Last week, something happened in China

that has never happened before. The

biggest exchange traded fund in the

whole country that ordinary Chinese

people put their money into is now a

gold ETF. So, let me explain. Here in

the US, we have something called the S&P

500. That's where most people invest

their money, represented by ETFs like

VO. Well, China has an equivalent of

that fund as well. That's this fund

right here. This is China's S&P 500. And

just recently, another ETF surpassed it.

That ETF is this one, Guan Yu Gold ETF.

It's now $13 billion versus $12 billion

in stocks. So, in the second biggest

economy in the world, the biggest chunk

of retail investor money is now sitting

in gold. Now, what's interesting is that

this is happening while gold prices are

kind of crashing. Remember, gold peaked

at around $5,600 an ounce earlier this

year, and then it went down almost 30%

below $4,000. And while that was

happening, China was buying way more

gold. And it's not just ordinary retail

people from China. It's also the

People's Bank of China. They just bought

gold for the 20th month in a row, which

is the longest streak going back to at

least 2015. In June, they bought almost

15 tons of gold, which is also the

biggest monthly buy since October 2023.

China also imported roughly 700 tons of

gold in just the first 5 months of this

year and over 14,000 tons combined since

2015. And it's not just the People's

Bank of China, it's also the world's

central banks that are buying gold as

well. 41 tons net in May alone. There's

also countries buying gold. Countries

like Poland, Usbekiststan, Kazakhstan,

everyone's buying gold. And in a couple

weeks on July 24th, four of China's

biggest banks are shutting down retail

gold trading. Which means if you're an

ordinary Chinese citizen and you want to

buy gold, China wants to make sure

you're buying the real thing and not

just the paper representation of gold.

Now again, if this were just China, this

would be a huge story. But two weeks

ago, the Treasury Secretary of the

United States was in New York and he

published a Wall Street Journal op-ed.

And that paper basically outlined what

the US is planning to do. And what it's

planning to do is a return to an

economic system named after Alexander

Hamilton. The treasurer has been to Fort

Knox and I am happy to say all gold is

present and accounted for. Uh the US has

the largest pile of gold in the world,

over a trillion dollars at current

market value.

>> Scott Besson's plan for the US economy

is what's referred to as Hamiltonian

economics. And that paper explains every

single chart I just showed you and all

the things we'll talk about in this

video, which is why China's buying, why

central banks won't stop buying, and why

some analysts calculate the math of the

global economy only balances out when

gold reaches $38,000

per ounce. That's kind of crazy to think

about. So, in this video, I want to

explain what's going on, what this means

for the price of gold in our portfolios

in the future. So, with that said, this

is going to be a very interesting video.

So, let's get into it. Hi, my name is

Andre Jick. Hope you're doing well. Come

for the finance and stay for the gold.

So, I want to give credit to Luke Grman

from FFTT. He put out a brilliant piece

about this where he connected all these

dots including Scott Besson's op-ed

where he talked about Hamiltonian

economics which is basically an outline

for how a country becomes the richest

and most powerful country in the world.

It's how countries become superpowers

and every country that ever got rich did

it this same way. And how they do it is

they cheat, right? They use protective

policies and taxes. And after they win,

they preach to the rest of the world

that other countries should trade freely

and not manipulate their prices. They're

like, "Hey guys, I'm done cheating. I

won. You can't cheat anymore." Okay,

here's how it actually works. We have to

go back to December 5th, 1791.

That's when Alexander Hamilton,

America's first Treasury Secretary, the

guy on the $10 bill, basically goes to

Congress and he creates this plan which

is based on his report on manufacturers.

Now, that report set the standard for

how the US would operate for the next

150 years. Here's some background. By

the way, at the time, the US was

essentially a startup country. It had

about 4 million people, most of which

were farmers, and it had virtually no

factories. Almost everything that was

manufactured, like tools and weapons,

that was imported from the British

Empire. The same empire that the US just

fought a war to get away from. So

Hamilton creates this plan, and he says,

"A nation that cannot make the things it

needs is not actually an independent

nation. It doesn't matter what your

constitution says. If your economy

depends on your adversary, then you're

just a colony still with extra steps,

right? So, his solution was a two-part

plan. The first part of the plan was

tariffs or taxes on foreign goods. The

second part were subsidies for American

industry. The idea was to protect young

American companies which he called

infant industries until they got big

enough and efficient enough to compete

with anyone in the world. This became

the US operating system for about 150

years. And thanks to the US using this

master plan throughout all the 1800s,

the US was able to go from a country of

farmers with no factories to a country

that became the biggest industrial power

in the world. In fact, Trump actually

gave a speech about it earlier this year

where he referenced a return to that

system.

