Latest / Financial Survival Network / Cure to Addiction will Cause Economic Chaos — John Rubino #5817

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Cure to Addiction will Cause Economic Chaos — John Rubino #5817 · Financial Survival Network

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We're trying to see if it is indeed possible to taper a Kanzi scheme,
0:03
and we know it's not. You know, so this will blow up if
0:06
they keep trying to shrink the money supply and there's nothing on the horizon that
0:11
makes it look like they're going to do anything different than they have for the
0:14
past year. You are listening to Carrie Letts's Financial Survival Network, where you
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Network now more than ever. Welcome you are listening to watching the Financial Survival
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Network. I'm your host, Carrie lets Well. John Robino is with us.
0:49
We have a lot of great news. John. We've got the seems
0:54
like it's the annual debt ceiling Kabuki dance. I sent you a thing about
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where kabuki, that term applying to politics came from, and it was actually
1:06
started during JFK and he had all those eggheads. They called them the intellectuals
1:11
running stuff, and they said that they were basically kabuki dance, a lot
1:15
of noise, a lot of dancing, and nothing really happening. And that's
1:19
what our debt dramas like, right every single time. Hey, Karen,
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Yeah, they've done this so many times. I think that the number is
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literally a hundred times that they've raised the debt sale eight seventy eight times.
1:32
Okay, And you know there's always some drama beforehand, because that was the
1:37
point of the law. It was to make it hard to increase the government's
1:41
debt. But it's become impossible to cut government debt or even to stop the
1:47
increase slowly increase. So now there's the law has just become this weird thing
1:53
that it gives everybody a chance to posture over and then is basically just put
2:00
shot the side and they do way with this year's limit or they raise this
2:04
year's limit. And yeah, and just let me say, you know,
2:07
the correct debt limit is zero or central governments. There should be no ten.
2:13
There should be no such thing as government debt. But we're so far
2:16
beyond that now that see, that's for the reset, that's that's for later
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when we've build something new out of the rubble of this system. Because there's
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no way in this system that government debt stops increasing or even slows down.
2:30
It has to accelerate from here the various reasons. Yeah, not to mention
2:36
that the our monetary system is our currency is a debt based currency. Every
2:42
dollar in existence has been borrowed into existence, so you can't slow it down
2:47
because once you have less dollars kicking around, nobody can afford to pay their
2:51
debt like we're seeing now, and then bankruptcies come. But you can't have
2:54
too much of the money creation, or then you have what we have now
2:59
is huge inflation. In no way to put it back in the genie back
3:02
in the bottle, right. In other words, it's a Ponzi scheme,
3:07
and it needs new money to come in continuously and in an ever increasing stream
3:14
in order to cover the bad things that have happened in the past, all
3:17
the bad depths out there that will blow up unless there's new money to refinance
3:22
that debt. And you know, at the same time that this is happening,
3:25
we are decreasing the money supply. The M two money supply is now
3:31
down over the past year, which it hasn't been for as far back as
3:35
the chart goes. So we're trying to Ponzi or trying to taper a Ponzi
3:40
scheme, which we can't do. So that's a you know, we're running
3:44
experiments in every aspect of modern life right now, but this is a big
3:47
one. We're trying to see if it is indeed possible to taper a Ponzi
3:52
scheme, and we know it's not. You know, so this will blow
3:54
up if they keep trying to shrink the money supply and there's nothing on the
3:59
horizon. Look like they're going to do anything different than they have for the
4:01
past year. Hey, And in a traditional Ponzi scheme, the people who
4:08
cash in their chips earliest win because they get their profits and they get out.
4:14
In this situation, I guess the people who who opted out of the
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Fiat based monetary system, they're going to be the winners. Well, that's
4:23
what you want to do towards the end of a Ponzi scheme. You want
4:25
to cash out and you want to put your money in a safe place.
4:28
So the people who are well Bill Gates buying a million acres of farmland,
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that's one idea, you know, that's an idea, and all the stackers
4:35
out there who are buying gold and silver coins. That's another idea. Those
4:40
are ways of cashing out. Have a Ponzi scheme, and you know,
4:44
you need to find your way whatever whatever it is that makes you comfortable.
