The Avalanche No One Is Prepared For (Uncut) 04-30-2025

Supply Chain Shock Ahead – The Avalanche No One Is Prepared For | Clem Chambers

Welcome back to Kidco News, I’m Jeremy Safran. We begin with a major shift out of Washington. A brand new Federal Reserve survey says that the trade war and the runaway U.S. debt are now the number one threats to Americans’ financial stability, surpassing banking stress, real estate and even geopolitics.

Now markets are already reacting. Gold has rocketed to record highs near $3,500 an ounce and Bitcoin hovers at $95,000, waiting for its next move. My guest today is Clem Chambers, our friend, CEO of Online Blockchain, founder of the new platform AnuFN.com, and a longtime Forbes columnist known for his bold outside-the-main market and mainstream calls.

He’s here to reveal how the Fed’s new flagged risk might catapult gold to $5,000 or maybe slash Bitcoin in half, rather. Great to see you, Clem. Good to be back.

OK, let’s start with this new study, the Fed Financial Stability Survey. Seventy-three percent of respondents have ranked the trade fight as the top danger. Half of them fear broad policy uncertainty and worries about the U.S. debt sustainability are climbing fast.

What’s the single domino that you think falls next year and how systemic could the damage be? Well, I mean, what always worries me in situations is what people don’t talk about. So if the market’s falling and everyone’s saying, oh, it’s falling, it’s terrible, oh, it’s awful, I’m not so worried. If the market’s rising and nobody’s saying it’s rising, then I’m not so worried.

It’s when it goes quiet that things can happen. And, you know, what’s happening now is no one’s talking about the supply chain. And if you imagine that 30 percent of American food is packaged in Chinese packaging and that the supply chain may just be a big, empty pipe moving down towards America.

How’s that going to pan out if if, you know, the food packaging isn’t bought because now it’s so much more expensive or it is bought? And that would mean four or five or six or seven percent food inflation. I mean, that’s going to be bad when the day comes when the supply chain empties and stocks aren’t there. And we’re talking about plastic film here and, you know, little blue packets that you put your chicken wings on.

If they don’t have them, you can’t have your chicken wings in the supermarket, can you? And it’s things like that that no one’s talking about that makes me worried because it’s like everyone’s gone quiet. It’s it’s it’s if Trump doesn’t do some incredible U-turn, which is not really his style, then what happens next is going to be really dramatic and people are going to be shocked because what I pick up is a lot of people have been in the market for so long and it’s been so good and it’s by the dip and nothing can go wrong. And good old Fed put is there and it’s all going to be fine.

And don’t worry about the valuations. It’s all just going to be hunky dory that they believe that this is the case this time. And that’s the only call you’ve got to make is, is it just the same old, same old? It’s all by the dip.

It’s all going to be fine this time. Or is this something completely different? Is this something worthy of a long term bear market? And, you know, if everybody was worried about the supply chain and there not being any plastic or plastic trays for chicken wings and steaks and to wrap up food for the supermarkets in what, 40, 50 days time, if they were panicking about that, I’d be relaxed because they’d be panicking about it. That’s all going to be fine.

Then people are working on it, but it’s all quiet. And this supply chain, if it’s simply not coming down the pike and a lot of numbers say the stuff is not on its way from China. Well, what happens when suddenly there’s no containers full of stuff? What happens then? And, you know, that could be a big shock and that shock could start an avalanche.

And so I’m just sat here thinking, well, you know, I hope I hope they’ve got this covered. Yeah, interesting. I mean, to your point, Apollo’s Global’s Torsten Slaak lays out a grim timeline.

He says empty shelves by May, trucking layoffs, a recession by summer, all tariff driven. Do you agree that this is the major risk here? I mean, is it more than just inflation? Well, yes, because the whole economics of comparative advantage has made the world rich. People don’t make stuff in different countries for no reason.

They do it because it’s more efficiency. And really, economics is about efficiency. It’s more efficient for America to have buildings full of programmers being paid a quarter of a million pounds by Facebook and Microsoft and Nvidia and all those things than to make shoes.

The only reason to make ships, the only reason to have steel, the only reason to have basic manufacturing is so you can fight a war. If you’re not going to fight a war, you don’t need this stuff. You don’t need to have a shipbuilding industry if you’re not going to fight a war.

But apparently America needs a shipbuilding industry and it needs to protect its steel industry. Steel is for war. Aluminium industry, all these basic manufacturing industries that won the Second World War.

