Wealth Formula by Buck Joffrey

Changing your personal financial belief system is like changing religions. Think about it. Maybe you grew up Christian or Jewish. Whether you practice or not, you have some pretty established beliefs. That’s why it’s not that common for people to convert from one religion to another. Maybe that’s an extreme example but there is a parallel when it comes to changing your personal investment strategy. We grow up being told that the “responsible” thing to do is to find a nice financial advisor and invest in a broad portfolio of stocks, bonds and mutual funds. You see the commercials all the time, right? Well, this heretic can’t stand those commercials! It drives me crazy because it reinforces the notion that there is a conventional financial pathway that is right and that it involves Wall Street. I broke away from that “religion” long ago and have followed the heretical path of real asset investing in “alternative” assets like real estate and precious metals. You gotta love the label “alternative”, right? It makes you think of blue hair mohawks and nose rings—not the nice responsible looking people you see on those brokerage commercials. Now some of you know that I have been thinking controversial thoughts even within the “alternative” investing space lately. It’s funny because I’m even a little uneasy about saying this but…I will come out of the closet. I no longer own gold. I know, I know. Some of you are disowning me as we speak. My own hero Robert Kiyosaki loves gold and, if he heard me say that I don’t believe in it any more, he would never come on my show again. Fortunately, I’m quite confident he doesn’t listen to my show so that shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll just wait a little while before I ask him to come back on again. For those of you who have not heard me explain my stance on gold—well, I just don’t understand why I wouldn’t just own more real estate instead. After all, the reason to buy gold is as an anti-dollar. Gold goes us as the dollar goes down. In other words, it’s an inflationary hedge. But so is real estate. In fact, real estate also throws off cash flow and can be leveraged. It is no more volatile than gold and it has tax advantages up the wazoo. Taxes on the sale of gold, on the other hand, are worse than capital gains. Ok, so all that said, I’m still trying to keep an open mind. I’m talking to people and letting them try to convince me why I should own gold. And my guest this week makes some pretty compelling points. So, if you are trying to figure out whether or not you should own gold, listen to this week’s episode of Wealth Formula Podcast. It may help you make the decision once and for all. Strategic, results oriented professional with more than 20 years of leadership experience across a broad range of retail and technology organizations, many of which are in the Fortune 500. He has a proven track record in driving strategic and operational change that results in growing both the top and bottom lines of an organization. Ken recognizes the importance of taking care of customers while showing a deep commitment to the development of employees.  Detailed experience with managing highly talented teams; setting the overall strategic direction for an organization; managing complex, multi-site distribution networks; implementing cross functional, multi-million dollar initiatives; significant P&L responsibilities both in revenue ($1B+) and cost ($350M+); strong technical knowledge in how systems enable the business. Specialties: eCommerce Technologies, Entrepreneur Organization Management with Founder Engagement, CRM, Business and Supply Chain Strategy, Information Technology, Merchandising, Large Project Implementations, Distribution Center Management, International and Domestic Transportation Management, Network Modeling, Site Selection and Building Start-ups, Labor Relations, System Implementations, P&L Management, Associate Growth and Development, Inventory Planning and Allocation, Lean, Six Sigma, S&OP Processes Shownotes: Ken Lewis’s background Out of all things, why gold? Gold’s volatility What’s gives gold its value? Owning physical gold How does Ken tie gold to blockchain? Passive income on the gold you own Real Estate vs Gold Onegold.com Apmex.com

Not everyone is that excited about blockchain. Especially these days as the market is about 90 percent down from its January highs. But remember, while the bubble was real, so is the technology. There is something here that will start to permeate our world—even if we have no desire to invest in cryptocurrencies. You see, blockchain and other distributed ledgers create a tremendous amount of efficiency. So-called security tokens essentially allow ownership of real things (just like a regular security) but allow for greater liquidity through secondary market platforms. Not surprisingly, we are starting to see blockchain projects creep their way into real estate. It’s just a matter of time that title searches and escrow companies become as useful as syphilis doctors. The challenge, in my opinion, is