Renaissancemen.org

My article I wrote at 3AM a few days ago got linked in WallStreetSilver on Reddit, a few blog sites that redirected to me, and yesterday – Sprott Money!! Take a look!! This one was 4AM today.

From this, I got a decent amount of media requests. I’m not your guy for that. I’m an analyst with a full time job, 6 side hustles, and a family to take care of. But what I have done, and will do – for them and for you – is to provide you a roadmap of sources to learn as much of this as you can. Follow the same rabbit holes. As a disclaimer, I’m heavily invested in miners as a result of my findings on the below. Some of my conclusions, at the end – are MY analysis, with influences from some of the people you see below.

How did I learn all of this? 3-5 hours a day for perhaps 16 months. It all started for me in September 2019, when I heard about the repo market almost failing. I have an MBA and recalled something about the overnight borrowing I learned in my time at Villanova – and remembered how low those rates were. The repo rates were said to get to 10%, which is saying, essentially, that these banks did not trust the assets of the other banks to provide them short term loans. Ummm…what? At the time, prior to COVID, I was driving 95 mins to work – each way, and I’d setup a play list of YouTube videos to listen to each day. Then, I found when mowing the lawn, doing work around the house, running, biking, walking the dog – at ALL times I was listening to interviews. I completely immersed myself. I then tried to take THAT legwork and summarize what I learned to write here. I’m not a professional writer, but I try and get it as fair, ethical, and close to how I see it as I can.

So the guys below have been doing this for YEARS. THESE are the primary sources I used. THESE are the guys you need to contact for media inquiries. Now, this isn’t as strong as an academic journal, obviously, so do your own due diligence. I write a blog for fun – but with two master’s degrees (cybersecurity, business administration), I have had to write massive 30-100 page papers and cite all kinds of sources. That being said, you will find a lot of my blogs here have many links to sources. Not APA or anything, but I’m also not writing a graduate thesis – but sharing thoughts, knowledge, and insights to discuss.

Here’s the list….I cannot add everyone and everything, or it might take a month to write. Using my favorites to watch and read….

The issues….

These guys can walk you through the STRUCTURAL issues with the silver market far better than I can.

1. Ted Butler – I don’t know a ton about him, as he does interviews rarely. But I have to start with him as a primary source for doing the research on the COMEX structure and short positions. Every and all conversations about this originate from him doing this work. Great interview on Tuesday here and a recent article posted at silverseek here.

2. Chris Markus – Arcadia economics. He did a book of interviews called The Big Silver Short where many of the below people appear in it. Most telling, he had an interview with a former CFTC regulator, Bart Chilton, who described JP Morgan’s short position that they took over. Please go buy his book to support his business. He puts himself out there daily on YouTube to share content with everyone and doesn’t have a pay service – this is how we can support members of our community – and he produced a superior product I highly recommend. There was an audio version I listened to while walking my dog!

3. GoldSilverPros on YouTube- Rob Kientz is a former auditor who discusses a lot of the commitment of traders reports. You can tell he comes from this field, as ledgers and spreadsheets get him excited. Love his content, but can get in the weeds and should be the focus of ANY FINANCIAL investigative journalist to reach out to.

4. Andrew Maguire – he has done a lot of YouTube interviews, and from what I can gather – he has a product he is pitching called Kenesis money, which seems to be backed by metals. That being said, he describes in GREAT detail market conditions – and one thing he continues to sell is that sizable orders of 1,000 oz silver bars are hard to acquire, if not impossible.

5. Craig Hemke – he did an interview I believe with Greg Hunter about 6 months ago discussing the setup, and why this will ultimately fail. In a quick search, I see several interviews with him, and I have to get to the Jan 21st one and catch up. I believe this is the 45 min interview which sets the stage that many need to understand.