>> As I said in my speech last week,

instead of taxing our citizens to enrich

foreign nations, we should be tariffing

and taxing foreign nations to enrich our

citizens. Does that make sense? Right.

>> Anyway, that's the system he's referring

to here. This is part of that

Hamiltonian economics, which is what

makes countries rich and powerful. Now,

inevitably though, this plan has always

led to the destruction of every single

empire in history where another country

rose up and took power. And here's how

this is happening to the United States

right now. Now, before I get into that,

there's something I've been meaning to

talk about because it affects all of us,

which is that the American health care

system can be tough in a lot of ways.

And one of the hardest things about it

is just how hard it is to book an

appointment to see a healthcare

provider. In fact, the average wait time

to see a new doctor in the US is 31

days. And in some cities, it's over 40.

And as soon as you call, you get put on

hold. You find out they don't take your

insurance. And then you have to start

all over. And I'm guilty of this, too,

because I've been putting off an annual

physical for almost a year because every

time I thought about booking it, the

excuse was that I'm too busy. I'll do it

after the next video, next month, for

sure. which is kind of crazy because

I'll check my portfolio maybe five times

a day, but not the most important asset

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the link is down below. And now, let's

get back to the video.

So, here's how a country goes from being

the global empire to another country

taking over that status. The most recent

example in history is of course the

British Empire, which for them started

in 1846.

That's when Britain got rid of something

called the corn laws and it converted to

the religion of preaching free trade to

the world. They're like, "Guys, we won

the game. Let's not cheat anymore and

let's sell stuff to each other at fair

market prices." And all the other

countries are like, "Yeah, well, you're

saying that now after you cheated."

Hamiltonian economics, right? High

tariffs, subsidies, protective policies.

So now you don't want anyone else to

cheat. Okay. Now by 1931 Britain stopped

being the global empire. Why? That's

because Britain slowly de-industrialized

meaning their factories closed, industry

moved to other countries and by 1931 the

British Empire was done. The global

leadership was transferred to the US and

it became the global superpower. That

process took about 85 years and it's why

most people don't really notice this

happening, but it's happening to the US

right now. And for the US, it started in

1971.

That's the year that the dollar came off

the gold standard, which eventually led

to factories leaving the US. Now, here's

a question, though. Why do factories

have to leave? Like, why does this

de-industrialization process have to

happen? And it happens because of

something called securitization. It's

when a country creates a paper market

for itself. Which means for that

country, more and more of its income

starts to come from shuffling paper

around instead of making real things.

Now, all empires eventually financialize

their economies by creating stock

markets and financial products. But in

doing so, that creates all the

structural incentives for the beginning

of the end of their empire. Because when

you financialize, you're like, let's

increase the value of our country. How

do we do that? Forget about building

things. That takes money and risk. It's

expensive. I have a better idea. Let's

buy our own stuff like our own stocks.

That's what's known in the stock market

as share buybacks. And also, let's

increase our income. How do we do that?

By lowering our costs. Let's use cheaper

parts imported from somewhere else. And

let's not give the job to the American

worker because they're expensive. Give

it to someone in another country that

makes less. Boom. Factories leave. Stock

prices go up. You become richer and

richer on paper. And as you were doing

it, you were stripping the nation of its

ability to make stuff. And given a long

enough period of time, like over 85

years of doing that, you become naked.

You have no capacity to build things

like weapons to defend yourself with.

And if and when a conflict breaks out,

where you're supposed to protect your

own country's interests, you're left

exposed because you can't. You're rich

with your own madeup funny money, but

you've got nothing real that's left of

your economy. And the people who make

your stuff for you, they're your

adversary. and your enemy is not going

to take your funny money to build bombs

for you so you can police the world.

Okay, but in giving up this industry,

what does a country get in return? What

we got is infinite choice to buy lots of

different brands and we can buy stuff

for cheap, right? Here's how that looks

like. Since the year 2000, the price of

TVs went down 98%. The price of toys

went down 74%. Software went down 73%.

But everything that couldn't be shipped

from China, that went the other way.

