International Man: As we approach the end of the year, let’s take a step back, review the Big Picture, and assess 2024’s major developments to better understand what may come next.
Before we drill down into specifics, what’s your high-level view of what happened in 2024?
Doug Casey: Let’s break it down into politics, economics, technology, and culture.
Politically, the election of Trump, against the will of the Elite, the Deep State, and the Establishment—they’re pretty much the same thing—came as a surprise to me. I suspected they’d succeed in stealing the election. More important than the election of Trump, though, is the defeat of Kamala and the Jacobins of the Democrat Party.
That defeat is echoed by a reaction against the Left most everywhere. The leftist German government—it was starting to mimic the old East German regime—will hopefully be replaced with the AfD. The elitist Macron is on his way out in France, as is Trudeau in Canada. In Romania, the election of Georgescu (see our interview with him) is being fought tooth and nail by their Deep State, but I think he’ll triumph. Hungary and Slovakia won’t participate in the insane war in the Ukraine. There’s a growing reaction against both war and Wokeism.
Regarding the economy, the average guy’s standard of living is flat to descending, albeit propped up by debt. He’s buried under mortgage debt, auto loans, student debt, and credit card debt. It is, to use a currently fashionable word, unsustainable like that of the government itself. On the bright side, the top 10%, and especially the top 1%, aided by a roaring stock market, are doing better than ever. Will it lead to a violent wave of resentment among the hoi polloi? When has it not?
Technologically, Artificial Intelligence finally came into its own in 2024. It’s widely used, and scores of gigantic data centers, which consume gigantic amounts of power, are being built everywhere. AI itself is cause for huge optimism. But it also, almost inevitably, means there will be a renaissance of nuclear power; even Greens seem to recognize it.
Space exploration is advancing rapidly with the success of SpaceX, which has taken over from NASA, the Europeans, and the Chinese.
Culturally, it seems 2024 was the year of Peak Woke in the universities, media, and corporations. The idiotic bubble has finally burst. One sign of that was the delegitimization of mass media. Nobody trusts CNN, MSNBC, or any other networks. People increasingly get news from decentralized sources.
At the same time, there’s a growing trend towards delegitimizing government in general, and the US government in particular. We saw this with the hurricane in North Carolina, where FEMA was not only unhelpful but counterproductive. And the hundreds of large drones floating around the Northeast at night. The government proved itself too incompetent to solve the mystery and too dishonest to discuss its findings, if any. Across the country, people have become pretty fed up with the old order.
So, except for the underlying rot in the economy, this is all good news.
International Man: Trump winning the 2024 presidential election was a defining moment in 2024.
What are your thoughts on the political and cultural changes sparked by this?
Doug Casey: Sometimes a man makes the times, and other times, the times make the man. It’s the latter with Trump.
History is punctuated by people like Alexander, Caesar, Genghis Khan, Louis XIV, Napoleon, and Hitler. People like that—and it’s a hugely abbreviated list—change the nature of life, mostly by leaving a trail of dead bodies in their wake. The most famous men in history are, perversely, and almost without exception, the most criminal.
Americans escaped, by the skin of their teeth, what would have become a Democrat “people’s republic” under the dim and evil Kamala. That said, the election of Trump will break a lot of rice bowls, which is great. It’s needed, and I’m all for it. But anything can happen with the economy, the political system, American culture, and the international situation all on shaky ground.
Maybe Trump augurs morning in America, as did Reagan. But when Reagan was elected, the stock market was around 1000—in real terms, a historic low. Interest rates were over 15%, historic highs. And Reagan was philosophically quite libertarian. Now, however, the stock market is at all-time highs, in bubble territory. Interest rates have started rising from all-time lows. And Trump is no libertarian; he lacks a philosophical center.
Those are scary differences.
It’s said that a butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon can cause a flood in China. Trump is like a butterfly the size of Rodan. And he’s righteously pissed off about what the Jacobins tried to do to him.
We’re in for big changes. But let’s look at this from a historical perspective. The long-term trend of history, since the end of the Neolithic 12,000 years ago, is that everything’s been getting better in all ways at an accelerating rate. Unless we suffer a real disaster, like WW3, economic and technological progress will almost certainly continue. The installation of Trump, Kamala, or whoever is no more than a bump in the road.
International Man: One of the most significant financial events of 2024 was the Federal Reserve’s pivot back to monetary easing under the pretext of having defeated inflation.
What are your thoughts on this policy shift and its broader economic implications?
Doug Casey: I’m amazed that anybody really cares about what the Federal Reserve says or seems to do. Manipulating short-term interest rates by a quarter or a half of a percent here or there is trivial. Long-term rates are what count; long-term, not short-term, rates represent the cost of capital to build industry and develop property. With the Fed creating dollars by the trillions to support the government, rates can only go up.
The dollar has lost at least 98% of its value since the Fed was created 111 years ago. And that trend is accelerating as the US government runs multi-trillion-dollar deficits, which can only be financed by the Fed, creating more dollars. They have no real choice.
The question is not whether the Fed is going to adjust rates up or down. It’s whether we will have a 1923-style German runaway inflation or a 1929-style catastrophic deflation. If the Fed doesn’t print money fast enough to finance all the debt in the world, the whole system will come unglued in a deflation. So, I’m betting on more money and credit being created. And higher prices to go with them.
International Man: What were the most crucial geopolitical events of 2024, and how might they shape the future?
Doug Casey: The most important geopolitical event has received the least press: the election of Javier Milei in Argentina. His success in rolling back the size of the Argentine government is historic. He has fired scores of thousands of government employees, abolished agencies, abolished many taxes, and abolished a lot of price controls and subsidies. The government, which has perpetually run in deeply the red, financed by printed fiat money, is now in the black after only one year. This is a really major change, a veritable first in world history, and a change in the megatrend, with any luck.
A lesser noticed but related sea change is the triumph of Bukele’s policies in El Salvador. Two years ago, it had probably the world’s worst crime problem after Haiti. Now, it’s one of the world’s safest countries. It was solved, at least temporarily, by locking up about 65,000 known gang members. In the meantime, there’s complete freedom of speech and opinion, and property rights are secure. As a bonus, Bitcoin is recognized as an official currency.
The other big event is the collapse of the Assad regime. There will be complete chaos as numerous groups jockey for control of Syria. I think it’s a template for the future in most of the artificially constructed countries of the Middle East and Africa—the whole world, in fact—although hopefully more peaceably in most places.
International Man: Gold and Bitcoin hit new all-time highs in 2024, while the S&P 500 rose around 24% year-to-date at the time of writing.
What’s next?
Doug Casey: Gold is no longer cheap. It’s about where it “should” be, compared to historical prices of houses, cars, clothes and food.
Bitcoin, as a new asset class, a digital age money, is finding its level. As it catches on with the world at large, it’s going higher. But this isn’t the time to discuss why I think that’s true.
Resource stocks—gas, oil, uranium, coal, gold, silver, copper, etc.—are truly cheap. They’re the best speculative vehicles I can think of. Will they go 10-1 as a group? It wouldn’t be the first time.
As for the bubbly stock and bond markets, there’s an incoming tsunami. Get out of the water.
Reprinted with permission from International Man.
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