3 Sunday Morning Thoughts – March 15 Edition

Written by Bryan Lutz, Editor at Dollarcollapse.com:

So, every Sunday morning I sit down to write a few short 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.Even when M2 Supply is reduced interest payments on the federal debt still need to be paid.

Remember back in 2022 when the headlines were flashing inflation?

People were posting pictures of insane increases in gas prices.

In the span of a little over two years, meat was up 25% then 50%, then more…depending on where you lived.

That’s when our friends at the Federal Reserve, and former Crow, the Secretary of the US Treasury, Janet Yellen supported the idea of a “soft landing.”

The Fed was going to deal with inflation. So they pulled the lever… ratcheted up interest rates and the day was saved… for a moment.

Meanwhile, M2 continues to move into new all-time highs each quarter.

However, M2 isn’t as important as what was happening while the Federal Reserve was saving the day with higher interest rates.

Notice that while the M2 Supply was decreasing on the Fed’s balance sheet, US federal debt continued going up at the same rate since the 2020 fiat bazooka.

2. According to our favorite Wall Street Analyst, private credit is about to face a reckoning.

More banks around the world are opening up dark closets, and cleaning out their basements. Lo and behold, the cockroaches are crawling out of the woodworks.

Wall Street’s biggest banks are cutting off withdrawals and checking tabs on private credit funds worth tens of billions of dollars.

On Friday it was spreading to Europe. Deutsch Bank just cut off a $30 Billion dollar private credit fund.

Mass Panic on Wall Street after Jim Cramer says this is not like the run-up to the Global Financial Crisis 🚨🚨 pic.twitter.com/JdoMg8m7oY

— Barchart (@Barchart) March 13, 2026

Private credit is another dance of the financial engineering genre. It repackages and rebrands the way easy money is assumed to provide value to the economy.You loan it out and make money on the margin.

Just like 2008, what was once passed over the sake of profit in the housing market is playing out in an eerily similar way in private credit.

Bad loans are coming to maturity.

And that means, defaults are coming, and a tens of billion dollar reckoning may happen sooner than later.

3. Iran is a culture war. UK is a culture war. Christianity versus Islam is a culture war. And they’re all a waste of time. The thing to focus on is solving real world problems for your own people.

So, there is this Human Resource consultant. He’s a fairly famous guy in his field, been around a long time. His name is Edward Schein.

He wrote some books that influenced me quite a bit back in my university days at Simon Fraser.

I was interested in communication, organizational leadership and culture, etc…

Basically, solving problems because this was at a time in Vancouver when we had all these “cool” tech companies hiring that had “Beer Fridays,” and snack bars, bean bag chairs, and open offices, and flattened hierarchies… The best idea wins kind of thing.

At the time, I was working in a very hierarchical organization, which was a stressful grind, every day.

I read Schein’s academic stuff like “Process Consultation: Building the Helping Relationship“, “Humble Inquiry,” and “Helping: How to Offer, Give, and Receive Help”.

Anyway, the point is that I avoided the fascination with culture that came with the proliferation of all these tech companies because I was focused on how companies actually solve problems together.

I figured there had to be something in the way these companies communicated that made them flourish over the stale, hierarchical company I was working in…

I found answers in those books.

And I found a warning sign that confirmed my suspicion of “culture.”

Schein said something like, “Don’t focus on culture because culture is a bottomless pit and can be a big waste of time.”

He’s right. When management starts focusing on culture over value-oriented decision making and the humble process of asking the right questions to solve the right problems, businesses fail. Meaning gets lost in anyone and everyone’s interpretation of what that culture is supposed to be.

Here’s the point:

Iran is a culture war.

UK is culture war.

And the religious battle between Christianity and Islam is a culture war. Culture wars, just like they are in the business world, are losing battles.

They’re a waste of time.

Instead, individuals ought to focus on solving real problems.

And that means, governments ought to focus on solving problems for their own people. At some point, the US federal government must come to the conclusion that maybe they’re not the best “person” for the job.

The big red button at the Fed is an even worse problem solver.