Latest / Simply Bitcoin / Tom Loungo Explains HOW Trump is ENDING Americas SECRET War With Europe | EP 1497

Transcript

Tom Loungo Explains HOW Trump is ENDING Americas SECRET War With Europe | EP 1497 · Simply Bitcoin

0:01
All right, guys. We are back again for our third
0:04
installment with Tom Luongo. It's been a few months.
0:07
A lot has, I would say, changed since the last time you came on.
0:12
So I don't want to rehash everything we've talked about in
0:15
the past, but I think obviously a good place to start is maybe
0:20
with the recent developments happening in the Middle East.
0:22
And I know, Tom, you said on many occasions on podcast posts,
0:27
on Twitter, your newsletter, that the real reason for what's
0:32
going on in the Middle East was not about Iran's oil, but more
0:36
so about that Iran was just a node in the complex global trade
0:40
and financial system built by the City of London.
0:44
So I think for everyone here in the audience, their question is
0:47
probably has Trump finally succeeded in destroying the City
0:52
of London and why is that not the conversation going on?
0:57
Or rather maybe that we've seen from the media.
1:01
There's a lot of reasons being used for what is going on in the
1:04
Middle East. So maybe that's where we start
1:07
the conversation. And then we'll, you know, pick
1:09
and choose different areas. Sure, the the happy to be here
1:13
and I'd say, you know, it's, it's funny.
1:16
Remember that when I talk about stuff like this, when I'm really
1:20
talking about when I mentioned City of London is that it's a
1:22
system, right? So it's a metaphor for the old
1:27
flow control system of how money moves around the world, right?
1:30
And, and, and ultimately Iran is just one of the network nodes
1:35
and that Venezuela was 1. And now that's been taken care
1:38
of. That's been taken off the board.
1:39
We're rapidly trying to work on Mexico, Canada's part of that
1:43
network. So is Hong Kong, so is
1:45
Singapore, right? So is Zurich, Luxembourg, yada
1:48
yada, yada. So, but Iran is a very important
1:51
part of that because Iran was about oil and the money that is
1:55
moved through the oil markets along with Venezuela and others
1:59
to ensure that the the markets are liquefied, moving dollars,
2:03
euro dollars around the world. I, I, I, I, I specify euro
2:08
dollars here, not necessarily dollars.
2:10
And everybody keeps forgetting that offshore dollars and
2:12
onshore dollars are completely different things.
2:15
So because euro dollars and offshore dollars are ultimately
2:19
have been up until very recently, the value of which
2:21
have been controlled by London and or Frankfurt and all the
2:25
other offshore banking centers and their network.
2:27
So what we're dealing with here is that you take Iran as a
2:32
potential choke point over the entirety of the oil trade off
2:37
the board and all of a sudden you're looking at a world that's
2:40
completely rewirable. Like it's just like I just had
2:43
this, this pole barn around my RV wired up on my electrician
2:46
friend the other day. You know, it cost a lot of money
2:48
and it cost a lot of angst and, and, and work to rewire this.
2:51
If I didn't like the job he did the first time or I don't like
2:54
the, the, the job specifications I gave him the first time,
2:57
right. So when you think about it that
2:59
way, Trump is looking at the world going, look, the current
3:04
global financial system, in the current trade system, in the
3:07
current way we finance all of this stuff does not work for
3:10
America, right? It works for other people, works
3:13
really well for other people. It's work to, you know,
3:15
impoverish America's work to drag America down.
3:18
But it hasn't actually, it doesn't actually work for
3:21
America. And that's where we have to then
3:24
ask yourself, OK, so why would he?
3:26
You know, so that's his motivation as to why he would
3:28
want to do this. So at the end of the day, there
3:32
are many reasons why he would go into and deal with Iran.
3:35
And many of the reasons are as as much as he stated, yeah, he
3:39
believes flat out no one has Iran should not have a nuclear
3:43
weapon. But the truth of the matter is
3:45
that Donald Trump doesn't think anybody should have nuclear
3:46
weapons. I mean, you make that kind of
3:48
abundantly clear that he hates the damn things and he thinks
3:50
they're immoral. So, hey, no more, no more
3:53
nuclear weapons for anybody. And it's a convenient and good
3:56
excuse to sell the whole thing, the whole package that way.
4:00
But Donald Trump is, my friend. Blaine Holt likes to point out,
4:03
never does anything for any one reason.
4:05
He does it for four or five different reasons.
4:06
He can get four or five things on the board that'll work for
4:09
him. He's going to do it.
4:10
And, and he may not achieve all of them and he may not achieve
4:14
all of them to an equal degree, but that's what he's going to
4:17
attempt to do. So has he stopped Iran from
4:21
achieving a nuclear, achieving a nuclear breakout in the next two
4:24
weeks? Yes.
4:25
Has he remove their ability to really defend themselves against
4:30
against a reasonably powerful military to so that if you
4:34
decide they want to rebuild that system and that and their
4:38
ballistic missile and their nuclear weapons program, they
4:40
will not Yes, he's achieved that.
4:43
Has he fully rewired the oil markets yet?
4:46
No, but he's in the process of doing so because if you look at
4:49
what's happening across the Middle East, let's let's like
4:51
break that down a little bit. If you, if you look at what he,
4:55
he was dealing with originally, right at the moment he went in
4:59
on February 28th, what he was dealing with was a Persian Gulf
5:05
with people on both sides of the Persian Gulf that were running.
5:13
They were part of that system, right?
5:14
So that Iran was moving oil and money and everything else.
5:18
And they were wandering through the UAE and you know, they were
5:21
and MI 6 is listening on the on the streets of Hormuz and Oman,
5:25
Hormuz and Oman. You've got Qatar is moving LNG
5:30
and you know, through the Persian dolphins.
5:32
So if you look at like all of those people, they all have ties
5:37
to the London, you know, financial centers and that has
5:41
all been exposed now. And it's some of those people
5:43
have been have been flipped to UAE being the big one right in
5:49
the last about the last week or so, we've realized it's just
5:53
how, how, how big that change has been.
5:56
So he's got that happening. He's moved.
5:59
He's now by highlighting the choke point of the Strait of
6:02
Hormuz the way he has, the way Iran has had to or the IRGC
6:06
specifically has had to effectively quote, try and close
6:10
it and everything else. What you wind up with is we've
6:15
had what, over 1112 million barrels a day are no longer
6:19
flowing through the straits. You got 7 million barrels are
6:22
going to the Red Sea. The UAE is ready to start
6:27
pumping 2 million barrels a day at their port at Fujairah at the
6:31
end of their pipeline. That's just part of the reason
6:33
why they decided to leave OPEC. You've got everybody else who
6:37
doesn't want to be involved in this is now moving, is now
6:40
loading up in the Gulf of America.
6:43
Hell, we're even loading oil for Japan off the coast of Alaska.
6:47
So like this whole lot of oil has now been, you know, rerouted
6:52
around this choke point. So it's it's not as cut and
6:57
dried or simple as oh, well, this is just Trump versus City
7:01
of London. It's Trump versus the old world
7:04
is, I think, a better way of putting it for, for people who
7:07
would, who would rather who, who are, you know, who want to hear
7:10
receipts about how old is the London support?
7:13
Just think of it this way. If you look at the world the way
7:16
we always do, which would be open up a map of the world with
7:19
a Mercator projection, who's always in the middle of the
7:22
world, right? Who's always in the middle of
7:24
the map? Well, it's Europe in the Middle
7:26
East, right, in Africa, like right there with North America
7:29
off the one side and Asia off to the other side.
7:31
Well, and in that view of the world, right, it was really
7:37
important, right? I mean, there's a crossroads
7:40
from China into the Middle East. They're they're, they're
7:43
important to Russia to try and bypass the Bosphorus and the and
7:47
the Suez and the whole Mediterranean complex.
7:51
Excuse me, hold on. But that doesn't mean that it's
7:56
the only way to look at the world.
7:58
But in that world, in that worldview, Ron's really damn
8:02
important. There's a lot of oil in the
8:05
Middle East. There's a lot of oil in Iran.
8:06
There's a lot of oil in Iraq. And all, and, and all of it, all
8:09
the oil and gas and all that stuff, and all the maritime
8:11
trade routes around the Mediterranean, the Red Sea,
8:14
Persian Gulf, etcetera. Excuse me.
8:21
So I hate it when that happens. No, I like something I think
8:26
flew into my mouth from the wind and so I went right down my
8:30
throat. Oh, come on.
8:34
Yeah, yeah. Tom, we, we can't have you go on
8:36
the stream, man. We can't have you go on the
8:38
stream. Here, take take a moment.
8:40
So so hold on. So, so in that framework, right,
8:46
that the old world, and that is literally the old world, right?
8:48
Europe in the Middle East, it's like been the center of the
8:51
world, the civilization for 4000 years.
8:54
But if you take that map and then shift it and put Europe off
8:58
the one side, Asia off to the other and the Americas dead set
9:02
in the middle, that's a different world, right?
9:06
That's a, that's a different framework.
9:08
And in that world, Iran's not nearly as important, is it?
9:14
Because now the trade routes now the center of trade, the center
9:18
of, of, of global finance and everything else is no longer
9:21
around all of the maritime choke points of let's just go, let's
9:25
just go through them. The English Channel, Gibraltar,
9:28
the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, the Suez Canal,
9:31
Gulf of Aden, Strait of Hormuz, right?
9:34
They're not important. They're not important.
9:35
Even the Straits of Mohaca, right?
9:38
Because if you're not moving as much oil and gas and trade and
9:41
everything else from Europe to China, you don't have to go past
9:46
the Straits of Malacca and Singapore, right?
9:48
And if you look at a lot of the things that Chinese have been
9:51
doing for the last 15 years, what do you think Belton Rd. is?
9:53
What do you think the, the, the, the oil and gas pipeline from
9:58
Kunming to Myanmar, the, and the Bay of Burma, right?
10:04
Is? It's a very important way, very
10:07
important loading energy loading nodal point so that they don't
10:13
have to be bottled up behind the US seven fleet in the Straits of
10:16
Malaca. Now that was what China was
10:18
doing in the 20 tens and, and in all the way into Trump's first
10:23
term and, and you know, with the whole Asian pivot with Panetta
10:26
and Hillary Clinton and and and Barack Obama.
10:29
So you have that right now. Let's shift everything over to
10:32
the Americas and you've got the Gulf of America.
10:36
Plenty of ways in and out. Only one geographic choke point,
10:38
the Panama Canal, which the United States controls.
10:42
Plenty of ways to get in and out of the the Gulf of America.
10:46
Plenty of ports, lots of oil, lots of lots of deepwater ports.
10:50
Miami, you know, all the coast of coast of Texas, New Orleans,
10:57
Caracas, all up and down Mexico, yada, yada, yada, You have all
11:00
of that. So why do we have to be bottled
11:02
up in the old world like this? And that's what Trump is asking.
11:06
That's what Trump is kind of talking about at this point.
