Latest / Man in America Podcast / A Contagion of Tyrannical Govt.'s Being Overthrown is Coming w/ Martin Armstrong

Transcript

A Contagion of Tyrannical Govt.'s Being Overthrown is Coming w/ Martin Armstrong · Man in America Podcast

• 0:00
  Seth Holehouse: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Man in America. I'm your host, Seth Holehouse. If you look around, there's a lot of crazy stuff happening right now, whether it's the bridge collapse, which is hugely significant and a lot of suspicious stuff surrounding that. The shooting in Moscow, which, again, very significant. Also, a lot of very suspicious stuff indicating some bad actors potentially within our own government, within London, etcetera.
• 0:23
  This is and this is just the beginning. We're just really entering into the spring of twenty twenty four, and we haven't even really got into the craziness that comes around the election. So a lot of questions that I have right now is what's the next twelve months look like? How does the bridge attack relate to Moscow? Is there any tie there?
• 0:41
  What's behind what's happening with NATO and Russia and Ukraine? I mean, there's just there's so much happening. And so joining us today to help make sense of this is Martin Armstrong, someone who I've had on plenty of times before, and he's the kind of person when he talks, I listen because he's got such a wealth of knowledge. And so we'll be going into that, but also looking at what he sees next, what he sees about this civilization, and what comes next. So, folks, it's gonna be a very fascinating interview, so please enjoy.
• 1:13
  Martin, it's always a pleasure and an honor to have you on the show, so thank you so much for being here with us today.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Well, thanks for inviting me. It's always a pleasure to to actually be on your show.
• 1:25
  Seth Holehouse: That's good to hear. It means a lot coming.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: You're one of the better, you know, better people out there, I think.
• 1:30
  Seth Holehouse: Thank you. Thank you. So you're someone I often look to to understand really by big picture financial news and big picture geopolitics and the intersection of those. And so what we have right now, I'd say, are two pretty key events that I think will shape a lot of geopolitics specifically. The bridge collapse in Baltimore, which is huge, and you've got a post on your website talking about what it means for supply chain, etcetera.
• 2:03
  And this attack in Moscow, which given your background and understanding, I what I think is you have one of the best understandings of what's actually happening in Russia and Ukraine. You spent a lot of time over there. You you know people on the inside. So between these two events, so I'll I'll hand it over to you. Which one do you wanna focus on first, and what do you make of it?
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: Well, I think the Russian one is a deliberate act. Virtually every everybody I know that has any, you know, background in geopolitics. I mean, they knew within the first, you know, thirty minutes at max that this was not an Islamic attack. When you have these Islamic terrorist types attacks, they die in those attacks. All right.
• 3:06
  It's part of a religious holy war thing, and they think all their sins are forgiven. Alright? But more importantly than even that, is Putin basically had to supported Iran. So why would they then suddenly attack the people that are supporting? That makes no sense.
• 3:29
  And then you even take like Nikki Haley. When Hamas went into Israel, she had the audacity to say, oh, well, that was a birthday present for Putin because October 7 is his birthday. And then all of a sudden, oh, they're now attacking Russia? No. And, I mean, these basically, what's going on is that they Putin, you know, won the election to their dismay, and they just don't understand Russia at all.
• 4:10
  But when Yeltsin turned to to Putin, he did so because the West was trying to take over Russia with the oligarchs. And on the other side, there were the old hardline USSR Communists who had filed a motion for impeachment to try and get rid of them on corruption. And so then they would have taken the country back to USSR. And that's why Yeltsin turned to Putin because he was neither camped. And and that's why it's not propaganda, but his popularity was like 80%.
• 4:52
  Because the Russian people felt, you know, they didn't want to go back to communism. They don't like the oligarch. And it was like, thank God we got somebody who's not going to be in the middle. And so they don't like the fact that they lost trying to take over Russia with the whole oligarch thing. And so you keep up this propaganda that, oh, Russia wants to take Europe or whatever.
• 5:26
  I mean, that's just total nonsense. I mean, that was Khrushchev. Alright. We will bury you and all that. That was when they were communists.
• 5:36
  And then to them, it was almost a religious, you know, economic policy. You know? We're gonna spread Marxism to the world. As far as neocons said, oh, really? Well, we're gonna spread democracy to the world.
• 5:49
  And so that's where all this neocon stuff even really began from there. But, you know, we have to understand what's you know, when Putin did the interview with Tucker, I listened to it very carefully. And since I was in the middle of a lot of that stuff, he told the truth. The book I put out, The Plot to Seize Russia, about the whole oligarchs and everything else, I got ahold of the declassified documents from the Clinton administration. And like on page three, I put the first one there.
• 6:28
  NATO to Russia. Please join. You know? Granted this stuff isn't in the history books and all people were, oh, you know, NATO never invited Russia, blah blah blah, and all this other kind of stuff. Sorry.
• 6:42
  You know, I got the documents that said, you know, that is all true. But, you know, what's happening now is that Putin will be inaugurated in on May 7. What happened to be the very turning point on our model that was published back in '79. So not too thrilled about it being the exact day. But anyhow, doing this, these people are into regime change.
• 7:20
  And they really think, like, the whole sanctions and everything that if you punish the Russian people, they'll overthrow their government. And it's not gonna happen. Alright? This they've been using this theory, you know, all the time, and it has never worked once. In The Middle East, I mean, I knew Bill Kristol.
• 7:43
  He wrote the book to support going into Iraq. And the whole theory, and I would argue with him, was, oh, if we replace these dictators and bring in democracy, that will create peace. And I said, sorry. These people don't, you know, it's a different culture. You can't judge everybody by yourself.
• 8:04
  So unfortunately, this Moscow attack was along those lines. And Russia has come out and said they know who did it, and it's was supported by The US and Britain, which is absolutely correct.
• 8:22
  Seth Holehouse: So do you think it was Yeah.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: These guys British and
• 8:24
  Seth Holehouse: American intelligence behind it? Like, in
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: the Yeah. I mean CIA. It's it's basically primarily the people in the state department. That's why Victoria Newlands, you know, stepped down. She was even bragging.
• 8:44
  Oh, Russia's gonna get a big, you know, surprise. And she's attracted so much attention because she's just a warmonger. And a lot of people are starting to pick up on it. But, you know, she and her whole family, they just hate Russians, period. Why?
• 9:07
  Because she's also Ukrainian. Right? I think it's a bit of a conflict of interest. If you look at all these stories that Russia is about to invade or Russia's weak or something along those lines, all negative issues of Russia, look at the source of who they're quoting. It's ISW, Institute for the Study of War.
• 9:29
  That's Victoria Newland's sister-in-law. Alright? I mean, even the New York Times came out and said, you know, this family has been always manipulating, you know, to to get their own ways on different things. I mean, so unfortunately, a lot of the people in the, you know, the intelligence agencies are also online. And so is NATO.
• 9:56
  And you have to understand it from this perspective. If Russia is not the enemy anymore, then why do you need NATO? You know, I've seen the arguments. How do we remain, you know, relevant, etcetera? They have to keep beating the war drums.
• 10:19
  What they have been afraid of is that the money would be taken from them and sent off to climate change. And then all of a sudden, they all lose their jobs, etcetera. But Russia has no interest in invading and taking Europe. I mean, those are days the old empire building days are gone. China doesn't want to occupy The United States.
• 10:45
  The United States doesn't want to occupy China. I mean, things are like from, you know, the eighteenth century thing. And that was really created by the old physiocrats who said that wealth is agriculture. So the more land you occupied, the richer you became. That's what Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations was a retort to that.
• 11:11
  So a lot of the war drum beating is just, you know, for the sake of war. That's that's about it. But, you know, this attack in Moscow, I'm telling you they deliberately did this praying that that Putin will retaliate, and that's why they didn't even try to cover it up. You know, I mean, anybody can pick up the phone and say, oh, I'm ISIS. I did it, you know.
• 11:45
  That's about it. So, I mean, but they've been trying to get Russia to attack anything in NATO whatsoever so they can justify a full launch. And we had two employees in Ukraine, One in Kyiv and one in in Donetsk, both now in in Berlin. Ukraine's lost about 8,000,000 citizens have fled. This war does not benefit them.
• 12:16
  And a lot of Ukrainians that I mean, now that they're beginning to see that Zelenskyy is basically really a traitor. It came out in the Ukrainian press that when Boris Johnson hopped on the plane and went to go visit, they had a peace deal. And Russia said return to being neutral, as you said, in the in the in all the agreements. And that was gonna be the deal. And Boris Johnson went off and said, no.