That's why housing went up 111%. Child

care went up 159%. College tuition went

up almost 200%. Hospital services went

up 281%. Because that's the trade we

made. America was sold off and we

hollowed out the economy from the inside

and the asset owners got richer on

paper. Consumers got unlimited choices

to buy cheap stuff and in exchange the

sovereign or the nation itself gave up

its industrial base and the kind of

high-paying jobs that used to let one

income buy a house. Right? That's what

happens to an empire when it

financializes its economy for almost a

hundred years. So now the US is looking

around and we're like wait stop. How do

we command Z undo this? Like how do we

get our stuff back? It's going to come

back. It's going to come roaring back.

It's all going to come roaring back.

We're going to put tariffs on outside

countries and outside people that really

mean us harm. They want to Well, they

mean us harm, but they basically want to

make their country good. Look at what

others do.

>> That's what the people in Trump's

administration are trying to posture

with. They're trying to go back to this

Hamiltonian economic system. Okay. But

how do we know that this is what they're

really trying to do? And how we know

this is because in January of this year,

Jameson Greer, who's the US trade

representative, gave a speech at Davos

where he talked about the United States

going back to that Hamiltonian economic

system. And then 2 weeks later, the US

attacked Iran and the news cycle moved

on and forgot about it. But then on June

23rd, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant

was in New York and he put out that Wall

Street oped paper literally named

Hamilton inspires Trump's economic

statecraft and in that paper he talked

about five core principles of what he

wants the US to do. The first one is

economic security starts with national

capacity. Meaning we need to be able to

make things again. We need factories.

Two, America's openness will be matched

by reciprocity. Meaning, if you let us

sell our stuff in your country, you can

sell your stuff in ours. Okay. Three,

America will rewrite the rules of the

next economy. That's fluff. I don't

really know what that means. Four,

financial leadership is a central

instrument of statecraftraft. aka you

better use our dollars and price your

oil in them and buy our treasuries and

our stable coins if we say so or else

five economic statecraftraft must serve

the American people whatever that means.

Now all of this sounds really promising

but it creates a problem because from

those five principles it means the US is

trying to do three things rebuild the

factories protect the people of Main

Street and keep the dollar strong. Now,

according to Luke Groman from FFTT, he

says that those things cannot be true at

the same time. You can't rebuild

American industry and put Main Street

first and keep the dollar as strong and

overvalued as it is today. You can only

pick two of them, and you have to

sacrifice one. For example, if you want

to rebuild the factories, aka bring back

the jobs and wages and protect the

people of Main Street, aka keep prices

low, then the dollar has to come down a

lot because it's the expensive dollar

that makes American factories

uncompetitive in the first place. So,

you lose the strong dollar. There's no

other way. Now, if you want to protect

Main Street and keep the dollar strong,

that means cheap imports keep flooding

in and factories never come back. That's

literally the deal that America's been

running for the last 50 years. So you

lose the factories and it becomes

impossible to re-industriize. Now, if

you want to rebuild the factories and

keep the dollar strong, then the only

way American industry can compete

against cheap imports is if you wall it

off with huge tariffs paid by consumers,

which means prices go up on everything.

Inflation goes up and the cost of living

eats society alive. It's a triangle

where you can only pick two. You have to

give one up. And according to Luke

Groman, he says Scott Bessent is way too

smart not to know this. And he's already

told us more or less which one of those

three he's going to give up. And the one

he's most likely going to give up is

going to be the dollar. Except there's a

really clever way of doing it, which is

to use another asset as an escape valve.

Something that is a neutral reserve

asset. an asset that is not one

country's currency and something that

can absorb the dollar's price adjustment

without blowing up the current economic

system. And there's really only one

asset on Earth with a couple thousand

years of experience doing that, which is

of course gold. Which brings us back to

China. Because as it turns out, China

knows all of this. And China's been

building that system since as early as

2009. So here's what happened in 2009.

Right after the global financial crisis,

Lehman Brothers just blew up. The whole

Western financial system got shut down

and the Federal Reserve was printing

money like crazy to save it. And China

is just sitting there holding trillions

of dollars of US treasuries watching all

of this thinking, "Wait, wait, hold on.

Our whole national savings account is an

IOU from a country that just printed

unlimited amounts of money for a problem

they just created, devaluing our

wallets."

So in March of 2009, the governor of

China's central bank published an

official paper called reform the

international monetary system. This was

China's Jerome Powell basically saying

quote the desirable goal of reforming

the international monetary system is to

create an international reserve currency

that is disconnected from individual

nations and is able to remain stable in

the long run. thus removing the inherent

deficiencies caused by using creditbased

national currencies. What this means is

the world's savings account should not

be stored in one country's funny money.