identifying what projects are actually useful. What projects actually need a blockchain or create some additional value that is not already there. After all, it is well documented that a number of companies simply added blockchain to their name to seem more desirable in 2017. In fact, some publicly traded companies saw appreciable differences in their stock price after changing their names to include “blockchain”. So, as much as I am a student of distributed ledger technology, I am also skeptical of many of the applications that I am seeing out there. In order for a project to be worth investing in, it has to create value that is not currently available. My guest today makes the case for the tokenization of real estate—specifically extracting equity from your personal residence through security tokenization instead of a home equity line of credit. He also speaks to the many other possible applications of blockchain to real estate investing. I thoroughly enjoyed this discussion with Matthew Sullivan from QuantmRE and, even if you don’t care about cryptocurrency, you will find this interview interesting and useful. This brave new world of blockchain is here before us. You won’t be able to ignore it. Shownotes: Michael Sullivan’s background Michael’s definition of Tokenization How does Michael do thing more efficiently in Real Estate through blockchain technology? How does it work within the framework of the law? The GP side: cost and advantage The profit and the process Quantmre.com

I remember being in medical school thinking that I wanted to be a surgeon. The idea of it appealed to me very much. I certainly had the personality of a surgeon. But there was something about which I felt very insecure. You see, growing up, my dad was about as white collar as they get. I didn’t learn anything about cars and never put up any shelves. The only reason to think I was any good with my hands at all was the fact that I excelled in hand-eye-coordination sports like ice hockey and table tennis (aka ping-pong). So as much as I loved the idea of being a surgeon, I had this big fear that I would be horrible at it. And, in the beginning, I kind of was! In medical school, all of the guys I liked were orthopedic surgeons. They were all into sports like me. The problem was that they were all carpenters at heart and I was NOT. I remember an orthopedic surgery resident handing me a saw to amputate a guy’s leg at the VA. Having that tool in my hands wasn’t pretty. Fortunately, the leg was supposed to come off anyway. Eventually, I realized that I was better at soft tissue surgery (no bones). I felt that I was better with fine movements than using power tools. That’s one of the reasons I decided to operate on brains. In fact, the first time I ever used a drill, it was in medical school drilling through someone’s skull on my neurosurgery rotation. I got pretty good with that drill after a while. It was the only power tool I liked. I remember getting confident enough practicing on people’s skulls that I bought a drill at the hardware store to put up some shelves in my apartment for the first time. Okay…so all of this sounds a little messed up I know. But it’s true. The good news for me was that there was a little bit of a learning curve getting my hands wet but pretty soon, I became a pretty darn good surgeon. In hindsight, the fear and anxiety of not being good at surgery were silly. As it turned out, becoming a good surgeon was really no different than becoming good at anything else in life—it took practice. In the case of most surgical procedures, you sort of do the same maneuvers in every case. After my neurosurgery stint (which I left because of the hours), I spent some time doing cosmetic surgery. I watched the masters do hundreds of operations. There was one guy I watched that was particularly interesting to me because his results were so good and so consistent. What I noticed when I watched him carefully was that he did everything the same every single time. In fact, I counted about 6 discreet maneuvers that he did for every patient and wrote them down. When I started doing my own cases, I did those six steps and, from the very first case, my results were outstanding. During my career, I did several hundred facelifts and did them exactly the same way every time. I got faster, more precise, and there were fewer and fewer wasted movements. My patients thought I was an artist. But the truth was that I was more of a robot than an artist. I am the least artistic person I know. This experience of mastery was profound for me. I felt like I had discovered a larger secret in the process of being a good facelift surgeon. The secret was that you could master just about anything if you cracked the code and did it over and over again the same way every time. That’s all that mastery really is. My guest on this week’s Wealth Formula Podcast is special. At a relatively young age, she has become a master at her craft and has shown the same kind of consistency with her financial outcomes as I did at my peak with surgical outcomes. Her name is Janet