Author: jwithrow

Yesterday we walked through the forty-year era of falling interest rates and cheap credit that shaped the American economy from the ground up.

It was the era of debt, deficits, offshoring, and mass-financialization. I call it the Age of Paper Wealth.

Today I want to talk about why I believe that era ended in 2022… and what the reversal looks like in real time.

After more than a decade of near-zero interest rates, quantitative easing (QE), and then two rounds of extraordinary money creation during the Covid hysteria, consumer price inflation came roaring back to life in 2021.

Suddenly, we saw our grocery bills and other daily necessities start to skyrocket in price… and that gave Federal Reserve (Fed) Chairman Jerome Powell the cover he needed to pave the way for the greatest economic reorganization in a century.

In 2022, Powell’s Fed began raising the Federal Funds Rate at the most aggressive pace in its history. The Fed’s target rate went from effectively zero to over 5% in just eighteen months.

But that’s only part of the story… because the Fed only controls short-term interest rates.

Continue reading “Why the Age of Paper Wealth Ended in 2022 And What’s Replacing It”

Friends,

Spring is in full bloom up here in the mountains of Virginia. The trees have come to life, the wildflowers stand tall, and a majestic green covers the landscape.

I always reflect on how Spring represents the blossoming of new life and the celebration of youth… and I think there are parallels throughout our civilization as well.

And speaking of celebrating youth, our local homeschool co-op held its closing ceremony for this year’s first semester yesterday. All the families gathered for some light refreshments, and each homeschool class gave everyone a brief overview of what they’ve been doing for the past several months.

Then the kids had the opportunity to stand up and share their favorite moments and show off a little bit.

The drama class performed several short skits. The journalism class showed off the podcast they developed. The trades class demonstrated the wall they wired with electrical wiring, switches, and outlets. One kid – maybe 10 years old – hammered out a piano rendition for us. Another played the ukulele. And then my daughter sang a song acapella for the group. Here she is:

I’m amazed at how talented and independent-minded these kids are. And the fact that they are learning real-world skills with no emphasis placed on meaningless memorization gives me hope for their future… which will take place in an economy much different from the one we have known.

To that end, a core thesis that we’ve been building on here at The Phoenician League, and the thesis that informs much of our investment strategy, is the observation that the Age of Paper Wealth is over.

I’ve spilled tons of ink fleshing out this theme in the monthly newsletter that goes out to Phoenician League members. And I’ve attempted to explain it in some degree of detail in these e-letters as well, though it occurred to me that I haven’t done so in a while.

I know some may hear me talk about the Age of Paper Wealth ending, and they think I’m referring to paper money being phased out. But that’s not at all the case. This story is much bigger than that.

I’ll explain by starting at the beginning…

Continue reading “What Is the Age of Paper Wealth?”

Yesterday we discussed the structural shift within the financial markets at the central bank level… but noted that it hasn’t received much attention in the private markets.

The world’s central banks have spent years systematically accumulating gold – even after the Keynesians running these institutions spent decades telling us that gold was a pet rock.

Well, the scope of their accumulation is now clear in the aggregate data — gold has overtaken Treasuries as the top central bank reserve for the first time in thirty years. This speaks volumes… but private investors are largely unaware of this new financial era.

Today I want to walk you through what it means for us — specifically, how the themes we are plugged into at The Phoenician League are positioned to benefit from exactly this kind of environment.

Continue reading “Gold Remonetization and Real Asset Investing: The New Financial Era”

Something big happened last week…

Last Friday – Good Friday – was a relatively quiet day with the US equity markets closed and most investors away from their screens for a long holiday weekend. In this cover of silence, a striking data point surfaced.

For the first time in thirty years, global central bank gold reserves overtook US Treasury securities in total valuation. This is telling.

As I write, the world’s central banks collectively hold approximately $4 trillion worth of gold. That’s compared to $3.9 trillion in US Treasuries (bills/notes/bonds). Let’s think about what this means…

For the past several decades, the US dollar and US Treasuries were the two central pillars of the global monetary architecture. Everything else was secondary.

That arrangement just changed. Not dramatically, and not in a way that will drastically impact asset values this week or this month. But this is a key structural shift in the global financial system – one that CNBC is unlikely to ever mention.

Gold surpassing US Treasuries as central bank reserves didn’t happen overnight. This is the result of a long-term trend that we’ve been covering in these pages for three years now. I call it gold remonetization.

