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Ron Paul Issues DIRE Warning. It’s About to Come CRASHING Down. · Man in America Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Man in America. I'm your host, Seth Hulghouse. So Ron Paul today just dropped a very, very significant article and commentary on where our economy is at. And I we we have to unpack this because he touches on some really, really important issues. He's talking about where where the economy is going, but also the ripple effects of how it's gonna change our society.
• 0:26
  And so to dig in this with me, I'm bringing on Kirk Elliott, PhD. We're gonna be talking about really what this means, what it means for our economy, what it means for the future of our nation and our currency. Welcome, Kirk. So, Kirk, thank you for for being here today. It's always great to have you.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: Oh, my word, it's great to be with you. Thanks for having me on again.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: This is
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: gonna be fun. I look forward to talking about this.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what's good because, you know, it's funny because a couple years ago, I was never someone that followed global finance very much. But now I I just I see that it it's tied into everything. You can't look at geopolitics. You can't look at what's happening with China or Russia. You can't look at what's happening with Biden without understanding what's happening with the global economy and and the global financial systems.
• 1:11
  And so, like, I think that it's kinda how Martin Armstrong uses the financial models to predict war, rise and fall of society. To me, it's almost like a as close as we get to kinda having you know, reading the tea leaves of understanding what's coming in the future by looking at what's happening economically.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: No. I I agree. Because there are certain things, like, when we're looking even at reports that come out every week, right? Some of them are leading indicators of of what we're expecting in the economy moving forward. Some of them just look at the past.
• 1:44
  But but yeah, whenever we can get like what the Fed is doing today, right, in raising rates, they raise rates another half of a point. Right. So so when you look at that kind of stuff, it's like, well, Okay, that's today. But moving forward, what does that mean? It means they are going to have these higher rates which keep compounding on top of each other.
• 2:08
  People are going to spend less. They're going to be living even closer to the margin every month. And so as we start to see some of this stuff unravel, what comes with it is a lot of mayhem and really economic imbalances that are going to be difficult to overcome. And it reminds me, Seth, of the late seventies all over again, which led to the high interest rates in the eighties to slow down the inflation train, the eruptions that that caused, the global economic slowdown. Because in today's world, everything's interconnected.
• 2:45
  Right? We've got this globalized economy. And what happens here is gonna impact Germany. What happens in Germany is gonna impact Brazil and in Japan and everything else. So these things that we're talking about are incredibly important.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely. So how about I'm gonna go and bring up the article, and I will I it's fair. I tried to highlight the key parts of it, but it was like the entire thing is key. So I'm gonna read through this. So, you know, bear with me, because it's not too long an article.
• 3:11
  Maybe it's, you know, six or seven paragraphs. But this is such an important and dense article. So this is the article now. It was published through Ron Paul's Institute for Peace and Prosperity, but then Zero Hedge republished. This is their top article on their website.
• 3:24
  So here we okay. So Ron Paul, the mother of all economic crises will lead to social unrest and violence. So he says, Noreal Roubini, a former adviser to the International Monetary Fund and member of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisors, was one of the few mainstream economists to predict the collapse of the housing bubble. Now Roubini is warning that the staggering amounts of debt held by individuals, businesses, and the government will soon lead to, quote, the mother of pardon me, of all economic crises. Rubini probably blames the creation of a debt based economy on the near or at zero interest rate and quantitative easing policies pursued by the Federal Reserve and other central banks.
• 4:10
  The inevitable result of the zero interest and quantitative easing policies is price inflation wreaking havoc on the American people. The Fed has been trying to eliminate price inflation with a series of interest rate increases. So far, these rate increases have not significantly reduced price inflation. This is because rates remain at historic lows. Yet the rate increases have had negative economic effects effects, including a decline in the demand for new homes.
• 4:38
  Increasing interest rates make it impossible for many middle and working class Americans to afford a monthly mortgage payment for even a relatively inexpensive home. The main reason the Fed cannot raise rates to anywhere near why they would be in a anywhere near what they would be in a free market is the effect it would have on the federal government's ability to manage its debt. So this is this is a really key point here he's making. Okay. He says according to the congressional budget office, interest on the national debt is already on track to consume 40% of the federal budget by 2052 and will surpass defense spending by 2029.
