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Hello everybody and welcome into commodity culture where we break down commodities markets, sound money principles and geopolitics all with the goal of making you a better investor in the commodities sector. My name is Jesse Day. Today is March 2nd, 2026 and on this episode I'm thrilled to be joined by Mark Fabber, a renowned economist, decadesl long veteran of the finance industry and the publisher of the gloom, boom, and doom report.
With the strikes on Iran by the US and Israel resulting in the death of Iranian Supreme Leader Kamei and Iran's retaliatory strikes spreading destruction throughout the Middle East, how will gold, silver, and other financial assets react? Mark gives his take on how this war could shape financial markets, the global economy, and geopolitical alliances, including why he thinks Russia and China won't sit idly by if things continue to escalate.
We also discuss why Mark thinks we're at the beginning of a bull cycle for emerging markets, the Epstein files, and whether the predators within will ever face justice, and so much more. So, strap yourselves in for my conversation with Mark Fabber. Mark Fabber, it is great to have you back on Commodity Culture.
I want to kick things off by discussing the recent attack on Iran by the US and Israel. They have killed the Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khani. And it looks like this has sparked or threatens to spark a full-on war in the Middle East. Iran now attacking other countries in the region, including the UAE, Bahrain, targeting uh US military bases.
I'd love to get your thoughts here. How prolonged do you think this conflict will be? And do you think there's a world where Russia or China gets involved in the conflict considering their alliance with Iran? Well, you're asking two very important questions. First of all, most wars have lasted much much longer than had been anticipated.
And uh wars last particularly a long time if they're initiated by ignorant people who have no clue about what they're doing. And Trump is just someone like that. He has no clue what he's getting into now. He may be lucky, you understand? and maybe Israel and uh America can um sort of uh clean out Iran in a very short period of time.
But based on the experience of other countries, nothing unites the citizen of a country more than than the aggression by another country and in the case of Iran in particular of Israel. You understand the population is not Israel friendly and uh the population has learned one thing in their history and this is not to trust the American people in terms of support because they dumped one of their leaders already namely Naser no sorry the sha of Iran.
thought there is a big mistrust among the Iranian population against the US and Israel. And about the last thing that an Iranian would want to have is Israel uh an Israeli occupation force or the US occupying Iran. So whether they like Humeni the leader or not uh they they they dislike even more an invader.
And how much of this do you think was driven by Israel because I Colonel Douglas McGregor on the show recently and he said he believed essentially America was under Israeli command and control and that this is Israel's war, not the US's war. And whether Trump liked it or not, Israel was going to force his hand.
Are you seeing the same things? Yes, I agree entirely. I mean there's no interest whatsoever for the US to have this war but uh I can see that uh Zionist leader like Netanyahu who would dream to have Israel expand its territory throughout the Middle East and he's joined by some Americans in this view that this is a a sort of the Israelis having blackmailed Trump to go ahead and support the invasion or the aggression.
But the second question in my view is even more important that you asked and that is about the involvement of Russia than China. I think that as long as it's clear that the US is not winning the war, uh, that they may not do anything. But I don't think that it's in the interest geopolitically of either Russia or China to see Iran occupied by Western forces notably the US that has proven to be very hostile towards uh Russia and towards China.
So my view would be that uh they will watch they will not intervene but they may intervene by you know supporting uh under the table Iranian um military forces. But they would, in my view, it would be inconceivable for me that Russia wouldn't intervene if America launched, say, ground troops in Iran.
And the there'd be the threat of American forces occupying Iran. And by the way, I think that other Middle Eastern countries would be very concerned about this as well and countries like India and Pakistan. So if someone says this war could expand and becoming very problematic and lasts a very long time.
I would agree with this view. It doesn't have to, but you understand once you start a war and you have no clear objective, it's very difficult to just walk away from it and kind of go home. You have to do something. I mean, I laugh about it, but it's actually a tragedy that nowadays when we have an global economy that is relatively sound, I'm not saying perfectly sound, but we have a global economy that has created a lot of prosperity around the world the world, I mean, and lifted the standards of living of many people.
that people go to war for whatever. I I'm it's not clear to me what is the objective of the Americans. That Netanyahu dislikes Iran is mutual. The Iranians dislike Netanyahu. And the sponsor of today's episode is Arc Silver Gold Osmium. Owner Ian Everard is praised even by his competitors as one of the most honest and level-headed bullion dealers in the United States.
