General commentary plays down the consequences of today’s Hormuz crisis, has entered a stalemate. The fact of the matter is that the US and its Israeli lobby will not accept Iran’s red lines, and the war which is already lost will continue. Not only that, but the Houthis are severely restricting Saudi pipeline oil flows Yanbu, emasculating the Saudi economy and destabilising the nation.

Admittedly, the 1973 crisis which was similarly driven by a conflict between Arab petroleum exporters and Israel led to a substantial increase of the oil price from $3 per barrel to $12. So far, the Iran war has only led to a mere doubling, but it’s 3-2-1 derivatives add a further $60 per barrel.

The 1973 crisis led to the combined economic slump and inflation shock, peaking at 11.1% in 1974 in the US, 24.2% in the UK in 1975, 13.7% in France in 1974, and 23.2% in Japan in 1974. Why should it be different this time?

Read more

“Everywhere we look, the economic warning lights are flashing red. From civil unrest and a looming €1 trillion bailout crisis in Europe, to Japan preparing to dump $1.4 trillion in U.S. Treasury holdings, the era of central bank intervention is losing control. Even U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently admitted, "The house doesn't win every hand."

”Meanwhile, Wall Street is sitting on a $1.5 trillion margin lending timebomb, and everyday investors are waking up to a startling reality: the 60-year "boom" in real estate is a fiat currency illusion. When measured in real money—physical gold—the average home price has actually plunged by 82% since 1963.

”Alasdair Macleod breaks down what happens when these credit bubbles implode, why the global press is warning of the biggest financial bloodbath in decades, and how physical gold acts as the ultimate lifeboat when paper promises fail.”

🔥 KEY TOPICS COVERED:
Europe on the Brink: Why France’s combined €700 billion deficit and debt burden could force the EU into a massive €1 trillion bailout—and what that means for the Euro and fiat stability.

Japan’s $1.4 Trillion U.S. Debt Exit: Inevitable Japanese interest rate hikes, the end of U.S./Japan currency interventions, and why Scott Bessent and the Federal Reserve couldn't stop the bleed.

The 82% Real Estate Illusion: How the average U.S. home fell from 509 oz of gold in 1963 to just 91 oz in 2026—and what this reveals about property in Australia, the UK, and the US.

The $1.5 Trillion Margin Bomb: How the gold price will react when record U.S. margin debt triggers forced liquidations across Wall Street.

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

Looking at the chart above showing gold and silver declining over the course of 2026, you wouldn’t think that the world is going to hell in a handcart. Instead, gold and silver prices are reflecting declining risk, in ignorance of the facts. Currently, the opportunity for the shorts to bash precious metal prices is created by a pause in the increase in bond yields reducing the fear factor, while oil prices head moderately higher.

The yield on the 10-year US treasury note has backed down in what looks like a normal correction, encouraged by minor portfolio reweighting from equities, which are visibly struggling:

Read more

“Alasdair Macleod joins the SilverTrade Insider for a MUST WATCH interview breaking down the global oil crisis, the bond market crisis, and the ramifications for gold and silver.

”Macleod warns we're about to see an ACCELLERATION in the collapse of fiat currencies - just as retail investors have LOST ALL HOPE in gold and silver!

”Have precious metals investors forgotten the fundamental reasons for owning physical gold and silver in the hype of short term trading profits!?

”Macleod warns the CRACK UP BOOM has begun, now is NOT the time to forget that FIAT CURRENCIES ALWAYS COME TO AN END!”

Yes, you read that correctly. It seems that a combination of loss of territory, loss of life, and Ukrainians fleeing the country has halved the population. Furthermore, the Russians have effectively closed Ukraine’s Black Sea ports so grain exports can’t be shipped, nor can incoming arms and equipment be docked. The collapse of the population, of trade, the cost of war, and widely reported corruption have led to Ukraine being well and truly bust.

From Zelenskyy’s point of view, Trump lifting sanctions on Russian diesel couldn’t have come at a worst time. Clearly, Trump’s focus is on the mid-terms, and he has had no hesitation in throwing Ukraine under the bus. For Trump it could be desirable for Ukraine to capitulate before the mid-terms, allowing him to claim that he did the sensible thing and brought “Biden’s war” — which is likely to be his claim — to an end.