• 5:20
  A small interest rate increase can raise yearly federal debt interest rate payments by many billions of dollars, increasing the amount of federal budget devoted to solely servicing the debt. The federal government's fiscal picture is made worse by the fact that the Social Security Trust Fund will begin to run deaths deficits by 2035, while the Medicare Trust Fund will run deficits by 2028. The looming bankruptcy of the two major entitlement programs combined with the unwillingness of most in Congress to reduce either welfare or war warfare spending puts the Fed in a bind. If it raises rates to the levels needed to really combat price inflation, the increase in interest payments will impose hardships on individuals and businesses as well as raise federal interest payments to unsustainable levels. This will cause a major economic crisis, including a government default on its debt, causing a rejection of the dollar's world reserve currency status.
• 6:19
  Also, if the Fed continues to facilitate federal deficits by monetizing the debt, the result will be an economic crisis caused by a collapse in the dollar's value and a rejection of the dollar's World Reserve status. There's one more paragraph down here. The crisis will lead to social unrest and violence as well as increased popularity of authoritarian movements on both left and the right. This will lead government crackdowns on civil civil liberties and increased government control of our economy. The only bright spot is this crisis will also fuel interest in the idea of liberty, and could even help bring about a return to a limited constitutional government, free markets, individual liberty, and a foreign policy of peaceful trade with all.
• 7:03
  Those of us who know the truth have two responsibilities. The first is to make the unnecessary plans to ensure our families can survive the forthcoming turmoil. The second is to do all we can to introduce as many people as possible to the ideas of liberty. So it's a lot to unpack there. So, you know, I guess I'll kind of jump in.
• 7:26
  And so am I correct in the kind of piecing this together? Because again, as I mentioned, I haven't been studying, you know, finance and, you know, the big economy stuff most of my adult life. Really, it's been really been the past five years I've really taken much more of an interest in it. And so the picture I'm getting here is that we know that the government and the Fed, they keep printing more and more money, and that money gets loaned to our government. It's like, well, how are we how are we spending all this money on Ukraine, all this money on welfare programs, has to come from somewhere.
• 7:53
  But that debt that the government holds, right, that we've borrowed has an interest rate. And so as these when interest rates are near zero, it means that we can keep printing unlimited money because it's almost like you have a credit card with no limit and no interest rate. So it's literally free money for infinity. But now that the inflation's got away from the rising of the amount of money in the system, you know, through the nonstop printing, typically, like you mentioned at the beginning of the show, they had to really jack up interest rates to bring down inflation, right, to kinda take control of that. Whereas now, what they're saying is that basically, if they if if they raise interest rates too much, it's literally gonna collapse governments and collapse currencies because the US government won't be able to service the debt.
• 8:43
  And they're saying that by I think that by 2059, I think it'll be 40% of the federal budget would just be paying out interest rates. So this is I know. I found this article to be really, really enlightening. But is it really this kind of Dan if you do, Dan if you don't situation that we're in?
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: It is. So okay. So you look at our federal debt right now. It's about 32,000,000,000,000. Right?
• 9:10
  So what is the interest? I mean, can just look at the federal budget of The United States. Go to summary table S2. And what is the net interest that we're paying? It's about $400,000,000,000 a year.
• 9:25
  So that's at about 2.08% interest is what we're paying on our national debt. So now let's just say that was earlier in the year. Interest rates have gone from the federal funds rate zero to a quarter of a percent, like you said, close to zero, right? The money was about free or at 2.08. But now the federal funds rate as of today is about four and a half percent because the Fed just raised rates another half a point.
• 9:58
  So look at that increase that we've seen in interest rates over the last eleven months. It's been astronomical, which has made mortgage rates more than double over that time span. So what does that mean for the federal government? Well, what used to be 400,000,000,000, if rates double, goes to 800,000,000,000. Well, what if what if rates go from 2% to 44% to 6%?
• 10:26
  It's another 400,000,000,000. Right. So so now we're up to about 1,200,000,000,000.0. Right. And that's only if rates get to 6% on the federal funds rate.
