Latest / Man in America Podcast / Big Short 2.0: The SECRET $3.8T Debt Bomb That Could WIPE OUT Pensions & US Economy

Transcript

Big Short 2.0: The SECRET $3.8T Debt Bomb That Could WIPE OUT Pensions & US Economy · Man in America Podcast

• 0:13
  Seth Holehouse: Welcome to Man in America, a voice of reason in a world gone mad. I'm your host, Seth Holmhouse. As we're looking around at what's happening right now in this country, there's obviously a lot of crazy everywhere you look between Doge and these massive cuts. You have the craziness of people lighting Teslas on fire. You have the bigger picture stories of, you know, a brewing World War three and the tensions about war with Ukraine and Russia and Trump negotiating.
• 0:41
  You have a lot of what I've been focusing on lately, which is this massive shift in the global economy, especially as it relates to precious metals. If you haven't seen the interview I recently recently did with David Jensen, I'll put it in the description below. You need to listen to it. This guy's an expert, and he explains exactly what's happening with the precious metals market and how the banking cabal has used this tool known as the LBMA, which is the London London Bullion Market Association to suppress the gold and silver prices to keep them from revealing how much money they've been dumping into our system. It's a whole big mechanism that, again, I go into in this interview with David Jensen.
• 1:24
  I highly, highly recommend. It's one of those important interviews I've done in quite some time. I recommend giving that a listen. But you have all that happening, and, you know, you might see all that happening, and you maybe you see in the news, like, oh, Forever twenty one has gone bankrupt or, hey, Hooters is going bankrupt or Red Lobster or Toys R Us or, Joanne Fabrics. And there's been a handful of bankruptcies of these, retailers, and it's easy to look at that and think nothing of it.
• 1:50
  That's like, okay, yeah, the things have changed. Forever twenty one, who shops there anymore? It makes sense or Joann Fabrics. However, there is a video that has gone viral of this woman on Twitter. I I think originally on TikTok, who obviously, she's very astute.
• 2:06
  She knows that she's talking when it I'm talking about as it relates to financial matters. And what she has uncovered, and she explains in this video, which we'll be playing in today's show, is that what she's seeing is the making of the February '2 point o, but even bigger. So if you've seen the Big Short, which is a one of my favorite movies, it's a great movie. If you if you've seen the movie and you see that discovery process of them realizing that all of these mortgages that were repackaged, these terrible crappy mortgages that were high, high risk, that were repackaged enough until they became low risk that were then resold, then resold, then resold, and they create this massive bubble that was built upon these terrible mortgages. That's what, you know, in a lot of ways, that's what led to the collapse in 02/2008.
• 2:57
  So what this woman's pointing out is that the exact same thing is happening right now, except it's in the private equity business with loans taken out for these retail stores where all these private equity groups took out trillions of dollars in loans for or or I'm not sure if between dollars and loans or trillions dollars in assets total, but it's it's we're talking trillion. I think we're close to $4,000,000,000,000 as she'll describe in her video of adjustable rate loans. So loans that when you get them, they're actually really low, but then if interest rates keep climbing, they quickly get high and interest rates have kept climbing. And so all of these loans are now actually destroying basically blowing everything up because these businesses, which were actually healthy, can't afford to pay five, six, seven, eight percent on these massive loans. So, again, she does a really good job explaining this and helping you to understand why what I think that we're looking at truly is something akin to the two thousand eight collapse, except it's not just housing.
• 4:00
  It's retail. It's so many other businesses. But what makes it even worse is that these loans were repackaged and repackaged and repackaged and then put into and sold to, in large part, the pension funds. So the money that my parents or your parents or your grandparents are depending on in their pension, that those are the funds that end up being carried at the end. They're playing hot potato.
• 4:26
  They're the ones that still when the music stops, they're holding these rotten loans that are it's like a ticking time bomb. So this is, again, another very important show. If if you watch it or listen to it and you come away with some really good insights, I encourage you to share it because we have to get more people to understand what's really going on. Also, as a quick reminder, every show that I do is a video if you're watching us on Rumble or YouTube, but it's also done as a podcast. So if you would rather listen instead of watch, say you wanna listen to what you're mowing your lawn or whatever you're doing, just go to your favorite podcast app, Spotify, Apple Podcast, Podbean, etcetera.
• 5:05
  Search for man in America. Look for that happy guy with a beard. Hit that subscribe button, and you can get every episode as an audio format as well. Alright. Let's go ahead and dive into today's interview.
• 5:17
  And my guest joining us is my good friend, Colin Plume, a guy that obviously understands, he's from Noble Gold, so he understands precious metals market, but he's also been a big investor in a lot of private equity and retail. And so he he will bring a very important perspective to this because he understands, especially the private equity market, like very few people that I know. So he'll help break down exactly what this looks like and where things could be headed. So please enjoy the interview with Colin Plume. Colin, it's great to have you back on the show.
• 5:48
  Thank you very much for joining us today.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: Thank you. Good to be here. Gold 3,000, a lot to talk about, but, obviously, that's, pretty exciting at the top of the hour to see gold breakthrough 3,000 and and hold firm up, you know, pretty considerably today too. So.
