Get Ready: High Inflation Is Coming

Originally published at: https://peakprosperity.com/get-ready-high-inflation-is-coming/

In this episode of Finance U, I had another in-depth discussion with Paul Kiker from Kiker Wealth Management, exploring:

  • Japan’s bond market crisis (spoiler: the emergency isn’t over)
  • The Big Beautiful Bill increases the deficit by such an alarming amount that it should be titled The Morbidly Obese Bill
  • Inflation is coming
  • The stunning advances of AI are worrying on several levels, but most concretely, will be its demands on the U.S. energy infrastructure.
  • Inflation is all but assured to accellerate under these conditions; prepare accordingly

We started by discussing market manipulations, where I shared my observations on a recent market rescue operation, suggesting that central banks and major financial players are propping up markets to maintain an upward trajectory, which an increasing number of market participants now view with skepticism. After all, markets are supposed to be where price discovery happens, not where political narratives are bolstered and insiders get first dibs on fresh money.

Paul and I have both observed a growing distrust in the markets, a sentiment that transcends political divides, as people from all sides are beginning to question the integrity of our financial systems. Are the “markets” as fake as a WWF professional “wrestling” event?

We delved into the specifics of Japan’s bond market troubles, highlighting the potential for a significant financial crisis there due to rising bond yields and the Bank of Japan’s losses. This situation could have ripple effects globally, especially if Japan’s insurers face massive unrealized losses.

On the U.S. legislative front, the recent “big, beautiful bill,” instead of cutting spending, actually increases it, which will fuel more inflation. Even before the BBB, the OMB was already projecting a massive increase in U.S. federal debt over the next 10 years:

With the BBB in place, you can mentally add another $2.3 trillion onto that 2035 figure, bringing the total to $54+ trillion. Unless there’s a war or recession before 2035, then you can mentally add many more trillions to the amount. And all of that is without the dollar losing a lot of value internationally, requiring interest rates to get hiked, which will cause interest expense to skyrocket…

The BBB shows that Team Trump has thrown in the towel on fiscal restraint, which we believe sets the stage for economic instability.

We also talked about the advent of AI and quantum computing, which could disrupt not just financial markets but the entire digital security framework. BlackRock’s warning about quantum computing’s potential to break current cryptographic systems underscores the existential threat this technology poses, not just to Bitcoin but to all digital transactions.

Lastly, we explored the implications of these technological advancements on energy demands, with data centers consuming vast amounts of power, potentially leading to increased energy costs and further inflation. This is a critical issue as we’re not seeing a corresponding increase in energy production.

In conclusion, while the markets might seem to be rallying, the underlying issues of trust, fiscal policy, and technological disruption suggest we’re in for some interesting, if not challenging, times ahead. For those looking to navigate these waters, having a strategy that’s adaptable and informed by these broader trends is crucial. Remember, it’s not just about making money in a bull market; it’s about keeping it when the tides turn.

If you’re interested in discussing your financial strategy or just want to understand these dynamics better, feel free to reach out to Paul and his team at peakfinancialinvesting.com.

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I listen to you guys chatting every week and have had a great conversation with Paul in the past.
Now we know about great taking and the light in the tunnel is not the other side but a moving train!!
NOT FINANCIAL Advice
Lots of various discussions about reducing exposure to manipulated markets/ casinos.
Some might be unresponsibly long PMs.
Then all that is left is no debt and RE we “rent” from the city/county, preps, tools of production to grow, process and store food, protection, survival skills.
But what about that remaining pesky 401k/IRA? Using PP oriented thinking we should want that safe and not in markets.
For non traders (gamblers) that leaves Cash ? Or a 1-3mo treasury bills that pays some interest - i suppose that is considered same as cash . Or maybe a self directed account invested in more RE etc.

If we follow the thinking and are awake to the real risks i suspect we end up with just an IRA. Depending on tax bracket cashing out could be expensive but maybe the right answer to covert to more unresponsibly long assets

Maybe some discussion on various ideas, pro/cons around this end would be useful .

