Latest / SILVER / GOLD / $UFD Meme Coin Investing & Global Economics / Greg Weldon Interview: The FACTS are SHOCKING 😳 (Silver & Gold)

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Greg Weldon Interview: The FACTS are SHOCKING 😳 (Silver & Gold) · SILVER / GOLD / $UFD Meme Coin Investing & Global Economics

• 0:00
  If you want to properly value gold relative to money, or value
• 0:03
  that relative to the debt that's been created, compared to 1971,
• 0:07
  it's pretty simple and gold would be 15,000 to as high as
• 0:10
  $90,000 an ounce. I'm not saying that's where it's
• 0:13
  going, but it shows you how potentially undervalued gold is
• 0:17
  at $2000.00 an ounce. Holy mackerel.
• 0:23
  Are you feeling scared and confused, a little cautious
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  about what's going on in the world?
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  Today's guest is Greg Weldon from Weldon Financial.
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  We're going to try to shine some light on to what's going on in
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  the world, make a little sense about what we're feeling right
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  now. Greg started his career as a
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  gold trader at the Comex in the in the World Trade Center.
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  He then went on to work for some of the world's largest financial
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  services companies. After that, he became a
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  proprietary money manager for two of the most successful hedge
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  funds in history, More Capital and Commodities Corporation.
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  For about the last 20 years, he's been working for himself
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  with his own company, Weldon Financial.
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  He produces independent research and financial advisory services
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  clients that he's worked with top hedge funds in the world,
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  money center banks, government agencies, sovereign wealth
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  funds, central banks, global wealth managers, financial
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  advisors, family offices and individual investors.
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  What I would qualify as a sophisticated high end
• 1:32
  investors. After all that, I'd like to
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  welcome Greg Duran's basement. Thanks, Ron.
• 1:38
  I would add that I take the garbage out at night too.
• 1:40
  I'm also the cleaning crew as well.
• 1:42
  So we do it all here. Well, it's just me.
• 1:45
  It's just me and Caitlin Ellis, my very capable CEO.
• 1:49
  And between the two of us, yeah, we really rock it out.
• 1:51
  So thank you. Yeah, well you I wanted to
• 1:54
  convey you know you and I speaking, but we've got this
• 1:57
  third person who's joining us right our viewer that's who
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  we're we're really making this for.
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  And I wanted to convey to them the fact that that you've worked
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  at the highest levels of finance and you've done you've worked
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  with some some very sophisticated investors you
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  still do right now. And as we look at what's going
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  on in the world, I I guess my first question for you, Greg, is
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  it feels like to me sometimes, like a lot of America, like
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  we're living in a fantasy world, right?
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  Like everything's OK, everything's all right.
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  But are we more at risk than most people realize right now?
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  I'd say 100%. I think that I think that most
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  people feel these things and I think that most people don't
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  fully understand what's happening, but they know
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  something's happening. And you know, I'm in Palm Beach,
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  FL and certainly a lot of people that are much wealthier than I
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  am or ever will be live in Palm Beach, FL.
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  And you know, I talked to a lot of these people and I go to a
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  lot of similar events and whatnot and you know, they asked
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  me a lot, You know, you know, I'm a gold guy, had been a gold
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  guy kind of get labeled as a go guy, even though we do
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  everything globally, you know, what do you think should be
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  moving money into gold and. They they feel fear.
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  They can't pinpoint why they feel fear.
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  But when you kind of question them and you whittle it down,
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  there seems to be a common theme, which is really
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  skepticism, that central banks can keep this thing floating,
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  that they can keep this bubble inflated.
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  You know that you have to pump evermore money every time you do
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  it. I have seen every trend
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  throughout this 40 year credit bubble that really goes back to
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  71. We could even say since Volcker
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  defeated inflation, you know, into 1981, that was when this
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  new cycle began. Of all this credit, What was
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  different then with Ronald Reagan coming off of Paul
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  Volcker destroying the economy like Jerome Powell's kind of
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  proposing to do here as well, was that we had no budget
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  deficit. We had ample fiscal latitude to
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  spend, you know, outspend the Russians and the Cold War and
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  the whole 9 yards around Reaganomics.
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  You don't have that. Now you are saddled with so much
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  debt that every time you have to print more money, it becomes
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  exponentially more that you have to print to get the same impact.
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  It's like we there's a variety of analogies that I like to make
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  when I do public appearances, one of which is a steroid.
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  Person, like someone is using steroids and uses steroids and
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  uses, how much bigger can the guy get?
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  And he's getting all pumped up and he looks healthy, pump you
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  up, right? But his internal organs are
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  failing and he's not really healthy at all.
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  And at some point, steroid, you know, abuse and overuse, you
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  know, will kill you. So that's kind of a similar
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  vein. You keep pumping this thing with
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  monetary steroids. At some point, the patient's not
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  going to be healthy. And I think we've reached that
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  point where it's a critical mass with the debt, record debt
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  globally, $307 trillion. That's a that's a figure that is
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  almost impossible to really comprehend.
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  It's so large, especially when you compare it to central bank
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  balance sheets, which are nowhere even close to that 110th
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  of that maybe when you combine them all.
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  And so I think that people have this sense of uncertainty around
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  can we keep this thing going? We see inflation destroys the
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  wage growth. We see that savings has been
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  depleted. We have this huge treasure trove
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  that the government gave us that's gone pretty much, you
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  know, and in this case, credit card debt keeps going up even
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  though you've seen a rollover in bank lending and all other kinds
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  except for credit cards. So is this sustainable?
