Welcome to this week’s market wrap podcast, I’m Mike Gleason
Coming up in a moment, we have an exclusive interview with Nomi Prins, renowned market commentator, author and founder and CEO of Prinsight Global. Nomi sheds light on what has been driving gold recently and how there is much much more to the yellow metal’s bullish story other than simply tariff concerns, and how the bigger picture of central bank diversification away from the dollar and other geopolitical factors are really the key drivers to the incredible momentum gold has built up over the last several years.
Nomi also weighs in on the big divergence we’ve seen when it comes to demand for gold in Asia and the Far East, as compared to the U.S. and the West. Other key topics in the upcoming interview also include silver, and what’s been behind its underperformance and what it will take to see it finally play catch up to gold.
So, be sure to stick around for another wonderful Money Metals interview with Mike Maharrey and this week’s guest Nomi Prins, coming up after this week’s market update.
In a rare moment of honesty, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell admitted he and his fellow central bankers don’t know what they’re doing as they wrapped up the May Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting this week.
As was expected, the Fed held interest rates steady at the meeting, taking a “wait and see” attitude.
“There’s just so much that we don’t know,” Powell conceded. “I think, and we’re in a good position to wait and see, is the thing. We don’t have to be in a hurry.”
Uncertainty was the theme of Powell’s post-meeting press conference, as he focused on the unknown impact of tariffs on the economy.
During a speech at the Economic Club of Chicago last month, Powell set up tariffs as a scapegoat as the inevitable effects of the Fed’s reckless monetary malfeasance during the pandemic and as the Great Recession played out. He doubled down on the theme during the post-meeting press conference.
The official FOMC statement also expressed worry about the impact of tariffs, saying, “Uncertainty about the economic outlook has increased further.”
Specifically, the committee said it “is attentive to the risks to both sides of its dual mandate and judges that the risks of higher unemployment and higher inflation have risen.”
If only there were a word for an economic slowdown with high unemployment coupled with rising prices.
Oh, wait, there is... Stagflation.
Powell said it was “too early” to know whether inflation or economic weakness would be the biggest problem. And how long will it take before there is more clarity? Powell said he doesn’t know.
Powell & Company also failed to provide any hints on the future direction of monetary policy because – they don’t know. Powell did rule out the possibility of a preemptive rate cut to offset the impact of tariffs.
When asked about the national debt and ever-growing deficit spending, Powell stated the obvious – it is “on an unsustainable path.” However, the Fed chair refused to offer any solutions.
Powell’s admission that the central bank doesn’t know what to do next or how things are going to play out is a rare moment of honesty from a central banker. Fed people like to maintain the illusion that they are in control. They want you to believe they're wise and knowledgeable, equipped with the tools and brainpower necessary to guide the economy through thick and thin with calm hands firmly on the tiller.
The fact that the people who set interest rate policy only forecast the correct trajectory of future interest rates about a third of the time is telling. The fact of the matter is, Fed members aren’t scientists with crystal balls. They are politicians with strong academic backgrounds.
Fed officials rarely admit they are improvising. Apparently, Powell decided it was politically expedient to do so in the current situation with the president breathing down his neck, demanding rate cuts.
The fact is this debt-riddled bubble economy can’t function in a high-interest rate environment. It needs its easy money drug. In other words, the Fed needs to simultaneously raise rates to battle price inflation and cut rates to prop up the weakening economy.
It can’t do both.
No wonder Powell has taken the “we don’t know, wait and see” position. What else can he do? But it’s important to remember that the Fed is always in this position. Monetary policy isn't a science. It's more akin to throwing darts at a dartboard.
Turning to lighter topics, a group of scientists just announced they have turned lead into gold!
Since ancient times, people have been trying to figure out how to transform common metals such as lead or iron into gold.
Well, it may have finally happened in Geneva, Switzerland, where an experiment detected the transmutation of lead into gold.
The experiment's central mission is to study the quark–gluon plasma (QGP)—a state of matter believed to have existed microseconds after the Big Bang, where quarks and gluons were not confined within protons and neutrons.
We don't know what any of that means, but that's how it's been described, and we thought it was important to include for any sciency folks who might be listening.