That’s what Trump is trying to get back into America. And that is the biggest worry of all, isn’t it? And that’s why gold’s gone up. Well said.

I mean, that is the macro backdrop. And now let’s turn to that metal that usually loves a crisis. You bring up gold.

Last time we had you here on the show with us, you said that rising global tensions were likely to keep gold climbing. And that call has been spot on, with gold recently smashing through that $3,500 last week of new fresh record. Now, you’ve warned before that gold is the asset of conflict.

Walk us through what’s happening under the hood here. I mean, is it the same as the war premium that you’ve warned about? Or has something else started to push gold even higher? Well, the big short term pusher of assets is liquidity. And right now, to an extent, the fairy godmother of all American institutions is the Fed, because they’re the guys that step in and bail everything out.

And if they didn’t do that, then everything would crater into a smoking disaster. And everybody would be in a terrible position. And if you take Covid, where the world stopped for quite a long time, well, of course you’re going to get inflation, because the only way you stop there being an economic meltdown is to print money.

That’s why inflation is generally created afterwards and why South American countries do it. And everybody does it. All the governments do it.

They make inflation to paper over the lumps and bumps and the crooks and nooks and crannies of an broken economy. And the more broken your economy, the more inflation you get. And it’s the only way to, in a sense, renege on your debt or paper over a chasm that can be caused by a systemic problem like Covid or a massive global trade war for that matter.

Yeah. Has this run surprised you on the gold front? I mean, you floated five thousand as the next waypoint, but pin that down for us. I mean, the catalyst timeframe and does the real yield still matter here? Well, for me, I just trade what I see and I liked gold back in the day because Covid meant inflation and therefore gold should run.

It’s, you know, it’s the first chapter in the book of investment. Inflation equals gold goes up. OK, so and it didn’t.

So I was a bit interested by that. I was a bit fascinated by that. So I began watching it and watching it.

And suddenly it was making what I consider the classic pattern of a breakout. That meant it was going to run. And it did.

It broke out and it ran. But when you get that classic pattern, it’s because there’s a driver behind it and you’ve got to work out what the driver is. And I was scratching my head.

Well, you know, is it electronics? No, that can’t be right. Is it gold teeth fashionable again? I don’t think so. Is everyone buying Rolexes? Well, they are, but not that many.

What what what is going on? What is the underlying core driver of gold? Who’s the big customer? What’s government? Well, why do they bother with gold? Because gold is for war. That’s it. Gold is for war.

So it’s breaking out because people are getting sweaty. Governments are getting sweaty and they’re buying gold. Well, Poland, even Poland is low load being up on it.

Well, they’ve probably got a good reason to load up with it, considering what’s going on in Ukraine. That’s a perfect example of that. And of course, China is the pivot point of all this.

Actually, Taiwan’s the pivot point. But it’s obvious now to anybody that there’s a Cold War between America and China. Well, China’s going to buy gold, aren’t they? And, you know, you can be a investment bank and you can be pushing around retail investors.

You can be fixing the gold rings in London and you can be mucking about. But when the 800 pound gorilla comes out and is now the buyer, you can’t be short gold. You have to let gold run, don’t you? When China and Poland and who knows however many other countries are buying gold in to stock up for increasing tension, then you’ve got to get out of the way.

And then when does this tension end? I mean, there’s no Indian side. There’s no Gandhi on the horizon. There’s only a load of stressed out, you know, political leaders all over the world.

I mean, the only ones that would seem to be relaxed up to a few weeks ago was India. And now even they’re in a conflict. So, you know, that increased intention to me, I think that was going to be inevitable.

But that is the sole thing that you need to drive the gold price. They make three thousand two hundred tons a year. And, you know, a ton is a hundred million.

Well, if you want to buy the bullets of war, which is gold, they’re golden bullets. Well, there’s you know, there’s going to be a big demand and there’s going to be no manipulation, no market corners. Everyone’s going to get out of the way of that and the thing is going to fly.

And it’s been flying. And then if you go right, well, if there’s this driver, what happens next? Well, you get into this, you know, ramping cycle that we’re in and that ramping cycle initially I thought was three and a half thousand and now looks like five and now is potentially 10. Now, that’s not faith.

But, you know, if the tension keeps getting worse and worse and worse, then, you know, the sky is the limit because gold is the only currency in international conflict. And if the more people are in international conflict, the more demand there is for it, the more intrinsic value gold has, because that is the fundamental use case. So, you know, every turn of that screw will see gold go up.

