Latest / SILVER / GOLD / $UFD Meme Coin Investing & Global Economics / Rafi Farber: The FACTS are SHOCKING 😳 (Silver Price & Gold)
Transcript
- 0:00As we head towards 100% coverage of the Fed's liabilities with
- 0:04gold, then the, the, the gold to silver ratio should descend near
- 0:1020 to 1:15 to 1:00. Once we have that, once we have
- 0:14let's say silver to silver at 20 to one and, and the Fed's
- 0:19balance sheet back by say 8090% by gold, then I, I, I think you
- 0:23can then I think it's time to buy stuff with your silver.
- 0:26Just buy whatever you can, whatever, whatever is being
- 0:30offered. I do think that that you should
- 0:32be able to buy a, you know, a nice size house for 75 to 100
- 0:36ounces of silver. Today we have a special guest,
- 0:42Rafi Farber from the End Game Investor.
- 0:46We're going to talk about gold, we're going to talk about silver
- 0:49and we're going to talk about the end game.
- 0:51Rafi, welcome to Ron's Basement. Great to be here.
- 0:56Well, we appreciate you joining us.
- 0:58We know you're in Israel. So it's late at night for you,
- 1:00early in the morning for me. But my first question, and I
- 1:04think a lot of our viewers are curious about this as well.
- 1:07What is the end game and are we getting close to the end game?
- 1:14Well, the the end game is the end of of gold and silver
- 1:18derivatives, at least for this round.
- 1:21I see all of the extras pyramids starts with gold and silver.
- 1:26That's how the dollar was born. It was born as both a gold and a
- 1:29silver derivative right until 1873 when it became a gold
- 1:32derivative exclusively, which itself was a a transfer of
- 1:36wealth between from silver holders to gold holders.
- 1:39And of course the silver holders of the middle class and gold
- 1:42holders are the the upper class, the rich.
- 1:46So the, the end game is the end of all those derivatives of gold
- 1:48and silver, which begins with the dollar and then goes to
- 1:51bonds and then goes to equities and, and all the way up to
- 1:55crypto currencies. The end of it all.
- 1:58And the since money is required for a division of Labor, right?
- 2:05You need money to divide the labor that we all know how to
- 2:07do. Without prices, without money,
- 2:09we wouldn't know what we were doing at any given day.
- 2:12We'd wake up and we'd have no idea what to do.
- 2:14Nobody would because there's no prices.
- 2:16And that's, that's a breakdown of the division of Labor.
- 2:18And it's really a zombie apocalypse.
- 2:19I'm not saying it's going to happen.
- 2:21It's not going to happen, but something close to it is going
- 2:24to happen because all of the prices that that we are used to
- 2:28that we woke up in the morning this morning and, and we, we
- 2:32based ourselves on the price array of yesterday.
- 2:34Those are all messed up prices based on them inflating the
- 2:38money derivative supply. So it makes everyone think that
- 2:40there's more money than there actually is.
- 2:43So it it it creates bubbles, it creates very big imbalances in
- 2:47the division of Labor. It decreases the quality of
- 2:50goods and services, does all the things that what we call
- 2:52inflation does. And the end game is the end of
- 2:55that. That means that all the
- 2:57derivatives are dead. And the only way you can trade
- 3:00for a brief period of time is returning to money itself, to
- 3:03gold and silver, because otherwise there aren't no prices
- 3:05of anything. And so if you look at, if you
- 3:07look at any, any hyperinflationary country, you
- 3:11know, in the last, let's say 150 years or so, they all their,
- 3:16their currency dies and they go back down the pyramid into
- 3:20inevitably the US dollar because the dollar is the base currency.
- 3:23But that's still a dollar, it's still a gold derivative.
- 3:27So the question is what happens when the dollar itself
- 3:29hyperinflates? You can't go back to a currency.
- 3:31There's no currency to go back to.
- 3:33So you have to go back to gold and silver.
- 3:34So for a brief period of time we will be trading gold and silver
- 3:37coins for our goods and services until we are able to create
- 3:42another derivative system, hopefully this time a more
- 3:44honest one. I don't I don't have anything
- 3:46against derivatives. I have a problem with
- 3:48derivatives that are lying about what they represent.
- 3:51Yeah, like the US dollar is at at this point based on on
- 3:55nothing. When you talk about Extra's
- 3:57pyramid, I want to get your opinion on this.
- 4:01You know, you look at a gold and silver at the base of that
- 4:04pyramid and then everything else, right?
- 4:07All the synthetic, I like to call it derivative type
- 4:10products. All the debt, all the, all the
- 4:14electronic money, all the, all the derivatives themselves, all
- 4:18the bonds, all the, you know, just everything up there.
- 4:22I guess I don't, I don't even know if you can put stocks and
- 4:25all that up there as well. But wouldn't it take just a even
- 4:28just a little bit of the synthetic part of that pyramid
- 4:32falling apart to make a huge difference in the silver and
- 4:36gold market? Like you said, like the whole
- 4:38thing doesn't have to collapse. But if you know, several of the
- 4:42bricks fall out of the inverted pyramid and find its way back
- 4:47into silver and gold, I mean, that alone could have a big
- 4:51impact. Is that is that a safe
- 4:52statement? I, I, I see what you're saying.