Read more

“The next financial crisis has already started, according to Alasdair Macleod. His warning is extraordinary: stocks will crash, the Federal Reserve will unleash limitless money printing, and gold will rise while most investors watch their wealth disappear.

”But if the crisis is already underway, why is gold struggling?

”Gold remains far below its January peak, even as inflation heats up, borrowing costs remain elevated, and America's $40 trillion debt burden places mounting pressure on the financial system.

”In our latest pod, veteran financial analyst Alasdair Macleod revisits his prediction that yields on 30-year U.S. Treasury bonds will eventually reach 20%. He explains why he believes America is already caught in a debt spiral, how the Iran war and global energy crisis threaten another wave of inflation, and why foreign investors may be the first to abandon U.S. financial assets.

”But what happens when the stock market collapses?

”Will the Fed stand by as trillions in retirement savings evaporate? Or will it print whatever money is necessary to rescue the financial system, potentially destroying the purchasing power of the very dollars Americans are trying to protect?”

🧠 About Alasdair Macleod
Alasdair Macleod began his career as a stockbroker on the London Stock Exchange in 1970 and later worked in investment management and banking, including as an executive director of an offshore bank in Guernsey. His work focuses on sound money, credit, banking risk, monetary history, fiat currency debasement, gold, silver, and the relationship between real money and the modern credit system. He publishes his current research and commentary through Macleod Finance.

The chart of the 10-year Treasury note yield plainly indicates that having broken above resistance at 5% which has held for three years, it is perfectly natural for it to tick back to find support at or close to that level. But the larger context should be kept in mind:

Read more

The level of investor interest in precious metals has retreated to the point where it has almost ceased to exist. It has been like this for months, indicated by the level of open interest in silver on Comex, which is the black line illustrated below:

And no wonder: last May, open interest fell into deeply oversold territory, breaching levels last seen in September 2013. On Wednesday this week, there was a sudden increase in open interest of 4,589 contracts, which tells us that on the $3.50 markdown in the price, buyers emerged for 714 tonnes of paper silver.

Confirming the almost total absence of investor interest, the managed money category which is comprised of hedge funds and similarly regulated investment managers has long contract interest still at record lows for the last twenty years:

Read more

“Is the global financial system approaching its breaking point? In this episode of Macroscopic, Alasdair Macleod warns of an unprecedented sovereign debt crisis that could threaten the very foundations of fiat currencies.

”We discuss France’s escalating debt crisis, Japan’s capital repatriation, rising bond yields, and the possibility of a major stock market crash. Macleod also explains how the unfolding energy shock could accelerate inflation, why governments may have no choice but to print more money, and what this could mean for gold and silver. Could the recent gold correction be setting the stage for an explosive rally?”

The first is that they are recorded after inflation estimates, to give so-called real growth. But government estimates of price inflation severely understate the reality of prices on the ground. And the second is that GDP is a measure of credit deployed in the economy, not whether it is deployed productively or not. Furthermore, the government gooses the numbers by running deficits resulting in excess non-productive credit.

How else do you think that governments have statistically banished recessions?

The only significant wobbles in GDP’s upward trend were the Lehman crisis of 2008/09 and the covid shutdowns of 2000. And even those were not that statistically significant. As for the other “recessions” GDP’s growth merely paused.

We mistake GDP growth for progress, an error proving fatal giving power to politicians masquerading as successful economic managers. As a consequence,

Read more

The cat’s out of the bag

On Friday, President Trump revealed that Russia has agreed to supply 300,000 tonnes of diesel to America and international markets immediately, with more to follow in the coming months. In return, the US has agreed to suspend energy sanctions against Russia. At the time of writing, Russian confirmation is from senior officials rather than a formal Kremlin announcement.

Zelensky’s response has been to double down on attacks against Russian refineries, reportedly striking two such facilities — moves likely to further alienate the Americans. The Europeans have also been blindsided by this move. For them, it is a clear breach in relations with their dominant NATO partner and raises questions over NATO’s future existence.

