Authored by Matthew Piepenburg via VonGreyerz.gold,
When it comes to contextualizing the tech, bond, gold and policy headlines of Q4 2026, it's easier to foresee their pathway ahead by first looking backwards. Once understood, we mathematically realize that our problems are not in the future, they are right now.
The 1970s
Ah, the 1970s. It was an era of bellbottom jeans, checkered suits, wide ties, the music of ABBA and Saturday morning cartoons.
It was also the decade in which Nixon decoupled the dollar and ended the sound money hopes of America's founding fathers.
Backed by nothing but "full faith and credit," the USD began its slow but steady death by a thousand cuts of borrow and spend without limit or concern.
Free a golden chaperone, politicians and Fed Chairs of every political stripe could expand balance sheets and the M2 money supply with almost zero concern for the longer-term financial karma that always follows a bacchanalian debt spree paid for with dollars literally created out of thin air.
Government debt, at $238B in 1971, was no big deal to our so-called "experts."
Besides, any future debts could be easily paid at this dawn of generational fantasy, which Hemingway described as the "temporary prosperity" of excess money printing masquerading as careful policy.
A Time Without Foresight (or Restraint)
In short, no one in the 1970's was thinking of what it might be like by 2026 when that same government debt had skyrocketed from a couple hundred billion to over $40T.
Instead, post-1971 leadership, re
