Schiff Sovereign Podcast

Lately we’ve been led astray over and over again by supposed ‘experts’ with decades of experience who can’t seem to stop making colossal mistakes. But I’m not just talking about individuals. I’m talking about institutions too. And one institution in particular that’s been an abject failure lately has been the central bank. That includes the Federal Reserve in the United States, the Bank of England in the UK, and more. The Federal Reserve, for example, despite its leaders’ decades of experience, completely failed to predict that their policies over the past few years would have any consequences. It’s extraordinary. These people honestly thought that they could print trillions of dollars, keep interest rates at 0%, and that there would never be any consequences until the end of time. And then, when inflation began to take hold last year, they failed to recognize it. They chastised people who pointed it out. Later, when they finally did acknowledge inflation, they insisted it was transitory. And then when they ‘retired’ the term transitory, they promised to do something about the growing inflation problem… eventually. Finally, in March 2022, they made a very ceremonial 0.25% interest rate increase. File that away under “too little, too late”. But now their tune has changed. Now their policies smack of panic and desperation, and they sound like they’re running around with their hair on fire with no clue what to do next. It hardly inspires confidence. Earlier this week we saw another example. The Bank of England made a stunning announcement that they would step in to prop up their rapidly-declining bond market. Investors around the world cheered the news, and global financial markets surged. The euphoria lasted about 24 hours. The next day, markets tanked again as investors realized, “Hang on… I don’t believe these people.” Central banks have enjoyed unparalleled respect and gravitas for the past 30 years; going back to Alan Greenspan in the 1990s, central bankers have been viewed as infallible superheroes who always know what to do. Now they just look like a bunch of amateurs. In today’s podcast, I walk through my analysis about what might happen next. Specifically, I argue why I think there’s NO WAY they’ll follow through on their interest rate increases. Simply put, continuing to do so will bankrupt their governments. Ultimately this means that inflation, at least some inflation, is here to stay. And I also discuss a couple of key asset classes, plus one surprising country, that can do well in this mess. Click here to listen. Open Podcast Transcription [00:00:00.850] Today we're going to go back in time, october 19, 1469, to the city of Viadali in modern day Spain. Now, I say modern day Spain because at the time, spain was really just a series of independent kingdoms. You had Castile and Navarro and and Aragon and so many different kingdoms across the peninsula, counties and Duchies, and there was no unity to Spain at all. And there in the city of Adelaide, in the cathedral that day, standing at the altar, was a 17 year old kid from Aragon. His name is Ferdinand.   [00:00:31.570] He came from a noble house called the House of Tristomera. Ferdinand, by all accounts, was somewhat of a genius. He was considered to be a child prodigy. He was chess and checkers prodigy, even as a child, beating the pants off of everybody in the court. He was an athlete, he was a horseman, he was a great soldier.   [00:00:50.600] He was battle hardened in combat. He was known as a great military commander. And people even said they wrote about at the time, they even said he was good looking. So he pretty much had everything going for him that you could ask for as a 17 year old kid. And on top of that, he was in line for the throne of Aragon.   [00:01:04.920] Standing next to him at the altar was his cousin, which seems incomprehensible to us, but it was pretty normal back then. People married their cousins from time to time. And his cousin was an 18 year old. He was 17, she was 18. Her name is Isabella.   [00:01:16.850] She came from the neighboring kingdom of Castile. Now, again, at the time, there was no unity. There was no such thing as Spain. There were these independent kingdoms. And the marriage between Ferdinand and Isabella created the foundation for what would become Spain, the Kingdom of Spain, eventually even the Empire of Spain.   [00:01:33.800] And they had a very successful marriage. Ferdinand and Isabella financed Christopher Columbus. They expanded the dominion of Spain. And by the time Isabella died in 15, four, ferdinand died about a decade or more than a decade later in 1516. And by the time Ferdinand died, what they left behind was greatly was far, far greater than what they had started with, with these two independent kingdoms.   [00:01:55.430] Now they had a whole empire. And the guy that was left over sort of holding all the marbles from that was their grandson. His name was Charles. Charles was heir to essentially all the kingdoms in Spain. And on top of that, because they had very fertile, and Isabella had been very deliberate in selecting the marriages and betrothing their children they had married their kids, essentially Charles mother, into another very powerful house in Europe, the House of Habsburg.   [00:02:24.740] The Habsburgs had claimed to the Holy Roman Empire. In fact, at the time, the chief Habsburg of the house of Habsburg was the Holy Roman Empire. Holy Roman emperor. His name was Maximilian. And in 1516, Charles inherited all the kings in Spain.   [00:02:39.060] A couple of years later, his grandfather, the holy Roman emperor, died too. Charles became the holy roman emperor, as well as the emperor of Spain. So this is a guy that literally overnight, in 1519, became the most powerful person in Europe. He had all of basically central Europe. He had Austria, he had Hungary, he had Germany, he had the Netherlands, he had parts of Italy and Sicily and Spain.   [00:02:58.510] This guy was overnight just the most powerful person on the European continent. And by all accounts, he was a complete failure. You'd think that somebody with that much power would have been able to figure it out and do some good in the world and leave behind a great legacy. He didn't do any of those things. Charles was a failure, made terrible decisions, terrible decision after terrible decision after terrible decision.   [00:03:20.430] He's known to history as Charles V, although depending on where he was, if you're talking about in the Netherlands, or for example, he was technically was Charles I was in Spain. He was Charles the fifth holy roman emperor, depending on where he was. He had different names and different titles. This is a guy that had so many titles, you could look them up on wikipedia. It's about a paragraph long.   [00:03:38.420] Of all the different titles that he had. This guy had so much power, so many counties, so many duchies, so many kingdoms. It was absolutely insane. And yet he was a total failure. This is a guy who inherited this very powerful kingdom, and yet, through his just horrific economic mismanagement, he ran up massive debts, massive deficits.   [00:03:56.130] He constantly had to borrow money from Spanish nobles, forced loans. He had to borrow money from German bankers. It was just terrible. When it came to managing the economy and managing his own finances at the same time he inherited his crowns. Remember what happened in 1517?   [00:04:12.910] This is the start of the great reformation in Europe, where you had people that realize, you know what? I think I want to break away from the catholic church. And you had the origins of protestantism and Lutheranism, and this is a time of great social upheaval in Europe. And it was a time that a leader, somebody as powerful as Charles was, he could have been the guy to create strength and unity, to calm down the tension and say, you know what? We all have our differences, but we're all the same, and let's just bury the hatchet.   [00:04:40.950] Let's all just get along and respect each other and be fine with our differences and be fine. But he didn't do that. Now, instead of creating strength and unity in society, he fanned the flames of social upheaval. And with his own fanaticism, he persecuted people with different beliefs. He supported the inquisition, which was actually used as a weapon to stamp out intellectual dissent, as well as actually rob and pillage people of wealth.   [00:05:03.080] Anytime there was a person of wealth that was brought before the Inquisition. The first thing they did was take away all of their assets and basically he cheat all the person's assets to the state. So Charles became actually quite wealthy by going after all these evil people of intellectual descent and stealing all their money. So again he could have been a person of unity but instead he became a person of division. There's actually a story where the King of Spain, it's unclear whether it was Charles or his son who was really cut from the same cloth.   [00:05:31.160] But in the late 1550s there's actually an event where they burned a bunch of heretics I think also in the city of Vague. It was as attended by 2000 people. And at one point, according to legend, the king walks by one of the condemned, he was about to be burned at the stake and this guy is begging for mercy. And the king looks at him and says if my own son were as wretched as you, I would carry the wood myself to burn him. So that's the kind of guy Charles is and the sort of cloth that he's cut from and his family at the same time.   [00:06:02.620] You think about all the different terrible decisions and mismanagement. He inherited a burgeoning protocolist economy in the Netherlands. He left it on the brink of civil war. He inherited all these free and prosperous cities in Germany. He left them overtaxed and vanquished and moving really backwards instead of forwards.   [00:06:17.520] He had been moving back towards the feudal system instead of forwards into capitalism. He inherited the world's dominant reserve currency, the Spanish dollar, the Real de Ocho. It was the silver currency that had become really the reserve currency around the world, in the Americas, across Europe, et cetera. And yet somehow this guy managed to engineer the worst inflation since the collapse of the Roman Empire in the 400s. He inherited a dominant military but he suffered some really embarrassing and completely unnecessary military defeats.   [00:06:44.190] All in all he was pretty much a failure. This is a guy again who was pretty much from birth brought up to become the Holy Roman Emperor, the Emperor of Spain, the King of Spain, lord of the Netherlands, all these things. This is a guy that was bred to rule. He had all this experience, decades and decades of experience. Latent to his reign, after literally decades on the throne, he provoked his sworn enemy, a guy named Suleiman the Magnificent from the Holy Roman Empire.   [00:07:10.110] He basically called Suleiman a butcher and practically dared the Ottomans to invade, which the Ottomans did. Wow, what a surprise. He boxed this guy into a corner, suleiman the Magnificent, into a corner. The guy actually had a real army and had the will to fight. And late into his reign he ended up losing charles ended up losing the Kingdom of Hungary, he lost the city of Budapest, which back then was just Buddha lost.   [00:07:32.130] The city of Budapest lost basically the entire Hungarian kingdom, plunging Europe into a major geopolitical crisis. Everybody in Europe, the French, the Austrians and Germans, everybody was completely terrified of what was going to happen. The Ottomans basically like it was like Russia and China rolled into one supervillain today. That's what the Ottoman Empire represented. And here you have Charles V with decades of experience on the throne, essentially daring his sworn enemies, say, come on and invade me.   [00:07:59.440] I double dog dare you, and made this big speech about how he would fight to the death. It would be such an honor for him to die trying to kill this evil butcher, Suleiman the Magnificent. I mean, it was such a ridiculous thing. And of course, then he ended up losing Hungary. He lost the war and plunged Europe into a major geopolitical crisis, saying, oh, my God, we're all going to end up being invaded by the Ottomans.   [00:08:23.330] He also on top of that, he continued to wage really idiotic and overly expensive wars that he couldn't afford. And finally, when he was completely exhausted and had exhausted his finances, he signed a terrible treaty to end the war. It's called the Peace of Augsburg, which is really one of the dumbest peace treaties ever signed that really just paved the way for future conflict. He completely destroyed the Calvinist, the Ana Baptist, and it ended up leading to the 30 Years War, which is even more expensive war, even worse war later on because he signed such an idiotic and stupid peace treaty. One of my favorite historians, who I love to read, named Will Durant, calls Charles V the most impressive failure of his era.   [00:09:02.530] And if you really read about Charles V, that's probably a pretty good way to label him, if we think about that today. Let's be honest, there are probably plenty of contenders for that title today. The most impressive failure of this era. There are a lot of contenders for that title, and I'm sure your brain is probably racing right now with examples. Too many names come to mind of the most impressive failure of this era.   [00:09:22.570] There are a lot of them. We've talked about many of them. It goes back to this concept of the experts, these allknowing, all powerful, unquestionable people that are supposed to just know everything and guide us to perfection forever and ever, until the end of time and never make a mistake. They're infallible and they're perfect and they're going to just walk across the water and fix everything in our lives. These same people with decades of experience that are tough and respected by everybody around the world, and yet they've continued to lead us astray over and over and over again.   [00:09:52.220] To be fair, it's not just people, it's not just the individuals, and it's the names that we're all thinking right now. But I'm not saying them, lest I be canceled off the internet again. But we're talking about institutions as well. And there's actually one institution in particular that I want to talk about today, and that's the institution of central banks. So we're not really going to talk about even an individual.   [00:10:11.520] We're going to talk about central banks. And this is really important because again, what I hope to sort of shed a little bit of light on is just this is one man's opinion expressing his first amendment right to have an opinion and talk about at least where I think the pocket is going to be. And if we think about this with respect to central banks and this is a really critical trend, central bank, we got to talk a little bit of history here. Central bank goes back to the early 1006 hundreds. The first sort of protocol bank in Europe was the bank of Amsterdam, which was launched in 16.   [00:10:41.700] Nine had a whole lot of responsibilities ranging from currency, bills of exchange, discount, some elements of financial stability. A couple of decades later, in 1664, was the Swedish central bank, the Riksbanken. Then later on in 1694, at the end of the century, was the bank of England. And over time, the central banks were essentially had more and more and more power, more and more authority, more and more autonomy, specifically over the currency. And this is a really, really big deal, what central banks really do, and this goes really into modern day central banking.   [00:11:17.780] Central banks essentially control the money supply, controlling the money supply. Essentially they have all the control they need to set and influence interest rates. Now, this is a complicated process by which central bankers buy and sell bonds. They call it open market operations. They're buying and selling bonds to increase and decrease the supply of money.   [00:11:37.440] That's all very complicated and it doesn't really matter. The bottom line is that central bankers have the power to control interest rates. This is really critical. It's a really important thing to understand because interest rates are basically the price of money. If you think about it, when you go out and borrow money, interest is the price that you pay for the money that you borrowed.   [00:11:57.290] So interest is the price of money. It's literally the price that you pay for money that you borrow or the amount that you receive for money that you lend. Interest is the price of money. So you're talking about a group of people that has the ability to control the price of money. And when you control the price of money, you have the ability to control the price of pretty much everything.   [00:12:19.670] So we think about interest rates, right? What has to do with interest rates? Well, probably in our own lives, most people borrow money to buy a house. Most people don't just plop down hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in cash to buy a house. Most people borrow money from a bank.   [00:12:33.680] And so that makes real estate and real estate purchases and home buyer activity. Extremely sensitive to interest rates when interest rates are low and cheap when you can borrow money. Just a year and a half ago, people could borrow money in the United States at 2.5% for a mortgage. Now it's six and a half going on 7% now. So obviously, when rates are low, people can afford to borrow more money, so that means they can afford to pay more for a house when rates are higher.   [00:13:00.820] Now it's more expensive to borrow money, so they have to borrow less, which means they can afford to pay less for a house or real estate. Prices are extremely susceptible to changes in interest rates. It's the same thing with really any consumer behavior. When you people borrow money to buy cars or to upgrade the kitchen cabinets in the bathroom, they borrow money at. Businesses borrow money because they have to invest in new equipment or new factories or whatever it is they're doing.   [00:13:23.720] All these things are subject to when interest rates are low, interest rates are high. It changes behavior, business behavior, consumer behavior. And then it's the same with asset prices. Interest rates have a huge impact on bond prices, which we'll get into later. Extremely influential in stock prices.   [00:13:37.890] So overall interest rates, changes in interest rates have an extreme economic impact. And we know that now from experience because we've seen it interest rates across the world. Wherever you are in the world right now, chances are you're living in a country you're listening this in a place that has seen their interest rates go up. Their central bankers have been increasing interest rates. Very few countries have been cutting rates, most countries have been increasing interest rates.   [00:13:59.090] And we're seeing now the effect that has on the economy. It's wrecking havoc in financial markets.   [00:14:07.190] The experts don't call it a recession, we're not allowed to say recession. But I mean, a lot of places are in recession right now, and a lot of that is because of these changes, these increases in interest rates. So when you think about that, that's an incredible amount of power for a single institution, a central bank that's an incredible amount of power for a single institution to have, especially when you consider that nobody in that central bank, nobody on those committees is actually elected. In the United States. We have what's called the Federal Reserve System.   [00:14:34.150] The central bank is called Federal Reserve banks. And the Federal Reserve system is actually comprised of twelve different Federal Reserve banks. These are all regional banks. For example, there's one in New York and there's one in Dallas, kansas City, San Francisco, all different places around the country. Minneapolis, Minnesota.   [00:14:49.870] All these twelve different Federal Reserve banks. Each one of those Federal Reserve banks is essentially directed by a board of directors. Well, guess who selects the board of directors? The majority of the seats on the board of directors of the central banks are actually selected by these big commercial Wall Street banks. So it's these big Wall Street banks that select the people that make up the central bank.   [00:15:10.460] So we're giving the power to control the money supply to the banks themselves, to the commercial banks, the big Wall Street banks, the investment banks. These are the guys that actually make the decisions about how to set interest rate policy and whether to increase or decrease the money supply or whether or not some factory work is going to lose his job because of what they do with interest rate policy. It turns out that the key decision makers that are actually making those decisions and pulling the strings and selecting the people that make those decisions are actually the big Wall Street banks. So it's a rather perverse system when you think about it and just riddled with conflicts of interest. But these people are supposed to be the supreme experts when it comes to the economy.   [00:15:49.010] They're infallible all knowing, all powerful, all seeing and yet somehow they've completely missed it. They totally failed to anticipate inflation. They totally failed to say oh gee, we're going to keep interest rates at basically zero. We're going to print trillions and trillions of dollars. Then along comes covet, we're going to print trillions of dollars more.   [00:16:06.460] We're going to slash interest rates to zero and we anticipate absolutely no problems with this whatsoever. So the experts upon experts here when it comes to the economy fail to anticipate inflation. They failed to anticipate the consequences of what they did. Then when inflation actually came around they completely failed to recognize it even when it was right there in front of them. Everybody else could see it but the central bankers said oh nothing to see here.   [00:16:28.180] So they started off early in 2021 when inflation was starting to rear its head and they just denied it. They rejected there's no inflation. And then they started gaslighting people making you think that you're crazy because you saw inflation and people think well wait a minute I see inflation. My costs are going up. I see food going up, fuel is getting a little bit more expensive and they could just say inflation?   [00:16:50.990] What do you mean that's no inflation here? Then they finally roll this out and they said okay fine, it's transitory. It's transitory. And then the transitory became a bunch of false promises and they said okay by late in the year they said okay I swear to God we're going to do something about it. We are absolutely going to do something about inflation.   [00:17:07.410] But later and they kept on with their money printing. They were dumping hundreds of billions of dollars into the housing market. They were dumping $65 billion a month into the housing market literally right up until March 2022. And finally they had a very symbolic ceremonial 25 basis point increase. When I say 25 basis points means zero point 25%.   [00:17:30.310] One quarter of 1% increase in interest rates in March. So inflation had been going on for more than a year and they finally increased interest rates by zero point 25%. So these people were totally asleep at the wheel. They totally missed it. They failed to anticipate any consequences.   [00:17:45.370] They failed to recognize the consequences. They failed to do anything about it. When they finally did something about it, it was basically nothing. Talk about too little too late, right? And now, six months later, now it says hair on fire.   [00:17:57.660] Oh my God. We have to do something about inflation. This is very desperate panicky. Whatever it takes at all costs, we're going to keep raising rates forever and ever until the end of time. There's nothing that we can do.   [00:18:08.980] That's too much. We're going to keep doing this no matter what the cost. This is now the sense of a complete and utter desperation on the parts of these central bankers. This does not inspire confidence. It's very panicky.   [00:18:22.790] The policy, the comments, the speeches that they give, these are not the actions, not the words, not the speeches of people that have things under control. I would also point out I was talking to a friend of mine today and he pointed this out to me and I have to bring this up. It is actually very unfair what they're trying to do now. So when you think about it, inflation has actually been around for a really long time. There are different types of inflation, right?   [00:18:48.450] We have asset price inflation and we have retail price inflation. Asset price inflation is when we see the prices of stocks and bonds and real estate and so forth increase in value when there's no real kind of underlying driver behind that. And that's what we've been seeing for a really long time. The stock market, for example, you had companies that were trading at 10 times 1200 times earnings. I mean, just outrageous price earnings ratios.   [00:19:14.420] Outrageous price revenue ratios. Outrageous cyclically adjusted price earnings ratios. I mean, the valuations were astronomical, really astronomical. We talked about this a lot in our writings. That valuations had only been that high couple two, three times ever in all US financial history.   [00:19:32.090] This is a prime example of an asset bubble or asset price inflation. But they were totally fine with that. No problem with asset price inflation because when asset price inflation is taking place, basically it means the people that own those assets, which are primarily very wealthy people, continue to get even wealthier. On the other hand, now we have retail price inflation, which actually the big thing that you hear them talking about is wage inflation. Wage inflation.   [00:19:54.970] Wage inflation is when workers make more money. So completely fine. When the price of whatever that pick your overpriced stock goes to the moon even though there's no fundamentals behind it, that's completely fine. But when some factory worker gets a 5% wage increase, we got to put that guy out of a job. We got to raise rates immediately so that that poor guy loses job immediately because we can't have that.   [00:20:19.350] We can't have any wage inflation. Oh my God. That's the end of the world as we know it. And it's extremely unfair actually when you think about it. It is actually kind of a bizarre form of almost like antisocialism in a way where they really take care of the markets and all the market participants in the professional class and all of that.   [00:20:39.500] But God help us if a factory worker gets a 5% wage increase. Now we gotta go and raise rates to the moon and cause a recession to prevent that from happening. So that's what's going on in the US. But this week and I'm recording this here now this is September 30 of 2022. It's been a bizarre week and if we think about what's happened this week in the bank in England, in the UK for a little while now, the British pound has actually been sliding horrifically.   [00:21:07.830] UK government bonds, which are called gilts, have also been falling too. A lot of this has been made worse because of various policies have been put in place by the new British government. So what they're trying to do is basically they're trying to cut taxes and deregulate the economy and really trying a new approach with inflation. They're saying our economy is too regulated. We need to eliminate the constraints on supply.   [00:21:29.450] We need to liberate the economy and allow people to produce more easily and so forth. And that's their approach. But you know what? The market doesn't like it and so people are selling off the bonds and British government bonds are falling. So what's happened?   [00:21:41.120] Well, the Central Bank had to step in and fix this and this is where things get really interesting. But we need to talk a little bit about bonds. Bonds are basically like stocks. Bonds are type of security. So when normal, when regular individuals need to borrow money, you go to a bank and you just get a loan.   [00:21:56.480] When governments or big corporations borrow money, they issue bonds, right? So bonds are basically fungible securities that can be traded so a corporation or government government can go. For example, just a couple of weeks ago the Treasury Department in the US issued about $50 billion worth of treasury bills. This is a type of bond that in this case matures in about six months. So these things you can buy treasury bonds and denominations as little, as small as $1,000 I think sometimes even $100 and they're basically all the same.   [00:22:26.180] So everybody that buys this particular bond, everybody pays the same price, they're all worth the same. It's sort of like Apple stock. If I have one share of common stock of Apple and you have one share of common stock and Apple, they're all worth exactly the same thing. They're all the same. They all mean that one share equals one share equals one share.   [00:22:42.520] They're all different now, different assets are not. That's the concept of fungibility and finance. It's called fungibility. Other assets are not fungible. If you think about a Ford Mustang if I have a Ford Mustang and you have a Ford Mustang, it's not the same thing, right?   [00:22:56.120] My Mustang might be different than your Mustang. I don't have a Mustang. I'm just using that as an example. But Apple stock, government bonds, the same issuances, they're the same, they're fungible. And because of that, very easily very liquid markets that can be bought and sold and so forth.   [00:23:10.580] So you have investors that are buying and selling bonds, just like investors buy and sell stock. And just like stock, bonds also have a price. So Apple stock has a price. US government bonds of a particular issuance like that has a price. You rarely hear people talk about bond prices because it's a little bit of a complicated formula.   [00:23:27.170] Usually you hear people talking about yield, so they'll say like, the yield on the ten year is 4% or something like that. So yield is essentially a proxy for bond prices. Bond yields and bond prices are related to each other and they're actually inversely related. So bond yields go up and bond prices go down and vice versa. So the bottom line of all this is really that what you saw over the last week is UK government bond prices falling.   [00:23:53.890] Yields were rising, bond prices were falling because nobody wanted to own them. Everybody's selling, everybody's saying, I'm disgusted with the British government, I don't want to have anything to do with this. I'm going to sell government bonds. So this is like what investors do. They throw a temper tantrum when they don't like what a government does and they sell government bonds.   [00:24:09.440] And so bond prices really start falling. And this happened a lot this week. British government bonds, gilts, they're called, really were falling and they've been falling for a while. So what happened is the Central bank stepped in and said, we're going to save the day, we're going to stabilize the market because that's what we're doing. And there's actually a lot of reasons behind this.   [00:24:25.220] One of the reasons behind this is because there were a lot of pension funds. Pension funds tend to buy government bonds because they are considered to be safe investments. But now these pension funds were sitting on these bonds and the bond prices were collapsing. And so the pension funds are going, oh my God, we're losing tons and tons of money here. Our entire portfolio is collapsing.   [00:24:44.540] And to make matters worse, a lot of these pension funds actually borrowed money to buy government bonds. So they were facing margin calls. It was just a pure meltdown scenario. And the government goes to the central bank, says, you've got to do something about this. So the central bank, the bank of England, steps in.   [00:24:58.580] Early this week and says we're going to intervene in the bond market, we're going to save the day, we're going to prop up the bond market, we're going to create stability again until this crisis passes. And essentially what that means is they're going to go and they're going to print a bunch of money. They're going to print money so they can artificially prop up the bond market. They're going to print money, buy bonds and artificially prop up the market. And they do this basically to try and save these pension funds.   [00:25:20.390] Now this is a huge reversal in their policy because up until this point the bank of England. The central bank. Like pretty much most central banks around the world is saying we're going to raise rates. We're not going to buy bonds. We're not going to intervene in the marketplace.   [00:25:31.650] We're going to raise rates. The market is going to do what it's going to do and that's it. So now all of a sudden overnight they reverse themselves and start buying bonds, reducing rates. And this announcement was met with just market Euphoria. Around the world stock markets went up, bond market surge.   [00:25:45.620] Everybody was happy again. They said oh central banks are on our side again and it's going to be great. And that sentiment that Euphoria lasted about a day, like literally the next day the whole market broke loose. Everything started falling again because people realized I can't trust these people. This is really the big trend that we're talking about.   [00:26:05.740] For about the last 30 years central bankers have enjoyed unparalleled, really respect and dignity and grandeur and gravitas for the past several decades. It goes back to the 1990s when you had Alan Greenspan running the Federal Reserve in the United States. Everyone thought Greenspan was a god among men. It was just so wonderful and Greenspan engineered this incredible economy and then you had even the global financial crisis. People credited, this was in 2008, 2009, people credited the Federal Reserve was saving the world, saving the economy because they printed trillions of dollars to do this.   [00:26:40.730] Mario Draghi, who was the central bank president, the European Central Bank president, they said, oh Draghi saved the Eurozone and all these things. And everybody always treated the central bankers as like all these people, they really know what they're doing and we can trust the central bankers because they know everything and they're always calm and they are steady and they always have the answer, they always know what to do, they always have the solution. Well that's not the case anymore. Now based on everything that we're seeing, you look at this, just what happened this week in the UK. The central bank stepped in and said we're going to save the day.   [00:27:11.550] And people said yeah and that lasted a day. And literally the next day people said I don't believe these guys, they're not going to be able to do it. They don't have the ability. They don't have the wherewithal, they don't have the resources. It's not going to happen.   [00:27:22.880] I'm selling, I'm out. And I dare you to bail me out, right? And that's what happened in the UK this week and we're seeing the same thing in the US. People just don't have the confidence in the central bank that they used to. This is an institution that's supposed to have the experts upon experts, the greatest experts in economics, the guys that are supposed to always have the solution, the steady hand, decades of experience that are supposed to be able to make sure that nothing bad ever happens.   [00:27:49.510] And people don't have the confidence anymore in the central banks. They are not buying that the Federal Reserve is going to be able to tame inflation because now they realize all of a sudden they go, oh, we have this massive energy crisis. But it turns out the Fed can't just print oil like they can print money. The Fed can't print food like they can print money. They can't create technology, they can't do the things that the economy actually needs.   [00:28:11.180] They can't create more labor like they can create more money. They can't do any of these things, the things, the resources that the economy actually needs. The Fed is completely powerless to do anything about it. And they even acknowledge this. Chairman of the Fed gave an interview not too long ago where he was telling a member of the media and he said, oh, we finally understand how little we understand about inflation or when grilled by politicians.   [00:28:35.160] I think it was actually Elizabeth Warren who was grilling about this and she's saying, so just so I'm clear, when you raise interest rates, is that going to bring down the price of food? And he said, no, not especially now. I said, Will it bring down the price of gas? No, it's not going to do that either. Is this going to do anything at all?   [00:28:50.350] Is this going to impact inflation at all? And the answer is no. It's not really going to do anything about inflation, but they're doing it anyways because it's that old expression when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And so they just their single hammer is we've got to manipulate the money supply, we got to raise rates because that's all they know how to do. Bear in mind, these are the experts with decades of experience, right?   [00:29:11.740] They're supposed to be able to land the plane and get us out of this mess. And yet everything they do seems to just make it worse and worse. Now the goal, the miracle that these guys are trying to realize is they want to raise rates enough to bring inflation down, to tame inflation, get inflation back to 2%, but without causing widespread panic, widespread financial devastation, widespread economic devastation. So they want to be able to they call that a soft landing. This is a total fantasy.   [00:29:39.310] This is a complete and total fantasy. And simply put, inflation is not this just easy issue. It's easy to understand but it's not so easy to fix because they got hit by all sides. We talked about this before. Inflation has really been a function of both supply and demand, right?   [00:29:54.260] So all the really cheap ultra low interest rates that they have I mean this is the central bank. They created really, really low interest rates. And then the federal government came in and started dumping free money, just shoveling free money into the economy. I got to say not only did the central bank slash interest rates to zero but they also went and they gave speeches and they went to Congress and they wagged their finger and says the government needs to do more. There needs to be more fiscal stimulus.   [00:30:19.050] There needs to be more basically there needs to be more free money from the government. You got to look at this and go, wait a minute dude.   [00:30:27.210] You're not an elected official. Who are you to go to the elected representatives of the people and tell them what they're supposed to do? Honestly, it's disgusting when you think about it. But here comes this guy who's supposed to be the expert with decades of experience claiming to be the expert of experts, the king of kings with central banking going up to Capitol Hill, wagging his finger at Congress saying you need to do more. You need to give people more free money.   [00:30:50.280] Completely oblivious of all the consequences that would have really quite sickening. But these people did this. They made their low rates and the free money and they created artificially high excessive demand, right? But at the same time there were supply issues as well. So too much demand.   [00:31:05.430] And then they gave another one of these experts, another emperor whose name escapes me right now I can't think of who it is but said, oh let's lock everybody down. What could possibly go wrong? Let's keep people terrified in their homes, locked in their basements watching fear porn on TV so that they don't go out and work. Let's keep people home. Let's give them incentives to not work.   [00:31:26.360] And so we created all these supply issues through lockdowns, public health policy and then all these other things too. This anti fossil fuel fanaticism, god help us if we drill for another barrel of oil in the United States of America even though energy prices keep going up. Well that would be the worst thing in the world. So it's this kind of anti fossil fuel financing combined with the public health policy and all the crazy things that they've done that have created supply issues, anti capitalist, anti productive policies, let's raise taxes. Let's do things to make it more difficult for people to do business, more difficult for people to go to work.   [00:31:58.990] Let's create more licensing issues and more regulatory issues. This is the way these people function. So they created supply issues to make it more difficult to create supply. And they gave everybody a bunch of free money and stimulate demand. Duh, you're going to get inflation from that, right?   [00:32:13.130] But it turns out the central bank can't do anything about supply. They can't fix supply, they can't put people to work, they can't change any public health policy. They can't create more energy, they can't create more food, they can't produce anything except for policy statements and basically create money, print money. That's all they can do. So really, in this case, because of all that, I think the best that the central bank can hope for is a combination of slightly lower inflation and higher unemployment.   [00:32:43.990] I think if they get to 5% inflation and 7% unemployment, why would they be taking a victory lap? They will be ecstatic. 4% inflation and 8% unemployment, they will be more than happy to deal with that. I think that's really the best that the central bank is sort of hoping for. And I think that's probably the best case scenario at this point because there's not really anything they can do.   [00:33:05.780] The critical issue that you got to realize is that governments, there's just too much debt in the system now. There's way more debt than there ever has been literally in the history of the world. Way more debt than there was the last financial crisis back in 2008. And there's more debt back then there was in the previous financial crisis in the 1990s. And so the debt issue is really important to remember.   [00:33:26.190] Today is the last day of the fiscal year in the United States, september 30, 2022. So it started October 1, 2021, and the fiscal year runs through September 3022. So last day, the fiscal year, the government national debt in the United States grew by $2.4 trillion this fiscal year 2022, which literally ends today. But it wasn't just the $2.4 trillion. The total amount of new government debt that was issued this year was actually about more than $14 trillion.   [00:33:56.080] $14 trillion, right. The difference between the two, the two and a half to $2.4 trillion versus more than $14 trillion. The difference in that is because the government had a bunch of old debt that matured. So if you think about ten years ago in 2012, the US. Federal government issued like a ten year bond.   [00:34:15.760] This is technically ten years are known as notes. They issued a bunch of ten year notes. Well, guess what? Now, ten years later, those ten year notes matured. And so the federal government says, oh shit, I got to pay all that money back that I borrowed ten years ago.   [00:34:28.060] So what do they do? Well, they don't actually pay the money back. They just go and borrow another whatever amount of money they need to pay off the old debt by borrowing new money. Right. So that doesn't count as new debt because you're basically just taking new money and paying off old money.   [00:34:43.040] So the net debt doesn't actually increase, but they are issuing new debt. And the reason that's important is because back in 2012, when they borrowed money, they were borrowing money at 1.5%. Today they're borrowing money at 4%. So that's a two and a half percent difference. And if you think about that, that two and a half percent difference.   [00:35:02.860] Over $14 trillion, right? Two and a half percent more interest that they had to pay on the $14 trillion worth of new bonds that they issued this year. That's about $300 billion in extra interest that they're going to have to pay every single year. Every single year. So essentially, the interest payments that the government has to make every year just went up by $300 billion.   [00:35:26.830] So you can start to see why this is such a big problem. So if the Fed keeps raising rates like they say, they say, we're going to keep raising rates, whatever it takes. Okay. All right. Well, let's see what happens.   [00:35:36.600] Let's see what happens if you raise rates to seven and a half percent. Right. And they have to refinance. Let's say. $10 trillion in debt over the next year.   [00:35:43.960] That's going to be another hundreds of billions of dollars is going to be another five. Six. $700 billion in annual interest that they're going to have to pay every single year. Plus the 300 billion from last year. We're talking about almost an extra trillion dollars a year in annual interest expense.   [00:35:59.510] This is completely bankrupting to the government. The federal government will be completely bankrupt if they keep raising interest rates because they simply cannot afford it. There's so much debt, if you think about this, $30 trillion, actually, now almost $31 trillion is the US. National debt. So if the national debt at $31 trillion and they raise rates to 7%, that's over $2 trillion a year in interest, right?   [00:36:25.280] In interest.   [00:36:28.510] That's half of total tax revenue, right? That's before you pay Social Security. That's before you pay for the military. That's before you pay for the light bill at the White House. They're shoveling $2 trillion out the door just to pay interest on the national debt.   [00:36:40.750] And on top of that, they go farther and farther into debt. Every year they went to debt another $2.4 trillion in fiscal year two two, and probably going to be another two $3 trillion next fiscal year. So you can see why this is completely and totally unsustainable. When you have a government like the United States that is so heavily in debt, tens of trillions of dollars in debt, you simply cannot have normal interest rates. You cannot have five, six, seven, 8% interest rates because the government's going to go bankrupt.   [00:37:10.450] And that's the bottom line, is that higher interest rates will bankrupt the government. And there is no central banker that wants to be tied to that. No central bank is going to have the courage to say, I'm going to tame inflation. I'm going to do whatever it takes, even if I bankrupt my own government. Nobody's going to do that.   [00:37:25.420] And it's not just the government. It's not just the government. Again, in the UK, they went and did this. The central bank intervened because the pension funds are losing money. So basically anybody that owns bonds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, they're all going to suffer huge losses.   [00:37:38.300] They're all going to require massive bailouts. And again, no central banker wants to do that. No central banker wants to create this massive financial crisis, this systemic, existential, game changing, earth shattering financial crisis that will bring down an entire nation. Nobody wants to be tied to that. So there's a certain point right now you got to imagine they're all talking, we're going to do whatever it takes.   [00:37:58.240] They're not going to do whatever it takes because that means bankrupting the government. So most likely, if the idea here is to try and figure out where's the puck going to be, the puck is most likely heading to inflation because that's the only other option. In order to not bankrupt the government, there is a limit on how high they can let interest rates get. And once they reach that limit, that's as far as they're going to go most likely to come back down. And ultimately that means that they will let inflation rein.   [00:38:25.730] They reach that limit, they go, okay, we think the government can afford 5%. Once we get to 5%, that's it, we're done. And if inflation is still 6%, you know what, we're all going to have to live with 6% inflation. And that's the deal. And that's the consequence of having a government that is so heavily in debt.   [00:38:43.220] And it's not just the United States. You've got Italy and you've got I mean, most of Europe is this way. I mean, the UK is this way. Spain, Germany, Japan. Oh my God, Japan is so heavily in debt.   [00:38:52.460] I mean, even China is sitting on a mountain of debt. Most of the world really is sitting on a mountain of debt, which is why they just cannot afford to have high interest rates. They can't do it in Europe. You have all these governments that for years have been borrowing money at negative yields. So what are you going to do if you're Italy and you've been borrowing money at 0% or -25 basis points and now you got to pay 4% forget it, you're done, you're done you can't possibly do that, right?   [00:39:20.190] And so because the central bankers, they may be crazy, they may be panicky, they may be desperate, but they're not stupid. These are not stupid people. So they know all this. And because of that, there's no way, there's no way that they can possibly, unless they're going to say, you know what, I'm going to bankrupt the whole world. I'm going to bankrupt the government, I'm going to do whatever it takes, because frankly, I think they're going to realize rationally, that a world in which all these countries are bankrupt and the financial system is bankrupt and the banks are literally bankrupt and the pension funds are bankrupt, that that's worse than 6% inflation.   [00:39:53.080] And I think between the two, those two evils, they'll definitely take the lesser of the two evils and the lesser the two evils is going to be 6%, even 7% inflation. And if they can get to four with 8% unemployment, oh my God, that'll be a major victory. They will make monuments to themselves. They will be so excited about that. And I think that's the situation that we're looking at now, the financial implications of that are I think it makes sense for people to be prepared for.   [00:40:20.050] I think everybody recognizes now inflation is not transitory. It is not transitory, and most likely is not going away anytime soon. There are some things sort of in the short term, if all of a sudden Vladimir Putin keels over and the war in Ukraine ends, that's definitely going to be a huge financial bonanza. You'll see stocks go up and everybody's going to be happy. It'll just be a big happy boom all over again.   [00:40:44.750] The happy rally, oil prices will come down. Everybody's going to be happy again. And because of that, inflation is probably going to go down a little bit just off of that, and they're going to go, you see, we told you it was all Putin's fault. But realistically, that's not the case. Inflation, again, is a longer term issue that has a lot to do with not just Putin, although obviously the war in Ukraine has a major impact on that.   [00:41:08.730] But it's fanaticism against energy markets. It's all the craziness with the lockdowns, the public health policies, terrible anticapitalist legislation and regulations, the money printing, the free money that they gave out from the government, all those things really, that's what impact. And you can't just expect that's all just going to go away in a couple of months. That was years and years and years in the making, and it's going to take a while to work through. So preparing for a longer bout of inflation is something that actually makes a lot of sense.   [00:41:39.730] There's a lot of history behind this. But one of the things, and this is not in any way me giving financial advice again, this is a guy expressing his First Amendment right to have an opinion on something. And when I look at history, I see that real assets do tend to make a lot of sense in an inflationary environment. These are talking about things that the world actually needs. Stuff energy, valuable minerals, valuable metals, food, and even, I would actually argue, productive technology.   [00:42:05.500] These are the types of things that we're talking about. Energy is a no brainer. We've talked about this before. Energy is in really a massive crisis right now that I think is only going to get worse. We can see this in Europe where governments there are now scrambling, trying to figure out how do we make sure people don't freeze to death in the wintertime?   [00:42:18.510] Because we've screwed this up so badly, we got to make sure that people now aren't going to freeze to death in the wintertime. A lot of this is, yes, the war, but it's so much more than that. It's a lot of this environmental fanaticism. Look, don't get me wrong. I'm very much in favor of taking care of the environment, and there are a lot of things that I personally do on my own.   [00:42:37.640] But this is not the way to do it. This kind of fanaticism where we say, oh, let's go, we did a whole podcast about this. Let's go down the road. Instead of oil and gas, let's do wind and solar. It turns out in many respects that's actually much worse and it's dirty.   [00:42:52.510] The kinds of minerals and things you've got to pull out of the ground to do those sorts of things. The resources that are required, you're not actually saving on your CO2 emissions. It's a really expensive way. The energy return, on energy invested, on oil sorry, on oil, on wind and solar is actually really bad. It just doesn't make any sense.   [00:43:08.700] We talked about this before. Nuclear is the answer. But you have all these greenies, all these energy fanatics in government that just continue to ignore the obvious solution. Every quarter, actually, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, one of the regional Federal Reserve banks, conducts an oil survey, an energy survey of oil executives. And the last one just came out a couple of days ago on September 28.   [00:43:33.000] They're hilarious. I'd actually encourage you to check it out. You can just sort of Google or whatever search engine you use. I actually use brave myself. It doesn't sound right when you say I'm going to brave this, but yeah.   [00:43:43.260] So go to your favorite search engine and look for Dallas Federal Reserve oil survey and you can see the one from September 28. And actually they're pretty hilarious because they're bunch of oil executives really just complaining about how all this ESG environmental, social governance, all this sort of woke capitalism nonsense, has really gutted exploration. You can see this proven oil reserves, proven energy reserves in the United States are falling. There's very little new discovery. The shale reserves are running out.   [00:44:11.460] The oil executives, don't take it from me, these are the oil executives saying, hey, the shale reserves are running out. People think that all this shale oil in the US. Is going to power us and give us all this new energy reserve. No, it's not. They're running out.   [00:44:23.280] And we don't have any new exploration because you can't get financing, you can't get government permits, all these things that are preventing us from new exploration and adding to our reserves. So this is a really big problem. And because of that, even though I think energy investments really have a lot of potential in some, I think like nuclear live a really, really long life ahead of them. There are a lot of things that make energy very, very contentious right now. I think, honestly, these green fanatics, they're totally full of themselves.   [00:44:56.110] One of my partners today told me he's in the UK. And he said he called me this morning. He said, I spoke to a coal producer in Africa, and he was telling me that his phone has been ringing off the hook for months for all these European governments, all these hardcore environmental fanatics in Germany that want to buy coal from them. And they were talking about buying the dirtiest coal imaginable. There's different types of coal.   [00:45:18.710] This is really dirty coal mine from child labor in Zimbabwe so that these Europeans can heat their homes, basically taking a fuel source away from Zimbabwe and shipping it to Europe. And he said right now, they've got literally over 1300 trucks going from Zimbabwe to the port of Mozambique, and they can't build the infrastructure fast enough so they can ship all this coal to Europe so that these people don't freeze to death in the wintertime. But they refuse to endorse nuclear power, which would slash CO2 emissions and provide inexpensive power literally, for the entire continent, eliminate their dependence on Russian gas for decades and decades to come. But they don't want to hear it, right? They don't want to partake in the obvious solution that's staring in the face.   [00:45:56.700] And so they say, oh, let's go get the dirtiest coal imaginable from Zimbabwe and bring this up from there. But we love the environment. I mean, these people are so full of shit, and it's impossible to take them seriously. On the mineral and mining side of things, again, these are also real assets. Mining is certainly less controversial than energy.   [00:46:15.280] You don't have the same picket lines of people saying, we don't want you've got so many people that are against energy, more oil expiration, I've got to help you. You can't have anybody just looking for new barrels of oil. Mining is less controversial, certainly, than energy, but there is some controversy around it. It's definitely not green friendly. And you don't get the ESG marks.   [00:46:38.350] You don't get the big private equity funds coming in that are concerned about their green report cards and so forth when you get into the mining business. This is why one of the reasons why I like agriculture so much, agriculture is a lot easier. It's super relevant right now in many respects. There's hardly anything more relevant in the world right now than being able to produce food. And there's nobody forming a picket line saying, we don't want any avocados here.   [00:47:02.570] It's very safe. You get support from the government. It ticks all the boxes from the green stuff, the ESG funds, all those things. So this is one of the reasons why I like agriculture so much. The last one I want to leave you with though, is technology.   [00:47:15.170] And technology has long been tied to technology investments only good when interest rates are really low. That's remarkably silly if you think about technology. And I think one of the ways that the world has gone wrong with its development of technology is if you think about the last 100 years or so, I mean, you can even go back thousands of years. The invention of the wheel, going back however many millions of years ago that was, and the ability to produce steel and all these things, some of which we've talked about in the past, this is productive technology. In the past 100 years, the automobile, the radio, the microprocessor, the invention and popularization of the Internet, all these things give us the ability to produce more and less time with fewer resources.   [00:47:58.440] This makes everybody better off. It makes everybody wealthier. A lot of that has changed in the last 15 years. There's been a shift from when you think about the advent of the personal computer, it made everybody more productive. The advent of even the early days, the mobile phone was something you could be more productive and you could take work with you on the go and all these things, it made everybody more productive.   [00:48:20.480] Now, technology, I think really since not to knock it, but since 2007, since the iPhone came out, most technology, I think that was sort of the high watermark. And since then, the iPhone, since 2007 on most new technology has really been consumer technology, not productive technology. It's consumptive technology. It's technology that helps us consume better. When we think about, for years, among the top tech companies, amazon, Facebook, Apple, Netflix, considered a tech company.   [00:48:48.450] I mean, this is not a tech company. It's a media company that just happens to deliver its media using technology. But this is considered a tech company. Amazon, basically, it's tech that helps us spend more money, helps us shop. Facebook is a tech company that helps us swipe and scroll and scroll and swipe.   [00:49:03.920] Helps 14 year old girls feel shittier about themselves because there's somebody out there that's prettier and more popular. Apple, that creates the devices that help us swipe and scroll. Netflix, where we can just waste away hours and hours watching the tinder swindler or whatever. I mean, all these technology companies, it's not really technology. It's actually ways to make people waste time and actually be distracted from the work, from the productivity that they're actually doing.   [00:49:32.420] Real technology will solve problems. Real technology creates ways to do things better, faster, cheaper, better, using fewer resources, using less energy, less electricity. That's what real technology, productive technology does. And not just swiping and scrolling. And I think that productive technology is absolutely a real asset.   [00:49:50.660] Real assets are the things that the world, the stuff that the world really needs. I mean, it could even be an intellectual property. This is productive technology. This is a real asset. It's not just swiping and scrolling.   [00:50:01.310] It's things that actually move the needle to make people more productive so we can do more with less. Productive technology is absolutely a real asset. And one of those that I think makes a lot of sense from a macro perspective, I would say countries even, who can live within their means, who have fairly liberal economies, who produce real assets like AG mining, energy and technology, these are places that can actually do well. And ironically, the United States actually does have a lot of potential here. The US has a lot of minerals, a lot of resources, a lot of energy potential if they could just get out of their own way.   [00:50:35.160] Lots of agriculture, lots of farmland, lots of brainpower to create really truly productive, game changing, productive technology. All of these things the United States actually does have. Not the only country that has this, but there are not that many in the US is one of them. It has the potential to do this. The problem right now, obviously, is there are just way too many emperors obstructing the way we know who they are, too many people with decades of experience who just keep screwing it up.   [00:51:03.160] And I think the end of the story here is that if the United States is able to get rid of it, charles V and all the other little emperors out there, I think the US actually stands a reasonable chance in this environment that is going to be, I think, years and years, if not decades. We're going to be dealing with inflation, we are going be dealing with energy issues and all these things. I think the US actually does stand a reasonable chance they can just get out of their own way. Thanks very much for listening. I hope you got something out of this and we'll speak to you again soon.   Close Podcast Transcription

John Adams famous wrote to his wife Abigail in the year 1780: “I must study politics and war, that my sons may have the liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. . . in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, and music. . .” So that their children can major in gender studies and waste their lives on Tik Tok. OK so I added that last part myself. But I believe the quote most accurately sums up the natural decline of empire. When enough time passes, a dominant superpower begins to lose the cultural traits that made it great to begin with. Instead of being energetic, ambitious, and hungry, the population becomes complacent. Meanwhile, hard-working rivals become wealthier by the day… rising, ascending, and eventually eclipsing the declining superpower. History has been witness to this natural cycle over and over again, from the ancient Greek conflicts between Athens and Sparta, to the decline of France and rise of Great Britain in the 1700s. The United States is the modern superpower that is now in obvious decline; we write about this all the time at Sovereign Man, so this should hardly be a controversial statement. As former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers once said, “There is surely something odd about the world’s greatest power being the world’s greatest debtor.” And he’s right. The economic and financial data are clear: the US has enormous debts, huge deficits, awful inflation, and insolvent pension funds (like Social Security). The social divisions are palpable. Trust levels in institutions, government, and corporations are at historic lows. It’s true that the US has been divided before. And the US has also seen its share of financial crises. But simply put, America has never been battered simultaneously by so many debilitating trends. This is truly new territory for the world’s dominant power. Now, it’s important to not get emotional about US decline. We’re talking about facts and doing our best to make a rational analysis. And one of my conclusions is that we may be experiencing the end of an era. For the past several decades, the US was the undisputed global superpower. And there was a great deal of peace and prosperity in the world. After all, so many countries– China, India, Russia, etc. were getting rich selling their products and resources to the United States. Who would possibly want to screw up that balance? We’ve seen this same cycle over and over again throughout history: peace and prosperity go hand and hand. But things are different now. Other countries are stronger than they used to be. The US is much weaker. The power dynamics have been disrupted… and the cycle of peace and prosperity is being displaced by chaos and conflict. This is our topic for today’s podcast. We start in ancient Rome and discuss how the unparalleled dominance of the Roman Empire in the early 1st Century brought an unprecedented period of stability, peace, and prosperity to the western world. Frankly it’s quite similar to what we enjoyed for the past 30 years. But the Pax Romana, as this period is known, did not last. Neither is the Pax Americana. We see chaos and conflict all over the world now… much of it due to the decline of the US, much of it due to bonehead incompetence from the supposed ‘experts’ who run the show. And this new era of chaos and conflict has some pretty serious implications. Don’t worry– it’s not the end of the world. In fact, there are some really interesting opportunities for anyone with the independence of mind to look at these facts and trends rationally. And we discuss some of these in today’s podcast, including things like real assets, and investing in neutrality. I explain, for example, what today would be the equivalent of having a Swiss passport in 1935. Or which specific asset classes are extremely relevant in a world where resource nationalism is a real possibility. And how cryptocurrency fits in to a cycle of chaos and conflict. These big picture trends are all very clear– it’s the obvious trajectory of the world right now. And it makes a lot of sense to align yourself with that trajectory of the world. You can listen in to the podcast here. Open Podcast Transcription [00:00:01.090] Today, we're going to go back in time to the year 29 BC to the Forum, Romania of ancient Rome. Now, this is about a five acre stretch in the Roman city center. It still exists today. And 2000 years ago, this was the primary center of commerce and trade. Everything that happened in ancient Rome happened in the Roman Forum.   [00:00:22.620] This is where they gave public speeches, parades, criminals were put on trial. There would be punishments, fights, arguments. Everything would happen here in the Roman Forum. And seven centuries before, one of the last kings of Rome had built a temple in the middle of the Roman Forum. And that temple was to one of the gods.   [00:00:45.590] Remember, Rome was a polytheistic culture, and there was a god in ancient Rome named Janice. Janice was a two faced god. He represented duality yin and yang, light and dark, good and evil, war and peace. And again, this ancient king, this is now seven centuries before 29 BC, built a temple of genus there in the Forum of ancient Rome. And the temple itself was quite historic, and it was quite symbolic.   [00:01:14.470] And the entrance to the temple were gates, specialized gates, and the gates were there again, as Janice represented this duality, including war and peace. The gates to the temple represented war and peace. And there was always a symbolic gesture throughout the history of Rome that whenever Rome was at peace, some leader or general would go to the Temple of Janus and close the gates. Closing the gates of Janus signified that Rome was at peace. Now, the last time that Rome had actually been at peace and the gates of the Temple of Janus were closed, it's been 200 years before this.   [00:01:49.080] Rome was at war for centuries, constantly. I mean, they had war with barbarian tribes. They war with Carthage, one of their greatest enemies, and had even been at war with itself for decades, really up to 29 BC. There was a civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great. It was a major civil war.   [00:02:10.640] Julius Caesar won that war, and then in 44 BC, was himself assassinated by various senators. That led to a second civil war and the second Triumvirate, including Antony and Cleopatra and Pompey the Great Sun. And it all ended, more or less with a battle of actium in 31 BC. September 2, 31 BC. Anthony and Cleopatra committed suicide the following year.   [00:02:34.660] And this was basically what Rome looked like in 29 BC. Two decades of civil war really taking its toll. Towns across Italy, towns near Rome, had been sacked. Commerce and trade halted. Crime went through the roof.   [00:02:48.200] There was no military, there was no security. Police forces don't even exist. Bandits and murderers ran wild. It was kind of like San Francisco today. People were hiding their money, hiding their income.   [00:03:02.270] When armies would move through towns during the Civil War period, they would just plunder the countryside. They would raise farms. They would steal people's wealth. People were literally burying their money, and hope was quite forlorn. People didn't feel optimistic about the future.   [00:03:18.300] They weren't having children. Birth rates were declining. Immigration rates were declining. In short, Rome was war weary. It was tired of conflict.   [00:03:26.490] It was coming apart at the seams, and people were desperate. They were sick of it. They were sick of the conflict. They were sick of the war. They were sick of the crime.   [00:03:34.750] They were sick of everything. They were just angry. They wanted to stop. And they're at the point where they just didn't care. They just didn't care.   [00:03:41.800] They didn't care about the Republic. They didn't care about their freedoms. They didn't care about the voting. They didn't care about any of that stuff. They just said, please, can I get somebody to deliver me from this conflict, from this constant chaos?   [00:03:53.170] I don't care what it takes. We'll do whatever. Just stop with this and give us peace and stability. Well, that's exactly what they got. And they got it in the form of a guy named Gaius Octavius.   [00:04:05.060] guyus Octavius was actually the grand nephew and adopted son of Julius Caesar. Now, you got to remember, in ancient Rome, adult adoption was actually a fairly common thing. Adopting was the way that people would signify, this is who my heir is. Gisele Tavis was the grand nephew. But at a certain point, Caesar, who did not have an error of his own, decided, I'm going to adopt Gaia's Octavia.   [00:04:24.410] And that was the signal to everybody that this guy is my heir apparent. And after Julie Caesar's assassination in 44 BC. Gaius Octavius had waged and won the next civil war. He defeated all comers, all enemies, and at the end of it, he was victorious, and it came at great cost, and he knew it. Rome was in turmoil.   [00:04:45.020] It was 29 BC. He knew he needed to do something quickly. He needed to bring stability. And that's why in 29 BC, Gaias Octavius stood at the temple of Janus and the Roman form, and he closed the gates. Now, Gaias Octavius is obviously known to history now as Augustus or Caesar Augustus, but that was actually his real name, was Gaius Octavius.   [00:05:07.560] We know him as Augustus, and most people refer to him as Augustus. And Augustus was really the first emperor of Rome. This is when Rome transitioned from being republic to being an empire. And Augustus was absolutely a dictator. He had all the power.   [00:05:23.700] Nobody opposed him. He was quite cunning. He kept the Senate close, but they gave him all the power he wanted, and nobody questioned him, because, again, everybody was so tired of conflict, and they said, we don't even care you're a dictator. Just do what we need you to do, and you can have all the power you want. And after he closed the gates, augustus got to work with forming Rome, and he did a lot of things that really strengthened Rome.   [00:05:45.980] He improved the rule of law. He got rid of all the illegal expropriations and the asset seizures, what we would call today civil asset forfeiture. They had that in ancient Rome where they just went and stole property, private property from people. And he stopped that. He said, no, we're not going to do that anymore.   [00:06:01.810] And people slowly became more confident. They realized, okay, I can actually have assets and it's not going to get stolen by the government. And so this money came out of hiding. People actually dug up their money, they dug up their wealth. And private investment once again began to flourish because people felt like, I could actually do things now in this economy, and it's not going to get stolen by the government.   [00:06:22.780] He strengthened private property rights. He stabilized the currency. He invested big time in security to the point that he actually created the first police force there was in Rome. Crime rates plummeted, piracy. He had a big navy and he kept it.   [00:06:36.420] And piracy on the seas disappeared. He actually used the navy instead of for war, to actually patrol the seas and make it safe for trade and commerce. Bandits went into hiding and crime rates really plummeted. He reformed the tax system. He eliminated this system of very unfair tax farming, which ended up rearing its head again later on in the empire.   [00:06:55.650] He simplified the tax code. He didn't make taxes exceptionally low. They weren't high, but they weren't super, super low. But they are reasonable. More importantly, they were simple.   [00:07:04.460] They were easy to understand. It wasn't hugely bureaucratic, and people felt like they got a lot of benefit for what they were paying. They got a lot for their money. And part of that was because Augustus went out of his way to stamp out corruption and eliminate all the graft and the theft that had been prevalent for really centuries before he took that savings. He invested heavily in infrastructure, roads, aqueducts, post, literally a postal service.   [00:07:30.920] In fact, the reason we call it post goes back to the ancient Rome where they had along the roads that the Romans built. Every so often they would have a post there. That post was literally a post whereby mail could be dropped off and picked up and so forth. There's literally a post in the ground. You could hire fresh horses.   [00:07:47.530] Sometimes there is food and water or an in there. That's actually today why we still call it the post, goes back to the ancient days of the Roman Empire when they actually had little posts along the side of the roads. And all these things, these infrastructure investments, they boosted employment. They had heavy, for example, irrigation investments in irrigation investments they did, especially in Egypt, which was the bread basket for the Roman Empire. The irrigation investments in Egypt just brought this bonanza of wealth and tax revenue.   [00:08:13.390] And there was so much money, so much tax revenue that came into Rome as a result of the infrastructure investments they made, the irrigation investment they're making it literally. It was such a flood of revenue that came into Rome. This tidal wave of money coming from Egypt actually caused interest rates in the Roman Empire to drop from 12% to 4% is how much money came in. And as a result of all of this, borrowing was cheap. Real estate prices boomed.   [00:08:37.260] Frankly, there's a lot of things that we see in some respects similar to over the last couple of years. Now, all this was taking place. It wasn't just in Rome. Rome was in this period of peace and prosperity. But it wasn't just in Rome.   [00:08:48.680] Rome had a huge economy, a huge population. There are 7 million people on the Italian peninsula alone, 40 million people across the entire empire. And they had a lot of spending power. They had wealth, and they weren't afraid to spend it. Imports abounded from all over the world.   [00:09:03.450] There is an ancient philosopher who lived around this time named Elius Aristides who said, whoever wishes to see all the goods of the world must either journey throughout the world or stay in Rome. Because when you were in Rome, you saw everything there was to possibly see from all over the world. They had meats from Sicily, stones, gemstones from Africa, soap, pottery from Gaul, pearls from Britain, amber and FIR from Germany, figs and cheese from Persia, incense and ginger from Arabia, rare fruits from Lebanon, silks from China. All over the world. And all this brought a great deal of wealth to foreigners and foreign traders and manufacturers and foreign farmers.   [00:09:44.450] Everybody was getting rich trading with Rome, selling to Rome. Everybody was getting rich. And so this peace really brought prosperity to everybody all over the world. Now, it's an interesting thing when you think about peace and prosperity, we often see these two words together peace and prosperity. They go hand in hand.   [00:10:00.300] This is not a cause and effect relationship. It's not that one creates the other. Peace creates prosperity, or prosperity creates peace. It's actually more like a chicken and egg issue. Which comes first?   [00:10:09.870] It's kind of hard to say, but they really, both of them go hand in hand. That peace and prosperity. For example, we see that peace meant that peace is security. And so trade routes over the land and over the sea were safe. They didn't have pirates.   [00:10:23.070] They didn't have the same problem with bandits and highway robbers and so forth across the roads. And so this made trade a lot better. And that created a great deal of prosperity. But you have to have one without the other. It had to be peace and security in order to have the prosperity.   [00:10:39.200] But you had to have the prosperity in order to maintain the peace and security. So you have to have both at the same time. Again, it's much more of a chicken and egg, as opposed to a cause and effect. And there are all these great stories back then, in the early days and the days of Augustus in particular, where merchants would come from all over the world. The story of merchants coming from Alexandria in Egypt, who literally came to worship Augustus because he provided the security that they needed to be able to trade.   [00:11:04.650] Their entire livelihood was based on the fact that they could trade. And the only reason they could trade was because August has provided them the ability to do so. Now, throughout all this time, life was pretty great, as you can imagine. Peace and prosperity, the stability. It was really extraordinary.   [00:11:21.660] And Romans lived a really great life. One of my, I think probably favorite, if you take a slice of life from Romans, like, what did Romans do? They got up in the morning, they went to work, and they do things like normal people do. But the way they actually entertain themselves is quite interesting. We hear all the stories about bread and circuses and the gladiator events and so forth, but actually, one of the things, especially in the days of Augustus, one of the things that was actually the most one of the kind of the centers of social life was actually the baths, the Roman baths.   [00:11:49.890] And many of these actually still exist today. The Romans were incredible engineers, and they figured out how to actually bring in hot water, underground water from natural hot springs and so forth, and pipe them into the city. And there were hundreds of them, hundreds of them, just in the city of Rome. These baths were actually at a subsidized entry cost. The cost was one quadrant, which works out to be an ancient unit of currency.   [00:12:15.440] That works out to be about $0.28 in today's money. That's based on a gold price of about $1,700. So we talk about twenty eight cents to be able to buy a day pass into a Roman death. Now, that might seem outrageously cheap, but it's actually not. If you think about it, that daily rate works out to be about $100 a year, a little bit more than $100 a year.   [00:12:38.000] And that's actually not that far off from what it takes to get an annual membership at the parks and recreation department in my hometown outside of Dallas, Texas. So it's actually somewhat similar to these subsidizer. If you think about the Roman baths as sort of parks and recreation in the city, where you go to a local rec center in the gym and the swimming pool and all that, that's what the Roman baths were, but they were a lot more interesting. Roman baths were open from sunrise six, seven a. M.   [00:13:03.760] To about 01:00 p.m.. For women, and then from 02:00 p.m.. Until evening time, maybe eight, nine PM. For men. And they have certain gym facilities, so you're going there.   [00:13:13.050] And as an ancient Roman, they didn't have, I don't know, whatever spinning classes and that sort of thing. But instead you could throw javelins and discus and boxing and wrestling and all the old school kind of Greek Olympian sports. These are the sorts of things that you can do in the gym facilities. And then you would go into the Tepidarium. This is the warm air sauna and then the Calidarium, which was the hot sauna.   [00:13:37.190] Then they had the Frigidarium, which was a cold plunge bath. And then they had the Thermae, which were the hot baths and all these things you go around from place to place and the hot sauna, the hot baths and the steam rooms and the cold baths and go back and forth these places. And they had game rooms. They were you go and play dice. And they had this version of an early proto chest called Ludus Latin Collorum which was like a kind of military strategy game that was very popular in the Roman Empire.   [00:14:05.310] They had game rooms set up where you had guys that were playing these board games with each other. And they had libraries and reading rooms. And they had areas for socializing where people would sit around and eat fresh fruit and gossip and talk to each other about just learn whatever the rumor of the day was. And other rooms they could hear musicians perform and philosophers and scientists delivering lectures. And they had gourmet restaurants.   [00:14:30.560] All this inside of the Roman bath, you got it for basically you're like parks and recreation. $100 a year price. What do you think about it? That's a pretty ideal lifestyle. Now, Rome was the superpower at the time, right?   [00:14:45.580] This is a place they had no more enemies. Their last major enemy was Carthage. They had long since been laid to waste. Roman legions and the Roman Navy still inspired tremendous all around the world. They had the best technology.   [00:14:56.790] Rome had the best engineers, they had the best roads, the best aqueducts, they had great metallurgy, they had hydraulic mining technology. It was just out of this world stuff. When people come to Rome and go, oh, my God, I can't believe people do these things. This is incredible. So Rome was exporting its technology.   [00:15:14.350] Everybody's coming to Rome to learn and they were also exporting culture. Roman culture was dominant throughout the world. This was the age of Ovid and Horace and Virgil and Livy. Even Emperor Augustus himself was so enthralled that he would eagerly anticipate Virgil's latest release like it was an Avengers film or something like this. When you look at all of that and you say, god, life was so good.   [00:15:39.860] Life was great. Life was great in Rome. Life was great outside of Rome. People were getting fabulously rich selling to the Romans. The Romans are getting fat and happy enjoying this wonderful life, this peace and prosperity.   [00:15:50.690] Businesses are making money. Property prices were going up. Everybody was doing great. And this is known to history as the PAX Romana, the Roman peace, where everybody was doing so well. Who would possibly want to mess that up?   [00:16:05.250] Who would want to throw a monkey wrench in that? Everybody's doing so well. Nobody would want to mess that up. And that's really why peace and prosperity do go hand in hand. Because you get to a certain point where you need some level of prosperity to be able to maintain the peace.   [00:16:18.920] But you need to have peace in order to have prosperity. They go hand in hand. It's very cyclical. It's a little bit of peace, a little bit of prosperity. It's the self propagating, self aggregating, self fulfilling prophecy that as it continues, it gets bigger and bigger.   [00:16:32.970] It's a lot of momentum in this towards more and more peace and prosperity. It just continues to build and build and build. And when you have it, it's great. It's great. And nobody wants to mess it up.   [00:16:45.590] This is what I think we've been experiencing for the past several decades. Starting in about early 1990s, we had a very similar thing. The US. Vanquished its last enemy. Instead of Carthage, it was the Soviet Union.   [00:16:58.270] Right. Just like Rome, the US has had and continues to have really this massive consumer economy that just like Rome, was importing everything from all over the world. The US was home to a very stable, respected reserve currency, accepted worldwide. The dollar was king. Everybody accepted it.   [00:17:17.530] Very powerful military dominant technology gave birth to the internet, Hollywood culture that was being exported around the world. Everybody wanted to be America, america number one. Everybody respected that. We're talking about 1990s and again, everybody is making money. Who would want to mess that up?   [00:17:37.320] The Chinese are making money, the Vietnamese are making money. The Brazilians are making money. Mexico is making money. Everybody's making money selling to the United States. Who possibly wants to mess that up?   [00:17:47.890] And this is the way the world was for decades. And we saw the rise of all these emerging markets, the bricks nations in India and Indonesia and so many places that we're doing so extremely well. This is some people call this the PAX Americana, like the PAX Ramana. I call it the PAX argentari. Argentari is the Latin word for fights.   [00:18:08.370] It's a financial piece, the money piece. Basically, it's the piece that was brought by money, by wealth, because people were doing so extremely well. Who would possibly want to mess that up? But the thing is, it never lasts forever. There was kind of an obscure economist in the 20th century, mid 20th century.   [00:18:28.880] His name was Robert Trifon. And Robert Triffin had an economist theory, it's called Triffin's Dilemma that basically says that dominant superpowers simply cannot last. They cannot last because it's like an autoimmune disorder. It just eventually attacks itself. Dominant superpowers by nature, because they're the dominant superpower, they cannot produce everything in their own economy.   [00:18:50.610] It's just too expensive. Being the dominant superpower means that you have this very expensive economy. You have expensive labor force and so you're not going to be able to produce socks and underwear because it's just too expensive. And so you got to start importing things from cheaper countries overseas and eventually that takes hold and you start importing more and more and more and more. As you start importing more, you grow this trade deficit, this current account deficit and essentially, you're shipping wealth overseas in exchange for other people's production.   [00:19:19.400] Your adversaries grow rich while you grow weaker because you're importing so much. And this is just a very cyclical thing. Rich nations tend to and we have seen this over and over again throughout history rich nations grow lazy. They get fat and happy. They lose their edge.   [00:19:35.310] They lose the priorities of the things that made them great and powerful to begin with. They lose the eye of the tiger. Complacency sets in. Deficits become commonplace. Debts rise.   [00:19:46.410] The currency they start to debase the currency and they do so with a tremendous sense of arrogance where they say, we're number one and everybody else is just going to suck it up. Everybody else has got to deal with it. We can do whatever we want because we're number one. So we can debase our currency and we can go into debt and we can run these sky high deficits and we can do whatever we want. It's that sense of arrogance because they lose the thing that makes them great.   [00:20:09.410] John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail on May 12, 1780. This was John Adams, the second president United States. This was years before he became president, but he was one of the Founding Fathers and had helped frame the constitution. In 1780 was the year he actually helped draft the Massachusetts Constitutions and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. And he wrote to his wife in May 1780.   [00:20:31.790] He said, quote, I must study politics and war that my sons have the liberty to study mathematics and philosophy in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, and music so that their children can major in gender studies and waste their lives on TikTok. Now, of course, I added that last part myself but the whole idea here is that this is John Adams saying, like, I've got to do this tough work so that my sons can do this other stuff that's still tough but different so that eventually, further on down the road, we have these younger generations, and they can do whatever they want. They can study art, and they can major in gender studies and they can do all these things that don't really have the same value as studying politics and war or science and technology, etc. E. And this is essentially the way that empires go.   [00:21:18.560] You start off strong, and everybody is focused and there's a common sense of understanding, and that commonality, that unity and eventually its discord. And all these things give way. And this is when empires go into decline and all of it can disappear rather quickly. In the case of Rome, augustus died in 14 Ad. Two emperors later, after Augustus was Tiberius, after Tiberius was very infamous, Caligula.   [00:21:44.600] Caligula ended his reign in 41 Ad. So from 14 Ad, at the time that Augustus died to 41 Ad, we're talking basically three decades later, the treasure was bankrupt. All trust and confidence in the government's, gone. This is by the end of the reign of Caligula, of course, Caligula just famously turned to I mean, they're not just rumors, actually true stories about turning palaces into brothels and all this crazy stuff that was going on. And people looked at the government and said, oh, my God, what a joke.   [00:22:12.810] What a joke. All trust and confidence in the government was gone. The power, the fame, the grandeur, the gravitas was all gone. And the treasury was totally bankrupt. And it happened in three decades.   [00:22:24.030] It happened in about 30 years. Right? So that sense of decline, it works in the opposite way. When we talked about peace and prosperity as being this sort of self propagating, cyclical force that just continues to rise and rise and rise, and the more peace and more prosperity you have, the more peace you have, so the more prosperity you have. And it rises and rises and rises.   [00:22:47.150] But when the decline sets in, it has the opposite effect. You have this self propagating force of conflict and destruction and you have more conflict and you have more destruction. And this is really a common theme in history. Conflict really does. When you have decline that starts to set in, conflict often does take place when you have a declining power that collides with a rising power.   [00:23:07.610] This is known in geopolitics as the Thucydides Trap, and this is named after the ancient Greek historian who wrote the history of the Peloponnesian Wars between the rising and declining powers in Greece, Athens and Sparta. And this sort of conflict, conflict is always extremely expensive. Conflict creates economic devastation. We're not just talking about war, but war in particular creates vast economic devastation. And that vast economic devastation often begets more conflict.   [00:23:34.250] Here's a great example, world War One. Leading up to World War I have the UK in decline. The UK enjoyed a century as the peak superpower in the 1800s, but by the early 1009 hundreds, it was obvious the UK was in decline. Meanwhile, we have Germany as a rising dominant power. Austria Hungary is a declining power.   [00:23:54.140] The US is a rising power. The Ottoman Empire is a declining power. So we have all these powers rising, other powers declining, and they're all colliding with each other. And basically there just needs to be some assets to be kicked. And that's what World War One was all about.   [00:24:07.830] All these guys forming alliances and so forth. And at the end of day, they had to fight it out. But World War I, because they vastly, all the experts vastly underestimated what that war was going to be in World War I created a historic devastation the world had never seen before. That's why they call it the Great War. They didn't call it World War I, obviously called it the Great War.   [00:24:29.200] And the Great War dealt a historic amount of devastation, especially to the European continent. And that devastation, again, the conflict created devastation. And the devastation created, what a surprise, world War II. More conflict, right? Because he had the Weimar Republic, which made it possible for a guy like Adolf Hitler to rise and so forth.   [00:24:48.410] And you get more conflict out of that. Conflict creates economic devastation. Economic devastation creates more conflict. This is all very cyclical. It's like the economic cycles where we have a period of boom and then bust.   [00:25:00.590] We have geopolitical cycles where we have peace and prosperity and then conflict and destruction. And then peace and prosperity and conflict and destruction. If we think about our world today, again, we go back to the US. It peaked in the early 1990s. Debt was being paid down.   [00:25:14.900] I mean, the deficits were actually falling. They're running a budget surplus. Oh, my God, a budget surplus. Can you imagine a budget surplus in the United States of America? That's what it was in the 1990s.   [00:25:24.260] And we had peace and prosperity. The worst thing that we had to worry about was Bill Clinton saying it depends on what the meaning of the word is, which, if you're too young to remember that, that was actually a real thing that the President United States said. Depends on what the meaning of the word is, which in of itself is hilarious. It took 30 years, just like Rome, right from the time that Augustus died to the time that Caligula ended. His reign was about 30 years.   [00:25:51.320] And they went from being super powerful and prosperous and all these things to Treasury's bankrupt. Nobody trusts the government. The whole thing is a joke. 30 years. Well, guess what?   [00:26:00.460] Early 1990s, 2022, 30 years, and we see the same thing. The US is an obvious decline. I've talked about this before, another podcast. When I talk about the four forces of decline, I'll touch on these briefly. But we have the forces of energy.   [00:26:14.290] I did a whole podcast about the forces of energy, and I would really encourage you to listen to that and understand that trend about energy sources that are becoming more scarce, becoming more expensive. And this makes everybody worse off. You cannot have a healthy economy if you have expensive energy. It's just not possible. There's a very, very clear correlation between a robust and prosperous economy and cheap and expensive energy.   [00:26:38.700] Where you have an expensive bit of energy, you have a prosperous economy. Where you have expensive energy, you have an economy that's worse off. And so the forces of energy are. Extremely powerful in this. We also have the forces of society, and these are the things, the anger and the trust issues and the social divisions and the constant conflict and the Twitter feuds, and just the antifa and the fist fights on the airplanes and all these things that we see, just society so deeply frayed and scarred and everybody just in each other's throats.   [00:27:10.910] Those are forces of society that we're also seeing. We have forces of economy, the debt and the inflation and Social Security looming insolvency and $2 trillion deficits, and politicians that hold up their index finger to their thumb and say it costs nothing when they're talking about two and a half trillion dollars spending packages. These are the forces of economy. And the last of the four forces are the forces of history. These are the natural cycles of things.   [00:27:37.820] The rise and fall of empire, in this case, the rise of other nations. And we see this in this context of the idea of the cycle of peace and prosperity, the cycle of conflict and chaos and destruction. And we see this cycle. And just like Rome, when you think about in the 1990s and the US was at the center, it has the economic superpower and the military superpower, nobody could come close to the United States, and its last major enemy had been vanquished. And the US was exporting culture all over the world.   [00:28:07.400] It was all about Tom Cruise and Hollywood. And maybe in some respects, it's still all about Tom Cruise. But if you look at the changes that we've seen, the US military, which I would still argue was the finest fighting force in the world, the military has been gutted from a financial perspective. It's been gutted from a policy perspective. Now they stand down.   [00:28:30.150] The military, it's all about all these sort of this woke ideology that they have injected into the military. Now. It's not about national security anymore. They've done this in the intelligence agencies and the CIA and so forth. It is completely ridiculous.   [00:28:46.640] Not to mention the utter humiliation. The utter humiliation. The shameful withdrawal from Afghanistan with the helicopters and people dangling from the landing gears of the airplanes and having to pass babies over razor wire and so forth. I mean, just what an utter humiliation in front of the entire world. The kind of thing that makes the adversaries of America look and go, really?   [00:29:12.750] I'm supposed to be intimidated by these people? It's just not a good look. You look at how from a cultural perspective, look at how these big US institutions just suck up to China from a cultural perspective. Disney is saying, thank you for letting us film our movie next to your Uighur concentration camp while we completely turn a blind eye to the genocide that you're waging on your own people. The National Basketball association closing ranks, firing an executive because he dared say something that was pro Hong Kong.   [00:29:40.850] It wasn't that long ago, John Cena, the Hollywood actor, was groveling in Mandarin on Chinese social media because he dared to call Taiwan a country. I mean, this is the sort of thing where you go, that was peak culture. Peak American culture was at least now 1015 years ago. Now it's all about Hollywood studios. It's like, it's all about, we got to get the Chinese on board.   [00:30:03.220] We got to get our movie in the Chinese box office, otherwise we're not going to make it. And all these big companies, they all turn a blind eye to all the human rights atrocities, everything that goes on in China, they completely turn the blind eye to it, and they completely just suck up to the CCP. It's such a joke. We're way past peak American culture again. The military has been gutted.   [00:30:26.330] From a financial perspective, this woke ideology, the humiliation, the loss of the defeats from that. And I would even say that if you look at American technology, which used to lead the way in the world, the US. Has really lost its edge in a lot of different ways. It's really fallen behind. The US.   [00:30:42.810] Is great at producing vaccines. Boy, if you want a vaccine, the US. Is that's USA number one. But in other things, I mean, the US. Has fallen far behind, for example, and things really of the future, like supercomputing technology, etc.   [00:30:54.590] For but the biggest thing that I would point out about US. Technology is that most us? Technology these days really seems to be more oriented towards consumer technology. It's about helping people consume more. It's not productive technology.   [00:31:09.090] It's consumptive consumer technology. Instead of making us our lives better, our lives easier, doing things faster, doing things cheaper, how do we keep people scrolling and swiping and swiping and scrolling? That's what it is. Like our big technology companies, it's like Apple, which makes iPhones, and Facebook, which destroys the self esteem of 14 year old girls, and TikTok, which sells all of the 14 year old girls data to the CCP. And actually, it doesn't even sell it.   [00:31:36.430] They just give it away for free because they're all basically stateowned Chinese companies, and Spotify, which we just listen to music, whatever. This is a technology company.   [00:31:47.390] This is not the kind of technology that they used to put out decades ago. And it's worth pointing out that let's just say adversarial nations tend to focus more on productive technology and not consumer technology. You have a currency that's not as widely respected as it used to be, not as powerful as it used to be, and geez, you're looking at eight 9% annualized inflation. Central banks, central bankers in the US. Don't seem to have the foggiest idea what they're doing now that it's running this haphazard monetary policy after being completely asleep at the wheel saying, inflation?   [00:32:23.470] What do you talk about? There's no inflation. And they say, oh, it's transitory. They said, okay, yeah, fine, we have inflation, we'll do something about it eventually. And now all of a sudden it's this emergency.   [00:32:32.360] Inflation has been around for more than a year, but now suddenly they're taking it seriously and saying, from my cold, dead hens, we're going to do no matter what the cost, we're going to keep raising rates until whatever hell freezes over. It's this very panicky approach to everything. And they've demonstrated that they are incompetent, that they totally missed it. They failed to predict it. They failed to see it even when it was so obvious to everybody else.   [00:32:57.900] This is not the kind of central bank policy and institution that inspires confidence in the rest of the world. And at the same time, the US. Sees many of his adversaries rising. And all these things happened again, like ancient Rome we're really talking about over the last 30 years. We're seeing geopolitical events that would have been unthinkable 25 years ago, and enemies, at least I want to say enemies, it sounds too generic.   [00:33:23.970] But really adversaries that are so emboldened in doing things that would have been completely unthinkable. And that's what happens when you don't have a stable hegemon. That peace and prosperity. The peace disappears quickly, and you can't have the stable hegemon. When you're running the largest current account deficit, you're running the biggest national debt in the history of the world.   [00:33:44.270] It was Larry Summers, former treasury secretary. He's in the news a lot, always running his mouth about inflation and where interest rates should be, blah, blah. But one of the better things that Larry Summers ever said was, how long can the world's biggest debt or go on being the world's greatest power? And he's right. You can't have $30 trillion in debt and expect to be the dominant superpower in the world and constantly go groveling to foreign nations, banks, please buy my treasury bonds.   [00:34:09.730] It's just not a good look. It's not something that powerful nations have to do. And so we have all these unthinkable geopolitical events, and we also have all these extra factors at play. We have consequences that are still playing out from the disastrous public health policies that took place during the Pandemic. We have the inflation, we have the energy crisis.   [00:34:28.650] And so all these things, the conflict, right? The conflict and destruction. The conflict is already upon us, and the conflict is destructive. Like we talked about in the examples, world War I creates economic destruction. The economic destruction from World War One created the conditions for World War II.   [00:34:44.960] Conflict creates destruction, destruction begins more conflict. And this is kind of the state of the world right now. It's important to point out, and I'm not saying like, oh, this all means shooting wars. Conflict and destruction, that part of the cycle. Again, it's this self perpetuating, self actualizing cycle where they reinforce each other.   [00:35:03.930] Conflict creates destruction, destruction creates conflict. That part of the cycle. Doesn't necessarily I'm not talking about a shooting war. I'm not necessarily saying, although obviously we're seeing that right now, but destruction basically means we're talking about fewer resources. Conflict means having various forms of conflict over those resources, fewer resources.   [00:35:25.160] When you have conflict, conflict creates destruction. Destruction means fewer resources. Fewer resources means a scarcity mentality. It creates a sense of mercantilism. We talked about that in a previous podcast.   [00:35:35.250] The difference between mercantilism and capitalism. Mercantilism was an economic system before capitalism, before Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of nations in 1776, one of the most important things to happen that year. And before capitalism, there was this system called mercantilism. Mercantilism was all about government control. It's a zero sum game.   [00:35:54.190] I get rich at your expense, you get rich at my expense. Therefore I have to block you. I have to block you from growing, because if I don't block you, you're going to grow at my expense. So I have to block you. I have to obstruct you.   [00:36:06.660] I have to stand in your way because it's a zero sum game and I'm going to win. And I'm going to win because it's at your expense. So we don't do win win deals. Capitalism is all about winwin. Value creation is about winwin.   [00:36:20.700] And mercantilism, in this conflictridden, scarcity mentality, resources are scarce. And so I've got to be protective, protectionist, mercantilist mentality, it's all about win lose. I got to win because you're going to lose. And the only way I can win is if you lose. So the only deal I want to do is a win lose deal where I get all the chips and you get nothing, where I get most of the benefit and you get very little benefit because there's a finite amount of benefit.   [00:36:46.790] And I'm going to take as much as I can for myself. And if I can't do a win lose deal, then we're going to do a lose lose deal. We're all going to go down together. And that's usually what ends up happening. And this is why conflict and destruction are self reinforcing, because it pushes people to do lose lose deals.   [00:37:02.960] And we've seen this, I mean, every day in the paper, we just see lose lose deals. The conflict, the war itself is just a lose lose deal. Everybody loses. Russia loses, ukraine loses, germany loses, the US. Loses.   [00:37:14.550] Everybody's worse off. But they're just going to keep doing it because they have this if I can't win, then you're going to lose, you can't lose. So we all end up we're just all going to lose. And that's what ends up happening. We're just all going to lose.   [00:37:25.350] And that's this sort of destructive destruction, conflict cycle mentality. It's mercantilist. It's a scarcity mentality, it's a lose lose mentality. And it's all extremely anti productive. But again, it's not all about a shooting war.   [00:37:39.860] It doesn't mean a shooting war. There are so many different ways that conflict can play out. We're talking about things like economic sanctions. G where have we seen those? Trade wars and tariffs g.   [00:37:49.890] Where have we seen that? Controls, right? Different types of controls, capital controls, exchange controls, price controls, competitive evaluation. We already see a lot of competitive evaluation, and I would remind you that in our modern world, in modern history, modern economic history, things like exchange controls and even capital controls were actually quite commonplace. Exchange controls have existed in modern economic history for far longer than they haven't existed.   [00:38:17.970] Exchange controls are where people say, okay, well, here's where our currency is going to be. Or we're not going to allow currency to freely come in and out of the country. We're going to create controls and restrictions around currency leaving the country or coming into the country and so forth. We're going to control these things because we have to control our economy. We have to prevent adversaries from coming in and making investments or selling investments or profiting off of our economy.   [00:38:41.850] So this is why people create controls. And controls existed literally for decades and decades and decades. We've had the last couple of decades where we haven't really had exchange controls, but that's actually a relatively recent phenomenon, so it wouldn't be a surprise to see return to some sort of exchange controls or capital controls. And again, some of us were already seeing some form of these things like competitive devaluation, the trade wars, the tariffs, the economic sanctions, these sorts of things. We're already seeing again, it's all of it.   [00:39:07.780] It's all of it very anti productive. It's win lose, or it's lose lose. It's definitely not win win. And this is why in this type of conflict, when we get into this part of the cycle where it's about destruction and conflict and conflict and destruction, it's really ultimately, again, we're not talking about a shooting war, but all this type of conflict is really it's like a war of attrition. It's to say who can stand to lose the most resources for the longest period of time.   [00:39:33.820] That's what a war of attrition is. It's just you just lose and you lose and you lose, and basically you're just trying to outlast the other guy. So who can lose the longest? Whoever can lose the longest wins the war of attrition. And that's an extremely anti productive prospect.   [00:39:51.170] One of the things I think this leads to, and again, this is me trying to, in a way, connect the dots in advance and skate to where the puck is going to be. But this idea, the cycle of destruction and conflict and conflict and destruction, one of the things in the controls and the exchange controls and the capital controls leads to something that I think is we could call it resource nationalism. I know what I'm saying. Nationalism not nationalization. I'm not talking about expropriation or confiscation or governments coming and say we're going to seize all these assets.   [00:40:22.830] We're not talking about nationalization. We're talking about nationalism. Nationalism. So this is basically export controls, right? If you think about whenever you export anything, when a company and wherever country produces something, they manufacture something and they ship it overseas.   [00:40:41.050] Essentially, they are exporting everything that went into producing that thing. If you're producing widgets and digits and whatever else, you're exporting everything that went into producing that. You're exporting the raw materials, you're exporting the labor, you're exporting the energy, you're exporting every single thing that went into producing that manufactured good, and you're shipping that away. So in an environment, for example, where, let's say, energy is scarce and it takes energy to manufacture something, it's certainly plausible that a government is going to peer in it and say, do we really want all this energy that we had to use to produce this thing? Do we want all that energy being exported over to our adversary?   [00:41:18.540] And it's certainly a case to be made that governments really start paying attention to how scarce resources being used and allocated. More importantly, where do they end up? Are we shipping things to our adversaries? Are we comfortable exporting energy to our adversaries? Are we comfortable exporting anything at all to our adversaries?   [00:41:36.930] And so they start looking at things and start identifying what they would consider critical national resources. And this can be a number of things. It could be certain minerals, very important, and critical minerals like lithium, for example. Absolutely certain things like energy. Even food.   [00:41:55.190] Even food, I think, is a possibility. We're not talking about caviar and things like that. We're talking about wheat, some of the really basic staples. And as an example of this, I would point out, in the state of California, for example, california is the largest almond producing region in the world. State of California produces 90 even.   [00:42:15.560] I've seen estimates of up to 99% of all the world's almonds, right? Almonds is a type of nut, obviously. Now, almonds suck up a lot of water. They use a lot of water. And so the state of California, the almond farmers are estimated to consume, at least on the low side, 10% of the state of California's water supply.   [00:42:35.570] So if you think about almond, farmers in California are using 10% of the state's water supply to grow almonds, and then they take those almonds and they export them outside of California. Some of that ends up in different parts of the United States. Others might end up in China. And so, at a certain point, even the state government in California say, do we really want to be exporting 10% of our state's water supply to China or any other country in the world? Does that really make sense?   [00:43:01.530] And so that sort of thing where they start looking at going, hey, we have scarce resources. We need to start paying more attention to this. And this is where they identify. This is a resource that's in the national interest. A national resource.   [00:43:13.030] And I think this also includes certain types of technology, even data, personal consumer data, the types of things that, for example, I mentioned before that TikTok is collecting. Everybody that uses TikTok. I mean, everybody uses any of these apps. If you're on Instagram or any of the sort of stuff. These guys are just collecting data, data and more data on you.   [00:43:33.660] And if you're using TikTok, all that stuff is being shared immediately with the Chinese government. That's not some wild conspiracy theory. This is the executives at TikTok at Bite Dance full blown admit this. They gave testimony in front of the United States House of Representatives and they full blown admitted this. So this is not any kind of conspiracy theory.   [00:43:52.810] This is coming straight out of the executive's mouth. So this is the sort of thing, at a certain point, you can imagine politicians saying, we need to be a little bit more careful about what we allow to be exported. This is a type of export control. This is resource nationalism, where we start identifying we don't want certain things to leave our borders, or not necessarily leave our borders, but we'll give it up to Canada, we'll give it up to Britain, but we don't want it to go to the Chinese. And this is really not that far fetched.   [00:44:22.490] Remember, they did this with face masks. They did this with face masks in 2020. It was a national resource, right? People can't buy it, we can't export it, we can't ship face masks overseas. So if they're going to do it with face masks and they did it with face masks in 2020, why wouldn't they do it with other things?   [00:44:37.440] Especially if there's a real shortage or a real crisis in some particular resource. So this is something, I think, that's totally within the realm of possibilities now. This is again, it's not a guarantee or any kind of certain prediction. We can't make certain predictions, and that's not the business that we're in. What we're trying to do is make certain determinations about the path that the world is on.   [00:44:57.820] What is the trajectory that the world is on? And the trajectory right now seems fairly clearly that this is a mercantilist, scarcity minded, conflict and destruction sort of approach where there's a whole lot of idiots in charge, and God help us, but there's no way that Camel and AOC are going to lead us back to peace and prosperity. It's just probably not going to happen. And I'm not saying that because this isn't about doom and gloom or anything like that. This is not the end of the world.   [00:45:21.120] I do think, however, it's important to consider that while not the end of the world, it may very well be the end of an era. An era where we had this PAX Argentarium, the PAX Americana, where it was just life was so good and everybody was making money. It was this again, self reinforcing, self propagating, peace and prosperity because more peace began, more prosperity and everybody is making so much money and everybody's getting so wealthy and the Chinese are doing well and the Indians are doing well and the Russians are doing well and Europe is doing well and everybody's doing well and who wants to mess it up? And then things happen. The decline starts to set in the natural end of empire.   [00:45:58.400] The decline of empire sets in and adversaries become more powerful and that balance of peace and prosperity starts to peak and offset and things happen and we see the four forces of decline set in. And then that leads to conflict. It leads to that thucydides trap. We have rising powers and declining powers colliding with each other over places like Taiwan or Ukraine or wherever else the case may be. That's the world that we live in right now and I think it's fair to at least argue the possibility of an end of an era, the end of a Pax Argentari on the end of a Pax Americana.   [00:46:32.370] And what does that really mean and where is the world going? I think it's important to try and understand the trajectory of the world and to align oneself with the trajectory of the world. Instead of saying no, I'm just going to continue on as if we're still living in the past, as if we're still living in the 1990s and that's still the world that we're living in. Again, this is all about skating to where the puck is going to be. It's not an exact science.   [00:46:53.220] We can't really ever say for sure, but we're not trying to pull out a crystal ball here and say here's exactly what's going to happen on this date at this time. That's silly. We're trying to connect some dots in advance and just understand big picture, the trajectory of the world and trying to align ourselves with the trajectory of the world. Now if we think about this from a financial perspective over the past several decades, central banks had all the power, right? Central banks, I mean we can think about if you're old enough to remember Alan Greenspan in the 1990s, this is a guy, he was the big cheese back then.   [00:47:26.800] He's one of the most powerful guys in the world. He was the chairman of the Federal Reserve back when you still used words like chairman. And this is a guy that went out and he commanded financial markets. He would notoriously speak in this Fed speak. He would just be very cryptic things and nobody could understand what he was saying.   [00:47:43.420] It was all this kind of code and everybody's trying to read the tea leaves on what Alan Greenspan was going to do and what it was all about, whether he's going to print money or he's not going to print money. And based solely on what one person would say, markets would rise and fall. And we still see this realistically to this day. Jerome Powell, chairman of the firm. I think he's chair or chairperson now.   [00:48:05.700] They don't use ghastly words like chairman anymore, but Jerome Powell running the Fed. He goes out and says something and markets rise and fall, but these days are coming to an end. We're already seeing this trust and confidence in central banks is falling rapidly. They have this basically one trick is to get to manipulate the money supply. They get to manipulate and by manipulating the money supply, they're manipulating interest rates.   [00:48:28.670] That's pretty much their one big trick. And people have seen again how asleep at the wheel they were. They look at the Fed with respect to inflation, say they were gaslighting people, they were denying it. Then they said it was transitory. Then they said, oh we're going to do I swear to God we're going to do something about it.   [00:48:45.960] And then six months passed before they did anything and they had these little tiny rate increases. And now they go, oh my God, now her hair is on fire. There's five alarm fire. And they're doing everything they can and they look like rank amateurs instead of these steady professionals who know what they're doing. They look like complete amateurs who are totally asleep at the wheel, failed to predict it, failed to see anything coming, failed to do anything about it.   [00:49:08.060] And now they're totally overreacting and blowing it all out of proportion. So this is not an organization that inspires confidence anymore. More importantly, I think people are realizing that the Fed's bag of tricks doesn't actually amount to very much. Yes, they can manipulate interest rates. Yes, they can increase and decrease the money supply.   [00:49:26.940] Big deal. They can't produce food. They can't produce energy. They can't hit the button on their big printing press and make more oil come out of the ground or make more wheat come out of the ground. They can't make more lithium come out of the mines.   [00:49:39.990] They can't create any productive technology. They can't do any of those things. And I think people are starting to realize that for the past several decades, during this whole PAX Argentarium, it was all about what is the Fed doing? And for the most part, the Fed was keeping monetary policy loose. For the past several decades, interest rates were generally falling and Fed balance sheets were rising.   [00:49:59.540] And so monetary conditions were easy and it was getting cheaper to borrow. And that was fueling this giant asset bubble. And that giant asset bubble fueled the rise in financial assets, paper assets, stocks and bonds and these sorts of things. And if we're talking about the end of an era where an era that was dominated by Federal Reserve and central bank monetary policy that drove the value of paper assets higher and higher and higher, it might make sense to consider, well, what else is there? What are the alternatives to this idea of investing in paper?   [00:50:36.730] And frankly, the thing that might make a lot of sense right now is looking at real assets. Real assets is actually real stuff. Instead of just pieces of paper and so forth, it's actually real things. I'm not talking about not investing in stocks and so forth. It's not really what I'm saying.   [00:50:53.870] I'm talking about specific real assets. Energy, mining, minerals, agriculture, productive technology, which by the way, productive technology and consumer technology. And companies that actually invest in these things, companies that produce these things, could be on a stock exchange, could be a private business. But the point is, this is a big difference then. And the difference I would highlight is in the past, I think the best example of the financial asset boom was index investing, where in the past when all that mattered was are they printing or are they not printing?   [00:51:24.980] Are they keeping monetary conditions loose? Are they pumping liquidity into the system or not? And for most of the last several decades, they were pumping a lot of liquidity into the system. And essentially what that did is it drove up the value of paper assets, including big, broad index funds. Now, if you think about what an index fund is, a big broad index fund basically means that you own a little piece of everything regardless of price, regardless of quality.   [00:51:51.340] So if there are companies in some big stock index that are trading at all time highs and they are dog shit companies that just have no hope of ever making money and they have horrible balance sheets and they're dead up to their eyeballs and they're hemorrhaging cash and they're never ever going to make money and the CEO's a drunk or whatever, guess what? You buy an index fund, you're buying shares of that company too. You're buying shares of every terrible company in the index. And there's a lot of terrible companies just because some companies on the stock market, a lot of terrible companies, a lot of great companies, a lot of things in between. But when you buy an index fund, you're buying everything in the market.   [00:52:27.800] So even some horrible company that's trading at an all time high, you are literally taking some of your money in that index fund and you're buying shares of a horrible company and paying an all time record high price for it. And in a time where central banks dominated financial markets and it was all about are they printing or are they not printing? And as long as they're printing money and as long as they're expanding their balance sheets and keeping interest rates low, then you know what, paper assets are just going to boom. And that's what happens. You didn't have to do anything.   [00:52:55.530] You just tossed money into an index fund. You bought shares through the index, a terrible company, and paid a record high price for it. But you could still do okay because central banks were printing money. That's the difference between real assets and. Paper assets, real assets and financial assets, real assets.   [00:53:11.640] We're talking about investing in companies and businesses and even the real assets, the commodities themselves, etc. Are productive technology things that actually produce real things that actually matter in this world. Instead of just useless pieces of paper and not having any idea what we're investing in, just throwing money at some random index or fund or piece of paper because the central bank is printing money, I think it's probably worth considering that that era may in fact be over. And instead, I think what we're left with is, in addition to investing in real assets, I want to leave you with an idea of investing in neutrality. And this is kind of an interesting concept.   [00:53:52.070] If we're talking about being in an era where it's dominated by conflict and destruction, and more conflict creates more destruction, which creates more conflict and so forth. I think there's a couple of different ways to invest in neutrality, and one is looking in, let's say, less aligned regions. I did a podcast previously where I talked about the barbarian kingdom thesis, where at the end of the fall of the Western Roman Empire, there are all these different barbarian kingdoms. There's no longer a dominant superpower in the world. And I think that's completely viable and plausible outcome, where instead of having a dominant superpower or even a bipolar world, it's a multipolar world where you have China's a strong power, and India is a strong power, and Europe is still relevant.   [00:54:34.990] North America, perhaps a union of North America is still very powerful, all these different sort of factions, some of which are aligned with others in certain ways and aligned with others in other ways. And if we're talking about a world where there's a lot of conflict, for example, between the US. And China, or Russia and the United States, et cetera, I think it might make sense to actually look at less aligned regions. And I think specifically, one of the regions that seems to be, at least for now, proving that it is not aligned and really had its fill with all this is Latin America. Latin America has a lot of Chinese influence.   [00:55:10.770] Latin America has a lot of us. Influence. Mexico is a great example. They've decided they want no part of this really hardcore side picking, where you've got to banish all Russians from your borders and you've got to engage in the two minutes hate every single day against all things Russia. And they said, we're not going to do this.   [00:55:29.780] We're going to continue to play nice with everybody. And in fact, Mexico even invited they said, hey, let's have peace talks, and let's invite Russians and Ukrainians here to Mexico and so forth. And Mexico is actually kind of gone out of its way to be neutral. And I think that's interesting. And it's the idea of looking at areas and parts of the world that are neutral is, I think an interesting concept, and not even necessarily in terms of financial investing, but we think it would even plan B sort of way of thinking about things.   [00:56:03.170] I look at Mexico as the way, if you could imagine having a Swiss passport in 1935, if you were in Europe, that would have been a very valuable resource for you and your family to have a Swiss passport in the mid 1930s before all hell broke loose in Europe. Because even when it happened, switzerland was still a neutral country. It was a safe haven. It was okay with everybody and didn't take sides. And because of that, it was relatively unscathed even when all hell broke loose on the European continent.   [00:56:32.430] And I think to have something like that in Mexico is why having, for example, residency or citizenship, something like that in a place or at least a part of the world that is relatively neutral, I think that's an interesting way to think about strategically even a plan B from a financial perspective as well. I think in terms of neutrality, I think also focusing on industries that aren't really politically charged. This is one of the reasons why I like agriculture so much, because you could look at, I think, energy. There's a lot of really great investments to be making in energy. We had a discussion before about nuclear.   [00:57:04.260] Energy is quite politically charged, though. I mean, everything to some degree is politically charged. There are people that are going to be professionally outraged about every single thing that you do or say. But in particular, energy, you've got a whole lobby of people, I mean, lots and lots and lots of people that never want to see another oil rig ever again. They never want to see another ounce, another barrel of oil ever drilled.   [00:57:24.230] They never want to see anything. They want to see any exploration. Same thing with mining, even though all these things, I mean, oil and gas and minerals, all these things are just so critical to the global economy. You don't really see too many picket lines of people saying no more wheat, no more avocados. We want to round up all the avocado farmers and get rid of it.   [00:57:43.920] Nobody ever says that, right? Nobody has a problem with avocados. Nobody has a problem with these sorts of things. This is actually why I like agriculture, because it's not politically charged. It's neutral.   [00:57:53.890] It's neutral. And I think neutral industries that don't have these horrible forces, these ESG forces they've got oil has all the ESG forces against it. They're forcing private equity funds and banks and so forth to not invest in oil and divest themselves from all their oil investments, try and chase these guys out of business and so forth. There are industries that don't have that. Frankly.   [00:58:18.260] Certain industries within the technology sector are also not politically charged, right? Cybersecurity. Nobody screaming that cyber securitycurity firms need to go away and that they're too politically charged or they're rigging elections or anything like that. These are the sort of things I think that makes sense to really consider. So we talked about basically kind of less aligned regions.   [00:58:42.330] I don't think there's any such thing as a completely unaligned region, but less aligned regions, non politically charged industries. And I think as well, you can look the same thing with currency currencies are aligned. And I think if you're holding a national currency in an environment that is very politically charged, geopolitically charged with a lot of conflict and so forth, what happens when they start sanctioning each other and the trade wars escalate and the competitive devaluation and the capital controls and exchange controls? What starts happening to the value of currency? They start playing, they get involved in currency disputes.   [00:59:14.480] Again, we're not even talking about conflict. Doesn't necessarily need to be a shooting war. It could just as easily be, hey, we're going to dump your treasuries, we're going to flood the market with treasuries. Your bonds are going to become worthless overnight. Your currency is going to go into freefall.   [00:59:28.890] All these things that adversarial nations could do. And so all these things are possible. And so to be able to hold things that are not actually aligned with any specific country or any specific block, and this is the thing that makes okay, sure, yeah, you could hold currency for other nations that are in line. But this is what I think why crypto is actually one of the many reasons why crypto is so extremely interesting is because it's not aligned. Let them sanction each other.   [00:59:54.640] Let them engage in capital controls. Let them engage in all sorts of silly economic shenanigans with one another. It's all good for crypto, and it's a way to be able to hold wealth outside of a system that you can't be sanctioned. It's not subject to capital controls and all these sorts of things, and you can have it fully in the blockchain with a brain wallet and all sorts of things. This crypto is extremely interesting in this kind of environment.   [01:00:21.850] I think to a degree, gold and silver are as well. I would say it's been just as an aside, It's been interesting. I think a lot of people may be surprised that gold isn't doing better in an environment where inflation is as high as it is and so forth. I think there are a number of reasons for that. But the one thing to keep in mind is that gold prices, where we start seeing major movements in gold prices over the long term, gold and has kept up very well with inflation.   [01:00:52.500] And the last stagflationary period in the 1970s, gold was one of the best performing investments. Gold, farmland, again, real assets like we were talking about did extremely well, extremely well. Gold, though, tends to move a lot when central banks buy and sell central banks, foreign sovereign governments, because these guys buy and they buy it by the time tons and tons and tons of gold. And that's what really moves the price, because it's not that much supply. And so when we see relatively limited supply, especially in an environment where people still deal with public health protocols and you're dealing with supply chain issues and so forth, there's supply issues in the gold market and then lots of demand coming from central banks, that's what moves the price.   [01:01:37.830] And I think that's something that and again. This isn't necessarily a specific prediction. But I think in terms of the trajectory of the world. If people are looking at conflict and saying. I got too many dollars.   [01:01:49.530] Or I'm trying to screw over the United States because we're trying to do a win lose or a lose lose. And so I'm going to dump some treasuries and so forth. Gold ends up being a beneficiary of this because they got to turn those dollars into something. They got to turn those euros into something. So what do they do?   [01:02:03.760] They buy gold. They buy gold because that's traditionally what they can do. Gold is a big market. They can spend trillions and trillions of dollars in the gold market and buy a lot of metal. And it's something that they know there's always going to be some value for.   [01:02:16.620] They're always going to be able to use that or trade that or sell it or whatever the case may be. And so I think we may be at some point here down the road in an environment where central banks and foreign governments are going to buy lots and lots of gold. And that's something that could absolutely move the price. So all this is to say, I just wanted to give you some thoughts. This is by no means is this investment advice.   [01:02:38.720] This is one guy exercising my First Amendment right to express my personal views, presuming that the First Amendment right still exists at the time of this recording. I do absolutely fundamentally believe. In fact, I don't even like saying the word believe. I believe. It's like saying I believe in Santa Claus or the tooth fairy, something like that.   [01:02:57.630] I don't believe. It's just obvious the world is changing before our very eyes. My thesis, my theory, is that this is the end of an era, an era that was marked by dominance of central banks, the PAX Argentia, the PAX Americana, where life was so good, everybody's making money, all these foreign countries, all these exporters traders, everybody emerging markets, everybody was doing well selling the United States, et cetera. But the natural forces of decline kicked in. Triffin's dilemma.   [01:03:30.890] You cannot be the dominant superpower forever. Decline will eventually set in the rot, the complacency. You lose the eye of the tiger, you start to decline. And that decline creates conditions for conflict. And that conflict creates more loss.   [01:03:44.900] And that loss creates more conflict and so forth. We start seeing this with respect to trade wars and trade disputes and sanctions, and even shooting wars, and currency competitive, currency devaluation and all these sorts of things that creates more and more conflict, that creates more losses and destruction, which creates more conflict. And the scarcity mentality and mercantilist approach and win lose and lose lose deals. That's basically what we're seeing right now. That is my thesis here.   [01:04:13.560] And it, I think, combines with a lot of the things we've talked about in the past. The energy story, the barbarian kingdom thesis, all these things sort of together. This is just my attempt to try and piece together everything that I've studied for years and years about history with where I see the world is right now and where it looks like the trajectory of where the world is going. We can see the trajectory. And to me, I think it makes sense to align oneself with the trajectory of the world instead of trying to fight it, accept it and see where it's going and try and really skate to where the puck is going to be, pick up on those big picture trends.   [01:04:50.630] It's not an exact science. It's not about crystal balls and trying to predict the future. It's really about big picture trajectory and aligning ourselves with that trajectory. And the trajectory that we see right now is an end of an era. It's not the end of the world, it's the end of an era.   [01:05:06.000] And it's not anything to be panicky about, it's not anything to be overly concerned about. But it's important to understand the gates of Janus are open. It is not the end of the world, but it does constitute a major shift. And as long as somebody has a little bit of courage and independence of mind to actually examine this openly with an open mind, it does create really a world of possibilities. I appreciate you listening and we'll talk again soon.   Close Podcast Transcription

