Schiff Sovereign Podcast

About Schiff Sovereign Podcast

James Hickman is a West Point graduate and former intelligence officer who has had an extensive business and investment career spanning more than 25 years. James has traveled to 120+ countries on all 7 continents, and he has started, invested in, and acquired businesses all over the world, in sectors ranging from technology to agriculture to banking. Since he originally began writing under the pen name “Simon Black” back in 2007, James has accurately predicted many of the major trends and events of our time, including the West’s enormous debt bubble, inflation, bank failures, social unrest, and more. Read more at www.schiffsovereign.com

Publisher

James Hickman

Category

business · business · news

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

18 Jan 2018

Latest episode

10 Dec 2025

Latest episodes

42 of 120 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   10 Dec 2025TRANSCRIPT

   2025: The Year America’s Debt Crisis Got Real

   Ronald Reagan once famously said he didn’t leave the Democratic Party—it left him. That was back in the early 1960s, when the America he knew was beginning to transform. Fiscal responsibility, which had been a cultural and political norm through the post-war 1950s, gave way to the reckless spending of US President Lyndon Johnson’s welfare programs (dubbed “the Great Society”) coupled with the Vietnam War. Reagan was just an actor. But he decided to go into politics to address this spending and debt problem. As governor of California and later as President, Reagan made it his mission to rein in spending and cut government down to size. At the time, America’s debt-to-GDP ratio was much lower than today’s astronomical levels. But interest rates were sky-high, which made the cost of servicing that debt a real issue. More concerning was the trajectory. Reagan knew that without deliberate effort to reduce spending, the deficit would eventually spiral into a crisis. Reagan’s ethos carried through the next two decades. Even Bill Clinton picked up the baton and eventually presided over multiple years of balanced budgets. But all that changed with the “War on Terror” in the early 2000s. The military spending blowout, combined with the 2008 global financial crisis and big bank bailouts sent the national debt on a vertical trajectory. It blew past $10 trillion, then $15 trillion, then $20 trillion with nary a concern. The political and media establishment dismissed it. “Debt doesn’t matter,” they said. “We’re the superpower. We’re America.” Yet the veneer of strength and credibility eroded, withering away bit-by-bit as deficits ballooned and the national debt climbed relentlessly. Then COVID happened. And whatever was left of fiscal sanity died quicker than nursing home patients under Cuomo’s Emmy-award-winning leadership. Under the influence of Lord Protector Fauci, Congress was convinced that the only way out of the pandemic was to spend trillions of dollars. The nation debt shot up $7.5 trillion in three years. But even when the pandemic was over, the spending binge never stopped. The national debt is now north of $38 trillion, and interest costs exceed $1.2 trillion per year— nearly a quarter of all federal tax revenue. The other three quarters of tax revenue is consumed entirely by mandatory entitlement programs like Social Security and welfare. This means that everything else— from the military, to roads, to the bureaucracy in DC— is paid for with borrowed money. And let’s not forget: a significant chunk of this debt is owed to foreign nations. Here’s the key part that makes 2025 stand out: foreign governments and central banks are starting to back away from US government bonds. For decades, the US had a captive audience. Foreigners needed to hold dollars to participate in the global economy. And US Treasuries were the most liquid, “risk-free” assets on Earth. But this year that illusion finally broke. The signs were already there at the start of the year. The Biden administration’s overuse of sanctions made it clear: if a foreign country crosses Washington, that nation’s assets can be frozen and its economy sanctioned. US government bonds no longer looked like a safe harbor. And in 2025, foreign countries began diversifying aggressively. The clearest sign of this trend has been this year’s astronomical rise in the price of gold. Central banks and foreign governments are dumping dollars and buying gold to prepare for a post-dollar world. And the chaos that 2025 brought only strengthened this resolve.

2. 