And I hate it. I don’t care that I’ve got a lot of it. I just hate it.

I would prefer to, you know, grow my orchard and pick my apples and plums rather than worry about all these highly strung leaders trying to make a point about how powerful they are. Yeah. I wonder, you know, you talk about five thousand, ten thousand dollar gold.

Robert Kiyosaki, who we’ve had on the show numerous times, just tweeted a jaw dropping forecast. Thirty thousand gold, three thousand silver by 2035, calling for a greater depression, a credible pathway, social media, hyperbole. What are your thoughts? I don’t think there’s enough time for it to get that bad, because this is my prediction.

And I’m sorry to interfere in your elections being that I’m a Brit. But I think by the time you get to the midterms, everyone’s going to be so fed up with what brought the world to that point that the Democrats will get in. However, you know, useless they are.

They will just swing into the Democrats and they will shut that down. And so it’s really about the midterms. It’s all about the midterms.

And they’re, well, 18 months away. So you’ve got 18 months of this move because, you know, people are not dumb. I mean, it’s there are dumb people.

But when it comes to their well-being financially, you’d be amazed how many people perk up and get their brain in gear. And, you know, they will see. Remember, the Chinese supply chain is 75 days long.

We’re already 20 odd days down. So there’s 50, 60, somewhere between 50 and 90 days before incredible stuff could happen at retail. Yeah, and, you know, everyone’s going to notice that no one’s going to think that this is a great thing.

So unless and he can, he, you know, does a lots of fancy footwork and the market is saying he’s going to. And that’s pretty much really what the market is saying. They’re either they’re either like ostriches with a head in their sand saying, no, this can’t possibly happen.

No, no, no. It’s Tina. It’s what is it? I can’t remember now.

There is no alternative. It’s Tina. There’s no alternative.

It has to go up. Otherwise, I’ll be sad. They’re either, you know, they’re either being a Tina ostrich or, you know, they’re right.

It’s all going to come good because they’re not going to be doing this body slam of international tariffs. But, you know, they’re running out of time pretty quick. It’s only days away, you know, 75 days to the supply chain and being as empty as it’s going to get.

And then whatever is in stock. I mean, it’s been busy around our newsroom covering it all. OK, yellow metal we covered.

Let’s flip over to the digital side. Bitcoin is holding about ninety five thousand dollars after flirting with six figures back in December. Does it need a fresh macro shock to clear one hundred grand or is liquidity already doing the heavy lifting here? Well, I mean, one of the reason I’m not a fan of the markets over the last few years is the highly curated.

Now, they’re not good old days of free markets. And basically, as I said, the Fed is the fairy godmother of America. And, you know, if things go pear shaped, they will pull the lever of print.

They will QE. They’re not QE, they’ve stopped QTing and they aren’t really. They probably are QEing, but, you know, in a way that people don’t really realize how they’re doing it.

They’re probably twisting and bending the curve and all that good stuff. But, you know, if things go badly south, they will do what they always do and always tends to work, which is print money. And, you know, extremists, they print money and they give it to the government.

They said they don’t, but they do. Right. And if it’s not quite so bad, they go around everybody and say, have you got any dodgy bonds? We’ll buy them off you at an inflated price.

Come on, then give it to us. Here’s some cash. So they will liquefy the markets.

But that, of course, ends up going into all sorts of frothy assets. Bitcoin, for example, that could happen. However, that’s not fate.

It’s up to them. If they go, well, if we pull this lever, there’s going to be inflation. Then I’m going to get blamed for it.

I’m not going to do it. They said they don’t want inflation. They said we’re bad people.

And, you know, they don’t like QE. They’ve told us a million times that they think we’re evil because of QE. Well, we won’t do anything.

And then, you know, that would be that would be interesting. Just put it that way. So there’s a fork in the road.

Will the Fed pull the QE lever if it hits the fan? If they don’t, then, you know, there’ll be hell to pay. If they do pull the lever, there will be significant inflation, maybe not run away. But you’re looking back five, six, seven percent gain, eight, nine percent right up there.

Good, solid, nasty inflation. Yeah. And then, of course, everything will go up.

And Bitcoin is is the frothy asset for that sort of thing. So it could go right for Bitcoin. My model is a bit different.

I go gold is for war. Bitcoin is for flight. So if there’s any group of people that need to leg it out of their town, Bitcoin will do on the run.

