The US Treasury's decision to double its debt buyback programme and run it through to early November is the focus of this episode. Felix Nikolas Prehn, a former investment banker, traces how the government is creating new money to purchase its own long-dated bonds at the same time as Japan, historically the most loyal foreign holder of American debt, sold roughly 88 billion dollars of US bonds in a single month. He sets out how real world inflation since 2020 has, in his view, exceeded 100 per cent, and notes that the dollar has lost roughly 93 per cent of its value since 1971 on official figures alone. He examines the additional pressure of an estimated one trillion dollars in corporate borrowing for AI data centres, the physical movement of gold out of US vaults at record levels, and the concentration of S&P 500 gains in just ten names. He concludes that holding assets with real pricing power matters more than ever when the money supply is expanding this fast.

In this episode:
00:00 Treasury doubles its debt buyback programme through to November
01:00 Physical gold leaving US vaults at record export levels
01:33 Japan sells 88 billion dollars of American debt in one month
04:05 Real inflation since 2020 estimated at well over 100 per cent
05:36 How the buyback mechanism works and who pays for it
06:36 Fed rate expectations diverge from government loosening
13:46 AI buildout adds roughly one trillion dollars in new corporate debt
17:19 Pattern matches the 1971 closing of the gold window

Sources mentioned:
US Treasury refunding statement, https://home.treasury.gov
Japanese investor holdings of US debt (Ministry of Finance Japan), https://www.mof.go.jp/english/
US Bureau of Labour Statistics (dollar purchasing power), https://www.bls.gov

Felix Nikolas Prehn is an economist and former investment banker. He co-founded TradeVision.io and founded Winston Daily and The Prehn Institute. The Prehn Institute gives no financial advice, and neither does this podcast.

Newsletter: Winston Daily, https://winstondaily.com
Research: https://prehninstitute.com
Author site: https://felixprehn.com

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