Matt is a trained geologist and former mining company CEO. He’s spent his career studying the resources that make the modern economy work — and the companies that produce them.

Today, he’s looking at one resource China has spent decades dominating.

But Matt sees a potential way around that dominance. And it doesn’t start with digging another mine.

I’ll let him explain…

Beijing’s Magnetic Leverage

The combination of scarcity plus utility creates valuable commodities. And that describes rare earth metals perfectly.

Rare earth metals are essential to many of today’s most important technologies, mainly in the form of permanent magnets.

These strong, small magnets go into everything these days: electric motors, hard disk drives, cell phones, speakers, headphones, MRI machines, precision-guided missiles, military communications and much more.

The problem with rare earth metals is that China dominates supply. It’s not that the country has all the deposits, but rather that it dominates the refining and manufacturing needed to turn those deposits into useful products.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), China accounts for:

1. 60% of magnet rare earth mining
2. More than 90% of magnet rare earth refining
3. Nearly 95% of rare earth permanent magnet manufacturing

That gives China an overwhelming economic lever to put pressure on other countries.

We got an early look at that power in 2010, when shipments of rare earths from China to Japan were disrupted during a territorial dispute. Japan’s auto and electronics industries suddenly faced a serious supply threat.

More recently, China tightened its grip again.

Your Rundown for Monday, September 21, 2026...

Breaking China’s Grip in Minnesota

In late 2024, Beijing restricted exports to the U.S. of several critical minerals, including gallium, germanium and antimony. Those aren’t rare earths, but the message was the same: China was willing to use its dominance of critical-material supply chains as economic leverage.

Then, in April 2025, China imposed export controls on seven heavy rare earth elements and related magnets. Shipments fell sharply, leaving manufacturers in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere scrambling for supplies. Some automakers were even forced to cut production.

And the pressure hasn’t gone away. China has continued restricting shipments of key heavy rare earths to Japan this year amid another diplomatic dispute.

That’s the danger of allowing one country to dominate a supply chain this important.

Developing a U.S. mining, refining and magnet manufacturing chain will help. But there’s another potential solution: innovate our way around rare earths altogether.

Permanent magnets don’t have to be made from rare earths.

Several research groups are focused on alternatives. One of the most advanced is an iron-nitride permanent magnet made by Niron Magnetics. The company grew out of research led by the University of Minnesota and supported by the U.S. Department of Energy.

The co-founder of Niron, Dr. Jian-Ping Wang, is passionate about permanent magnets:

Permanent magnets are the unsung heroes of our modern society. Without them, many systems just don’t work. They convert electrical energy into mechanical motion in the most energy-efficient way. They’re in everything.

Unfortunately, Niron is private. But this is exactly the kind of company that we want to own.

Magnets, like batteries, are critical to technology. The companies that can disrupt the status quo are going to make investors rich.

And Niron has made significant progress since I first wrote about it.

In August, the company secured a $150 million loan to help build its first commercial-scale manufacturing plant in Sartell, Minnesota. Then, earlier this month, Honda announced an investment in Niron.

Construction is moving ahead, too. On Sept. 10, Niron held a steel-raising ceremony at the 287,000-square-foot Sartell plant.

Courtesy: LinkedIn

The facility is expected to begin operating in 2027, eventually producing up to 1,500 tons of rare-earth-free magnets per year.

And that’s just the beginning.

Niron is also planning a much larger 1.6 million-square-foot manufacturing facility capable of producing 10,000 tons of magnets annually. The company estimates that could eventually represent roughly 1–2% of global permanent-magnet demand.

Don’t get me wrong. One company won’t derail the need for rare earth magnets.

But Niron points to a future where China has real competition. And more importantly, it shows that there may be another way to break China’s grip on one of the world’s most important technology supply chains.

China has shown repeatedly that it will use its near-monopoly as leverage when it suits its interests.

The best long-term answer may not be trying to beat China at its own rare earth game.

It may be making that dominance matter a whole lot less.

Market Rundown for Monday, Sept. 21, 2026

S&P 500 futures are up 0.70% to 7,765.

Oil is down 2.55% to $97.75 for a barrel of WTI.

Gold is down 0.70% to $4,394.40 per ounce.

And Bitcoin’s up almost 5% to $85,175.

That’s when Kevin Warsh and his colleagues voted unanimously to raise the federal funds target range by a quarter point, to 3.75–4.00%. The explanation wasn’t complicated. Inflation remains above the Fed’s 2% goal.

But there was another vote in Washington on Wednesday that deserves some attention.

The House voted 417–3 to pass the Ratepayer Protection Act, legislation aimed at keeping households and small businesses from footing the bill for the enormous amounts of new electricity infrastructure required by data centers.

The three holdouts were Democrats Summer Lee of Pennsylvania, Delia Ramirez of Illinois and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. At least Tlaib opposed the measure from the other direction, arguing that it didn’t go far enough to rein in data-center development.

All this as last week’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) report showed inflation running at 3.4% over the 12 months ending in August, while electricity prices rose even faster, up 3.8%.

That puts electricity among the household expenses rising faster than the overall cost of living.

Now consider what’s happening to electricity demand.

After about 15 years of little growth, U.S. power consumption has started climbing again. The Energy Information Administration says electricity demand grew an average 1.7% per year from 2020–2025, compared with just 0.1% annually from 2005–2019.