- 4:56I would change it a little bit. First of all, I don't think that
- 5:00the the dollar, in my way of thinking at least, the dollar is
- 5:03not based on nothing. It's based on the assets that
- 5:05the Federal Reserve holds. Like the the Federal Reserve's
- 5:07balance sheet is literally the other side of the dollar.
- 5:10So the dollar is backed by mostly debt, about 93% debt and
- 5:14maybe like 7% gold, assuming they have it.
- 5:18So the, the, the end game looks like the assets on the, the
- 5:22Federal Reserve's balance sheet falling to nothing because they
- 5:24can't be paid because the debt can't be paid anymore.
- 5:27And then what, what, what has to happen is that the remaining
- 5:30assets on the Fed's balance sheet being the gold that's
- 5:32still there that compensates for that lost value.
- 5:35So then what you end up having is a, a 100% backing of the
- 5:40dollar by the remaining gold on the Fed's balance sheet.
- 5:42So gold would have to go to something like forty, $50,000 an
- 5:46ounce. And there's really no difference
- 5:50between that and saying it goes back down to 35 and everything
- 5:54else deflates. It's, it's the same thing in the
- 5:56end. So it, I, there are going to be
- 6:00bricks that fall out of the pyramid.
- 6:02I mean, we saw one in March of 2023 at the regional banking
- 6:06crisis. That was a brick falling out.
- 6:08And before that, the Repocalypse, that was in
- 6:11September 2019 when repo rates went to like 10%, that was on
- 6:14the brick falling out. And then they rebuild it.
- 6:17So in in the end, I do, I do see the entire thing, the entire
- 6:21thing collapsing in terms of gold and silver.
- 6:22And then it's not like everything becomes worthless
- 6:25except the dollar becomes worthless.
- 6:27And then all of the stuff on top of the pyramid on top of gold
- 6:29and silver becomes denominated in gold and silver oz just by
- 6:32force. It's not, it's not like there's
- 6:36not going to be, you know, a meeting in Congress or in any
- 6:39central, you know, elite institution or whatever three
- 6:44letter, three letter acronym they have.
- 6:46It's not going to be them deciding, OK, well, I guess it
- 6:48didn't work. You have to go back onto gold.
- 6:49They're just going to be running for their lives and then the
- 6:52market will take us back to gold on a 100% basis.
- 6:55This is this is exactly what we saw in 1980.
- 6:57It's not like this hasn't happened before.
- 6:59It happened in 1980. When the, when the amount of, of
- 7:06the, when the liabilities on the Fed's balance sheet we're back
- 7:09to 130, a 130% by the gold on the Fed's balance sheet.
- 7:13Because gold, gold in 1980 was so high that the the rest of
- 7:17the, the, that just the gold in the, on the Fed's balance sheet
- 7:20backed all of the dollars that were that were in circulation by
- 7:25gold. That, that is a gold standard,
- 7:27right? And we're, we're still on a gold
- 7:29standard because you can still go to a coin shop and you can
- 7:33get gold if you give them $2500 like so it's still backed by
- 7:38gold. The minute it isn't the minute
- 7:40you the, the, the minute you go to a coin shop and you hand them
- 7:43a big wad of cash and I'm like, sorry, we don't take dollars
- 7:46anymore. That's it doesn't matter how
- 7:47much you give us. That's the end of the gold
- 7:49standard. And that's the end of the gold
- 7:51standard is really the beginning of it.
- 7:52Because then we go back to gold itself, right?
- 7:54We don't go back to dollars anymore.
- 7:55It's dead. You can start a new currency
- 7:58system where you lop off 3 zeros like any other hyperinflationary
- 8:01country. But then The thing is in a
- 8:03hyperinflationary country that just resets that country.
- 8:05But if you're resetting, the dollar resets the price of the
- 8:08entire planet, which is going to be a lot more destabilizing, but
- 8:12also a lot more cathartic. And it should get rid of the
- 8:17various pockets of insanity that we've seen in every sector of
- 8:21the economy, whether we're talking about mutilating
- 8:23children or a medical industrial complex, military industrial
- 8:27complex, All this stuff is because of inflation.
- 8:30First Mining Gold is a development company advancing
- 8:33two of the largest gold projects in Canada, Spring Pole in
- 8:38Ontario and Du Parquet located in Quebec.
- 8:41Each already has 5 million ounces of gold reserves, but
- 8:46exploration initiatives are under way at both projects to
- 8:50find even more gold. First Mining is well financed,
- 8:54has zero debt and owns an interest in four additional
- 8:58Canadian gold development projects.
- 9:01So I heard you say something, Rafi that that I also say that I
- 9:05think a lot of people maybe don't agree with or maybe
- 9:09understand. And that is I, I think you said
- 9:12that we've never really gone off the gold standard.
- 9:15And I say that all the time, the gold and silver.
- 9:18And I guess I refer back to extras pyramid that they've
- 9:21always been there, even though in 1971 Nixon temporarily took
- 9:26us off the gold standard. It kind of maybe, maybe a bad
- 9:31analogy, but it's kind of like when a bear hibernates, right?
- 9:34Gold and silver went into hibernation, but they never
- 9:38died. They've always been there.
- 9:40And are we, do you feel like we are?
- 9:43And I guess we can bring this up to the the current, let's say
- 9:46last two to three months where we've seen some big moves in the
- 9:49gold and silver price. Are do you feel like gold and
- 9:52silver are starting to kind of maybe wake up from their
- 9:55hibernation? If you agree with my analogy and
- 9:59that and that the world will you use the word by force be forced
- 10:07to re recognize the increasing oh validity or power that gold
- 10:13and silver have? I don't.