   18 Nov 2025TRANSCRIPT

   Some clear thinking on the bizarre state of the US economy

   Sometimes it feels difficult to get one’s bearings. Markets are near all-time highs, yet extremely volatile. America is the ‘hottest economy in the world’ attracting trillions of dollars in capital, yet inflation is up... and seemingly almost every week some major corporation announces mass layoffs. Very little makes sense these days. So today I wanted to take a big picture view of what’s happening in the US economy… and more critically, where it may be headed. 1. It’s all about the US federal budget deficit It’s not exactly controversial anymore to say that federal spending is completely out of control. Fiscal Year 2025 (which ended on September 30 of this year) posted another $1.8 trillion deficit, and interest on the national debt exceeded all military spending. This becomes worse each year and will soon reach a point where it is unfixable. The government has to borrow money just to pay interest on the money it has already borrowed… which means that the annual interest bill-- already more than 20% of tax revenue-- will continue to increase. 2. The budget deficit has to be financed, one way or another When the US government spends more than it collects in tax revenue, it makes up the difference by selling more debt, i.e. Treasury securities. Very broadly, you could group the investors who buy the US government’s debt into two groups: foreign investors and domestic investors. 3. Foreigners are abandoning US debt faster than anyone cares to admit. But for the past few years, foreigners (including foreign governments, central banks, large corporations, commercial banks, and even individual foreign investors) have been net SELLERS of US Treasury securities. It’s not hard to understand why; the entire world has witnessed utter chaos and insanity, from a guy who shook hands with thin air, to the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, to TWO attempted assassinations of a Presidential candidate, to “Liberation Day”, to the government shutdown, and more. Plus, all along the way the national debt reached an eye-popping $38 trillion. Foreigners are no longer looking at US government bonds as a “risk free” or “safe haven” asset. Instead, it just looks better to avoid. 4. Domestic investors don’t have enough savings to finance the deficit Each year, between businesses and consumers across the US economy, a total of roughly $1-2 trillion in “net savings” is generated. This is essentially the combination of all business and corporate profits, plus the net total of whatever households have left over after paying all bills and expenses. This year net domestic savings in the US economy is on track to be less than $1 trillion. But the budget deficit is roughly $2 trillion. This means there’s simply not enough savings in the United States to finance the annual deficit. 5. So, the Fed steps in and fills the gap Since foreigners aren’t buying, and the domestic economy doesn’t generate enough savings, the only option left to finance the budget deficit is for the Federal Reserve and the banking system to create the money. That’s why, over the past decade, US money supply has grown by 6.8% annually, while the real economy has only grown at 2.3%-- a difference of 4.5% annually. In short, this means that the growth in money supply is significantly greater than growth in the production of goods and services. A 4.5% difference isn’t very much if it were just a single year. But if you compound that 4.5% difference over 10-15 years, it means that the amount of money in the system has become substantially greater than the amount of goods and services in the economy. So there’s a LOT more money chasing around less ‘stuff’. The net result is inflation.

3. 

   12 Nov 2025TRANSCRIPT

   These three Central Banks are SELLING Gold

   We sincerely hope the House of Representatives can pull itself together and get the government back open this week. Not because we love federal bureaucracy—but because this shutdown is embarrassing, and it continues to chip away at the rapidly declining confidence that foreign governments and central banks have in the United States. This matters. Foreign governments and central banks collectively own $10+ trillion of US government bonds and other agency securities. And given how rapidly the national debt is rising, the Treasury Department needs every lender they can get. Up until recently, foreigners have always happily stocked up on US government bonds— which were traditionally viewed as THE world’s “risk free” asset. But over the past few years, they’ve seen endless financial chaos and political dysfunction. They watched Joe Biden shake hands with thin air. They watched the humiliating US withdrawal of Afghanistan. They watched millions of migrants stream across the US border with impunity, then be showered with taxpayer benefits. They watched TWO assassination attempts on a Presidential candidate. Then, even after last year’s election, they watched the richest guy in the world willingly roll up his sleeves to help eliminate federal waste and cut the deficit— only to get chased out of town by politicians who are addicted to fraudulent spending. They’ve watched extreme political dysfunction, with two sides who can’t agree on anything... including the most basic task of keeping the government open. They’ve watched deficits grow and the national debt spiral to $38 trillion. They watched the debt grow by HALF A TRILLION dollars just over the past SIX WEEKS when the government was supposedly closed. In short, if you were a foreign government or central bank, there’s little chance you would look at Congress and think, “these are serious, responsible people.” Quite the opposite. In fact you would probably think that it’s time to start cutting your Treasury holdings and back away from the US dollar. After all, the United States Congress doesn’t exactly look “risk free” any longer. Foreigners understand that a time is coming—sooner rather than later—when the US dollar will no longer be the dominant global reserve currency. Many central banks still hold nearly 100% of their reserves in US dollars. They know they need to diversify. And we’ve written about this many times before— the #1 asset that they’re purchasing right now is gold. It’s not because these foreign central bankers and finance ministers are irrational gold bugs. Instead, they understand that gold is nearly the only asset that (1) is universally accepted, (2) carries zero counterparty risk, and (3) has a large enough market to absorb hundreds of billions of dollars in capital flows. That’s why, from Poland to Ghana to Kazakhstan, central banks have been buying gold in record quantities. It’s not just China. China is the most desperate. They hold hundreds of billions in US dollar assets as part of their strategic financial reserves, and the Communist Party is extremely concerned—because they see a real possibility that they could be at war with their own borrower in the future. Only three central banks were selling gold last quarter—and their reasons are easy to understand. Russia was one—not because they love the dollar. But because they need to fund a war. Frozen out of the global financial system, gold has become almost a medium of exchange for the Russian government. Singapore was another. Most central banks only buy strategically; they don’t try to turn a profit. Not Singapore. Their financial institutions are filled with sharp traders who would sell high into record trading volume,

Inside a recent episode

2025: The Year America’s Debt Crisis Got Real

Published 10 Dec 2025 · Transcript excerpt

[…] They spend all of their tax revenue. They have to borrow every single penny they spend on national defense at the entire military budget is financed with more debt. And so at some point you got to go, hey, this is starting to be a problem. And even if people in the US don't realize it, foreigners realize it. And the reason that matters is because foreigners own a ton of the US national debt. You know, it's about half of the marketable fixed rate US government securities are owned by foreigners. Foreign government, central banks, and then he got, you know, commercial banks and, you know, investment banks and even individuals, wealth individuals, corporations, you know, big companies, like whatever, you know, Toyota, Mitsubishi, and, you know, various, Siemens and IKEA and all these, you know, of course, they all own US treasuries. […]

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

YouTube views

311,270

Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.6 / 5

203 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

37 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 57 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

50

Social presence

0

YouTube

93

Engagement

67

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