The Flying Frisby - money, markets and more

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.comPlease do not share, copy, reproduce or distribute any part of this report without the express permission of the author.I am going to do something I don’t often do today, and that is tell you about a silver mining company. The reason? I think it could rally by 50%, and quickly. I make no secret of my ambivalence towards silver. On the one hand, there is no metal with as much potential. It’s a monetary metal and we are in an inflationary environment that wiser heads than me are comparing to the 1970s. Silver was the “bitcoin of the 1970s” going from below $2 to $50, with the silver mining companies rising thousands of times over.Then there are silver’s multiple industrial uses. Silver is to modern technology as sugar and salt are to modern food: it is in just about everything.  If ever there was a metal that had so many uses, I’d like to know what it is. I could write a tome about uses of silver. It might not be that readable, but it would be long. From medical equipment to electrical appliances, it’s almost harder to find things that don’t contain silver than things that do. Every smartphone has silver in it; every computer; every jet engine; every solar panel. The best batteries contain silver; it’s used in detergent, deodorant, wart treatment, antimicrobial lab coats, 3D printing, plastics, jewellery, wood preservation, water purification. It’s like a “picks-and-shovels” play on new tech and the growing middle class of the developing world. There is 15 times as much silver in the earth’s crust as there is gold. So silver “should” be 1/15th the gold price. That is the historical norm. But silver, at $24/oz with gold at $1,970/oz, is 1/82nd the gold price. If it were to revert to anything like the historical mean, and gold were to stay at its current price, then silver would be $130.But if there is one thing you can rely on in this fickle world, it is that silver will not deliver on its potential. One day it might, but I dare say we will be waiting a long time. However, there is something of a “special situation” to the company I am going to cover today. Obviously, if silver goes to $130, or even $50, or even just $30, the company will soar. But we don’t need that to happen.The company in question has acquired a past-producing silver mine and is putting it back into production. The mine was only recently put into care and maintenance, the equipment is all there, as are the workers. The capital is in place. To get it producing again, should take less than two years. But the stock was halted for almost a year pending completion of the transaction, and various regulatory approvals in Mexico where the mine is located. I’ve never known a stock to be halted for as long.The company has just resumed trading and so there is a torrent of selling pressure - almost a year’s worth - from people who have not been able to trade the stock. The result is that the company is now trading some 20% below its IPO price.This situation will not last. The company knew that as soon as trading resumed a plethora of stock would hit the bid, so it has done very little to defend the share price. Once the stock is properly cleaned out, however, then the company will start marketing itself again and the stock price will rise. But there is no point doing that until the selling is done. I’d say we are a couple of weeks from when the marketing starts.So, if you want to buy an imminent silver producer that will soon enjoy mid-tier status, at beaten down exploration-discovery play prices, here is your chance. This my biggest silver position. I think there is 50% upside to be had before the summer is out. It could quite easily double within a year with some help from the silver price. If silver itself ever even remotely delivers on its potential, we will make out like bandits. We are talking Mexico here, so perhaps I should say, “banditos”?