4:47
You need to move your dollars into those assets things that cannot be inflated away
4:55
because the Ponzi scheme is going to collapse at some point because Dad has to
4:59
in increase because the baby boomers are retiring yet for no other reason. You
5:04
know, we've got this huge wave of people who are going to collect on
5:08
Social Security and medicare new and basically John yeah, yeah, yeah, We're
5:15
going to be incredibly expensive because you know, a lot of us didn't take
5:17
very good care of ourselves. You did carry and I kind of between two,
5:21
but the average boomer liver disease, heart disease, joy of replacements.
5:27
It's going to be this litany of one hundred thousand dollars operations and treatments or
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as far as the eye can see, it's going to cost us a fortune
5:35
which we are obligated to pay for, which means the government has to borrow
5:41
more more money year after year. And that's in addition to all the other
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crazy stuff that the government's obligated to do. So government debt has to increase,
5:51
which means the money supply has to increase at an equal or greater rate
5:58
to keep the system from blowing out. And right now it's not. Right
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now, government debt is soaring while the money supply is shrinking. So um,
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we're headed for this brick wall, this financial brick wall out there,
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and it doesn't seem to be any way to avoid it because the FED cannot
6:13
start cutting interest rates yet and the government can't slow down it's borrowing, So
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there's no real way to get the money supply growing again in any meaningful way.
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So you know, start looking for things to short. Well, that's
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of course, that's the other way to play a collapsing Ponzi scheme is you
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actively bet against it. You don't, you don't leave it um and take
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your take your assets and go somewhere else. You bet on the main ponsi
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assets going down. And that day is coming. I mean, I think
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it's actually a good time to be starting to short for sure. I've got
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some SMP five hundred and some um nastac shorts, which one of them is
6:57
doing okay lately and the other one's not. And then I've got offers in
7:02
to short the home builders, which ought to be one of the big casualties
7:10
of a collapsing financial Ponzi scheme here, so we'll see you. But you
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would think that with house prices where they are right now, interest rates where
7:19
they are right now, and the money supply shrinking, that the supply or
7:23
the demand for new houses is going to shrink going forward, which will crush
7:28
the home builders. We'll see. That's the thesis though, and and my
7:31
offers haven't been taken yet, but that's what I'm trying to set up.
7:36
That's the trade I'm going forward new Okay, do you know anything about leaps?
7:40
Those are long term balls, so they're called like long term appreciations something
7:47
or other. I can't remember what LEAP stands for. But you could go
7:50
multi year, whereas your standard options are only good for you know, I
7:57
mean, you could go years with options, but the far out options are
8:01
very lightly trade yeah, not liquid. Yeah, that's what I normally do.
8:05
But yeah, the illiquidity is an issue out there because sometimes the premiums
8:09
get so crazy. I think when you've talked about this where I tried to
8:11
short Tesla with long term options and Tesla did go down, but not enough
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to eat all the way through the gigantic premium on those options. So that's
8:22
a thing to pay attention to. And I'm just trying to flat out short
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the housing the home builders just by selling the stocks without owning them. But
8:35
that ties up a lot of cash, you know, you really you have
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to have enough in your account to cover you know, a wide range of
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resulting outcomes for something like that. With options, it's that's not an issue,
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but you got to pay a high premium, so the thing you're shorting
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has to drop quite a bit before the option really works for you. So
8:56
nothing's perfect, but get it right and and you can make a ton of
9:01
money, especially with options. You know, when when an option goes your
9:05
way, a five bagger is a very easy outcome, and a ten bagger
9:09
can happen easily. So um, you know, it just depends. You
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have to pay attention to what you're buying and the and the terms of the
9:18
contract. But if you're right, you can make a lot of money shorting
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things. I think you could go do a inverse ETFs or for housing.
9:31
Um, there's a bear real estate eat enough and but they are dangerous because
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they could be highly leveraged. The other thing you could do is sell options
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or buy puts on the on the Housing home Builders ETF which is h O
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MZ, so you could sell puts, you could buy puts on that.
9:54
I should say yes, yeah. Now, the thing about those index etf
10:00
is that there are options. Don't usually go out that for That's what I've
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noticed. I don't know if there's a rule, but you can get like
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one a one year option, one year put option on something like that,
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but you can't go out two and a half years. That's why leaps are
10:11
so good. Yeah, because in two and a half years you better be
10:16
right or else your thesis was completely a mistaken you know. And a leap
10:22
is a leap is a long headed a second ago, a long term equity
10:28
anticipation security as that for a or a name a leap. So you use
10:37
the leaps and you could use less capital than purchasing the shares. Obviously that's
10:43
the benefit of an option, and you get a lot more of the benefits
10:48
of shorteness stock or owning it because they're long term. They could go out
10:52
for years. Yeah. Yeah, so with an option, if you're right,
10:58
you can be right very being. But if you're wrong, you lose
11:01
everything you put into it. But you didn't put the full price of the
11:05
stock into it, so your your total loss is limited in that way.