11:09
And so it doesn't really matter at the end of the day whether,
11:13
excuse me, whether Iran is destroyed, not destroyed, this,
11:16
that or anything else. That is a lot of, I'll be frank,
11:20
a lot of Iranian and to a lesser extent Russian propaganda.
11:24
Really what this is amounts to is, you know, if you look at the
11:28
beginning of the war, you had the American saying these were
11:33
our strategic objectives were on the other side, you had the
11:36
whole Iranian propaganda wing centered around Alexander Dugan
11:39
and all those guys saying all Ron has to do is survive, like
11:43
the Pepe Escobars and the Dugan's and all those people.
11:45
And you could see those talking. You can see that talking point
11:48
promulgated through the entire alt media space.
11:50
And I don't care who who it is you're talking about.
11:53
They all said the same thing. And I'm like, excuse me, you
11:57
don't get to define America winning the war that they chose
12:00
to fight on your turn, you know, with your terms.
12:03
We have our strategic objectives.
12:05
We have achieved all of those strategic objectives.
12:08
And it doesn't matter whether you survive or not.
12:11
Ultimately, it's it's not about, you know, it's not about any of
12:14
this old world, new world, You know, it's not about any of that
12:18
stuff anymore. We embarrass the Americans
12:20
they've lost. And the straits of our moves
12:22
were all this like, like delusional nonsense because it
12:25
truly is delusional nonsense, right?
12:28
America has lost. What are you?
12:29
What are you talking about? America has lost.
12:32
OK. No, because if you look at the
12:35
situation as it stands right now, what do we have?
12:40
We've closed the Straits of Hormuz.
12:42
Nobody can get past. If we don't, we don't let them.
12:44
Really. Then why didn't you shoot down a
12:46
whole bunch of U.S. Navy destroyers last yesterday
12:48
and the day before? Oh yeah, that's right.
12:51
You couldn't, which is what all of us have been saying.
12:54
Look at the I've looked at this this militarily since like day
12:57
three of the war when the Americans let everybody know
13:00
they were flying A10 warthogs over the Persian Gulf.
13:02
Like, excuse me, if you're flying, if we're flying a 10s,
13:05
you're not shooting them out of the sky.
13:07
These things are literally sitting ducks right to modern
13:11
air defense systems. Part of the reason why the A 10s
13:13
not, you know, this is very important point.
13:16
The A10, the Air Force wanted to get rid of them because they're
13:19
sitting dust against modern air defenses.
13:21
Yeah, I agree. But guess what?
13:23
We killed all their modern air defenses and now all they've got
13:26
left there's a bunch of slow flying drones and some fast
13:29
attack boats, which the A 10 is really good at killing.
13:32
And they have proven this over and over and over again over the
13:35
last five weeks, says 7 weeks. So Iran never really closed the
13:40
streets. Who closed the straight was
13:41
always abundant, right? Who closed the freights were the
13:44
ones who said no shipping, no shipping insurance, no ships
13:48
move. And everybody who went along
13:51
with that, you know, all created or helped create the talking
13:57
point. Well, look, we had 130 ships
13:59
going through on February 27th. Now there's only 13.
14:01
Yeah. Well, oh, well, like who's, you
14:04
know, are they, are they involved in this, this, this,
14:07
this, this nonsense or not? Some of them are just like,
14:09
look, we can't. We can't move until there's
14:13
insurance available. OK, well, the United States then
14:15
turns around and says we'll give you insurance.
14:18
But the prerequisite for that insurance is that you have to
14:21
accept our escorts. Or if you want our escorts, you
14:24
have to accept our insurance. And now that we're ready to
14:27
start escorting ships around out of the the straits, you can
14:32
assume by inference with those ships are not taking our
14:37
insurance. So this is what's going on.
14:41
The Iranians aren't in charge of anything in the street, and they
14:44
haven't been for weeks, like literally weeks.
14:49
So now all it now it's now we're into the are you or are you not
14:53
going to actually surrender to a war you've already lost?
15:00
And if you're not, well, we can wait you out, which is where we
15:07
are. That's fine because every day
15:11
that that happens is another day that the world rewires global
15:15
trade away from the Strait of Hormuz.
15:17
Because the truth of the matter is that nobody does business
15:20
where there's uncertainty. So if we're not certain as to
15:23
whether or not our ships are going to get blown out of the
15:25
sky by some, you know, Persian death cultist or, you know,
15:28
whatever, like, sorry, like I'm not going to move by.
15:31
I'm not going to move by ships in there.
15:32
OK, well then you're just going to have to go somewhere, have to
15:35
go some other route that'll make things a little bit more
15:37
expensive. That'll do this.
15:39
And it'll force people to build pipelines or, you know,
15:43
railroads or whatever they have to do.
15:44
Or, you know, more different ports will become more important
15:48
than the ones we had previously. Like this is the thing that that
15:51
drives me nuts is like, why do we have to accept?
15:54
Why does everybody just accept the fact that, oh, on February
15:56
27th, the straights were open and everything was working fine?
15:58
No, everything wasn't working fine.
16:00
The world was actually paying a very large chaos premium on
16:05
global trade because there was always this threat that if
16:08
somebody looked at Iran sideways, they, they, they close
16:11
the straights. Well, now they don't even have
16:13
that. Isn't that better?
16:16
Because once this is all over and they finally like submit or
16:20
not, they're going to submit. Eventually they're either going
16:22
to get bombed back to the, the stone ages as Trump is
16:25
threatened, or they're going to, you know, finally come to the
16:29
deal and make a, you know, come to the table and make a deal.
16:31
And if they come to the table and make a deal, fine, great.
16:35
You get to live like the Iranian people get to live, they get to
16:38
choose the they get to choose their a new government and all
16:41
the rest of it. And that'd be great.
16:42
Kind of like what's happening in Venezuela, which is phenomenal,
16:46
honestly. So we had in Venezuela, it was
16:49
clearly, you know, just organized crime running the
16:52
country. So that's gone now.
16:55
And now we're, you know, moving towards something better, not
16:58
something great, not something you know, it is what it is.
17:01
It's better and better is better and we should always strive for
17:05
better. We shouldn't have to accept what
17:07
we what's always been and that's, that's that.
17:10
So I'll, I'll leave it there. There's many other ways, many
17:14
other aspects of that that I haven't gone into, of all this,
17:18
I haven't gone into. But it's all I mean, but that's
17:20
the, you know, down at the brass tacks. the US has won the war
17:23
militarily. It's now winning the war, you
17:26
know, logistically and the only, the only part of the war hasn't
17:31
fully won yet is the propaganda war.
17:34
And the propaganda war is where 9095% of us in Iraq, because
17:37
most, because 95% of us don't know anything.
17:39
Yeah, Yeah. That's, that's just I, I am.
17:44
I do want to ask a little bit about maybe not just a timetable
17:48
of how this waiting out period would be, but how long it would
17:53
take for the world to see that things are different.
17:58
Like what, what would we be looking for?
18:00
And, and in your mind, just what is the timetable?
18:02
Like if what you're saying and, and I see the chat, they're
18:05
like, you know, I, I don't believe the 40 chest Trump
18:08
stuff. And I've always been, as we've
18:10
talked, like, yo, things may not be as they seem, considering
18:15
that we all know about the fake news media.
18:17
They, they expend their narratives.
18:19
We've I think done a pretty good job on this show following the
18:22
money and showing who is behind these big media conglomerates.
18:27
And one of the biggest thing that we've noticed trying to
18:30
cover what's going on and the implications it has for the
18:33
macro and Bitcoin, of course it is a Bitcoin show is us being
18:37
very open. It's like, look, we really don't
18:39
know what's going on. We're just taking the headlines
18:41
and the news stories and this is part of the operation going on.
18:45
This is, you know, on both sides.
18:47
This is part of the operation. So again, long winded way of
18:51
asking, in your mind, how long is it going to take for people
18:56
to get a tangible benefit or or feel that things are different?
19:00
Like just obviously we have no crystal ball, but how long do
19:04
you think that this uncertainty is going to last for everyday
19:08
people? Months, not years, OK, Weeks and
19:12
months, not, you know, quarters and years.
19:14
Let's let's not kid ourselves. How much, how long do you think
19:17
Iran can can hold out? And I mean, Iran at this point,
19:21
I'm, I I I want to make it abundantly clear.
19:23
I mean, the IRGC, yeah. OK.
19:25
Not the civilian Iranian government, which is clearly
19:28
trying to negotiate a way out of this.
19:30
But the IRGC won't let them. Every time that Aragotchi tries
19:33
to, you know, cut a deal or or change a red line, he gets like
19:38
taken back behind the chemical shed, beaten with a stick and
19:41
then sent back out there in the struggle session.
19:43
Like it's it's it's ridiculous. It's been going on since, you
19:46
know, literally since like March 2nd, right?
19:48
But the reality is, is that let me ask you a very basic
19:52
question. I know a lot of people just I
19:54
don't believe in the 40 test of Trump.
19:55
Yeah, because you believe in the CIA talking point.
19:58
The 40 test is the is the new conspiracy theory.
20:01
Like, I'm just like laying out basic freaking military and
20:04
logistics strategy here. And if you think Donald Trump is
20:07
just an impulsive Jackass, then why aren't you president?
20:12
How did, how did he survive long enough to get to the point where
20:15
he got elected a second time after the entire world was, you
20:19
know, trying to stop him from doing so?
20:21
This is a, there's a lot of just like, true, honest to God like
20:26
insanity. The guy's actually not bad at
20:29
what he does. Oh, Tom, I think we lost you.
20:36
Tom, you went black. Chad, am I the only one seeing
20:42
I'm going black? One SEC.
20:52
Oh, there you are. There you are.
20:54
OK, I had I had a phone call coming on my iPad.
20:56
OK, OK, shut. Everything off OK, it's because
20:59
you know, some because some scammer wants to sell me a, a
21:02
business loan that I don't want. Christ, God save me from
21:07
Indians. OK, now seriously, I think
21:13
everybody really needs to take a step back and ask themselves
21:16
just how much why do you believe Donald Trump is an just just an
21:22
impulsive Jackass and maybe just maybe actually has maybe a bit
21:26
strategy. That's not 4D chess, folks.
21:28
What I laid out to start out with is not 4D chess.
21:31
That is exactly what anybody with his set of goals in mind
21:35
would start doing. And maybe, just maybe he's
21:38
better at this than you are and that's why you can't see it.
21:42
And you should ask yourself that question on every day because
21:45
otherwise you're just a barking seal responding to whatever it
21:50
is that is out there in the zeitgeist.
21:53
And there's a whole lot of intelligence, overlapping
21:55
intelligence operations out there to rob you of your reason.
21:58
If you go through and you look at events, it's pretty clear why
22:02
he's doing what he's doing. Like, don't listen to what he
22:05
says. I can, I can argue all day long
22:08
about that. Look at what he actually is
22:09
doing. Look at what's happening, OK,
22:12
We're exporting 6,000,000 barrels a day out in the, out of
22:15
the, the, the Gulf of America. This 9,000,009 to 10 million
22:20
barrels a day have been taken off of the Straits of Hormuz.