• 6:05
  Seth Holehouse: Yeah. And what mean, actually, I'll just check real quick because silver is at, what, thirty thirty three and a half, 34. I mean, silver's also been doing great. And it's it's crazy because as much as as what's happening with precious metals, especially looking at what I've been focusing a lot on lately with the LBMA and the paper market and all this, there was a video which will play for, you know, the the viewers today that went viral yesterday explaining some of these big retail closures, and it paints a pretty solid picture about why what we're experiencing that it's just starting is a 02/2008 collapse two point o. But I'll pull up a few articles really quickly here.
• 6:46
  So Forever twenty one, Hooters, Joanne Joanne Fabric, a bunch of these major retailers are being bankrupt or going bankrupt. Right? Forever twenty one's that they that was just yesterday. It got announced. Hooters also recently, Joanne Fabrics, I think, was last month.
• 7:05
  And, like, Joanne, as an example, was a healthy business. And so it seems like, oh, okay. Look. There's it's easy to make some excuses. Okay.
• 7:13
  People are shopping online. You know, there's, you know, maybe people, you know, after COVID, they never got used to going back in store. But there's this woman that put this video together, which will play very shortly here, that paints a picture that's hard to ignore. So if it's okay with you, I'll just jump into playing this this video. How's that sound?
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: Do it. Yeah. Sounds good. Yeah. Let's get into it.
• 7:35
  Seth Holehouse: Okay. So this is a woman. Her name, I think, is Tiffany. She's, the v no mom on, you know, Twitter, funny enough. And so this video is about eight minutes long.
• 7:45
  I'm gonna play the whole thing because it's such important information, and she does a good job breaking it down. She did a very good job editing the video. You can see she's just she's not some professional financial news anchor. She's a wine mom. Right?
• 7:59
  But this is the this is the key is that it's people like this that are breaking important stories, and the video is up to, you know, seven around 7,000,000 views as of this morning, on x. So let's we'll play this, and then I'd love to hear your thoughts on what she's talking about. So, again, this is about eight minutes long, so I'll go and full screen it for people.
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: Last night, I started off by researching Hooters getting bankrupted by private equity and ended up uncovering the next 02/2008 level economic collapse. And they're hiding the bubble inside a private equity black box that makes it almost impossible to see what they're doing. Almost. This time, they're not gonna collapse the banks and make it too big to fail. They're gonna bankrupt the entire American pension system.
• 8:40
  I'm almost too afraid to make this video, but it has to be done. So let's get into it. In 02/2008, investors and bankers were able to crash the world's economy by engaging in risky, unethical bets and investments, and they did it right out in the open. They've learned, and this time, they're doing it again. Bigger investments, bigger risks, same playbook, but they're doing it behind the smokescreen of private equity in bigger numbers.
• 9:02
  They're creating a bigger bubble than before, and it's not somewhere down the road. It's here, and it's about to pop. You see, for the last month, I've been trying to figure out why these companies that private equity had acquired were failing even though they were still succeeding. Joanne's ninety seven percent of their stores are still profitable, and yet they're still bankrupt. But they weren't bankrupt a year ago, and they still had the debt that private equity had stacked on them a year ago.
• 9:26
  So I wanted to know what changed. The same thing with Hooters. The same thing with now in 2024, private equity bankrupted a 10 businesses, and that was almost double their previous record. There have been huge increases in the amount of bankruptcies each year over the past three years. But I didn't know what had changed because private equity had held many of these businesses for several years, and they were still succeeding until I got my hands on an economic report and an article and found a term that nobody could explain to me.
• 9:58
  The term was back floating rate loans. I didn't know what that meant and no article would explain it to me. So I had to go and do research in the financial prospectuses of a bunch of financial investment firms. Guys, in the last few years, private equity has taken out $3,800,000,000,000 in adjustable rate loans. These are adjustable rate loans.
• 10:23
  These private equity firms took out adjustable rate loans. And so for the last three years, as our interest rates have gone up every thirty to sixty days, the money due on the loans they stacked on top of these companies has gone up every thirty to sixty days. That's why these successful companies that private equity had acquired are suddenly bankrupt even though they're still making money. They're bankrupt because they're paying adjustable rate loans. But it doesn't stop there.
• 10:50
  It gets so much worse because my next question is why are the banks willing to give these risky loans to these private equity firms knowing it's gonna cause them to fail? And the answer is because the banks aren't gonna keep them on their books. The banks are immediately repackaging these adjustable rate loans as something called CLOs, right, which are then packaged and sold off to our pension funds as really great debt. And they tell them that it's a diversified portfolio. Are you hearing the big short in real time?
• 11:18
  Literally, all of these companies are getting bankrupted in greater and greater numbers, and all of this debt is adjustable rate, and all of the bankruptcies are skyrocketing in this direction, and the inch now if you look at this graph, you can see that aside from twenty twenty, which is obviously an anomaly. Right now, private equity, that's the yellow section, has double the highest number of bankruptcies they've ever had prior to last year. And that number is climbing this $3,800,000,000,000. 3 point 8 trillion dollars in this debt. Okay?
• 11:52
  I want you to look back to 02/2008. Do you wanna know how many risky adjustable rate mortgages there were? $1,100,000,000,000. Do you wanna know how many subprime but not quite as bad loans there were? $1,300,000,000,000.