A number of people I know have started using Ozempic. This is the drug, otherwise known as Wegovy, beloved by the likes of Elon Musk and Jeremy Clarkson, that suppresses your appetite, so enabling you to lose weight. Not only does it suppress your appetite, it actually turns you off food. I’ve been overweight in the past. I get how hard it is to shed pounds. It takes a lot of time, effort and persistence. It can be deeply demoralising, and you can become quite desperate, so I get why many are taking the apparently easier Ozempic route. But I worry about it. We don’t yet know for sure what the side effects are, but I’d wager that in a few years time, as so often is the way, we are going to discover all sorts of nasty unintended consequences. What is more, on the company’s own site it reads:Ozempic® may cause serious side effects, including:Possible thyroid tumors, including cancer. Tell your health care provider if you get a lump or swelling in your neck, hoarseness, trouble swallowing, or shortness of breath. These may be symptoms of thyroid cancer. In studies with rodents, Ozempic® and medicines that work like Ozempic® caused thyroid tumors, including thyroid cancer.Read that last sentence again. In studies with rats, Ozempic caused thyroid tumours.What’s more, as soon as you stop taking Ozempic, you are going to put all the weight back on that you’ve lost, and probably more. Ozempic can only be a temporary solution. Lastly, people who’ve taken Ozempic and lost weight, don’t look that good. They look weird. Why take the risk when there is a much more healthy and natural alternative? An alternative that is also much cheaper. But nobody is pushing it, because there are not big pharma bucks with patents behind it. That alternative is cider vin egar.If you are considering Ozempic, please give cider vinegar a week’s trial. It’ll save you money and it may well save your health as well.In September 2021 I went the wrong side 90kg (over 14 stone or 200lb). (I should really use stones and pounds on point of principle, especially having given this lecture, but my scales default to metric). Metric or Imperial, this was too much for a man of my 5ft9 frame. None of the diets I tried were working, so I went back to a diet that had worked in the past - intermittent fasting, specifically the 5:2 - and I set myself a goal of 75kg (11 stone 8, or 165 pounds). I set that goal without ever thinking I would reach it. But about 14 months later, last November, I hit 77kg. I explain the diet here. But sod’s law being what it is, I ended up putting on about 4kg after writing that article and then plateauing. I then got a trapped nerve in my neck which was agony and that stopped me exercising.However, lo and behold, in the last three or four weeks, I suddenly shed a load more weight and hit my target. 75kg. 11 stone 8.The magic bullet, in my opinion, was cider vinegar. I upped my intake. from once to three times a day. Like Ozempic, it makes you eat less.I take two dessert spoons in a glass of water twice or three times a day (about an hour before I would usually eat seems to work best). I then skip meals wherever possible, which is easy as cider vinegar reduces your appetite. I exercise a fair bit and the weight falls off.Some days I don’t take it at all, other days I take it three times a day.Cider vinegar is said to have numerous other benefits: * It lowers blood sugar* It lowers cholesterol* It lowers blood pressure* It’s good for your complexion* It kills bacteria, fungi and germs* It eases eczema* It eases acid reflux (don’t overdo it first thing in the morning)* It can help your body be more alkaline (which itself has been said to ward off cancer)* It’s even supposed to improve hair healthPlease tell people about cider vinegar and the dangers of Ozempic.But because there is no Big Cider Vinegar, nobody is marketing it. It reminds me of animal fats, tallow and lard, which we have eaten for centuries, suddenly being superseded by heavily marketed and patented industrial oils, rebranded as vegetable oils, with horrific consequences to obesity rates. You now can’t even buy tallow in your local store, while there is shelf upon shelf of seed oil.Nothing is perfect. Cider vinegar is not great for your teeth, so be sure to rinse your mouth out after consuming.Cider vinegar is dirt cheap.You can take it every day for the rest of your life, should you so wish.There are no nasty side effects.Please give it a go before you try Ozempic. And make sure you buy one with “the mother” (meaning it has naturally occurring probiotics, that ordinary cider vineger does not contain).You should subscribe to this amazing publication. Just put your email in the box.And if you are interested in reading about how I managed to get my weight down, you can do that here:Finally, if you should happen to be in the Scottish neck of the woods this August, I am doing one of my lectures with funny bits at the Edinburgh Fringe this year.This one is about gold. It has got Greek gods, heists, interstellar collisions and Nazis. What more you could want in a show? Except possibly Vikings, I’m not sure.It’s from August 4th to 20th at 2pm - some highbrow mind food with which to start your day. Please come if you are in town- you can get tickets here.Plus it’s in the room in which Adam Smith completed Wealth of Nations.Here’s the blurb:Older than the solar system itself, gold has captivated humans since the Stone Age and driven them to do the most extraordinary things. But does it have any future in this digital age?A lecture with funny bits by financial writer / comedian, Dominic Frisby about the amazing metal that is gold.The Times say Dominic is 'outstanding'. The Telegraph says he’s 'excellent'. The Spectator says he is 'mercurially witty'. Even The Guardian admits he 'can be entertaining'.Hopefully, I will see you there. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