• 10:36
  Right. So you're seeing every 2% increase in interest rates should add about 400,000,000,000 a year to the interest only payment. So here's here's what's wacky about all of this and why this is such a great article that Ron Pauls Foundation wrote. So remember back to the early 1980s, interest rates were 18 to 20%.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah. My my parents telling me, like, the home they bought in the eighties, I think that they paid eight then 8% or sorry, 18% interest rate on it.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And that's if you had good credit. Right? So imagine if you had bad credit. So really, the federal funds rate at the time was about 14 and something.
• 11:21
  So if we get back to those times again, which I don't see why we wouldn't, Seth. I mean, this article is about the mother of all debt crisis. Right? Well, we saw in 02/2009, we saw in February, we saw some pretty extreme type conditions. Right?
• 11:41
  But yet not as bad as what we're seeing today. We saw in the late seventies stagflation that led to 18% interest rate on a thirty year mortgage. This is worse than what we had back then. Right? So so here's where as we look at this, what if we were to get back to 18% to 20% interest?
• 12:02
  That article said we're fastly approaching 40% of our federal revenues could be towards debt service. Well, if we get to 18 to 20%, it's more than 100 of everything that we bring in are just tax revenues, just on interest payments. What about defense? What about welfare and entitlement programs? What about infrastructure?
• 12:25
  What about educate what about I mean, you could add up all these what about what about what about there's not there's nothing left. If we get to 18% interest again, well, that would make the debt service more than 100% of everything that we bring in in federal tax revenues. See, this is where debt is the Achilles heel of any economy. And we've got it at the consumer level, the municipal level, the state level, the federal level, the corporate level, everything. We're in debt up to rivals.
• 12:58
  The stock market is where it's at today because of debt. It was debt stimulus that's kept it propped up. The bond market is all debt from the jump. That's what it is. It's issuance of debt.
• 13:13
  So when we're seeing this stuff play out, it's truly a dire situation because how once you start paying people entitlements benefits, it's very difficult to take it back.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Why? Because they become accustomed to it. If you take it back, who makes the policies? Politicians.
• 13:41
  If a politician takes something away that they've already given, they're not going to get voted for again. Right? So there's this reluctance for politicians to ever take anything away once it's been given. But so how what do they do? They they just don't take it away.
• 13:56
  They just go to the printing press to keep printing their way out of it, which makes the inflation scenario even worse. So here's the issue, Seth. We've got municipal governments, state governments, the federal government, individuals, corporate America, everybody's in debt up to its eyeballs. Right? So when you raise rates to slow down the inflation that they're creating by printing money out of thin air, it actually amplifies the problem.
• 14:25
  It doesn't fix it. Right? So so as as rates continue to increase, that debt service just on the federal debt ultimately will become if we get to 18% again, gets to a point where it's like, oh my word, we're at 100% of everything we bring in goes just towards debt service. You can't run the country on zero. Right?
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: That's that's kinda like the definition of bankrupt there. It's almost like, let's just say I went and got a credit card, and I I put on a hundred thousand dollars in that credit card, and say I make a hundred thousand dollars a year, hypothetically. Okay? So I borrow so maybe at the first year, the credit card, I'm like, you know, paying 10%. So I'm paying, you know, $10,000 a year to service that credit card.
• 15:06
  But it's almost like getting to a point where my annual payment for the credit card is, say, a hundred and $50,000. Yeah. I've only borrowed a hundred thousand dollars on the actual credit card. And that, like and so the annual is is more than my salary. So it's like, the only option is a, I can try to maybe get more credit.
• 15:28
  So say, okay, let's increase a credit card to $200,000. Right? B, I can try to make more money. You can't really you can't create more federal budget out of thin air. Right?
• 15:38
  Or c, I I filed bankruptcy. Right? Because there's no other option. So is is it kind of like our government is in that place of some teenager that got a credit card and just blew through everything and wasn't responsible. And now they're like, they basically had to just go bankrupt.
• 15:53
  Is that where we're at?
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: Yes, but no. So absolutely yes. What you just said, absolutely yes. But it's actually worse than that because you don't we don't have to get to the point where debt service equals our total income for us to have problems because over 80% of everything that we bring in goes towards entitlements. This actually is going to 100% confirm Ron Paul's article here.