• 12:52
  You're not allowed to to have any kind of a peace with Russia. And that made the Ukrainian press. And now a few weeks ago, even Zelenskyy had respond a little bit to it because people are beginning to realize that they don't control their own country. You know? And Zelenskyy was initially elected for peace, and he's done absolutely everything in the opposite direction.
• 13:21
  And they feel that they are just the, you know, the tip of the spear, and nobody cares about Ukraine, and they don't. When after Johnson appeared there, over 500,000 Ukrainians have been killed. That that blood is on his hands, and and no problem. You know, it rolls off their backs. So this Moscow Attack is they didn't even really try to cover it up.
• 13:55
  And it's it's mainly to provoke Putin to get him to do something that will then they can claim he's the aggressor and see, then we go in. But people have to understand. And they killed a whole bunch of civilians, and this is the way war develops. Alright? You can you can Google it.
• 14:22
  The US used the the Lusitania. They were putting in arms, secreting them off to to Britain. And Germany even put an ad in New York paper and said, you do not sail in Lusitania. We're going to sink it. And when they did, oh, they attacked a passenger facility.
• 14:46
  You know? Weapons of mass destruction never happened. You've got McNamara. You can look at his video. He did a book.
• 14:57
  He was the neocon that got us into Vietnam. And before he died, did a video. And he he I think he wanted to clear his conscience. And he said, we were wrong. Russia was never involved.
• 15:09
  It was just a civil war. Johnson, the tapes came out, they said, you know, Vietnamese never attacked us. He says, for all I know, they were shooting at wheels that night. There isn't one single war that somebody hasn't lied about. And that's the real problem.
• 15:29
  I mean, now they just came out the Daily Mail in in London just came out with leaked documents out of Germany. They knew masks didn't work and lockdowns wouldn't work. And they hit it all. That's like the front page of the Daily Mail over in London right now. There isn't anything you can do that with these governments, and it doesn't matter which one you're talking about.
• 15:57
  They never tell the truth.
• 16:00
  Seth Holehouse: And so with with Putin, you know, who's obviously restraining himself from smashing the big red button that enters into World War three. Right? And he's been very calculating. But what is your what is your what is your program? What does your gut also in your analysis tell you?
• 16:16
  I mean, it will it it reach a breaking point where one of these attacks will end up triggering and kicking off World War three? And and what kind of timeline are we are we looking at?
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: The computer has been, you know, projecting May this year and July. And I put out a couple of years ago that my information was then saying back then that they intended to create this World War three before the twenty four election. And this is the way Washington works. They they feel that no president has ever lost an election during war. And they're also very concerned about Donald Trump because if Trump wins, he fires all the neocons.
• 17:14
  He fired John Bolton, who I think would invade Canada to get one Russia, really. Victoria Newland's been in every administration except for his. And I had gone to dinner at Mar A Largo, and that was in March of twenty when he was president. And I was actually impressed because I met many heads of state. But he actually then said he wanted to pull the troops out of Afghanistan, but it was the reason.
• 17:47
  He said he was sick and tired of writing letters to their families that their son died for God and country or whatever. And he said, what are we doing there? They've been fighting over borders for a thousand years. What difference are we going to make? And he's the first world leader ever that I ever,
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: ever
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: heard about any kind of remorse about the people that die on the battlefield. I mean, was good friends with Margaret Thatcher. She never said anything like that about the Falklands War. You know, I think they just accept that people die and that's it and they don't pay attention to it. And that brings me to that Moscow attack.
• 18:31
  They don't care. They really do not care. They're desensitized.
• 18:37
  Seth Holehouse: And how do you make sense of the timing of the Moscow attack that but, you know, pushing things, you know, I I hopefully, from their perspective into war, but also looking at this the the bridge collapse, which which I I wanna hear analysis on that. I mean, what is there a connection between the timing of these two events? Because they're they're two pretty significant events with two major players in the geopolitical field within a very short time.
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: It's hard to say with the with the the bridge. Mainly, what there are a few strange things. One, you know, where were the tugboats? You're doing this in the middle of the night. They usually are escorted out with tugboats.
• 19:22
  Where were they? I don't know. But this ship was also involved in another incident over in in Belgium. So it's it's they had power failure. Okay.
• 19:37
  Fine. You have no backups? I mean, there there were definitely a lot of strange questions to ask. Was it something that that was orchestrated by Russia? I don't think so.
• 19:57
  It may be more of an issue of simply low maintenance, not really caring, etcetera. But I mean, it's just I don't know. It it it's very it's strange. It will definitely affect the economy to some degree. And but I think, I mean, you know, there are some people who have been suggesting that The US actually did it to try and pretend it was a retaliation.
• 20:33
  This is the problem when you get into this situation. The latest polls in Europe show that the you're looking at, you know, the confidence in the European government is down to 30%. Here, know, Gallup poll says down to 28%. I mean, we're talking about people just don't trust government anymore. And I think COVID kind of really pushed everybody over the edge.
• 21:10
  And it just got to be really, really crazy. I would say my computer, which has been remarkable in picking timing. I would be very concerned about what comes in May. It's showing high volatility after that. July statistically tends to be the period where actually worse like to to take place, July and August.
• 21:45
  But this attack in Moscow appears to be an attempt to once again create some sort of regime change to get the people to blame Putin and because he's supposed to be sworn in on May 7. So it's like maybe, you know, if we do something like this, they'll retaliate against Putin, and and you won't get in again. But, honestly, if you just look at the at the people there, all the people who've been threatening nuclear war from the hardline side. The head of Chechnya came out and said they should have nuked Kyiv. And Putin's been the one who says, no.
• 22:33
  We don't wanna go there. But you you have to understand Putin is a historian. All right. And when he was talking about how we got here, etcetera, he is a lover of history. All right.
• 22:51
  And so to him, nuking Kyiv would be kind of like us nuking London. You know, he didn't want to do that. You know, that's that was the original home of the Russians until the Mongols invaded, etcetera. So when he's talking about all this history, people think he's just wasting time or whatever. No.
• 23:18
  And that's him. Okay. So that probably has done more of a restraint on Kyiv than anything. The critics in Russia have been that he thinks, you know, he has not appreciated that he's really in war with The United States and NATO, not Ukraine. That's what they've been saying.
• 23:49
  And they also have been saying that had he just gone in and actually invaded Ukraine like we did to Iraq, this war would have been over in six weeks. And usually what you do in such an invasion, you take out the water supply, the electricity, etcetera. He did none of that, which showed that that it was it was not trying to, you know, absolutely, you know, conquer Ukraine. That was not his objective. But I'm I'm afraid that this was an act, a desperate act, to try and get the people then to rise up against him before May 7.
• 24:38
  And it just does not seem to be the case. But the computer has been showing May as a major turning point for quite some time. The fundamentals just seem to come out with those events. So I would just be very concerned as we go into that May period in early June, because definitely we're starting to look at high volatility at that point in time. And I published some recent charts on, like, the ruble, etcetera.
• 25:19
  The dollar made major highs against the ruble back when the invasion first take you know, you know, took place. It has not been around any since. So all this stuff, all of the sanctions, they have not worked. The markets don't You know, it's you can just look at this, you know, just I look at it from the market's perspective. What are they actually doing and what have they, you know, anticipated?
• 25:49
  And clearly, at this point, I think the new cons are just completely out of control. They got their, you know, their pet, you know, you know, president. He's just basically a hand puppet. And what I mean by that is that think when you look across the board, environmental stuff, geopolitical, economic, it's all going completely crazy. Why?
• 26:27
  Because normally the president in these cabinet meetings, he is typically the referee. So you have each one of these agencies, and they all, compete against each other for their own agenda. And so he's the one that's supposed to run the be the referee between them. And there's nobody there. You know, 40% of his time he's in Delaware.
• 26:58
  All right. So you have these neocons threatening everybody in the world from China to Korea, know, Iran. And that's just their agenda. All right. Then you have the Treasury that's worried that basically if China stops buying the debt, then interest rates are going to go up.
• 27:22
  So you have Yellen jumping on a plane off to China to say, please still buy our bonds. So what are you supposed to do? Say, please buy 100,000,000,000 worth of our debt so we can buy some bullets to shoot you? I mean, there's no coherent policy here. Then you have these environmental people which are just so obsessed with their that's a religion too.
• 27:50
  And I mean, I grew up with gas stoves. I don't think it had any impact on my my health. You know, outlawing gas stoves and all that. I mean, these people have no idea. It's impossible, absolutely impossible to put get rid of fossil fuels.
