CW 469 – Bill Tatro – The U.S. Dollar’s Future with Townhall.com Columnist & Former Radio Host of ‘It’s All About the Money’

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Welcome to the Creating wealth show. This is your host, Jason Hartman. This is episode number 469 and thank you to all of our listeners who are listening on Stitcher Radio, really a growing part of our audience and we welcome you and appreciate you listening on Stitcher Radio. Our guest today will be Bill Tetro. Bill is a really interesting guy. I used to listen to him on good old terrestrial radio. Yes. You know, on the AM dial, if you know what that is. I know that's, that's quickly starting to fade from our thinking. I know as a lot of attention is really driven toward the podcasting side of the world. But Bill actually ended his terrestrial radio career somewhat recently and has gone into podcasting as well. And he's out with a new book and you know, I really, when I asked him to be on the show, I didn't really, I didn't know about his new book and I wasn't thinking about his new book. I just wanted him to come on and talk about some of his fantastic insights into investing and economics, which I really enjoy listening to on the radio. But his new book, you know, he wanted to talk about that, so we're going to spend a little time on that as well. It's called 44th A Presidential Conspiracy and you can guess what that's about. But it won't just be about that. We're going to talk about economics and, and some fun stuff there as far as the investment landscape and on our members call today. By the way, I don't know when you'll exactly be listening to us, but those of you who are members of Jason Hartman University, jhu, you know, we probably should get some cool shirts and hoodies and college looking wear made up for JHU huh? Yeah, that'd be a good idea. Well, we don't charge enough. It's only 33 cents a day. You know, college, it might cost you $100,000 or more. You don't have to finance this deal. 10 bucks a month, it's pretty affordable, for sure. We're going to talk about the four types of property management on today's, you know, the day this is published, which is Wednesday. I'm recording this Tuesday evening. By the way, if I sound a little tired, it's because my MIST therapist just left and I just got a massage. So that'll, that'll mellow you out for sure. And I think that's really good for you. So take advantage of that. Don't forget to make sure you get some massages, you know, stimulate blood flow, lymph fluid. Remember, your lymph system doesn't have a pump. Your blood has a pump to pump it around your heart. Right. Your lymph system does not have that. So that's why you need to manipulate and help your lymph system along. And there's really two ways to do it. One is through exercise and the other is through massage. So I, I think that's very valuable. What was I talking about? Oh yeah, property management. There I go again. So on the members call today, we're going to have Fernando on that call. We're gonna talk about something I've talked about before many times, self management, which is one of the four types. But first we'll talk about traditional management. And if you have a good property manager, traditional management can work great. But if you have a not so good property manager, which occasionally everybody runs into at one time or another throughout their investing care, then they might nickel and dime you and they might not do a real good job. And there are certainly some pitfalls that you have potential for there. The other type is what I call a la carte property management, where you can pick and choose in a cafeteria style methodology what property management services you want. And then of course there's self management, which I have been impressed and amazed just from a personal experience as an investor that I could self manage properties that are 2,000, 25,000 miles away, properties I've never seen, tenants I've never met and have that go pretty darn well. So that's one way, and we've really talked about all those three ways, but the one way we haven't talked about on the show yet, and we're going to talk about it on tomorrow's members call and by the way if you're not a member yet and you go to jasonhartman.com and you go to the upper right portion of the website and you see that little area, it's really small. It says sign in or join as a member for 120 bucks a here. If you do that, all of these member calls, the monthly calls are in there in the replay section. So they are archived for members and you can get them. So the fourth way we're going to talk about is what we call the flipped property management system. The flipped system where basically the tables are turned, whereas the typical relationship is, you know, you hire the property manager to do a job, you have the expenses and they have. They do their job, hopefully. And you know, if all that goes well, you know, it can be a pretty profitable arrangement. If it doesn't go so well, then, you know, it's not as good. But then the flipped method, it's offering more of kind of the style of a hedge fund, but without all of the downfalls of. Remember commandment number three, right? And what is commandment number three? Thou shalt maintain control. Because when you pool your money with other people and you invest in a fund, okay, you leave yourself susceptible to the three major problems. Number one, you might be investing with a crook. Number two, you might be investing with an idiot. And number three, assuming they're honest and competent, they take a huge management fee off the top for managing the deal. So in the flipped methodology, what we want to do is provide you all the benefits of a managed investment without all of the pitfalls, or at least if you have some of those pitfalls, they wouldn't be as bad or as significant or as problematic as they would be in the traditional system or the a la carte or the self managed. Okay, so with a lot less work than that. So we're going to talk about that and of course there will be some inklings about it on future podcasts as well if you're not a member. Some interesting articles in the it's an amazing time to be alive category. Do you know that last week it was in the media and you may have caught this. Scientists have now figured out, I mean, this is amazing. And it has, I think, big widespread implications for material science, for cryogenics. Do you know what cryogenics is? Well, I've done two episodes on my longevity show, my new show, which by the way, I'm sure many of you are listening to it. And thank you for listening because it is now in itunes. It's been featured in iTunes new and noteworthy section for two weeks in a row since its launch. And we finally did get around to launching that show. So longevity show, it's the longevity and biohacking show. And one of the things I firmly believe, and we talk about this when it comes to real estate investing. I mean, think about it. The big well, there are many benefits, but one of the big benefits to income property investing is leverage, because it is the most leveraged favored asset. When I say leverage, you probably think of it in the sense of financing. Right? And that's, you know, that's a great advantage. But there are many other sources of leverage that we've talked about on prior episodes and we'll talk about on future episodes of Leverage offered through Income Property. It's not just the fact, although that's a part of it, that the bank pays for 80 or 75% of the deal. And that leverage is fantastic. And by the way, speaking of funds, when you're investing inside a fund, you can't really take advantage of those great leverage opportunities the way you can when you are an individual investor. That offers you much more leverage because the fund, unless there's something I don't know, I mean, I haven't seen this happen in any funds that I know of, can never get the really high, really favorable leverage ratios that you can get as an individual investor. Okay? So keep that in mind. But the Longevity Show, I was talking about that. So thank you for listening to that one. Thank you for reviewing this show and all the reviews in itunes. We really appreciate that. Also, please, if you're listening, go rate, review and listen to the Longevity show and write a review for that. I'd really appreciate it because really, my core philosophy of life in general, whether it be your business life, your financial life or your being, your biology, is leverage, the importance of leverage. And what I teach on all of my shows is how to. Because I'm learning about it too. Okay? I learned this from doing interviews with thought leaders and guests all day and in my readings and my listening to audio books and so forth. And it's how to gain leverage on the three primary areas of life, work and business, our professional life, our investments, and our personal finance. Gaining leverage there. And that's what we cover mainly on this show. And then gaining leverage through the longevity sciences and biohacking opportunities available. Gaining leverage on our body and our mind, our psyche and our soma body and mind. So can we learn to increase our brain power? Can we increase brain power through biohacking? I say yes, we can And I believe I'm doing it myself. And we talk about that on the Longevity Show. And again, these things aren't.