The fundamentals

I used a lot of them to learn a ton

1. Mike Maloney – goldsilver.com. As a disclaimer, he owns a company selling gold. However, if you take his sales pitch at face value, and watch his documentary 10 part series on YouTube called “The hidden secrets of money“, you will be terrified. The whole series took me about 4 hours to watch on a Sat afternoon one day, and this will change your life. It’s about the history of money. He loves to tell you what you have in your wallet is currency, and not money. Anyway – any journalist asking me anything needs to sit down and watch this for 4 hours. Pick your jaw off of the floor, and try not to panic.
2. Peter Schiff – no need to go deep here, he’s well known in the space. Gold guy, but makes extremely compelling arguments. I’d add several to this group to understand different schools of thought. Harry Dent, James Rickards, Brent Johnson – etc. These are a lot of great conversations with inflationary and deflationary pressures
3. George Gammon – in “3 simple steps”, he will blow your mind. These financial systems are highly complex, and he tries to boil things down for you with stick figures. Love it. His video he did on ETFs awhile back blew my mind.
4. David Hunter – he talks about a crack up boom, a global bust, and a commodities raging bull market for the second half of the decade. His conclusions are hard to argue against. He discusses $300 silver and $10000 gold as an endgame. While it is a depressing subject – his “bust” seems to have a “silver lining” in that it is a depth of a great depression, but the length of a recession. Meaning – he sees a recovery starting and on its way in a year from the plunge, and this recovery will be a massive infrastructure and commodities boom where it seems each country will be rebuilding their industrial capabilities internally.
5. Milton Friedman/Thomas Sowell – I’m a HUGE free market guy. These guys really tell you how the free market is supposed to work, and when you realize where we are currently, you realize that today we have slowly gone to a form of planned economy where winners and losers are picked by government systems. The free market has been usurped by special interests and “too big to fail” entities.
6. Rick Rule – I’m adding him here because he discusses “risk free return”. Currently, the government seems to tell people it is smart to give them money for 10 years at 1% interest, and they promise to have 2% inflation and take 1% of your money every year. It starts a discussion on inflation anyone reading this needs to review my article on. Once you understand how inflation is here, but not being reported, you understand then how we have close to 0% interest and people getting poorer. It helps describe how in a generation we went from a saver/creditor nation to the largest debtor nation.
7. Robert Kiyosaki – he wrote a book called “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” – which I never read (my mom had gotten me the book 20 years ago or so). He is a gold guy, and walks you through a lot of fundamentals.
8. David Morgan – The “silver guru”. Tons of interviews on YouTube. Walks you through a lot of the silver uses and principles for it to go up

What you learn in the above, is – big picture

• gold and silver have been money for 5,000 years. Historic ratio is 15:1 gold to silver. Gold and silver are in our constitution as money, and our forefathers saw the potential collapse of our civilization if we ever got away from this
• All fiat currencies, in history, not backed by gold or silver, have failed – over 6,000 currencies. And we are mimicking the end of the Roman Empire with our spending, currency debasement, and endless wars
• Inflation is being hidden with CPI. This has allowed interest rates to fall and for our spending to go out of control. If REAL inflation was being captured, then interest rates would be much higher and our government would not afford to do more things. But the more this is masked – the poorer the people become – and they more they rely on government – and the government gets more control. By being dishonest about this, it makes our entire country poorer each year
• Gold and silver are depressed by the COMEX systems. This system masks inflation of an asset by artificially suppressing prices with paper-backed contracts. Hedging is legitimate, and most commodities trade at 125% production in daily volume. Silver trades at 200 DAYS worth of production. By masking commodity prices, you hide inflation. This also structurally damages the commodities market, over a long period of time. With miners, that has slashed prices significantly, in a highly CAPEX driven system. This has forced miners to take on debt, have share dilution, and cut exploration expenses.
• Gold’s MAIN reason to move is “real rates” and “currency debasement”. If the 10 year is 5% and inflation is 2%, that is 3% “real rate” – that is, your savings will grow faster than inflation, and people will put their money into the 10yr. If the 10 year is 1% and inflation is 10%, then that is -9%. If you put your money in the 10 year, the government promises to LOSE you 9%. In that environment, gold is superior because it yields 0%. In our current environment, the 10 year is 1% and CPI (Mike Maloney calls the CPLie) is -1.6%. So gold is better. However, due to the bogus CPI numbers, Americans are now told we have “inflation deficits” and must create more inflation. Tell this to Americans who see 10% year over year healthcare cost rises, but 2% wage increases. Food prices, energy prices. Anything you think would be important to measure, they do not measure. In fairness – it appears their inflation deals on a macro environment – not joe sixpack. And that is also part of the disconnect.
• Many measure inflation every year at 8-10%. IF THIS REAL number was known, and people knew they are losing 8% spending power per year, everyone would rush to gold and gold would be $90,000 per ounce. However, if that happened, you would have immediate loss in our currency. So, I understand the WANT to suppress metals prices. I get it. It’s a form of governor switch baked into the cake. But they abused this governor switch, as governments always do. No government wants gold to go to $100,000 per ounce tomorrow. It’s a fair point for national security. With a COMEX, you can prevent this sudden rise. But – when you do not allow ANY rise for 40 years, that’s where a disconnect is.
• In 1980, you could have taken all of the gold at $800 per ounce and paid off the national debt after gold inflated 24x in the 1970s. Now, assuming there are 8800 tons of gold (32000 ounces per ton), you have 281 million ounces. At current value of gold (about $1800), that means our gold stores are worth $506 billion. Our debt is $27T plus $7T on Fed books for $34T. Ballpark numbers, that means current gold prices would need to be inflated 70 times to pay our national debt today. Please, re-read. We let our debt increase at 70x the rate we allowed gold to increase in value. That governor switch broke and all. We cannot let gold go to $140,000 per ounce tomorrow, but what about setting a 40% gold backing initiative by 2030? Assume we use today’s numbers (which will be outdated by then), but you could have a 40% backing of debt at $56,000 per ounce. So…gold has to go up 28 times in 10 years. About…the exact same rate gold went up in the 1970s with high inflation.

