Athletes going public with personal health problems should always be viewed positively. Professional athletes are some of the best examples of the incredible things that the human body can do as they perform on the playing field or playing court. For pro athletes to reveal that they are dealing with significant health issues is a moment of vulnerability that should be applauded especially for male athletes. In sports, athletes are not expected to show vulnerability or weakness so coming forward about health issues is the opposite of what they have known to do as they have played their sport for decades as a kid, teenager, and then adult as a professional.

During the 2010s, one of the most exciting running backs in the National Football League was Chris Johnson. The former first round pick entered the NFL from a smaller conference school, East Carolina, and Johnson himself did not have the size of fellow first round running backs such as Darren McFadden, Jonathan Stewart or Rashard Mendenhall. However, Johnson’s rare speed set him apart from virtually every running back of his era. A scatback in the mold of former Eagles halfback Brian Westbrook, Chris Johnson was a homerun hitter who began his NFL career with six consecutive 1,000-yard rushing seasons. However, his second NFL season led to his nickname “CJ2K” being born when he ran for 2006 rushing yards in 2009 and displayed that his frame could hold up to be a featured back in a major way.

Finish story here; Chris Johnson’s public bravery deserves public recognition.

I watched the whole circus with a different set of eyes.

Some of that comes with age. Once you have lived long enough to see how grown men come apart, you stop finding the earnest ones so hilarious. I have buried friends who were cooler than Russ ever tried to be. And I have watched slick talkers with all the right one liners lose their families, their money, and eventually themselves. Nobody clipped their bad decisions and set them to funny music. The quiet ruin of a so called real one rarely trends.

So let me say the thing plainly. The corniness people mocked was never the flaw they pretended it was.

Think about what the ridicule was actually built on. Peel it back and you find a television routine, a slogan or two, a husband who bragged on his wife instead of stepping out on her, and a father figure who embraced his stepson and treated him like his own. Somewhere along the way we got these categories twisted. We started treating polish like weakness and treating chaos as authenticity. This culture will crown a brother who cusses out reporters and picks up DUIs while his marriage quietly falls apart. Then the guy who spends his time supporting families and sitting with sick kids at the hospital, him we decide is lame.

That math has bugged me for a long time.

Look at the actual record, not the memes. Across 14 NFL seasons, there were no publicly reported arrests attached to his name. Nobody leaked footage of him swinging on somebody in an elevator. There was no baby mama drama splashed across the blogs, no sideline meltdown that torched a career. He weathered the end of his Seattle run, getting benched and released in Denver, Pittsburgh moving on after one season, and the Giants turning to a rookie after three starts. Through all of it he stayed professional. In the press he kept his mouth clean. He did not go scorched earth on his old teammates on the way out. Knock the throws however you want. Off the field he was not a locker room problem, and he did not hand anybody an off-field reason to regret his signature.

We ought to sit with how rare that truly is.

I coach a little on weekends, youth ball, nothing serious. Those boys hear the same thing out of me every season. The world will hand you a hundred reasons to be angry and only a few reasons to stay steady. Anger is the easier road. It gets the laughs, draws the followers, and reads to everybody like it is keeping things a hundred. Steady looks boring from the outside. It reads as corny. Yet steady is what keeps a household together when the money gets tight and the phone stops ringing.

Here is what the jokes always missed. It takes real backbone to keep showing up as the same person after the crowd turns on you. When his time in Seattle ended, Russ could have gotten bitter and loud. Once things collapsed in Denver, he could have leaked his frustrations and played the victim on any podcast that would book him. Plenty of former stars have taken exactly that route. He chose to keep his family intact, keep his charity work going, and hold his composure while grown professionals openly mocked his contract. Say what you want. That is discipline most of us could not muster with cameras in our faces.

I return again to the family piece because that is where the double standard gets loudest. When a certain kind of athlete flexes his relationship, we swoon and call it love. Let Wilson do the exact same thing and we roll our eyes and call it performance. Why? What did all that scrutiny of that man’s marriage reveal except a husband who genuinely enjoys being a husband? He stepped into a ready made family and treated his stepson like his own blood. In a community that spends a whole lot of breath talking about absent fathers, we sure did give a hard time to a brother who volunteered to be present.

Somewhere our compass got demagnetized.

I am not here to canonize anybody. He fumbled real football moments. On the field he made choices that fans had every right to critique, and the money he was paid invited scrutiny. Criticize the play. Debate the deep ball and the sacks and the price tag. That is the fair game part. What I refuse to accept is the idea that his decency itself was a defect, that his refusal to self destruct made him less of a man than the wreckers we love to celebrate.

