be, it&rsquo;s in no one&rsquo;s interest to call attention to gold&rsquo;s role as a form of money.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Who Holds Rights to Gold in Fort Knox?
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;There&rsquo;s another even more insidious reason why Trump and Musk backed off from their Fort Knox visit,&rdquo; Jim goes on.
To be clear, Jim believes the gold is there. &ldquo;The deeper question,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;is whether that gold is leased.&rdquo;
Even if you&rsquo;re a longtime reader familiar with how this scheme works, it&rsquo;s worth a revisit: Gold leasing is how the owner of a gold bar can earn a return.
&ldquo;Gold does not pay dividends or interest like stocks and bonds,&rdquo; Jim reminds us. &ldquo;But you can lease it to a third party and make 2% or so annually in lease payments.&rdquo;
Key point: &ldquo;The party leasing the gold does not back up a truck and take it away. The gold stays in the original vault. Gold leasing is a purely paper transaction.
&ldquo;The gold lessor gets the lease payment. The lessee gets what&rsquo;s called a right of rehypothecation. That means the lessee can lease the same gold to another party. And that party can lease it to a fourth party and so on. With rehypothecation in play, one metric ton of gold could support 100 metric tons of &lsquo;paper gold&rsquo; transactions.&rdquo;
If this sounds problematic, you&rsquo;re right.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;The danger is obvious. It&rsquo;s no different than any run on the bank when it comes to bank deposits,&rdquo; says Jim.
&ldquo;If a group of paper gold investors suddenly demands physical delivery, the counterparties have to buy gold in the spot market since the leased gold is not in their physical possession. The gold market is liquid, but not liquid enough to support delivery if there were demand for physical by more than a small slice of the paper gold market.
&ldquo;A full-scale gold panic could emerge quickly. The spot price of gold would go to $25,000 per ounce before an investor could yell, &lsquo;Buy!&rsquo;
&ldquo;I take it that someone (possibly Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent) sat down and patiently explained the paper gold reality to Trump and Musk. Once you understand how the market actually works, you quickly back away from putting on a show at Fort Knox.
&ldquo;For the masterminds of the paper gold market at JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, the less said about gold the better. They need to keep the game going.&rdquo;

[Editor&rsquo;s note: If you&rsquo;re reading this, you still haven&rsquo;t claimed your financial war protection package &mdash; a box of items selected by Jim Rickards to help protect you from a crisis he believes is only weeks away from breaking out.
It&rsquo;s about the size of a shoebox. And it&rsquo;s in our warehouse, waiting for you.
Of course, we don&rsquo;t have an unlimited supply. <a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2448367">Please review this message from our customer care chief to learn how to claim yours</a>.]

<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> But hold on: Four members of Congress have introduced a bill requiring an honest-to-goodness audit.
The Gold Reserve Transparency Act requires a full assay, inventory and audit.
And more: As Jp Cortez of the Sound Money Defense League writes, it would &ldquo;also require full disclosure of all transactions involving America's gold, including any purchases, sales, loans, pledges, leases, swaps and other encumbrances, dating back 50 years. Such activities have not been publicly disclosed.
"Only a thorough audit, not a public-relations stunt such as the 'live walkthrough' as Elon Musk and others proposed, will suffice" for transparency, says Cortez.
Sponsors include Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky), Warren Davidson (R-Ohio), Troy Nehls (R-Texas) and Addison McDowell (R-North Carolina).
"Americans deserve transparency and accountability from the institutions that underpin our currency," says Massie.
We&rsquo;re not holding our breath that this bill will sail through Congress &mdash; but we&rsquo;ll keep tabs regardless.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Trade Talks Sabotaged Before They Began?
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> The stock market begins a new week treading water &mdash; perhaps awaiting headlines from a new round of U.S.-China trade talks, underway as we write in London.
We don&rsquo;t have any special knowledge, but we suspect the talks got off to a rough start.
No sooner did Donald Trump and Xi Jinping get off the phone last Thursday than the Commerce Department suspended export licenses for U.S. firms that want to sell equipment for Chinese nuclear power plants.
Among the U.S. companies affected are Westinghouse (owned these days by a Canadian consortium) and Emerson (EMR).
Gee, just when it seemed the tensions were easing and maybe Beijing might loosen its restrictions on rare earth exports to the United States&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> In any event, the major U.S. averages are mixed &mdash; the Dow down, the Nasdaq up, the S&amp;P 500 flat.
The S&amp;P ended last week a hair over 6,000 and is holding that level at last check, if barely.
In the precious metals complex, there&rsquo;s no stopping silver right now &mdash; up another 66 cents or 1.8% to $36.56. Gold&rsquo;s gain is more modest &mdash; $17 or a half percent to $3,326. Crude has pushed over $65 a barrel for the first time in over two months.
Bitcoin is starting the week in the green, approaching $108,000.
The big economic number of the week comes Wednesday when the Labor Department issues the official inflation rate.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Milei&rsquo;s Gift to the Pope
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Hmmm&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5vi0qSfUazhNVrF2g8lPRQ/c377544202a62f9f5f80d3fe659de79c/TakingHayekSeriously.png" alt="Taking Hayek Seriously" width="540px" />
Argentina&rsquo;s free-market president Javier Milei paid a call on Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican this weekend.
Milei was seen presenting the pope with a copy of a landmark book by the Nobel prize-winning economist Friedrich Hayek &mdash; The Fatal Conceit.
Hayek was a leader among the 20th-century Austrian School economists. The Fatal Conceit was published a few years before his death in 1992.
On one level, the book is a takedown of socialism. On another level, it&rsquo;s a powerful summation of Hayek&rsquo;s signature insight from over 70 years of study &mdash; that an economy is far too complex for any government official or central banker to issue commands and expect predictable results.
That is, the economy is not a machine &mdash; push a button here, pull a lever there. It&rsquo;s a complex ecosystem with more interdependencies than any bureaucrat or group of bureaucrats could possibly understand. Their interventions inevitably result in second-order effects and unintended consequences.
Or as Milei explained in Spanish &mdash; one of five languages in which the pope is fluent &mdash; "Trying to control the levers of the economy is a fatal conceit. It's like believing oneself to be God."
We&rsquo;re not altogether familiar with the American pope&rsquo;s views on economics, but he doesn&rsquo;t seem thrilled with his gift in that screengrab!
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Misunderstandings, Musk
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />I confess to misunderstanding a reader who submitted a contribution for the mailbag <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/phase-two">in Thursday&rsquo;s edition</a>.
&ldquo;Dave, your missives are so needed. But just because I said things like Ukraine&rsquo;s drone attack would bring Putin to the table was not by any means an &lsquo;OK with it.&rsquo;
&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not OK with ANY of it.
&ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad you could use my remark to make a point. But when I saw Mitt Romney excoriate Trump during the 2016 campaign, then publicly beg for the secretary of state job immediately after Trump won, I knew the &lsquo;Ukraine plan&rsquo; was a huge deal for the deep state. Something they could not let go of.
&ldquo;I lived through the &lsquo;duck and cover&rsquo; age. It was my generation&rsquo;s global warming fear porn. It&rsquo;s a mess.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Meanwhile a couple of readers weighed in over the weekend after our hot take on <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/trump-musk-all-kayfabe">the rift between Elon Musk and Donald Trump</a>&hellip;
&ldquo;I would argue that the point of the dustup between Musk and Trump is that Tesla stock had been tanking,&rdquo; says one.
&ldquo;Musk was the darling of the left and Tesla was all the rage until Musk went MAGA. Admittedly it started when he bought the left's sacred sandbox, Twitter, but actually joining the Trump administration was the last straw. Then the left peacefully torched Tesla dealerships. Musk has to stage a break with Trump to save his bottom line.&rdquo;
Says another: &ldquo;I think Elon&rsquo;s replacement &lsquo;special government employee&rsquo; should be chosen by Sen. Rand Paul, a proven generational advocate for government efficiency and service to the American people.
&ldquo;THANKS for all your tireless dedication to the true spirit and trust of journalism!&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> I didn&rsquo;t have room for this observation in Friday&rsquo;s edition&hellip; but the one instance where Musk seriously misstepped last week was when he went &ldquo;full Epstein.&rdquo; 
And no, this wasn&rsquo;t some sort of 3-D chess move coordinated with Trump.
As the theory goes, Musk saying that Trump turns up in the Jeffrey Epstein files is supposed to prod Democrats to demand the immediate release of those files and finally the truth will out.
In the first place, Democrats are holding their tongues.
In the second place, we already know Trump crossed paths with Epstein; it would be no surprise if Trump&rsquo;s name turns up in the files, but that does not implicate him in any wrongdoing.
Finally, it&rsquo;s a terrible look for Musk to say something like that after leaving government service. If the suggestion is that Trump committed wrongdoing, he should have spoken up the moment he knew.
No, it&rsquo;s just one more instance of Musk being Musk. Remember when he called a British cave diver &ldquo;pedo guy&rdquo;?
Even Musk realized he went too far with his Trump-Epstein post &mdash; judging by the fact he deleted it over the weekend&hellip;
Best regards,
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/signatures/dave-gonigam.png" alt="Dave Gonigam" width="250px" align="left" />
Dave Gonigam Managing editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

P.S. Congratulations to readers of Ray Blanco&rsquo;s Catalyst Trader &mdash; who pulled in 125% gains last week on an AI company leading the way in specialty semiconductors.
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<a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2448447">As Ray shows you in this exclusive briefing</a>, this company has a profit catalyst on the calendar just six weeks from now. <a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2448447">Watch here</a>.

