| Swan Dive — January 14, 2026 Addison Wiggin The more bark the empire throws up overseas, the more likely it is to bite you at home.
On this day in 1784, the United States ended a war to escape empire.
Today, it manages the decline of one.
Not officially, of course.
Officially, we still have elections, state governments, and a budget.
But as we observed in the first edition of Empire of Debt in 2005, if it walks like an empire, talks like an empire, and drops $1.5 trillion on defense while throttling dissent at home… with the same digital leash it uses abroad… well, it’s safe to say it is, in fact, an empire. 📈 The Metal Men Are Back The gold bugs are having a field day. Gold bounced to another all-time high of $4,647 yesterday. Silver topped $92 an ounce, setting a fresh milestone that has even the mainstream financial press raising eyebrows.
Tin, long the forgotten workhorse of industrial applications, is surging — up nearly 8% year to date — thanks to a confluence of supply bottlenecks and China’s economic reawakening.
Bloomberg reports that the moves are being driven by bets on further U.S. interest rate cuts and a “surprising revival” of Chinese demand in electronics and packaging.
Tin, often used as solder in electronics, is seen as a bellwether for early-stage industrial production. But it’s not just base metals. Silver and gold’s double-digit surge suggests something deeper: monetary anxiety.
Yesterday’s CPI showed prices still ticking up—2.7% year-over-year, right in line with expectations.
Wall Street expects at least two rate cuts in 2026. At the same time, global central banks — led by China and Russia — continue buying gold to reduce their reliance on the dollar. Combine this with supply chain reshoring and increasing geopolitical tensions, and metals have emerged as both a hedge and a haven.
Between a precious metals rally catching the attention of outlets as lilywhite as Bloomberg and the Trump administration’s 2026 focus on critical minerals and domestic production, there’s a lot to unearth in the natural resource sector.
Tomorrow on Grey Swan Live! we’re digging into “metals mania” with resource guru Shad Marquitz, whose day job includes hosting the Korelin Economics Report on the radio. (Details below.) 💳 Jamie Dimon, Meet the Guillotine The $70 billion credit card securitization market is losing sleep. President Trump’s latest demand? Cap interest rates at 10%.
That would decapitate profits on an entire slice of Wall Street’s synthetic debt machine. Credit card issuers bundle and resell that debt to yield-starved institutional investors.
JPMorgan — the largest issuer — is already rattling its sabers, declaring “everything is on the table” to block the move.
Trump brushed off Dimon’s warning with a presidential shrug. “Wrong,” he said, and moved on.
Meanwhile, former Fox firebrand and now U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro is doubling down on the criminal probe into Fed Chair Jerome Powell. She insists the central bank is “not above the law.”
Markets are adapting, in real time, the rules of engagement under Trump 2.0: - Executive power will not be hemmed in by polite tradition
- Financial independence of the Fed is a soft norm, not a hard law
- And populist rhetoric isn't just for rallies — it's now policy
It’s not merely a return to strongman economics — it’s the beginning of an entirely new regime… so long as Trump can make voters happy by November 3, 2026. 🌎 The American Mandate Trump doesn’t really care about democracy in Venezuela. He does want obedience.
As Bill Bonner noted this morning, Trump isn’t interested in regime change. He’s ushering in an era of regime management.
The Wall Street Journal confirms this shift in doctrine: “After costly failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Trump administration is betting that managing Venezuela’s autocracy is cheaper than dismantling it.”
In this view, what happened in Caracas wasn’t an invasion or a policing adventure. It was a foreclosure.
In the absence of ideology, Trump is driven by a very American logic: control the oil, ignore the politics. Democracy? That’s your problem. Our concern is who gets the drilling rights. 🚫 Goodbye Deep State ATM According to journalist Alex Newman, Venezuela served as the financial underwriter for Leftist-Marxist operations across the Americas — from Caracas to Minneapolis.
“The so-called uprising was organized by Rockefeller front groups, and these are paid professional revolutionaries,” Newman claims. With Maduro now behind bars and his cash pipelines shut off, the tentacles of that network have withered.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is not-so–quietly rewriting the rules on money transfers.