Let me tell you who my father was. A quiet cat who went to work, came home, kept his word, and not once put my mother in the position to explain his mess to the neighbors. Nobody made a viral clip out of him either. No one ever will. That kind of steadiness does not go viral, and that is precisely the sickness in how we measure worth now. We reward the spectacle and yawn at the substance.

Young brothers are watching this closely. They are learning, from the way we hand out our respect, that loud dysfunction earns more love than quiet reliability. The lesson sinking in is that a wild man is interesting and a faithful one is a joke. We are raising a whole generation to believe that being good is the same as being weak, and I promise you the bill for that lesson comes due.

More of us need to move like number three moved, and I say that without a trace of irony. Forget the slogans and the branding for a second. I mean the core of it. Handle your business. Protect your household. Serve the folks around you. Lose without becoming a bitter, blaming mess about it. Stay clear of the kind of trouble that follows a name around for years. If that reads as corny in this era, then maybe corny is exactly the medicine we have been avoiding.

I would rather my son grow up dull and dependable than exciting and gone. Better he be the punchline in some comedian’s bit than the cautionary tale at somebody’s funeral. Give me the water metaphors and the goofy optimism all day long over the smooth operator who leaves a trail of wreckage behind his charisma.

The people who laughed were never really laughing at a flaw. They were laughing at a mirror, at a standard most of them will never meet. Russell Wilson kept his family, his dignity, and his integrity through the public unraveling of the final stretch of his playing career. Go ahead and call that corny. Some of us just call it a whole man.

Staff Writer; J.G. Lacour

Covering the NBA, NFL, college basketball, college football, and Major League Baseball from a Black man’s perspective. He loves the full world of sports, but the NFL remains his favorite.

Need to contact this bro, feel free to use this email address; JGLacour@ThyBlackMan.com.

Why Businesses Are Turning to Online Cheque Ordering During Tax Season

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Moreover, businesses utilizing sophisticated financial planning tools like the Asset Allocation Model can benefit from the seamless tracking and reporting features of digital cheque systems. This ensures that all financial activities, including cheque issuance, are aligned with strategic financial goals.

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The convenience of ordering cheques online cannot be overstated. Businesses save valuable time that would otherwise be spent on traditional cheque procurement processes. Utilizing an online platform allows for instant cheque customization and order placement, which is particularly beneficial during the hectic tax season. This efficiency is further enhanced when businesses implement a Monte Carlo Simulation, a method that helps predict the financial impact of different scenarios, ensuring that cash flow remains stable even during peak financial periods.

Additionally, businesses that adhere to the Fiduciary Standard—obliging them to act in their clients’ best interests—find that online cheque ordering provides a reliable way to ensure timely payments. This is crucial for maintaining trust and transparency with stakeholders, especially when financial obligations peak.

Cost-Effectiveness of Online Cheque Solutions

Cost-effectiveness is another compelling reason businesses choose to Order Cheques Online. Traditional cheque ordering can be expensive due to the costs associated with printing, shipping, and handling. Online solutions, however, offer competitive pricing models that can significantly reduce these expenses. Businesses that employ Dynamic Spending Strategies, which adjust spending based on current financial conditions, find that online cheque ordering aligns with their cost-saving objectives.

Moreover, by choosing to Order Cheques Online, businesses can take advantage of bulk purchasing discounts and avoid the hidden fees often associated with offline suppliers. This strategic financial decision supports the efficient allocation of resources, allowing businesses to focus on more critical financial planning activities.

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Security is a top priority for businesses, especially during tax season when the risk of fraud may increase. Digital cheque systems offer enhanced security features such as encryption and secure access controls, which help protect sensitive financial information. This is particularly important for businesses engaged in Tax-Loss Harvesting, a strategy used to offset capital gains by selling securities at a loss. Ensuring secure and accurate transaction records is vital for such tax strategies.

Furthermore, Behavioral Finance—a study that examines psychological influences on investors’ behaviors—suggests that secure financial systems can improve decision-making by reducing the anxiety associated with potential fraud. Recent analysis from Investopedia highlights how secure digital transactions foster greater confidence among business owners and financial planners.

Conclusion

Businesses increasingly Order Cheques Online during tax season to streamline operations, cut costs, and enhance security. This approach not only supports comprehensive financial strategies but also aligns with modern financial planning practices. For businesses aiming to optimize their financial management during this critical period, adopting online cheque solutions is a strategic choice that promises efficiency and peace of mind.

Staff Writer; Bruce Jones

Bristol later wrapped the whole thing in the soft language of layoffs, part of a larger cluster of cuts tied mostly to ESPN integrating NFL Network and other media assets acquired from the league. Cam Newton got caught in it. Tom Pelissero too. Clark, though, refused to accept that framing. On The Pivot, he called it what he thought it really was. Fired. His case rested partly on timing. Clark was informed on Monday, while the larger round of layoffs was announced Tuesday, which told him that a decision about his future had been reached before the broader cuts gave ESPN cover to carry it out.