• 16:22
  Right. So going over 80% of everything we bring in goes towards welfare entitlements, women, infant, children programs, Medicare, Medicaid, all of that stuff. And our debt service starts to become to a point where even if we're 40%, not even 100%,
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: if we're still 20% over, right?
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: It's still 20% over because over 80% of everything we go towards is handouts. And you can't pull those back. So you're going to have civil unrest. You're going to have civil unrest and riots and protests if interest rates equal basically 20%. Right?
• 17:04
  Because still, then you have entitlements and you have debt service. Well, what about the defense? What about infrastructure? What about roads? What about police?
• 17:16
  What about it's like, oh my word. So really, we're at this point of critical mass already that's unsustainable. It doesn't have to get very far for this to happen what Ron Paul was talking about. But Okay. So you add to that We're just talking about the debt side.
• 17:35
  What about the income side? Right? What about people are making less? So I just read a report three or four days ago that inflation is 7.1%. Right.
• 17:47
  And they're bragging about how it's coming down. Right. They're they're working. I mean, the mainstream media is just insane because they're saying, look, Biden's policies are fixing inflation that's coming down. It's like, okay, that's bogus numbers.
• 18:01
  They're cooked. I mean, they're fabricating them because just three days prior, the wholesale prices went up by half a percent. So let's let's play out this math. It doesn't work. So if the cost of manufacturing something went up half a percent, well, then the cost of retail should go up half a percent, too, because are retailers just going to squeeze their margins and not make any money?
• 18:25
  No. It's going to go up with it. So one of these numbers is wrong. The one I would say is wrong is the one that they report to the public, which says, hey, inflation is coming down. But it's not.
• 18:38
  Right? So you've got people that are being pinched and squeezed and can't afford to live and their food prices and energy prices are going through the roof. So they can't feed their they can't really pay their rent. They can't pay their mortgage because prices are going up and wages are coming down. Because here's the the reality of it.
• 19:00
  If inflation's at 7.1% and wages went up 7.1%, what's the net effect of inflation? Zero. Exactly. You wouldn't even know there was inflation if your wages kept up with it. What if your wages went up 6% while inflation was 7.1?
• 19:20
  It's like, okay, it's like a 1.1% difference. Right? It's like, okay, this is it's getting tighter. Right. But but the reality is wages didn't go up anything.
• 19:30
  They came down 0.9%. So you add 7.1% inflation minus 0.9% wages. That's an 8% difference. So what that means is it's like everyone getting almost a 10% you know, salary cut. Right?
• 19:47
  It's like, all right, you made $100. Now you're going to make 90 you're going to make 91,000. Right? We're just taking all this money out of out of your wages. Well, if people are already living at the margin, they're going to have to borrow.
• 20:00
  Right? Well, they can't afford to borrow because rates are going up and they're probably tapped out on their credit lines. See, this is where the civil unrest starts to happen.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: Here's Kirk, I'll show you really quickly. So this is something I just posted on Telegram. I think it was this morning. This is from Jack Sobiak. He put he put this out right here saying actually, is yesterday.
• 20:20
  Another month of uncomfortably high inflation. So here they say that they're telling us that the overall CPI is 7.1%, yet gas is up 10%, fuel oil is up 65%, electricity 13%, groceries 12%, chicken 12, milk 14, eggs 49%, almost a 50% increase in the cost of eggs, 15% bread, 16 potatoes, airline 36%, yet your real average earnings are down 1.9%. Like, like, how can they possibly try to tell us that overall consumer price index is up only 7%, yet everything like, if I had to average that, I'd probably say the average is closer to 30%. And if you take this on top of what we talked about, which in the article where, you know, he makes the point, it's not just the government that's in debt like this. It's the individuals.
• 21:13
  And I I saw some charts recently showing the amount of household debt. It's at record high levels. People are living off of credit cards now. And so you have the interest rates that the Fed's raising is also gonna affect interest rates of the loans that people are getting, the auto loans, everything. So the whole thing is just looks like it's spiraling out of control.