11:07
But yeah, everything has their issues, you know, They've got their upsides
11:11
and downsides, and you have to understand the instrument that you're using to short
11:18
to know if it's a good deal. So there's a lot to think about.
11:24
But you know, I had a formative experience doing this in the Great
11:30
Recession when the housing bubble burst. I got that kind of adrenaline rush of
11:35
a gambler who has a streak of luck happened, you know, and I
11:41
want that back. I've been craving that feeling ever since. So I think,
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play, Yeah, I'm an addict. I'm maybe I need to take
11:48
that drug you were talking about that his addictions. Yeah, let's let's talk
11:54
about that. So this could be the antidote to consumerism because this drug,
12:00
which you see it on TV a zempic weggathe, it's somaglatide, and what
12:07
scientists doctors have been finding, well number one is that it basically makes you
12:16
lose weight because it gets rid of your hunger on several different levels, but
12:20
one of them is that it somehow rewires your pleasure center. So when you
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eat that chocolate or that ice cream, that dopamine hit is smaller, you
12:31
don't get the dopamine, and then it's like, hey, if I can't
12:33
get my dopamine, why bother. But what they found is it works with
12:37
cigarettes with many people in addition to weight loss, drugs, alcohol, and
12:43
shopoholicism. So this could be the death knell to Amazon, to luxury brands,
12:52
to all of that. Right, and how much you want about that
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the people who edit it have an unfortunate plane crash or something pretty soon because
13:03
the rest of big pharma is not going to be happy about this. Well,
13:05
they'll come up with an antidote built us put to. They'll find a
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MR and a vaccine that stops stops these GLP one agonists from from cutting back
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on your urges for all the things that the society makes money off of your
13:24
addictions from. Right, That's it's a great race, a weapons race.
13:30
Oh, they're just manipulating us through every direction. Yeah, but you know
13:35
that's that's the big fear of the pharmaceutical industry is a cure for things.
13:39
You know, if somebody cured cancer today, um a trillion dollars of market
13:45
cap would disappear from the a drug industry. Unemployment on the unemployment line,
13:54
radiation technicians. I mean, the most profitable section of any hospital. I
14:01
just read this recently is the oncology department. They make more money off a
14:07
chemo than anything else in that hospital. This is what I read. If
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I'm wrong, I all stand corrected. Somebody corrected something and I mentioned it
14:18
a few weeks ago. If I'm wrong, I want to know. But
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I believe this to be true. Well, and that's why they use chemo
14:24
for every kind of cancer, even though it only works on a few kinds,
14:28
because it's incredibly Yeah, it's expensive, it's high margin, and you
14:33
can get away with throwing it at pretty much anything because there's no other treatment.
14:39
So yeah, look, there's millions of people alive today because of chemotherapy.
14:45
We don't want to poop poo it, but but just follow the money
14:50
and understand that that has created incentives that we would prefer not be in place.
14:56
Well, obesity might might be in that league monetarily because right now Big
15:03
Food makes a fortune selling you know, pseudo foods to people that throws their
15:09
metabolisms out of whack, that makes them incredibly fat. Then those people go
15:13
to the doctor and instead of the doctor saying you need to lose one hundred
15:16
pounds or don't even come back here, they just give them drug after drug
15:22
after drug to manage the symptoms of obesity. Yeah. Yeah, So come
15:26
up with a drug that cures obesity, and all of a sudden you've got
15:31
big food, big pharma, and a big chunk of the rest of the
15:37
healthcare profession in bad shape. Right now, you know, that would be
15:41
a nice version of creative destruction, right you know, capitalism at work,
15:48
at work in the best sense. It's putting a lot of bad actors out
15:52
of out of business. You know, if you close down half the pharmaceutical
15:54
industry and most of the food processors, you've done a really good thing for
15:58
society besides saving mine. So yeah, but you can hope, yeah,
16:03
John, if your food addiction comes from the same part of the brain as
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drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, and other things like shopoholism, whatever addictions.