One reason is sitting inside those sprawling windowless buildings going up across Virginia, Texas, Ohio and other parts of the country.

Your Rundown for Friday, September 18, 2026...

The (Power) Hunger Games

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimates data centers could consume about 11.8% of all U.S. electricity by 2030 under its central estimate. Depending on the pace of development, their share could range from 9.5–15.3%.

All of that computing power requires actual power. And supplying it would mean new generation, transmission lines, substations and other grid infrastructure.

The question now being fought over in state capitals and Washington is who pays for it.

That’s what Wednesday’s 417–3 House vote was about.

The Ratepayer Protection Act would require state utility regulators to consider whether large electricity users should bear the costs of the infrastructure needed to serve them rather than shifting those costs onto other customers.

Researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas recently tried to measure what the data-center boom could do to electricity prices.

They estimate existing data centers have already raised average wholesale electricity prices 3–5% nationwide, with larger effects in major data-center regions.

Under a moderate build-out scenario, wholesale electricity prices could be about 20% higher by 2028 than they otherwise would have been.

That gets us back to Wednesday.

The Fed raised interest rates because inflation is too high. Meanwhile, the House voted 417–3 on a problem that could put more pressure on one of the prices Americans pay every month.

And household electric bills are only part of the story.

The Dallas Fed notes that its inflation estimates capture the direct effect of higher electricity prices on consumers. They don’t account for what could happen when businesses themselves pay more for power.

Data centers aren’t competing for some special supply of “AI electricity.” They’re plugging into the same power system that serves factories, warehouses, hospitals, stores and homes.

How much of those additional costs eventually gets passed along is impossible to know today.

But the debate over who pays for the AI power boom has already reached Washington.

For years, the AI race was measured in chips, models and trillion-dollar technology companies.

Now we’re starting to get the bill.

Market Rundown for Friday, Sept. 18, 2026

S&P 500 futures are slightly in the green at 7,705.

Oil is down 0.35% to $101.50 for a barrel of WTI.

Gold is down 0.25% to $4,412 per ounce.

And Bitcoin’s up 2%, just under $78K.

New tires? A vacation? Wipe out the credit-card balance?

Or maybe you walk into a coin shop and buy an ounce of gold.

Last Tuesday, President Trump stood before the Republican Party’s midterm convention in Dallas and made a promise:

“We will pay every adult citizen a $5,000 dividend.”

There was a catch, of course. Republicans have to retain control of the House and Senate in November.

Trump calls it the “Trump Dividend.” And with roughly 240 million adult U.S. citizens, the price tag would be around $1.2 trillion.

Exactly where that money would come from is unsettled.

Trump says Washington can afford it and has pointed to tariff revenue as a possible source of funding. He also says the money would have to be spent in the United States.

House Speaker Mike Johnson says Congress would have to approve the payments.

In other words, don’t spend your $5,000 yet.

But Jim Rickards is already thinking about what those checks could do to the dollars already in your pocket.

Your Rundown for Wednesday, September 16, 2026...

The $1,200 Inflation Lesson

There’s a useful precedent for Trump’s $5,000 proposal.

In April 2020, the first COVID stimulus checks began landing in Americans’ bank accounts. For millions of people, the check was written for $1,200.

At the time, businesses had been ordered closed, unemployment was soaring and the economy had effectively hit a wall.

But the checks didn’t stop at $1,200. Congress ultimately authorized several trillion dollars in pandemic relief.

Then came inflation.

By June 2022, consumer prices were rising at an annual rate of 9.1%, the hottest reading since November 1981.

The stimulus checks weren’t solely responsible. COVID disrupted factories and supply chains around the world. Energy prices climbed. Labor markets were scrambled. The Fed kept monetary policy extraordinarily loose.

But all that government spending mattered too.

New York Fed researchers later found that government stimulus accounted for half or more of the inflationary pressure from increased spending through June 2022.

Now consider what happened to that original $1,200 when measured against precious metals.

On April 15, 2020, gold closed at $1,727.20 per ounce. Silver closed at $15.45.

At spot prices, $1,200 would have bought about 0.70 ounce of gold or roughly 77 ounces of silver.

On Monday, Sept. 14, gold closed at $4,333.77. That 0.70 ounce would now be worth just over $3,000.

Silver is even more remarkable.

Those 77 ounces purchased for roughly $1,200 in April 2020 would be worth more than $4,900 today.

Now put Trump’s proposed $5,000 dividend against the same yardstick.

At Monday’s closing price, $5,000 would buy about 1.15 ounces of gold or 78 ounces of silver.

In other words, $1,200 bought about 77 ounces of silver in April 2020. Today, it takes around $5,000 to buy 78 ounces.

That doesn’t mean consumer prices have quadrupled since 2020. They haven’t.

Nor does it mean inflation alone explains silver’s rise. Industrial demand, investment flows, mine supply and monetary conditions all affect the price of silver.

But it does illustrate something Jim Rickards has been warning about for years: Dollars, no longer tied to gold, are a measuring stick whose value is unnecessarily fluid. The number printed on the bill stays the same. What it buys does not.

And Jim sees an obvious danger in handing Americans another, much larger round of checks.

“One thing we can be sure of is that [Trump’s] plan would be highly inflationary,” Jim writes in this week’s Strategic Intelligence.