• 28:15
  Nobody has a gas car. We all have to plug in. The power grid will never support it. And then what do you do for manufacture? I mean, Germany is already going down because they went down this path of green.
• 28:34
  And now even the greens are starting to question what's going on. People are losing their jobs. Germany used to be a major manufacturer. It's declining. I mean, you have to understand what when people start losing their jobs and things of this nature, then you get into civil unrest.
• 28:54
  Alright? And then the other side of this crazy situation that because we don't have a present running referee, then you have all these migrants coming in. And I can tell you that Biden signed, an executive order opening the the border within three hours and walking into that office. Why? I learned this because I had the mandate from China back in 1998 because they knew I knew the Australian government.
• 29:36
  They wanted me to negotiate with them to buy an island or something, you know. And I met there. And I met also with, you know, the Prime Minister, you know, Paul Keating. And everything I kept proposing, the answer was no. No.
• 29:53
  No. And I finally said, look. I've got a blank check here. I can pay off your national debt.
• 30:01
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• 30:25
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• 31:02
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• 31:09
  Speaker 2: Now what is the problem? Is this racist? That's the only thing that I could come up with. You know? And he said, no.
• 31:18
  They would then if they allowed them in, they would vote conservative. And he was a labor government. And the whole thing about keeping, you know, Hong Kong out was that they would change the politics of Australia. And this is what's going on here. It's the same exact thing.
• 31:42
  They're letting all these people in to change the politics of the country because they know that the Democrats are losing. Alright? Their whole policies of of, going after the rich. And then you have Yeltsin, Janet Yellen saying that, oh, they want to bring down audits to $600 So what's the definition of rich? Anybody with a job, basically.
• 32:12
  And, I mean, they're no they're not billionaires. If you took all the money they had, it still doesn't balance the budget for a year. So it's it's you know, they make these wonderful statements and get everybody cheering. And and I mean, I in fact, I was down in Australia when they were passing a law, the luxury tax, and was sold as we're gonna get those rich people with their fur coats, their Ferraris, and their French wines. Everybody cheered.
• 32:44
  They passed it. What was in there? All electrical products. And nobody ever gave me any French wine when I was down there. The only place I ever saw a fur coat was once in a while down in Melbourne, certainly not Sydney.
• 33:00
  And I saw maybe three Ferraris in town because they were already a % taxed to get them in. I mean but it was a great slogan.
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: So
• 33:10
  Seth Holehouse: How do you what do you foresee or as we look ahead to the election this year? Because what I'm seeing is is a couple different scenarios, but one, Biden somehow gets in. Right? The same shenanigans as 2020 and and riots and who knows what else, war, etcetera. He gets in, and I think that then just completely steps on the gas to turn America into Venezuela or Haiti with cannibal gangs running around, whatever it takes to do that.
• 33:43
  Say Trump does get in and say that the polls are overwhelmed, etcetera. I think that we'll see, you know, make the riots of twenty twenty look very mild compared to what because I think they understand that that Trump's second term, as you mentioned, he would be cleaning out a house. He he now, after his first four years, think he he now understands who all the bad actors are. So Oh, yeah. We what do you what do you see happening?
• 34:08
  I mean, like, election, post election, what's America look like even? It's hard to imagine.
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: It well, I can say that what our computer's been projecting is that civil unrest goes off the charts. But it it I don't think it matters who wins. The other side's not gonna accept either way. If Trump loses, they're gonna say, no. It was rigged.
• 34:34
  If if Trump wins, they're gonna say it's rigged. You've you've so successfully divided the country that is so polarized at this stage in the game that I mean, I've seen some studies coming out. It's not just, you know, politics. They're beginning they hate each other. You have Alaska.
• 35:00
  Over a third of the people wanna separate from The United States now. I'm seeing it here in Florida. I'm seeing it in Texas. And, you know, this recent decision from the you know, on Texas, can they arrest illegal aliens and saying no. That's that's the jurisdiction of the federal government.
• 35:24
  Then there is no longer any justification to have The United States. If a state cannot defend itself, then why be part of a union? And I honestly think we're looking at separation either way. It doesn't matter who really wins. We've gotten to that point that let me say, people that trust government is down to 28% anyhow.
• 35:56
  It's we should not be subject to these crazy ideas. I mean, one of the girls that worked for me, you know, just texted me this morning from New York. She's it's getting so bad up here. It's you know, people are getting, you know, robbed and and punched. And and, you know, you're you know, these a number of countries that said, great.
• 36:24
  US is doing this. They've opened their prisons and and sent them here. You have Mexicans that are here that are very upset about this. And and even, you know, they're they're basically voting for Trump. Mainly, you talk to any of them, they said, look, I had to speak English.
• 36:49
  I had to have a career. I had to have something to get in here. What is going on? I saw the same thing with Brexit in London. You had a lot of Indians are there and they all had to have, most of them are involved in medical or whatever, and they had to speak English.
• 37:09
  You want to get a citizenship in Zurich, you have to speak German. I mean, if you don't, you can't get in. Here, we're just look, this is just getting to the point You're destroying our civilization, our culture, everything. And we've had a great run. I mean, basically, you leave the house, not necessarily locked the door before.
• 37:40
  Now you have to lock the door. All right. You've got people on TikTok saying, look, if a house is empty, we should just take it over. And that's what they're doing. They're squatting.
• 37:53
  I mean, what are you going to do? I mean, this is really destroying our country. And I think you're you're looking at the computer's basically saying that The United States will no longer exist after 02/1932. We will be splitting up. And civilization succeeds when everybody benefits.
• 38:22
  When one side says it's, you know, well, we got the power and you're gonna do what I say. That's not civilization. That's a dictatorship. And unfortunately, that's where we're heading. You go to Europe, you see the same thing.
• 38:40
  And the EU tried to force single policies on everybody that's offending different cultures and religions, etcetera. I mean, just look at what Zelenskyy has done deliberately to create unrest. He's outlawed them speaking Russian, and he's outlawed Eastern Orthodox religion. Christmas now must be December 25. I mean, can you imagine in Canada if they outlawed French?
• 39:14
  I think you're gonna see a civil war. What if The United States said you can no longer speak Spanish? I mean, you don't do these kinds of things. It's certainly not promoting peace.
• 39:27
  Seth Holehouse: When you say that this is something that will destroy civilization, and I know that a lot of your work is based on cycles. Is there any particular cycle that's that's showing that? Like, that that for instance, like, every twelve hundred years, you see a major empire collapse or something to that degree that that that indicates that that helps illustrate looking back into history what might be approaching because destroying civilization is a pretty big thing. Right? Not like they burnt down the capital building or they, you know, they sunk an island.
• 40:06
  It's like destroying civilization culture as we know it makes me think, what's the scale of this event? Can we make it through this event? Can we rebuild something better on the other side? I mean, my mind goes to a lot of places.
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: Yes. I mean, look, you go through these things roughly every three hundred years. Okay? The American Revolution was against monarchy. Okay, so we overthrew monarchy then, okay, fine.
• 40:38
  We started. Unfortunately, they started a republic rather than a democracy. And then these things are contagions. The French Revolution said, hello, that's a good idea. We should do that here.
• 40:52
  Alright, even if you go back to ancient times, Rome, which was the motto for founding fathers, they overthrew their kings, their monarchy and started the republic. That was May. Within a year, Athens says, oh, that's a good idea. They overthrew their tyrants and democracy began. So these things are always like almost like the flu going around.
• 41:18
  You saw Tiananmen Square happen. And, you know, within six months, the Berlin Wall falls. So all these political changes like this are contagious. Europe will break up because this idea of the EU, it just does not work. I mean, it's the same reason communism failed.
• 41:43
  Centralized control does not work. And we were supposed to have states' rights. And you look at this and everything. They try to make federal issues out of just about everything from, you name it, from abortions to migration. And it was the Supreme Court that said like an abortion should go back to the states.
• 42:13
  That's correct. Okay? If you don't like that abortion policy, then you move to another state. All right? You're not you know, you at least have the freedom of movement.
• 42:25
  But, you know, this is what's behind all these things. And all no matter what you're looking at, if what city state you look empires, nations, they're all buried in a common grave. Mainly because humanity never changes. If you go to Greece, the the the central bank back then was basically the temple of Delos. There's a Stella there listing all the countries that never paid their debt, sovereign defaults.
• 43:03
  Nothing's new. Look at Hammurabi. All right? Look at the actual code. What's it about?
• 43:10
  Wage and price controls, inflation. Alright? Roman emperor Diocletian put out his edict, wage and price controls in 02/8480. Richard Nixon do when wage and price controls, when Bretton Woods fell. I mean, these things happen all the time.
