Latest / Financial Survival Network / 2024 Market Kickoff: Global Dynamics, Gold Trends & Societal Divides -- John Rubino #5975

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2024 Market Kickoff: Global Dynamics, Gold Trends & Societal Divides -- John Rubino #5975 · Financial Survival Network

0:00
And now we've got the seasonality as always going for gold. January is usually
0:05
good month, and we've got central banks buying gold aggressively. There were two
0:10
straight years of thousand ton uptakes of gold from the central banks, which is
0:16
here. You know, those are really big numbers in the context of a
0:20
you know, four thousand ton a year output from the world's minds. You
0:25
are listening to Carrie Leutz's Financial Survival Network, where you get valuable information you
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0:52
Welcome. You are watching and listening to the Financial Survival Network. I'm your
0:57
host, Carrie Lutz. John Rabino is with us. Now you all had
1:00
a wonderful, wonderful New Year's It's in January twod twenty twenty four. This
1:07
is the time where we look ahead at what kind of year it's going to
1:11
be. We forget about how awful twenty twenty three was in so many different
1:15
respects, and yet the world didn't end. John, you know here we
1:22
are. Stuff is still happening, you know, inflation is still inflating.
1:29
Stuff is still getting more expensive. And well, what happened today the Nasdaq
1:36
type the first day of twenty twenty four trading? Hey, Jerry, Yeah,
1:40
that was that was an interesting first dand trading because stocks in general were
1:45
okay, but tech talks got smacked and a big part of that was Apple.
1:49
You know, it looks like the world is saturated with iPhones now and
1:56
so Apple sales are not going to be as robust as they used to be,
2:00
and that is starting to come out now. People are starting to get
2:01
that. And so Apple stock was down pretty hard today, but not just
2:05
Apple. You know a lot of other tech stalks were down. Let's see
2:08
Intel and do you count Netflix as a tech stock? I kind of do,
2:13
but yeah, well our tech park Medium, that's a cloud stock.
2:16
Yeah, it's a cloud stock. Anyhow, they were both down hard today
2:20
too, and that that could easily be a sign of things to come,
2:25
because they're wildly over valued, first of all, and stocks in general are
2:30
widely over or wildly overvalue. The SAP five hundreds p eager shows something like
2:36
twenty five and normally in recessions and bear markets, it gets down to twelve
2:39
or whatever, you know, so we could we had easily see big stocks
2:45
be cut in half just to be fairly valued for what's coming. So I
2:49
think what happened in the NASAC today is, you know, one day doesn't
2:53
really tell you that much, but when the bear market comes, days like
2:58
today are going to become norm for several months, and you know we could
3:02
easily be heading into that right now. All right, well, hey,
3:06
I am the first two of it. I never saw the Santa Claus rally
3:09
coming, but it would be appropriate that first trading day of the year.
3:15
Santa Claus. He's back in the in the closet along with all the all
3:21
the Christmas decorations for next year. Right. Well, in December, the
3:25
FED announced that it was going to stop raising interest rates and start cutting interest
3:30
rates, so that, you know, perfect timing for a Santa Claus rally,
3:34
right, because that's you know, a massive relief rally when when people
3:38
think that tight money is over. But what's you know, what we never
3:44
seem to understand every cycle is that the FED stopping raising interest rates is not
3:50
the same thing as the FED easy because everybody's death that has to roll over
3:54
is still going to roll over at today's higher interest rates. So monetary conditions
3:59
are tightening or a big part of the economy still and they'll continue to tighten
4:04
until interest rates go way back down. And that's it's not happening yet.
4:09
You know, we're still in the high threes right on the in your treasury.
4:14
So if we get back up into the forest, we get back up
4:15
to what you know, everybody thought was the terminal rate for this cycle.