22:23
OK, that's a big rewiring of the world.
22:26
OK, go look at the trade routes. Go look at the, the AIS data and
22:30
you'll see more people, you know, going around the Horn of
22:33
Africa and going, you know, the Cape of Good Hope and the, the
22:37
trade routes are just changing because people are going to
22:39
react to them. So to your question as to how
22:42
long is this going to take? It's going to take as long as it
22:45
takes for the IRGC to realize that they no longer have a
22:50
benefactor behind them that's willing to stand behind them.
22:53
And I'm going to try and lay it out for you in this way.
22:56
And the easiest thing, the easiest way for me to, to do
23:02
this is to, I'm going to give you 2 other examples.
23:05
If you look at the way the IRTC has been negotiating, they
23:09
haven't been negotiating. There has never been a deal on
23:12
the table that even mattered. It's always been, this is what
23:15
we say we want. And then every time there's
23:17
another round of talks to come out and they just reiterate the
23:19
same thing over and over again, right?
23:20
They haven't changed anything. It's like the United States
23:23
says, I have, we have these 15 points and the Iranians are yes,
23:25
we have these 10 points. No, no, no, I said 15 points,
23:29
yes, yes to front 10 points. Like it's typical Arab
23:32
negotiating over a friggin rug, like you know what I mean?
23:35
Or some tchotchke in in an open air bazaar.
23:37
It's just retarded. That's one.
23:41
Who else at negotiates like that?
23:44
Zolensky in Ukraine. He's been saying the same thing
23:48
for four years. We want Crimea back.
23:51
Dude, you lost Crimea in 2014. It's 2026, the Russians have
23:56
been there for 12 years. They built the bridge across the
23:59
the Cfas off like that. The fuck off.
24:02
Like, you know what I mean? Like they're done.
24:04
And you want to know who else negotiates that way?
24:06
The European Union, They did this in Brexit.
24:09
Go back to all the Brexit stuff. Go look at what they did in
24:12
Brexit. Every day, every week they get
24:14
together and Donald Tusk and Theresa May would sit and oh,
24:19
with that guy with a Michel Barnier would sit down and the
24:22
EU would just say the same thing over and over again, expecting
24:25
the Brits to change their mind. And the Brits would keep moving
24:27
towards them and they would say the same thing.
24:29
So they never negotiate. They just keep already
24:32
reiterating the same terms over and over again.
24:34
You want, you don't think I'm you don't believe me as Giannis
24:38
Varoufakis, he used to talk about this when talking about
24:40
the Greek debt, sovereign debt crisis.
24:42
These you, you go out there, you, you put together a proposal
24:45
for them, you present it to them.
24:46
And then they look at you like you just turn the Swedish
24:48
national anthem. And then they go back to, you
24:50
know, drinking their, their, their, their espressos and
24:53
eating their crumb cake and doing whatever they're going to
24:55
do. And they ignore you.
24:57
That's their negotiating strategy.
24:59
They just assume that you don't have you don't matter to them.
25:03
So you want to know who's standing behind the IRGC?
25:07
Well, look who's standing behind Ukraine.
25:11
Look who stood firm on Brexit until, you know, the British
25:15
people finally stood up and said no.
25:18
And I want a decent, you know, put Boris Johnson and they got a
25:21
halfway decent deal. Also a crappy deal, but they got
25:23
a better deal than they would have gotten with Theresa May,
25:25
who was literally negotiating for the EU on behalf of the UK
25:31
like it was insane. And the same thing has been the
25:33
same thing has been going on forever in a day in in Ukraine,
25:37
like Ukraine should have been over in March of 2022 and it's
25:43
not We're still dealing with the same same problem.
25:45
So the So what I find interesting, right, is that last
25:50
week and I think this is actually will give you an idea
25:54
of why I think the time frame is shorter than longer as to when
25:57
they're going to finally give this up because we're not going
25:59
to do this for four years, folks like that's not going to happen.
26:06
Why I think things have always had a bit of a break in the log
26:10
jam is that last week when King Charles, or as I like to
26:15
affectionately call him, King Sauce's fingers, comes to the
26:20
United States, gives a speech before Congress speaks with
26:25
Trump, You know, at the the dinner, the state dinner that
26:27
night. And if you really watch
26:31
Charles's speech, which I did, and I was nauseated most of the
26:35
time, even though he's quite charming, I realized that while
26:40
he's, like, putting out like, little things to Congress, like,
26:42
you know, he's not a, you know, democracy and legislation,
26:46
separation of powers. And he said something about, you
26:49
know, help us fight the war against, you know, the Russians
26:52
and Ukraine, yadda, yadda, yadda, 90%.
26:54
The other 90% of that speech was, well, just to put it
26:58
simply, more simple minds than it was Imperial March more.
27:03
Don't you forget about me then don't Like it was very obvious
27:09
that Charles went to the United States to say, yeah, you're you.
27:17
We can't stop you from doing whatever it is that you're going
27:19
to do at this point. We can, you know, we can try and
27:23
assassinate you, Donald. We can do this.
27:25
We can do that. But you know, whatever.
27:27
Like we've had two assassination attempts in in DC in the last
27:30
like 3 days. Like so there's one this morning
27:33
like someone's really big mad about all this.
27:35
They want like JD Vance and they want Trump.
27:38
They want Trump guns. It's 3 assassination attempts in
27:40
10 days. So.
27:43
But that's what I heard saw from King Charles, right?
27:47
I saw this kind of pleading of, you know, if you're going to go
27:52
on with the the true independence of America for the
27:56
first time in 250 years, don't forget about where you came
27:58
from, Which is the way of saying don't forget about the royal
28:02
family. Don't forget about the heritage,
28:06
which speaks to my friend Ian Burlingame's point about, you
28:08
know, what Charles's actual role is.
28:11
So let's break that down a little bit.
28:14
So if that's the case, isn't it interesting that on Sunday, I
28:20
think it was Sunday, I saw the latest offer from Aragachi, they
28:28
finally moved on. Iran did finally moved on
28:34
uranium enrichment and monitoring and all of this stuff
28:37
that no, you we won't we don't have the right to, you know,
28:41
enrich uranium to 60% of weapons grade.
28:45
We don't have the right to we're giving up the right to a nuclear
28:48
weapon, right. They would always talk out of
28:51
both sides of their mouth about this.
28:53
This is again another one of those, you know, moments where
28:56
you watch them not negotiate while on the go while quote UN
29:00
quote negotiating. We watch them now move red
29:02
lines. Now why did they we watch them
29:05
move red lines? Was it had had did have to do
29:07
with the king? Did it have to do possibly if
29:12
you believe the only the City of London angle or the OR if
29:15
Charles was the the spokesman for you know that part of the
29:22
old European colonials collected those old families.
29:26
It's possible. Or did something else happen
29:29
that made it, you know, it? Or is it that the IRGC is just
29:33
beginning to finally lose control over the civilian
29:36
government in Iran, which would be also, which would also get
29:39
you to the same situation? And then there's the UAE saying
29:45
what we are, they're leading OPEC now.
29:48
What happened yesterday? The minute that it looked like
29:52
there was going to be A and by the way, this all happened
29:55
during a British banking holiday, which was on Monday.
29:59
You had a couple of things happen.
30:01
You have Trump moving, you know, as having the US Navy escort a
30:05
bunch of ships, including one from Maersk, right?
30:08
That would be the Dutch company through the Straits of Hormuz
30:12
without incident, right? You had a British in military
30:18
report that they Iranians, you know, hit an American destroyer.
30:23
But no video. No, you know, the Internet like,
30:26
you know, pics or I don't believe you, right.
30:29
So I don't buy that story at all.
30:32
And then the Iranians, you know, flew some drones and and hit the
30:37
the port of Fujairah to, to punish the UAE for, you know,
30:43
quote UN quote betraying them. OK, So what's the net effect of
30:47
that? Well, push the price of oil up
30:49
again, because the price of oil was trying to drop again.
30:51
They're constantly trying to keep this this thing above water
30:55
to try and keep the price of oil up to hurt Trump politically at
30:58
home because that's their only method.
31:01
The only way Iran wins or whoever Iran plus their
31:05
benefactors, shadow benefactors call them what you want City of
31:09
London, the Rothschilds. I don't care.
31:10
Pick, pick. I don't care at this point,
31:12
Davos, whatever high table fine. If what I can tell you is that
31:17
it's not Israel because they're making moves to to support the
31:21
UAE here. So sorry, Those are facts.
31:24
Deal with it as you want juice burgs.
31:26
I don't really care. What's important now is that
31:29
this is what's this, this is these are facts.
31:33
This is what's happening and you know, they the only way they win
31:41
is if they can hurt Trump politically at home and cost him
31:44
the midterm elections. And how do you cost him the term
31:47
elections? Will you push the price of
31:49
gasoline to $5 a gallon, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Right.
31:52
Well, someone's moving the price of gasoline here in the United
31:55
States in the, the gasoline futures contract on on almost no
31:58
volume. It's 370.
32:00
It was 370 a gallon this morning.
32:02
I'm like, and I'm looking at the chart like there's no volume.
32:05
It's like somebody's like, but you know, there's no never any
32:08
volume in the gasoline futures market.
32:10
But you know, like Brent crude, same thing.
32:14
If you can move the benchmark, you can have a price that
32:17
everybody points to, even though the market isn't really based on
32:21
that at all. So, you know, it's like,
32:25
obviously this is the, this is, that's the real Sia, that's the
32:29
real 40 chess that's going on here.
32:30
The real 40 chess is someone is trying to do political damage to
32:35
Donald Trump to keep him from winning the midterms, which
32:37
makes sense. Everybody's fighting.
32:39
Everybody's fighting for their lives here.
32:41
Like, don't get me wrong. When I, when I, when I talk
32:43
about the Iranians, like trying to win the propaganda war, I get
32:46
it. Like if I were them, that's what
32:48
I would be doing. Like, I'm not, I don't, I don't
32:51
begrudge them fighting the war the best way they can in order
32:54
to affect the outcome that is best for them.
32:56
That's in their best interest. Well, the United States is doing
32:59
the exact same thing. And why would anybody who's
33:02
watching this not analyze the United States from that
33:05
perspective and not analyze Donald Trump's actions from that
33:07
perspective? If you're not, maybe it's
33:10
because you're either gas lit delusional or you just want us
33:13
to lose. We're not losing.
33:17
Now what? That's between you and your
33:19
therapist and the guy in the mirror.
33:20
I don't give a shit. I'm here to talk about the raw,
33:23
hardcore politics and the potential economic downfall, you
33:27
know, downstream of this. And since everybody else has
33:31
taken the under on on Trump's ability to navigate this, I'm
33:36
taking the over and just being a prick about it because why not?
33:39
Someone's got to tell that side of the story, even if it's not,
33:42
you know, even if you don't believe me, that's fine.
33:45
But you should at least listen to it.
33:46
You should at least consider it. And I just find a lot of people
33:49
just not considering it whatsoever.