And there’s so many groups of people that might have a need to flee at the moment that I think that that’s a a potential what is a support. I think what you’re seeing now is that very thing that is a support for Bitcoin. Without it, it’ll be much lower.

And you can look at the previous cycle when there was a double top and you can you can say, well, that second top was Afghanistan. Because if you are in a country which is all the rich people that have been plundering the country, you’ve got to flee. They’re not fleeing with gold.

They’re fleeing with Bitcoin. So, you know, they will load up a Bitcoin before they have to head to the airport. So you will see whenever there’s a group of people that go, oh, this is a bit too spicy for my liking.

I’ll put 10 percent of my net worth into Bitcoin. You will get that jump. But if if that goes away, then it’s coming down to sixty thousand.

Interesting, because, yeah, I mean, you’ve you’ve talked about this back in December when we had you on the show. You told us that Bitcoin was close to topping out, maybe around one hundred to one hundred and twenty thousand. You warned about a potential 50 percent crash.

Here we are months later, obviously, despite major moves down, Bitcoin still, you know, holding up ninety five thousand. Do you still think that that big that sell off is coming or has Bitcoin proven to be more resilient here? I you know, it has a use case. Yeah.

I mean, Bitcoin is not. I didn’t hear a hundred thousand dollars because it’s a useless thing. It has a use case and it has value and it has followers and it has great branding power.

But if you look under the bonnet of crypto, there’s not much else doing at all. Well, in fact, it’s just Bitcoin because that has this use case of being able to move very large amounts of money really quick in a way which is transparent of of your need to show at the airport. I mean, you simply can’t get through the airport with a hundred million.

You just can’t do it. Right. Bitcoin is left the moment you own it.

So, you know, that has a fabulous use case in a world of increasing tension because in all these things, there are winners and losers and the losers who’ve got money and have to, you know, leg it will be will be doing that with with Bitcoin. And, you know, in countries, they really do lose their countries and they really do end up with hundreds of millions and sometimes billions of dollars in cash. And of course, where are you going to put that if you looted your country? Where would you put it? You can’t put it in gold.

Yeah, you’ve been, you know, siphoning it off into Switzerland and all those offshore places and all that stuff. But suddenly you and your family have got to, you know, head to the airport. Well, you know, Bitcoin or think you might have to in the next 30 days.

Bitcoin is the actual place. So gold is for war. Bitcoin is for flight.

Yeah, well said. Last time we spoke, you said that you were all out of Bitcoin. You kind of sold it.

You had some Ethereum, some Solana. Has your position changed, Clem? I’ve got less Ethereum. I mean, look, I have a major problem with crypto and that is now it’s connected to Wall Street.

It’s it will be normalized. And Wall Street, they buy their yachts and their mansions and flying their private jets off the back of the investor and trader. Yeah, they take assets and they drain money out of them.

Yeah. And and once you connect up your wonderful new asset into the nervous system of Wall Street, it’s going to be a constant drain. And it’s already high.

And I don’t, you know, therefore I kind of feel that this run is over. It’s not over for blockchain. It just may have run much of its course for crypto.

So the days of going from 100 to 1000, from 1000 to 10,000, 10,000, 100,000, I think that’s over. And now you’re into incremental gains. And, you know, in equities, when the equity markets aren’t being crushed by all sorts of craziness, it’s just as much opportunity.

And gold, there’s just as much opportunity in gold right now as I think there is in Bitcoin. I mean, Bitcoin going from 95 to 110, I think that would be remarkable. But gold going from 3000 to 4000, you know, similar sort of move.

You know, I don’t think it would be any more or less remarkable. And therefore, I think that I’m the days of doing 10x are over and they were very good to me. Why less? Why less Ethereum here, my friend? You’ve just been selling that dip.

What’s been happening? Look, the wonderful thing about Bitcoin or the least not wonderful thing about it is that there’s no single Satoshi Nakamoto is is dead or gone or dead and gone. OK, he can’t come along and go, oh, I didn’t mean it. I want to do something different now.

Oh, I think we need to change the white paper. I’m going to recode it. That can’t happen.

Whereas all these proof of stake coins are basically oligarchies. OK, a group of people fighting over power and dominance is the same old story since the beginning of time. And that doesn’t end well.