Anyway, alchemists back in the day primarily focused their efforts on turning common substances into gold using chemistry. Needless to say, they never figured it out. However, with the advancement of physics, scientists discovered that heavy elements do transform into other elements naturally or through radioactive decay – or in a lab under a bombardment of neutrons or protons.
So now we can literally make gold! We're all going to be rich! Well, not so fast. It will apparently take about 33.9 billion years to create just one ounce of gold at the rate these scientists are doing it. In other words, don't hold your breath.
Here's the thing: even if we could produce large amounts of gold in a lab, what would be the point? If gold suddenly became commonplace, it wouldn't be worth as much. Gold's rarity is one of the features that makes it so valuable.
So, if you do figure out how to turn lead (or something else) into gold on a large scale, you might want to keep it to yourself!
Lastly, and before we get to this week’s interview, let’s take a look at the weekly market action.
Gold is seeing a nice bump in prices here this week and has recovered all of the losses from the last two weeks and a little bit more. The yellow metal currently checks in at $3,358 an ounce, up just over $100 or 3.2% for the week.
Turning to silver, it too has had a good couple of days here to end the week and currently trades at an even $33.00 an ounce, up 2.3% since last Friday’s close.
As for the PGMs, both are over $1,000 now and both have gained exactly $34 an ounce or 3.5% for the week. Platinum comes in at $1,018, while palladium is just a tick below at $1,016 as of this Friday morning recording.
Well now, without further delay let’s get right to our exclusive interview well-known market commentator and author Nomi Prins.
Mike Maharrey: Greetings. I'm Mike Maharrey, a reporter and analyst here at Money Metals, and I'm joined today by Nomi Prins as her website describes her. She is a geopolitical financial expert and a financial historian and she likes to shed light on the dark corners of the global economy. It seems like there's a lot of those dark corners these day. How are you doing, Nomi?
Nomi Prins: I'm great, Mike, how are you doing today?
Mike Maharrey: I'm fantastic. I really appreciate you taking a little bit of time to be on the show today. And I want to start off talk a little bit about the gold market and the bull run that gold has been on really for quite a while now. And right now everybody's talking about tariffs and that seems to be kind of what is driving everything, but the gold market's been doing really well for long before Trump came into office, so it's obviously not all about tariffs. So, I'm curious, what do you kind of feel are the underpinnings of this gold bull market right now?
Nomi Prins: Yeah, that's such a great question because the gold bull market that we have right now is really just the beginning of I think where gold is going to continue to go and be bullish for quite some time. Last year when it was trading in the mid two thousands, we talked about on wherever I was basically on print sites and elsewhere, that it would be at 3000 by the turn of the year, 4,000 by the turn of this year and 5,000 by the turn of the next year. And those aren't just because they're very neat thousand kind of points, they're because of all of the reasons what you're asking about, which have basically created momentum behind gold. Of course we know there's the central bank reason. Now, the central bank reason actually has a lot of tenants even in of itself. It's diversification against the dollar.
It's diversification against the debt of the United States and US treasuries. It's the collaboration of countries with each other outside of the dollar. It's having a standard that isn't simply fiat, but actually has some hard backing behind it, which likes back to the pre Bretton Woods era and with the BIS, the Bank of International Settlements or the sort of mother of Central Banks, central Bank of Central Banks, having now counting gold as a tier one reserve asset. It gives central banks even more of a reason to stockpile grow their holdings of gold relative to paper assets. And that's what we've seen. The biggest mover of that has been China with respect to how they have recalibrated longer answer to your question, but just I think it's really important to note that they have recalibrated their holdings of US debt from 2018 from the beginnings or middle of the last Trump administration and when tariff started, but also post the financial crisis 10 years after into half of the amount that they were holding in US treasuries, even as we have blown up the amount of US treasury debt that exists and instead been increasing their assets in gold and they're only at 5% of their reserve assets in gold, there's a lot of room still to go and that's why we're going to continue to see them buying Now they are the largest non-dollar trade partner in the world, obviously us still the reserve currency, US still the currency of trade, but the largest partner in terms of trade and loans and everything else is China with the rest of the world.
