Latest / Man in America Podcast / The Corruption is FAR WORSE Than You Thought — Economic Hitman, John Perkins

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The Corruption is FAR WORSE Than You Thought — Economic Hitman, John Perkins · Man in America Podcast

• 0:01
  Seth Holehouse: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Man in America. I'm your host, Seth Hulghouse. So in somewhat breaking news, we've just discovered that someone that appeared on Epstein, Jeffrey Epstein, the famous pedophile, blackmailing, extortion, probably, Mossad agent that was probably working with the CIA as well, had on his calendar the current CIA chief, William Burns. And so this raises all kinds of questions, but one of the big ones is that what is the CIA chief doing involved with Jeffrey Epstein? Here's the article to pull up for you there.
• 0:40
  Again, at Gateway Pundit. Private calendar reveals convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein met with Biden's CIA spy chief and other individuals as well. But the question really is how deep does this go, really? And so joining us today is someone that I am really excited to speak with, and it's the author of this book here, Confessions of an Economic Hitman. So his name is John Perkins.
• 1:07
  And he was, you know, for, you know, a few decades, literally what you call an economic hitman. And he dealt with the CIA extensively, but he was oftentimes dealing with what he calls the CIA jackals. These are the ones that were sent in for the assassinations and everything else. So but before we jump into the interview, I'm actually gonna play a quick little two minute cartoon for you that explains exactly what an economic hitman is because this really helps set the stage for the discussion with John Perkins. Let's go ahead
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: and pull
• 1:40
  Seth Holehouse: this up for you.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: We economic hitmen have managed to create the world's first truly global empire, and it's basically a secret empire. We do it many ways, but but but principally, we identify a country that has resources our corporations covet like oil, range a huge loan to that country from the World Bank or one of its sisters. The money never actually goes to the country. It goes to our own corporations to build big infrastructure projects in that country that help a few very wealthy people, but don't benefit the majority of the people who are too poor to buy electricity or have cars to drive on the highways. And yet they're left holding a huge debt that they can't repay.
• 2:15
  So we go back at some point and say, you know, you can't pay your debts. Give us a pound of flesh. Sell your oil real cheap to our oil companies. Vote with us on the next critical UN vote. Allow us to build a military base in your backyard.
• 2:30
  Something along these lines. And when we fail, the jackals go in and either overthrow or assassinate these leaders. And if the jackals fail as they did in in in Iraq, then we send in the military. I don't think the failure is capitalism. I think it's a specific kind of capitalism that we've developed.
• 2:48
  We've created what I consider a mutant viral form of capitalism. And this mutant form of capitalism, which I think is really a predatory form of capitalism, has created an extremely unstable, unsustainable, unjust, and and very, dangerous world. I've met a lot of terrorists. I've interviewed them for books. I've never met one who wanted to be a terrorist.
• 3:18
  They're desperate people. If we wanna get rid of terrorism, we must get rid of the root causes, that cancer that is destroying our whole system. Because I think it's really important that we understand today we cannot have homeland security unless we understand that the whole planet is our homeland.
• 3:38
  Seth Holehouse: So, yeah, that was John Perkins' voice. That was probably, I think, an interview or a presentation he gave. But so that's what an economic hitman is. And so he was the person that was at the center of this, but he's also the person that really became the whistleblower. And even when he first talked about writing a book on this and exposing it, he got death threats.
• 3:57
  His his daughter's life was threatened, but he eventually still found the courage to come out and expose this exact model. So this is gonna be a fascinating interview. I think you're gonna really enjoy it. I ask if you are enjoying it, please share it with a friend or a family because it's just gonna be a really important thing to understand what's happening and where we're at in the world. Before we get started, make sure you're following me on social media at Man in America.
• 4:22
  I'm on Twitter at Man in America US. If you're watching on Rumble, make sure you're following me. Know, just check-in case you unfollowed. And what wherever you're watching, make sure you hit the like or thumbs up button because it really helps reach more people. Also, every show is done as a podcast as well.
• 4:38
  So if you wanna listen instead of watch, just go to favorite podcast app and search for Man in America, and you'll find me there. Alright, folks. Let's jump into this interview with John Perkins. John, I have to say it is such a pleasure and an honor to have you here. You're one of my favorite authors.
• 4:55
  I just, it's such a, it's kind of exciting to have you on the camera interviewing you today.
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: Well, thanks, Seth. That's good to hear. It's a humbling thing to hear, but thank you.
• 5:08
  Seth Holehouse: Of course. So you wrote a book called Confessions of an Economic Hitman, and this is the third version of it, which I'll put this link in the description. I'll pull it up. And so this one and we're gonna be diving into a lot of this. But when I first came across this book, I'd seen it all over the place.
• 5:25
  And I finally read it a couple of years ago. And I said, Confessions of an Economic Hitman, what would that mean? So I'm just gonna read something that you have in the book here, because this is how you open the initial the first version of the book, which explains, I think, really what an economic hitman is. So I read this to you, economic hitmen, are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the world out of trillions of dollars. They funnel money from the World Bank, the US Agency for International Development, USAID, AID, and other foreign aid organizations into the coffers of huge corporations in the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the nation's or the planet's natural resources.
• 6:06
  Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization. I should know I was an So that's a pretty powerful introduction. So can you just give a little bit of your background? I'm sure a lot of people that are watching or listening have read your work.
• 6:34
  But for those who haven't, just give us a little story of your background as an economic hitman.
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, Seth, I graduated from business school and I went in the Peace Corps for three years. I was in Ecuador, mainly in the Amazon. And then I was recruited by this consulting firm in Boston as an economist. I very quickly became chief economist, probably because so much of their work was done in places that people with perhaps better credentials than me, certainly older than me, couldn't live. I've been in the Peace Corps, I can handle lots of strange places.
• 7:14
  And also a lot of the PhD economists and people like that, they demanded solid statistics so they could do all these econometric models and so forth. And I realized that you weren't going to get those. Had to do a lot of just very good thinking and writing, and I always liked to write. So I advanced very quickly, and then I did the things that you described there. Basically, you know, my job was to identify countries with resources our corporations want, like oil, today, lithium, and arranged huge loans to those countries.
• 7:51
  But the money never went to the people, instead it didn't go to the countries, instead it went directly to our corporations to build big infrastructure projects in those countries, things that helped a few rich families who owned the businesses, the industries that benefited from ports and airports and highways and better electrical power systems, these people benefited. But the majority of the people suffered because money was diverted from education, healthcare, and other social services to pay the interest on the debt. And in the end, the principal couldn't usually be paid, so we go back and say, hey, since you can't pay your debt, sell your your collateral, your your oil or or whatever, real cheap to our corporations without any environmental or social restrictions. Let us build a military base on your soil. Privatize all your public sector, things like your utility companies, etcetera, and sell them to our investors.
• 8:51
  Vote with us on the next critically united nations voting of Cuba or whatever. So we were really creating this empire, and it's pretty much a corporate empire that's supported by the US government and at that time, the banks that basically controlled much of the international work, like the World Bank and the IMF.
• 9:12
  Seth Holehouse: And it was interesting because towards the end of the update, your most recent, you know, version of the book, you talked about something where you said that you're talking about capitalism, what is capitalism, and how today, you know, we don't really have true capitalism as it was set out. And but you you how you phrased some part of it, said something about basically how the does the you know, we would always wanna avoid the state owning the businesses. Right? You know, kind of a a fascist, know, system or a communist system where the state owns the businesses. But whereas what you're seeing is that we're now in a system where in a lot of ways, the businesses own the state.
• 9:49
  And and it was in your it was in your book that I had first really kind of come to grasp the whole idea of the corporatocracy. Right? And the and the the that you have these countries, and and we we think of that as, okay, The United States and Ecuador and con you know, you know, The Republic Of Congo, etcetera. But then it's actually that almost like above those countries are the corporations, that these giant multinational corporations that really can buy politicians. Like, you know, they can even, in a lot of ways, own militaries.
• 10:21
  I remember in your book, you talked about I think you were down in South America, perhaps Ecuador, and when you discovered that, like, some of the the militaries were under the control of the oil companies. I mean, so this the whole idea of a corporatocracy to me was just it cracked open this way of understanding how the world was being put together and how it's being controlled. So can you dig a little bit more into the corporatocracies from what you saw?
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: Yes, Seth, so the first Confessions of an Economic Hitmemor came out in 02/2004, basically talks about what I just explained, where there was a fairly small group of us that were just looking to bring more resources to The United States, US companies to benefit from these huge loans. So the money when we lent money to a country like Ecuador or the Democratic Republic Of The Congo, the money had to come back. It didn't even go to those countries at all. It just went to hire our companies to build infrastructure, and they made huge profits. The second book, which came out in 2016, this is really a trilogy, I go into very deeply how now corporations suddenly, every one of them has their own economic hit map.
• 11:31
  Whether all the international corporations from Nike to Walmart to Exxon, you know, and they really control governments around the world, including the US government. Know, it's we know that nobody gets elected to a high office in The United States without lots of money, that comes through corporations one way or another or through their owners. And also, most all of our elected officials today understand that if they decide to retire, they don't wanna run again or they lose an election, they will get a very lucrative consulting jobs or lawyer's job, lobbying jobs with the corporations that they supported. So it's this that's the corporatocracy. It's this revolving door.