Whether Trump’s $5,000 checks ever arrive is another question. The proposal would first have to clear significant political and legislative hurdles.

But if a “dividend” check does land in your bank account, Jim has already suggested one possible destination.

He recommends increasing allocations to real property, gold, silver and natural resources as protection against inflation.

The government sent Americans $1,200 in 2020.

Six years later, Trump is talking about $5,000.

Measured in silver, they’re practically the same check.

And that’s one way to measure what’s happened to the dollar since 2020.

Market Rundown for Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2026

S&P 500 futures are up 0.35% to 7,680.

Oil is down 1.80% to $103.88 for a barrel of WTI.

Gold is up 1.15% to $4,382 per ounce.

And Bitcoin’s down 0.15% to $75,845.

The tiny Persian Gulf nation of Qatar sits atop the North Field, part of the largest natural-gas reservoir on Earth. For decades, Qatar has built its fortunes shipping liquefied natural gas around the world. 

Now it needs ours.

Iranian attacks in March damaged Qatar’s Ras Laffan complex, sidelining about 12.8 million metric tons of annual LNG capacity. Repairs could take up to five years. Meanwhile, shipping through the Strait of Hormuz remains severely disrupted.

QatarEnergy is now seeking about 2–3 million metric tons of U.S. LNG annually to help meet existing commitments, particularly to Asian customers, including Japan, South Korea and India.

And Qatar is joining an increasingly long line for American gas.

In June alone, the U.S. exported 17.37 billion cubic feet per day of LNG to 37 countries. 

Total U.S. natural-gas exports that month were the highest for any June since federal records began in 1973.

The Energy Information Administration expects growing LNG exports and domestic power demand to put upward pressure on U.S. natural-gas prices. 

The Permian Basin is getting ready.

Send your opinions to, feedback@newsyoucanacton.com

Your Rundown for Monday, September 14, 2026...

From Gas Glut to Gas Grab

For years, West Texas had the opposite problem.

The Permian produced so much natural gas alongside crude oil that producers sometimes struggled to give the stuff away.

At the Waha trading hub, prices have repeatedly fallen below zero when Permian production overwhelmed the region’s ability to move gas to other markets.

Pipeline companies responded with a massive expansion of takeaway capacity.

The latest project is enormous.

The Solitude Pipeline System will consist of two 48-inch pipelines running from the Permian to Katy, Texas. 

The first phase is designed to move about 2.25 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) starting in the second half of 2029. A second phase in 2030 would double that to roughly 4.5 Bcf/d.

WhiteWater owns 50%. Devon Energy owns 25%. MPLX, Diamondback Energy and Western Midstream own the rest.

And Solitude is not alone.

From Katy, Kinder Morgan is building its $1.8 billion Trident pipeline to move up to 2 billion cubic feet per day toward the industrial corridor near Port Arthur. 

And more capacity is coming from Blackcomb in late 2026 and from an expansion of Hugh Brinson and Eiger Express in 2028.

East Daley Analytics now says the Permian could be approaching an era when gas-pipeline capacity is no longer the constraint.

The industry spent years trying to rescue stranded Permian gas. Soon, the bottleneck could move elsewhere.

Possibly to oil.

Much of the Permian’s natural gas is “associated gas,” produced alongside crude oil from wells drilled primarily for oil. East Daley estimates Permian residue-gas production could grow roughly 3 billion cubic feet per day between December 2026 and December 2028 in its base case.

But that growth depends partly on continued oil production. If crude pipelines run out of room first, producers could have less incentive to drill — limiting the additional natural gas that comes with it.

For now, companies are positioning themselves to make money moving gas from where it’s nearly worthless to where the world needs it most. 

Devon Energy, one of the Permian’s major oil and natural-gas producers, is a good example. 

It owns 25% of the Solitude Pipeline System, has reserved transportation capacity and has already begun securing international LNG-linked pricing for some of its Delaware Basin gas.

Devon now has a stake in the gas and the infrastructure that moves it to market.

Qatar’s problems are thousands of miles away.

But American producers are already building the infrastructure for a world that’s coming to us for natural gas.

And the most valuable part of the gas boom may not be the molecule itself. It may be the toll road underneath it.

Market Rundown for Monday, September 14, 2026

S&P 500 futures are down 0.60% to 7,680.

Oil’s up 2.80% to $102.85 for a barrel of WTI.

Gold is down 1.65% to $4,335.50 per ounce. 

And Bitcoin’s up 0.90%, just under $78K.

Proposition 40 would impose a one-time 5% tax on certain assets held by Californians worth more than $1 billion.

At the time, the battle lines looked fairly simple: A health care workers union, for instance, wanted the tax. Billionaires didn’t.

Gov. Gavin Newsom opposed doing it at the state level and argued that taxing extreme wealth should instead be handled by the federal government.

Two months later, things have gotten considerably messier.

Some of California’s most powerful labor unions are now fighting each other over Proposition 40.

SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West is spearheading the initiative, arguing California needs the money to offset federal health care cuts. The California Labor Federation and California Democratic Party have endorsed the measure.

But the opposition now includes the California Teachers Association, California Professional Firefighters and the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California — groups that frequently find themselves on the same political side as organized labor.

So much for a tidy billionaires-versus-workers storyline.

Sonoma State political scientist David McCuan told ABC7 the dispute demonstrates something more fundamental about California politics.