FortKnox0609

Now it can be told: There was never going to be a Trump-Musk audit of the gold at Fort Knox.

Fort Knox Fake-Out

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Trump-Musk: All &ldquo;Kayfabe&rdquo;?
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> The kiss-and-make-up session is on, the kiss-and-make-up session is off.
Day 2 of the epic Trump-Musk meltdown is all about when and under what circumstances the two might start to reconcile.
We won&rsquo;t get into the blow-by-blow of Day 1 &mdash; which you can read anywhere and you&rsquo;re probably familiar with already.
(Truly, it was like the car crash you can&rsquo;t help looking at.)
The stock market was in the green before the two started s***posting at midday. But at day&rsquo;s end, the S&amp;P 500 was down more than half a percent. Tesla makes up about 2% of the index and TSLA logged a 14.3% drop &mdash; its biggest one-day loss on record.
Late last night, Politico posted an article saying that White House aides &ldquo;scheduled a call Friday with the billionaire CEO of Tesla to broker a peace.&rdquo;
But this morning, the president told CNN he won&rsquo;t be involved in any such call himself &mdash; saying the two won&rsquo;t speak &ldquo;for a while&rdquo; and that he&rsquo;s &ldquo;not even thinking about&rdquo; Musk.
It would be no surprise if the dynamic changes again by the time you read this.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> There&rsquo;s a theory circulated by armchair pundits that all of this is &ldquo;kayfabe&rdquo; &mdash; to borrow a term from pro wrestling, something Trump has been involved with for decades.
The term simply means that rivalries and other dramas inside and outside the ring are all for show, staged for the audience&rsquo;s entertainment.
Assume for the moment that&rsquo;s the case: What would be the purpose?
Sorry, we don&rsquo;t buy it. As the independent reporter and astute political observer Michael Tracey tweets: &ldquo;Is there any historical analog for a White House senior adviser who quit and immediately campaigned to tank the president's signature legislation, denounced him as an ungrateful liar, accused him of child sex trafficking and causing a recession and called for him to be impeached?&rdquo;
Besides, why would Trump and Musk do something to potentially divide the loyalties of MAGA Nation?
The sheer volume of vitriol on Musk&rsquo;s part suggests he was off his meds &mdash; or on something else.
But none of it is a long-term deal-breaker for his credibility. Everyone knows Musk can be mercurial; it comes with the territory of investing with him. The only difference is how the tendency manifested itself yesterday in such spectacular fashion.
Seen in that context, it&rsquo;s little surprise that TSLA is up 7.2% as we write this morning.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Also note how quickly Musk backed down on one particular threat&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/37mqnyRylCvI2LJwK8loPk/a23196581fd41625becb873f3e8b32d5/Elon-tweet.png" alt="elon tweet" width="540px" />
After an X user urged Musk to &ldquo;cool off and take a step back for a couple days,&rdquo; Musk replied: &ldquo;Ok, we won&rsquo;t decommission Dragon.&rdquo;
Whether they like it or not, Musk&rsquo;s SpaceX and Trump&rsquo;s administration are much too dependent on each other for either side to walk away from their space partnership.
Dragon, as a reminder, is the only way American astronauts can reach the International Space Station. NASA is increasingly reliant on SpaceX for its many launches. And don&rsquo;t forget SpaceX&rsquo;s valuable Starlink division, with an unmatched network of low Earth orbit satellites the government also needs access to.

<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Indeed, nothing that&rsquo;s happened in the last 24 hours alters the investment case for SpaceX.
Now as you likely know, SpaceX is not publicly traded. Only the high rollers of finance have access &mdash; a fact that gets under the skin of Paradigm Press publisher Matt Insley.
Then again, Matt recently learned from a venture capitalist friend about a <a href="https://pro.crowdability.com/m/2446925">hidden backdoor</a>. &ldquo;Just type in four letters,&rdquo; Matt says, &ldquo;and you can get pre-IPO exposure to SpaceX <a href="https://pro.crowdability.com/m/2446925">on the stock exchange</a> &mdash; even though it&rsquo;s private.
<a id="2"></a>
&ldquo;Plus, my buddy is giving you the <a href="https://pro.crowdability.com/m/2446925">ticker symbol for FREE, just for watching today</a>.&rdquo;
Only one catch: This presentation goes offline tomorrow night at midnight. <a href="https://pro.crowdability.com/m/2446925">Click to watch now, while you still can</a>.

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />PLTR&rsquo;s &ldquo;Bud Light&rdquo; Moment
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />If it weren&rsquo;t for Trump and Musk, the biggest market story yesterday would have been the sudden stumble of market darling Palantir Technologies.
The story begins a week ago today, when The New York Times published the splashy headline &ldquo;Trump Taps Palantir to Compile Data on Americans.&rdquo;
On the basis of an executive order Trump signed in March, the administration is increasingly turning to Palantir to make it easier for federal agencies to share data with each other &mdash; raising the prospect of whether Trump &ldquo;might compile a master list of personal information on Americans that could give him untold surveillance power.&rdquo;
Under the amoral logic of Wall Street, PLTR shares rallied 7.7% that day. By Tuesday of this week, Palantir closed at an all-time high.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> While Wall Street partied, pockets of MAGA Nation sounded the alarm.
Suddenly, everyday conservatives were discovering what we&rsquo;ve noted now and then for years: PLTR was founded in 2003 with seed money from In-Q-Tel, the CIA&rsquo;s venture capital arm.
They also learned the CIA was Palantir&rsquo;s only client for the first several years of the firm&rsquo;s existence.
And via the work of <a href="https://unlimitedhangout.com/2024/07/investigative-reports/the-man-behind-trumps-vp-pick-its-worse-than-you-think/">the online muckraker Whitney Webb</a>, they learned Palantir&rsquo;s entire reason for being &mdash; to give the feds cover for doing things that the Constitution forbids the feds to do themselves.
Remember the creepy <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Information_Awareness">&ldquo;Total Information Awareness&rdquo;</a> surveillance program launched about 18 months after the 9/11 attacks? Civil liberties activists objected loudly enough that the feds shut it down &mdash; only to put many of its operations under PLTR&rsquo;s auspices.
The tweets and memes this week have been voluminous&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/RjkprQEjbUcY6VW5WOv22/091f6987a5f086861526269060c6cc59/TheQuarteringTweet.png" alt="The Quartering" width="540px" /> <img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6irgsT5B6QxFaVinaNijft/265d4ec98e250b34e8e4013af8a55eee/WallStreetApes-06.png" alt="Wall Street apes" width="540px" /> <img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4zsZVvyNke58KkLNhNVDxy/4db3d35e20a4d8355a6b1a74f60d3d50/Palantir.png" alt="Palantir" width="540px" />
On Tuesday, Palantir labeled the Times story &ldquo;blatantly untrue. Palantir never collects data to unlawfully surveil Americans.&rdquo;
As the &ldquo;Uncommon Sense&rdquo; account on X pointed out, &ldquo;Palantir is not lying here. They don&rsquo;t illegally spy on people, they legally spy on people, and your government allows them to do it.&rdquo;
Yesterday, Palantir CEO Alex Karp felt compelled to do an interview on CNBC, declaring his company is &ldquo;not surveilling Americans&rdquo; at all.
Reaction across the political spectrum was hostile&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1QtbMu6xkUmdzGS8Vo5w6W/f5ea823641596f3073fe1475f8a3340b/PowertothePeople.png" alt="power to the people" width="540px" />
&hellip; and PLTR ended the day down 7.8%.
Thing is, unlike Bud Light or Target or John Deere, Palantir has no &ldquo;customer-facing brand&rdquo; that everyday folks can boycott. Nor are there any, say, Palantir-branded surveillance cameras they can vandalize.
All they can do is dump PLTR stock if they own it&hellip; or persuade other people to dump it if they don&rsquo;t.
Checking our screens this morning, Palantir is up about 3.8%. Perhaps as with Tesla, the big drop was a one-day affair. Then again, it might be the start of something. We&rsquo;ll keep you in the loop&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Jobs: Clearing a Low Bar
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> The good news is that the monthly job numbers came in a bit better than expected this morning. The bad news is that expectations were low.
The wonks at the Bureau of Labor Statistics conjured 139,000 new jobs for May. The previous two months&rsquo; numbers were revised down.
So for the last three months, the average number of new jobs works out to a little over 135,000. That&rsquo;s down meaningfully from the last quarter of 2024 (209,000). As a reminder, it takes 150,000&ndash;200,000 now jobs each month just to keep up with population growth.
Most of the growth took place in health care and leisure-hospitality. Manufacturing jobs, in contrast, shrank by 8,000.
Federal government jobs fell by 22,000 &mdash; just under 1% of the federal workforce. Go figure: DOGE is finally starting to have a measurable impact on federal employment just as it&rsquo;s folding its tent.
The official unemployment rate held steady at 4.2%. Still low by historical standards, still higher than most of 2022&ndash;23.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Amid that backdrop, the major U.S. stock indexes are shaking off whatever jitters they were feeling yesterday.
As was the case in the hours before the Trump-Musk kerfuffle broke out, the S&amp;P 500 is knocking on the door of 6,000 &mdash; up almost 1% from yesterday&rsquo;s close. The Nasdaq&rsquo;s gain is stronger, the Dow&rsquo;s weaker.
Silver continues to rally and is *this* close to ending the week over $36. Gold is losing ground but not much, the bid $3,334. Crude is up over a buck to $64.52, the highest since mid-April.
Bitcoin sank to near $101,000 overnight but is now back to nearly $105,000.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />A couple of more giggles from the Trump-Musk dustup&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/jFRV8zfyoFYfO0Zcg9vyE/16e95181743aa1d4a31516c7dbe91237/Trump-MuskComic.png" alt="comic" width="450px" />
If you&rsquo;re a bit fuzzy on the historical reference, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_images_in_the_Soviet_Union">a quick glance at this Wikipedia page</a> will serve as a reminder.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Finally, this insight courtesy of your editor&rsquo;s wife&hellip;
&ldquo;So I guess we&rsquo;re not getting our $5,000 <a href="https://www.heraldmailmedia.com/story/news/2025/05/22/doge-dividend-checks-see-update-on-status-and-qualifications/83769424007/">DOGE dividend</a>?&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Time Flies
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />A belated acknowledgment to everyone who wrote in after two of last week&rsquo;s editions &mdash; reprises of previous musings about <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/a-totalitarian-bureaucracy-within-our-shores">the military-industrial complex</a> and <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/luigi-mangione-isnt-the-problem">the health care cartel</a>.
With another week already gone by, I&rsquo;ll simply have to thank everyone who wrote in with their thoughtful responses. We really do have the smartest and most engaged readership in all of financial publishing.
(And to the veteran who agreed with me about the military-industrial complex but thought the Memorial Day timing was in poor taste &mdash; I totally get where you&rsquo;re coming from. Thank you for taking the time to speak up.)
We&rsquo;ll give the final word to a reader who sought to weigh in on both of those industries&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;I appreciated your recent musings highlighting the immense public funds flowing into America's military-industrial complex and the health care sector &mdash; both effectively government-sponsored monopolies. While the system is on a trajectory to break, the powers that be will not take action while the music is still playing.
&ldquo;We are watching the perpetual &lsquo;money game,&rsquo; where cunning actors ingeniously seek paths to wealth and power. Ideally, they prefer the easiest route &mdash; taking money rather than creating genuine value. Government emerges as the most lucrative and accessible conduit to funnel public funds from the masses into private hands under the noble-sounding guise of national defense or public health.
&ldquo;This strategy is straightforward and astonishingly effective: Invest relatively small amounts of money in politicians through campaign contributions and lobbying efforts and reap exponential returns through government contracts, subsidies and protective legislation. The military-industrial complex and the health care industry serve as ideal laundering mechanisms, converting public resources into concentrated private gains.
&ldquo;Thus, politicians' inertia, including Trump and the current Republican legislative menagerie, is not accidental. They have no incentive to dismantle or even reduce these sectors, as doing so would disrupt the machinery that sustains their power and enriches their benefactors.
&ldquo;Thank you for shining a spotlight on this game. Your voice is crucial in exposing that which thrives in the shadows of public ignorance and political complicity.
&ldquo;Hell of a time to be an American.&rdquo;
Dave responds: It&rsquo;s as good a moment as any to cue up my favorite George Carlin rant&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2yk2fYaWEMzVzW5AED2yiU/9b1aebadae7046e0f511a9b96cb07092/George.png" alt="George Carlin" width="540px" />
Have a good weekend,
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/signatures/dave-gonigam.png" alt="Dave Gonigam" width="250px" align="left" />
Dave Gonigam Managing editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