• 12:17
  So also the other thing is people go from an industry like oil, to being government jobs that that watchdog that industry, knowing full well they're gonna eventually go back to the industry. You know, it's extreme corruption, but since it's legal, it's actually not corruption. And, you know, if it were happening some other place, we would define it as corruption. So yes, it's an empire. It's not an American empire as it's a corporate empire that's supported by the American government to a large degree.
• 12:47
  And now, you know, the subtitle to my the third edition is China's Economic Hitman strategy and how we stop the global takeover. And so this third wave now so we've had three waves of economic hitmen. I was the original, and then there was the second. It was corporations, and now we've got China coming in, and China's learned from all of our mistakes and and successes, and they're doing a more efficient job. Their economic hitmen are doing a more efficient job than ours ever did.
• 13:17
  And the conclusion of the book is that it doesn't matter whether it's China's or The United States' Economic Hitmen, we must end it because it's creating an economic system that's that's destroying the planet as we know it.
• 13:30
  Seth Holehouse: Yeah. It really is. And so I wanna dig into China, but I have a I have a few questions before we get into that because I've got a lot to say about China. But one thing that really struck me from, you know, your book was that, you know, we we hear the different conspiracies about the governmental agencies. Right?
• 13:45
  Was it it's like, okay. Was it the CIA that assassinated JFK, or was it somebody else? You know, was it a lone gunman or these different things. But, you know, you had you had talked directly about seeing this happen, you know, in other countries where the CIA was going in, and you refer to them as the jackals. I remember you said the CIA jackals.
• 14:05
  Basically, if you couldn't convince a president to, say, take a massive loan from the IMF and sell out his country in exchange for, you know, a huge amount of money going, know, and lining his pockets. If you couldn't do that, then the the CIA would come in. And, you know, I think it was the president of Ecuador, and I think it was also maybe the president of Panama, I believe. But there are multiple people that you knew that had their planes, you know, blown up or any number of things. And so it's interesting timing to have this conversation.
• 14:35
  Because, actually, I'll pull an article up because the this news just came out that Epstein's calendar, you know, was kind of was leaked or people got ahold of Epstein's calendar. It showed that the current CIA director chief, I think it's William Burns, actually had an appointment with Epstein. So, of course, now there's a whole, you know, kind of discussion about, okay, what's the relationship between the CIA and Epstein? But then you've mentioned, you know, in your you know, even in the introduction, I read that there was sex and blackmail and extortion, which we know that, you know, Epstein was running a sex and blackmail and extortion operation. So it makes sense there's probably some crossover there.
• 15:13
  But with what you saw of the CIA coming into these countries, how would you describe some of that?
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: Well, it's it's it's it's an interesting approach, Seth, because often it wasn't the CIA employee because the CIA doesn't wanna get caught doing these kinds of things. They'd subcontract out about what they call CIA assets, you know, and that's why I like the term jackal because you never knew where they came from. You refer to the president of Ecuador, Jaime Roldos, and the head of state of Panama, Monte Rios, both of whom were clients of mine, and refused to play the game. They refused to accept my deal, and yes, they both died in private plane crashes that were very suspicious. There's never a smoking gun because smoking guns but if you wanna assassinate someone, well, you know, crash their plane because the smoking gun goes up in flames.
• 16:14
  But, you know, I knew these jackals personally, and I knew that they were behind me and I knew that they came in many different guises. So in those two particular cases, a lot of the evidence is particularly in the case of Torrijos of Panama points to the Chilean secret service or the Argentine secret service, actually, the Maccasan was Argentine actually doing the dirty work. But the CIA had brought the dictators of Argentina into power at that time, had tremendous control over them. So it makes total sense that rather than getting involved directly, the CIA would subcontract this job out to loyal people who owed them favors, the old mafia thing, you know? You guys owe me a favor, you Argentines owe us a favor, so we gotta get rid of Torrijos.
• 17:05
  And you'd see that over and over. It's unfortunate, The United States has admitted to instituting coups and assassinating leaders in Chile with with Allende of Chile, Arbenz of of Guatemala, Mossadegh of Iran, that's kind of where it started with Mossadegh, ZM of Vietnam, Lumumba of The Congo, it goes on and on. And those are just the heads of state. But this also goes down to lower levels and, you know, secretary or minister of finance or, security or or whatever. So this has been done over and over.
• 17:47
  And in a way, have to say, Seth, that it made my job easy. I only had these two presidents who didn't go along with my deal, Ecuador and Panama. But basically, I go into a president's office and I say, here, in this hand, I've got a few billion dollars, you know, and and for you and your your people, we're gonna build these big construction jobs. You're gonna get a lot of money from it. You're going get some money that's it's legal corruption, but you're going to get it at scholarships for your kids in The United States, all expenses paid, worth a hundred thousand dollars a year, whatever.
• 18:23
  And in this other hand, I got a gun if you don't play the game. Now I didn't carry a gun, but I knew and they knew that the guys with the guns, the tackles were right behind me. So it's a very interesting system. And also I have to say that within organizations like the CIA, the NSA, these are vast organizations. So there's empires within the empire.
• 18:50
  And sometimes they're conflicting with each other, you know, and I think we're seeing something similar in some of the drug related deals that go down to Mexico and the switch from Colombia to Mexico today or recently. So it's not a cut and dry sort of thing by any means, but it's very dangerous and it's totally contrary to all the principles as a country of The United States, a country, and it's totally working against us today because China doesn't have the reputation of doing that, and the world knows this. It's one of the reasons more and more countries are turning to China.
• 19:26
  Seth Holehouse: Alright, folks. I've got a quick message for you. I have one simple question. If today you could no longer go purchase more food for your family with the food stores that you have in your home, how long would you be able to feed your family? Would it be a week, three weeks, a month, two months, a year?
• 19:45
  This is a really important question folks that we have to be very realistic about because the elites are proactively trying to put us into a state of food crisis and a state of famine. I'm sure you've seen all of the different food processing plants and farms that are blowing up. You've got cattle dying by the tens of thousands. They're proactively trying to collapse our food system because they know if they can control our food, they can control us. And so one of the best ways to be outside of their control is to be able to have our own stores of food and to be able to produce our own food.
• 20:18
  So there's really two things I would recommend. One is having heirloom seeds that you can grow your own food with, making sure that they're non GMO heirloom seeds. That way you can harvest your seeds this year, use them next year. You can use these seeds for generations. Literally, it's how it will work.
• 20:35
  The other thing though is this high quality storable food. This is food that's sitting somewhere. It's hidden in your basement, buried in your backyard, whatever it ever it is. So that way, if there is a crisis, if there is an emergency, you might have three months set aside to get through that time period. And so for this, I would highly recommend a company called Heaven's Harvest.
• 20:54
  This is an amazing Christian owned patriot company, and what they're doing is they're making high quality storable food. Again, lot of the food companies, they say these food buckets, they're all about maximizing calories per dollar. They're filling the buckets with a bunch of filler and junk like sweet beverages, etcetera. But Heaven's Harvest, they focus on very high quality food that will last up to twenty five years on the shelf. They also sell heirloom seeds.
• 21:21
  You can buy all of your seed. You can buy all of your restorable food. And look, folks, personally, I would recommend having at least three months per person in your household, if not six months or even a year. Again, depends on your budget, but I'll definitely make sure you have some seeds because that seed those seeds could be worth their weight in gold, if not more in the future. So to go ahead and do this right now, go put up a new tab and go to heavensharvest.com.
• 21:47
  And if you use the promo code Seth, that's s e t h, promo code Seth, you'll save 15% off of your entire order. So again, folks, the time is running out and you'd rather be three months or one year early than one day late. Again, heavensharvest.com and use promo code Seth to save 15% today. Well, so one question though is so that if okay. So we have the these giant corporations that, you know, working with the the state, right, with the US government and the agencies, you know, and it's whether it's Halliburton or Chevron or, you know, you know, BP, any of these these giant corporations.
• 22:26
  So if let's just say that there's a country like Ecuador, for instance, where, you know, you have a giant oil company that's trying to set things up and the the debt trap that would be set would basically, if I as I understand it, you go into a country like Ecuador and say, hey, you know, we're gonna build this giant infrastructure project, whether it's a power plant or, you know, whatever it is. And so that's gonna cost, say, $5,000,000,000. Right? And they might say, well, we can't know, what are we gonna what's our collateral? It's like, well, it's your oil.
• 22:59
  It's your natural resources. It's your, you know, part you're the part of the Amazon Forest that you own, whatever it is. And so the the debt or the, basically, the project, it's it's almost like it's from the beginning, it's set up to fail. Right? So that way, they're forced to then hand over their oil, hand over, you know, military assets, etcetera, to even sometimes a a giant multinational corporation.
• 23:22
  But the question I have is that when it comes to the the CIA and the Jackals and these other agencies that they you know, their assets, is it that basically that these giant corporations are directing the CIA? Or, like, what's the relationship there? Because if the Jackals are going in as, you know, hired guns under the CIA, as assets of the CIA, and they're accomplishing things that end up benefiting the big oil, like, what's that relationship? I'm sure it's probably murky, but what do you see of that relationship?
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: Well, I'll give you one big example. That's the first Bush president whose family had been deeply involved in oil, he had been deeply involved in oil, and he was deeply involved in the financialist family, was deeply participating in Wall Street, he was behind a lot of corporations, and he also became president. And, you know, we get Condoleezza Rice later on who was secretary of state and worked for an oil company and went back to that sort of thing, was continued to make a lot of money from oil. We see this over and over and over again. So the relationship is a loose one, but doesn't have to always be particularly formal.