And so having a backing outside of their currency outside the US and gold matters as it matters to all the other central banks. So that's one source of buying that's not going to go away. It's only going to increase and it requires physical gold as opposed to paper gold or sort of ETF gold to sustain itself. The other thing that's happened is as we have had more geopolitical uncertainty, and this is not just currently with tariffs, this had to do with the Ukraine, the Russian invasion in Ukraine. There was a lot of focus on hard assets. Again, at that time, not just gold but other critical minerals and hard assets, but gold of course as assets of currency of wealth preservation and safe haven nature also began to have more of an appeal in Europe and also sort of Asia by extension because of trade. So then you sort of pile that on top of it.
Then we look at how there has been a growth of ETFs that have underlying gold within their mix. For example, IAU, which has a lot of physical gold beneath it, whereas the momentum for gold has increased, so has the volume that has come into these ETFs. This has been more recent as the supplication to gold in the last year, year and a half. But we have seen record inflows even this quarter in Asian ETFs as we had all of last year that have to do with gold. And now we're seeing more of that in the European N US markets as well. And then of course you have all the old reasons. It's an inflation hedge, it is wealth preservation, it's generational security. All these things are in play as well. But when you start to add these factors that aren't going away, we start to see why gold is not just having a moment. It's basically pushing towards ever increasing highest.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah, absolutely. There's a lot to unpack even within what you just said. I want to touch just a little bit on the Asian buying that we've seen. It's really interesting if you look at especially physical demand for bars and coins, the only place in the last quarter where we saw a drop in demand for bars and coins was the United States. Every place else they're loading up on physical metal. Do you think that the east is kind of starting to corner the market on gold or is there a point where western investors are going to wake up? How do you see this dichotomy playing out?
Nomi Prins: What's interesting, what we saw at this quarter is certainly the Asian investors have been pushing in terms of the physical investment in gold, as you said, bars and coins. And part of it has to do with how their financial systems are also pushing into these. If you have your central banks going in and then you have your state banks and you have your local banks and you have the ability to have backing to your accounts with gold or put gold in vaults in these banks, then you have all of these other reasons as individual investors to be involved in physical gold. And that's something that China, India, a lot of the Middle East, a lot of the sovereign wealth funds are now also diversifying into gold are doing because you have that real physical asset that can really stand the test of time and volatility and uncertainty. And that's what we've seen on the west. We haven't seen that quite as much. And it's interesting because I'll tell you a really quick story from Europe, which is kind of the West, but also sort of increasing its trade and obviously in the middle of the US and Asia and Asian partners, I was not Germany, I was in Austria recently at the Vienna Mint, one of the oldest mints in the world and still functions as sort of cultural mint for creating physical coins and designed physical coins, my beautiful artistic artisan.
And when I was there, the sort of store next to the where individuals and investors can buy gold was full. And the reason it was you had to have appointments. You can't just walk in. It wasn't like counters of gold. You had to go to individual sort of cubicles to actually buy your gold. You had numbers, you waited in line and so forth, but it was just a random weekday and there was a lot of goal buying. And I asked the CEO and the heads of the mint when I was in there, what that was about. And they said, we are next to a potential war zone. We're next to whatever happens between Russia and Ukraine, whatever happens between funding for NATO, whatever goes on. We remember the history of Europe and we remember that having physical assets actually means something. So, then you move on to the US in that sort of a west -to-west movement.
The US hasn't really had that. We haven't had that sort of real internal wake-up crisis call that would make us as a nation push towards having that physical gold in all of our vaults, right? It tends to be by choice. It tends to be family wealth. It tends to be more the international communities within the United States, but more and more it's increasingly coming down to the private wealth chain in the us. And so to answer your question, I do think it's changing. One thing for example, is that Morgan Stanley wealth management for their private wealth clients is starting to increase their suggestion of gold allocation for their private wealth clients. Why? Not because they think there's a potential in the United States, but because they're seeing the momentum and the solidity and the sustainability of gold as an asset that's happening for all these other reasons around the world and they want to participate.
Goldman Sachs, where I used to be managing director, Goldman Sachs has increased its predictions as to where gold will go. And so there's more and more big US name players that are coming into the mix that have big wealth clients that are reallocating or allocating or diversifying more into gold. So, we will see it, but I think the reasons that push the Western investor on our side anyway into gold have not had as much momentum as they do recently because of what everyone's seeing with prices in the markets and other forms of uncertainty all around.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah, that makes sense. And I think too, would you agree that some of it's just a cultural difference, the East Chinese Indians, there's a cultural affinity to gold that's kind of built in that we don't really have here in the us. I'm often called a gold bug as a pejorative, and I actually did my own podcast yesterday and I mentioned the fact that if you dumped me in China, I'm no longer the outlier. I'm more of the norm. So, I would guess that's probably playing into it a little bit as well, right?