16:18
If all the addictions emanate from the same place, you know, and you
16:23
have a drug that bum gets rid of. Just say it, Just say
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it makes your addictions manageable. Like you only spend two hundred dollars a month
16:33
on Amazon instead of five hundred. This is like really bad. They can't
16:38
allow this because look, addiction is a major profit center in modern capitalism.
16:45
Like no one ever went broke, you know, from people who were too
16:52
addicted. Right. Well, that that's why I said there was going to
16:56
be an accident of some sort here, because this threatens you. If you
17:00
threaten two trillion dollars of corporate prophets, you're dead. That's you. You're
17:06
just going to die one way or another. You know, there's single single
17:12
car accident you're driving by way. Yeah, they'll be they'll be flying a
17:17
private jet to Domos or something like that, and they'll go down over the
17:21
Rockies. But yeah, you know, you're so cynical, John, But
17:27
I hate to say it. It's true. There's one that's even more effective
17:32
than ozempic or somaglatide, and that is ter zepetide, which basically you lose
17:37
as much weight from that drug as you do from bariatric surgery. All right,
17:42
so that means you got all these guys who are putting in bands like
17:48
the internal bands, external bands, they're like disconnecting your stomach all of this,
17:53
they're going to be out of work too. This could throw we could
17:57
have a global to press and all because there's a drug that effectively treats addiction.
18:03
I think of all the drug and alcohol counselors, they're going to be
18:07
on the breadlines. And this wasn't even done by AI. When you put
18:11
all that, nobody's going to be working. If we can end addiction through
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a drug and thinking through chat gpt we don't need anybody to work anything to
18:22
do anything, right, John, I think this is going to be the
18:25
decade of automation. Yeah, you know that's that's going to be a front
18:27
page story day after day after day because chat gpt is is eating into a
18:34
really shockingly wide range of jobs. You know. The apparently part of the
18:40
writer's strength in Hollywood is driven by fears about automation. In other words,
18:47
a computer writing screenplays better than a human can do it. That's you know
18:52
that that always seemed like right at the edge of creativity where no machine isn't
18:57
going to be able to to do dialogue, for instance, as well as
19:02
Woody Allen or something like that. But apparently that's a fear now, So
19:06
Woody Allen as early days, not in his later days. I think the
19:08
AI can beat them in his later movies. Yeah, but you know,
19:14
that's a very big deal. That's that's the kind of transition that we aren't
19:18
prepared for obviously, but we're going to have to creatively deal with avoid it
19:23
turning into this just gigantic catastrophe because a lot of people now are talking about
19:30
how that's going to be the thing that makes ubi universal basic income a feasible
19:37
government policy because so many people are going to be put out of work.
19:41
Meanwhile, the people who own the automating technologies are going to be raking in
19:45
such an insane profits that will kind of have to tax the robots and then
19:51
spread that money around to the people who are out of work with no prospect
19:56
of getting back into their old careers because their old careers are gone. You
19:59
know. That's the that's it's an intense decade or century or however long it
20:03
takes. But it's good thing you and I are untouchable. Yeah, so
20:08
far, it's so good. No, No AI can do what I can
20:11
do or you can do. For now they're going, we'll be joining the
20:17
rest on the sidelines. But think about this, jot. All the fent
20:21
and all deaths, all the drug the deaths from food, from obesity,
20:29
type two diabetes, all this, and then we have a drug that gets
20:33
rid of all that. Not only will they have to give the UBI,
20:37
but life expectancy is going to go up. And well, oh yeah,
20:41
you know so, Social Security, medicare, Medicaid already bankrupt, but it's
20:47
going to be even worse than that because all these people are like you and
20:51
me. If they figure out a drug and we can stick around for an
20:53
extra twenty or thirty years, they're going to have to figure out a way
20:56
to get rid of us. So maybe the idea of that plane accident on
21:02
the way to the Builderberg group meeting where all the uh, well, all
21:06
the creators of all these drugs ending addictions, isn't isn't too far a stretch,
21:11
is it? Yeah? But you know, wouldn't wouldn't that be just
21:17
perfect? Boomers we've had We grew up in basically the best world that has
21:22
ever been and we you know, we had it our way all this time,
21:27
and we own all the appreciated stocks and all the appreciated houses, and
21:33
then they come out with some drug that gives us an extra thirty years.