So if you’ve got some genius, a curious genius that has invented something and made himself a zillionaire and and he’s never been wrong and then suddenly he’s wrong and it all goes down, doesn’t it? And I think if you look at Ethereum, it’s basically anti-generated. It’s lost its primacy. And therefore, it’s going to going to dwindle and wither like most of the other ones.

In fact, probably all the other ones will be replaced at some point by something else. Yeah. And and so, you know, I’ve just I’ve lost a taste for it because, you know, everybody I know has been robbed or even mugged in the street because they had something to do with with crypto, you know, basically being attacked with machete in Spain or or had their wallet empty because they clicked on a bad link or or somebody, you know, stuck them up outside of a conference or hacked into their phone in a conference and stuff like that.

And that just doesn’t happen in equities. And, you know, that existential risk of holding crypto just just makes me lose my excitement for it. I can’t really go big enough in it without having to have a bodyguard.

So I prefer to be not worth stopping in the street and having my mobile phone grabbed. Not that that would do them any good. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, you always talk about Wall Street and the fact that you don’t like that. They’ve kind of gotten involved with the crypto community on the regulation front.

I mean, the Fed last week scrapped its preapproval rules for banks dabbling in crypto, echoing similar FDIC moves. Is the US finally thawing towards these digital assets? And could that maybe move up the price needle or will people come back in? Well, you see, that’s the thing you’ve summed up in a nice ball. What’s the problem with crypto? Everybody thinks of it as money and cares about the price.

That’s the only product. It’s basically a replacement for Las Vegas. It’s all about gambling.

And that’s a fantastic use case for crypto gambling. You know, that adds a lot of value to crypto because it’s a use case for it. And, you know, you’ve got very few other ones.

But the real use case is the blockchain and what it can do for all sorts of incredible things. But what America has done wrong up to recently is they’ve made it impossible for not quite impossible, but extremely difficult for legitimate businesses to partake. Yeah, because it’s too dangerous for them from a from a regulatory standpoint, from a law and order standpoint, from a from a legal standpoint.

There’s just not the only people that would want to play are either people that got in so early they don’t know any different or people that are basically so risk hungry. They don’t care what rules they break and what happens next. And that stunted the whole blockchain world.

But now America is regularizing it out and enabling people to say, I’m a proper business. I’m not spicy. I don’t want to break any rules.

I can just read this book and I can do I can do a business and that’s fine. And I won’t get my bank account seized and I won’t have the FCC coming around or Homeland Security or whoever. I won’t get stopped at the airport, you know, so that will enable the true value.

And it is huge of blockchains to start to grow and flourish. If you go back four years, there’s very little today that wasn’t already there four years ago. And the reason has been no breakthrough revolutionary developments is that you have to be off your head to enter the market where you could get thrown into jail by the American government on a whim.

And that that really regulation by enforcement that’s going away and that will open the door to this incredible technology to actually add huge value. And so I think that’s what’s coming next. But I don’t think it will be dominated by cryptocurrencies.

Interesting. OK, well, speaking about bank accounts being seized before we continue, a quick update on the major political shift just north of the U.S. border. Canada has just held one of its most historic elections.

And at the start of twenty twenty five, it looked like the Conservatives would cruise to victory. But in a stunning comeback, the Liberals, led by Mark Carney, have pulled off a win. Now, Carney is the former Bank of Canada and Bank of England governor, and they’ll now form a government, likely a minority or possibly a slim majority, depending on final counts still coming in.

Carney says that the old U.S.-Canada relationship is, quote, over and vows to forge stronger ties with Europe, U.K. and Asia while renegotiating trade with President Trump on, quote, Canada’s terms. Meanwhile, Trump has weighed in directly, suggesting Canada should simply become the 51st state, promising no tariffs, more U.S. investment in what he calls the highest military power for free. Clem, how do you see this Canadian election result impacting U.S.-Canada trade negotiations? And could it spill over into, you know, broader market volatility? Well, there’s an interesting thing about Carney, which I learned from people that actually, you know, had dealings with him.

He’s apparently the world’s most charming man. So I don’t know how that’s going to get on with Trump. But, you know, he’s in a sense, if you look at Italy and you look at Super Mario, he got to be prime minister of Italy and he did a good job until he got fed up with it and said, no, no, no, no, you’re all a bunch of kids.

I’m going, you know, if you can’t behave like grownups, there’s not much point in me being here. And so there’s something quite, you know, I’m not I’m I’m not a hater on central banks. There are some seriously heavyweight people and and Mark Carney is a seriously heavyweight guy and he’s also incredibly charismatic in a sort of quiet way.