Trump-Elon

There’s a theory circulated by armchair pundits that the Trump-Musk meltdown is “kayfabe” — to borrow a term from pro wrestling. 

Trump-Musk: All “Kayfabe”? 

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Silver Soars
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />A few hours doesn&rsquo;t constitute a trend &mdash; but silver has blasted through the $35 barrier.
Checking our screens, the white metal has screamed $1.36 higher on the day &mdash; nearly 4% &mdash; to sit at $35.83.
I said in Tuesday&rsquo;s edition I planned to buy more silver later in the day, even with the price near 12-year highs. I did. But that&rsquo;s not a short-term trade thing. It&rsquo;s a long-term accumulation thing.
Silver began the week around $33. It blasted higher on Monday, consolidated a bit, and blasted higher again today.
In Tuesday&rsquo;s Rude Awakening, Paradigm&rsquo;s recovering investment banker Sean Ring laid out five factors that lit the fuse on silver&rsquo;s rally this week&hellip;
<ul>
<li>Short Squeeze Chaos: &ldquo;Once silver pierced $33.80 overnight [Monday], the game was on. That level was the lid on the pressure cooker &mdash; and once that blew, CTAs [commodity trading advisers] and managed futures funds tripped over each other to cover&rdquo;</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Industrial Demand and Supply Constraints: &ldquo;Robust industrial demand, especially from China&rsquo;s rapidly expanding solar and electronics sectors, played a significant role. Supply also remains tight, with the world&rsquo;s top producers (Mexico, China and Peru) facing stalled mining growth. This has led to persistent deficits and declining aboveground inventories, making the market more sensitive to supply shocks&rdquo;</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Record-Setting ETF Inflows: &ldquo;Institutional investors bought over 29 million ounces worth of a silver ETF last week&rdquo;</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Safe-Haven Demand: &ldquo;S.-China trade tensions flared up over the weekend. Silver is acting as a hedge against The Donald&rsquo;s whims&rdquo;</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Russia-Ukraine: &ldquo;Drone strikes do not make a peace settlement. This is safe-haven investing at its finest.</li>
</ul>
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;Silver isn&rsquo;t just another shiny thing. It&rsquo;s a monetary metal with industrial utility, which makes it uniquely disruptive to the status quo,&rdquo; Sean goes on.
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s one of the few assets that can blow holes in both fiat illusions and Green New Deal fantasies &mdash; depending on who you ask.
&ldquo;When silver spikes, it signals something deeper is breaking. Confidence in fiat. Stability in supply chains. Or faith in central banks.
&ldquo;Unlike gold, which central banks hoard, silver is the people&rsquo;s metal. And when it starts moving like this, it's telling you inflation hedges are back in play, industrial demand is real and the old suppression game may be losing control.&rdquo;
If $35 can hold, Sean says the next target is $38. Beyond that? &ldquo;It&rsquo;s blue sky until $50&rdquo; &mdash; a level that marked the all-time high in 2011 (and before that, 1980).
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Gold, in contrast, is treading water today &mdash; down about eight bucks to $3,364. But in the bigger picture, the Midas metal looks stout.
Check this out, courtesy of the chartmeisters at Bank of America&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/32yTABe08o4ReG9aPJ0QbC/2b95a61dca714fda7f4fe638fa6d0112/katusa_tweet.png" alt="Katusa Tweet" />
This is a good opportunity to revisit some timeless wisdom about bull markets &mdash; and how every bull market goes through three phases&hellip;
<ul>
<li>In the first phase, nobody wants to buy. That&rsquo;s where gold was in 1999&ndash;2000 &mdash; mired at $260, left for dead, a mere fraction of its $800 record two decades earlier. It&rsquo;s at such moments when the brave move in and scoop up a bargain</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The second phase is that proverbial &ldquo;wall of worry&rdquo; &mdash; when the pros are piling in but they&rsquo;re fretting the whole way up that it could all fall apart again. That happened throughout the 2000s &mdash; including during the 2008 financial crisis when gold took a steep tumble from record levels over $1,000</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The third and final phase is the mania phase, when mom and pop &ldquo;retail investors&rdquo; pile in en masse. Gold went parabolic &mdash; more than doubling from under $900 in early 2009 to a record $1,950 just after Labor Day 2011.</li>
</ul>
The current gold bull market began when the price bottomed in December 2015 at $1,050 &mdash; a bottom Paradigm&rsquo;s macro maven Jim Rickards nailed almost to the day.
That chart above suggests we&rsquo;re still squarely in Phase Two. Still plenty of time to get 10% of your portfolio allocated to gold, as Jim recommends.
Even if his hypothetical target of $27,533 is never achieved &mdash; you can see the math behind that calculation <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-usd27-533-gold-solution" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a> &mdash; just $10,000 would be nearly a triple from current levels.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Whoops, This Wasn&rsquo;t the Idea
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Amid another trade-war headline, this headline-driven stock market looks remarkably calm today.
The headline in question is a phone call between President Trump and President Xi of China.
Chinese state media were first to report it &mdash; albeit with few details. Trump piped up on social media at midmorning, at least hinting at what was discussed: &ldquo;There should no longer be any questions respecting the complexity of Rare Earth products.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The Trump-Xi call had been in the works for a few days &mdash; but it came a day after Trump&rsquo;s trade policy ran up against the law of unintended consequences.
Recapping what we mentioned on Monday: After talks between U.S. and Chinese negotiators last month resulted in a 90-day tariff truce, the U.S. Commerce Department issued a warning against the use of AI chips made by the Chinese firm Huawei &ldquo;anywhere in the world.&rdquo;
Beijing evidently took exception to that &mdash; and responded by starting to hold up approval of export licenses for rare earth elements used in everything from smartphones to guided missile systems.
Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal reported that for lack of rare earth magnets, &ldquo;four major automakers&rdquo; &mdash; some of them presumably American &mdash; faced &ldquo;looming factory shutdowns.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />These companies&rsquo; solution to their conundrum? Move the manufacturing of certain parts to China.
&ldquo;Ideas under review,&rdquo; said the paper, &ldquo;include producing electric motors in Chinese factories or shipping made-in-America motors to China to have magnets installed. Moving production to China as a way to get around the export controls on rare earth magnets could work because the restrictions only cover magnets, not finished parts&hellip;&rdquo;
In a delightful exercise of understatement, the article then says, &ldquo;If automakers end up shifting some production to China, it would amount to a remarkable outcome from a trade war initiated by President Trump with the intention of bringing manufacturing back to the U.S.&rdquo;
In any event, Trump says negotiators from both countries will meet for another round of trade talks at a date and time yet to be announced.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Amid that backdrop, the major U.S. stock averages are modestly in the green.
The S&amp;P 500 is up 0.4% and a mere six points away from the 6,000 mark &mdash; a level last seen in February.
Among the news-making names is Boeing &mdash; flat on the day after final details emerged of its deal with the U.S. Justice Department.
The company will fork over $1.1 billion to avoid prosecution for the two crashes of 737 MAX jets overseas during 2018&ndash;19 &mdash; twin disasters that killed 346 people total.
For the record, $1.1 billion is about 5.6% of BA&rsquo;s revenue during the first quarter of this year. No surprise that it&rsquo;s a &ldquo;cost of doing business&rdquo; penalty if you saw <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/quiet-riot#4" target="_blank" rel="noopener">our most recent write-up of this travesty</a> last month.
If you can hold your nose, several Paradigm experts say Boeing looks like a buy at this point: At $211 today, our Alan Knuckman says there&rsquo;s plenty of room to return to the 2019 highs of $400.
&ldquo;They&rsquo;re not going to let that company fail.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />After Striking Big Deals With Trump&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />For all the big deals that Donald Trump made last month with the leaders of the Gulf sheikdoms like Saudi Arabia&hellip; those leaders might be on the verge of bigger deals with China.
Last month, a delegation from China met in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia with officials from the Gulf Cooperation Council (six countries including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates)... as well as officials from ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (10 countries including Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines).
&ldquo;This has bizarrely received almost zero coverage in Western media,&rdquo; marvels the French internet entrepreneur Arnaud Bertrand, who&rsquo;s spent many years in China.
As he writes on X, the summit&rsquo;s aim was nothing less than &ldquo;to forge what could become the world&rsquo;s largest economic bloc, covering everything from free-trade agreements and de-dollarization to Belt and Road connectivity.&rdquo;
The <a href="https://www.kln.gov.my/web/guest/-/joint-statement-summit-of-the-association-of-southeast-asian-nations-asean-the-cooperation-council-for-the-arab-states-of-the-gulf-gcc-and-the-people-" target="_blank" rel="noopener">final statement</a> from the summit contained the usual mumbo jumbo found in such documents. But reading between the lines, Bertrand says the arrangement &ldquo;could represent nothing less than the most significant realignment of global economic power in generations, bringing together 2 billion people and more than half of the world's GDP growth under a single cooperative framework.&rdquo;
If so, Trump&rsquo;s weapons sales to the Gulf states and other deals made last month will look less consequential in the sweep of history.
Maybe nothing will come of it &mdash; but we owe it to you to tell you what corporate media won&rsquo;t.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Whoever thought to merge the national debt with the &ldquo;Disaster Girl&rdquo; meme is brilliant&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6jziLQkytRUqTtPpAIAhnc/0d36e422b71da81936a11a4566042b27/disaster_girl_meme.png" alt="disaster girl meme" />
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Warfare
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />George Washington&rsquo;s prescient warning in <a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/George_Washington%27s_Farewell_Address" target="_blank" rel="noopener">his farewell address</a> about &ldquo;sympathy for a favored nation&rdquo; springs to mind as we sift through the mailbag.
After <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/will-america-tariff-itself" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Monday&rsquo;s edition</a> about the Senate bill imposing 500% tariffs on goods from any country that buys Russian energy, a reader writes: &ldquo;We have the killer in the Kremlin who won't stop killing innocent Ukrainian people until he subjugates the whole of Ukraine.
&ldquo;That killing of innocent people must stop. Drastic financial punishment is the only peaceful measure we have to stop Putin. If that fails, we have no choice but to resort to military action.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;There is no way the U.S. was not only involved, but the mastermind,&rdquo; a reader writes after <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/it-starts-with-drones-it-ends-with-nukes" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tuesday&rsquo;s edition</a> covering the Ukrainian drone attack on Russian aircraft.
&ldquo;You can start with the immediate and implausible &lsquo;details&rsquo; that clearly give the credit to Ukraine and absolve the U.S.
&ldquo;Trump needed to show Putin there could be Russian losses outside of manpower and old weapons. This attack was costly for Russia, like losing the flagship on the Black Sea. That is the only thing that will bring Russia to the table.
&ldquo;Hiding drones near Russian targets for over a year? Preposterous! Putin cannot bear these types of losses.&rdquo;
Dave responds: Assuming Trump knew about and authorized the attack, you&rsquo;re OK with that because it will &ldquo;bring Russia to the table&rdquo;?
Sure doesn&rsquo;t seem like that&rsquo;s the result after the phone call between Trump and Putin yesterday.
Meanwhile, it can&rsquo;t be said often enough: Sanctions are an act of war.
Often as not, sanctions do not serve as a substitute for &ldquo;kinetic&rdquo; action but rather a precursor to it. Certainly the U.S. embargo on Japan&rsquo;s oil imports did not forestall Pearl Harbor &mdash; and many historians believe the embargo actually precipitated it.
Alternatively, sanctions can become &ldquo;a trap door to war,&rdquo; as John Patterson wrote in 1994 for the Middle East Research and Information Project.
He had in mind the run-up to the Gulf War in 1991: &ldquo;The Bush administration easily co-opted the broad support that arose for sanctions by arguing that time had run out, sanctions had been tried and failed, and therefore military action was justified.&rdquo;
In the present moment &mdash; when we&rsquo;re talking about the two nuclear superpowers &mdash; caution seems to be in order, no? Tens of millions of Americans glowing in the dark <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-ukrainian-missile-crisis" target="_blank" rel="noopener">is not an acceptable price</a> for &ldquo;owning Putin.&rdquo;

shutterstock 1899351673 (1)

“Silver isn’t just another shiny thing. It’s a monetary metal with industrial utility, which makes it uniquely disruptive to the status quo,” says Sean Ring.

