Inside today’s Daily Journal…

Today, we conclude Porter’s three-part Journal about William Strauss and Neil Howe’s generational theory, which proposes that history runs in 80-plus-year cycles, divided into four distinct phases or Turnings.

Porter ended Tuesday’s part 2 by pointing out that the pattern is unmistakable: every Fourth Turning climax in Anglo-American history has been a mass confiscation of purchasing power, engineered by the state, to liquidate debts that could not otherwise be paid.

Now, Porter continues…

For the first time since Strauss and Howe began their work, the climax of our current Fourth Turning now has a precise mathematical trigger.

The wheel is not just turning – it is about to collapse.

Think about who our sovereign’s (the U.S. government) largest creditor is today? It isn’t the foreign bond holders. It’s the people who have been promised a pension and health care in their retirement.

The 2025 Social Security Administration Trustees Report, released June 18, 2025, explains exactly what’s happening in black and white:

But these forecasts all assume that the government will begin running balanced budgets. Ha! That inflation will not go back to 9% like it was in 2022. And that our economy keeps growing.

Of course, if things don’t go back to normal, the depletion of the Trust Funds will occur much faster. In fact, following the July 2025 passage of President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the Social Security chief actuary revised the OASI depletion date forward once again – to 2032.

Every year, the depletion date moves closer, not farther.

And the political window for a graceful fix is already gone. The last trustees’ reports in which the math could have been fixed with modest tax increases or benefit tweaks were in the 1990s.

The accumulated hole has now grown past the point where any conceivable austerity package – even the abolition of the entire discretionary budget – could close it.

For the government, there’s no escape.

In October 2020 the U.S. paid $345 billion in net interest over 12 months. In October 2025 it paid $981 billion – a near-tripling in five years. We’re spending far more on interest than we’re spending on the war with Iran… and that’s a lot

The Congressional Budget Office (“CBO”) projects interest will consume 13.85% of all federal outlays in FY2026, 14.11% in FY2027, and 14.52% in FY2028 – and these projections assume the Treasury can keep rolling over $10 trillion of debt per year. But that won’t happen for much longer.

The CBO itself has put the year 2029 in print.

In its March 2025 Long-Term Budget Outlook, the CBO projects that federal debt held by the public will reach 107% of GDP in 2029 – breaking the 106% all-time record set in 1946 immediately after World War II.

The single worst debt burden in U.S. history – incurred to win the largest war in human history – will be surpassed, in peacetime, in 2029.

One century to the year since 1929.

China’s Treasury holdings have fallen 9% since the start of 2025 alone, and now sit at the lowest level since October 2008.

Central banks globally bought a record 1,082 tonnes of gold in 2022, 1,037 tonnes in 2023, over 1,000 tonnes in 2024, and another 244 tonnes in Q1 2025 alone – the heaviest official-sector gold accumulation since 1967, the year before the London Gold Pool collapsed.

The dollar’s share of global central-bank reserves has slipped below 47%, while gold’s share is climbing toward 20%.

For the first time since the 1990s, foreign central banks hold more gold than they do U.S. Treasuries. The world is voting with its vaults… that’s not good for the U.S. dollar.

This is the monetary Fourth Turning.