So everybody that I know that had dealings with him is considered him to be like massively charismatic in a in a way that you wouldn’t necessarily pick up. Yeah, because if you look at somebody like his predecessor, who was massively charismatic up front and like Macron, he’s hugely charismatic up front. He’s got a sort of incredibly humble but powerful charisma.

So I think that’s probably a good choice for Canada at this stage. But I mean, you know, the 51st state of America, I mean, it’s just a troll, isn’t it? And it’s I don’t know what it says about the world that rulers with massive power want to go around and troll people. I mean, you know, that’s the new thing is this desire to troll everybody, which is new and revolutionary and frankly, you know, relatively, I think, dangerous and bad for everybody.

But if you want to look at a time where people were behaving like this, it’s actually the French Revolution. And that was a catastrophic moment. Absolutely catastrophic moment.

France never recovered from that. They had 30 million people. Germany had six.

Britain had six. France has now got 60 million people, twice as many as they had before the French Revolution. And Germany’s got 10 times as many.

And Britain’s got 10 times as many. So, you know, this kind of wild behaviour, wild attempts at, you know, turning everything upside down. I’m not out of the markets for no reason.

And I’m not heavily engulfed for no reason. Yeah, I wonder, you know, because Carney says that he wants to build stronger ties with Europe, UK, Asia. Do you think that they’ll be able to do that more than the US side? Or do you think that they’ll be able to renegotiate something with Trump here? Well, the American exceptionalism is gone, isn’t it? It’s dead.

And you can see that by where all this is now, because, you know, presidents used to walk quietly and carry a big stick, you know, because they could, because they had all that. They did have all the cards. Yeah.

And I mean, what happened if I was China? Well, they’re doing it, aren’t they? They’re saying, yeah, OK, then fine. Let’s see what happens next. Then you can’t make light bulbs.

What are you going to do for light bulbs? Oh, you can’t make shrink wrap for your chicken wings. Oh, we’re going to do that. Oh, you can’t do you can’t make chips.

We’re going to do that. So, you know, if I was trying to get my acting back in order to be able to compete with China, I would be being quiet about it. Not not not eliciting a head on with this.

I think that that well, we’ll see. We’ll see. I mean, the market says Trump isn’t that far wrong.

And if it isn’t people with their head in the sand, if the market is right, well, you know, good luck to him. But if he’s wrong, I tell you, we’re going to see the market’s going to half. Interesting in that in that scenario, then let’s talk portfolio strategy.

I mean, if we do see and hit a trade induced downturn, how would you weight gold, Bitcoin, cash and equities today? Well, look, it depends on how fast it happens. You saw how fast it really happened. Well, in fact, the UK has recovered pretty much the whole way.

I mean, not totally the whole way, but much better than America. So what you’ve seen is the American market said, oh, this is not good. This is not good, but not as bad as it could have been.

Yeah. And overseas markets, stable markets have done a lot more recovering. So really, it’s a blow to the US as far as the market is concerned.

But it’s not as catastrophic as, you know, I and many others think it will turn out to be. So that would suggest that the the average person thinks it’s it’s not something else. Something good will come of it.

It’s not going to be just terrible or they’re going to change course here. They’re going to do this. And it’s all going to work out.

And in my book, I think that people are living in a cycle of grief and they’re they’re at the denial stage now. And that will change. And when it changes, you’ll see another leg down.

However, you know, the market doesn’t listen to me. I listen to the market. And if Trump’s glorious battalion or geniuses can pull off this maneuver, then, yeah, it would just be a blip.

But. I mean, I mean, please, people just send me an email telling me how how this is all going to go right. I can’t I can’t see it.

Tariffs are going to be damaging for the world. So a global recession. Well, that’s not good for anybody.

Right. That’s not good for America, not good for anybody. Yeah.

And it’s going to take a long time to unpickle this mess. It’s just everything’s gone in the air and it’s going to fall where it where it may. And it’s going to be a less rich world at the end of it in the short to medium term.

Now, in the long term, it might be marvelous. But in the long term, you know, that’s going to be quite a long time. I think at least 10 years to to get back on track from this.

Interesting. OK, so are you playing the Buffett card then? Are you I mean, you mostly cash at this point, cashing gold. You’re out of the stock market.