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  And I think a lot of people are wondering whether it is or not.
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  And if it's not, then what do we do to keep pace?
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  And I think that's the question that we try and, you know, ask
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  ourselves and try and answer to whatever degree we can every
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  single day. Yeah.
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  And if it feels like, and I, you know, I'm 53 years old and
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  during my adult lifetime pretty much exclusively now that, you
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  know, every time a crisis came up, that there was this rush to
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  fix things by injecting liquidity, by printing money.
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  And, you know, I was, I was listening to a talk that you
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  gave a few few years back. And another analogy you used was
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  a bonfire, which I thought was great because, you know, they
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  just kept throwing, you know, more and more wood on this
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  bonfire. Oh, can you elaborate on that
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  one quickly for us? Yeah, sure.
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  It's funny because I took various pictures of bonfires.
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  This is a speech I did probably in Vancouver in 2020, where.
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  You know, we started as the little beach fire, you know, and
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  it's 1987 when actually there was a bailout of $100 billion
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  and everyone went crazy. This is going to cause
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  inflation, $100 billion is astronomical.
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  And you look now in 87 is a blip on the chart of the stock
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  market. You can't even see it, right?
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  So, I mean, I've lived through every one of these.
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  When Greenspan in 1990 cut the Fed funds rate to 3% and it
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  drove people insane. Why?
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  Because inflation was 3%. It was the first zerp on a real
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  inflation adjusted basis the Fed had ever executed.
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  All right. And so you can see the
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  progression of this in way of like a bonfire.
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  And so you look at GDP and I use global GDP and I measured kind
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  of tried to make it somewhat correlated to the size of the
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  bonfire pictures that I had, right.
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  And you go up and up and up to where you were in 2007 and it's
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  one of the largest bonfires ever.
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  How are you going to throw enough wood on that bonfire not
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  to just keep it at the level that it is?
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  It needs to grow to service the debt.
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  Keeping the bonfire at the same fire level is not good enough.
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  You need to keep firing it larger.
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  And the last slide was like coming into 2020 and it was kind
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  of like, you know, I thought COVID would be a big deal.
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  This was the first week of February 2020.
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  And I was warning people to lock down.
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  You're going to see volatility markets going to get back.
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  This is something to take seriously before the US was even
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  really involved in taking it seriously.
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  And I I showed a picture of the World's Guinness Book of
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  Records, world's largest bonfire, which took place in
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  Sweden. And it's like what, you know, is
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  there enough wood to keep adding it now?
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  I would quickly add that there is, and this is what I wrote in
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  my book in 2006 when I first said they're going to monetize
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  government debt and I was called like a nut job for saying that
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  and two years later they were doing it.
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  What it's like monetary Armageddon where it's like you
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  have the scene in the bunker of nuclear war and you have to have
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  both guys turn the keys at the same time.
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  You got the Fed official, got the Treasury official and they
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  basically print enough money to do eliminate every dollar of
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  debt ever printed by the Treasury.
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  That would be something they could do and maybe we'll do.
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  But then the question is, you know, was it cost $100 or $1000
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  for a loaf of bread when they do that, If you're looking to buy
• 8:28
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  I think Pembex is best and you will too and be sure to tell him
• 8:52
  that you're from Ron's basement. I like what you said about the
• 8:55
  the bonfire and that can you even keep it going like right
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  right now I think it's safe to say it feels like we are at that
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  world record size bonfire and just to keep it going.
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  And you know, even if you think about how bonfires work, right,
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  like you pile all the wood on, you know, Fed, the Fed printed
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  40% of the dollars ever in Creation back during the the the
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  the covic crisis. Like that wood gets thrown on
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  the fire. It takes a little while for it
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  to catch and burn. I mean it almost feels like
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  we're at the stage right now where the the wood is almost,
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  you know, it is almost burnt through and we're going to be
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  faced with you know are we going to need to try to throw more
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  wood on the fire And it and it could lead to some, you know,
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  some scary challenging economic situations as we head into the
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  next year or two. Is that, is that a safe
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  assessment? I think it is.
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  And I the way I would look at it and you make a really good point
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  and the way I would you know, kind of position the picture and
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  the way to look at it is you you basically had this inflation
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  that came from all the money they printed.
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  And This is why the 40 year downtrend of lower interest
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  rates and lower inflation is over And it is now an uptrend
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  because you have turned it. You have reached that critical
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  mass where you printed enough money now and it's, you know,
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  it's the definition of inflation.
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  More money chasing fewer goods. All of a sudden you had the
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  supply side kick in with fewer goods and bam, here's what you
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  got And now it's a trend that will continue because they have
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  to keep printing more money. Now what's interesting about
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  that when you say is the fire kind of.
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  Peaked. And there's the flames starting
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  to come down a little. Well, I would say this, Let's
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  look at the Fed's policy path, All right.
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  They started talking tough on inflation.
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  Inflation went to four. They did nothing.
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  It went to six. They did nothing.
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  It went to 8. They did nothing.
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  And they told us in 2018. And again, I think in 2020, it
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  was that this is what was going to happen.
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  Powell said this is the new paradigm, OK, We got our star.
