On September 15, local time in the United States, shortly after the first televised campaign debate between Trump and Harris ended, Trump was assassinated again while playing golf in Florida. He survived the second time. This was his second assassination attempt in two months.
After the assassination, Trump immediately told his supporters: "Nothing can slow me down, I will never surrender!" In a statement, the White House stated insincerely that Biden and Harris had learned of the incident and were relieved to learn that he was safe.
We noticed that at the debate on September 10, when Trump said he would push for an end to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Harris launched a fierce attack on him, saying that he wanted to end the conflict quickly because he wanted to abandon Ukraine. So, when the latter said these lines at the debate, she had actually anticipated that an assassination like this would happen sooner or later.
Analysis of the scene shows that the possibility of Trump's side directing and acting in the incident can basically be ruled out. Coincidentally, the last assassination attempt in Pennsylvania also occurred within two weeks after the end of the TV debate.
The assassination attempt on Trump comes at a time when the US campaign is in turmoil and will usher in the final showdown in 50 days. Trump is currently locked in a fierce competition with Harris, whose support has soared since replacing Biden as the candidate in July. In July this year, after Trump was assassinated, US billionaire Musk wrote that "dangerous times are coming."
It is clear that this incident is yet another unprecedented event in a series of events that have shocked financial markets in this US election cycle. Analysis shows that this renewed gunfire may have determined the outcome of the 2024 US election and a historical moment in the direction of US financial markets and asset price patterns.
With the news of the second assassination attempt, the US financial market may experience turbulence in the next few days. It is expected that the "Trump deal" will be boosted next, and Trump Media Technology Group (DJT) once rose more than 8% in pre-market trading.
The latest Ipsos poll on September 16 showed that the economic promises Trump vowed during his campaign were supported by a majority of Americans, indicating that he has an economic advantage over his rival Harris.
There is no doubt that the current chaotic US election is becoming another fuse for the impending US economic recession. Under the expectations of high interest rates and a strong dollar, the US inflation trend is rising. As the US election process exceeds expectations and geopolitical frictions exceed expectations, according to experience and historical data, US stocks and US bonds will perform better in the two months before the election, but will basically perform poorly in the six months after the election. Commodities including oil tend to perform better in the six months after the election, especially gold.
This shows that gold is showing its kingly qualities. The combined effect of multiple factors, including regional conflicts in the Middle East, expectations of a sharp interest rate cut in the United States and gold being the ultimate safe-haven investment, has pushed gold to an all-time high. At a time when more and more state authorities in the United States have announced financial and monetary independence, it shows that the dollar and the U.S. banking system, which are the cornerstones of the global financial order, have experienced a crisis of confidence in the United States, which is beyond the expectations of Wall Street.
The latest development is that the Louisiana Senate Committee passed an update bill (SB459) on September 15, making gold and silver legal tender in the state, becoming legal tender on par with the US dollar, and beginning to perform the function of general equivalents in commodity trading processes. It can also be used as an exchange currency to repay US debts and taxes to cope with uncertain risks such as the decline in the purchasing power of the US dollar and inflation.
This also means that 45 states in the United States have officially declared independence in the financial and monetary system, declaring that the US dollar is not the only legal currency.
Just last month, Alaska authorities signed a bill (HB22) that makes gold and silver independent legal tender in the state, abolishes transaction taxes, and prohibits the U.S. Treasury from seizing and "confiscating" gold. Bills (HB101) and (HB2804) submitted by Kentucky and Tennessee authorities also indicate that the two states have done the same thing.
According to incomplete statistics from the BWC Chinese Financial Research Team based on bill data published by various states in the United States, since the beginning of 2024, at least 10 states have successively announced measures to use gold as a replacement for the US dollar (please refer to the figure below for specific data details). Among the remaining 9 states, South Carolina and Hawaii are also accelerating legislation to abolish gold transaction income tax and become monetaryly independent from the US dollar.
This suggests that gold’s value and monetary function as a natural store of wealth is returning from America’s monetary history to express doubts about the security of the dollar and the U.S. financial system.
In fact, half a century ago, people all over the world were accustomed to calling the US dollar "American dollars", which actually reflected the credit value of the US dollar when it was anchored to gold. But when the United States no longer had enough gold reserves to support the gold standard, since Nixon unilaterally closed the window for direct exchange of US dollars for gold in August 1971, the balance of payments crisis faced by the United States has become increasingly serious. Through several rounds of flood-like liquidity releases and under the shadow of the debt snowball, the US dollar has increasingly lost its purchasing power.