• 12:08
  That was just in housing. In the $3,800,000,000,000 held by private equity, they own the largest shares of the home ownership market in The United States, but they also own the day cares. They own the veterinary clinics. They own the pet stores. They own the nursing homes.
• 12:25
  They own the emergency rooms. They own the doctor's offices, the orthodontists. They own the the builders. They own the HVAC companies. This isn't just housing.
• 12:36
  It's gonna touch every single industry around us. And that is why if this were a free market and private equity had not exploitatively gotten involved, if we had a free market and we could see what they were doing, these companies would be succeeding. If this were actually a free market, these companies would be succeeding. Joanne says 97% of their stores profitable. That is an astronomical number.
• 13:01
  97% of a retail store is profitable, and they are failing, and they are closing every store, and it is further consolidating an already consolidated environment. And now there are thousands and thousands of employees that will not have jobs, and there are thousands of other businesses that are going through the exact same thing right now. And why? Because they know we will never allow the banks to be bailed out again. We would literally riot in the streets, but we're definitely going to allow them to bail out the pensions because that's our grandparents.
• 13:32
  That's our parents. That's the working class. They know that this will get bailed out. And because there's no regulatory authority, there are no laws stopping private equity from doing whatever they want, They know they can get away with it, and we can't do anything to stop them.
• 13:48
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• 14:19
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• 15:19
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• 15:49
  And if you make a purchase, make sure you use a promo code Seth, that's s e t h, to get an additional 10% off the already heavily discounted red light therapy products. I definitely wanna hear your thoughts. I wanna just quickly give my own kind of very kindergarteners seeing of what's going on. So Yeah. So in 02/2008, in the mortgage crisis, right, as I understand, they took all these really crappy housing loans that were given to people with poor credit, no credit, no no status, etcetera.
• 16:22
  So they did that. And then they package they they repackage and repackage and repackage these loans, said they were good. They sold them off a million times. And then eventually, though, people realized that at the very, very core of all these these derivative, you know, these loans, it was just complete garbage, and the whole thing fell apart. So it seems like what she's saying here is that you have these private equity firms that have all these different businesses, and they took out all of these adjustable rate loans.
• 16:51
  The all these loans that, you know, basically follow interest rates. And these loans, as they've gotten more and more expensive, that, obviously, these these kinds of loans would would crush a business. Right? If you're a business, you know, like, the Joann Fabrics, if you got a, you know, 400 you know, say, you have, like, a a $30,000,000 loan that goes from, you know, 3% to 7%, like, could ruin your entire business, which operates on small margins. But they took all these retail loans totaling close to $4,000,000,000,000 and repackaged them as these CLOs the same way they repackaged the crappy mortgages.
• 17:26
  And now then then they resold them, but a lot of these got sold into pension funds. So it's like they they like, that's where the most criminal of of all this is that they've Right. Sold it into the pension funds. So am I understanding that correctly? And and I I mean, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And there has to be a lot of nefarious players to to do both of the scenarios that that you discussed. For instance, in 02/2008, you know, part of it was that you had when they would when someone would go to get a loan, they'd have to have an appraisal. And what was happening, they talk about The Big Short, is that like everything was just rubber stamped, every appraisal, right? Because in theory, what's supposed to happen is when you go to the bank to get a loan, they go, Okay, let me see your credit, blah, blah, blah.
• 18:19
  Before 02/2008, maybe the credit was an issue that they just kinda rubbersome. But what about the actual real estate? Like, the bank has to think about if we're gonna get this back, what's the real estate worth? And so what was happening, not only did they give loans to people that can afford it, but on the other side of it is they were just saying that the property was always would always qualify for the loan. So you had that whole industry of the appraisal just saying yes.
• 18:44
  Yes. And even though prices were going up ten, twenty, 30 percent, yes. The the home's worth half a million. Next year, it's worth 700,000. Next year, it's worth so you have all those players that are just saying yes.
• 18:55
  Right? And then you have the the agencies, the credit agencies packaging those CDOs, the the CDO loans, and selling them on the on the market to third parties and then reselling them or reselling. And that's that was a big reason we had that, you know, collapse in 02/2008 and 02/2009. We had the bailout. And so now the private equity, what they're doing and listen.
• 19:19
  I'm very familiar with private equity. The the the reason that they've taken these loans out is that private equity needs to make money faster. They don't wanna make money slow. So when they look at Joanne's and you and she's right. Like, Joanne's ninety seven percent of the stores are profitable, and I was surprised that they were having issues because people have said, like, TMoon, these other companies would affect them.
• 19:44
  But Joann's is unique in that when you're doing a project like this, you actually do wanna go in and cut the fabric yourself or get the right tools. And I've I've gone to Joann with my family. It's not something you're ordering typically online, because you don't want 4,000 yards of of fabric. Right? You might want a few pieces.
• 20:02
  You also might go in there and not know what you're doing, and you need that person. It's it's one of those unique things that it it's unlikely that Timu and these other situations would would completely decimate, maybe to some extent a little bit. So, basically, the private equity looks at these kind of businesses and goes, okay. It's profitable, but how do I get the money out quicker? So they come in, they refinance that debt at really low rates because as much as we look at these rates, these adjustable rate loans, I've saw them like, let's say if a ten year note was at three and a half percent, some of these adjustable rates would be at two and a half percent.