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  We know where we have to be. We can fight inflation the way
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  Volcker did. That's the playbook we're going
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  to use. We're going to.
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  That inflation get above the eight-year average.
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  There's no tolerance band, meaning if it gets 2% above, it
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  will start to do something. It was like we're going to let
• 11:07
  it go as high as it wants, stay there for a while and then we're
• 11:10
  going to raise rates dramatically to bring it down.
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  They did exactly what they told us they would do.
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  The problem is they waited too long to start hiking rates.
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  So what happens? They didn't get to a tight
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  monetary policy until May of last year.
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  So this entire like 1415, sixteen month period where
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  they're hiking rates, they are still extremely stimulative
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  because the real fed funds rate is so far below inflation.
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  All right, so to get to a policy of stance where you're
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  restrictive, they want sufficiently restrictive.
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  You need to be about 150 to 200 basis points above the rate of
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  inflation, which is where they are now.
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  But they only got restrictive in the last 5-6 months.
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  It takes that long for the economy to reflect that, and
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  you're starting to see it now. I'll tell you what, the
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  employment number, people championed it for being strong.
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  It was horrible. When you break down the
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  household numbers, absolutely atrocious, It was a nightmare
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  number. And then you get the ISM service
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  sector. Service employment's been
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  holding the economy up right, the worst number, one of the
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  biggest declines we've ever seen.
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  And there's only two other times it's been this low.
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  It was during the 2008 and during the pandemic.
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  So you have some real fractures. So what's going to have to
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  happen? You're going to have to bring
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  more money. So we watched the dollar for
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  these keys because the dollar has been kind of a leader in
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  giving us clues, particularly the dollar versus gold.
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  And I don't mean the price of gold, I mean, you know, the
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  dollar divided by gold gives us some clues on to the monetary
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  conditions specifically. And that's why the Fed just
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  recently said, look, in their minutes they said, well, we
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  don't want conditions to become so easy.
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  Has to spark the next inflation before we're ready kind of
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  thing. And that's where I think the Fed
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  fears are and they probably make a mistake by staying tight for
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  too long. But I'll make one more quick
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  point to make this long answer a little shorter.
• 12:55
  But when you said specifically more and more money they're
• 12:58
  printing and they do it so quickly.
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  Now man, if March of last year wasn't the prime example of
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  that, you know, SVB bank goes up, what do they do?
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  They print the most money in a single week in history.
• 13:11
  Outside of three weeks in the pandemic because of two banks,
• 13:14
  you have issues with the banks that we could discuss for hours
• 13:17
  right now and we probably will touch on this.
• 13:19
  That suggests that, you know, this could be another issue
• 13:22
  where I think This is why the Fed turned so quickly in
• 13:24
  December is because there's something going on under the
• 13:27
  surface in the banking system. Yeah.
• 13:30
  And and and it it, it scares me as we head into these coming
• 13:34
  years that we're doing it with a level of debt right now that is
• 13:40
  typically associated with like a country coming out of a major
• 13:44
  war or a major recession or depression, like things are
• 13:47
  supposedly good right now. You know Bidenomics is working.
• 13:51
  Everybody's doing great and I say that facetiously and we're
• 13:55
  and and as we head into what could be some troubled waters,
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  we're doing that in a fine, in a fine.
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  Am I, am I correct that we're doing that in a financial
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  condition as a country that is pretty atrocious broke, I mean
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  bankrupt. I mean eventually.
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  I mean, and here's a here's a stat for you.
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  It wasn't maybe 15 years ago, 20 at the most, where you only had
• 14:17
  three countries in the world that had debt to GDP ratios
• 14:19
  above 100%, Libya, Greece and Japan.
• 14:21
  That was it. All right, you have 41 countries
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  now with that statistic, OK. This is not just the US, this is
• 14:29
  global. Think about how inflation hurts
• 14:31
  people in Turkey with the currencies down 66 fold in the
• 14:34
  last 15 years. You know where the purchasing
• 14:36
  power the currency. Has been destroyed India.
• 14:39
  OK, where the rupees making new lows pretty much every year.
• 14:41
  The price of gold in rupee is up six fold in the last 15 years.
• 14:45
  I mean this is a global issue again next time you come around
• 14:48
  to it. But when you start to talk about
• 14:51
  we really need to kind of address the bank dynamic because
• 14:54
  to me when you say you know are the flames coming down again,
• 14:58
  well, I think that certainly the banking system would give us
• 15:01
  signs of that. And you know some of the stats
• 15:03
  they sent you some of the numbers.
• 15:04
  I mean, when you talk about the small banks, banks under 250
• 15:08
  billion, which to me is not necessarily small, but OK, 250
• 15:11
  billion is where the Fed puts them.
• 15:13
  They hold 80% of the commercial real estate loans in this
• 15:16
  country, all right. Right now small banks are
• 15:18
  borrowing more than their cash. The only other time that's ever
• 15:22
  happened was 2008. Not only that, lending growth
• 15:25
  year over year is still $250 billion while deposits have
• 15:29
  shrunk by 100 billion, right? This is not sustainable.
• 15:32
  So what happens? The term funding facility, all
• 15:35
  right, the emergency lending facility the Fed set up in March
• 15:39
  to deal with SVB has been tapped the last seven weeks for over
• 15:43
  $20 billion and is at a new high of around 140 billion.