33:51
And that just seems dumb to me because it like you're going to
33:54
tell me that Iran has won the military war because they, they,
33:57
they bombed a bunch of abandoned bases in the middle that we, we
34:01
had like laying around to the Middle East.
34:03
So we're basically nothing but, you know, cargo containers and,
34:05
and air and temporary airstrips. Really.
34:08
OK, you know, 4F fifteens and an A10, you know, no, that's not a
34:13
win. It's just not a win folks.
34:16
And the right and the truth of the matter is that right now
34:19
Donald Trump has put more assets, military assets in
34:23
theater than were it were staged on February 28th when he started
34:27
the war in the 1st place. So what do you think is going to
34:29
happen next? If Iran chooses death or the
34:32
IRTC chooses death or they to put it in Indiana Jones speech,
34:36
they chose poorly. What do you think is going to
34:39
happen then? You're only to watch what's
34:43
you're going to watch what we thought we were going to get
34:46
originally, which is when I was that barman do use
34:50
infrastructure. OK.
34:53
Now, interestingly enough, today's what, May 5th on May 8th
34:57
and May 9th, Vladimir Putin has announced a ceasefire in
35:05
Ukraine. And, you know, in accordance
35:10
with wanting to celebrate the 81st anniversary of the end of
35:13
World War 2 or what they call the Great Patriotic War.
35:17
But this morning I saw the, the, the post from the, the, from the
35:21
Russian Defence Ministry, which said, and we're doing this.
35:24
And if Kiev, and if the government in Kiev violates this
35:28
in any way, we will unleash holy hell on Kiev in a way that we
35:33
have chosen not to out of humanitarian reasons, for
35:36
humanitarian reasons for four years.
35:39
So Putin's lost all patience with this nonsense.
35:45
I am willing to stop hostilities and try to end this war, but
35:51
someone doesn't want this war to end Balls in your court.
35:55
Same way that the ball was in Iran's court last week when
35:59
Trump officially ended Operation Epic Fury and started Operation
36:02
Freedom to start moving ships through the, the Gulf, the the
36:06
Straits of Hormuz. Hey, no, the, the war's over.
36:10
We're moving stuff around and then the Iranians go out
36:13
yesterday and attack ships and attack ports.
36:17
You're just late. You're just leaving yourself no
36:19
legal room for anybody to have any sympathy for you whatsoever.
36:24
That seems dumb to me. But hey, you know, that doesn't
36:27
seem I'm like, I'm trying to figure out the 4D chess on that
36:30
one because from the Iranians perspective, what are you doing?
36:33
Seems dumb. I maybe, maybe you shouldn't do
36:36
that because now you're handing Donald Trump the legal
36:39
justification under American law for him to do whatever he needs
36:43
to do. Because if they've attacked any
36:45
of our ships whatsoever in any way, they are now a unilateral
36:52
belligerent. And under Article 2 plenary
36:54
powers, he can do whatever the hell he wants.
36:56
He doesn't need Congress, he doesn't need the war powers act.
36:59
He's already resetting the war power war powers act clock
37:03
anyway. And that's this is important.
37:05
These are these are things that matter.
37:08
These are facts that matter. These are political realities
37:10
that matter. They're not 40 chests.
37:12
This is exactly the way these things have to be prosecuted.
37:16
And you know, your ignorance doesn't turn into doesn't get to
37:19
be, you know, laughed off is 40 chests because it's it sounds
37:22
good on Twitter like that doesn't that's not the way wars
37:25
are prosecuted. Folks hate to hate to break it
37:28
to anybody. So.
37:31
Absolutely love it, Tom. I, as I said, I think the first
37:34
time that we had this conversation, it was exactly
37:38
what you just said a minute ago. It's like, hey, you may not like
37:40
what Tom is saying, you may not agree with him, but at the very
37:43
least you should at least incorporate Tom's worldview into
37:47
your analysis of what's going on.
37:49
And I'm glad that we can update it at least get to the current
37:52
moment. So quick commercial break, guys,
37:54
and we'll get a little bit more into the nitty gritty, maybe
37:56
even talk about a little more of the economic situation in the
37:59
US. The biggest news maybe is, you
38:02
know, Jerome Powell leaving, what those implications are.
38:05
So that's what I'll be covering right after the break, guys.
38:09
Quick commercial break and we will continue this conversation.
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se-ed.com store. OK, Tom, we're back.
40:25
So as you know, we are called simply Bitcoin.
40:28
So our show, even though we do cover a lot of geopolitics and
40:31
I'm, I'm really glad every time you come on, I know the audience
40:34
gets a little mad because they get mad at us when we talk about
40:36
politics. But we always have this view of
40:39
like, look, you know, politics controls the money.
40:41
So understand what's going on in the geopolitics and you can
40:45
understand better what's going on in the macroeconomic
40:48
situation. It really upsets our audience,
40:50
but we do it anyways because I think there's a lot of value
40:53
there. But again, this is a financial
40:56
show in, you know, for, for lack of better words.
41:00
And we have been covering, of course, a lot of the stuff
41:03
coming out of the Fed. And as our audience knows, you
41:06
know, Jay Powell last FOMC meeting, you know, he's on his
41:10
way out. Well, you know, Kevin Walsh is
41:13
supposedly coming in. Jay Powell is going to stay on
41:15
the, you know, Board of Governors here.
41:18
But I really want to hit on and I don't think we've hit on this
41:21
before on the show with you, but I found sounded very interesting
41:25
on your Twitter. I, I forget if you retweeted it
41:27
or if it was you posting it, but it was something on the lines of
41:31
everyone's been talking about this idea that it's Trump versus
41:34
Jerome Powell. I mean, everyone's obviously
41:37
aware of Trump calling Jerome Powell too late.
41:39
Powell, you know, he does the Trump thing on social media.
41:43
But I, I found it interesting on this post.
41:46
Again, I forget if you posted it or retweeted it, but you said or
41:49
he said whoever was sorry it was the war is not Trump versus
41:53
Powell. Well, it's probably better
41:55
framed as Powell versus Walsh. What what do you mean by this
41:59
idea And, and maybe breakdown kind of the landscape for people
42:03
so they can understand maybe the implications of what we just had
42:07
and what is potentially on the horizon?
42:09
Sure, there's a couple of, there's actually a lot to this
42:13
and I'll try and be, I'll try and be brief and and and
42:17
whatnot, but there's a lot to this.
42:18
So let's start with the basics. I never really bought the idea
42:22
that Trump and Powell were at odds, per SE, because he had to.
42:28
As always, Trump likes to seed the zeitgeist with an idea that
42:32
whose time has come but is not. But the public's not ready for
42:35
it yet. So why can he not come out and
42:38
say, look, I'm attacking old Europe with my Iran gambit?
42:42
People have asked me this 100 times.
42:43
Like, why can't he say that? Well, if you look at the
42:45
pushback I get on Twitter for saying that, you can imagine
42:48
what he would get, right? So it would be marginalized.
42:51
It's the same kind of thing with him and the Fed.
42:53
He can he has to go after Powell over something that's tangible
42:57
on the ending. The building is a good is a good
42:59
example of this because it's like it's this big, you know,
43:03
image of fraud, waste and abuse, which has been a theme since
43:06
they took office. OK, so you start there, but
43:13
Powell is going to be at the end of his term.
43:15
Powell at the end of the day is I'm not, I never questioned or
43:19
thought that Powell was anything other than basically a
43:22
Keynesian. I never argued anything other
43:24
than that he is ultimately the the head of the FOMC.
43:27
He's been at the he's been at the Fed for 17 years or however
43:31
long it's been. Look, he is who he is.
43:33
And Scott Besson mentioned at one point he said like, you
43:36
know, Chairman Powell, maybe, you know, he's become a little
43:40
institutionalized and that he wants to protect the
43:43
institution. The job gets to everybody.
43:45
Eventually everybody becomes part of the the existing machine
43:49
because they've lived in inside of that for as long as they
43:52
have. And that may be the case.
43:54
So you have that as background. Now you have two fundamentally
43:59
different, I think approaches to the Federal Reserve because what
44:02
have I been arguing for about for a couple of years, which is
44:04
that Trump and Besant and company want to reform the Fed,
44:11
like the Fed in its current incarnation is not compatible
44:15
with their vision of the future, certainly not compatible with
44:18
their vision of, you know, any kind of Hamiltonian restoration
44:21
of the American system, for better or for worse.
44:25
Free traders in the audience may not like it, but this is where
44:27
we're moving towards the the Fed is was not designed to to
44:32
support that and certainly not the Fed in its current
44:34
incarnation, right as the monopolistic issuer of new
44:39
currency units. Clearly with genius and clarity
44:42
acts now being finished and now for all intents and purposes,
44:46
law, we're now going to have a, a, a return to the treasury
44:51
being, you know, at the center of issuance of new monetary
44:56
units, not just the Fed. So if you go back to when I said
44:59
a couple of years ago, I said, you know, look, if we're going
45:01
to have Fed reform, what we need is a if we're going to be going
45:05
back to like a mercantilist world of protection tariffs and,
45:10
and sovereign currencies and, and and and and trade and trade
45:15
settlement and, and various targeted trade settlement rails
45:19
between countries. Then we need to have a version
45:23
of some kind of offshore dollar versus onshore dollar with the
45:26
Fed standing in the middle, providing the market access
45:29
charge and providing the semi permeable layer to move dollars
45:33
back and forth. But they get to control the
45:34
price differential between those two things so that Americans get
45:38
dollars at preferential rates to foreigners, kind of like the way
45:43
Chinese get preferential rates on on shore yuan versus offshore
45:48
yuan, for example. So, so with that in mind, the
45:54
classic Fed, the, the, well, I wouldn't say classic Fed, the,
46:00
the modern Fed role that we're all used to dealing with where
46:04
everything about American monetary policy and about the
46:07
price of dollars is, is, is determined by the Fed.
46:11
Not really compatible with the future and certainly not
46:14
compatible with the future where so far the secured overnight
46:17
financing rate is the, is the, the, the that my mail is getting
46:25
delivered. Just drop it off if you would
46:27
please. So sorry, like my mail, my mail
46:31
person's here. So it's incompatible with with
46:34
that. And because of that, you have a,
46:41
the security overnight finance rate in the end can destroy the
46:45
Fed funds rate. We don't need a fed funds rate
46:47
with SOFR, right? This is a point that I made to
46:50
Daniel Demartino booth the first time I had her on my podcast
46:52
back in 2022. I asked her this.
46:54
I said, look, if you really think about the implications of
46:56
this, you know, the possibility because like sulfur becomes a,
46:59
you know, allows us to re regionalize the, the, the Fed
47:03
funds rate because, you know, the markets can just trade based
47:07
on the, based on the, the demand for capital regionally.
47:13
So that's it. She said, and and I remember her
47:16
saying to me, she's like, yeah, that sounds great, but Wall
47:19
Street will never allow that to happen.
47:20
That was her her answer. And she's probably correct about
47:24
that. But here we are in 2026 and
47:26
we're on the verge of that. So now think about it from that
47:29
perspective. If Powell is effectively the, if
47:35
Powell's effectively the keeper of the old guard of the old Fed,
47:39
right, then we have a couple of things that that means.