According to Alex Mooney, a defender of the U.S. gold standard, in an updated proposal (HR2671) submitted to the U.S. Treasury on September 14 to review the transparency of gold reserves, the current $100 has depreciated by 97% relative to gold.
So, from this point of view, the decoupling of the US dollar from gold itself indicates that the US dollar is losing its credit. This shows that US dollar assets have a shelf life. The US dollar is not gold. The real gold is gold.
This shows that when global central banks really need to address the soaring debt risks in the United States, the process of re-evaluating the dollar's currency status will begin. As the dollar's status and reserve share decline, it has prompted US allies including Japan, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Europe to continue to reduce their holdings of US debt to reduce their exposure to the US dollar. At this critical moment, another unexpected thing happened.
This is the lasting impact of Trump's increased chances of winning the election. Traders are concerned about the prospect of continued growth in the federal deficit after the US election in November and rising structural inflation. What worries them most is that a larger federal deficit may be coming and there is a possibility that the United States will refuse or suspend repayment of US debt and related payments.
The U.S. Treasury said last week it would increase the size of auctions of most Treasury maturities, including two-year and five-year bonds, over the next three months.
In its latest forecast, the Congressional Budget Office said on September 3 that the U.S. national debt in fiscal year 2025 (October 2024 to September next year) is expected to be 30% higher than previously forecast. The federal budget deficit in fiscal year 2025 is now expected to reach 2.5 trillion U.S. dollars. If certain changes in payment timing are taken into account, this figure will rise to about 3 trillion. Trillions more will need to be borrowed in the next decade, and interest spending will set a record high of interest costs as a percentage of GDP since records began in 1940.
Data shows that since fiscal year 2024, the United States has paid nearly 1.3 trillion U.S. debt interest, more than twice the average level of the past decade. It is estimated that this figure will soar further as high interest rates will remain longer in the foreseeable fiscal year 2025.
The U.S. deficit is almost as large as Russia's economy, and there is a negative feedback loop that could make the situation worse, with investors reassessing the potential inflationary impact of fiscal, tariff and immigration policies proposed during Trump's term, which could mean the Fed's rate-cutting cycle will soon come to a halt.
Even Japan's largest brokerage firm Nomura warned in a report updated on September 16 that if Trump is ultimately elected, it will once again stimulate U.S. inflation to rise, causing the public debt ratio to rise at a steeper trajectory than the Congressional Budget Office predicts. In that case, the U.S. authorities may refuse or suspend debt repayment, and Trump may call a halt to debt repayment, thus shifting the risk of the U.S. debt deficit.
Nomura said the decision may be supported by Congress because about one-third of Treasury bonds are currently held by creditors outside the United States. At this critical juncture, something unexpected happened to the market.
U.S. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia again submitted a draft to Congress on September 15, calling for the United States to return to the gold standard as soon as possible when global central banks are developing digital currencies anchored to gold, making gold the anchor to replace U.S. bonds to determine the value of the dollar. This will obviously be seen as a clear warning to the existing dollar-dominated U.S. financial system and the trend of a possible crisis in the U.S. dollar, which is spreading again, once again beyond Wall Street's expectations.
This further shows that now that more and more states in the United States have lost confidence in the US dollar and have begun to announce that gold can replace the US dollar and become independent of the US dollar in financial currency, then in the near future, the United States may also use gold to repay debts to creditors.
Because the United States' basic law clearly stipulates that "U.S. bondholders must be paid", which shows that the repayment of U.S. debt is sacred and inviolable, and it cannot violate its obligations to repay debts and pay interest. The United States dare not and has no right to default on U.S. debt-related payments.
It is worth mentioning that at present, the US debt ceiling funds will be exhausted again at the end of 2025. According to the plan, negotiations will be restarted on January 2, 2025. However, in the current chaotic US election environment, the negotiation deadlock in Congress will be staged again. As the United States fails to lift the debt ceiling issue in time, it may seriously hit the confidence of the US financial market, and the credit of the US dollar will be weakened again. Therefore, the far-reaching significance of 45 US states declaring gold as a currency on par with the US dollar is worthy of our deep consideration.