It is already clear to independent observers that Ukraine is a lost cause, and this is the implication of the diesel agreement with Russia. The only surprise is the degree to which European Russophobia continues to blind UK/German/French/EU politicians:

Read more

Paper bulls of gold and silver may be down in the dumps, but there’s a quiet evolution in progress. And this is now evident in the relationship between gold and oil over the last three months:

After oil’s peak last April, the price started a bottoming process in July, as did gold. Both then rose, not entirely synchronised, but roughly together with gold achieving its high point at end-August and oil three weeks later before both declined to recent lows in the last week.

This action questions the macro view which argues that higher oil prices lead to higher inflation and therefore interest rates, raising the cost of holding gold. But on examination this argument doesn’t hold water.

Why is this?

Read more

Gold has always been money

In 1750, you could order a cup of coffee in Jonathan’s coffee house, which was the forerunner of the London Stock Exchange. Jobbers and sundry speculators would gather to listen and gossip about the latest speculations and perhaps trade in shares and bonds. That cup of coffee would cost you a penny.

There were 240 pre-decimal pennies to a pound sterling, which following the Coinage Act of 1816 became tied to a gold sovereign coin. A gold sovereign today is worth about £775, valuing a 1750 penny at about £3.23. An Americano coffee in Starbucks is about £3.25, perhaps slightly more in central London. But it is not just coincidence that the price is remarkably similar over the span of 276 years.

We can find similar examples over longer timespans. 1,725 years ago, the Roman

Read more

My topic will be “Fiat Currency, Infinite Credit, Finite Trust”. I’ll also take part in the Precious Metals Panel, taking place Saturday October 31 from 11:50am. Meet me at VON GREYERZ’s Booth #432, or arrange a one-on-one meeting in advance with Jan Baltensweiler at jb@vongreyerz.gold.

Introduction

Regular readers of MacleodFinance will be aware of a looming debt crisis affecting all G7 member nations and beyond. This crisis is unique for modern times, being a widespread government financial crisis and not a private sector one in its origin. The outstanding question has been which of the G7 dominoes will topple first, and will it knock all the others down?

We appear to have the answer: France. Headlines tell us of a far-right takeover in the French senate, and there’s a presidential election in six months. Students are rioting out of control. But this is not unusual for France; the problem the media misses is the government debt bomb in the process of exploding.

The chart below reflects the growing risk of a French default on its debt, whereby the buyer in effect pays an insurance premium as protection against default on a 5-year bond. In the last month, this CDS has risen from 33.75, an increase of 136%. It is screaming crisis.

France’s debt situation

Read more

In recent weeks, open interest on Comex gold and silver contracts has struggled higher but is still close to deeply oversold territory. This reflects speculators putting just a toe in the water. Using their language, they are yet to be fully convinced that the debasement trade is on, so they believe gold and silver are vulnerable to rising bond yields. Hence, the opportunity for market makers and bullion bank trading desks to cover shorts and attempt to build neutral to long positions. But open interest tells us that this shakeout has its limitations:

As a measure of an oversold market, open interest is still struggling to rise above the extreme levels at the end of the 2011—2015 bear market. The fact that market makers have been trying hard to close their bears and go long tells us that they expect prices to rise from here and need to be positioned accordingly.

To confirm the bullish thesis, deliveries on the October contract expiry rose sharply: 11,465 gold contracts representing 35.66 tonnes, and 2,125 silver contracts representing 330.47 tonnes. So far, in 2026 600.6 tonnes of gold and 9,000.65 tonnes of silver have stood for delivery. Furthermore, China’s customs data records 1,141 tonnes of gold imported by end-August and there’s a further 80 tonnes of monetary gold added to the PBOC’s official reserves.

To summarise, while Western retail demand is virtually non-existent, China and other Asian nations are using the opportunity to get out of the dollar and into gold in huge quantities. Who is right: the big money from central banks downwards, or the little people who have a record of buying at the top and selling at the bottom?