4:20
So you know, monetary policy is still technically tightening for a lot of different
4:28
entities out there, and that once people start to figure that out. But
4:32
it's going to be a long time before we actually get easy money, even
4:36
if the FED cuts a couple of times twenty four yeah, so yeah,
4:42
yeah, well, I mean we can't function with money this tight without the
4:48
economy blowing. We have to get yeah we have right easy money? Yes,
4:53
yeah, No, nobody can handle interest rates at this level going forward,
4:57
So the FED and all the the central banks are going to have to
5:00
ease aggressively, but they're going to need a crisis to make them go back
5:06
to QT on steroids and yeah, get us down as zero or negative interest
5:12
rates. That's going to take a big thing to happen, and there's no
5:15
shortage of candidates for that, right from geopolitics, to commercial real estate,
5:20
to consumer finances, you know, you name it. And something bad is
5:28
going to happen pretty soon in the Fed is they're to then go into full
5:30
on easing mode. Hey, let's look at the two year because the two
5:34
year is really crucial to two year treasury. You know, it finished off
5:39
the day at four point two four four, just like a month ago it
5:45
was up at five and a quarter. Okay, it was five and a
5:49
half because the Fed funds rates got to stay ahead of the two year,
5:56
Right, and now we're looking inverted yield curve because the two year is it
6:00
four point two seven seven or four point two four to four? Rather it
6:04
opened at two seven seven and the ten years at three eighty six. Right?
6:11
Does that sound inverted to you? Yeah? Well it? And you
6:15
know, interest rates around four percent are still too high for this economy on
6:21
a lubber's economy like this, because you know that still implies a six and
6:26
a half or seven percent mortgage rate, right, and the average mortgage out
6:30
there is around three percent, which means you know, mortgage rates dropping from
6:35
eight percent to six percent. That doesn't unlock all the people that are locked
6:40
into the three percent mortgages and can never merge, right, So that still
6:44
has to happen. Yeah, yeah, I mean for you know, for
6:46
you to buy a new house with a six percent mortgage, why would I
6:50
do? Why would you do that? That's right, you know, it's
6:53
got to be, you know, otherwise an incredible deal. Well, one
6:57
thing that could make that happen is if house prices go down by half from
7:00
here. You know, you have these mathematical adjustments that have to happen,
7:05
and they can't happen with the current set up. So one of the parts
7:10
that we've set up have to change. And you know, I don't know
7:13
what it will be. I yeah, you know, normally a recession is
7:18
the mechanism or the adjustments to happen. And there's no reason to think that
7:23
it won't happen this year again in the cycle, and we won't have this
7:29
soft landing that everybody's talking about, because you know, credit card debt is
7:33
the trillion dollars and personal interest in spiking. You can't row an economy organically
7:40
with new debts. If personal interest expense is doubled in the last year and
7:46
will double again in the next year if nothing happens. So all of this
7:50
sudden and you I think you said me the thing about student loans. Yeah,
7:55
they kicked back in, but nobody's paying. Imagine if you we've had
8:00
a student loan moratorium and nobody showed up, you know, once it ended.
8:07
Right, It's exactly what's happening in China too. I mean, as
8:09
bad as things are here, they're way worse than China because China's experience a
8:16
multifaceted collapse, meaning their economy is collapsing. All that nice new infrastructure they
8:26
built, which was tofu drag that's collapsing, moral collapse, Communist party collapse.
8:33
I mean, we're kind of like mirroring each other, except that we
8:37
don't really have the infrastructure collapse because all of our hundred year old infrastructure was
8:43
built way better than we ever expected it to be. But our collapse is
8:48
happening on multiple levels as well. Right, Well, you know we've got
8:52
infrastructure issues too, and the way the current infrastructure plan probably won't deal with
8:58
it because is you know what we have that's in collapses, roads, and
9:03
bridges and airports and things like that. And if we put a bunch of
9:07
money into offshore wind plants or something like that, that doesn't fix our bridges
9:11
or anything. So we're still kind of in that that place too. You
9:15
know, you pretty much look at any society that you want to look at
9:18
right now, and there are signs of collapse. Germanys of nightmare right now.
9:24
You know, China is obvious, the US is is not as as
9:30
obvious. But when you dig a little deeper, we got very serious financial
9:33
problems too. And but Germany might be the worst of everybody. My god,
9:37
they and it was all self inflicted. Germany basically committed suicide. And
9:46
there's no other way to put it. I mean, Angela Merkel five years
9:48
ago was seen as this solid conservative leader, you know, it doesn't make
9:54
stupid mistakes. But it turns out everything she did was a stupid mistake.
9:56
Yeah, and that's the truth. Yeah, Unlimited immigration, developing a reliance
10:05
on Russian natural gas, and then going along with a NATO plan to start
10:09
World War three over Ukraine, which got the pipeline blown up by the US.