They have some great prices. You can see some of them displayed right now on screen. Take advantage of these specials today by reaching out to Ian at 3072649441 or by email at ianarchsg.com. Make sure to tell him of course that commodity culture sent you. And now back to the interview. Yeah, I think definitely um this is Israel's war as as Colonel McGregor said.
Now, interestingly, we're on the first day of markets being open since the attack on Iran. Oil and related stocks are up. The broad market is barely down and looks to be doing just fine. Gold is up slightly. Silver has dropped. I mean, it's pretty much another day at the office here for financial markets.
Is this in line what you expected? Do you think perhaps you know the the participants in the market are not foreseeing a prolonged war and that's the reason we haven't seen a crash in the broad market? How are you viewing the way the markets are reacting? Actually I can tell you because I was writing my report when the aggression occurred and my report went out on on February 28th at night.
So it was March 1st and I was thinking at the time you know how will markets react and my view was uh we don't know for sure but it's going to be volatile and as you can see gold was up in the morning I don't know 120 or $140 and now it's barely up on the day and silver is town and the bond market. The first reaction was to rally.
That was also my inclination to think that bonds would rally. But they rallied and then they came down again because obviously a war is sort of inflationary and uh already before the I mean the inflationary pressures are there in the US anyway because the money supply is accelerating again on the upside.
So I would like to say that I don't know what the outcome will be but one thing I'm quite sure uh it is doubt it's very questionable that uh this war is good for financial assets that I I would say because you have to consider Wars are inflationary. You can look it up in the economic literature. During the Napoleonic Wars, prices went up.
During the American Civil War, prices went up. World War I, World War II, and so forth. And sometimes they go up before the war and sometimes they go up after the war. But around wartimes, commodity prices tend to go up and also peak out. I want to stress this, but the fact that prices go up strongly leads to misallocation of capital and uh in my view this war will provide an excuse for the Federal Reserve to print money.
So whereas the initial reaction has been for the dollar to go up, I would expect eventually the dollar to weaken again. And uh I think that bonds are not attractive. This is also my the conclusion I had written in my report. They're not attractive because they are low yielding instruments to start with.
It's not like in 1980 bonds were yielding 15% to 10 years and were relatively attractive at that time. Now this is not the case. But in bonds you may lose less money than in stocks because American stocks are pricey. I mean not every stock is pricey but the ones that are contained in the indices in the SNP in the NASDAQ namely the magnificent seven stocks they have a very large market cap and the heavy weight in the index something like 35%.
And they are very pricey and if they go down then the index is pulled down as well. So I'm not very optimistic about US talks and the rest of the world in my view will to some extent suffer economically from the war in the Middle East and they may get involved in some way. So I'm sort of not very optimistic about financial assets.
We also have to recognize financial assets are in the sky relative to the real economy. But uh I acknowledge there are markets that are not terribly expensive. Latin America is not terribly expensive and Southeast Asia is not terribly expensive. Is what I would call reasonable reasonably priced gold and silver.
I I mean I'm still positive about the precious metals, but you understand frequently a market will peak out on the news. And in my view, the market uh for precious metals was strong already last week before the announcement of the aggression because the market was expecting an aggression. Maybe not you and me, but some people in Washington, they knew it's going to happen because it was discussed.
and in Israel, they knew it would happen. Well, I wanted to get your thoughts a little bit more deeply when it comes to the precious metals because it's been a while since I last had you on the show. And of course, since then, we've seen gold and silver go on an incredible run. Silver at one point, correcting dramatically, 26% in a single day.
Seems to be moving back towards triple digits, but of course, today we've seen a sell-off in the silver market. We're still close to $5,400, I believe, when it comes to gold. So inching towards previous all-time highs once again. What are your thoughts here? Are we closer to the beginning or the end of this bull market in precious metals if you had to venture?
This is a question you and I should ask the Federal Reserve members. But based on history, I can tell you once you embark on money printing, you can stop it. But once you embark on money printing, to stop it is incredibly painful economically. And so every government especially in democracies because they the nature of a democracy is to take decision that please people so they vote for you is not taking decision that causes them discomfort and this is also with the war in the Middle East.