• 21:32
  And like, is that what you're saying? It's this only ends in civil unrest.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: It it it has to. And see, so your estimate there of about 30%. So this is what I did my dissertation on, one of them. And it's like I developed a new methodology for measuring inflation. It has us at 7.1% CPI, which is what that number said, should give us true inflation of around 24%.
• 21:57
  So that's really where we're at, those numbers would justify it. But here's something a little bit lot a bit wonky. Okay. Inflation's at 7.1%. We'll just use their numbers.
• 22:10
  Right? Okay. So what is gross domestic product? Gross domestic product is the total monetary or market value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country's borders. Right?
• 22:22
  So the number that came out this morning that everyone's bragging about is, oh, gross domestic product went up a little bit. It's at 3.2% growth. Okay. This is ugly math. Right?
• 22:34
  So they're bragging about it, how they think that this is great. But if it's the if it's the sum of all products and all these products are going up in price, average 7.1% inflation and GDP is 3.2%.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: It's negative.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: That means means negative. That means the economy, 7.1 to 3.2 is is about 40% less. That means the economy actually contracted by about 40%. If inflation's at 7.1%, GDP is at 3.2%, that's about a 4% difference. On 7.2 that's about a it's down literally over 40%.
• 23:15
  See, if you wanted GDP to actually measure something that's real, it would have to grow as much as inflation if it's the sum total of all finished goods. Right? And inflation is 7.1 Something is really, really wrong with our economy. And then when you add the debt to that, when you add the prices of all those things together and people are living at the margin, there will be civil unrest. Then Let's
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: say you add in the BRICS nations. You add in China and Russia. That's a whole like, even if if they weren't coming after us economically, which with with a very open plan to collapse our dollar and to collapse the Western financial system because it was weaponized against Russia for Ukraine. Right? And this is also part of a longer term plan for them anyway.
• 24:02
  Even without them interfering, we're already spiraling out of control. And to me, it looks like something that's impossible to fix. But then you add in the fact that we have two of the most powerful nations on earth that have made it their goal to destroy the US dollar and collapse our economy. It's like, like, we're I just, you know, I mean, there's always a silver lining. But like, to me, I don't really see much of a way out of fixing our dollar.
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: Well and they're doing it wrong. I mean, seriously. What so what did the what did the g seven nations and Biden just do last week? They put a cap on Russian oil of $60 a barrel. Okay.
• 24:44
  Why? And so, Okay, Russia is part of the BRICS nation. They're the art in BRICS. Right? You've got China.
• 24:51
  You've got South Africa. You've got India. You've got Brazil. So but now Saudi Arabia is part of this mix too. Saudi Arabia just told China Two Weeks ago, it's like you're our number one trading partner in purchasing oil.
• 25:10
  You're the largest manufacturer in the world. We don't want you to pay for anything in U. S. Dollars anymore. So to nail in the coffin to the petrodollar.
• 25:17
  Right? Detracts from our demand. So if Russia and Saudi Arabia are part of the BRICS nations and and we just put a $60 cap on oil, why would Russia sell us any oil when they've got China and everybody else that they can sell to at regular prices? Right? So so here's the thing.
• 25:37
  There's gonna be a lack of supply. And what the g seven nations just did with Biden is they're going to jack up the price of oil so much because of limited supply. Russia's not gonna sell it to us or to Europe for $60 a barrel when they don't have to. Right? Because they've got these other trading partners now in their own coalition of BRICS nations.
• 25:59
  So a stupid government policy that's actually going to destroy things and make the inflationary pressures even worse. Again, amplifying Ron Paul's article here because that is going to bring civil unrest. Well, what else is going to be in there that he didn't actually really mention? That is banks are making the availability of money really tight. So people can't get loans.
• 26:28
  A, because interest rates have gone through the roof, but, B, they're capital strapped. Right? This is all a function of what the Fed did last year, last July, when they took 2 and a half trillion dollars with a reverse repo mechanism, meaning they took 2 and a half trillion dollars of liquidity out of The US banking system. So banks no longer have capital. What else did they do?