I want to say 100 percent cash, but it’s not true because I can’t actually keep my hand out of it because it’s this occasional things go by and I go, oh, that’s yummy. And and, you know, the defense stocks are yummy. And, you know, there’s a few companies which might be yummy and the U.K. market is yummy.

But I would say if you take out the gold, I’m only 8 percent in stocks and I’m therefore, you know, gold plus 92 percent in cash and gold or cash and precious metals to be accurate. Interesting. OK.

And online blockchain obviously focuses heavily on tokenizing real world assets. You just mentioned to me off camera how much you love to pick apples out of a good orchard. Do you think people are buying things like that now? Talk to me about which asset classes or sectors look most resilient or even most profitable if this tariff and trade fragmentation and financial chaos continue.

It’s extremely difficult, it’s extremely difficult. The obvious answer is to be short, but I’m not a shorter. I mean, I just it just doesn’t suit my personality.

I prefer to just sit there and watch the world go by than be short. So there is that. There’s obviously if you’re into trading and it’s all short term, you can you can, you know, do pretty well with that.

Once once it’s all settled, like saying three or four, if it crashes, you know, make sure that you get the last leg of the W and before you get back in. But of course, a crash is a fabulous time to enter the market. And that’s been a very good thing for me over the years.

You know, I’ve done very well getting out near the top and getting in near the bottom for pretty much every single crash after the dotcom. In fact, all the crashes after the dotcom. Did you did you get in there? Did you buy the last haircut clamp? I mean, when we saw these, you know, NASDAQ, we saw the S&P, it just took a huge hit after these tariff announcements.

I mean, it’s come back quite resilient now. But were you buying that dip? I don’t buy I don’t buy the falling knife and I don’t buy V-shaped crashes because they’re very rare. The last one was a Covey was a V-shaped crash.

And I kind of left it until it kind of started to make a W. But it obviously was massive intervention. And, you know, what I see at the moment feels like intervention to me. And, you know, when the intervention goes away, when the systemic risk of of failure goes away, then the intervention goes away and it will it will go to where it should go to.

OK, and and that would generally make a W shaped bottom. But what I see now is just a well, you can see it at the beginning of the dotcom crash. It’s the same sort of shape and it’s the same sort of shape at the beginning of the 2008 credit crunch crash as well.

And, you know, it’s just like, oh, there’s a crash. Oh, no, by the dip, by the dip. Oh, no, it can’t be that bad.

Oh, yeah. You know, there is no alternative. It’s all going to be good.

Oh, there it is. Yeah. But if it isn’t like those two crashes, it then rolls over and does the big leg down.

And I’m until until this supply chain is established in my head what’s going on with it. I’m I’m I’m I’m not playing. I don’t mind missing upside.

I don’t mind missing anything. I will just sit there because if suddenly the last contained container drops out and there’s no more behind it or not enough to pack your hamburgers. Then all hell’s going to break loose, right, because if you can’t get hamburgers in the store because there’s no packaging for it, 30 percent of American packaging food packaging comes from China.

I mean, that alone, I mean, you can you can blow that out into all sorts of formats. Right. You know, rubber, rubber washers, probably nuts and bolts, just just a whole lot.

Right. And everybody’s been running all this just in time stuff for the last 20 years. I mean, I remember Jobs saying we don’t hold stock.

Our supplies hold the stock next to our warehouse and they put it all together and they stick it in our warehouse. We don’t want any of that. Yeah, well, that’s that’s just great.

And if you don’t have tariffs. Yeah. So this hollowing out of American manufacture.

Yeah, that has happened. Yes. All the things that have happened have happened.

But if you slam down that supply chain and it doesn’t, you know, they don’t keep it full. Well, what happens when you can’t get sausages because those little blue dishes there aren’t any left? What’s going to happen in America when that happens? What’s the outcome for that? Well, I mean, it’ll be pandemonium one way or the other, won’t it? And so until that, remember, 70 days plus stocks. Well said.

All right. Clem Chambers, let’s leave it there, my friend, CEO of online blockchain and founder of a new FN dot com. Always a pleasure having you on.

Great insight there, my friend. I hope I’m wrong. I really, really, really hope I’m wrong.

I make I have no fun making money out of people’s troubles. I really don’t. Yeah, yeah.

Well said. All right. I appreciate your time.

Thanks again. See you. Thanks, Clem.

And for more expert interviews and real time market coverage, be sure to like, subscribe and turn on notifications right here on Kitco News. I’m Jeremy Safran. Thanks for watching.