1596: Flattening America, Election Issues, Casey Research, Doug Casey

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Welcome to episode 1596. 1596. And I hope this isn't boring you because it is beginning to bore me, I must say. And we will not, and I'm not talking about politics, by the way, not interested in talking about politics at the moment. But we'll be back to that. Especially as it affects our money and our investments. And it does affect our money and investments. But the subject of people leaving big cities, you know, this is maybe getting a little bit overplayed. I predicted it before anybody. I predicted it back in February when I saw what was going on in Italy. That made me especially aware of it, but also even back in Wuhan. But now there are whole other reasons. And here's my new prediction about this. I'm going to play a clip for you here in a moment. And of course, today we have part two of Doug Casey from yesterday. No need to listen to them consecutively. Not important. Just catch yesterday's episode if you haven't already, whenever you can. If you're hearing this first, it doesn't matter. They can be in any order, not critical. But as far as this mass migration that we've been talking about. So the new thing is what I announced on Sunday, the flattening of America. Hugely significant, very, very important concept, the flattening of America. If you did not hear my Sunday livestream where I went into that, you can go on YouTube or Facebook. YouTube's probably the better place to watch it if they haven't censored it and taken it down yet or Facebook hasn't. Oh, the tech gods. We must bow to the gods of technology. So I talked about the flattening of America. How as people are leaving these cities, bright, ambitious people who in a Darwinian sense couldn't afford to live in these expensive areas like New York, San Francisco, Louisiana. These Expensive areas, Boston, whatever. And they couldn't afford this high cost of living unless they were very educated, smart and ambitious. Those people. It's just Darwinism. That's all it is, just Darwin acting in an economic sense, it's economic Darwinism. But as those people leave these overpriced, expensive cities for a whole variety of suburban markets around the US guess what we have? We have the flattening of America. We will see. One of my predictions on this is we will see a massive reallocation of brain power as the cities have experienced a brain drain and that will continue. And the high tax, high crime, high cost of living jurisdictions, usually liberal, usually leftist politics, usually Democrats running them, they have a good knack at ruining everything. Listen, that's not even a political statement. Just look at Detroit. Look at all the other places they've touched. Look at Baltimore, it's a disaster. Look at California, look at Seattle, look at Portland, look at New York. I mean, this is not an argument, folks. It's simply observation. It's a fact.

As people leave these places, these bright, ambitious, educated people with way more spending power as they leave those places, we will see a reallocation of brain power. We will see a reallocation of venture capital. We will see a reallocation of tech startups spread all around the country. Whereas before they were concentrated in Silicon Valley and in Silicon Alley and in the Tech triangle and so on and so forth. Now that is flattening America. It is spreading out. It will be more evenly dispersed. And that is great news for all of you friends who have been following my advice for the last 16, 17 years and investing in these markets. Our advice really, really didn't change much. It's simply an accelerant to what we were already advising. Now listen to this clip. And this is from the New York Post. You're going to hear some residents interviewed. It's just a very short clip, just about a minute, but I think you'll find this insightful.

It was the pandemic, but really, I think the uptick in crime was really concerning for us. And had it just been me and my husband and my dogs, I don't think we would have had a problem staying.

But.

You know, is it amazing to you that everybody just talks with totally improper grammar? If it was just me and my husband, since when does me come first in the sentence? It would be my husband goes first and then me or I, as the case may be. Right. Like, it's unbelievable how just nobody cares about any of this stuff anymore, do they? It's so sad. Well, and nobody cares about how they look or dress anymore either. So sad. Watch old movies, Watch old TV shows. Continuing tangent alert. Back on track.

Once we saw the city start to devolve and things become less safe and less clean. And we've been back several times to do various things in this city, so we've seen it firsthand and it really, really upset us. And it's not really a place we want to raise a child anymore, to have spaces like this and the Atlantic Ocean.

So what you're looking at now. Well, you're not looking at it, but I am. You're looking at a man in the Hamptons. Okay. You know, it says New Yorkers explain why they've fled to the Hamptons.

And, you know, just greater space and where I live, an outdoor area that I can just step out to. I have a great circle of friends out here, many of which have come out here also more semi permanently.

It's been amazing, actually.

And the picture of the guy in the Hamptons with the c. But you get the idea. There is this mass migration out. The crime is increasing dramatically now. Check out these statistics. More than 300,000 New Yorkers have bailed from the Big Apple in the last eight months. New stats show city residents filed 295,103 change of address requests from March 1 through October 31, according to data the Post obtained from the U.S. postal Service under a Freedom of Information Act. A FOIA request. Right. That's great that we have the FOIA laws, right, where they can get information like that. Since the data details only when 11 or more forwarding requests were made to a particular county outside New York City, the number of moves is actually higher. And a single address change could represent an entire household, which means far more than 300,000 New Yorkers fled the five boroughs. So, folks, this is just hugely significant. And my prediction is that it will lead to a flattening of America. And that's a good thing. That's a really good thing. A very good thing. You should be happy about it. Like Trump would say. He'd be saying, it's a very good thing. It's fabulous. It's just a phenomenal thing. No, not like that. He would say it like it's fabulous. It's very good. It's big Lee.

Oh, if that guy isn't reelected, I'm going to miss his unusual speech patterns. But then again, Joe Biden's got some unusual speech patterns, too, because he's just mentally deficient. I Mean, what else can we say, right? So major crimes have been on the rise this year. The number of murders in the Big Apple in New York hitting 344 by October, surpassing the count for all of 2019. The number of shootings through November 8th is up. You ready for this, folks? You ready for this? Are you sitting down? Are you ready? Are you ready?

Here it comes.

The number of shootings up through November 8th is up 94%. 94% increase over last year. Wow.

That is so sad. I mean, can you imagine if you. Hopefully none of you, probably none of you, this applies to. Because you're listening to my show, you've been following my advice for the past many years and you don't own these expensive properties in New York that are plummeting in value, okay? I mean the crime, the taxes, the interference in people's lives, the brain drain, people just fleeing from these places. And the same is true of California. But in California it's much less concentrated because obviously it's a much bigger place geographically. And in terms of population too. I mean, it's almost 40 million people in California, but declining rapidly. The thing about California is that the demographics, well, I should say the population demographics, just population numbers don't change as dramatically. Why is that? Well, because you have these silly sanctuary cities, well, not silly, but epically stupid sanctuary cities. And you have people coming there for handouts while the people paying taxes and obeying the law and contributing, not wanting handouts are leaving. So the net migration, the net out migration in California is not as pronounced because they have build themselves and basically advertise themselves as the place to come for handouts. The place to come if you want to leech off of society. Now I get it. I'm a bleeding heart capitalist. I'm not that cold hearted. I understand that people for temporary points in their lives need aid. Almost nobody, unless they are permanently disabled, needs aid forever for their life. That should only be for the vast, vast majority of people, a very temporary situation to help people get back on their feet. And there is a place for government in both of those categories. But sadly, the leftists that have way more power than they should have made it a permanent condition. Because it disables people, it makes them permanently dependent on the government largesse. And that is obviously a recipe for disaster. Happens over and over again. This is the flattening of America we're seeing, but we are also seeing a massive amount of money pour into these suburban markets. Now granted, some of these suburban markets are ultra ritzy expensive markets like the Hamptons. That's not what I'm talking about. Yes, there are certainly wealthy New Yorkers that already had a second home in the Hamptons and they just went there. Big deal. Forgive me, I can't remember her last name, but Dottie, the CEO of Douglas Solomon Real Estate on the show several months ago talking about that. That's a trend. But.

The bulk of the trend is people moving to less expensive, reasonably priced suburban markets where they can have a better life for less money and certainly lower taxes.

This is a giant trend, folks. It's a big deal and you are on the cutting edge to take advantage of it. And I got to tell you, I am really excited about our webinar on Thursday for Charlotte. A whole bunch of you have signed up already. So Charlotte, North Carolina, just a fantastic city. Absolutely love that city. I made good money on property there myself. I told you about how I cashed out, did a 1031 exchange on my last property there. I got two for one. It was a great deal. So join us for that. Go to jasonhartman.com Charlotte jasonhartman.com Charlotte and register for our Thursday Charlotte webinar. You do not want to miss this webinar. In addition to having a market profile and introducing you to our new construction builder in Charlotte, you will meet him and you'll see pictures of the properties. He's got really some great offerings there. But you're also going to get some content. I forgot to do that with our Alabama webinar that we did recently. By the way, if you missed that one, you can find the replay@jasonhartman.com sweethome but I didn't do any teaching on that one. And this one I remembered to do a little bit of teaching and show you some charts and things that I think will be interesting. So you'll get both of those things for the Charlotte webinar on Thursday. JP jasonhartman.com Charlotte now let's get to part two of Doug Casey, the international man, the anarcho capitalist international man. Here he is.

But hey, let's talk about the election, Doug. There's so much going on. We gotta get to that. You know, what, what can we expect? You know, the whole system, I think we've all can agree that it's, it's corrupt. It was corrupt without, you know, voter fraud and miscounting ballots and all of that because we have a two party system that makes it corrupt on its face. But we are where we are. What can we expect?

I think we can expect the worst in this election because the country is really divided philosophically. It's like a marriage where you and your wife have learned to hate each other because you just disagree on what's right and wrong. You disagree on what's good and bad, what should and shouldn't be done. And that's the way things are right now between the red counties and the blue counties. I don't see how it can get better. People can't change their whole psyche. The optimal solution to what we're confronting now, a veritable cultural revolution in the us I use that word. I'm trying to use that word accurately. What we're on the edge of is something that's similar to what China went through from 1966 to 1976. This is really serious and really ugly where people really differ on the most basic levels of things.

But I don't see how the US can break up so that people are in different political entities easily. It can happen. It should happen. Instead, they're going to be contesting for who controls Washington and who gets to boss the other group around. This is not a happy situation.

No, it's definitely not a happy situation. But what can we expect? What are the markets going to do? What about commodities prices? What about housing? I mean, the housing market is booming. It is. I've never, I've been doing this an awful long time, Doug, and I've just never seen a market with inventory this low and this much. I mean, the migration is a big part of it. Thankfully, our investors are buying suburban properties, so that's where all the action is. Right. But yeah, I mean, if you're in New York City or San Francisco, I think you're in bad shape, or downtown LA or Seattle or any of these high density areas where you've got BLM and you've got Covid and.

All of this civil unrest. But what's the market going to do? Real estate stocks, commodities, interest rates, whatever you want to say about that. I mean, you're a financial guy.

Well, I agree. First of all, as far as property in the big cities is concerned. And they're essentially dead ducks and for a good long time because the governments of these municipalities are bankrupt and their main source of income is real estate.

Taxes and that is under attack. That's going to suffer greatly and they're going to go even more bankrupt than they already are. So if you're investing in municipal bonds in these kinds of places, watch out because you're likely to see some defaults. That's Going to be pretty ugly. And the pension crisis.

And if you own proper in these big cities, the real estate taxes are going to go up. Furthermore, your occupancy is likely to go way down in the future as people move out. At the same time, as I've found in Aspen, the rich are moving in because it's safe and it's quiet. And people generally share values with you. Mostly liberal values, I've got to say, or I shouldn't even use the word liberal. I should say statist and collectivist values. Very different from what liberal values historically have been because it comes from the word.

They have hypocrite values in those places.

Yes, you're right. So what are you going to do right now with. At the same time, real estate's being driven upwards because it floats on a sea of debt. And right now, with interest rates, real interest rates being negative and actual interest rates, 2, 3%, something like that, in the real world, eventually. Interest rates, interest rates. First of all, the dollar is going to turn into toilet paper because they're creating trillions of them as we speak. They've already created trillions or creating trillions more. They have no alternative. Trump, Biden, makes no difference.

Both spenders, they're both going to dole out the goodies, the stimulus, whatever. They're going to print, and they're already printing. I mean, it's just a foregone conclusion, but Doug, just. I know the inflation rate is a lot higher than the government would lead us to believe, than the official stats say. But even that statement notwithstanding, and we both agree with that statement, I'm sure you agree with me without even answering, there still hasn't been anywhere near as much inflation as we might expect given the amount of money creation coming out of the Great Recession this time around with COVID the inflation, there's some inflation there, for sure. A lot higher than we're being told, but it's not dramatic yet.

You're quite correct. This is in many ways a mirror image of the 70s, when the amount of money being created wasn't remotely comparable to what we have today. But retail prices were running away in the 70s. People forget that Nixon put on wage and price controls.

Right, I remember that. Yeah.

Okay, so it's not nearly as bad as that. But the financial markets were devastated. They were, in real terms, as cheap as they've been during the 1930s. So now all that money is flowing into the financial markets, stocks, bonds and real estate. But it's going to float down to a retail level, too. So look out. And eventually, while the dollar is really inflated out of existence, this is very, very serious. Interest rates will eventually go back to the levels I think and beyond what they were in the early 80s, which you might recall, we're talking 12 and 15% for government borrowings. We're looking at very tough times. So what do you do? What do you do? Can't buy most stocks, they're grossly overpriced. Bonds are a triple threat to your capital. You've got interest rates, you've got default.

Risk, you've got the current huge inflation risk.

Yeah, forget about it. With bonds I see a lot of problems with a lot of kinds of real estate. Some are okay, much better than others. So where do you go? Well, all I can see at this point is commodities in general, but in particular the precious metals, gold and silver. I hate to tell people to buy gold when it's at all time highs, but I think it's going much higher, much higher. And more than that, I think what you have to do is reorient your psychology. You can't really be an investor today, you can't really be a saver today. The world's too unstable. You're forced to be a speculator. And what does that mean?

Which is not fair because older people who've saved money, who've been conservative, who've delayed gratification are forced into these speculative investments that can ruin their retirement. I mean, it's so unfair what's happened now this isn't new, this isn't news. This has been going on for decades, but it's even more acute now, I'd say. Right, you're quite correct.

The only place that I think you should go right now is gold stocks, which gold is going higher, silver is going higher. And these stocks are very, very cheap right now. They're under owned every gold producing stock in the world right now. Their market cap is not quite what the cash, or just slightly greater, I should say, than the amount of cash that Apple alone has in its bank accounts. That's how cheap they are. And most fund managers have been. They don't believe in gold. They think it's a pet rock.

Well, they think it's a barbarous relic, to quote Alan Greenspan.

So they don't own gold. It's very under owned. And gold stocks are very, very cheap, looked at from many points of view, price, earnings ratio, all kinds of things.

Okay, all right, so but when you say commodities in general, and what about rare earth metals? You know, and the thing, you know the thing that's the wild card, Doug, it's a little further away, but I don't know if it's that far away is the asteroid mining. I mean, that could just tank the market for all of these, what we consider precious here on Earth because it's so abundant in space, right. And you know, Japan has already achieved that. They have, have sent a probe to an asteroid, collected material, brought it back to Earth. We can do it today, you know, and there are companies that are, you know, raising money to do just this as we speak.

You're quite correct. And Elon Musk is hoping to land on Mars by 2024 and not long thereafter making a colony on Mars self sustaining. So.

And part of that whole Mars project needs to include asteroid mining, just for the water, if nothing else. But yeah, yeah, things are advancing at.

The rate of Moore's Law and not just in computers, in a number of areas, robotics and nanotechnology and biotech. So it's a wonderful time that we're moving into from one point of view, but I'm afraid from politically and economically and our personal freedom point of view, it's going to be very, very scary. That's why, incidentally, that's one of the reasons why I've written, with my co author John Hunt, a series of novels exploring what's going to happen in the future and what's happening now. We just came out with one. I've got to give you this commercial.

Jason, I know, you go for it. Yeah. Assassin.

Assassin. I brought a copy with me and basically it's talking about what's happening today. And the question is, Charles Knight, our hero, is trying to reform the unjustly besmirched occupation of political assassination. And the question we ask is, is political assassination moral or immoral? Right or wrong, is it effective? Does it really change anything or does it make sense?

Well, look, the CIA doesn't it, so it does.

And would you, if you believe that Bill Clinton actually committed dozens of Arkansides, which could be termed assassinations.

Arkansides, I've never heard that. He's from Arkansas, folks. So, yeah.

So yeah, this goes on. It's the nature of politics. People kill each other, mostly in the form of wars where hundreds of thousands of people are involved. But on a personal one to one level, what about assassination? And I'm interested in the moral questions as much as the technical questions of how.

Okay, so the novel explores it and can people get that at International man, or do they have to go to leftist Amazon or elsewhere?

Well, they can go to internationalman.com and hard hardback novels will be available there shortly. But at the moment, yes, Amazon does do a service by. They're the largest publisher in the world by far.

Until they censor you and shut you down. Yes.

No, I haven't had any problems at all.

But they've shut a lot of other people down.

Well, yeah, I'm sure that's in the cards. So get this book before, because it's highly politically incorrect and I've got to say that I've been reading the book myself, having written and edited it, but now I'm reading it in the form of a paper like an ordinary reader. And it is one hell of a good book. I'm very proud of it. Everybody should read it because most people think it's about Trump and killing Trump, although we do a lot of things that are very different. But no, buy this book.

I promise you it wouldn't be about that. Because I would guess that out of the two terrible choices we always get, you would have been a Trump voter more than a Biden voter. Right.

Well, faced with Scylla and Charybdis, you've got to choose Scylla. That's correct, yeah.

Because at least Trump's better than the alternative, for sure.

Yes, he is. He's a cultural conservative. He'd at least like to see the US Return to the days of Ozzie and Harriet and Father Knows Best, as opposed to Kamala Harris, who actually would like to foment a Marxist revolution with her buddies in the Gang of Four AOC and the rest of them.

If Biden is determined to be the winner, she may well become president. Because Biden needs to retire a long time ago, actually.

I mean, you know, you've got to lose respect for the average voter. Assuming that the election results reflect the average voter, which is another question. How much cheating is there? Quite a bit, I'd say probably on both sides, but much more on the Democrat side. Now, this election is a major turning point in the US it's going to be as serious as the election of 1860. And I hope we don't go into a civil war. I hope it just turns into a mellow secession of the different groups in the US but unlikely. Nobody wants to see the US and I don't say America. America is a concept and a wonderful one, but it's a dead duck. It's been washed away. It's not the United States. And nobody, no president, wants to see the US break up on his watch, which is pretty much the thinking that Lincoln had.

Well, we shall see. Let's all hope for the best and we are on the edge right now. Everybody wants to know what's going to happen with this election and it's just a crazy time. So got to pray for the country and let's hope for the best. Doug, thanks for joining us. The website is internationalman.com or right?

Yes.

All right, thanks again. Good to have you.

Thank you. Jesse.

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