I think if the American people express serious discomfort about the war in the Middle East or serious apprehensions and Trump and his administration of cronies notice that they may lose some votes. I think they may change their policies. That's why I'm saying, you know, it's going to be very volatile because we are now ruled by someone who doesn't think very deeply and doesn't read the his own admission, doesn't like to read.
and uh he's an emotional guy who gets up in the morning and takes a decision and someone walks in and says, "Well, maybe he's not very good for your net worth or the nets of this big donor over here." and then he changes his mind and so so it's as Hayek said uh the more the state is planning the more difficult it is for the entrepreneurs for the businessman to plan to have a plan for his business that is the case but uh in general I think that uh I would be relatively cautious and concerning precious metals.
My view has always been that I would hold precious metals not because I think they'll go up a lot, but I believe they are an insurance policy. When things go bad, you know, you're happy to have some gold. And I just want to mention one thing that occurred to me over the weekend because you know the young generation Z they love cryptocurrencies and uh they're not particularly interested in precious metals.
But in Iran they closed down the internet for a while. In other words, there was no internet access. H how do you want to pay with a Bitcoin when the internet access is closed? You know, how do you want to pay with cryptos? It doesn't work. And so I think people can see that physical gold coins and silver coins have some merit.
I'm not saying it's the ideal, but paper money is not the ideal either. Maybe possessions are not the ideal. Who knows? But I would be diversified and I hold my gold, but I admit that I sold some gold shares last week because they had a big run. Then they came off and rallied again, but the rally wasn't accompanied by very heavy volume.
That was missing in my view. But I may be wrong. Maybe in a year's time because Mark is such an idiot. He sold his gold shares and they went up another 10 times. Who knows? Well, nobody got hurt taking profits. So, I I I don't think that was a bad move at all, especially considering that a lot of these equities have run very far.
And that is my next question is the gold and silver mining stocks. Obviously, you've sold some, you've taken some off the table because of that rally you saw. Um, do you think there could be a lot more upside ahead because you mentioned you hold on to gold and silver not to make money but as an insurance policy whereas the miners are obviously a levered play on those commodities and so the goal is increase of capital as opposed to preservation of capital.
Do you think the mining shares are still a good bet at this point in time? Would you be on the sidelines if you were a new investor approaching the space perhaps waiting for a pullback? What are your thoughts there? Yes. To be uh to be very frank with you, I think when an event like this happens, the best is actually to stand aside and not to trade the event because of the volatility I just mentioned.
I mean, say in the morning, if I didn't have any positions, I might have been tempted to buy gold. you understand as a reaction or I would have bought bonds. But my view is the volatility during and in the proximity of these events increases a lot and sometimes the market goes up on the news of an intervention in this case the aggression uh towards Iran but then reverses and goes the other way around.
And I would like, people ask me, well, is the war good for stocks or bad for stocks? And my response is this. If the war happens and the stock market is low, the war can be good for stocks and stocks go up. But if prior to the war the stock market is already in the sky like the magnificent seven stocks, I don't think that the war is good for stocks.
You you understand it depends very much are we in a bull market or bare market. in a bull market or at the beginning of a bull market a war can be good like in 1990 1999 the Iraq intervention stocks went down for a day or two and then they rallied but other interventions were not like this I want to read something you wrote on X recently last month you wrote money printing has distorted the market making diversification essential for survival al I'm watching precious metals and exploring emerging markets like Thailand and Vietnam don't follow the herd.
So talk to us about that diversification aspect. Are you mostly speaking about being geographically diversified and what is your approach to navigating this distorted market? Well, this is a very good question. I'm glad you're asking it. I think when people talk about diversification, they frequently think, well, okay, I will have a portfolio at 20 different companies and so I'm diversified.
But they hold the 20 different stocks in a portfolio with one custodian, say Group or State Street Boston or Maril Lynch or Goldman Sachs or whatnot. But I'm talking diversification in holding stocks, bonds and cash, precious metals and real estate. So four asset classes. And then someone may say okay I want to have additional asset classes such as collectibles and cryptos and whatnot.
And then I'm talking about diversification in terms of geographical diversification. I want to have some assets say in Canada and some in Europe and some in Australia and some in Asia in maybe Singapore and Hong Kong and so you understand. So I have a geographical diversification like also real estate.
I have some in Switzerland but I also have some in Thailand. This is my idea of diversification. Now an individual may say well Mark you are in a fortunate position. You can do these things. I cannot say a small investor. He doesn't have the money to be so diversified. But equally, he may not be as vulnerable to asset price movements as someone like me whose business is asset markets.