• 20:41
  Well, for private equity, that that hundred basis points is massive. That's massive profit for them. So they go in going, we're gonna pull them up. Don't worry. It'll be fine.
• 20:51
  We'll put this adjustable debt on, and then we'll just keep refinancing. And that's, you know, that's the whole game. They just wanna keep refinancing. I saw this with red red lobster. And actually, know firsthand because I look to buy a red lobster real estate deal after private equity bought Red Lobster.
• 21:11
  And Red Lobster has also had issues. Similar situation. Private equity came in. They owned about 85% of their real estate, and they owned it for a long time. And it was a and it was like they had all this money tied up in the real estate.
• 21:24
  So what the private equity did is they came in, and they said, we're gonna sell all this real estate, and they went and put these loans. They went and put these rents on the and sold it to investors like myself. I didn't buy it. But the rent I looked at the rent, and I said, Red Lobster is never gonna be able to stay a bit. This location can't afford $30,000, 40 I saw, like, $4,050,000 dollars a month.
• 21:49
  I'm like, this is gonna be 20% of their overhead. They're never gonna be as be able to stay in business. And so I I didn't buy them. And now these these red lobsters are all vacant, but private equity did what they needed to do. And they needed to get the money out quicker.
• 22:05
  Private equity is classic example. It's a little bit of the the Gordon Gekko. Right? Like, they wanna go ahead and strip things apart and and get the money out quicker. And they've screwed up a lot of businesses, And and I think this woman, you know, she was right.
• 22:21
  And and now, yeah, the question is, with these loans that they've done for the CLO, they've sold them to the pensions. And so who's gonna back up this debt? And I have a ton of friends that are in the bond market that deal that sell bonds to Harvard and all these institutions. And when every time I talk to them, they're buying the most conservative thing. Them buying debt that's packaged up with all of these retailers in a very tough retail market makes no sense.
• 22:57
  But there's so many fees that happen in between. They get sold something to bill goods and, you know, obviously, they want a higher return and all these things happen. So I'm not surprised by any means that this happened. Private equity has been doing this for a long time, and, and it it'll be interesting to see, Seth, who who's gonna front the bill on this situation. And that's exactly right.
• 23:20
  Pensions these pensions can't they can't afford these kind of losses. You know, $34,000,000,000,000. I mean, you look at the numbers of who's buying the CLO market, insurance companies, mutual funds, depository institutions, pension funds. I mean, it's, you know, it's a lot of money that's that's set aside for people that are gonna retire. And so it's gonna create a a massive bubble, and we'll see we'll see who ends up fronting the bill for these these problems because it's not going to go away.
• 23:53
  There's more debt coming in the next two to three years. That's adjustable rate. And this is just one segment. So it's basically like we made the same mistake that we did before, but now we did it on a bigger scale than 02/2008. And so it's quite scary.
• 24:11
  And then we have independent of this, we have the commercial real estate bubble too, where there's a lot of adjustable rate mortgages and a lot of mortgages that weren't adjustable that are just coming due. Because when you buy an apartment building or a shopping center or an office building, you can't get a thirty year mortgage. You can only get a three, five, seven, or ten year mortgage. And a lot of people aren't aware of that. Now it could be amortized over thirty years, but the the loan term is gonna be shorter.
• 24:36
  And so there's a lot of that debt that's coming due this year too. A lot of apartment buildings, a lot of office buildings. I mean, there's no there's no way we can you know, the banks can afford to take all this debt in. So it's it's a pretty scary situation. And and I think the fact that this woman broke it down in such a simple form, is great.
• 24:55
  You know? And the fact that she could even understand this and make sense, it's it's really a testament to the time that, you know, you can throw out The Economist. Like, you just need someone that does a little research, goes online, they do a video, and, you know, she's got seven, eight million views. So it's it's fantastic.
• 25:09
  Seth Holehouse: Exactly. Which I mean, obviously, that's what I do, where is it you know, I try to just piece things together and and make sense of it. Actually, there's there's about three more minutes left. I'll I'll finish because I I cut it off a little bit earlier, but
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: Oh, okay. Great.
• 25:22
  Seth Holehouse: Yeah. Actually, well, because she paused. As I said, it wasn't edited very well, so it just froze for ten seconds. And I thought, oh, maybe it it was over, but, actually, it was still going. So we'll we'll finish her video quickly, three minutes, and we'll come back after that.
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: Most important thing you need to understand is this wasn't done by accident. This was done by blatant intentional greed. The private equity firms wanted the cheapest debt they could get, and they believed arrogantly that the debt would stay cheap forever. They had 0% interest rate loans for ages. And so they took on these adjustable rate notes thinking what?
• 25:57
  They could keep refinancing forever out of it. It was arrogant. But it also meant that they got to collect bigger fees because they were taking risky debt that cost less. Less. The bankers were happy to give them because they got higher fees on offering bad debt.
