Tanvi Ratna Profile picture
Jan 31 8 tweets 2 min read Read on X
The gold and silver crash wasn’t a coordinated plot by Wall Street or governments.

Kevin Warsh wasn’t the cause — just the match.

As Ray Dalio warned, capital wars are here — and we likely just witnessed one.

The sequence matters. I’ll walk through it 🧵 Image
For decades, global finance ran on one quiet habit:

Japan lent money for free.

Borrow yen at ~0%.
Buy anything else.
Keep the spread.

Hedge funds, pensions, commodities — trillions leaned on this.

Japan was the rich grandmother who never asked for it back.
On Jan 20, that changed.

PM Sanae pushed for fiscal expansion to help the Japanese middle class & strengthen defence.

Long-term yields on the yen jumped.

Cheap yen stopped being cheap.

Suddenly savers could earn real returns & Japan's capital started returning home.
When funding tightens, money looks for safety.

That’s why gold and silver didn’t crash first —
they spiked, something that most conspiracists miss.

Gold up ~30%.
Silver up ~60%.

Not because things were great.
Because stress was building fast across institutions.
Then came the moment that closed the door.

On Jan 30, Trump picked Kevin Warsh for Fed Chair.

Markets didn’t hear a biography.
They heard: strong dollar, no quick rescue.
Now the yen was tightening and the dollar was firm.

That combo is brutal for leverage.
After that, nothing was colluded. It was automatic.

Higher funding costs. Margin calls triggered.

Gold and silver were liquid amidst the currency turmoil
+
Warsh signalled a collapse in the devauled dollar trade (gold/silver)

Both were sold rapidly (paper rather than spot)
This looks like what Ray Dalio called "capital wars"

Japan pulling money home for security and tech.
The U.S. defending the dollar and industrial stability.

No conspiracy. Just national priorities in the real economy overruling speculators.

Full story: tanviratna.substack.com/p/gold-silver-…
I’ve spent a decade working at the intersection of geopolitics, economics, and technology.

If you found this insightful, follow me here on X & Substack for sharp, no-fluff breakdowns of the forces shaping our world.

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More from @tanvi_ratna

Jan 10
Everyone says Venezuela is about oil, gold, and rare earths

But the math doesn't math. Each burns billions for America and goes nowhere fast

Instead, the true White House strategy seems far more novel. They aren't lying—but it's also not what you think 👇🧵 Image
2/ To understand this better first let's delve into each resource.

To monetize a resource you need: verified geology → secure sites → power/logistics → enforceable contracts → processing/export routes → years of capex.

Venezuela fails that chain across almost everything.
The Venezuela “oil grab” story fails on economics.

Orinoco crude is extra-heavy, closer to oil sands than shale: high lifting costs, diluent blending, specialized refineries. A real ramp to 2–3M bpd needs $100–150B and 5–7 years.

That’s not "loot," more like a capital sink.
Read 10 tweets
Nov 3, 2025
Of all the clips from Trump’s 60 Minutes interview, one stands out for policy:

“We can be bigger, better, stronger just working with [China] rather than knocking them out.”

China was one of Washington’s last bipartisan consensus. Has the view changed? Some signals 👇🧵
Key security think tank - RAND’s October 2025 report surprised many. Once hawkish on China, it now calls for “muted rivalry,” urging engagement over escalation and pressing Taiwan toward restraint. Image
Public sentiment is shifting. The Chicago Council poll from Oct ’25 shows Democrats favor engagement with China while Republicans remain hawkish.

The bipartisan consensus on China as a strategic competitor is fracturing — creating new political room for recalibration. Image
Read 5 tweets
Oct 31, 2025
Everyone’s debating who won the Xi–Trump summit.

But won what? Tariffs? Soybeans? Optics?

The true contest is over future capacity — and the scoreboard isn’t linear.

China plays for throughput.
America plays for time.

Here's the asymmetry that actually matters 🧵 Image
The U.S. controls stacked chokepoints:

EDA software (Synopsys, Cadence)

Lithography (ASML, Applied Materials)

AI chips (Nvidia, AMD, Intel)

If China falls behind in just one, it stalls in the stack.
America then doesn’t just lead — it compounds ahead. Image
China’s leverage is real — but it peaks on use.

-Tariff threats
-Rare-earth dominance
-Embargoes

Each flex accelerates substitution.
Each embargo justifies a new refinery, alliance, or export control.

Power that burns itself to be seen ≠ durable power.
Read 6 tweets
Oct 29, 2025
The U.S. isn’t rebuilding China’s rare-earth empire — it’s leapfrogging it.

Science, finance & alliances are converging into a multi-pronged strategy that could compress decades into years

The membrane story was just the start..🧵 Image
U.S. labs are rewriting the chemistry.

Membranes & protein binders can bypass solvent extraction — and now, proof is scaling:

@ucore (UURAF) has processed 4k tons under a DoD grant and is building a Louisiana plant by 2026

If it works, China’s moat is hit hard Image
The Pentagon isn’t just funding — it’s market-making.

A 10-year price floor & guaranteed offtake for MP Materials turned rare earths into an asset class.

Industrial policy as capital structure — Washington learned from Wall Street. Image
Read 6 tweets
Oct 9, 2025
In June, I was first to say Trump’s Gaza Riviera pitch wasn’t cosmetic—it was core to IMEC, an economic corridor to counter China's Belt & Road.

Some called it a stretch. But the Gaza rebuild strategy confirms it.

Gaza will be wired for investor-grade trade, not just rebuilt🧵 Image
For context, revisit my June thread—where I linked Trump’s Gaza play to IMEC’s stalled spine. The corridor needed Gaza stable to restart.

Since then, every move has aligned: coalitions formed, plans advanced. It isn't just about the hostages.

Trump’s Gaza plan centers on a $70–100B investor-led trust to remake Gaza into a secure trade zone.

Backed by US-Gulf capital, it blends land tokenization, megaprojects, and a trusteeship model to wire Gaza into IMEC—with jobs, ROI, and rare-earth access in play. Image
Read 7 tweets
Aug 22, 2025
SEISMIC: Jerome Powell just scrapped the 2020 "average inflation targeting" playbook.

Now, 2% inflation means 2%—no intentional overshoot.

This shift rewrites central banking orthodoxy and signals the end of the easy-money era post-2008.

This changes policy and markets 🧵 Image
The last framework allowed inflation overshoots to "make up" for past misses.

That misfire precipitated inflation spikes of 9.1% in 2022—highest in 40 years.

Powell’s reset restores inflation as a ceiling, not an average.
No longer just worried about unemployment being too high but equally about it being too low.

The Fed can tighten preemptively to cool hot labor markets.

That’s a hard pivot from the “employment first” bias and signals a balanced dual mandate focus going forward.
Read 6 tweets

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