Nomi Prins: Well, it is, and I've always advocated for people all over the world, including us, to have allocations of their investments, of their portfolio, of even their sort of liquid cash not liquid assets, but available assets in gold. And yes, I've been called a gold bug as well. But the reality is gold has stood the test of volatility, safe haven, nature, time, and now accumulation for a whole other host of reasons that are only accelerating throughout the rest of the world. And that gives it additional value. And sort of back in the day when you had gold markets and gold coins and you're sort of trading back and forth and that sort of thing, we don't have as much of that in our history in the United States. We are a new country. It's not sort of as embedded, but from the standpoint of what's a secure asset? I was recommending gold mining portfolios a number of years ago when they were not doing very well, and people were like, well, why don't you just do something like Nvidia? And yes, I mean that's a thing.
But the reality is if you don't want the volatility, if you want the appreciation, if you want the security, if you want the fungibility of the asset into being able to change it into something liquid and to actually be able to use it and exchange it even today, you can still do that with gold. And also we've had so many more applications even on the technology side that allow you to connect to gold, to connect to your vault, to connect to your certification and your authentication and make sure that you're actually investing in gold that is legitimate, that is real, and that you have that you need that. I mean, no one should invest in gold with the porn broker down the street. I mean, you do have to have all of those certifications, but a lot of places have that ability now where you don't have to physically go in and touch the gold.
You can do it online. You can do it over a call. But you can still have all the authenticity and availability to have that. I mean, there are apps I use for example, just as a, I use a lot of different ways to have gold or to have silver, but there's an app called Glint where basically you just attach it to your credit card and every month you can purchase gold and then it's stored in a vault where it is, and you know how it's connected, and you don't have to buy a whole bar because whole bars are expensive for people. There's different ways that you can participate in the market on a dollar cost averaging nature into gold, which didn't even exist a number of years ago. So as this is all progressing, the idea of being a gold bug is being replaced with just a gold investor because it makes sense.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah, when I hear gold bug, I hear Money-Bug
And yeah, you're absolutely right. There's so many different options out there now, money, metals, we have a kind of monthly buy as you go program, whereas for a hundred dollars a month you can accumulate that goal. And like you said, for a lot of people it is difficult to, they don't have $3,500 laying around to buy a one ounce gold coin. So, I want to pivot back to China for just a minute. You mentioned the central bank gold buying that's going on over there, and our own, Jan Nieuwenhuijs, I think you're familiar with him, has done some work and shown that it appears that China is actually accumulating even more gold off the books than what they're officially admitting. And it's interesting, I don't know a lot about Chinese politics, but I do know they tend to have a longer view of things, right? They're much more willing to play the long game than politicians in the United States, who are usually working within the next election cycle, which is next year. And so I'm curious as to your thoughts. We see them accumulating all of this gold. What do you think is kind of their long game here? What are they aiming at in your view?
Nomi Prins: Well, again, there's the diversification nature of just having gold as a tier one asset for a central bank, which means that any bank in China, a bank that trades with China, a central bank that trades or swaps currency with that central bank has the ability to use gold as the backdrop to use gold as the anchor. And so what that does is it has a more objective pricing in the world than simply a fiat currency. What it, it's not that gold doesn't have geopolitical movement attached to it. It's not completely isolated, but because it's something that's physical, because it requires international components, whether it's getting it out of the ground, getting it moved, about having it locked up, having it safe, there's so many different components which make it a lot more valuable and harder to save and harder to lose than a fiat currency that what the Central Bank of China is doing is I think playing to have not just itself, but any central bank, which is pretty much almost all the central banks with whom it would do transactions ultimately have a component of gold that acts as a gold standard that anchors the ability to simply move things in a fiat sort of way.