47:42
And then you have Powell as that guy, Warsh as the guy who's
47:46
going to come in and change the culture in the Fed completely,
47:50
right? He's got to change that.
47:52
He's going to come in, he's going to change the culture of
47:54
the Fed. Well, then makes sense that like
47:58
this is where I get into like this is where I get into Powell
48:01
is a very complicated figure. Let's go back and I've been
48:05
thinking about this a lot. Like it makes sense that we have
48:08
two possible scenarios, possibly even 3 scenarios 1.
48:11
Powell was just trying to defend the Fed, OK.
48:15
And he doesn't like he's not really on board with all the
48:18
changes that worship Trump are have on the table and he knows
48:22
this. That's one.
48:23
It's possible. If so, then it's like The Dark
48:27
Knight. You either die a hero or you
48:29
live just long enough to see yourself turned into the villain
48:32
because he did all this great work 22 to 26, but now he's like
48:36
fucking up. That's one, it's very possible.
48:39
Second one is that his him staying on the FOMC is there to
48:44
smooth all the ruffle feathers that Kevin Marsh is going to
48:47
ruffle as he changes the culture inside the Fed.
48:51
And Powell gets to be kind of, you know, the guy who smooths
48:55
everything over internally, right?
48:59
And then the third thing is, and that's kind of the basic matter
49:04
or, you know, Powell's on board with all of this and is, you
49:10
know, is actually the worst one. The worst one is that he's
49:13
blocking from putting another person on the board.
49:17
The worst version of it is that he's blocking Trump, replacing
49:21
him with someone like Judy Shelton.
49:22
There's somebody else along those lines.
49:23
So like, you have villain Powell.
49:25
You have, you know, do you have, you know, hapless Powell?
49:30
And you have and you have kind of facilitator Powell.
49:34
OK, I'm not sure which one of those is going to take place,
49:38
but you know which one which one it is.
49:40
But what I can tell you is that watching Powell's actions here,
49:49
we're going to tell you what's going what what it actually is.
49:51
We just don't know. So but worse is going to come in
49:54
and he's going to change the culture in the Fed and he's
49:56
going to we're going to move the Fed back to its original
50:00
conception, which is a Zalander of last resort in the commercial
50:03
paper markets and a guarantor of the rate that at which off the
50:10
offshore dollar out the offshore dollar flow around the world.
50:16
And those are, that's a very powerful position for the Fed to
50:20
be in while the Treasury takes over as in many ways the primary
50:25
issuer of new monetary units, really the commercial banking
50:28
system does if you well, you know, with genius and clarity,
50:32
right? And so there you go.
50:35
That's what I think is happening.
50:38
Interesting. It's, you know, most of our,
50:41
most of our chat is Bitcoiners. They do come from a libertarian
50:44
perspective. They're they're very anti state.
50:46
But when you put it in that context, it's like Trump or, or
50:51
yeah, I'll use Trump. He's really doing what a lot of
50:55
bitcoiners have been saying forever.
50:56
It's like he may not be essentially ending the Fed like
51:01
as a whole institution, but it does seem like in the context
51:05
you laid out, he's ending the Fed as we know it, which maybe
51:10
that's a baby step towards the libertarian dream here.
51:14
Yeah, it is, but I don't think the libertarian dream is is I.
51:17
Know, I know we. Know I'm I'm off that.
51:20
I'm off that. I know, I know, I know.
51:22
I we don't have to rehash that. No, no, no, no.
51:24
That's fine. There's nothing wrong with that.
51:25
Look, I'm fine. But here's the thing.
51:28
The libertarians right now are wrong about everything.
51:30
I hate to break it to everybody in the audience, but you're
51:33
wrong about you're, you're. And the reason you're wrong
51:36
about this stuff is, is very simple, He said any pacifism at
51:41
all cost. Excuse me.
51:43
No, you have real enemies out there that are willing to do you
51:46
harm. You're being invaded.
51:48
You don't have a you don't have a freaking country.
51:50
Your political borders, like excuse me, if you're if you're
51:53
an open borders libertarian and you're still and you're talking
51:55
Bitcoin and you're thinking maximal decentralization
51:57
tomorrow. Nice, we can get there.
51:59
That's a goal. You want to get to that goal,
52:01
get to that goal, but how are you going to get there?
52:04
I've been saying this for years. The order of operations matters.
52:07
The first you, you, you, you reform the Fed back to its
52:10
original conception. Run that as an interim and then
52:13
and then we'll see if we can make that work.
52:15
You're the libertarians are all wrong about the war.
52:18
Every one of them from Ron Paul on down and everybody and
52:22
everybody parroting those talking points, including people
52:25
like Marjorie Taylor Green, Tucker Carlson and Robert Barnes
52:28
and all the rest of the wrong, absolutely wrong.
52:30
Trump needs to be doing, doing this, period.
52:32
This needs to happen. Sometimes a war is just
52:35
sometimes. This isn't a war of
52:38
colonization. This is a war of liberation.
52:41
And you have to, if you reframe everything that's been happening
52:44
since the beginning of this year as wars of liberation for real.
52:48
And that you can use these evil institutions like the US
52:51
military and the Federal Reserve, sorry, like you can use
52:56
them, their tools, their technology, they can be used.
53:01
Bitcoin is not a good, it's not a good technology.
53:05
It's not a bad technology. It's technology.
53:07
How it's used is what's ultimately going to determine
53:11
we're going to use that technology however we need to,
53:14
however we want to. And the reality is, is that, and
53:18
here's the next one for you. And I'm going to channel my
53:19
partner, Dexter White on this. If you're all so goddamned right
53:22
about everything you know all self evidently right about
53:25
everything, why haven't you built anything?
53:29
Why is it that Bitcoin is only really going to win because it's
53:33
now been become part of the financial system is going to be
53:36
blessed as collateral within the system next to gold in order to
53:41
do what rebalance all the books and it's right here and staring
53:46
us in the face right now Bitcoins trading at 81,000 this
53:48
morning while everything else is struggling.
53:50
Now it's bitcoins time to be let out-of-the-box and you know
53:55
which is good. This is great.
53:57
Don't get me wrong. I I said it many times I love
53:59
Bitcoin still have it still buy it every month I buy a little
54:02
gold, I buy a little Bitcoin. You know, I save some dollars, I
54:06
do a little bit of everything why because I'm going to be
54:08
agnostic about this because in the in in the future we're going
54:11
to watch are the purchasing power of all of these things
54:16
rise, including to a lesser extent the US dollar.
54:19
It's going to it's going to lose value versus gold Bitcoin, but
54:22
it's going to rise in purchasing power over time because the
54:25
onshore dollar is going to fuel how we build, rebuild America
54:31
after it had been hollowed out from the the post Bretton Woods
54:35
euro dollar system that was run by City of London and Europe.
54:40
And that's reality. And it's all, all those systems
54:43
are gone until all that the, that all the messages of those
54:46
old systems are gone. And by the way, they'll never
54:48
will be, but until they're deprecated in importance to the
54:52
point where they're no longer threats to our livelihood as
54:56
humans. I think.
55:03
I think you muted yourself, Tom. No, it's muted.
55:13
Yeah, you, you're muted. Oh, did I mean yeah.
55:16
OK. All right, guys, look, top.
55:19
Yeah, you're back here. Perfect place to to, you know,
55:22
pay the bills here. One more commercial break and
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57:14
OK, Tom. So we stopped around the dollar
57:16
before it went muted. And I, I think the, I, I did
57:19
have this as one of my questions is amongst a lot of Bitcoiners
57:24
in particular and, and maybe even broader the like hard money
57:27
advocates. There is obviously this idea of
57:31
that what we're seeing is like the diminishing power of the US
57:35
dollar from your perspective. And, and we're seeing obviously,
57:39
considering the geopolitics and what you just said about Jay
57:42
Powell and Warsh and Trump and the Fed maybe getting rebranded,
57:47
to put it a certain way, how exaggerated do you think are
57:51
those claims on Twitter? Like you, you see it go around
57:53
Twitter all the time. It's like, oh, the, the power of
57:55
the dollar is diminishing around the world.
57:57
Countries are dropping the dollar.
57:59
And as a bitcoiner, I obviously like, it's one of those things I
58:03
want to believe. But when I look at the facts,
58:05
I'm like, that's not what's playing out, guys.
58:08
I know people say this, but that's not what's happening
58:11
right now. It's probably getting stronger
58:13
in real time. Yeah, it is like French Johnson
58:17
and I are right, like, sorry, guys, we're right.
58:20
Like we're watching re dollarization, not D dollar.
58:22
Yeah, OK, That's that's what we're seeing and you know, and
58:28
and that's OK. Like, by the way, if those
58:30
dollars are backed by Bitcoin, some of those dollars are backed
58:32
by Bitcoin and gold, what do you care?
58:35
Like we're we're never going to transact guys.
58:38
We're not going to transact in Bitcoin.
58:40
Why would you? Buckhans are slow and dumb and
58:43
stupid and they're great variety of things like building trust,
58:47
right? But they're not particularly
58:49
good at like moving money around like they're, they're, they're
58:51
kind of bad at it. I'm just, you know, just in
58:54
general, they really are. And but again, I say this as an
58:58
OG Bitcoiner. So the guys in the audience who
59:00
are like screaming at me right now, I'm like, I'm sorry, dudes.
59:04
I've been doing this since 2010, OK?
59:07
And I've, I've been up and down this and I've been in where you
59:10
are and I'm telling you, block chains aren't any from a
59:13
technological perspective for moving money.
59:16
They're not any better than an encrypted database.
59:18
They're just not. But I'm many way and and for
59:22
moving money, for storing money, for storing, for tokenizing
59:26
wealth. Oh no, no, no, no, no.
59:28
For building trust as you can build a you can build a modern
59:33
financial system that moves money around the world.
59:35
That's a different story. I'm a big fan.
59:37
I'm still a big fan of it from that perspective.
59:39
To me, like Bitcoin is like is, is gold that is capable of
59:44
moving, which is nice. Gold has doesn't move because
59:49
it's expensive and you got to put in a vault and then you got
59:52
to get some strong back to move it from onto a cart.
59:55
And then you got to put it into a car and or a flatbed and you
59:58
got to put on a boat and you got to move it around the world.
1:00:00
Bitcoin, you go. Done.
1:00:02
Moved, right. I mean, so as a collateral
1:00:05
asset, so I see them as complementary collateral assets
1:00:07
always have actually since I really started thinking about
1:00:10
this, I'm like, I looked at them, I'm like, yeah, they're
1:00:12
just complementary collateral assets.
1:00:14
And we may settle certain types of of of, of, of, of trade
1:00:20
imbalances or whatever, you know, like, you know, zero layer
1:00:25
money moving from area to area, from country to country or from
1:00:29
central bank to central bank. We may use Bitcoin as opposed as
1:00:32
opposed to gold, But for the most part, it's just going to
1:00:34
sit and collect it. It's, you know, Milton Friedman
1:00:37
and what's his name? Yeah, Friedman.