Sometimes I look at what is happening in the world around me, both at home and abroad, and I feel like I’m watching some kind of slow-motion car crash. It’s so obvious what is happening, what is going to happen, and yet the protagonists are oblivious. At school we learnt about dramatic irony: when the audience sees what the characters in the play don’t. That’s how I feel when I watch what Western Europe is careering towards. From energy to fiat money to mass immigration, we don’t seem to realise what we are doing to ourselves, nor what the long-term consequences of some of these decisions, if you can call them that, are going to be, never mind the sheer stupidity of many of the arguments that are taking place. I suggest that pretty much everything that “isn’t” working has some kind of state action at its heart, yet the solution always seems to be more state. When will people realise that the state itself is the problem? I’m not holding my breath.“Our political economy is broken,” says right-leaning commentator Matt Goodwin. Left-leaning commentator Matt Forde describes himself as “politically homeless.” It is the same thing. It does not matter where on the political compass you are, left, right, libertarian, authoritarian, barely a soul feels represented. I have never known a time when so many felt so disenfranchised. Nobody wants what we have, nobody voted for it.(By the way if you have never done a political compass test, you should. I always encourage my mates to: it is a surprisingly effective remedy for political division). Such is the discontent, if this was a history book, you would expect the next episode to be some kind of revolution or revolt. It feels like we need a revolution today. Almost all of Europe and the US is discontent. Enough people are calling for it. But here is the depressing fact: a revolution is not possible. We can’t “starve the monster” and refuse to pay taxes, because almost all taxes are deducted at source. Whether you like it or not, your endeavour is funding this thing. In the case of Income Tax, which, together with National Insurance, accounts for 50% of government revenue, PAYE means most workers never actually receive the money, so are never in a position to be able to refuse to hand it over. Nor can you go into a shop and refuse to pay the VAT, or the fuel or alcohol duty. Nor can we take the traditional route and rise up and revolt like the peasants in 1381, the Americans in 1765 or French in 1789, because, in Europe at least, we are not allowed to carry arms. The mismatch in weaponry between citizen and state is too great.That leaves voting. What good does that do? Elections every five years change nothing. Representative democracy is conflation: it’s neither representative nor democratic. Direct democracy, when citizens vote on issues as they arise - should we legalise drugs? What should the immigration cap be? - and politicians then administer the will of the people, might work. It would certainly engage citizens. But that will not happen. The one vote that seemed meaningful was Brexit. Here was a chance, finally, to change the direction of the tanker, but that has largely proved a wasted opportunity. The basic tax reforms that Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng attempted were stamped out pretty quickly by the IMF, the Bank of England, the globalists or whoever it was.There are occasional glimmers of hope. For example, in December 2021, when Prime Minister Boris Johnson didn’t lock down against the tide of the rest of Europe, which did. But the only reason Johnson didn’t lock down is because Steve Baker headed a Conservative rebellion, which, basically, said it would put a vote of no confidence in Johnson if he locked us down. So Johnson only took that decision to save his own skin. It was a classic of the career risk genre.I’ve always been very interested in figuring out how things work. That’s why I’ve written so much about our systems of money and tax: these are the zero patients. We now have this slow motion car crash, but there is nothing anyone can do. You can’t starve the system by not paying taxes. You can’t rise up and overthrow it, because we are unarmed. All most of us can do, I guess, is put are own house in order, hope that others do the same and we can extrapolate from there. But most people can’t put their own house in order because they can’t afford a house! We have the state to thank for that. People only have smaller families, because they can’t afford to have bigger families. And what is the biggest cost in everyone’s life? The state.The government solution, however, to smaller families is to import people from abroad and so the locals are eroded away. The locals are then told this is what has to happen because of something somebody may or may not have done three hundred years ago.Depressing.So, if no revolution, what happens next? You know the answer to that: the South Africanisation of Everything.My dad always used to say there was no Golden Age. It only ever existed in people’s minds. But if I were to look back at history and think when did we get it right? I think the closest Britain came was in the 30 or so years around the turn of the 20th century, between say 1880 and 1910. When most of history is just lurching from one cock up to another, this was a brilliant period. It produced brilliant people who did brilliant things. We’ve a way to go before we get back to that.Interested in buying gold to protect yourself in these uncertain times? My recommended bullion dealer is The Pure Gold Company, whether you are taking delivery or storing online. Premiums are low, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, US, Canada and Europe, or you can store your gold with them. More here. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

