Written by Bryan Lutz, Editor at Dollarcollapse.com:
Can you believe it?
We are more than halfway through the summer months.
And soon comes the annual fall gold run with the big beautiful bill set to kick in for the new fiscal year.
That’s a good sign for gold.
Anyway, in case you are new here, every Sunday morning I sit down to write a few thoughts.
Sometimes these thoughts end up being about life, other times they are on gold, geopolitical issues affecting the markets, or the economy.
Here are three thoughts for this morning:
1. Every day Americans are already making hard choices. They’re choosing between paying down their student loan and paying rent. What’s next?
Rent is coming first in this case.
After Biden shut down student loans repayments in 2021, no one worried about them.
Until now, Trump kicked the student loan repayments back into high gear this year. He even threatened to garner wages.
Nothing so far, but the 90+ day delinquencies are hitting the statistics news reel…
The only other sharp uptick in delinquency rates are in the mortgage and Home Equity loan categories.
If rates stay high, I could see HELOCs and mortgages also spiking with some people choosing transportation to keep their income going.
I suppose any penalties for not paying off their mortgages seem light in comparison to job loss from lack of transportation.
Housing payment pain may grind on until Powell’s term ends May 2026, but the student loan pain is here to stay.
2. Capital is flowing out of the Russell 2000 like a river. And that’s why THIS is happening…
The appetite for risk in this market is low.
In fact, the most in over a decade by a lot.
Usually, when markets are good…
When money managers are feeling confident…
That’s when they start dumping into main street, and small cap stocks like those in the Russell 2000 index. It’s harder for them to get credit to push their operations up and expand outward. So when times are getting hard, banks pull back from loaning out credit to these smaller cap companies.
But the chart above is a sign of the times.
So is this…
Tariff threat or not…
Gold futures are pushing over $3500. To think everyone was getting excited about $3400.
The appetite for risk is low, and that means gold isn’t done shooting up.
3. I want to go out on a limb here and say that the “War Phase” of the Fourth Turning will be fought mostly by AI – externally and internally.
Jim Quinn over at theburningplatform.com recently published an article announcing that we’ve now entered the “war phase” of the Fourth Turning.
I hope not, but…
Then again, I think we underestimate the influence AI is already having on war and conflict management.
I’m sure Palantir’s software makes recommendations on who to bomb and when. Who to make love to, and when…
For as much as there is propaganda to influence citizens internally, and influence decision-makers externally, the United States has AI – predictive algorithms to run the show.
It’s already been used during the Israel-Iran conflict. The Russia-Ukraine conflict too.
AI is just too much of a wild card to throw away ideas like it is.
Let’s hope it is programmed to influence war as a last, last, last resort.
One thought on "3 Sunday Morning Thoughts – August 10 Edition"
As much as I don’t want war, I have seen the horrors of war. Unfortunately, it is coming eventually. And it will start in the Middle East and then spread to the rest of the world.