- 10:16Know if they have power, they're just they just happen to be.
- 10:19I don't, I don't want to be misconstrued for religious thing
- 10:22around this subject. I don't think that gold and
- 10:24silver have any specific power or anything like that.
- 10:27They just happen to be the most liquid commodities in a, in our
- 10:31economic system. And they always have been and
- 10:33they still are. Look, I remember in my economics
- 10:37class in, in high school, the, I didn't understand much of it
- 10:43because a lot of it was Kinsey and gobbledygook nonsense.
- 10:45And so I kind of just like zoned out.
- 10:47But one thing that my teacher did say that stubbornly is that
- 10:50economics is the study of scarcity and choice, right?
- 10:53There are a limited amount of resources on this planet and you
- 10:56can't just create the amount of nothing.
- 10:58And that's, that's the, that's the fundamental economic lesson,
- 11:01at least of the story of the Garden of Eden, right?
- 11:04Got kicked out of paradise and now work is going to be hard.
- 11:07It's not, it's not going to be just us picking fruit from trees
- 11:10and, and, you know, just enjoying ourselves and consuming
- 11:13where we're going to have to work.
- 11:15So the whole idea of inflation that you can create in monetary
- 11:19units and just, and, and that itself somehow increases
- 11:24productivity. Like, what is it that doesn't
- 11:27make any sense in order to you have to create stuff in order
- 11:31for wealth to be created. Money is just a way for of
- 11:33accounting for it. And you can, you can lie about
- 11:36how much money you have by printing more of it and saying,
- 11:38oh, look how much gold and silver I have.
- 11:40Now we can, we can make all these investments, but doesn't
- 11:43it doesn't make sense. So it, it's it, it goes against
- 11:48the whole story of the garden of Eden and and the expulsion from
- 11:51paradise. It goes against the definition
- 11:53of economics. The study of scarcity intro is
- 11:54if you can print digital units of nothing and that increases
- 11:58wealth, well, then there is no scarcity because if you can just
- 12:01keep creating units, you can keep creating wealth.
- 12:03And then there's no such thing as scarcity anymore.
- 12:05And we just, we're back in paradise.
- 12:07That that's, that's ridiculous. We're not, we're in the real
- 12:10world. So, so in terms of the world
- 12:16waking up from hibernation, I don't, I don't think that's you
- 12:21could you could look at any isolated move in gold and silver
- 12:24and going up and say, oh, the world's waking up now I've been
- 12:29in I've been in this for like, you know, since 2008 and
- 12:33watching the movies of gold and silver.
- 12:34And you think that every every type of world's gonna understand
- 12:36now they don't understand now. I don't think we're I don't
- 12:40think we're there yet. What I'm looking for is
- 12:43something close to 1980 where we had a 100% backing of all the
- 12:47Fed's liabilities buy gold. So we're headed to somewhere
- 12:51around 30-40 fifty thousand, depending on how big the Fed's
- 12:55balance sheet gets when we get there.
- 12:56I know the world has woken up and that's the only way to go.
- 13:00There's nowhere else to go. Yeah, yeah, You know, you, you
- 13:03said something. I, I might, one of my props
- 13:06here, my handy, you know, paper $1.00 bill.
- 13:09But I think a lot of silver and gold investors, enthusiasts, we,
- 13:15we sometimes, you know, forget about the fundamental fact, like
- 13:18you said, there's only so much silver, there's only so much
- 13:22gold on the planet. And these things as we know,
- 13:26where I can be basically printed into Infinity.
- 13:30And while they haven't been printed into Infinity yet,
- 13:33they're getting pretty darn close.
- 13:35They're working in that, in that direction.
- 13:37And at the end of the day, am I correct in saying like, no
- 13:41matter, no matter how you slice it or dice it, right,
- 13:45mathematics shows no forgiveness on the altar of truth.
- 13:48The more of these you print, the less valuable they'll become.
- 13:53And you just can't print silver and gold.
- 13:57That's, that's true on a general, on a, on a general
- 14:03step, long term process, right? The more dollars you print, the,
- 14:08the, the less they'll be worth. I mean, but theoretically it's
- 14:12not necessarily true in every case.
- 14:14Because if you, if you produce more stuff, if you produce stuff
- 14:17faster than you produce dollars, then the purchasing power of the
- 14:21dollar will still go higher. And that's, that's the whole
- 14:23idea of how the, the state wants inflation to really work, right?
- 14:26They want, they want us to produce more stuff faster than
- 14:30they produce dollars in order to bid it away from us so that
- 14:34we're being stolen from, but we don't notice it, right?
- 14:37The, the, the analogy that I, that I come back to is the, the
- 14:40apple tree in your backyard. If you're growing apples and
- 14:43you, and it's really, really productive tree and your
- 14:45neighbors like swiping a few apples from you every night.
- 14:48But if, if they're still growing, you're not going to
- 14:50notice it. So your, your neighbor gets to
- 14:52pilfer from you without you noticing and you're not going to
- 14:54fight them. But then eventually your
- 14:56neighbor invites his friends over and his, his government,
- 14:58right? His government gets a lot bigger
- 15:00and starts stealing all of your apples.
