By Doug Casey
International Man
February 6, 2026
International Man: Davos 2026 just wrapped, and in Trump's speech, he highlighted U.S. housing affordability.
He framed it as a tradeoff with protecting existing homeowners' wealth, warning that making homes "cheap" can crush values for people who already own them.
How do you evaluate it economically and politically-and what does it suggest governments are really trying to protect in housing markets?
Doug Casey: Trump says that he wants to maintain prices for the people who own houses, but also make housing affordable for the people who don't. In his video, he explains these contradictions in a manner.
Here's another speech he gave where he says, "I'm the only one who knows how to do this." Power has gone to his head. He's turned into a genuine megalomaniac.
As contradictory as Trump's words are, some things he said actually make sense. He said that he wants to cut regulations. That's an excellent idea, because regulations probably add 20 or 30% to building costs. But most of them are local and state regulations, which are out of his bailiwick.
He wants to reduce interest rates to reduce the cost of mortgage financing. But creating more money and credit would just fuel another housing bubble. And he wants to privatize BLM land. Good idea. But it's all in the boondocks, far from cities.
He makes it sound as if he personally controls the housing market. But while he's poking the economy here and pulling it there, manipulating it like Willy Wonka in the chocolate factory, he's conveniently forgotten the duties ranging to 45% that he's imposing on Canadian lumber.
Trump is really talking about a two-tier market, necessarily managed by the State-high-priced houses for current owners, cheap houses for new buyers. Contrary to what his supporters want to believe, Trump's solutions amount to the government managing everything and further politicizing the US economy.
I'd point out that in 1980, the average home buyer was 32 years old. Now, the average home buyer is in their late 50s. It's true that young people can barely afford to rent, much less buy a house. While the value of current homeowner's equity drops 5-10% per year, as the dollar is inflated.
International Man: Jared Kushner unveiled his vision of turning Gaza into a high-end development. With more than two million Palestinians living there, what practical steps-and political realities-would have to line up for something like that to be even remotely possible?
Doug Casey: The first question is: where are they going to put the two million Palestinians who are there now ? Their cities and housing have been totally destroyed in the war. Mobs of angry, homeless poor people wandering around are at odds with turning Gaza into an upmarket development.
Will they ship them to Somaliland, which Israel has just recognized ? It's possible. Will that make the Palestinians happy ? And what about the Somalis ? Anyone who takes them has a Palestinian problem. Transplanting them will just create an even bigger problem down the road. Well, not to worry. Presumably, the Americans will borrow the money to pay for it all.
This brings another question: If Kushner has all these great plans, who will actually own the land in Gaza ? Do Gazans now have individual titles to the land ? What about the apartments they had ? Who owned them ? Nobody addresses these things.
Are they basically going to evict all these people ? Will somebody pay them to go away?
It seems Kushner's upmarket development is intended to compete with Dubai. I don't see how it possibly could. Dubai is an established wonder of the world. Gaza would basically be a Jewish development in the midst of hundreds of millions of very antagonistic Muhammadans. The concept impresses me as somewhere between delusional and criminally stupid.
Nobody dares mention that everybody involved in kicking out the Muslim Gazans appears to be a Jew. That can only fuel antisemitism. It's not just the worst development idea I've ever heard of; it's the worst I can imagine.
International Man: At Davos, the tone around AI was less about "innovation" and more like economic and security strategy.
Where does AI concentrate power-states, mega-corporations, or networks-and what are the biggest second-order consequences people are missing?
Doug Casey: AI is unquestionably a world changer. It's one of the most important innovations in human history, at least as important as the invention of gunpowder or the printing press. As with gunpowder and the printing press, rich people and States will dominate AI first, using it to suppress the masses.
But eventually the cat gets out of the bag. Gunpowder transformed from something to suppress the commoners to a practical means of overturning the rulers, taking down armored knights, and destroying their castles. The printing press was initially controlled by the Church and the State. But it quickly got out of control and wound up spreading all kinds of ideas that were antithetical to the ruling classes.
The same thing is going to happen with AI. It'll be democratized, and the plebs will use it in unpredictable ways. Elon Musk says that he'll be building consumer-level robots next year, with AI capabilities.
Governments will have terminators, sure. But individuals, rebels, and cyberguerrillas will hack them.
