“You think it’s all a couple of looney scientists, it’s not ! It’s bigger. There are people out there, *forces* out there, who have a lot to lose. They’re grown ups. It’s gotten too big, it’s in the hands of grown ups !”
- James Kelloway (Hal Holbrook), Capricorn One, 1978.
“I’d go to the moon in a nanosecond.. the problem is we don’t have the technology to do that any more.”
- Donald R Pettit, NASA astronaut, IBTimes video, 2016.
“The moon landings have to be real because if they are not real it means that our country is so corrupt it’s mind boggling and that’s why people still believe it’s true because they don’t want to face the reality that our government is totally corrupt, totally immoral, total liars, embezzlers of money, and murderers of people.. and it means the CIA runs the government.”
Get your Free
financial review
Peter Hyams’ 1978 thriller ‘Capricorn One’ has long been a favourite of this correspondent. Spoiler alert: if you haven’t seen this criminally underrated gem, best to skip to the next paragraph. Jim Knipfel:
“Although the story concerns a faked, manned mission to Mars, the nudge and the wink was clear. Even the TV spots gave it away. “What if the greatest event in human history,” the narrator asked as the camera pulls back from an iconic image of an astronaut standing beside a flag and lunar module to reveal he’s on a movie soundstage, “.. never really happened ?”
‘Capricorn One’, of course, is a none-too-subtle conspiratorial pastiche of the moon landings, and is, at least notionally, a work of fiction.
Let’s come back down to earth.
That central banks exist, on the other hand, and that their ongoing grim mission creep continues to metastasise uncontrollably, is a matter of hard fact. And it is fact that for decades they have been attempting to impose artificial constraints on market prices.
Since the global financial crisis, the financial markets have been a battleground between the forces of deflation and inflation. Deflation represents the free market. A free market wants to reset the game, cleanse the system of malinvestments and bad actors, and clear all the redundant pieces from the table. Inflation represents the State, and its economic agents, the central banks, whose theoretical independence from the State may be unlikely to survive this ongoing crisis. The (Deep) State ‘merely’ wants to perpetuate itself, and is somewhat indifferent to the costs incurred to its citizenry in the process.
After years of seemingly endless stimulus and overly easy monetary conditions, the wheels are finally starting to fall off an increasingly rickety capital markets bandwagon. Weakened by rising global bond yields and inappropriate corporate behaviour (AI financing looks increasingly circular while its debt issuance threatens to crowd out that from the public sector), the centre is not holding any more.
In a recent commentary, analyst and truth bomber Doug Noland cites the work of the economist Hyman Minsky:
Minsky’s “financial instability hypothesis” models three categories of debt structures: Sound “hedge finance” – where “cash flows are expected to exceed the cash flow commitments on liabilities for every period.” Less sound “speculative finance” – where cash flows, although inadequate to fully service debt in the short-run, are generally sufficient over the longer-term. And unsound “Ponzi finance” – “cash flows from assets in the near-term fall short of cash payment commitments” and only with some future “bonanza” will cash flows ever be sufficient to service debts and provide any realistic hope of generating profits.
Importantly, “a ‘Ponzi’ finance unit must expand its debt load to meet its financial obligations.” New money and credit in abundance are a necessity for perpetuating the scheme. The greater the ratio of speculative and Ponzi finance, the greater the fragility of the financial sector to rising interest rates and/or other shocks. Ponzi financed assets, in particular, are highly sensitive to both changing perceptions and higher interest rates. Traditionally, higher rates are problematic as debt service costs rise at the same time the present value of future cash flows drops. Quoting Minsky, “The rise in long term interest rates and the decline in expected profits play particular havoc with Ponzi units, for the present value of the hoped for future bonanza falls sharply.”
Minsky: “It can be shown that if hedge financing dominates, then the economy may well be an equilibrium seeking and containing system. In contrast, the greater the weight of speculative and Ponzi finance, the greater the likelihood that the economy is a deviation amplifying system.. Over a protracted period of good times, capitalist economies tend to move from a financial structure dominated by hedge finance units to a structure in which there is large weight to units engaged in speculative and Ponzi finance.”
