The Strait "Reopens" and Gold Keeps Climbing

The Strait "Reopens" and Gold Keeps Climbing

From Doug Casey's Take by Matthew Smith

April 17, 2026 · 30 min · Episode 441

About this episode

Doug Casey discusses the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, the rising gold prices, and various geopolitical issues.

In today's episode: Good news broke this morning: the Strait of Hormuz is officially open again — assuming you believe what you read in the papers, which Doug emphatically does not. Oil dropped toward $80, gold crept toward $5,000 (a combination Doug calls "a little bit counterintuitive"), and meanwhile C-130s keep flowing into the Middle Eastern theater around the clock. As Doug puts it, "chances are this is just a pause in hostilities — everybody's taking the opportunity to reload." From there the conversation goes exactly where you'd hope it would. We get into Pete Hegseth's now-infamous "prayer breakfast," where the Secretary of Defense appears to have lifted Samuel L. Jackson's Ezekiel 25:17 monologue from Pulp Fiction and delivered it to a room of bewildered military brass as scripture. Doug's review was not kind: "It was kind of weak and mealy-mouthed the way Hegseth delivered those lines." His proposed fix? "Next time he ought to put a red bandana around his forehead à la Rambo, strip his shirt off to expose his war-like tattoos, and then deliver it with proper fervor." Elsewhere in a wide-ranging episode: Why coin collecting is dead and what that says about how we think…

People in this episode

Host: Matthew Smith

Topics covered

  • geopolitics
  • gold market
  • military affairs
  • coin collecting
  • travel concerns
  • human cloning

Keywords

  • Strait of Hormuz
  • gold prices
  • military
  • coin collecting
  • travel
  • human cloning

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Pulp Fiction

Places: Ireland, Argentina, Strait of Hormuz

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