Phase Two 

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Alaska Opens for Drilling
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />On Monday, top Trump officials announced a sweeping plan, setting the stage for a dramatic expansion of oil and gas drilling in some of the nation&rsquo;s untouched landscapes. 
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, joined by leaders from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy, unveiled the proposal during a high-profile visit to Alaska&rsquo;s North Slope, signaling a renewed drive to unleash the state&rsquo;s vast energy resources.
The move specifically targets the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A), a 23-million-acre expanse about 600 miles north of Anchorage, bounded by the Chukchi and Beaufort seas.
Originally established in the early 20th century as a strategic fuel reserve for the U.S. Navy, the NPR-A now stands as the largest single tract of public land in the country, home to grizzly and polar bears, caribou and hundreds of thousands of migratory birds.
In 1976, Congress authorized commercial development of the reserve but mandated a careful balance between energy extraction and conservation
Last year, the Biden administration imposed sweeping restrictions on oil and gas development across more than half of the NPR-A, designating 13 million acres as &ldquo;Special Areas&rdquo; off limits to leasing unless operators could prove minimal or no adverse effects on surface resources.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2X3Zk4kcBApNpLfvdRkjxq/dcdb3f150c0141d204cfc483b522f20b/PolHistMaven.png" alt="PolHist Maven" width="540px" />
Secretary Burgum argues, however, that Team Biden &ldquo;prioritiz[ed] obstruction over production and undermin[ed] our ability to harness domestic resources at a time when American energy independence has never been more critical.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The Trump administration&rsquo;s proposal would rescind Biden-era restrictions, opening millions of acres to new drilling and mining projects. 
The announcement drew immediate praise from Alaska&rsquo;s oil industry and many state leaders, who have long chafed at what they see as federal overreach. &ldquo;The National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska was set aside to support America&rsquo;s energy security through responsible development,&rdquo; Secretary Burgum notes.
President Trump vows to double the oil flowing through Alaska&rsquo;s pipeline system and to advance a massive liquefied natural gas project aimed at both domestic use and export to Asian markets.
The administration&rsquo;s delegation to Alaska notably included representatives from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines, spotlighting international interest in Alaska&rsquo;s energy potential
Alaska&rsquo;s Native communities remain divided &mdash; some support new projects for the jobs and revenue they bring, while others worry about threats to subsistence hunting and traditional ways of life. Still, several Alaska Native leaders welcomed the visit, after years of feeling sidelined by the previous administration.
Meanwhile, just days after the Alaska announcement, the administration fast-tracked the reopening of the long-dormant Velvet-Wood uranium mine in Utah, highlighting a broader vision for U.S. energy dominance.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Utah Uranium Moves Forward
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The Velvet-Wood mine, located 35 miles south of Moab, Utah, is the first project to benefit from President Trump&rsquo;s January 2025 declaration of a &ldquo;national energy emergency.&rdquo; 
Under this order, federal agencies can expedite environmental reviews for critical energy projects, slashing approval times from months or years to as little as 11 days.
&ldquo;President Trump has made it clear that our energy security is national security,&rdquo; Burgum says. &ldquo;These emergency procedures reflect our unwavering commitment to protecting both.&rdquo;
The administration&rsquo;s rationale is straightforward: With the U.S. importing about 98% of its uranium&mdash;much of it from allies like Canada and Australia, but also from nations like Kazakhstan and, until recently, Russia &mdash; domestic mining is seen as a matter of national security.
&ldquo;By simplifying the review process for essential mineral projects like Velvet-Wood, we&rsquo;re reducing dependence on foreign adversaries,&rdquo; Burgum adds.
Once a cornerstone of Moab&rsquo;s Cold War-era uranium boom, the Velvet-Wood mine has sat idle since the 1980s. Now, Canadian firm Anfield Energy is poised to reopen it, tapping into known deposits of uranium and vanadium and promising jobs and infrastructure improvements for the region.
The Interior Department estimates the operation will disturb just three new acres of land; yet the rapid approval process has sparked backlash from environmental groups who argue that the &ldquo;energy emergency&rdquo; is a political construct and not a legitimate crisis. (More on that later in today&rsquo;s issue.)
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Despite the pushback, the White House&rsquo;s master plan is clear: Cut red tape, boost domestic production and leverage America&rsquo;s resources for economic and strategic advantage.
The Trump administration&rsquo;s aggressive push to unlock Alaska&rsquo;s energy reserves and fast-track critical mineral projects is not merely a policy shift &mdash; it marks the opening chapter of what Paradigm&rsquo;s macro expert Jim Rickards calls &ldquo;America&rsquo;s Birthright&rdquo; moment.
As the drive to revitalize American energy stretches from the Arctic tundra to the red-rock deserts of the West, the nation stands poised to accelerate its energy ambitions and unlock, what Jim argues, is a $150 trillion trove of critical resources long sequestered on federal lands.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />A &ldquo;Stunning&rdquo; Market Prediction
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;It is stunning how often the stock market &mdash; and the movement of various technical indicators &mdash; is able to predict the future,&rdquo; says Paradigm&rsquo;s pro trader Enrique Abeyta.
&ldquo;We see this happening right now,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;One of these signals is how quickly the stock market recovered to near its highs after a steep sell-off.
&ldquo;Here is a table from one of my favorite research services, Bespoke Investment Group, that shows how the S&amp;P 500 performs after it has sold off at least 15% and then recovered to within 3% of a new all-time high&hellip;

<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5GCThYm3EPZM8AcpMSHTXn/0f85164369c2f84061081b2802019302/SP500-Bespoke.png" alt="SP 500 Bespoke" width="540px" />

Source: Bespoke Investment Group
&ldquo;This has happened 15 times since 1954, and the S&amp;P 500 has been up every single time six months later,&rdquo; Enrique notes. &ldquo;It is also up almost three times the normal amount over that period on average.
&ldquo;Here&rsquo;s a signal from another great service called SubuTrade.com, showing what happens next when the S&amp;P 500 is up 18% over 35 trading days&hellip;

<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2fwW2GzBtSVWF3WnV8BNZj/515d8f244485d0b3bf2f0f3667f302ce/SP500-SubuTrade.png" alt="SP 500 subutrade" width="540px" />

Source: SubuTrade.com
&ldquo;This has happened only seven times before, and the stock market is also up every single time in six months. Plus, it&rsquo;s up more than four times the normal move.
&ldquo;I have another dozen or more of these types of signals,&rdquo; Enrique summarizes. &ldquo;They are all saying the same thing&hellip; The stock market is headed higher.
&ldquo;Focus on price,&rdquo; he adds. &ldquo;The market will reward you!&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Looking at our screen today, stocks are rebounding modestly &mdash; with the tech-heavy Nasdaq leading the way: up 0.25% to 19,455. At the same time, the S&amp;P 500 is up 0.20% to 5,980 while the Big Board is up 0.10% to 42,570.
Turning to commodities, the price of crude is down 0.85% to $62.85 for a barrel of West Texas Intermediate. As for precious metals, gold is up 0.60% to $3,397.50 per ounce; silver, on the other hand, is down 0.25% to $34.55.
While Bitcoin&rsquo;s down 0.80% to $105,430 at the time of writing, Ethereum&rsquo;s rallying almost 2% to $2,675.
As for the leading U.S. economic indicators today&hellip;
<ul>
<li>S&amp;P Global Composite PMI (May 2025): The Composite PMI rose to 52.1 in May, up from 50.6 in April, signaling the fastest pace of private sector growth in, well, two months. The uptick was led by a rebound in services, while manufacturing remained sluggish. New orders increased, but higher tariffs pushed up costs. Business sentiment? Cautious</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Initial Jobless Claims (week ending May 24, 2025): Initial claims for unemployment benefits rose to 240,000, the highest in several months and above expectations. Meanwhile, the number of people continuing to receive unemployment benefits climbed over 1.9 million &mdash; the highest number since late 2021. </li>
</ul>
For what it&rsquo;s worth, according to the ADP Employment Report, only 37,000 new private-sector jobs were added in May, far below expectations and sharply down from April.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />DOE Halts Coal Plant Shutdown
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has taken the unusual step of issuing emergency orders to keep a fossil-fuel power plant running in the Midwest, citing concerns about grid reliability as summer demand surges.
The DOE&rsquo;s emergency authority comes from Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act, which allows the government to intervene during grid emergencies.
On May 23, Energy Secretary Chris Wright directed the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) to ensure the continued operation &mdash; for at least 90 days &mdash; of the J.H. Campbell coal-fired power plant in West Olive, Michigan, just days before its planned retirement.

<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2qRorTSUGkoBRsG8iyYCoa/f0172bd913206ef7ac3dac6ff586726e/PowerPlant.png" alt="power plant" width="540px" />

Source: X, mlive.com J.H. Campbell power plant in West Olive, Michigan
The plant &mdash; which can generate 1,560 megawatts of electricity at its maximum instantaneous generating capacity &mdash; was set to close 15 years before the end of its intended lifespan as part of Michigan&rsquo;s green-energy transition.
Federal officials justify the move by pointing to recent assessments from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), which warns that the MISO region faces an elevated risk of electricity shortfalls this summer due to rising demand and the retirement of thermal power plants.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2oc6KCsZ0dKeRwjgyUDYwa/7bb1d5cc138551cf33eff81837297897/MAP-NERC.png" alt="map" width="540px" />
Last summer, FYI, MISO narrowly avoided blackouts by importing power from neighboring PJM, but both regions now expect even tighter supplies.
While critics argue the order is unnecessary and could raise electricity costs (?), supporters say it is essential to prevent blackouts and maintain grid stability.
This as the rapid growth of AI and associated data centers, combined with the closure of coal and other fossil fuel facilities, has left the national grid with a much thinner reserve margin than in previous years.
[Update: Further underscoring the <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/summer-2025-maxed-out">need</a> for reliable, dispatchable power this summer, on May 31, the Trump administration ordered PJM&rsquo;s Eddystone oil-gas facility outside Philly to remain operational by emergency order. Stay tuned for more on the rapidly changing energy landscape.]
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />A &ldquo;Rainmaker&rdquo; Behind Bars
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Nigerian TikTok star Murja Kunya just learned that making it rain can land you in hot water &mdash; at least if you&rsquo;re doing it with naira notes. 
Kunya, who boasts over a million followers as well as a knack for courting controversy, was sentenced to six months in jail after a court in Kano caught wind of her &ldquo;spraying&rdquo; cash at a party &mdash; a beloved local tradition, but one that Nigerian law now prohibits.
The judge, perhaps with a sense of irony, gave her a choice: Spend half a year behind bars or cough up a 50,000 naira fine (about $33).
Guess she pissed away all her cash reserves?
As a bonus, now Ms. Kunya&rsquo;s been drafted as an online anti naira-abuse crusader, ordered to use her social media clout to tell everyone else not to do what she did.