• 26:52
  They put a 0% reserve requirement on. So normally, if you have a deposit at, call it any bank, let's call it Chase. Could be any bank, though. You put $100 in your checking account. They lend out 90 of it.
• 27:08
  If it's a 10% reserve requirement and there's only $10 left on hand And they figure, okay, this is okay. Not everyone's coming in to get their money all at once anyways. In July of last year, the reserve requirement went to zero. So banks no longer have to have any capital on hand. If you go in, it's ripe for a run on the banks.
• 27:27
  They don't have capital. People need it. They can't get it. And so then what are you going to have? You're going have run on the banks.
• 27:33
  That's civil unrest. You've got food prices going through the roof. What was the cause of the Arab Spring? Remember back maybe a decade ago? I can't even remember.
• 27:43
  It was it was a while ago when when there was a food crisis. Foodflation went through the roof and being hangry is a real thing. Right. So you had all these terrorist nations that were starting to go haywire and there were uprisings all over the world. And the Arab Spring was a function, the byproduct of food inflation.
• 28:06
  Right. We've got that. We've got Russia now withholding heating oil and natural gas from Europe. Right? It's like, oh, boy.
• 28:18
  Now we've got people that are going to be freezing out in winter months. More cause for civil unrest. I'm not just talking about here in this country. This is a global thing. And when you talk to Martin Armstrong, right, what is it?
• 28:33
  We are in a war cycle right now. Right. And this is all a function of social unrest, civil unrest, inflationary prices, food problems and food shortages. You look at this and you think, oh my word, this is not going to be good. But this all started from our conversation of the national debt and interest rates squeezing us out of being able to use the money for anything else.
• 29:01
  Right? And so you look at it on the outset and it's like, this does not look good. But how can I have a smile on my face? Right? How?
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I wanna get to that. I wanna bring up the article one more time. Because he let's see. Let me make sure if I have it here.
• 29:18
  Let's see if they pulled up really quickly. Go ahead and go ahead and tell us why you're smiling while I pull the article back up.
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: Oh, so so for every crisis, there's an opportunity, right? You just have to know where to look. Right? So so we've got okay. We're gonna play this out in two separate ways.
• 29:37
  Let's let's look at what the the enemy camp is wanting to do, the globalist. Right? So you've got the banking system that's in turmoil. You've got all these inflationary pressures, higher interest rates, potential social disarray. So what are they doing?
• 29:55
  Right. So I want to read you a quote from Jerome Powell. I mean, he just said this. So he said, there is no sense that inflation is coming down. Okay.
• 30:07
  He just said there's no sense that inflation is coming down. This despite eight months of aggressive interest rate hikes and quantitative tightening. So what he's saying is even though we've been raising rates to slow down inflation, it's not coming down. So therefore, we're going to stay the course until the job is done, meaning they're going to keep raising rates indefinitely until inflation goes away. Okay.
• 30:30
  Here's where it gets a little bit weird. What is inflation? Inflation is simply too much money chasing too few goods. Right? They're printing all this money and it devalues it.
• 30:40
  And so it takes more of that devalued currency to buy anything. So what the tools that the Fed has to fight inflation are raise the interest rates or decrease the money supply. Those are the two tools that they have. They're not going to decrease the money supply because they they need stimulus money to fund everything because they have so much stuff that they want to pay for. And if you if you lower interest rates, it's going to bring inflation back.
• 31:11
  You raise interest rates too much, it's going to kill the economy. Right? So they're pretending to fix inflation by raising rates. However, here's the big however. They're talking about in economics, you have demand and supply.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: So what the Fed does is on the demand side of the equation, the demand for money. You make a lot of it or you have a little bit of it. Inflation comes mostly from food and energy. That's on the supply side. So they can't they don't have tools to impact the supply side.
• 31:45
  Why do we have lack of supply? Why do we have supply chain disruptions? That comes from a couple years of COVID and people not working. Some
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: the war happening somewhere. Right?
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: You start to connect some of these dots. This goes way back, I think, to COVID ruining the supply chain. Inventories are lacking. Stuff isn't available. Can't manufacture microchips, all this stuff.
• 32:12
  Now you've got a monetary crisis and their banks have no liquidity. All of this is working together towards what? Central bank digital currency that we're seeing right now. It's like, things are so bad. We've got these crisis.