Whether he had that read right, I could not tell you. Grown men can disagree about internal politics none of us witnessed. What grabbed me, what should grab any of us who have watched gifted Black voices rise and fall inside institutions that were not built with us in mind, is the part of this story that happened long before the cameras cut away.

He saw this coming. Not the exact date, not the cruel staging of it, but the shape of the thing. Back in 2022, the former safety sat down with Fred Taylor and Channing Crowder and helped build something that belonged to their team. The Pivot. A show where retired players talked ball, talked life, talked to guests who would rarely get that real on a scripted network segment. It grew into a genuine presence. And here sits the quiet genius of the move. When the suits finally decided they were done with him, the chair was theirs to take. They could pull the salary, reportedly more than two million a year. The national television slot that put his face in living rooms every football season went right along with it. Yet one asset they could not touch was the independent platform he had helped build with his partners.

That is the whole lesson, and Black folks in media ought to write it somewhere they will read it every morning.

Visibility and independence are not the same currency. A network hands you the first. Only you can build the second. ESPN gave Ryan a stage, an enormous one, and there is no shame in accepting a stage when somebody offers it. Millions of viewers learned his name because of that association. But a stage you do not control is a rental, and the landlord can change the locks whenever the quarterly numbers get ugly or an executive decides your opinions rub him the wrong way. We have seen this particular movie more times than I care to count.

Think about how many talented brothers and sisters got their shine inside a building they had no claim to. The commentator with the sharp read on the game. A morning host with a loyal following. Some reporter who broke stories nobody else could get. When the institution decided the relationship was finished, most of them started from scratch, blinking in the daylight, wondering where the crowd went. That crowd was not theirs to begin with. It belonged to the logo behind their head.

Clark understood something plenty of peers miss until it is too late. The bond you build directly with people cannot be revoked by a memo. Nobody at Disney can email your listeners and tell them to stop caring about what you have to say. The audience Clark, Taylor, Crowder and their team cultivated through The Pivot remained connected to the platform they built. When the news hit, Clark did not go quiet. He turned the mic back on and spoke straight to that crowd, with nobody cutting him off for a commercial break.

Underneath all of this runs an older story, and I am not going to pretend it away. Black entertainers and athletes and artists have spent generations handing their best work to machines that other men owned. The old record labels did it to our musicians. Movie studios did it to our actors. Sports television has run a subtler version of the same play, elevating charismatic analysts into household names while the actual value, the brand, the archive, the viewer data, stayed firmly in corporate hands. Sam Cooke figured out he needed control over his publishing and business affairs before much of the industry caught up. The principle has not changed. Only the medium has.

What makes this moment different is that the tools finally sit within reach of regular folks. You no longer need ESPN to reach a nation. A camera, a decent microphone, a point of view worth hearing, and the discipline to show up week after week can build something no HR department gets to dissolve. Ryan and his partners proved it. They did not wait for permission. Nor did they assume the good years at a corporation would stretch on forever, because deep down we all understand they never do.

Let me be careful here, because I am not preaching that anybody should turn down opportunity out of pride. Take the job. Grab the exposure. Cash the checks while they clear. Use that big stage to introduce yourself to people who would otherwise not find you. Just do not confuse the borrowed spotlight for a home you actually own. Build the home on the side, brick by brick, while the borrowed light is still shining on you. That is the whole move. It is what separates the folks who bounce back from the ones who vanish.

The men and women who own their distribution get to survive endings like the one Ryan just lived through. They get to grieve the loss of a good gig without grieving the loss of their entire public life, because those two things were never bundled together in the first place. He lost a job. What he did not lose was his voice. His people stayed right where they were. The network handed him a painful education and a strange sort of gift in the same breath, a reminder that everything he truly needed, he had already helped put together himself.

So watch what he does next. My money says he lands fine, maybe better than fine, precisely because the most valuable thing in his possession was never printed on a contract in Bristol. It was printed on the loyalty of everyone who follows him wherever he decides to go. That is ownership. It is the only real security this business has ever offered. And every Black creator watching this play out should be taking notes.

Staff Writer; J.G. Lacour

Covering the NBA, NFL, college basketball, college football, and Major League Baseball from a Black man’s perspective. He loves the full world of sports, but the NFL remains his favorite.

Need to contact this bro, feel free to use this email address; JGLacour@ThyBlackMan.com.

Let that word sit for a second. Earned.