• 43:33
  And I think it's largely because humanity responds the same way to similar events always.
• 43:42
  Seth Holehouse: You mentioned a few examples of, you know, civilizations or empires collapsing, but via an overthrow of the tyrants. So do you think that that's the stage that we're at where we now recognize there are these tyrants, these globalist tyrants that want no, you know, no nation states, etcetera? Do you think that we're at the stage of people around the world overthrowing the tyrants around the world now that they're just they're everywhere?
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: Oh, yes. This is this is like I said, it's gonna be a contagion. I
• 44:16
  Seth Holehouse: see. So the contagion is
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: It's not an
• 44:18
  Seth Holehouse: the overthrow of tyrannical governments.
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: Pretty much. We're looking at the fall of republics this time. Republics are the most corrupt form of government. They're they're worse than a dictatorship or a monarchy. Why?
• 44:32
  Because you can't really bribe the monarch, right, or the dictator, but you can bribe every representative in a republic. People, you know, don't there was fake news back then. I mean, Cicero was the fake news of ancient of the ancient world. Alright. Why did Caesar really cross the Rubicon?
• 44:58
  Alright. And just look at it from a practice practical standpoint. All the cities opened up their gates. They cheered when he came. The senate deflected to to, you know, to Asia.
• 45:11
  Why would the senate have to flee if they were the honest and people that I mean, come on. I mean, if people didn't support them, there was a debt crisis at the same time. The difference was if you you there was a real estate crisis that fell. And let's say you bought a house and your mortgage was 100,000. And so what happened was the house is worth 30,000.
• 45:38
  And you can't just default and they take the house. Back then, it was like, okay, fine. You're still always this. And so they would take your children and sell them into slavery to make up the difference. I mean, so when Caesar crossed the Rubicon, everybody cheered.
• 45:54
  They thought he was gonna wipe out all the debts. We have a Julian calendar because talk about corruption. They the high they used the moon calendar, but they knew that was wrong. So the high priest had the discretion to insert the weekdays. So he would be bribed.
• 46:17
  When Caesar crossed the Rubicon, it was January 10. That should have been winter. It was summer. All right. You know, he created the calendar to make it straight up so they know no more discretion and he can't bribe the priest.
• 46:34
  A lot of his reforms were basically for the common man. Cicero, you know, being one of the oligarchs, oh, he's evil. He's a dictator. You know, it's kind of like, you know, expecting Hillary Clinton to write the biography of Donald Trump. You know what I mean?
• 46:53
  You're not gonna get a fair a fair assessment.
• 46:58
  Seth Holehouse: That's a funny concept to consider too. Life of
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump
• 47:03
  Seth Holehouse: by Hillary Clinton. Looking okay. So when we look around the world right now, as as I just said, it seems that there's tyrannical governments everywhere that we didn't see ten years ago. Ten years ago, you wouldn't have thought the Australian government was tyrannical. You wouldn't have thought the Canadian government was tyrannical, or the, you know, even the United States government questionable.
• 47:26
  But now you see it, and it is everywhere. There's this disease that's infected a lot of this world. Now there's pushback in different countries with populist uprisings and whatnot. But so do you think that this what you mentioned is the end of the civilization, collapse of civilization. Is it just is it the end of the civilization that is built on the foundation of corruption, blackmail, and greed, and all the evil that's now controlling?
• 47:54
  So is it that civilization that's falling and that will be then what's left will be an opportunity for us to rebuild something without that?
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: Yes. I mean, it's our opportunity. That's the light at the end of the tunnel. The same thing when we revolted against monarchy, Then they sat down and then, okay, how do we redesign a country? They made you know, this is the the problem when the founding fathers did that.
• 48:26
  Alright? Congress only met for maybe a few weeks out of the year. So there was no consideration of a salary. There was no consideration of term limits because why would somebody wanna do that for free? You know?
• 48:42
  Then they started paying themselves to to get slavery through. They bribed everybody and said, vote for us, and we'll get rid of slavery, and we'll give you an annual salary. That's when they started. Okay. So then you need term limits, you know, and it wasn't until FDR with with World War II that they finally came in with term limits for the president.
• 49:12
  But we still don't have them for Congress. I mean, look, I knew Arlen Spector. He lived a few doors from me on the beach down in New Jersey. And he's the guy behind the magic bullet theory with JFK and all the rest of this stuff. And, you know, he's talking about all the dictators in in The Middle East.
• 49:36
  He says, oh, they've been there for, like, thirty five years. And I said, oh, Arlen, aren't you in the Senate for about thirty five years? Know, not the same. You know, I was elected. Well, I said, was so Saddam Hussein.
• 49:49
  You know, I think we need guardrails on this stuff and to learn from our mistakes. And let's redesign something. I would like to see it more on a an actual democracy thing where Athens, you know, Marx and a lot of our founding fathers, they they misunderstood the Athenian democracy, I think. But nobody ran for office. It was a lottery.
• 50:27
  So your name would be in there. Okay, fine. You're gonna be the head of state for a year or whatever. So there wasn't like campaign contributions and things of this nature that you had to deal with. But they didn't feel that the average person was smart enough to really vote.
• 50:47
  And that's where it kind of started all this nonsense. But granted, they they may not be up to par for, you know, all the minutiae that's gotta be done. But questions like, shall we go to war with Russia? Yes or no? I think everybody's qualified to do that.
• 51:07
  I mean, look at Vietnam. They say, oh, we live in a democracy. If you were 18, you could get drafted, sent to war. You had no right to to vote, and you couldn't even drink, but you're old enough to die. That's democracy.
• 51:23
  So, I mean, there's a lot of real serious flaws in our system. And basically, think you're looking at this come crashing down after 02/1932. And then that's our shot at redesigning something and learning from these mistakes and looking at history for once. I mean, I get called into a lot of these times because, you know, I've at least done all the historical research, but I find it ironic. You got a financial crisis going on and somebody goes, Oh, we should do this.
• 52:03
  Oh, okay, great. Nobody even asked the question, has this ever been attempted before? Did it work? Not once. So we end up making the same stupid mistakes.
• 52:16
  I mean, when I got called into the Brady Commission for the '87 crash, they said, we're gonna find that guy that shorted the market and overpowered it. And I just said, you know, do you realize that that's been the theory since every market crash since nineteen o seven? Huge investigations and nobody was ever found. And well, what? I said because you've never traded markets.
• 52:40
  You don't understand. If everybody's long and something happens and they try to sell, it's called no bid. And a market will go down a thousand points real fast because everybody's trying to exit. It's not a short player. Nobody ever has the courage to short that much of a market.
• 53:00
  It's usually the guy that's long and everybody's bought at the high and something happens and then they all try to get out. And I did meet when I was doing a conference in Tokyo One time. This old guy bribed his way into an institutional session I was doing, and he apologized for bribing in. He says, I just had to talk to you. I said, what?
• 53:26
  What's so urgent? And he had bought for the very first time in his life $50,000,000 at the high of the Japanese stock market in December 1989. And he was still holding it because he didn't want to admit it or loss. Okay. And I was curious.
• 53:46
  I actually met the guy that bought the high. And I asked him, why did you do that? Since he it was the first time he said he ever bought stock in his entire life, and he was like in the sixties. And he said for seven years, brokers kept calling him and saying, the market goes up 5% every January. And he watched it, watched it.
• 54:05
  True. He finally bought 12/31/1989 and watched it crash. So it's that when you get everybody in, the last guy who had ever thought about buying is now in. And something happens and you gotta get out. It's called no bid.
• 54:23
  And the market crashes down. Unless you under you know, you've All down. You've traded. You don't see that.
• 54:31
  Seth Holehouse: I don't wanna be that guy. You you how much money do you think he lost of that 50,000,000 yen?
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: Oh, he lost I think it was about 35. When that came down, it came down really hard and in three months. And because everybody was long. Simple as that. It's it was also part of the Japanese culture and Asian culture that people in the West don't quite get.
• 55:02
  But in both societies, the emperor used to be, you know, god. And so when they got rid of the emperors, but that image kind of still stayed with the government. So if the government came out and said they're going to support the market, oh, okay. You know, they believed it. And the government couldn't, and it kept going down and down and down.
• 55:27
  But, I mean, nobody can support a market or change a trend when it's gonna go, you know, one way or another. It's that's it. But, you know, under Japanese culture, they listened to the government and lost a fortune.
• 55:41
  Seth Holehouse: Well, hopefully, we've learned in America not to listen to the government by now.