And the more gold you have, the more stability you have with that hard asset. There used to be a gold standard must say there's going to be a full on gold standard back, but if you have a portion even of a currency or a portion of collateral for a currency or a portion of your reserves in physical gold, it sort of levels that playing field of being able to just create fiat currency and use that to liquefy or drain the system. And so I think when China looks at the long game and actually working with its trading partners and investing and lending and getting repaid, that partially it and other BRICS countries, other eastern European countries, some Western European, they're looking at the idea of having a stockpile that is counted again by the BIS that can be used to back ultimately policy.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah, that absolutely makes sense. And we kind of saw Russia reap the benefits of that, didn't we? After the invasion of Ukraine as they're being sanctioned and very aggressively, I think Unprecedentedly sanctioned, I would argue, and we can debate the foreign policy aspect of it, but just from an economic standpoint, Russia has benefited from having a lot of gold and being able to use that to shore up their economy as they've been cut off from a lot of the world. Would you agree with that?
Nomi Prins: Yeah. And one of the sort of reasons that gold began its sort of latest ascent during these last three year period. One was because it was shown to be a diversifier for policy decisions relative to the dollar, relative to the international banking system, the swift system that basically allows you to settle transactions on a country to country basis and was a diversifier and external sort of factor to that. And as I mentioned, on the flip side of that, you have European banks and individuals and private wealth accumulation going on in gold because for the same reasons, it allows you to have a store value in your institution or in your home or in your vault that is separate from what could happen or what could be sanctioned at the bank level if you can physically hold it or know where it is or have access to it. And so that happened with Russia? Yes. And it happened with individuals in Europe and it happened with in general, China was not immune to the fact or India or Saudi Arabia or Poland. It was not immune to the fact that increasing their own gold reserves would allow them to have more autonomy over their own currency or policy should anything happen or even if it doesn't happen just simply to be stronger. And so that was a moment where we saw gold step into that idea of political sovereignty, not just something that had historical value.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah, it's interesting you mentioned Poland, the central bank governor there, and I'm not going to attempt to pronounce his last name, but when they announced a couple of years ago that they were going to aggressively begin increasing their gold reserves, that's what you said was exactly what he talked about, how it creates stability, it makes us a better economic player. It's a fire insurance. If something does happen, we don't expect it to, but if somebody turns off flips the switch on the world financial system, we have this hard asset. So, that's exactly how he put it as well.
Nomi Prins: And it's also protective nature. Yes. From the standpoint of all of that, but also for example, Poland in the wake of what's gone on and what's going on between Russia and Ukraine has been able to increase, for example, its defense capabilities and its participation in nato. I mean, all of this is not an accident that it's also related to increasing its gold reserves.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah, absolutely. De-dollarization and this kind of diversification of reserves is kind of a pet issue for me. It's something I find really, really interesting, and still to this day, I think you see it more in the mainstream now than you did say a year or two ago. But still when I talk about it, a lot of people have this, well, that's a conspiracy theory kind of thing, and we don't really need to worry about it, the dollar's king. Do you think that de -dollarization from a US policy perspective is a danger and something that the people that are in charge should be concerned about?
Nomi Prins: It's an interesting question because it's a question degree and a question of time. So yes, the dollar is king, the dollar is the prevalent reserve currency is the prevalent trade currency, although it has declined in both of those measures over the years where it has the most still kind of strength relative to other currencies in the world is in the swap markets and the foreign exchange markets because it's the settlement currency. So that's actually where it has a tremendous amount of longevity strength. And to change that strength requires other systems which are being built, digital systems which are being built and other things that are going to sort of fray at that component of dollar strength. So it's not like that is going to go away, but these are things that if you're in the US government, you want to be watching and you should be concerned about.
Because what it means is that the more that you are, for example, trying to control a trade policy, whether that's with tariffs or any other sort of way, whether it's the Trump administration or any other administration, the more that is on one side of the equation on the other side is other nations diversifying their just activity respect to not engaging in dollars, well then it kind of takes out a big chunk of where the dollar can sort of threaten that type of trade or sort of move that type of trade back to the United States. And so if you're looking at policy from that perspective, knowing where the dollar is and where it's declining in terms of its use value is very important. But also from the standpoint of debt, if we are at 37 trillion of debt in the United States and counting regardless of who's in the White House and what the budget is, it's just a fact.