We are talking about a kid from Akron who walked into the league as a teenager carrying the weight of a whole city on his back, and who somehow carried more each season after. Four rings across three franchises. Regular season MVP trophies, four of them. Twenty two All Star selections, a run longer than plenty of careers last from the first whistle to the goodbye. The all time leading scorer in NBA history, a number nobody thought would ever fall until he simply refused to slow down. Twenty three seasons already completed, with a record twenty fourth waiting for him in Philadelphia. Two full decades as the face of a billion dollar business, the poster on the wall, the reason casual fans tuned in at all.

And still hated.

That part deserves honesty, because it is the strange truth sitting underneath his whole run. Plenty of grown men cannot stand the guy. Some of them look just like us. Brothers who came up watching him, who own the jersey, who quote the highlights, will turn around and tell you with a straight face that they never rocked with him. Ask them why and the reasons get thin fast. Something about the way he left Cleveland that summer. Maybe it is that he got handed too much too soon. For others it comes down to him not being that other fella who wore forty five and twenty three before him. Scratch any of those excuses and the same thing sits underneath. Resentment. Plain old resentment. A brother kept betting on himself, kept cashing those bets, and it drove people crazy that he never once waited on anybody’s permission to do it. For a certain type of person, that alone is unforgivable. We watch that jealousy dress itself up as basketball opinion, and we nod along as if it fools anybody.

Now here comes the last chapter, and watch how the same crowd handles it.

He did not chase a bag to Philadelphia. Eight million dollars over two seasons is pocket change for a man who prints money in his sleep, and the King knew that the moment the pen hit paper. What LeBron wanted instead was a feeling. A locker room stacked with All Star talent, Joel Embiid anchoring the middle and Tyrese Maxey buzzing on the wing, plus rising second year guard VJ Edgecombe soaking all of it up. Even Jaylen Brown is there now, the former Boston rival who used to trade playoff scars with him, an All Star and a proven champion, suddenly wearing the same jersey. A packed arena filled with a fan base that has been starving for another reason to believe. One real shot at a banner before the body finally says no more. Rich Paul called it basketball happiness, and honestly that phrase says everything. None of this is running away. He is walking straight toward the thing that still makes his heart pound inside a gym.

That is his business. Nobody voted on it. No panel in a studio needs to bless it.

Which brings me to the loudest room in all of this, the sports media machine that treats every move the King makes as a crime scene. For more than twenty years these people have built entire livelihoods off his name. They scream about his clutch gene one night, then question if he ducked a rival the next, then argue his jewelry count against a ghost from the 90s. A villain moves the needle. Outrage sells, plain and simple, and they manufactured plenty of it. So they poked and prodded and framed his choices as betrayals when the truth is much simpler. A working professional went where he wanted to go. That is it. Nothing else to the story. Yet somehow the panels will burn a week deciding whether he owed it to Los Angeles to fade away in purple and gold, as if that franchise ever owed him a graceful exit in return.

Let me say the quiet part plainly. He does not owe any of us a thing.

Not a farewell tour. No tidy finish in the city we picked for him. And certainly no retirement podium scheduled around our convenience. This is a person who gave the sport everything for more than two decades. No major off court scandal ever swallowed his career. His sons grew up watching their father put in work. There is a public school back home created through his foundation’s partnership with Akron Public Schools. Whole neighborhoods the country wrote off saw real money from him. And through all of it, the shots kept coming and he kept standing. If somebody like that decides his final act happens in a red and blue uniform on the other side of the country, the only correct response from the rest of us is respect.

I think about my own father when this stuff plays out. Forty years he gave to that job. When his time came, the old man did not poll the room about the proper way to bow out. He shook a few hands that meant something to him. The rest he left behind without a second thought, then pointed the car home for good. No one demanded an explanation. Everybody understood the exit was his call and nobody else’s. We grant that grace to plumbers and teachers and bus drivers without blinking. Why the greatest to ever lace them up somehow has to justify his last stop is a question worth sitting with, and the answer usually reveals more about the person asking than about the fella they are dragging.

So he is a Sixer now. Wild to type, but here we are. Maybe it wraps with a parade down Broad Street. Or maybe it ends with a first round exit and a soft goodbye. Either way the pen belongs to the King, and it always did. The rest of us are just readers hoping to catch the final pages before the book shuts. We do not get a vote on the closing lines, and honestly, we never should have.

More than two decades bought him that. Every bruise, each buzzer, all those late nights dragging a roster past its ceiling, every summer somebody swore he was cooked, added up to a plain privilege that too few folks want to hand over. The freedom to decide when the story ends, and the freedom to decide where.

Let the man write his own last page. He paid for that ink with his whole life.

Staff Writer; J.G. Lacour

Covering the NBA, NFL, college basketball, college football, and Major League Baseball from a Black man’s perspective. He loves the full world of sports, but the NFL remains his favorite.

Need to contact this bro, feel free to use this email address; JGLacour@ThyBlackMan.com.