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My longshot concern: “hacker-trained AI” that finds and executes zero day attacks on targets of choice. This would just pile on to the quantum computing threat. I’m sure NSA already has one of these “hacker AIs”, and probably China too. But given Health Ranger has trained up his own LLM - it doesn’t seem a stretch to imagine hackers doing this as well.

If the banking system gets disrupted - all that “money printing” won’t mean a thing. That’s my longshot. “Molecules win” in this instance.

Here’s another thought. How good would AI be at market manipulation? Let’s say it had all the customer trading data from all the major firms…you might have to add another couple of quotes around the word ““markets””.

Lots of data centers, coming soon. What will be “real” in that world?

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A freezer full of self raised beef? Some PM? Lead? Fresh water? A garden? Stored food? Generator?

Well, we know for sure political promises will be real because they love us so much and they took an oath.

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So you’re saying, friends, food, fuel, first aid, firearms and… only God knows what else.

because we know “they” love us.

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Regarding the quantum computing and Bitcoin, this risk has been know for quite some time and is related to use public/private key encryption which has very widespread use in many things.

Its very easy to make this sound like an existential threat and affecting Bitcoin, but it does not affect Bitcoin any more than any other financial asset.

To understand why Bitcoin is no more at risk than other financial assets, its important to remember that 1) as this risk approaches, it is possible to change the protocol to add a quantum secure algorithm, although it would require people to move their BTC from their current addresses to a new one. Some lost BTC in older addresses would become targets, including Satoshi’s lost coins, and this could in theory add sudden liquidity and drop the price, but the network would almost certainly continue on. But since the same non quantum resistant security affects most all the security of everything on the internet, every other financial asset would similarly be a target, and it isn’t clear that it would be worth going after BTC instead of other honeypots like an old password used by some Blackrock system that didn’t get fixed.

To understand why the risk of quantum computers breaking encryption currently isn’t that high, and any code breaking events here still seem very very far away, its important to realize that quantum computers work very differently than current computers. 3Blue1Brown has an excellent video which outlines how quantum computers work, what Grovers algorithm is, and thus the way cryptography would be affected. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQWpF2Gb-gU

Under assumptions of our current computing hardware, breaking a 256 bit encryption is estimated to take ~10^11 years. Assuming the quantum clock speeds catch up to normal computers, and we were somehow able to make a 2.23 million physical qubit quantum machine, it would still take that quantum computer about 18000 years working on just one Bitcoin address! Yes, it is dramatically faster, and perhaps theoretically insecure, but I think we have a little time here.

It is easy to get all worked up about this by thinking a quantum computer can ‘break’ encryption instantly. When you investigate the details, it turns out this just isn’t a risk at all.

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@lawrence-mcknightgmail-com

Where does access to electricity - or not - factor in? Strikes me as being kinda important…

I forgot float test the devices.

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@westcoastjan I’m not clear what electricity use you are referring to. Bitcoin or quantum computers or ???

Both require electricity, do they not? Neither can exist without electricity.
This is the prime reason I am not a fan of Bitcoin. I understand it’s positive aspects, but this risk is the game changer for me.

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@westcoastjan I don’t know how much electricity quantum computing takes relative to regular computers but AFAIK, this part is not something even considered for optimization at this state. So, for example, over 18000 years, it would be ~ A LOT.

Bitcoin, of course also uses a notorious amount of energy for its proof of work ‘mining.’ Nodes and other components use a trivial amount. The mining operation however is highly distributed where it does not matter if a miner goes offline at any point in time because there is some miner somewhere else that picks up the hashpower. This is critical because it means that mining tends to occur when extra energy is available and free, but not when energy become expensive. On a global scale then it acts as a kind of battery, where if there is rainfall and too much water for the generators so the water would go over spillways, or when one area is sunny and the solar power panels are putting out more than needed, or where there is some waste natural gas that would otherwise be flamed, or the electricity would only be used to general heat anyway, the miner can turn on and use that energy. But when there is drought so no extra water for the dam to spill, or dark and the solar system isn’t working, or no extra nat gas, or no heat needed, the miner can shut off, because the somewhere else the energy is still free. This tends to cause an overbuild of energy sources that can spill waste energy to mine BTC, and equalize demand. Then BTC mining uses the extra.

