Editor's Note: For fifty years, Robert Kiyosaki he has made one argument: the rich act before the headlines, not after. Now the CEO of IBM has publicly given the world's encryption three or four years, and the world's biggest banks, the Pentagon, and Big Tech are quietly spending billions against the quantum threat almost nobody else is watching. Kiyosaki's team calls it Countdown to Q-Day, and he is releasing a free private briefing on it, one session per day, to his readers first. There is nothing to sign up for and nothing to fill out. Your click IS your registration. Click here to save your spot at the Q-Day event or read more below.
Dear Reader,
THE 10-YEAR TREASURY just touched 5.35%. That is the highest level since April 2002.
Think about that for a second. September jobs came in at 29,000. The forecast was 90,000. The two previous months got revised down by another 60,000. By every measure, the economy is slowing.
In a normal world, that kind of labor weakness pushes bond yields down. Money floods into Treasuries. The 10-year falls. That is how it always worked.
Not anymore.
Inside today's issue:
- The Interest Trap: America now pays $1.25 trillion a year just to service its debt. That is more than the entire defense budget. I will show you what this number actually means for everyone who holds dollars.
- Bond Vigilantes Are Back: The market is not buying the "soft landing" story. Yields are screaming that something is very wrong. I have seen this pattern before. So has history.
- The Escape Hatch: When the cost of debt exceeds the cost of defense, the dollar is already in retreat. There is one asset class that has survived every version of this story. And it is not bonds.
- Larry Benedict -- Oil Skimming: Larry Benedict just released a new presentation on a strategy called "Oil Skimming." It's worth a look. (Brownstone Research)
THE INTEREST TRAP
Here is the number Washington does not want you to think about.
In fiscal year 2026, the federal government is paying $1.25 trillion in interest on the national debt. The entire defense budget is $946 billion. We are now spending more to service yesterday's borrowing than to defend the country today.
And the debt keeps growing. Washington collected $5.6 trillion in taxes and spent $7.4 trillion. That is a $1.9 trillion deficit. Every dollar of that deficit gets added to the $40 trillion pile. Every dollar of that pile demands more interest. More interest means more borrowing. More borrowing means higher yields.
This is not complicated. This is a spiral.
THE FLIP
The mainstream take: "Yields are rising because the economy is strong." CNBC ran that line all week.
Here is what that actually means: September added 29,000 jobs. Not 90,000. Not 150,000. Twenty-nine thousand. The prior two months were revised down by 60,000 more. If this is strength, I would hate to see weakness.
Yields are not rising because growth is roaring. Yields are rising because bond buyers do not trust Washington to pay them back in money worth anything. That is a very different problem.
"Interest payments on debt held by the public increased by $41 billion, or 7 percent, due to a larger debt."
I have been saying for thirty years: when a government spends more on interest than on anything else, it has lost control of its finances. We crossed that line with defense spending in fiscal 2025. We are now closing in on Medicare. Social Security is next in the crosshairs.
THE CYCLE CALL
Every empire that printed its way out of debt eventually found itself paying more in interest than it earned in tribute. Rome did not fall in a day. But there was a moment when every thoughtful Roman knew the math no longer worked.
The M2 money supply sits at $23.34 trillion right now. All-time high. They printed it into existence. And they are printing more to cover the interest payments on the money they already printed.
The bond market sees it. That is what a 5.35% 10-year yield is telling you. The market is demanding more compensation to hold dollars. More compensation means higher rates. Higher rates mean even higher interest payments next year. The spiral accelerates.
There is one more piece to this puzzle I want to show you. It has to do with what Washington will be forced to do when the interest bill becomes impossible to pay. And the answer changes everything about where you want to hold wealth.
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THE PLAY
When a government owes more in interest than it spends on its military, it has two options.
Option one: cut spending. That means cutting Social Security, Medicare, defense. No politician does that and survives. Not in America. Not anywhere.
Option two: inflate the debt away. Print enough dollars that the real value of what you owe shrinks. The dollar takes the hit so the budget does not have to.
They always choose option two. Always. In every country. In every century. The Roman denarius lost 95% of its silver content over 300 years. The British pound lost 99.5% of its purchasing power over the last century. The dollar has lost 97% of its value since 1913.
My rich dad taught me one thing about this pattern: do not hold the paper. Hold the asset the paper is supposed to represent. Gold. Silver. Real estate. Hard assets that cannot be printed into existence.
The bond market just confirmed what I have been saying for decades. When the 10-year hits a 24-year high despite terrible jobs data, it is not saying the economy is strong. It is saying the dollar is weak. Those are completely different signals pointing to exactly the same trade.
The people who understood this in 1971 held gold. The people who understood this in 2008 held silver and real estate. The people who understand it now will hold whatever the government cannot print.
To your freedom,
Robert Kiyosaki
Author, Rich Dad Poor Dad
P.S. There's a public document that shows what a small group of people in Washington does with their own money. Most people who find it have no idea what they're looking at. My research team does, and they'll show you. See the briefing.