“Labor is a huge, powerful block in Sacramento,” he said. “And it’s not really blue or red. It’s just powerful.”

And that power is now pulling in opposite directions.

Your Rundown for Friday, September 11, 2026...

Bigger Than Billionaires

Proposition 40 applies to billionaires who were California residents on Jan. 1, 2026.

The tax would equal 5% of their net worth and come due in 2027, although taxpayers could spread payments over five years at additional cost. Real estate, pensions and retirement accounts are generally excluded.

As Jim Rickards explained when we first covered the proposal: “That means after you pay income tax and invest the remainder, they want to tax the assets themselves, not just the income.”

And Californians appear increasingly divided over whether that’s a good idea.

Source:The New York Times, California Wealth Tax Initiative polling tracker. Graphic created with assistance from ChatGPT.

A Berkeley IGS poll conducted Aug. 3–9 found 48% of likely voters supporting Proposition 40 and 41% opposed.

That’s still a seven-point advantage.

But compare it with Berkeley’s March poll, when Yes led 52% to 33%; the Yes margin has narrowed from 19 points to seven.

Meanwhile, an opposition-sponsored FM3 poll conducted Aug. 23–27 put No ahead 47% to 44%, underscoring just how unsettled the race remains.

The most interesting part of Proposition 40 may ultimately be what happens after California votes.

Supporters frame the measure as an emergency response to health care funding cuts. Opponents argue a state wealth tax could encourage wealthy residents to leave, reducing the income-tax revenue California already collects from them.

The state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst says that response could reduce ongoing income-tax collections by less than $1 billion annually, though the precise effect is uncertain.

That leaves California voters with a broader question than whether billionaires should pay more.

It’s whether a state should begin taxing accumulated wealth itself.

Jim put the stakes more vividly when we first examined this fight: “Investors need to know what’s coming,” he said, “before the DSA knocks on your door.”

Whatever happens on Nov. 3, Proposition 40 is already testing an idea with implications well beyond California: where the line between taxing income and taxing wealth should be drawn.

Market Rundown for Friday, September 11, 2026

S&P 500 futures are up 0.55% to 7,640.

Oil is down 2.85% to $99.50 for a barrel of WTI.

Gold’s down 0.85% to $4,369.10 per ounce.

And Bitcoin has pulled back 0.25% to $76,915.

The musician, standing outside near a swimming pool, clapped his hands, raised his fist and saluted. The Apache crews appeared to salute back.

The video went viral.

The Army opened an investigation into the unauthorized flyby and temporarily grounded the pilots. Then Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stepped in.

“Pilots suspension LIFTED,” he wrote on X. “No punishment. No investigation. Carry on, patriots.”

That might have been the end of a bizarre episode. Instead, nearly five months later, The Washington Post reported a strange postscript.

Gen. Randy George — at the time, the Army’s chief of staff — wanted the Army to follow normal procedures and determine whether the Apache crews had broken safety protocols.

But Gen. Christopher LaNeve, Hegseth’s senior military assistant, advised George to drop the matter. George believed LaNeve was conveying the defense secretary’s own wishes, according to the Post.

George resisted.

Days later, Hegseth fired him.

George had served in the Army for more than four decades. LaNeve, meanwhile, became the acting Army chief of staff.

The Purge

General George is one of a growing number of senior military leaders Hegseth has removed, pushed aside or blocked from promotion since taking over the Pentagon.

At least 20 generals, admirals and senior civilian defense leaders have been fired or left their jobs during his tenure, according to CBS News.

Among them, Gen. James Mingus, the Army’s vice chief of staff, and Gen. Christopher Donahue, commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, both retired early.

Gen. David Hodne, who led the Army’s Transformation and Training Command, was removed without a public explanation.

Together, the three represented well over a century of Army service.

Mingus, Donahue and Hodne, along with George, were also part of a small group working with Army Secretary Dan Driscoll to overhaul the Army.

Their focus included drones, counter-drone systems, artificial intelligence and faster ways to get new weapons into soldiers’ hands.

Some turnover at the Pentagon was inevitable. Trump had every right to install military leaders he trusted, and the Department of Defense was overdue for serious reform.

But some of the people caught in Hegseth’s purge were trying to do some disrupting of their own.

Eventually, Trump’s own Army secretary had seen enough.

Your Rundown for Wednesday, September 9, 2026...

The Revolt Reaches Trump

Dan Driscoll was hardly a creature of the Pentagon establishment.

An Iraq War veteran and Yale Law graduate, he was a close friend of Vice President JD Vance and had worked on Trump’s transition team.

Driscoll wanted the Army to learn from Ukraine’s rapid use of drones and other battlefield technology. He wanted new weapons reaching soldiers in months — not after years of waiting for the Pentagon procurement machine.

Trump himself called Driscoll a “disruptor and change agent.”

But Driscoll repeatedly clashed with Hegseth.

He raised concerns with the White House about the defense secretary’s personnel decisions, according to The Atlantic.

ABC News separately reported that Driscoll spoke with senior administration officials, including White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.

Then, in late August, Driscoll went directly to Trump.

He told the president about the senior Army officers Hegseth had removed. Trump seemed surprised by the extent of the upheaval, The Atlantic reported.

Driscoll also tendered his resignation.

One U.S. official told Semafor that Hegseth wasn’t particularly inclined to listen to Driscoll anyway.