• 26:11
  They were gonna get paid no matter what. The same time, the private equity firms mandated in their contracts with these companies they acquired that they were advisors that they were a management company. So they also get paid that way, and then they sold the land out from under these companies and all their assets and made themselves whole before any of this even began. They're already cash positive. The banks knew they wouldn't be held accountable because they were gonna bundle it up and pass it off to the pensions.
• 26:37
  And even the pensions were reckless because they're buying these mechanisms because when you purchase in a private equity, when you purchase private equity debt as a pension, you get to put on your books, especially if you have an underfunded pension, the projected gains for ten years. Which means for ten years, it looks like that pension is more shored up than it is. And at the end of that ten years, when it's time for that fund to close out, suddenly then all of the bad debt comes crashing down on the pension. But at that point, there's a new leader on the pension fund and they kick the can down the road. So even they were reckless.
• 27:10
  But at the bottom of all of this is the bankrupting of the fabric of our society. We are losing our businesses. We are losing our doctors. We are losing our our orthodontists. We are losing our nursing homes.
• 27:20
  We are losing our funeral homes. And one by one, they're going to fall under the weight of this really horrible adjustable rate debt. And nobody, nobody is talking about it. I could only find two articles in very obscure financial magazines that even talk about these back floating rate loans. I I have never been more terrified.
• 27:42
  And I talk about private equity a lot. I have a lot to say. But right now, all I wanna do is get someone to pay attention that can make a difference in this because we have a problem. We're not without any hope at all. Right now, equity is only allowed to be this exploitative because they exist under something called the carried interest loophole.
• 28:04
  Something that multiple congresses have tried to close, but private equity continues to bribe politicians to fail to actually achieve. Trump, three weeks ago, said he wanted to close the carried interest loophole. I thought he was doing it as a fundraising maneuver. I thought he was doing it as a fundraising maneuver, but he's doubled down on it repeatedly. If we can make enough noise about this, maybe we can get him to actually see it through and end private equity stranglehold on our population.
• 28:29
  There's so much more that we have to go through, so this is gonna be a multipart series. But if you're new here, my name is Tiffany. We work together to fight private equity and save small businesses in our community, and it's gonna take every single one of us to do so. So do all the things and stick around. I'm so glad you're here.
• 28:46
  Seth Holehouse: It's interesting that I feel like that what she said in her last three minutes is exactly what you just finished telling me is that
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: And you know what's funny? I hadn't seen that part. I only got to the part where it stopped, and she said the same thing. And I'm thinking to myself, people probably thought I would just watch that and just, but actually, I hadn't I hadn't seen what she said. But I agree with her, and I know it.
• 29:05
  And also, I and then another thing, I bought private equity investments. And they they typically they hold your money for ten years, just so you know. That's ex exactly what you said. And I've I've bought that before, and they they have a return that they say they're gonna but your money's locked up. And if it's almost like an annuity in a way in that if you try to get the money out earlier, you get penalized for it.
• 29:32
  So they give themselves kind of a wide limbo window, excuse me, to make the return that they say that they're gonna get. And I I saw the idea that they can kinda show what kind of returns they're gonna get. Obviously, as an investor that owns a lot of businesses, I know that was all BS because how could you really know? I mean, you maybe you could go back and look at your last few funds and say, okay. We've we've tracked this, but there's no way to know what you're gonna do in the future.
• 30:02
  And, you know, there's a typical return. Now I will tell you as an investor, private equity, if you if you compare it and you look at other mutual funds and things that it it has outperformed in the last fifteen years. It has outperformed the regular market because of these this massive ability to do what they can do. And and, you know, it's, you know, it's a few percentage points, but I think they're the some of the funds that I looked at were between, like, 1213%. And and so 13% to the stock market, maybe nine to 10 averaging.
• 30:40
  Right? So it's part of it is this ability to get businesses early, change the debt, maybe restructure. I mean, the the c the the CLO isn't isn't the only thing private equity does. Typically, sometimes they'll restructure or focus on the c suite. I mean, they do other things too.
• 31:00
  But at the end of the day, what she's saying is a % right. They got greedy, and they may or may not have cared if they the thought of interest rates changing. Really, really, they just you know, they pigeonholed these businesses, and they're gonna bankrupt a lot of businesses, by by the strategy. The strategy is is gonna put a lot of and a lot it's a lot of retailers, which is a lot of jobs. It's gonna affect a lot of people.
• 31:31
  It's gonna affect a lot of bottom line for a lot of people, unfortunately. And it's and it could have been avoided because they could have put you know, there was two two, three years ago, they could have put ten year debt on those and and avoided all this. Ten year debt at 3%, three and a half percent, even 4%. Now it's coming due at six and a half, 8%, and those businesses are not are not gonna be able to to to cover those higher those higher rates. And so they're gonna they're gonna put a lot of people out, unfortunately.
• 32:01
  But, yeah, it's a lot of it is just wrapped up in how private equity does business, tax advantages. That's why you can't really have all your money in in assets that are have so much debt behind them. It it really exposes you in this kind of environment. And I and I don't know. And I've I've been racking my brain, Seth, about what to do.