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I I think Americans are more independent. Yeah. More mud. Just, you know, I I think everybody, they may disagree on a lot of different things, but I think the one thing everybody does agree on, something's wrong.
• 56:01
  Seth Holehouse: Exactly. Exactly. So, Martin, before we sign off, I want you to just tell us about you have a big seminar coming up in London. Right? So is this something that what's what's it gonna be about?
• 56:13
  Is it in person only? Are you streaming it? Where can I find it?
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: No. It will be streamed too. It's this is our major turning point. It's actually May 7. So decided that since this is that's the very day that Putin is supposed to be inaugurated.
• 56:37
  And the computer's been projecting war and civil unrest, particularly in '25 on a global scale. So this is we're doing this one for a lot of our clients that have been with us for a long time and a lot of institutions that are there in London. Plus, you know, I used to live in London for seven years. So it's kinda like going home for a little bit anyhow. But it will be streamed.
• 57:11
  But we're looking at probably going to be addressing really the geopolitical problems, the economic side, what are the markets really going to do as a result of it. And it's important to understand, like I said, The United States was bankrupt in 1896. That's when JPMorgan had to lend a hundred million in gold to bail out the US Treasury. By the end of World War one, we were the financial capital. And by the end of World War two, we had 76% of the gold world gold reserves.
• 57:46
  So without World War I and II, we would still be an agrarian society. So wars are very important. They do shift the capital around. And I can tell you what's happening now. It's kind of like why the stock market keeps making highs and people are like befuddled here.
• 58:06
  In Asia, you've got North Korea threatening Japan, etcetera. And you got Japanese institutions waking up and saying, maybe I should have some over there. Alright? Same thing's happening in Europe. And so when you see the the Dow leaked over the S and P and the Nasdaq, That's the big international money.
• 58:30
  They don't buy the NASDAQ. The NASDAQ's more of the retail crowd. The S and P five hundred tends to be a little bit more of the domestic institutions. But the the the international big capital, like the the Dow. Mainly because if it goes down, the guy is not gonna lose his job.
• 58:55
  Alright? But if we buy some startup company on the Nasdaq and that goes down, you're fired. You should have known better. So that that's the the politics behind the the big, you know, the big institutions.
• 59:09
  Seth Holehouse: I see. Okay. Well, there's a lot more we could talk about, but we're running short on time. I'll make sure that the link to your your seminar is in the description. Also, your blog, just armstrongeconomics.com.
• 59:22
  Let's pull that up quickly here. You've got a great post I recommend people read about the the bridges the bridge collapse, which I think is very good. And beyond that, I look forward to having you back on again and getting more updates, and I'm curious what happens May 7. Hopefully, you're okay over there in London, and let's just let's touch base again soon. I have a feeling it's gonna be a very interesting year as it has already started off to be so far.
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: Yes. I think that's the Chinese curse. Right? May you live in interesting times?
• 59:49
  Seth Holehouse: Yeah. That's our life.
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: I guess we've been cursed. Right?
• 59:53
  Seth Holehouse: Yes. It is. Thank you, Martin.
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: Oh, thank you for inviting me. Take care.
• 59:58
  Seth Holehouse: Take care. Alright, folks. I hope you enjoyed that interview. We've now got some really important news about what's happening with Social Security programs, Medicaid, pensions, etcetera. A pretty shocking report released by the Social Security trustees that outlines what the reality is about these, basically, you call unfunded liabilities.
• 1:00:21
  These are liabilities that government has towards us. They don't have the funding for, and it's in the trillions of dollars. So if if you're, you know, playing on Social Security, Medicaid, etcetera, this is an important episode to understand. So please enjoy. Kirk, welcome back.
• 1:00:38
  It's great to see you.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: Oh, it's so good to be with you. Lots going on. I mean, seriously. There absolutely is. There
• 1:00:46
  Seth Holehouse: is. It's one of the news cycle days where either there's probably six different stories that we could have covered, you know, central bank digital currency, inflation, BRICS, Bank of International Settlements. But one thing that we were talking about beforehand, which is something that I think is on the forefront of a lot of people's minds in America, especially people that are approaching retirement age, is pensions and Social Security. And we've talked about that before. We've we've covered this.
• 1:01:14
  And what's also I'll I'll throw a quick caveat is that there's there's oftentimes I've seen different comments about, kind of Social Security, and there are folks that are saying, why are you attacking Social Security? Because I've paid into it my whole life. I deserve that. And it's not taking away from that. It's not taking away from the fact that we people have earned this social it's not a handout.
• 1:01:34
  It's not a government handout. But, unfortunately, it's a government run program, which is it's deeply flawed. So I wanted just to set that up and just hand hand things over to you.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 3: I mean, so entitlements are something that people have come to expect. It's not something that's inherent in what you should have, but meant to be a band aid to help people out. But over the decades, for political purposes, those handouts have become expectations and a way of life, right? So rather than just a Band Aid, it becomes, oh, I deserve this. If you ever take it away, now I'm the victim because I've been paying my taxes and I deserve all of this stuff.
• 1:02:19
  It's like, well, to me, if you look at it in its purest form, when the Constitution, Bill of Rights, you're looking at all this stuff, it's like, oh, what are we here for? The government for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That's the American dream, right? Well, so that's been blown out of context where life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness means you're not happy unless the government's really taking care of you kind of a deal. Well, that's not what it was ever intended to be.
• 1:02:48
  Like, there's always going to be hurting people. There's always going to be disadvantaged people. There's always going to be the poor and needy. And who is that up to to take care of them? The church and individual families never was it intended to be the government ever.
• 1:03:06
  Not saying we don't take care of people, saying it's not the government's role to do so. But they've taken that life, liberty, pursuit of happiness out of context. Right? It's like, well, that's the government's duty and obligations. Like, no, it's not.
• 1:03:22
  That's a benevolent person wanting to help your neighbor kind of a thing. You know, Jesus said, take care of widows and orphans. Right. And so so when they but here's where boy, you know, I look back. It was about maybe eight, ten years ago, and I was talking to George Barna, the Christian pollster guy.
• 1:03:43
  And I said, how many evangelicals tithe? He said, well, we've never asked the tithe question, but we've asked how many people that view a strong Judeo Christian faith. How many of you give? And he said that was an ambiguous kind of an answer because it could be putting $5 in the offering plate on Easter, right? I mean, not 10 percent of your income like what the Bible tells us to do.
• 1:04:11
  So just people that give could be $5 here and there when they go to church on Easter and Christmas. I mean, that's you know what the number was? 3% of people say that they're followers of Jesus or evangelicals or Catholics actually give at any point, at any number, 3%. So here's the problem. If Christians aren't doing what Christians are supposed to do, then somebody's got to fill that void.
• 1:04:43
  The government filled the void. Right? So they just came in where the Christians didn't fulfill that obligation. Barring this research, 3% of people who identify as a follower of Jesus, a Christian, evangelical, Catholic, only 3% give. It's like, Oh my word.
• 1:05:01
  No wonder the government's handouts, entitlements, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, women and children programs, all of that stuff. No wonder it's so huge because we aren't doing what we're supposed to do in taking care of our neighbor and loving our neighbor. Right? So now when all of those benefits are being paid by the government, you have to increase taxes to take care of that. Ultimately, people get taxed too much.
• 1:05:29
  They stop spending money, and so there's not enough tax revenue, so they print their way out of it. This is where we are in society. Right? And and it's all a function of people aren't doing what people are supposed to do as believers and really give. I'm a firm believer, Seth, we would not have the problems that we have if everybody who says that they're a Christian actually gave 10% of their first fruits, 10% of their income, we wouldn't be in the financial pickle we are as a country.
• 1:06:00
  I really believe that. What also Because the numbers I numbers show that.
• 1:06:05
  Seth Holehouse: The government just takes so much. I mean, that's that's also one of the struggles is that we're left with so little where I think a lot of people are left living paycheck to paycheck. And and because of inflation, because of high taxes, be you know, because of this this behemoth of this federal government that has sucked so many of us dry. Whereas, you know, we we talked about this a lot. You go back to, like, you know, my my grandparents where you hear these stories of, oh, it's like my my grandpa was a traveling insurance salesman that, you know, raised a family of six, owned a home off of a single salary, had two cars, and, you know, you could have a a person that painted houses that could afford your average, you know, typical family home that could raise at that point, right, it was three, four, five, six kids.
• 1:06:51
  Like, my dad was one of nine kids. Right? Yeah. And so everything has just changed, which, of course, I think they know what they're doing because they know that if we're so financially strapped, that people are not gonna, you know, at that, you know, when Sunday comes along, or when when there's a need for help. Right?