You understand? say a doctor he his business doesn't depend terribly on the stock market and so forth there's some influence by especially with plastic surgeons because people if they make money in stocks they go and have an I don't know faceelift or whatn not or or make their eyes but uh stock I And someone who is in the financial market, my wealth and earnings depends on financial markets not collapsing.
That that is a different position. Or say if you're a cobbler or an electrician, your business doesn't not depends as much on the financial markets as mine. So he may not need to be as diversified as I am. And as you know, I'm not the most optimistic person about financial markets to start with. So I want to be diversified because I think if you look at history, the last 40 years have been heaven on earth for asset holders.
The prices of paintings went up. The prices of stocks went up in the world. The price of real estate went up and so forth. And in the process uh affordability became very limited. You know that in real estate and we're talking here about residential the affordability is at the lowest in history in the US.
It means that wages they have gone up but they haven't gone up as much as the prices of real estate. So affordability is down. And when I started to work the stock market capitalization in the US was 25% of GDP. Now it's 150% of GDP. In other words, when I started to work, salaries were high and asset prices relatively low.
And now asset prices are in the sky and salaries relatively low. You can thank the central bank for this condition. And that's why I'm not particularly I should say that's why I'm negative about financial assets period. But I'm also aware that there is a risk to hold all your cash, I mean all your funds in treasury bills and treasury bonds and in savings accounts at banks as as risky as to hold a reasonably good corporation.
I want to get your view on emerging markets here because they've been performing very well recently. Many of the emerging market focused ETFs are at all-time highs on a monthly basis. What are your thoughts there? You spoke about being geographically diversified. Do you think emerging markets have a lot of potential up ahead?
Could we be at the beginning of a bull cycle for emerging markets? The emerging markets and by the way also Europe have been in a bare market against the US since 2010. In other words, if you measure the relative performance of emerging markets with the US is a straight downwards trend since 2010 until 2025.
The turning point was December 2024 when emerging markets began to outperform the US. And as you know last year many US indices were flat to up a little but emerging markets a lot of them went up 30 50%. And for the first time in 15 years since 2010, both Europe and emerging markets significantly and I repeat significantly outperform the US.
Now knowing how investors are in time, retail investors will wake up and also portfolio managers and say, "Hey, uh, emerging markets and Europe and gold and silver perform better than my portfolio. I better do something about it. otherwise my bonus is going to be cut and then they'll go and buy emerging markets.
It's begun like there some money has been flowing in to emerging markets recently but nothing in comparison to before and if you look I mean we can measure things you look at the assets of ETFs the assets of ETFs say of semiconductor ETFs and of magnificent seven ETFs they are ballooning expanding dramatically the assets of gold funds, they haven't gone up.
They went down and recently they've gone up, but they haven't gone up much at all. They're lower than say 5 years ago. And that tells me we actually for precious metals and for emerging markets, we at the beginning of major upward moves. But if you know the instances where a seam goes down, say 197374, the US stock market went down and everything went down with the exception of gold and silver at the time 7374 and other instances.
In 1989, the Japanese markets went down, but the money flowed out of Japan into other markets and they went up. Both is possible. After 2000, until 2003, precious metals didn't move up and the resource stocks didn't move up, but then they moved up a lot. So there's in my view no hurry, no urgency to buy into emerging markets.
My portfolio is emerging markets, you understand? But I'm I'm saying what an investor should do who doesn't have any exposure. I already have my exposure and I'm happy to hold stocks. And here is the question an investor has to ask himself. Say I own a good company. I bought it at 10 and is now at 30 and I think it will correct.
Now should I sell it? And with the view to buy it back, it went from 10 to 30. With the view to buy it back at 25 or at 20 or should I just hold it? Because if I sell it after cash and maybe something happens to my cash, I don't know. Maybe it's better to sit on the stock. It goes from 30 to 20. It's a good company.
Um I don't know you understand each individual is different has different objectives. I can live with the portfolio that goes down 20%. Because it went up a lot before but other people they have a they have diarrhea if the stock market goes down 5%. Well, I want to get your thoughts now on the Epstein files and the impact they've had thus far and how connected they could be to this war with Iran.
Now, we we've seen some investigations into some highranking politicians in Europe. Um, and even Prince Andrew got arrested, although that was not related to the trafficking of children. That was more due to him sharing state secrets with Epste, but who knows what that will turn into. But basically, not many people have been held accountable for any of this yet.