10:16
And now basically Germany is doing a thing called the industrialization because they allowed
10:20
all this stuff to happen, and their economy used to be based on taking
10:26
cheap natural gas and turning it into industrial products and exporting those products. Well,
10:31
now the natural gas is gone, or the cheap natural gas is gone,
10:35
so they're basically having to shut down. And the only reason the Eurozone
10:39
still exists is because Germany was backing everybody up via the ECD. So you
10:46
take that away and there's no real rationale or no real scenario in which the
10:52
euros stays a functioning currency and the EU stays a functioning trade block. So
10:58
you know, Germany takes Europe with it, and it doesn't seem to be
11:01
a solution. I don't see it, that's for sure. It definitely don't
11:07
see it. In the meantime, we ended we ended twenty twenty three with
11:11
gold above two thousand, and it seems to be sticking there for the time
11:16
being. And you know, at this point in time, I kind of
11:20
take predictions about gold price with a grain because everybody's been so wrong for it
11:26
so long. But at this point, though, it looks like we're getting
11:31
the higher highs and higher lows, and the trend is in our favor.
11:37
Yeah, nothing's guaranteed yet. With gold, it could you know, in
11:39
two bad days, it could be back low two thousand, but it is
11:43
held up there for quite a while. You know. I think it finished
11:46
the year at the highest ever yearly clones. I mean, it made its
11:50
highest ever monthly closed before that. So these these are good numbers. And
11:56
now we've got the seasonality as always going for gold. January is usually a
12:01
good month. And we've got central banks buying gold aggressively. There were two
12:05
straight years of thousand ton uptakes of gold from the central banks, which is
12:11
huge. You know, those are really big numbers in the context of a
12:15
you know, four thousand ton a year output from the world's minds. So
12:22
we've got the biggest, most deep pocketed buyers in the world buying aggressively.
12:28
And now we've got cost Co selling gold bars and selling out at which time
12:33
they did any end. And then Walmart she started doing the same thing.
12:37
And now both Costco and Walmart are selling silver as well as gold, so
12:43
at both ends of the spectrum. You know, the small guys at Costco
12:46
buying individualizes of gold who never could do it before. Now I think can
12:50
impulse buy precious metals, and then the central banks, the biggest players in
12:54
the global financial system, aggressively buying gold. So I think there's a lot
12:58
of fun to me reasons to think or to hope that this is a time
13:05
in which gold starts the next leg of a serious bull market. So you
13:09
know, here's hoping, but I think it's it's totally possible. And the
13:13
FED is easing again. Yeah, you know, it's not easy aggressively yet,
13:18
but it's starting to and gold usually embarks on a bull run when when
13:24
the FED stops tightening, equities have to wait for aggressive these gold starts sooner
13:31
and you know it passes prolonged. Still, then this is the time,
13:37
in relating with gold's relationship with the fad what it would normally start moving.
13:41
So you got a lot of favorable factors in the gold space right now,
13:46
and who knows, I think this could be an excellent year for precious metals.
13:52
I totally agree with you, Na. You know everyone said thinks inflation
13:56
is beat. Now you and I are old enough to remember Gerald Ford's win
14:01
campaign whip inflation now. So I'm starting a new site called the Inflation Cafe,
14:09
and we're going to start a Whip Inflation Now campaign. And let me
14:15
just tell you how I got inspired by it. I was at an infamous
14:20
coffee establishment that shall go unnamed, but that basically allows any antisocial behavior to
14:28
take place within their confines regardless. And I looked at the price of my
14:35
latte and it was seven bucks, and I said, then, and it
14:39
was skimpy. They shorted me, and I said to him, you know,
14:43
you don't sell coffee here, you sell inflation. And you're the inflation
14:50
cafe. Hence the site is being set up now and the inflation Cafe was
14:58
born. So my first f it is going to be to start a win
15:01
campaign to whip inflation now, because there's so much we can all do about
15:07
it, right, yeah, we can take care of that at a hard
15:09
baba. You know, does it work so well for the last time it
15:13
was tried? Right, You've got all these people saying, now, oh,
15:18
why are people so pessimistic? Inflation is down to next to nothing,
15:22
the economy is growing. We actually have a good economy. Why don't people
15:24
see that? Paul Krudwin, you know, Humber Brothers. But what they
15:28
don't get is that if you have a big bout of inflation and then prices
15:33
stop going up. That doesn't fix things for the people who now have to
15:37
pay thirty percent more for all of life's necessities. So life gets hard and
15:43
stays hard for them even after rice increases stopped. So you know life is
15:50
going to be hard. Voters are getting pissed off no matter what until we
15:56
have deflation, and then deflation is painful in its own line. So there's
16:00
we blow up when we have deep decision, you know that. Yeah,
16:04
they love inflation because that paper is over all the mistakes. But when we
16:08
have true deflation, banks blow up, which is why we can never have
16:14
true deflation in this system because too many, too many over leverage entities will
16:19
blow up. Like you said, so so we have you know, the
16:23
vast majority of people in the country are paying way too much for life's necessities.
