3 Sunday Morning Thoughts – September 6 Edition

Written by Bryan Lutz, Editor at Dollarcollapse.com:

It’s Sunday.

Here’s what we do.

Every Sunday I share a few thoughts with you, and other subscribers at Dollar Collapse.

Sometimes we’ll talk about economics, sometimes recent events, and other times, life.

Here are three thoughts for this morning:

1. Somewhere between the advisor who says everything is fine and the newsletter screaming collapse, there is a calm, ordered plan.

This week the 10-year ran to 4.79%, the Dutch moved their gold, and diesel hit a record. More on all three below.

But first, something I hear from readers almost every week…

“I believe the thesis. I just don’t know what to do.”

For most people it goes like this: Your advisor says everything is fine. They say, “Stay the course. The sixty-forty portfolio we built for you is fine.”

Meanwhile, if you’re like most of our longtime readers, you’ve been taking everything in, even watching some of the videos where “experts” are screaming “bloody monday.”

Thing is, neither one hands you a plan.

So, I put one together. It’s not specific, guaranteed, or step-by-step. It’s more like a map because some people are further ahead, and not everyone is in the same place in life. What it does do is act as guide.

The Dollar Collapse Playbook is 27 moves in four stages: Defense, Hard Assets, Internationalization, Offense.

Inside you’ll find a 12-question diagnosis that tells you which moves come first for you. Then you work through them, in order, starting this week.

No, the answer inside the Playbook is NOT one big summary that equals: “buy gold.” But it does include: How much, in what form, stored where, and when to stop adding. Buying physical gold is several moves in… Not everyone starts in the same place:

Get the Dollar Collapse Playbook here.

You can read it in a weekend.

2. The Dutch just moved 86 tonnes of gold out of New York. They said it was about “geopolitical unrest.” Now read what the central bank actually said.

Between March and August, De Nederlandsche Bank cut New York’s share of its gold from 31.3% to 18.5%. They moved it to London where their gold storage portion went from 18.1% to 32.1%.

France already took the last of its gold out of the New York Fed in January.

The Dutch press release statement looks like this…

DNB Governor Olaf Sleijpen:

“With this relocation, we have improved the tradability of our gold reserves. We expect that we will never need to use them, but we do need to strengthen our resilience and preparedness.”

Resilience against what?

Against the day a friendly government freezes your reserves. In 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, the United States’ response taught the world a lesson. $300 billion in Russian assets were seized, which taught every central banker on earth that a Treasury is a promise, and a promise can be revoked at any time.

So the Netherlands moved their gold to a vault that could be reached in an emergency. It’s a place where the US is less likely to seize their assets, or take them for themselves (a la Venezuela).

Stackers have known this for years. Now the Dutch do too.

3. Gold is the great retainer of purchasing power. In 2022, an ounce of gold bought 306 gallons of diesel. Today it buys 802. Let’s take a look.

Last Sunday I wrote about diesel sitting $100 a barrel above crude. This week the pump caught up. $5.85 a gallon on Friday, past the 2022 record.

So what does gold do when diesel spikes?

Here’s ten years of both on one chart:

Diesel spikes have been gold’s launchpad, with a lag. In 2022, diesel hit its record while gold sat flat near $1,800. Then the inflation from that energy shock worked through the system and gold ran to $5,000.

The reverse happened in 2020. Diesel collapsed to $2.40 and gold ran to $2,000 anyway. That was the printing press, not diesel prices.

But, both roads lead to the same place.

Here’s the ratio:

Instead of pricing gold in dollars, price it in diesel.

In July 2022, diesel was $5.72 a gallon and gold was about $1,750 an ounce. So one ounce of gold bought about 306 gallons.

Today diesel is back at the same price. But gold is about $4,490. So one ounce now buys about 802 gallons.

Diesel didn’t get cheaper. Gold got stronger.

If you held dollars through those four years, a tank of diesel costs you the same as it did in 2022.

If you held gold, that same tank costs you less than half as much gold as it did.

That’s what gold does for you. It doesn’t stop prices from rising. It keeps you ahead of them.

Have a great Sunday.