Schiff Sovereign Podcast

Think back to where you were two years ago today. For me, I was in Trakai, Lithuania. It was Day 4 of our 10th annual Sovereign Academy entrepreneurship camp. My dear friends Bill and Marco were giving a joint lecture to the students on hiring, firing, and building culture within a business. Craig Ballantyne was up next with a talk about Instagram marketing. And I was going to finish up the afternoon with a presentation on sales and negotiation. Maybe you were on holiday. Or, since August 4, 2019 was a Sunday, perhaps you were spending a relaxing weekend with family and friends. Now imagine if someone had come up to you two years ago and said– A few months from now, a novel Coronavirus will spread around the world. The virus will definitely be a problem, and a LOT of people will needlessly die. Yet government data will eventually show the virus to have a 98.3% survival rate… and a survival rate of more than 99.8% for people under the age of 75 who aren’t morbidly obese. Despite this data, however, the virus will be treated as the worst thing in the history of the world by politicians, the media, and unelected public health officials. They will wage a crusade to eradicate the world of this virus, no matter the cost. They will systematically dismantle the core pillars of modern society, from private property rights to individual liberty. Some of the most advanced representative democracies in the world, like Australia, will literally deploy the military to the streets in order to keep people locked in their homes… essentially at gunpoint. And governments will indebt themselves by tens of trillions of dollars, going so far as to pay people to stay at home and NOT work. Politicians will assume unlimited spending authority and use the pandemic as an excuse for every entitlement pet project they’ve ever conceived. Inflation around the world will surge as a result of this orgy of debt and money printing, but central bankers will dismiss the data and pretend that everything is fine. Meanwhile, the scientific community will lose all objectivity. They’ll claim, for example, that protesters against racial injustice are exempt from following public health lockdowns because of their moral righteousness. Yet simultaneously they’ll say that people protesting against public health lockdowns are a danger to society. Pharmaceuticals companies will be given total immunity from prosecution and liability to develop a host of vaccines to combat the spread of the virus. The initial clinical trial data will show significant promise in keeping people safe from severe infection. However long-term studies, by definition, will not exist for a number of years. Despite these limitations, world governments will push these vaccines on the global population. Some will make vaccination mandatory; others will subjugate the unvaccinated population and take away their most basic freedoms until they submit. Personal choice will no longer be an option. Anyone who hesitates or dares ask a question will be ridiculed as a selfish murder by social media. And the Big Tech companies will squash intellectual dissent. Even prize-winning, highly respected scientists will be censored for expressing views that don’t conform to the official narrative. And then, after nearly 18 months, just when you think the pandemic is over, a new variant will emerge… and public health officials will go right back to the same policies all over again. If someone had said this to you two years ago, you might have thought they were completely delusional. And yet, all of it has happened. It’s been a long time since I’ve written about this topic.  That’s partly because of my wishful thinking that the worst had subsided. But to be perfectly honest, I’ve also steered clear of the topic lately because I didn’t feel like being canceled by Big Tech. (It turns out that trying to appease Big Tech is a dumb idea; YouTube temporarily suspended our account for a few days last week, proving that there’s no point in walking on eggshells.) Moreover, in light of this week’s events, including New York City’s Mayor Comrade Bill de Blasio mandating vaccine passports across the city, and New York State’s sexual-harrassor-in-chief Andrew Cuomo ‘strongly encouraging’ the same, I decided it wasn’t a topic I could continue to ignore. So this is what our podcast is about today– 2020 called, it wants its chaotic public health policy back. Let me be clear: this isn’t a rant about vaccines, or masks, or lockdowns, or even government overreach. Nor am I trying to downplay the pandemic. My key point today is that public health officials started from a premise that Covid is the WORST thing in the history of the world and must be eradicated, no matter the cost. Now, in the private sector, responsible managers routinely look at the right metrics to determine if they’re on the right track, if their strategy is working, and if the benefits justify the costs. But that hasn’t happened here. So my goal today is to have an objective, dispassionate, data-driven discussion to examine whether the fundamental ‘Covid premise’ is valid, and whether the benefits justify the costs. We didn’t post this to YouTube for obvious reasons. But you can listen to it here below. Oh, and a special note to the fact-checkers on all the Big Tech censorship committees: ALL of the data I cite in this podcast is pulled directly from the CDC website. Feel free to follow along.