Another offered his wry assessment: Hegseth won’t “be able to blame Dan when things go wrong.”

Hegseth’s Embattled Hire

Remember Christopher LaNeve? He’s the general from the Kid Rock story who reportedly advised George to drop the Apache investigation.

After Hegseth fired George, LaNeve became the Army’s acting chief of staff. Hegseth wants him to have the job permanently, but Senate Republicans have resisted.

The administration was preparing to nominate LaNeve in May. According to The Wall Street Journal, Republican Sen. Roger Wicker, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, told the White House there weren’t enough votes to advance him. The nomination was held back.

LaNeve made other decisions that would draw Capitol Hill’s scrutiny.

In January, the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Europe established an experimental battalion of about 600 soldiers focused on drone warfare.

The unit was building drones, testing unmanned systems and learning from Ukraine’s experience against Russia. George and Driscoll had championed the program.

In August, LaNeve ordered the battalion to return to its conventional airborne infantry mission.

The decision drew objections from a bipartisan group of lawmakers, including Republican Sen. Thom Tillis and Rep. Mike Turner.

In a Sept. 1 letter, they warned that eliminating the specialized drone mission could hinder the Army’s modernization efforts. They also asked whether the decision came from Army leadership or the Pentagon.

The timing was remarkable. American troops were fighting a country that had made cheap drones a central weapon of war, while one of the Army’s experimental drone units was being phased out.

And for Tillis, the concerns went well beyond one battalion.

The GOP Has Questions

On Sept. 2, Senator Tillis called on Trump to replace Hegseth.

Tillis had voted to confirm Hegseth in January 2025. He also spent eight years on the Senate Armed Services Committee, including time leading its personnel and readiness subcommittee.

Driscoll’s resignation appeared to be the breaking point.

In a Sept. 2 statement, Tillis praised Driscoll and George for helping transform how the Army equips its soldiers. Hegseth should have been fighting to retain leaders like them, Tillis argued, not pushing them out.

Instead, he said, the defense secretary was creating a “leadership void at the top of our military ranks.”

Tillis added: “I have never witnessed more inept management of the brave men and women who serve our country.”

He further accused Hegseth of being “intimidated by competence” and retreating into culture wars instead of attending to national defense.

Ultimately, he urged Trump to find a new Pentagon leader who would “retain and empower military talent.”

Tillis was not alone.

Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said he was tired of the personnel churn and wanted more stability. Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota questioned the Army’s leadership after Driscoll’s departure.

When asked whether he still had confidence in the defense secretary, Rounds said the question was whether the president did.

286 Days

On the very day Tillis called on Trump to replace Hegseth, the USS Abraham Lincoln arrived at Laem Chabang, Thailand, for a long-awaited port visit.

The carrier had been deployed since November 2025. Its crew of roughly 5,000 sailors and Marines had spent 264 consecutive days without a full port stop, much of that time supporting combat operations and the naval blockade against Iran.

By the time the Lincoln reached Thailand, its deployment had lasted 286 days.

Sailors headed to Pattaya for five days of rest. Some reunited with family members who had flown halfway around the world to see them.

For months, those families reported food shortages, broken toilets, moldy showers and deteriorating morale aboard the carrier. Some described long meal lines and shortages of basic supplies such as soap and toothpaste.

The Navy disputed the severity of the reports, saying the Lincoln remained fully capable of carrying out its mission and that no meals had been missed.

The war, however, complicated resupply efforts. Iranian attacks on logistics hubs in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates disrupted ports that normally sustain American ships in the Persian Gulf.

Families also reported exhaustion, limited communication and mental-health emergencies.

One mother said her son had reported an attempted overboard incident, while another sailor had been rescued after entering the water. The Navy confirmed that a sailor was recovered from the water.

Regardless, the Lincoln continued carrying out its mission. Its commander and the Navy praised the crew’s professionalism, even as the long deployment raised concerns about the strain on sailors, aircraft and machinery.

The carrier departed Thailand on Sept. 6. Its deployment is winding down, but the Navy has not announced a final homecoming date.

On Aug. 30, The Washington Post reported that senior commanders had warned that prolonged Iran-war deployments could leave U.S. forces too stretched to respond elsewhere.

After the Post published its report, the Pentagon removed decades of classified Secretary of Defense Orders Book records from an internal system, despite a former defense official warning that restricting access could hinder urgent military planning.

Separately, on Sept. 4, The New York Times reported that roughly 50 Joint Staff members had undergone polygraph tests — over leaks about dwindling weapons stockpiles.

A war that stretches supply lines, munitions and personnel for months can turn a logistical problem into a readiness problem.

That’s the kind of problem a defense secretary should work tirelessly to mitigate.

Who Purges Pete?

For years, Paradigm’s ex-CIA insider Jim Rickards has warned that Washington’s permanent bureaucracy — what we commonly call the Deep State — can outlast presidents and their policies.

The Pentagon is no exception. Its senior officers, civilian officials and intelligence allies have spent careers learning how to work the system in D.C.

In Hegseth’s case, the Deep State does not need to manufacture controversy.

His personnel decisions, in particular, are prompting opposition within the military and from Republicans on Capitol Hill.

The Atlantic reported the mood in Washington, according to one congressional staffer: “We are not going to reward Hegseth for what he did to the Army.”