• 24:44
  But people like me, and I wasn't privy to all what was going on, but what I did know is that these countries that I was trying, my job was to get these countries to take these loans and sign off that their collateral on the loans was oil or whatever, and that was my job. And I knew that they knew about Allende in Chile and they knew about Mosaddek and they knew about all the other people. So it made my job easy, but I didn't actually have to know who the Jackals were, I did eventually get to know some of them, but I didn't need to. And I didn't need to really know who was calling the shots. What I knew is that my job was to create economic models that would show that if you invested this money in, let's say, a whole electrical power system and hired US companies to build a power system for all of Ecuador.
• 25:36
  We keep talking about Ecuador. That's a pretty good one. That was my job, was to get them to take this big loan, hire our companies to build this infrastructure project with the collateral being oil. And, you know, I didn't really need to know much beyond that except that was what I was supposed to do. And I would produce studies that began with reports, and then eventually we did get into econometrics more.
• 26:03
  I hired some very good statisticians who were able to I mean, basically you can do anything you want with statistics. But the truth of the matter is that when you invest a lot of money into infrastructure in a country, a poor country especially, you see the growth in GDP. It happens. So I could convince myself, and during most of the time I had this job, I was convinced that I was doing the right thing. I'd been in the Peace Corps, I wanted to do the right thing, and I could see how, yeah, we invest in these things and the economy grows.
• 26:37
  Eventually I came to see that GDP measures how well the wealthy are doing in the big corporations. It doesn't measure the majority of the people at all. So even though we could it's very, very skewed statistic and it works completely to the advantage of empire building. And I eventually saw that and that's when I got out, it was actually Omar Torrijos who helped me see that Omar Torrijos of Panama. But you know, we build these econometric models based on something that we want to believe.
• 27:09
  It's kind of the same way as we talk about, you know, the rule by law, but that all depends on who writes the laws, doesn't it? And as long as, in those days, as long as, you know, and still, we control the World Bank basically, we appoint the president, we kind of, we were, The United States writes a lot of the laws, now that's beginning to change very rapidly. But rule of law is a great idea, but whose laws are you gonna use?
• 27:39
  Seth Holehouse: Yeah, and so it's such a good point, especially when you're looking at on the international stage. I mean, The United States used to, in a lot of ways, be the world's police. Right? You know, we were the ones that are going and keeping things in line and, you know, counteracting the Soviet Union. And, you know, we so we were that.
• 27:57
  But then I think now what you have happening is that a lot of this the corruption and this the reality of of how The United States became this monolithic, you know, empire in a lot of ways, you know, kinda came to be. And now you have the kind of rising and now you have the falling of that with the rising of China. Right? And so I have a little graph, which I wanna show the audience. I've I've placed before in different episodes bef but I think that this really shows the shift of what's happening.
• 28:28
  Because I think that, you know, for me growing up here in America, you know, you we always we we almost had this perception that America oh, yeah. We're the number one country. We're the we're the biggest country. We're the you know, doing the business with all the countries in the world. But that's actually changing very rapidly.
• 28:44
  So I'm gonna pull up this graph. So what this is, this is a little animation showing the the countries around the world that have either The United States as their top trading partner or China as their top trading partner, and that's represented by the colors of either blue or pink or blue or red. US being, you know, being blue and China being red. And it just shows how The US used to, at one point, basically, in a lot of ways, could say control much of the world through its trade and through its financial relationships, right, a lot of, you know, economic hitman type stuff. But how that's been replaced by the what, you know, you refer to as the third wave, which is the China.
• 29:22
  So let me go ahead and just pull this up because this is gonna really help kind of lay a foundation for our discussion. So in 1980, you can see it was just China was the only country that was red. You can see how it's it's progressing. And not only goes to twenty eighteen, but you can see that by the time you get to 02/2018, almost the entire world is red. I mean, South America, all of almost all of Africa, a lot of Europe, Russia.
• 29:55
  So, I mean, to me, this right here, it's all it reminds me of playing Risk as a child. You know, this is showing, you know Yeah. This is it's not a war like we used to think of as a war where, you know, countries are you're capturing territory and everything. Everything's happening economically now. And what this is showing is that China is now the dominant country.
• 30:17
  And and I then we'll talk I wanna get your thoughts on this, and then we'll talk about BRICS because that's a whole other, you know, thing with the bricks and the dedollarization happening. But, I mean, what you have a few chapters. Actually, it's on the cover of your book. Right? You've got, you know, the the Chinese shipping containers there.
• 30:34
  And so why don't you just explain what you see happening with China and their economic hitman and how China is taking advantage of the flaws of The US model?
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: That's a fascinating graphic. Thanks for sharing that. Yeah, I think today China's the number one trading partner with about 124, 20 five countries in The US with about 55, 50 six countries. And that's all changed, you know, that's your map showed that, and it was really when Xi Jinping became the powerful in the 02/2012 in China that he decided to go out into the world. Before that, China pretty much focused on China.
• 31:17
  And, you know, I taught at an MBA program in China, One of the top, considered by many people the top one there, and Chinese students were, you know, it became very obvious to me that they wanted to learn about what I did that was successful and what I did that was not successful, you know, the failures. So actually China's Economic Hitmen have learned really, really well about from our successes and our failures. And they've got a great story to tell, You know, they can tell a story that for thirty years, they averaged economic growth of almost 10% a year, and nobody else has ever done that. They brought more than 800,000,000 people, according to the World Bank, they brought more than 800,000,000 people out of poverty, more than the rest of the world combined. That's an amazing story.
• 32:09
  If you're the president of a country in Africa or Latin America, you say, well, like that story. I don't necessarily want their government. Then again, I'm not sure I want the US government because it doesn't seem to be working too well these days, but I do like the economic model that China portrays. Also The United States, we always had these strings attached called neoliberal economics, where we insisted that countries that took loans from us policies into place like no regulations or reduce your regulations on corporations, very low environmental and social regulations, privatization, as I mentioned before, we we assisted on this. China has never done that.
• 32:54
  And and and nobody wants to be told how to run their country. There's nobody. The other side of it is we put military bases everywhere. They haven't done that, just a few places where they've been strategic spots for their shipping channels, their shipping routes, etcetera. And we have this history of assassinations, which they don't have.
• 33:14
  So they have this compelling story. And as I point out in my book, but their goal is essentially the same, it's to control resources, it's to control markets, it's to control the world basically. And so it's the same, they're headed in the same direction, but they've been doing quite frankly a brilliant job of it. And the new Silk Road, their whole idea of bringing the world together. So we'd go into countries and say, Hey, we're gonna sign a favored trading agreement with you so that you, Brazil, Ecuador, Republic, yeah, or the Democratic Republic or The Congo, you can have a really good bilateral trading agreement with us in The United States.
• 33:54
  China says, we're gonna give you the new Silk Road, which will connect you with all parts of the world. Latin America, we're gonna help you build ports so that you can connect with the rest of the world through shipping. So it's an amazing story that they had. At the same time, Seth, I think The United States has also shot itself in the foot, and I've been chatting for a long time, so I want to go back to you and see if you want to take that further. Where do want to go with this?
• 34:20
  Seth Holehouse: Oh, mean, I could listen to you. Actually, do. If I have audio buckle, I'll listen to you for hours, so it's no problem. But, you know, one thing I want to mention about just China and their model with this is that if you look at what they're doing with bricks, I mean, you have to say it's brilliant because you had the The US when with their empire they they built, but it was really about they were the ones completely in control, and everything else is very subservient. They controlled the resources.
• 34:49
  They used their military. They used the CIA, etcetera. And the Chinese, it's like what they've done is that they've you know, through opening up to all these BRICS nations, it's almost like they've taken the rest of the world on that journey with them to say, hey. Look. We're no longer gonna be bowing down to the imperialist United States.
• 35:07
  We're gonna, you know, kinda come together and form this coalition of countries that will together form trading, everything associated to, you know, this new Silk Road and, you know, the Belt and Road Initiative. And then if you then even further that so let let's take a look at what happened, you know, once Russia invaded Ukraine and The United States sanctioned Ukraine or sorry, sanctioned Russia and then kicked Russia out of the SWIFT system, Right? Which that was then, you know, the showing that The United States will actually weaponize the dollar, which is the world reserve currency that will weaponize that against a country that it doesn't agree with. I think that that took an even further step, and it gave China the perfect ammunition to tell all these other countries, well, look, when's the when are The US going to weaponize the dollar against you? Right?
• 35:59
  So they're they're using all these things, their debts, the the the money, the military to control your country. If you don't play their game, they're gonna they're gonna there's gonna be an orange revolution. There's gonna be a coup and assassinated president. And China, I think, you have to give them credit for that. They've done a brilliant job of really building the opposition to the American empire.
• 36:20
  But then what what does concern me, and I and I really wanna hear your thoughts as you touch on it a lot in the later chapters of your book, is is as much as in a lot of ways The United States is being especially our government has been demonized. And I think even a lot of people that that a lot of strong, you know, constitution loving, American loving patriot people in America are now thinking, gosh, our government is so corrupt and so evil. And, you know, that's true. There's a lot of corruption within the government. But if you look at our way in light of life here in America versus the way of life in China, it's a night and day difference.
• 36:57
  Because, you know, I've spent a lot of my life really focused on human rights abuses in China, and, you know, they've they've got millions in these the Uighur concentration camps. And I remember talking interviewed a doctor that was had defected from China that was forced to perform live organ harvesting, right, off of people. And he was talk he was from the Xinjiang region. Right? And so he was talking about the Uighurs.