Billions in Somali welfare fraud have been frozen. The UN climate treaty, once a massive sluice gate for grift, has been gutted.
“The UN is very mad,” Newman notes, “and their chief spokesman is saying the U.S. has a legal obligation to keep paying them.”
Somehow, we think not. Continued Below...
With so many strange events happening across the economy (consumer confidence plummeting, credit-card delinquencies soaring, and more), it's no wonder the richest investors are loading up on gold. But what you might not realize is that there's a much better way to profit from rising gold prices - WITHOUT ever touching an ETF, mining stock, or even bullion. Get the full details here.
📱 Digital Chains & Leather Boots The imperial boomerang is also pointed inward. Following our engaging discussion about The Preparation on Grey Swan Live!last week, Matt Smith presented a scathing critique of the tools now used to track enemies of the state within the continental borders.
The tools used to track and neutralize enemies abroad are being rebranded for domestic use. Palantir, the data integration monster, is now plugged into nearly every major federal agency. Real ID is mandatory for air travel. And ICE, bloated with a 120% personnel increase, is rapidly becoming the de facto national police.  Despite all this, Trump’s deportation numbers still lag Obama’s.
So what explains the $100 million wartime recruitment media blitz? The $50,000 signing bonuses? The dropped education requirements?
Perhaps it’s not about immigration at all.
As we’ve noted in previous editions, the power to surveil and detain is addictive. Eventually, all of that institutional muscle — built to control foreign enemies — ends up flexed at home. 📜 The Treaty, and the Burden of Sovereignty On this day in 1784, the Continental Congress ratified the Treaty of Paris, formally ending the War for Independence and marking the birth of the United States as a sovereign nation in the eyes of the world.
The treaty, often referred to as the “Second” Treaty of Paris—following the one that concluded the Seven Years’ War in 1763—did more than recognize America’s independence.
It attempted to define the terms of peace between two former enemies now bound by commerce, geography, and a common language. The British agreed to withdraw their claim over the thirteen colonies. American fishermen secured access to rich waters off Newfoundland and the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. Both sides promised to honor war debts and return confiscated property.
But sovereignty is not a resting place. It's a beginning.
The ink had barely dried before the limits of the young republic were tested. British forces lingered in forts along the western frontier.
Creditors on both sides of the Atlantic struggled to collect what they were owed.
American farmers, battered by war and weighed down by debt, began to rise in protest.
By 1786, the courts in Massachusetts were overwhelmed by foreclosure proceedings. That unrest erupted into Shays’ Rebellion—a populist uprising that exposed the fragility of a government still operating under the Articles of Confederation.
The Treaty ended one chapter, but it opened another.
With independence came the obligation to govern wisely, to balance liberty with order, and to prove that a republic could endure not just in war, but in peace.
Today, as we witness the exertions of executive power, the fraying of institutional trust, and the persistent question of who really governs whom, the lessons of 1784 remain uncomfortably relevant.
Because self-rule is not simply declared. It must be earned—again and again.
~ Addison
P.S. Tomorrow at 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PST, join us on Grey Swan Live! with resource investing savant Shad Marquitz.  In addition to a raging bull market in precious metals, Shad’s tracking a sleeper company reclassified from junior miner to strategic defense supplier thanks to overlooked copper and antimony reserves — both critical to drone and battery tech.
With the U.S. defense posture accelerating and Fast41 priorities being shuffled at the Pentagon, this one could be the next 50-bagger. Don’t miss it.
If you have requests for new guests you’d like to see join us for Grey Swan Live!, or have any questions for our guests, send them here.
How did we get here? Find out in these riveting reads: Demise of the Dollar, Financial Reckoning Day, and Empire of Debt — all three books are now available in their third post-pandemic editions. You might enjoy one or all three. 
(Or… simply pre-order Empire of Debt: We Came, We Saw, We Borrowed, now available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble or if you prefer one of these sites: Bookshop.org, Books-A-Million or Target.)
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