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I am sorely tempted to call you out as a troll… but I won’t.

You did not answer my question tho’. What if there is NO electricity? As in a massive power outage/cyber attack? Your juggling & balancing of resources won’t mean diddly squat then.

Sorry bud, not computing with me, in the least.

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Sorry - late to the party today but …

As a critical thinker you should be very, very embarrassed.

Re Quantum computing. The threat mentioned requires quantum to advance and everything else (bitcoin, banking, web security) to stand still.

Banking and web will be slower than Bitcoin but nothing will stand still.

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How much energy does the traditional banking system use?

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@westcoastjan Sorry, I guess I misunderstood your question.
Yes, of course, if there was no electricity at all anywhere in the world, then yes BTC transactions would not work. However, IMO that is a relatively dire situation where more or less any form or money would be useless because water would not flow so for the mass of peoples most toilets would not flush, all supply chains would stop, etc. Gold would not even help, because people would only care about food, water and shelter.

Also, I’m not a Bitcoin troll, and did not mean to offend you. I am not advocating that you buy any if you don’t feel comfortable with it. I’m just pointing out the many of the fear related arguments about BTC are overblown IMO. If nothing else, you should consider working with strong man arguments not straw man arguments, and understand why others would consider some arguments for or against BTC weak or strong.

If it makes you feel better, for example, IMO the strongest argument against BTC is transaction throughput limits scale. People are working on this, but BTC necessarily becomes bottleneck because only so many people can balance layer 2 solutions in a given time period.

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Which part do you mean by SHA256? Wallet private key?
How about how they broke eniac encryption, by finding pieces they knew how message is both plain and encrypted, and started building “dictionary” and finally managed to decipher enough to make meaningful use of that decryption… This is most common way as pure mathematical perfect breaking is unfeasible in most algorithms.

I understood this as , yes somewhere very likely bitcoin network is running. But say I have farm very farm from everything. So I have cold wallet. It should stay fine even in some EMP blast where electric is cut for a year? Or storm breaks electric supply for long time.

@th1 Re SHA256. Sorry for the confusion and over simplification. Yes, the main problem as I understand it determining the public/private keys for a wallet address - not the hashing algorithm used in mining. My understanding is that wallet addresses use ECDSA defined with secp256k1 (although I though that involved hashing functions including SHA-256 but I could be wrong there). I think the net effect of how quantum computers work to solve this is the same or similar, but I should have said ECDSA.

Regarding farms with cold wallets (or seed cards). Yes, as long some node somewhere in the world survives, then the network could be restored and the BTC in your addressed could eventually be moved again (ie. recovered). However, it might be a long period where you need to transact and cannot, and - as with all money - the value of the some unit is only worth what someone else is willing to value it for in exchange for what you need/want. So after everything collapsed, I think trust in anything electronic would be substantially destroyed so it would be probably be harder to find someone to transact with.

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Hey Jan, you can always ask: “I’d like to get some disclosure, please, so I can put your comments in context. What’s the ratio of crypto-to-gold in your portfolio?”

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And in full disclosure mine is ~50/50. It didn’t start that way. I have put far more input dollars into Gold/Silver, but I rode the market rise in BTC where not have now have a bit more BTC, but only because I have never sold either BTC or metals. I consider all of this a kind of insurance where I have relatively high confidence that the dollar will continue to depreciate relative to all hard assets, and I’m otherwise not that good at predicting the future or market behavior.

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And you should never need to feel that you have to disclose any details of your investments to a bunch of strangers on the internet. Even behind a paywall, if this thread is such.

You actually sound like a decent nice person, not a troll. Since your user name includes what I’m guessing is your real name, I kind of hope you’ll delete your post. Nobody needs to know what you have. Have a good evening!

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