21:37
I think. I think the the Zoomers and the millennials are not going to
21:45
think that's fair. You know, well, how about civil war and they'll
21:48
just decide to kill off all the people sixty and over because you're just soaking
21:52
up the uh, you're just taking you're not contributing anything, You're just getting
21:57
paid to not do anything. I think we own most of the guns though,
22:02
so we're liable to win the civil war. Yeah, well and just
22:06
live forever. Yeah. Yeah. The millennials like they never learned how to
22:11
shoot. But speaking of the Builderborgs, So it's underway in Lisbon now.
22:15
And if you don't know about the Builderberg group, all the movers and shakers,
22:19
hundreds of billionaires from all over the place, and they set policy and
22:26
then you know, supposedly like before the first Arab oil embargo, there was
22:32
a Builderberg meeting and they decided that the guests would go up to a dollar
22:36
a gallant. And in the year it was up in all of these things.
22:40
So who's there but the guy who the head of Chat, of open
22:45
Ai, the creator of Chat, GPT, the CEOs of Fizer, Microsoft,
22:52
Goldman Sacks, and Stacy Abrams. I don't quite get the connection there,
22:56
but all the world's move and shakers. I'm sure the heads of of
23:04
Google are there, and Zuckerberg or somebody's there from Facebook. I don't know
23:11
that they invited Elon Musk this year, probably not as my guess. You
23:15
think Elon's there, I'm best he's there, um because they want to win
23:22
him over. Hey, they either, let's face it, they have to
23:26
assassinate Elon Musk or they have to co up right, so so one way
23:33
or the other. Um, but or he's already co opted. You saw
23:37
who he named the CEO of Twitter, who was an executive and what economics
23:44
are on. I can't explain that unless he flipped her, unless he flipped
23:52
her, well, unless he flipped her or they flipped him. Are they
23:56
couldn't refuse? Yeah? Yeah, I mean maybe you know, with the
24:03
bumper of a tesla in his bed. Well, because I mean think about
24:07
it. They could go to him and they'd say they say, well,
24:11
listen, we killed the Kennedys, we killed all these other people, you
24:15
know, this guy and this guy and this guy that was us. We
24:17
killed them all. We'll kill your kids and your wife and your parents unless
24:22
you stop this. Then you stop this stuff right now. Yeah, you
24:25
gotta sense ourselves here, John. Let's just say they wouldn't hesitate to extreme
24:32
prejudice and leave it at that and before and they'll do it again. But
24:37
man, that's like, yeah, I couldn't make out what that Twitter thing
24:40
was unless it's like he had his new toy, he had his fill of
24:44
it, and now he's got to get the Mars in a hurry, so
24:48
forget it. Hey, So recession, we've been going over this leading indicators
24:53
prerecession territory. Commercial real estate is in the pits and has no hope of
25:00
ever recovering in our lifetimes. Home sales down twenty three percent year to year
25:04
and home depot. But it's like, that's the really one of the companies
25:11
that really excelled during the lockdowns during COVID, and that's reported some bad numbers.
25:18
What's your take, Well, there are a lot of things that are
25:21
rolling over and what they really knew, so you and you named a lot
25:23
of them. And then there's the leading economic indicators which is a kind of
25:26
a compilation of a bunch of indicators that tend to predict things going forward,
25:33
like hours worked. For instance, if there are longer hours being worked this
25:40
month, and that means paychecks are bigger next month and consumer spending is out,
25:45
you know, so you can you can use hours worked to predict those
25:47
other things. And that index is a very good predictor of coming recessions.
25:53
And it's flashing red right now. It says major recession coming. And so
25:59
it's no surprised that somebody like home Depot would be seeing less demand for things
26:07
that are basically in a lot of cases optional, Right, if you're going
26:11
to redo your kitchen, you can do it this year, or you can
26:15
wait a year. And when you start being more and more nervous about your
26:22
financial situation, it gets easier and easier to wait a year. So the
26:26
home supply companies are sensitive in that way. So for Home Depot to see
26:33
a big drop in earnings where there were their revenues down to I forget.