16:29
There their wages are not rising nearly enough to make up for it,
16:32
and they're suffering. So the people who don't understand this, first of all,
16:36
I'm surprised they don't understand it. It's not a very complicated idea.
16:38
But there are political implications to this, one of which is populism. Selves.
16:45
In this kind of an environment, you know you can if you run
16:48
on a platform. Look, listen, these guys are screwing you. Over
16:51
Look how hard your life is. I'm going to go in there and I'm
16:53
going to clean house and take back what's yours. You win, And I
16:57
think that's the political reality the US and most of the rest of the West.
17:02
Oh an ad And I'm going to close the borders, you know,
17:04
and you add that too. I'm going to get your prices back downs.
17:08
And you're very hard to beat as a politician. So I think you know,
17:12
the Republicans discovered this goal. The Democrats have to discover it too.
17:17
So it's an arms race of populism. That's what we got. Well,
17:22
the it's so ironic, John, you know, the who is it bitching
17:27
most about the runaway situation at the border? Now it's all the blue cities.
17:33
Now, I read that Governor Abbot of Texas had gratuitously provided eighty five
17:41
thousand people with the bus and airplane tickets to various blue cities like Chicago,
17:47
New York. And these are sanctuary cities. They're supposed to have their arms
17:52
wide open, you know, statue of liberty. Send us your beat and
17:56
your dreary and all that, and they're the ones that are bit the loudest
18:00
about it. So I think we're on the brink of a solution. But
18:04
who's ever running the show in DC wants this situation Because the NGOs get paid
18:11
like one hundred thousand dollars per illegal alien, and all the Obama phones that
18:17
get handed out, and the free medical care and the free food all that.
18:21
Obviously somebody is profiting by this and they want it. They like the
18:25
situation the way it is. But for the rest of the country, driving
18:30
it further and further into bankruptcy, maybe not such a great thing. Well,
18:33
yeah, open borders have always been attracted to the elite. On the
18:40
Republican side, you know, that's cheap factory labor can't complain about working conditions
18:45
because they're afraid of being decorded. On the Democrat side, it's voters who
18:49
depend on the government and will therefore vote for the party of government, which
18:53
is in Democrats. So both of the I mean, the powerful people in
18:57
both groups have invested interest in open borders, But it's the ninety five percent
19:03
who aren't in those two groups who are being hurt by this. And I
19:07
think the backlash is coming fast. I sent you that chart that we talked
19:11
about the Live where. Yeah, we'll put that up. We'll put a
19:15
link to the chart in the show notes. I'll try to embed it on
19:18
the on the thumbnail if I can. Okay, because new births from illegal
19:26
immigrants now exceeds the number of new births from American citizens, can you insane?
19:33
Yeah? Situation? You know that that is not well. Actually,
19:36
if the chart is right, and I didn't do the basic research or anything,
19:41
I just pulled this chart. But if the chart is true, then
19:44
that means that we're basically committing national suicide in fact, pretty out. It's
19:49
astounding that that I would never guess that we've gotten that far into this,
19:53
but you know, we're there, and the pendulum is going to swing back
19:57
so hard and so fast at some point that oh, yeah, it's just
20:02
going to shock the five percent who think everything is okay. But we know
20:07
we we've seen this before. Man, you know, this is just the
20:15
yeah, La, they don't live in reality. You know, these people
20:18
do not live in reality of like having to get a job and having to
20:23
meet bills and all this. The policymakers, it's like the generals in the
20:30
army or you know, eating philet mignon and the troops are of an MREs
20:37
that are moldy. You know, well what it's like. It's a case
20:41
of different realities. You know, if you're a billionaire, or you're the
20:45
CEO of a company, or you're a politician with a safe seat, or
20:51
if you're a bureaucrat that's been appointed by politicians of the safe seats, and
20:55
you're any of those guys, life is good, and you don't understand so
21:00
many people are so discontented because you don't live in the world of you know,
21:06
having to stretch your paycheck all the way to the end of the month
21:10
and then seeing cost Co raise their prices by thirty percent of the basic stuff
21:14
you buy. You know, you don't have to say it. You know
21:15
you don't go shopping. So yeah, now this is this is not unusual.