• 15:47
  There's a bank somewhere that's having some issues and I think
• 15:49
  that when you look at how these banks, you know the, the numbers
• 15:54
  and the balance sheets don't work and how you have too big to
• 15:58
  fail. So JP Morgan will come in and
• 16:00
  buy some of them really on the cheap.
• 16:01
  That's what they do. But when you say, OK, well maybe
• 16:04
  there's and when you take the bit the banks under 10 billion
• 16:07
  in assets, they have 35% of the commercial real estate loans in
• 16:11
  this country, 1.7 trillion mature in the next 18 months.
• 16:15
  It's a recipe for disaster. This is, I think This is why the
• 16:19
  Fed turned in December and I think This is why, you know,
• 16:22
  pricing of 4% Fed funds for the end of the year is not as
• 16:25
  outrageous as it might sound, although the Fed doesn't like to
• 16:28
  see that right now either. So right now it's kind of a tug
• 16:31
  of war and it's been a little tricky already in 2024.
• 16:34
  Is it is it a, is it a condition that we could call with the
• 16:38
  banks right now kind of extend and pretend like well we're not
• 16:42
  going to recognize, we're not going to recognize losses we've
• 16:45
  had on our bond portfolio. We're not going to recognize our
• 16:49
  mark to market, God forbid our commercial real estate portfolio
• 16:54
  and and that we're in this position.
• 16:56
  And and and one more question for you is that almost because
• 16:59
  we hear this term lag effect, is that almost an example of the
• 17:04
  lag effect the fact that yeah the bank sitting on a $100
• 17:07
  million commercial real estate loan, the collateral that backs
• 17:12
  that up is maybe now worth 65,000,000 but that loan doesn't
• 17:16
  come due until August of 2024. So it's not a problem we don't
• 17:22
  it's not you know we can we but but that when it comes due that
• 17:25
  it will have to be recognized and and it's kind of the the the
• 17:29
  almost an example of the lag effect that we hear about with
• 17:32
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  demand precious and base metals. Absolutely.
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  I mean kind of Canary in the coal mine almost now at this
• 18:14
  point in time, but it's, you know it to me.
• 18:18
  I what I have. Found in doing this for 40
• 18:21
  years. OK and understanding where I
• 18:23
  started the business it was everything was done on paper.
• 18:25
  OK communication nowhere near what it is now.
• 18:28
  Information was much more valuable back then.
• 18:31
  All right now with Twitter everyone's an expert.
• 18:33
  Everyone can get all kinds of information for, you know, it's
• 18:35
  kind of information is very available, but what I have.
• 18:38
  Found is really amazing. Because people really kind of
• 18:42
  only only look at the surface. They look at the headlines, they
• 18:44
  look at whatever, and they kind of believe whatever the shtick
• 18:46
  is based on who's giving you this news, which isn't
• 18:49
  necessarily news. People don't really dig into the
• 18:52
  data the way they used to. And thank God because that gives
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  me a business that I can, you know, take advantage of that
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  niche where Ioffer this information that tells you the
• 18:59
  reality, like the employment number that just came out.
• 19:02
  They're saying this is a great number.
• 19:03
  It was not a great number. I mean, you had more people
• 19:06
  dropping out of the labor force. The participation rate dropped
• 19:08
  not only for those with less than high school diploma, but
• 19:11
  those with a college degree or higher.
• 19:13
  I mean, it's really rampant in the labor market.
• 19:16
  But what it takes and and it's like ignore that, ignore that.
• 19:19
  It's The headlines are fine. Everyone's willing to believe
• 19:21
  what they want to believe until the day when there's a story
• 19:25
  that sparks it, when it's like an epiphany and all of a sudden
• 19:28
  the world wakes up to something that's been going on for six or
• 19:30
  eight weeks. I'm seeing that happen more and
• 19:32
  more often. And I think we know the reasons
• 19:35
  for that are the attention span, the media, the way people get
• 19:37
  their information and all these things.
• 19:40
  But if you that's why we dig down as deep as we can and I
• 19:43
  tend to see things early. I also know my faults as like a
• 19:46
  trader and investor. I tend to dig so deep into the
• 19:49
  data. I see it at the micro level and
• 19:52
  I get a little excited. It's like, OK, I see a turn
• 19:54
  coming. I see the shift and you need
• 19:56
  recognition. You need the the population of
• 19:59
  traders and participants to see it before it's going to, you
• 20:02
  know, move the market. Because the markets reflect what
• 20:05
  the most, the majority of people think.
• 20:07
  So it's a, it's a game of, you know, I tend to be early.
• 20:10
  So I have to be able to take a couple small losses because I
• 20:13
  tend to be early and people aren't going to get it until the
• 20:15
  day they get it and then they get it in a big way.
• 20:17
  And you want to be involved in that day because it may be too
• 20:20
  late, you know, and that's one of the things I think will go
• 20:22
  old and what's going on now monetarily, you know, that's the
• 20:25
  risk if you're not involved, but at least you have some portion
• 20:29
  of your money in there, you know, it may be difficult in
• 20:31
  terms of the risk reward of getting in unless you just don't
• 20:34
  care about the risk reward. You know, the, the the two big,
• 20:37
  I guess, manias that I've lived through where the tech tech
• 20:40
  bubble and the real estate bubble.
• 20:42
  And I was thinking about this the other day to go along with
• 20:45
  what you said in both of those circumstances.