• 37:23
  And one of the things he said, he goes, oh, he goes, that's huge business for the CCP because a lot of the Middle Eastern clients that need organs want kosher organs. And so because they have this huge Muslim population in China, that's those are all the organs that get sold to the wealthy Middle Eastern families. And so if you look at you know, this is a state run operation in China. This is what really concerns me because, you know, communism in general, it seems like a lot of times at the very beginning, it paints this really beautiful of utopia, and we're gonna cast off the, you know, the old ways of doing things, and we're gonna build this new world that's all inclusive. But then once they seize control, then everyone that helped them is lined up against the wall, and and then the true colors come out.
• 38:08
  So, I mean, sorry, it's kind of a long, you know, kind of way of explaining and asking your opinion. But does that does that concern you with China? That even though right now, looks like they're doing a lot of the right things and offering countries benefits, but that once they actually seize control, you know, will that will they treat an African country or a South American country? Will they treat those people any different than they treat their own citizens?
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah. You know, I don't know. Those are all good points, and I don't have a crystal ball. And I, you know, I just came back from Latin America recently in the last couple of months and headed to Europe this summer. These are all speaking engagements and meeting with people in these places that have some authority.
• 38:53
  And what I hear over and over, and I was asked that very question to some pop officials in places in Latin America just within the last few months, and the response that I get is, well, we don't know what China is going to do, but we do know what The United States has done, and we don't like it. And we know what The United States is doing right now with with with with our immigrant, with our migrants, with the people from our countries that are trying to get go to The United States because The United States, the free trade agreements, CAFTA and NAFTA, have destroyed our economies. That's especially true in Central America and Mexico, and it's true. These policies control destroyed the country. That's why there's so many immigrants.
• 39:36
  It's not because the people don't like Guatemala or Honduras, they love their countries. I speak Spanish, I know them well, I talk to them here in The United States where they're, you know, our gardeners, and they want to go home, but the economies have been destroyed, and we could go into more detail about what's behind those policies, but suffice it to say that they will look at us and say, yeah, well we don't like what's happening to the Uighurs, that's terrible, but what's happening to our own people in your camps? How many of them are being killed or tortured or starved? And what about your indigenous people? And what about your prison populations?
• 40:12
  I mean, they see this. And then if I say something like, well, aren't you afraid that something's going to happen to Taiwan? Like what's happened to Hong Kong and Tibet, and it could happen here? And the response to that is, well, you've already done that here to a certain degree. You took over half of, I don't know, a large share of Mexico not so long ago.
• 40:33
  You've invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, and now you're deeply involved in Ukraine. We don't really know, but they do say, but historically China has used trade and this is true. China's really never spread its military beyond what it considers to be its ancient borders, and that's certainly unfortunate, and I'm not trying to defend it in any way, shape or manner, but Tibet, parts of Northern India, Taiwan, Hong Kong, those are all part of China, and they've gone into those areas, but they haven't sent armies into Africa or The Middle East or South America, we have. And so when you look at this from the perspective of other countries, you see something very different from what we Americans are accustomed to seeing. Would I want to live in China as opposed to no, I love this country and I'm a very strong patriot.
• 41:33
  That's why I criticize because I think democracy depends on criticism. We've got to face what we've done wrong so we can correct it. I'm an extremely loyal patriot. My family fought in the revolution. Know what mean?
• 41:44
  I go back and I'm extremely loyal, but we have to change. We've shot ourselves in the foot many different times, and China's taking advantage of that for sure. And you mentioned BRICS. All right, what does BRICS stands for? Brazil, the largest, most powerful economy and the most people of Latin America.
• 42:04
  Russia, well, now Russia's role is changing very rapidly. India, the biggest population in the world, BRIC, China, okay, and South Africa, very important country on the African continent. So BRICS is a very powerful institution. Today, its economy, BRICS members, just those members, forget about the other ones that are joining in now that are becoming part of it, but just those countries, their economy is bigger than all the G7 countries, which is The United States, Canada, The United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Italy, Japan. Italy, Japan, I don't know how many are counted, but anyway, it's, you know, it's it's our based on our European allies plus Japan.
• 42:52
  And Britain is bigger. Its economy is bigger. It's more powerful, and it's taking over the World Bank in many countries. So we've seen this shift and I don't like it at all, but when I talk to people in the countries where the shift is happening, the ones you showed on the map of how they've been growing in acceptance of China, I can understand why they're doing it and how much we need to look at that, really investigate who we are. You know, if you've you know, I remember I remember in in in grade school coming home, complained to my mom that some kid that I really liked didn't like me, was picking on me.
• 43:34
  Mom said, well, you probably can't do anything to change that kid's impression except change who you are and how you relate to that other kid. I think that's a really important thing for us to look at. Look at how do we relate to the world as a country and how does the rest of the world see us?
• 43:53
  Seth Holehouse: You know, I think that a lot of times those kinds of changes only happen amidst great struggle and difficulty. I know in my life, you know, as a small kind of microcosm of that, the times when I've changed the most have been the times that were the most difficult. The time, the times when everything I thought to be kind of comfortable and secure around me was stripped away, and I was forced to look at myself in the mirror and kind of say, well, what's left? You know, who am I? And so I think that if you look at where our country is right now, you know, especially post COVID, yeah, you know, say five years ago, in many ways, life was still just good in America.
• 44:33
  I think most people were, you know, quite naive, were quite distracted. But now that's been really stripped away. And so I think it's also why you're seeing a resurgence of people that are talking about the founding fathers and the constitution in 1776 and getting back to that because I think that we forgot those things. In a lot of ways, it was intentional. It was part of the the overall plan, which I think, you know, from the subversion from the enemies to make us forget those things and and to forget our our identity and our roots and everything.
• 45:00
  And so but, you know, I think that also one thing one comment I'll throw out there just kind of reflecting on it through our conversation, is that I if you look at what our government has done, you know, to a lot of countries, right, in combination with the corporatocracy, I feel like that the what's protected us and what's kept America America is really just what the founding fathers set forth. I think that if we didn't have the second amendment, if we didn't have the constitution, if we didn't have the the power that's distributed to the states and then, you know, to the counties, I think that our country would have fallen to tyranny a long time ago, actually. So I think that it's really it's it's the the bones of our country that have kept us safe from tyranny. And what are your thoughts on that?
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: Well, I agree, and I think the world would agree. I think the world has a tremendous respect for the principles of The United States, and therein lies the irony that I think today a lot of the world doesn't see us as keeping our principles very well, but, you know, they see us as a dysfunctional country, and I hear that a lot, Seth, that, people say, well, The United States is a democracy, we don't want it. You can't seem to agree on anything. You can't get anything done. I mean, right now we're going through this another crisis in the debt ceiling, as well as people being murdered, innocent people all over the country, you know, like nowhere else has that happened.
• 46:41
  And, you know, seriously, nowhere else. I take groups of people to Ecuador and Guatemala, people say, aren't those places dangerous? And I say, well, people get shot in those places, but they're almost all connected with the narco trafficking business in one way or another, or fighting the narco trafficking business. I'm not worried about me. Nobody walks into a school in these countries and starts shooting people, or a church, or a restaurant.
• 47:03
  So people look at The United States now with a very different view, and yet still our principles are huge guiding principles for the world, yes. Wonderful, incredible, you know, but people don't see us as really adhering to those principles, rightly or wrongly. And I think that's something for us to take a very, very hard look at ourselves about. If we really want to compete with China, if we if if we don't wanna see China take over, then we've got to look at what we've been doing wrong that's turned people against us. Because that map you show is not just the fact that China's Economic Hitmen have been efficient, it's also the fact that all those countries have been disillusioned with The United States in one way or another.
• 47:50
  Yeah,
• 47:51
  Seth Holehouse: and that's a really good point, it's the combination, and actually, Eva, as you point out in the book, that it's the failures of the the, you know, unite, The US, you know, economic hitman model, and this and how it's been implemented, and then how it's kind of acted after that. It's the failures that that make it, that make the China strategy that much more effective as they move in, you know, to those countries, whether it's in Africa or South America or, you know, whatnot. But it's also interesting to kind of take a step back because as with a lot of a lot of different things that we experience where you say, okay, that's corrupt. You then you trace it back and you realize, oh, it's the same people controlling that. And so you mentioned that the drug trade, and I've talked to a lot of people that have focused on what's happening in Mexico, and then, you know, the cartels coming in.
• 48:37
  And actually, the a lot of the cartels are actually tied to the the the CCP. Because the sea if you look at the fentanyl trade. Right? And it's because they this is kinda looking at this is, you know, unrestricted warfare. Right?
• 48:51
  Going back to the the the book that was written by the the two Chinese generals that, you know, that that China, you know, with what's playing out with the the trade, that's just one aspect. You know, I think that from what I have understood, in the minds of the of the high you know, the leaders of China, they're at war with The US. You know, they and as you mentioned, they want control. Like, they want to take control of the world. That's their goal.
• 49:14
  You know, that that Mao set out with the, you know, hundred year march, hundred year marathon, that by 2049, they wanted China to be basically in control of the world. And The United States has been the biggest, you know, kind of sustained block in their way for that. And so the you know, going back to the gangs and everything, while it might feel like, okay. Well, that's corrupt. And we know that the CIA was actually has been very heavily involved in the drug trade.
• 49:39
  Right? But you can also trace so much of it to China and the CCP, especially the importation of fentanyl, which is destroying our country. So it's it's such a complicated thing to look at because it's almost like, do you want, you know, this mob family or this mafia family? Right? It's it's like it's like, so where do we go with it?