- 15:02And you start to notice that you're losing stuff.
- 15:04And you know, it's your life is getting worse.
- 15:06And since the state cannot stop itself from growing, they can't,
- 15:10it's not like they, they don't even have an option to do that,
- 15:13right? It's not like there is this
- 15:14theoretical good government that can stop growing itself on, on a
- 15:19Fiat system. The Fiat system that we have now
- 15:22necessitates government growth because the, the way they, the
- 15:27way that money is printed is that the Fed buys bonds and when
- 15:31they buy bonds, they buy government debt.
- 15:33So the, the, the, the government has to spend that money into the
- 15:37economy in order for the Fed to print money in order to keep the
- 15:40Fiat system alive. So the, the, you know, we can
- 15:43talk about, you know, right wing conserve fiscal conservatives or
- 15:46liberals, and one of them is better than the other.
- 15:48I don't think so. They just spend their money on
- 15:51different things. You know, the conservatives
- 15:53spend it on war and funding Israel and Ukraine, which I
- 15:56resent. You know, even even as an
- 15:58Israeli, I don't want any of your money.
- 15:59I think it's horrible for both of us and Ukraine even worse.
- 16:05And then the liberals, they just spend their money on domestic
- 16:07crap. It's but, but they, they all,
- 16:09they all spend it right. And, and if it, if it comes to
- 16:12the point where somebody balances the budget, you're
- 16:14gonna have a banking crisis. So, so the, the, The thing is,
- 16:19you have to get off the Fiat money.
- 16:20The Fiat money is the problem, which means we're going to have
- 16:23to cause a major, major crash of the entire banking system and
- 16:27we're going to have to live through that.
- 16:28There is no escaping that. There's no solution that will
- 16:31prevent the worst consequences from happening.
- 16:34All you can do is protect yourself with real money and
- 16:37family, insane people, and a community that you can surround
- 16:40yourself with, with people that at least have a decent sense of
- 16:43morality. Yeah, wow.
- 16:46Thank you, Rafi. Great, great commentary.
- 16:49If we if we come back to what's been going on recently in the
- 16:54gold and silver market, gold obviously has been breaking out
- 16:58the new all time highs, silver doing well, I think $28.65 on
- 17:04Friday. Any general thoughts are you,
- 17:07I'm hearing a lot of people say that this rally that we had in
- 17:11gold and then now this, you know, kind of late developing
- 17:15ketchup that silver's been doing that it feels different this
- 17:19time. Any any thoughts from your
- 17:20perspective on what you're seeing when you look at the gold
- 17:23silver price I. Don't know, when people say it
- 17:28feels different this time, it's usually, you know, feeding into
- 17:31their own emotions and and reflecting back.
- 17:34It's hard to remember exactly what you felt like during the
- 17:36last silver Out gold rally. What was anybody really feeling
- 17:39like in 2011? What were people really feeling
- 17:41like in 2020? Or, you know, August 2020 when
- 17:43gold passed $2000 for the first time.
- 17:47It certainly felt apocalyptic, like we were losing our minds,
- 17:50locking down the entire planet, you know, for reasons that I
- 17:53don't want to go into. And that that was, you know, one
- 17:57of the most terrifying times in my life.
- 17:58I fought that in very risky ways and I never want to go back
- 18:02there again. So I mean, this is different.
- 18:06I mean, it's a lot calmer now, at least compared to 2020.
- 18:10But but now like, you know, they're bombs falling fairly
- 18:13close to me. So there's that.
- 18:14But at least that. But at least, you know, those
- 18:16those risks I understand, like I understand the risk of bombs
- 18:19falling. Like, I get how those are
- 18:21harmful, but you know, the whole medical thing that happened in
- 18:242020, I didn't, I didn't understand what, what, what was
- 18:27going on there other than just like scary stuff.
- 18:30So it even if it feels different this time, it's best not to
- 18:36indulge in those emotions. Oh, it feels different this
- 18:39time. Therefore, I'm gonna go all in.
- 18:40I still think ahead of us is going to be one more
- 18:43deflationary panic because the Fed still isn't printing money
- 18:47and they haven't been printing money since 2021.
- 18:50So the money supply, meaning the dollar supply has been falling
- 18:53since 2021. They're going into more and more
- 18:57and more debt with a, with a smaller and smaller and smaller
- 19:00monetary base since 2020. That's them shrinking their
- 19:03balance sheet. So eventually a smaller monetary
- 19:05base and more debt, eventually you're going to hit some kind of
- 19:08deflationary crash like we saw in 2019 with the Repocalypse.
- 19:12And, and that is going to cause the Fed to print something like
- 19:165-6 trillion dollars in a few days.
- 19:18It's going to be something like that and that I think is going
- 19:21to, is going to be when gold and silver go vertical.
- 19:24I try not to time that. I don't encourage people to try
- 19:27to wait for that to happen because when it does happen,
- 19:29it's going to freak everybody out.
- 19:31Just like in 2020 when, when gold fell, sorry from about
- 19:35let's what was it 1800 to 1450? It felt like, it felt like, you
- 19:39know, it was over for gold. Silver fell to like $11.00 or
- 19:43something. Everyone was panicking, but
- 19:45really, gold prices were following the least of any other
- 19:49prices, excluding consumer prices, right?
- 19:52They were following the least of any other asset.
