An Earthquake Is Coming — And America Will Feel It Hardest

I’ve known Francis Hunt for years. He mentored me early on when I was still finding my way through the noise of markets and money. We stayed in touch. We still talk. And right now he’s helping me plan the practical steps of relocating outside the United States in the years ahead. That decision isn’t emotional. It’s mathematical.

What we discussed today is the same signal we’ve been tracking for a long time. The bond market is losing credibility. Long-end yields have already pushed into multi-decade highs. Trust in sovereign paper as collateral is breaking in real time. Central banks continue to accumulate physical gold and silver while the paper markets are still used to manage perception and buy time. When the quality of collateral collapses, the assets that can’t be printed become the only ones that still matter.

We’ve been calling the next leg higher in gold and silver for years. The setup is clearer now than it’s ever been. Organic physical demand from the official sector, combined with the failure of government bonds to function as the world’s risk-free asset, is forcing an organic revaluation. Paper markets can suppress price for a while. When the paper claims finally meet real tightness, the move is rarely gentle. It’s discontinuous.

The same structural forces that support gold and silver also create explosive opportunities in select crypto assets once the liquidity cycle turns, but that turn only arrives after stress is allowed to build.

The rest of the world is already building parallel systems. Gold is moving back toward the center of settlement and reserve strategy. New payment and trade rails are being constructed outside the old dollar-centered plumbing.

America is going to get hit the hardest. The United States carries the largest debt load, the deepest dependence on continuous foreign and domestic demand for its paper, and the most aggressive tax regime in the developed world. That tax burden isn’t going to ease when the bond market begins to fail and inflation accelerates again. It’s going to intensify. Governments under fiscal stress don’t suddenly become restrained. They reach for every available tool.

This is the part we didn’t discuss much on record, but it’s the practical reality driving my own decisions. Slowly cutting ties to the United States is no longer optional for people who want to protect capital. The tax code is already confiscatory by historical standards.

When yields stay elevated, interest costs explode, and the political pressure to fund the gap rises, the response will be higher taxes, new emergency measures, and in the worst case the use of existing emergency powers to reach private assets. Profits that look safe on paper can be taxed into irrelevance or frozen under the banner of stability. The legal architecture already exists.

The earthquake is coming. Parallel systems are being built. Gold and silver remain the clearest hard-asset expression of that shift. Select crypto will have its moments once liquidity returns. But the people who treat the United States as a permanent safe harbor while holding large unrealized or realized gains are underestimating how quickly the rules can change when the bond market stops cooperating.

Francis and I see the same map. The difference is that I’m now acting on the jurisdictional side of it. The window to position capital, reduce exposure, and build optionality outside the highest-tax, highest-debt jurisdiction is still open. It won’t stay open indefinitely.