26:40
So yeah, yeah, so anyhow for them to have a bad quarter is
26:45
another leading indicator. It means that that spending from the sectors that would normally
26:52
boyd home depot would be weak in the next quarter. Let's say, so
26:59
I think by year end we're in a recession, and and then then we
27:03
get back to that, Oh they're they're tapering a Ponzi's conping. You know,
27:07
we would be basically shutting off the money's picket if the economy starts to
27:11
turn over and you'd see a lot of debt go bad. That that commercial
27:15
real estate thing is just you saw Sam Dell just or Zelle just died,
27:19
right, Yeah, yeah, sad, Yeah. Yeah. He's really just
27:25
this down to earth guy who was right over and over again about the real
27:29
estate cycle. You know, he would build up this big portfolio of office
27:33
buildings and warehouses and factories, and then he would sell them towards the peak,
27:38
and then he would go on c NBC or whatever and and say,
27:41
yeah, things are headed down. I'm out, I'm out of all my
27:45
real estate now. And then it would work out, and then he would
27:47
go back in at the bottom. And so he was doing interviews right up
27:52
to the end when he was basically saying that same thing again, Yeah,
27:55
I'm out, I'm a seller of real estate. He even he called today's
28:00
society why am our republic. So he was as apocalyptic as he has ever
28:07
been. And he's been right so many times in the past that I think
28:11
we need to pay attention. And he says commercial real estate is a mess.
28:15
So I got him. He's right, Yeah, you do. Based
28:21
on the real stuff that's happening out there and the fact that he's been right
28:25
so many times in the past commercial real estate is toast. It sounds like,
28:29
yes, yeah, I think you are correct, man, I really
28:33
I think he's right. I mean, that guy is one of the smartest
28:37
guys and he wrote a book. I mean he was really, really talented
28:42
and quite brilliant, so you know, hey, and you could never bet
28:48
against him. He always had impeccable timing, that guy. Speaking of real
28:52
estate. So New York City lost five point three percent of its population,
28:59
almost half a million people since COVID, most of them heading south, all
29:03
of them coming to Palm Beach County, Florida, where I am, which
29:07
is why the place is so crowded now. And people still think that they're
29:14
just coming here for the good weather, right, well, yeah, and
29:18
it makes complete sense that people are leaving New York City now. It's very
29:21
badly run and it has these monstrous winners. I've lived there for ten years,
29:26
and I can remember some walks from one place to another in Manhattan in
29:32
the middle of winter that were just you know, they're etched in my memory
29:36
as the most painful things. You know. My skin is free anyhow.
29:38
So it's no surprise that people are leaving New York City, and it's no
29:42
surprise are going to Florida because that's the that's the normal kind of underground railroad
29:48
thing they've got going where they ship their retirees down to Florida. So the
29:52
big question is can Florida stay a free state if it imports ten million New
29:57
Yorkers. I think the jury is still out. Yeah, what I think
30:03
is that it will because people who come here are probably more conservative, I
30:11
guess than those who are staying there, because Florida has become more red than
30:18
ever. So my guess is probably it will stay that way. But I
30:25
wouldn't put it past them. You never know. So it's just an interesting
30:30
interesting phenomena there. Hey, so what about this. China springs their debt
30:36
trap on a dozen countries. They're like coming out of our playbook. It's
30:41
like Pakistan Kenya, Zombia, Laos, Mongolia. They're all in hock to
30:48
the Chinese. They owe them billions and billions or often substandard infrastructure that was
30:53
part of the Belton Road initiative. And China is not so friendly as the
31:00
US, the Japanese and others. I just wonder if we're going to see
31:03
a new round of Chinese gunboat diplomacy. Well, we weren't very friendly when
31:07
we were doing that stuff. For remember that book, the Confessions of an
31:11
Economic hit Man. Yeah, you know that. What the US used to
31:15
do, according to him, was they would they would go in to you
31:18
know, some Banana republic and talk to the dictator and say, hey,
31:22
you know, we'll help you build this airport and we'll finance and everything,
31:23
and you can you can pocket one third of what we give you and everything.
31:27
And then so they go ahead and they do it, and then the
31:32
airport doesn't generate enough cash to cover the resulting loans, and then the US
31:36
gets to go in and just take those assets. Well, China's kind of
31:38
doing the same thing now. They were, They were doing it with a
31:42
happy face for a long time. Where was you know, we're never going
31:45
to invade you or anything. We don't have anything like the CIA. Don't
31:49
worry. But now they've made all these loans to all across Africa. Right,
31:55
China is by far the biggest economic force in Africa, but now we're
31:59
starting to call to loans. Yeah, and when when you call a loan
32:04
that cannot be paid back, that means you get the collateral. So China
32:08
is apparently going to be taking over a lot of infrastructure in the developing world,
32:14
and you know with all the political influence that that implies. So yeah,
32:22
I hate to say I told you so at anybody out there, but
32:25
you cannot trust empires to to act in your best interest if you're in a
32:31
small country. In fairness to China, I don't think they set out for
32:36
this to happen. I think they really believe this Belton Road initiative was really
32:42
going to be a major success. And you know, one of the reasons
32:45
the United States became ascendant is because of trade routes, trade routes through the
32:51
Panama Canal, trade routes from the US to Europe and to Asia, and
32:57
it protected those trade routes were better than a hundred years. So the Chinese
33:02
answer to that was Hey, we're going to do the built and Road initiative,
33:07
and we'll pay off all these tinpot petty dictators. Will build airports,
33:12
will build you know, ports and everything else. Well, as it turned
33:15
out, the quality of that infrastructure not so good, not as good as
33:20
ours, and then they became money losers because they weren't economically viable. And
33:28
you know what bails out a economically unviable government investment over time? John?