Conclusion

All of the above points you to a conclusion that I have drawn and made my own investment thesis on. I analyzed the situation, and made moves over the last year good for me based on these observations. I COULD BE 100% WRONG. DO NOT LISTEN TO ME FOR INVESTMENT ADVICE. I use all of the information above to then derive my own endgame in this.

Our debt is out of control, and the governor switch broke, allowing us to borrow debt at a rate 70 times faster than gold increased in price. This shows obvious price suppression to allow interest rates to fall and allow us to refinance our “house” constantly. With our “free money” we clear up from the refi, we create MORE government spending on the promise of cheaper debt the next year. To do this, we must artificially rig the inflation rates down and suppress commodities prices. Without this, we could not have defeated the USSR in the cold war. However, instead of correcting the ship later, we expanded this spending and overextended ourselves to the point we now have a path of the Roman Empire in front of us.

Because this can has been kicked down the road over 40 years, we are now that generation inheriting the debt from 40 years ago. With compound interest, so to speak. The artificially low CPI has depressed wages while costs of living have outpaced our incomes. This has led to a consumerism that needs to be constant, or the whole house of cards falls apart. Which also has led to us taking out and borrowing more cheap money than ever before. This can easily be witnessed with how leveraged everyone is on margin on the stock market, and how if a pin touches it, margin sell offs can rip our face off on the way down, like in March 2020.

Overall, it seems our debt is now coming to a point where we cannot service it through our existing means.

This will lead to governments all over the globe, at some point, defaulting on their debt. How will this happen? One of two ways:

1. Cannot make payments on interest. First, it can’t really happen because we just digitally print more in the basement of the Fed. The modern monetary theorists just have this as the answer. If you stop making payments rather than print, your credit is downgraded further. This really will not happen, because no elected official wants to do this.
2. Inflate your way out of debt. This involves money printing – but you need inflation to inflate assets to tax them. Let’s say you have a $300,000 house with 3% mortgage for 30 years. Maybe you pay $2,000 per month mortgage/taxes on this. If governments foment inflation, my wages can rise, and get me more free capital to spend on the economy. Higher velocity of money. More taxes. The value of my house goes to $1 million, but I only owe $300,000. In 5 years, my wages are double by my mortgage payment was the same, and I can now pay that debt off. Gold will rise with this inflation. In 2019, the bank of international settlements made ALLOCATED gold a tier 1 asset. I see a long game where inflation is the road ahead, and gold may rise to $10,000-$40,000 by the end of the decade and have a peg to gold.

Using the above – I came to the conclusion in December 2019 that gold and silver are commodities that are undervalued, as much as 70-140 times their ACTUAL inflation-adjusted value. Further research with the above folks showed me this.

In 1980 and 2011, silver hit $50 per ounce. The inflation (CPI) adjusted price for that silver, today, is $157. Using that number, we still would have a 6x in silver JUST TO GET to the CPI-adjusted high. Let’s assume that is $150. In an environment of high inflation ahead, perhaps 2x by 2030, that could mean in 2030 silver is $300 per ounce using CPI. Meaning, buying physical and silver miners today for a 10 year hold means I will own an island somewhere in 2030.

