WEF = WTF
Friday January 23th, 2026 - Issue # 125
(Any views expressed below are the personal views of the author and should not form the basis for making investment decisions, nor be construed as a recommendation or advice to engage in investment transactions.)
Buenos Dias. Oh man where to even begin. Friends, fans, readers, haters, I really don’t know where to start. Is it the World Economic Forum and how the world is literally shifting from beneath us with no vote? Or is it the fact that my colleague and MD of Satstreet El Salvador sat down with President Nayib Bukele the other night?
Or does it all just jive together? Who knows. But what I do know is things are moving fast, and it feels like we’re in the later innings of the Fourth Turning. If you haven’t read the book—it’s kind of too late. We’re in it now. The world has changed, and if you’re reading this, you’re either going to come out the other side prosperous, or somewhere in the middle with the rest of the West.
I’m writing this from El Salvador as the sun sets over the beach just steps from my place. It’s hard to be salty down here other than after a day at the beach. I understand that Ontario is the polar opposite vortex.
Sorry for rubbing it in! Please don’t unsubscribe — the weather will turn eventually and you might miss these rants at some point…and maybe I’ll have to put up a paywall by the time you want to come back if bitcoin lags any longer!
Anyway…
Let’s give it up to the gold bugs—seriously, congratulations. We’re in the same boat, thinking the same way. Except our boat wouldn’t sink if we’re moving any serious amount of capital.
But what a run. Gold’s been on fire sitting just shy of $5k this morning while I’m noticing a familiar rotation to silver, copper, platinum, palladium, and whatever else lights up the periodic table.
Watching folks lose their minds over bitcoin’s choppy price action lately has been…informative. A few months of BTC underperformance and suddenly all that ironclad conviction looks way more conditional than advertised. This is exactly what boring markets do to you — they test patience, not theses. Feeling uncomfortable? Go buy a gold coin and call the top for us. Then we can get back to regular programming.
Gold’s market cap exploding like this — pushing toward $35 trillion territory — opens the door wide for bitcoin to climb to levels most of us couldn’t imagine just 12 months ago. The catch-up trade will be brilliant when it kicks in.
We’re already seeing early signs: precious metals investors quietly shaving bits off their gold and silver bars to diversify into bitcoin. Scarcity recognizes scarcity.
Wow, I used to post these every time the US debt was out of control. You can see in a bunch of my letters. This is the first time I’ve seen this! I can’t even screenshot the fact that the US is near $39T in debt without a government popup about fraud. Wild. As much as I want to stay here and riff on this I’ll move on.
The one thing that jumped out to me watching Davos this week is that the people who usually pretend everything is fine are not pretending anymore. The message underneath all the polished panels and soundbites is pretty clear: things are breaking, and they know it.
Not “might break.” Not “are under pressure.” Breaking.
When you’ve got senior leadership standing on a WEF stage openly saying globalization failed the West, that’s not some fringe opinion anymore…that’s the system admitting the experiment didn’t work as advertised. Don’t fight what these folks are telling you.
Offshoring everything. Hollowing out domestic industry. Becoming dependent on rivals for energy, medicine, chips, and manufacturing. It looked efficient on a spreadsheet. It looked great for margins. But now, it looks terrible for sovereignty under this new paradigm.
The shift happening now isn’t ideological, it’s pragmatic. Borders matter again. Supply chains matter again. Political independence suddenly looks a lot more valuable than cheap labor.
That alone tells you we’re not heading back to the world we had from 1995–2019. That chapter is closed.(¯\(ツ)/¯)
Then you’ve got Larry Fink, not quite the rebel, acknowledging something even more important (and very obvious): people don’t trust institutions anymore.
I’m surprised he didn’t fall through the stage as the foundation of the world he sits atop is crumbling.
What he meant was, once trust erodes, the policies don’t matter nearly as much. You can have the smartest economists, the biggest balance sheets, the cleanest slides — if people stop believing you’re acting in their interest, the social contract starts to fray fast.
Populism isn’t a bug. It’s the output of institutional failure. And all these weirdos in Davos know it.
I don’t even want to get into Carney… this guy. Apparently one of the only leaders in history to get a standing ovation after his WEF speech — for selling us out, being the poster boy for the New World Order, turning his back on our neighbor for communist China. Honestly, it was a pretty sick speech…if you had no idea what it all meant you might toss your elbows up with pride. That’s not how I saw it.
Anyway.
This is where Ray Dalio’s lens becomes useful.
His argument is simple but uncomfortable: the global monetary order itself is changing. Fiat currencies and government debt are no longer being treated as unquestioned stores of value by central banks. When that happens, the consequences ripple everywhere.
That’s why gold quietly had one of its strongest years while everyone was focused on tech stocks. That’s why US markets underperformed globally. And that’s why capital flows are starting to matter just as much as trade flows.
Trade wars don’t exist in isolation. They create capital wars. And capital moves fast when confidence cracks
The key takeaway isn’t “buy gold” or “sell stocks.” It’s that the old assumptions are no longer safe. The idea that government debt is automatically risk-free. That reserve currencies are permanent. That central banks can always clean things up without consequences.
History says otherwise. Dalio has spent decades studying what happens next. It’s rarely linear. It’s usually volatile.
And then you’ve got the other side of everything: Trump openly telling us the stock market will double.
At first glance, that sounds completely at odds with Dalio’s warning. But it actually fits the same framework.
Exploding debt and weaker currencies have a way of pushing prices higher without fixing anything underneath. Markets can rally not because conditions are improving, but because the money measuring them is rapidly deteriorating. Both things can be true at the same time.
And that’s really the message coming out of Davos: globalization is retreating, trust in institutions is fraying, the monetary order is under strain, and politics and markets are colliding again in a very real way.
If nothing else, it’s a reminder to stay alert. The rules are changing. Volatility isn’t a phase, it’s a feature of transition periods like this.
No one can predict what the world will look like from here. If someone says they can, run. In a few years, the world will not look like it does today. And positioning yourself accordingly matters more than pretending this is just another news cycle.
In a world of abundance, scarcity matters most.
Bitcoin was literally built for this sh**.
Have a nice weekend.
The WEF has promoted the corruption in our government……….. This corruption is with both parties Democrats and RINOS………. they are not working for America………… https://davidsthoughts.substack.com/p/anouncing-a-new-series-deep-tate?r=2u141v&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true