Hey all - following up from my comment on the chat: Wanted to share some examples of anecdotes that I think were a great way to demonstrate all the concepts we talk about. Real life stories are a great way to communicate a complicated point, and really helped connect dots for me. - Hospital district development and ramifications - Oregon Measure 4-247, separation from new money entering the system - Customer whose son took over the business and wasn't as sharp - Lumber first hand experiences - Old timer at work - Friend who is a big time Astoria developer/HNWI - Homelessness in Portland, the reaction by home buyers - Personal finance (debts paid off, yield chasing, being a productive person who lives beyond his means to seek an interest beyond that of his occupation) There's certainly more but wanted to drop a quick list to help elaborate on the point. Thanks again for all the insights, cant wait to keep truckin ✊️

Hi all - looks to me like there's been a big uptick in bot comment activity, and I imagine its used to feed the AI suggestions and gear the content in the way the bot operators want. It's odd to me that out of nowhere the comments are propagating the gas price credible threat and echoing every fear mongering topic specifically. The credible threat has now come to it's biggest whitleblower it seems 🤣

I've been taking in all the things we talk about in our chats, skool posts, YT livestreams, and it's gotten me thinking about the best way to use real money to acquire cash flowing assets. Invariably we see videos referring to Weimar Germany, so I decided to learn from first hand accounts and see who succeeded. Thats when I learned about this guy Hugo Stinnes a.k.a Inflationskönig a.k.a. The "Inflation King". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Stinnes Long story short he accumulated hard money like Gold in foreign vaults. But when the hyperinflation came, he didn't turn his gold over in exchange for assets. {See image attached} He borrowed against his gold, used the loans to buy factories and other productive cash flowing assets for cheap (priced in gold) and that cash flow paid off his loan. This came from me watching lots of folks prudently advising to build wealth in precious metals, but then I always wondered what happens when you sell it. Let's say you have a small amount of gold: you turn it over in hard times for food; but then youre left without the gold. The food you buy, or clothes, or housing payment you make eventually gets used up or depreciated. What I learned was that a huge advantage was to find a way to borrow against real money in times of debasement. So my open question is this: In the US most brokers require ~$100k-$500k min for SBLOC to borrow against. So youd need a lot of IAU to do this in the future. Other than this, do people know about what other platforms offer for services like this? Are there ones that are more flexible or do people like us in this community just have to knuckle down and get ourselves over that wealth hurdle to have access to security lending products like this? I'm trying to learn what options I have out there to take credit against assets like Common Stock or shares of funds that track real money prices like IAU, GLD, SLV, etc

Short thought here: I could see the growth of China leading to the Chinese diving into luxuries just as the US opens robotic factories that leverage 100% depreciation on Year 1 as Trump allowed. Whats cheaper than workers who compete by sleeping on the floor? Tax advantaged mechanics that take no breaks at all. I feel as though all those who fear monger about China taking over miss this entirely, wheras I see it as inevitable. Let me know your thoughts below

Bernankes speech seems to be playing out. I've always suspected Japan as the most likely candidate to have foreign debt that the US buys. Could this be beginning already? https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/us-treasury-informed-banks-that-it-may-intervene-yen-source-says-2026-07-31/