But the case gets more compelling when you hear shadowstats has gone back and used ORIGINAL inflation numbers, BEFORE they switched up the CPI in 1980 to mask inflation, and found that $49 in 1980 silver prices would equate to $611 today. Meaning, silver still would have a 25x ahead to match the highs of 1980. And, in the 1970s, silver went up….29x. Again – assuming we have 2x from here inflation from 2021 to 2030, this perhaps suggests that silver can get to $1200 just to match the performance of the high inflation of the 1970s. To do this, the governor switch of the COMEX suppression needs to be….adjusted downward to also allow for silver price growth to allow for price inflation.

We also learn that silver is found at 8:1 in the ground, and for 4900 years was valued at 15:1 of gold. Now, assuming we have gold at perhaps 40% of our national debt as a peg, we’ll use $40,000 gold.

At 8:1 that is $5,000 silver

At 15:1 that is $2600 silver

At 33:1, the 100 year average since silver was “de-monetized”, thats…drum roll please….$1,212 silver.

Using miners as leverage

Anyone investing in mining will tell you to first get physical metals. They don’t tell you what to do with them. Truth be told, no one feels safe with any kind of value in their home these days. Look at storage solutions on your own – I will not recommend any below here.

Gold used to be $35 per ounce in 1971, but gold was found at the surface and miners made a profit at $35 per ounce. Today, most miners have a cost (averaged) of perhaps $1000 to pull it out of the ground. This is inflation in production costs. So the COMEX essentially “permits” a bit of profit, but not a ton, in order to get the commodity produced. Over years, it gets harder to find gold, and more expensive to dig and grades become less rich.

The same thing has happened in silver over the last 10 years, but has not really been reflected in price. It is getting harder to find, more scarce, and less primary silver miners exist today than perhaps…ever. The low prices ran them out of business. Silver is mostly produced as a byproduct of things like zinc and lead – but it’s such an important commodity – that is also money!!

With miners, costs are going to rise a lot over the next 10 years. Silver will get harder to find. It takes 10 years or so to bring a mine online.

IF we are seeing $1200 silver by the end of the decade, a loaf of bread might be $20.

That being said, if you had owned silver miners for this decade, you more or less can retire.

I once heard that silver miners in the 1960s went up 165x. Not 165%, 165x. Long story short, is the leverage you will have to silver miners is tremendous.

Let me explain – quickly. First Majestic roughly has costs to mine silver at $15 per ounce. Anything over that is profit. The obviously have exploration costs and long term investment costs, but they are profitable at $18 silver. At $21, 2x profit (about). For every $3 increase in silver price, their profits go up by a factor of 1. With $50 silver, their share price is stupid crazy. At $100 silver, printing money. Over the decade of increased costs and inflation of supply chain costs, perhaps their cost to mine is $200 per ounce. And if silver is $1200 per ounce, they are making $1000 per ounce. Today, they are making about $9 per ounce. Their profits can potentially go up by a factor of 100 in the coming decade. Let that sink in. So people are positioning now with FM in anticipation of $50 silver and beating the crowds in.

So…more chessboard stuff here folks.

Opening….

1. Educate yourself on the above topics to make your own decisions. Don’t listen blindly to me or others. None of us know. We make educated guesses based on what we see.
2. Governments across the world have racked up debt and only way forward is to inflate ourselves out of debt
3. To inflate, we need to re-value gold. BIS made it a tier 1 asset in 2019.
4. Gold and silver are undervalued by many, many, many multiples
5. Gold could get to $40,000 and silver could get to $1200 by end of decade. More conservative estimates are $10,000 gold and $300-600 silver.

Middle game

1. Position yourself with physical metals – in various forms. Hidden, vaulted, etc. For home security purposes, it’s probably not a great idea to have any sizable amount at your house. DO NOT DO THIS.
2. Position yourself with the miners with the highest leverage to silver – First Majestic, Impact Silver, Endeavor Silver, Fortuna Silver Mines, Golden Minerals, Discovery Metals (still has 10x potential at $30 silver if you check out NPV and market cap and they just started mining), Alexco, Black Rock Gold, Chesapeake gold, Reyna Silver, MAG silver, Silvercrest, Bear Creek Mining, GR Silver, Silver One, America’s Gold and Silver, Aftermath, Vizsla, Bunker Hill.
3. Pay mining analysts to point you to the right ones. Don’t listen to me for advice. I have 4 of them – Gold Newsletter, Mining Stock Journal, Junior Miner Junky, Silver Chartist
4. Strong physical demand and ETF bar demand will put pressure on the 1,000 oz bar market. Media will begin to cover. Several have already reached out to me.
5. Be patient