<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7nSBACewfvGIoRDj6JiVvC/3651f8d17b58329aabeab369180bb1ea/EFCC.png" alt="EFCC" width="540px" />

Source: X Murja Kunya&rsquo;s mugshot
Kunya is no stranger to legal drama, having been repeatedly arrested for her &ldquo;immoral&rdquo; videos in the conservative Muslim state of Kano. This latest escapade saw her dodging law enforcement for weeks before finally pleading guilty.
While &ldquo;spraying&rdquo; cash is a staple at Nigerian celebrations, authorities insist it&rsquo;s an insult to the currency. And local celebrities like Kunya are learning the hard way: In Nigeria, if you treat money like confetti, you might just pay the price.
It&rsquo;s a shame the same rules don&rsquo;t apply at the Federal Reserve&hellip;
Take care, reader! We&rsquo;ll be back at it Thursday.
Best regards,
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/signatures/emily-clancy.png" alt="Emily Clancy" width="250px" align="left" />
Emily Clancy Associate editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

energy-0604

The Trump administration sets the stage for a dramatic expansion of exploration and mining in some of the nation’s untouched landscapes. 

Promises Kept (Trump’s Energy Agenda)

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />It Starts With Drones. It Ends With Nukes
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;If you haven&rsquo;t figured it out yet, America and the world dodged a huge bullet last weekend,&rdquo; says Paradigm&rsquo;s military affairs expert Byron King.
At least so far.
As you&rsquo;ve surely heard by now, Ukrainian drones pulled off a sneak attack on Russian aircraft parked at their bases.
As you might not have heard, some of those bases lie in Siberia &mdash; thousands of miles from the front lines of the war. What&rsquo;s more, the aircraft are designed for dropping nuclear weapons in a doomsday scenario; they have no value to Russia&rsquo;s war aims in Ukraine.
Byron usually holds forth in our virtual pages about natural resource investing. But he also logged 30 years of service as a Navy flight officer, both active-duty and reserve. Along the way he picked up an advanced degree from the Naval War College.
&ldquo;The immediate message of an attack on nuclear platforms &mdash; anywhere, anytime: bombers, missile silos, submarines &mdash; is that another nation is trying to take out your strategic component,&rdquo; Byron <a href="https://dailyreckoning.com/ukraine-targets-trump-with-a-propaganda-pearl-harbor/">writes today</a> at our sister e-letter, the Daily Reckoning.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Ominous? Yes, he says. &ldquo;This kind of hostile action could easily lead to rapid military escalation, up to and including &lsquo;pushing the button,&rsquo; so to speak. 
&ldquo;OK, yes&hellip; I get it that Ukraine doesn&rsquo;t like getting blasted by Russian weapons, certainly not by weapons fired from Russian bombers,&rdquo; Byron goes on.
&ldquo;But as a matter of American national interest, it is beyond outrageous that Ukraine attacked those strategic-level bombers (and possibly submarines) at home bases, with all the potential to trigger an escalation to nuclear war. And they didn&rsquo;t tell Trump, eh? Hmm&hellip;&rdquo;
That&rsquo;s the official story, anyway. The Axios news site says the attack was 18 months in the making. But &ldquo;reports indicate that Ukraine did not inform the Trump administration in advance,&rdquo; says the New York Post.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Byron will allow for the possibility that Ukraine&rsquo;s military acted alone. Other experts rule it out.
&ldquo;None of these attacks could have been planned and executed without assistance, if not the direct involvement, of Western intelligence and NATO officers,&rdquo; writes former CIA analyst Larry Johnson at his Sonar21 site.
&ldquo;The drones likely were activated by a remote signal made possible by Western satellites and/or systems like Starlink. Those systems also played a critical role in enabling the drones to navigate to the targeted airfields.&rdquo;
Early last year, The New York Times ran a lengthy article acknowledging that when it comes to Ukraine, &ldquo;the CIA and other American intelligence agencies provide intelligence for targeted missile strikes, track Russian troop movements and help support spy networks.&rdquo;
What&rsquo;s more, the partnership &ldquo;took root a decade ago&rdquo; &mdash; after the Obama administration engineered regime change in Ukraine in 2014.
For today, we&rsquo;ll leave aside the implications of the American &ldquo;deep state&rdquo; orchestrating this operation while leaving the president out of the loop.
The point is that Moscow almost certainly sees Washington&rsquo;s fingerprints on this attack &mdash; especially only days after Trump warned that Russia&rsquo;s Vladimir Putin is &ldquo;playing with fire.&rdquo;
How will the Kremlin ultimately respond?
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />The Perils of &ldquo;Escalation&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;No one wakes up in the morning and says, &lsquo;What a nice day for a nuclear war. Let&rsquo;s launch some missiles,&rsquo;&rdquo; said our Jim Rickards in this space in 2022 &mdash; when the Russia-Ukraine war wasn&rsquo;t even three months old.
&ldquo;Experts who have studied the subject of nuclear warfighting since the 1950s (and I&rsquo;ve personally studied their work since the late 1960s) all agree that the danger is not an out-of-the-blue decision to launch. The danger is escalation.
&ldquo;The adversaries will first go through a process of confrontation and gradual escalation to the point that one side or the other feels trapped with no way out except to use nuclear weapons.
&ldquo;At that point, game theory is applied to infer that if your enemy is about to launch nuclear weapons against you, it&rsquo;s in your interests to launch first. That&rsquo;s because suffering a first strike might make you incapable of launching a second strike in retaliation.
&ldquo;The solution is to launch a first strike before the other side launches its first strike. You can build a capability that will survive a first strike and launch a second-strike retaliation, but you cannot be sure it will work, and your adversary might have increased its first strike capability, etc. The entire game theoretic framework pushes both sides to a nuclear attack even though neither side wanted that.
&ldquo;The real answer is to avoid escalation in the first place.&rdquo;
Which the government of Ukraine &mdash; and whoever might have aided and abetted the attack &mdash; did not do.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> So far, Vladimir Putin has responded with restraint. But for how long?
Western media usually portrays Putin as an absolute dictator. But the fact is that for the duration of this war, he&rsquo;s been under immense pressure from hotheads in the Russian power structure demanding he lash out more than he has.
Then again, the response might not be nuclear at all.
Ponder this for a moment. The Ukrainians say they hid the drones inside the roofs of wooden sheds &mdash; which were then loaded onto trucks driven near the bases. The truck drivers had no clue about their explosive cargo until the Ukrainians remotely lifted the sheds&rsquo; roof panels and the drones flew out.
&ldquo;The problem with this attack,&rdquo; tweets the freelance journalist Leonid Ragozin, &ldquo;is that anyone can play this game against absolutely anybody. Notably including the Russians when they need to engage in what they call asymmetrical warfare.&rdquo;
But not just the Russians &mdash; also organized crime and terrorists. With this attack, &ldquo;the genie goes out of the bottle.&rdquo;
We&rsquo;ll leave it there for today. The investment takeaway is this: However many hedges against geopolitical risk you hold in your portfolio, it&rsquo;s probably not enough. We&rsquo;re talking gold and silver. Oil, too &mdash; even with the oil price stuck in the low $60s for most of the last two months.