• 20:48
  And I worked in the tech field in the mid to late 90s through
• 20:52
  2000. Everything was great.
• 20:54
  Everything was great. Everything was great.
• 20:57
  And then suddenly it wasn't, you know, suddenly it was a big,
• 21:00
  there were a big, big, I mean and it happened, it did happen
• 21:03
  rather quickly. And I would say the same was
• 21:06
  true with the real estate, you know, financial crisis related
• 21:10
  bubble and O seven O 8. I had an office in a high end
• 21:14
  office complex here in Saint Louis and there were suddenly
• 21:17
  all these little mortgage brokers popping up and I'd
• 21:19
  listen to these guys talking. I think this is crazy and it
• 21:22
  went on for a couple of years and it was great and then all
• 21:25
  suddenly it wasn't right. But you bring up a great point,
• 21:29
  I guess, from a a risk management perspective.
• 21:32
  If you do dig in, if you do see something, you you have to
• 21:36
  manage how you position yourself for that because you can be
• 21:41
  being real early can feel a lot like being real wrong at the
• 21:45
  same time. Yeah, there's two different
• 21:47
  things defining the trade and then executing the trade, two
• 21:50
  totally different things, you know, it really is.
• 21:52
  And then managing the risk, the stops and the hardest decision
• 21:56
  and the hardest thing to do well consistently is getting out of
• 21:59
  profitable positions, believe it or not.
• 22:01
  To me, I have found that to be the trickiest, most difficult
• 22:04
  thing where you're even someone that's been doing this for long
• 22:07
  as I have, that I'm able to remove most of the emotion from
• 22:10
  it. Sometimes you get out too early,
• 22:12
  you second guess yourself, you know.
• 22:13
  So these these things are always something you are dealing,
• 22:16
  dealing with, you know and that's kind of the trader side
• 22:18
  versus the investor side because those two are two wholly
• 22:21
  different things. And with the products we offer,
• 22:23
  we offer you know, advice for both types.
• 22:26
  We can't possibly know all the different, you know, risk reward
• 22:29
  dynamics, risk tolerance, age goals, financial situation,
• 22:33
  which money you earn, which savings are you know for every
• 22:35
  person. So it's difficult to make
• 22:37
  specific recommendations even though we do it understanding
• 22:41
  that they have to manage their own risk.
• 22:42
  We can't do that for everybody. You don't, you don't do that for
• 22:45
  everybody. I'm going to ask you, you were
• 22:47
  talking earlier about the the prospect of inflation.
• 22:51
  Do you? I, I talk a lot about
• 22:53
  stagflation. It feels like to me we're moving
• 22:55
  into this environment where we still have like, like the like
• 23:00
  the table is set. Maybe they have inflation under
• 23:03
  control, quote UN quote a little bit.
• 23:05
  Now the Fed wants to say, you know, they're winning the war on
• 23:08
  inflation, but the table is set still for like a spike in
• 23:13
  inflation and that we could move into an environment somewhat
• 23:17
  similar to the 70s where we have this, this the Fed's in a box,
• 23:21
  right? Do we fight inflation or do we
• 23:23
  fight a stagnating economy and that it could become very
• 23:27
  fertile soil for the precious metals prices?
• 23:29
  Do you have any any thoughts on that?
• 23:31
  Yeah, I think absolutely. Stagflation is a word I've been
• 23:35
  throwing around since last year, beginning of last year, very
• 23:38
  well. So and in fact we did the, you
• 23:40
  know, the report we did yesterday.
• 23:42
  One of the places we looked at was Switzerland, and you see
• 23:45
  that you have a huge rise in the number of unemployed in
• 23:49
  Switzerland. All right.
• 23:50
  And this is a country that has pretty low inflation and you
• 23:53
  know, 1.7 inflation against the 1.75 interest rate, all right.
• 23:57
  But at the same point, that's not what you would call type,
• 24:00
  but it's also not easy, all right.
• 24:02
  And the QT in Switzerland, the central banks winding down their
• 24:05
  assets very quickly and what happens, you get this huge jump
• 24:08
  in unemployment, I mean massive 2324% over the last six months.
• 24:13
  It's been in a row. So yeah, I think stagflation,
• 24:16
  there's signs of it everywhere already, particularly in Europe.
• 24:21
  I really believe in Europe is the place because that's where
• 24:23
  inflation could rise very quickly again, where you have
• 24:25
  more places where you have this kind of systemic debt issues
• 24:29
  around sovereign, sovereign debt.
• 24:31
  So you know, to me that's something that is already
• 24:33
  visible and we've seen some of that.
• 24:35
  I did a piece during the third quarter of 2023 just recently
• 24:39
  and I had to look up the German word for stag parties.
• 24:43
  In other words, like a bachelor party, right.
• 24:44
  Because stagflation. I want to use stagflation.
• 24:46
  So I got this German word. The whole piece was about
• 24:48
  stagflation in Germany because we saw a lot of.
• 24:51
  So I think you're on to something there.
• 24:53
  And I think that is the, I don't, I don't know whether it's
• 24:56
  the worst case scenario for the Fed because there's a lot of
• 24:59
  worst case scenarios for the Fed right now.
• 25:02
  But that would be really tricky and I've talked about this
• 25:04
  before. At what point do you shift the
• 25:06
  narrative from fighting inflation to protecting the
• 25:09
  economy if that happens? And you know.