• 1:07:08
  When when it's Right. Even greater when there's a family that needs, it's like people are so tight with their time and their money that they can't give like I think that we we should. So, anyway, you were talking about just the the the growth. This is what this has kind of turned into. And that
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So so people have complained at me because when I've when I've talked about Social Security and all the different entitlements, say, Kirk, Social Security is not entitlement. I said, I never said that it was. But you have to lump them in with the same thing. Social Security is a mandatory payment, right?
• 1:07:45
  So we pay into a system our whole lives with tax dollars, everything else, and for the benefit of what? For it to get Social Security retirement income when we retire. But try to take that away. That's why I lump that together. So Social Security is not an entitlement.
• 1:08:02
  It is earned. You paid into it your whole life. You should get a benefit from it. But I lump them in with entitlements because you take away that mandatory payment, and you're going to have riots, looting, protests. You're going to have all kinds of stuff, just like if you were to take away an entitlement.
• 1:08:18
  So to me, I lump them together, even though technically they're not the same thing. One, you pay in to receive a benefit. The other one is just a handout, Right? So what happens when a government decides to take something away? Well, they have a mutiny on their hands.
• 1:08:33
  We saw that in France last summer. So in France, Socialist country and people who live in a socialist country know that they're paying a ton of taxes to actually receive the benefit of the government taking care of them in retirement. So France ran out of money. And what did they do? They said, hey, retirees here in France, we know that we're supposed to start paying you out when you're 65, but we're going to bump that up to 72.
• 1:09:00
  Right? I think they added seven years. That added five or seven years to the retirement age. Well, all the people that were in retirement or close to retirement that were not the age of the new number, well, got ticked. And they protested, and they said, for crying out loud, we're finally at retirement.
• 1:09:18
  Now you're going to say that I have to work another five years? We've lived in this socialist country our whole lives, paid excess taxes for you to take care of us, now we don't have it. So that's what France did. They raised their retirement age. What's another thing that governments do when they start running out of money?
• 1:09:37
  These are all called austerity measures, right? So they could reduce benefits. Saying, all right, your Social Security was going to be $2,500 a month. Now it's 2,100, And we're going to raise the age of when you can receive it. Governments start to do that kind of things to withhold from people so they don't run out.
• 1:09:55
  Right? So that's what happens when a government runs out of money. Then the the populace gets angry and upset, starts to riot, starts to protest, starts to lose confidence and faith in their government. That's the beginning of social decay and social erosion and uprisings and riots and everything else, right? So that's where we are as a nation.
• 1:10:16
  So if you look at that, oh boy, you go back way back in history, and this is an important history lesson, right? So the Roman Republic, the great Roman Republic, the largest republic of all time, they crumbled from within when the weight of their entitlements was one third of citizens of Rome were receiving government assistance. The government couldn't afford to pay. It was remembered, though, it's one third. This is an important number.
• 1:10:47
  So what is America today? How many Americans are getting government assistance of some sort? It's over 80%. Not a third. It's over 80%.
• 1:11:00
  So you can look at that, verify the number I'm saying by going to the Whitehouse.gov website, looking up the federal budget, you know, Biden's new budget for 2024. Just look at the numbers. You'll have total outlays. What is the budget? His new horrible budget just broke all records.
• 1:11:23
  $7,300,000,000,000 budget when we're bringing in maybe four point something. So it's like, well, in what world does it make sense that people say, oh, there's the budget, let's just sign it. And you're $3,000,000,000,000 in the hole from day one. It's like, woah, why would anybody sign that? Because they've gotten so used to having an unlimited printing press because we were the reserve currency of the world that whenever they needed to raise the debt ceiling, whenever they needed to increase stimulus handouts, whatever, there was always built in demand for our currency.
• 1:11:59
  And so therefore, they could. But the fateful path that every country goes down is when you're living on other people's money and that money dries up and there's not enough revenue to fund it yourselves, you're going to have austerity measures. You're going to have rights. You're going to have looting. They're going to change the currency, maybe revalue it, you know, like what they've done in Venezuela, Argentina, all these other countries where they have massive inflation for the same reason that America is starting to go down this road.
• 1:12:32
  Because now that the BRICS nations are trading in their own currencies for oil, we are no longer the reserve currency. That means we're the same as every other country that doesn't have that, whether it's Venezuela, Argentina, Russia, Greece, Cyprus. I mean, you name it, you name it, right? So this is where we're heading down. But how bad is it?
• 1:12:53
  How bad is the program? So we all remember Bernie Madoff. I mean, this Ponzi scheme, awful. People got built for billions of dollars, right? So a Ponzi scheme means you are relying on the new people coming in to pay the people at the top.
• 1:13:16
  That's what a Ponzi scheme is, right? So you look at what's the key component there. You have to have more people working and paying into a system than you have people receiving benefits for that to keep going on. But in a declining fertility rate model, which is what we're in, so let me define that real quick. So if a fertility rate for a country is two, two point zero, That means when mommy and daddy die, they have two kids.
• 1:13:48
  They replace themselves. Society stays constant, right? That's what a fertility rate of two point zero would mean. If it's greater than two point zero, let's say it's 3.5. Well, when mom and dad die, they're the two.
• 1:14:02
  There's an extra one and a half kids out there, more people working to pay into the system to fund the baby boomers, the graying of America, who are now going into receiving mode rather than paying in giving mode, right? So problem, because in America, we're now 1.9 or maybe 1.8, maybe we've reached 1.8. So that means we're in societal shrinkage, fewer people working, paying into the system to fund the baby boomers, which is the largest demographic in America that are the graying of America. They're retiring.
• 1:14:37
  Seth Holehouse: There you go. One, two, three, six, four.
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 3: Oh my word, it's gotten worse.
• 1:14:41
  Seth Holehouse: As of 2020. I can't imagine it's increased.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 3: No. I think yeah. The numbers that I was using are from I think it was 2018 because it's the last number I had found. Well, it was 1.9 then. So it's gotten significantly worse in the last five years, significantly worse.
• 1:15:01
  So history tells us that this is a bad number because throughout history, no country that has ever gone below two point zero in fertility rate has ever come back from that, like ever. If you're a gambler and you're going to Vegas, and I said, hey, Seth, the odds of you losing all of your money are 100%, would you still go? I mean, some people would go for the entertainment value, but you're certainly not going to gamble very much if you knew full well going in, you're going to lose 100% of everything that you do. You wouldn't go, probably. Well, this is where America is right now.
• 1:15:41
  We come out of this. So no country ever has. I'm not just saying it's America, just saying it doesn't Here go.
• 1:15:51
  Seth Holehouse: This is the fertility rate in The United States from 1800 to 2020. Going from seven in eighteen hundred, you see the baby boom right here after 1940, where jumped from being just over two to three and a half, but now as it continues, it's dropping well below two. There's a little bit of time, it looks like around 02/2008, '2 thousand '10, it was slightly above two, But gosh, this dangerous territory.
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 3: Well, it's so dangerous, and so let me tell you why people in the countries don't recover from this. So let's use a ridiculous story. Let's say that America knows that this is the problem, and so they say, okay, they make a policy. Every woman in America is going to take fertility pills, all of them, and they all have five kids. It's like, okay, they all have five kids.
• 1:16:44
  This is great. We turn that around, right? Well, that kid doesn't become a productive member of society for like eighteen years. So you've still got a couple of decades. If every woman in America went on fertility pills, had five kids, it's still two decades before that actually makes a difference economically, right?
• 1:17:04
  So here's why that is in decline and why countries don't ever recover from that. So politicians know this ugly number. They do. They see it. They look at the numbers.
• 1:17:16
  They look at Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, women, infant, children programs every single day and look what those entitlements are. So how convenient if we're in a declining fertility model in America that you just open up the border and bring people in that way. Well, there's a problem with that because that's not really a productive member of society. It's even a bigger drain on society. So it actually amplifies that.
• 1:17:42
  But they're trying to fix the fertility problem by bringing in people into America, but they're not becoming productive members of society. So this is the amplification of the problems. And how big is the problem? We have to look at how big this is. We're talking about it quite a bit.
• 1:18:01
  So this article, where was it that you were showing me? Because I have a number that I want to pick out of there, but you had picked the actual shortfall.
• 1:18:10
  Seth Holehouse: Let me read this really quickly. This is a quote in here. It says that the program referring to Social Security. The program's payouts have exceeded revenue since 02/2010. Right?