We haven&rsquo;t even touched on how the Iran nuclear talks are on the verge of breakdown&hellip; or Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth&rsquo;s reckless promise to defend Taiwan against mainland China.
Yeah, personally I&rsquo;m buying more silver today, even with the price near 12-year highs&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Power Play
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Among the market-moving names today is one we submitted for your consideration in this space four weeks ago &mdash; Constellation Energy (CEG).
Facebook/Instagram parent Meta Platforms just announced a deal with CEG to help power Meta&rsquo;s AI ambitions. For the next 20 years, Meta will get access to the electricity generated by the Clinton nuclear power station in downstate Illinois.
Exactly how much money is changing hands is still under wraps. But &ldquo;it&rsquo;s billions of dollars of capital that you&rsquo;re signing up for to run a plant for 20 more years,&rdquo; says Constellation CEO Joe Dominguez.
The Wall Street Journal says the deal is the first of its kind &mdash; in the sense that Clinton has been in operation for nearly 40 years.
That&rsquo;s different from the deal Microsoft struck with Constellation last year &mdash; in which CEG will restart the undamaged reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania after it was shut down in 2019.
CEG is up 1% on the day. It&rsquo;s up 18% since we mentioned it in <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/blackout-nation">our May 7 edition</a> as one of the companies best positioned to thrive from the prodigious demands that AI is placing on the power grid.
It&rsquo;s a theme we&rsquo;ve been pounding the table about since early last year. If you&rsquo;re not up to speed, <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-monster-that-ate-the-power-grid-ai">here&rsquo;s a good place to start</a>.
We&rsquo;re so passionate about the issue &mdash; and the investment possibilities &mdash; that it&rsquo;s quickly becoming a major project here at Paradigm Press. Stay tuned through the summer for details&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> As for the broader market, it&rsquo;s not outrageous to start talking about new all-time highs.
At last check the S&amp;P 500 is up more than a half percent on the day. At 5,970 it&rsquo;s at its highest level since late February&hellip; only 30 points below the psychologically significant round number of 6,000&hellip; and only 2.8% below its record close of Feb. 19.
Elsewhere, the jitters over Uncle Sam&rsquo;s debt burden persists in the bond market &mdash; with the 10-year Treasury note a little below 4.5% and the 30-year T-bond just under 5%.
Precious metals are taking a breather after yesterday&rsquo;s furious rally &mdash; gold down $34 to $3,346 and silver off 37 cents to $34.35. Crude is up another buck today to $63.58.
Bitcoin is showing signs of life, up to about $106,500.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />A postscript to your editor&rsquo;s post-DOGE scribblings yesterday&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/uT8wT7uAoZx59m3XxSffD/b8b7dfb4db211768990424fe74e55319/RetroTweet.png" alt="Retro Tweet" width="540px" />
Admittedly this is a dated reference, lost on younger readers &mdash; but it <a href="https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/subcultures/columboposting">does have an entry</a> at KnowYourMeme!
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Civil War
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> We got a voluminous reader response to our &ldquo;civil war&rdquo; issue &mdash; originally published <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/blood-trains">in late 2023</a> and updated last week for the Trump 47 era.
&ldquo;I agree with you,&rdquo; says one short note. &ldquo;What happened to leave each other alone and quit stealing my money and wasting it? Let&rsquo;s go with that.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;I can see civil unrest, sabotage and martial law with government-run food centers in our future. Runaway inflation alone could trigger that,&rdquo; a reader speculates.
&ldquo;What I really fear is a future where the threat has no face. It's random and capricious. Films like Escape from L.A. (1996), The Warriors (1979), and Children of Men (2006) are fun examples.
&ldquo;But the work of fiction that has the most uncanny parallels to today is Frank Miller's graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns (1986). The broken tribal society he artfully depicts in that work mirrors our modern world in so many ways. The talking heads in the media, the obnoxious political rhetoric, the crime and the fanatics. Taken from the blaring TVs colored on the page and transplanted to the ones in our homes 30 years later.
&ldquo;Unless Elon has a Batman suit in his closet, I don't know how we're going to give people a sense of unity in the years to come.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;There never has been any &lsquo;civil&rsquo; war in all recorded history. &lsquo;Civil war&rsquo; is a term used for a failed revolution,&rdquo; another reader writes.
&ldquo;All so-called revolutions (especially U.S. 1775&ndash;82) are better characterized as civil wars, except the U.S. Civil War which was a failed War of Southern Succession. Victors write the history.
&ldquo;Widespread combat within the U.S. might have occurred after Obama was elected the third time in 2020 and more so after imposing vax mandates in September 2021. Why else were the truckers so brutally suppressed in Ottawa in February 2022? Orders from Kalorama because a southerly copy was developing and needed to be quashed lest midterms turn into an even worse disaster. Do you think Trudeau could do it on his own? Biden is brighter. So is Kamala.
&ldquo;All to illustrate that war happens when one or more parties decide that war is the only/best way to get what they need. For the time being, Repubs are satisfied with the nominal presidency and Dems appear satisfied with lawfare, but a third Trump term frightens them. (What doesn&rsquo;t?) Maybe enough to unleash their proxy gangs (illegals).&rdquo;
Dave responds: You&rsquo;re not the only reader to bring up the American Revolution &mdash; which indeed is characterized by Johns Hopkins historian Michael Vlahos among others as a civil war.
Another reader points us to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_the_Loyalists">a Wikipedia article</a> titled &ldquo;Expulsion of the Loyalists&rdquo; &mdash; and a 2012 estimate by a Harvard historian that 60,000 white settlers left the United States, over half of whom ended up in what are now the Canadian Maritimes.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;I'm not sure which door to pick on your three scenarios for civil war but it reminded me of a trip I took to Tennessee and Alabama in the late &rsquo;90s,&rdquo; writes a reader from the San Diego area.
&ldquo;When I told the owner of the B&amp;B outside Nashville that I was going to see a few Civil War battlefields they replied in thick Southern drawl, &lsquo;We call it the War of Northern Aggression; there was nothing civil about it.&rsquo; We have a long-standing tradition of holding strong differences of opinion and managing to coexist in relative peace.
&ldquo;That said, media hysterics and the interwebs&rsquo; effect of instant infotainment and sifting for substance does distort our better natures. I'm betting on the inertia of the collective to remain more at rest as full bellies and superficial entertainment lull most into passivity.
&ldquo;Thanks for keeping it interesting as you have for many years!&rdquo;
Dave: So instead of The Dark Knight Returns, our alternative future is Idiocracy? You&rsquo;re not making me feel any better!
Best regards,
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/signatures/dave-gonigam.png" alt="Dave Gonigam" width="250px" align="left" />
Dave Gonigam Managing editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