It really feels like the Trump administration is trying to sweep it under the rug. Perhaps war is part of the distraction tactic. Do you expect people to ever be held to account? Cuz the way the news cycle works these days, people tend to forget about stuff very quickly. So my concern is that the Epstein files will get memory hold and you know a year or two years from now, people will be posting remember the Epstein files and everyone will be like, "Oh yeah." Um, that that's my fear.
How do you see all of this playing out? And how much do you think the Epstein files a potential blackmail by Israel has pushed the Trump administration towards this conflict with Iran? Well, I I think if I read correctly that Epstein was sort of an agent for Mosad or had connection to Mosad and so forth and uh what you're bringing up is absolutely true that uh the aggression towards Iran may have been encouraged by the threat of blackmailing Trump and other highranking officials in the administration.
Now, do I expect anything to happen to these people? No. Because uh they are I mean so many important people are involved. You understand? the Clintons are not going to testify against Trump because they don't want him to testify against them. So that is the problem of democracy. Uh it's a political class that protects each other.
is that the the state they will make everything to stay in power. They don't want to lose power and they know that if they talk about someone else that someone else will talk about them and so forth. So I think what you bring up is absolutely true. I'm sure that the Epstein files and the threat of revelation of some unpleasant truths may have contributed or been the catalyst to the intervention in Iran.
You're absolutely right that distracts the public and two years from now will talk about the absin files and so forth and nobody will have a deep interest because half the people will be data and so forth or in no no power position. Well, I want to explore like how all of this changes because the political class has such a grip over the world, particularly when we have these kind of transatlantic elites or people have been calling the predator class now, which I think is a much better description.
Um, and they all work together. You know, there there's a lot of discussion that potentially these people are part of secret societies, that they are all operating with each other, and that there's of course more people behind the scenes that we don't see on our TV screens who are the ones who are actually making the decisions when a President Trump or a Mark Carney steps up to the podium to give a speech.
Now, it feels like more people are waking up due to the Epstein Files release, social media, all of these types of things, but a huge population of Western countries continue to be brainwashed and act as though everything is great. So, what is the catalyst for change here? Does the entire system need to collapse?
Do we need an anarcho capitalist system? Do we need a libertarian system? Is there any way out of the mess we're in without a destructive and potentially very violent collapse? How do you see that playing out? I don't know. But uh you understand the majority of people in this world in the western society are people they have a salary or they get a contribution from the government say social security or unemployment benefits or old age insurance pensions and so forth.
These people are unlikely to do a lot because they're afraid to lose their benefits. You know, if you work for a big organization, uh the compliance department will tell you you're not supposed to talk to the press and so forth and so on. And then you shut up and get your salary and you go on as if nothing had happened.
And to your friends over the weekend, you say, "Oh, this is bad and that is bad and the Epstein file contain this and that and so was." But in actual fact, you don't do very much. And that is the system of democracy that we've built. And that's how the government sort of controls the masses of people.
by telling them you vote. In fact, they have to vote in a certain way because if they don't vote in that way, they may lose their benefits and their privileged position. So I don't know when it will change but one thing is clear to me that changes are under way in the sense that economically countries that were not a factor within the global economy until the 1960s7s including the whole of Asia, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan after 1978 the open door policy in China and after 1990 and especially after 2000 2005 Modi in India that these countries have now a huge influence on the world.
Now in the case of Iran they may sit back and not do anything because they may wish to observe. they may wish to just see how you know things will shift and also China may not know 100% to what extent they want to support Saudi Arabia and to what extent they want to support Iran and so forth and so on.
So they do what the Chinese do best is namely to do nothing geopolitically. But if the western world thinks that they can just kind of uh take over the territory of Iran which is at the center of Central Asia basically that in my opinion will not be uh accepted neither by Russia who has more to lose in this whole thing uh nor by China.
Some great thoughts today. Mark, tell us about the gloom boom and doom report. I don't know. Who knows? Anyway, thank you very much for your time and thank you for your viewers and listeners and all the best. Yeah, I'm going to put a link in the description below to the Gloom, Boom, and Doom report as well as your X account.
And uh as always, Mark, fantastic insights. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Bye-bye. Thank you for joining us today. Our sponsor Ark Silver Gold Osmium has some great prices on gold and silver bullion products. You can see them on your screen. Take advantage. These are well supplies last and subject to change.
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