LePage and she is a computer scientist who has cracked the code to successful multifamily real estate investing. In this episode, we will learn how she did it. Buck P.S. Don’t forget to sign up for our upcoming Wealth Formula Investor Meetup in Scottsdale, AZ. Click here to learn more! For the past decade, Janet has been focused on creating wealth through well-selected real estate investment. She has grown her precise business strategy from more than 50 residential transactions in Arizona to the purchase of multi-family buildings. Under Janet’s leadership, WWC has placed more than $279 million US in private equity and acquired 44 multi-family properties, comprising more than 8,500 rental units, with a purchase value of more than $750 million. In 2017, Janet was named entrepreneur of the Year (Real Estate/Construction/Pacific region) by Ernst & Young. In 2016, Janet was named one of Business in Vancouver’s Forty Under 40 and was awarded the Veuve Cliquot Canadian New Generation Award, which recognizes young female entrepreneurs. She holds a Bachelor of Applied Science in Computer Science and Business Administration (Simon Fraser University) and a Project Management Professional designation.  Shownotes: Janet Lepage’s background Cracking the code then sticking to it Velocity and leverage Have a lot of lemons to squeeze Affordability index Caring = profitability The We Got You Back program

You know it’s been a hell of a year in terms of market volatility right? Now, in cryptocurrency, we expect that. It is a speculative asset class with binary outcomes. That’s why we only invest money in money that we can lose. In 2018, we definitely lost it (who knows about 2019). But the equity markets are supposed to be where you put your retirement money! Whats up with the volatility? December has been the worst month in the stock market since 2008 and could very well be the worst December since 1932 during the Great Depression. Why? Because the fed raised rates by one quarter of one percent? Because there is a government shut down over a border wall? Why do these seemingly unrelated circumstances affect your publicly traded equities? The answer…your wealth in the stock market is not real. When people get nervous and there is a sell off in the market, your wealth vanishes. Investing in the stock market is not conservative as conventional financial wisdom has led you to believe. It gives you exposure to systemic risk that you cannot control. Now I know some of you skeptics out there will say yeah Buck the real estate market is not an uncorrelated asset either. That’s absolutely true but here is the difference. You see, the money I have tied up in real estate is real. How do I know that? Well, I can see, touch, and feel an apartment building. And people have to live somewhere so they keep paying if they need a roof over their head. People sell stocks so they can pay their rent. As for the value of the building. Maybe it will go down in value for a period of time but if I’m making money from the asset now, why do I even care? I’ll just cash flow for a few years and when the value goes back up, maybe I’ll sell (or maybe not). These are not new concepts for this show but worth repeating because I am sensing panic out there with stock market investors and I am getting a lot of questions about where to invest or where to hold cash. Rather than be foolish and give you financial advice, let me point out that my own strategy continues to be to buy moderately leveraged real estate with value add opportunities in high growth markets (Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, Atlanta). If you are an accredited investor and you want to know exactly what I’m up to, join investor club ASAP and you can decide if you want to do the same. As for where to keep cash, I’ll say it again. There is only one vehicle that I know that continued to provide solid positive compounding growth and liquidity through the Civil War, the Great Depression, and the Great Recession. It’s called Wealth Formula Banking and, in my opinion, this is the best risk adjusted long term investment ever. If you are tired of feeling queasy not knowing which way the market is turning, it may be time to really take a look at this option.  I think we are in for some serious volatility in the next year. That said, I do not believe that we are headed for another 2008 right now. The biggest problem we have right now is that rates are normalizing (although mortgage rates remain low) and there is a tremendous amount of political uncertainty. The markets hate uncertainty. Sitting on cash in an almost certain inflationary environment may not be in your best interests either. That guarantees you lose money as inflation exceeds the nominal interest you are earning at the bank. Markets go up and down even though in good times we never seem to remember that. It doesn’t mean we freeze. It means we make decisions based on what is in front of us. In this week’s episode of Ask Buck, we touch on these topics and more. Start out the year with some Wealth Formula Wisdom. Don’t miss this episode.