- 19:54And it was that point that gold was at its high in real terms,
- 19:56all time high that we haven't even gotten close to.
- 19:59So, so just be careful. We should be having one more
- 20:03round of deflationary panic at some point soon.
- 20:06And then once the Fed responds to that it'll it should be over
- 20:10in a few months. Interesting.
- 20:12Rafi, do you mind if we talk about Fortuna Silver for one
- 20:16moment? I know it's a a company that you
- 20:18follow. I hear you talk about you do a
- 20:20weekly video for arcade economics.
- 20:23Fortuna Silver right there. They sponsor my channel to big.
- 20:28It's a stock that I own in Full disclosure, but I'd like to get
- 20:32some general thoughts from you when when you think about
- 20:36Fortuna, the stock's done pretty well lately.
- 20:39Any any thoughts that you want to share with our audience about
- 20:43what you're seeing going on with Fortuna right now?
- 20:46And then I'll give my my thoughts as well.
- 20:49Well, first of all, what I like about them is that I know the
- 20:51people in charge of it and I like, and, and the, the group of
- 20:55sponsors that they have are trustworthy.
- 20:58Your, your, yourself included. And, and Chris, I know him
- 21:01personally and he, he wouldn't affiliate himself with companies
- 21:04that are, you know, anything near pump and dump or anything
- 21:07like that or shady in any way. And, and I know Jorge Canoza and
- 21:11some of the staff there and, and they seem to be like very hard
- 21:14working, serious people. And I think that's the most
- 21:17important thing when you're investing in a company,
- 21:18especially something that's potentially as opaque as a mine
- 21:21as as a mining stock, right? How much of us in the gold and
- 21:24silver community really understand geology?
- 21:26I don't like, you know, almost none of us do.
- 21:31And you know, when, whenever I see these numbers, it kind of
- 21:34just like makes my head spin. So I really just have to see how
- 21:37much they're producing, how much debt they have, the people in
- 21:40charge. And I know all that.
- 21:42And the other thing I like about Fortuna is, is that they're,
- 21:46they're not afraid. They, they, they haven't been
- 21:48afraid to just, you know, change their, their, their business.
- 21:51They went, they went heavily into gold.
- 21:53Was it two years ago? They made a, they made this deal
- 21:55with rocks gold, and that has been very productive.
- 21:59And, and you know, as much as I like silver and I do, it's hard,
- 22:04it's hard to hang on to a company that is dedicated
- 22:09strictly to silver as a primary producer because like it or not,
- 22:12silver's very volatile. And, and, and if you want to
- 22:16hold on to it without panicking and, you know, miners are
- 22:19volatile either way, you know, so if you're going to pure
- 22:23silver miner, it's going to be hard.
- 22:24It's, I'm not saying it's not going to go up, but there's
- 22:27going to be very, very volatile times.
- 22:29And and then moving into gold and succeeding there in West
- 22:33Africa and having a new jurisdiction there.
- 22:36I think it's a very smart move for them.
- 22:38And it's, it's paid off, I think.
- 22:40And I think I think they're going to do very well and I'm
- 22:44comfortable holding them. So yeah.
- 22:46Thank you. Yeah, I, I would agree with you.
- 22:48The people there that I deal with, Adam Circus, Carlos and of
- 22:54course, Jorge, high quality people.
- 22:57I also like to think about the fact that Jorge has been
- 23:01building that company for almost 20 years at this point.
- 23:04And he's methodically, I mean, built mines now 5 operating
- 23:09mines, all of which have been successful, right?
- 23:12Obviously starting in Latin America.
- 23:14And then as you said, I think it was 2021.
- 23:18They, they, they purchased rocks gold and moved into West Africa
- 23:21with a, a mine in Burkina Faso and their newest Seguela mine in
- 23:27Cote d'Ivoire, which is producing, I mean, they built
- 23:30that mine, they've built these big mines.
- 23:33And the Seguela mine, last I'd heard was producing like 2025%
- 23:38above its name, nameplate capacity.
- 23:41The other thing, and you mentioned this, Jorge always
- 23:44talks about a fortress. I'm an old accountant, right?
- 23:47So I'm always looking at the balance sheet and cash flows and
- 23:50Jorge always talks about a fortress balance sheet, right?
- 23:53A company that can withstand any market environment.
- 23:57And fortunately for all of us right now with these higher gold
- 24:01prices and silver prices, they're in an environment where
- 24:05he likes to use the word harvest, right?
- 24:07They, they're harvesting some, some good gains based upon smart
- 24:13decisions that they, that they'd made in the past.
- 24:15And I made a little list here just just recently when they
- 24:19announced their first quarter production numbers, they paid
- 24:22off more debt. I think in the last like nine
- 24:25months, they've made $340,000,000 debt repayments,
- 24:30like 120 million altogether. And they already had a, a
- 24:34relatively low debt level to start with.
- 24:36They're buying back shares. I think they bought back a
- 24:39million shares during the first quarter and they bought back 1/2
- 24:43of the royalty I think it was Franco Nevada has on their
- 24:47Seguela mine in West Africa. So they're generating a lot of
- 24:52cash and it just, it feels like to me that that Jorge and the
- 24:57executive team there, but they're a little different than
- 25:00what you see in a lot of companies now.
- 25:02I, I think Jorge makes actually makes long term decisions, you
- 25:07know, doesn't go just quarter by quarter.