• 32:26
  We've got civil unrest. We've got social unrest. Everything that Ron Paul is talking about. How about we just shut everything down for a few days? Come back.
• 32:34
  Let's let's bring in central bank digital currency. Right? So I'm I'm just playing out a potential story. Right? Because I don't see how these dots can connect any other way.
• 32:44
  So what is China doing? Okay. China already has well, in India, they already have central bank digital currency. China's been testing it since the Olympics. And what did they just say?
• 32:56
  They just said they wanna have central bank digital currency that's backed by gold. Okay. Don't let that trick you. Right? Just because it's backed by gold doesn't mean CBDC is backed by gold is a good thing because central bank digital currency is all about reducing people's freedom.
• 33:15
  It's about taking away privacy out of every transaction. It's all about people control. But they're enticing people into their system by saying our currency is backed by gold because all else being equal let's say, Seth, you and you and I are investors, which we are, and we wanted to invest in a currency. Would you want to invest in the US dollar or the British pound? It's just fiat based currency where all they have to do is press the button on the printing press and prints more of it and it's worthless?
• 33:43
  No. How about a currency that's backed by gold that's like, oh, that sounds enticing. That sounds amazing. Right? It does unless it's a central bank digital currency because all they're doing is dangling this carrot out there saying, hey.
• 33:56
  Invest in our currency. Invest in our currency. It's backed by gold, which is ultimately a great thing until it's you're pulling people into a system where everything is tracked. There is no privacy. Right?
• 34:07
  And then they can shut off your ability to buy or sell at the flip of a switch because there's there's clarity of all those transactions. See what Russia and China and the BRICS nations are doing. And to validate that, you've got Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, United Arab Emirates. A lot of these Central Asian countries are buying gold, not by the ounce, not by the pound, by the ton. Yeah.
• 34:38
  Literally, they're buying gold by the ton. And to what end? Are they part of the BRICS nations? I would say, no, not yet. But they're right along that Central Asian corridor, and they will be.
• 34:48
  That would that is my guess. They're agriculture producing nations, oil producing nations. They're buying their central banks are buying gold by the ton. They're going into the BRICS nations, and they are trying to dominate the Western financial system in London and in New York, and they're doing a really good job at it, Seth. And I hate to say that because I don't want them to win.
• 35:11
  I want us to win. But you know what they're doing is they're killing a financial system that needs to be killed. Right. And we need sound currency. We need sound money.
• 35:22
  We need tangible back money. They're doing it well. We are not. So here's how I see this playing out. They're going to take a lot of demand away from the US dollar, away from the European Union, away from the euro.
• 35:36
  Right? Because they have a currency that's backed by gold. Then what are they forcing us to do? Is print without discretion to inflate or die. And how are they gonna try to slow down that inflation?
• 35:48
  By raising rates. Because what Jerome Powell just said is inflation is the worst thing facing America, and we're going to keep raising rates until it goes away. But their exact policies are creating inflation. I don't see this ending very well in the near future. So why am I smiling?
• 36:07
  What's China doing? What is Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, United Arab Emirates? What are the billionaires doing? They're buying gold. Right?
• 36:14
  They're buying a tangible asset that goes up with inflation. You know what? So are we. Because in the last thirteen weeks, basically three months, silver is now up 35.8%.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: Incredible.
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: In three months. It's amazing. That's why I can have a smile on my face because you can protect yourself against all this nonsense.
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: And that's it's funny because I wanna bring that up in the article. Kind of there is it seemed that there is this silver lining in what he's saying here, where he says the only bright spot is that this crisis will also fuel interest in the ideas of liberty and could even help bring about a return to a limited constitutional government, free markets, individual liberty and a foreign policy of peaceful trade at all, with all. Those of us who know the truth have two responsibilities. The first is to make the necessary plans to ensure our families can survive the forthcoming turmoil. The second is to basically spread this information.
• 37:15
  And so this is why that sentence right there, make the necessary plans to ensure our families can survive the forthcoming turmoil. You know, that's why for me, prepping is a big thing. Now, obviously, I know you're specifically gold and silver. That's a key part of that, right? Because you see it's attacking the financial system.
