How The US Dollar Controls The World Economy | Deca-Billion Dollar Fund Manager Explains

All right.

Gentlemen, took me 5 years to start my first fund. 1999, I said, I'm going to start a fund. When I learned that you can make 20% on someone else's money, I was like, I'm in. 2004, I started my first fund. 5 years. No one ever taught me how to do a fund. I didn't have any mentors. I had to learn it all myself. And I hope, I know I have condensed down time, the learning curve for people to learn funds. And Bridger and my son John and the whole team, you guys, and Mason, you guys have done great. And I just can't tell you how happy I am that people around the world and in this country now know about funds and how to put one together as opposed to it used to be a mystery, mystery and all this stuff. So I am, I am so I'm so happy that it's really worked. Now, so as you guys know, I've written a couple books. I brought these. If you don't have one, take one. If you have one, take another one. They're all signed. And I brought a few of these. I didn't have as many. I gotta order some more. I wrote this a little while ago. If you want one of these, I only have 2, but I can get you some more. Anyway, I think you might like—

Give him the pieces on that one.

Yeah, I have— look, I, I have, I have videos. I have videos at Mr. Mormon.com or BigBangBible.com. And anyway, I have 11, 12 videos. The first 3 videos are done really, really well. I paid a guy to do incredible motion graphics. The first video is about 6 minutes. It goes over chapter 1 of this book and it gets you pumped for it. And it's got incredible, I'm telling you, incredible motion graphics. I've had people call me and ask me how much I spent on it because it's that good. Anyway, that one now has 2.2 million views on YouTube, Facebook, all the other places. So yeah, it's been out. But anyway, you will really— I think you'll really like at least the first 3, just to watch the motion graphics. But they basically summarize in 3 or 4 minutes the first 3 chapters. So there's 3 videos. 1, 2, 3. And if you'll just— if you watch those and you like those videos, then you might like the book. Okay. Okay. Now, I don't know what I'm going to— I have a bunch of stuff I want to do, but let me give you an update on Bitcoin. Bitcoin became an ETF. 11 companies did an ETF and now they can sell Bitcoin. So a couple of interesting things that are strange to me, but not strange that way, but So you'll notice that Bitcoin a few months back was $27,000, and then it, you know, did this and did this and about $31,000 and came back and did this and this and came back and then up, up, up and $46,000. You have ETFs selling it and then it dropped. All right, well, think about it this way. If my theory is true, The 11 companies that became ETF sellers, okay, here or here, somewhere in here, are told by the head of the SEC, we're going to approve all 11 of you guys. So what you should do is you guys should start buying Bitcoin so that when you open your ETF, you can sell the Bitcoin to all the people buying in at record numbers. You can sell the Bitcoin at $46,000 to them, the Bitcoin you bought at $31,000 or $27,000. That's my theory. And there, that's why it went down. And that's why you had record sales is because BlackRocks of the world and these other, the 11 people, 11 companies, ETFs, they bought the Bitcoin To sell to you, me and you would have done it that way. We would have thought, wait a minute, Bitcoin's going to be ETF. The day goes ETF. When I put a hundred dollar order in to buy Bitcoin, it'll go into the ETF. The ETF will have to go out to the market and buy Bitcoin to put it in the ETF, and that will make the price go up. That's how me and you would think about it. But it's all a game. If my theory is true, it's all a game. And now these eleven companies. Are in cahoots with the SEC to protect and promote the U.S. dollar, and Bitcoin being one of those threats to the U.S. dollar. So it's what I'm saying is it's now arrived into a bigger game. It went from college baseball to Major League Baseball. Whatever the analogy you want to use, it's in the bigger game and it's in a bigger arena. So let me tell you two things that happened with the BlackRock application. Back in, I don't know, September, Gensler, who's the head of the SEC, said we're delaying the ETFs for Bitcoin because we need the applicants, BlackRock, to make some adjustments, modifications to their application to be an ETF. What modifications are you wanting the applicants to do? 2 things that are strange. After reading, I didn't read the whole thing, but 2 things I picked out of the BlackRock application. Okay. And this is, I believe this is true for the other 11 or the other 10, but I didn't read them. But think about what I'm about to say here. The one is we can make sure, and I've got to paraphrase it here. Um, the one says there's one page in the, in the application, BlackRock, it says And I'm paraphrasing here. The sponsor, who is BlackRock, the sponsor, if at any time in the future the product, meaning Bitcoin, ever forks, the sponsor may choose the fork which is not advantageous to the sponsor's customer financially. Why would you write that into an application for ETF? What is the plan? I mean, they're disclosing that in the future, if the Bitcoin ever forked and one fork was less valuable, they could choose that fork and not choose the other fork. And even if this fork goes down in value to it, their to the people who bought the BlackRock ETF, even if it's less, less, uh, less financially advantageous, the sponsor may choose to take that fork. Why is that even in the application? That's number one. Number 2, in the application it also says, and I'm paraphrasing, that the sponsor has the ability to write more contracts paper than it owns its actual product. That's what the ETF can do for the purpose of smoothing out markets. What it just said is that the ETF can write paper like we discussed earlier, that the gold spot— there's more gold paper in the world than actual gold. There's more options on gold by far, far, far, far than there actually is gold. And that's how they keep gold. And that's how JP Morgan over all those years spoofed and used the futures market to write paper on the silver market, precious market, and they kept it. They corralled it for 9 years. And that's why they got fined $1 billion. JP Morgan got fined $1 billion for manipulating the precious metals market for 9 years. Why? How? Using futures market and using paper, writing paper. Well, the BlackRock application says They can write paper on their own ETF. I thought it was spot. I thought it was a spot price. I thought it was spot price ETF. It is mostly, but the company can write papers. Those are two strange things that why would you write that into the modify your application? And then they let all eleven at the same time go forward. And I assume that these characteristics in BlackRock's application is should be the same or similar in the other applications. Okay, questions? That's all I really know about the update. That's my update. Any questions there or any comments?