By the summer of 1849, Karl Marx was still an obscure writer struggling to make an impact. He had published The Communist Manifesto— a short, 23-page pamphlet– the previous year in 1848. But as yet it had failed to catch on. Marx was operating a fledgling newspaper in Germany at the time. But he kept getting in trouble with the German tax authorities for failure to pay taxes. (This taxation double-standard still exists today. Marxists LOVE high taxes… but only if they’re not the ones paying.) That’s why Marx was forced to leave Germany (technically Prussia) in 1849– after having also been previously expelled from France and Belgium too. Marx infuriated the local authorities so much, in fact, that he was also denied Prussian citizenship. This made him officially stateless. And in an ironic twist of fate, Marx ended up in Great Britain– the wealthiest country in the world at the time, and the birthplace of modern capitalism. The reason was simple: Britain had few barriers to entry for immigrants– something that was quite rare in the 19th century. Thousands upon thousands of refugees, exiles, and radicals immigrated to London as a result. Marx was among them. Yet the fact that he had benefited from the laissez-faire policies of this free market society did not change Marx’s views on capitalism. He still hated the system and blamed it for everything that went wrong. Marx and his family lived in abject poverty in their earliest years in London. He constantly had debt collectors knocking on his door, and landlords routinely evicted him from his home. Of course, people don’t realize the real cause of Marx’s financial troubles was that he almost never had job. He thought it was degrading to work so that someone else could profit from your labor. So he simply refused to work. Marx subjected his family to live in filthy, squalid conditions, and his children often went without food. In fact only three of his seven children even survived to adulthood. Yet Marx still refused to work. And he continued to whine that capitalism was the source of his economic hardship; not once did Marx turn the lens onto his own fanaticism as the root cause of his poverty. This is also ironic, because modern day socialist and communist parties love to praise workers and talk about giving benefits to the working class. It’s just like taxation: Marxists love work… as long as they’re not the ones actually doing it. Honestly the entire Marxist philosophy is complete hypocritical. And there are people today who call themselves Marxists (like the BLM co-founders, who are self-avowed Marxists). Yet they probably don’t have the foggiest idea that their patron saint literally watched his children go hungry because he’d rather complain about capitalism than go get a job. Socialists are the same way; even though (according to a recent Axios poll) 41% of Americans view socialism in a positive light, most of these people don’t actually understand the first thing about socialism. When they say ‘socialism’ they think it means Sweden, free university, and six weeks of paid vacation. They have no idea how wrong they are. One key difference that people fail to understand is that, while Marx despised capitalism, he never made it personal. He didn’t shame individual people for their success, or automatically assume that rich people were evil. The only reason Marx was lifted out of poverty, in fact, was because a wealthy capitalist gave him money. In our modern world, however, so-called socialists love to make it personal. They ridicule people on social media because of their success. Activist newspapers illegally leak confidential tax information in an effort to ‘name and shame’ wealthy people. Even Marx didn’t stoop to that level. This is the topic of our podcast today: Marxism, socialism, and communism… and why most people who claim to embrace these ideas don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.

Nearly every year in his annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letters, Warren Buffett spends a few pages talking about the dynamism of the American economy. His message is clear: the United States has faced adversity before. It will again. But America always prevails and you should never bet against it. That theme has certainly held true during Buffett’s life. He was born in 1930 and came of age at a time when the US had become the world’s undisputed dominant superpower. Buffett’s entire business career, in fact, took place at a time when America was on the rise. But even Buffett would have to acknowledge that times have changed. Today the government is obsessed with passing regulations that create obstacles to growth and new business formation. They’d rather pay people to stay home and NOT work rather than encourage production and innovation. They rack up enormous quantities of debt without a single thought to the long-term consequences. They engineer inflation. They stifle competition. And they constantly ridicule anyone who took a chance, worked hard, and became successful. Not only do they want to raise your taxes, they want to shame you because of your hard work and success. Buffett knows this now from personal experience. Last month, in an effort to make wealthy people look bad, Buffett’s private personal tax returns were illegally leaked on the Internet for everyone to see. He never had to deal with that sort of rage before in his life. Moreover, when Buffett was a young man, he never had to contend with fanatical mob of woke Marxists. And he never knew a time when the biggest companies in America bent the knee in subservience to them. And while there have always been small groups of Communist sympathizers and socialists in America, Buffett made his fortune at a time when the vast majority of people understood the awesome, prosperity-generating powers of a capitalist system. But today, socialism is totally mainstream, with New York Magazine last month proclaiming that “Socialism isn’t a dirty word anymore.” And according to a recent Axios poll, most Gen Z (ages 18-24) have a negative view of capitalism. Bottom line, the America of today is not the same America where Buffett made his fortune. This isn’t to say that there aren’t extraordinary opportunities to create wealth and become successful. Of course there are– opportunities abound everywhere, both within the US, and around the world. But it would be foolish to ignore these trends, or the fact that the country may be past its economic and political peak. To paraphrase former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, how much longer can the worlds biggest debtor continue being the world’s biggest superpower? How much longer can a country which debases its currency, embraces socialism, silences intellectual dissent, brainwashes its youth, and encourages unproductive behavior, continue being the world’s most dynamic economy? These are not controversial statements. They’re relevant, important questions that any independent-minded person might consider. This is the topic of today’s podcast, which you can watch here (on YouTube) or here (on SovereignMan.tv), or listen to here:

The most astute investors in the world understand that there is no such thing as a risk-free investment. Every investment carries at least some risk; stocks, bonds, venture capital, real estate… even something as simple as keeping money in a bank.… they all carry some degree of risk. Sharp investors take steps to identify and hedge their risks, so if the worst happens, they’ll still be protected. Stock market investors, for example, might purchase ‘put options’ which increase in value in the event that their stocks fall. That way, if there’s a crash, the investor is protected from any major losses. Bondholders often purchase credit default swaps, which is like an insurance policy in case the bond issuer defaults. And real estate investors routinely buy insurance to mitigate the risk of property damage caused by fire, flood, and hail. These are all sensible precautions that can dramatically reduce an investors’ risk. And this is ultimately what a Plan B is all about– taking sensible steps to reduce obvious, often substantial risks. Inflation is an easy example; we’ve long argued that misguided government and central bank policies (like paying people to stay home and NOT work, or conjuring trillions of dollars out of thin air) would eventually create painful levels of inflation. This was a significant risk, but one that could be mitigated with certain investments (like gold, which is up 16% since the start of the pandemic, or silver which is up nearly 60%.) But there are plenty of risks that don’t have anything to do with money or finance. Over the past year, for example, we’ve seen an aggressive erosion of our freedom, angry mobs hijacking our children’s education, increased tensions with China, etc. These are all obvious risks. And one type of ‘insurance policy’ to protect against these sorts of non-financial risks is looking abroad and making sure that you and your family always have another place to go. That means having either a second passport, or at a minimum, legal residency in another country. Like any other insurance policy, you might never need to use it. No one goes to bed at night complaining that they haven’t been able to ‘cash in’ on their home’s fire insurance policy. But if you ever really need it, you’ll be extremely happy that you took the steps to set up residency in another country. Besides, there’s very limited downside in having another option to travel and live somewhere, especially if it’s a place that you and your family really enjoy spending time. This is the topic of our podcast today; Viktorija is actually in Panama at the moment applying for residency there, and she recently obtained legal residency in Mexico too. We talk about both of those, and much more. You can watch it here (on YouTube) or here (on SovereignMan.tv). Or can access the podcast here:

In late 2019, the real estate firm Knight Frank published a list of the most expensive streets in the world, i.e. the individual neighborhoods with outrageously pricey real estate. The top 10 list included four streets in New York City (57th Street, Central Park South, Fifth Avenue, and Park Avenue), three in Hong Kong, two in London, and one each in Los Angeles and Palm Beach. But global real estate changed immeasurably the following year in 2020. Places like Manhattan have seen a population exodus after 18 months of idiotic pandemic rules, rising taxes, and destructive woke policies, while other cities and neighborhoods have seen a surge in demand. So that top 10 list is certainly going to change. One of the places that may very well make an updated list of most expensive streets in the world is an upscale neighborhood in… Puerto Rico. We talked about this several times in the past– Puerto Rico has some of the most attractive tax incentives in the world. People of just about every nationality can benefit for Puerto Rico’s tax incentives. But they’re especially attractive to US citizens. With the direction that the US is headed– Marxist politicians, higher income taxes, higher estate taxes, wealth taxes, etc.– a lot of people have become fed up and are leaving the US to take advantage of Puerto Rico’s tax incentives. But this has created a major supply and demand imbalance in real estate; in the most popular expat neighborhoods, property prices have skyrocketed. And there are a few pockets of the Puerto Rican real estate market that have seen prices quadruple in the past year and are now as expensive as MONACO. Puerto Rico is not alone, of course. There are cities and neighborhoods all over the world that have seen major price increases. COVID-related migration is definitely a factor. But another key driver of higher real estate prices is central bank policy. As we discussed a few weeks ago on our podcast, the Federal Reserve in the United States has not only kept mortgage rates at record low levels, but they have printed hundreds of billions of dollars in the last few months alone to ‘support’ the US housing market. This seems completely bizarre: the median US home price has never been more expensive. Most local real estate markets are booming. Why do these people think the housing market needs their support?? Viktorija and I devoted today’s episode of the Sovereign Man’s Freedom Podcast to housing; it’s a topic that affects just about everyone, everywhere in the world, whether you’re renting an apartment in Toronto, buying a house in Austin, selling a flat in London, or investing in a REIT in Sydney. We talk about some reasons WHY property prices have risen so much, and some key metrics to monitor to get a sense of where prices are going in the future. You can watch it here (on YouTube) or here (on SovereignMan.tv). Or download and listen to our podcast here:

