Black coffee: truth and consequences

Welcome to another exciting edition of Black Coffee, your unusual weekly digest of what’s going on in the world of money and personal finance.

Another busy week has been crossed off the list. So without further ado, let’s jump straight into the commentary (adult audience advised) …

It’s hard to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it.

– Upton Sinclair

Some people think that the truth can be hidden with a little obfuscation and embellishment. But as time passes, what is true is revealed, and what is false fades away.

– Ismail Haniyeh

Sooner or later, everyone sits down for a banquet of consequences.

-Robert Louis Stevenson

Credits and debits

Credit: Have you seen this? Amazon is trying to crack a crowded, cutthroat big-box market with plans for a 20,000-square-foot market. mega store in the Chicago suburbs, that would be bigger than the average Walmart and almost big enough to swallow two Targets whole. The store says it will split the massive building into two separate parts: one side for groceries, household goods and prepared foods, and the other side for fulfilling online orders for those who prefer Amazon’s stay-at-home convenience. You know what that means: Someone will assess many new applications in the near future. Um… or not.

h/t: @LostTourist3

Debit: In other news, a new trend is emerging among newcomers trying to break into the housing market for the first time: people are buying homes together with friends and relatives. Data collected between July 2024 and June 2025 shows that first home buyers were 25% single women and 10% single men, while the share of married couples remained stable at 50%. Compare that to the pool of all home buyers, of which 61% are married couples, 21% are single women and only 9% are single men. If only there was some sound financial advice people could follow to avoid having to be so financially creative…

Gary Larson – The Other Side

Debit: Did you know that Verizon first entered the Dow Jones Industrial Average in April 2004, replacing its main rival AT&T? It did. However, analysts say the company is likely to be jettisoned in 2026. Why…because Verizon stock has gone virtually nowhere since joining the Dow. In fact, shares are up just 17% in 22 years. As a result, the communications giant only accounted for 241 of the Dow Jones’ 49,077 points last week. In other words, Verizon now almost has it zero impact on the rest of the Dow Jones index. As for the expected replacement? One analyst suggests it will be Google spin-off Alphabet.

Credit: Speaking of stocks, on Wall Street. … So capitalism is not dead yet. That said, let’s see what happens in one of the few remaining Latin American bastions of anti-capitalism… (GET LINK)

Credit: Gold has beaten the holiest of all, the S&P 500 average, and is rising more than 300% versus the S&P’s 267% over the past decade – yes, even after Friday’s 8% plunge. So… how much higher can gold go? Well, if you believe macro analyst Luke Gromen, this high…

Credit: Meanwhile, after rising 165% last year, silver says to gold:hold my beer.” And the white metal’s rise is a problem, because silver analyst David Jensen predicts that “the 2 billion ounces of unsecured spot contracts sitting on the London market means that some banks will ultimately become mere historical artifacts as demand for physical deliveries increases.” Yet that does not stop development magic money tree (MMT) crowd from emphasizing that shorting silver is an option still a good idea. It certainly was on Friday, when the white metal fell 30% (sic) to close at $78. But again: $78 was corrupt to the West paper market price – and 47% lower than the $115 price for which was simultaneously quoted in China Real silver…

Credit: Despite Friday’s big drop in metal prices, what’s going on with their sharp rise since last November? Well… astute micro-analyst Franklin Sanders says you can blame “crazy central bank maladministration. The Bank of Japan (BoJ) is the textbook example, as it owns more than half of Japan’s government debt, is the largest owner of Japanese equities, is a top ten shareholder in 90% of the Nikkei 225, and has a balance sheet larger than Japan’s GDP. The BoJ is now where other central banks will soon be, with the choice: hyperinflation or losing control of debt markets.” Uh huh. They just don’t know it yet – and neither does the Fed…

Credit: For its part, the Fed – in collaboration with the US Congress – has been actively destroying the purchasing power of the USD since 1971. Why? Because, as macro analyst Greg Mannarino explains: “The USD devaluation is not a side effect, nor a policy mistake – it is the financing mechanism of the US government. That is the definition of a failed state.” He goes on to say that to keep the state afloat, we can expect limited returns, “with false, unproductive liquidity windows, safety nets and growing debt.” That’s true, but the stock market is still aiming for record highs. So there’s that.

Debit: It is no coincidence that Germany is confronted a growing choir There are voices calling on the nation to retrieve the remaining 1,250 tons of gold it keeps in American vaults. That gold currently has a market price of $200 billion – and its value continues to rise while the USD continues to lose purchasing power. This is yet another sign of a complete collapse of global confidence in the US – and its debt-based monetary system.

This Wall Street Journal head has not aged well. For those who can’t see the date, it was barely three years ago: September 20, 2022.

Credit: We’ll close with a bit of wisdom from billionaire Ray Dalio, who opined last week about what we’re experiencing a mass exodus of fiat currency in favor of real money without counterparty risk – i.e. physical (not paper) gold and silver. Why? Because countries no longer want to hold each other’s debts for fear of sanctions – see: Russian assets are frozen by both the EU And US in 2022 – while other investors are no longer willing to hold debt-based currencies for fear of loss of purchasing power due to massive government deficits, aided by the monetization of central bank debt. What about you? In the meantime, everyone greets the new candidate for Fed chairman!

By the numbers

Although the US remains the country with the largest official reserves of the precious metal at 8,100 tonnes in 2025, the US ranks only twelfth per capita, with 0.75 troy ounces per person. With that in mind, these are the ten richest countries in the world, per capita through the end of 2025 (troy ounces of gold per person):

0.99 Austria

1.07 The Netherlands

1.12 Singapore

1.17 France

1.18 Portugal

1.20 Qatar

1.28 Germany

1.33 Italy

1.58 Lebanon

3.73 Switzerland

Source: Dear real estate agents

The question of the week

The results of last week’s survey

Last week’s question was submitted by a reader Frank. If You If you have a question you would like me to ask the readers here, please send it to me at Len@LenPenzo.com – and be sure to include “Question of the Week” in the subject line.

Useless news: the friendly sky

(h/t: Honeybee)

Squirrel Cam

If at first you don’t succeed…

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Tim Sanders left the following rebuttal in the comments section of Len Penzo dot Com after reading my article explaining why corner lots are for suckers:

You’re an idiot. I just wasted three minutes of my life reading this.

Make that four minutes of your life, Timmy – because I just deleted your comment.

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