Minsky witnessed a lot, but he surely never imagined an environment of zero rates and endless trillions of Fed monetization, and how such a backdrop – the perpetual “bonanza” – would extend the “deviation amplifying” Ponzi phase..”
We have long advised investors to enjoy the party, but to dance near the door. We elect to dance on. We have and recommend no meaningful exposure to bonds whatsoever. Nor to naked fiat currency (i.e. cash). We do make selective use of the least risky (i.e. marvellously inexpensive) high quality and powerfully cash-flow generative listed companies; we see merit in well risk-managed systematic trend-following funds that offer the potential to benefit in falling as well as rising markets; and we maintain plenty of exposure to precious metals, especially silver, and to real asset-linked value companies operating profitably amidst the world’s commodity markets.
We think, in short, that ‘the State’ will win. That means inflation. Which means, in turn, that many investors will lose.
With regard to the moon landing conventional narrative (we went; we landed; we came back), Feargus O’Connor Greenwood, author of ‘180 degrees: unlearn the lies you’ve been taught to believe’, writes as follows:
“If it is a lie, then it is possible that the consequences of the lie have been far worse than the lie itself. Just as with the assassination of President Kennedy, those responsible would not only have thought,” if we can get away with fooling the world on that, we can get away with anything,” but would indeed go on to do so. It does not require too much imagination to see the egos of the perpetrators being inflated to such a level of hubris that the public becomes just a set of ‘dumb animals’ to be mocked and exploited, and the space programme a boondoggle that is literally out of this world.
“Regardless of where the truth lies what has clearly been exploited over the decades are people’s naivety and innate trust in authority. Unfortunately for THEY, the internet arrived and a new generation was born that is less emotionally attached to historic events they didn’t live through and are now witnessing multiple lies unravel in real time. Perhaps the rest of the bamboozles are about to be exposed ?”
We asked Grok:
“If it turned out that the lunar landings were faked, what would that say about America ?”
Grok’s response:
“It would say that the United States, at the height of the Cold War, chose national prestige and psychological victory over the Soviet Union more than it chose truth. A successful fake would have required coordinated lying by NASA, contractors, the military, Congress, allied tracking stations, and later administrations that kept the story going. That is a large, durable conspiracy, not a casual PR stunt.
“It would also say something about competence. Faking the landings well enough to fool rival intelligence services, radio observatories, and later independent imaging of the sites would still have been a major technical and organizational achievement—just a dishonest one. The country would look less like a society that actually reached the Moon and more like one that was extremely good at theater, secrecy, and narrative control when the stakes were high.
“What it would not automatically prove is that “America is uniquely evil” or that every later claim by the government is false. States lie. Superpowers lie more when status is on the line. The interesting part of the counterfactual is the scale and duration of the lie, and how many ordinary engineers and officials would have had to live with it.
“In the actual world the landings were not faked. The physical evidence—returned samples with unique isotopic and exposure signatures, laser retroreflectors still used today, contemporaneous tracking by other countries including adversaries, and later high-resolution images of the landing sites—is consistent with the official account and inconsistent with a studio production. The hypothetical is useful mainly as a thought experiment about trust, incentives, and what a government will risk for a symbolic win.”
‘What a government will risk for a symbolic win..’ Now there’s a coinage.
………….
As you may know, we also manage bespoke investment portfolios for private clients internationally. We would be delighted to help you too. Because of the current heightened market volatility we are offering a completely free financial review, with no strings attached, to see if our value-oriented approach might benefit your portfolio – with no obligation at all:
Get your Free
financial review
…………
Tim Price is co-manager of the VT Price Value Portfolio and author of ‘Investing through the Looking Glass: a rational guide to irrational financial markets’. You can access a full archive of these weekly investment commentaries here. You can listen to our regular ‘State of the Markets’ podcasts, with Paul Rodriguez of ThinkTrading.com, here. Email us: info@pricevaluepartners.com.
Price Value Partners manage investment portfolios for private clients. We also manage the VT Price Value Portfolio, an unconstrained global fund investing in Benjamin Graham-style value stocks and real assets, and also in systematic trend-following funds. The fund was “Highly commended” in Investment Week’s 2026 Fund Manager of the Year Awards.