I’d like to give each and every one of my listeners a gift this year so I’m going to do that the only way I know how—to give you some unsolicited advice (not to be confused with financial advice). Take it or leave it but these concepts have served me well. So…let us begin! Invest in people, not deals. This is just as true whether you are investing on your own as owner-operator or as a passive investor. It is easy to understand from the perspective of a passive investor. Once word gets around that you might invest in a private placement, you will get a lot of garbage thrown your way. My advice…if you don’t know who it’s coming from, delete it.Proformas and glossy offering memorandums can be made to look whatever way you want them to look. You can make swamp land in Florida look good on paper. It’s like putting lipstick on a pig. Work with people that you know, like and trust. What if you are contemplating a new venture on your own or are thinking about buying your own apartment building? Same principal here…invest in people, not deals. In this case, you have to invest in your self. You have to take the time to learn and get the help you need from mentors and masterminds. If you are going into a dark cave for the first time, bring someone who’s been there before. Be careful on this one—lots of gurus out there who aren’t going to help you that much. They are too busy selling their programs to be true mentors. It’s better if you find a real person willing to take you under their wing who’s got some scar tissue. To master anything new, you have to learn from mistakes…but they don’t have to be your mistakes. Finally, remember to keep an open mind and try to learn from multiple sources. A mentor is great but should serve as a foundation for your on-going learning. Get perspectives from others. I have found that perfectly intelligent people can disagree on how things should be done and both or neither can be right at the same time. I have missed out on some big opportunities in the past few years because I kept listening to the same people crying wolf about the economy over and over.I have found that when everyone thinks the same thing, it is usually time to second guess the assumptions that are being made. So…please keep listening to my podcast and become an active member of the Wealth Formula Community. But also listen to others who have a different perspective. Tell me when you think I am wrong. But if you do, back it up rather than quoting another podcaster or blogger. On my end, I will continue and try not to let myself get boxed into one kind of thinking and to continue to provide you with truly unique and useful content that isn’t just a replay of someone else’s podcast. I think we have just scratched the surface. Merry Christmas!

People keep asking me the same question these days—Buck, what are you investing in given the relative instability of asset prices and the economy? Now I won’t give you financial advice—that is my disclaimer. But I will tell you what I tell everyone else. In times like these, I stick mostly to multifamily real estate and life insurance related products. Why?  Well, in the case of multifamily real estate, people have got to live somewhere. Paying you rent is required so they don’t go homeless. What good is your apple stock if you’ve got no place to live? What if asset prices go down you ask? Well, as long as you are moderate with leverage and continue to deleverage by creating value, you should be just fine. Again, that’s my opinion and those of you in my investor club know that I am doubling down on this. What about this whole life insurance product thing? Well, if you don’t know what I’m talking about, take a look at WealthFormulaBanking.com and get a sense for yourself. You know, it drives me crazy when know-it-all doctors tell me that life insurance is not a good investment. Well, if you look at the way their policies were structured, they are absolutely right. They just aren’t seeing the way the wealthy get these things structured. The wealthiest people in this country, the Romneys, the Rothschilds all use these products to create wealth. Do you think they might know more than an ER doctor with a blog about this stuff? Well, I’ll leave that up to you. The good news is that the structure used by the ultra-wealthy for these policies is not just for the rich. It’s about structure. You don’t have to be a millionaire or a billionaire to make these things work for you. And, in unstable financial times like these, dealing with investments that have consistently paid out since before the Civil War might not be a bad idea. We talk about this stuff a lot and will continue to do so but if you have not checked out WealthFormulaBanking.com do so to get detail. I can honestly say that if you took no other action from Wealth Formula content other than to get familiar with these products, I would feel like I have done a service to you and your financial future. Today, we are going to talk about the not-so-obvious benefits of these kinds of products that guys like me don’t often think about because all we care about is creating wealth. In fact, there are many strategies that we these policies can be used for other than maximizing leverage and velocity. To talk about this, I’ve got the best in the business back on the show this week, Christian Allen and Rod Zabriskie.  Shownotes: 30 seconds summary of Wealth Formula Banking 30 seconds of Velocity Plus Wealth Formula Banking: Don’t I have to pay back interest? Long-term insurance market Why would life insurance make more sense than term insurance Convertible-type policy Insurance as part of a comp package Getting a policy for your kid Common questions and misconceptions Not only to protect but to grow your wealth