Tom Haynes wrote an interesting piece in the Telegraph the other day to mark the 40th birthday of the pound coin. “The pound in your pocket is now worth just 30p” ran the title, followed by the subhead “Some 40 years after the first pound coins were minted, their relevance is waning”. I’ll say!But the pound has actually lost a lot more than 70% of its value, and the article’s own statistics demonstrate that. “The average house cost £27,386, compared to £290,000 today,” says Haynes. I make that a fall of over 90% in purchasing power.A first-class stamp was 16p. Now it’s £1.10. That’s a fall of over 85%.A pint of London Pride cost 58p. Good luck finding it below a fiver today outside of Wetherspoons. Another c90% loss of purchasing power.A pack of fags was £1.02. Those same B&H will cost you 14 times that today. A 93% loss of purchasing power.A Mars Bar was 15p. Today it’s 65p. That’s a 77% loss of PP.In general terms, as covered before in this piece on inflation, items we buy with debt, such as houses, have risen in price by much more than items we buy with cash, such as food. A dozen eggs cost 73p. Today - assuming your local store is not out of stock - they would cost between £2.50 and £4, depending how free range and organic you want to go. But even for food, the minimum loss of purchasing power is 70%. A loaf of bread, which was 38p, might be around £1.50 today.“A weekly shop would cost a family £8.54. These days families spend £26.38 a week on food.” I don’t know about that £8.54 figure, but what family spends £26.38 on food? That’s barely enough for one family meal in my household, if fish or meat is involved. It is, of course, increased taxes that have largely caused the 90%+ loss in purchasing power of the pound against booze and fags. Meanwhile, the massive increase in debt levels we have seen over the past 40 years has meant a massive increase in the supply of money chasing the things we buy with debt - so have house prices become so unaffordable. The pound’s worth, says Haynes, “has been eroded by the passage of time”.No, no, no, no, no! A thousand times no! The pound’s worth has been eroded not by time, but by government. Inflation is not measured properly. It is not even defined properly. Money supply growth is ignored. House prices are ignored. Only the prices of certain consumer goods and services, most of which are prone to the deflationary forces of increased productivity, are measured. The result is that interest rates have been too low for too long. And don’t get me started on Quantitative Easing and all those other forms of fiscal stimulus that came with Covid. This is not erosion by the passage of time, but the incremental and compounded effects of decades of debasement. I often refer to this chart from Our World in Data which shows consumer prices over the course of the 19th century, when the world was on a gold standard. The purchasing power of money did not fall by over 90% or even 70% in forty years. It increased over time. In the 30 years from the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the purchasing power of money doubled. Prices halved.They rose again with the effects of the US Civil War in the 1860s, but from its end to the turn of the 20th century, the purchasing power of money almost doubled again, and prices almost halved.40 years from now, do you think your money will buy you more or less? We all know it will be less. The only question is: how much less?But imagine if you knew that in 40 years time your money would buy you double what it buys you today. The whole dynamic of society would change.In a way money is stored energy. You expend energy working and in exchange you receive money, which you will then spend at some later stage for the product of somebody else’s expended energy. But why should the value of your stored energy decline? It should maintain its value. It is essential to an honest society that it does.No wonder gold standard advocates of the past considered sound money to be one of the key pillars of a free society, like property rights or habeas corpus.The easiest way for ordinary people to protect themselves against and benefit from the explosion in money supply of the last forty years has been via real estate. That is why houses have become savings vehicles instead of just houses. Now we have an entire generation that cannot afford anywhere to live and will put off starting a family as a result.How much better for society if houses were just houses, somewhere to live, and instead money was the savings vehicle?Now take a look at this chart of consumer prices since 1695 (when central banking began give or take).Hundreds of years of price consistency, until the fiat era and price explosion.Wages have of course increased, but to nothing like the extent that the purchasing power of money has fallen. It now takes two salaries, fewer children and a lot more debt to enjoy the middle-class lifestyle that many took for granted in the 1950s. It has long been