1:00:40
All the monitors are like all rolling over in their graves.
1:00:42
We just dig gold up out of the ground, stick it in the ball.
1:00:44
Like, what the hell is the good of it?
1:00:47
Dude? Seriously, like 0 friction money
1:00:50
is the bane of our existence. It's why we created Bitcoin.
1:00:53
OK, so you know, you don't want that, right?
1:00:58
You want you, you want collateral assets to cost have
1:01:03
an opportunity cost and I think Bitcoin is all wonderful asset
1:01:08
to that and it's proven itself over and over and over again.
1:01:10
It's being an excellent, excellent at that role.
1:01:15
Why does it need to be more than that?
1:01:17
I mean, for some religious fervor about, you know, some,
1:01:20
you know, some some radical free market individualism that, you
1:01:25
know, frankly doesn't build anything because it's not
1:01:27
capable of doing so. Like it's not defensive when
1:01:30
it's at that level. Like it's just not.
1:01:33
I mean, I don't get me wrong, I love Bitcoin, but you really
1:01:36
have to think about it in the context of the real world.
1:01:38
Like there are people out there trying to build buildings.
1:01:39
We're not going to do it with, without having, you know, the
1:01:42
bitcoins not going to move if it's ever everything is, is, is,
1:01:45
is, is there's no, we want less leverage in the world.
1:01:49
We don't want 0 leverage folks. OK, You know, that's, that's I
1:01:53
think part of the, the, the, the, the missing part of all of
1:01:57
this. And you know that whatever
1:02:01
leverage is in there in the system shouldn't be infinitely
1:02:04
rehypothecatable, right? There shouldn't be infinitely
1:02:08
rehypothecated. I mean, that's why we have to
1:02:10
never because that's where all that happens, OK, doesn't happen
1:02:14
in the US Can't do that in the US can't infinitely
1:02:17
rehypothecate in the US. We have very we have much
1:02:20
stricter rehypothecation rules, right.
1:02:23
So what you want is the lower is the lower leverage ratio
1:02:26
overall. I think the genius and clarity
1:02:29
do that, do that well to the stablecoin market in order to,
1:02:32
you know, create, you know, currency units, currency units
1:02:37
that we can actually, you know, operate with and with as little
1:02:42
friction as possible. Our collateral assets shouldn't
1:02:45
move. So I've been saying for years,
1:02:47
I'm like bitcoins, like, you know, 0.1 from architecture.
1:02:52
I mean, I, I, I used the word, I shouldn't use the word dumb.
1:02:55
But I mean, come on, like 10 minute block times 11 big
1:02:57
blocks, All that stuff doesn't make any sense.
1:02:59
If you want to create a currency, right?
1:03:03
Makes a great collateral asset though.
1:03:06
It just does. And especially, you know, when
1:03:09
the network is stressed and it's expensive to move, right?
1:03:13
Why, why are we, why are we accepting 1% or 3% or whatever
1:03:17
the hell it is for moving Bitcoin around?
1:03:19
That just seems dumb. Like, how is it any better than,
1:03:22
you know, credit card fees? It's not.
1:03:25
I mean, I think we've all been kind of lied to a little bit
1:03:27
too, you know, like it's, again, this is all new technology and
1:03:31
we're now watching it actually out in the real world, doing
1:03:34
real things, actually acting in real time.
1:03:40
And you know, some things have better some things have
1:03:48
advantages over other things some things are suited for you
1:03:52
know there isn't. I don't know about you, but I
1:03:55
don't use a screwdriver to hammer nails right?
1:03:59
There's a hammer. Maybe I'll use an axe with a
1:04:03
blunt with a butt end on it. I can have AI can have my my
1:04:06
hatchet do use use it 3 or 4 different ways.
1:04:08
You watch Bush crafting videos, you can see a guy using a
1:04:10
hatchet in 100 different ways, but he's still not going to use
1:04:13
it to drive screws with last I checked.
1:04:17
But then again, he might not have any use for to drive
1:04:20
screws, but the day he does need to drive his screws, Oh my God
1:04:22
damn screwdriver. Because that's the way the world
1:04:27
works. That's what technology.
1:04:28
That's why we have all these different tools and Bitcoin is
1:04:31
just a tool, just like gold, just like the dollar, just like
1:04:34
stable coins, just like the cigar watch isn't the tool of
1:04:37
you know, of, I don't know, I'm not even sure but why, why I do
1:04:44
this? They're just, they're just fun.
1:04:46
So, OK, Tom, you, you really drink to the chat on that one.
1:04:49
But I, I want to, I, I want to kind of combine all of the
1:04:55
conversation that we had so far with Bitcoin.
1:04:58
I saw you say something, it was on a show or it was a Twitter
1:05:02
post, but it was something on the lines of we've seen how
1:05:05
Bitcoin has acted when the US has basically destroyed the
1:05:09
dollar. Now that we're moving into this
1:05:11
era where the US is defending the dollar.
1:05:14
Obviously, as you mentioned earlier, we saw Bitcoin 801K
1:05:17
this morning. It seems to be rising.
1:05:19
But how do you think Bitcoin reacts in that in that scenario
1:05:23
of the US actively defending the dollar?
1:05:25
You kind of talked about it a little bit just a minute ago,
1:05:28
but how does this play out? I, I don't know how it plays
1:05:32
out. I'm just telling you that isn't
1:05:35
it interesting that we're not at 250K or a million or whatever
1:05:39
the cycle was supposed to give us?
1:05:41
It's amazing what happens when the United States decides to
1:05:43
start defending the dollars or as a, as the world's reserve,
1:05:46
not as the world's reserve currency because we're not,
1:05:48
we're not doing that anymore. We're actually, we're actually
1:05:51
ending that part of it. But they were looking at
1:05:53
actively defending the dollar and the value of the dollar by
1:05:56
having rational monetary policy, Rast, you know, moving towards
1:05:59
rational fiscal policy and all the rest of it.
1:06:01
Maybe, just maybe we, we get to a number in Bitcoin that is, you
1:06:06
know, a lot lower than a lot of people think.
1:06:08
Is I, I'm saying the same thing about gold.
1:06:11
There are there are people out there who think $150,000 gold,
1:06:13
I'm like no, 1518, yeah, maybe 20 on the outside.
1:06:21
The same thing with Bitcoin. Do I take $1,000,000 Bitcoin?
1:06:24
Yeah, possibly. But I don't think anything
1:06:26
beyond that. And simply Simply put, because
1:06:29
at some point you have to ask yourself, at what point have we
1:06:33
bled off and have we, we accumulated assets and we've
1:06:38
accumulated collateral that has risen in price for the point
1:06:44
where it balances the, the books of the previous cycles dead.
1:06:50
And if we're grooming the asset side of the balance sheet, this
1:06:53
is every, this is the fundamental problem that I have
1:06:56
with, with so much analysis that's out there.
1:06:58
And I, I yell at people about this all the time.
1:07:01
I'm like, look like you can focus on the debt all you want
1:07:04
and that's all the Bitcoiners and the Austrians and you know,
1:07:08
guys like Luke Roman and others, all they do is complain about
1:07:10
the debt. OK, that's great.
1:07:12
If that's important, not going to argue, not going to lie, but
1:07:16
if I've got $100,000 worth of debt and make 300 grand a year,
1:07:23
isn't that a really that big deal?
1:07:26
If I've got, if I can grow my asset pile every year greater
1:07:29
than the interest on the debt that I'm that I'm, that I have,
1:07:34
I can pay the debt off whenever I want.
1:07:36
What I mean like like if you're not looking at both the asset
1:07:39
side and the debt side of the balance sheet, when you're not
1:07:42
looking at the demand for money as well as the supply of money,
1:07:45
then you're not doing a proper analysis of what's going on.
1:07:48
Bitcoin was birthed at a time time when the United States was
1:07:52
doing as much violence as possible to the value of the
1:07:55
dollar. It was designed and loosed upon
1:07:58
the world during the Obama administration, which was
1:08:01
literally a, a, a treasonous organization designed to destroy
1:08:05
the United States on behalf of of old Europe.
1:08:09
If you look at all of Obama's policies, the man was a traitor.
1:08:13
He should be, he should be hung and we should look and, and, and
1:08:17
we should come to terms with that as bit pointers, as gold
1:08:21
bugs, as as money advocates, as, as, as sovereign consumers and
1:08:27
realize that the world is that just because we grew up in one
1:08:32
era doesn't mean that we're still in that era.
1:08:36
I was at a conference this weekend in Atlanta and Andy
1:08:41
Scheckman was there and they got finally a chance to meet Andy
1:08:43
Scheckman for Miles Franklin. Great guy, wonderful, wonderful
1:08:46
person has a, you know, on Friday night he does a, a talk
1:08:50
and he's explaining all the, the thing he's going over the, over
1:08:54
all the problems the United States has and, and all of these
1:08:56
things. He sounds just like, you know,
1:08:58
I, it's a, it's a great talk. If it was 2015, it'd be it, it
1:09:03
would be a scary talk and it would be accurate.
1:09:05
And I told him afterwards and he and I went out for drinks
1:09:07
afterwards and we chatted up until one O clock in the
1:09:10
morning, just, you know, shooting shit and, and, and, and
1:09:14
doing the, the, the doing the thing.
1:09:18
And I said, Andy, it's a, it's a great talk. 2015, it's 2026.
1:09:22
We're not in 2026 anymore. There's a lot of bitcoiners out
1:09:25
there that still think it's 2015.
1:09:27
And they wanted and they they think that because they want to
1:09:30
think that they don't want to engage with what's actually
1:09:33
happening. And I've been, you know, I'm
1:09:35
trying as best I can to explain to people like it's like the
1:09:39
Iran war. Like there's the story you're
1:09:41
being told this, the story you tell yourself.
1:09:43
And then there's the real story, OK.
1:09:47
And then there's a story that fits more of the facts than
1:09:51
these other facts They get. Trump administration is
1:09:57
absolutely talking about and implementing a system to improve
1:10:03
the asset side of the US balance sheet that is going to have a,
1:10:10
an effect on making Dundee prioritizing the quote UN quote
1:10:17
the debt as A and the and the, and the servicing of that debt.
1:10:22
If I said this three years ago, and I'll say it again, the world
1:10:26
would love to have the United States balance the budget, the
1:10:31
pricing system of the world today.
1:10:32
The price of Bitcoin, the price of even that back then, the
1:10:35
price of gold, the price of this, the price of all of these
1:10:37
things, all based on the idea that the United States was
1:10:40
running a $1.3 trillion deficit. OK, What if that's taken off the
1:10:45
board? How does everybody change the,
1:10:49
the, the valuation of their assets?
1:10:51
How do they like, what are they going to do?
1:10:53
Are you are you going to not invest in the in the United
1:10:56
States that has a balanced budget and is growing the asset
1:10:59
side of its balance sheet relative certainly relative to
1:11:02
its debt? Really well, you might not
1:11:06
personally people in the chat, but I have a whole lot of people
1:11:10
out there that will and they're doing it now.
