The Triumph of Geopolitics: Weeks Where Decades Happen

Executive Summary

I first met John Butler in 2011, but in truth our introduction came earlier than that. And it came not in person, but through a report he had written for what was an early incarnation of The Amphora Report.

It wasn’t simply that I agreed with the conclusions, but that the way he framed the issues forced me to pause and reconsider assumptions I hadn’t yet realized I was making.

It left a lasting impression and lingered with me well beyond the initial read, shaping the way I began to think about money, power, and the deeper mechanics of the financial system.

It was after this first encounter and meeting with John that I went on to read the original edition of his book, The Golden Revolution, Revisited. It is a great book and I recommend it without reservation.

More importantly, it proved foundational to my own education on the subject, arriving at a moment when I was still forming the framework through which I would come to understand monetary history, financial cycles, and the quiet forces that govern global capital flows.

What struck me then, and what has continued to stand out over the years, is that John has never fit neatly into any intellectual box.

He is not what most people would call a traditional “gold guy,” a label that often implies a narrow worldview or a reflexive attachment to a single asset as an answer to every problem.

His perspective is far more difficult to categorize, and far more valuable for that reason.

John’s background is rooted in traditional finance.

He has worked for some of the largest firms in the City of London, operating inside the very institutions that shape modern capital markets rather than merely critiquing them from the outside.

And he has lived and worked in Europe for decades, absorbing not just its financial culture but its political and historical sensibilities as well.

As a result, he is one of the very few people I have met who can move seamlessly and comfortably between a Wall Street boardroom and a gold conference, speaking fluently to both audiences, without talking past either.

That ability is rare, and it matters, especially in an era where financial discourse is increasingly fragmented into ideological silos.

It is precisely for this reason that the guest piece John has written for us fits so naturally into the body of work we have been building.

Much of what we have published over the past several years has revolved around a central theme: the return of great power competition and the recognition that economics, finance, and geopolitics can no longer be treated as separate domains.

We have featured Michael Every and his articulation of a “Grand Macro Strategy”, which reframes markets through the lens of national interest, strategic leverage, and geopolitical intent.

We have explored BowTied Mara’s examination of Argentina under Javier Milei, not as a curiosity, but as a real-time stress test of ideology colliding with political reality.

Click To Download