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, I think where we go with it is to recognize that these two systems, it's really the same system in a way, but these two countries control create almost half the world's economy and almost half the world's pollution. And they both get this economic hitman strategy. That's what it is, and it's not serving any of us. It's created by another economist calling a death economy, an economic system that's polluting and consuming itself into extinction.
• 50:41
  And, you know, it has this goal of maximizing short term profits regardless of the social and environmental costs. And in the short term, it's depleting the resources it needs for the long term. It's a bad system. China's system is very similar to different approaches, but similar to the system to ours, and both countries are looking to dominate. And that's putting us in this horrible situation where we've got climate change and species extinctions and income inequality, starvation, environmental destruction.
• 51:12
  Those are all problems, but they're not the problem. The problem is the death economy, which causes all of those crises that we're facing today. And the alternative is the life economy. And I'm not one of these people that say no more growth. Yeah, I'd say no more growth in the areas where we've been growing and producing a lot of junk for ourselves and things that are just destroying the planet, but let's grow in the area of helping starving people feed themselves.
• 51:38
  Let's grow in the area of paying people to clean up pollution, you know, to mine all the plastic that's in the ocean and so many other things, and to regenerate destroyed environments, to bring back old mine pits and coral reefs and forests. Let's pay people to really get into recycling, to do real recycling, and to come up with new technologies and processes and products that don't ravage nature, that in fact enhance life. We can do this, and we've been doing it. You know, the conscious capitalism, the green new deal, the idea of the whole benefit corporations, B corporations, solar energy, wind energy, non fossil fuel fired transportation systems, all of these things are moving in that direction, and that is the hope. And China's deeply involved in that process too.
• 52:29
  And what we need to do, think, is really, really encourage that and to understand us as individuals, that we all have a role to play in this. It's an extremely, this is such a critical time in human history, as we all know, and for each of us, we should feel blessed to be alive at this time because we can all participate. You know, Seth, every one of us is a victim, but we're also collaborators. We all shop. We all support these corporations through our consumption.
• 53:00
  Many of us work for the corporations, manage them, invest in them, whatever. So we have more power than we realize we have, and what we've got to do is redefine what it means to be successful humans on this planet, maximize long term benefits for all life, not just maximizing short term profits. And, you know, it's gonna take both of these two huge countries as well as a lot of others to make that truly happen.
• 53:26
  Seth Holehouse: Yeah, and whether the two countries can somehow get along and realize that a plant that's alive is a lot better than a plant that's dead.
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: Well, think about what happened after World War II. What countries could have hated each other more than The United States and Germany or The United States and Japan? We came together very, very quickly because it was a common enemy, the Soviet Union. The Cold War brought us together very quickly. I think what's important now is if China, you know, in The United States, if we can, well, think about this.
• 54:02
  So there's a bunch of UFOs hovering over us, whole lot of them, aliens threatening us. What does China and The United States do? Yeah. They come together. Right?
• 54:13
  Exactly. Well, let's let's assume that that, you know, we've alienated our we are the aliens. We we've defined ourselves as human supremacy over nature. We're not part of nature, we're apart from, that's how we've defined ourselves. First time in history, basically, been going on for a few hundred years, but that we really looked at ourselves as the dominators.
• 54:37
  We have the right, we have the right to destroy our planet. We don't look at it that way, but that's basically what we're doing. And so we the alienators, we are the aliens. It's not human beings. It's our dedication to short term consumerism, short term profits.
• 54:54
  It's the economic hitman strategy. It's death economy. So let's, you know, if we can spread the word that we all have to come together to fight the concept, to confront and to change the concept of the death economy, to transform the death economy into a life economy. It can be a lot of fun and you know, profitable and in many ways, not just profitable from a money standpoint, but profitable from a deeper standpoint. What is prosperity?
• 55:29
  You know, it's what is prosperity? That's a good question. But it is not about accumulating more and more consumer goods and making companies that build those things wealthier and wealthier.
• 55:41
  Seth Holehouse: Yeah, I mean I think that and I feel like that in a lot of ways we're going through this process. You know, someone that I've I've been following a lot is Peter Zihan, who wrote, you know, his most recent book is the end of the world is just the beginning. And it's about the really the death of globalism. And and what he sees is all the indicators that, you know, globalism and the global world that was built off of the, you know, really the the American empire is coming to an end. Now whether China can replace that, that's to be seen.
• 56:09
  But what he's talking about, though, is that as that dies, something else emerges. I think this is the real solution. Because, know, yeah, you have a lot of these giant corporations that are pushing, you know, their green initiatives, but how much of it is really for the planet because they're still making their shoes in in in China, and they're still polluting all over the place. Whereas, I think the real solution fundamentally is getting back to a sustainable human way of living where we're we're buying and selling locally. We're supporting local farmers.
• 56:39
  We're supporting local businesses. We're, you know, in a lot of ways, it's almost like the the solution to this is the death of the corporatocracy. Right? Because it's the it's like the corporatocracy is a parasite. Right?
• 56:52
  Or then also, like, the communism similarly is is and has always been a parasite as well. And so, you know, that's what I what I'm seeing, it does give me hope. And, actually, I similar to you, I feel excited to be alive at this time because, you know, I'm making a lot of these decisions myself as well with how we're living. It's like, well, let's not, you know, why live in this way that you're consuming so much waste and just, you know, buying throwaway made in China stuff, whereas now we're we consciously if we need to buy a new tool, I buy something that's made in America that's gonna last, you know, five times as long as some tool that was made in some cheap factory over in China, for instance. So there's a lot of these these changes that are that are kind of unfolding, which is encouraging to me.
• 57:34
  But, you know, one one final question I had for you as we're kind of rounding out the end of the interview here is that, you know, when I remember when I first was reading through your book, I was thinking, how is this guy still alive? Right? This is somebody that was on the inside that was exposing, and this guy is talking about the CIA jackals and presidential assassinations. And, you know, you walk us through your own personal journey of realizing what role you're playing. And then in my opinion, you know, kind of coming to the conclusion that, you know, part of how you can help kind of correct a lot of, you know, what you were involved with was just exposing it.
• 58:09
  And so when you did that, when you're writing, you know, the first version of your book and coming out and exposing this model, did you ever, you know, fear for your safety? Like, what what is it that gave you the courage to do that? Because a lot of whistleblowers end up not making it, and somehow you've here you are, you've you're talking to you know, you're you're dining, you know, with with world leaders and giving TED talks, and somehow you've risen above that. But how how'd you go through that process?
• 58:39
  Speaker 3: Well, when I first stopped being an economic hitman back in the eighties, I started writing a book. It was an expose. I to get involved with lots of people's stories, other economic hitmen and jackals that I knew. And I started making phone calls and asking them if I could tell their story, and almost immediately I got phone calls threatening my life, my daughter's life, she was an infant at the time, muffled phone calls, know, but I took them very seriously. I'd seen what Jackals can do.
• 59:10
  At the same time, I got taken out to dinner by the president of Stonewarester Engineering Company, which was a big rival of the company I had just resigned from. And at the time, I think the largest engineering company in The United States, a very powerful company, he takes me out to dinner and he says, you know, we'd like you've got a great resume, you're a chief economist at this other company, you have 50 employees, we'd like to use your resume in our proposals. You won't have to actually do any work for us, just let us use your resume and proposal. We might ask you to take our private jet ones in a while down to Rio De Janeiro or someplace and have dinner with some important people, but we don't ask you to do any real work. And he said, I'm prepared to write you a check tomorrow morning for half a million dollars, consultants retainer.
• 1:00:00
  And that was back in the eighties. There's nothing to blink at now, it was, you know, anyway, and then he says to me, Just don't write the book that we know you're working on. So Seth, I'm getting the same, I'm getting the pistol, I'm getting the gun, the threat, and I'm also getting the carrot. And, you know, I I took the money. And what would you do?
• 1:00:26
  You know? I mean, my god. But, you know, I have to say in my own defense, I didn't go out and buy a fancy yacht or big mansions. I I reinvested in where I'd been a Peace Corps volunteer in the Amazon. I went back, I formed nonprofits, and I wrote five books on indigenous people and the need to protect these indigenous areas.
• 1:00:44
  They were fine with me writing those books. So I I I, you know, I did all that and and created these nonprofits, Pachamama Alliance and others. And but then on 09:11, I was in the Amazon, taking a group of people to learn from the schwa, the people who had been a Peace Corps volunteer, who still lived with a life economy back then. And after 09:11, I I came home and I flew to Ground 0. And as I stood there, I knew I had to write the book.
• 1:01:18
  But this time, I decided that I wouldn't make it an expose, I wouldn't contact anyone else. I would write the whole book in private. I had five books at that point published on indigenous people. I knew you're supposed to write a proposal, get in advance, and write a book. I didn't I decided I wouldn't do that.
• 1:01:34
  I'd write the whole book and I'd make it completely personal, a confession, a personal confession. Wouldn't contact anyone, get in the hands of a very good New York agent, and I figured that once he got it out into the publishing world, it was my best insurance policy because anybody in the alphabet agencies, CIA, NSA, FBI, might want me to have would know that's the worst thing they could do because if something strange happens to me, the book's gonna sell millions of it has sold millions of copies, but it would've sold millions more and more quickly, and they knew that. And so I figured it was my best insurance policy. And I think that's really good advice to any whistleblower. Don't threaten to blow a whistle, and don't blow the whistle until all the sheep have all gathered, you know, or whatever.