Continue reading “Gold Overtakes Treasuries… and What It Means”

Here at The Phoenician League, we’ve been making the case for real assets for years now. And for most of that time, the polite response from mainstream financial circles was a kind of patient skepticism — the sort of smile that says “that’s amusing, but we don’t do those quirky things here”.

And I understand why.

For those who came up during the Age of Paper Wealth, gold was a “barbarous relic”. John Maynard Keynes said so. So did Warren Buffett, in so many words.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin was just a silly speculation for libertarians and tech geeks… Uranium was irrelevant because nuclear was dead… And royalty companies were massively risky. To the mainstream view, the serious money was in the stocks that you could find covered in the Wall Street Journal and on CNBC. And the best way to own those stocks was through some kind of financially engineered fund.

That consensus in mainstream circles lasted for decades… but it’s now breaking down.

To me, this is one of the most important investment stories of the decade. The era of maximum financialization is over. The Age of Paper Wealth has ended.

What the Age of Paper Wealth Cost Us

For roughly four decades, the global economy ran an experiment.

The experiment was simple: what happens if you make finance the dominant force in economic life? What happens when the most talented people go to Wall Street instead of building things? What happens when corporate strategy is driven by buybacks and multiple expansion rather than investment in productive capacity?

Granted, I don’t think they saw this as an experiment. I think there were a lot of true believers out there. The story of Jack Welch’s rise at General Electric (GE) is a great example.

Regardless, we now know what the financialization experiment has reaped.

Asset prices went up — dramatically, in many cases. The people who owned financial assets got wealthy. But the underlying economy — the physical, productive, tangible economy — was hollowed out in the process. That wrecked the middle class.

Manufacturing left. Infrastructure aged. The skills required to build and maintain real things became scarce. And the financial system became dependent on an ever-expanding supply of cheap money to keep the whole structure from contracting.

That era is over. And we’re now seeing the assets that were ignored for forty years begin to reassert their value.

And here’s the thing…

Continue reading “The End of Paper Wealth and the Rise of Real Assets”

Friends – happy Monday!

Spring is starting to show its face up here in the mountains of Virginia. The snow has melted, and many of the trees are starting to bud.

It will probably take another 30 days or so, but we have a weeping cherry willow tree on the property that blooms the brightest pink for roughly one week every Spring. I always look forward to it.

To me, Spring represents new life and new beginnings. I’m always humbled by the logic of nature’s cycles.

And if we turn our attention to the world of finance, we can see evidence of new beginnings everywhere we look. If we pay attention to the signs, that is.

The Strait of Hormuz — the narrow waterway that carries roughly a fifth of the world’s oil supply — is now effectively closed. As a result, oil is back above $100 a barrel for the first time in four years.

Meanwhile, gold is holding firm above $5,000 an ounce. For context, gold was just over $3,000 per ounce at this time last year.

And the US Treasury, which has been trying to manage a great economic reordering, is now in a tough spot.

If oil prices remain elevated, that will put a drag on economic activity. And since Congress has not done anything to stop all the waste, fraud, and abuse uncovered by the DOGE team, the US government is still running a massive fiscal deficit… which puts upward pressure on interest rates.

At the same time, the stock market has pulled back from its recent highs, and many stocks (like software companies) have fallen dramatically. Now narratives are shifting by the day.

If you’re watching all of this from inside a conventional portfolio — heavy on financial assets, light on real assets, and anchored to the hope that the Fed will eventually cut rates and rescue valuations — this environment might feel troubling.

But for those of us who recognized the trends and positioned ourselves with real assets investing, the current climate feels like confirmation.

So I’d like to step back from the headlines today and talk about what it means to invest wisely in a changing world.

Continue reading “Volatility vs. Risk: Why Real Assets Investing is the Smart Play in Today’s Economy”

After a relatively calm start to the year, the financial landscape has grown more turbulent over the past week.

War headlines continue to dominate the news cycle. We’re seeing talk of $100 and even $200 oil prices.

At the same time, markets are trying to digest the implications of a rapidly escalating AI arms race. And investors are watching the stock market pull back as uncertainty ripples through the system.

For many investors, the current landscape is confusing. How does one go about investing during market uncertainty?

One day the headlines say artificial intelligence is about to transform the global economy. The next day markets are selling off as geopolitical tensions rise somewhere across the world.