33:36
What inflation? All right? There's so many things that were built in the
33:39
United States that were really worthless when they were built, but they were expensive,
33:45
and as inflation proceeded ahead, it made those the economic case for those
33:52
assets more viable. Problem with China is they haven't even finished half these projects.
33:57
And the projects they have finished off and been substandard and just not capable
34:04
of generating the return. And I give you the example. A lot of
34:07
this was just means of getting capital out of China by private individuals because there
34:15
was no legal way to do it. But when you have a money losing
34:17
project that you have to keep subsidizing, then the money just flows pretty much
34:23
unrestricted. And this is the upshot of it. Now, whether will you
34:30
know the United States many times invaded countries because they weren't going to pay us,
34:36
especially in South America Costa Rica. The term banana republic came from that.
34:42
I wonder, you know, one day we just invaded Nicaragua because they
34:46
wanted to expropriate to us fruits banana trees. Right, they just didn't like
34:54
the idea of what's now jaquida. I believe us fruit is jaquida international.
35:00
Uh so, I think we're we're in a new round of banana republics here.
35:06
But they don't have any bananas to send right to China. Well,
35:09
they've got a lot of other stuff like box site and what's what's the thing
35:15
in oh in the Dominican another Congo? Yeah or dominic No, not Dominica,
35:23
Yeah, okay, congos. But you can only send the you know,
35:27
miners to mine it. But miners with an or not an R.
35:32
Yeah. Well yeah, I mean those you know, those those videos of
35:37
the child labor travel child slave laborers as far as the eye can see.
35:45
So we can have cheap art for cars. Yeah, that's h's that's miners
35:52
with When they say miners in cobalt mining, they mean M I, N
35:58
O R, not er god Yeah, what a world? Really, what
36:05
a world. You know, there's a long list of stuff we're gonna have
36:07
to answer for him, and that's one of them. You know, the
36:09
idea that our green technology requires something like that to be created, and we
36:16
still think of it as green. It means we were never really cared about
36:22
the environment, you know, we just wanted cool stuff at any price.
36:25
Yep, that's it. Well, hey, the end justifies the means,
36:30
and that's where we're at now. And you can't blame other countries for following
36:35
that business model. It propelled the US to where it is today. But
36:39
the past is not so rosy. A lot of people died, a lot
36:44
of exploitation, a lot of suffering, and hey, I'm not like bashing
36:49
the country, but you have to understand the history of the exploitation that carries
36:54
on to this day. Right. Oh yeah, it's not the past.
36:58
It's currently going on a lot of this stuff. You know, you look
37:01
at factory farming or or most of the extractive industries that are springing up around
37:09
clean tech, and it's as bad as anything we ever did. So yeah,
37:15
yeah, that's too bad. The world couldn't have learned a lesson in
37:19
They don't teach us this history, not in our schools, not in any
37:23
schools, even in the countries we conquered in the Philippines, in Haiti,
37:29
in Costa Rica, in Honduras, they don't teach this history. They don't,
37:36
and therefore we keep keep repeating. Anyway, I don't want to get
37:38
into the whole anti Americanism, but we have to acknowledge it worked, but
37:45
at what cost? And to continue this model onward? This is not going
37:50
to work in any event. That is it. We've run over. But
37:53
make sure you go to John's substack. It's Robino substack dot com. The
37:59
link is the show notes this interview. Hey, our sight Financial Survival Network.
38:04
Make sure you sign up for your free newsletter that I'm sending out shortly
38:07
and John, we will catch up with you next two weeks. Okay,
38:12
Sehry, thanks for listening to carry Lets's Financial Survival Network, your solution to
38:17
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38:22
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