• 1:02:21
  And don't, you know, don't blow the whistle until you've got all your ducks lined up and and and and you've got good proof of everything that you want to say, and it's out there, it's already out there. Once it's out there, they can't do anything.
• 1:02:33
  Seth Holehouse: Yeah, that's a good point, actually. It's a good point. Yeah, go ahead.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 3: And I'll add one thing else, know, had not signed any non disclosure agreements, I hadn't actually worked for the CIA unlike, you know, unlike Edward Snowden or somebody else. So, you know, they didn't have anything legal on me. The only thing they had on me was, you know, the threat of my daughter's life or my life. And once that became no longer viable to them, they would sell books, I figured that that went away.
• 1:03:12
  Seth Holehouse: Yeah, there's a good lesson, a good takeaway. If you're a whistleblower, write a book first in private, and then publish it, the chance of, you know, your chance of being, shot in the back of the head in a park or something like that greatly will be reduced with that. Alright. So before we before we sign off, I just want to bring up just your book for people again. So you can, you can buy it anywhere online.
• 1:03:34
  So again, this is it's Confessions of an Economic Hitman. There's three editions. I would personally recommend getting the third edition because it's the most complete, and it has a lot of the new chapters about China. But again, phenomenal book. And what I really enjoyed about it is that it's storytelling.
• 1:03:50
  It's not an academic book. It's just you and your story and your experience. And I think that there's an age old appreciation of good storytelling. It's in our DNA. So do you have any final closing thoughts before we sign off?
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 3: Well, thanks, Seth. I would just say that, you know, I think we all should be feel blessed to be alive at this time when we have this opportunity. The book, and I know we don't have time to go into this, but the book, you know, has it, final chapters are about what each of us can do as individuals. And it includes five questions we can each ask ourselves, which very quickly are, what do I most wanna do for the rest of my life? What'll bring me the greatest satisfaction?
• 1:04:30
  And how do I do this in a way that helps to transform the death through a life economy? So as a writer, I'd say I'm gonna write about these things, try to inspire people. I have a friend who's a carpenter who'd say, I'd like to work with my hands, but I'm gonna only use sustainable woods to do this. And then there's three more questions that go on about what's stopping you, how do you change your perception to allow you to move forward, and what actions do you take that we can all ask ourselves. And I think it's just terribly important that all your listeners feel really honored to be alive at this point in time, and to know that you, all of you, you can play a role in this, you can do something and you need to.
• 1:05:10
  We all need to get on the wagon, we all need to do this, we all need to get involved. This death economy is destroying the planet as we know it for us and the future generations of all life. So welcome that opportunity, embrace it, and you know, that's basically most of my message is that we've got to turn this thing around and we can, and we can have fun doing it.
• 1:05:40
  Seth Holehouse: Absolutely. Well, John, thank you again for coming on. It's been such a joy having you on. Thank you for everything that you've done.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 3: You're welcome, Seth. My pleasure. And thank you for what you're doing, getting all this message out there, Man in America. There we go. Yeah.
• 1:05:54
  Yeah. Thank you so much. I really appreciate what you're doing.
• 1:05:57
  Seth Holehouse: Thank you. Alright, folks. I hope that you enjoyed that interview. I've now got a very special and urgent economic update with doctor Kirk Kelly. Some pretty significant things are happening in the banking industry.
• 1:06:11
  We just experienced the second largest bank in American history to fail. And it failed. FDIC came in, and lo and behold, JPMorgan comes in and scoops it up. So we're seeing a consolidation of the banks. But this is very significant.
• 1:06:26
  And they're telling us that this is the end, but I think that it's just the beginning. So enjoy this interview with doctor Kirk Elliott. So Kirk, it's a pleasure to have you back on. It seems like every week within the financial and banking industry, there's something crazy happening for us to talk about. So at least it's exciting, I guess you could say.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 4: Well, there's never a dull moment. That's for sure. I mean and and this weekend when when First Republic went into FDIC receivership, I mean, this to me, it's like everyone's saying, is this going to happen? When is this going to happen? It's like, dude, it's going to happen here pretty soon.
• 1:07:08
  Even last Friday, I was doing some shows with some different, you know, influencers. And so, like, First Republic is going to go into FDIC receivership. There's no doubt in my mind. I just didn't think it was going to be two days later. Right?
• 1:07:24
  Which is what happened on Sunday. But the aftermath of that is is huge, Seth. It's just massive because this is way bigger than Silicon Valley Bank. This is way bigger than Signature Bank. I mean, you're you're getting not to the point of, like, Credit Suisse size in in Europe, you know, that UBS had to buy out.
• 1:07:48
  But we're talking about the fourteenth largest bank in America, Second largest bank failure in the history of our country. Right. And it just sort of happened. Right. It didn't just sort of happen.
• 1:07:59
  You know, these things don't just ever sort of happen. It's been going on for decades. Right. When when you look at the debt of of America, when you look at the Federal Reserve, when you look at their policies, they've been they've been hiding things intensely, like purposely hiding things since about 02/2009, you know, during that crisis when you had the the Dodd Frank bill and all that other stuff that came out. And and but even even more so since February when you had the tech stock bubble and you had 09/11, you had the Patriot Act, all those things came in.
• 1:08:39
  What did they start doing to stimulate the economy? It was it was those two things in particular where they decided, you know what? We can just print up money and a ton of it, and we can lower interest rates and have credit artificially low to stimulate people borrowing and to stimulate the economy and make the federal, you know, the not the Federal Reserve, but make the real estate market, you know, a function of Federal Reserve policy completely. Right? Because the real estate market mushroomed because of these artificially low rates, which if you look back over time, you know, historically, the average mortgage is about 7%.
• 1:09:25
  Well, we're just actually approaching the average now and people are freaking out and thinking these interest rates are way too high. It's like, no, we're just actually not even there yet. We're still a few percentage points away, but we're approaching the historical average. See, when you've got the prime rate, you know, in upper fours like where it is right now and it should be in the sevens, we're still not even close to the average, but we're getting there. Right.
• 1:09:49
  But we're so used to these these low, low interest rates, artificially low interest rates that they've made on purpose to try to stimulate the economy that that anything that's not real seems like phony when when really the stuff that we consider phony is just the norm. So it's like this is the new normal that we're going into. I would want to just tell people, it's like this era of almost free money, cheap credit, it's over. I don't think we're ever going to see it again. I really don't think we're ever going to see that again because we saw what that did with those imbalances, these boom and bust cycles due to an economy.
• 1:10:32
  It devastates them. And I think policymakers are scratching their head, wishing that they would have never done that. Because now, you know, the old adage, the bigger they are, the harder they fall really is coming true right now. And this is going to be an ugly fall. It's going to be an ugly downfall and collapse of something that we think is normal.
• 1:10:56
  I mean, if you've got if you've had a kid who graduated from college in the early 2000s to mid 2000s, they've known nothing else other than ultra cheap credit. Well, how old are those kids now? Right? They're in their 30s and their 40s. Right?
• 1:11:15
  It's like they've known nothing other than artificially low interest rates. And to them, that's life and that's reality. But that's not the reality for the rest of time. Since the beginning of time, that's never been the reality. And so when that bubble bursts and you come to the realization, it's like, I can't spend like a drunken sailor and expect that the economy is going to still keep going, that has a cost, right?
• 1:11:44
  We've just been used to it not having that much of a cost. But now that interest rates are coming and are not even close to their average, but going to that point, and they will, it's like people are saying, I can't afford to live. I'm living hand to mouth right now. Well, shame on America for living hand to mouth with all this debt when we've gotten so used to the lowest interest rates in the history of America, Seth, that that's what people just got used to. And you know what it reminds me of?
• 1:12:14
  It reminds me of the vision that Joseph had in the Old Testament of the seven fat cows and the seven lean ones. It's like store up during these seven years of plenty, you know, keep. But but when you have excesses, you should store up because there always will be seven years of famine that follow or seven lean years or market corrections, however you want to put it in today's terms. But people didn't do that. And so now it's time to face the music.
• 1:12:45
  And this is a problem because facing the music, it wasn't just individuals that did this. It was banks. It was companies. It was countries that overspent, that went into debt up to their eyeballs and took advantage of those cheap artificially low rates. But now we are coming to that point, that critical mass point where it's kind of over.
• 1:13:09
  It's just over at this point.
• 1:13:11
  Seth Holehouse: And what's crazy is a few things to touch on there. One is I remember, you know, my mom telling me, oh, yeah. When we bought a house in the eighties, I think they're paying like 15% or it was insanely high rate the house. It's like, oh my gosh. Like, you know, we're locked in at around 3%.
• 1:13:32
  We bought a couple of years ago. I feel like it's just free money. It's like, know, like, you know, up against inflation. It's like we're earning money somehow by not, you know, having to be paying out. We're not being holding the debt that's kind of losing value every day.
• 1:13:45
  But if you look at it, because as as I'm making sense this because, you know, I knew I knew nothing about finance a couple of years ago. This wasn't what I focused on. Right? But especially through, you know, our conversations and through really studying what's happening, it's it's like I'm piecing it all together. And so it's like, we're almost like we're at a phase now where they printed it, they printed, they printed, and eventually it caught up.
• 1:14:05
  And now we're hitting inflation. And they're now, like, really having to kind of aggressively raise rates. But the banking system, so many of these banks are holding assets that are affected by those rates going up, and that's what's triggering these collapse. And then we also have people losing faith in the in the banks. Right?