Does the issuance of paper allow them to be market makers for their own ETF?

They can sell more Bitcoin than they actually own. That's what I thought, yeah. They don't know, they own 100 Bitcoin, they can sell 105 Bitcoin.

Yeah.

Right? And not go to the market.

Yeah.

After point.

So I believe on that, the other exchanges can do a similar thing.

Yeah.

So FTX, Coinbase, Binance could also accept orders, make the transaction while they give them time to go, hopefully acquire that Bitcoin.

Right.

A lot of— I was talking to a whale last week, he owns 5,000 Bitcoins.

Wow.

His yearly audit he does on— so he owns— he's had— he's one of the beginning early crypto guys. He has 5,000 Bitcoins. He sells all of them on January 1st every year.

I think January 1st. For tax reasons or what?

Or he'll— sorry, not sell. Well, he'll sell—

no, what do you sell?

Anyways, he'll move them off the exchange.

Yeah.

That's what he does.

Sorry.

He moves all the Bitcoins off the exchange to a different exchange or to a cold storage wallet.

Yeah.

Wherever he's at.

Yeah.

Just to prove that they have Bitcoins.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

And his thing was, he's like, we should all do this as an audit on the internet.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Every year we should pick a day and all of us should call our Bitcoins due.

Right.

And we'll see who's got underwear on.

Yeah, right. Right, right.

And then we'll put them all back. We'll put them back where we were. That was his option. He didn't sell, but he pulled back.

Yeah.

All right.

Any—

$47,000.

Yeah, it's back up. It's back up. It's back up. So they're— it's getting out of control.

I don't think it's strange to put that into the—

Really?

The forking?

The forking? That they would choose the other fork that's not as financially to their clients?

From a legal perspective, I mean, they're covering their bases, right? In the event that they have to— It might be a detriment. You have a fork, and there's been forks in the past where you have, um, you know, there's Bitcoin Classic and there's— yeah, it possibly— I think it would have to go that way, but it would probably—

okay, okay, you know, to detect—

protect themselves, right?

Yeah, there's a pre-fork, and I'm not a Bitcoin expert, but maybe there at some point is a pre-fork and post- Fork Bitcoin, like there's all these different varieties of Bitcoin, right? There's coins that were minted before the ETF.

Yep. And the ones that were minted after.

Yep.

Well, so, so again, my theory about this whole thing you've heard, I, I might be— I give myself 15% chance of being wrong. So I could be wrong. I'm not saying I'm right. Next, next thing, update on— I don't know if I can explain this to this group, but the— and I did partially— China brokers a deal, a peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Why?

From the China point of view, China is trying to de-dollarize the world. So they know that, and they want to buy oil from Saudi Arabia in the yuan, but they can't because Saudis won't sell it to them in the yuan. Why? Because the Saudis need the United States military to protect them against places like Iran. So China goes to Iran and says, "Listen, Iran, who do you hate more, Saudi Arabia or China? Sorry, Saudi Arabia or the United States." Well, we obviously hate the United States more. Then stop attacking because you got to choose here because we are going to in the future try to buy oil from Saudi Arabia in the yuan. That's going to decrease the United States' power by not allowing by allowing oil transactions to go in the yuan, not. in the US dollar. And Iran goes, wow, that's great, let's, let's hurt the United States. And so, well, you got to sign the peace treaty because it's going to take a few years for the Saudis to believe that you no longer are going to attack them. And then maybe in the future the Saudis can say to the United States, we don't need your aircraft carriers, we don't need your military, we don't need your F-35s anymore. That's why we're going to start selling to our biggest customer, China, in the yuan. And Saudi and Iran goes, you know, you're right, let's do it. And they sign. And then just a few months later, a little, a little while later, President Biden realized he's losing. We are losing in the Middle East because of this peace treaty. And then Biden sends over $4 billion cash to the Iranians to say, look, we're still good guys, we want to be your friends, we're not— you know, why did he send the $4 billion? Because he was losing. Why did China do it? Because they're trying to de-dollarize the world and trying to make the dollar less, you know, prolific in the world. How do you do that? You got to— Saudi Arabia is the kingpin. Questions, comments? That's just an update on my theory of the— because Hamas was—

they're not Hamas, the Houthi rebels were Iran-backed.

Yeah, and the, the Iran— it's Well, the ironic thing is we're now raising money in Congress to fund Ukraine and fund Israel. So in reality, if we sent the $4 billion to Iran and Iran sent the money to Hamas, and we're now sending money to Israel, we are funding both sides of the war, which is the ironic part of the whole situation. But again, who's funding it? The US dollar. is funding both sides of that war. The magic, magical product, the best product ever produced by mankind on the face of the planet, the US dollar, is funding both sides of that war. That's our magic product. And that's what President Biden did. He sent off $4 billion in what? His best product ever, the US dollar. Okay, anything else on that? Anyone want to make a comment? All right, so I thought— what's that?

How has— I haven't checked— how's the US dollar done In the last year compared to Saudi Arabia and China? Have you looked on that?

Well, China's looked like this. The dollar's held up pretty good, and they keep printing more, and it's held up pretty— I mean, better than most people expected. It came up, up, up, up, up, up, and then it's come down, but it's come back up a little bit. Look, if you go after all the predictions, the US dollar should have been— with all the printing and all the whatever, and it just doesn't. Your Economics 101 class in college, supply and demand. If you print a bunch of these things, like trillions of them, the price of it should go down. It's going down, but not as fast as everybody else, especially not as fast as you want, because they are in hurt. They are in big hurt over there. China is in— China's in a 1929, 1930 depression. They are in serious economic trouble right now.

Right now?

Yeah, right now.

Right now, some reports came out this past week about it, right?

Oh, it's been going on for, you know, I haven't seen the news for a week.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, they think the whole stock market and—

oh no, the Yangtze. Yeah, hitting all-time lows and yeah, propped up by the government. Oh yeah, they're buying, they're buying their shares now. Yeah, whatever. I mean, I know there's a big bubble, but no, it's bad to the extent of— why don't you talk on that?

Okay.

Now I've got 2, 2 videos I watched in the last 3 or 4 months, uh, on TikTok, kind of, you know, the old video. This lady, she has 105 employees. She has no orders. There's no one in her shop.

She lives in China.

She lives in China and she's posting, look, I called every single customer that I've had for the past 5 years. I called 'em all. I don't have one order. None.

Zero.

Not a half an order. I have no orders. I have all my employees are gone home. They're not there. Truck driver, he's in Hangzhou. I can't remember where he's at. He's in a port city. I can't remember the port city. He says, I'm a truck driver. You see all these containers? They're stacked 4 high. See them? They're a mile long. They're all empty. There's no orders. There are 16,000 truck drivers in this city. 3,000 are working.

Wow.

That's how bad it is, right? The unemployment, youth unemployment in China is so bad they stopped reporting it.

Youth unemployment meaning from 18 to 30?

Yeah. If you are a college graduate, if you're a college graduate in one of the big cities and you have a job, now get this, you're a college graduate in China and you're in a big city and you have a job, which is odd, if you have a job, the average monthly salary is $650 to $950. That's a college graduate average in a big city.

What?

$650 to $950, that's the average salary right now. They're hurting bad, I'm telling you, it's bad. It's gonna be years, not months, years to pull out of that. Okay, questions, any comments?

What do you think about, um, so I was thinking about when I read the book, thinking about how you were analyzing, hey, we're printing more money, but the value of the dollar is still very resistant.

Compared to other currencies, yeah.

So my perspective on that is maybe the actual inherent core is the American economy vis-à-vis consumerism is the actual product And the dollar is the marketing flyer. So the more we print, the more it's promoted. And the dollar itself is backed by the American economy. Any thoughts?

Yeah, I agree with you. The engine is the consumer, American consumer. They consume everything from all over the world. They want things from every country in the world. Come here and I'll pay you these things with the US dollar, right? But the difference is, I think the big difference is the US dollar. If you take all the loans in the world, they're mostly dollar-denominated.

Yeah.

So, people have to pay them back in US dollars. The secret is they got the US dollar accepted all over the world, then they lent it to everybody. And now, all these people are locked into US dollar-based loans all over the world. And that's one of the biggest tools that the government has used to proliferate and make sure that you can't get away from the US dollar because everything's in loans.

Where do you see the national debt fitting into this picture?

It's getting to a point, obviously, where the interest is going to be the second biggest expense per year, I think past Social Security. I mean, it'll be Social Security, the interest on national debt, military, you know, which is— that's not good.

Right.

And so it's coming to an epic point. And that is, I believe, when there will be the, you know, the reinvention of the US dollar. And that's when it will— somehow there'll be a crisis. It will be a cyberattack that you wake up one morning in your bank, you go to the morning bank, and half your money is gone.

gone.

And my half of my money's gone. Just, just think this through. And this happened, and, and the government says there was a huge cyberattack and they— people came in to grab all your money and we stopped them before they can get the other half of your money. And you're so glad that the government stopped them from getting the other half of the money. And to protect everyone from this future happening, we're all going to shift to the digital dollar at one big 'Cause you have to have a crisis. You have to have the country that needs to do it all at one time. That's one way. And my other way in my book, I do a soft way over many, many years. You know, they have the crisis and they, that we're going broke and we need to, you know, change to the US dollar so tax dodgers can't, you know, scoot around the edges. That's another way. So those are a few ways. I don't know how they're gonna do it, but they're definitely going after it. And, Maybe, maybe they're trying to commit the crisis. Maybe they're just spending and spending and spending and spending and spending, trying to make it to a crisis where we have to do something crazy, like switch to the US dollar. I don't know if you know this, a few years back, Cyprus, little country.

Mm-hmm.

Cyprus, they woke up on one morning on, I think it was a Monday morning, and that would, that's what happened. About half of the money was out of everyone's bank.

Bail-in.

And they said the country was going to go broke. Therefore, we all had to tax anyone that had over, I don't know, $100,000. I'm not sure what the number was. The rich people, we took half their money and that kept the country alive. If we didn't do it, the country would have gone down and you would have lost all your money. So aren't you glad that the government grabbed half your money and saved the other half of your investment? Yeah, this is this is this is the digital age. When things are digital, when things are digital, this is what can happen. I think the physical dollar is a part of the marketing mystique. Say that again.

The physical printed dollar is a part of the like how else do you show American status without the physical?

Yeah, so we'll see. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know.

Aircraft— an aircraft carrying your bag shows some status too, you know what I mean? That, that's, that's some serious, um, you know, we want you— you think about the, the companies that have left China. They've all fled China. A lot of companies have in the last 3 or 4 years, and they've all went to countries like South Korea, Thailand, India, countries that buy their oil in US dollars. So here's a note going back to China.

I read this, sorry, I think this I read a week ago.

Cyprus.

The how bad it is in China. Evergrande and, you know, the other real estate developers.

Yeah, yeah.

This article said that all major real estate developers Have defaulted on their loans.

Yeah.

All of them. Yeah.

The 2 biggest ones account for $500 billion of default.

Peter—

And put that in perspective.

Yes, go.

The Great Financial Recession that we had was $700 billion.

Yeah.

And 2 is at $500 billion. 2 companies.

When did this happen?

Now.

This is just—

Right now. Right now. Peter Zion, the other night I watched Peter Zion.

Yeah, we got living under a rock.

You've been— too many textbooks are written last year. They're written in 2023, man. What is going on? What year is this shit? That whole case study is so old school, man. So, so last week I watched— 2 weeks ago, Peter Zion said— I watched him say that— I think, I think what he said was The number of empty apartments that they've built in China is almost a billion units that can't— are never going to be used because the population is doing this. They overbuilt because of the way their tax system works. They kept building and building and building to create more taxes for their—

And revenues.

Revenues for the— right. And it's collapsed. It's totally collapsed. What's crazy is they have a lot of empty buildings outside of China as well. Right. This is what I'm saying. This problem in China is not going to be solved in a year or 2 or maybe even 3 or 4 or 5. It is bad. It's really bad. And that— a big country like that, 1.3 billion, that ripples through a lot of parts of the world. So—

Not getting any new EB-5 investors.

Or they might be fleeing. They might be fleeing. Yeah, if they can flee, they'll short it. It's well, it's already it's already gone. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

September of 2022 would have been the time to start.

Yeah, yeah. So who who are we trading with?

Like leaving China?

Who's our Mexico?

All Mexico, right?

It's going to Mexico. Yeah. And that got that got exacerbated by COVID, right? Just with yeah, that's right, that's right. Just kind of more proximate. That's right. Yeah, yeah. Exasperated. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Okay.

Yes. Sorry, do you have another topic?

I do.

Yeah.

But what? Go ahead.

No, I was going to ask you about other topics.

Other topics? Yeah. What other topics you want to know about?

I was going to ask you. I was just reading the other day Barclays spoofed Libor from 2000. There's a case study in this book from 2005 to 2011. They spoofed Libor and they were fined a ton of money. Barclays Bank.

I didn't know this.

I didn't know it either. I just read this book. So Barclays was— so LIBOR is the London Interbank Rate.

Right.

They would get traders apparently trade on that rate.

That's right.

They would have options traders that would send in, hey, can you put it up or down for us?

Yeah.

Apparently 6 banks put trades in. They take out the highest and lowest.

Yeah.

They would put it above or below to move the rate up or down so their option traders would make money. And then later when the 2008 crash happened, They would put in their rates higher.

Oh, we're lending at a good rate. Even though they weren't.

To show that they were a stable bank. And they got fined all this money and almost got kicked out of the whole thing.

It was a Barclays bank. So, they controlled LIBOR.

Wow.

I didn't think that was possible.

And I think that's why maybe they went off LIBOR.

They went to sulfur.

Yeah.

They lost all the credibility after that because they had spooked it.

I did not know that. Wow.

I knew you'd love that.

I do love that. I do love that.

You always are talking about there's a game within a game within a game.

That's right.

There are people currently manipulating the markets.

Yes.

So which— my question is, which markets do you think currently in 10 years we're going to find out, oh, this group was manipulating this market? You already said kind of Bitcoin, you think. Any other markets?

Gold, silver, Bitcoin for sure. Uh, I, I, and I, I, I told you guys at your conference that I was, uh, on your podcast in November, 1st November, I told you I was long gold, silver, and uranium because I think— I thought uranium is a bottleneck. It was going to go up, and it did go up big time. But I thought uranium had not been— the big boys had not focused on it to manipulate it. And it seems like if I can find markets that there is a willing buyer and a willing seller that has an economic to come together and decide what the price is without manipulation, I have a Higher probability of understanding when to buy and when to sell. But when there's manipulated markets, I seem like I try to find out what the manipulation is, and that's the only way I can play it. I have to understand what the manipulators are trying to do and then go with that. So, but you know, I don't—I really don't know at this point because if sulfur can be—if LIBOR can be manipulated—that is wild. That's wild. Yes, sir.

How about with China being in the state that it is, what do you think the future of the Belt and Road Initiative is?

It's bad. No, it's down. It's done. There's countries that are defaulting in Africa and the Belt and Road. They're just saying, no, we're not doing it. We're not taking the yuan. We don't want the yuan. It's just— and that's what Saudi Arabia is doing. That's what we're trying— we're kind of sending a message to Saudi Arabia, to Saudi Arabia, aren't you guys so glad a few years back you didn't take the yuan? Because we put the pincers on China. But we look, China did to themselves. We just poured gas in the fire and helped it go down. Every if if you know Powell takes the Fed funds rate like this as fast as possible to five, five and a quarter, five and a half. China bought all their bonds back when it was low, all their U.S. Treasuries. And now every time China sells US Treasuries, it kills them. They're losing so much money. The longer he can keep that up there, they have to sell because they told them years ago, we're going to start— we hate the US dollar. We're going to start selling our US Treasuries. Okay. Well, we're going to raise rates then. And my theory, if I'm right, is that part of the raise rates to 5% and 5.5% was based on the because the Fed knew they needed to raise rates to hurt China and other countries when they start selling US Treasuries. How do you get rates to 5.5%? Well, if I said— if I'm the head of the Fed and I say, you know what, we just— we're just going to go for inflation at 2%, I could have never convinced anyone that 5.5% rates were good. Couldn't have never done it. But if I can get inflation to 9%, The American people will accept 5.5% interest rates.

Yeah.

So, I've got to get to 5.5% interest rates. I thought it was going to go to 6.5% but it may or never get there. But if I— so, if I'm running the Fed, I want to get to 5.5%, I have to create 9% inflation. So, I tell everyone, we're just trying to get 2%. That's all we're trying to do. And then inflation goes up. You know what I say? It's at 4%, it's transitory. When I know it's not. Then it goes to 5%. Then I say, this inflation is transitory. Everyone calm down. It's going to come right back down. It's just transitory. Then it goes to 6%. I'm doing it on purpose because I want to let it run to 9%. If it runs to 8, 9, then I can go— we're going to go from 2% to 4% to 5 to 5.5 really fast and kill everyone, right? And they're running a balancing act. So, think about this. You think they're that smart? They are. I believe they're that smart. Because it's the biggest product in the world. It's the most, it's the most prolificated product in the world. And by definition, if you have the best product in the world, you have to have insatiable demand. It's not luck. It's not luck that the US dollar is the best product in the world. Therefore, that's their best product. But back to my point. So they run it all up. They run it up there to 5.5% and keep it there to put the squeeze on China. And I lost my train of thought. I had one more point. Come on. I had one more point about, uh, about the inflation rate to run it all up to the Federal Reserve.

Um, balancing act.

It was a balancing act. Thank you. Balancing act. Thank you. So, so they're in a quandary here. They have Congress that spends way too much money. It's like, it's like, it's like a married couple. One person spends all the money. and the other person has to pay for it. Congress is out of control, maybe on purpose, I'm not sure. And the Fed over all these years has figured out every year how to pay for it. It's unbelievable. But they can't go too high because they can't— they're hurting the real estate market. You know, real estate agents aren't making enough money this year. Title company agents, title companies are almost out of business. There's no transactions in the whole real estate business. So, they can't They want to hurt China and all these people, you know, keep the US dollar, but they can't hurt the US consumer too much. They have to balance it. They can hurt them a little bit, enough to hurt China, right? So if they really wanted to, they would raise it up to 15% and really crush China, but they can't do it because it would hurt the consumer too bad. So they have to balance it. They're that smart. They're that smart to trying to balance it. So people have told, you know, oh, like, Mr. Powell, you're not going to have a soft landing. Well, So far, do you guys see a big— you see a small recession? Big recession? You see a recession?

He did it.

He did it so far. Now, it might not be true later on this year, but so far he has created a soft landing to an economy that was going to have a crash landing. And it might still crash, maybe on purpose in the future for a crisis. I mean, it might not. I'm not sure. But when I see Mr. Powell and the Federal Reserve, they do make mistakes. Now, don't get me wrong, I do believe they made mistakes. Like Putin said, and he agreed with me in my book, we made a mistake when we cut off Russia on the SWIFT system. And they just said, fine, we won't do the SWIFT system anymore. We'll just go to rubles and yuan and gold and oil. And that was a mistake because it decreased the probability the US dollar will be prolific for a longer period of time. So, so they have a balancing act. And I say to you, if I put you 20 years ago in head of the Federal Reserve, and I said to you, you're head of the Federal Reserve, protect and promote the US dollar. And by the way, Congress is going to spend like $16 trillion over these 20 years, or 10, whatever it is, $12 trillion. And the— and everything else is going to go to You would have to figure out how to balance it and keep the economy going. And you'd have to be pretty smart and pretty strategic to do what they've done with the assumption that you can't control Congress because they won't stop spending money. You try and try and try, they just don't. My job is to keep the dollar protected from the US dollar. And you have another party of your government that just spends, spends, prints, prints, spends, spends, spends. He's done a pretty good job if you compare the challenge that he had and he still has. So anyway, rates dropping this year? Yeah, because it's an election year. Not a lot, but I think rates will drop sometime this year, summer, because it's election year, right? And traditionally, Every election year is an up year for the stock market.

What do you make of with that whole scenario, the regional banking crisis last year, the lending that's going to end in March and more, maybe more regional bank problems? Do you think that's part of a plan to consolidate banks to JP Morgan and Wells Fargo?

Yes. Yes. Or do you think it's— Yes. You got— Yeah, the 11 banks here, Citigroup and JP Morgan, they're in cahoots. And as long as they're in the team, they're going to get sweetheart deals. And JP Morgan's going to get to buy banks at cheap, other banks, or what I'm saying. So when the— They bought First Republic Bank.

6 cents on the dollar.

Yeah, First Republic Bank, 6 cents on the dollar. Why?

No one else could bid.

No one else could bid. Why? Because JP Morgan is in cahoots with the feds. They're team members. They're a team. You do something for me, I'll do something for you, right? Clarify something. Yes. Yeah. So when you're saying the feds, right, like who specifically are you talking about? Are you talking about Powell and his 11 federally group? 3 to 5? Like, or is there, is there, is there somebody else behind the scene that you're talking about? Like who, who in particular? Who in particular is orchestrating this master plan? Because honestly, I just don't think that they're— they have that intellect, honestly. Like, I think they're all— they're all miners. Yeah. So this is the team. The Fed, obviously, they, they produce the dollar. These people are part of the team, and they help the Fed protect and promote the US dollar.

That's what they do.

They don't all do it perfectly all the time. They're not all a well-oiled machine team.

I got the CIA.

Oh yeah, I got CIA. You got to have CIA.

And the globally significant banks, the G-SIBs.

There you go. There you go. And now you have JP Morgan, right? Citigroup, right? Just keep going down the list, right? Some examples: US president gold confiscation, 1933. Why? To promote the US dollar. They confiscated all the gold in the United States from your grandfather, my grandfather, made it illegal to own gold. Okay, the SEC, just, just look at the Bitcoin thing and the, and the Ripple, the Ripple lawsuit. Why did they extend Ripple? Ripple was, was meant to compete with the SWIFT system.

The SWIFT system is a US dollar-based system.

Ripple XRP doesn't need US dollars. It just goes around the banking system. You don't have to change your dollar money into dollars to transfer stuff. You can just do Ripple, Ripple, Ripple, right? So the SEC in November 2021 extends the— why would they extend the lawsuit against Ripple for 2 more years and then lose and then appeal again? What's so bad about Ripple? It competes against US dollar. The SEC Is promoting and protecting the US dollar through this. The SEC sues JP Morgan, learns how to manipulate the precious metal market for 9 years. They teach the Feds how it's done, and the Feds go after Bitcoin because it's a competitor to the US dollar. I don't believe the Feds knew how to control the whole market until they learned it from JP Morgan, 9 years of manipulation. JP Morgan got fined $1 billion from the SEC. No one went to jail though. This is the key. SEC sues JP Morgan. Here's, here's a $1 billion fine, but no one goes to jail. Why? Because you're going to help us figure out how to control Bitcoin. That's how they learned it. It's all a big conspiracy. It's a great story and it sells lots of books. So keep quiet.

Yeah, if, uh, if the JP Morgan If the desk wasn't shorting silver, we'd have out-of-control silver prices. You know, they had—

It's a free market.

Yeah.

Capitalism.

My whole entire financial life, I've been watching analysts call for $50 silver and nearly $10,000 gold.

Never happens. It's never going to happen.

And it's not because they mine 2% of it a year. It's because they need to short it Into oblivion to keep the dollar strong.

There you go. Because it's— now, look guys. Aren't you so glad? Isn't everyone in this room so glad that we are on the same side of the Fed?

Yes.

Don't we love the US dollar? Do you want tomorrow morning to wake up and find out the US dollar is worth 1 penny compared to today worth a dollar. Do you want that to happen tomorrow morning?

No.

I'd be broke. You'd all be broke. We are on the best team ever. Look at this. This is our team. Stop fighting it. Stop fighting the team. This is a great team. This team's going to win for years and years and years and years. You don't bet against Michael Jordan. You just don't do it. And Scottie Pippen when they're on the same team. You just don't do it. You're an idiot if you do it. Now, Back to your thing. Are they smart enough? Wait, I got one more before you make a comment. Did I ever tell you the idiot waiter story? I don't know. Maybe. Okay.

I think so.

There's this idiot waiter. We're at this restaurant. It's, it's a very high-end restaurant and there's this waiter and they call him the idiot waiter cuz he's really bad at math. He is. Everyone knows all you're all, we're all the other waiters and we all know he's bad at math. He's terrible at math. Why? Because every time he takes the money back to the cash register, And he brings back to the customer. The change is always bad. The change is never right. It's never right. And he goes, oh, I'm very sorry. I'm really bad at math. That's why I'm a waiter. That's why I'm a waiter because I'm not good at math. My accounting career went like this because I'm not good at math. But then the owner of the restaurant did an audit on the last 100 customers this dude had. And he found out that every time he brings the change back, 100% of the time, the change is in favor of the waiter, not in favor— wait, wait, if he's bad at math, it should be 50% in favor of the customer and 50% in favor of the waiter. But it's not, it's 100%. So who's really the idiot? The people who believe he's an idiot waiter? So the Fed will say, we didn't know it wasn't transitory. We thought it was transitory. That's why we had to catch up. They wanted it to go to 9%, but they couldn't tell you that. They kept telling you they're bad at math. And then they make— they do the reports and they readjust them. They do the reports and they say, we're sorry, we made a mistake. And they do this all the time. They've done it for years. They make a prediction, then later they say, we made a mistake, we're correcting it now, blah blah blah. We made another mistake, we're correcting it now. And they apologize for it. Like I'm the idiot waiter. I'm very sorry I'm bad at math. Everyone knows about math. I'm very sorry. We're all idiots here at the Federal Reserve, but we wanted it 9% inflation so we could raise to 5.5%. Because if we had done 2%, we could have never raised to 5.5%. And I say to you, we're the idiots if we believe what they tell us over the microphone. If you watch what they do, They're brilliant.

We're the idiots if we keep interest rates low for too long just so the American people think that we are, that their economy is good.

That's right. That's right.

I used to go to the gas station and buy penny candy, and there are these old men that would drink coffee, and they'd wait. I was like their gimmick because they'd pull a 50-cent piece or a quarter out. of their pocket and a dollar. And I was old enough to know the difference. And they would say, which do you want? And I would say, I like the shiny one. Every time I would go to that gas station all summer long, 3 summers in a row, I made probably like $90 in quarters and 50-cent pieces. Like you last—

Because they were having a joke with you and you were faking dumb.

Yeah, never ever do it again. Like, yeah, the gag would be over.

Yeah.

But I think there's one conflict that I'm trying to process is if we, if we like what you guys are talking about with the book that you—

Peter Zeihan.

Yeah. So I mean, how do you see, how do you see us keeping our dollar strong globally with all of the dynamics that go into strengthening it from a global perspective? If we continue to, out of maybe necessity, turn internally and stay—

Let me turn to page 93. It's in here. The way— by definition, to have the world's most prolific product, the best product ever invented by mankind, better than hotcakes, you have to have insatiable demand. And there's a few ways you can get insatiable demand. One, you can tax your citizens in US dollars. They have to get more dollars to pay you. 2, you can flood the world with low-interest loans for 30 years. They have to pay you back in US dollars. 3, you can insist that all world global transactions for oil have to be in US dollars, right?

Yes.

4th, you can have a navy that enforces that. Right? And I can't remember my 5th one. I have another one in there. But I'll go back to one thing on the loan. So, the euro-dollar. Not the euro. The euro-dollar, okay? The euro-dollar is lent into existence. And dollars here are lent into existence now. It's not used to be that way, okay? But when you go to a bank, okay? And they have $100 in their accounts. And all of us go to the bank and want a $100 loan. They just write it and we lend you $100. That's how— that's— they don't actually print the money. The bank prints, brings dollars into existence by doing loans. And I do the loan because I'm FDIC— I'm a bank, FDIC insured. The FDIC has allowed me to do this because they want their dollar lent because they know it's got— okay, so— Fractional reserve banking. Yeah, it's fractional reserve. So, so if you think about what happened, and I know for some of these guys it's review, but not, not you, Calum. This is not review for you, and maybe a couple in the back. It's December 2018, and the Federal Reserve says we're gonna raise interest rates 3 times in 2019. Why? The economy is doing great, unemployment is low. In January 2019, less than 45 days later, They said, we're sorry. We're not going to raise interest rates 3 times. We're going to lower interest rates 3 times. What just happened? Something huge just happened. It's huge. They were going to raise 3. 30 days later, they're going to lower 3 times. That year, March, I read a report. There's $3 trillion in Europe being traded at negative interest rates. I don't know what negative interest rate is. I have an economics degree. I don't even know what it is.

What's the difference?

That summer, it's $14 trillion. And I figured out was the Federal Reserve decided, I believe, wait a minute. People are borrowing money in Europe at zero interest rates.

Yeah. We can do it.

So, we have to lower our interest rates as low as possible. Not to zero, almost possible. So that we can compete against all these loans. So, we can proliferate our number one product. They did that on purpose so that if you're going to borrow, don't borrow German Don't borrow Spain, borrow the US dollar. Just, it's barely above 0%, and it's the world reserve currency. So borrow our stuff for 30 years, and then you have to pay us back in 30 years, which makes the dollar proliferate, right? And that creates insatiable demand. And that's what I thought they did. That's my theory anyway. That's why they lowered it on purpose. They bought bonds. Now, now you can just lower interest rates, but it doesn't take everything down. You have to take the bond market down. The Federal Reserve, on their balance sheet, bought $120 billion of bonds each month for 30+ months. If you buy bonds, buy bonds, buy bonds, buy bonds, the yield goes down, down, down. Buy bonds, buy bonds, buy bonds, the yield goes down, down, down. I take the bonds, I put them on the Fed's balance sheet. Why? Why are they buying the bonds? To keep interest rates low so that you're borrowing American dollars. So again, if you have the number 1 product of all time, you have to be pretty smart to be able to proliferate and keep that thing as number 1. It's not by accident. That's back to the idiot waiter. So— And then I was going to ask you. So, you always list the Navy. Why not the military at large? Well, it's because— It is the military, but because in 1944, it kind of happened like this. The Bretton Woods Agreement that they— the war was almost over. We knew we were going to win the war. We're making 50,000 planes a year. 1,000 planes a week are coming off our assembly lines. Germany's making 4,000 planes a year. We're making 50,000 planes a year. It was math. So a little place in New Hampshire called Bretton Woods, 44 countries sent 1,000 people to reset the world currency. And they basically said, listen, because of World War II, US came in late and they were selling all their crap to all the warring countries. And World War I, we came in late and we had a gold confiscation in 1933. The United States has— now get this, this is a crazy statistic— The United States has 60% of all the gold bullion in the world. We have in our Fort Knox and places. So the US dollar right now is going to be backed by gold, and the French franc is not going to be backed by gold anymore. The French franc will be backed by the US dollar. Okay? And all we really ask— it didn't say this, but all we really ask is if you buy and sell your oil in US dollars, You don't, you don't need to have your own navy anymore. We'll be your navy. The French's navy was gone. Italy's navy was gone. China's navy was gone. Japan's navy was gone. Russia's navy was gone. Everyone's navy's gone. The US had their navy intact and Britain had some. And a navy is very, very expensive for a country. It's one of the most expensive things a country can do is have a navy. And so we just said, you know what, buy and sell in US dollars in oil and we'll be your navy. So a little country around around the world wants to sell its goods, its trinkets, its chairs, its furniture to the United States, they don't need to have a navy anymore if long as they buy and sell in US dollars. And so that's why the navy is the tip of the spear there, because now— because it has created global trade, and no country has more benefited by this system than China. China has had the fastest growing Economy of any society in world history in the last 30 years. It's gone like this. No society in world history, even Romans, United States, has done as fast as they've done. They have benefited by having a world reserve currency, the US dollar, keeping the world reserve currency relatively flat, and US Navy patrolling the seas. China has benefited because they need product coming to their— They import 70%, 80% of their oil. They import 80% or 70%, 60% of their food because the US Navy is out there, you know, making sure pirates aren't all over the place. But now that's not true anymore. You don't want to buy in US dollars anymore? Well, you know what, pirates, you got to have your own navy. You got to spend— you got to make your own ships. That's why I always put the US Navy up there.

Yes, sir.

Can I add something to that?

Yeah, go.

The US Navy, we have 11 super carriers, super aircraft carriers. Combined world, if you combine— they have aircraft carriers, but they're like World War II class aircraft carriers— would have a combined about 3. One aircraft carrier— so we just parked the Ford, the brand new Ford-class carrier off of Israel— is the 3rd largest air force in the world. One aircraft carrier. So if that parks off your ocean, that's the— and the US is the number one air force, so it's US, I think it's China, and then the aircraft carrier would be the 3rd most powerful air force.

One aircraft carrier? One.

We have 11 of them, and they're powered by 2 nuclear, um, engines. They can, they can leave port for 50 years.

They don't have to ever port. They don't need gas.

They're powered by nuclear engines. It's— they're a city. I mean, there's— it's insane. Like, one— we don't— we underestimate the power of aircraft carriers. Massive. So when Taiwan— China was taking over Taiwan, years ago, the US parked an aircraft carrier right there, which cools everything down. But it didn't this time. This is the 3rd or 4th Taiwan conflict. They parked a 2nd one in the area, and they actually parked— I read a report, I was trying to verify. I heard one report they parked a 3rd one in the North Sea, and then everything cooled down.

China was like, holy shit, these guys are serious.

They parked 3 aircraft carriers in the South China Sea right between Taiwan and then at the north. And I mean, imagine having 3 of the world's largest air forces right off your Sure. So anyways, okay, man, that's why I put a gift thingy on.

It reminded me of something I got to tell you. I just learned this a few weeks ago, and I am still— I'm just too flabbergasted by it. In 1989, Gorbachev and Reagan took down the wall in Germany. West Germany, East Germany. You remember this?

Nope.

Okay, I started selling used jeans at that point. For 9 years, I sold used jeans to Eastern Bloc countries. I made a lot of money. My two partners moved to southern Germany. I grabbed used jeans all over the United States, and mostly Western United States, and shipped to them. I had seamstresses all day long, dyeing, scrubbing, sewing, shipping, dyeing, sewing, scrubbing, shipping. And they, my partners sold Prague. They went to Prague. They went to Austria. They sold jeans all over the place. Okay. Now this is crazy. PepsiCo was the first company that I know of went into Moscow to start selling Pepsi. Okay, now watch this. So PepsiCo, okay, owns Pizza Hut, okay? Okay. And Pizza Hut goes in after PepsiCo and starts opening Pizza Huts, which is really hard to do. It took them a lot of money, everything, okay? So then Pizza Hut starts selling pizza, selling it. They're doing great, right? But they're getting paid in rubles, and they're buying a lot of their products from other countries. in US dollars. At that point, you could not exchange the ruble for anything outside, outside of Russia. Getting this? Okay, this is funny. This is hilarious. So Pizza Hut goes, what are we going to do with all these rubles? They call their parent company PepsiCo, who's been in Russia longer. Hey guys, what are you guys doing with all your rubles? PepsiCo goes, oh, we had— we got that. We solved that. We worked out with the Russian government that we, when we have a bunch of rubles, right? I don't even know how to spell rubles. Rubles. When we have a bunch of rubles, okay, PepsiCo has the option to use their rubles and go and buy ships and submarines from the Russian government because they're not using them anymore. So PepsiCo starts buying ships and subs What do we do?

We launder it.

That's what we do.

Then, then they were selling them to other countries like Ukraine for US dollars. They did this for years. If that doesn't show you how powerful the US dollar is, when you have to do this gymnastics to get US dollars At one point they said if PepsiCo would have, you know, all the stuff they bought, if they would have kept all those submarines, they would have been the 9th largest navy in the world with all the stuff they had to do to get their money out of Moscow. Anyway, that's a pretty funny— that's hilarious, man.

That's crazy.

Subs! They're buying subs! Not not not Subway subs. Not Subway subs. They're buying actual subs and selling them to Ukraine. They make soft drinks. Yes, I'm selling sugar water so I can buy subs.

Oh my gosh!

Well, anyway, it's pretty awesome.

Okay, I got way more stuff, but we'll have to do another night. So I think that— I think I've talked to you guys enough.