• 1:18:21
  So the Ponzi scheme since 02/2010 is now paying out more money than it's bringing in. It says, but the recent past is nowhere near as grim as the future. According to the latest annual report by the Social Security trustees, the gap between promised benefits and future payroll tax revenue has reached a staggering 59,800,000,000,000.0 with a t, $60,000,000,000,000. That gap is $6,800,000,000,000 larger than it was just one year earlier. It says the biggest driver of that move wasn't COVID nineteen or the the treatments for it, which won't get into in the show, but rather a lowering of expected fertility over the coming decades, which you could probably tie that to the COVID type, you know, stuff.
• 1:19:09
  Right. Again, so that's crazy that we're at a point where if I understand it correctly, that the gap between how much they have promised to pay out. So, you know, a little old lady that gets her check every in the mail every day for 2,000 every month for $2,000. The gap between what they owe and what they expect to come in is $60,000,000,000,000, up 10% in just the last year.
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 3: Yep. Holy smokes. Ponzi scheme. Literally, that's a legalized version of a Ponzi scheme. So what's gonna happen when with that austerity measures like what they did in France?
• 1:19:52
  They're going to tell the little old lady in your story, it's like, you know what, you're not going to get your benefits yet. You got to work for another five years. And she's saying, I can't. My body's given I can't go work. I need to retire.
• 1:20:05
  I've been looking forward to this my whole life. It's like, sorry, too bad, so sad. You got to keep working. And then there's no guarantee that she works for another five years, that she's going to get the benefits then either, because they may go belly up. They may do more austerity measures.
• 1:20:21
  They may reduce the benefits. I mean, these are the things that they can do to try to keep things afloat. Well, the $60,000,000,000,000 shortfall is just the tip of the iceberg. So as you go further down in that article, the actual amount of unfunded Social Security and Medicare unfunded with an infinite time horizon is $175,000,000,000,000. So unfunded means what?
• 1:20:51
  These are programs that Congress has already passed, that they don't have the funding to keep them going on. It's literally a hundred and $75,000,000,000,000 in the hole. That's not easy to overcome. I don't think that they can, actually. So this is why you get rid of the system altogether.
• 1:21:09
  You have a system of social credit scores determining what kind of credits you get out of digital currency, and if you don't toe the line, you're just not going to get them. Ask the truckers in Canada how that worked. It's like, we don't like your ideology. We're going to cut you off from your money. Right?
• 1:21:26
  So the same thing is going to happen here because when you've got $175,000,000,000,000 shortfall and every single year, the government runs out of more money because the budget this year is about $3,000,000,000,000 over and above what we bring in. You can't raise taxes anymore to try to fund more revenue because people are already living at the margin. You raise taxes, which reduces their bottom line. They're simply going to spend less. So then income taxes come down, property taxes come down, sales taxes come down, all of it.
• 1:22:00
  This is Biden's economic plan for America, right? And you look at the nonsense behind all of it and why we're spending money so frivolously as a country. We should not have $3,000,000,000,000 deficit every single year with the amount of money that we bring in as a nation. But when you're the police of the world, when you're funding, you know, taking care of Ukrainians pension plans, it's like, well, what about ours? Right, this is the problem.
• 1:22:32
  And you and I have talked about this where where Putin, for example, is very nationalist president of his country. So is Xi in China. Very they're they're country first. They're very much Russia centric, China centric. And forget about the rest of the world.
• 1:22:47
  We want our people to be better. Literally every president in the world should have that same attitude and be a nationalist, saying we care about our country more than we care about others because I'm an American. I want America to succeed. We have a president occupying the White House that cares more about the globalist agenda than he does the benefit of The US people. Right?
• 1:23:13
  His actions show that. Central Bank digital currency, you know, executive order 14067, paving the way for that, which paves the way for social credit scores, digital social profiles, ESGs, to determine, hey, what does your ideology say about you? It doesn't match up with ours. And if it doesn't, we're going to cut you off from buying or selling. And somebody would actually agree to that like our president did.
• 1:23:38
  It's like, well, that's anti American. That's anti freedom. That's anti privacy. That's why I say that that's anti American is because it's anti freedom and anti privacy. That's not how the founding fathers envisioned our country.
• 1:23:53
  See, our founding fathers, I can't remember which one it was, maybe Hamilton, maybe Jefferson, they did not want a central bank. They understood that central banks consolidate power and control. They didn't want that. That was their warning. We don't want a national central bank.
• 1:24:13
  Just have states rights, have states do banks, private individual banks, not central government because that brings power and it brings control. And that's what this is all about right now. So 175,000,000,000,000 with a T future shortfall. Couple that with the 60,000,000,000,000 that you already talked about. It's like, man, we're in absolute decline as a nation economically.
• 1:24:42
  The prosperity curve is going to the East. You know, money always follows strength. Money, cash flow, gold, it's all going to Asia as these central banks are backing their currency with mountains of gold. Hundreds or thousands of tons. You know, like China, thousands of tons.
• 1:25:03
  Russia, a thousand tons. India, Six Hundred tons. The European Central Bank, ten thousand five hundred tons. The Federal Reserve, eighty five hundred tons of gold.
• 1:25:13
  Seth Holehouse: Found this
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 3: gold. These are tons. And
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: so there's
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 3: something something to happen.
• 1:25:18
  Seth Holehouse: Oh, yeah. Just because you you said it, I thought it was really important. So this is Thomas Jefferson who said, a private central bank issuing the public currency is a greater menace to the liberties of the people than a standing army. We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. There you go.
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah. They went on further to talk about the ethics and morality of that. You know, if if you read the rest of the passage, so to speak, that Jefferson was talking about, he said, shame on politicians to ever incur more debt that can't be paid back in the current generation. Why? Because then the future generations, the kids and the grandkids, have to pay for the sins of their parents and grandparents.
• 1:26:06
  Well, that's not fair in a world where everyone talks about fair and equality, fairness and equality. It's like, that's not fair. Right? So that's why they weren't. It's like, yeah, if you're going to bring on debt, make sure you can pay it off during your generation.
• 1:26:19
  They forgot about that because now we can't ever pay off the debt. It's impossible.
• 1:26:24
  Seth Holehouse: You're you're talking about these these a lot of central banks and countries buying gold, which we've talked about a lot. And so the question that I have with this is that when does this run out? Because I remember actually one I think the first time I met David Martin in person, I was at actually, funny enough, was at doctor Brian Artis was having this event. It was a party with, like you know, doctor Martin was there, Peter McCullough, doctor Artis, a bunch of these different people that were all at doctor Artis', you know, private home. And it was a really cool event to go to, as you could probably imagine.
• 1:26:55
  And I remember, like, sitting across from David thinking, oh, this is the guy from the the Pandemic movie, and he's talking. And the only thing he was focused on was Social Security, and the and and he was talking about 2028. So I've heard somewhere I've heard anywhere between 2025 to 2030 is when the this basically, when this Ponzi scheme collapses due to, like, they no longer they've run out of money. Like, you know, Madoff can no longer pay anybody because he's run out of money. So when does that when do you think that happens?
• 1:27:26
  What does it look like? And how does that relate to the financial moves these central banks are So
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 3: if you look back at some of the original documents when Social Security was established, I think it was back in the 40s, 30s or 40s, it was expected to last until about the year 02/1930. Originally, they never expected it to go on forever because they're statisticians. They understand. They're actuaries. They know that ultimately you need way more people paying into the system.
• 1:27:59
  But it's natural for any kind of a defined benefit plan, meaning you pay in X dollars every month and your benefit is going to be defined. You're going to make 80% of your highest salary for the rest of your life kind of thing. That's how a pension would work. Well, ultimately, you have more people in retirement than you do have people working at the company. Let's say you're General Motors.
• 1:28:22
  And over the decades, you've had 500,000 people working for you. They've retired. They come and gone. But you only have 20,000 employees, right? So it's like, man, you've got 20,000 employees paying off all these hundreds of thousands of people that have retired.
• 1:28:37
  Every year that goes on, the more people go into the retirement roles. That number automatically and naturally becomes so big that the people paying into it can no longer fund it. Well, that's the problem. But over the years, they've had stimulus money, this and that, and they've extended it to now they think that Social Security will end in 02/1935. '2 thousand and '30 '5.
• 1:29:02
  So it was 02/1930 over the decades that from printing money, stimulus, keeping it afloat, now 02/1935 is the drop dead date. So then what? So what else is happening between now and then? So the SWIFT program, which is the messaging board for all banks to receive and send wires, you can't get a wire to bank unless you're part of the SWIFT program because what it does is it's this messaging board. Just view it as a messaging board, and it'll say, Hey, Bank of America, send $10,000 to Seth Holehouse, let's say you're at Chase.