Endgame

1. At some point, the concentrated short positions will have to be wound down because governments need the governor switch to back off to allow metals to run up to demonstrate to everyone inflation is happening and they can raise the 10yr without a crash. If the stock market tanks in the next few months, it provide an opportunity for shorts to then buy back cheap. I believe that is what they have been waiting for, honestly. While EVERYTHING will get hit in a market crash, I believe THIS is when the banks plan to buy back shorts. This will have a STRONG MOVE UP for metals when everything else is on the roller coaster to hell. This will create the divergence in the PM versus equity markets we have expected the last year, but haven’t seen. JPM is long silver and apparently when silver dove to $11.75, this is when they bought back their shorts. This is also when the other banks should have followed suit, but didn’t. I believe this mistake has put them at a lot of unnecessary risk of having to short cover and double down on price pushes to try and prevent them from having to cover shorts.
2. IF there is no crash by end of March, I feel strong moves to pull metals into buyers’ possessions, coupled with industrial demand skyrocketing on tight 1,000 ounce bar demand will force shorts to start covering if they haven’t already. I strongly believe all of this news with physical buying and ETF buying will create a situation like 2011 where manufacturers want to increase their inventories. This will move the needle – and when this needle does move, and if the banks are still short, this is a nuke of price which is where I see a possible $75-$150 short term move which immediately unleashes supply of bars to the market. Could be a several day event from $75 up to $150 and back down to $65 in a single day. I have targets I’m looking for with miners to sell tranches into the up move. I will reload after the peak is hit and price retreats.
3. The “dollar” may be an initial safe haven on a crash – in immediate short term, but other currencies will be fled to and our obvious negative rates will be known to the world soon enough so gold is a safe haven picked over the 10yr. David Hunter is predicting a “bust’ end of Q1/or Q2 after a run up of the stock markets yet. Peter Schiff wins this argument over Harry Dent and the dollar milkshake group because the end game is gold, it doesn’t matter if the dollar runs to 100, 120, or 140 for a short period of time. Gold will be the destination very soon thereafter. Therefore – both groups agree the end is a sharp dollar drop. Schiff says it is going down, another group says it is going sharply up before down. Both groups agree dollar is going sharply down long term.
4. At some point, inflation will be real to everyone. It’s going to run hot, which is why they put $7T into the economy with stimmy checks and why it will continue indefinitely. COVID vaccines are not required to track you, but to get the velocity of money roaring. This will be REAL inflation seen in the second half of this year like you’ve never seen it before. It is thought there may be a severe correction before this time. Buckle up.
5. Analysts say a strong economy is bad for gold. I’d point them kindly to a chart of the 1970s how inflation went up but interest rates were trailing – a negative real rate was excellent for gold and help support gold re-inflation. It appears we may be in for a decade of “stagflation” as we get our debts in order and re-inflate gold.
6. They cannot raise the 10 year without crashing the economy and defaulting on debt. Inflation MUST run hot and be visible to everyone before any real rate hikes happen – or crash crash boom. It’s possible this upcoming crash is caused by the 10yr creeping up and no one implementing yield curve control. Any crash will force hands on YCC and this is the catalyst to send gold to $3,000 by year end. This means, short term – you can see gold in the $1700s and $1600s despite money printing. Because the 10yr is going up, but the CPI numbers are still pegged too low. Without YCC this will send us down, and HARD.
7. Inflation will create strong negative rates which is good for gold and silver. It will be controlled carefully so you don’t see the actual 20% that is happening, but you will be told 4%.
8. Gold and silver creep up over the decade. Miners make stupid profits.

How I’m positioned for some of this.

Not going into everything here, but here’s a few things I have. Do not replicate me.

1. SLV calls for $54 at March 30th. 99.9% chance of going to money heaven. IF there is a move with silver that is wicked, it could be the second half of March as people scramble for metals on the spot market. People can take IMMEDIATE DELIVERY if they want, during March. I bought these at $.50, but this price is much lower now. Might get more.
2. PSLV – I want them to buy physical
3. AG $10 strike price Jan 21 2022. Paid $3.16 for these. Went up to $14 earlier this week and I didn’t cash out. I left a 5 bagger out there because I feel AG will be nuts this year.
4. Mix of 28 gold and silver producers, junior producers, developers, explorers, and streamers. I chose silver producers with a higher percent of silver production over silver production volume. I.e, I favored AG over PAAS.