A Letter from Brezhnev with John Polomny - Why the West Knows the System Is Broken But Can’t Say So: It's HyperNormal

ITCOM is a podcast that helps serious active investors navigate market volatility, protect capital, and uncover new ways to confidently grow your wealth in radically uncertain times.

John Polomny didn't go to Georgetown. He didn't intern under a former Secretary of State. He joined the US Navy at 18, ran nuclear reactors, travelled the world on warships, opened a brokerage account at 15, suffered a 90% drawdown, and eventually became one of the most-followed independent macro investors on the internet.

Today, he runs Actionable Intelligence Alert on Substack — covering geopolitics, resource investing, and the slow-motion unravelling of the Western-led world order. 

In this conversation, John and Jeremy discover they've independently arrived at the same framework to describe the world we're living in: hypernormalisation — the condition in which nobody believes the system anymore, but no one dares say so out loud.  It forms the basis of Jeremy's Substack, HyperNormalTimes.   

Topics covered in this episode:

• How a working-class kid from rural South Florida built a lawn business at 14, joined the nuclear Navy, and became a self-taught value investor
• The 90% drawdown that changed everything — and what Charlie Munger, Howard Marks and Warren Buffett taught him about compounding
• Why John thinks we are already in World War Three — and what Leonid Brezhnev has to do with it
• The Strait of Hormuz, the petrodollar, Saudi Arabia's patience, and the slow death of the post-1973 energy order
• Oil sands investing: why Suncor, CNR and the Canadian oil majors were among the most undervalued assets in the world 
• The "Don Monroe Doctrine" — why the US is quietly retreating to the Western Hemisphere and what that means for Europe
• Frontier markets: Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Africa — and why John thinks a 22-year-old with ambition should be booking a flight, not polishing a CV
• Why Argentina's Milei experiment matters more than most might realise
• Vaclav Smil's EROI (Energy Return on Energy Invested) framework — and what medieval peasants can teach us about the energy transition

The line that sums up John Polomny:
"I don't want to get too radical here." He then does. Every time. That's the point.

Follow John's work at Actionable Intelligence Alert on Substack and YouTube.

Keywords/tags: macro investing, geopolitics, oil investing, energy investing, value investing, Substack investing, self-made investor, US Navy, oil sands, Suncor, frontier markets, Argentina, Milei, Strait of Hormuz, WWIII, petrodollar, empire decline, hypernormalization, contrarian investing, independent investor, podcast

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