Right? We need something neutral,

something no one controls.

Then the guy in charge of China's

central bank was like, "Maybe we should

revive that one idea from the 1940s from

a guy named John Maynard Kanes." And the

idea he was referring to was a neutral

international currency called the

Bangor. The Bangor was based on a basket

of about 30 commodities and its whole

job was to keep trade between all the

nations of the world perfectly balanced.

Right. Long story short, the way that it

was supposed to work was if you ran a

trade deficit, the system punished you.

If you ran a big trade surplus, the

system also punished you. Under Kane's

system, the whole game of one country

hollowing out another country's

factories would never happen because the

system would automatically correct it.

Now, at the time of this proposal, the

United States was like, "Nah, we're

good." Why? Because in 1944, the country

that was running the giant trade surplus

against the world was the United States.

The US was the China of the world in

1944. We sold everything to everybody.

And so we didn't want a system that

punished surpluses. So Kane's idea got

thrown out and instead the world got the

dollar system. How do we know this? We

know this because the US trade

representative Jameson Greer literally

said all of this at Davos.

>> Many of Kane's most creative ideas for

how to deal with this problem uh were

left on the cutting room floor at

Bretton Woods. He wanted a global

currency. Uh things like that. Uh the

system that emerged did not have a

completely structural mechanism to

discourage uh imbalances. And to be

honest, the United States had a big

trade surplus at the time. So maybe that

had something to do with it.

>> That's what he said. It's kind of ironic

that in 2009,

China quoted Canes to the world and

said, "The dollar system is broken. We

need a neutral reserve asset." And

nobody listened. And then 17 years

later, the United States is now on the

losing end of the system that it

designed. And it's now the US that's

quoting the same economist making the

same argument. Right? The point is

they're telling us the system needs a

neutral reserve asset. And by the way,

it's not just China asking for this. In

2010,

the president of the World Bank, Robert

Zolic, who was the former US Treasury

official, wrote an article in the

Financial Times saying the world should

consider using gold, quote, as an

international reference point for the

monetary system. In 2016, a guy named

Ken Rogoff, who was the ex- head

economist at the IMF, he wrote that

emerging markets should convert a big

chunk of the trillions of dollars they

hold in reserves into gold. And then he

wrote, "Maybe the most important thing

you'll learn from this video." He said,

"Gold, quote, despite being in nearly

fixed supply, does not have this problem

because there is no limit on its price."

So tying all of this together thanks to

L Groman Kanes in 1944, China in 2009,

the World Bank in 2010, the IMF's former

chief economist in 2016, and now Greer

and Bessant in 2026.

The point is they're all versions of

basically the same thing, which is a

return to a neutral reserve asset to

balance global trade. And there's only

one asset that's ever actually done that

job. Now, the problem is gold cannot do

that job at today's prices because it's

just too low. For the math to work, the

price has to be much, much higher. The

estimate for how much higher gold has to

be is $38,000 per ounce roughly. That's

when the biggest trade imbalance, which

is with China, would be balanced. Okay.

So, if this were to be true, and if this

theory is partially right, then how

would we know? What's the evidence? And

what would we start to see? What we'd

probably start to see is countries and

central banks buying a lot of gold. And

it just so happens that's exactly what

we've been seeing. Remember those charts

from the beginning of the video? Watch

what happens when you look at them

again. Now that you know what the plan

might be, the People's Bank of China

buying gold for 20 straight months,

including their biggest purchase in

almost 3 years, while the price was

crashing 30%. That's a central bank that

does not care what the price is because

they're not trying to make money.

They're accumulating an asset that they

think will probably run the world in the

future. Also, world central banks as a

group have been buying roughly a,000

tons of gold per year for 3 years

straight, which for context is about

double the pace of the decade before.