21:21
This is the standard aristocracy script, right, you know, you change
21:26
the rules so they don't apply to you anymore, and you live that and
21:30
happy. You don't understand why the peasants are revolting until they cut your head
21:34
off. So that's coming. It is coming, you know, metaphorically speaking,
21:40
hopefully, metaphorically speaking, that's coming pretty sure. Yeah, no,
21:44
I totally totally agree with you. But but you know, when you live
21:49
just for today, then you don't have to think about it. So what
21:52
about what's going on here in Harvard? Here this lady or like, I
21:59
looked at her and I said, she's the president of Harvard. Before I
22:02
knew anything about her, you know what, she was testifying before or before
22:07
the House and wouldn't condemn genocidal protests and all that, But she just seemed
22:15
to be like somewhere else. And now she's a serial plagiarizer and they keep
22:22
finding more and more stuff that she plagiarizes verbatim. And I guess intellectual integrity,
22:30
little things like that don't matter to Harvard anymore. Well, are could
22:33
our colleges have become insane asylums where the inmates run the asylum, and the
22:40
Harvard pick is a perfect example of that. Is she couldn't she couldn't explain
22:45
why calls for the genocide of Jews would be unacceptable on her campus. But
22:51
yeah, once people looked more closely at her, it wasn't just that one
22:53
inability to connect two ideas together. It was the fact that. Let's be
23:00
blunt. He's the ultimate diversity higher. You know, she so Africa has
23:04
a lot of boxes there. Yeah, she talked a lot of box checks
23:07
a lot of boxes. And it turns out that she has as a tenured
23:11
Harvard professor, she has eleven papers published. And that's all. That's that's
23:18
like, you know, your third year in as a postdoc or something like
23:22
that, you should have that many papers published. That's a week a week
23:26
of John Rabino's substack. Then come on. But and her Harvard was ranked
23:34
dead last on a scale of freedom of speech among colleges. So she was
23:41
kind of a you know, would be dictator, it would be woke dictator
23:48
and a really inadequate academic who got the job because Harvard liked the idea of
23:56
having somebody who ticks a lot of boxes in. And you we are now,
24:02
you know, and I would be surprised if the rest of the Ivy
24:06
League was any better. So you're going to see a house cleaning. I
24:10
think, now that's you know, everybody, because now that's that's a Pulitzer
24:15
Prize winning beat for a reporter. Right. You go to these colleagues and
24:21
you find out who the frauds are and you publicize them. Yeah, expect
24:27
the expect the press to dig into this and expect these these colleges that basically
24:33
just been you know, uh, fraudulent all these years in the last decade
24:40
or so, and expect them to get cleared out in a hurry or be
24:44
publicly humilitated and use all their all their donors and stuff for them. That's
24:51
the allimate nightmare. People stop. They don't care if kids don't show up
24:55
because they can always replace straight A students. There's plenty of them out there
24:59
in the world of great inflation. But if the one hundred million dollar building
25:03
naming donors stop showing up, then that's a catastrophe. And that's what a
25:08
lot of these guys are looking at it think. Yeah totally. Hey,
25:14
I remember I once read the definition of diversity is celebrating our differences while pretending
25:19
not to notice them. Yeah, yeah, because because you know, it's
25:22
a diversity of outward appearance. Yeah, but not diversity, yeah, not
25:27
diversity of thought. In these schools, they're they're absolutely monolithic. When you
25:33
look at the opinions and the political affiliations of the people running these schools,
25:38
and you can get away without it. So you can get away with all
25:41
kinds of things in good times. What worn buffet's old clothed about. Only
25:45
when the tide goes out do you see the swimming naked? Then suddenly the
25:51
tide has gone out on high powered colleges and they are boy, they're naked,
25:56
and they're not the kind of people you really want to see naked on
25:59
the beach, right, you know, make it and ugly at the same
26:03
time, Look at all the law firms, yeah, New York, big
26:07
law firms that said we're not hiring Harvard grads anymore, and that's going to
26:11
spread, and that's the kind of thing that they care about, because it's
26:17
like, oh, well, our graduates were hired by the top ten law
26:21
firms and they're making X amount, and that's their like prestige, that's their
26:26
halo. And once they don't have that, I don't know what they do
26:30
have, because honestly, if you know the law school that I went to,
26:33
I would put my legal education up against Harvard's law school any day of
26:37
the week. More of our people passed the bar exam in New York than
26:41
Harvard grads. So isn't that the ultimate test first time out, you would
26:47
think it would be you know, I do a once a month thing on
26:52
Substackle, Art of the Collapse about all the means and the satire and stuff,
26:56
and I started this last one with Harvard because the meme averse has just
27:03
had a field day with this. There's two things that I ended up posting.