And other central banks that used to be big buyers for our debt are not buying as much of our debt are buying perhaps other central bank debt or other country debt or buying more gold as we just discussed and so forth. It makes the value of our debt actually that much more expensive to carry. There's less demand for treasuries. So therefore, whatever the Fed does, interest rates, and we've seen that the 10-year kind of stay stubbornly high relative to where the short end of the curve has been going. That's something to be concerned about as being the dollar nation and what is going on. So, there's a lot of different components that aren't the same as, oh, the dollar's going to go away tomorrow and we're all going to basically use the Chinese one, and that's going to be it. There's a lot gray in between here.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah. You and I are absolutely on the same page. My contention has been that we're not going to wake up tomorrow and see the headline in the New York Times, “Dollar no longer reserve currency.” It's kind of a slow bleed. But I would argue that even a marginal diminishment of that power is a problematic for exactly the reasons that you brought up the United States depends on global demand for dollars to soak up the money creation and the debt and all of that. That goes along with, as you mentioned, it's not really even a partisan thing. We see the same trajectory no matter who is in control in Washington DC
Nomi Prins: That's right.
Mike Maharrey: I would like to talk silver for just a minute because I think a lot of silver investors are frustrated and silver hasn't done badly. I think there's a misconception that it's done poorly because it has not hit record highs as gold has, but it has arguably lagged. Do you see silver playing catch up and possibly a contraction of this really wide gold silver ratio that we've seen over the last year or so?
Nomi Prins: Well, I do share the frustration that silver has underperformed the momentum that gold has had, not so much the gold silver ratio because I think all of the reasons that we talked about as to why gold has had this additional momentum and additional boost, the geopolitical reasons, the allocations, the diversification, that has been very unique because all those factors have kind of been happening at the same time and created momentum for each other, and that's created this big escalation in gold. And normally, and that's why right now we see that gap so wide between gold and silver. Normally without all of those things accelerating and happening at the same time, we would see silver track gold a bit more. Yes, it'll be more volatile. Sometimes it will increase by more than gold, sometimes it will lag. But for the most part, you won't see the gap that we have right now between gold and silver.
But again, the reason for it's because we've had this confluence, a very solid long-term multipurpose events happening that have and will continue to boost gold. So the question is, will silver catch up? I think it will, and it should for a couple of reasons. One is because if you're looking at a precious metal, regardless of what you think of that gap, which again is why, but for other reasons, silver has that supply demand gap as well. There is less available silver that is out of the ground than the growing demand for silver in terms of growing the infrastructure, not just the wealth accumulated aspect, but the energy and infrastructure that governments around the world are planning and are involved in doing. And I think what's happened is in this period of all these momentum factors contributing to gold's upside and why it hasn't happened to silvers because the counter argument that silver's having to contend with, it's just, well, but if the economy's slowing, then we won't grow these things as much. Industrialization won't really happen as quickly as the plan say, China's economy is going to slow down, so they're going to not need to put silver in their factories or it's not going to be as needed for their energy transformation products. And so you've had this sort of counter balance to silver risk prices, which you haven't had in gold. And I think that that is temporary in that a lot of the long-term infrastructure development, including if we onshore manufacturing by more, there's an actual plan for that from a White House. And I'm saying any White House that could happen by more. So there will be more of a demand for silver here. And also, again, throughout the world, I don't think China's economy is going to fall off a cliff, for example, or their long-term planning is going to stop. But the narrative of these numbers of this potential slowdown has impacted silver in a way that it hasn't impacted gold.
And I think that's what's happened. But I think once we move sort of past that and recognize that this development will be going on, it is long-term silver does have catch up, plus it has all those historical wealth values that it hasn't lost over this time period. We will see silver reclaim it's better gap relative to gold, and we will see silver in the 45 50 kind of dollar range in the next year or two because that's where it should be right now.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah, that's one of the best explanations of that gap that I've heard. That was very, very well done. Thank you. I'm going to get you out on this one. And this is just kind of a fun question I like to ask folks, especially if I don't know them real well. What is one thing that you see as a major factor in what's going on in the markets in the economy right now that you think the majority of the mainstream is missing?