• 32:24
  And, really, there's with with us being so dependent on cheap debt now in this economy, if we can't get rates to drop in the next twelve to eighteen months, a considerable amount, we're gonna see bankruptcies and foreclosures everywhere. It's gonna be rampant all through the country. And if inflation's going up, which it hasn't hasn't dropped, it's basically the same, what what can the Fed do? I I don't I don't know what the only thing that they could do, and I've been saying this for a year, is quantitative easing. I think quantitative easing is the only way out of this scenario, just expanding the money supply, throwing cheap debt out there, getting more money lent.
• 33:10
  But otherwise than that, unless, you know, president Trump can go in and force the Fed to lower rates, which will be going against their mandate, I don't know how he avoids the next twelve to eighteen months of pain.
• 33:24
  Seth Holehouse: What what I'm seeing with this, I always try to look for patterns. If you look at 02/2008 as an example, and you see us throughout history. But even looking at 02/2008, what you saw was fundamentally the people that had the power and the money, the bankers, the corporations, the elite families, the wealthy, the the mega rich, they took they found these loopholes that at the end of the day, it would end up screwing the average person, but they didn't care. Right. They found these loopholes to make more money in the short term while passing off a lot of suffering in the long term to the end user, which is typically us, we, the people.
• 34:05
  They took this they created this poisonous, they asset they could make money on. They just kept reselling it and reselling it and passing it to the next guy, passing it to the next guy, passing it to the next guy until the illusion broke, until people started to realize, wait, this was a poison apple that you've been sharing and sharing and sharing. So we see that with so many different things, and and and we know what happens at the end of it. And so same thing I'm seeing here is the same exact pattern that they create this way of making more money in the short term for themselves while passing on the pain over the long term to the common person. And this I mean, this is this is the story of our modern financial system.
• 34:45
  This is the story of fiat currency. It's not just these isolated examples, and what I've been covering a lot is lately is what's happening with the LBMA and how when Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard in '71, how then it gave them the ability to start, you know, quantitative easing. Right? Let's just pump a bunch of money into the money slide. But but then the problem, though, is that as they inflated the money supply, the value of gold and silver skyrocketed for the next decade, and people started actually exiting and not wanting to hold the debt and wanting to actually hold the assets.
• 35:20
  And so they started going into gold and silver instead.
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 35:24
  Seth Holehouse: And so they had to stop that. And so that was my interview with David Jensen that we just did, you know, a couple days ago. And so then they created the LBMA, which was then given, you know, get basically handed over to the Bank of England, which is the origin of so much of this modern usury. Right? Going you know, tracing back to the the Rothschilds in seventeen hundreds and everything.
• 35:44
  So then the Bank of England was able to use the LBMA to flood the the paper mark flood silver and gold with the paper silver and gold market, thereby suppressing the price, but that system is breaking. So, again, even looking at paper silver and paper gold, it's the same thing. They created this poisonous apple
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 36:03
  Seth Holehouse: That they could then sell to the the person at the end of you know, the end user and say, oh, yeah. Here's your certificate. Right? This right here says that you own a thousand ounces of gold in our vault, but they sold that same paper to a thousand different people. Yeah.
• 36:16
  And so the thing is is it's like music chairs musical chairs that when the music stops, who has a chair? And the thing is the bankers, they took the chairs long ago. They're sitting in their chairs smoking fat cigars with strippers dancing on them. Like, that's the bankers.
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: All of
• 36:30
  Seth Holehouse: us are thinking that I'll have a chair. The government says I'll have a chair. The FDIC says I'll have a chair. It just seems to me that the pattern is that this whole system is now being exposed for what it is, which is a poisonous system, and that the whole thing is just coming apart. And this is just like this February.
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: Man. Yeah. The well the wealthy too are are able to to withstand all this because they they're not all tied up in assets. They actually own assets too. They they don't have just debt.
• 36:59
  Right? They have assets to to survive. And so they created what you're saying, which I agree with, is they've created these boom and bust cycles. And what happens is is that once regular people or corporations or whatever can't afford that debt, they swoop in and and it happened in February, you know, October where people lost their homes. The the government said they gave money to banks to to buy those homes at a discount, and they gave basically free money.
• 37:29
  So the banks acquired all those homes, right, at a discount. So they let the builders build them. They let people own them for a few years. They got them at a cheap price. Then they over from 02/2011 to '2 and people were saying like, why aren't they selling them?
• 37:44
  Why aren't they it was like, well, they were waiting because they knew the prices were gonna go up. So they got all these great assets. Then they started 02/1415, they started to sell them. Maybe they kept some of them. What happened today, and this is what's gonna happen, is that with Joanne Fabrics, a private equity bankrupted them and a private equity is gonna buy them in like two months.
• 38:05
  That's exactly what's gonna happen. They got all the money out and they'll fire everybody. They'll restructure all the leases. They'll come in and somebody will go and go, you know what? This is a good business.
• 38:16
  So private equity will come back in and buy the same thing again at cheap price, but all the debt is going to be held by all the pensions, and they're gonna be in trouble because it'll be a totally different entity at that point. So, yeah, it's it's it's a boom and bust cycle, and the key is you have to and I I think we've talked about this a lot is that you have to have assets with no debt that you own to survive these times. Everybody that's been living on on assets that have either you have you have to have some some capital behind you to survive these times. And I think we've shown time has shown that cash isn't great in these scenarios because it's not gonna go up enough to do it. And, you know, we've seen what gold and silver have done, you know, with you know, I would say the last two years before, you know, before this LBMA situation, I think that gold was unlikely to continue to go up in this environment because you had high rates, high interest rates.