- 25:09Of course, you know, they, they keep a, a tight focus on what's
- 25:12going on day-to-day in the business, but is willing to make
- 25:16and I think the rocks gold decision, which has proven to be
- 25:20very wise, is a good example. He's willing to, to make, you
- 25:24know, long term decisions that he thinks will benefit the
- 25:28company. And maybe that's why they've why
- 25:30they've done so well for the last 20 years.
- 25:32Thank you for asking that. You know, another question that
- 25:36I've had from a couple of people, Rafi, that they wanted
- 25:39me to ask you was obviously you're joining us from Israel.
- 25:43There's a lot of tension, to say the least in the Middle East
- 25:46right now. What's life like in Israel right
- 25:49now? It's very frustrating, a little
- 25:53bit scary. There's no faith.
- 25:56There's no faith in the we all know this is a show.
- 26:01We look, I don't, I don't know what exactly happened on
- 26:04Shminyatzarit. What, what you know is October
- 26:067th, it was a Jewish holiday. They chose to attack us on a, on
- 26:11a, a major holiday. I, I, I can't explain to you why
- 26:18the Army didn't do anything for 8 hours.
- 26:21I don't understand. You know, I have some theories,
- 26:27some ideas, but it's not like anybody in this country trusts
- 26:31our government to protect us even in the most basic sense
- 26:33anymore. And we're, we're hamstrung
- 26:37because, because unfortunately, we rely since 1967 on American
- 26:41weapons. And it should never, it should
- 26:43never have been that way. It, it creates resentment in
- 26:47both countries. You know, if you think the, the
- 26:50last war that Israel actually actually really won, the last
- 26:53war that we won was in 1967 and we didn't get a dime from
- 26:57America. We didn't.
- 26:59And that was that was the war that we won.
- 27:01Why? Because we were, we were, our
- 27:03backs were to the wall and we decided that we had to, we had
- 27:06to attack or we would be annihilated.
- 27:09And we did. But now, now everything is now.
- 27:12Now, we can't really do anything and anything that we do, we're
- 27:16accused of war crimes or whatever.
- 27:18But like, you know, everybody around us wants to kill us all.
- 27:22So what are we supposed to do? It's a, it's a, it's an
- 27:24impossible situation where I think the only solution to it is
- 27:28going to be the collapse of the dollar that will cut us off from
- 27:32American money once and for all. And then we'll be, we'll be in
- 27:35an existential situation where we'll have to decide what the
- 27:37hell are we going to do about it.
- 27:39And I don't have any fear at all that the Jewish people are going
- 27:41to be annihilated. That is, that's impossible.
- 27:43It's a metaphysical impossibility.
- 27:47We, our, our greatest victories come when we have no choice.
- 27:50And we're going to get to that. We're we're going to get there
- 27:53when there's no more money to give us.
- 27:55And then we have to decide what to do.
- 27:58And Netanyahu can't do it. None of the people in charge
- 28:01have any. They, they, they're all
- 28:03responsible for October 7th for not doing anything for eight
- 28:05hours. What Iran lobs like 300 missiles
- 28:08at us at like a snail's pace, giving us two or three days
- 28:11notice as if this is some kind of stupid show.
- 28:13And then Oh well, we shot them down.
- 28:15Yay. We're so great and wonderful and
- 28:16amazing. It's all stupid play by both
- 28:20sides that that are, that are trying to like, you know, gin up
- 28:24their populations as you know how, how, how amazing they are.
- 28:27It's it's all just a waste of time and money.
- 28:31Yeah, you know, I I agree with you.
- 28:33And I told my wife Susie it when it when it happened, I said this
- 28:37has to be the most telegraphed attack.
- 28:40It's like it's not. I mean, it's how do I say like
- 28:43if you I mean it was like it was like made for TVI guess is to a
- 28:48certain and it's not we're dealing with human lives, right.
- 28:52So it's not, I don't want to minimize the impact of this, but
- 28:56it almost felt like it was made for TV And I think, like you
- 28:59said, maybe made for show and, and and I don't know.
- 29:04It's are, are people scared? Are I mean, are people in
- 29:09Israel, do you think fearful about about what's going?
- 29:13I mean, obviously to 1° or another, but are are or you, you
- 29:17seem rather calm to me about the whole situation.
- 29:21It's. Not that I'm, it's not that I'm
- 29:22scared. I like, I'm more scared of the
- 29:24tax authorities than I am of Iran.
- 29:26I'm. Not.
- 29:29I'm not, I'm not, I'm not scared that we're going to be
- 29:32annihilated or something like that.
- 29:34I'm just, I'm just incredibly frustrated and uneasy because
- 29:39our, our leaders are just so spectacularly incompetent that
- 29:46that and there's, there's no way to vote them out because there's
- 29:49no replacements for them. It's not like anyone who's in
- 29:52the Knesset now would be better than Netanyahu.
- 29:54So you know what, what was, there's no political solutions
- 29:58to any of this. So it's just, it's just a
- 30:00feeling of just being stuck and, and things, and things just
- 30:05getting worse. But I know that, that, you know,
- 30:08things that we're, we're gonna let loose at some point because,
- 30:12you know, speaking from my own religious perspective, you can
- 30:15agree or disagree with it. Like we, we came back to our
- 30:18homeland after, after Rome, you know, expelled us after 2000
- 30:23years. We didn't, this didn't happen by
- 30:25accident and we're not leaving again.