• 25:12
  Every single time. I've said this my entire career,
• 25:15
  I wrote in my book in 2006, and this has proven out to be so
• 25:18
  true. It's not even funny beyond what
• 25:20
  I would have even thought we'd see.
• 25:21
  All right, is that when staring into a debt deflation abyss,
• 25:25
  officialdom will choose to reflate no matter what the cost.
• 25:29
  And that is certainly has been true.
• 25:30
  In 2020, it went overboard with the pandemic in terms of
• 25:33
  support. But, you know, that's what
• 25:35
  they're going to do again. And yes, that absolutely plays
• 25:38
  into the precious metals as a store of value, as a way to
• 25:41
  protect the purchasing power of your paper money and wealth,
• 25:44
  because that's what it's all about.
• 25:45
  Stocks could go higher. If it all goes down, it's good
• 25:48
  for stocks. But you know, I like to say this
• 25:50
  on every program I do. I mean, it's like, but the stock
• 25:52
  market in Argentina goes up every year, makes new highs
• 25:54
  every year. Standard living is certainly not
• 25:56
  higher in Argentina than it was 10 years ago.
• 25:58
  So that doesn't matter what matters.
• 26:00
  And because the pace of the peso devaluation and the whole 9
• 26:03
  yards is much faster than the appreciation of stocks, we can
• 26:06
  see that here in the US We can see a sideways stock market with
• 26:09
  no growth that crushes the debt. You have stagflation and all of
• 26:13
  a sudden the Fed has to print tremendous amount of money just
• 26:15
  to keep this thing from really pancaking.
• 26:18
  Yeah, that that critical difference between nominal and
• 26:21
  real returns. If the S&P 500 double S in a
• 26:24
  year, but the cost of bread goes up by 5 times, you know you're
• 26:29
  not, you're not doing well, right.
• 26:31
  Phenomenal basis numbers. Yeah, great.
• 26:33
  But you know, go, go try to use that money.
• 26:36
  You're losing, losing, buying power.
• 26:38
  And I always get a kick. I want to get your quick
• 26:40
  thoughts on. You've already been very
• 26:41
  generous with your time this morning.
• 26:43
  But I I hear people talk about how the the dollar is strong,
• 26:47
  right. We've kind of I heard that
• 26:49
  somewhat over the last year or so the strong dollar and I went
• 26:53
  back and looked at the DXY index and found that in like the early
• 26:58
  1970s the Dxi was pretty much exactly where it is today, about
• 27:03
  1:02. And I thought how can, how can
• 27:06
  we have this, this narrative that the dollar is strong when I
• 27:11
  know that you know $100 if I compare what I could buy with
• 27:15
  $100 in 1973 at the grocery store with what I can buy now, I
• 27:21
  can maybe buy 2015%. Any thoughts on that?
• 27:26
  You just said it. I mean I just echo what you just
• 27:28
  said. You know, one of one of one of
• 27:31
  my we started podcast a year and a half ago and one of the first
• 27:34
  podcast I got is look, you know the the basement of the
• 27:37
  purchasing power you pay for money.
• 27:38
  It's so simple and it's so obvious.
• 27:41
  And I went back to 1971 and compared what's the cost of the
• 27:44
  average car? What's the cost of an average
• 27:46
  2000 square foot apartment. All these different things.
• 27:49
  Remember, used to be the suit or the Thanksgiving dinner index
• 27:53
  that would measure where inflation was.
• 27:55
  And when you say the dollar is strong, it's just nothing could
• 27:58
  be further from the truth. What it is is stronger than the
• 28:01
  other paper currencies. That doesn't make it strong, all
• 28:04
  right, because it's not holding its purchasing power.
• 28:06
  Just look at anything you have to buy like you just said.
• 28:09
  And I would make it this simple, all right?
• 28:11
  Because I watched this religiously.
• 28:13
  This one is something I look at every single day, like so many
• 28:15
  things. But really, this is a very
• 28:17
  important indicator. And I said this before, if you
• 28:19
  take. The dollar index and divide it
• 28:22
  by the price of gold. You're getting what I call the
• 28:24
  gold adjusted value of the dollar.
• 28:26
  It's a better gauge of the purchasing power of your money
• 28:30
  in dollar terms. It's near a multi decade low
• 28:34
  here, All right. So the dollar is not strong.
• 28:36
  The dollar is already on the verge of becoming very weak and
• 28:39
  when that plays into the price rise in gold, that's when you
• 28:43
  see the dollar come down hard. There's levels in the dollar
• 28:46
  around 9976 where this is huge technically going back to the
• 28:50
  entire history of the dollar index, where you have this
• 28:53
  convergence of really long term. And medium term stuff that says
• 28:57
  you get below 9976 ish. You know depending on which
• 29:01
  you're looking at the futures, the cash index or whatever, that
• 29:04
  level would be a major secular breakdown and that would be
• 29:08
  really bullish for Golden, would definitely get it to propel
• 29:11
  through this resistance. We see a 2100.
• 29:14
  Yeah, In turn and in terms of like just the real value of
• 29:18
  gold. Last question, Greg, I promise
• 29:21
  as you look at the world right in this and I know we could go
• 29:24
  on for hours in this discussion. But in a nutshell, if you look
• 29:27
  when you look at the world, this bifurcation that's going on, you
• 29:31
  know, China, Russia, the bricks, obviously the bricks plus.