“You think it’s all a couple of looney scientists, it’s not ! It’s bigger. There are people out there, *forces* out there, who have a lot to lose. They’re grown ups. It’s gotten too big, it’s in the hands of grown ups !”
“I’d go to the moon in a nanosecond.. the problem is we don’t have the technology to do that any more.”
“The moon landings have to be real because if they are not real it means that our country is so corrupt it’s mind boggling and that’s why people still believe it’s true because they don’t want to face the reality that our government is totally corrupt, totally immoral, total liars, embezzlers of money, and murderers of people.. and it means the CIA runs the government.”
Get your Free
financial review
Peter Hyams’ 1978 thriller ‘Capricorn One’ has long been a favourite of this correspondent. Spoiler alert: if you haven’t seen this criminally underrated gem, best to skip to the next paragraph. Jim Knipfel:
“Although the story concerns a faked, manned mission to Mars, the nudge and the wink was clear. Even the TV spots gave it away. “What if the greatest event in human history,” the narrator asked as the camera pulls back from an iconic image of an astronaut standing beside a flag and lunar module to reveal he’s on a movie soundstage, “.. never really happened ?”
‘Capricorn One’, of course, is a none-too-subtle conspiratorial pastiche of the moon landings, and is, at least notionally, a work of fiction.
Let’s come back down to earth.
That central banks exist, on the other hand, and that their ongoing grim mission creep continues to metastasise uncontrollably, is a matter of hard fact. And it is fact that for decades they have been attempting to impose artificial constraints on market prices.
Since the global financial crisis, the financial markets have been a battleground between the forces of deflation and inflation. Deflation represents the free market. A free market wants to reset the game, cleanse the system of malinvestments and bad actors, and clear all the redundant pieces from the table. Inflation represents the State, and its economic agents, the central banks, whose theoretical independence from the State may be unlikely to survive this ongoing crisis. The (Deep) State ‘merely’ wants to perpetuate itself, and is somewhat indifferent to the costs incurred to its citizenry in the process.
After years of seemingly endless stimulus and overly easy monetary conditions, the wheels are finally starting to fall off an increasingly rickety capital markets bandwagon. Weakened by rising global bond yields and inappropriate corporate behaviour (AI financing looks increasingly circular while its debt issuance threatens to crowd out that from the public sector), the centre is not holding any more.
In a recent commentary, analyst and truth bomber Doug Noland cites the work of the economist Hyman Minsky:
Minsky’s “financial instability hypothesis” models three categories of debt structures: Sound “hedge finance” – where “cash flows are expected to exceed the cash flow commitments on liabilities for every period.” Less sound “speculative finance” – where cash flows, although inadequate to fully service debt in the short-run, are generally sufficient over the longer-term. And unsound “Ponzi finance” – “cash flows from assets in the near-term fall short of cash payment commitments” and only with some future “bonanza” will cash flows ever be sufficient to service debts and provide any realistic hope of generating profits.
Importantly, “a ‘Ponzi’ finance unit must expand its debt load to meet its financial obligations.” New money and credit in abundance are a necessity for perpetuating the scheme. The greater the ratio of speculative and Ponzi finance, the greater the fragility of the financial sector to rising interest rates and/or other shocks. Ponzi financed assets, in particular, are highly sensitive to both changing perceptions and higher interest rates. Traditionally, higher rates are problematic as debt service costs rise at the same time the present value of future cash flows drops. Quoting Minsky, “The rise in long term interest rates and the decline in expected profits play particular havoc with Ponzi units, for the present value of the hoped for future bonanza falls sharply.”
Minsky: “It can be shown that if hedge financing dominates, then the economy may well be an equilibrium seeking and containing system. In contrast, the greater the weight of speculative and Ponzi finance, the greater the likelihood that the economy is a deviation amplifying system.. Over a protracted period of good times, capitalist economies tend to move from a financial structure dominated by hedge finance units to a structure in which there is large weight to units engaged in speculative and Ponzi finance.”