The Senate can hold up Hegseth’s preferred Army chief, demand answers about the dismantled drone program and scrutinize the Pentagon’s request for about $70 billion in emergency war funding.

These are ordinary powers of Congress. Hegseth’s own missteps have given his opponents every reason to exercise them.

Twenty-Five Years Later

This Friday, Americans will remember the nearly 3,000 people killed 25 years ago on September 11, including those who died when American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon.

This anniversary arrives at a precarious moment for Pete Hegseth.

The United States is six months into a war with Iran. American ships, aircraft and military personnel have been operating under extraordinary strain.

Senior military leaders have been removed, and the Army’s civilian secretary has resigned after warning the president about the turmoil.

Is the military preparing for the next war — while protecting the people already fighting this one? Are its leaders being chosen for competence or loyalty?

Meanwhile, upheaval at the Pentagon continues.

On Sept. 5, Reuters reported that the White House had reviewed possible replacements for Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg. The Pentagon denied that a replacement process was underway.

For now, the White House continues to stand behind Hegseth. Trump has praised his performance, and there is no indication that the president has decided to replace his secretary of defense.

But Trump only needs to be persuaded that keeping Hegseth has become a major political liability.

The secretary of defense promised to purge the Pentagon.

Today, Hegseth has given the Pentagon everything it needs to purge him.

162,000 new jobs.

That’s how many jobs the U.S. economy added in August, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics report — nearly triple the 56,000 economists surveyed by Reuters expected.

Even better, June and July were revised upward by a combined 55,000 jobs, and the labor force participation rate ticked up from 61.4% to 61.6%.

Unemployment, meanwhile, held at 4.1%.

Of course, government employment numbers deserve the usual grain of salt. Or two.

But Jim Rickards has a useful way of looking at employment statistics.

“An economy is nothing more than two things: How many people are working and how productive are they?” he said years ago.

Which gets us beyond the BLS headline number.

Your Rundown for Monday, September 7, 2026...

What’s an Hour of Your Life Worth?

The average private-sector worker now earns $37.75 an hour, according to Friday’s BLS report. That's up 3.1% from a year ago.

But a paycheck is only useful for what you can exchange it for.

And Jim has a fascinating way of explaining money.

In Currency Wars, he argues that money can be understood as stored energy.

Imagine a baker making a loaf of bread. There’s the baker’s labor, the farmer’s labor, the energy required to grow the wheat and the fuel and machinery needed to turn it all into something you can grab off the shelf.

When the baker sells that bread, all that economic effort gets converted into money.

“Money works exactly like a battery,” Jim writes.

You work. You charge the battery.

You spend the money later. You discharge it.

That makes inflation more than an annoying increase in your grocery bill. It drains your financial battery. More quickly.

But there’s another employment wrinkle Jim has been watching.

What happens when the worker isn’t human?

Jim published MoneyGPT: AI and the Threat to the Global Economy in late 2024.

By then, AI had already gone mainstream. Millions of people were using it to write emails, generate images, analyze documents and answer questions.

But Jim looked beyond what AI could do for us, asking what would happen when AI could do the work instead of us.

Technology has been replacing certain kinds of human labor for centuries. The mechanical loom displaced weavers. Tractors displaced farmhands. ATMs changed bank branches.

But AI is marching into territory we once assumed belonged exclusively to people with college degrees and desk jobs.

And there’s an ominous footnote buried in Friday’s jobs report.

The information sector lost 23,000 jobs in August. Among the casualties: computing infrastructure, data processing, web hosting, publishing and broadcasting.

One month doesn’t make a trend. And it certainly doesn’t prove AI caused those losses. But it’s worth noticing.

Still, Jim’s two-part equation hasn’t changed.

How many of us are working? And how productive are we? AI could send the second number through the roof while scrambling the first.

Jim offered a hopeful reminder, however, around the Fourth of July — particularly for younger Americans wondering what careers await them.

America, he wrote, still offers “untold educational and vocational channels” to “take your passion, learn your trade and have a rewarding career.”

That could mean becoming a lawyer. Or running a beauty salon, tree removal service or garage-based tech startup.

Jobs may change. Opportunities won’t disappear.

As Jim put it: “America doesn’t tell you what to do but she empowers you to do anything.

“In America, the sky’s the limit. (Actually, it’s the moon).”

Have a wonderful Labor Day.

That eventually brought us to a larger question.

Who worries YOU more: billionaires or the politicians promising to protect you from billionaires?

Your answers suggest the real problem may not fit neatly into either camp.

“Unethical people want to rule,” writes Kathy G., “and usually they are corrupted long before they maneuver themselves into positions of power.”

Meanwhile, Bob D. zeroes in on Phoebe Gates and the “cookie stuffing” controversy we described Monday: “Could Ms. Gates be prosecuted? And while we’re at it, what about her old man?”

Then there’s Carl H., who doesn’t buy our billionaire-versus-politician framing at all. In his view, “enormous NGOs, international banks and political power are so intertwined that focusing on one group misses the larger machinery.”

John T. brings us right back to Stanford: “I would keep an eye on those students. That kind of appetite for power can become dangerous.”

Perhaps that’s the real answer to Monday’s question: Worry about the people who desperately want to be in charge.

Your Rundown for Friday, September 4, 2026...

Buck Sexton: DSA & DOD

Money & Power’s Buck Sexton has seen American domestic policy from the inside.

