What if the loudest case for a gold bull market is actually the case for a bear market on the system overall? In this week’s episode of the Collapse Life podcast, Bob Moriarty — Vietnam Marine fighter pilot turned market contrarian — walks us through late-stage empire logic: crowds are herds and herds chase highs. Sentiment, not slogans, move prices.
Touching on such things as Emmanuel Todd’s “Defeat of the West” to the resource bloc consolidating to the East, Moriarity maps the turn from debt-based dominance to something older, rougher, and more real. And then there’s the social fuse that needs to be addressed: what happens if expected SNAP benefits don’t hit the accounts of 40 million Americans on time, thanks to a prolonged government shutdown?
Systems fail slowly at first, then all at once.
The conversation between Moriarty and Collapse Life host, Zahra Sethna, is certainly sobering but not fear porn. It’s a field guide — humorous at times — that will help keep your head steady when the herd begins to stampede. Moriarty’s formula: sell into euphoria, buy when distress hits, de-romanticize politics, and build a life that works in low-trust, high-friction conditions.
If Rome is the metaphor, the lesson is practical: the people who did best were the ones who could read the weather forecast.