• 39:21
  You know, it's not it wasn't a normal environment for gold to go up, but it did continue to go up because people are just looking for safe havens. So now it I think the next two years is I think it's gonna be a a replica of 02/2008 February and 02/2009. We're in it right now. You're gonna see a lot of banks go out of business. You're gonna see a lot of restructuring.
• 39:43
  You're gonna see a lot of problems with big retailers. I mean, we're gonna things are going and and, you know, listen. Maybe it's the perfect time for all this to happen because we're doing Doge. We're clearing things out. You know, we're seeing how much gold we have in Fort Knox.
• 39:55
  Like, maybe this is the time that, like, we just gotta hit the bottom. Right? And but, you know, the thing that's scary for people is if they're all tied up in the stock market or all there's gonna be you know, with any time that you have all this debt and bankruptcies, there's gonna be a lot of volatility there. There it's gotta happen. I mean, you know, NVIDIA, the, you know, magnificent seven, I mean, everything is down right now.
• 40:17
  So that's the one thing that, you know, I think, as always, we we talk about is being diversified, you know, having different assets. And and, you know, listen to the the proofs in what's happening around the buying of gold. You know, we're at 3,050 today, gold. It's really sky 3,040. Look at that.
• 40:36
  40% over the over the past year. Silver's still moving. Hasn't moved as much as gold over the last year, but it's moving.
• 40:43
  Seth Holehouse: Even look at gold over, say, five year. Right? So it's up over a %. And that's the thing is that I mean, and what's crazy is that we're talking about this as if this is a lot, but, actually, this is still within this very crooked, corrupted paper market where they've been completely, you know, corrupting this what this price should be. I mean, I'm hearing a lot of experts say that it it should be 5,000, 10 thousand, 20 thousand, a hundred thousand an ounce when you when you remove this manipulation.
• 41:14
  Because if you look at how much the money supply has increased, and the gold and silver should be somewhat relative to that, yet it hasn't been. And so but what, I I mean, what happens so amidst this. Right? So we've got a we got a lot of fat. We have this perfect storm happening right now of the the the gold and silver shorts happening.
• 41:34
  Right? So crushing the LBMA. It's losing its grip on its ability to keep these prices suppressed, which is why I think gold has now surpassed 3,000 for the first time in in history. Right? In this in our recorded modern history.
• 41:46
  I think to me, it's it's it's indicative of the fact that they're losing their ability to keep that price down. So you have that whole scenario, but then leave looking at what happens amidst a 02/2008 style collapse, which is really a a collapse of the debt as more people then move into physical assets. I mean, what what are your thoughts on where this could be heading?
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: Here here are my two thoughts. My first thought is gold hitting 3,000, whatever you have to think, but Bitcoin at, you know, 85, 80 8 like, what has more value? What does more? What has than than gold? Like, if Bitcoin's at 88,000 and, yeah, it's it's becoming to the market and it's a place, but but what does it do really?
• 42:31
  You know, there's no it's just a currency. Right? It's another currency and it's a digit. I mean, that's the thing with gold. Like, it makes it makes sense.
• 42:38
  It has uses. It has industrial uses. Central banks are buying it. So that would be the, you know, the first thing that I would say is just like when you look at Bitcoin and you look at gold, gotta say, like, there's some connection that alternative investments, alternative currencies are becoming the forefront. And so that's why, you know, these price numbers that you're saying, five, ten thousand are not unrealistic.
• 43:00
  And then the other thing that I always look at is, you know, gold hit $900 an ounce in 1983. If you look at inflation adjusted price of $900 in 1983, that price today would be $3,800. So for it to hit its real high of 1983, if you're using the dollar losing that much value over that time, 3,800 is the number that that it should hit if you if you factor in inflation. So and everything has factored in inflation today. Right?
• 43:32
  Like, we're seeing it all across. So even though it has gone up and there's been suppression and LBMA, it's still got room to hit that $19.83 price. So those are the two things that I I really think about day to day. And it was giving me a lot of comfort when I own gold, you know, because obviously, like, you think about it as much as I own and is is, you know, where's the top? And I think that 3,800 inflation adjusted price, Bitcoin's at 88 87,000 wherever it's sitting today.
• 44:03
  What's more used in today's world? Right? I mean, gold is is is something that'll be around. And as and I do believe in alternative investments, and I do believe in cryptos. But at the end of the day, if I had to think about it in the next twenty years, gold's gonna be around.
• 44:18
  It's not going anywhere. Bitcoin's at 81,000.
• 44:20
  Seth Holehouse: You've got silver too. Right? Look at the past five years, it's up, you know, almost 200%. And and that's it's me. You look at the the ratio, the gold and silver ratio.
• 44:29
  It's like, historically, it's been what? Closer to one to fifteen, one to 10. Yeah. This to me, like, so for every ounce of gold or ever, you gold, I'm I'm getting I'm getting 20 equivalent of silver just because, like, to me, it's it's the obvious massive upside. Sure.