• 1:14:26
  Which I think that since Silicon Valley Bank, that First Republic lost a hundred billion dollars in deposits. I mean, that's a massive bank run. But what's also crazy, though, is that, you know, as you and I talked about, it was a concern that, well, is part of this overall plan just to have the small to medium sized banks fail So that way they get they get bought up by the big banks. If you look at what happened with First Republic, it's like, well, okay, here comes in JPMorgan. And so and I'm gonna pull an article.
• 1:14:58
  We have few different articles to kind of say, but so JPMorgan recently made some or sorry. Jamie Dimon, right, CEO of JPMorgan made some statements. This is like this is crazy. So he's coming out saying that after the failure of the second largest bank in our nation, which is coming on the back of the failures of a couple other banks that were still significantly large banks in America, he's now coming out saying that, oh, the system is very, very sound. Like, we're we're good now.
• 1:15:28
  It's like he's lying through his teeth. And he gotta come in here and the FTC FDIC paid all kinds of money to them that, you know, they're gonna come in and scoop up all this and just kind of kind of just feeding the monster of the giant banking system. But I mean, this is crazy that he's saying this. And so again, this is also what's you know, I'll read this. He says, finally, the two biggest to fail banks CEO warned, we're clearly going to see some reduction in bank lending, implying that JPMorgan will be doing, quote, God's work for the Fed by contracting credit without the need for rank height for rate heights.
• 1:16:08
  So and this is just kinda crazy, but then they say this is what's also interesting. Diamond's closing comments were the most prophetic stating that they, quote, support community banks and that banks will consolidate. Oh, I mean, they support community banks, yet they're like, what by buying them when they fail? I mean, it's just this is just nuts. And, like, everyone all the experts are saying that the banking system is fine.
• 1:16:37
  Don't worry about it. But what I'm seeing is that we had SVP, we had Signature, we had First Republic. It it's just like the dominoes are starting to fall. And I is this I mean, this the last bank? I mean, do you think that that that Diamond's telling the truth when he says that we're past the crisis now, it's all gonna stabilize as we, you know, kind of walk into a beautiful future together?
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 4: No, I I don't. So I think if you try to read through, read through the lines here, it's like, are they trying to do? Right? They're they're wanting to bring in central bank digital currency. Right?
• 1:17:14
  We've talked about this incessantly for for months now. And now that it's right underneath our nose, that you've got to have more and more crisis for people to lose faith and confidence in the current system for them to bring in something new. Right? So so I think what what Jamie Dimon is saying when he says it's coming to an end, it's like, well, a, how would he know unless he does know something. Right.
• 1:17:37
  But but imagine you trying it's like a it's like a shepherd trying to corral all the sheep. Right? If you have like six or seven of them, it's really easy. But if you have thousands, it's like, oh, there's the ones keep running away and this one jumped off a cliff and the other ones are going down drinking and some laying in the ground. I mean, they're everywhere.
• 1:17:54
  Right? So imagine trying to corral all these banks into a central bank digital currency system. It's gonna be very difficult. But if the medium banks are buying up the small ones and the big banks are buying up the mediums, maybe you only have to corral six or seven by the time it's all said and done. Right?
• 1:18:13
  But I think it even I think it even gets even squirrelier because last week, the the World Bank unleashed their central bank digital currency plan, And they actually have their own token, their central bank digital currency token called the Unicoin. Right? And it's like, Okay, this is not the Fed. This is not the Bank of Japan. This is not the Chinese central bank.
• 1:18:40
  This is actually the World Bank. Right? So here you go. The the tip of the iceberg, the top of the pyramid in the central bank digital currency world, which is the World Bank's version of central bank digital currency called the Unicoin. And so what I think is gonna happen is not just are you getting consolidation in banks in America, right, as these old school banks really start to fail with their paper money and excessive loans, They're moving into this digital world.
• 1:19:11
  Ultimately, you're gonna probably have a bunch of these not a bunch, but a a bunch of, like, regionally traded central bank digital currencies. Maybe one for the Eurozone, maybe one for North America, maybe one for China and the BRICS nations. And then it's going to be easy to corral all of those into one end of the funnel central bank digital currency for the world being the unicorn from the World Bank. So I think everything that we're seeing is a precursor of things to come, of what we're going to see with massive amounts of consolidation. You're even seeing consolidation not just in the banking world, but in political power.
• 1:19:54
  With the BRICS nations rising up, having all these countries come together politically to what end? To be the world's economic superpower, to be the world's military superpower, to be the world's political superpower. They want it all. Right? And so we did have it all.
• 1:20:12
  Right? As America being the world's reserve currency, largest military in the world, who could ever defeat us, the largest economy, very much politically stable since like after World War II. I mean, we had it all, but now that time in the sun is ending. And in the world of finance, you can't have something that's born unless something else dies. Right?
• 1:20:38
  It's almost like a zero sum game. So something has to give for something else to take its place. That's what I see that we are seeing right now is the death of the banking system as we know it in America to be make room for the birth of a new one being a central bank digital currency. It's kind of how I see it. And you're seeing all these parallels play out politically, militarily, geopolitically, and it's not just in the banking system.
• 1:21:07
  It's not.
• 1:21:09
  Seth Holehouse: Well, here's one thing I'll show. So this is because I just as you you, I mentioned, I just finished interviewing John Perkins, you know, economic hitman. And this is a graph showing the countries that have USA or China as the largest trading partner. And you can see as it progresses in time, the whole world goes from being blue, which is, you know, US dominant, you know, US trading partner in '2 in '80 up this only goes to 02/2018. I'll play it again.
• 1:21:38
  The whole world changes to red. And this is bricks. And this is this is a graph. This is the collapse of the dollar. This is the collapse of the American empire.
• 1:21:48
  This is underpinning a lot of what we're seeing also happening in these with with the BRICS nations and the bank failures. I mean, there's a massive change. But then also going back to digital currency, I got a tweet here from Disclose TV. This is from the IMF chief who says that more than a 10 nations are developing central bank digital currencies. So this also just came out.
• 1:22:12
  So as you talked about, if something's gonna die, it needs something to replace it. And that's what we're seeing. I mean, you can see it. It's like the they they want, like, I believe they want the banking system to collapse. It's part of their plan.
• 1:22:28
  It's also mean, if you look at it from that perspective, then you can make sense of a lot of Joe Biden's actions or a lot of the Fed's actions. It's like, yeah. This is what they want to happen because they want it's like what we talked about our last show. They want, like, what happened in Nigeria or some of these African countries where people are being forced into their really, it's their their digital slave system. That's what it is.
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah. It it is. And it's just getting to that point, and it's just absolutely, for most of the people that call me, scary. I mean, I'm I'm not even joking.
• 1:23:05
  Are so gripped and paralyzed with fear. I mean, absolutely consumed by it. And you can feel it and you can you can hear it. I mean, it's just it's the worst feeling in the world talking to somebody who's so gripped with fear that they don't even know. It's like they're having an anxiety attack over the phone.
• 1:23:27
  But this is is what I hear every single day over and over and over and over again. And what I what I try my best to do is is calm those fiery nerves and say, look, it's going to be okay. But you do need to act. You do need to go into something that's going to be counter counter growth to what we're seeing with all the shrinkage. There are things that can grow and grow substantially and take advantage of these and put a smile on your face.
• 1:23:56
  And and ultimately, even though our political freedoms are eroding and our personal freedoms and our religious freedoms, our finances don't need to erode with it. Right? And And when you bring people off the cliff, so to speak, into a reality of, well, what is it, Kirk, then? What is it? Why are you so calm?
• 1:24:16
  It's like, well, because my finances, which is what my gifting, calling, and anointing to help people with is, they're not shrinking. In fact, they're exploding in value, right? Because when everything else is falling apart, that's when gold and silver rise a lot like they are right now. I mean, we're talking about currencies wanting to back themselves with gold out of complete transparency and accountability to people because they know that the way that they did it is broken. Well, whether that central bank's just saying, we're gonna back our currency with gold because that's what people wanna hear, what what does that tell us?
• 1:24:52
  Or whether it's real, it tells us that they've gotta do something because people do not trust the system right now, And perception is reality in the world that we're living in. This is why silver is going through the roof. This is why gold is going through the roof. And then you've also got that coupled with the reality that, yeah, we've got massive amounts of inflation. That's not slowing down.
• 1:25:14
  I mean, just the reports from last week, Seth, that came out, the financial reports, you had Case Shiller Home Pricing Index, you had number of new mortgage applications, you had number of pending home sales, you had gross domestic products. You had durable goods orders. All of those reports came out last week. Before the end of last week, I was saying, this is going to be a bloodbath of a week. None of these reports are going to look good.
• 1:25:36
  And the couple of them that might look kind of okay is because they're fudging numbers, right? Because this is not a good economy. And sure enough, that's what happened. None of these things look good. And then today, we get well, that report of Charles Munger, right?
• 1:25:55
  Billionaire investor Warren Buffett's partner, saying commercial real estate's in superhero trouble. It's not going to be a soft landing. Because why? What's the big deal with commercial real estate? Well, commercial real estate are what retailers, they're buying, they're leasing, and nobody's spending any money.
• 1:26:15
  So therefore, why have commercial real estate, right? They're just going to not get their payments as company after company after company ultimately goes out of business. So there's not going to be a soft landing. Everybody's pointing towards this is what we know to be the case in the future, but yet perception is we're listening to CNBC and Jim Kramer shouting from the rooftops, This is a good buy today. I think you should buy it.
• 1:26:44
  It's like, No, don't. If fundamentally the economy is not strong, don't go into it because you're playing with fire. Right? If something does good right now, it's because of luck, not because of strong fundamentals. And I would never wanna base a retirement portfolio on luck.
• 1:27:01
  Seth Holehouse: And you you were saying something just came out today, and when I pulled the website up, kind of changed that. So what was it you're pointing to?
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 4: Oh, so some of the news that came out today, not just about commercial real estate, but about the the country's economic outlook in general. So there's a report that came out that said America's Sixty Eight Percent chance it's going into a recession. That's the highest I've ever seen that number ever. And these are economists that for CNN and MSNBC and some of these horribly liberal channels, right? There's like, well, boy, Biden's economy really isn't very good.
• 1:27:48
  Right? And we are moving in towards a recession. We're moving into a world where what you and I have talked about, artificial intelligence is going to replace probably 20% of all the jobs globally, right? Globally, one out of every five jobs. Well, was a report that came out this morning that I saw on CNBC how AI could change the future of work.
• 1:28:21
  Well, the numbers here are actually much different. So Goldman Sachs laid out stark possibilities when it comes to AI in the economy, and they estimate twothree of the jobs in The US and Europe could actually be replaced by computers. Twothree of all jobs in The US and Europe. This is why the CEO of Google is basically saying, We better brace ourselves for the impact of artificial intelligence. This is why Elon Musk two weeks ago said, Hey, we got to put a pause.
• 1:28:54
  Let's just pause on this artificial intelligence stuff because computers are getting too smart. And I saw a video last week of Joe Rogan podcast, you're right, and one of the most popular podcaster in the world. All the show was fake. It was artificial intelligence taking a sampling of his voice and creating a whole show. It wasn't him, but it was the computer rendition of him, and you couldn't tell.
• 1:29:26
  I mean, that's how freaky it was. You you couldn't tell. So this is the world where we're going into where people are going to lose jobs. Know, three months ago, you're
• 1:29:37
  Seth Holehouse: talking to an AI generated version of Seth Hohlhaus. Seth Hohlhaus is actually on the beach right now in Miami, and so you're talking to an AI version of me.
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 4: Well, actually, knew that because I'm the AI version of me talking to you and then the robots know each other. So but but here's the here's the creepy thing. That could actually be a true story somewhere down the Yeah. Yeah. So the real me or the fake version of me, I wouldn't want to have any gray in my beard.
• 1:30:06
  That's all. Anyways, what's creepy about that is that could be a true statement, right, a few months from now. Just not even years from now, literally a few it could be a true statement today. This is how advanced this is becoming. Where three months ago, the report was one out of every five people in the world are going to lose their jobs.
• 1:30:30
  Now Goldman Sachs says it's two thirds of all Americans and Europeans could lose their job. Two thirds, that's much greater than one fifth, right? So this is what America is bracing itself for, which scares me because they don't view people as people at the World Economic Forum. I'm telling you, Seth, they don't. Not when their chief scientist says we're a bunch of useless eaters, they could care less.
• 1:30:56
  They could actually care less. Those aren't my words, those are theirs. And so this is why, yeah, if computers are going to replace humans in the world, well, they're just useless eaters, right? They've been saying this for a long time. No wonder you had the Georgia Guidestones.
• 1:31:12
  No wonder you've had this plan that they've been playing out for such a long time. And now when we're living under it, it was like, I can't believe this is here. It's like, well, the writing's been on the wall for a while. So the point is we can protect ourselves from all this nonsense. Right.
• 1:31:26
  And that's where tangible assets like gold and silver come into play. You're not a digital slave into somebody's digital world. You've got a tangible thing that's real that you can barter with, that you can use, that's that's still private. I mean, there's going to be a point in time where it's not anymore. There will be.
• 1:31:44
  I mean, I think those days are numbered and who knows how long, but we're getting to that point really quick.
• 1:31:52
  Seth Holehouse: We are. And, you know, when you mentioned that, you know, people are you're you're to are fearful, it really kinda tugs at my heart a little bit because it's like thinking, you know, everyone's got a different situation. You know, some people have a trust fund or they've got a, you know, a million dollar savings. Some people are leaving living paycheck to paycheck. Right?
• 1:32:10
  And it's it's a whole spectrum of people. And, you know, one thing that I can just say through my own experience is just take tiny steps. Take whatever step that you can take. And it's not just about gold and silver. It's about everything.
• 1:32:24
  Right? So it's like you wanna be have more self protection. Well, you can go get a really inexpensive handgun for a couple hundred dollars, pay a hundred bucks for some training for it, get some ammo. And that's it's an incremental step. You say you're worried about food security.
• 1:32:41
  Okay. Go get, you know, you say 50 pounds of rice, Throw it in some five gum buckets. Spend a hundred bucks if you can. You know, just to have okay. Here's a backup.
• 1:32:50
  Here's the emergency. Go get some bottles of water. I mean, that's the thing is that people can take any steps. Like, I get sometimes the comments people say, look, Seth, like, I can't have chickens and a big garden and a tractor like you, so I'm I'm doomed. It's like, no.
• 1:33:04
  No. You're not. Like, I was living in an apartment in Manhattan. I was in a high rise four years ago. I didn't know how to cook.
• 1:33:11
  I didn't know nothing about growing my own food. I knew not certainly nothing about raising chickens. I couldn't own a gun because I was living in New York City. And I just I made new lifestyle changes, you know, kind of incrementally. Not to mention I was in massive debt.
• 1:33:26
  I mean, I had a I a business, you know, all kinds of problems that were happening, and I had to kind of rebuild myself from nothing, you know, my wife and I. And so it's like, we can just go step by step, take those tiny little steps, even if you're looking at precious metals. I know that, you know, you, like, there's other people that have a minimum. It's like, look, say you've only got a couple hundred bucks, you can start there. You know what I mean?
• 1:33:48
  And and even if that's a big thing, it's okay. Set that aside. Because right right now, it's like, what, like, maybe only 2% of families in America actually have physical gold and silver. So even if you have 10 ounces of silver, right, $300, 2 50 dollars, even that right there puts you so far ahead. So think about reframing.
• 1:34:10
  So I hate hearing how people are fearful. And it's also it's difficult because in my position, like, don't want to be someone that's just doom and gloom. And I try not to be. I try to always have a smile and expose, you know, different all sides of everything. But I also don't want to be someone like Jim Kramer or someone like, you know, that you're gonna see on, you know, Sean Hannity or whoever that just is saying it's all gonna be okay.
• 1:34:35
  And, you know, don't don't worry about it. Don't become one of those prepper people. Like, I wanna be really sincere in searching for the truth and trying to understand what's happening. So, anyways, I thought I'd just put that out there.
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 4: No. It's it's really good. And and, you know, I feel the same way because when when we report the news, there's always the tendency for people to wanna kill the messenger. Right? It's like, okay.
• 1:35:01
  You're you're speaking all this bad stuff. I didn't come up with the news. I mean, we're just we're just reporting what other evil people have done. Right? Because a lot of people always will say, well, Kirk, they're so stupid.
• 1:35:13
  It's like, no. They're not. I don't think that they're stupid. I just think that they're evil. You know, you don't have that much success in changing a global economy if you're stupid.
• 1:35:23
  Right? But so I do think that it's evil. To me, all of this stuff is a physical manifestation of a spiritual battle that's being waged, right? And we know how to win spiritual battles. Right.
• 1:35:35
  So this is where, Okay, let's turn that darkness into light. Let's turn that fear into faith and hope. Right. Because we can. There are things we can do.
• 1:35:45
  There are solutions, which is why if we didn't talk about them, I personally, I feel like I would be remiss. That's that's my calling is to help people protect and preserve and thrive. Right? Well, you can't protect yourself from something if you don't know what the enemy is doing. Right?
• 1:36:00
  So so therefore, you have to talk about it, but there is a solution. Right? And that's where you can put a smile on your face. Now the what I what I tell everybody that calls and it's like, you know what? This is how the world is actually operating right now.
• 1:36:15
  And if you don't do anything, I would be kind of scared. I really would because you will sink with the ship, but you don't have to. You really don't have to, which is why I haven't. I haven't for like twenty years. This is why I do have a smile on my face because there are things that we're doing and we've helped countless tens of thousands of people all over the world do exactly this, get a smile on their face by allocating to the right place at the right time to take advantage of these horrible, sick, twisted economic trends by evil people that we're talking about and going into something that will cause you to actually not just survive but thrive.
• 1:36:57
  That does put a smile on my face.
• 1:36:59
  Seth Holehouse: Absolutely. And so, Kirk, I know you've got an interview directly after this, we have to cut, you know, cut off now. But, you know, for folks that are watching or listening, again, biggest thing, just try not to to live in a state of fear. And try to make don't make decisions out of fear either. You know, calm yourself down.
• 1:37:15
  If you want to talk to Kirk and his team, you can go to goldwithseth.com, fill out the form, or just call (720) 605-3900. Those will be in description as well just to set up an appointment, consultation, just kind of see, explore a little bit. Kirk, thank you so much for for coming on. And there's this yeah. There's always a lot to talk about every week, but these are really important.
• 1:37:40
  Think there's a lot of people that they look forward to these economic updates with you because it affects all of us. And so I I thank you for putting all the time that you are into helping to educate people about this stuff. Because for a lot of us, we're very financially and economically illiterate.
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 4: It's my pleasure, and I look forward to talking to you next week, Seth.
• 1:38:00
  Seth Holehouse: Alright. Thanks, Kurt.