• 1:29:47
  So then Chase gets the message from SWIFT that says, Oh, we're getting $10,000 from Bank of America, and it's for Seth Whole House. So receive the wire. Right? So that's what Swift is. It's the messaging board that makes wires happen.
• 1:30:01
  So Swift, in their own documents, they're now past phase two of their beta testing of the connectability, the interoperability of every different country have a different central bank digital currency algorithm, you know, how they track things, what the value of their fiat based money is compared to other currencies and what that's going to convert to in digital currency. Right? So they're beta testing it, and they're expecting full compliance from every bank around the world that's part of SWIFT, which is pretty much all of them outside of the BRICS nations. And even BRICS has some nations in SWIFT. But but this was Putin's.
• 1:30:47
  What caused Putin and China to get really tight was economic warfare from Biden, where Biden said, hey, Putin, when the Ukrainian problem started with Russia,
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 2: Putin
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 3: or Biden said, well, we're gonna cut you off from the SWIFT system so you can't get any money for your agriculture, for your corn, your wheat, whatever. Cutting you off. So Putin didn't even miss a beat. He said, well, stupid Biden, I don't care what you say. So he goes to China and says, well, we just got kicked out of the SWIFT system.
• 1:31:19
  And China says, I don't care. We have our own SWIFT system. It's called C P Why don't you join us? So now the BRICS nations are huge. They've added six of the nine largest oil producers in the world into their mix, which is why Putin can say we're going to de dollarize the world.
• 1:31:35
  That's our objective and it's irreversible. Right? Those are fighting words there. But of course, he can have fighting words because they don't care about SWIFT. They they work themselves around it.
• 1:31:47
  But now what about all of us who aren't a country, you know, basically saying we're gonna get out of this banking system and we'll just deal with China? It's like we're just people that have bank accounts. So SWIFT, within the next twelve to twenty four months, will have full communication, connectability, interoperability between central bank digital currencies and every financial institution in the world. Twelve to twenty four months away from what, Seth? I believe that's the mark of the beast.
• 1:32:16
  The ability to cut you off from buying or selling if your ideology doesn't match up. Tell me if it's anything different than that. I mean, it sure sounds like it. Maybe it's not, but it sure sounds like it when they brag. They're bragging about, yeah, your social credit score, your digital social profile, your ESG.
• 1:32:36
  If you're not in it for a clean climate, we're just not going to let you buy anything. I mean, good grief. This is what they are saying. So there the SWIFT program says twelve to twenty four months. The United Nations is faster than that.
• 1:32:52
  Last year, the United Nations says we're going to have all this stuff in place, biometric ID attached to your bank accounts. We want to unleash this on the world at our next big meeting in September of twenty twenty four. So the United Nations Pact for the Future, you can Google it, go to United Nations Pact for the Future, anybody who's watching, you'll find this documentation. They're ready. Their goal is to fully implement by September of this year.
• 1:33:24
  That's April, May, June, July, August, September. That's six months away, not 12 to 24%. I mean, so the way that we're looking at it, we are dealing with borrowed time here. We're just playing with borrowed time because they're so far down the runway that they are going to get that. But don't fret.
• 1:33:42
  Don't have a frown on your face. There's things that we can do to counteract that, which would be like tangible assets. It's not part of a unified ledger, not something that they can program on and off and divorce you from your money. It's a tangible asset. It's a thing that you take delivery of or you store for yourself in an IRA at a depository, but it's a physical thing.
• 1:34:04
  Physical things never go to zero. This is why they hate it. That's why they hate it, because they can't control something that's not digital that you can flip the switch if you want people to buy or sell. You'd actually have to go find who owns it when it's dealer non reportable. That's almost impossible.
• 1:34:20
  And then you have to get it from them. That's almost impossible. You you could go to the depository. Well, some depositories are just going to buckle under the pressure and say, all right, here's every client's information. The one that we use in Texas, they're patriots, God fearing people like us.
• 1:34:38
  They think like we do. And they're just storing safely the safest asset in the world for our clients, 25,000 of them plus all over the world. So here's where I think the smile on my face is we have over 25,000 people that have gotten out of the path of that hurricane. And that wealth that's generated through that growth is going to suspend to the next generation. See, what we do today will determine what the next chapter looks like for us.
• 1:35:10
  When there's a war, economic war playing itself out, we better do something with it. Allocate properly, because when the page turns. What if the markets collapse? What if the inflationary pressures get so high and you didn't protect yourself? You're going to sync with that ship.
• 1:35:29
  But high inflation, gold and silver go up in value. You've inoculated yourself from that and you're growing and thriving. That's the message that we want to get out to people in a big way is just because you haven't done it before doesn't mean it's bad. It means you just haven't done it before. Well, I'm really used to stocks or bonds or mutual fund.
• 1:35:49
  Great. You shouldn't be right now because they're all in sinking mode. So you need to allocate into gold and silver. I understand that you've never done it before. It's a leap of faith, but we'll walk you through it.
• 1:36:00
  We'll hold people's hands, cross the t's, dot the i's, move the assets, and then we hold clients' hands through the economy moving forward to let you know when it's time to buy, sell, reallocate, or do whatever needs to be done.
• 1:36:13
  Seth Holehouse: So, basically, with the the bigger picture of this, we see that, well, there's a lot of different things happening with the dollar. We have BRICS nations. We have the de dollarization, inflation, etcetera. But then you look at, specifically, Social Security, the these Medicaid, all these government handouts that, as we talked about, that they're they're that Ponzi scheme is coming to an end. So that's just another another kind of log on the pile of logs that represents the the the giant bonfire that's that's coming.
• 1:36:46
  That Yeah. They because when that happens, like, mass financial turmoil. Right? When all of a sudden and that's societal turmoil. What happens to all the population when they get a letter saying, sorry.
• 1:36:57
  We're we're cutting your Social Security from two and a half thousand to a thousand. Right? You you saw what happened in France just by raising the retirement age. So Yeah. They they know this is coming, and that's why they're so busy, whether it's a UN, the Bank of International Settlements, the big banks, JP Morgan, etcetera, they're so busy creating their their solution.
• 1:37:17
  Right? Which is
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:37:19
  Seth Holehouse: It's like, oh, I think I've heard it before. Right? They they create the problem. They watch our they we have our reaction to it, then they bring us the solution. Yes.
• 1:37:26
  Which is here's your central bank digital currency. And and it's like, oh, sorry. You lost your pension, but here's, you know, you know, 5,000 credits in this. So and as you mentioned, you know, I'm a big believer in getting out of that. So, like, I want out of every system the government has their hands on, whether it's my energy, whether it's my food, whether it's my finance.
• 1:37:46
  And so, yeah, your precious metals, you know, bury them in your backyard, put them behind a wall somewhere in in in your house. So whatever it is, you know, they're gonna have a hard time coming after that. Not to mention the fact that amidst the collapse of other currencies and societal unrest is really when those those assets soar. So if someone wants to get a hold of you, say that you know, what if they have questions about of that, but their pensions, Can your team help with that? Like, you know, if they have retirement questions, pension questions, Social Security questions, mapping out their future, is that something that you can help with?
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely. We'll we'll look at your statements. We'll navigate through it. We'll give you our advice on how to protect with precious metals, right?
• 1:38:29
  Because everybody's different. We can't use a cookie cutter approach. Some people are close to retirement, some people are just starting to work old, young, rich, or you're still at a current employer, you're not retired, what do we do? We'll help you with all of that and craft out a strategy for success moving forward that'll stand the test of time.
• 1:38:51
  Seth Holehouse: Great. So we've got a website, goldwithseth.com. They can fill out these little form on there if they wanna reach out to your team. Otherwise, (720) 605-3900. And and those consultations are free with experts.
• 1:39:06
  Great for, you know, answering questions. So Kirk, anything else you wanted to add before we wrap up?
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 3: No. That's it. I mean, watch the watch the inflation numbers. Watch the unemployment numbers because they're gonna continue to lie about them. They just do.
• 1:39:19
  My guess is they pause rates again, that they pause them. They can't lower them because they haven't tackled the inflation beast. They can't raise them because that would cause the biggest recession of all time. So therefore, they don't know what to do. They're probably just going to keep them the same for quite some time.
• 1:39:37
  Seth Holehouse: Makes sense. Makes sense. Well, Kirk, thanks again. It's always great having you on. Have a wonderful rest of your week.
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 3: You bet. You too.
• 1:39:44
  Seth Holehouse: Thank you.