Stagnation +Inflation = STAGFLATION. I explain why this could be explosive for gold and silver.

Hello dear friends. My name is Clive

Thompson and today is Friday. What is it

the

Today is Friday the 27th of March 2026.

Uh I hope you can hear me all right.

There's a bit of a gale blowing here in

Switzerland. Uh it's a freezing cold

day. Um but the sun is shining and you

get the impression that spring is maybe

coming soon. Um, so today I'm going to

be talking uh a lot about gold and

silver, but we're before we get there,

I'm going to give you the backdrop to

where we are in the world and why I

think that gold and silver could perform

very well in the coming environment,

which is going to be called stagflation.

Now, you're going to hear the word

stagflation a lot in the coming months

and years. Uh, but let's start off with

where we are in the environment. Now, we

are, in my opinion, we are heading into

a recession.

The reason I say that is there's a

number of uh things which are pointing

in that direction. Uh obviously there's

no guarantee that a recession will come

because recessions have been forecast

almost every year, but they rarely come.

But I think this time they're on their

way.

Um now the numbers I'm going to be

quoting are those from the USA. But

where the USA goes, the whole world

goes. So I'm pretty much uh convinced

that everything I say will be related to

um what's going on in the world as well

as the USA. So let's start with the

employment numbers. Now the one number

you should not be listening to is the

non-farm payroll number. We hear that

come out every month and every month

apart from the last month they show

massive increases in the number of

people employed. yet. Here we are uh in

uh fe the last number we've got is um

February uh 2026.

And comparing that number with the

number of people working in February

2025, we have 689,000

less people working now than we had in

February 2025. Uh that's nearly, you

know, 3/4 of a million nearly less

people working. Now that's coming in the

backdrop of a rising an increasing

population. So the population of the

United States has gone up in the same

period. If I go back to a year ago, the

number uh the population has gone up in

a year by 1.91

million people. So we have a rising

population but a falling number of

people working. net debt. That works out

that we have an increase in the

non-workers in the USA of 2.6 million

people. In other words, there's 2.6

million people more not working in the

United States than there was a year ago.

And that's a combination of more

population and less actual people

working. So 2.6 uh non-workers. That's

how much has gone up by. Um so that's

the first sign that we're moving into

recession. The second side is the GDP

number. Now the GDP number when you hear

a number quoted they quote it quarter by

quarter and they always annualize the

number. So uh if you hear a figure let's

say of 4% uh that means that it was the

GDP rose by 1% and they multiply by four

to get to 4%. So in the third quarter of

2025,

the GDP rose by

uh what was it now? Here I've got it

here 4.4%.

That was if you like 1.1% multiplied by

four.

In the fourth quarter,

the number rose by an annualized rate of

0.65%. The official number is 0.7

because they round it upwards to the

nearest number above but 0.65. So we've

gone from 4.4% growth to 0.65% growth

and the first quarter of this year which

is 2026 uh almost certainly is going to

be uh a lower GDP number based on

everything we know. So I think we're

going into negative GDP uh growth. I

think two negative quarters of GDP

growth would mean that we are in a

recession. So you won't actually know

that we're in a recession for perhaps

another 6 n months. But uh that's the

direction of travel I think. U lastly

we've got uh these private credit funds

and there's lots of them now who are

reigning in their horns uh because they

know there's massive redemptions coming

at the for the quarter ended uh 30th of

June. uh the redemptions are coming

because uh pension fund managers,

private individuals, wealthy people are

saying, "Can we have our money back?"

So, what they're doing, they're they're

basically saying when they've been

lending money to people on a quarter by

quarter basis or year-by-year basis,

when those loans reach maturity, they're

saying, "Sorry, uh we can't renew your

loan." Now, what does that mean for all

these small businesses, medium-sized

businesses who've been borrowing money?

It basically means that they'll have to

lower their stock levels. They won't be

able to carry as much stock as they used

to carry because their credit lines have

gone down. If they don't carry as much

stock as they used to carry, their

selection of goods or whatever they're

selling will be that much less. And that

means lower sales, uh, which basically

means lower profits. It means they'll

have to lay off some staff and things

like that. So many small businesses,

many medium-sized businesses are going

to struggle with getting credit. They

can't they borrow from the private

credit funds because typically they

can't borrow from the banks. That's

either because the loans are very

complicated or it's because the uh banks

don't trust the creditworthiness of the

of the aura. Why it's really blowing

again. I hope it's not affecting the

microphone. I have to listen to this

afterwards to see if you can hear me.

So what with with the raiding in of the

private credit companies obviously part

of their uh money that they have lent

out to other people come from the banks

themselves a small part and the banks

probably have taken collateral. Now what

happens when we get to June and they

have to meet all these redemption

requests. Well first of all we're going

to see a lot of gating. Gating means

they tell you you can have some of your

money back. Uh often the rule is 5% of

the of the value of the fund. So you can

have 5% of your money back. You might

have to wait 20 quarters to get your

full money back. Well, uh that's a

that's a lot of years.

It's five years basically in a worst

case scenario.

So we're going to have the banks have

lent money to these private credit

funds. So what does this mean? the banks

will perhaps be also saying perhaps we

don't want to lend you anymore uh

because we see things are there's

problems coming. Uh so you've got the

double whammy of perhaps the banks not

lending money to the private credit

funds and you've got the whammy of the

pension funds high netw worth invest

individuals cashing in their

investments.

Uh which means those private credit

funds cannot lend money. they can't roll

over the loans which are maturing

because they want to be be conserving

cash to meet the 5% or whatever the

gating level is uh at the end of the

June quarter. So that again will be

slowing the economy as these small

businesses won't be able to keep doing

what they've been doing to the same

extent and some of them will fail. Now

what happens when uh if you're a private

credit company and you've got to meet

redemptions? Well, what do you sell? You

sell the most liquid assets. You sell

the ones which are easiest to sell. Now

I don't think I'm telling a pension fund

manager anything he doesn't know.

Everybody on the planet knows that when

you have to raise cash, you raise you

sell the most liquid asset first. The

one which you can sell for the best