27:07
One is a bumper sticker that said my kid did not go to Harvard,
27:12
because you know, there's these bumper stickers about my kid, isn't Harvard
27:15
and stuff like that on now it's reversed. And the other is a Dilbert
27:18
cartoon where there's an interview, job interview, and the boss says, you
27:23
know, I assume you went to college, but I don't see you in
27:26
your resume anymore, and the yeah, the guy says, well, yeah
27:30
I went to college and the h and the boss says it was Harvard,
27:34
wasn't it. I'll see myself out. I love it. Yeah, you
27:41
love it, And that's you know, that's real. Now people actually think
27:45
Harvard is a laughing stuck so yeah, as well it should be as well,
27:51
it should should be. I mean, there are so many law firms
27:53
that have just stopped and then there's major hedge fund guys that have pulled back
27:59
there donations to these ivy leagues and once they're just hoping it's going to blow
28:07
over and everyone will forget it. But things like this don't so much blow
28:11
over so quick, do they. Well, no, now, and this
28:17
this is a battle of very powerful lobbies right now. Man, It's interesting
28:22
to see a clash of people with this kind of political power out there.
28:26
So I'm curious about where it goes because it's fascinating so far. And I
28:30
just you know, you've got to hope all the turmoil ends sooner rather than
28:36
later. But there's no guarantee that it does at all. This could be
28:37
a multi year story. Yeah, yeah, I think this will go on
28:42
because this is a This is all part of the cultural war taking place not
28:47
just in the US but all over the world, and more of what we
28:52
have to look forward to for twenty twenty four eight. If we can finish
28:56
twenty twenty four in the same place where we are now, it will have
29:00
been a major victory. I'm not counting on it. The wars are heating
29:04
up in Israel and in Ukraine, and where this craziness is going to end
29:11
The only thing is it's winter now, so basically they'll fire missiles at each
29:15
other and artillery and they'll resupply. Even though eventually, you know that we
29:22
didn't even talk about the fact that the House said we're not going to fund
29:26
Israel or Ukraine if you don't do something about the border, and they had
29:30
a deal like a few weeks ago, and that deal collapsed, and now
29:36
they're just waiting around. I don't know who's going to blink here, you
29:38
know, Yeah, this is there's really gridlock on a lot of these things.
29:45
And that's a good thing for the Ukraine war because I think, like
29:49
you said, it's winter, it's harder to do stuff there now, and
29:55
the US is no longer willing to fund Ukraine in an open and it's coming
30:03
out that Russia has always been offering peace deals all the way through this.
30:07
They've been willing to settle. So now there's no way in the US now
30:11
that it's public knowledge that Putin was like, yeah, you know, we'll
30:15
settle one today's terms, or you know, yeah, they've been saying that
30:18
over and over again. There's no way for the US to hide that fact,
30:22
even in the mainstream media and so there's no excuse for not getting on
30:27
board some kind of negotiation and cutting a deal, because the deal is the
30:32
simplest one in the world. Just Ukraine does not join NATO and doesn't bomb
30:40
the Russian parts of Ukraine, and that's it. That was the whole deal.