• 44:46
  But Colin, as we're we're wrapping up here, a lot of people have a lot of questions about the process of of, you know, moving money into gold and silver. In my perspective too, just, you know, this is financial advice to your own research. Don't take everything you own and put it into gold and silver. Right? You know, so you don't have anything to eat.
• 45:03
  But I would certainly say that make sure that, you know, at least a good chunk or a portion of your assets is in something like gold and silver because to me, it's the insurance policy. It's that, like, okay, if if the stock market goes down, if we have it in our 02/2008, you know, I I watched my dad as a little kid. He had his you know, he had a 04/2001 k that went from a hundred thousand dollars. He had a good job with AT and T down to, like, $15,000 into you know, and that was actually no. That was the, the the.com bubble.
• 45:32
  So it's like I watched that happen. It's like his my parents' life savings just just vaporized because it was sitting in, you know, something outside of their control. So for people that I mean, do you have any recommendations of how much they should allocate into to to physical metals, and and what does that process even look like if they want to?
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm I mean, look, it's different for everybody. I mean, I think that's the beauty behind Noble Gold is that we're gonna talk to you, and and, you know, sometimes people do they wanna test us out and and start with some and then add money later. We're gonna do whatever is good for you and your family. And, you know, we we work with, you know, clients, and a lot of times people will do a, you know, a small amount and then add more later, they just want to see how the process works.
• 46:19
  For us, it's education, getting to know somebody, building a relationship, and building it for the long term because we know if you're doing an IRA, you're gonna be with us, typical IRAs, seven to ten years. So we wanna have that relationship with you upfront. And I think that's the thing that we've realized is that no matter what, if we give good information and that we talk about what we do, we you know, people research us, They make their own decision when they're ready. And that's that's the most important thing for us. It's just that we're ahead of everything.
• 46:46
  And at the end of the day, Seth, and you know this because you've been with us for a long time, it's a customer service business. So we're really focused on having a relationship with somebody here and our team, and then getting you the right information, and then you decide, you know, what's best for you.
• 47:01
  Seth Holehouse: Which is just perfect. So I'll pull up. We've got a website goldwithseth.com. Takes you here. There's a basic form you can fill out, or there's a phone number (626) 654-1906.
• 47:12
  That information will also be in the in the description. I can tell people, look, because I used to work in the precious metals and jewelry industry before this, and and there's a lot of very crooked companies. And and just, you know, I'm I'm not trying to attack any particular company, but you have to really know who you're dealing with when it comes, especially to precious metals. I'm you know, because I used to buy over the counter. So I have people come in, they'd be selling me gold bars or gold chains, and and probably 30% of what came in me was fake.
• 47:38
  And whether they knew it and they're trying to scam me or whether they didn't know it and they bought it from someone else, they'd come in with a tungsten filled gold bar, they'd come in with a a gold chain that stuck to a magnet. Like, that was always instant. Oh, it's fake. It sticks to a magnet. Gold's not magnetic.
• 47:53
  Right? Right. Right. So I saw that. So trust is really important, and, you know, maybe you have something you're working with already trust.
• 47:58
  Good. But I've I've, you know, called, I've vetted your company thoroughly. Actually, before I even chose to work with you guys years ago, I called as if I was a customer, and I think I talked to Fernando, and I I was asking, okay, how do you price your metals? How do you do this? How do you do that?
• 48:12
  Because I knew the industry, so I knew what kind of questions to ask, and that's why I even reached out and said, hey, maybe there's an opportunity for you guys to be one of my sponsors because, I I called you as a customer and walked away thinking, okay, they're fair. Like, that's the thing is you're not cheap. If someone's selling you gold and silver for cheap, there's a problem because it's a commodity. Right? There's no such thing.
• 48:31
  Yeah. It's like if a gas station's selling, you know, gas for a dollar less than the one next to them, avoid that gas station at all costs. Right? But Yeah. You guys are fair, and you're honest, and you treat your customers well.
• 48:43
  And that's why I'm so happy to have, have you as a sponsor, and you've allowed me to grow my show and and do what I'm doing, which is trying to bring truth to people. So Absolutely. Supporting, you know, working with Colin is a way of supporting what I'm doing and what my family are doing. And so, you know, Colin, I thank you for for, you know, being along the ride with me and everything that you guys have done and for providing a fair service. And I'll make sure that the information is is all in the description to the show.
• 49:07
  So, Colin, any last thoughts as we wrap up here?
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: No. I listen. I love the show. You know, obviously, we get to to chat and talk about all different things, and I and I love diving into the stock market. And, you know, I I learned from you, and and, you know, this has been really fascinating.
• 49:22
  And I get to use my, I think, pretty wide range of experience in different investments. And I think, ultimately, we just want people to call and have a conversation and it's going to be like this. It's exactly like this. We're going to go back and forth and discuss. And I think when you call in, that's the kind of relationship you're gonna have with our staff, and you're gonna like it.
• 49:42
  And, you know, if people need more information, just call in and ask. And and I would just say get the information you need and and get the guides and learn. And then whatever you decide, it's up to you. And and but, yeah, as always, thanks for having me on. It's it's great.
• 49:55
  It's fun fun to be on your show
• 49:57
  Seth Holehouse: and talk talk about yourself. It is. It is. Well, thanks again, man. Take care.
• 50:00
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