my contention - since writing Life After the State in 2013, Four Horsemen in 2012 and before - that, for all the battles over free speech, wokery, and any other front you care to mention in the culture wars, the Ring of Power in all of this is our system of money. Throw fiat into the fires of Mount Doom and replace it with a system of money that no single body has the power to create at no cost, and all these other battles will quickly dissipate. With the inevitable shrinkage of government, there would not be the oxygen for them to exist.Meanwhile, the case for gold and bitcoin, money governments can’t print, remains strong.If you’re interested in buying gold my recommended bullion dealer is the Pure Gold Co, with whom I have an affiliation deal. You can buy gold and either store it with them or take delivery. If you need them, here are my reports on how to buy bullion and how to buy bitcoin. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

Following on from my piece last week Tyranny of the Midwits, I was having dinner the other day with a friend who is a big cheese behind the scenes in government. I won’t say his name. Discretion is everything. In any case, his name doesn’t really matter to what I’m about to say.I was busy moaning, as we all do, about the state of the country, and at the fact that there are so many things that, it seems to me, could be quite easily remedied with some reasonably ballsy decision-making by those in power. Yet, from planning to tax to energy to immigration, nothing seems to change. We seem to be having the same arguments we were having decades ago, arguments that I thought had long since been won. Something, in particular, that drives me nuts is when a politician or public servant in an influential position stands down, then goes to the media and says what needs to be done. And you’re thinking: you were literally just the person who could’ve done something, you were in charge, why didn’t you do anything? I remember it happened with George Osborne, with Mervyn King and many more besides.My friend came back with this. If you want somebody in government or in a position of influence at a major institution to do something, and you say to them, “look, we have this problem here, and this is the solution, this is what needs to be done”, they will nod their heads wisely and then do nothing, because to do something involves, first, extra effort and initiative on an already-full plate, but, more significantly, career risk. The path of least resistance, with the least career at risk, is usually to continue with things as they are. People don’t like to ruffle feathers or create work for themselves unless they really have to.On the other hand, if you invert the process, and you leak a story to the press, create a scandal, then you turn to the person in charge and you say, “look at this story, it’s really bad, it reflects really badly on you, you’ve got to do something,” then suddenly the career risk to that person in charge becomes not doing something.So the only way you can get people to do stuff is by creating pressure, usually via the media, and somehow making the career risk to not do something. It’s why it so often seems we are ruled by the media. It’s only when they create a scandal, and put pressure on those who run institutions, that anything ever gets addressed. Our system of rule is not a democracy but a media-cracy, never mind a mediocrity. It’s nuts. It’s such a backwards way of operating. Lord knows how, but if any of the change so many of us crave is to happen, we need to invert that career-risk thing, so that the risk in powerful institutions is no longer doing something, but not doing something, otherwise, this ridiculous process of leaking stories to the press to put pressure on those in charge will continue to be the only way of ever getting anything done. It’s such a second- or even a third-rate way of operating, and it’s especially bad when midwits are running the show.Subscribe to the amazing publication which is The Flying Frisby. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

A one-hour interview with private investor Danny Solomon, discussing which markets we like and which we don’t … and a bit about Chelsea too. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

In 2004 James Turk and John Rubino published The Coming Collapse Of The Dollar And How To Profit From It: Make A Fortune By Investing In Gold And Other Hard Assets. I discover from Amazon that I “purchased this item on 18 Feb 2006”. Isn’t digital record keeping amazing?It remains one of the best books about gold and gold investing that I have ever read, beautifully articulating the anti-dollar, anti-fiat, anti-money printing, pro-gold narrative. Those that followed the advice of the book will have made good money – as long as they got out in 2011.There’s just one thing: the dollar never collapsed. Sure, its purchasing power has steadily eroded. Each year it buys you 10%-15% less house, less S&P 500, less good or service than the previous, so that if you compare 2004 prices with today the dollar buys less than half as much house or S&P 500 as it did then.Have US wages more than doubled by way of compensation? No. They have gone from $60,000 to $75,000. The taxes you pay on them have gone up too. Sterling has been even worse. Back then a pound got you two dollars. Some people could actually afford a house.But is a 55% loss of purchasing power over 20 years a collapse? Not really. Currency collapses happen over quicker time frames, as in Weimar Germany, Zimbabwe or