One of the wonderful people I’ve been fortunate to get to know in my life is legendary investor and prolific author Jim Rogers. I’ve known Jim for nearly 10 years now. He’s a great guy and I’ve learned so much from him– about finance, markets, travel, writing. But above all that, one thing in particular really stuck out: fatherhood. It seems like every time we’ve ever had dinner or drinks together over the past decade, Jim always brings up the topic of having children. He didn’t have children until later in life; he’s written about this extensively, saying that he never wanted kids and was quite content with his success and career. But when he started having children at age 60, he realized that he couldn’t imagine his life without them. And literally every time Jim and I have hung out, he has always encouraged me to have kids. I never took the idea seriously… until last year. Amid all of the fear, anger, violence, and totalitarianism that was gripping the world, I became convinced that it was the right time to have a child. You see– I’m an optimist. I believe wholeheartedly that no matter how many problems people create, no matter how dark the chaos, there’s always a solution. Human beings are natural tool creators. We solve problems and overcome challenges– and this is especially true for people who can think independently and plan proactively. I know that this chaos– the Marxism, the Woke fanaticism, the Covid-1984 totalitarianism– isn’t going away anytime soon. But I’m also wildly optimistic about the future, because I know there are plenty of solutions to de-risk these challenges… and at the same time I see a world full of vast opportunities. And all of that is what brought me to Mexico– my child was born here in Cancun earlier this month. I could not have asked for a better experience. Becoming a father has been an unimaginable joy… and choosing to have the baby in Mexico was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Yes, the “Plan B” benefits are nice; baby automatically received Mexican citizenship (which will be passport #5), and mommy and daddy both received Permanent Residency. But the benefits go way beyond that. The medical care, staff, facilities, lifestyle, costs, etc. have really been extraordinary. In this week’s podcast episode, I talk all about it… and tell a few stories about our experience here that are truly unbelievable. You can watch the video here. Or listen to the podcast here.

In last week’s podcast — the first podcast episode we’ve published in a few years — Viktorija and I discussed how central banks engineer inflation… and why inflation is probably here to stay. In this week’s episode, we dove even deeper into the topic to discuss a different type of inflation: ASSET price inflation. Remember that inflation rises whenever the amount of money in an economy increases relative to the amount of services and products available to purchase. And that even includes assets. There are only 500 companies in the S&P 500, which essentially means there’s a fixed number of assets available for investors to purchase. So whenever the central bank prints trillions of dollars, much of that money finds its way into the stock market, bidding up the stock prices of S&P 500 companies. The bizarre part is that this increase in stock prices doesn’t mean that a company has become more successful. In fact, Coca Cola is a great example here. Over the past decade, Coca Cola’s revenue has fallen. Its equity has fallen. Its profit has fallen. Its debt levels have exploded. Coca Cola has clearly become a LESS valuable company over the past decade. And yet its stock price has soared to record highs. Coca Cola’s record stock price has nothing to do with the company’s success; it has everything to do with the tidal wave of cash that the Federal Reserve has printed. Much of that money has made its way into the stock market, pushing up share prices– even when the companies are in decline. This is asset price inflation. We discuss this phenomenon in a lot more detail in today’s podcast… including why it’s so dangerous (because asset price bubbles always pop, eventually). Moreover, we discuss alternative asset classes– like venture capital and private equity, as well as why right now is such a great time to start a business. You can watch the video here: https://youtu.be/uRrfGLoQ78A Or download this week’s episode of our Freedom Podcast here:

It feels like it’s easily been two years since I’ve recorded a public podcast. But after yesterday’s article about inflation, I realized that I had so much more to say. Inflation– which is essentially the slow destruction of a currency– is already a major issue that’s capturing headlines. But there are plenty of reasons why it could be far worse in the future. This isn’t anything to be afraid of. But it’s definitely a topic to learn a lot more about. Understanding inflation is critical to making sound, long-term financial decisions, and creating a great Plan B. But it’s a complicated topic. To properly understand inflation, it’s imperative to first learn about how central banking works; for example, why does the Federal Reserve buy so many mortgage bonds? What’s the actual mechanism for ‘creating’ money, and how does this new money make its way into the economy? (We talk about all of this in today’s podcast, including the absolutely ridiculous and infuriatingly cozy relationship between the Fed and the biggest commercial banks.) More importantly, what are the long-term factors that could drive inflation a LOT higher? We discuss some of the obvious ones, like the federal government’s insatiable appetite to spend money. But there are a lot of other obscure reasons– like the fact that there are fewer farmers and fewer acres of farmland planted in the United States than at any other point in history going back to at least the late 1800s. That last one could be a pretty big deal; US food imports have been doubling roughly every 10 years. So the US is going to reach a point where it has to import a large quantity of its food, and pay for it all with a rapidly depreciating currency. You can probably imagine the impact that trend could have on future food prices. There’s a LOT more to discover here– like why the Fed keeps supporting a housing market that’s totally on fire, what they actually mean when they say inflation is ‘transitory’, and what types of businesses might make solid investments in this environment. We even walk through the details of the last financial crisis– and how the it mirrors what’s happening today. It’s been so long since we published one of these, I had to ask our Sovereign Woman, Viktorija, to help me out and guide my comments in the right direction. I sincerely hope you’re able to learn something from this and come away with a much better understanding of how to factor inflation into your own Plan B. You can watch the video here: Or listen to the audio here:

This morning I reached out to my old friend and colleague Peter Schiff to talk about some uncomfortable truths that very few people are discussing right now. I wrote to you about this yesterday: banks are in trouble. You can’t expect to shut down practically an entire world economy that is in debt to the tune of $250 TRILLION and not expect massive loan defaults. The last financial crisis in 2008 was caused by a spike in loan defaults. We’re about to see another spike of loan defaults due to all the layoffs and business closures… only this time the problem is much, much bigger than it was in 2008. And Peter and I discuss some potential scenarios. Be forewarned, they’re not pleasant. Think about it like this: before the last financial crisis, US government debt was ‘only’ about $9 trillion. It’s nearly tripled since then. The Federal Reserve’s balance sheet prior to the last crisis was $850 billion. It ballooned to $4.5 trillion, more than 5x as much. This means that we could see US government debt reach $40 to $50 trillion, the Fed’s balance sheet exceed $20 trillion. Could that possibly have negative implications for the US dollar? You bet. Peter and I talk about what might happen with the dollar, and more. You can listen in here. * Editor’s note: As you’ll hear in the podcast, Peter promotes a number of his businesses, mutual funds, etc. We need to be clear that those comments are his alone, and that we are not recommending in any way that listeners make any investment with any of Peter’s businesses.

I thought in this age of insanity that we are living in, nothing would surprise me anymore. But sure enough, there was a headline in the Financial Times the other day, “Central banks should consider giving people money.” It seems almost impossible that someone could believe in something so ridiculous. And yet this is the world we are living in. The path to prosperity is now based on unelected central bankers conjuring millions of dollars out of thin air. Bankrupt governments are issuing bonds with negative yields, meaning they are being paid to go deeper into debt. And there are more than $13 trillion of these negative yielding bonds in the world. If anything this makes a compelling case for why people should consider owning gold. It’s a store of value with a 5,000 year track record of withstanding inflation, political crisis, and monetary stupidity. I’ve been suggesting people consider buying gold for quite some time, especially over the last year. I argue that the supply of gold, is actually declining, yet the demand will increase in large part due to all of this central bank lunacy. And that has absolutely been happening. The price of gold is up more than 25% over the last year, and just surpassed $1,500 per ounce. But unlike most other assets like real estate, stocks, bonds, etc, gold is still far from it’s all time high. There could still be plenty of gains ahead. And silver would have to triple before it reaches it’s all time high. Every summer for the past eight years, I’ve enjoyed a week or two in the italian countryside at a 400 plus year old villa. Here I relax with friends, family, business colleagues, and some of our Total Access members who fly in from around the world, to break bread and enjoy really stimulating and entertaining conversations. This year Peter Schiff has been one of my guests. He’s an old friend who shares many of the same beliefs. And when our conversation this morning turned to gold, I thought it appropriate to record it, and make a Podcast out of it. In our conversation we talk about why gold and silver have plenty of room to rise, and a number of different ways to invest.