1:11:12
And Trump has made a a multitude of deals and say, look, they
1:11:18
people will beat a path to our door to do business in the
1:11:21
United States if we fix what's wrong with the United States.
1:11:25
So we're in the process of doing that.
1:11:27
That means by definition, we're defending the dollar, the
1:11:31
purchasing power of the dollar. Therefore, what do you think
1:11:35
bitcoins top end is in that scenario?
1:11:37
And what do you think bitcoins role is in that next that
1:11:39
scenario? Now, if Trump fails, bitcoiners
1:11:44
are going to be happy as as as clams because you'll have yeah,
1:11:49
the the Bitcoin will will rise in in power over the system.
1:11:55
That's important. But then the question I have for
1:11:59
everybody is what system is going to replace it with?
1:12:02
And are you prepared to create the two have online that system
1:12:08
or do we have to have, you know, I don't know, like it's, it's a
1:12:11
very interesting scenario, but I, I tell you right now, I, I
1:12:15
don't think anybody really wants to live in a world where the
1:12:19
EUSSR is running the show. And if you think that that's
1:12:24
going to be good for Bitcoin, good luck with that.
1:12:28
And the United States is embracing it.
1:12:30
Europe is still hostile to it in every way.
1:12:33
So. Interesting, Interesting.
1:12:38
Yeah, the the chat, the chat's like I need to push back more
1:12:41
guys. I want to hear Tom's thoughts on
1:12:43
this. I don't have to agree with
1:12:44
everything, but the chat is they're they're a little,
1:12:47
they're a little round up. Why?
1:12:49
Why? What's the push back against?
1:12:51
I'm listening Well, I think I. Think the main one was being
1:12:55
capped at a million. Obviously we're like it's going
1:12:58
more than that. But in the context of what
1:13:00
you're saying is it's a very interesting thought experience.
1:13:03
When you when, when go look at the Fed's balance sheet, go with
1:13:06
the go look at the debt, go look at what we can, what we can.
1:13:09
The, the numbers are pretty strong, but I mean pretty,
1:13:12
pretty straightforward. Do the same calculation that Jim
1:13:14
Sinclair did in 1980. How did he come up with $880 an
1:13:18
ounce for gold? He divided the reserves by the
1:13:21
debt. He came up with 880.
1:13:22
We balance that. We balance the books and then
1:13:24
and then the the market and then we top the market out.
1:13:27
You know what that number is today?
1:13:33
Absent, you know, absent anything else like 140 grand in
1:13:37
gold. Add Bitcoin into the mix, we can
1:13:40
get the 20,000, I think $20,000 gold, 1,000,000 Bitcoin.
1:13:42
I think it's as far as it's going to go.
1:13:44
Remember, it's a different world than it was then.
1:13:47
The amount of energy it takes to to produce a dollar of GDP
1:13:52
compared to that dent today, compared to then, which takes
1:13:55
110th, actually it's even less than that.
1:13:59
We're 10 times more efficient with a barrel of oil today in
1:14:03
terms of producing GDP than we were back then.
1:14:08
Roughly 10 times like 1990 was like 7 times.
1:14:11
So you go back to 1980, that's probably 10 times, right?
1:14:14
Like these are these, these numbers are real, right?
1:14:18
So, you know, whatever happened back then, the question is today
1:14:25
I look at it and I go the market and this is where the free
1:14:28
marketeers in the audience need to, you know, check their
1:14:30
premises about how much they believe in their free market fee
1:14:34
fees. Isn't the market going to decide
1:14:38
what the leverage ratio between the US assets and US debts is?
1:14:41
A is going to be? Does it have to be 1 to one?
1:14:45
Does it have to be, you know, .5 to 1?
1:14:47
Can it be two to one? Can it be 3 to 1?
1:14:50
Maybe today is 8 to 1. I don't know.
1:14:51
Whatever the number is, pick a number as to whatever you think
1:14:54
the assets versus liabilities are.
1:14:57
Valuations. OK, well, the closer as we move
1:15:00
towards bringing those two things in balance, doesn't the
1:15:03
law of diminishing marginal utility take over?
1:15:08
As I checked, it does. I'm not a I'm not a Malthusian.
1:15:10
Anybody who makes the infinite argument for the price of
1:15:13
Bitcoin is a, you know, you're just a Malthusian.
1:15:15
You're just a Malthusian talking your book.
1:15:17
Great. I don't believe in Malthusian
1:15:19
arguments, never have. But it's one thing that I can
1:15:23
like I, I can debunk easily at all and and and and forever is
1:15:27
any kind of Malthusian argument. Well, it's like this now.
1:15:30
So therefore we continue to do it that like that.
1:15:38
I think it got muted again. I'll take a break, last
1:15:44
commercial break and we'll and we'll wrap up today's interview.
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1:17:26
Hey, Tom, I hope you're back. Can let can you hear me or I
1:17:31
can't hear you now, though? Yeah, you're still muted.
1:17:36
There you go. Is that better?
1:17:37
Yeah, yeah, you're back. OK, All right, you guys know, at
1:17:41
the end of this, these Tom Longo interviews, I do like to open it
1:17:44
up to the chat. So chat, be respectful, you
1:17:47
know, be respectful. But if you got some questions
1:17:49
for Tom, maybe you can flush out some more stuff here.
1:17:52
I do want to be respectful of your time.
1:17:53
Have been here for almost 100, you know, an hour and 20
1:17:56
minutes. So we'll we'll do maybe a couple
1:17:59
in, in the in the chat. And then I I have a silly
1:18:02
question. Tom, your podcast is called, you
1:18:05
know, Gold Goats and Guns started that years ago and
1:18:10
around the time I believe when you started, I, from what I
1:18:14
looked, it was about five years ago when you started, the price
1:18:16
of gold was about $1500. If you started your podcast
1:18:20
today with Gold roughly around 5000, would you still name your
1:18:25
show the same thing today? Absolutely.
1:18:28
OK. So.
1:18:29
Your thesis hasn't changed at all.
1:18:31
No, I mean look, it's. Even though, even though you
1:18:33
said you move to a different. Libertarianism.
1:18:35
Wait, wait wait. Gold, Goats and guns Is is a
1:18:37
portfolio strategy. OK.
1:18:40
Cash flow industry defense. OK.
1:18:45
That's all right. You should have, you should
1:18:49
have, you know, I mean, it's a portfolio strategy.
1:18:51
It's it's a way of living. You don't, you don't invest
1:18:55
until you've saved. And once you start investing,
1:18:58
you hedge your and defend your, your, your investments.
1:19:02
That meaning you should have a hedging strategy of some form or
1:19:05
another, or, you know, whatever that may be.
1:19:08
And I don't care if it's, you know, it can be in your personal
1:19:10
life. You save some gold, you have
1:19:12
some coats to, to work your land with and, you know, provide your
1:19:17
food for your family and, and, and leather and everything else.
1:19:20
And then you should have some guns to protect your property
1:19:23
because you got to protect, you know, that means for if you have
1:19:25
goats and you have to have guardian dogs, you can have gold
1:19:28
goats, guardian dogs and guns. I don't care if you can be, you
1:19:30
know, you can change, you can change the, the, the, the
1:19:33
metaphors around, right? But it's a metaphor.
1:19:36
And Bitcoin is part of that. I mean, I could, you know, I can
1:19:38
probably come up with three BS, but it wouldn't change because I
1:19:41
think I actually believe, I actually believe more, still
1:19:44
more in gold than I do in Bitcoin.
1:19:45
And the reason I, I the reason that is, is because the people
1:19:49
who own the have the power in this world for real power, the
1:19:53
ones who control the guns, they still believe in gold.
1:19:58
Yeah. And you can't argue that point.
1:20:00
And so, you know, until y'all millennials are in charge of
1:20:06
everything. Great.
1:20:07
But as far as the as long as the Boomers and the Gen.
1:20:09
X, Gen. X are in charge, No, sorry,
1:20:11
folks. It's still gold, goats and guns.
1:20:14
By the time it's, you know, it's, you know, I don't know.
1:20:22
Beans, I don't know whatever beans, boobs and and Bitcoin
1:20:25
like it's I can get. Behind that, I can get behind
1:20:27
that. You know, then then you know,
1:20:30
you know, beer, guns and pussy, like, I don't know, like
1:20:33
whatever, like like, you know, pick a pick a thing like, you
1:20:36
know, it's at the end of the day, like that's that's my
1:20:38
that's still my I think that still would be my favorite band
1:20:41
name of all time. Beer, guns and pussy, like, you
1:20:43
know, so, but that's it. Like nothing would change.
1:20:47
And it's nine years, actually, we've been doing.
1:20:49
OK, not bad. Yeah.
1:20:50
No, no worries. OK, there are some questions in
1:20:54
here, some of them I might have to skip over.
1:20:57
I think you've answered some of them before.
1:20:59
But we got a Country Club hillbilly, very vague question.
1:21:04
What is the solution to this whole deal?
1:21:07
The the solution is, you know, build the solution is find what
1:21:13
you're good at and go out and build something great.
1:21:15
You're going to never have the better opportunity to go out and
1:21:18
build something new. And if you believe in Bitcoin,
1:21:20
build something in Bitcoin, right?
1:21:22
I'm, I'm not against any of this.
1:21:24
I want to see people be as you know, I want to see people prove
1:21:27
me wrong. That would be great.
1:21:28
I'd love for the Bitcoin as well.
1:21:29
Prove me wrong, be great. I'd love to come on here one day
1:21:31
and go, Yup, I was wrong. You guys won great, happy to
1:21:36
happy to have that conversation with you all.
1:21:37
But I'm, I'm dead serious when I say that I'm not being flipped
1:21:40
at all. Whatever it is that you're
1:21:42
passionate about, whatever it is you believe in, you should go
1:21:44
out and build like we should have an opportunity.
1:21:48
That's what entrepreneurism is, right?
1:21:50
That's what Bitcoin was built on.
1:21:51
That's what everything is built. It's built on the idea of when
1:21:54
we have this, what do we want, right?
1:21:57
The man acts because they want to turn what is in the what will
1:22:00
be and only what will be happens here, right?
1:22:05
That being otherwise the the world just sinks into entropy,
1:22:09
right. Then the the gets free energy
1:22:11
equation takes over and Boltzmann, you know, last from
1:22:13
beyond the grave going hi, by the way, entropy is kind of
1:22:16
important. But if you're going to go out
1:22:18
and you're going to build something going to go out there
1:22:20
and build negative entropy, you got to apply energy to that.
1:22:23
And that's part of the reason why, that's why part of the
1:22:25
reason why I've always been a fan of Bitcoin, while I've
1:22:27
always been a proof of work maxi more than I've been a Bitcoin
1:22:31
maxi. OK, there's a, there's, there
1:22:34
are reasons for that. I love proof of work as as an
1:22:37
idea, as a thing, as a technology, because it says
1:22:41
before we put we create new tokens, we have to apply work to
1:22:45
approve to create new tokens or whatever they are.
1:22:48
But at the end of the day, everything is just tokenized
1:22:52
energy. Gold is just tokenized energy.