• 37:32
  But this is why I tell folks, look, like, you know, we invested a lot to build a chicken coop. We bought chickens. We bought a bunch of feed. Well, because I knew the egg prices are gonna keep going up. Right?
• 37:42
  And so now my eggs are costing me almost nothing compared to what people are paying. And that, you know, and I've got free range organic chickens. They're very happy chickens. Right? They give us beautiful eggs.
• 37:54
  And so this is again why we need to take the steps to protect our families. So you know, getting our foods, our food in order, getting out of the debts if we can, if we're if we're in particular debts or high interest debts that are eating away at us, getting our water secured, our home secured, you know, investing not only in gold, silver, but also brass in case things do reach that, you know, tumultuous place where we have to, you know, protect our family. God forbid, I really don't want that to go that way. But I'd rather be the one that's secure and safe than than not. Because this is this is where we're at in history.
• 38:29
  And that's the thing is when I look at when I take a step back, and I look at this entire narrative, you look at the narrative of the conversation you've had just had, like, to me, there's no undoing this. Like, this system has to collapse. It has to fail, and something new will have to emerge on the other side.
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: I couldn't agree more. And never let a good crisis go to waste. Right? So they're using this crisis to actually bring in something that literally six months ago nobody would have wanted. Still probably nobody wants it now.
• 39:05
  But when everything collapses, it's like, oh, that sounds like a good idea. Just bring us back prosperity, bring us back safety, bring us back financial peace, bring us back lower prices. We need food. We need energy. I mean, people are either faced with tyranny, they have tyranny, right?
• 39:26
  They will give up their peace. They will give up their freedoms in exchange for peace and security when they have tyranny. Right? It's like, but boy, what comes with that when they give up their freedoms is even more tyranny.
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: Exactly. It's always how
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: it works. It's like this. What they think that they want, they don't really want. But yet things are going to get so bad that people will be willing to give up their freedoms in exchange for anything. This is how Hitler got elected.
• 39:54
  You know, Hitler, one of the worst dictators in the history of the world, didn't hold a gun to people's heads and say, vote for me or else. He just said, hey, I'm I'm I'm bringing hope and change. We're going to fix this hyperinflation in Weimar Republic, Germany. We're going to get us out of this and vote for me. It's like, oh, okay.
• 40:12
  Well, how are you going to do it? I'll show you later. Right? I mean, they just they just voted for him.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So, Kirk, I was saying, are you seeing with with this shift time? I know we're kind of towards the end here, and we always go over our original estimates, which is always probably a good sign. Are you seeing a lot more individuals and families and people that you work with shifting their money away from the dollar based, you know, currency system, away from the stock market, away from IRAs, into precious metals and silver, you know, silver and gold?
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: I've been doing this for twenty seven years, Seth. I have never seen this kind of activity, ever, ever. I mean, 2022 was the busiest year ever as people are seeing the writing on the wall. They're feeling it. Right?
• 41:04
  They're not just seeing it, but they're they're feeling it in their wallets. They're they're sensing that something is wrong. And it could be that, you know, you've got political turmoil. You've got everybody that's that's hating everybody else for for breathing wrong or what I mean. Literally, very polarized nation.
• 41:19
  You've got things that that people used to put their faith and trust in. Stock market down 29%. Oh, cryptocurrency, the new stock market rate or the the second largest exchange in the world just went belly up and, you know, turned out to be the biggest Ponzi scheme in the history of the world. Right? So people are losing faith and confidence in things.
• 41:39
  They're wanting something that's real. They're wanting truth. They're seeking transparency and accountability. That's what precious metals bring to the table. And not only that, not only asset preservation and safety, but seriously massive growth.
• 41:58
  And so as we see this unfolding, as busy as we've been in 2022, '20 '20 '3 I think is going to blow the roof off the place. I think as things continue to unravel, energy prices go through the roof, gold and silver go through the roof, stock market continues to to come down, the bond market will get shellacked as interest rates continue to rise because that's what Jerome Powell said that they were going to do.
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: Man. So folks, go get your MyPillow products today.