The truth is that we’re living through one of those rare periods where multiple structural shifts are unfolding at the same time.

A new technological revolution is accelerating… a new geopolitical order is emerging… and the financial system itself is slowly adjusting to both of those forces.

When this kind of transition happens, markets can become volatile and difficult to interpret. Short-term price movements begin to look chaotic. Narratives change from week to week. And investors who are relying on traditional financial advice often find themselves reacting to events rather than preparing for them.

At The Phoenician League, our comprehensive investment strategy was built specifically to navigate the uncertain world that’s unfolding before us.

Rather than trying to predict every twist and turn in the news cycle, our approach focuses on positioning our capital around the structural forces that are shaping the next era of the global economy.

That means understanding how artificial intelligence is transforming infrastructure and energy demand. It means recognizing how geopolitical tensions are reshaping supply chains and resource markets.

And, most importantly, it means building a portfolio that includes real assets and income investments designed to bulletproof our money in uncertain environments– in addition to our strategic equity portfolio.

Continue reading “Investing During Market Uncertainty”

After snow and ice covered the ground for the better part of three weeks, Winter’s finally starting to break up here in the mountains of Virginia.

A host of little robins have found their way to our property, each content to hop around and search for worms. That’s a sure sign that Spring will be arriving soon.

On the macroeconomic front, our 2026 Investment Outlook is falling into place.

For the first time in several decades, the market is now valuing real assets and raw materials (gold, silver, copper, uranium, industrial metals, and the infrastructure that produces/delivers them) at a premium to the financialized paper claims layered on top of them (futures, ETFs, derivatives, REITs, and mortgage-backed securities).

This is the Age of Paper Wealth crumbling right before our eyes.

Continue reading “Portfolio Strategy for the Great Re-pricing”

Friends,

I hope the new year is off to a great start for you. It’s certainly been a winter wonderland up here in the mountains of Virginia. The ground has been covered in ice all week, and temperatures have been around zero degrees Fahrenheit every night.

This environment reminds me of why it’s wise to keep extra provisions on hand and to invest in alternative energy sources.

We’ve been routinely enjoying old-fashioned fires in the fireplace up here. And we just added a second 500-gallon propane tank to our homestead last month to make sure that the generator always has plenty of fuel.

In addition, I’ve been running my solar shed on a Jackery backup battery system since the solar panels will be buried in ice for the foreseeable future. If you haven’t seen these devices yet, they are incredible. You can get more information on them at: https://www.jackery.com/.

Here’s a picture of the frozen solar shed with our bare-faced cliffs looking down in all their majesty:

On the investment front, everything is playing out according to our initial 2026 investment outlook. Gold has already surpassed $5,200 an ounce while silver, copper, and uranium mining shares have gone parabolic – along with other investments in critical minerals.

Continue reading “Winter Preparedness, Real Assets, and Advanced Wealth Strategies for 2026”

Hey friends – we’re going to talk about our 2026 investment outlook today. But first – happy New Year!

I certainly hope that you had a wonderful holiday season. It’s such a magical time of year.

Here at the Withrow Estate, my daughter Maddie claims that we had the best Christmas ever. I love seeing the excitement in her and her brother Isaiah’s eyes when they walk downstairs on Christmas morning.

Maddie is eleven years old now… so I’ve come to terms with the fact that her lens on Christmas morning will likely change here in a few years. I have mixed feelings about that. But I’m learning to live in the present and cherish the moments as they come.

Speaking of moments, the kids got a drone for Christmas… and it’s pretty slick. This thing can fly up to 120 meters into the sky, which is about 394 feet. And it features a camera that can swivel to take some incredible pictures.

Here’s one the kids took of our property:

I’m amazed at how sharp this is. You can see the old red barn in the bottom right of the picture, and the original farmhouse to the left of it. The clouds are striking against the crisp blue sky. And it looks like there’s a little snow on top of the mountains in the background. That wasn’t evident when looking up from the ground.

We’re still learning how to operate the drone effectively… with an emphasis on not spooking the neighbors. But we plan to take this thing on some hikes in the area to capture more stunning pictures here in the new year. I’ll share those with you as they come.

And speaking of the new year, I’ve spent a considerable amount of time reading, thinking, and assessing the prominent trends that will feed into our 2026 investment outlook.

Continue reading “2026 Investment Outlook: Real Assets, Rates, AI & Metals”