In the year 1566, at the end of the reign of the legendary Suleiman the Magnificent, his Ottoman Empire was the world’s dominant superpower. Ottoman territory extend across three continents over nearly 2.3 million square kilometers. Its military was powerful… and feared. The economy was strong and the treasury plentiful. But in time that changed. Subsequent Ottoman rulers became complacent. The government became bureaucratic. The military became softer. Society became decadent. As a whole, they lost the elements that made them strong and powerful to begin with, and the empire began to dwindle. Over time, France ascended as the dominant superpower; Paris became the global center of politics, commerce, and the arts. And no other European power could come close to France’s wealth or military capabilities. But eventually the French, too, lost their way, and were eventually displaced by the British Empire as the world’s leading superpower. To this day the British Empire is still the largest ever in the history of the world, totaling more than a quarter of the world’s land mass. They dominated global trade and oversaw a period of relative peace now called the Pax Britannica. Yet they too eventually declined, and the British Empire was ultimately displaced by the United States, which has now been the world’s leading superpower for decades. It goes without saying that the United States is also in decline; that’s not intended to be an emotional or controversial statement. From a rational academic perspective, it’s very difficult to not see obvious and familiar signs of an empire in decay. I group these into four fundamental forces of decline– The first are the Forces of Energy, both natural and political, which have created rising energy costs that are now bordering on an energy crisis. We discussed this at length in last week’s podcast, when I walked you through the dynamics of how it now requires much more energy to produce energy than ever before. In other words, oil producer are having to burn more oil now to fuel their equipment, for every barrel of oil that they pump from the ground. This is a critical trend to watch; the past few centuries have proven a very clear link between energy and prosperity, and more expensive energy is a nasty, long-term barrier to economic growth. The second major category of forces causing decline in the US are the Forces of Society. We can see this every day in the social and political divisiveness, censorship, media manipulation, the appalling decline in trust, rising crime rates, popularity of socialism, wokeness, etc. The third category are Forces of Economy. Here we can see evidence in the absurd level of money printing, inflation, the national debt, rising taxes, multi-trillion dollar spending packages that “cost nothing”, etc. And the fourth category are the Forces of History. This is the inevitable course of empire– rise, peak, and decline, and it includes all the geopolitical events we’ve witnessed, from the debacle in Afghanistan to the war in Ukraine and rise of China. Each of these groups of forces are contributing to an obvious US decline. It is by no means a one-way street. And there are many elements that could be improved. The widespread adoption of nuclear power, for example, could result in an economic bonanza in the US, which would keep the party going for quite some time. But for now, the trajectory of the US appears to be heading down. Again, that shouldn’t be a controversial statement, and I’d encourage anyone to look at the situation rationally and dispassionately, and not through the lens of patriotism or fear. For a long time I’ve asked myself– what comes next? Who will be the dominant superpower after the US decline? And I’ve often thought that China is the answer… simply because it is the only viable power large enough to displace the US. But China has always been an imperfect answer. China has a mountain of its own problems too. Some are fixable, like its giant debt bubble. Others (like its demographic crisis) are not. So my thinking has evolved… and I’m now considering a future world that looks more like Europe in the 600s. At the time, there was no superpower. The Byzantine Empire was still relevant. But Europe had been taken over by several barbarian kingdoms– the Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Burgundians, Frisians, Franks. Plus the Middle East and North Africa were rapidly falling to the new Islamic Caliphate. No single power dominated the rest. And I think that may be the world we’re headed for– where China, Russia, Europe, India, and North America are like the Barbarian Kingdoms of the 600s. This has huge implications, especially for the US dollar. The dollar has been the dominant reserve currency for so long, which is a privilege that the US government has been able to enjoy for decades. It means that the Treasury Department has been able to borrow a whopping $30 trillion worth of debt, and has never had a problem finding lenders. But in a world of Barbarian Kingdoms where no single superpower looms so large, there won’t be as much demand for US dollars. And that’s decline in demand for dollars is going to make it awfully difficult for the US government to keep spending. Or for the Federal Reserve to keep printing. This is the topic of today’s podcast. We do a deep dive on this ‘Barbarian Kingdom’ thesis, the Four Forces of decline, the implications for the US dollar, and ways to think about your Plan B. You can download and listen here. Open Podcast Transcription [00:00:00.790] Today we're going to go back in time to September 4, 476 Ad, to the city of Ravenna in modern day Italy. And it was an important day, because that's the day that historians regard as the end of the Western Roman Empire. Himself at that time was split into two. You had the Eastern Empire and the Western Empire. The Eastern Empire was really where all the power and all the wealth was.   [00:00:22.540] The Eastern Empire had its own emperor. A guy named Zino at the time was emperor in the east. Zeno had his own imperial court, he had his own succession, he had his own everything was totally different in the east. The west had its own emperor. And the emperor in the west was technically a guy named Julius Nepos.   [00:00:39.890] Julius Nepos, though, had recently been deposed. Julius Neppos had decided to elevate to his chief general. You could think of as like, his chairman of the joint chiefs, that the head of all the Roman military. Julius Nepos had elevated this guy named Orestes to become his chief general. Orestes was a famous guy.   [00:00:57.860] He had previously served atilda the Hun a couple of decades before, and Orestes then essentially became the head of all Roman military forces. Naturally, you can imagine what happens next. Oresty says, oh, wow, I have the entire Roman military, the Western Roman military behind me, so I'm going to go take over. So Resty goes and he marches into Ravena. Ravena, by the way, at the time was actually the capital city of Rome.   [00:01:21.770] The Western Roman Empire was so weak that the city of Rome wasn't even the capital anymore. The city of Rome had been sacked decades prior, and all these barbarians had moved in. And so they actually had to move the capital to Ravana, which is on the opposite end of Italy. It's in northeastern Italy again, on the Adriatic Sea. And so, arrested now with all the entire Roman militaries back, he goes into Ravana.   [00:01:43.200] He says, guess what, Julius nepos, you're out. And Julius Nepos left without a fight. He fled to the Roman province of Dalmatia, which is in modern day Croatia. He tried to set up a fledgling government. He reached out to his colleague in the east, emperor Xeno and Constantinobi, please help me, send me forces.   [00:02:00.430] I need to take my crown back. And Zeno said, no, I don't think so. I'm going to wait and see what happens here. So now we've got arrestes. Who was the head general.   [00:02:09.570] Now he's taken over the Western Roman capital in Ravana. He's chased out the emperor, Julius Nepos, and he decides he's going to declare a new government. So he installs his son as emperor. His son is just a kid, a 1011 year old kid, and the kid's name Romulus Augustus, which in theory is actually quite an auspicious name. Romulus was one of the founders of Rome.   [00:02:30.230] Augustus was its most revered emperor in the first century Ad. So you got this kid as Emperor Romulus Augustus. You got Orestes, who's essentially the de facto Emperor, and then you've got Julius Neppos, who still claims to be Emperor, who's sitting hundreds of miles away off the coast in Croatia. Now, the thing you've got to understand about especially the Western Roman Empire at the time, is that most of the military was made up of foreigners, foreign mercenaries, really, they were called Federati. Now, before going back hundreds of years, before Rome started cooperating with all these foreign barbarian tribes that were really at their borders, and they decided to create something they call this Federati.   [00:03:11.190] Federati is the same word, the same root of the word, the English word, Federation. And we can think of Federation as a league of independent countries, independent states. You can think of your Star Trek fan. Think about United Federation of Planets. You have all these independent planets that come together in a pact and agree to whatever they're doing, fighting the Klingons and the Romulans, whatever.   [00:03:30.320] This is sort of the same thing in Rome. They said, okay, all these barbarian tribes are going to have this federation together where we agree to cooperate with each other. And we, as Rome, we will provide you certain things, and you, as you barbarian kings, you provide us certain things. And that certain thing provided by the barbarian kingdoms was usually military assistance. But by 476, this Federati was basically just foreign mercenaries and it made up a huge part of the Roman military.   [00:03:56.030] So there was another soldier at the time, his name was Odoacer, and Odo Acer. We don't know much about him. We know he was not Romantic. Historians think he might have been Germanic or from one of these barbarian tribes. He might have been a Goth, we're not really sure.   [00:04:08.840] But we know he was a soldier and he worked his way up in the Roman military. In the Legion. He became an officer and eventually head of the Federati. Now, the Federati had been promised the world by successive Roman Emperors for years and years and years, and they said, look, you come and you give us security and you give us peace, and we promise you the world, we're going to give you lands, we're going to give you farms, we're going to give you all these things that you want. And of course, they never actually followed through on their promises.   [00:04:36.650] And so eventually, when arrested, chased away Julius Nepos and installed his son as Emperor, he got Romulus Augustus and the federal he came to arrestis and said, hey, we want all that stuff that we were promised. We want the land, we want the farms, we want the peace, we want all of that and arrest. You said, no, sorry, I can't do it. All those other guys promised you that. You can't expect these other guys to have made you promises, and then I'm going to follow through with it.   [00:05:00.370] Sorry, I can't do it. So naturally, the Federati raced up. They were angry, and so they chose one of their own, this guy, Odoacer. Odoacer wasn't a Roman. He was one of them.   [00:05:11.190] He was ready. The head of the federati. He was the natural choice to be leader in this rebellion in the Federatei marched into Ravana, which again was the capital of the time. Rome, the city of Rome wasn't the capital, had already been sacked. They had to move the city, move the capital city to Ravena.   [00:05:26.180] And so Odawayser, at the head of the Federal, he marched into Ravana and he met arrestes in battle. And there was a battle. arrestes lost. The Western Romans lost arrest. He was slain in battle.   [00:05:37.430] And ODA racer walks up to Romulus Augustus and he looks at this kid and he says, I'm not going to murder this kid. But he throws the kid out. He said, look, you got to go. And Romulus Augustus went off and lived the rest of his life. But at that point, Odo acer essentially crowned himself king.   [00:05:55.250] Now, he's actually fairly cunning about doing it. He didn't say, I'm now the head of the Western Roman Empire. He just said, I'm King of Italy. We're going to carve out this new state here. We're going to call it Italy.   [00:06:06.450] I'm king of Italy now, and in fact, I'm just going to act like I'm subordinate to the Easter Emperor. So he writes to Zeno and he says, you know what? I've just taken over Italy, and I'm going to be your subordinate. I'm going to pay homage to you, I'm going to give you tax, et cetera, and you're going to be my overlord. And for Xeno we thought, Great, that's fantastic.   [00:06:27.150] Now there's no more Western Roman Empire. The Western Roman Empire has essentially been dissolved because Odoacer, who just took over the throne, has decided he doesn't even want to be emperor. He's going to be my subordinate. And so essentially, that was it. That was the end of the Western Roman Empire.   [00:06:42.090] From that point forward, there's only the Eastern Empire, which again ended up calling itself the Roman Empire. And that was basically it for the Western Roman Empire. Rome continued in the east and the Eastern Empire eventually became known as the Byzantine Empire, though they still refer to themselves as Romans. But that was it for the Western Roman Empire. The interesting thing about this, though, is that at the time, if you had been in revenue, or if you were still one of the handful of people left in Rome, it didn't seem like it was that significant.   [00:07:13.930] Today, it's literally the date, september 4, 476 to go. That was the day that Rome fell. But if you had been on the ground in Rome at the time, if you've been on the ground in ravine, if you'd been on the ground and Byzantium and you would have seen September 4, 76th, guess what? The next day wasn't really that different. It wasn't like everything changed all of a sudden overnight.   [00:07:35.750] In fact, for the most part, people viewed on the ground at the time, locals viewed this as just another passing event. It was just another embarrassing debacle. It was just another humiliating embarrassment for Rome. They go, Here we go again. Another guy marching in, taking over another battle, another emperor gets deposed, blah, blah, blah.   [00:07:55.070] We've seen this a million times before, and they had for the longest time, there had hardly been any peaceful succession, any peaceful transition between Roman emperors, especially in the west. There was all this political conniving and murder and intrigue, and it was just a normal part of life in Rome. And some people looked at this and said, Here we go again, just another thing. And it didn't seem like it was any different. In fact, for days, weeks, months, even years after the fact, nobody really got the implication of what had just happened, that quite literally, the Western Empire ceased to exist, and that that was a huge watershed moment in history.   [00:08:33.050] Now, granted, it wasn't like that was really the cause. We can't go back and say with any kind of intellectual honesty that September 4, 476, that was the most important day in the fall of Rome. Or that was the fact that Odo. Acer came into revenue and went up to Romulus August and said, you're out of here, kid. That was really what caused the decline.   [00:08:54.440] The decline of Rome, again, is a very long, very complicated story that involves so many different forces of military nature and economic nature and social nature and all these things that happened over very long periods of time. But that day, that was it. The Roman Empire in the west ceased to exist. And this is actually, in my opinion, a very important lesson from history, because it shows us that there are events that happen from time to time that are actually far more important than anyone realizes. And there are actually many examples of this throughout history we can think about.   [00:09:30.540] The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand In. This clearly wasn't like it was no big deal, but I don't know that anybody would have necessarily looked at that and immediately thought, oh, my God, it's going to be war. It's going to be this huge war. It's going to be the war to end all wars like nobody has ever seen before. That wasn't really the immediate reaction, right?   [00:09:50.020] Certainly wasn't something that people off in the United States would have thought, oh, my God, this guy got killed, and so we're all going to end up at war, and it's going to be so devastating and so costly. Nobody really thought that at the time, but that's what happened because it was a trigger that created different escalations, and this whole war broke out as a result of it. Another great example, martin Luther Nailing, the 95 theses that he wrote up to the door of church in Wittenburg, Germany. And that was essentially the event that triggered the entire Reformation movement, that brought the Catholic Church to its knees and the Reformation, the counterreformation, all the movements and things that happen. It was one of the biggest moments in history.   [00:10:31.740] But at the time, it was just no big deals. Some guy goes as a monk, he puts something on the door, and that's it, walks away. And at the time, nobody would have thought that that was this historical watershed moment, and yet it was. And this is the sort of thing that happens from time to time. It's usually never about that single event.   [00:10:48.300] The event is really just a representation. It's not like the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the cause of World War I. The cause of World War I was the years, even decades prior to building of all the alliances. And suddenly, Germany literally creates itself out of nowhere in the forms itself out of a confederation of different kingdoms, independent kings that came together and decided, one day, we are now Germany. And they signed some papers, and poof.   [00:11:15.080] Now suddenly, one of the largest powers in Europe just exists overnight. And you've got Britain, and you've got France, and the United States have become the largest economy in the world, and you had all these forces competing with each other, making alliances with one another and so forth. And this is something that was literally years and years and years of conflict and tension in the making. And then all of a sudden, there was just this one event that triggered it, and it was this event, the trigger. At the time, nobody realized that's it, that's the trigger, and yet that's what happened.   [00:11:43.210] The same thing with Martin Luther. There are all sorts of misgivings and conflict and turmoil and tension between the church and other groups. Martin Luther was just the trigger. Nobody thought it was at the time, but that's what happened. And we could see this over and over and over again throughout history.   [00:11:58.020] So many different instances of some event that seems maybe relatively innocuous or, okay, maybe it's a big deal, but nobody necessarily expected, wow, this is going to lead to so much change, so much turmoil, so much disruption. And it wasn't about the single event. It was about the years and decades. In the case of Rome, even centuries of buildup, of trends building. In 2005, you may have probably seen this on YouTube or something.   [00:12:25.330] Steve Jobs gave a very famous commencement address to Stanford University. He talked about life, and he talked about going back in time and connecting the dots. And he would say, you know, he would talk about his own life. He'd say, I did this, and then I did this, and then I did this, and all these sort of weird things. I dropped out of school, and I kept showing up to classes, even though I technically dropped out, and all these things that impacted my life and that's resulted in the way where I am today, and all these products that we've created at Apple and so forth, of all these bizarre, seemingly random events that happened in my life.   [00:12:55.900] But in retrospect, when I connect the dots, I can see how it all led to this point. And Steve Jobs at the point also kind of famously said, you can never connect the dots going forward, only backward. But that's not entirely true. With all deference to Steve Jobs, it's not entirely true if you think about life really itself, and many of us have had that same experience. We look back, I know I can.   [00:13:18.450] I'm sure many of you can as well. You look back and connect the dots on things that seemingly random events, totally accidental. You meet somebody that something happens and this door opens and it creates this opportunity and something else happens and whatever, you meet your spouse, whatever, almost accidental events, and you look back on it in life and connect the dots and say, wow, these sort of things that weren't delivered. And that's how I ended up where I am today. And that is true to a degree.   [00:13:45.850] But there are also other things that are seemingly extremely deliberate. Extremely deliberate because in life, while there are some things that are accidental, there are some things that are deliberate. There are some things that we plan on. And I can't believe I'm going to use this as an example. I'm kind of vomiting in my mouth right now.   [00:14:01.380] But if you think of Hillary Clinton, it is no accident that she ended up where she did. I mean, that was a grand plan for a very long period of time to become this political insider and work her way up. And eventually she wanted to be present. She didn't make it. But it is no accident that her career and her life has had the trajectory that it did.   [00:14:20.310] And she is a great example of somebody that really connected the dots going forward. So I look at all this in context. If I think about the historical element of it and so many things that are going on today, and I'm going to actually rely on this cliche right now. This is one of the most overused quotes, especially in business and finance people think about Wayne Gretzky, this famous Wayne Gretzky quote where he talks about skating to where the puck is going to be, not where it's been. It's actually miscredited to Wayne Gretzky.   [00:14:49.410] He would actually himself credit his father. Walter Gretzky is the guy that said that. But the point is that it's this concept of connecting the dots going forward and trying to look at big picture trends and think about what's happening. We're not talking about thinking about looking into appearing into a crystal ball and thinking about this is exactly what's going to happen on this date, at this time. That's ludicrous.   [00:15:10.890] There are obviously always people that think that they know exactly what's going to happen, and that's totally ludicrous. Pompous. It's petty, it's narcissistic. But we're talking about major trends. You don't have to be a rocket scientist.   [00:15:23.190] You don't have to have a PhD in history or economics or any of these things to see major trends, to connect the dots, especially if you have a little bit of humility. And if you think about the fall of Rome, the fall of Rome was so obvious. It was so obvious. Everybody knew it. Everybody could see it.   [00:15:38.470] This is why Rome lost so much of its population during the 400s, during the 300s as well. People said, screw it, I'm out of here. This place is going the way of the dodo bird. And they were right. They were right because the fall of Rome was so obvious.   [00:15:51.060] They were losing military power. They lost all their economic power. They're losing territory. They were getting invaded by barbarian tribes. People were happy.   [00:15:58.580] They were getting invaded by barbarian tribes. People in the countryside are saying, please deliver us from these high taxes. Thank you, barbarian tribes, for invading us so we don't have to pay these ridiculous taxes anymore. We had price controls and wage controls under penalty of death. It was so obvious that they were in decline and that they were eventually going to fall into the dustbin of history.   [00:16:18.780] It was so obvious. World War I was also so obvious, right? If you look at the power dynamics in Europe, it was obvious there needed to be a war. Somebody had to get their ass kicked to prove who was the big cheese in Europe. Now it had to happen, right?   [00:16:34.800] So if we look back in history, the Reformation was obvious. It was just one of these things. The trends, the tensions, the conflicts were building for so long. So while we can't necessarily connect the dots and say, this exactly is going to happen, we can look at these major trends and things that are so obvious and still have a little bit of humility and say, I could be wrong. However, there are some really obvious things happening to try and connect the dots going forward.   [00:16:59.870] Obviously, we're talking about this because I think it is pretty clear that the United States is in decline. We've been writing about this sovereign man for a really long time, and a lot of the things that we've been writing about have continued to accelerate and get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. A lot of the things that we thought in terms of the direction of the US. It's happening. It's happening in front of our very eyes.   [00:17:21.270] And I would say, just to summarize, the US. Is subject to what I consider four forces of decline. And I think those forces aren't, by the way, just in the United States. I think we can see this in a lot of different places, but one of those is the forces of energy. Now, I talked about this actually in a podcast last week.   [00:17:39.700] We explained all about what's happening in energy and energy markets and energy commodities in general. And I would really actually encourage you to go back and listen to that because it's really important to understand the forces of energy. And energy as a decline. Force is so powerful. It is so powerful, it's transnational, it's global.   [00:17:59.540] It's something that really makes everybody poor and there are solutions to it. We talked about nuclear. We talked about I made an analogy to the collapse of Bronze Age civilizations and ushering in the Iron Age when people discovered steel. We have fission, we have fusion technology, we have our steel. It's coming, right?   [00:18:17.430] We have things that we can do to actually improve that. But the bottom line is that it is taking a lot more energy to produce energy. And that makes everybody poor. There is a very clear, very clear trend between cheap energy and when I say cheap energy, I mean essentially, it doesn't take very much energy to produce energy. It doesn't take very much you don't have to burn a whole lot of oil to produce barrels of oil, right?   [00:18:43.390] So that's cheap energy. And when you have cheap energy, you have prosperity. Where you have expensive energy, you have a lack of prosperity. And so what we're seeing right now, this increase in energy prices, and I don't just mean in dollar terms, I'm talking about in energy terms. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, I would really encourage you to go back and listen to that.   [00:19:01.840] But energy is getting more expensive, makes everybody poorer. That is definitely a force of decline in the US. But the US. Is also subject to forces of in addition to forces of energy, forces of society, where we see the rise of socialism and wokeness and this horrible division that exists where two people just can't even have a conversation and people get in fist fights on airplanes because they're just so tightly wound. And we see all of this leads to things, terrible, terrible national priorities where we say, oh, we got all these problems going on.   [00:19:31.960] You know what? Let's forgive student debt. Let's take a trillion dollars that we don't have and just make it go away because people need to study underwater basket weaving and all these kind of ridiculous things. And you know what, just to be fair, there are a lot of people, and I think especially more conservative pundits, that have said, oh, this is something that it sticks the cost onto people. Blue collar workers that didn't go to college, the working class, so that people who study whatever gender studies and things like that can get their degrees for free.   [00:20:05.610] And that's not entirely true. Obviously, there are a lot of people who go to medical school they study computer engineering, whatever. But if you really look at the statistics in terms of the degrees, degrees of study courses study that most people take, a lot of it's not exactly hard science. Most of the stuff that people study is not hard science is not technology. It's things that don't actually move the needle economically for the United States.   [00:20:29.970] So if you think of it in terms of return on investment, let's be honest, we're probably going to get a higher return on investment. If we even think this is a good idea at all to say let's forgive education, you're probably going to get a higher return on investment, incentivizing engineering and math and science and all the Stem fields. But that's not really what they're doing. So they're saying, oh come on, come all, we're just going to forgive all this student debt, which is extremely inflationary, but this is a terrible priority, or another terrible priority. As an example, they got so insane over their vaccine mandates and he had the federal government going and literally firing people because they wouldn't get a COVID-19 vaccine.   [00:21:05.810] And there are people that were high up in national security positions, people with literally decades of black ops experience going and doing clandestine missions overseas, but we're going to fire them because they can't get a vaccine. They don't want to get totally fine that they go and risk their lives with terrorist cells, but not okay that they don't get a covet shot, so we're going to fire them, right? That's an insane priority that we're going to prioritize. Subordination over public health policy is a higher priority than national security. That is a horrible priority.   [00:21:35.520] But this is an example of the forces of society that the US is gripping with, that is an indication of its decline. Another one of these four forces. In addition to the forces of energy. The forces of society. We have our forces of economy.   [00:21:47.310] The overspending. The constant insane deficit spending. The inflation. The money printing. The national debt.   [00:21:53.210] The fact that Social Security is about to go bankrupt and is going to require a bailout to the tune of literally tens of trillions of dollars and I say about to go bankrupt. I mean in the context and the timeline of retirement where the Social Security Board of Trustees itself is saying. Look guys. Basically within the next ten years these trust funds are going to run out of money and that's going to cause a serious problem. We're going to have to cut back on the promises we made.   [00:22:17.500] We're going to have to cut back on the benefits that we pay every month. We might have to do all sorts of other things in order to keep this program going. And I don't even think they scratched the surface of that realization. Are they doing anything about it? No, of course not.   [00:22:29.910] They're going to keep kicking the cannon on the road and saying nothing to see here, people don't worry about it. And in ten years, this is going to be a massive problem, I guarantee you. The last force that we're dealing with in terms of US decline is the forces of history. The forces of history involve the natural cycle of things, the rise and fall of empires, the rise and fall of reserve currencies, the rise and fall of military power, all these things that we've seen over and over and over again. And this idea of cyclicality is really important.   [00:23:00.980] We spent a whole podcast last week talking about the forces of energy. We write all the time about the forces of society and the forces of economy. I want to talk a little bit about the forces of history today, this idea of the natural cycle, where there's always been a dominant superpower, there's always been a dominant reserve currency, there's always been a dominant economic system, and these things change over time. And I've talked about this and I've written about this really since I started Soccer Man 13 years ago. But I will admit again, you have to have humility with this.   [00:23:30.970] I've been wrong. I've been wrong a lot. One of the areas I've been wrong is I've thought there's always been and there's always going to be a dominant superpower. And we can think about this throughout history. The United States the dominant superpower.   [00:23:42.860] Now, before the US, the US displaced Great Britain, which used to be the dominant superpower. Britain displaced France, which in the 17 hundreds, the 1617 hundreds, was the dominant superpower. France displaced Spain, spain displaced the Ottoman Empire, et cetera. So you can go back and sort of walk that dog throughout history and see one empire declining, another empire rising, that empire declining, another one taking its place. And I've applied this thinking to trying to determine what's going to be the next dominant superpower, and I just sort of assumed by default, it's got to be China.   [00:24:15.930] It has to be. It's the only possible option. But I've always had some misgivings about that, because China has its own problems, right? China has I mean, if you think about the US. The US has a massive amount of debt.   [00:24:26.150] It's got all these bizarro financial crises, looming retirement crisis, currency issues, etc. And guess what? China has that too. China has massive amount of debt, has its own really weird financial crises brewing. It's got its shadow financial system and all these things with just huge debt bubbles.   [00:24:42.800] China has its own retirement crisis, unfunded pensions, etc. It's got serious currency issues in terms of lack of convertibility, and nobody really trusts it. But more importantly, it's got all these continued economic tumultuous, economic issues from its COVID response that to this day, now going on almost three years since it was first discovered in China, in Wuhan, that they're still shutting down the economy, they're still locking people in their homes, they're still doing all these crazy draconian. Things and you could just keep looking at this, etc and etc. There are so many issues in China now, I would look at all of these and say, well, that's fixable, because while China has a lot of debt, it has a lot of problems with its pensions and problems with its currencies, et cetera.   [00:25:26.730] All that stuff is actually fixable because China does have a lot of assets. It's got a lot of financial reserves, it's got huge foreign reserves, lots and lots of savings, lots of production. So a lot of these financial and economic issues are fixable. But there are some things in China that are not fixable. And the biggest one of those really is its demographic issues.   [00:25:48.070] Decades of this one child policy, which is one of the dumbest ideas since the feudal system, have really vanquished future Chinese prosperity. What you want in any nation, in any healthy nation, for any healthy economy, you have to have a demographic period, demographic pyramid, basically, it's got a lot of young people at the bottom and not as many old people at the top. You don't want it to be really steep. But you want it to be enough. Where you've got younger people that are eventually going to go into the workforce and there are going to be more people in the workforce and they are retired.   [00:26:22.990] And that the people in the workforce can pay for the people that are retired. And it's not going to be a huge burden and so forth. And you've got this kind of constantly, steadily growing, not by a whole lot, but a steadily growing population that keeps a very steady, safe demographic pyramid, where you constantly have this new flow of young people. And they just destroyed that in China. They said, okay, we're only going to have one child.   [00:26:44.660] Well, guess what? If you have two parents and one child, that means by the time those children come of age, now you've got one person taking care of two older people. It just doesn't work. It just does not compute arithmetically. It doesn't work.   [00:26:57.210] And you can't just fix that, right? Because now they finally realized, oh, my God, that was stupid. So they're getting away. They've gotten away from their one child policy. But you can't just fix that overnight because it takes literally decades and decades to fix that.   [00:27:10.540] You can't just conjure out of thin air 30 year old people, right, who are in the workforce and they're contributing and they're paying taxes and they're paying into pension funds and paying into Social Security programs. You can't just conjure that out of thin air. The only way you can is with immigration, right? If you have immigration, say, okay, we're going to open our borders. Everybody that's 30 years old, between 30 and 45, we want you coming into our country, paying taxes and working and so forth, because we have all these older people and we don't have enough young people in theory, you could fix that problem with immigration.   [00:27:40.640] Now, you get too much of that all at one time, you create a whole other set of problems. But it doesn't even matter because this immigration wave in China is extremely unlikely. It's extremely unlikely because who wants to deal with that? Who wants to deal with the environmental crisis? Who wants to deal with all this COVID nonsense?   [00:27:55.230] Who wants to deal with the lack of freedom? Most people can't even speak Chinese. It's a tonal language, and there's not that many tonal languages in the world. And it's very unlikely that China is going to be able to just fix this all of a sudden with immigration. It's possible, but it's unlikely.   [00:28:08.970] And on top of that, they have their debt problems, retirement crises and currency issues and all these things that I need to fix. So again, in theory it's fixable, but it's highly unlikely that they're going to be able to fix all of this. And this is essentially what leads to the conclusion that China isn't necessarily bound to become the world's dominant superpower. And I've had to unlearn this. Now, I said earlier, one of the key lesson from history that we talked about earlier is that sometimes things happen, events happen in history that are far more important than anybody realizes at the time.   [00:28:40.680] Again, like the fall of Rome on September 4, 476 Ad. Like Martin Luther in 1517. Like the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. That's lesson one that we can learn about from history today. Lesson two is that the world doesn't necessarily need to have a dominant superpower.   [00:28:58.070] We've had this unipolar superpower world that's very US centric, and that's certainly on the way out, as the US is clearly in decline for years before that, decades, it was kind of a bipolar world, but the US. Was clearly the more dominant one when it was the US and the Soviet Union, which you had in the had these two superpowers together. But there was obvious that the Soviet Union was in decline and it wasn't going to last, and eventually they went away. But there is a case to be made that the world doesn't need to have a dominant superpower at all, doesn't need to have a single superpower or dual competing superpowers. It's possible the world has no superpower at all.   [00:29:38.510] And to this I would actually point to this period of time after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. So we go back to 476. And now initially you've got Emperor Zeno says, hey, now I'm the big cheese, I'm the sole guy. I get to be emperor now of all of Rome, and it's all that's going to take place from Constantinople. But over time, the Eastern Roman Empire, which was just known as the Roman Empire, again became known as the Byzantine Empire, started to fall into decline after you have the Justinian era, et cetera.   [00:30:10.170] By the 600s, Byzantium was still relevant, but it was no longer the dominant superpower. And you had all these different barbarian kingdoms. If you look at a map of Europe and the have all these different kingdoms, the Visigoths, the Franks, the Phryzians, the Jews, the Saxons, the Slavs, the Avar Kingdom, then he had the Arabs. This was after Muhammad and the Muslim caliphates were rising. They were conquering all over in the Middle East and parts of Africa.   [00:30:36.390] The Vikings were going to emerge soon, right? So you had all these different barbarian kings and all of them, each of them was powerful in its own way. Not one of them was so much more powerful than the others. There wasn't one of them that could just command the rest to heal and say, okay, here's what we're going to do, like the US has been able to do for so long, right? The Byzantine Empire was no longer powerful enough that it could do that.   [00:30:58.870] It couldn't tell the Saxon, hey, here's what you're going to do. Saxons, here's what you're going to do. Franks, here's what you're going to do. Goths, they couldn't do that anymore, right? And so it wasn't a unipolar world or a bipolar world.   [00:31:12.170] It was just a no superpower world. And the world just sort of existed that way. And my thinking has evolved in this way now, where I start, instead of thinking about, OK, China is going to be the next dominant superpower. Now, I think of it as this barbarian kingdoms theory and thinking, what are the barbarian kingdoms of tomorrow? And clearly China is going to be one of them.   [00:31:37.320] China is going to be one of these kingdoms. Just say, okay, it has all these problems. Yeah, great big deal. Still a billion people, a huge economy. Huge economy, right.   [00:31:45.680] Probably will be continued to be the large it might even be today already the largest economy in the world. Will probably continue to be the largest economy in the world for quite some time. But that doesn't necessarily make it the dominant superpower that gets to command everything that happens in the world. Europe, the EU, Eurozone, whatever that ends up looking like in the future. And I think that's clearly going to change.   [00:32:06.890] That's still relevant. It's still there, right? It's a lot weaker. Europe is having so many issues. It's energy issues, it's refugee issues, all sorts of things.   [00:32:15.980] That debt issues. It wasn't that long ago they had the Pigs crisis. Portugal, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain. Europe is still going to be relevant. That we can't say that Europe is just going to fall off the face of the Earth is a very advanced civilization with hundreds of millions of people.   [00:32:32.970] This is still going to be a very relevant place that has power, greater Russia, whatever context that means, whether it's just Russia or a smaller Russia or even larger Russia than it is today. If they win this war in Ukraine and they annex Ukraine, and the annex, other places and they start sort of piecing together almost a Soviet Union. Again, I think there's a very strong case to be made that Russia becomes and remains really quite a powerful place. India I think is fairly obvious as well, just by sheer size. And look.   [00:33:05.800] The US. Is not going anywhere. Anything is possible, but most likely the US. Continues to exist and I think it remains still powerful. I think it's likely that the US.   [00:33:16.280] Tries to sort of ally itself in some kind of North American union. Canada's got a lot of oil reserves, mexico's got a lot of commodities and there becomes sort of a North American union I would say, and we'll talk about this in a minute, that the future of this is actually very commodity oriented, commodity versus today it's all about money is power. Well I think in the future, and we're getting there very quickly, is that wealth, real wealth is in commodities, it's in stuff, it's in real things as opposed to money in dollars and paper assets. And so if you combine North America is incredibly wealthy in stuff, in resources and commodities, especially if you include Mexico and Canada together in some North American union, that could be an extremely powerful alliance, a federation if you will. There are other players that I think are also going to be very relevant.   [00:34:07.050] I think you've got the United Kingdom is always going to be I think, relevant. Venezuela, which now by many official statistics has the largest oil reserves in the world. If I'm honest. I think there's a case to be made that there's an invasion of Venezuela at some point just to sort of take over their oil reserves and pull Venezuela into some sort of federation, some North American union or American union. I think even the UK maybe joins that.   [00:34:32.670] You have the US. The UK, canada, Mexico, Venezuela, possibly a couple of places together in some union to try and compete against China which makes its own union with Southeast Asia. So you've got all this sort of manufacturing capacity and economic power against North America, but you've got Russia and you've got Europe and different places in the world and I think there's a case to be made and again there's no crystal ball here. So I in no way could say this is exactly what it looks like. But if we try and connect the dots and use the Gretzky cliche and try and figure out where is the pot going to be, it seems pretty obvious that the US.   [00:35:09.800] Is in decline for all these forces that we talked about, the forces of history and the forces of economy, the forces of society, the forces of energy that are pushing the US. And decline. It's not inevitable. Some of these things can change. They can certainly change the trajectory of these forces of energy.   [00:35:25.160] They could turn the forces of energy into growth instead of decline if they would just get their shit together and realize, oh wow, nuclear is so powerful and we can get on board this, and this is really going to solve a lot of our problems. And by getting on board and stemming the decline in terms of the forces of energy that can really turn around a lot of other things and create a lot of prosperity, which helps unleash a lot of to reverse the decline in terms of the economic issues in the US. Etc. And so there are a lot of things that can happen here. But if we look at the trajectory right now and the forces and trends that are in front of us, this is certainly a plausible scenario that doesn't necessarily look exactly like I've been outlining here.   [00:36:04.170] But there are a lot of different this barbarian kingdom theory where there is no single dominant superpower. And the reason that's worth thinking about is because whether it's China that rises or multiple this sort of multiple barbarian kingdom theory, it has a significant effect on the US dollar. And that's going to have implications for just about every single person alive, because what it ultimately means is a different global financial system. The world right now, the financial system in the world is this we go back in time a little bit. Now we go back in time to July 1944.   [00:36:41.190] It's at the tail end of World War II. The invasion of Normandy was successful in the US. Knows now the writing is on the wall. Most of the world knows the writing is on the wall, at least in Europe, that the war is going to come to an end fairly soon. And they got together in a hotel in the United States in Bretton Woods, which is a city in New Hampshire.   [00:37:00.570] And they said, okay, we're going to create a new financial system. Over the month of July 1944, they created a whole new financial system, decided the US. Is going to be the center of this new financial universe. The US dollar is going to be pegged to gold, and every other currency is going to be pegged to the US. Dollar.   [00:37:14.930] And it was basically the system of fixed exchange rates, which existed for a very long time. In August of 1970, 115 August to be exact, richard Nixon terminated gold convertibility once and for all. There was some kind of movements before that and et cetera, but in August 1971, Nixon terminated gold convertibility. So in terms of the Bretton Woods system that existed, where they said the US dollar is pegged to gold and everything else is pegged to the US. Dollar.   [00:37:41.940] Well, Nixon terminated that. So now we have the system of free floating exchange rates where the dollar goes up or down against the pound, and the pound goes up and down against the German mark and so forth. And this kind of colloquially became known as Bretton Woods Two. So the original one was Bretton Woods one. Now we have Bretton Woods two.   [00:37:57.720] And during that time, the US. Remained still the dominant superpower. It wasn't long after that the Soviet Union was an obvious decline, then collapsed entirely. And for the last 30 years, it's been a unipolar world, and the US. Has been the dominant superpower.   [00:38:11.810] And why is that? Right? Why is the US. They took the dollar off of gold and they've kind of done whatever, they printed a bunch of money and all these things. Why does this continue to be the case?   [00:38:20.780] Well, one, because obviously there is no alternative. The US. Has been the dominant power for so long. The dollar has been the dominant currency for so long. That's just the way it's been.   [00:38:30.140] And since there's no obvious alternative at the moment, the world just sort of remained that way. But also specifically because the US. Has very mature financial infrastructure. You've got very free flowing markets. There's no formal capital controls in the US.   [00:38:45.030] You can move money in, move money out. It's got a very robust banking system. It's got financial markets. These financial markets are very deep and relatively transparent. You can throw literally, if you have to, you could put trillions of dollars to work in the United States, whether you talk about stocks or bonds or whatever else, real estate, even.   [00:39:04.230] They're very deep financial markets in the United States where you could put money to work. And so that's a major factor in why you couldn't do that. For example, this is why I hate to pick on Costa Rica. It's a wonderful country, but Costa Rica Cologne is just never going to be the reserve currency in the world because it's just not a big enough economy. The financial markets in Costa Rica really aren't even any financial markets in Costa Rica.   [00:39:27.360] You couldn't do anything. You couldn't put that money to work. So anybody that's holding Costa Rica Cologne, what are you going to do with that money, right? You can't invest, you can't put it to work anywhere. You can't buy assets with it, so it just doesn't work.   [00:39:38.490] The US. Has a really huge economy with very deep and liquid financial markets, so it makes it very easy and very convenient to put money to work. The other thing that really has kind of maintained the US financial lead in the world has kept the dollar being in the position that it is, is for the longest time, the US. Has had unmatched military power. And believe it or not, that actually is a very big deal.   [00:40:01.650] And the reason why is because the US military is what supports this concept of the I call it the petrodollar loop. The concept of petrodollar is very common. People know about this. This terminology basically refers to the fact that oil and oil contracts around the world are priced in dollars, whether it's the Saudis selling to Europeans or different oil producing people in Indonesia, selling to Australia. Those oil contracts are priced and quoted and settled in US dollars.   [00:40:33.070] And that's a really big deal. And the reason that's such a big deal is because it creates this loop. It creates this essentially artificially engineered demand for US dollars. Means every country has got to buy oil. So if you want to buy oil, you've got to be able to have US dollars because that's how you pay.   [00:40:51.320] You pay for oil in US dollars, right? And so you pay for oil in US dollars, which means that you need US dollars. So you have to hold US dollars. So if you're holding US dollars, you have to hold those dollar somewhere. And this essentially what do I do?   [00:41:05.050] If you're a country, you got $100 billion in US dollar reserves. What am I going to do with this money? I got to put it to work somewhere. So I have to put it in US financial markets. And most of the time that means US bond markets and most of the time that specifically means US government debt.   [00:41:19.580] Treasuries, right? US. Government debt. So people, essentially the fact that oil and by extension coffee and copper and all these major commodities are priced in US dollars creates demand for US dollars.   [00:41:34.570] And I talked about the military. The military actually has a lot to do with that because it goes back to this agreement made with OPEC nations and Saudi Arabia and basically saying, look, we'll give you military aid, we'll protect you, we'll give you military technology, we'll give you weapons, et cetera, as long as you price and quote and sell your oil in US dollars. And if Saudi Arabia is going to do it, pretty much everybody else is going to go along with that. They set the standard. And so this is the concept of the petrodollar.   [00:42:02.190] And the fact that the US military is so powerful means that a lot of these other countries, they're just not going to mess with that. They're not going to disrupt that, and they're going to price and sell and quote oil contracts and so many other commodities contracts in US dollars. It creates demand for dollars, which creates just out of the blue creates this artificial demand for US government debt. It means there's all these foreigners out there in the world that are buying US Treasury debt. Every time the government wants to go into debt, it's got all these foreigners there that are more than happy to buy.   [00:42:30.770] Now let's go back to the concept of decline. Again, if we go back to Rome in the 400, the 300s, it was so obvious that Rome was in decline. If you look at the United States today, it also seems pretty obvious the US is in decline. They do the things that take place in the United States. I mean, my God, look at what happened in Afghanistan last year.   [00:42:54.450] It was so humiliating to see.   [00:43:00.350] Honestly, it's probably the one thing that still gets me really emotional to see that maybe it's the fact that I served in the military and just to see that just so humiliating. But it wasn't even just that. I mean, the things we had politicians stand up and say, talking about multi trillion dollar spending packages go on live television with a straight face and say it's going to cost nothing. Or Pelosi running off to Taiwan and literally trying to set off World War Three. Or the fact that supposedly all these people with decades and decades of foreign policy experience couldn't stop the invasion of Ukraine.   [00:43:34.390] It's just one thing after another after another after another. It's the division and the horrible wokeness. And the fact that they go and they pass a law to say, oh, let's go and give $80 billion to the Internal Revenue Service, because that's what a healthy economy, that's what a wealthy nation does as we go and we invest tons of money into our tax authorities to go around and harass private citizens. That makes a lot of sense. All these things are such obvious indications of decline.   [00:44:02.150] And I don't mean that in an emotional sense. I'm not trying to say all the US. Is finished and it's all going away or trying to scare anybody. I think it's important, however, that people look at these things rationally and just ask yourself, is this something that a dominant superpower does? Is this the way that a wealthy, prosperous nation acts?   [00:44:20.480] Are these the things that we would see from a country that's on its way up or on its way down? And I think if you look at it rationally, you look at the events, you look at the conflict again, the forces of society, the forces of economy, the forces of history, a lot of these things that we're seeing are really signs of a downward trajectory. That doesn't mean it's going to happen tomorrow. But boy, if we think back to five years ago, ten years ago, it's like a totally different world now. It's a totally different country.   [00:44:45.840] It's really hard to not see the fact that things have been accelerating and deteriorating very rapidly. It doesn't mean that it's a one way street down. Things could reverse, things could improve, et cetera. But it seems pretty clear, if you look at events rationally, that the US. Is in decline.   [00:45:03.170] And it's entirely possible, if we go back to this concept of lesson number one, that sometimes there's an event that happens. And that event is something that at the time, people just think it's just again, it's some passing thing that happened. Just like when Odoacer marches into Ravana and goes up to Romulus August and said, you're no longer the emperor kid. Get out of here. And people go up and they shrug their shoulders.   [00:45:25.100] Here we go again. It's another guy, another emperor. Somebody else got deposed. Big whoop. We've seen this a million times before.   [00:45:31.700] And they never really connected the dots and said, oh, my God, this is it. As a political entity, we're actually done, right? Maybe there's already been that ODA oasis event in the United States. Maybe it was Afghanistan. Maybe it was years ago.   [00:45:46.540] Maybe it was something that's still to happen. We don't know yet, because, again, this lesson from history, sometimes something happens that's so powerful, marluther goes and nails his 95 feces on the door of the church in Wittenburg, Germany, and nobody even realized at the time what a watershed moment that was. Maybe it's happened already, and we don't even know. But in theory, if we think about decline in the United States, in theory, there should be some event, and maybe it's already happened that becomes the thing that triggers the decline of the Petrodollar, right? And some of this, by the way, it is happening, some of this has been engineered just out of plain stupidity.   [00:46:21.670] I mean, the fact that they engineered so many stupid things, even in Russia, the Russians used to take US. Dollars as payments, and then they said, oh, no, you can't take US. Dollars anymore on the road. Said. Okay.   [00:46:32.530] I guess we'll take Rubles. And now they're dealing with the Chinese and Renminbi, and they're demanding rubles from the Europeans. Well, guess what? That's a clear case of Petrodollar decline. We've seen this across the Middle East with countries now that are saying, you know what?   [00:46:45.220] We'll go ahead and take other currencies. We'll take renminbi, we'll deal with Russia, et cetera. Because a lot of this comes from just engineered stupidity, from a bunch of rank amateurs masquerading as experts in diplomacy. Oh, I have 50 years of experience, but somehow I'm a complete idiot when it comes to diplomacy and engineering. All these things that ultimately result in this decline of the Petrodollar, right?   [00:47:08.970] Because now, all of a sudden, when you have different countries and now trading with each other in oil and gas and different commodities, and they're not invoicing each other and they're not settling and closing those trades and transactions in US. Dollars, guess what it means? That's a decline in the petroleum. It means there's less demand for US. Dollars.   [00:47:24.720] And that's a really big deal. It's a really big deal. The other part of that, if you go back to this idea of these sort of competing barbarian kingdoms where you have several powerful entities, powerful blocs, powerful countries, but they're competing with each other, and there's no single dominant superpower. If you have no single dominant superpower, you don't necessarily have a single dominant reserve currency. So if we imagine a future where the US.   [00:47:49.460] Continues on this trajectory, the US. Continues to decline, and again, we're just trying to connect dots, and we see the US. Is obviously in decline. If that trajectory continues, we can see a world where China has got its problems, but it's very powerful. The US.   [00:48:01.900] Is very powerful, but has so many problems. Europe is still powerful. Russia's powerful, right? We have a lot of different competing powers. And because of that, there's no single dominant reserve currency because hey, countries are invoicing and trading no longer petrodollars.   [00:48:17.010] Now they're trading in euros and they're trading in renminbi. And people are like, you know what, we'll start taking other currencies now and it's fine. And that's a really big deal because it decreases demand for US dollars, right? So we have all the stuff that they've engineered so far out of their own stupidity. We've got the rise of competition.   [00:48:33.540] We also have the fact that the US is rapidly becoming no longer, I still think to this day, an unmatched military power, but not anywhere near the same way it used to be. I would still contend that the US marine Corps is the baddest and boldest military force in the world, probably in the entire history of the world. But if we're honest, the Chinese military is becoming more powerful every day, every year, for sure. And their weapons and technology, especially missile technology, all these things, they really are running circles around the US in a lot of different elements of military technology. So you can't ignore that.   [00:49:09.380] That's one of these forces of history. If we think about the US decline and that has an impact on things like the petrodollar, petrodollar has a huge impact on the future of US debt and the US economy. A lot of this is because if we think about for the last several decades I talked about this a minute ago, but wealth has been really paper has been wealth. Wealth has been paper. We think about financial assets, we think about bonds, we think about stocks, we think about pieces of paper.   [00:49:36.380] We think about the representations of paper in our bank accounts. Bank accounts, just a number printed on the screen. It's an entry in the database that says you have this much money. And that database is an abstraction of some piece of paper that isn't backed by anything, right? It's all of it's just sort of this make believe abstraction of wealth.   [00:49:53.970] That's what money is today. That's what wealth is today. In a highly inflationary environment, in an uncertain environment, in an environment where you've got multiple powers and multiple competition, and it's no longer clearly this one piece of paper that's better than all the other pieces of paper, this idea of paper wealth starts to take a backseat to real wealth. Real wealth meaning stuff, commodities, actually productive assets, businesses and minerals and of course oil and energy and all these things. Real assets, as opposed to paper assets, real assets really becomes the most powerful thing, really the most powerful form of wealth.   [00:50:31.990] This is actually what I would view if we think about, again, trying to connect the dots and we look at all these different things, what's happening in energy markets, what's happening in the US economy, and geopolitics. Et cetera, and just looking at the things that seem really obvious. Well, we've been on this Bretton Woods. There was a Bretton Woods One. There was Bretton Woods too.   [00:50:49.620] But now a lot of the fundamental things that have made Breton Woods Two possible, like unmatched military power, unmatched US. Economic power, all these things that used to underpin Britain Woods Two are no longer still the case. Right. So this takes us into a future. What does it look like?   [00:51:06.250] Let's call it Bretton Woods 3.0. What does that look like? What does Bretton Woods 3.0 look like? Well, I think it probably looks like competing reserve currencies, especially this sort of barbarian kingdom thesis hold. Or it means the US.   [00:51:18.810] Isn't the dominant reserve currency. Maybe the renminbi becomes the dominant reserve currency. Maybe the international community gets together and says strategic SDRs that are issued by the International Monetary Fund. This becomes a dominant reserve currency. Or the World Bank creates some new reserve currency.   [00:51:32.840] Or maybe it's gold. Right. But there are a lot of different possibilities. But each of these different possibilities, unless the answer is no. Nothing to see here.   [00:51:43.470] The US. Dollar continues to be the only dominant reserve currency in the world. Right? Okay, there's a small chance that that's the case, but there's a lot of different scenarios here that there's competing reserve currency, or it's gold, or it's some formal IMF World Bank reserve currency. Right.   [00:51:59.200] So all of those different options essentially mean that there's reduced demand for US dollars. There's reduced demand for us. Dollars because the Chinese are no longer paying for oil in dollars. They're paying in renminbi, or maybe they're paying in rubles. The Saudis aren't necessarily demanding US dollars for payment anymore.   [00:52:15.530] The Venezuelans are not demanding payment for US dollars anymore. This is actually why I think it may be possible, certainly not outside the realm of possibilities, that there's an invasion. There's some excuse for there to be an invasion, a US. Invasion of Venezuela. And Venezuela essentially becomes a client state of the US.   [00:52:31.880] Just to make damn sure that Venezuela continues invoicing and closing trades for oil in US dollars. That's certainly a possibility. There's precedent. That the US. Will use its military to defend the petrodollar because they know it is so important.   [00:52:47.750] Now, why is it important? Petrodoll is so important. This idea about foreigners and having demand for US dolls is so important because you have to think about the national debt. Now, so far this year, this is again September 9, 2022. Bear in mind the US fiscal year starts on October 1.   [00:53:04.890] From October 1, 2021 to September 9, 2022. That's almost the entire fiscal year. Right? The fiscal year is going to end on September 30, so just three weeks from today. But so far this fiscal year, the US.   [00:53:15.140] National debt has increased by almost two and a half trillion dollars. Technically, the actual numbers $2,468,000,969,678 as of yesterday afternoon. That's the amount, $2.46 trillion in additional debt so far this fiscal year. Now this is really important. 246 trillion dollars.   [00:53:39.740] That's new debt, right? That's basically the difference between how much they spent this year and how much they earned in tax revenue was about $2.46 trillion. But the actual amount of debt, the actual amount of debt that was issued this year was about $16.5 trillion. Now let that sink in. The actual amount of debt issued was 16 and a half trillion dollars, basically since October 1.   [00:54:08.190] 16 and a half trillion dollars. It's like one $4 trillion a month. It's an insane amount of money, 16 and a half trillion dollars. Now, what's the difference? Let's say the debt went up by two and a half, right?   [00:54:22.340] But we issued 16 and a half trillion debt. What's the difference? That's $14 trillion difference. How do you get $14 trillion difference? Well, I'll explain to you.   [00:54:28.920] 14 and a half trillion dollars is debt that's already matured. So let's talk about very briefly, let's do Bonds 101, how bonds really work. The US. Government borrows money almost every day, right? Government is constantly borrowing money.   [00:54:42.130] You can go to the treasury website, they have an auction schedule, literally, at least every week, they're issuing 28 day T bills. The idea is that the government borrows money, but it does it in specific increments of time. So you can buy a bond that's literally the shortest bond is 28 days. So you give the government $1,000 and 28 days to give you back $1,000, plus a tiny bit of interest. Actually, it works.   [00:55:03.440] Technically, they discount it, but that's a different story. So the shortest term bond is basically 28 days. This is called 28 day bills, and it goes all the way up to 30 years, right? So there's people that loan the government money in the early 1990s that haven't been paid back yet. They'll get repaid sometime over the next several months.   [00:55:24.170] Literally today, somebody that loaned the government money in 2012 and bought a ten year note is going to get paid back today. Somebody that loan the government money on September 9, 2012, their bond is going to be called when the bond matures. So a ten year bond that was issued on September 9, 2012, would literally mature today. And the government has to pay them back, right? So we have these bonds again, that are issued anywhere from 28 days to 30 years.   [00:55:52.880] And the common ones, you got one year, two year, ten year, et cetera. And so these bonds, again, whether it's 28 days or one year bonds, two year bonds, five year bonds, ten year bonds, technically, anything between one and ten years is called a note. But let's not get bogged down on the nomenclature. But when these bonds mature, they need to be repaid. So the government borrows money.   [00:56:13.790] It issues a ten year note today. Well, in 2032, September 9, ten years from today, they're going to need to pay that money back just like anybody else, right? When the bonds mature, they need to be repaid. So most people, when they have debt that needs to be repaid, they reach into their pocket and they pay the money. But that's not how the government works because the government doesn't have that money, right?   [00:56:35.710] The government doesn't have the money to actually repay bondholders whenever those bonds mature. So what do they do? They just borrow more. It's like they basically refinanced the debt. So what happened this fiscal year, $14 trillion of bonds matured and rather than pay that money back, the government just borrowed another $14 trillion to pay back the $14 trillion.   [00:56:57.060] So what happened? They borrowed 14 trillion and they used that 14 trillion to pay back the other $14 trillion. So the actual amount of debt, the net debt didn't increase. Right? They went into debt by additional 14 trillion, but then they paid back 14 trillion.   [00:57:10.550] So we had plus 14 -14 so the net debt. Is actually zero, but the important thing is they had to go out and actually still borrow the $14 trillion to pay back the $14 trillion, right? So we have two and a half trillion dollars basically in new debt because they spend more than they earn. But on top of that, they still had to go out and borrow $14 trillion to pay back the other 14 trillion. That's a total of almost 16 and a half trillion dollars worth of bonds that they had to sell this year.   [00:57:38.290] That is an enormous amount of money. That's an enormous amount of money. And it's not like this year wasn't an anomaly. Next year there's going to be a whole bunch of there's going to be trillions and trillions of dollars of the US national debt that matures. And guess what?   [00:57:52.180] The government is going to have to go and borrow money just to pay back that debt. And then on top of that, they're going to have to borrow more money because they're going to have to finance the deficit. They're going to have to pay, OK, we spent more money than we earned in tax revenue, so we got to go out and we got to borrow more money. This is every year now. It's not just the two and a half trillion dollars in additional spending, it's the $14 trillion in debt that they had to basically refinance, right?   [00:58:18.780] But that's still debt that they have to sell. So they have to go out to the whole world. They have to go to banks, they have to go to hedge funds, they have to go to foreign governments, they have to go to foreign central banks, they have to go to just foreigners in general and say, please, please buy our debt, buy our Treasuries, please buy this 1416 and a half trillion dollars. So obviously it's worth asking the question, how can they possibly continue borrowing $16 trillion per year? Even if it's a lot less than that.   [00:58:46.140] Hell, even it's only ten it's only $10 trillion. It's only $8 trillion. That's an enormous amount of money. That $8 trillion in debt is, like, larger than almost every economy on the planet. And they got to borrow that in debt every single year.   [00:59:02.690] That's an enormous amount of money, right, in a Breton Woods Three environment. That is virtually impossible in an environment where you've got competing reserve currencies, where you don't have the Petrodollar dominance that you used to have, right? Remember, under the Petra dollar, every government, every bank, every big company, overseas, everybody held dollars. Everybody had to hold dollars. Well, guess what?   [00:59:26.820] In an environment where there's a different reserve, there's some World Bank reserve or there's multiple competing reserve currency. You've got euros and you've got renminbi and you've got different currencies. Well, guess what? Now there's less demand for dollars, which means that people that used to buy those charges, that used to be in that group that said, okay, sure, we'll buy some of that $16 trillion, they used to be in that group, now they go, actually, I don't need US dollar assets anymore. Now I need renminbi assets.   [00:59:54.750] I need Rouble assets. I need Euro assets. I need maybe pound assets. I need gold. I need something else.   [01:00:01.320] I don't need dollars anymore. So that's less demand for dollars. So if you don't have these foreigners buying mopping up $16 trillion a year, $16 trillion in Treasuries in US debt every year, who's going to do it? Right? Who's going to do it?   [01:00:19.200] And more importantly, why would anybody want to? Because interest rates. If you buy these treasures, what are you going to get today? 3%? Three and a half percent.   [01:00:27.710] What's the rate of inflation? 8%. So if you're buying Treasuries, you're loaning money to the federal government, you're losing money when adjusted for inflation, you're losing money every single year. You're losing money after adjusting for inflation year after year after year. So why the hell would anybody want to do that?   [01:00:45.060] You're not making any money. You're losing money right? Now. You have all these other options to say, I can go and buy money.   [01:00:54.270] Oil from I could buy commodities from India. I could buy commodities from Australia. I could buy commodities from anywhere in the world. I could buy commodities from people in South America, Africa. I don't need to own US dollars anymore because there are so many different options.   [01:01:10.230] So why would anybody do this, right? Why would anybody mop up $16 trillion a year when you're losing money when adjusted for inflation? So the only way they could make it more attractive and say, please buy our bonds, please buy our national debt, the way they make it more attractive is they have to raise interest rates. And this is actually what happened in the 1980s. They raised interest rates so high, you could get 18% on a US government bond that was actually a lot higher than the rate of inflation.   [01:01:40.690] There were people that were buying 30 year bonds, paying 1516, 17%, 20% US. Government bonds for 30 years that were basically getting paid for 30 years, getting 30% a year, not getting paid 15%, 18% per year by the US. Federal government. That was a hell of a deal. That was an amazing deal, right?   [01:02:00.490] So they would have to raise interest rates. But if you raise interest rates now, you bankrupt the federal government, because now, can you imagine the federal government paying 15% interest on $10 trillion? That's $1.5 trillion a year, just an interest, right? You get to the point now where almost all of your tax revenue is going to pay interest on the debt, and now you're talking at night. So if you raise interest rates to a level that would actually be really attractive for foreign governments to go and buy US.   [01:02:30.730] Debt, now you bankrupt the federal government, you bankrupt the US. Government. And, oh, by the way, that doesn't even take into consideration this is another one of these. Again, when we're trying to connect the dots going forward, we got to look at obvious things. What's obvious?   [01:02:42.640] Social Security is going bankrupt, right? That's not some alarm bells, oh, my God, this guy is falling. This is guy I talk about this a couple of times a year. You read the Social Security annual report of the trustees? The trustees of Social Security program which includes the Treasury, Secretary of the United States, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the Secretary of Labor These are some of the most senior government officials in the United States government.   [01:03:08.800] And they say flat out in the report of trustees, the annual trustee report. You can Google it, look it up yourself, and see. You can read it. They'll say, you know what, the trust funds of Social Security will run out of money in the very early 2030s. So this is basically ten years from now, which in the context of retirement is kind of right around the corner.   [01:03:29.550] We're supposed to think about retirement over a period of like 40, 50 years. Ten years is right around the corner. So they're telling us the Treasury Secretary of the United States of America is telling us that Social Security is going to run out of money. It's trust funds are going to run out of money in ten years. And as a result of that, they're going to have to make serious, serious changes to the program or there's going to have to be a massive bailout and a massive bailout of Social Security.   [01:03:53.880] We're talking $10 trillion at least. The actual number that the US. Government puts on its balance sheet is over 50. $60 trillion is what's actually needed for Social Security. So even if they do a fraction of that and they say, okay, let's do $10 trillion, that's on top of like 510 trillion dollars a year in maturing debt on top of a couple of trillion dollars a year in deficit spending.   [01:04:15.690] How is this even possible, right? Who's going to do that? And you're talking about doing this in a world where foreign governments have there's competing reserve currencies. So people don't need US dollars anymore. They don't need to hold US government debt anymore because they have to hold US dollars.   [01:04:30.970] They can hold renminbi. They could hold euros. They could hold all sorts of different currencies because we're talking about a world where there's competing reserve currencies. This is massively destructive to the US economy, to the US government particularly, because if they don't have all these people out there in the world saying, okay sure, yeah, we'll buy $16 trillion a year in debt, if they don't have it anymore, then what happens? Well, either the Federal Reserve, the US.   [01:04:54.560] Central bank, the Fed has got to print all that money. The Fed prints the money and say, okay, here you go, here's your $16 trillion. So now the Fed basically goes on this absurd money printing bonanza and prints trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars every single year, which of course is going to result in huge inflation, or there's going to be a major default. And default could mean one of two things. Either they default on their financial obligations, they default US government defaults on its bonds, which again that's going to create another huge financial crisis, means that people aren't going to want to buy US debt at all, which is going to make that problem even worse.   [01:05:34.200] Or this is probably more likely they default on their obligations to citizens. They don't have enough money to pay for this premier world dominating military anymore. They can't have a 700 billion dollar defense budget anymore because there's so much of the money's got to go to pay interest on the national debt. They can't afford Social Security anymore, right? So they cut the program.   [01:05:53.860] Or they keep moving the needle and say, sorry, you're not going to retire at 65. Now we're going to move it to 75. You can't get Social Security until you're 75, or something like that. So these are the things, the promises that they've made people for years. We're going to provide for your security.   [01:06:08.400] We're going to provide for your retirement. We're going to provide these things. Guess what? They're just not going to have the money to do that. So they default on the promises they made to their citizens.   [01:06:16.540] So these are the ways if we look at things that are totally obvious, it's so obvious that Social Security is running out of money. That's not a conspiracy theory. That is literally a quote from the Treasury Secretary of the United States. They tell you in black and white that these trust funds are going to run out of money in ten years time.   [01:06:37.570] That one is so obvious we don't have to bother thinking about what could happen in the future. They're telling us, they're telling us right? We can see the decline in the US. We can see all these other competing factors and we connect the dots going forward and try and think about the things just big picture trends that are obvious. We can think, well geez, we're already kind of moving into a Bretton Woods three scenario.   [01:06:56.450] We're moving into an environment where because of all these different factors that may be competing, currencies debt level is going up. Even if somehow over the next ten years the US is able to escape a Bretton Woods Three scenario and for the next ten years the US dollar remains the world's dominant reserve currency. Even if that's true, they're still going to have to contend with Social Security. So either they're going to have to go into debt and say, okay, well we need another $10 trillion to bail out Social Security, which is going to be really hard, or they're going to default. Either way, these are things that I think people need to prepare for.   [01:07:30.360] And the implications are, number one, your taxes are probably going up. They're going to have to raise taxes right, because they're going to have to try and live within their means. They're going to have to pay for all this debt. They're going to have to pay the interest, they're going to have to pay the higher interest rates. So that means they're going to have to get the money from somewhere.   [01:07:46.070] So taxes are probably going up. It probably also means that retirement is uncertain, is a little bit in danger, Social Security is certainly in danger and it means that typical retirement planning that people base for decades thinking okay, I can do a little bit of this and then I'll get my Social Security and everything will be fine. Well I don't think you can necessarily think that way, especially if your retirement is farther out. If your retirement is more than ten to 15 years out in the future, you're really going to have to think differently about retirement and figure out different ways that I can save more for retirement or just assume that you're going to have to continue working for a lot longer than you were expecting. Because if you look at the annual trustee report for Social Security again they're telling us in black and white that those trust funds are going to run out of money and when the trust funds run out of money they are going to have to cut benefits.   [01:08:37.790] It's as simple as that. So this is really what plan B thinking is all about. It's trying to connect the dots a little bit, looking at things that are obvious, again with humility because we could be wrong and we have to acknowledge we're not Anthony Fauche. We don't have all the answers. Like nobody has all the answers except for Faucey, who knows everything that's ever going to happen again in the history and the future of the world, but everybody else is just a mere mortal.   [01:09:03.630] We don't know exactly what's going to happen. So we try and look at things that are completely obvious and recognize that we could be wrong, right? But that's why the idea is to look at these obvious trends and try and think about from a big picture perspective, is that a good thing or is that a bad thing? Is that good for my retirement or is it bad for my retirement? Is the fact that the Treasury Secretary is telling me that Social Security is going to run out of money, is that good for my retirement or is that bad for my retirement?   [01:09:27.930] These are very simple elementary questions, and this is really what Plan B thinking is all about. It's not rocket science. We keep it very simple. And if so, if it's like, okay, jeez, it's probably bad. So there's something that I can do about it, in which case there's no downside if I happen to be wrong.   [01:09:45.670] And so let's think about taxes. Taxes are probably going up. We could be wrong, but there's a very strong case to be made that taxes are going up. There's a lot of politicians right now screaming and moaning and whining and complaining about taxes are too low, we need to raise them. So we don't have to get into the details right now.   [01:10:04.140] But there are a lot of legal, perfectly legal and legitimate things that you can do to reduce your taxes. And if we're wrong and it turns out that taxes don't go up, in fact, taxes go down, well, there's no downside, right? There's no downside in taking completely legal and legitimate steps to reduce the amount that you owe. There's no downside in doing that. If taxes don't go up or they go down, even when you took certain steps now to reduce your taxes, guess what?   [01:10:32.020] You're still fine. Who cares? There's no downside in that whatsoever. As long as you keep it simple, you don't go out of your way and get involved in some really crazy, ultra complex, very expensive tax plan to reduce something. You're spending so much money and maintaining some structure every single year, tens of thousands of dollars and something like that, unless it's really worth it to you, right?   [01:10:58.190] But doing very simple things that make sense, there's no downside in that. You're not going to wake up and go, oh, I'm so angry, I save money on my taxes this year. Nobody's ever going to say that. Nobody's ever going to say that, right? And the same thing about retirement.   [01:11:12.370] If it turns out that benevolent space aliens show up and save Social Security, just pour a bunch of free money into Social Security and save retirement for everybody. And you went out and actually you set up a more robust retirement structure and you put some extra money away into your retirement plan. You made some better investments and you set up a structure where you could make more lucrative investments instead of just sort of generic, Wall Street managed generic, lackluster funds, and did things that were a little bit more interesting and more lucrative, and you have more money set aside for retirement. There's no downside in that, right? You're not going to be upset about that.   [01:11:49.800] And that's what Plan B thinking is all about. Look at the big picture trends. Look at the things that are obvious, try and determine, is this good for me or bad for me in the future? And what are the things that I can do now that are simple and cost effective and makes sense? No matter what happens next, if I'm totally wrong, if we're totally wrong about how we're thinking about X, Y, and Z, I'm still okay.   [01:12:10.040] That's what Plan B thinking is all about. As a final point in this, I would say a third lesson here. Number one, being there are often events in history, huge events that take place that people don't even realize the significance at the time, but they end up being watershed moments. And I think in the United States, it's possible that we've already had that. We've already had our Odo acer shows up to Romulus Augustus.   [01:12:34.430] It's possible we had that moment already. We might have had our Martin Luther moment already, or possible we didn't. We don't know. We're not going to know for quite some time. Lesson two is that doesn't always necessarily have to be a dominant superpower.   [01:12:46.360] We walk through a scenario in which there are multiple superpowers and what that might mean and what that means specifically to the petro dollar and the difficulty of the US. Being able to have to sell potentially $10 trillion a year or more of debt. That's a really tough thing to do. And the implications of that being able to potentially even bankrupt the US. Government and the potential inflation or the defaults that would take place, that's a big deal.   [01:13:12.130] Number three. Another lesson here is there's always a brighter place. And we talked about this barbarian kingdom period in history. This is actually what most people kind of commonly call the Dark Ages. And historians actually have tried to shift that to something else to say, well, let's not call the Dark Ages anymore because there's only the Dark Ages in Europe.   [01:13:31.850] And that's actually true, is that while it was the Dark Ages in Europe, you think about 600, 700 Ad. 800 Ad. It was the Dark Ages in Europe. But in China, it wasn't the Dark Ages. It was the golden age.   [01:13:42.930] That is the Tang dynasty, the golden age of Chinese civilization or the Gupta empire in India. Even the Golden Age are nearing the Golden Age in Japan, or the Empire of Ghana or different places around the world that were booming, right, booming economically, booming socially. They had peace, they had prosperity. It was a wonderful place to be. And that's always the case.   [01:14:05.930] It's always been the case that even though there's some place that might be really bad and struggling, there are other places, are doing really good. Dark Ages in one place might be Golden Ages in another place, and it doesn't mean that, okay, you should get up and move and go somewhere. For a lot of people I know that's really radical, but at least think about it. The world is a big place, and anybody who ever said, oh, it's a small world, never flew across the ocean to Australia before, the world is absolutely freaking enormous. And there are a lot of different opportunities in the world depending on what your priorities are.   [01:14:37.830] And different countries in different cities and different places have different things. Different opportunities for people. Depending on what your priorities if you're a priority is retirement. Or you want to raise your family in a quiet and peaceful place where you're not going to have people constantly screaming at you or telling you how to raise your children. Or business opportunities.   [01:14:53.890] Or you're young and single and you're looking for different lifestyle opportunities. Whatever the case may be. The world is a huge place and there are different opportunities for everybody where you can have your golden age. No matter what's happening in the world. Again, it doesn't necessarily mean you have to move, you have to pick up and go and take your family somewhere, but it's at least worth looking at options and knowing that if there is one of these events and we do find, oh, well, that was the Oto Acre event, that was Romulus Augustus in September 476 Ad.   [01:15:25.710] And it just happened, and I feel like I need to get out of here. You want to have that option available and that's again, also the idea behind a plan B is you want to have this stuff lined up in advance so that if plan B ever becomes plan A, you're not thinking about it while you're packing your bags. It's important to think about this stuff in advance and having a little bit of the interest and the courage and the presence of mine and the independence of mine to try and connect the dots again with humility. That's really what it is. That's what it's all about.   [01:15:57.950] Having a plan B. And plan B thinking. It's the whole idea. It's the idea is to look at big picture trends that are really obvious and things that we can look at again with a little bit of humility because we know we could be wrong and that's why we want to do things that make sense no matter what happens or doesn't happen. Next.   [01:16:13.930] Thank you very much for listening. I hope you enjoyed it and I'll speak to you again soon.   Close Podcast Transcription

The year 1776 is legendary for precisely one thing: the Declaration of Independence. But 1776 was actually a REALLY big year. Because in addition to the formation of the United States (which undoubtedly had an extraordinary impact on the course of the world), 1776 also saw two other historic trends take shape. The first was the birth of capitalism. 1776 was the year that Scottish economist Adam Smith published his famous work An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, which was the first book ever to outline the case for free markets and laissez-faire governments. Not to take anything away from impact that US independence had on the world, but you could easily make an argument that the idea of capitalism has been just as profound to human history. Capitalism is responsible for more wealth creation and more prosperity in the past 246 years than every economic system combined over the previous 5,000. That’s a pretty significant impact. But we’re not even finished yet with the big events from 1776. Because that year saw something else take place that was truly profound… again, potentially outweighing the impact of both US independence AND capitalism. It was the invention of the steam engine… which at the time may have been the most disruptive technology in human history up to that point. For thousands of years prior, nearly all work done on the planet was powered by muscle, i.e. human beings and animals toiling away in fields and factories. Just about everything required physical labor. The steam engine changed all of that. For the first time on a mass scale, an inanimate fuel source (like coal or wood) could power machinery, which could do the work of dozens, even hundreds of people. It was the steam engine that really kicked off the Industrial Revolution and brought about an extraordinary period of growth to the world, where wealth and standards of living increased like never before. Over time, human being figured out better, faster, cheaper ways to produce energy to fuel their machines. And there is an inextricable link between prosperity… and cheap energy. When energy is cheap and abundant, societies are able to invest heavily in growth; they have more resources (i.e. more energy) available to grow, to produce goods and services, to invest in the future. When energy is expensive and scarce, the opposite happens. A society has to spend most of its energy just to sustain itself, and there is limited surplus left over for growth and investment. After generations of enjoying cheap energy and declining costs that fueled unparalleled prosperity, we are now facing steeply rising energy costs. And I don’t even mean in dollar terms. Sure, the cost of a barrel of oil has more than doubled in the last year. Gasoline prices and electricity prices are high too. But what I’m really talking about is the cost, in energy, of producing energy. Oil wells, for example, require electricity or diesel fuel to power their pumpjacks. So oil wells essentially consume oil in order to pump oil. In the past, this ratio of oil produced vs. oil used was quite attractive. For every barrel of oil it burned in fuel, an oil well would produce 30-40 barrels of output. And that was a great cost/benefit ratio. But this ratio is falling rapidly, making energy a lot more expensive. And that’s a terrible trend. Again, cheap and abundant energy is a critical factor in driving prosperity. More expensive energy has the opposite effect. Europe is already in a full-blown energy crisis, and many developing countries aren’t able to get their hands on enough energy to sustain themselves agriculturally. So this is already becoming a major issue, and it could potentially become much worse. Obviously the war doesn’t help. But there has also been a deliberate political agenda to drive investment and enthusiasm away from fossil fuels towards more expensive, inefficient forms of energy production… like installing solar panels across cloudy Germany. Again, I cannot overstate how important cheap energy is to human prosperity. So these incompetent, spinless politicians and climate fanatics are dragging the world down a terrible path. Fortunately there is a real solution to this problem that already exists: nuclear. It’s controversial (even though it shouldn’t be). But momentum is really starting to build for a new energy renaissance driven by nuclear power. And this is a major trend you ought to be aware of, because it could drive human prosperity for generations to come. (Plus there are a LOT of ways to invest in it now.) I invite you to explore this topic with me today in today’s podcast, in which we discuss: – the intriguing history of energy, and why there was very little growth for 5,000 years – how everything changed in 1776 – basic energy terminology you should know, like EROEI, specific energy, and more – why cheap energy is so important to prosperity – why energy is becoming more expensive… in energy terms – why nuclear is the obvious answer, and how it can drive future growth Open Podcast Transcription [00:00:00.910] Today we're going to go back in time to the year 1776. Now, most people think of exactly one thing when they think of the year 1776, and of course, that's the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the birth of the United States as a nation. It but 1776 was actually a really big year for a couple of other things that we're going to talk about. The first, though, was a book. And it was a book that was written by a Scottish economist named was Adam Smith.   [00:00:29.030] And the book was called An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the wealth of nations. It's often just referred to as the wealth of nations. And this is generally known as sort of the Bible for capitalism. Adam Smith is known as the father of capitalism. So you kind of argue that 1776, just like it was the birth of the United States, was also the birth of capitalism.   [00:00:48.350] Capitalism, just like the United States, has had a profound impact on the world. And I think you could make an argument that it's possibly just as important, certainly at least in the same conversation in terms of the impact that capitalism has had on the world prior to capitalism. Hundreds and hundreds of years before capitalism, we had the feudal system, which is one of the dumbest ideas ever. Such a stupid idea. You had the king at the top, who was in his position solely by accident of birth, a bunch of noblemen, same position.   [00:01:16.760] And then all these medieval serfs who were tied to the land and couldn't go anywhere. It had no freedom. Terrible system. Terrible, terrible system. But between capitalism and the feudal system, there was a period of time where the general prevailing economic system was known as mercantilism mechanicals.   [00:01:30.840] And it was a very authoritative system. The government was in charge. And primarily it was based on an ethos in which everybody believed that the world and wealth was finite. It was a zero sum game. The only way I can be wealthy is by taking from you.   [00:01:52.270] I have to take your wealth. And that's the way I, as a nation, become wealthier. And that was the cause of imperialism and so many wars over territory and resources. It was all about, I have to expand my territory. I have to expand the availability of my resources, and that's the only way I can become wealthy.   [00:02:10.930] And Adam Smith said, no, that's crazy. That's stupid. Adam Smith believed, and he wrote about this in The Wealth of nations, is that wealth is not finite. Prosperity is not finite. And the way to actually create literally infinite wealth and prosperity is through value creation, by doing things that actually create value through competitive advantage.   [00:02:30.900] He gives us great example in the book where he talks about silk, and he's saying, in England, we do a lot of textiles really great, but we don't do silk. The French do silk really well. So you know what? The French should do what they do well, which is produce silk, and the English should do what they do well, which is wool and other things like that, and then we can trade with each other. That way, we're doing what we do most efficiently.   [00:02:54.750] You're doing what you do most efficiently. And we trade because we do things that we do most efficiently. We have this extra surplus, and we can trade our surplus with each other, and that way we're all be better off. We'll all be better off. And it was not a zero sum game.   [00:03:08.780] It was infinite prosperity. Everybody can win. It's a win win. That's what capitalism is all about. Win win, as opposed to winlose zero sum game.   [00:03:18.180] Mercantilism. And again, mercantilism is what gave way to all the imperialism and war and everything was all about taxes and tariffs and all these things. I would say, actually, we're kind of sliding quickly towards mercantilism again today. When you hear these progressives talk about I think it was AOC said, you don't make a billion dollars, you take a billion dollars. That's a zero sum mentality.   [00:03:42.720] That's based on this idea that wealth is finite, prosperity is finite, and the only way somebody becomes wealthy is by taking it from somebody else. That's a very 18th century, 17th century mentality. It's incredibly antiquated. It's naive, it's unsophisticated. Capitalism means value creation.   [00:04:01.060] Wealth is infinite. And Adam Smith was the first guy to really write this down and say, this is what the world can be. That was a really big deal. But there was something else even bigger that happened. And the other thing that happened that year was another Scotsman big year for Scotland, another Scotsman named James Watt, who had relocated to the city of Birmingham in England.   [00:04:23.850] James Watt was 40 years old in 1776, and he was an inventor, he was an engineer. And he put the finishing touches in 1776 on one of the most profound inventions, certainly up to the that point in history. It's called steam engine. Now, like all great scientists, james Watt stood on the shoulders of giants, like Isaac Newton before him and all great scientists before him. And one of the giants upon whose shoulders James Watt stood was a guy named Thomas Newcomen, who decades before had created something he called an atmospheric engine, which was something like a steam engine.   [00:04:56.530] But the basic idea behind the steam engine was you produce heat in some capacity, you burn something, that heat is produced, it heats up water, the water produces steam. And that steam, the rising of the steam creates a force, and that force does something. It turns a crank, it drives a piston, etc. It turns a wheel, something happens. It creates some mechanical motion.   [00:05:18.810] And that mechanical motion powers a machine that does something that weaves textiles or even powers a steam ship. It wasn't long that steam was soon powering everything. This idea of steam power, that you could take this inanimate fuel source like wood, burn it, and power something to create machinery. Soon everything transportation and trade and commerce and industry, cities, everything was being powered by steam. It's interesting that James Watts company was called Watt and Co.   [00:05:50.820] At the time. This actually companies still exist, believe it or not. It's a subsidiary of a large conglomerate, publicly traded company called Illinois Tool Workshops that has probably hundreds of subsidiaries. And one of those is actually the original Watt and Co. It's changed names since then, but that original company still exists, which is kind of interesting.   [00:06:08.980] Now, the reason this is such a big deal, the reason why steam power was such a big deal is you have to now we have to go even further back in time. You have to think about the way that human civilization was for, honestly, millions of years. Now, the first fossil fuel some years ago wasn't that long ago. Archeologists found fossils in a cave in central Bulgaria that they dated back to 46,000 years. And the fossils, through some DNA studies, that they did realize that these were certainly Homo sapiens.   [00:06:45.790] Our exact species of human beings have been lots of different species of human beings over time. But these were the first recorded Homo sapiens. And if you think about these people that would have existed in central Bulgaria 46,000 years ago. Or people that would have existed during the agricultural or called the Neolithic Revolution 10,000 years ago. Or even people in ancient Mesopotamia three.   [00:07:10.750] 4000 years ago. Their lifestyles wouldn't have really been that different because most of the things that they did. Whether it was 460 years ago or 10,000 years ago. Planting the fields. Et cetera.   [00:07:23.030] Everything that human beings did was done primarily by human beings. Not by machines, not by robots, not by AI. Most of what they were doing was being done by human beings or animals, right? They were raising mules and horses and ox and so forth to do certain things. But it was really just muscle power.   [00:07:45.750] And so if you think about that, somebody, for example, 10,000 years ago who was working a wheat field, went out in the field, planted the seeds, took care of the crops, pulled some weeds, irrigated, maybe even dug some irrigation trenches, et cetera, harvested, separated the wheat from the chaff, processed. All that was basically done by hand, by human beings, literally human muscle power. And really up until the Industrial Revolution, until the invention of the steam engine, that's the way it always was. So if you think about a farmer in the 16 hundreds, even in the early one, seven hundred s, the way that farming was done wasn't really much different than the way it was done in ancient Mesopotamia, thousands of years before. It was still a human being.   [00:08:34.120] Maybe a couple of draw animals that were out in the fields using muscle power in order to plant their fields and tender their crops. Sure, by the 1500, they had better yields, they had better farming techniques, fertilizer, maybe better irrigation techniques, and possibly even the occasional, maybe water power to grind grain. They figured out water mills, and maybe even some early crude windmills, but it was still primarily muscle power. Steam changed all of that. And it was one of the most profound discoveries, one of the most profound inventions, literally in all of human history, because it gave way to this idea that suddenly we have this inanimate fuel source.   [00:09:12.210] So instead of muscle power, now we can go and take you, we can chop down a tree, and we can burn this wood, and this wood is going to create steam, and the steam is going to power stuff. And again, we had transportation industries, homes, entire cities were being powered by steam. Now, the interesting thing about this is that initially, the people were burning wood, because that's what people burned for a really long time. And then a couple of different things happen. One, as they chopped down a whole lot of trees, and they realized they had to go a lot farther afield to get new trees to chop down the wood.   [00:09:42.630] But they also realized, wow, there's a better source of fuel here. And it was called coal. And the reason that coal was a better source is because it actually contains more energy per weight per kilogram. And so if we think about energy, this is something that in science is referred to as specific energy or energy density. So if you think about, and we'll get to this in a minute, but the amount of energy which you could measure in a number of different units of measurements, so in this case, we'll say joules per kilogram for wood is about 18 joules per kilogram of energy that you get.   [00:10:16.180] So there's an amount of energy that's contained in wood. You can burn that wood, and that energy then is converted from what's stored in this chemical energy of the wood into heat energy. Same thing with coal. You've got this chemical energy that's contained in coal, you burn it, and that energy is converted into heat energy. Well, it turns out there's about twice as much energy, twice as much chemical energy stored in coal for every kilogram of coal than there is for every kilogram of wood.   [00:10:44.040] And I realized, oh, wow, this is great. So we get twice as much energy out of coal than we do for wood. So then coal became all the rage. Coal became super popular, and it was great. It was one of the things that actually ended up powering transatlantic steamships and so forth, because they could put more fuel on the boat, because you could get twice as much energy out of every kilo.   [00:11:02.310] And then they figured out how they could kind of doctor the coal a little bit and put certain additives. And so forth, it became much more powerful, much, much more reliable source of energy. Lighter, better, faster, sweeter. Everything was better about coal. But the other thing about coal is that it wasn't just the specific energy.   [00:11:21.300] It was also about how easily you could get it. How easily could that form of energy be obtained. So let's think about a basic energy calculus. Let's think about a lot of people probably like to garden, okay? So if you have a garden, you may be pleasantly surprised to know that gardening is actually pretty good exercise.   [00:11:39.820] And people burn 250 to 350 calories per hour when they're gardening. That's energy that we're using, right? Because that's human muscle. Just like thousands of years ago in ancient Mesopotamia or 10,000 years ago, we're using human muscle in our gardens with our tools and our shovels and all these things that we have to do. So you're burning about 300 calories an hour.   [00:12:01.820] That's energy, right? So if you think about it takes 100 hours of work to maintain, to seed your garden, to maintain it, go out and pull the weeds, harvest it, process everything that you get out of that. If you think 100 hours times 300 calories an hour, that's 30,000 calories, 30,000 calories that you're burning that's energy, right? So literally, just in order to break even on that energy consumption, if you're spending 30,000 calories to take your garden from nothing to where you've got food in your hand, you're spending 30,000 calories of energy, then in theory, your garden should generate at least 30,000 calories in order for you to break even on it. Otherwise you're going to be spending more energy than you're producing in the food, right?   [00:12:46.790] So that's roughly, if you think about it, if you have a tomato garden, that's like somewhere between 80 to 100 tomato plants that you would need. So your garden needs to have at least 80 to 100 tomato plants just for you to break even on that 100 hours of work. So if you think about this, and I'm sure that's a pretty easy concept to understand, if you think about this in the context of energy in general, it's the same, really, with any form of energy. We could think about that with oil. We could think about that with coal.   [00:13:14.280] If you think about it with something like, for example, early steam engine, when people were burning wood, somebody had to go and chop down the wood. Then they had to transport the wood. They had to have carriages with horses, the horses need to be fed and all these sorts of things.   [00:13:30.850] This is true of any form of energy. There's no such thing as truly free energy. Every form of energy has to be harnessed in some capacity. We have to drill for oil, we have to mine coal, we have to chop down trees to burn for heat energy, all these sorts of things. This is known in energy analysis as energy return on energy invested.   [00:13:51.670] And there's a lot of different ways people look at it. Sometimes they look at it as net energy. There's a lot of different terminology for this. But you can think of energy return on energy invested as I have to put energy in, in order to produce this energy, and I get a certain amount of energy out. So you can think about it again as wood, I have to put a certain amount of energy into chopping down the tree, transporting the wood, maybe even processing the logs, et cetera.   [00:14:16.840] And then I burn it. It goes into my steam engine. And that steam engine produces a certain amount of energy. So we certainly better hope that that steam engine produces more energy than it required to chop down the tree and transport it to the steam engine, all that. So we better hope that generates more energy than that.   [00:14:34.890] So this energy return on energy invested is generally considered a ratio, right? So we say for every one unit of energy I put into it and chopping down the tree and transporting the wood and all these sorts of things, for every one unit of energy I put in, I get three units out. Five units out, 100 units out, right? So the general level that most people, it's certainly an advanced developed economies. The threshold that they look at is they say, okay, this is what makes a reasonable energy source and economically viable.   [00:15:05.800] Energy source would be a ratio of about seven. So if you have seven to one, for every one unit of energy you put in, you get seven units of energy out. That's considered economically viable. Now, there is no standard calculation, right, because it really depends on how far do you take this. What do you actually sort of circle in the energy input?   [00:15:24.050] We know the energy out. That's usually pretty easy to figure out, right? How much energy does this steam engine produce? For us, that's pretty easy to figure out. Same thing with a power plant.   [00:15:33.410] We know exactly how much energy this power plant can produce. But what's a lot more difficult is to figure out, okay, how do we calculate exactly the amount of energy required that goes into it? If you think about the wood and the steam engine example, do you also include the energy used, for example, to manufacture the axe that was used to chop down the tree? Do you amortize the cost of that axe over thousands of trees? Do you include the cost to make the wheel that goes on the carriage to transport the wood, et cetera?   [00:16:03.230] So there's no standardized calculation for this. And this is why you'll see a lot of estimates. If you look up energy return on energy invest, you'll see a lot of different calculations for a lot of different fuel sources. But it's a very interesting way to think about energy. I want to go into a little bit more about energy terminology.   [00:16:21.860] If we think about really anything height, weight, area, length, et cetera, let's think about length. We have different units of measurement for length, right? We could say miles, we could say kilometers, we could say millimeters. We could use nautical miles, light years, right? So these are all different ways to talk about length, and they all have different uses.   [00:16:44.270] So if you're in aviation or shipping, if you have a boat, whatever, you're probably accustomed to using nautical miles. When you talk about distances, if you're just driving around the road in the United States, you're using regular, what they call statute miles. Or if you're in pretty much everywhere else in the world, you're using kilometers. If you talk about really short distances, using millimeters or centimeters or inches, if you're in astrophysics, you use light years to talk about really far distances between stars and galaxies, or maybe parsecs or kiloparsecs, right? These are all different units of measurement, but ultimately, they all measure the same thing.   [00:17:23.230] They all measure length, right? And we convert from one of these to the other. We can say, okay, I'm whatever, 6ft zero inches, which is the same as 182 CM. You can also, if you wanted to, you could calculate your height in miles. You could calculate your height in light years.   [00:17:41.020] If you wanted to, you could calculate your height in nautical miles, or you could calculate the height of Mount Everest in meters, or you could calculate it in feet. And so there's a conversion between these 1 mile is equal to 1609 meters. We convert back and forth. Energy is the same way. There's different units of measurement, just in the same way that we can convert from miles to kilometers and kilometers to nautical miles and light years, et cetera.   [00:18:06.890] We can do the same thing with energy. So different units of measurement for energy, if you're talking about, for example, your electricity bill, which is a form of energy, you're accustomed to seeing something like kilowatt hours. If you're in science and technology, a lot of times people use joules. If you're in particle physics, they use a unit of measurement called electron volts, which is a really tiny unit of measurement. If you're in the automotive business, you use footpounds.   [00:18:33.130] If heating people use British thermal units. BTUs, food is a form of energy. Food is literally just stored potential energy. And with food, obviously, the unit of measurement we use with food is calories. Again.   [00:18:48.830] We have BTUs, British thermal units quads. Quad is literally 1 quadrillion. That's ten to the 15th British Thermal units, or barrel of oil equivalent BoE. So there's all these different units of measurement when we think about energy. So let's go back to food for a minute and think about something really standard that probably everybody's at least seen if not eating at some point in their life, like a Snickers bar.   [00:19:11.120] A Snickers bar is 250 calories. That calorie. Again, that's a unit of measurement for energy. It's literally the sort of amount of stored energy inside of all that mess that chocolate and nutty, not going anywhere for a while, 250 calories of energy. And so, if you consume a Snickers bar, that energy now is going from the Snickers bar and through your body's metabolic process, is converting that into some form of energy, which you can then use to go for a run, power your muscles, type on a keyboard or do absolutely nothing, in which case your body goes AHA.   [00:19:45.440] And it stores that in your gut, or your butt, or wherever you happen to store your fat, because fat is really just stored energy. So we take this stored energy from the Sniggers bar, put it through our body's metabolic process, and then it ends up being stored somewhere else in our body in a rather unsightly manner. But you can again convert because calories is just a unit of energy. So the 250 calories in a Snickers bar is the same as saying, well, 250 calories is the same as 1,046,000 joules, which is the same as 991 British thermal units, which is the same as zero point 29 kilowatt hours. These are all different units of measurement for energy.   [00:20:23.850] It's like saying that 100 km is the same as 54 nautical miles, which is the same as 328,000ft. This is all the same thing. We're just using different units of measurements. So 250 calories is roughly 1000 British thermal units and so forth. Now, with all that kind of in mind, we talked about energy return on energy investment, we talked about specific energy, we talked about basic energy calculus.   [00:20:48.390] Here, if we go back to this idea, we had the steam engine and we had people burning wood and they were burning coal. Well, eventually they figured out, oh my God, we could do this with oil. And now oil had been around for a really long time. In fact, I've read about shipwrecks in the ancient world going back thousands of years, where they found at the bottom of the ocean, they found oil lamps on these old shipwrecks, right? So even in the ancient world, people realized that they could burn oil as a fuel, mostly for lamps.   [00:21:17.550] And even in the early days in the United States, when they discovered oil, they were originally saying, oh, this is great for lamps. And everything was basically about lighting that they could put basically becomes kerosene, and they could burn it and have these oil lamps. But eventually they realized we could burn this because oil has a much higher specific energy than coal. It's got a very high energy return on energy investment, by the way, natural gas even higher. And they realize that we could burn this.   [00:21:44.840] This becomes a source of electricity, becomes a fuel not just for lighting lamps, but literally for powering entire cities, for eventually internal combustion engine, et cetera. So oil, especially in those early days had an incredibly high energy return on energy investment, had a very high specific energy. So it was a much more efficient fuel source than coal, certainly than wood. And this was, again, a huge discovery, not even just for any single country, but literally for our entire species. The important thing to really understand about energy is that you got to think about energy as the ability to do things, the ability to create value.   [00:22:23.440] If we go back to the idea of Adam Smith and Adam Smith's concept of capitalism was value creation, you do what you do best, we'll do what we do best. We specialize in certain things, and we create value. And the amount of value that we can create is infinite. But in order to create value, we need energy. And initially it was human beings with muscle power and animal power doing things to create value.   [00:22:46.960] And then all of a sudden, we had machines doing that. And so the machines made us much more productive, much more efficient. Instead of having 100 people doing this one activity, you could have one person and a machine doing this activity and meant that everybody else is freed up to do other things, and we could produce more. So energy, the ability to have abundant energy and the machines that were powered by that abundant energy was an incredible boost in human wealth creation. And that's the important thing about energy.   [00:23:16.420] It gives us the ability to do things. Now, if we think about energy in that context, right? So let's look at the United States, for example. So total energy production, now we're going to go back to those units of measurement, right? So we have barrel of oil equivalents or kilowatt hours, whatever.   [00:23:33.810] So the ones that they use a lot of times in national accounting like this is quads one quad is 1 quadrillion British thermal units. So 1 quadrillion, by the way, is ten to the 15th power. That's one followed by 15 zeros. That's a big number. Total energy production in the United States is about 100 quadrillion British thermal units.   [00:23:55.630] Okay? So British thermal unit is specifically what is a BTU? I'm trying to remember it's like to increase I think it's increased a certain amount of water by one degree Fahrenheit, something like that. I can't remember exactly what it is, but each one of these has a very specific measurement to it. So total us.   [00:24:15.350] Energy production, 100 quadrillion British thermal units. And we could convert, again, that British thermal unit. We can convert that to kilowatt hours, we can convert that to whatever we want in the same way that we could convert a nautical mile into inches and feet if we wanted to. So 100 quadrillion BTUs, we say, okay, it's 365 days in a year. There are 350,000,000 people in the United States consuming this 100 quadrillion BTUs of energy production.   [00:24:44.360] So what that works out to be, if you divide that 100 quadrillion BTUs by 350,000,000 people divided by 365 days out of the year. And convert that into another unit of measurement, one that we all understand. Food calories, right? Let's convert it into Snickers bars. 100 quadrillion BTUs is the equivalent of about 200,000 food calories per person per day, literally for every man, woman, and child in the United States every single day.   [00:25:10.500] That's the amount of energy. That's about 800 Snickers bars worth of energy per person per day in the United States. That's how much energy is being produced. So if you can imagine, every single day, 800 sneakers bars just fall out of the sky, right? That's how much energy is essentially being produced in the United States.   [00:25:27.910] So that's based on daily caloric consumption, anywhere between, let's say, 1802,600 calories, that gives you roughly the daily food needs of about 80 people, okay? So that's essentially what it works out to be. If we're talking about 200,000 food calories per person per day. So 200 Snickers bars, that's about 80 people in terms of daily food needs. Let's have a little thought experiment for a minute.   [00:25:53.590] So let's imagine that we have 80 people all working in some beautiful garden in some commune where no money exists, and it's just people just working, right? Sounds like a communist paradise, but just go with me for a minute here. So we have 80 people kind of working in some gardens. And initially, they don't know anything about gardening, they don't know anything about food production. And so it takes all 80 people working in the garden just to produce enough food in order for them to survive, right?   [00:26:22.880] So the 80 people, they consume x number of calories working the garden, and the garden produces exactly that many calories. And so they eat, they have that food, and so they're able to survive to another season to work in the garden and keep consuming and producing, and they never have basically any surplus. But then one day there's a technology breakthrough and they realize, oh, wow, we could fertilize or we could increase our crop yields and all these different things. And the crop yields skyrocket. The crop yields just go through the roof and all of a sudden now they could free up a whole bunch of other people.   [00:26:56.560] Now, instead of all 80 people working in the gardens to produce enough food to support exactly 80 people. Now it only takes ten people working in the garden, and those ten people can produce enough food to support 200 people, right? So that's a huge breakthrough, because what it means is those other 70 people and their little communist hippie commune now can go out and do stuff. Those 70 people can engage in trade and develop technology and security and build buildings and so forth, and essentially create civilization. And everybody benefits because of that, of those 70 people.   [00:27:31.720] And now, all of a sudden, instead of producing enough food barely for 80. People. Now we're producing food for a couple of hundred people. And some of those 70, they say, oh, you know what, I'm going to go to the next commune over and I'm going to trade the surplus of food we have for other things that they might have. And so I'm going to bring those other things back and everybody's going to be better off because of these advances.   [00:27:52.950] So the basic idea here is that when you have the ability to produce energy more efficiently, more inexpensively, it's better for everybody. It drives prosperity. And that's a very key point that you have to understand, is that prosperity really abounds when energy is cheap. Poor countries have expensive energy, and it's actually quite a vicious cycle because they have to spend more energy to get energy. And instead of spending that energy, instead of having an abundance of surplus excess energy that they can spend on other things, they have to keep reinvesting all the energy they get out of their system right back into it to try and produce more energy.   [00:28:30.780] So they don't ever have any excess energy left over for value creation. Just like what Adam Smith said. Actually, to combine these two capitalism where we have this concept of value creation, and it's not a zero sum game, wealth is abundant, prosperity is abundant. Plus cheap energy, you get crazy amounts of prosperity. And what a surprise.   [00:28:51.650] The United States had both of these for a long time and became the wealthiest country in all of human history. Prosperity abounds when energy is cheap, if you think about it in financial terms, right? Because we're talking about energy return on energy invested. It sounds like a financial term. Let's think about a basic financial investment, something as simple as a certificate of deposit.   [00:29:14.430] If you go back to the early 1980s when interest rates are actually really high, in early 1982, you could go to your bank and put money into a three month CD certificate deposit and they would pay you an annualized rate of 15 and a half percent. 15 and a half percent. Now, inflation was pretty high back then, but it's basically about the level that it is now. Inflation was about 9% and your three month CD was 15 and a half percent. This is kind of in a way of looking at energy return on energy invested, right?   [00:29:44.340] So it's like your inflation is kind of your cost and your three month CD yield is your return. And so if you subtract the two and you say, okay, my return is 15 and a half percent, but my cost of getting that 15 and a half percent is I have to pay this 9% inflation. But hey, I'm still six and a half percent ahead. 15 and a half percent return minus the 9% inflation means I'm still six and a half percent ahead. Even after adjusting for inflation, that's extra surplus and that extra surplus of six and a half percent.   [00:30:18.750] You know what? I could reinvest that again and get another six and a half percent on that. Or I could invest in other things. I could pay down my mortgage. I could invest in the business.   [00:30:26.500] I could do so many other things because that six and a half percent, that's surplus, and I can get ahead with that. Now, think about what we've been dealing with over the last several years, right? Inflation was I'm not talking about now. I'm talking about let's go back to 2017, 2018, when inflation, the official inflation rate was like 1% 0.7%. Now you could go out and actually get a certificate of deposit.   [00:30:50.770] If you are really lucky, you might be able to get a 0.7% 1% certificate of deposit. There are a couple of banks that are actually offering that was considered a really high certificate deposit rate. So now we got 1% inflation. That's sort of our cost in order to produce a 1% rate on certificate deposit. Now we're just breaking even.   [00:31:12.400] We're barely breaking even here. We got 1% in one person out. We're not actually we don't have any surplus. There is no wealth. There's no prosperity being generated here, right?   [00:31:21.320] And Metro respects is actually even worse because if you put your money in a savings account, you're getting 0%, and yet you're still paying 1% inflation. So now you're actually worse off year after year after year. Now it's negative prosperity instead of positive prosperity. So this is a really important concept to understand, is that cheap energy? And when I'm talking about cheap energy, we're talking about energy return on energy investment.   [00:31:45.790] We're talking about the amount of energy required to produce energy. Because the cheaper energy is in energy terms, the more energy we have left over is surplus. And that surplus energy powers things. It powers value creation. And value creation was what creates prosperity, especially when you combine it with capitalism.   [00:32:05.950] Now, the issue that we're facing, of course, is that energy is becoming more expensive. We think about the price of oil. Right now, the price of oil is like $90, $100 a barrel. Depends on if you're looking at WTI or Brent or whatever it is that you're looking at. But as of the day I'm recording this, september 2, 2022, that's the price of oil.   [00:32:23.870] If you listen to this, at some point in the future, you might think, oh, my God, $100 oil sounds so cheap. I hope we don't get there. But it's certainly a possibility. But try to divorce yourself for a moment from the idea of the price of oil denominated in dollars or euros or any other currency. Try to divorce yourself from looking at gasoline prices in your local currency and instead think about the price of oil, the price of energy in general, and the price of oil in oil, right?   [00:32:52.670] What is the price of oil in oil? How many barrels of oil do we have to burn in order to get one barrel of oil or really better, how much oil do we get out of the ground for every barrel of oil that we burn in producing it? Right? So this is the basic energy in, energy out, energy return on energy invested. Well, guess what?   [00:33:13.260] We don't have to guess because a lot of oil companies actually produces and there are extensive studies and you can even look at government sources. The Energy Information Agency for example, the United States, they have lots and lots of data on this and even the oil companies themselves often report this. And in the 90s, for example, in the early ninety s, it was pretty common that oil companies would report a 30 to one ratio. So for every barrel of oil or barrel of oil equivalent amount of energy that they were burning, that they were consuming in trying to drill for oil, they were getting 30 barrels out. That's quite a good ratio.   [00:33:44.930] Remember, the sort of economic threshold is about seven to one. So they're getting 30 to one. Well by the early 2000s, by 20 05, 20 06 that had fallen to about 18 to one. And now in a lot of places it's less than ten to one. So it's been falling, it's been falling pretty rapidly.   [00:34:01.750] Now, bear in mind, in the early days in the United States in particular, we're talking about 1000 to one energy return on energy investment. This is in the early 1009 hundreds when the oil was just bubbling up out of the ground and they just had to go and just scoop it up in jars. It was so abundant. You're getting 1000 to one really energy return on energy invested. Now again, this is something that it varies widely.   [00:34:24.020] This is not something I'm not trying to say, oh, we're running out of oil tomorrow, or any of these sorts of things. It's not what it is. And it's very specific. Literally every oil well is going to have its own calculation in terms of energy return on energy investment. Every field, every region, it's all different.   [00:34:41.680] But it's pretty clear that the abundance that they had so long ago and it was so much easier to get it out of the ground because it was in many respects not even underground. It was bubbling up above ground. Those days are gone when it was so easy to get. So now they have to spend more energy to get it. Fortunately, a lot of the technology has gotten a lot better and that makes things more productive and means you consume a little bit less energy in getting it.   [00:35:06.960] But it can be deeper, it can be harder to get to and you've got to go through a lot of things, especially with shale oil etc. Or to really unlock all of that. And so that's why in many respects that energy return on energy invested is declining. We're getting less and less oil for every barrel of oil that we spend or in many respects we're having to spend more energy to produce the energy. That's the opposite trend that we want.   [00:35:31.470] Again, if we think about this in a financial context, now we're saying that if we go back to that certificate of deposit example, now we're saying, okay, well imagine now we have that certificate deposit. Now we've got really negative rates. So now it's like in the European Union or Japan or Switzerland. Now we go to certificate deposit. Now we have to pay minus.   [00:35:51.910] And on top of that we've got four, five, 6% inflation, right? So that's not a great situation to be in. There are of course a lot of reasons for this. We have climate fanaticism that has truly just demonize the oil and gas sector for sure. They say oil bad, solar good.   [00:36:09.890] That's the only thing that anybody is allowed to say. And that's led to quite a bit of wokeness in business, banking, lending, investment markets, capital has really dried up. They call this the official kind of nice sounding, high sounding terminology for it is ESG, which stands for Environmental Social Governance. And so you have all these banks and private equity funds and hedge funds that have adopted these ESG principles. And so if you got an ESG fund you're literally just not allowed to invest in oil and gas companies because they are evil.   [00:36:42.680] And so you can't invest in these companies. And so what that means is there's less capital going into these sectors. If you want to see this for yourself, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas publishes every quarter. The next one is coming out in a couple of weeks. The last one was from June, the one before that was from March.   [00:37:00.140] And they publish a quarterly oil survey and they go and survey a bunch of oil companies. And so granted this is all anecdotal some of this is more objective data but some of this just listening to some of these oil companies just complained. A lot of it is hilarious. There's one I think from June, I'm going to read this and this is an oil company executive and they post these comments and they say when our government leaders are regularly demonizing the business, the oil and gas sector, we shouldn't be surprised that investors are not interested in supporting exploration for new supplies. Basically.   [00:37:32.020] Meaning you've got all these politicians that are saying oil is bad, oil is bad, oil is evil. And so of course the banks and the private equity funds and all these guys are just they are divesting. They're not investing in oil in many respects. They're actually getting out of the oil business. They're selling their oil positions that they have and making it.   [00:37:51.660] Another one says the current administration in Washington has declared war on fossil fuels. They did this before going into office and they have continued that war to this day. Another one says the real energy crisis isn't even here yet. Shale will likely tip in a terminal decline. That's shale is the type of oil that's contained in rocks and it was sort of all the rage some years ago.   [00:38:12.100] But they're saying shale will likely tip into terminal decline in about five years as the main shale plays run out of locations. Unfortunately, by then most of the individuals with incumbent knowledge will have retired. The brain draining industry will create a real and much larger crisis in the mid to late 2020s. So this is another sort of point to the idea about energy return on energy invested, having the resources and tools to do this. So this is if you really want to hear the comments of people that are in the business, they're right here in the Dallas Fed actually puts this stuff out.   [00:38:40.700] There's actually one guy who's saying it's really frustrating, but this push for the elimination of fossil fuels. Now would I like to see the use of fossil fuels reduced? Of course I would. If not for my sake, then for the sake of my kids and my grandkids and generations to come. But they're saying, look, it's got to be gradual and not let's get this done yesterday because obviously let's get this done yesterday attitude.   [00:39:01.690] We've got to get ourselves off of these fossil fuels. Now that's having a significant impact and it also means that there's not as much investment, there's not as much exploration. And when there's not as much exploration out there, that's a big problem, right? Because it means that now we've got to spend more energy to produce the energy that we have instead of having this abundance of energy. That's a really big deal.   [00:39:24.130] Now the issue is actually a bit worse than that. It's actually quite a bit worse than that. And we've got to talk a little bit about physics here. There's a principle in physics called conservation of energy. And thermodynamics this is the first law of thermodynamics and it basically says that you might have heard of this, you probably have that energy is neither created nor destroyed.   [00:39:42.130] It is conserved and conserved basically meaning that energy essentially just changes form. We never really just eliminate energy never just disappears from the earth. It's just converted from one form to another. So an example of this is photosynthesis, right? So we have sunlight.   [00:40:01.030] Sunlight shines all over the world and plants absorb this sunlight and they've got special chemicals and so forth inside of their plants and chloroform and all these things. And plant biology is really interesting. What is that really interesting and the things that plants are able to do to power themselves is a really high talk about really high energy return on energy invested is what's inside of the plants and the stomas and everything. It's really powerful biology. Now that solar energy through the photosynthesis process is converted into stored energy inside of the plants.   [00:40:31.160] So basically, photosynthesis converts solar energy into stored energy inside of plants. And then what happens? Human beings, the head of lettuce, whatever we go and we eat the lettuce and the stored energy inside of the plants goes through another process, our human metabolic process, and we convert that stored energy inside the plants into muscle energy that we can use to do things again. Go, run, go work out at the gym. Whatever it is that we do, play with our kids, right, that requires muscle energy that we get from the stored energy in plants.   [00:41:04.090] And so we're just converting one form of energy to another. In the same way that early steam engines were converting, there was a certain amount of potential heat energy inside of wood, and they would burn the wood, then produce steam, and that steam would essentially power again, some kind of turban or crank or shaft or something that would produce mechanical energy. So we're just converting this potential thermal energy or this chemical energy inside of the coal into heat energy, which is converted into mechanical energy. So this is essentially what conservation of energy is all about. Unfortunately, that process can be messy and not very efficient.   [00:41:42.250] And the reason for that is that there's a lot of loss along the process. So if you think about a coal power plant that burns coal to produce electricity, today in our modern world, not in 1776, today in our modern world, roughly 68% of the potential chemical energy stored inside the coal that is burned to produce electricity, 68% of that is lost just due to heat, because the coal gets really hot. And that heat, instead of being contained inside of the system, is just sort of if you think about sort of like a fireplace or if you ever have like a Franklin oven or something like that, these things, they can get really, really hot. But a lot of that heat is really lost. And it's the same thing in, for example, an automobile engine.   [00:42:25.720] We put gasoline in our cars, and the gasoline in our cars, there's an internal combustion inside of the engine block. But a lot of that chemical energy inside the gasoline is actually lost to the heat, which is why your engine block is really hot. Once your engine is going for a while, your engine block gets really hot. And the reason your engine block gets so hot is because of so much heat in that chemical reaction where you're converting the potential energy, the chemical energy inside the gasoline, into the mechanical energy of your car. Well, again, that process is very inefficient.   [00:42:59.560] And so there's a lot of heat loss in that, right? So we're losing literally two thirds of the energy in the conversion process, transferring from one form of energy to another. So that's a pretty big deal. Then they also have another thing called the capacity factor. This is with power plants.   [00:43:17.670] Power plants have capacity factors. And these are losses that are often due to certain operational inefficiencies and things like that. And these can be quite significant as well. You could lose easily 2030, 40% of your energy just due to this capacity factor, the operational inefficiencies. And then you also have other issues.   [00:43:34.460] For example, like what's plugged into the other end of that. If you think about an old incandescent light bulb, those old glass bulbs or the tiny little filament in the middle, those were popular when I was a kid in the where I was told you're not allowed to shake the bulbs because the filament might fall out and then the bulb is pretty much dead. But those bulbs, you'd have like 100 watt light bulb. 95% of that electricity that went into that bulb was wasted to heat. Only 5% of it actually went into light.   [00:44:00.490] So now the light bulb converts electrical energy into light and heat energy. But only 5% of the electricity went into light and 95% was wasted as heat. So if you think about it again, coal fired power plant, we're losing 68% of the coal energy into heat loss. We're losing a lot more due to capacity factor than losing 95% wasted to heat with an incandescent light bulb. So at the end of the day, if you think about going from the coal, the lump of coal to the light at the other end of that, it's a really, really low ratio, right?   [00:44:34.030] So if you consider that through the lens of energy return on energy investment, right, you think about something like oil. Oil has a declining energy return on energy investment. Again, we had 1000 to 101 and 35 to one and 20 to 115 to one. Now in some respects, even less than ten to one. So we have this declining energy return on energy investment.   [00:44:55.330] Then we think about, okay, we drill for oil using vehicles and generators and all these things and all that requires, guess what, gasoline, which is made from oil, right? So we have oil that is powering the way that we drill for oil. So right off the bat now, all those things, the generators and the vehicles and so forth that we're using, the big trucks and tractors and generators, all require oil. But the engines and motors and those things are wasting two thirds of it in heat loss, right? So we're using oil in order to drill for oil, but two thirds of the oil that we use is being wasted.   [00:45:29.270] And then the oil that we get out of the other end, the oil that we're actually drilling, that we're producing as a declining energy return on energy investment. So that's a really bad scenario, that declining energy return on energy investment. We're wasting most of what we get out. We have to put it right back in to try and produce more oil, wasting most of that because of the heat losses, etc. For so if we go back to that financial example again.   [00:45:50.190] This is like a certificate of deposit. It's paying zero 1% interest like they do today at a time when inflation is 9%. And then on top of that, you've got to pay 30% tax, 40% tax. If you live in the state of California, God help you, you got to pay 45% combined state, local, federal tax on that 0.1% interest that you get from your CD. So you get 0.1% interest, you pay 40 50% tax, then you got 9% inflation.   [00:46:19.370] So you're getting killed, especially after adjusting for taxes and adjusting for inflation. And then you go, you got this tiny little bit of money that's really, when adjusted for inflation, less than what you started with and you got to reinvest that back into your CD. That's not a way to become prosperous. That's the way to become poor and poor and poorer every single year. Now, a lot of people obviously jump to renewables and say, oh, renewable is the answer.   [00:46:44.290] Wind and solar and blah, blah. And it's just not. It's just not. The first thing you've got to understand about renewables is that renewables is like it's like the term rainforest. They used to call it a jungle and then a couple of decades ago they start saying, no, it's not jungle, it's rainforest.   [00:46:58.410] And somehow it's some kind of catchy marketing idea that just makes it the kinder, gentler jungle is now called the rainforest. Renewable energy is not renewable because it takes stuff in order to create the renewals. Photovoltaic cells don't fall out of the sky, they have to be created. And all the things that go into producing photovoltaic cells and wind turbines, et cetera, are all based on finite resources. It takes metals and minerals and all these sorts of things to produce those things.   [00:47:24.760] And some of those, by the way, like lithium and cobalt are really nasty. You're talking about child labor in the Congo overseen by guys with AK 47s holding their guns to the heads of little kids out in cobalt mines, which are dangerous and nasty. And yet it goes into these batteries and it goes into photovoltaic systems and all the progressives and all the environments. People go, yeah, this is so great. It really is.   [00:47:51.460] This just child labor. There's a horrible environmental consequences to a lot of this, but everybody just sort of ignores that. And so this is why I would say it's not renewable because it does depend on many of these finite resources and many of these are really nasty resources that we have to pull out of the ground. And then on top of that, you're dealing with heat losses, transit losses, capacity factor, especially with something like solar. Guess what?   [00:48:14.270] We have this concept called nighttime when the sun doesn't shine, right? So you are all automatically starting off with this capacity factor of 50% at best. And that's assuming that for the other 12 hours of the day, every single day the sun is shining, which of course it doesn't. So if you're being relatively realistic, even in your calculations, the energy return on energy invested is quite low. Same with wind.   [00:48:40.100] Guess what? The wind doesn't blow all the time. And so you have to have all sorts of redundancy built in if you expect to get electricity. And that really vastly increased. I mean, double, triple, quadruple.   [00:48:50.360] If you have to have four different turbines, six different turbines, it's six x's your input costs, right? So your energy return on energy investment ends up being quite a bit lower than that. Now, I've been hearing a lot of people started to talk about this. If you think about the summary of all of this, we're talking about, look, energy is critical. Energy is prosperity.   [00:49:14.410] The cheaper energy is, the more prosperous we can be. And yet energy is becoming more expensive, not only in dollar terms or local currency terms, but it's becoming more expensive in energy terms. And that's really bad. That's a bad trend because if energy becomes more expensive, that puts a limit on the amount of prosperity that we can have. And a lot of this is self inflicted, right?   [00:49:34.720] They go off and they engineer a war and they engineer all this wokeness and drive exploration and discovery out of the business. By the way, every year the US Energy Information Agency puts out a report and they say, here's what US proven energy reserves are, proven energy reserves in the United States. And last year, for example, the last report they put out, that number declined by almost 20%. And the reason why is because there was almost no exploration, no new discoveries. That's a really big deal.   [00:50:04.650] And it's not because there's not more discoveries to be made. It's because they just can't get the money, they can't get the political will, they can't get the support, the entire industry can't get the support they need. So a lot of this is really just a self inflicted wound. But there are a lot of people now that are starting to look at this and study this and these energy trends. I mean, Michael Moore made a documentary about this in many respects, is all you need to know.   [00:50:26.700] You can probably guess where that goes. And the moral of the Michael Moore story there is we just all need to consume less. We all need to figure out how to get by with less. We all need to just own up to the fact that we're going to be less prosperous and our entire civilization is going to be less prosperous and so forth. And then a lot of people are even talking economic growth is dead and a lot of people are making the link between fossil fuels and food and saying, oh, because energy is going to be more expensive than food's, not going to be done, fertilizers aren't going to be made.   [00:50:56.770] And that's going to lead to starvation and famine and all these things. I got to tell you, I have a completely different view I have a completely different view of this. And for this, we'll have to go even further back in time. You've probably heard of ancient historians use what they call the Three Age system. We have, for example, the Stone Age.   [00:51:22.330] The Stone Age lasted millions of years, right? Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble and the whole cartoon and the dinosaurs and all that. But the whole point of the Stone Age was human beings using learning how to use fire and develop very crude tools that were made of stone, because that's what they had available. They took stone, they shaped the stones, and they made little shovels and very crude weapons and things like that. They had access to metals.   [00:51:50.950] In fact, there's a lot of archeological evidence of many Stone Age tribes I'm not going to say civilizations, but Stone Age tribes that had gold and silver and copper. Most of it was just used as decoration and adornments. I'm sure the big chief, whatever, was wearing gold and silver, maybe they made little just had it stacked around as ingots and things like that. But everything that they did, they didn't have any metallurgical capabilities, so everything they did was based on stone tools. Well, eventually they developed the ability to work with metal, and the new technology that came of age to them was bronze.   [00:52:31.550] And this goes back now several thousand years. Bronze was absolutely game changing for our species. Bronze is basically the combination of copper with tin. Copper in and of itself wasn't useful enough for them. They couldn't turn it into a tool.   [00:52:51.840] They had to combine it with something. And the thing that they combined it with was ten. And the reason why is because tin had a very low melting temperature. Ten's melting temperatures about 250 degrees centigrade. You could get that on your kitchen stove at 250 degrees Centigrade.   [00:53:06.650] It's like 450 Fahrenheit. That's about where you would bake a loaf of bread in your oven. So today you could just melt ten in your oven if you wanted to. But you combine ten, the ratio is about ten to 110 parts copper, one part ten. You combine the two, you've got bronze, which is a metal that you could forge, that you could shape into tools and weapons and all sorts of things, wheels, even if you wanted to, all sorts of things.   [00:53:30.050] And this was a major game changer because now they had a really great metal that they could use to actually go out and help grow and build civilization. And so tin was as critical to the world thousands of years ago as oil is today. Tin was the aside from food and water, was the most important commodity in the world. This is why it was so important that the historians literally call it the Bronze Age, because the tin was. The key element going into the bronze medal that they were making.   [00:53:56.910] And the bronze was an absolute game changer for human civilization. There was a substantial bronze trade in the Mediterranean, substantial tin trade in the Mediterranean. The tin itself, copper mines, lots of copper mines all over. Some of the biggest copper mines in the ancient world were actually in the island of Cyprus. Tin, on the other hand, was quite scarce.   [00:54:13.930] They had to come from a long way. You had to go all the way to Afghanistan in the mountains of Afghanistan, go and find ten and haul it all the way across, basically Iran and all over the Middle East and up into Turkey and so forth. And there are all these trade routes, and the trade routes for ten were very expensive, extensive. The ten trade was very expensive most of the time. There were fleets of ships going all sailing all around the Mediterranean, because that's where most of the civilization was at the time.   [00:54:42.500] And they were trading in tin among a lot of other things, including, like I mentioned, oil lamps and copper and gold and silver and all sorts of things. And then eventually the tin supplies started to run out. And I'm sure there are people in the ancient world who were running around saying, peak ten, the ten is drying up, but we can't get any more tiny people saying, oh, you're crazy. There's no such thing as peak ten. Don't believe anybody says peak ten, that's nuts.   [00:55:10.270] And yet, sure enough, the ten dried up and the trade ended. And you could imagine the same thing. What if all the oil just runs out all of a sudden? You could imagine the chaos, the war, the violence that would ensue in the world. Or if all of a sudden all the oil dried up in the United States, I have to imagine they would probably be looking pretty hard at invading Venezuela literally tomorrow morning.   [00:55:33.810] Right. So the tin trade in the ten supplies and the ten reserves drying up was a major factor. Extremely disruptive. There is some evidence, it's possible that the Trojan War, in fact, may have been fought over ten and over the years, obviously, as they told the story and retold the story, at some point along the way, somebody decided, you know what, let's forget about the tin trade and just insert something else. It's a lot sexier story.   [00:55:57.450] If we say, oh, is this hot babe Helen of Troy? Everybody went to war over this woman as opposed to the tin trade, that's not really as sexy. It's not going to stand the test of time. So they knew their audience pretty well and they changed the story. But it's possible that the tin trade may have actually been the cause of the Trojan War, at least one of the causes of the Trojan War, because Troy actually would have been a very wealthy city set smack dab right on these trade routes of where the tin would have crossed paths from Afghanistan going into the ancient Mycenaean civilization and ancient Greece and the Hittites, et cetera.   [00:56:29.450] These are sort of the dominant kingdoms at the time, the Hittites, the Mycelian civilization.   [00:56:37.590] Then there was a tin shortage, and the tin just sort of went away. And this was certainly a tumultuous time in human history. And there are a whole lot of other things, by the way, going on. There were wars, there were invasions, they had a volcanic eruption, they had climate change. They had all sorts of things that happened.   [00:56:54.030] But one of the key lessons that we learned from history is that you never bet against human ingenuity, that human beings have been down before plenty of times, have faced an incredible amount of adversity, and yet, time after time after time, human beings adapt and overcome. And we always figure out a way. And it's because we have brains, we have our ingenuity, we have courage, we have all these things that enable us to go out and say, all right, we're going to figure something out. Regardless of the stupidity of our leaders that want to drive wars and cause all sorts of inefficiencies, we're just going to get it done. And the beauty of this is that essentially heralded the end of the Bronze Age.   [00:57:34.210] Not even the end of the Bronze Age. It was a fullblown collapse of the Bronze Age. The Bronze Age went out in terrible fashion because the entire thing that made the Bronze Age possible just went away. Now, they had this other technology at the time that they were aware of. They already knew for a long time.   [00:57:50.390] They always knew about iron. Iron was so much more abundant. I mean, tin was rare and had to go all the way to Afghanistan to get it. Iron was man, look at those rocks over there. It's all iron.   [00:58:01.740] Everything is all iron. There was iron everywhere. It was like oil in the early days of the US. It was just bubbling up out of the ground. There were iron rocks and rocks and rocks everywhere.   [00:58:09.790] It was so easy to get. The problem is that iron has a very much higher melting point, talking 1500 degrees centigrade as opposed to 200. You can do tin in your oven iron. You need very special equipment. And when the tin went away, instead of cowering in fear and saying, oh shit, we're all done for.   [00:58:27.480] Everybody's going to die. We're all going to starve, all these terrible things are going to happen. They said, all right, we're going to figure this out. And they doubled down and had a tremendous growth curve, not necessarily in their economic growth or any of these other things, but in the growth of human knowledge, the body of knowledge of human beings. And they learned very quickly, how can we work with iron?   [00:58:47.310] And they developed much more advanced technology. They say, okay, if we build it like this, and we take these bricks and we take this grass, and we use these special equipment that we developed in order to create more combustion and retain the heat, et cetera, you know what? We could actually get a fire much hotter that's going to be able to we can actually work with iron. And they figured that out. They figured it out pretty quick.   [00:59:10.110] And then they figured something else out because once they were working with iron, then they really started experimenting. I said, okay, what happens if we add a little bit of this? And what happens if we add a little bit of that? And suddenly one day they went, oh my God, look at what happens when we add a little bit of carbon to this, because now we go from iron to steel. And steel was an absolute game changer.   [00:59:33.890] Steel was better, faster, cheaper, stronger, much more abundant. Steel was absolutely revolutionary. It was so much stronger than bronze, so much stronger than iron. It was the best thing that had ever been invented in the entire world up to that point in human civilization. And with steel now, they had really powerful tools and really powerful weapons, and they had really powerful weight.   [00:59:58.770] They could build things with steel. They could build really great structures that could last a really long time. There were so many things that they could do with steel, and it made all the difference in the world. And the world propelled itself forward. They were at the depths of this crisis.   [01:00:13.150] They had resource shortages and everything. And they said, you know, we're going to find a better way. And that better way was steel. So I believe that the world is in a similar point right now where we have these issues where our energy return on energy, investors getting lower, our energy is becoming more expensive, not only in dollar or euro terms, but in energy terms. That's really bad for prosperity, because prosperity requires cheap energy.   [01:00:39.690] But we already have this, right? In the same way that during the Bronze Age, they knew about iron. In fact, there are some civilizations that already started to kind of crudely work with iron. And they figured out, okay, we can kind of get to 1500 degrees Celsius. We can kind of start working with us a little bit.   [01:00:55.900] So there are some basic, some tribes and some kingdoms had very, very basic crew knowledge of working with iron. But it didn't really go anywhere because iron in and of itself, it was okay. But they were so accustomed to working with bronze, they were really doubling down on tin. I think we're in a similar position today. And the iron essentially that we have available to us, because this is a technology that already exists, just like for a lot of ancient Bronze Era civilizations already knew about iron, we already know about nuclear.   [01:01:25.410] Now I remember that concept of specific energy we were talking about that energy density, the amount of energy you have, and Joules, or really megajoules per kilogram, I want to go back to that with nuclear. So remember, with wood, the specific energy, that energy density in wood is about 18 megajoules. Remember, Joule is a unit of measurement for energy. So 18 megajoules for every kilogram of wood. With coal, it's twice as much.   [01:01:51.800] It's about 36 megajoules per kilogram. With uranium, it's 80 million. 80 million megajoules per kilogram. Okay, 18 megajoules per kilogram with wood, 36. With coal, 80 million with uranium.   [01:02:11.110] So what you're talking about with a little hunk of rock with uranium, 80 million megajoules per kilogram. It's off the charts in terms of its specific energy, the amount of energy that's contained in a kilogram of uranium. If you compare that to, for example, photovoltaics, if you compare that to solar power, the panels, if you generously, I think assume 2000, 2500 hours a year for 30 years of a lifespan for solar panels, you're going to get about 40 to 50,000 megajoules. With solar panels, it's not really about weight so much as energy, right? You think about solar panels is like per square meter or per square foot of solar panel.   [01:02:50.020] So we convert this into volume or area instead. So you're talking about 40 to 50,000 megajoules for every, let's say, square meter or liter of solar panels versus 1.5 billion for uranium. The difference is just extraordinary. And if you look at the numbers, for example, energy return on, energy invested. Look, this is something that's subject to a lot of debate.   [01:03:16.430] And it's a bizarre thing with nuclear. There are so many people that hate, really hate nuclear. They think nuclear is the worst thing in the world. All they can think about is, whatever, three Mile Island and Chernobyl and all these sorts of things. They say nuclear is the worst thing ever.   [01:03:33.750] Okay, fine. I'm not here to say nuclear is perfect form of nothing's perfect. Everything has upside, everything has downside. The problem that we've had for so long. And by the way, excuse me, I would take this back to Covet.   [01:03:50.990] I would take this back to a lot of things related to C. There was never any rational debate that was even allowed, let alone took place about upside versus downside, looking at actual, real data. Instead, it became very emotional. It became very contrived, heavily censored, and this is the only thing that you're allowed to think, et cetera, honestly, with the subject. I think nuclear is the next Covet with respect to the debate and the emotional frenzy and everything going along with because they're environmentalists right now in Germany, you have environmentalists.   [01:04:22.900] That because they're losing so much Russian gas. And the Russians have just recently announced, hey, by the way, we're going to dial back the amount of gas that we're sending to you for the wintertime. Good luck with that. Dealing with the harsh winter in Germany without our Russian gas. Good luck with that.   [01:04:38.810] So, of course, the Germans know they got to keep the power on, and yet what do they decide to do? They're firing up all these coal fired power plants. And the Green Party, right, the hardcore environmentalists are saying, yeah, let's do it. Coal fired power plants, that's great, let's do it. Because they're so antonuclear.   [01:04:55.190] And you have these people, the Greta Thunbergs of the world. How is this person even relevant in a conversation? You've got a bunch of kids that are out in the streets protesting no to nuclear, don't know the first thing about nuclear energy, nuclear power, the risk associated with it. Come to find out, oh, well, actually, they say, oh, it's radioactive, and so forth. A lot of things there's just crazy misconceptions about it.   [01:05:19.330] Again, I'm not here to say there's no issues and there's no risk and so forth, but I think that as somebody that I pride myself on being as objective as possible, I have looked at this so much, and I've come to the conclusion, looking at so much data, including there's people that are extremely pro nuclear, by the way, that completely dismissed. Oh, there's no risk of that. And there's no risk of that. Of course there is. There might be a meltdown.   [01:05:43.510] There might be there's certain risks that might happen. There's also, by the way, a lot of risks of coal. In fact, often there's more radioactivity coming out of a coal fired power plant than there is in any nuclear plant. You'd be surprised, actually, at a lot of this. And for anybody that really does, I think, rational, objective research, the conclusion to me, I think it's an inescapable conclusion that this is absolutely the way forward.   [01:06:07.820] Nuclear is absolutely the way forward. There are a lot of really great, I think, objective, comprehensive studies that really, when you talk about energy return on energy investment, they go all the way through and say, okay, let's talk about even what does it take to build a nuclear plant? What does it take to mine uranium? What does it take to produce the energy? Once we have the uranium, we have the plant built.   [01:06:27.490] For example, you can see things like it takes 75 concrete and 36 tons of steel for every megawatt and power that a nuclear energy plant produces, right? So it's a very comprehensive study, and you can see a lot of these studies. For example, wind, by the way, produces requires 460 tons of steel per megawatt versus 36 tons of steel for a nuclear power plant. So you end up, again, if you look at all this and say, what does it take to mine what does it take to build what does it take to produce all this? You end up with an energy return on energy investment of between 60 and 70 X.   [01:07:03.040] That's really high. That's really high. And that's really your all in cost with everything, even including the steel and the concrete and the mining and all these things. And by the way, for people that are so inclined for this, the CO2 emissions on nuclear are basically nothing all the way through the chain. Even with the mining of the uranium, even with the concrete and the steel and all that, you're talking about a CO2 emissions that is almost nothing.   [01:07:27.790] You can't say that about solar. If you're honest about it and you're honest about the cobalt and the lithium and the battery production, all these things, you just can't say that about solar, but you can about nuclear. That is completely undisputable. And there's a lot of really good data. I'm not here to convince you about nuclear or whatever, but I want to point out that this idea of nuclear, especially right now, nuclear fission is technology that already exists.   [01:07:52.920] It's better, it's cheaper, it's everything. And I would really say for the people that are detractors the stuff that's out there, there's so much media, so much hysteria. Nuclear is terrible. They say, oh, it's too expensive. No, it's not.   [01:08:08.420] It's really not. And there's actually a lot of data for this. In fact, in the state of California, which still has at least one nuclear power plant that's run by PG and E, Pacific Gas and Electric, the average power production cost for PG and E is ten cents per kilowatt hour. For their nuclear plant that they have, it's 6.5 cents, right? It's not even a study.   [01:08:30.170] It's not even some hypothetical, let's try and figure this out. It's the data that they have. They know this. This is what it costs us per kilowatt hour. And again, lower CO2 emissions, all these things that all these people supposedly care about.   [01:08:41.980] And instead they go, no, we don't want nuclear because they're still living in the think a lot of people haven't really bothered to try and objectively educate themselves. Yeah, of course there's risk. There's risks of tailings. And you've got a story that a lot of people talk about nuclear waste. It's funny.   [01:08:58.290] In the United States, under Jimmy Carter, jimmy Carter actually outlawed the recycling of nuclear waste to go back into nuclear power plant, said, no, we're going to go and store this. And in the there were some issues with that in the technology has obviously gotten so much better. And by the way, why wouldn't you want to recycle a nuclear waste if you can get more energy out of it? That just increases the energy return on energy invested even more. So there's been a lot of political ill will against nuclear for a long time.   [01:09:25.960] And I view this as this is actually the good thing about global competition. And it's like anything else when you've got some countries that say we're going to raise taxes and we're going to make things more difficult for business, et cetera, well, guess what? You can have other countries say, well, guess what? We're going to lower taxes and we're going to roll out the red carpet for productive individuals and profitable businesses because we want you to come to our country. And so this is how places like Singapore are actually really able to thrive and become incredibly successful, because they were very competitive in building the right kind of environment that was attractive to businesses and productive people in the UAE, they said, hey, we're going to cut our taxes.   [01:10:02.050] Come to the UAE. You're not going to pay any taxes. We're going to build this whole this whole thing here for you. A lot of these countries, they became competitive because they knew all these other countries, these Western developed countries, were going in the wrong direction. They said, we're going to compete.   [01:10:15.880] And they were able to attract a lot of business. It's going to be the same thing with energy. There's going to be a lot of countries, they're going to say, we don't want nuclear energy. We're running away from nuclear energy. And there's going to be other countries that say, we like nuclear.   [01:10:25.980] Sure, if you want to do nuclear, come to us. We're going to support it. We might even subsidize it. We're going to embrace it with open arms. It's like every other technology.   [01:10:33.570] There are places that say, sure, you want to do driverless vehicles, come to us. We're going to pave the way for you. We're going to pass special legislation making driverless vehicle autonomous driving technology possible in our state or in our country. There are countries that outlawed online gambling, and there are other countries that said, we like online gambling. And if you want to be in the online gambling industry, come to our country, right?   [01:10:57.910] So this happens in everything, and it's going to happen with energy as well. There are going to be a lot of countries that say, you know what, you want to do nuclear? Come here. We like nuclear. We want to go nuclear.   [01:11:09.240] If you want to do nuclear, come here. We want the most advanced technology ever. And this is going to happen. It's already happening. And it's even happening in surprise places.   [01:11:17.400] It wasn't that long ago, I think it was back in July, that the European Union, they published this thing called the Green Finance Taxonomy for Sustainable Activities. This is basically their thing that says, all right, this is what we now consider as our big EU government. This is what we consider now environmentally sustainable activities. They've now included nuclear on that list. There are a number of caveats, but they've included nuclear on that list.   [01:11:42.080] What that means is that a lot of funds and a lot of investment can go and be allocated now into nuclear energy, nuclear power, RND, research, development for nuclear energy, etc. And in a way that never was before. And they get all sorts of different incentives and tax benefits, et cetera, for this. Now it's pretty pathetic that they had to be dragged into this kicking and screaming. You had certain places, the Green Party in Germany, this one guy, one freaking guy who's like, I've been fighting against nuclear energy for 50 years, and I'm not going to allow that success to be snatched away from me after all that time.   [01:12:17.810] It's like, dude, what kind of ego? What kind of ego do you have to have to say, I am going to personally retard the progress of all of human civilization because of my own ego, because I'm not going to because otherwise, what was my life for anyway? I'm sorry. Your life in the last 50 years was completely meaningless. And I would say that's probably the same for a lot of other politicians that have spent 50 years in government.   [01:12:41.620] I can't think of anybody right now. We'll see. But for these people, their entire life was completely meaningless. Everything they did was wrong. Well, guess what?   [01:12:49.450] Tough shit, get on board the train right now. Because this is what the world needs, and this is where the world is going. And so this one guy is trying to block this, unsuccessfully, by the way. Then you had the entire government of Austria that threatened to sue the European Union over this. I mean, so ridiculous.   [01:13:04.170] Then of course, quite predictably, greta Thunberg is barfing all over this and making her contrived scowling faces and giving these silly videos and speeches and stuff that for some reason some people actually listen to. But it's still happening.   [01:13:21.450] This is happening. There's a lot of momentum. There's a lot of progress. More importantly, there's been literally tens of billions of dollars in investment capital, even primarily earmarked for R and D going into nuclear. And not just the technology that exists.   [01:13:33.420] We have nuclear fission, which is where we split apart an atom's nucleus. This is really powerful. Inside of an atom's nucleus, you've got a lot of similarly charged particles, a lot of protons, and you've got different subatomic particles even within really tiny particles, within protons themselves, you've got a lot of similarly charged particles that in theory, based on what we know about electromagnetism, they should be flying apart from each other, right? When you take two magnets that are similarly a North Pole and a North Pole, or you take two similarly charged electrical particles and you put them together, then the electromagnetic force is going to cause them to go flying apart from one another. They're going to repel each other.   [01:14:12.540] And yet you have all these similarly charged particles that are sitting inside of an atom's nucleus, which means there's something really powerful as a very powerful force inside of a nucleus. In fact, scientists refer to there's a weak force and a strong force inside of a nucleus. And so what happens in fission is we're breaking apart that atom's nucleus and we're unleashing that energy that's holding together all these suddenly charged particles. That's where a lot of this comes from. So the force and the energy inside of that through splitting apart an atom's nucleus, that's the fission process.   [01:14:43.970] That's what powers nuclear energy. It's why there's so much energy inside of uranium, because that's what they're using for this, is uranium. There are other elements that can be used in nuclear power and a lot of research and development for that. But on top of that, and I would actually say that fission is like our iron. So we're the end of the Bronze Age right now, and we're looking around saying, hey, we have this iron, right?   [01:15:05.760] Look, it's everywhere. It's all these rocks everywhere. We have all this iron already. And we can say the same thing. We already have fission, we already have nuclear.   [01:15:11.890] And you know what? It's pretty good. And it's a lot better than the alternative, which is running out of the tin that we have using fission. It's not perfect, but it's pretty good. And that's basically the same situation that Bronze Age civilizations were faced, the ancient Egyptians under Ramsey III were faced with at the end of the Bronze Age.   [01:15:33.030] But we also have our steel. And our steel, which is not here yet, but it's coming, is nuclear fusion. Fusion is where we instead of splitting apart at atoms nucleus, where we're combining two or more nuclei together, it releases an incredible amount of energy. The specific energy in fusion is so high. Remember I was talking 80 million, it's like half a billion with nuclear fusion.   [01:15:54.750] It's even higher with nuclear fusion. Nuclear fusion, if you go back a couple of decades, you might be thinking nuclear fusion. It's not even possible. Well, in many respects, they've already done it. There's been so much R and D into this.   [01:16:07.100] The advances are happening very rapidly and there's a ton of capital going into this. This is our steel. This is like steel in the Bronze Age. This is something, we know it's there, we know it's coming. We already have a really good alternative in fusion, but fusion has the potential to be even better.   [01:16:23.470] And this is why I would say ultimately why this is not this bad news story. This is not famine and widespread economic devastation and all these sorts of things because we already have it. We have it. We have something that is inexpensive in dollar terms. Again, you think back to Pacific Gas and Electric, six and a half cents per kilowatt hour versus $0.10 for the rest of their energy.   [01:16:45.890] Lower CO2 emissions. It's very high energy. Return on energy investment, absurdly high specific energy, all this stuff combined, and we already have it. We don't have to figure out, oh gee, how do we do nuclear fission? We already have it.   [01:16:59.050] It's already there right in front of us. And all we have to do is just somehow muster the political will and the will and the media don't hold your breath for that. But it's going to happen because there's so much competition in the world among nations. There are countries that are in a quite serious energy situation right now, and they're going to be the first ones to go, you know what? We're going nuclear.   [01:17:21.890] I don't give a shit what the media says. We're going nuclear because we need it, because we have no alternative and we're going to do it. And all of a sudden, everybody's going to look around and say, oh my God, look at how they solved their problem. They have so much energy right now and it's so cheap and their economy is booming. We want that too.   [01:17:36.410] And all the people that were against it, they're going to look really stupid. All the politicians that were against it, they're going to look really stupid. People have been making little baby steps in this. Again, we can see what's happened with the European Union. We can even see, believe it or not, even now, the State of California, they had this one nuclear power plant and now they're looking at saying, hey, let's continue the lease on this.   [01:17:55.280] Let's keep going with it. I'll be the first guy to say that Gavin Newsom is a moron, but he's actually been one of the guys leading the charge, notwithstanding other side issues, including the fact that he's getting billions of dollars from the federal government to do this. So it's free money and very little risk on his part. But again, you've got people that are just they're coming up with the most, the craziest things. You got people that are saying, oh, but the nuclear power plant is on lands that once belonged to Native Americans and all these sort of things.   [01:18:20.840] You go, how is it even relevant right now? It's really insane, the sort of obstacles and the roadblocks and the excuses that people come up with. But in time, and I think relatively short order, there's going to be a period because there are countries that are going full steam ahead, no pun intended, with nuclear power, and everybody else is going to say, wow, look at that. They're better, they're faster, they're growing like crazy. They don't have any of these obstacles.   [01:18:44.260] They've completely divorced themselves for any dependence on Russian oil and gas. They're totally energy independent and their economy is booming as a result. We want that too. And that's really what's going to lead to this kind of adoption. On top of that, all the investment capital that's going into it, that makes it even better, even safer, and developing nuclear fusion technology, this is what's absolutely going to drive prosperity for the future.   [01:19:11.940] Because, again, that rule from history, you never bet against human ingenuity. We're going to have political competition that's going to cause a lot of countries to increase adoption. And our human ingenuity, the investment capital, is going into this. This is going to power prosperity for decades and decades to come. It's not.   [01:19:28.660] Going to solve a lot of the other major political challenges. It's not to say that Social Security is still going broke. The US government still has $30 trillion in debt. They still love their Marxism. They still love all their Woke bullshit, all that kind of stuff.   [01:19:41.050] But we don't have to worry about living in some kind of Mad Max world where we've got this handful of scarce resources and everybody's out killing each other over it. It's going to be bumpy and it's going to take time. It's still going to be all sorts of issues. You're going to have to put up with everybody's nonsense and campaigning against this. But eventually, nuclear is going to be powering decades, even generations of prosperity to come.   [01:20:04.470] And I believe that's going to make it the biggest thing that's happened since Bye.   Close Podcast Transcription

Years ago when I was in the military, I had the privilege of serving with some of the finest people I will ever know in my entire life. It’s not a cliché. Many of my brothers in arms were incredibly honest, hard working, dedicated, loyal, intelligent, creative, courageous, and more. And yet, if I’m being brutally honest, I also have to acknowledge that I also served alongside quite a few scumbags. I remember one enlisted soldier in my unit who was arrested by Secret Service agents one day because he had been counterfeiting $100 bills on a Laserjet printer. (He should have been a central banker instead.) Others routinely beat their wives and children. Others were petty criminals and kleptomaniacs. It was a small number, for sure. But there were certainly plenty of bad apples in the military. And there are always going to be bad apples in any large organization– whether it’s the Army, or the entire federal government. This is important. Because we live in a time when apparently the solution to EVERYTHING is MORE GOVERNMENT. Bigger government. And more expensive government. This week, just like that… poof. The government became much bigger. Politicians are cheering this legislative ‘victory’ as the dubiously-named ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ was passed and signed into law on Tuesday. As I’ve said before, the bill will probably make inflation worse. But even more, the bill aims to expand the size and scope of the federal government… as if it weren’t big enough and powerful enough already. And this takes me back to bad apples. There are already millions of people who work for the federal government. Even if just the bottom 10% are bad apples– people who abuse their positions and power for personal gain, or because of their ideological fanaticism, then a lot of terrible things can happen. The IRS is going to potentially hire tens of thousands of people. If even 10% of those are bad apples, the damage they’ll cause is incalculable. Exhibit A: Just take a look at the CDC. This week they admitted, rather sheepishly, that nearly everything they did during the COVID pandemic was wrong. The CDC acknowledged being plagued by a horrific culture of selfishness, bureaucracy, fear, careerism, and ineptitude, and that they need a “reset”. “It’s not lost on me that we fell short in many ways,” said CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, in an honest assessment of her agency’s response to COVID. Of course there are some smart, good-natured, intelligent people who work for the CDC. But with such a toxic culture, the entire organization became a Bad Apple within the government. And the consequences that resulted will be felt for years to come. Thanks in part to the CDC’s response to COVID, the US economy ground to a halt. The supply chain broke down. Mental health, substance abuse, and domestic violence problems skyrocketed. Censorship and cancel culture reigned. And trust in major institutions, including the medical industry, plummeted. Constantly expanding the size and authority of government only increases this risk of terrible consequences. Yet it seems to be the only solution that politicians can ever come up with. This is the topic of our podcast today: bad apples… and why having a Plan B is really so important. Open Podcast Transcription [00:00:03.670] - Holly So the government got bigger this week. Are we celebrating?   [00:00:08.750] - Simon Ha ha, well, some people are.   [00:00:10.180] - Holly Some people are.   [00:00:11.470] - Simon That's okay. The government did get a lot bigger this week because they just found another way to spend an absurd amount of money. And it's interesting thing because this is their solution to everything. The solution to everything is we need, whatever the problem is, the solution is more government. And whatever the previous problem was that we solved with more government. Well now the problem is we need even more government. The government's never big enough so we need even more government. And of course now we need a bigger IRS to be able to pay for this bigger government. You and I have discussed this a lot, that the trust in pretty much every institution and that includes the government is really bordering an all time low. We see this now: nobody trusts the media, nobody trusts the banks, nobody trusts the big tech companies, nobody trusts any of these things. And it's especially the government. Congressional approval ratings are at astonishing lows. The office of the presidency, the Supreme Court, all these various departments and agencies, individual offices within the government. Interestingly enough, even the military now is taking a hit. The military was always one of the things that sort of stood above and beyond in its reputation and the numbers, the approval ratings and the trust level and military was always quite high.   [00:01:36.700] - Simon Even that's really starting to come down a lot. So trust levels are really at a low and let's be honest, there's a lot of good reason for that. We see all sorts of things that are now where you can say historic overreaches and shenanigans and all these things, so many just weird, weird things and you think what are they possibly going to do to top this? And then they do it again. There's just something else that people just can't believe. How could you possibly do these sorts of things? What I would say is I think in fairness and again I always try and look at things very objectively, very rationally and I want to I guess briefly mention this in the context of good apples and bad apples. When you think about how big societies are in any country that you go to, even small countries, people listen to this from all over the world, but especially big countries. I mean you get all sorts of people, you have really good people and you have really bad people and a whole lot of people in between and there's no different in the government. I would actually go back to my time when I was in the military and some of the people that I served with, I would say to this day rank as some of the finest people I will ever know in my life.   [00:02:54.220] - Simon Some of the most noble, some of the most honorable, some of the most selfless people I have ever met and will ever meet in my entire life. At the same time, there are also some of the worst scumbags I've ever seen. There were guys that were beating their wives. There were guys that were harder drug dealers. Yeah, there were guys getting arrested. The military police would go around these guys up in their quarters, on post on the base, because the guy was beating his wife, beating his kids. Again. There were guys that had really severe substance abuse problems, or guys that had a major drug ring, prostitution ring. There were guys... I had a guy in my unit who was actually arrested. I remember the secret service showed up one day to our headquarters. And I was the executive officer. And they came in and sat down. And they took a meeting and explained that we actually had a soldier in our in our unit who was counterfeiting $100 bills. Like. Really cheap, bad, terrible $100 bills. Like, off of a laser jet printer and going around town trying to buy stuff. Whatever. These fake $100 bills. And it's actually one of the jobs of the secret service. They protect the president, and they also go after counterfeiters. And so they came and they arrested this guy. They put them in handcuffs. They hauled him away. It was like in the middle of a training session whenever the secret service came in and cuffed this guy and hauled him away. And I'm sure he did prison time or whatever. You get all kinds. You get some of the best people, like I said, I will ever meet in my life, and some really bad scumbags. And that's the way it is. I think, in anything. You can't have an organization as large as the military, the federal government, the IRS, the IRS, the FBI. The FBI is an interesting one because they've taken so much heat. They've taken so much heat. And let's be honest, there's a lot of reason for that. I mean, over the last several years, it's been one scandal after another after another. We just kind of look at bonehead.   [00:05:00.930] - Simon How could they do that? It looks bad. There are a lot of things that look really bad. I would also say again, in fairness, I personally know a lot of FBI agents, and I'm just speaking from personal experience, the ones that I know are really great people, really great people. The kind of people that you go, well, I'm glad that person is in the FBI. Really professional, really intelligent, sophisticated, and all they want to do is just catch bad guys. They want to catch really rotten criminals and put them behind bars. That's what they want to do. Having said that, there are also a lot of bad apples. And the FBI, in fact, just the other day, there is yet another scandal. It wasn't something really reflected on the bureau itself, but something that highlighted that, yes, there are some bad apples, and it was actually this big scandal in Puerto Rico. Wow, what a surprise. Is it Tuesday? There must be another scandal in Puerto Rico. And they arrested in Puerto Rico the former governor of this lady, Wanda Vasquez, on basically bribery and corruption. And again, lockdown Wanda. Right, lockdown Wanda. So this is the one that was never elected.   [00:06:08.570] - Simon She was the Gerald Ford of Puerto Rico.   [00:06:13.250] - Holly Ha ha ha.   [00:06:13.250] - Simon But at least Gerald Ford won his primary. Just barely won his primary against Ronald Reagan, but at least Gerald Ford won his primary. Wanda Vasquez didn't even actually win the primary in her own party. So that's how widely despised she was. But everybody knew she was corrupt. And it turned out, oh, well, okay, so this is whole thing and it was bribery scandal. And there was an FBI agent, actually, technically a former FBI agent who was in the middle of all this, and he was kind of brokering the bribes and everything like that. And again, it's not a good look. He got a guy who was an ex agent. So again, technically, he was no longer in the bureau. But it's not like he suddenly became corrupt. The second he retired. He became this corrupt criminal. Give me a break. So this guy was arrested too. And it's these sorts of things to go, that's a bad apple. And there are bad apples like that in any organization.   [00:07:04.150] - Holly Oh, I have one for you. For two years, I was threatened, right? We were all threatened by the CDC, who's controlling us and like, a toxic relationship. And now they finally apologized. But I still have trust issues because this apology was a total non apology this week where what was it they said? Mistakes were made, right? Total passive voice when they're saying this. And it doesn't really engender a lot of faith from people who honestly felt like there was a breach of power there.   [00:07:43.790] - Simon Yeah, it's funny. We're having this discussion yesterday with some friends, and I don't personally agree with it because I'm a rational adult and I can do my own research throughout all this, looking at studies, et cetera. But I at least understand the desire for people to want to have some objective authority, give them objective advice about some emerging medical threat. And I understand why people would look to the government to fill that role, to say, look, there's some brand new thing, and I don't know what to think about it. Can you tell me, is this a risk or not? What do I need to do? Should I be freaking out about this? What's the deal? And is there some independent sort of objective medical authority that can tell me whether or not it should be concerned and give me the right kind of advice? And I understand why people would look to the government for that. Personally, I don't, but I understand why people do. I don't want to be completely...   [00:08:44.250] - Holly Traditionally, it had at least the veneer of being trustworthy. I'm not just talking about the CDC. I'm talking about all institutions. We thought Walter Cronkite was delivering us an objective, objective unbiased news. It expanded across it was generational, and now that's completely changed.   [00:09:06.110] - Simon Yeah, it's totally changed from an institutional perspective. But we can come back to that because I think, for example, in the media, I think a lot of people, while we don't trust the media and we don't trust legacy media, people don't trust CNN, they don't trust MSNBC, they don't trust all this stuff. But there are individual voices in media that people do trust. Everybody's got places they go to where they feel like, okay, I'm getting the unvarnished truth here from this organization or this person. So I think that's a good thing. I think that the idea of the trust in the institutions is falling. I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing because people are finding we do have so many options in terms of places that we can find the right information and people that we can trust. But I think you're right. The CDC. Such an embarrassment. And this week they issued they said, oh, we conducted a study, we conducted self assessment, which is interesting, that they would have gone and done that again. It was very light touch. Mistakes were made, and they came back and said, we need a culture of what do they say?   [00:10:17.280] - Simon We need a culture of action and we need a culture of equity. I'm not sure what equity to bring sort of identity politics into this. I'm not sure really how that impacted the outcome and the embarrassment of their covid 19 response. I'm not really sure how diversity and inclusion factor into that, but that was something that they cited and they said, oh, we need a culture of action. Actually, no, you don't need a culture of action, because that sort of was the problem. That was all the actions that you were taking and all the things that you were doing. It just happened to be all the wrong actions. And if anything, there's a culture of a complete lack of accountability. And this is sort of the thing is that this is government in general. Congress passes laws and agencies go into all these things. They issue their guidance, but there's never any accountability when they're dead, flat wrong, hilariously, embarrassingly wrong. There's never any accountability. Nobody ever gets fired. The amazing thing is about it that a lot of these people that are in charge, fauji is still running around saying, this guy is following, I mean, this is a guy who hasn't been fired.   [00:11:26.210] - Simon He's been so wrong, proven wrong, over and over and over and over and over again. And it turns out in the CDC sort of very vaguely hints about, okay, yeah, we weren't really putting all the information out. We're sitting on a lot of information. I mean, they waited so long, so long to actually tell the truth and say, well, the people are actually really high risk of this, are people that are obese people who haven't taken care of themselves. And maybe, just maybe, we were wrong for saying that people should sit at home, coward, fear in their homes while everybody was ordering in Big Macs and drinking mass quantities of alcohol, deal with all the mental health pain, and not going to the gym because we told people you can't go to the gym, we closed all these things. So all these really unhealthy habits, maybe that was totally wrong decision. It's not even this little very brief document where they acknowledge mistakes were made. They owe a huge apology to everybody. So do the tech companies. All this stuff all along the way where they say if you had an independent opinion and you were canceled and they slapped all these warning labels on your dangerous misinformation and so forth, it turns out, oh, it actually wasn't misinformation at all.   [00:12:42.700] - Simon The misinformation was the bullshit that was coming out of the CDC. That was the misinformation. So it was perfectly fine to spread misinformation as long as it was the official misinformation that was coming out of the CDC and not the actual truth that was coming out of the independent research and so forth that people were conducting. They owe a massive apology to so many people. And again, this is a case of bad apples. And I think within the CDC, there are a lot of really smart, intelligent people, intelligent, even well meaning people within the CDC. I think one of the big issues inside the CDC wasn't even necessarily all these terrible people. The culture itself was the bad apple.   [00:13:26.660] - Holly Well, bad apples rot other apples.   [00:13:30.650] - Simon The Michael Lewis book on this, I don't know if you've seen them, it's a really great expose into how absolutely rotten and hilariously incompetent the CDC was. And it's not because they don't have very intelligent people. The CDC, the prioritization, the incentive structure, et cetera, just creates these horrible, horrible, horrible outcomes. It's literally the entire organizational structure and the culture itself that is the bad apple.   [00:13:57.190] - Simon And so we can see this idea of bad apples across government. We can see in a lot of these organizations, not to say that everybody in such and so agency or such and so whatever is bad or the agency itself is bad, I'll even say something that's going to surprise a lot of people. This almost sounds sacrilegious, but there are a lot of really even within the IRS, there are a lot of really great IRS agents. I would actually tell you that some of the most competent, sophisticated investigators in the world, especially when it comes to anything financial, are IRS agents, specifically on the criminal side, the criminal investigative agents, these are some of the most sophisticated financial investigators in the world. They really understand banking, international commerce, and transaction. They really get this stuff. These are very complex topics. They're very sophisticated people. And a lot of these guys, all they want to do is catch people that are hardcore frauds and cheats and stealing from the government, whatever. And again, there are some very good people involved in some of these organizations. Having said that, again, they're also bad apples. There are bad apples.   [00:15:06.910] - Simon Sometimes it's the entire organization or the structure or the incentive structure within the organization that's the bad apple. But there are always bad apples inside. You get people like Lois Lerner, who was the lady infamously inside of the IRS years ago that just coincidentally happened to be targeting these sort of conservative charities and that was a quite famous case. But there are always bad apples inside of these organizations and sometimes it's just a handful of bad apples that can really wreck a lot of havoc and destruction.   [00:15:37.910] - Holly Well, that's the thing. I try to say this earlier and I was having technical problems, so I don't know if it recorded or not, but in a box, if you have a bad apple, a rotten apple, it will corrupt the other ones. It spreads. And so I think at this point there are a lot of people who are skeptical about things like this inflation reduction act that was just passed and signed this week because they are starting to think that the bad apples have taken over. And if certain parts of the government are expanding, those parts of the government will be I've seen the word "weaponized" against them. The trust has eroded to the point where they think that these criminal investigators are going to be just investigating people who disagree with them on political, social and other topics. What do you think about that?   [00:16:29.330] - Simon It is a trust problem, and we talked about this before. If you think about it, the analogy being in a terrible relationship and you're in a really terrible toxic relationship with somebody, whether it's a loved one, spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever, you have serious trust issues. Everything that person does you view with serious suspicion. You start extrapolating well because of this and this is going to happen. They're going to do this and this and they must be sleeping with a neighbor or whatever. You start inventing things that aren't real. You start scrutinizing these tiny little things and making a huge deal out of it. And if you look at it rationally, we know, okay, that's not really true. And this is the relationship, again, that I think that a lot of people have with their government, right?   [00:17:22.080] - Holly Especially when they gaslight you. There is no inflation or what you were just talking about with the virus.   [00:17:30.320] - Simon Right. You find out that you're in a manipulative codependent relationship with a really terrible person that has taken every advantage to sort of steal and plunder and create all sorts of mistrusts and so forth. So yeah, of course you have every reason to be skeptical. But then you see some little action that they take and we start saying, oh, this is going to happen. Now we sort of create outcomes. We invent outcomes that haven't happened yet. Now, it certainly makes sense to think about various scenarios and so forth, but we talked about this before. A lot of people said, oh, they're going to pass this thing with the IRS. $80 billion is going to be 87,000 gun toading agents storming down people's doors. Whatever, okay, let's tone it down a little bit. That's not going to happen, that's not going to happen. And if you just sort of dive into the numbers and the actual text, the legislation and so forth, a lot of this stuff isn't really true. But this is always the case after the Dobbs Jackson Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. There are a lot of people that were freaking out about all this is going to happen, that's going to happen.   [00:18:42.640] - Simon Again, people were inventing outcomes that didn't exist. And then Kansas fairly conservative state went and passed in a statewide vote to preserve abortion rights in the Constitution. And so a lot of times the things that people think this is going to happen is going to be this terrible outcome. Again, I think we need to step back and try and look at it as rationally as possible, try and keep a level head about ourselves and look at the actual facts of the matter. I think in the case of the IRS, there actually is quite a bit of it that is earmarked specifically for enforcement, which does mean there's going to be more field agents. There's most likely going to be in terms of the gun toting special agents on the criminal side, now we're talking like 1000 people. A lot of that is going to be field auditors, people that actually go out. But those numbers, I would be surprised if it was really even 25,000 at that. Not to say that that's a good number or bad number or anything. Again, it's not the 87,000 gun toting door kicking agents that's been circulating around the media.   [00:19:53.950] - Holly However, that's a lot of people to investigate. Only people who make more than $400,000.   [00:20:02.790] - Holly Which is impossible. Impossible, right. Whatever the number is, it's going to be a lot of people. It's going to be a lot of people. I'd say even if it's 25,000, which is probably a mid range estimate, it could be more, it could be less. If you're talking about 25,000 field auditors, that's a lot of people. If you think about bad apples, it's even 10% bad apple. Now you've got thousands of people who are bad apples who are going out for whatever personal advancement, some kind of political fanaticism, ideological agenda, whatever the case may be, going out and causing all kinds of havoc and destruction. If you think about that in the context of the entire federal government as an institution, that vast apparatus that's got literally even a couple of million people that are working directly in or with the federal government, if even 10% of those are bad apples, you're talking about hundreds of thousands of people, hundreds of thousands of bad apples. That's a lot of destruction. That's a lot of destruction. And if you think about the top 10% of those by virtue of their rank and position and authority, that's tens of thousands of people that have significant power and authority to again, these are kind of faceless innocuous bureaucrats like Lois Lerner at the IRS who years ago just decided, well I'm going to coincidentally target all these conservative charities.   [00:21:34.710] - Simon You get people like that. Imagine tens of thousands of people like that. Just the numbers are what they are. It's a big number. And so when your entire solution based to everything, the extent of your creativity is "We have a problem. What's the solution? Let's expand the size of government". Right? And again, if even just 10% of those people are the bottom 10% people are the really bad apples which frankly I think that may be fairly generous. The actual number may be much higher than that. But let's call it 10%. 10%. That's a lot of destruction that can be caused. So if you're talking about you're hiring 250 people or even if 2,500 them are really nasty, that's a lot of destruction out there across middle America because this isn't just people that wealthy people or multimultimillionaires, et cetera. It's ludicrous. They say, oh, this won't affect anybody who makes less than $400,000.   [00:22:35.250] - Holly Biden said it right before he signed it.   [00:22:37.360] - Simon Lot of them said it, they all said it. The Treasury Secretary said it. The congressman said it, senator said it. But they had the opportunity to actually codify it into the law and actually write it down and make it part of the legislation. "Say thou shalt not audit anybody who makes less than $400,000." It was brought up and they said, "No, we're not going to actually write, we're not going to write it down. We'll just say it" because politicians always do what they say, right? So we're back to the trust issue and nobody trusts them and rightfully so. As an institution, why should anybody trust these people when all they do is lie and lie and lie?   [00:23:10.500] - Holly Well that brings up what happened earlier this month with the non raid. They keep talking about classified documents and we're supposed to trust all of this but there's a lot of things like a lot of smoke around it. So you know a thing or two about the classification system. Can you kind of go through that a little bit so we can at least have an understanding of what they might have been looking for or maybe not even in this case what they're looking for?   [00:23:39.780] - Simon Yeah, sure. I mean I was an intelligence officer so obviously have a lot of first hand experience with this. There's a lot of mystique behind the idea of classification. It's an old joke that I can't tell you got to kill you. It's such bullshit. It's so silly. What I would say is when I was an intelligence officer and I'm sitting here and I'm looking at all these classified documents, a lot of people don't really understand how it works. You get a security clearance. There used to be something called a Defense Investigative Agency, whatever. They've kind of rolled all this stuff into various agencies. But you go through a background check depending on the scrutiny, level increases or decreases based on the level of classification. If you're trying to get a top secret clearance as opposed to secret clearances, more scrutiny. They'll go and they'll interview people and they'll definitely look at your financial records and different things like that. There are certain disqualifiers, but they'll go through and look at your finances. For example, if you've got a ton of debt, that's not a good thing because then they're going to think that okay, you're susceptible to bribery and selling secrets and things like that.   [00:24:45.560] - Simon So they go through, they do fairly extensive background check. But your clearance basically makes you eligible to obtain certain classified documents. It's not that you can just go and just willynilly start getting access to whatever you want. All classification, all classified documents are on what's called a need to know basis. That's a real term. And you have to be working in a specific job and a specific agency that requires you to have access to certain information. There are certain things that are just sort of out there that the need to know is pretty broad, really broad. And they have entire systems. So there's one that's used widely in government called SIPRNet, which is basically like the internet. There are web browsers and websites and everything like that. But there's a certain level of encryption and you have to be on a special device, a special machine that has certain encryption on it to be able to access. It's a secret version of the internet.   [00:25:44.310] - Simon And it was hacked last year, right?   [00:25:46.950] - Simon That's a whole different thing. Different, yes, exactly right. So all these secrets, they make a big deal about this stuff. And to be fair, there's a lot of deal made about Hillary Clinton's emails as well. And I think the same rules apply. But there wasn't really so much a big deal made about the fact that this was with the solar winds hack. Nobody made a big deal about that. And the fact that the Chinese and the Russians got to plunder all this treasure trove of US government secrets. So I made a big deal about that. That's totally fine. Nothing to talk about there. When was the last time you heard anybody in the media talking about that? They didn't really talk about it. Even when it came up. But now it's just this classification issue. But yeah, you could browse SIPRNet and go to any agency, any intelligence agency, and they have a separate website with these secure servers that are connected to SIPRNet. And then there's another one that's actually top secret. It's called JWICS. Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System. JWICS is the top secret version of the Internet.   [00:26:50.190] - Simon So these agencies then have yet another set of secure servers that they connect to an even more secure network that's got a different set of really, really high level encryption that you have to access with special machines, et cetera. And you could go around and you could look at all this stuff and the things that I always saw when I was in the intelligence business, I was actually surprised at how much completely useless, petty information was classified. I would say literally at least 90% of stuff that's classified probably shouldn't be classified.   [00:27:27.810] - Holly Wow.   [00:27:29.550] - Simon Government overclassifies things. Really overclassifies things. Things are, again, silly, petty, oftentimes common knowledge. It's just so stupid. And you can just stroll through and read. They classify embassy cables, right? And a lot of the stuff you can see for yourself, don't take my word for it, you can go to WikiLeaks and see a lot of this stuff, a lot of these things that were classified documents that were leaked and posted on WikiLeaks, and most of the stuff is so mundane, it's so trivial, it's so petty. And you go, really? This is secret, this is top secret. You actually classify this garbage.   [00:28:06.270] - Simon It's hard to lend any credibility because as soon as somebody says, oh, it's classified documents, people think you're talking about nuclear launch codes. And the reality is a lot of this stuff is really just tame, lame, mundane stuff. Really petty, really silly. And it's as if sometimes you would think that they took a copy of the National Enquirer, then put a classification label on it. Sometimes that's how petty and silly some of the stuff is. And I use the National Enquirer literally because sometimes you even get analyst reports and people come out with these crazy ideas about this imminent space alien attack. Some analyst in some office somewhere in the Space Force,  "we're protecting against what we think is an imminent alien attack". And then they go and they put a classification document. That's the same thing you would see in the National Enquirer.   [00:28:59.490] - Holly Which might be the only institution people still trust.   [00:29:02.740] - Simon Ha ha, maybe so, but there's a lot of just really ludicrous stuff and they slap classification labels on it. And then a lot of the things that people say is "well you classify stuff because you're trying to protect the source". They go, well that's not really true either, because most of these sources are so well known or have already been compromised. It's satellite imagery, for example. Give me a break. What big tech company? You tell me. Google doesn't have access to it's all on Google Earth anyways. There's so many things like, to say that there's some unique source and people don't know where it's coming from is actually quite silly. Or even some of the human sources, like a lot of these diplomatic cables saying we have to classify it so we protect the source. I will tell you, anybody with half a brain who walks into an embassy meeting, they know exactly there's always employees of the CIA pretty much at every embassy, and everybody knows exactly who the spooks are because they have the weirdest, strangest titles you've ever seen. You meet a guy in an embassy, he's wearing a kind of nice looking suit, gives you a card.   [00:30:08.260] - Simon You look at the card, and the title on the card is one of the most incomprehensible... You're like, what is that? That's a spook. That's exactly who the spooks are. They're in what's called official cover, as opposed to non official cover. So the official cover guys are people who have these bizarre job titles, who work in an embassy, claim to be working for the State Department, but they're actually spooks. And so these are the guys that are providing a lot of information going, these embassy cables, but everybody knows who they are, and so you're not protecting the source because everybody knows who these guys are, and so they end up with this trivial, mundane, silly stuff that ends up being classified. Yes, mishandling classified information is against the law. I would actually tell you it happens so regularly, in many cases, inadvertently, people just it's not to say everybody does it every day of their lives, but it actually does happen fairly regularly, even though a lot of the stuff is supposed to be maintained in buildings with no windows, guarded by MPs and et cetera. But it still happens, and you don't really hear a whole lot about it.   [00:31:13.040] - Simon A lot of times people get admonished, and it could be a fairly big deal, but certainly not to the extent that we've seen here over the past week or so. That's a personal take on what's been happening and kind of a nonsecret of what we've been discussing, but a little bit of a personal take on classified documents. I'm not condoning any way mishandling classified information, but what I would just say when people hear classified information, they kind of assume we're dealing with nuclear launch codes. And for the most part, that's just not the case.   [00:31:45.750] - Holly Now that you told me, you'll have to kill me.   [00:31:47.900] - Simon Ha ha.   [00:31:47.900] - Holly Although we won't go into the whole controversy right now over whether a president has the right and the ability to declassify things, we'll let them settle that.   [00:32:01.050] - Simon That's up to the legal scholars and the courts.   [00:32:04.530] - Holly The point of all of this is that there's nothing that's happening right now that I see that is healing the wounds. Right. That's making people trust their institutions more, it sounds like, although you're saying hey, it's probably not going to be 87,000 IRS agents like we were talking about last week. The idea that there are bad apples everywhere and that certain people do take license with the power that they have does give people pause. And it's one of those things that makes you wonder kind of the reality of what could be coming. Now, you said something to me earlier, this isn't going to happen tomorrow. It's not like the IRS is going to unleash all of these new field agents and by the next tax, say half of the middle class is going to be audited. Right? This is a process and there could be amendments made.   [00:32:58.050] - Simon Yes. So a couple of things to bear in mind. Number one is there's been a law passed, there's been funding, in theory allocated. First things first, they actually have to come up with the money. So you always have to remember that with the United States when you're running multi trillion dollar deficits, just because they allocate money for something doesn't mean, especially when you're talking about over five to ten year period, doesn't mean when you think about five years from now, are they actually going to be able to come up with that money? Will there be a source of capital that's going to go and continue buying, funding US. Deficits year after year after year? Can they really say that with a straight face that six years from now we'll still be able to run these huge deficits? And yes, sure, the Chinese will continue buying our debt, so it's not going to be a problem. We'll be able to fund this. You might actually not have that luxury. You might not actually be able to come up with the money, and you might actually have to live within your means because you can't keep running these massive deficits.   [00:33:58.030] - Simon So even that's not a given. It's also not a given that they won't make changes to the law. It's entirely possible that there's a radical political adjustment and people come in and go, "you know what, we don't like this and we're going to pull the funding". And they could just as easily do that as well. So again, don't overreact and assume that there is a law that was passed and then sort of read into the law things that aren't actually there and just assume that all these things are going to happen. It does make sense to understand certain implications. And the implications are, yeah, sure, there's a lot of this that has been earmarked specifically for enforcement. That does mean more field auditors. I'm actually much more concerned about something else we can talk about in a second with respect to enforcement. But even with the field auditors, let's say it's 25,000, and I think that's a reasonable estimate. It could be more, it could be less, but it's not like you can just go and grab those guys and they're out tomorrow morning in the field. It's going to take a long time to recruit.   [00:35:00.450] - Simon The job market is tight, very tight. And these people that are going to be hired by the IRS, they have to be educated. They have to have certain credentials. It's tough to find those people and to go and get a whole bunch of them, that's tough. And it sucks as well for the private sector because now the IRS is taking a very scarce resource out of the labor market, right? So it's already scarce. And now you're going to make it even more scarce so you can have them doing instead of something productive, you can have them doing things that are anti productive. So I think it's actually a terrible move. But then you're going to have to train these people, right? They don't just show up on day one and send them out in the field. It's going to take a couple of years, really to work all that through. So that's one thing to bear in mind, is it's not like this is all going to get ramped up immediately, tomorrow morning. The big priority is, first of all, they can have to recruit these people, but they also gonna have to they're going to have to fix their broken as customer service because they have no I mean, there's nobody even going to answer the phone right now.   [00:35:59.440] - Simon So they got to fix that. There's so many things they need to fix. But the part that I was going to say that's actually even more concerning for me is the technology end of it. And the IRS has been trying to invest in technology. They haven't had the budget for it. They haven't had the funding for it. Now they do. And so you can be fairly certain that they're going to really expand. They already have a system in place that tries to flag certain things, whatever. And I think one thing that's highly likely is, and again, I'm not really extrapolating or trying to invent things that aren't there. This is based on a lot of comments from the service itself, from the commissioner, et cetera. They really want to invest in AI. And that to me is actually very scary because the government does not have a good track record at all when it comes to technology. Brought to you by the people that spent $2 billion on the Obamacare website, right, because Michelle Obama's college buddy, whatever, owned the company. I mean, it was so ridiculous. These people can't do anything right when it comes to technology.   [00:37:10.030] - Simon It's so terrible. They're so behind the times. In the US Air Force that deals with floppy disks, with missile launches, I mean, really important stuff. They deal with old school floppy disks. It's completely ridiculous. And so for the IRS to have this AI system that goes in and looks through zillions of tax returns, through this AI and machine learning because there's a lot of data there. This is how machine learning works. You just give it lots and lots and lots of data and then it comes up with its own analytics, et cetera, and then figures out how do we audit better, how do we catch tax cheats, et cetera. Which is great, except for the fact that they're probably going to do it really poorly because the government does have a dismal track record when it comes to technological implementation. So what concerns me is that they go and take some of this money and they go and spend a lot of money, billions of dollars are going to go and waste on some AI machine learning system that fails miserably at its job. And all of a sudden now you got all these sort of regular people that get flagged by some incompetent, broken AI tax system.   [00:38:28.600] - Simon Now everybody's getting flagged by the IRS because of some things they develop. It doesn't even touch the human beings. If a human being looked at, they go, there's nothing to see here. This is a completely normal, honest, taxpaying, law abiding citizen, but for whatever reason, machine flagged it and so now everybody's lives are turned upside down. That's the part that actually bothers me.   [00:38:50.040] - Holly It reminds me of that Tom Cruise movie years ago. The Thought crime?   [00:38:55.290] - Simon Oh, the Minority Report.   [00:38:56.890] - Holly Minority Report, yeah.   [00:38:59.130] - Simon Well, I don't know that it would really be a pre-crime issue, but I think it's a no-crime issue. That's the thing about it. People that done nothing wrong and they get flagged by some system because whoever wrote the software didn't know what they were doing and the IRS didn't really the implementation of it. The people in charge of developing that technology and implementing it just did such a pitiful job. And this is the tracker we see with the federal government.   [00:39:26.250] - Holly The issue too is that the tax code is so complicated that there are probably a lot of people who are making mistakes without even realizing it. I know there was a book that came out a while back about how you're constantly committing felonies from the moment you wake up in the morning because some law somewhere, this goes beyond the tax code. This is just the legal system and antiquated laws that are still on the books around the US. But that's probably going to erode trust even more because then agents who are looking for money could possibly take advantage of people who are not experts and haven't gone to get their master's degree in accounting or their CPAs. So we'll see how that comes out.   [00:40:14.570] - Simon But again, then you've got the bad apple angle of it as well.   [00:40:20.570] - Holly And to be true, there are bad apples in the public too. There are people who are deliberately trying to...   [00:40:28.130] - Simon There are people that are cheating and committing fraud and they're criminals of all stripes everywhere.   [00:40:34.920] - Holly And those people probably need to fess up.   [00:40:38.630] - Simon Yeah, that's the thing I would say, with taxes it's very interesting. It's always better to sort of come clean and say, "well, I really didn't know". If people that are doing things that are really on the aggressive side. This is definitely, I think, an opportunity to reflect and say it's probably better to come clean for a lot of reasons. Number one, because interest rates are rising, but the IRS only raises those on a quarterly basis. And so if you got to pay essentially interest on the money that you should have paid three years ago, it's a lot better to do that now rather than let the interest continue to accrue because that interest is actually rising. And usually the IRS, according to a lot of the tax lawyers I deal with, they tend to be a lot more lenient when people sort of step forward and say, "you know what, I did some things, I was a little bit aggressive, I got some bad advice and I shouldn't have done this. And I kind of realized that now, jeez, I'm really sorry, I didn't know what I was doing", and file an amended return. There are some people that say "never file an amended return because that's going to automatically trigger an audit".   [00:41:46.340] - Simon But in a situation where there's going to be a whole lot more field agents out there auditing, if the chances of people getting audited are higher anyways, you may certainly want to consider filing amended returns and paying some potential back taxes that should have been paid for anybody who is doing things that were extra aggressive. At the end of the day, I think most people, vast majority of people who haven't done anything wrong, it is a cause for concern to think that now there's going to be all this extra scrutiny for people that haven't done anything wrong. Honestly, it's irritating. It's really disheartening to think that to have some looking over your system that might flag you or honestly. Or some guy with an axe to grind because you donated to the wrong political action committee or whatever. And then that stuff is public record and they see this and some guy with an axe to grind is just going to go "I'm going to go down this list and just start grabbing everybody who donated to this particular charity" or something like that. That is a risk. I'm not saying it's a guaranteed outcome, but statistically speaking, if you just look at bad apples across the government, there's going to be some percentage of people, whether it's 2% or 20% or whatever that number is, it's going to be some percentage of people that use and abuse their position and power and status in ways that cause tremendous amounts of destruction.   [00:43:15.110] - Holly On that happy note. Ha ha.   [00:43:19.530] - Simon I mean, not to leave it there, but I mean, this is a couple of points to make again. Number one is this particular issue. It's not certain, it's not final. It's been passed in the law, yes, but it's something that's supposed to roll out over literally years and years and years, which means that a lot of things could change, a lot of things could change, and the entire direction of the country could shift. We've seen this again, really throughout human history. I mean, we go back to ancient Rome and we see a series of horrible, terrible emperors, and the empire was in decline. And then suddenly you had a handful of good emperors in a row, and everything changed. They stopped the decline. They arrested the decline. They started moving in a better direction, reconquered some lost territory, changed the laws, reestablished a sound currency, made a lot of strides, and bring down inflation and bringing down their debt levels and getting their budgets under control and so forth. These things do happen. It doesn't stop the ultimate trajectory. To me, it's like health so many other things where if you're constantly making bad decisions for your entire life, if you're never getting any exercise and you're drinking excessively and you're taking in a lot of sugar and you're just eating Big Macs every day, eventually, you're going to be on a really terrible health trajectory.   [00:44:50.790] - Simon You can get away with doing that in your teens and 20s, but if you're still doing that in your 60s, you're going to have pretty serious problems.   [00:44:57.950] - Holly So even if you start going to the gym, these are cumulative and it's not going to make a huge dent.   [00:45:05.370] - Simon Well, you can always start taking steps, but in the same way, it's sort of like somebody that's now in there, I don't know, around 75 or so, that decides, "now I'm going to start getting serious about my health. Finally, I'm going to put down the Big Macs and I'm going to start going to the gym". Okay, that's great. And it's going to help. It's going to arrest some of the decline and may even kind of move the needle in the opposite direction and maybe actually start improving things a little bit. But starting to take your health seriously when you're in your mid 70s is different than taking your health seriously when you're in your 30s, right? Because you have so much more maneuverability and time on your side. And when things are already when the accumulation of bad decisions has been made and that sort of total aggregate bad decision, the outcome of that is so great. It is a lot harder to steer that ship in a different direction. So in a way, if you look back to Rome again, it doesn't really stop the inevitable outcome of "here's what's going to happen", but it does actually make things better for a significant amount of time.   [00:46:12.160] - Simon And I think that is something that I think a lot of people could probably anticipate. Nothing goes up or down in a straight line, and I think for a lot of people, things across really all of Western civilization over the last several years have been feeling down. Everybody literally in the entire planet felt this during Covid and there was so many things even before and since, but nothing goes up or down in a straight line. And so I think that, for one, it certainly makes sense to assume that there is going to be a break from that. That would be a good period as well. At the same time, though, this is the whole thinking behind this concept of having a plan B. Because when you can see these sorts of things I wrote about this fairly extensively, this inflation reduction act, I mean, it's so hilarious in so many different ways. You don't legislate your way out of inflation. The fact that they think they can do that is so ludicrous, is so pompous, is so narcissistic. We have all the government has all the power to do all this stuff. It's so ludicrous.   [00:47:23.330] - Simon You do not legislate your way out of inflation and prosperous, healthy nations don't resort to cannibalizing the wealth and plundering their innocent, hardworking, productive people because again, and I say that very deliberately, because they had the opportunity to write it into the law and say "You know what? We're going to ignore people that are making less than $400,000 a year". They could have really you know, they could have had a hardcore they could put a probable cause or at least reasonable suspicion provision in there to say you can only out of people who are making $400,000 a year if you have very clear evidence of wrongdoing and fraud and so forth, not just even a little bit of suspicion, nothing random. They could have written all that into the law, but they didn't. They didn't. They claim that they care about middle America. They care, they care about working class people, but they don't give a shit because they had the opportunity to write in the law and they didn't. So this is not how a wealthy, prosperous nation acts. This is not the kind of legislation they pass. They don't resort to these sorts of things.   [00:48:27.060] - Simon But it is the hallmark of nations and empires and dynasties and decline going back to ancient China. We can see examples of this in Rome. Byzantine Empire. The French Bourbon monarchy, the Ottoman Empire. This is a hallmark of empires in decline saying "We got to go after our people, we got to seize their wealth" because in many respects they feel like this is their primary source of revenue. They got to go take that money. So it's unhealthy. And I think it is a major indicator of decline. It's not to say that decline is a one way street because it can in fact be arrested and it can in fact reverse course. So nothing is completely inevitable. But you are in a position where, for example, I like to bring up Social Security. I mean, the Social Security Board of Trustees is saying, hey guys, we got like a decade basically, until these trust funds run out of money. That's going to be a big deal. That's going to be a big deal. So if you plan on being retired at any point past the early 2030s, well, guess what? You're going to have a serious problem.   [00:49:32.690] - Simon They're going to have to drastically cut back on all the promises they made. It's going to be a big deal, right? And so it's hard to even if there's some radical political transformation and all this stuff over the next couple of years, I mean, Social Security is still going to run out of money. So there's only so much that even in a radical political transformation, there's only so much sort of good. Even if they reverse course, there's still going to be consequences and still going to be bad things that happen. And that's why, again, it just makes sense to have a plan B when you look at a lot of these things in that direction. I don't think it's cause for panic. I don't think it's caused for just try and stay above it. Try and not be outraged all the time or be depressed and despondent and panicked and worked up and stressed out. Just understand it for what it is. Number one, I think you can have at least a little bit of hope that things are probably going to change because these things are cyclical. But two, there are things that you can do about it.   [00:50:31.190] - Simon You are, again, a lot more powerful in your own life than they would want you to believe. You do have a lot of options and tools at your disposal and taking advantage of those is completely rational thing to do.   [00:50:42.810] - Holly Alright, thank you. Till next week.   Close Podcast Transcription

It’s been another historic and mind-blowing week to say the least. Over the last several months we’ve heard some of the most ridiculous lines of BS from politicians. Things like, “The economy is not in recession.” Last year’s humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan was an “extraordinary success”. Multi-trillion spending bills “cost nothing”. “The border is closed. The border is secure.” And so much more. But yesterday the Attorney General of the United States made a public statement during which he told the world that “upholding the rule of law means applying the law evenly, without fear or favor.” The Attorney General was trying to justify his department’s raid on Donald Trump’s private residence earlier this week by claiming that no one is above the law. And that’s 100% correct. The rule of law is supreme in America, and no one is above the law. Except for Nanci Pelosi, Paul Pelosi, Paul Pelosi Jr., every Federal Reserve official who was caught trading the stock market, Hunter Biden, the mysterious “Big Guy”, Hillary Clinton, Christopher Steel, Andrew Cuomo, every Bush administration official who committed war crimes, etc. Except for all of those people, and everyone else who is above the law, no one else is above the law in America. Millions of people must have simultaneously laughed out loud. Naturally the Attorney General made no effort to speak plainly and admit that, at a minimum, the raid looks really, really bad. Nor to offer understanding as to why people would be suspicious of the government’s motives. Nor even to acknowledge that it was unprecedented. This is exactly the sort of response that makes people lose even more trust in their government officials… at a time when the trust deficit is already at a historic low. This is the topic of our podcast today: trust. We start off by talking about taxes– because, believe it or not, trust and taxes are closely linked. There are countries (like Greece or Italy) where tax evasion is rampant. And one of the reasons why is because people have no trust or confidence in their governments. Lack of trust is a really, really bad trend. It makes growth and prosperity more difficult. But rather than actually fix the trust deficit with honesty, transparency, and plain talk, they keep making the problem worse. This is what makes having a Plan B so obvious… and today we also discuss why looking at some options abroad might make a whole lot of sense. Click here to listen in to today’s episode.

There’s an old saying that people often misattribute to Albert Einstein– that ‘the definition of insanity is repeating the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result.’ The saying has become a bit of a cliché, but there is actually some truth to it. About 80 years ago, a psychologist named George Kelly became fascinated with the way human beings make decisions, and he developed a framework that he called the Personal Construct Theory. Kelly’s Personal Construct Theory suggests that people behave and make decisions based on their unique sets of life experiences. For example, a child who is constantly spoiled and coddled by helicopter parents may (according to Kelly’s theory) grow up to expect constant support and safety nets… and make life decisions accordingly. Kelly theorized that, over time, human beings often behave poorly and make bad decisions because their personal constructs are flawed. In fact in his 1955 book The Psychology of Personal Constructs, Kelly wrote “we may define a [psychological] disorder as any personal construction which is used repeatedly in spite of consistent invalidation.” Kelly, in other words, defined insanity (or at least a psychological disorder) as repeatedly relying on a flawed way of thinking. This is clearly the psychological state of most of our ‘leadership’ today. They have a very specific worldview, which, like Kelly’s theory suggests, is based on their experiences. The President of the United States loved to brag during his campaign about his decades of political and diplomatic experience. The Speaker of the US House of Representatives likewise has decades of experience that has formed the foundation of her worldview and decision-making process. Anthony Fauci has decades of experience atop one of the largest public health agencies in the world. But it turns out that these collective decades and decades of experiences have resulted in terrible decisions… and even worse outcomes. Based on Kelly’s theory, however, these people are incapable of learning from their mistakes and making better decisions. Even though their decisions have been consistently wrong, these people are unable to adjust their thinking. They continue relying on the same, flawed decision-making constructs, which are based on their decades of experience. Kelly used the right terminology for this– a psychological disorder. And that aptly sums up the ‘leadership’. These are the so-called experts. And they broke the world. But as I’ve written before, their regime is quickly coming to an end. Listen in to today’s podcast as we walk you through four key examples of their disorder that we suffered through literally just in the past few days.

For this week’s podcast I had the pleasure to speak with Viktorija once again, fresh off a long flight from Istanbul and several weeks in Europe. We had a really in-depth discussion that covers a lot of ground. We talked about Mexico City… and why it’s such a pleasant surprise: cheap, chic, clean, civilized, and more. We also spent time discussing Citizenship-by-Investment programs, including why Turkey’s program is so attractive. Click to listen in.

Prince Harry ventured out of his nine-bedroom, $14.7 million oceanfront compound in California earlier this week to deliver a speech to the United Nations General Assembly. The fact that Prince Harry is even addressing the UN General Assembly is absurd itself. But even more absurd were his weeping, whiny, wimpy remarks: “The right thing to do is not up for debate,” Harry told his audience of mostly masked onlookers. “And neither is The Science.” So, the guy who was born with the ultimate silver spoon up his arse believes that there should be no debate about science. Or what’s “right”. He continued to lament the “rolling back” of Constitutional rights in the US, climate change, COVID disinformation on social media, and more. “The only question is whether we’ll be brave enough, and wise enough, to do what is necessary,” the unelected sage continued, without elaborating on what, exactly, he and The Science have decided is “necessary” or “right”. This is our topic for this week’s podcast. We start off talking about what another unelected body– the Federal Reserve (i.e. the US central bank)– has deemed “necessary” and “right”, which has just so happened to have engineered stupifyingly high inflation. I also explain why the unelected Federal Reserve is VASTLY more powerful than the President of the United States. Think about it — because the Fed has supreme executive authority over setting interest rates in the United States, that gives them unbelievable power over the entire US economy, as well as critical financial markets. And yet, there are ZERO checks and balances with the Fed. If the President does something stupid (gee when would that ever happen), his executive actions can be blocked by the courts. But if the Fed does something stupid (like conjuring trillions of dollars out of thin air), there’s NOTHING that anyone can do. We can’t sue them. We can’t fire them. We just have to suck it up, buttercup. Then there are ‘Emperors’ like Larry Fink of Blackrock, another unelected Crusader who has weaponized our own money against us, to force us to submit to his woke fanaticism. And of course there are the unelected professional weepers like Prince Harry who constantly want to tell us what to be outraged about, and how to live our lives. In his UN speech, Harry painted a very bleak, sinister picture of the world. And that’s great for Harry. But I choose to not live in Harry’s world… where everyone is outraged and terrified, and they can’t manage to find their big boy pants. Yes, there are a lot of risks out there, most notably from people like Harry who have anointed themselves our social and financial overlords. But the world is still full of opportunity and triumphs as well. People with courage and independence of mind can always choose which world to live in– Harry’s wimpy, fearful world, or the world of your own making. Click here to listen to today’s episode.

It’s rare to find someone, anyone, who has yet to witness, hear about, or directly experience the devastating consequences of the supposed leadership that ‘experts’ have unleashed on us over the past few years. They have engineered and mishandle crisis after crisis after crisis… The world over, from California to Sri Lanka, people everywhere are suffering from their incompetence. Western Europe is on the verge of a major energy crisis; the 4th-largest economy in the world (Germany) is dimming its street lights lights and thinking about firing up its coal power plants (previously considered UNTHINKABLE!) because they’re running out of energy. Even in Texas, which could be considered the world’s 10th-largest economy by GDP, the independent energy grid is so fragile that power companies are remotely turning down people’s home thermostats to save on energy supply. We have also just seen a leaked hour+ video showing the ‘authorities’ in Uvalde, Texas– fully armed law enforcement professionals– ignoring the literal screams of dying children only a few dozen feet away. Instead they texted on their phones and sanitized their hands. You know, because of Covid. I guess that was the priority. All of this is an utter indictment of how pitifully our experts and authorities have betrayed us. In short, the people in charge broke the world. But the good news is that their reign of ineptitude is rapidly coming to an end.. That much is obvious. And even better, there are a lot of solutions and technologies on the horizon that could make this all go away relatively quickly… just as soon as they get out of the way. You can listen in to that discussion in today’s podcast, which you can access here.