Drone

As you’ve surely heard by now, Ukrainian drones pulled off a sneak attack on Russian aircraft parked at their bases. The imminent danger? Escalation… 

It Starts With Drones. It Ends With Nukes 

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Will America Tariff Itself?
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Is &ldquo;Pearl Harbor&rdquo; really the most apt metaphor for what happened in Russia yesterday?
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/45zveu27YYGUGhCHmn31bp/0799b5609fcc080a6f074c2a79bfc2e3/NYPost.png" alt="NY Post" width="540px" />
If memory serves, the nation that staged the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor ended up&hellip; losing the war.
Anyway, we&rsquo;re not going to spill much digital ink today on Ukraine&rsquo;s drone attacks inside Russia. There&rsquo;s too much we don&rsquo;t yet know to draw firm conclusions. Fog of war and all that. Maybe tomorrow.
But there&rsquo;s a related matter we&rsquo;re able to wrap our arms around already: Washington is on the verge of amping up the financial warfare against Russia.
And the consequences could be dire&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;If this bill were to pass, it would cause an economic calamity on a scale never before seen in our country.&rdquo;
So writes Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) of a bill in Congress called the Sanctioning Russia Act.
As you&rsquo;re likely aware if you keep up with these daily missives, Russia is already subject to a vast array of economic sanctions imposed under the Biden administration and still in effect under Trump.
They&rsquo;ve done nothing to achieve their intended purpose of wrecking the Russian economy or Russian currency.
So in true Washington fashion, a bipartisan group of senators has decided to double down on what&rsquo;s proven not to work.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The key provision of this bill is a 500% tariff on imports from all countries that buy Russian energy.
That&rsquo;s a lot of countries.
&ldquo;Dozens of countries continue to trade with Russia directly and indirectly including key strategic allies and even the United States itself,&rdquo; Sen. Paul points out.
&ldquo;In 2024, the United States imported $624 million worth of enriched uranium and plutonium directly from Russia&hellip; Are the proponents of this legislation honestly seeking to require the president to enact a 500% tariff on ourselves?&rdquo;
Even if not, the tariff would hit U.S. allies hard. Europe still can&rsquo;t wean itself off Russian energy; imports of Russian liquefied natural gas into the European Union grew 19% between 2023&ndash;2024. Japan also relies on Russian LNG.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />So the bill can&rsquo;t possibly pass, right? Wrong. Out of 100 senators, the measure has 81 co-sponsors.
Of course, there are the usual suspects. The lead sponsors are none other than warmongering Republican Lindsey Graham and warmongering Democrat Richard Blumenthal. Both of them just happened to pay a call on Ukraine&rsquo;s president Zelenskyy last week in Kyiv.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/28OJXJDbGNGesVAmM8zYJa/4b1de9941baef464db96d7624ab9894a/ZelenskyyTweet.png" alt="Zelenskyy Tweet" width="540px" />
But the list of co-sponsors also includes MAGA-adjacent Republicans like Alabama&rsquo;s Tommy Tuberville, Oklahoma&rsquo;s Markwayne Mullin and Florida&rsquo;s Rick Scott.
As independent reporter Michael Tracey points out on X, many of these names &ldquo;would not necessarily fall in the typical category of GOP Ukraine hawks.&rdquo; A companion bill in the House is likewise gathering bipartisan support.
The president isn&rsquo;t tipping his hand about what he&rsquo;ll do if this bill reaches his desk. Obviously there&rsquo;s already a veto-proof majority in the Senate.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Then again, assuming the bill becomes law, the rest of the world might simply ignore it.
Recall that a month ago, Trump declared on social media that &ldquo;any Country or person who buys ANY AMOUNT of OIL or PETROCHEMICALS from Iran&hellip; will not be allowed to do business with the United States of America in any way, shape, or form.&rdquo;
And yet&hellip; last week, a new rail line connecting China to Iran started carrying Iranian oil to China &mdash; as well as Chinese goods to Iran.
&ldquo;Railway infrastructure connecting Iran and China allows freight trains to travel from Shanghai to Tehran in 15 days, compared to 30 days via the maritime route,&rdquo; reports the news site The Cradle.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2rDMdKP42Fev11eXYTaTG9/a103d272ede6cf1bb5d9fcb66e0d3b56/SITweet.png" alt="SI Tweet" width="540px" />
But for the moment, China continues to &ldquo;do business with the United States of America.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> So assuming the bill passes, expect one of two outcomes.
&ldquo;If implemented,&rdquo; says Sen. Paul, &ldquo;these tariffs would make U.S. trade with most of the world untenable, raise prices for American consumers and risk further weakening the dollar.&rdquo;
And if not implemented, no one overseas will take Washington&rsquo;s threats and bluster seriously anymore, regardless of who&rsquo;s in the White House.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Trade War: Who&rsquo;s Violating Whom?
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> The stock market is starting a new month the way the old month ended &mdash; bouncing with every trade war headline.
The market slipped on Friday when Donald Trump declared Beijing &ldquo;HAS TOTALLY VIOLATED ITS AGREEMENT WITH US&rdquo; &mdash; that is, the 90-day tariff truce that U.S. and Chinese negotiators reached in Switzerland last month.
The market slipped further this morning when China&rsquo;s Ministry of Commerce declared Washington is the one who &ldquo;severely violated&rdquo; the truce.
<blockquote>➢ Trivia: One of the mainstream financial outlets mentioned that the stock market just put in its best month of May since 1990. It neglected to mention the economy tipped into recession that summer and the market took a 16% spill by that fall. No, that&rsquo;s not a prediction history will rhyme, it&rsquo;s just context for factoids the media love to entertain us with.</blockquote>
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Exactly what got under Trump&rsquo;s skin last week is a bit murky. Let&rsquo;s try to get some clarity.
The mainstream narrative is captured in a front-page Wall Street Journal article published Saturday: &ldquo;Beijing has held up approval of export licenses for rare earths and other elements needed to make cars, chips and other products.&rdquo;
Few people bothered to read the sentence that followed, which conveyed the real news: &ldquo;China&rsquo;s decision to stall on rare earths, according to people familiar with the matter, was in response to the U.S. Commerce Department&rsquo;s May 13 warning against the use of Huawei Technologies' Ascend artificial-intelligence chips &lsquo;anywhere in the world.&rsquo;&rdquo;
Anywhere in the world? Including China?
For its part, the administration says the warning merely reiterated existing policy. But the warning also came only days after U.S. and Chinese negotiators reached that 90-day truce.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Elsewhere, the commodity complex is on a tear &mdash; perhaps because of the sudden escalation in the Russia-Ukraine war, or perhaps because of something else.
At last check gold is up $81 to $3,369. And silver has rocketed $1.38 or 4.2% higher to $34.33.