AI is certainly dangerous. Governments and sociopathic corporations will work in a "public-private partnership" to control the hoi polloi. But, speaking as the eternal optimist that I am, I think the end result will be more like this . I'm pro-AI. It will be a story with a happy ending.
International Man: Davos conversations made it feel like the rules of geopolitics are getting rewritten in real time.
For example, Trump called for "immediate negotiations" to acquire Greenland while using (and then backing off) tariff threats as leverage with European countries.
What does it signal about how power will be exercised in a multipolar world, and what kinds of flashpoints does it create for allies who suddenly find trade, security, and sovereignty bundled into the same negotiation?
Doug Casey: Trump laid the cards on the table when he said that he wants Greenland, and threatened to take it "the easy way or the hard way". That shows us two things. First, Trump's mindset is that of a street thug. Second, NATO and the EU are unimportant anachronisms.
NATO is already a dead duck. It should have been abolished in 1991 when the Soviet Union fell. Even though it's useless, its continued existence is a provocation to Russia and China. The EU is a counterproductive bureaucracy whose 80,000 bureaucrats are a pure drag.
The good news is that both NATO and the EU will probably disappear by 2030.
As for Greenland, Trump won't relent about making it part of the US. My view is that it should be an independent country. Of course, my ideal is that we have eight billion independent countries in the world. But everywhere, we're seeing larger entities break into smaller ones, much as the Soviet Union broke up into 15 smaller entities, Yugoslavia into 6, and Czechoslovakia into 2. Hopefully, that will happen with Italy and Germany, which were just scores of small duchies and principalities that were united in the 19th century. Same with France and Spain. Russia is going to break up into several smaller countries, as will China; what Trump is trying to do runs counter to the spirit of the century.
Although such a large land area with only 57,000 people means Greenland might be hard to maintain as an entity. Because of its size, it's not like Monaco, Liechtenstein, Andorra, or one of the numerous Caribbean mini states. But that doesn't mean that it ought to become part of the US.
My guess is that Denmark really would like to get rid of it. It costs them about a billion dollars a year in subsidies, which is a lot for a small country like Denmark. Trump will keep pushing for it because, although he's never read history, he's proving Thucydides right: "The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must."
Trump won't stop with Greenland. Clearly, he's going to take back the Panama Canal Zone, and even now, American officials are talking with Albertans about their joining the US. Although if Alberta were smart, it would become independent. Since Alberta is a cash cow for the rest of Canada, the country will break up into its various provinces if Alberta secedes.
It's funny because Carney, who impresses me as a horrible person and a dangerous political hack, gave a speech in Davos that Trump took as a personal affront. And since Trump takes everything personally, he's likely to push for the dissolution of Canada just to punish Carney for his insult at Davos.
Trump is a symptom of the breakdown of what once passed for the New World Order. And good riddance. Maybe that's why Trump is creating his so-called Board of Peace. On the one hand, it's a beard for evicting the Gazans, but it also has pretensions to replace the United Nations. However, only a few third-world backwaters and Trump sycophants have joined so far. Even if it gets off the ground, it will only last as long as Trump is president.
But the Board of Peace is a business/government hybrid, and shows another trend in the world: business is really just an arm of the State. It's the realization of Mussolini's dream. Everything must be cleared through a governmental bureaucracy. That makes it much easier for politically powerful people to become wealthy "legitimately", by dispensing favors through a State Capitalist, a.k.a. Fascist, system.
International Man: Coming out of Davos 2026, what are the biggest investment implications-and how are you positioning for them?
Doug Casey: Years ago, I went to a Davos lookalike event called Concordia.
It was full of exactly the same people who go to Davos-big deal business and political leaders. I found it boring, pompous, and self-righteous: a place where useless hustlers who want to be big shots can rub shoulders with each other. I haven't been invited back.
All the talking at Davos only worsens the world's problems. Why ? Because the solutions proposed always revolve around more government involvement, not less.
The thing to bear in mind is that gold's upward explosion in recent months is a sign of instability. Everybody knows that Trump wants a low dollar to manage the national debt and drive asset prices higher. It's destabilizing. When everybody's dumping the dollar, where are they going to go?
In the case of central banks, gold is the only practical alternative. As long as Trump is in office, this trend will continue; Trump has really got the bit in his teeth. Lord Acton was right: Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Trump has let power go to his head.
I'll repeat my prediction. He's not going to finish out his term for any number of possible reasons.
This article was originally published on International Man.