- 30:28And this is it. And it's, it's going to get
- 30:30rough. It's going to get very rough.
- 30:31And a, a lot of people are unfortunately going to die.
- 30:33And I don't know if I'm going to be one of those, but I'm not
- 30:36leaving. I'm much more scared of America
- 30:38now than I am being here. Because when the, when the, when
- 30:42the dollar does collapse, I don't see anything else holding
- 30:47America together other than spending.
- 30:49America's going to break apart into how many pieces, I don't
- 30:52know. But, but Israel, we're not going
- 30:55to break apart again. We're like a, we're like a very
- 30:58dysfunctional family. But when we're under attack, we
- 31:01do fight together, even though we hate each other.
- 31:05It's more like how a family hates each other, hates itself.
- 31:07Like we, we kind of like get over that and then move forward.
- 31:11So we're, we're going to head to that when the dollar collapses.
- 31:13And what happens after that I don't know.
- 31:15Thank you. Thanks for that insight, Rafi,
- 31:18because I think most of our viewers, let's say in the United
- 31:21States don't have a, you know, don't really have a good feel as
- 31:25to what is going on in Israel. We don't really get, I mean,
- 31:30our, our media is so dumbed down.
- 31:35I would say that, you know, unless you want to talk about
- 31:39Donald Trump or Joe Biden, we don't really get a feel for
- 31:42what's going on in the rest of the world.
- 31:44So I appreciate you sharing that with me.
- 31:46If you're looking to buy gold, silver or platinum, do yourself
- 31:50a favor and check out PIM Becks, the online precious metals
- 31:54bullion dealer and sponsor of Ron's Basement.
- 31:58I was a happy customer before they offered to support the
- 32:01channel. You'll find they have the best
- 32:03prices, quality and service. I think Pembex is best and you
- 32:08will too. And be sure to tell them that
- 32:11you're from Ron's basement. I want to bring everybody out to
- 32:15a place where they can learn more about Rafi, the in game
- 32:18investor on substack.com. Rafi, you want to tell people
- 32:23kind of what you offer here and, and, and how they might be able
- 32:27to learn more about you and your your writings.
- 32:31Yeah, sure. So I, I my specialty here.
- 32:35I guess my strong point is that I, I write everything from a
- 32:38logical progression. I try to get the people to
- 32:42recognize logically what the end game is and how the various
- 32:45movements in the bank system in the monetary system are are
- 32:49leading to it. So you understand it from an
- 32:51intellectual perspective, right? If you, if you understand what's
- 32:54going on with your in your mind and you get the structure of it,
- 32:59then then crazy movements are not going to throw you off The,
- 33:03the, the like a, a, a danger to, to being part of the end game or
- 33:08investing in the end game, investing in the end of the
- 33:10dollar is that, that if you, if you don't quite get what's going
- 33:15on structurally, like in terms of the pyramid, then you can
- 33:19get, you can get caught up in things like Bitcoin.
- 33:23I'm not, I'm not totally against Bitcoin.
- 33:25I think Bitcoin should be legal. I think people should be able to
- 33:28use it if they want to, but I think it's a distraction.
- 33:32And if you have like in very volatile days where gold and
- 33:37silver are way down and you have this final deflationary crash,
- 33:40you could throw a lot of people off if they don't understand
- 33:44what's going on. But if you, if you understand
- 33:47that that there is no escaping this, that gold and silver
- 33:50literally are money right now, that the only reason the dollar
- 33:54has value right now is because it is still exchangeable for
- 33:56some amount of gold. If you understand that
- 33:58principle, you won't be thrown off.
- 34:01And so you have to have a certain amount of cash in order
- 34:04to stay emotionally balanced and you have to have a certain
- 34:06amount of gold in case the end game comes tomorrow.
- 34:10But no, I, I, I, I keep at this from an intellectual,
- 34:16philosophical standpoint and less of a technical trading up
- 34:21and down my price targets to keep people mentally balanced
- 34:26through what is probably going to be one of the most
- 34:31destabilizing events financially of our lives or probably the
- 34:34most. Yeah, yeah.
- 34:37Thank you. Rafi, can.
- 34:38Do you have time for one more question 1 short question?
- 34:43I think at one point, I remember you mentioning that, that, that
- 34:48silver investors in particular may have a little window of
- 34:52opportunity to exchange their silver at some point in the
- 34:57future for other real assets. And correct me if I'm wrong, but
- 35:00I think you even mentioned like, hey, at some point the
- 35:03possibility exists that we could see a little window where you
- 35:06could trade, let's say a couple 100 ounces of silver for a small
- 35:11house. Do do do you think that's still
- 35:15in the cards potentially for us? Yes, I, I do, I do think that's
- 35:19still in the cards. It's not going to last very
- 35:21long. But I can tell you that, that
- 35:23once, once we have the Fed's liabilities on its balance sheet
- 35:29backed close to 100% by gold, which is what happened in 1980,
- 35:32went even higher than that 230% for a day.
- 35:35I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't, you know, wait for 130% and then
- 35:39then buy a house. Like as we head towards 100%
- 35:42coverage of the Fed's liabilities with gold, then the,
- 35:47the, the gold to silver ratio should descend near 20 to 1:15
- 35:51to 1:00. Once we have that, once we have
- 35:54let's say silver to silver at 20 to one and, and the Fed's
- 35:59balance sheet back by say 8090% by gold, then I, I, I think you
- 36:03can then I think it's time to buy stuff with your silver.
