#401 Jim Rickards: The Iran War, "Trump's on the Losing Side of That Bet," The Case for $10,000 Gold, and the Japanese Yen Carry Trade Unwind — The Most Important Financial Story in the World

Jim Rickards returns for a wide-ranging macro conversation on a world where geopolitics and economics have fully merged. He lays out the US–Iran standoff as a global game of chicken — Trump betting Iran's economy breaks first, Iran betting the midterm elections break Trump first — and explains why he thinks Tehran holds the stronger hand, why regime change was always a fantasy, and how a handful of drones a week is enough to keep the Strait of Hormuz bottled up. From there he turns to gold: how he used Jim Rogers' 50% drawdown rule and fractal scale invariance to call the bottom, why central bank buying puts a floor under the market, why gold works as a deflation hedge as well as an inflation hedge, and why he stands by his $10,000 target. He also dismantles the popular "debasement trade" narrative, explains what Kevin Warsh's less transparent, market-following Fed means for investors conditioned to expect a rescue, and walks through the unwinding of the Japanese yen carry trade — which he calls the most important story in the world right now, and the one most likely to make 2027 messy. The episode closes on the darker side of AI: increasingly sophisticated voice-cloned scams aimed at older Americans.

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More about Rickards:

Rickards is a New York Times bestselling author of Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis and several other best-sellers, including The New Great Depression, Aftermath, The Road to Ruin, Death of Money, The New Case for Gold, Sold Out: How Broken Supply Chains, Surging Inflation, and Political Instability Will Sink the Global Economy, and his newest book MoneyGPT: AI and the Threat to the Global Economy. An investment advisor, lawyer, inventor, and economist, Rickards has held senior positions at Citibank, Long-Term Capital Management, and Caxton Associates. He is also the Editor of Strategic Intelligence, a widely-read financial newsletter.

Links:  

http://www.jamesrickardsproject.com/

https://x.com/RealJimRickards

Visit CallFort.io  or download the app https://apps.apple.com/us/app/callfort/id6752949954

Timestamps:

0:00 – Intro: welcome back, Jim Rickards

1:04 – Geopolitics and economics have merged: chokepoints and economic warfare

3:30 – The US–Iran game of chicken: what each side is betting

6:13 – Regime change isn't happening — and why killing leaders backfired

10:42 – Lost credibility and the Iran–Oman deal the US wasn't part of

14:41 – The midterm clock, and how Iran keeps the Strait closed

17:23 – [Sponsor: Augusta Precious Metals]

19:04 – Gold's drawdown: the Jim Rogers 50% rule and fractal math

24:04 – Why gold goes much higher — and the $10,000 call

25:03 – What's driving gold: central banks, deflation, flat mine supply

31:15 – Why the "debasement trade" narrative is wrong

33:00 – Inside the primary dealer world and the old Fed

35:00 – Kevin Warsh, killing the dot plot, and a whole new Fed

38:16 – [Sponsor: Monetary Metals]

40:03 – The Fed's only real job — and what Friedman got wrong

44:13 – The yen carry trade: the most important story in the world

48:55 – The petrodollar, Japan's Treasuries, and the Bessent bailout

51:43 – Why currency defenses always fail, and why 2027 gets messy

52:50 – AI, sophisticated scams, and the Callfort app

59:10 – What's next: climbing Kilimanjaro