Minsky witnessed a lot, but he surely never imagined an environment of zero rates and endless trillions of Fed monetization, and how such a backdrop – the perpetual “bonanza” – would extend the “deviation amplifying” Ponzi phase..”
We have long advised investors to enjoy the party, but to dance near the door. We elect to dance on. We have and recommend no meaningful exposure to bonds whatsoever. Nor to naked fiat currency (i.e. cash). We do make selective use of the least risky (i.e. marvellously inexpensive) high quality and powerfully cash-flow generative listed companies; we see merit in well risk-managed systematic trend-following funds that offer the potential to benefit in falling as well as rising markets; and we maintain plenty of exposure to precious metals, especially silver, and to real asset-linked value companies operating profitably amidst the world’s commodity markets.
We think, in short, that ‘the State’ will win. That means inflation. Which means, in turn, that many investors will lose.
With regard to the moon landing conventional narrative (we went; we landed; we came back), Feargus O’Connor Greenwood, author of ‘180 degrees: unlearn the lies you’ve been taught to believe’, writes as follows:
“If it is a lie, then it is possible that the consequences of the lie have been far worse than the lie itself. Just as with the assassination of President Kennedy, those responsible would not only have thought,” if we can get away with fooling the world on that, we can get away with anything,” but would indeed go on to do so. It does not require too much imagination to see the egos of the perpetrators being inflated to such a level of hubris that the public becomes just a set of ‘dumb animals’ to be mocked and exploited, and the space programme a boondoggle that is literally out of this world.
“Regardless of where the truth lies what has clearly been exploited over the decades are people’s naivety and innate trust in authority. Unfortunately for THEY, the internet arrived and a new generation was born that is less emotionally attached to historic events they didn’t live through and are now witnessing multiple lies unravel in real time. Perhaps the rest of the bamboozles are about to be exposed ?”
We asked Grok:
“If it turned out that the lunar landings were faked, what would that say about America ?”
Grok’s response:
“It would say that the United States, at the height of the Cold War, chose national prestige and psychological victory over the Soviet Union more than it chose truth. A successful fake would have required coordinated lying by NASA, contractors, the military, Congress, allied tracking stations, and later administrations that kept the story going. That is a large, durable conspiracy, not a casual PR stunt.
“It would also say something about competence. Faking the landings well enough to fool rival intelligence services, radio observatories, and later independent imaging of the sites would still have been a major technical and organizational achievement—just a dishonest one. The country would look less like a society that actually reached the Moon and more like one that was extremely good at theater, secrecy, and narrative control when the stakes were high.
“What it would not automatically prove is that “America is uniquely evil” or that every later claim by the government is false. States lie. Superpowers lie more when status is on the line. The interesting part of the counterfactual is the scale and duration of the lie, and how many ordinary engineers and officials would have had to live with it.
“In the actual world the landings were not faked. The physical evidence—returned samples with unique isotopic and exposure signatures, laser retroreflectors still used today, contemporaneous tracking by other countries including adversaries, and later high-resolution images of the landing sites—is consistent with the official account and inconsistent with a studio production. The hypothetical is useful mainly as a thought experiment about trust, incentives, and what a government will risk for a symbolic win.”
‘What a government will risk for a symbolic win..’ Now there’s a coinage.
………….
As you may know, we also manage bespoke investment portfolios for private clients internationally. We would be delighted to help you too. Because of the current heightened market volatility we are offering a completely free financial review, with no strings attached, to see if our value-oriented approach might benefit your portfolio – with no obligation at all:
Get your Free
financial review
…………
Tim Price is co-manager of the VT Price Value Portfolio and author of ‘Investing through the Looking Glass: a rational guide to irrational financial markets’. You can access a full archive of these weekly investment commentaries here. You can listen to our regular ‘State of the Markets’ podcasts, with Paul Rodriguez of ThinkTrading.com, here. Email us: info@pricevaluepartners.com.
Price Value Partners manage investment portfolios for private clients. We also manage the VT Price Value Portfolio, an unconstrained global fund investing in Benjamin Graham-style value stocks and real assets, and also in systematic trend-following funds. The fund was “Highly commended” in Investment Week’s 2026 Fund Manager of the Year Awards.
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