- 36:06Just buy, buy whatever you can, whatever, whatever is being
- 36:10offered. I do think that that you should
- 36:12be able to buy a, you know, a nice size house for 75 to 100
- 36:16ounces of silver, which is not unprecedented.
- 36:18It's not unprecedented. It's happened before, but it's
- 36:21very brief when it happens. And it's not, it's not that it's
- 36:24not the fact that silver is so valuable all of a sudden that
- 36:27everybody wants silver and therefore they'll they'll
- 36:29wouldn't sell a house to you. It's the fact is that once once
- 36:34everyone who has dollars and all these derivatives of gold and
- 36:36silver and they realize that they're actually worthless, what
- 36:39they have to do in order to re establish a division of Labor is
- 36:41offer their real assets to you at such spectacular rates to
- 36:45real money. So if they have some money so
- 36:47they can plug back into the division of Labor because
- 36:48otherwise there isn't one. So they they need money.
- 36:52Once an economy without money needs first and foremost, money.
- 36:57It's more important than food. It's more important than water
- 37:00because, you know, it's not like there isn't any food and water
- 37:03like you don't, you don't have famines because there's no food.
- 37:07You have famines because there's no money to divide food among
- 37:10the people. That's the problem.
- 37:14You you had a video you made on Friday on the Arcadia Economics
- 37:19channel where you you talked about this prospect of the gold
- 37:23to silver ratio dropping down to this 20 ish range.
- 37:28Am I correct in remembering that that actually happened in 1980,
- 37:32that the gold to silver ratio got to that level when we had
- 37:35the $50 top in the silver? It's happened more than that.
- 37:39I mean, even even, sorry, even in 19701971, Fort Nixon closed
- 37:45the gold window, which is really just him just like saying I'm
- 37:47not going to pay anymore. You know, just to just to
- 37:51comment on that for a second. Like he didn't really close the
- 37:53gold window because the central banks wanted gold instead of
- 37:56their dollars. They could have just bought it
- 37:58on the free market instead at at a higher price than 35 because
- 38:01they didn't, they didn't do that because they wanted to maintain
- 38:03the the system. But yeah, so in 1970 to 1971,
- 38:08silver was 20 to one and it hit around around 15 to one in
- 38:11January 1980, it hit 15 to one in 1968.
- 38:15Also with the fall of the London Gold Pool, it hit 15 to one in
- 38:181919 after World War One. And it was 15 to one for like
- 38:21200 years from like 1700 to 1950, that that's that's where
- 38:25it was. So maybe not, maybe not 1950,
- 38:29maybe like, no, sorry, not 1950 from like 1700 to 1873.
- 38:33And then it got wobbly. So that's that.
- 38:35That's the natural monetary ratio, and that's where it
- 38:38should go. Back when, when gold derivatives
- 38:41no longer are no longer trusted, you can't use a gold.
- 38:45The reason gold derivatives are so good is because they divide
- 38:48gold into retail amounts. You can take $1.00 and divide
- 38:50gold into 2400 pieces and buy a pack of gum or whatever it is.
- 38:55When those no longer work, you can't use them anymore, so you
- 38:59have to use silver. And that's what we're waiting
- 39:01for. That's the end game.
- 39:03Yeah. And I, and I'll throw in one
- 39:04final comment. At $2400 gold, if we had a 20 to
- 39:091 gold to silver ratio, because I have a degree in advance
- 39:13degree in accounting, I was able to figure out that would be a
- 39:16$120.00 silver today. If we did, if you know, if we
- 39:20were living in an environment with what has like, as you said,
- 39:25Rafi historically happened that we have a, a, a gold to silver
- 39:28ratio somewhere in the 20 range. Rafi, did I forget to ask you
- 39:33anything? Did I forget you?
- 39:34Anything more you want to mention before we bid farewell
- 39:38to our viewer? You can check me out on YouTube,
- 39:41on my channel, it's just called, just my name, Rafi Farber.
- 39:44I try to make things funny, try to put humor in all my stuff
- 39:47just because it keeps me sane and, you know, without laughing
- 39:51at everything that's going on. I would cry so.
- 39:54Well, I'll put a link in the description of this video to
- 39:58Rafi's sub stack which we visited.
- 40:01And also Rafi's YouTube channel as well.
- 40:05And then I think on it seems like every Friday, you have the
- 40:08video that comes out with Chris Marcus from Arcadia Economics as
- 40:14well. And it's a video that I never
- 40:16missed. So Rafi, you're very well liked,
- 40:20very popular within the gold and silver community.
- 40:23I know many of my viewers on my channel are huge, huge fans of
- 40:28yours. I want to say thank you to AI.
- 40:31Think a mutual subscriber that we have Cliff who helped kind of
- 40:35facilitate our meeting. It's been a big honor for me to
- 40:38have you on. I, like I said, I'll say it one
- 40:40more time. I just really enjoy listening to
- 40:43you and I learned from you pretty much every week something
- 40:47interesting. And from a selfish perspective,
- 40:50it gives me something to talk about on my channel.
- 40:52So thank you, Rafi, and we'll be looking, looking forward to
- 40:58seeing you again soon. Thanks for having me, Ron.