A former CIA officer who spent years briefing senior national-security officials, Buck now co-hosts The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show.

And in a recent essay, he made the case for something Jim Rickards has been warning about, too: Economic frustration is creating an opening for political ideas Americans once dismissed as fringe.

Here’s Buck:

“I’m probably going to get some angry emails for this one, but I have to say it…

“Republicans need to start taking the socialists seriously.”

Buck isn’t predicting some massive blue wave. Nor does he think most Americans are suddenly clamoring for socialism.

The danger, he argues, is much simpler: “Everything costs too damn much.”

That gives the political left an opening.

“Somebody can walk into the grocery store, spend $150 on what feels like $90 worth of food and wonder why everybody on television keeps telling him the economy is doing so well.

“You’re not going to win that argument by showing him another chart.”

Housing makes the problem even harder to ignore. Younger Americans are looking at home prices and mortgage payments and wondering how they’ll ever afford their first house.

Then there’s “electricity, insurance, restaurants, childcare and just about every other expense that comes with living a normal American life.

“This is how people actually experience the economy.”

And Democrats don’t have to sell voters on the entire socialist agenda. They only need to say: “You’re struggling. These guys are in charge. Blame them.

“People have tried reasonable,” Buck adds. “They’ve voted for the people who promised to fix things. When they still feel like they’re falling behind, eventually the appetite for something more radical starts to grow.

“And waiting right there to greet them, wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt and carrying approximately $180,000 in student-loan debt, is the Democratic Socialists of America.”

The DSA, Buck says, has an answer for everything.

“Can’t afford a house? Government should build you one. Healthcare is expensive? Government should pay for it. College costs too much? Make it free. Jeff Bezos has too much money? Tax the snot out of him.”

Of course, most Americans understand there’s “no magical government money tree growing behind the Treasury Department.”

But that’s not really the point.

“When people get frustrated enough with the way things are going, they become a lot more willing to listen to ideas they would have laughed out of the room five years earlier.”

The pattern should sound familiar.

Trump himself won a second term by telling millions of Americans that the existing political system had failed them. Washington insisted Trump was too radical, too disruptive and too dangerous.

For many voters, Buck argues, “that was practically the campaign commercial.”

Trump and the radical left are obviously not the same. But Buck sees a similar political mechanism at work.

“When people lose enough faith in the status quo, they start looking for somebody willing to smash the windows in and start over.”

The difference is what happens when the DSA gets inside the building.

“They’re sitting on committees, writing legislation, controlling budgets and overseeing federal agencies. And suddenly the ideas we were laughing about can start affecting your money.”

The DSA and the broader socialist left aren’t particularly coy about those ideas: higher corporate taxes, higher taxes on investment, wealth taxes and more aggressive redistribution.

And Buck sees another potential collision — one involving the Department of Defense itself.

“A stronger socialist wing of the Democratic Party is a movement deeply skeptical of the Pentagon, American military power and spending hundreds of billions of dollars on weapons when that money could instead fund its domestic agenda.

“I understand why that pitch appeals to people.

“The problem is Vladimir Putin doesn’t care about our domestic spending priorities. Neither does Xi Jinping. Neither does Iran.”

For decades after the Cold War, the West got comfortable with the belief that enormous weapons stockpiles were no longer necessary.

Inventories could shrink. The defense industry could consolidate. And if a major war ever erupted, American industrial might could simply spring back to life.

“Turns out the switch is a little rusty,” says Buck.

Ukraine provided the first major wake-up call.

“The war with Iran has put even more pressure on American inventories. And drones have completely changed the economics of the battlefield.

“Modern warfare burns through artillery shells, missiles and air-defense interceptors at an astonishing pace.” Replacing them isn’t simply a matter of writing a bigger check.

America needs factories, skilled workers and supply chains capable of producing everything from rocket motors to guidance systems.

Much of that capacity vanished after the Cold War, when Washington assumed large-scale warfare was a thing of the past.

“Now we’re finding out what it costs to get it back,” Buck says.

At exactly the moment the DSA — and a growing socialist left — are asking why America should spend so much on defense, the rest of the world keeps supplying new reasons to do exactly that.

Market Rundown for Friday, September 4, 2026

S&P 500 futures are slightly in the green at 7,755.

Oil is down 1% to $90.35 for a barrel of WTI.

Gold is down 0.50% to $4,515.90 per ounce.

And Bitcoin’s down 2.30%, just under $80K.

For years, the Banque de France kept about 5% of its gold reserves in New York. But those 129 tonnes didn’t meet the modern standards France required for its reserves.

Moving that much bullion back to Europe would have been a risky logistical headache. So between July 2025 and January 2026, the French central bank did something clever.

It sold its old gold in New York. Then it bought the equivalent amount of higher-standard gold in Europe.

Twenty-six transactions later, France still owns roughly 2,437 tonnes of gold. But now all of it is stored in vaults beneath Paris.

The maneuver also generated an extraordinary €12.8 billion — roughly $14.8 billion — capital gain for the Banque de France.

France says the decision was about modernizing its reserves. Fair enough.

But the episode tells you something about the gold market in 2026.

Central banks aren’t treating gold like some dusty relic from the Bretton Woods era. Around the world, they’re buying more of it — and thinking very carefully about where they safeguard it.

Your Rundown for Wednesday, September 2, 2026...

When Jim Rickards Spotted a Whale

Six years ago, Jim Rickards was paying attention to the central bank crowd.