How was it that some people were able to predict the 2008 financial meltdown? Were they clairvoyant? To be clear, I’m not talking about those who predict a financial meltdown every year. I’m talking about groups like ITR economics who we had on the show a few weeks ago that also accurately predicted periods of financial prosperity as well. Those who best understand how the global economy works at the macro level are the ones who can see where it is headed. Most of us are down in the weeds seeing things happen in real time wondering when to take cover or when to shoot for the moon. The good macroeconomist, though, is not guessing. He sees the financial world move in concert from a thousand feet above with its complex interactions. He understands that the economy is dynamic and, in the global economy of today, cannot be seen through the same lens that it was 50 years ago when economies were more isolated from one another. I am certainly no economist. However, I am good at surrounding myself with people smarter than myself (which isn’t that hard frankly). That is a skill that has essentially accounted for all of the investing success I have had. In the world of macroeconomics, Richard Duncan is one of the guys that I listen to and he is my guest on Wealth Formula Podcast this week. If you want to know what the financial world looks like from a thousand feet up and several thousand miles away, do not miss this episode! Richard Duncan is the author of three books on the global economic crisis. The Dollar Crisis: Causes, Consequences, Cures (John Wiley & Sons, 2003, updated 2005), predicted the current global economic disaster with extraordinary accuracy. It was an international bestseller. His second book was The Corruption of Capitalism: A strategy to rebalance the global economy and restore sustainable growth. It was published by CLSA Books in December 2009. His latest book is The New Depression: The Breakdown Of The Paper Money Economy (John Wiley & Sons, 2012). Since beginning his career as an equities analyst in Hong Kong in 1986, Richard has served as global head of investment strategy at ABN AMRO Asset Management in London, worked as a financial sector specialist for the World Bank in Washington D.C., and headed equity research departments for James Capel Securities and Salomon Brothers in Bangkok. He also worked as a consultant for the IMF in Thailand during the Asia Crisis. Richard has appeared frequently on CNBC, CNN, BBC and Bloomberg Television, as well as on BBC World Service Radio. He has published articles in The Financial Times, The Far East Economic Review, FinanceAsia and CFO Asia. He is also a well-known speaker whose audiences have included The World Economic Forum’s East Asia Economic Summit in Singapore, The EuroFinance Conference in Copenhagen, The Chief Financial Officers’ Roundtable in Shanghai, and The World Knowledge Forum in Seoul. Richard studied literature and economics at Vanderbilt University (1983) and international finance at Babson College (1986); and, between the two, spent a year travelling around the world as a backpacker. Shownotes: Richard Duncan’s story A shift in how the economy works after the gold standard Why do trade deficits matter, for both sides? With all the bubbles around, what next? Don’t be stuck in a traditional mindset Trade war policies The MacroWatch Newsletter Richardduncaneconomics.com Subscribe and get 50% off for Wealth Formula listeners, coupon code: formula

I have written and talked before about the value of gold. What is the real purpose of holding gold anyway? Gold bugs will argue that gold is the only real money and that’s why they hoard it. I think that’s fair. Gold is money and if you just want to keep some money around gold is not a bad way to do that. Not only is gold money, but it is essentially the anti-dollar. In other words, as the dollar continues to degenerate and dilute, gold remains constant. In other words, gold does not go up in value. It’s the dollar and other fiats currencies that go down in value relative to gold.  But is gold the only “anti-dollar”? I would make the controversial argument that real estate might actually be even more of a hedge against the dollar. After all, owning real estate is a hedge against inflation because rents go up to counter-act the effects of diluted fiat currency. That, in turn, increases net operating income and thus…the value of the dollar value of the real estate. So it’s doing pretty much the same as gold except it is throwing off cash flow along the way. Now here is the kicker, inflation erodes debt. So, if you financed that real estate not only are you benefiting from the hedge against inflation but the dollars you borrowed have effectively become worth less over time. In other words, if you borrowed $100K 20 years ago that is worth a lot less in terms of buying power than it is today. That loan you took way back doesn’t seem like much money anymore in today’s dollars. If you didn’t get this part, read it again. It is critical. Inflation erodes debt. So, with real estate you are getting not only the inflationary hedge of the real asset and the cash flow, but you are effectively printing your own money by letting inflation erode your debt. Simply put…this is why people get rich with real estate. Now, you know that I am a multifamily guy. I invest and sponsor syndications. For a variety of reasons, if you are an accredited investor with a full-time job, this might be the easiest way to invest in real estate. But…that’s my bias. There are others out there like my friend Dean Graziosi who was in my course, Your Roadmap to Real Wealth, that own thousands of houses. The important thing is that you should listen to as many opinions as you can—preferably from people who know more than you—and make your own educated investing decisions. In the single family home space, there are few people who know more than Marco Santarelli and he is my guest on this week’s Wealth Formula Podcast.  