• 29:34
  Now are we experiencing, are we, are we, I mean are we are we
• 29:38
  like approaching this point where like we talked about with
• 29:41
  all the debt that we have in the country, the screwed up monetary
• 29:45
  system, fiscal system, we didn't even touch on social political
• 29:49
  issues domestically in the United States.
• 29:51
  But then when we broaden our our, our scope and look at
• 29:54
  what's going on in the world, are we are we potentially
• 29:59
  entering a a a decade or a phase where there could be fundamental
• 30:04
  shifts in in relation to how gold is valued.
• 30:09
  Like gold never went away but the gold begins to regain some
• 30:13
  of its luster. I heard somebody say something
• 30:15
  and I promise I'll shut up and wrap this up.
• 30:18
  But that that, you know, over the last 50 years the United
• 30:21
  States was the hegemony of the world, ruled the world.
• 30:26
  And and that that potentially we could come into a just by
• 30:29
  natural market forces a period where gold and silver maybe for
• 30:34
  that matter to a certain extent as well kind of become the, the,
• 30:39
  the, the, the hegemony power for a while because those countries
• 30:42
  don't trust each other, they don't trust the United States.
• 30:45
  What's left is, is gold. Any any thoughts on that?
• 30:49
  Yeah, no, I like it. I mean, I feel that, you know,
• 30:53
  the, the changes you're going to see over the next maybe 12 to 36
• 30:57
  months, let alone the next 10 years are going to be tectonic
• 31:02
  in terms of geopolitics. When you talk about this side of
• 31:05
  the world against the other side of the world, and I'm talking
• 31:08
  about China, Russia, OPEC, you know, Shiites and you know, Shia
• 31:11
  together, Iran and Saudi Arabia, everyone linked together, all
• 31:15
  the all about resources you tie in South South Africa and all of
• 31:18
  Africa with China has all kinds of investment.
• 31:20
  The first thing they did whenever we pulled out of
• 31:22
  Afghanistan, you know, would not only do we show our weakness and
• 31:25
  no longer are we going to be the military police to the world, by
• 31:28
  the way, OK. That's another big shift that
• 31:30
  we're seeing already taking place.
• 31:32
  But they started building their super highway that would you
• 31:35
  know go through Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia
• 31:38
  down to Africa all about resources.
• 31:39
  It's a resource war. We're in it already.
• 31:42
  And when you look at the pricing of currencies, you look at
• 31:45
  Brazil, South Africa, Saudi Arabia's already agreed Russia.
• 31:50
  I mean you know the the pivot was 2018 when Shanghai crude oil
• 31:54
  exchange opened price different going to be trading the Dubai
• 31:57
  OPEC price crude oil, great crude oil.
• 32:00
  That was the beginning of the end.
• 32:01
  So yeah, this is huge for gold because the D dollarization is a
• 32:06
  real thing. And it's something that, you
• 32:09
  know, when you talk about the political situation, the only
• 32:11
  thing I'll say is it's going to be chaos.
• 32:13
  Absolute chaos bordering on anarchy, potentially in 2024.
• 32:18
  And we have these wars on all these fronts.
• 32:21
  Spending all this money that we don't have, all right?
• 32:23
  Let alone the immigration problem, All the potential
• 32:25
  terrorists coming in, all the people that are paying taxes now
• 32:28
  they're being given away, all these people that aren't even
• 32:30
  citizens of the country. Oh my God.
• 32:32
  The seeds for social unrest are huge in 2024 and this is a time
• 32:36
  when China is going to make their move.
• 32:38
  On Taiwan, on Korea, even, you know, you got a lot going On.
• 32:42
  The Philippines, Vietnam, there's all kinds of, This is a
• 32:45
  very intricate and involved story that has deep roots going
• 32:48
  all the way back to when G was six years old and his dad was
• 32:52
  killed and he was whisked away to become who he is now.
• 32:54
  So this is big picture stuff de dollarization, very bullish for
• 32:58
  gold. And when you start talking
• 33:00
  about, you know, what is the true value of gold, You know,
• 33:03
  we've had, you know, I've sent you to some of the charts and
• 33:05
  stuff. I mean, you know, if you want to
• 33:06
  properly value gold relative to money or value that relative to
• 33:10
  the debt that's been created, compared to 1971, it's pretty
• 33:14
  simple. And gold would be 15,000 to as
• 33:16
  high as $90,000 an ounce. I'm not saying that's where it's
• 33:19
  going. But it shows you how potentially
• 33:22
  undervalued gold is at $2000.00 an ounce.
• 33:24
  Holy mackerel. You know, you say, Oh my God,
• 33:26
  it's so high compared to where it's been.
• 33:28
  Look at everything else. It's really not that high.
• 33:30
  And frankly. You go a lot higher, so and and
• 33:33
  and and yet most of our fellow Americans are asleep.
• 33:37
  I like to say I live in a middle, upper middle class
• 33:41
  suburb here in Saint Louis. We have a community swimming
• 33:44
  pool. I have wonderful neighbors, but
• 33:46
  if one of them comes up to talk to me at the pool and I'm not in
• 33:50
  the mood to talk, I can start talking about gold and silver.
• 33:53
  That will get them to go away. If that doesn't work, I can talk
• 33:57
  about the the BRICS nations. And then thirdly, if I really
• 34:00
  want to get them to leave, I'll talk about the Petro dollar.