Then there's also countries like Poland,

Usbekiststan, Kazakhstan, China, and

notice who's selling. Almost nobody. And

remember that paper gold ban that China

just did? It starts to make a lot more

sense because if gold is going to be the

neutral reserve asset, the last thing

you would want is a giant Ponzi scheme

of paper claims sitting on top of the

real metal suppressing its price

allegedly. Right? China wants its

citizens holding the real thing. Coins,

bars, ETFs backed by bullion in a vault

somewhere, right? not somebody's IUS

with leverage and a futures contract on

top of it. So it kind of looks like then

that China is deporizing gold before

this possible revaluation. And while all

this is happening, by the way, look at

the gold exports for the US. This shows

something called non-monetary gold

exports, which is a line that's going

right up, right? the biggest increase in

the history of the data and it started

right around the fourth quarter of last

year which happens to be right after US

and Chinese officials got together. What

this means then is the United States is

literally shipping gold to China right

now in record amounts. Luke Grman

predicted this. He said that under this

Hamiltonian system of economics, the US

will have to export a lot of gold in USD

terms to China for some time. It's

already happening. Now, hold on. Where

does this $38,000

an ounce number come from? Cuz I know it

sounds insane. Here's how they arrived

at this number. You take China's last

trade surplus, which is around $1.2

trillion or so. Now, China's gold

imports last year were 940 tons. And if

you divide the surplus by those tons,

meaning if China were to settle its

trade surplus in gold, the price where

the math balances that would be roughly

$38,000

per ounce. That's how that number was

made. Trade surplus divided by gold.

Now, at today's price, gold is just too

cheap to settle world trade with, but at

$38,000 per ounce, it covers most of it.

So, let me tie all of this together.

Luke Groman's argument is that there's

really two ways that this story ends.

The first way is the whole MAGA plan

fails. This is where

re-industrialization does not happen.

The debt keeps on growing, confidence

breaks, and the financial system we've

had since 1971 comes apart the bad way,

which is the way that it came apart

between 1922 to 1945, which as a

reminder included a depression, currency

collapses, and a world war before the

system replaced the old one. Right now,

I hope that is not the path that we

take, but little by little, that seems

like where we're going. If that's what

happens, gold would skyrocket cuz gold

is what people want when these paper

systems break. Now, the other outcome is

maybe this plan works. Maybe the US

actually re-industrializes and trade

gets rebalanced and the world

transitions in a controlled managed way

to a system where gold is that neutral

reserve asset that settles trade like

China asked for in 2009, like Scott

Bessant is talking about right now. that

would be the preferred path, right? But

either way, both roads lead to the same

outcome. The only variable we don't know

is how fast or how painful that process

is going to be. So then the question is,

well, what does this mean for our

portfolios? Obviously, this is not

financial advice. I'm a guy on YouTube

who used to do card tricks. But the most

likely outcome, I think, is that we'll

see a capital rotation from

financialized America into real world

America, right? Real infrastructure

stuff and commodities. Now, in that

world, inflation will outperform the

dollar, the stock market will outperform

inflation and the dollar, and gold will

outperform everything else. And so far,

that's already started happening.

Starting from early 2018, when the first

China trade war started, it shows the

S&P 500 is up 161% in dollar terms,

which sounds amazing, but when measured

in gold, it's actually down 15%.

Long-term Treasury bonds, which are the

safest assets in the world, those are

down 31% in dollars and down 78%

measured in gold. Gold miners are up

over 200%. So the dollar prices that are

on our screens are kind of an illusion

because when measured in real money,

money that cannot be inflated, right,

the safest assets on Earth have actually

been the worst place to be. And the best

place to have been was the shiny rock

that everyone told you not to buy. Now,

does this mean then that gold is going

to go to $38,000 an ounce next week or

next year? Probably not. That's not

going to happen overnight. There's still

a lot of accumulation between nations

and central banks. And the crazy part is

though, none of this is actually a

secret, right? It's in the Wall Street

Journal. It was announced at Davos. It's

kind of hiding in plain sight. And

people are just not listening to this. I

think if people understood this, they

would probably be hoarding more gold

than they are today, which would

obviously be counterproductive for the

central planners. Personally, I think

this could take more than a decade to

play out. These things take a very long

time. So, if you're watching this video

and you have FOMO to go out and buy gold

right now, this is not a video to go and

get you to buy gold. I think this is

going to take again a long time for this

to play out and there will be major

corrections along the way even for gold.

Just remember, if this theory is true,

there's a difference between being right

on the direction and being right on the

timing of when to buy it. Which is also

why I personally don't hold any gold

yet. But I'm watching it every day to

see if I can get a safer entry point.

When and if I do decide to buy it, that

video will most likely live in the

premium member section where I post my

videos earlier and I post extra thoughts

in the economy. If that's valuable to

you, the link is down below. Thank you

so much for watching. I hope you have a

wonderful rest of your day. Smash the

like button. Subscribe if you haven't

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next time. I'll see you soon.