Make sure to tune in to this episode as he makes his case for single-family turn-key rentals homes. Marco Santarelli is the host of the Passive Real Estate Investing show — the show where busy people like you learn how to build substantial passive income while creating wealth for the long-term. Marco Santarelli is also the creator of DealGrader™ – a scoring system that measures the investment quality of a real estate investment, giving you an overall snapshot of its profitability and investment risk. He purchased his first real estate investment at the age of 18.  He successfully handled the entire rehab and property management of his first property without ever taking a course or reading a book on the subject. Marco went on to get his real estate license and sell residential real estate for three years before leaving real estate sales to pursue other active business ventures. Because of his love and passion for real estate, and desire to help others succeed in building their wealth through real estate investing, he eventually returned to real estate investing and founded Norada Real Estate Investments in 2003. Today, Marco Santarelli is a licensed California real estate broker and runs a successful real estate investment firm focused on helping other investors build wealth through the power of real estate. Shownotes: Marco Santarelli’s background Tightening before 2008 Seeing real estate as gold Is it a good time to be buying single family real estate? What should you look for in a turnkey provider? Noradarealestate.com

When I was a kid growing up in the early eighties, I remember my parents opened up a savings account for me and let me take the interest out as an allowance. That was a pretty good deal for an eight-year-old. I remember riding my bike to the bank every couple of months and showing them my bank passbook. That’s all it took to access my account at age eight! For those of you too young to remember, a bank passbook sort of looked like a passport and helped keep track of your transactions. So, I would show the bank teller my bank passbook and I would ask her (always a woman) to give me all of my interest in cash. Invariable, she would give me about $20 every time I went. I wasn’t allowed to touch the principal and I have no idea how much money was in there. This was the eighties with double-digit interest rates so I guess if I was pulling out about twenty bucks every couple months, you can probably do the math. If I did the same thing with my kids today, they would probably be pulling out a nickel. Anyway, somewhere along the line, bank tellers stopped dispensing cash and the passbook disappeared—but the bank tellers did not. I say this because that was a genuine fear that people had with the advent of the ATM. They thought the ATMs would steal human jobs. As it turned out, the ATMs ended up doing the simple work of dispensing cash and the tellers just focussed on the more complex stuff and everyone was happy. The moral of the story is that every time there is a new technology, it doesn’t mean the robots are going to steal our jobs. It just means that our jobs might look different.  This is particularly important to understand right now as we see artificial intelligence advancing at a rapid pace. What does a world with advanced AI and blockchain look like? Driverless cars? Equity markets without investment bankers? Who knows. But I am confident that we will continue to find things for us people to still do. It will just be different. Maybe I’m overly optimistic but I look back on human civilization and realize that we are incredibly good at adapting to our own new realities. In 1798 Thomas Malthus published An Essay on the Principle of Population. In short, his theory was that human populations were going to outgrow our food supply. From where he stood, that might have been the case but it didn’t take into account our technological advancements in agriculture that made it possible to feed an ever-expanding human population. Similarly, I’m hopeful that our ingenuity will bail us out of some of the other challenges we face today like sovereign debt and global climate change. Technological advancements since the advent of the internet are accelerating at a lightning pace. In the meantime, we face an increasingly insular world of nationalism and economic inequality that is more reminiscent of the early 20th century that ultimately culminated into the great wars. How all this ends up is anyone’s guess but one thing’s for sure. We live in interesting times (an old Chinese Curse). My guest on this week’s Wealth Formula Podcast is well versed in all of the issues that I have discussed here including macroeconomics and technology. He looks at the problems of today with knowledge of the past and a keen insight into our future. His name is Diego Zuluaga and