Venezuela.The narrative is shifting againThe dollar-is-going-to-collapse narrative really got going around the global financial crisis in 2008 and with all the money printing that followed. In a way, it spawned bitcoin. (If you think gold bugs are extreme in their anti-fiat narratives, go and have dinner with some bitcoin maximalists.)But then, after 2011, gold went into a bear market. “Bear market” isn’t strong enough to describe what happened to gold mining. Gold mining really did collapse. The dollar, meanwhile, actually strengthened. Not versus stuff we actually buy, like houses, equities or cars, but versus other currencies.I’m saying this because I have noticed a discernible change in narrative over the last 12 months. No longer do we hear about the imminent collapse of the US dollar or of fiat currency. Now the buzz word is “de-dollarisation”. I’ve written about it a lot. The US dollar is the global reserve currency. It is the default for international trade. Participants trust Swift and the international banking system enough to use them for payment. But there are many nations who would prefer, if they could, to use something else. China would, I’ve little doubt, like to see its yuan replace the US dollar. Russia would rather use roubles. And so on.The de-dollarisation theme really took hold in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, when the US weaponised its financial might to confiscate Russian dollars and freeze Russia out of international trade. But whether it’s the Russian Davos, where attendees regularly talk about a new system of international settlement, or France’s President Emmanuel Macron telling China President Xi Jinping that “We should not depend on the extraterritoriality of the US dollar,” or China making trade deals with major international commodity suppliers Argentina, Russia, Brazil and Saudi Arabia to bypass the dollar and trade using the Chinese yuan, or nations not just increasing their gold holdings at the fastest rate since the 1960s, but increasing their gold holdings relative to other assets, we are seeing de-dollarisation in action.People like talking about crashes. Crashes get clicks. Crashes sell copy. But they are for the media, not for politics or economics (until they actually happen). De-dollarisation, however, is very much a theme now, a mainstream narrative, beyond the media, in a way that collapse never could be. I think it’s only going to become more of a theme.But what of James Turk and John Rubino’s collapse? That was not a single event, but a gradual process, even if the net result, a 50% loss of purchasing power, is similar. And what of the next 20 years? Do I think it’s possible that houses, cars or equities will cost less than they do now? If this was the 19th century, they would. Stuff got cheaper. But I don’t think there’s a chance in hell. In fact, I’d be surprised if they are only double what they are today.Your wages, or your children’s wages, might be a bit higher. Your taxes? They’ll be higher. Your government, or your state as we tend to call it in the UK? That’ll be a lot bigger. While many nations are taking steps to de-dollarise, I would take steps to avoid the constant erosion of fiat money, whether pound, dollar or euro. De-fiatise. I don’t think that’s going to catch on as a term. But “erosion reduction” should very much be the focus.If you are interested in buying gold, please consider the The Pure Gold Company, with whom I have an affiliation deal. Premiums are low, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, US, Canada and Europe, or you can store your gold with them. An earlier version of this article appeared at Moneyweek. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

Comedian Simon Evans joins me for a video interview in which we discuss the re-writing of Wodehouse and the nature of slippery slopes.If you prefer the video version, it is here.I share a flat with Simon at the Edinburgh Festival most years and I will say that Simon is one of the most well-read and well-informed people I have ever met. He seems to spend every spare moment he has listening to audiobooks on double speed with the result that he is bursting with knowledge. In another, fairer life he would carry the same intellectual status as Stephen Fry. This interview is well worth an hour of your time - if you happen to have any of that precious commodity.Simon’s show is superb and if you are interested in going to watch him on tour, you can find out more here. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

The other night I did that thing on Substack: you follow one writer you like’s recommendations onto another’s and onto another’s and, before you know it, you’re down a rabbit hole. While down there I came across the term “midwits”. It really made me laugh. I know I’m late to it, but my finger is not on the cool kids’ internet jargon pulse.But I love it. Instead of the dimwit for the stupid, we have a pejorative term for those of average or even above-average intelligence, who do not share the same worldview. According to the internet, a midwit has an IQ score between 85 and 115. This is probably most of us. (I once did an IQ test and scored 136, but I think it was a fluke. I’m never doing another one, as I do not want to put that score in jeopardy). A midwit is probably university educated, has reasonable qualifications, is of slightly above average ability, but who is in no way exceptional. (Me in a nutshell, probably you too, but, as I say, not with the same worldview). Because midwits occasionally read, they