The ceiling on silver is $35, as it&rsquo;s been for a while now. &ldquo;I believe that if we surpass $35, to the point where $35 changes its polarity from a resistance level to a support level, we&rsquo;ll see $50 much sooner than I can imagine,&rdquo; suggests our recovering investment banker Sean Ring in today&rsquo;s Rude Awakening.
The HUI index of gold stocks is up 5.6% to 420, the highest since early 2013.
Crude is up $1.77 or nearly 3% to $62.56.
But crypto looks moribund, Bitcoin at $104,432.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />DOGE, We Hardly Knew Ye
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> With apologies to Shakespeare, we come to bury DOGE, not to praise it.
As you&rsquo;ve likely heard, Elon Musk has formally wrapped up his formal government role &mdash; Musk and the president exchanging smiles and handshakes in the Oval Office Friday.
I admit: Even I got sucked in at the beginning. <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/civil-war-by-another-name#4">How could I not</a> when Musk and Mr. Small Government himself, Ron Paul, were trading ideas and memes on X.
In fairness to myself, I was already <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/buy-sell-hold#4">expressing skepticism</a> weeks before Musk dialed back his initial aim of $2 trillion in spending cuts to $1 trillion.
But hope sprang eternal: <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/elon-vs-the-pentagon">In February</a>, Trump said in his Super Bowl interview that it was time to unleash DOGE on the Pentagon&hellip; and Musk said Paul should lead an audit of the Federal Reserve.
[Voice of narrator: Neither happened.]
By mid-April, the $1 trillion was slashed by 85%. Musk said during a cabinet meeting, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m excited to announce that we anticipate savings in &rsquo;26 from reduction of waste and fraud by $150 billion.&rdquo; And as we pointed out at the time, $150 billion was the amount by which Trump wanted to raise the Pentagon budget.
In the end, the actual savings may be as little as $9 billion, or 0.1% of the budget.
&ldquo;The White House will ask Congress,&rdquo; Bloomberg reports, &ldquo;to enact $9 billion of spending cuts into law &mdash; a small portion of the $175 billion in savings that Elon Musk&rsquo;s Department of Government Efficiency claims to have found.&rdquo;
A few days ago, Musk threw in the proverbial towel, adopting the position of nearly every Republican politician and policy wonk for the last 40-plus years: The only fix for a spiraling national debt is to &ldquo;grow our way out of it.&rdquo;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4jEVqqcjMPmPerdHCMD5g5/5471b516216b432001d37c1ed07c61e3/elong-tweet.png" alt="elon tweet" width="540px" />
As our favorite political reporter, the aforementioned Michael Tracey, posted a few days ago: &ldquo;Musk's role was to throw out &lsquo;shiny objects&rsquo; for frantic social media consumption and give the vague impression that something momentous was happening, as though &lsquo;streamline federal agencies&rsquo; and &lsquo;modernize computer systems&rsquo; isn't just a reheated Bill Clinton initiative from 1993.&rdquo;
The investment implications? As independent newsletter operator Luke Gromen observes on X, the only times GDP has outgrown the debt were during episodes of high inflation (1965&ndash;1985, 2020&ndash;2023) or an epic asset bubble (1995&ndash;1999).
Neither scenario is good for long-term Treasuries. <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-real-reason-for-the-tariff-pause">But we&rsquo;ve been down on T-bonds</a> for a while.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />This is sort of a follow-up to Friday&rsquo;s edition about your editor&rsquo;s media consumption&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3CFJ6GZ0auojC0rWLJIPre/fa5718d53b514835f35c99cfba12e6fc/text-cartoon.png" alt="Cartoon" width="540px" />
As it happens, I&rsquo;m reading a book at the moment called Your Stone Age Brain in the Screen Age, by George Washington University neurologist Richard Cytowic.
So far the biggest takeaway is that I should counteract the 24/7 onslaught of information by taking walks in nature &mdash; which I already do!
Speaking of my media consumption&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Media Madness
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> We have a bulging mailbag. It&rsquo;s going to take all week to catch up.
&ldquo;Thanks for your reporting and especially the rundown of your day!&rdquo; a reader writes after <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/death-of-the-corporate-media">Friday&rsquo;s edition</a>. &ldquo;Gives perspective of where you&rsquo;re coming from.
&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know how many times I&rsquo;ve read your articles and said, &lsquo;God dammit that guy pisses me off, but he&rsquo;s right!&rsquo; I usually have a belly laugh at myself seeing influences drop.
&ldquo;Thank You Dave &mdash; keep up the good work!&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;Maybe you should try some other conservative outlets,&rdquo; a reader suggests.
&ldquo;Although I normally enjoy the daily 5 and get something out of it, lord knows you spew enough leftist drivel. Try The Epoch Times and the Daily Signal. Yes, the latter is a product of the dastardly Heritage Foundation, but you will find a lot of truth in their writings.
&ldquo;Also, I have found Jeffrey Tucker's writings to provide a very thoughtful perspective.&rdquo;
Dave responds: Mr. Tucker is a former colleague, one I still lean on now and then &mdash; to wit, my five-year retrospective of <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/covid-9-11">&ldquo;COVID 9/11&rdquo;</a> in March.
Epoch Times is OK as long as one is aware it&rsquo;s operated by a sect that has a major beef with the mainland Chinese government. And I still want to know why they parted ways with perhaps their best reporter, Ken Silva. (He&rsquo;s now working at Headline USA.)
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;Give these a perusal,&rdquo; suggests our final correspondent today: Tangle, 1440, The Merge and International Intrigue.
&ldquo;The last two afford me information on defense contracts and geopolitical news and opinion.
&ldquo;WAPO, BBC, NYT are all a waste of time unless you just want to see what unverified trash they are peddling.
&ldquo;However, I will have to credit my local newspaper for a coverage on Page 2 under Briefs.
&ldquo;There I found a feel-good story about Nvidia&rsquo;s collaboration with Intel on a supercomputer named after a female scientist who worked on Crispr&rsquo;s genome program.
&ldquo;I have all three stocks in my portfolio!
&ldquo;There&rsquo;s an old adage which is good to remember. A piece of paper will lay down and let you write ANYTHING on it! Enough said.&rdquo;
Dave: As it happens, my wife relies on 1440 as a straight-up, down-the-middle news summary that doesn&rsquo;t drive her insane.
We have much more reader feedback on other topics to get through &mdash; starting tomorrow!
Best regards,
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/signatures/dave-gonigam.png" alt="Dave Gonigam" width="250px" align="left" />
Dave Gonigam Managing editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

5 bullets hero Fire in the field near the city (Kyiv, Ukraine).

shutterstock 471929459

“If this bill were to pass,” says Sen. Rand Paul, “it would cause an economic calamity on a scale never before seen in our country.”

Will America Tariff Itself? 

United PressInternational

Today, a behind-the-scenes look into what goes into these daily 5 Bullets...