Nomi Prins: That's a great question. I think the majority, and it's a little bit of what I said on silver, I think the majority of the mainstream is missing what the long-term trend is and so many things that are becoming different and accelerating in their growth, that is going to happen regardless of what quarterly figures are or what annual figures are. So for example, we just had a quarterly negative print in the US GDP. That's true. We have less people buying stuff. We've got a debt overhang. There's uncertainty, there's tariffs, there's lots of things that's these companies reducing their capitalization. They don't know what money is going to cost. So, there's a lot of stuff in the short term, but I think the main narrative is missing where long-term attraction is, particularly in the commodity space where whether it's precious metals from gold to silver, copper as well being an industrial and energy metal uranium and all the sorts of other things in the commodity space have very long-term trends that are really independent of where short-term economic data is coming out or what we say about markets or the economy or the consumer.
And I think in general, that kind of thing tends to be missed because, well, the news, we tend to focus on what's right now in front of us. And so what we do at Prinsights, what I've been doing forever is really trying to not look at the upfront noise. I mean, yes, I talk about it, we decipher what it says and how it relates to bigger picture stuff, but looking at these long-term trends and needs in the supply and the supply chains of things that basically come out of the earth. And I think that that's something that gets missed.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah, that's so important too. I remember 10 years ago or so ago, we started talking about the 24 hour news cycle, and I would argue now that it's like a 32nd news cycle, it's like what's on X? And everybody reacts to that thing, and I'm like, I like to look at longer term trends and try not to get too caught up, as you said that upfront noise. So great answer to that question before I let you go. I do want to allow you to let people know where they can follow your work and anything special that you're doing that you want to call attention to, this is your opportunity.
Nomi Prins: Well, I appreciate that, Mike, and appreciate what you're doing. And I just want to call back one second what you said about the a hundred dollars or the way people can kind of accumulate gold with money medals and so forth, because it is important to connect into that long-term wealth growing framework by accumulating over time and not sort of moving with the knee jerk reactions that the market can have that can be amplified technologically. And so where you can find me, where we do all that work Prinsights.substack.com. That's where I'm now collecting all of my work. I have a lot of books out there that are also on Amazon in different places, but right now we've got basically three different tiers for the work that we do here. We have one that's complimentary. We do regular commentaries on the market, on the fed, on gold, on everything else.
And then we have two different premium tiers. One is very specific on monthly analysis and recommendations. I go out in the field, I wear hard hats. I mean, I do stuff and really look at what's going on. And then our founders tier, which are highest tier, and we're just actually just about to launch a new product within that tier, which is specific to the junior mining and commodity and supply chain community, and really looking at where we have these long-term high growth potential opportunities in that area. Again, you'll see me at different places of the world as well as young people on our team in the trenches. So this is not just stuff we do on paper, it is real conversations. I mean real conversations with management, but also physically getting out there and looking at how operations are on a ground and underground level of the companies that we look at and all the companies in between that make the technology work and the logistics and the transportation, the AI and everything else. And so we have those three levels.
Mike Maharrey: And what's your website again?
Nomi Prins: It's prinsights.substack.com.
Mike Maharrey: Okay. Excellent. Well, again, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to chat. Very informative. I really enjoyed your insights and we'd love to have you back at some point as things move forward because no, we could sit here and talk for hours and hours, but I won't make you do that. But again, thank you so much.
Nomi Prins: Thank you.
Well, I hope you enjoyed that interview, and that will do it for this week. Be sure to check back next Friday for our next Weekly Market Wrap Podcast. Check out the Money Metals Midweek Memo podcast as well. To listen to any of our audio programs just go to MoneyMetals.com/podcasts or find them on places like Apple Podcast, Spotify or other podcast platforms. And as a big help to us we would ask you to please like, subscribe, download and rate our podcasts. Doing so helps us extend the reach of this material.
Until next time, this has been Mike Gleason with Money Metals Exchange, thanks for listening and have a wonderful weekend everybody.
About the Author
Mike Gleason is a Director with Money Metals Exchange, a precious metals dealer recently named "Best in the USA" by an independent global ratings group. Gleason is a hard money advocate and a strong proponent of personal liberty, limited government and the Austrian School of Economics. A graduate of the University of Florida, Gleason has extensive experience in management, sales and logistics as well as precious metals investing. He also puts his longtime broadcasting background to good use, hosting a weekly precious metals podcast since 2011, a program listened to by tens of thousands each week.