In late 2020, gold was trading around $1,900 an ounce. COVID had blown a hole through the economy. The Fed was creating enormous amounts of money and holding interest rates near zero. Washington was running what Jim called “super-deficits.”

Yet when Jim asked what was driving gold higher, he looked beyond the usual suspects. “It’s not retail investors,” he wrote, “and it’s not institutional investors.”

Instead: “The steady buying is coming from central banks.”

At the time, Jim called it a “sea change” as “confidence in the dollar erodes due to Fed money printing.”

Central banks were looking “for alternative stores of wealth, including gold,” he wrote.

“These trends begin slowly,” Jim said, “and then gather momentum.”

Central banks, meanwhile, have accumulated an average of roughly 1,000 tonnes of gold annually over the past four years, according to the World Gold Council — double the average pace of the previous decade.

And gold eventually climbed above $5,500 early this year.

But 2026 also introduced a nasty plot twist.

The war with Iran sent oil prices soaring. Because oil is priced in dollars, oil-importing countries suddenly needed more dollars to pay their energy bills.

One way to get dollars? Sell gold.

That rush for dollars turned one of gold’s greatest strengths — its liquidity — against it. The price of gold plunged from its January high to below $4,000 in July.

Today, it’s trading around $4,375.

In other words, the dollar Jim remarked on in 2020 became one of gold’s biggest headwinds in 2026.

But the bigger central bank trend never went away.

After a slow start to the year, central banks added a net 289 tonnes in the second quarter alone — a record for any second quarter.

At the same time, a record 45% of central banks surveyed by the World Gold Council say they expect to increase their own gold reserves over the next year.

Which brings me back to something else Jim wrote in 2020: “Investors like to say that the price of gold is going up. But what is really happening is that the value of the dollar is going down.”

Wars intervene. Oil spikes. Demand for dollars surges. Gold gets sold to raise cash.

But through all those crosscurrents, the world’s central banks continue accumulating one monetary asset they can’t print.

Market Rundown for Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2026

S&P 500 futures are slightly in the red to 7,638. 

Oil is down 0.80% to $89.50 for a barrel of WTI.

Gold is down 0.45% to $4,375.90 per ounce.

And Bitcoin’s down 0.85% to $76,590.

Students get in through referrals, then instructor Justin Lewis-Weber personally whittles the candidates down to six men and six women.

Just 12 students. Ten weeks. Invitation only.

And what are these carefully selected Stanford students learning?

How power works.

How to find weaknesses in bureaucracies. How to maneuver around official channels. How to get what they want from systems — and the people inside them.

The unofficial seminar has a predictably chilling name:

So You Think You Can Rule the World?

But students just call it “Rule.”

Your Rundown for Monday, August 31, 2026...

Father Knows Best?

One of Rule’s former students might sound familiar: Phoebe Gates.

The 23-year-old daughter of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates graduated from Stanford in 2024. While there, she joined Rule’s exclusive ranks and later tapped the seminar’s network to recruit for her startup, Phia.

This summer, the fashion shopping app Phia came under scrutiny over a practice known as “cookie stuffing.”

Here’s an explanation.

When a website or app sends a shopper to an online store, it can earn a cut of the sale.

But Bloomberg found that Phia’s browser extension could insert its own tracking code just before a shopper made a purchase — making it look as though Phia deserved the commission.

In other words, Phia could get paid for a sale it didn’t generate.

After Phia disabled the features in July, according to Bloomberg, its average daily revenue dropped from about $80,000 to between $10,000 and $28,000.

Young Phoebe, of course, isn’t the only Gates who has figured out how to work the system.

Her father has just operated on a slightly larger scale.

In 2024, Bill Gates reportedly gave around $50 million to Future Forward USA Action, the nonprofit arm of the main super PAC supporting Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign.

As investments go, Gates has made better ones.

But the donation was striking for another reason. Gates spent years largely avoiding enormous partisan political contributions.

Today, the Democratic coalition Gates was trying to help elect in 2024 is home to a growing socialist movement — deeply suspicious of men exactly like him.

Bill Gates is practically Exhibit A for what’s wrong with American capitalism if you’re a democratic socialist.

He’s worth well north of $100 billion. He’s built one of the most influential public-health organizations on Earth. And when he personally decided the 2024 presidential election mattered, he reportedly dropped $50 million to back his candidate.

Democratic Socialists of America would look at all that wealth and power concentrated in one man and say: He’s the problem.

But for all their differences, America’s billionaire class and an energized socialist movement seem to share one enormous assumption.

Put enough power in the right hands… and the right people can “fix” things.

Gates wanted Harris in the White House. DSA wants Bill’s wealth redistributed.

Different “fixes.” Same confidence that they know best.

Which brings us back to Stanford’s seminar for sociopaths…

So You Think You Can Rule the World?

Maybe the most chilling word isn’t “Rule.”

Instead, put the emphasis on YOU.

[I’ll leave you with a question, reader. Who worries YOU more: billionaires or the politicians promising to protect you from billionaires?]

Market Rundown for Monday, August 31, 2026

S&P 500 futures are down 0.25% to 7,700.

Oil’s up 3.55% to $86.38 for a barrel of WTI.

Gold is down 0.50% to $4,506.60 per ounce.

And Bitcoin’s down 0.55% to $78,400.