You know, they're. They're a little bit hard to measure. Okay. So admittedly, they have a kind of relativistic feeling to them and an anecdotal kind of feeling to them. But I tell you, through good old coffee and maybe some additives to coffee, I think I have increased my, my brain power, actually. And there are some other ways that I think you can do that, too. So biohacking, and we talk about that. So why is it important that scientists have actually learned how to unboil how to reverse a boiled egg? Well, maybe that will lead to new material sciences that have to do with our real estate and the physical being of the properties that we invest in. But also, what does it have to do for longevity? Well, there's this whole concept, we've seen it in science fiction movies of people that freeze themselves. Right. And, you know, this kind of a crazy idea, but I've actually interviewed two companies that do that on the Longevity show, and it's. By the way, I'll save you the time of even listening to the show. Well, there's more detail on the show. Obviously, it costs $29,000 to do this, and today we can't wake people up out of a frozen sleep because once water in our bodies are what, 70, 75% water, right? Once that molecule is frozen, it changes, the whole dynamic of it changes, and it can't be unfrozen. And so you can't be reawakened, at least not yet. But, gosh, if we can take a boiled egg and make it unboiled and make it revert to its original state before we boiled it.

Whoa.

That is a. That is unbelievable. It's amazing. It's an amazing time to be alive. Who knows what that will lead to? It's amazing. It's an amazing time to be alive. So keep that in mind. There's an interesting article. Back to the more specific real estate theme. An interesting article I was just reading saying that renting is now twice as expensive as buying as buying a house in the U.S. okay, now, of course, all real estate is local, obviously, and it depends what market we're talking about. Again, this article is misleading. Although it's interesting, it is misleading. And I want to take more time on a future episode to dissect this idea more, because what do they not tell us? Well, it depends what city see you are still. And you know, one of the Things it says. I'll just read you from paragraph 4 of this article I'm reading. It says, even in the cities which have always been famous for high rents, the likes of. And you know what? I'm going to get to regular listeners because you get it. You get that personal finance, investing, renting versus buying, that age old debate. It's all about Einstein. Einstein was right. We learned the theory of relativity from Einstein. And the theory of relativity applies to income, property in so many profound and dramat ways. Okay, See, life, when it comes to money, nothing should be about what something cost, the price of things, it's almost irrelevant. What's important is ratios, percentages. Okay? I'm much more interested in the percentage sign than the dollar sign. Why is that? Because the percentages, the relativity, the ratios are what tell us and help us understand the value of things.

