Two dangerous forces are holding America hostage [Podcast]
by James Hickman on July 1, 2025
In our latest podcast, we dissect one of the most toxic patterns in American governance: total abandonment of principle the moment it’s politically inconvenient.
In 2022, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan criticized the idea that a single lower court judge could block an entire federal policy from taking effect across the whole country—saying it “wasn’t right.”
But last week, she voted to preserve them… because they could be used to block Trump.
Meanwhile, Senate Republicans—once furious over Pelosi’s “zero-cost” fantasy math—are now pushing their own trillion-dollar bill using the same fake arithmetic. Lindsey Graham, as Senate Budget Committee chairman, even called himself Zeus, the “King of the Numbers.”
When no one on either side sticks to principles, the result is:
$61 trillion in debt by 2035 at the current rate.
A growing revolt from foreign bond buyers.
A nation inching toward ‘Crisis 2033’—the year Social Security goes broke and debt interest consumes about half of all tax revenue.
In this episode, we also cover:
Why blind optimism and aggressive ignorance are America’s real enemies.
How NYC’s hard-left turn reveals stunning voter ignorance.
The Corporate Transparency Act: a case study in bureaucratic insanity.
The link between gold prices, central bank behavior, and debt markets.
Why our undervalued gold picks are exploding while Treasury buyers flee. (Click here to learn more about The 4th Pillar investment research— currently 40% off).
Click here to listen now.
The podcast transcript is available to you here.
About the author
James Hickman
James Hickman (aka Simon Black) is an international investor, entrepreneur, and founder of Sovereign Man. His free daily e-letter Notes from the Field is about using the experiences from his life and travels to help you achieve more freedom, make more money, keep more of it, and protect it all from bankrupt governments.
We pride ourselves on maintaining intellectual honesty, especially when analyzing something as consequential as H.R.1—and as a result, a deep dive is necessary.
Yes, the budget was covered in the podcast—but what was conveniently ignored is how the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) actually scores the bill. The headline figure—$3 trillion—seems colossal, until you realize it’s a mirage conjured by baseline budgeting. Under the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, paired with the Deficit Control Act of 1985, the CBO must project spending and revenue based on current law. That phrase—“current law”—does a lot of heavy lifting.
Here’s the kicker: a big chunk of that $3 trillion comes from the expiration of existing tax law. So the CBO treats the loss of hypothetical future revenue as if it were new spending. It’s like calling someone broke because they didn’t win the lottery. In accounting terms, this is a shell game—akin to confusing marginal tax rates with effective ones, or treating GAAP earnings as if they were cash.
Now, there is new spending—roughly $350 billion in increasing to program & new tax expenditures—but even count tax as expenditures is debatable as “real” spending. And those new costs are more than offset by over $1 trillion in spending reductions. True, some of those reductions are merely less spending than previously planned, but that only reinforces the point: what’s on paper rarely matches fiscal reality. Especially in Washington.
This kind of statistical sleight-of-hand isn’t limited to budgets. Take foreign holdings of U.S. Treasuries. Many interpret their decline as foreigners dumping American debt. In reality, the market value of those holdings fell, not necessarily the quantity. But even if countries were selling, it’s not out of confidence in their own economies—they’re scrambling for dollars to service Eurodollar debts and defend their currencies. We’ve seen this movie before, and we’ll see it again.
You also briefly mentioned gold. Let’s not gloss over this: gold didn’t just rise—it replaced the euro as the alternative reserve asset. With the USD now facing competition from both the euro and gold, this was inevitable. Especially after Basel III elevated physical gold to Tier 1 status—meaning banks can now hold it and lend against it, just like cash or sovereign bonds. In a world where trust in fiat wanes, hard money makes a comeback.
It’s in the fine print—the “esoteric” details—where the truth resides. And if you don’t understand the game, you’re probably being played.