think they are superlatively intelligent. Because all around them think the same, they think have the right opinions about everything.Really, midwit is a libertarian or alt-right term for someone out of that left-of-centre blob that seems to proliferate in large corporations, in middle management, across the internet, in suburbia, in bureaucracies, in commissioning, in planning, in government, and so on. You’ve probably seen an IQ Bell Curve meme at some stage on your travels. They are the best. Idiots and geniuses arrive at the same conclusion, midwits in the blobby middle take the opposing view. Here’s the template. Here’s a beauty about inflation.I love them. I should have done one about Brexit - if I only I had some basic (midwit) picture-editing skills.By the way, a process I noticed with comedy was that those comedians who weren’t quite good enough to make it as comedians, but knew they had something to offer, would often become producers. I think something similar might happen again: those that aren’t quite good enough to be top producers, but have something to offer, then become commissioners, with the result that commissioning is full of midwits. Just a theory, very generalised, and I probably feel that way because of the lack of success I’ve had with commissioners over the years. (I doubt any commissioners are reading this BTW. At least I hope they’re not). But you get the point.On personality typesI’ve met many different people over the years but there are two types that seem to stand out.One is of the let’s-try-this-and-see-what-happens mentality. Rather than study something for years before trying it, they dive in and learn on the job. If it goes wrong, well, so be it. At least we tried. It’s not so much a who-do-I-ask mentality as a why-not-what’s-going-to-stop-me? Such types end up entrepreneurs, explorers, inventors, sometimes artists.Then there is a much more cautious, risk-averse type. They’ll often focus on why you can’t do something rather than why you can. They seek permission not forgiveness. These types often end up in structured, safe careers with clear parameters- civil servants, solicitors, accountants that kind of thing. They tend to be employees, rather than self-employed. They often do well in big company environments, such as the BBC, the NHS, most corporations, the government itself, where it doesn’t pay to rock the boat.I guess in a successfully functioning group or society you want a healthy balance of the two types. One to push boundaries and the other to reign them in.What concerns me with government today is that power and decision-making has fallen into the hands of this risk-averse, health and safety mindset that proliferates public health, that we dare not do anything. National destiny is determined by people whose first instinct is to find reasons why you can't do something, not why you can. There is too much focus on their own career risk.We saw it like mad during Covid. Rules were imposed out of fear. Under pressure, the government quickly changed from the Swedish approach to the international approach, before they fully understood the illness, even though the efficacy of certain measures - masks and lockdown - was disputed. It was a safety-first, career-risk first approach. One set of data - Covid deaths and infections - was scrutinised. The other, immeasurable data set, which was the cost of locking down, went ignored.It's pure Bastiat and his broken window parable. Not just the cost to businesses and the economy, and all those whose livelihoods were ruined, but the cost of having lives, relationships, social contact, free movement, experiences, to kids for example of having their school or university years taken from them.Many paid a price they should not have had to pay. The medicine - from lockdown to the economy to vaccine side-effects - seems to have been more harmful than the disease itself. Collectivism is supposed to be for the greater good.But this is the midwit way of thinking. We are ruled by midwits. They control our institutions. They control decision-making, the media, the narrative. Maybe a buccaneering king or emperor of that other mindset, personality one, might be preferable to what we call democracy.Interested in buying gold to protect yourself in these uncertain times? My recommended bullion dealer is The Pure Gold Company, whether you are taking delivery or storing online. Premiums are low, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, US, Canada and Europe, or you can store your gold with them. More here. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

Before getting started today, I just wanted to flag that Kisses on a Postcard won silver at the New York Festivals Radio Awards for best serialised podcast.We beat off competition from major production houses, including Lionsgate, the BBC and MediaHuis (Ireland’s largest media group), which is good.If you haven’t already listened, load it onto your favourite podcast app and play it while you are cooking/walking/driving/ironing. This podcast with music about two boys in WWII will make your life better.In other news, wearing my comedy hat, there are still about 10 seats left for the Crazy Coqs gig on May 3rd. Some new songs, and plenty of old favourites, these nights are really good fun. Please come.So to today’s piece …I've said it before and I'll say it again - the US dollar is the most important price in the world.The dollar is the global reserve currency, the international money of default. Global commerce thinks in dollars. It’s the pricing mechanism for