It’s time to sit back, relax and enjoy a little joe …
Welcome to another rousing edition of Black Coffee, your off-beat weekly round-up of what’s been going on in the world of money and personal finance.
Well… another busy week is behind us. So with that in mind, let’s get this party started!
Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money… seizing gold and leaving to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold is an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced; paper is a mortgage on wealth that doesn’t exist, backed by a gun aimed at those expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which isn’t theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked: ‘Account Overdrawn.’
— Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
Credits and Debits
Debit: Did you see this? Anheuser-Busch announced that it is closing its Newark, New Jersey, brewery which opened in 1951 early next year, along with two other breweries in Fairfield, California, and Merrimack, New Hampshire. The good news is the company is offering full-time jobs and relocation packages for the 475 employees currently working at those three facilities to its other US breweries; and workers who don’t want to move will be given a severance package. Just don’t tell that to one particular consulting firm’s employees…
Credit: Oh… and speaking of employment options, Americans spent an estimated $2.6 billion on OnlyFans subscriptions in 2025. No, really. Be sure to keep that in mind if you’re ever thinking about starting a lucrative side hustle.
Credit: Last week, sagacious macro commentator Franklin Sanders shared this little story with his readers: “Sometimes small events hold large portents. Here’s another small harbinger with huge forebodings. Saturday in the grocery store for the first time I beheld the cashier’s screen showing ‘rounding up.’ No more pennies, they’re too dear to mint and too cheap to track. Just round to the next nickel. Next it will be the nearest dime, or quarter, or dollar. The omen speaks: The US dollar (USD) is perishing.” Well… it sure seems that way, Mr. Sanders.
h/t: @Matt_Bracken48
Debit: Of course, the Fed has completely abandoned any pretense of working to maintain the purchasing power of the USD and is actually only hastening the fiat currency’s demise. That’s because last week they ramped up their loose monetary policy by lowering their benchmark Fed Funds Rate by 0.25%. If that wasn’t enough, they also tacitly admitted they’ve restarted quantitative easing (QE) – that is, putting their money printers in overdrive – by regularly buying T-bills again. Even so, that hasn’t stopped the usual loose money proponents from claiming that the Fed’s latest policy change absolutely positively isn’t QE.
Credit: Then again, the rapid debasement of the USD shouldn’t be a shocker to anyone because, as macro analyst Matthew Piepenberg points out, “all debtors – including Uncle Sam – prefer a debased currency to pay down fixed debt. And desperate governments are more desperate today than ever before.” Indeed they are. These governments are stealing purchasing power of the their citizens and they don’t care. Oh, and speaking of stealing …
Credit: According to precious metals analyst James Turk, the gold and silver prices “in the late 1970s were driven by currency destruction, which sent the precious metals higher. We’re seeing currency destruction again, with the ongoing erosion of purchasing power of every fiat currency as the debts of governments around the world soar.” In other words: The fraudulent debt-based monetary system – which has been around since 1971 and is the cause of the mess we are now in – is, blessedly, is clearly on its death bed. Which is why gold and silver priced in USDs has risen more than 70% and 100%, respectively. This year alone.
Credit: So how did we get here? Well… last week, macro analyst Craig Tindale pointed out the new reality of today’s world in that, “We have entered an era of complex constraints, where the physical availability of (commodities) – not the availability of credit – sets the limit on national power.” It sure looks that way. Although we expect most Western governments to fight that paradigm shift in the hope that their fiat currencies will continue to preserve government economic power until the bitter end. Note: Under no circumstances should “Government economic power” be confused with the citizenry’s purchasing power…
Debit: By the way, Tindale wasn’t finished, noting that “the West adopted a financial system that has effectively disarmed its security. Inside that intellectual frame, dismantling the domestic material-productive economy looked efficient and profitable. But in the real world of global politics, geography and supply shocks, it was a slow-motion act of strategic self-harm that hollowed out the industrial base required to sustain a conflict or a protracted crisis.” Yep. And now here we are. The bad news is that until the system is fixed, living standards will continue to fall for most Americans. So… how low can they go? Apparently, very, very low:
Credit: The good news is that beginning next year, a rule change will allow gold and silver, to be held inside 401(k) plans for the first time in modern history. As precious metals analyst David Morgan points out that isn’t the only good news for current precious metal owners because the rule change doesn’t force employers offering 401(k) plans to act, “but it removes the regulatory barrier that kept precious metals at zero exposure for decades. So even modest adoption inside a $9 trillion system introduces a new source of long term, structural demand” for gold and silver.
Credit: Not coincidentally, this week macro analyst Vince Lanci observed the new reality before us, remarking that “The global economy has changed its rules; wages no longer buy security and debt no longer bridges any shortage of income.” Instead, Lanci explains that, with our fraudulent debt-based monetary system now in its final death throes, “a new asset-based order is taking shape where ownership of those assets determines who advances in society, who treads water, and who gets left behind.” Indeed. And while it may sound frightening, the coming change is actually a good thing – but only for those who are willing to adapt.
Credit: We’ll finish our final round-up of 2025 by observing that it’s looking increasingly likely that the US is going to revalue its gold to help relieve some pressure. With that in mind, Mr. Piepenberg suggested this week that the US “could legally reprice gold at $20,000; a deliberate number which would revalue the US gold hoard to $5.2 trillion, which is the valuation needed to match the assets and liabilities of America’s most liquid