1:22:54
The gold guys hate when I say that.
1:22:56
I'm like, oh, it's no different than Bitcoin.
1:22:57
Bitcoin is just tokenized energy.
1:22:59
It was always gold. The token in this case is a is
1:23:01
A1 oz gold coin. You take energy, human
1:23:06
mechanical, you know, energy and you go out and you go dig gold
1:23:12
up out of the ground, refine it and turn it into a coin.
1:23:14
That's all it is. It's not consumed.
1:23:17
You move it around. Same thing with Bitcoin, then
1:23:19
you move it around. So has different properties in
1:23:23
Bitcoin, but it's still Bitcoin. But I mean it's still, but it's
1:23:25
still just tokenized energy. That's what that's what that's
1:23:28
what humanity is. So what's the solution to all
1:23:30
this? Go out and build something
1:23:31
brilliant. That's what the solution is, as
1:23:34
always. Love it.
1:23:37
Kind of agree more with that. I actually have one more
1:23:40
question and and you've kind of covered it throughout the show a
1:23:43
little bit, but there has been a very strong, I would say maybe
1:23:50
narrative push currently on Twitter of us going into a
1:23:54
multipolar world. And I've seen you talk about
1:23:57
actually you posted something and Emmanuel Macron quote about
1:24:02
him being very angry of the US, China and Russia coming
1:24:05
together. So are we entering A multipolar
1:24:08
world where the US, China and Russia are on a more equal
1:24:13
standing? Is that what your perspective is
1:24:16
right now? No, I don't.
1:24:17
I wouldn't say that not equal. What I'll say is that what I
1:24:20
mean is it's like a. Partnership.
1:24:22
More of a partnership. Not even a partnership, just not
1:24:25
just not adversarial. Like, ultimately what I say is,
1:24:28
is that ARK, America, Russia, China are the three dominant
1:24:34
powers in the world along with Europe.
1:24:36
Except that ARK hates E because E wants nothing more than to
1:24:42
destroy ARK, right? If you really look at right, it
1:24:47
should be, you know, it should be, I don't know, Korea or
1:24:49
whatever, but it's not or you know, and the reason is, is
1:24:54
because the Europeans still want to be in control of everything.
1:24:56
They still want to, they still want to colonize the world.
1:24:59
So what Macron is was talking about in that quote was this is
1:25:04
the right, the the realization or the admission that the
1:25:10
Americans, the Russians and the Chinese have more in common than
1:25:13
they in this respect than they do anything else.
1:25:15
So then they do with Europe. Europe has been adversarial to
1:25:20
them openly to the point of warfare.
1:25:24
Basically, they've tried to triangulate, you know, with
1:25:27
Russia, they've tried to triangulate between the
1:25:29
Americans and the Chinese and they failed miserably.
1:25:32
We're going to find out just how miserably in about a week and
1:25:35
1/2 when Trump goes to visit XI in in China.
1:25:38
That should be a very interesting moment in time.
1:25:42
And I everybody should watch that carefully, but I don't I
1:25:45
don't see like arc is not going to be like like the bricks.
1:25:48
That could be a formal thing. It's just going to be like those
1:25:51
three, these 3 powers that circumscribe the Pacific Ocean
1:25:57
are, have, there's no reason for them to, to be anything other
1:26:02
than wearing, you know, business partners.
1:26:07
They should be business partners.
1:26:09
That means that they have relationships and everything
1:26:12
else. But you know, if you fuck me
1:26:13
over, I'm going to come after you.
1:26:14
So it's not a, you know, it's not going to be like any kind of
1:26:17
formal alliance. I certainly don't believe that.
1:26:22
But, you know, in the short term, they have one thing that
1:26:26
they all agree on. Fuck Europe.
1:26:29
And once that's done, then they can decide how they're going to
1:26:32
carve up the world. the United States and the and the Russians
1:26:35
have have, you know, reasons to want to, you know, fortify
1:26:40
themselves against China and uncertain vectors.
1:26:44
The Americans and the Chinese have every reason to want to
1:26:47
work together over certain with certain things.
1:26:49
And the Russians and Chinese obviously have things to work
1:26:51
on, work together with the bricks and all this
1:26:57
multipolarity and the bricks and the D dollarization and all that
1:27:00
stuff. That was all birthed as a need
1:27:06
out of necessity. And I still believe this and I
1:27:08
still think that they should pursue this because the United
1:27:11
States may fail. Europe may still destroy the US,
1:27:15
right? The you know, Donald Trump could
1:27:17
fail, OK. And if he fails, the United
1:27:20
States is going to sink in the civil war and and depravity and
1:27:23
North America is going to be carved up and it's going to look
1:27:25
like the the 19th century again. It's going to be ugly, OK.
1:27:29
But if the Trump doesn't fail, then, you know, you can start to
1:27:34
watch a different world take take shape.
1:27:38
But if, but in the process, while this is working itself
1:27:41
out, while this old, while this divorce between Europe and the
1:27:44
United States takes place, Russia and China should with the
1:27:48
other members of the BRICS, you know, form a, a loose
1:27:53
association where they can do business to each other, business
1:27:57
together and be aligned with each other in order to act as an
1:28:01
antipode. Because what happens if the
1:28:03
United States sinks back into where it was under Obama?
1:28:06
Then you're going to have Europe plus the United States versus
1:28:08
the rest of the world. So BRICS is that antipode.
1:28:11
And I had and I, I encourage them to keep that, you know, on
1:28:16
the on the back burner, just in case the United States fails,
1:28:20
right or gets sucked back into that old, you know, narcissistic
1:28:26
abusive relationship with, with old Europe.
1:28:29
But if not, then bricks will just, you know, kind of go by
1:28:35
the wayside. They'll they'll still have
1:28:36
their, they'll still have their infrastructure, they'll sound
1:28:38
like and bridge and a variety of these things.
1:28:40
Because the world is going to break up into regional currency
1:28:43
box or regional, regional Spears and influence.
1:28:48
And they're going to need to be able to, you know, transact
1:28:50
locally amongst themselves. And remember, as I said earlier,
1:28:53
I expect, you know, I do believe that the United States is moving
1:28:57
away from Trippin's paradox. Again, this is what I was
1:28:59
talking about with Andy Schechman over the weekend.
1:29:02
Like I agree. Like, yeah, we're we're we're
1:29:04
the tripping stolen or paradox, whatever you want to call it is
1:29:07
a problem. And we're actively trying to
1:29:10
overcome that. And we have to retrench, pull
1:29:15
back on our quote UN quote, global naval empire.
1:29:18
But that also means as we as we pull back from that, somebody
1:29:21
else is going to have to take that place.
1:29:23
Somebody else has to be has to build out a blue water Navy to
1:29:26
patrol, you know, their sphere of influence, because we're not
1:29:31
going to do it globally anymore and we shouldn't do it globally.
1:29:34
It's it's too expensive and I'm OK with that and there's nothing
1:29:39
wrong with that. And bitcoiners should really
1:29:41
consider what what that look, what the world looks like and
1:29:44
what bitcoins role is in that world where the United States
1:29:47
isn't spending a trillion dollars a year in a fact,
1:29:52
policing, you know, effectively policing and and and patrolling
1:29:56
the seas, the police in the world and patrolling the seas.
1:29:59
I mean, it's a it's a huge undercation.
1:30:01
So once that comes off the once that frost comes off the top and
1:30:04
that money gets disposed to going out, goes back is is
1:30:08
reinvested inside the US. Oh, that's different.
1:30:11
That's a very, very much that's a much different world than the
1:30:13
one in which Bitcoin was birthed under, which is what I was
1:30:16
trying to say earlier. So don't look at it as, you
1:30:19
know, there's not, it's not like we're going to have an alliance
1:30:22
of that, of that form. We're going to have
1:30:24
decentralized institutions. You're going to see more things
1:30:28
like the Gaza Board of Peace than the United Nations, right?
1:30:32
You're going to see things like there's going to be things that
1:30:35
the Russians, the Americans and Chinese agree about and they're
1:30:37
going to form a little organization, probably form a
1:30:39
little organization covering just those things that they
1:30:42
agree with, agree on, and nothing else.
1:30:45
That's decentral. That's what practical
1:30:47
decentralization is geopolitical level looks like as opposed to,
1:30:50
you know, the fever dream of the globalists at 1:00.
1:30:52
Central bank 1 legislative body 1, you know, 1 military, blah
1:30:59
blah blah, you know, 1 taxing infrastructure, yadda yadda
1:31:01
yadda 1 regulatory infrastructure, which is the
1:31:04
dream of Europe. And I don't think anybody wants
1:31:06
that. Certainly.
1:31:07
I even think the Chinese want that.
1:31:09
They're still nominally communist, so.
1:31:14
All right. Well, Tom, I just looked at the
1:31:15
time. It's been an hour and a half.
1:31:18
I, I think, I think you gave our audience a lot to think about,
1:31:22
even if they're going to be angry.
1:31:24
I think every time you came on, I said the same thing that when
1:31:27
I first heard your thinking, it initially gets you angry.
1:31:32
And then I sit with it a little bit and I'm like, all right,
1:31:35
look, I don't have to agree with everything Tom's saying, but
1:31:38
it's an interesting framework to compare everything that I'm
1:31:42
seeing out there. And I do have to agree.
1:31:46
And maybe the chats gonna, you know, call me a coward or
1:31:48
whatever, tell me I'm glazing Tom here.
1:31:50
But I think a lot of the things you've said over the last couple
1:31:54
of years has been very correct. And it's, it's definitely
1:31:58
informed a lot of the things that I've been seeing your, your
1:32:01
opinion on things and your analysis has been one of those
1:32:04
main signals that I do compare other voices with.
1:32:08
And I that's why I truly value you coming on the show again,
1:32:11
you know, the chat may not like everything, but I think
1:32:15
especially in the Bitcoin world, we are very caught up in our
1:32:18
echo chambers. And therefore I like to listen
1:32:21
to other people that are talking about and viewing the same thing
1:32:24
maybe from a different perspective.
1:32:26
It does, it does provide me a lot of value.
1:32:29
So personally, I thank you so much for coming on the show
1:32:31
today. And we'll have to do this again
1:32:33
soon. And, and we could tally up the
1:32:35
track record here. What's Tom right.
1:32:37
You know, in three months we'll come back on and be like, all
1:32:40
right, Tom, how right were we on this podcast that got everyone
1:32:44
angry? So again, just thank you so much
1:32:46
man. Have a good rest of your day.
1:32:48
Thank you and and it was fun and we'll do it again.
1:32:51
All right, man, thank you so much.
1:32:53
OK guys, you already know the deal.
1:32:55
This was a Tom Luongo special. We will be back to our normal
1:32:59
programming tomorrow. I think Niko will be here
1:33:02
tomorrow. At least that's what he told me.
1:33:04
So on that note, guys, I'll catch you tomorrow at the same
1:33:06
time. 12:40 PM Eastern. Peace out.
1:33:10
Today's episode was brought to you by bitcoinwell.com, a
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