• 34:02
  So. If you wanted.
• 34:04
  Them to stay, all you have to do is bring up ammunition.
• 34:06
  You ask them what kind of ammunition they have, you know,
• 34:08
  or something like that. You'll get a lot of people
• 34:11
  coming over to talk to you about that kind of stuff.
• 34:13
  That's a sign right there. Come on, Seriously is.
• 34:15
  Yeah. Right on, Right on.
• 34:17
  Hey, Greg, on behalf of all of our viewers, thank you.
• 34:21
  This has been great. You are a wealth of information
• 34:24
  and obviously have spent decades learning, studying.
• 34:28
  I know you work long, long hours, and for you to come on
• 34:31
  here and share that information with my viewers is is great.
• 34:35
  I want to give you an opportunity here.
• 34:38
  If people want to learn more about you or learn more about
• 34:41
  your services, how do they, how do they go about that?
• 34:44
  Sure. Thanks.
• 34:44
  That's great. Yeah, you
• 34:45
  sales@weldononline.com, Weldon online all when we're Weldon
• 34:50
  online.com, I mean we just did the 2024 special outlook for
• 34:54
  gold that we sent to you that you saw, certainly happy to send
• 34:57
  that probably a lot of your listeners are affiliated with
• 35:00
  Mr. Grandich as well who's just great and legend in the business
• 35:03
  as well. And then we just did our weekly
• 35:06
  today. I just published it literally 15
• 35:07
  minutes before we came on. So anyone who wants to get a
• 35:10
  copy of that and potentially, you know, we do the gold guru,
• 35:12
  it's called and that's a a daily product with a big weekly
• 35:15
  monetary, you know, macro oversight.
• 35:18
  We do all the equities. We rank them based on their
• 35:20
  trends. We provide model portfolios,
• 35:22
  discretionary portfolios, the futures, the ETFs.
• 35:25
  We even do crypto the base metals and right now what's
• 35:28
  really potentially hot is uranium, frankly URA and some
• 35:31
  uranium stocks as well. And then we have a what we call
• 35:34
  the portfolio playbook which is U.S. equity based S&P 500.
• 35:38
  You know which stocks, which well first which sectors and
• 35:41
  then which stocks. Because if you do want to be,
• 35:43
  continue to be a stock person and you're not willing to do
• 35:46
  other things where you can stay in stocks and have a currency
• 35:49
  position, have a commodity position, you know, ETFs or at
• 35:52
  the very least give yourself a chance to keep pace with the
• 35:55
  debasement of the purchasing power of your money by being in
• 35:58
  the things that had the best chance to go up by the most.
• 36:00
  I mean, you know, just buy and hold and this indexing, we
• 36:03
  already know that 6040 is crushed last year.
• 36:05
  That's dead. I think this is where the next,
• 36:08
  you know, 12 months to 36 months shows us that buy and hold is
• 36:11
  dead. It's not going to work the way
• 36:12
  it used to. You have to be more active.
• 36:14
  You have to be more diversified. Being in growth value and small
• 36:19
  cap over here is not diversified.
• 36:20
  We know that. I think everyone knows that.
• 36:22
  But people seem to be kind of, you know, hesitant and almost
• 36:26
  afraid to take action to do things.
• 36:28
  And I think once you start to get knowledge and once you start
• 36:30
  to do it, people can do this for themselves a lot better
• 36:34
  sometimes even than the professionals frankly.
• 36:37
  And I think we try to provide tools that help people do that.
• 36:39
  That's kind of our goal is to kind of level the playing field.
• 36:42
  I came from the hedge funds. I came my last term was Goldman.
• 36:45
  And you know, one of the reasons I left was didn't like what they
• 36:48
  were doing. I mean, it's like your customers
• 36:49
  and you basically take advantage of me, take the other side of
• 36:51
  the trades. You know, my my purpose here is
• 36:54
  to try and help people with my knowledge and to get back in
• 36:56
  that way and help people, you know, better weather, what's
• 36:59
  coming next and what's coming next.
• 37:02
  You know, I'm not a doom and gloomer.
• 37:03
  I'm a positive person on life and spiritually and everything.
• 37:05
  What's coming next economically and politically in this country?
• 37:08
  Not going to be pretty. Yeah, I heard.
• 37:11
  I heard you say, you know, you, you're not a doom and gloomer.
• 37:15
  And I've sensed that even with our conversations offline.
• 37:17
  You're a good person and a positive person, but you get
• 37:20
  paid to assess risk and I love that and and to advise people
• 37:28
  based you know share what you see and assess that risk and and
• 37:32
  and make recommendations on in terms of what people can do to
• 37:36
  protect themselves, which is a positive, helpful thing.
• 37:39
  So thank you Greg. This has been great.
• 37:42
  Again, you know, on behalf of the viewer myself, you know, we
• 37:46
  can't say thank you enough. And we're going to hope and hope
• 37:49
  that we can get you back here sometime in the coming months
• 37:52
  back into Ron's basement. Yeah.
• 37:54
  It's Ronald. It's my pleasure, man.
• 37:55
  I really love participating. You do a great job of seeing
• 37:58
  some of your stuff. So kudos to you as well.
• 38:00
  Thank you. Yeah.
• 38:01
  Yeah. And and thank you to Peter
• 38:02
  Grandich for for connecting us.