this was one of my favorite conversations on Wealth Formula Podcast so make sure not to miss it! Diego Zuluaga is a policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives, where he covers financial technology and consumer credit. Before joining Cato, Zuluaga was Head of Financial Services and Tech Policy at the Institute of Economic Affairs in London. While at the IEA, he authored papers on the social value of finance, the regulation of online platforms, and the taxation of capital income, among others. His work has been featured in print and broadcast media, such as the Times, Newsweek, and the Daily Telegraph. Zuluaga is a prolific public speaker as well as a former lecturer in economics at the University of Buckingham. Originally from Bilbao in northern Spain, Zuluaga holds a BA in economics and history from McGill University, and an MSc in financial economics from the University of Oxford. Shownotes: Diego Zuluaga’s background The forces that traditionally drive disintegration and what’s going on today More economically driven than other factors Are automatic robots really taking over our jobs? The ATM Scare Diego’s outlook of the future Thoughts on blockchain Should cryptocurrency be regulated The Howie Test Learn more about Diego Zuluaga cato.org

Is it just me or does politics these days resemble a reality television show? It’s crazy. Take a step back for a moment. Regardless of your political preference, you have to admit that the last two years have been unprecedented. Remember when having an affair was enough to end a political career? Now, we have the president of the United States paying off porn stars and playboy bunnies! And last week we had the midterm elections and the drama that surrounded all of that. Now that the House of Representatives is in the hands of the Democrats, Donald Trump will almost certainly see a flurry of investigations and potentially subpoenas in 2019—a great way to end season two of the Trump presidency! No one is going to tune out now! One of the things I’m most curious about “next season” is what happens with this whole Mueller probe into Russian interference and questions of collusion. Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress seem to be trying to protect the sanctity of the investigation. I certainly hope they do. While it does seem like the investigation is taking quite a long time, I think it is in the best interest of the country for the findings to be released to the American people. If the president is innocent, then he should have nothing to fear and I don’t think it’s in his best interest to attack the intelligence community in the meantime. I think it’s important to remember that members of the FBI and CIA are public servants. They keep us safe. In my view, attacking the intelligence community is like attacking the military.  These people are serving our country and it is important to remember that. To demonize them is un-American. Speaking of our intelligence community, I’ve got a very interesting show for you to listen to as we head into Thanksgiving—it’s an interview with Valerie Plame. Does that name ring a bell? Remember the spy who got outed by the Bush administration? Yep…that’s her! This will be a fun one for the holiday week so make sure you tune in. A former career covert CIA operations officer, Valerie Plame worked to protect America’s national security and prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, in particular, nuclear weapons. During her career with the CIA, Valerie managed top-secret covert programs designed to keep terrorists and rogue nation states from acquiring nuclear weapons. This involved decision making at senior levels, recruiting foreign assets, deploying resources around the world, managing multi-million dollar budgets, briefing US policy-makers, and demonstrating consistently solid judgment in a field where mistakes could prove disastrous. She was also involved in covert cyber operations and counterterrorism efforts. Valerie sits on the boards of Global Data Security, a cybersecurity company that safeguards digital data streaming and extends that protection to email and attachments, and Starling Trust, a predictive behavioral analytics company that interprets and forecasts behavioral trends. She also serves on the nonprofit boards of The Ploughshares Fund, Global Zero, the United Way of Santa Fe County, and Postpartum Support International. Valerie is affiliated with the Santa Fe Institute, a trans-disciplinary scientific think tank created by two Nobel Prize winners to address the most compelling and complex problems in the world today. Valerie has done extensive public speaking throughout the country and internationally on cybersecurity issues, national security, nuclear proliferation, women in intelligence, and the NSA revelations. She has written for many national publications including Time, Newsweek, CNN, The Daily Beast, and The Huffington Post. Valerie is the author of The New York Times best-selling memoir Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House, which was released as a major motion picture of the same name starring Sean Penn and Naomi Watts. Along with Sarah Lovett, she has published the well-received fictional spy thrillers Blowback and Burned. Shownotes: Valerie Plame, former CIA What was Valerie doing during 911 What led up to her Identity leak? What is a deep state? Is there really such a thing? What can we do for the next administration More on Valerie Plame valerieplamewilson.com spyseminars.com