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War In Iran: How It Will Create A Global Financial Crash

VRIC Media Jun 12, 2026

Summary

Macleod says the war's economic damage has not yet reached inflation data, making the July, August and September CPI prints the ones that matter.

Oil near $90 only reflects strategic reserve draws; some Asian buyers pay up to $200 a barrel, and fertilizer shortages feed food prices.

Bond yields above 5% would expose overvalued equities to forced selling from $22 trillion of foreign holdings and $8 trillion of collateralized debt.

He treats gold as money rather than an investment: physical gold is final settlement, while holding dollars means taking government counterparty risk.

China's export restrictions have drained global silver liquidity, and he expects mining equities to keep falling with bullion until the dollar turns.

Alasdair Macleod's takeaways

  • Top takeaway His central call is that war-driven inflation pushes the US into massive QE: with government debt at about 125% of GDP and war costs collapsing tax revenue while welfare costs soar, he sees no alternative to the Fed buying Treasury stock, and expects that to destroy the dollar's purchasing power, with the political imperative being to bail out everyone until the currency is valueless.
  • He expects bond yields to rise above 5% from around the ten-year point, after which he sees equities collapsing as foreigners unwind roughly $22 trillion of US stock holdings and more than $8 trillion of collateralised debt, hedge fund borrowing plus FINRA-recorded broker loans, is liquidated into the market.
  • On mining stocks he calls the sell-off inevitable because they follow the metal price and retail holders dump whatever has not fallen yet, but treats it as an initial effect rather than the sector's undoing, noting miners still produce good margins at $1,400 to $1,800 gold against roughly $1,400 sustaining costs, and expects the sector to perform again once gold and silver recover.
  • He insists gold is money rather than an investment, arguing fiat currency carries central-bank counterparty risk while physical gold is final settlement, and frames gold near $4,200 as of mid-June 2026, down from a top near $5,600, as only a correction in a dollar-in-gold trend he expects to keep falling, adding that central banks buy gold because they know the law.
  • On silver he advises treating it as an industrial metal with demand he says is going off the scale, citing China's reversal of its export policy, London lease rates spiking to 40% in early October, a move from $50 to $120, and swaps desks that are very short silver pressing miners to hedge production forward.

Darrell Thomas's takeaways

  • Top takeaway The host argues the pullback in gold from about $5,600 to just under $4,200 as of mid-June 2026 is a buying opportunity to trade paper currency for real money, and says investors who had been waiting to get in have instead been running for the exit.
  • He treats the back-and-forth with Iran, deals and no deals, attacks and renewed bombing threats, as noise, and points to the strait staying closed and blockades continuing as the real signal that oil and fertiliser pressure will keep building.
  • He says markets are fragile and are trading on disinformation after the recent broad sell-off in gold, gold miners, the S&P and tech stocks, and that the truth about the Middle East has not been priced in yet.