Doug’s last stand in the U.S.
Doug asked me to pass this along, and it goes first because it’s a one-time thing.
He’s speaking at the New Orleans Investment Conference, October 28 to 31 at the Hilton New Orleans Riverside. As far as he’s concerned, it’s his last conference in the United States.
Doug: “I’m going back to New Orleans at the big investment conference there the last few days of October, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s my last conference here in the US. I’ve kinda been there, done that. Love to meet you.”
New Orleans is the oldest show of its kind, founded in 1974 by Jim Blanchard, the man who campaigned to make gold ownership legal for Americans again after Nixon closed the gold window. This year’s lineup includes Peter Schiff, Danielle DiMartino Booth, Grant Williams, Brent Johnson and Peter Boockvar, plus roughly 120 exhibiting companies, most of them junior miners. The exhibit floor is sold out with a waiting list, and registrations are running ahead of anything the organizers have seen in decades. That’s what a gold bull market looks like on the ground.
Doug gave me a preview of his speech. I won’t spoil it. He’s not going with a safe one.
Doug: “I’m gonna try to be suitably outrageous because frankly, I’m a great believer in what Ricky Nelson sang in ‘Garden Party’: can’t please everybody, so you better please yourself. And frankly, I don’t give a damn what other people think at this point.”
If you’ve wanted to shake his hand and hear him live on American soil, this is it. Click here to register for the New Orleans Investment Conference.
And for those who asked about meetups: we’re planning another Plan B conference here in Uruguay in March. Details as they firm up.
Two conspiracies for the price of one
Today is 25 years since 9/11. Yesterday was one year since Charlie Kirk was shot. From here on, every anniversary of one is a reminder of the other.
I was working in Fort Myers when the second plane hit. My first thought was the same as most of the country’s: someone is going to pay for this. We went to war for 20-plus years and it turned out we were the ones who paid.
Doug: “A lot of it just doesn’t make any sense to this day, and it was never allowed to be properly investigated.”
Doug’s story from that fall: a couple of months after the attacks, he found himself at lunch with Newt Gingrich, just the two of them. Doug asked what he thought about Building 7. The former Speaker of the House, one of the best-connected men in Washington, had no idea a third tower had come down.
Doug: “He didn’t know about Building 7. This is further proof that they live in a total bubble.”
Same pattern with Kirk. A high-powered rifle that should have done far more damage than it did. No bullet recovered. The scene cemented over within days. Compare that to the Twin Towers steel hauled off and shipped to China for recycling before anyone could examine it.
None of this tells us what actually happened. It tells us the official story is bunk, and that the 89% of Americans who say the government is broadly corrupt have their reasons.
Doug went short
An hour before we recorded, Doug sold a Nasdaq futures contract. Not a big position. A gentleman’s bet with the market.
Doug: “I just wanna be short the stock market. I kinda think the whole thing’s rolling over. That’s just a gut feeling, though. Maybe I’m wrong. If I start losing money, I’ll close it out next week.”
The backdrop: the Houthis just swept something like 5,200 square kilometers from Saudi-backed forces in Yemen and now hold the island in the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, which puts every passing tanker within artillery range. Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline is on fire. The U.S. is blowing up Iranian-linked tankers carrying two million barrels apiece. Brent was $106.60 while we were talking, and Doug’s surprise is that it isn’t higher.
Axios reports the Saudis asked Trump twice for help against the Houthis and were turned down, though 100 to 200 American advisors are reportedly already there. Two Marine battalions and the 82nd Airborne are sitting offshore waiting for a mission. Yemen might be it.
Add a Fed that looks likely to raise rates into a market at all-time highs, and the short makes sense. Which brings us to the reason it might not.
The $5,000 bribe
Trump wants to send every adult American $5,000. I assumed he was trolling. Then JD Vance was on Fox defending it. Call it $1.3 trillion, conjured from nothing, and Trump has hinted he doesn’t need Congress to do it.
Doug: “People think about the immediate and direct consequences. ‘Hey, sounds good. Give me the money.’ But they forget about the indirect and delayed consequences.”
Doug reached for Tocqueville: the end is near when the government discovers it can bribe the people with their own money. Politically it’s probably brilliant. If you want your $5,000, you’d better vote. Economically, it’s the COVID child tax credit all over again. I got $200 a month for one of my kids, deposited whether I wanted it or not. That was a UBI test run, and the inflation that followed was the result.
Doug’s concern for his short: pump over a trillion dollars into an economy and earnings go up, at least for a while, even if most of it flows to liquor, fentanyl and flashy cars.
Same week, per the Washington Post, Trump floated renaming the Strait of Hormuz “Trump Strait.” His reasoning: “I should get something out of it.”
Doug: “He’s created the biggest disaster in the last God knows how many years, and he wants to get something out of it. And he never, ever acknowledges that he’s wrong.”
Doug’s read is that Trump is the Alexander and Genghis Khan personality type minus the competence, at peak hubris. He’s still betting Trump doesn’t finish his term, and still can’t find anyone to take the other side.
Your questions
What happens to stocks and real estate when AI puts the upper middle class out of work and they become forced sellers? Deflationary, and then the state responds the way it always does: print, plus new regulations to clamp the lid on the pressure cooker. Expect UBI to arrive as the “bridge” through the AI transition. It’s already been tested, see above.
Once the U.S. and G7 default, what does daily life look like? Doug’s answer is an old French one: sauve qui peut. Every man for himself. Stay out of the bonds, keep assets outside the country, and have a place to go. An honest default would be better for everyone but the lenders. What we’ll get is the soft default: print, plus emergency powers.
Doug: “Your biggest risk is political. So the best way to insulate yourself from political disasters is to not be in the bailiwick where it’s happening.”
The Dutch central bank moved 86 tons of gold out of the U.S. and Canada to London. Prudent, or proof gold is a geopolitical pawn? Both. Central banks have been buying gold for years while retail ignored it, and now they’re bringing it home. That’s the tell. But London?
Doug: “Why is it being stored in London, which is within the grasp of another manifestly bankrupt and unreliable and essentially, at this point, criminal government?”
Same question for Milei, who shipped 60% of Argentina’s gold to London while picking a fresh fight over the Falklands. The islands are about to matter. Rockhopper and its Israeli partner say offshore production starts late next year at around 150,000 barrels a day, and by Doug’s math the royalty alone works out to roughly $150,000 per adult Falklander per year. Argentina wants that. Britain has no navy left to defend it. Doug’s verdict on parking the gold there: criminally stupid.
Where should someone build a new gold vault? Caymans, Singapore and Switzerland have it covered. Australia is going the wrong way. New Zealand still works. The Southern Hemisphere is otherwise wide open, which is why I know some Germans opening a vault here in Uruguay. I’ll be introducing them to Doug.
Is Nike a bargain on the numbers? Doug doesn’t care about the numbers.
Doug: “They’ve lost, what? A couple hundred billion in market cap. I’m glad the market is punishing them, and I hope it punishes them much more.”
Go woke, go broke. He wants the lesson remembered for generations.
Any bars in D.C. for like-minded people? Doug lived there for years and compares the search to Lot looking for an honest man in Sodom. Don’t bother.