30:45
That was all they have to do, you know. So you know
30:47
that that can be that beans literally lunch, you could, you could figure
30:52
that out the time it takes to have a couple of glasses of wine and
30:56
an entree and dessert and get it over with, you know, And so
30:59
I think will do that. Preston. Okay, So, if you've been
31:03
following what China's doing to the Philippines, they're like, basically, China has
31:07
declared the entire South China Sea is their own, and they are firing water
31:14
cannons at the Philippine fishing fleets and basically provoking the Philippines, which has led
31:22
to a wholesale rejection of China by most countries in the world and a reaffirmation
31:29
of the alliance between the Philippines and the United States and in Japan. And
31:37
it's I don't know what's going on here in China, but it's like,
31:42
I think the same people are running China as are running the United States,
31:45
John, They have like no conceptualization. You know, the Belton Road initiative
31:52
that's in tatters. They call that the bribe and rape. Uh you got
31:57
the bribe and rape you know, trail or whatever initiative that's that's in shatter.
32:06
It's that everybody is defaulting on that. And man, like I always
32:12
thought the collapse was going to be in the West, I'd never thought it
32:15
was going to happen all over at once. I mean, no place is
32:17
safe from these sociopaths here, John. You know, China is kind of
32:22
a special case. And there's a guy named Peter Zion that you talking about
32:27
on your show before. But his take on China is that they're demographically collapsing,
32:35
that they basically have one more generation of military age men, and after
32:40
that massive shortage, you know, they won't be able to project power twenty
32:45
years from now, and this is therefore their last chance to solidify their influence
32:50
over there. So they're feeling rushed to take over the South China Sea and
32:54
put their their naval bases there and everything because they know they can't twenty years,
33:00
ten years, from now even they won't be able to do it,
33:02
and so it's making them reckless. And the last thing you want is a
33:07
declining power with nuclear weapons who is desperately reckless, right, So it makes
33:14
China dangerous when they wouldn't normally be. What's really interesting is Henry Kissinger said
33:20
thirty forty forty years ago, two or three times China had the opportunity to
33:24
become the pre eminent hour in the world, and they blew it every time,
33:29
and he said they were going to blow it this time as well.
33:31
And when you look at the stories about the weaponry, like they've become a
33:37
major arms exporter, except all their stuff is basically garbage, and their missile
33:44
system, their whole thing that they were so proud of, as it turned
33:47
out, was hacked by the US and taking control of and they had a
33:52
nuclear sub blow up that might have been a result of the fact they were
33:57
hacked. Nobody knows exactly what's going on in that place. But the last
34:01
thing they need now is a cult of personality like g you know, like
34:06
they needed now last time, and something has to get there too. So
34:12
these are the hot these are the black swans for twenty twenty four is who's
34:17
going to collapse first? And you know, Russia, China, US,
34:23
Germany. It's just an unbelievable mess out there. Yeah. Yeah, well,
34:30
you know, by the by the end of twenty twenty four, your
34:35
show and my show and when we're together is going to be all, oh
34:37
my god, did you see that? Oh you know, it's going to
34:39
be one of those just exclamation didna, Yeah they did? Well, gen
34:45
do you ever expect that to happen? Yeah? So, so we should
34:50
enjoy the good old days while we can't. You know, we're physically saved
34:54
and the kids are physically saved, and nobody's going bankrupt all around us right
35:00
now. So these are the good times. Enjoy them. Hey, this
35:05
is why, always, always, always, don't worry about investing in stocks.
35:08
If you have a portfolio, that's great. Always invest in yourself,
35:13
human capital, in improving yourself and just do something new, whatever it is
35:20
that's going to make you happier as a person and more fulfilled. And then
35:23
the sociopaths can't get to you because you've beaten them at their game. They
35:29
can only get you by manipulating the news and everything else and making you believe
35:34
things that are true and making you disbelieve things that are true. But once
35:39
you get past that and you find your own truth, there's nothing they can
35:43
do to touch you. Hey, that's it. Everybody out there, Happy
35:46
twenty twenty four, Be glad twenty twenty three is gone. Just hope that
35:52
we don't look back and look at twenty twenty three as the good old days
35:55
like our parents always used to talk about the olden days. And Hey,
36:00
John Substackrabino dot substack dot com link in the show notes our site. Sign
36:07
up for your free newsletter, you know, get ready for the Inflation Cafe.
36:10
It's opening shortly and we will be sending out a little swag. I'm
36:16
working on a whip Inflation Now bumper, sticker and pin and we'll be passing
36:22
that out to all everybody who joins the cafe. John, Happy twenty twenty
36:27
four. We'll talk to you there. Thanks, okay, see ya,
36:30
Thanks for listening to Carrie Letz's Financial Survival Network, your solution to today's trying
36:37
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