We will leave that question hanging and move our attention to bonds. All bond markets are in crisis with yields rising to levels exposing the bankruptcy of the dollar-

Read more

“In this exclusive interview, I sit down with Alasdair Macleod to discuss rising interest rates, bond yields, U.S. Treasuries, the stock market, gold, silver, the U.S. dollar, mining stocks, commodities, and the risk of a major financial crisis.

”Alasdair explains why he believes interest rates and bond yields could move much higher, why 5% yields may already create serious problems for the financial system, and what that could mean for U.S. equities, the dollar, and precious metals. We also discuss whether the stock market could face a major decline, whether the Fed will be able to intervene again, why Alasdair remains extremely bullish on gold and silver, the risk of food shortages, the possibility of a Venezuela-style outcome, and whether bond yields could eventually rise above 10%.”

In the mid-eighties, a regulatory event occurred in London which was termed Big-Bang. Banks moved into securities markets buying brokers and jobbers: brokers advised investors and managed their portfolios, while jobbers are known today as market makers. The reason that London was the epicentre of this change and not New York is that US banks were still constrained by the Glass Stegall Act which separated commercial from investment banking. This restricted investment banking and stock market trading activities in New York, but the big US commercial banks were free to do so in London.

Futures and options activities boomed both in regulated exchanges and unregulated over the counter markets. This did two things: it introduced limitless capital into securities trading and also bank credit creation provided the necessary capital. The very thing that Glass Stegall banned in the 1930s, which was the expansion of credit for securities trading putting depositors’ funds at risk, returned in London and gradually gained ground in New York until Glass Stegall was finally repealed.

It radically changed the way securities markets operated. Instead of expanding bank credit out of thin air to lend to businesses, bank credit was created for securities trading. And it brought a paper culture into trading which was fundamentally different from the physical securities and commodity markets which operated before.

It was embraced by the US authorities who saw it as the means to suppress commodity prices through paper expansion. That would reduce producer and consumer price inflation while the dollar bedded in as gold’s replacement. And with respect to gold, the expansion of paper supply would ensure that the horrors of the 1970s — for the dollar that is — would not be repeated and gold would be relegated to non-monetary roles.

The current market

Paper markets are just another form of credit. After all, the definition of a bank is that

Read more

We have lived with macroeconomics for so long that we know of no other system. It was designed by Keynes purposefully to give governments justification for economic intervention, whether it be industrial or by monetary manipulation. The reason was a misdiagnosis, the apparent death of classical economics which was wrongly blamed for the Great Depression. That was actually due to the newly established Fed pumping up a credit bubble which ended spectacularly with the Wall Street crash of 1929.

President Hoover followed by President Roosevelt pursued a policy of intervention which simply prolonged and worsened the slump. It contrasted with previous slumps, notably that of 1920—1921 when President Woodrow Wilson refused to intervene, following the policies of previous presidents. He let the economy sort itself out, which it rapidly did as economists of the day understood and predicted.

In the 1930s, Keynes thought long and hard about why it was that America and much of the world was driven into depression, dragging the rest of the world down with it. Prices were collapsing, banks were going bust, and unemployment had soared. The problem for employers was that output prices were falling more rapidly than their costs. And they could only stay in business if workers suffered substantial cuts in their wages. Keynes’s socialist leanings rejected this market solution in favour of seeking a better system, one in which governments intervened to prevent such a catastrophe from happening again.

The problem was that he had to demolish the central tenet of capitalism, which is the

Read more

“Alasdair Macleod thinks the endgame of the fiat currency system is accelerating rapidly, being pushed to the brink by wars, supply shortages, and a blindly corrupt political class hellbent on keeping the paper game alive to the bitter end. Alasdair lays out his timeline to collapse and explains how we can all protect ourselves from the coming storm.”

00:00 Coming Up
00:48 Fiat Currency Endgame Approaching
09:50 How Will Silver Hold Up?
13:39 The East is Positioned to Survive
20:17 Do Central Banks See What's Coming?
24:13 Stack Gold or Silver?
28:42 Digital Currency Won't Work
33:36 Will Gold's War Premium Kick In?