The Dollar Vigilante: AI, War, Markets, and the End of Easy Illusions

You might not know from my walk and talks that the Dollar Vigilante is . I’ve talked about a lot of stuff over the past decade while walking my dogs, but you might not know that the Dollar Vigilante is actually a financial newsletter that I started around 2016 with my business partner Ed Bugos.  I don’t remember the exact numbers, but when we first started, gold was around 700 or less. Silver was probably 5 or 10 dollars. Bitcoin didn’t even exist in any meaningful way to most people. It kind of did, but I didn’t even hear about it until 2011. We recommended it at around 3 dollars. Since then we’ve seen a massive shift in everything. This is what the Dollar Vigilante is about. This is what our newsletter is about. We’ve had some incredible calls over the years and I wanted to have Ed Bugos on the show again because there is a lot going on this year and it feels like one of those moments where things can get very strange very quickly. For example, US stock markets are basically at all time highs again even though we are in what is supposed to be a war cycle and major geopolitical tension. Even Trump recently said he expected that when the attack on Iran happened, markets would fall 25%. That didn’t happen. They dipped a bit and then went right back to highs. He also mentioned oil could go to 200 or 300 dollars. Oil did spike, but it is still far below those panic levels and is currently around the 100 dollar range depending on the day. So, there’s a lot to unpack. Stocks, oil, gold, silver, crypto, and this strange disconnect between reality and markets. In today’s video, Ed and I talk about a number of things.  First of all, what the Dollar Vigilante really means at its core. A lot of people hear “dollar collapse” and assume it means an immediate crash in the currency. That is not really what we have been describing for years. What we have been talking about is something slower and more structural. The dollar has been losing purchasing power for decades. If you go back to when the Federal Reserve system really took shape in the early 1900s and when gold backing was removed later on, you are looking at a long term erosion rather than a sudden collapse. The number that always stands out is that the dollar has lost over 98 percent of its purchasing power over time. That is not speculation. That is just what happens when you expand supply and suppress the cost of capital for decades. But what people miss is that the collapse is not just versus other currencies. It is versus real things. Housing, food, energy, equities, everything that matters in daily life keeps getting more expensive in dollar terms. That is why we call it a dollar collapse theme. It is not a single moment. It is a process that stretches over generations. We also chat about something that really stands out to both of us. The market cycle we are in now is one of the longest sustained bull markets in history when you adjust for interventions. Since the 2008 crisis and really since the founding of this newsletter in 2010, we have basically been in an upward market environment with only brief and shallow corrections. The Federal Reserve response after 2008 changed everything. QE1, QE2, QE3 and then the massive expansion during 2020 completely reshaped how markets behave. Trillions of dollars were created and interest rates were pushed to zero for long periods. That kind of intervention does not just inflate prices. It changes behavior. It changes risk perception. It changes how investors think about downturns because every time there is even a small correction, there is an expectation that policy will step in. But Ed makes an important point that often gets missed in these discussions. Even though this has been heavily inflated by monetary policy, there is still real productivity underneath it, especially in technology. Profit margins expanded significantly in big tech over the last decade. Companies found ways to increase revenue without proportional increases in labor costs. So what we are seeing is not just fake prices. It is a mixture of real innovation and artificial liquidity. That combination is what makes this period so unusual. The core idea is that we are sitting in a system where almost every major asset class is stretched in some way. Stocks are concentrated and expensive. Bonds are under pressure. Oil is volatile due to geopolitical risk. Crypto is transitioning through a maturity phase. And AI is driving both real growth and speculative excess at the same time. At some point one of these pressures tends to trigger a broader repricing. That is what The Dollar Vigilante has always focused on. Not predicting exact timing, but understanding the structure beneath the surface. Because most of what looks stable in the moment is actual