So in the article here, it says even in the cities which have always been famous for high rents, the likes of Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, my home hometown, Seattle, New York, renting was more affordable than buying before the US real estate market crashed in 2008. However, since then, rents have been on a steady upward trend across the country while the cost of buying a home has been falling in many parts of the country to a point where renting is now the less affordable option, sometimes by a huge difference. Oh my God, can these people actually learn to think, please, because this is not thinking. Just because you can go buy a $600,000 house in Boston, well, you can't even buy that in San Francisco. Probably, but we'll make it a theoretical $600,000 house. I don't know, maybe you can. San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, New York.

If you can rent that house for $3,000 a month, you are better off renting. Think people, you know, the news media, they just don't get it. And by the way, I also want to talk to you about this article or this chart that was out about serial killers. What do serial killers have to do with this? A lot. Why do they have to do with it? Because it's all about how to lie with statistics. This stuff is so misleading. People do not get it. And you know, I'll give you a clue. Basically, this chart I saw was showing that the United States has the highest number of serial killers and China was way down the list. But no one bothered to ask, what is the ratio? What is the per capita number of serial killers based on the population? It's just stupid. It's stupid. You know, you could take that $600,000 back real estate now and you could make $6,000 a month on that. And you can get the utility, the use of that house for $3,000 in any of those overpriced cities. So renting is not the dumb choice in an expensive market, it's the smart choice. If you're in a low priced market, it's better to own than rent. We recommend investing in the lower priced markets. Haven't our tenants figured this out? Well, apparently not. They haven't figured it out. So use that to your benefit as an investor. And you know, what are the reasons these people don't buy? Well, I'd say the first reason is financial immaturity, you know, and I've talked about that enough on prior episodes, so I'm gonna save it this time. Okay, so before we get to our guest, Bill Tetro is a great interview coming right up. Okay, a couple things I want to just mention quickly. We would love to have you listeners on the show. And we've done a couple of shows lately. We had David on the show, we had Fernando on the show. We've had a few. But you know, we kind of stopped asking you guys to come on the show. So if you want to come on the show, if you've got a question, it can just be for a quick five minutes to answer a question or come on for a longer time and tell your story. We'd love to hear from you investors. It's not just to tell your story. It'll be educational. We'll discuss issues, we can debate issues. If you want, I can answer questions for you. You know, it's like the good old fashioned radio call in show. Okay. So to do that, it's really, really easy. All you need to do is go and use my little quick, convenient appointment scheduler. And that is Jason hartman.com. jason real easy, you can remember that. Jason hartman.com Jason and in about five or ten seconds you can book yourself an appointment and I'll have you on the show. Okay, so do that. And a few of you, since I announced it on the last episode, have been buying our Meet the Masters, our best of Meet the Masters home study course. And that's super cheap. Now we're blowing out the last ones. It's the physical product. It'll look awesome on your bookshelf. It's got a whole bunch of CDs, beautifully packaged and a 500 page book with it with all sorts of details on what all of these best of professionally edited speakers. So you know, there's not a Lot of chatter. You won't waste your time and if nothing else, for what is it, 200 bucks? When the digital product is $500, it'll look great on your bookshelf. So it's a, consider it part of your decor. What do you think of that? So take advantage of that. Go to jasonhartman.com and check it out in the store. Well, supplies last. We do not have many more of those, so take advantage of that. Well, you can at an extreme final sale discount. Okay. And let's get to our guest, Bill Tetro. It's my pleasure to welcome Bill Tet to the show. I used to listen to him on the radio quite a bit and really enjoyed his work. He's host of the It's All About Money podcast, editor of the Macro Profit newsletter and author of the new book 44th A Presidential Conspiracy, as well as the One Hour Survival Guide for the Downsized. Bill, welcome to the show. How are you?

Well, Jason, thank you for having me. So you listen to me on radio. You were the one. Okay. I tried to figure out who that one was out there.

You know, when you looked at your Arbitron ratings, I was that guy listening to you.

Yeah. Well, we have to say our arbitrary ratings were very, very good. So, and I know you're one kind of inspired others to listen to us also, so I thank you for that.

Yes, yes. I referred a few people to your show. I'm sad to hear you're not on radio anymore. Why did you end your radio career?

Well, basically, you know, I'm getting a little older, but I was constrained as most people are not aware when you are doing a commercial radio show five days a week, you have deadlines, etc, etc. And so I'm still on the radio, I'm doing my podcast and I'm going more with, we have a whole new program. It's the, the, the, the words, the, the written word and everything. We're rolling out in January. But I just wanted a little bit more control of my time because the commercial radio, you have to have the show in by a certain date, certain time and, and that's it. And it was two to three hours in preparation and everything like that because it's, you know, it's all economics, finance, geopolitical, et cetera. And it had to be contemporary, so just taking a different direction. But I'm there, I'm out there and we're going to Talk on my BillTatro.com will tell us more and more about how we're taking that new Direction.

Podcasting is so great because it's asynchronous. You can record when it's convenient for you, the listener can listen when it's convenient for them. It's really a much better format than terrestrial radio. Years ago, I had a terrestrial radio show on KRLA in Los Angeles. I started podcasting right after that, and, boy, the podcasting has been much better. So I think you're going to. To. You're going to like it a lot as your podcasting career develops more and more. So I think it's. Good move. Good move. So we were talking about the Keynesians versus the Austrians just for a moment before we started recording for the show today. And your new book is entitled 44th, and that's obviously Obama the 44th President, Presidential Conspiracy. Take us into that a little bit, and let's talk about how the Keynesians keep trying to push us over the cliff. And I want to add my two cents about how. I don't think that's happened yet, but tell us about the book.

Okay, well, the book. About a year and a half ago, two years ago, I started getting a whole lot of questions from people all over the country, all over the world, because I was on Internet while I was doing the Terrestrial. And people say, how does a guy get to be a president who has this limited background, et cetera? There's got to be somebody behind. And then when he ran for re election, there was a question that the mainstream media, nobody really investigated him at all, either the first time or the second time. They went into the backgrounds of the Republicans going against him in the primary. But I always. I said in one of my columns for Town hall, and it was interesting because the readership's about two, two and a half million there. And I said, wouldn't you have thought that maybe an ex girlfriend would have come out of the woodwork and simply said, yeah, he's a great guy, or he's a lousy dater. He's Che cheaper, he's expensive, whatever. And so John Ransom, who's the editor there, puts the title of the column and says, confessions of an Ex Obama Girlfriend. And all of a sudden we had.

And is it blank?

It was like, yeah. I mean, it was like people said, wait a minute, that wasn't about that. But the bottom line was we had almost 4 to 5 million hits. It was the biggest that Town hall ever had on that. And I'm thinking people just in a title are interested. So. So I started thinking about the different questions. I also wanted to Know what his relationship really was with Putin after that? Theoretical. We were going to World War 3 with Syria and then they had a G20 meeting in St. Petersburg. The Economist reported that there was a 20 minute conversation between Putin and Obama in a side hall. I kind of took that into the book. I took it and took a look at it and did it from a novel standpoint. But I just simply as an economist, took a look at all the different things that were happening in there, there. And I said, how did this happen? How do we. Well, it's his relationship with Bernanke. Where does Hillary play in this whole thing? Now all those people are in there. I take a different name rather than Obama just to keep it moving. But it's a book that I think that if you pick it up, it's only about 180 pages. You can get it on Amazon.com you're gonna, it's gonna, you're gonna look at, you're gonna say, huh, really? And there's one thing I did a lot of research on the, I call it the assassination of Osama bin Laden. I will have to tell you, everything you know about it, I will contradict in that book because when you look at it, a lot of that stuff doesn't make sense. So I, in the book, I kind of lay it out the way I think it really happened. And the intriguing part about it is that I really believe we had them all along.

Very interesting. I really want to make our focus the economic stuff. We have never seen such insane spending. Just recently, another $1.1 trillion. We don't even talk in billions anymore, Bill. You know, a billion ain't what it used to be. It's now a trillion is the number you talk about. Is this just total insanity or what?

Well, we come back to our original conversation about the Keynesian approach. And remember Einstein once said the height of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. But when you get into the depths of Keynesianism, it's all mired in one thing, and that is in modeling. What does that mean? You and I are walking down the street. We're young kids, we're single, couple good looking girls come by us, we wink, hey, looking for a good time. But that's it. That's our reaction. Keynesians will say that worse. Now I'm in my 60s, I'm walking down the street with my wife and a good looking girl goes by and I'm going to do the same thing or say, without my wife, I'm going to do this exact same same thing. They don't take in consideration. I'm 40 years older, I have more experience, and if my wife saw me do that, she would kill me. Then she'd go to work on me. The Keynesians believe that if you do one thing the same time, you're going to do it again and again and again. Which means then that this spending money, creating debt, debt, debt, debt, we're not doing enough of it. The reason it's not succeeding, the reason that the economy has not really turned the corner and we have these fictitious unemployment numbers, et cetera, is because we haven't done enough of it. Look at what, what happened when we had Abe over in Japan saying, you know, I got problems, things aren't working. We've been doing this for three decades. We need to call on somebody to advise us. Who did they call on? Mr. Krugman from the New York Times. Right. And he goes over and he tells them, yeah, he says, you got to do more of it. You got to do more. And that was the whole thing. That's why, Jason, you see this continue propensity of doing the same thing again and again. It's mired in their job.

So here's the funny thing about it. I mean, you know, from a philosophical level, Bill, I definitely do not agree with the Keynesian ideal. I don't think you should be printing your way out of economic woes. You know, obviously that causes inflation. We have lots and lots of history to back that up. In fact, that's pretty much 100% of the lesson. It's, it's always that way. It always happens. All of these people who talk about the demise of the dollar, how, you know, it will just be inflated away, nothingness, they just don't seem to be right. I mean, the dollar is strong, the ruble is collapsing. People keep running to America and its currency as the brink struck of the world. And maybe it's because we're the best managed country or the least worst managed country in a world of countries that are even worse than we are. Or maybe it's just because we find ourselves in this really interesting place geographically, historically, from an immigration perspective and from a perspective of hegemony, that we've got the largest military, we've got so many advantages that these other countries don't have. And with that, Bill, it's not just about math, is it? If it were about math, the dollar should have collapsed a long time ago. Go. But there are many other forces, right?

Well, here, Jason, here's one of the things. Now we get into the real depths of the economics and here's where I take exception, not with the majority of what you said, but with a little bit of what you said in there. And that is, and I get this from all economists around the world, the fact is, yes, the dollar should have collapsed. The reason it didn't is because there isn't a whole lot of dollars out there. I know people come back, say, wait a minute, look at the trillions of dollars that we've printed.

Well, it hasn't hit the street yet.

Correct, Absolutely correct. It is sitting on the balance sheets of the banks. They have been using it to leverage in the oil patch. They have been using it to leverage in the various commodity arenas. They have been using it to redeposit it back on the books of the Federal Reserve to get a spread borrowing versus what the, what the Fed is paying on that. So what we have, this is not the 20s where we're back in Germany where they're walking around with barrel fulls of money and they have, and prices are rising dramatically. A dear friend of mine, Peter Schiff is so for klumped because Peter keeps saying, well, it's coming, you know, and it never comes.

He's been saying that for years. Yeah, I mean I remember, I've had Peter on the show and I remember Peter, when Obama was running the first time candidate Obama, he said, you know, he made the prediction that gold would be $5,000 before the end of Obama's first term. Just the complete opposite has happened.

Yeah. And when you look at that and Peter, when Peter and I had a conversation quite a while ago, I asked him one simple question. You look at this and the thing you can't get is the velocity of money. The velocity of money is the amount of money that turns over. It's a dollar that's in circulation, keeps moving, moving. We are at the same level or below where we were in the Depression. The money's not out there. And all of a sudden, as an example, if it's not out there, it can disappear very quickly. Look at the money that was put into the oil patch for the fracking and for that particular arena, all of a sudden it was predicated on $110 oil. You've got junk bonds that were selling at par and Premium now, now 40, 50, 60 cents on the dollar. You can watch money disappear very quickly in that particular scenario. And that's what we're seeing right now. So therefore it becomes what the central banks of the world are most feared, not inflation, but it's deflation. And that is what is running and running rampant. And these guys don't know how to handle it. But they'll continue doing the exact same thing as we've seen. Why? Because they're Keynesian.

So there's a question I have never asked anybody on my show. How do you handle deflation? What is the way to handle that? It seems like Abenomics is the way, as much as people want to say it's not working. There's that old thing that you can't hear the dogs that don't bark. Maybe the question to ask is how much worse would Japan be if it wasn't for Abenomics? I don't know. It's a question, it's not a statement.

Right. And it's a question that I get all the time because people will say, well wait a minute, we always talk inflation, we don't talk deflation. Yet that is what when we look at, at the inflation rate in Europe and they've gone negative, you know, Switzerland just went to a negative interest rate policy. They took their. And so that's what we're looking at. How do you solve the problem? We had an opportunity back in 2008. You have to let the so called quote free market work. GM should have gone under. Goldman Sachs should have gone under. These entities, these entities should go under. Once they go under, it's kind of like, you know, if you have a scratch, I always tell people you have a scratch on your leg and it's from a nail, which is a rusty nail and you don't treat it, you just put a band aid on it. You're going to look a couple days later and that infection is going to have grown. Well, you put another band aid on it and another band aid on it. Eventually you're going to have to cut off the leg. Eventually there will be a collapse. Eventually there will be businesses that go out of business. There will be. It's like the oil patch. Right now you're looking at the shale oil. There will be those that will go out. The strong will survive. Shale oil is not going away. Fracking is not going away. But there will be those that survive. That's the problem. We've got into this. We're mired in this. Too big to fail. We're mired. If we studied our history, in 1920-22 we had a very severe recession which the farmers never came out of, but everybody else did. Why? Because they let things happen. You had when.

Coolidge was underneath Harding, they, they had guys who said, look, let the week fail and we'll trample the week. And they came out of it. And what do we have? We had the roaring twenties, but we didn't learn from that. We didn't, we don't learn from that. And 2008 was an issue because we should have let things happen, but we didn't. We stepped in. And now, as you know, the other day when we passed this budget, who was the biggest lobbyist getting this budget bill passed so that they could continue to play the Dodd Frank wouldn't be invoked in them. It was Jamie, Donald Trump Diamond. The banksters are in control. And eventually, eventually as we get to this 300 trillion and growing in the derivative market, it will tumble. The question becomes how bad does it get? But the next one is my fear is that this thing is playing out not only economically, but it's playing geopolitically. And when you push people into corners, like we're pushing Russia into the corner, whether it's of their own making or of its ours, people respond or institutions or entities. I know wounded animals, how they, when they're backed in the corner, how they respond. They get desperate. And that's what's scary right now.

I agree, that does concern me about Russia. No question about it, just in a brief explanation, you know, other than printing money. I agree with you that there should be no corporate socialism and no too big to fail. You know, we should take our medicine and in two years we'd probably be back much better than we were. But Americans like to kick the can down the road. That's what we do. We don't want to, you know, we want to minimize any initial pain and mortgage the future for that, you know, to do that. But how do you, how do you deal with deflation? Deflation, really? I think the reason these central bankers and governments are so scared of deflation is because it really is quite possibly the worst thing that can happen to an economy. In a way as perverse as it may seem sound. Inflation is really a great business plan for governments as long as you can control it to some extent, because it allows them to keep throwing money and buying votes and they can just inflate away the value and they always hurt the people they say they're helping the most. That's pretty obvious if you're, if you're paying attention. But what other tool do you use to combat deflation other than the printing press?

Well, succinctly put, there isn't, there isn't any because when you're looking at paying debt with cheaper dollars, that's inflation. When you're paying debt in a deflationary environment that becomes more expensive and so then it will collapse of its own weight. We're seeing various entities and what's scary about that is if you look, sooner or later, countries around the world, the people will be picking up the pitchforks. Watch Greece, Watch Greece. Right now they're into their second, the first one, they'll have their second election, then they'll have their third vote. Vote. They will not elect the president, which means that they'll come up for a general election sometime in the next month or two and Syriza will win and they will more than likely pull Greece out of the European Union. Watch the games begin then. It's just things happen and that's the way it is. That's the problem. The central banks know they cannot control deflation. Jason, I think you said it very, very well. It is the biggest fear that they have. They can control inflation. They'll raise those inflation interest rates. That's why raising interest rates is a joke. They're not going to raise interest rates. To what point? I write in town hall for tomorrow saying okay, so we got a family sitting around the table. Well, we're not going to buy a house now because the mortgage rates 3 to 4%. I think we'll wait till it gets to 5 to 6. Is that logical? I don't think so. Most corporations are simply supporting their stocks by buying back their, their, their shares in the marketplace on borrowed money, leveraged money at low interest rates. So they're going to look for that higher rates. And finally the US treasury on their refunding is at 2.1 in the 10 year. If it's back up to 4, we become our debt to GDP is like Greece and then we become the banana Republic.

Would we really become the banana Republic though? Because we're not in the same. You know, I know the famous last words of everybody is this time it's different. Right, So I get it. But then I'm going to say, Bill, this time it is, is different. I mean nobody has, we have the largest military the world has ever known and with that we will use that, as unfair as it may be, to maintain our reserve currency status. I say we will, I think we will. You know, people want to think that, you know, the US is just going to sit by and let the dollar collapse and let Bitcoin take over or let the BRICs trade outside of the dollar. That's Just not going to happen. I mean, why would they do that? Why would the powers that be in the US and with the Federal Reserve let that happen? They're just not going to, are they?

I don't think. Also, I don't think it will. I think that the dollar will stay as a reserve currency for quite a while because I think it's also beneficial to China, who holds a lot of ours, to various other countries, who hold a lot of ours. But there are side things at the edges that continue to fray. That is the deal between Russia and China, for the deal being discussed between Russia and Iran, all of these side things. And you use the military. Our whole economy, as Eisenhower said, beware of the military industrial complex. We are in, what, 165 countries? I think I heard that on the NFL Armed Services thing. They're bringing the NFL to 165 countries and I almost fell off out of my chair. 165 countries. That's more than we were before 9, 11. You know what it is? It is Rome all over again. And when you have to support those people, it becomes very, very costly. And I don't think they wrote the book the Rise and Rise of the Roman Empire. I think it was the rise and the fall of the Roman Empire. That's on the horizon. That is absolutely on the horizon.

Many, many very bright people have compared, you know, present day America to Rome. I mean, I've been hearing that compared to comparison for a good 15, 20 years now. And there are a lot of valid points. I just think, though, that it's different this time because this technology is so scalable and America still, you know, this might be looked at by some or ignored by some as the importance of the American brand. My Uber driver the other day had come from Somalia and I was listening to his story and you know, I just, you know, everybody around the world still wants to come here even though, even if they hate us, it seems like they still want to come.

Well, I will remember. I will remember those words, sir, from you, from Jason Hartman, that this time it is different. All right? And I'm going to put that right up on my website in the holistic survival that this time it is. I'm going to quote it. I've got it. I've got a quote.

You might just nail me on that one, Bill. And I don't listen philosophically, I don't think it should be different. I just think that there are many reasons it does seem to be different. And famous last words, like I said, where do you Think oil prices are going. I mean, that's a really good indicator of where we are in terms of the inflation deflation debate.

Well, what I do, I've listened and I predicted, I say predicted, I mean, as far as the oil, a while ago I listened to one of the Saudi oil ministers and his comment was we can live with 55 to $60 oil for the next eight years. Okay. All right. Now forget the deal made between Saudi Arabia and the United States about bombing Syria and all the rest of that stuff. Okay. That's a side deal. We could talk about that for hours. But just listening to them in the most recent commentary. So where are we with oil? We're down in the 60s. We got about 65. We bounced back up a little by 62. I think we bounced back up this to around 69. But then we had a Kuwaiti gentleman who's saying, no, there's not going to be any meetings. OPEC will be next summer. We're not going to decrease our production. We're all going for share. But there was another Saudi gentleman who said, you know, we're not going to respond just because oil might get down to $40 a barrel and do something different. We can live with that. So I think that oil ultimately, and the outlier number I've heard is somewhere in the 20s, between 25 and $40.

Wow.

And it could stay there. It could stay there for a while. That could be a major Russia destruction to. Yeah, but, but to us, Jason, to us.

People are saying for deflation.

It's dramatic. Yeah. No, but here's, here's the thing. People will say if you look at the amount of jobs that have been created in the Patch in the last five to six years, it's dramatic. The average income up north and in Texas and in Pennsylvania is about 97, 98,000 doll. That really work. The guys out there, big money, a lot of money going in there. The amount of money that has been borrowed on junk bonds to continue to develop wells and continue this whole thing, all of this is getting clobbered by this low price. So all of a sudden the employment, we saw it today, first time unemployment claims came out, but they were. Forget that. But when you look at Pennsylvania and Texas, they jumped up dramatically. They were up big time. And those are two of the FR. Fracking areas, the two of the oil areas that are getting hit by these low prices. So that's dramatic and it's going to have an impact on this country. I wrote a piece today and should read it on suggest to listeners, go to Town hall or go to billtatro.com, it's there. And there's this illusion that because oil prices have declined, there's all this extra money sloshing around the world, around the country, and it's all going to be put into retail sales for Christmas. All right, they've been, they've, they've interviewed 75% of people they interviewed said, well, I'm going to take it money I save from my at the pump, I'm going to pay some debt or I'm going to stick the money away. I'm not going to spend it. But my piece says this. I go to the pumps and before I was had a 20 gallon tank, 4 bucks, $80 came out of my pocket. If I started with 80, I was at zero. If I'm only paying 42 bucks times the 20 gallons, if I got the extra 40 and I go spend it someplace else, all I've done is I haven't gotten any more money than 80. I still have 80. I just bought two different things. And the sidebar of this is if I go buy a toy which says Made in China, the bulk of my money gets shipped over to China. About, according to the energy department, approximately 21. I'm sorry, yeah, 21% in next year of our energy will come from overseas imported. That means that 79% is domestic, domestic. So if I'm buying oil, this is how perverse this is. 79% of my money is staying domestically, even by buying oil. But if I'm going and buy some toy at Walmart that says Made in China, my money's getting kicked overseas. So there's no way our GDP is going to increase. As a matter of fact, it get, may get knocked down. The new projection is less than 2% for the, the fourth quarter. And the thing with the GDP will get knocked down because money's going overseas, not staying here. That's as perverse as it is years ago we didn't have this problem because everything was coming in from opec. Now we've created our own little conundrum because we have developed a shale oil industry that's providing a lot of our own energy.

So that could be bad.

No, from the standpoint of low oil prices, it can be bad because the shale oil industry is getting wrecked.

It could very well be the demise of the majority of the shale oil industry. And so for you and I as a consumer, I'm saying that's fine. All right, I don't have any more money, but I have less to go into the tank. Maybe I save it, I'm not spending it. Remember, retail sales include energy. And so when you see the retail sales and high oil prices, retail sales look good, low oil prices, prices, low gasoline, retail sales look bad. So it's more than just gee, oil prices are down and I got some extra money to spend at Christmas time. There is a lot of things hanging on these oil prices. I know it's a long way to get around to the fact that where do I see oil price? I think they're going to stay low for a long period of time.

You know, I did a show and I'm going to find that show and re air it years ago. I can't remember the name of the author, but he wrote a book called the Oil Company Card and I couldn't believe it. It was probably when oil was, I don't know, 80, 95 bucks years ago when it passed through that, that range. And he's, he, he was predicting $3 a barrel oil. I mean, I was just like floored. I couldn't believe it. But I don't know, you know, maybe.

Well, I, I think I'm more closer to that $3 a barrel as opposed to $140 barrel. But remember this, the production cost of Saudi Arabia to extract oil out of the ground is between two and three dollars.

Wow. Okay. And what is it for shale? What about shale?

For shale, it's somewhere around that, depending, because it runs anywhere from 65, 70 up to about $95. When you're down here in this level, it can be very painful for the shale guys. And the question is how long do they want to continue to produce and lose money?

Very interesting stuff. So is the future inflationary or deflationary?

Deflationary, absolutely. Well, okay, the future. Well, no, wait a minute. When you say the future, we're talking about the next 10, 15 years. Are we talking about the next couple of years?

Well, the next 10, you know, we go through that next couple. So distinguish it.

Okay. I think we go through it's deflation and then what we will do is in certain areas because there will be lack of goods, there will be lack of food, there will be lack of things that will be happening out there and that there will be a very real high price on those things. But you'll still have a job where there will be 10, 15, 20 people wanting that job, which means that the employer can set a low price and that means it becomes deflationary. Your students graduating from college, the jobs are going to continue to get less and less and less. And so that becomes. That's a whole different discussion we'll do next time.

The fantasy of, gee, I get a degree in philosophy and there's a job waiting for me out there. Those days are gone. And so the deflationary environment, I think, as we see worldwide, is going to sweep into the United States.

Very interesting. So you would agree, Bill, and I know we got to wrap up here, but you would agree that deflation is something central banks and governments do not want, right?

Absolutely, absolutely. You'll hear them.

They want inflation. I mean, the Fed targets inflation at about 2 or 3%. So you don't think that it's possible to just print your way out of deflation? I mean, by creating so much new currency that there's no way you could have deflation. They can just outpower it.

Yes, I would say that if that money could get into the system. But these bankers are not going to let that money get into the system. Nobody's going to let that money get in the system.

Okay, and why aren't they going to do that?

Because it's in their best interest to take it and put it in areas where they don't have any risk. They have no risk. When they put money into. If they're borrowing in a carry position, if they're borrowing at zero to a half and they turn around and they buy Treasuries at two, they make the spread and then occasionally they take a foray into the oil market or the commodity market. Not quickly, but they'll do it leveraged with a carry trade and there's great profitability. But they're going to. They don't want to loan money to you and me. They've got. They can put deposit money at the feet Fed and the spread between what The Fed pays versus what they're borrowing, which is ludicrous, but they make 1, 2%. They make billions of dollars. It's all about protecting that top 1%.

Right? I know, and it's terrible that it's come to that, where we're losing our middle class and so forth. But can't the powers that be at the Fed and the government end that game? I mean, they'll just reduce. They'll just pay less on Treasuries and then that incentive will go away and the bank bankers, that money will start burning a hole in their pocket and they'll let it hit the streets. Right? No.

I love you, Jason. I love you. I mean, really, I really, I really do. I mean, you have to look. Okay, the Federal Reserve, the New York Fed, which is really the Fed. Right, the New York Fed. I mean all the rest of them around the country, they were just kind of like Christmas bulbs hung on a tree. When you look at the way it was designed, it was a New York Fed. So who is on the board of the New York York Fed? Who's on the board of New York Fed? Let's see. Jamie Dimon, the guy from Citibank, the guy from Bank America. Basically they're regulators who are regulating themselves. They're regulators regulating themselves. So is that going to change? Of course not.

Very interesting point. Very interesting point. Yeah. Well Bill, this has been a fascinating discussion and I really like your work because you dive deep into, into these issues and so many other people in this industry, the financial commentary industry I'll call it, they just don't really take deep dives into this stuff. So it's fascinating talking with you give out your website, tell people where they can get the book, et cetera.

Well, the website is Bill Tatro, T as in Tom A t as in tomro.com and I would invite them to look at all the different things because we have our columns or our commentaries, we have prior radio shows, we have all sorts of things about my company, GPS for life and the things that we do there. The book itself you can click on and there is a video at one hour, one minute video. It's kind of like a stay tuned in the movies, the previews and you can get the book on there. Simply go to Amazon.com you can, you can download it, the email, the ebook or you can get it in a paperback which can be delivered quickly. And as this is the shameless commercialism, it makes a great stocking stuffer, folks.

Awesome. Good stuff. Bill Tetro, thank you so much for joining us today.

Well Jason, thank you for having me. I look forward to coming back again.

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