For anybody who missed the story, the retired Celtics great is in a Los Angeles courtroom with Princess Santiago, an events director and the mother of his youngest boy, King. She asked a judge for $29,811 a month. He fired back that approximately $4,145 felt more reasonable, leaning on an income picture that he says is changing. His filings reportedly put his average monthly income during the first half of 2026 near a hundred and sixty five thousand, although Pierce argues that amount will fall sharply once his remaining Fox payments end. Read that twice and let it settle.

I am not here to referee whose attorney wrote the sharper brief. Grown folks disagree about dollars constantly, and courts exist for that reason. My trouble runs beneath the arithmetic.

The detail that stuck in my throat came from Santiago’s earlier statement. She says she went through all nine months of the pregnancy without financial support or an in person presence from Pierce. Then he acknowledged paternity and requested joint legal and physical custody after DNA testing confirmed that King was his son. Sit with that timeline. A whole human being was made, grown, and brought into this world while dad allegedly kept his distance, and his legal effort to become involved began after the results came back. To be fair, Santiago later acknowledged that Pierce had started making an effort to see King and was developing a relationship with him. That progress matters, even if it does not erase the pregnancy she says she faced alone.

That is the part nobody at the sports desk wants to slow down and name. We have turned a sacred obligation into a spreadsheet fight, and too many of our brothers with means and platforms are leading the way down that road.

Here is what I need my people to hear, especially the athletes, working or retired. A boy does not need only a settlement. He needs a presence. You cannot wire love through direct deposit and call the account balanced. Visitation is not a line item you haggle over to protect your comfort. It is time, the one thing your bank cannot manufacture and your son cannot get back once it is spent.

Pierce reportedly disclosed roughly $121,000 in legal expenses during the first half of 2026, though the available reporting does not establish that all of it was connected to this particular case. Still, one day his boy may discover that lawyers and accountants were publicly debating his support before he was old enough to understand his own name. That kid is going to grow up, learn to Google, and find each filing, each proposal, and each argument over what amount should be considered reasonable. Picture that for a second. Your own father discussing the cost of caring for you in documents available for strangers to read. Not because the court process is unnecessary, but because children eventually see how the adults around them handled their arrival.

Let me be fair here, because a one sided rant does nobody any good. No man owes a check he has no way to cover, and sure, some mothers run their own games too. Pierce alleges in his filing that Santiago earns more than $400,000 a year, so his position is that she is not without considerable resources of her own. High earners can face support requests that deserve careful review, and a man is allowed to ask a court for something sane. All true. None of it touches the heart of the matter, though, because the heart of the matter was never only the figure. It was the disappearance she says came first.

See, child support and custody and emotional availability are not three separate negotiations you can win or lose independently. They are one covenant, and you cannot ace the money portion while flunking the showing up. A father who mails the check but skips the recitals has not fulfilled everything. He has purchased a clean conscience on layaway, and the interest on that debt comes due in a grown child who never quite trusts him.

Our community knows this wound intimately. A lot of us grew up under a father who mailed his money on time and never once walked through the door, or the flip of that, one hanging around plenty who let the rent slide. Years later we were still working out which of those left the deeper mark. So a brother who earned generational wealth and entered the Basketball Hall of Fame on his first ballot having every resource to break that cycle carries a special responsibility. Pierce has requested joint custody, and that willingness to participate should be acknowledged. Still, the public fight over support cannot be separated from Santiago’s allegation that she endured the entire pregnancy without his financial help or physical presence.

The athlete part matters here, and I will not soften it. You men are watched. Little Black boys wear your jersey and study how you move, on the court and off it. When you retire, that gaze does not retire with you. It follows you into the courtroom, into the podcast studio, into the choices you make about the children you helped create. Plenty of famous names let this exact pattern define them, and it repeats until somebody with a platform breaks it loud and on purpose. Pierce still has an opportunity to do that by building a genuine relationship with his son, accepting where he fell short, and making sure King never has to wonder whether his father truly wanted him.

Instead, much of the public conversation has centered on litigation. We got a man detailing meal expenses, travel costs, declining income, and legal bills while the needs of his own boy sat at the center of the dispute.

Money is real, and I will not pretend otherwise. A support order that ignores what he actually pulls in helps nobody. But the moment your baby becomes a bargaining chip, something precious gets placed at risk. You can teach your own bloodline that everything, including his care, has a price adults will argue over until a judge chooses a number.

To every brother reading this with a kid on the other side of a courtroom, I say this without malice. Pay what is right and pay it without theatrics. Then show up. Show up sober, show up early, show up when it is inconvenient and the game is on and you would rather be anywhere else. Answer the phone. Learn the teacher’s name. Down the road you want to be the story your kid tells proud at the cookout, not the name they punched into a search bar to find out who you really were.