essential materials. Oil, copper, wheat - energy, metal and food, in other words - are traded in US dollars. The majority of international debt - and there is even more debt than essential material - is traded in dollars. The IMF thinks in dollars. It’s a determinant of international capital flows: is capital flowing from or to the United States, the largest economy in the world (just)?I can get all idealistic and say the world would be a better place if gold had this role. It should. It’s independent. It gives no nation or government exorbitant privilege. It lasts longer. It has a proven history. Its purchasing power doesn’t get steadily eroded. New gold supply matches population growth. That kind of stuff. Even bitcoin could work. It’s independent.But the reality is that the US has got the gig, largely by having such a strong army, and also for the fact that so many around the world trust in America. (I would argue that trust is not what it was. It’s fading. But when push comes to shove it still has the gig).A strong US dollar should be good for international stability, and thus good for America’s reputation. But the US government likes to print, spend, and then export the inflation and debasement. You just need to look at what it does to know what it prioritises. How the game worksWhen the dollar is weak, asset prices rise – and the policy-making world sure does love a bit of asset-price inflation. Borrowing is cheap, house prices go up, stock prices go up, bond prices go up, energy and metal prices go up. The party keeps on rocking. Everybody feels wealthy.But when the dollar is strong, the world gets the jitters. It starts to think that the asset price bubble that has been inflating since August 15, 1971, might be about to pop.Those in charge may talk tough. They wear smart, plain suits and look respectable. But then they usually start printing again.Here’s the thing though. The dollar has just hit an inflection point. It comes to them every now and then. And when it does, it pays to take heed.Despite the experience of day traders, where prices flicker at you and fortunes are made and lost in tiny fluctuations, if you zoom out a bit, the dollar tends to trend for months at a time, if not years.The US dollar index (the dollar versus the currencies of its major trading partners) hit a high in 1985. It got so high, in fact, the G5 nations signed the Plaza Accord to get the price back down again. The eventual low did not come until 1992, seven years later. This wasn’t a one-directional thing, except for the first move. There were counter-trend rallies that lasted several months. Trend, consolidate, trendIn fact, the process of making a low lasted from 1988 to 1995. It made a low, rallied a bit, made another low and so on. It took time in other words. Seven years.But then from 1995, the dollar rallied - with the usual drawn-out countertrend moves - all the way to 2001. With the dot-com bust, 9-11, the Iraq War and all the rest of it, the dollar then saw seven years of a bear market and in 2008 it made another low. The price was 71. It rallied for several months, then declined for several months, eventually retesting the low in 2011. So the bull trend, the bear trend and the process of making lows and highs can each take many years. If you, as an investor, trader or portfolio manager, were able to catch these trends - and be in and out of the market at the right time - you would have been able to magnify your returns many times. The low in 2011 was 72. Many years of bull market - with the usual drawn-out countertrend moves - followed before the dollar index eventually peaked in September last year at 114. Here’s the long-term chart that illustrates what I have just described:Please subscribe to this amazing letter.When it changes direction, this lumbering beast likes to put in double tops and double bottoms, more than any asset I can think of. Sometimes triple tops and bottoms. It reaches a level, then re-tests it, and then sometimes re-tests it again.Here’s the thing. It might be putting in one such double bottom now.The pain, especially of commodity prices, has been relieved somewhat these last few months as the US dollar has come off. This last month has felt particularly good with gold and silver both strong.But the dollar index hit a low at 101 in early February. It rallied for a few weeks, then came off again. It’s retesting that low now.Does the US dollar now rally?I have to say it would be quite normal behaviour for it to do that from here.I have heard a lot of excitement about silver, for example. You know my cynicism about that metal. Too much excitement and euphoria usually mean declines are upon us. In fact, in the last few days, I have taken a small short against silver in my spread-betting account.I’m not forecasting the beginning or end of a major dollar cycle. But I do think, assuming 100 on the US Dollar Index holds, we might see a reversal in the dollar that could last several weeks or months. It comes, interestingly, just as gold is re-testing its highs. Could gold be putting in a double top?It’s all about that 100-101 level.Interested in buying gold or silver. My recommended bullion dealer in the UK is The Pure Gold Company, whether you are taking delivery or storing online. Premiums are low, quality of service is high. You can deal with a human being. Both deliver to the UK, US, Canada and Europe, or you can store your gold with them. I have an affiliation deal with them.This article first appeared at Moneyweek. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe