It has clearly broken out on the upside. The reason is simple and always leads to the

Read more

CHAPTERS:
Here are the chapters for this video:

0:00 Introduction: Rising bond yields and global debt crisis outlook.
0:56 The situation in Iran and potential for conflict.
3:58 Impact of oil price and energy shortages on the global economy.
11:30 Risks in the tech sector and data center expansion.
13:43 Geopolitical shifts: SEO summit and shifting alliances.
16:13 Monetary and fiscal policy, gold market, and the Japanese carry trade.
20:00 Central banks, gold property rights, and the New York Fed.
28:44 The carry trade and US Treasury debt holdings.
37:07 Analysis of the Japanese Yen and carry trade collapse.
41:43 The Japanese stock market and credit bubble risks.
47:58 Commodities, copper prices, and future inflation expectations.
53:30 Decline of the US dollar in global foreign exchange reserves.
58:08 European political instability and potential conscription discussions.
1:06:24 Central bank gold purchases, specifically China.
1:11:15 Conclusion and final thoughts from the speakers.

Presumably, the 27 tonnes were to be examined and a metal audit made. If so, then at the least the DNB suspects or knows that the bar identities shipped from North America did not tally with their own records.

The reasons given for the transfers to London were increasing geopolitical unrest and better tradability. But this is not DNB’s first transfer from New York. Following Germany’s difficulties in retrieving a minor amount of its gold from New York, in 2014 the DNB recovered 122.5 tonnes, succeeding where the Bundesbank had failed, presumably benefiting from the bad publicity over the latter’s experience suffered by the New York Fed.

It is increasingly clear that there is a problem with custody at the Federal Bank of New York. Earlier this year the Banque de France announced that it had sold 129

Read more

This is not the way to win friends and influence people, serving only to strike fear into the dwindling number of sycophantic governments, most of which have debt problems of their own. And Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary deliberately set off a bear squeeze in the yen, against the interests of the carry traders upon which he depends, with as yet unknown consequences.

As the chart below of the yen/US$ rate shows, over the last month the yen has rallied by nearly 5% wiping out carry trade profits for hedge funds and others borrowing yen. The annual return on the round trip is about 2%, so to lose 5% in one month is bad news.

There are two significant considerations. The first is that the carry-traders don’t fully

Read more

“The global bond market is flashing increasingly serious warning signs as rising yields, enormous government debt, and shrinking demand collide with an escalating energy shock. Alasdair Macleod (

MacleodFinance Substack

Dedicated to explaining why gold is money and the rest is credit. Dedicated to explaining economics relevant to the preservation of wealth. And dedicated to explaining geopolitical developments relevant to investors.

By Alasdair Macleod

) warns that the unraveling Japan carry trade could put additional pressure on U.S. Treasury financing while exposing vulnerabilities throughout the G7 bond markets. He also argues that shortages of oil, diesel, fertilizer, sulfuric acid, and other critical commodities could ripple through global logistics, inflation, and economic activity in the months ahead. As confidence in sovereign debt and fiat currencies comes under pressure, Macleod believes investors may increasingly turn toward gold as money without counterparty risk. In this explosive interview, we examine the potential debt traps, currency risks, bond-market fractures, and commodity shortages that could mark the final stage of the current global credit cycle.”

INTERVIEW TIMELINE:
0:00 Intro
1:10 Oil shortages & bond crisis
16:40 US bond market
23:45 Currency collapse

It started with Scott Bessent at the US Treasury intervening in the JPY rate doing a favour for Japan’s finance ministry in late-July. As the chart above shows (scale inverted) the yen rallied sharply, did little for a month and this week suddenly rose again. Over the period of a month, the yen has rallied 5% against the dollar. Not only will Japan’s institutions be reviewing foreign bond and equity investments, but the carry-traders buying US treasury bills could become forced sellers to cover their yen shorts.

This matters, because the only way in which T-bill demand can be maintained is for the Fed to raise its fund rate to maintain an interest rate differential across global markets. Effectively, the competition to attract global investment funds is on. But we

Read more

While the yield has yet to exceed the 5% level, it appears to be a hurdle which will be easily overcome because these chart formations, commonly termed pennants after their shape, tend to mark the half-way point in an ongoing trend. This is best illustrated in the chart of the long bond, which is already embarking on the next leg higher. This is next:

Note that this chart is on a logarithmic value scale, illustrating how the percentage move of 250% from the 1.9% low to 5% could run to well over 10% from the breakout over the same brief timescale. The fundamental justification is a combination of the Hormuz and Bab el-Mandab blockades, the debt trap sprung on US government finances, the end of the petrodollar leading to surplus dollar balances in foreign hands, and the global loss of confidence in the dollar from an American geopolitical defeat.

This move to far higher bond yields will almost certainly trigger massive selling of the dollar, a point addressed later in this article. It is a racing certainty that the Secretary Bessent will order the suspension of trading in bonds and equities, as his predecessor William MacAdoo did in July 2014. That time, Wall Street remained shut until the following December. A prolonged market closure today to stop foreign and domestic selling is a real possibility. Don’t get trapped, because if it happens, markets will open considerably lower and investors will face large losses on their investments and on the currency as well.

I shall write about this possibility in a future post.

US fiscal policy is in crisis

Read more

Introduction

So far, only experienced commodity analysts such as Jeff Currie, formally with Goldman Sachs and now co-Chairman of Abaxx Markets in Singapore appear to realise the full horrors of America’s failed attempt to emasculate Iran and the consequences for energy and other prices. If Currie is right and evidence is on his side, at Jackson Hole last Friday Warsh severely understated his interest rate policy challenge.

Readers of this Substack will know that we have been beating the drum on this issue for a long time. Rising commodity prices were already reflecting a continuing decline

Read more

“Alasdair Macleod of Macleod Finance argues that America’s growing debt burden is becoming increasingly difficult to finance as major foreign holders of U.S. Treasuries face problems of their own. He explains why rising bond yields could become a serious threat to the dollar, why attempts to suppress those yields may ultimately weaken the currency further, and why he believes gold and silver will play a much larger role as confidence in government debt deteriorates.”

0:00 Who finances America’s $40 trillion debt?
1:25 Iran, sanctions, and pressure on the dollar
3:02 Why rising bond yields threaten U.S. finances
5:10 The growing Treasury refinancing problem
7:17 Gold begins moving again
8:05 BRICS and the changing global order
13:36 What a dollar decline means for ordinary people
15:25 Why higher bond yields could hit stocks and housing
20:00 Macleod’s 18-month crisis timeline
22:03 The Fed’s impossible choice
24:07 Why price controls could make things worse
27:05 Are central banks already technically insolvent?
31:27 Japan’s debt problem and Treasury demand
34:30 The carry trade holding up U.S. debt
37:08 Why gold and silver have no counterparty risk
38:46 How high could gold go?
41:15 Where Macleod believes gold should be stored
43:38 Why portfolios remain underexposed to gold

Copyright © 2026 Cambridge House International Inc. All rights reserved.

Silver volumes on Comex have been high for the last seven trading sessions, while open interest has climbed from ultra-low levels, but it is still in deeply oversold territory by this measure:

Read more

Along with Soros and Druckenmiller, Bessent was not involved in LTCM. He was a managing partner of Soros Fund Management in London. In 2000, Bessent set up his own hedge fund, Bessent Capital, which according to an AI search had mixed-to-poor results, but there appears little to verify it. In 2015 he set up another hedge fund, Key Square Group. Its performance overall was lacklustre, leading to investor withdrawals reducing the fund from $5.1bn to $577 million.

I would comment that when you manage a large hedge fund, you should be able to get consistently good returns because you are large enough to move markets in your favour, particularly if you use the substantial leverage available to such a fund. So far as we are aware, this Master of the financial Universe appears to have failed this test.

Now in charge of the US Treasury, the entire world depends on his financial management skills, which appear to be those of a paper tiger. Druckenmiller criticised his attempts at bond yield suppression in an Op-Ed in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. He is echoing our view, but we go further.

Read more

Dominic says:

“In this latest Money Markets and More, I sit down with monetary analyst Alasdair Macleod to discuss gold, fiat currency and why he believes we are rapidly approaching a point at which the monetary system as we know it can no longer survive without a return to gold.

”Alasdair has spent decades studying financial markets, monetary history and the role of gold, and his argument is uncompromising: gold is money; pounds, dollars and euros are credit. He believes confidence in fiat currencies is approaching breaking point and goes as far as to predict that the present system could be dead within the next 18 months. In his view, any currency that hopes to survive what comes next will ultimately have to become a credible substitute for gold through a proper gold standard.

”From there, our conversation ranges from sterling, government debt and the fragility of bond markets to Japan, China and what a 21st-century gold standard might actually look like. We discuss why Alasdair believes gold should be treated as the unit of account rather than something whose value is measured in depreciating currencies, why government debt eventually threatens the currencies supporting it, and why, if I gave him £100,000 today, his answer would simply be: gold.”

Money Markets & More is the interview series from Dominic Frisby, exploring money, markets, gold, economics and the ideas shaping the world.

Clearly, the mainstream media in the West thinks gold is a hangover from the past, no more than a rock to which a few investors still emotionally cling. And it is a fair bet that most emotionally attached investors are looking to profit from a rising price. In other words, they look to buy gold with a view to selling it at a higher price. But this contradicts an important fact: gold is the money, and your currency is not.

Profit seekers have it the wrong way round. They should be getting out of currencies altogether because they are credit. And it is increasingly obvious even to the financially impaired that credit risk is now escalating.

Before Bretton Woods was suspended in 1971, currencies were always priced in grains of gold, because gold is the money, and currencies are credit issued by governments. Currencies operated as gold substitutes, being exchangeable for gold. Admittedly, exchange for gold became increasingly tenuous as governments interfered in economic activities from the 1920s onwards expanding their debt in the process. But the fact that gold is the money and all else is credit has never altered.

For evidence that this is so, central banks which are the ultimate insiders have been

Read more

There can be little doubt that gold has turned a corner. Markets now see risk in the dollar, whereas as recently as last month it was everyone’s safe haven. This dramatic change in sentiment has seen gold rise to positive territory for the year and oversold silver rushing to catch up. So far, the buying appears to be a western phenomenon without Chinese involvement.

Since mid-July gold has risen over $600 to $4590 this morning and silver from under $55 to $69.70. That’s up 16% and 27% respectively in a month. And technical analysts will be turning positive because the gold chart is now in bullish sequence with the price, 55-day moving average, and 12-month MA all rising. The trend is our friend, as they say.

So, why the turnaround?

Read more

Read more

Behind this change in risk perception is a dawning realisation that the Middle East oil crisis threatens to destabilise the global economy which is already drowning in

Read more

“In this exclusive interview, Alasdair Macleod joins us to unpack Matthew Piepenburg’s latest macroeconomic insights and the unprecedented shift currently unfolding in the global physical gold market.

”As retail investors get lost in the noise of daily price actions and short-term corrections, the world's 'big whales'—led by central banks and China—are quietly accumulating physical metal at historic rates. With China consuming roughly 40% of the world’s newly mined gold supply over the last decade and officially eliminating paper trading for gold and silver, the stage is being set for a new monetary system.

”We dive deep into the surging global bond yields, the weaponization of the U.S. dollar, and why gold is mathematically cementing itself as the de facto global reserve asset. If you are trying to navigate this broken financial system, understanding this historical wealth transfer is critical.”

Topics Covered in This Interview:

Are Central Banks & China the 'Big Whales' controlling the market?

China's 14,000-Tonne Masterplan: Positioning for the next monetary system.

Surging Bond Yields: Why central banks now hold more gold than U.S. Treasuries.

The End of Paper Gold: How China's new physical-only trading rules will shock global markets.

Gold's new role as the de facto global reserve asset and trusted collateral.

"The Greatest Buy Signal in a Generation": Protecting your generational wealth.

The chart of major currencies valued in gold shows them plunging at an accelerating pace, despite the six-month correction since January. The pace of their collapse is now resuming and if it continues, they will approximately halve by December. That implies a gold price exceeding $9,000. Not a forecast, just an extrapolation.

This article looks at the factors that might lead to this outcome; an outcome which implies a continuing collapse of major currencies’ purchasing powers which is unlikely to stop at a halving. Inevitably, it will lead to long bond yields rising rapidly which will destroy government finances and the fiat currency illusion.

The potential for bond yields to rise is clearly demonstrated in our next chart:

Read more