King Rafael is going to remember who fought for him and who fought over him. So will the rest of them. That distinction is the whole ballgame, and no amount of money has ever settled it.

Staff Writer; Lee Walker

This brother is a fitness trainer with 12 years of experience, focused on building strength, clarity, and real health within the Black community. Through his writing, Mr. Walker hopes to uplift younger Black men and men in general through honest conversations about fitness, financial pressure, fatherhood, discipline, mental wellness, and the importance of brotherhood.

Have questions? Reach me at LeeW@ThyBlackMan.com.

Add Tangible Assets to the Portfolio

Physical precious metals differ from shares and bonds because they are not another party’s promise to pay. Gold, silver, platinum, palladium and rhodium have distinct supply dynamics, industrial uses and investment characteristics. Their tangible nature can make them useful within a broader strategy designed to preserve wealth across different economic conditions.

Specialist resources such as auctusmetals.com can help investors examine precious metals within the context of portfolio construction rather than treating them as short-term speculative trades. The purpose is not to replace conventional investments, but to understand where physical assets may reduce dependence on financial markets.

Diversify Across Different Economic Risks

A portfolio holding only shares and bonds may appear diversified while remaining heavily exposed to interest rates, corporate earnings and market sentiment. Precious metals can respond to different forces, including mining supply, geopolitical uncertainty, industrial demand and changes in currency values.

Gold is often associated with monetary uncertainty, while silver combines investment demand with extensive industrial use. Platinum, palladium and rhodium are influenced more strongly by manufacturing requirements and constrained production. These differences mean that metals should not be treated as a single, uniform asset class.

Protect Purchasing Power Over Time

Inflation gradually reduces the amount that money can buy. Although no asset provides guaranteed protection, scarce physical assets may help preserve purchasing power over long periods, particularly when confidence in a currency weakens.

Gold is commonly assessed as a store of value, meaning an asset expected to retain usefulness or purchasing power over time. Its effectiveness can vary considerably across shorter periods, however. Long-term planning should therefore consider the investor’s time horizon, entry price and overall allocation rather than assuming that metal prices will automatically rise alongside inflation.

Reduce Reliance on Counterparties

Paper investments usually involve counterparty risk: the possibility that an institution, issuer or contractual party cannot meet its obligations. This risk exists in different forms across bank deposits, corporate bonds, derivatives and some metal-backed financial products.

Direct ownership of allocated physical metal can reduce certain counterparty exposures, provided ownership is legally clear and storage arrangements are sound. Investors must still assess custody, insurance, verification and access. Removing one form of risk does not eliminate the need for careful administration.

Balance Stability With Liquidity Needs

Precious metals can strengthen diversification, but they do not generate dividends, rent or interest. Their returns depend primarily on price movements, and less actively traded metals may have wider differences between buying and selling prices.

A sensible allocation should reflect expected spending needs and access to emergency funds. Money required in the near term generally belongs in liquid assets rather than holdings that may need to be sold during an unfavourable market. Rebalancing can then be used periodically to restore the intended proportions as asset values change.

Plan Ownership Beyond the Investment Period

Long-term wealth planning also includes what happens when assets pass to another person. Physical holdings require accurate records covering ownership, purchase prices, storage locations, insurance and instructions for access. Without reliable documentation, valuable assets can become difficult for executors or beneficiaries to identify and manage.

Tax and estate rules vary between jurisdictions, so professional advice may be necessary before making substantial purchases or transferring ownership. Clear documentation ensures that diversification remains an advantage rather than creating an administrative burden.

Build Resilience, Not a Market Bet

Planning beyond paper assets is ultimately about resilience. Precious metals can broaden a portfolio’s sources of value, reduce reliance on counterparties and introduce assets influenced by different economic forces. Their role should nevertheless be proportionate, carefully documented and aligned with liquidity needs. Used alongside productive financial assets rather than as a wholesale substitute, tangible metals can support a more balanced long-term wealth strategy.

Staff Writer; Keith Poole

Throughout most of America’s history, the answer has been an emphatic yes. Scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, artists and strivers from around the world have chosen the United States because they believed they could build something, discover something or start a business while making a better life in this country.

We should worry about the day when this is no longer true.

Unfortunately, the Trump administration seems determined to make that day arrive sooner rather than later. Its destructive embrace of protectionism is not merely directed against foreign goods and capital. It’s not limited to low-skill immigrants, either. It’s also directed against in-demand foreign talent.

For instance, a rule finalized in early July replaces “duration of status” for foreign students, exchange visitors and foreign journalists with fixed admission periods. In other words, it forces international students to seek government approval to stay beyond four years, regardless of whether their studies can be completed that quickly. It also makes it more difficult for international graduates of American universities to stay and work after graduation through the Optional Practical Training program.

A recent brief by Amy Nice, Michael Clemens and Jeremy Neufeld of the Peterson Institute for International Economics highlights the stakes. The authors examine the pipeline through which international students — particularly those studying science, technology, engineering and mathematics — enter American universities and eventually the American workforce. It is an enormously valuable pipeline for all of us.

The authors found that America’s science and technology workforce depends heavily on talent from abroad. Immigrants fill almost one in three advanced STEM positions and nearly one in two requiring a doctorate. People who first entered the country to study represent about one-fifth of degree-holding STEM workers and more than one-third at the Ph.D. level.

Clemens explains that the STEM students who stay in the U.S. after graduation “patent new inventions at four times the rate of typical college graduates and are responsible for around 10 percent of all new inventions patented in the United States. They found high-growth startup companies at six times the rate of US-born graduates.”

That means we can dispense with the idea that if a foreign engineer gets a job, an American engineer must have lost one. Protectionism applied to human capital relies on the same economic fallacy that underlies other forms of protectionism: the belief that the economy is like one pie, and hence, allowing foreign interests to take a seat hurts those already at the table.

Economies don’t work that way. Talented people don’t merely fill existing jobs. They create them by inventing products, starting companies, conducting research and making the people around them more productive. In the process, they create opportunities for other people that otherwise wouldn’t exist.

Giving a cold shoulder to foreign students is particularly absurd when you consider Washington’s obsession with competing against China. Politicians insist that America is engaged in an existential technological race. They spend billions of dollars subsidizing semiconductors and other favored industries. They develop elaborate industrial policies intended to make America dominant in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and advanced manufacturing.

Then, when a potentially brilliant young scientist from India, China or anywhere else earns an advanced degree at an American university and wants to stay and contribute to the American economy, our government says perhaps they should leave.

You can throw billions of taxpayer dollars at a semiconductor factory in Arizona. You cannot manufacture genius through an appropriations bill.

The Peterson researchers estimate that discouraging just one-third of international STEM graduates could leave the American economy 0.7% to 1.3% smaller, or roughly $200 billion to $400 billion in GDP over a decade — equivalent to losing the entire economy of Utah or South Carolina.

Those estimates necessarily depend on assumptions about future immigration and productivity, but we don’t need to know the precise numbers to understand the effect. When productive people leave — or never arrive — we lose their ideas, businesses, discoveries and all the related economic activity.

There is also something deeper at stake. One of America’s greatest strengths is that people vote for this country with their feet. They leave familiar places, sometimes traveling thousands of miles, because of possibilities unavailable elsewhere. It’s an extraordinary vote of confidence in American institutions: our markets, rule of law and culture of entrepreneurship. We should never take it for granted.

Indeed, the possibility that the world’s brightest young people will decide that America is no longer worth the trouble should terrify us. Not simply because we will lose their economic contributions, but because their decision will tell us something about what America has become.

Written by Veronique de Rugy

Official website; http://twitter.com/veroderugy

Americans are not naive. They realize that fast-evolving technologies will disrupt how we do business, just like the Industrial Revolution replaced blacksmiths and the horse and buggy. Many young people, particularly, are already pivoting toward “AI-proof” career fields that promise long-term stability.

However, while concerns about AI automation have dominated headlines and sucked the oxygen out of the room, a bigger, more immediate threat to Americans’ job prospects and wages continues to go virtually ignored: That is the crowding-out effect of the rising federal debt on private investment.

Our national debt is not a theoretical boogeyman. It’s a bona fide job-killer that is impeding economic growth and driving up costs on everyday families. And it will only get worse the longer it is ignored.

An analysis by Ernst & Young projects that on the 2025 debt path, which has accelerated in the current fiscal year, the United States will lose over 1 million jobs by 2035, 2.7 million by 2055, and 3.6 million by 2075. These losses will disproportionately impact young people, who are more sensitive to labor market conditions.

At the same time, evidence indicates that the “crowding-out” effect of the national debt — whereby the high cost of servicing the debt pushes investment into Treasury bonds instead of private, job-creating capital — will reduce income growth by 16% between now and 2055.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office pegs that number even higher. A 2023 report estimates that the rising debt will cut income growth by a third, or more than $14,000, over the next three decades. It notes that every dollar of federal borrowing causes a 33-cent reduction in private investment.

In other words, our national debt and the interest costs that accompany it are stifling job creation and wage growth, and the situation will only get increasingly worse as our federal debt load continues to balloon.

What’s more, the interest on our national debt — which costs about $2.8 billion per day and is projected to grow to nearly $6 billion per day by 2036 — is driving up borrowing costs for consumers, exacerbating the affordability crisis. A Yale Budget Lab report found that every 1-point increase in the permanent deficit relative to GDP adds between $600 and $1,240 per year in loan costs for the median U.S. home.

Sadly, young people bear the worst of these job losses, wage stagnation and borrowing cost increases. Last August unemployment among 20- to 24-year-olds peaked at over 9%, more than double the general rate of 4.3%. Since 2023, younger Americans’ job-market optimism has fallen 23 points, similar to the Great Recession — which caused millennials to earn about 20% less over their careers, with roughly half the wealth of their parents at the same age.

Coupled with Social Security’s 2032 depletion date, all these factors are squeezing young workers from every angle: disappearing jobs and lower wages today, and a shrinking safety net tomorrow.

Our massive national debt and the significant costs it imposes on ordinary Americans is a problem of Washington’s own making. It will take leaders with political courage to address it — leaders who are willing to say no to reckless spending our country can’t afford, even when it may cost them their job.

Democrats have proven they have no interest in getting the debt under control. They know that federal spending builds dependence on the welfare state and obstructs private-sector growth, consolidating power in Washington. That’s their end goal — a powerful government that “provides” for all, picks winners and losers, and usurps personal liberties.

There’s only one problem: Their socialist vision doesn’t work. It never has. That’s because government doesn’t create wealth; private enterprise does. As Winston Churchill famously explained, “The inherent vice of Capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”

Young people are not wrong to worry about the economic disruptions AI could bring about, but our out-of-control national debt is the bigger, more pressing elephant in the room. And we cannot afford for lawmakers to kick the can down the road.

Written by Ken Buck

Official website; https://x.com/BuckForColorado

It’s only a game. It’s supposed to be a pastime (according to AI, something that “helps make the hours pass pleasantly when you are not working”), not an obsession. There are 162 games a year and letting your emotional state hinge on whether your favorite team scores more runs than the other team is obviously senseless.

And yet.

Generations of Americans have been swept up by the game. Children never forget their first trip to the ballpark or memories of playing catch with their father, or the ball players they elevated to heroes, or observing their elders go ballistic over a dropped ball. My friend Paul remembers being five years old and watching his father rip the radio out of the wall after the Red Sox grounded into a rally-killing double play.

That was in 1958. For New Englanders, that kind of passion hasn’t abated much, even if people are watching games on cell phones.

It’s been ever thus. “Six months out of every year, I may as well be made of stone,” laments the long-suffering wife of a die-hard Washington Senators fan in the 1955 Broadway musical “Damn Yankees”, while her long-suffering husband sings “Those damn Yankees, why can’t we beat ’em?”

Speaking of the Yankees, years ago I was comparing notes about baseball obsession with Floyd Abrams, the great First Amendment scholar/advocate, who has argued numerous cases before the U.S. Supreme Court on erudite points of constitutional law. Abrams, an overcharged Yankees fan, told me that any neurosis I had about the Red Sox paled before his about the Yankees.

“I doubt it,” I said.

“Trust me,” he said, and related that every night, when he watched the Yankees games on television, he had to leave the room while the opposing team was at bat.

“You win,” I said.

Anyone who has ever dropped their kid off to begin their freshman year at college remembers the surge of emotion that the experience triggers: the sad wonder about the time that has flown by, the brooding about the things not done together, the re-discovery of the bedroom, hermetically sealed since age 13, suddenly open to reveal a space, once a pigsty, now deserted.

As in every other New England family, my son and I bonded intensely over the Red Sox. The weekend after we dropped him off at college, while I was still in a post-drop-off funk, the Sox and their archrival Yankees played a three-game series. The Sox won the first game, the Bad Guys the second. In the final game, nationally televised, the Yankees beat the Red Sox in the ninth inning.

I did not throw furniture. I did not rip the television out of the wall. But it’s possible that some of the pent-up emotion over the previous week’s college drop-off seeped out, just a bit.

Perhaps trying to comfort, our teenage daughter attempted to reason with me. “Why does it matter?” she asked. “It’s just a piece of wood and a ball.

This wasn’t helpful.

Exactly at that moment, a text arrived from my son, looking after his old man, albeit from a distance. “Don’t do it,” the text said simply. “You have so much to live for.”

Given the state of the world, there was particular reason to look forward to the Red Sox season this year: part diversion, part reason for hope.

The team did not oblige for the first half of the season. They did not hit. They did not pitch. They did not field. Consequently, they did not win.

Then a miracle happened. Call it a sign from God. The team won 15 games in a row. They are back in contention — for now.

My son and daughter-in-law have been staying with us for a few weeks. The old ritual has returned: sitting together to watch our beloved team and sweat every pitch.

Point is: you have got to hand it to the Boys of Summer. Somehow or other, however bad things are, they give you reason to hope.

And to remember.

Written by Jeff Robbins

Official website; https://x.com/jeffreysrobbins