HS 216 - Inflation and Economic Woes with Charles Goyette

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Hey, it's my pleasure to welcome Charles Goyet back to the show. He is the host of Ron Paul's America radio show and podcast, and he's got a great background with a whole bunch of other awesome things on his resume, and I'll let him maybe tell you about a few of those. Charles, welcome. How are you?

Jason, great to speak with you. Please don't make me talk about them all.

Okay, well, you can give a Reader's Digest version then. How's that sound?

Well, I'm the author of a couple of, I think, timely books. One called the Dollar Meltdown, which was an international bestseller. And my latest book is called Red and Blue and Broke all how to Restore America's Free Economy. And the main impact, I suppose, of the book is that I'm not sure that anybody really wants to restore Americ Prosperity, to restore the American Dream. Oh, you individually and your listeners individually and many other people individually, if you ask them, yes, we would like to restore our prosperity. Yes, we would like to restore the American dream, then these are the sorts of things that we would need to do to do so. But if you ask the people in this country on a corporate or collective level, through their elected representatives, to do the things that need to be done to restore American prosperity, to make sure that the American dream is Alive for not only ourselves and our golden years, as they call them, and our retirements and our kids and their aspirations to own homes and have a long lifetime and their kids to have a better future than they themselves had and so on. I'm not sure that collectively or in the political body we're really willing to do the things necessary. So that's that book. But the main thing I'm really proud of now because it reaches so many people, is the Ron Paul radio show. We're on about 125 radio stations across the country twice a day with commentaries on things going on in the news. And the big one is a long form podcast that anybody can avail themselves of. You can simply Download it@podcast1.com or at my website, Charles Goyet.com but it's a chance to hear Ron at length on the big issues are of the day that are affecting people's lives in America, their prosperity in America, their futures in America.

I'll tell you something Charles. If our electorate listen to podcasts rather than the lame stream media, we would have a much better government because what you're saying, when you, you mentioned it a couple times, you said long form podcast, long form podcast. And television is truly the idiot's medium because it's always a sound bite. And it's like we have elections that are won or lost on these dumb flippin sound bites. It is absurd that. I mean, are the American people really this shallow that they're gonna let a thing like read my lips, no new taxes determine the next president? I mean there's a lot more complexity to it than that. Or hope and change or binders of women. I mean these are just silly. This is silliness, right?

I agree with you. Yeah. And it is a lot more complex. But you know, the political debate has been dumbed down by the two parties. I mean, they have turned it into an advanced auction on stol and goods. They have turned America into what I call the American pinata in which all they do, the political parties and their chosen candidates are involved in passing the big stick around and making sure everybody in their demographic group and their ethnic group and their regional group, whatever groups they may be members of, make sure they get a crack at the American pinata with a stick. And they hope, of course, to bust loose some goodies for each other. And the real reason that we never solve it is that the Republicans don't think that they do it and the Democrats think it's all the Republicans, you know, that want to, you know, fortify the military industrial complex or whatever it may be. Each party wants to blame the other one, and both are certainly fully deserving of blame. But until they clean up their own houses, the Democrats clean up their house, and the Republicans clean up their house, then this situation will go on until, you know what happens at the end of the pinata party. I mean, the pinata itself is busted up beyond repair and unrecognizable. And they've turned America, this great noble idea, into a pinata. And all they do is pass the big stick around. And you're right, too. The media plays the part of, like, the mariachi band. They're there just to keep the festive spirits high and persuade everybody that this party is the normal sorts of things. Here, take a whack at the American pinata. Get yourself some goodies. Vote for the candidate that promise you the most. Oh, you get more goodies from the Rs or more goodies from the Ds. Why would you vote for the Ds if you're going to get more from the Rs? Why would you vote for the Rs if you get more from the Ds? Yada, yada, yada. It's all absolute nonsense. It leaves America poorer. And in the course of doing this, you're right, they make a slogan out of these issues that certainly divide the people. There's no question that people could be divided about these headline or bumper sticker issues. But the fundamental things that impact America's freedom and prosperity going forward, the things that I care about, and I suspect you care about, too, are the things they never talk about. They never talk about, you know, the American military empire and the reach of it and the way that it's bankrupting the country. They never talk about. They never talk about the destruction of the monetary system by the central bank. You can go through an entire presidential campaign, and we just did a year or so ago, and you never hear, for example, the Federal Reserve even mentioned. Isn't that peculiar, Jason? I mean, money is.

Well, except by Ron Paul. Let's audit the Fed. Which is like this crazy. Yeah, right. It's just unbelievable. Well, it's because these mainstream candidates are bought and, you know, owned by the Fed and the Rothschild family, you know, everybody else. But we don't need to go there and get too, too far afield because people just kind of, I don't know, they just get funny when you start talking about.

Well, you don't even have to go far afield. I mean, I think it's all right there in the open.

I mean, it is, it is.

You know, since, since 2008, the Fed has created, think about this. The Fed has created well over $3 trillion out of thin air. And where did the money go? The money went to relique the money sitter banks, the crony banks, the influential banksters. It went to take toxic mortgages and broken down securities off of their books and put them on the books of reserve and effectively on the books of the American dollar or the American people as a proxy. So they transfer bad risk toxic assets onto the books of the people and they bail out to influential cronies with $3 trillion in money printing that nobody ever voted for, that never gets audited, that nobody really understands how this is happening and how it works.

It is literally mind boggling that we have this. I mean, it is in so many ways. But hey, no need to comment on that. It's ridiculous, it's crazy, it's absurd and it really gets us all hot under the collar. I want to ask you about something a little more current though, Charles. There's a lot going on in foreign policy right now and it has wide ranging effects for us economically. You know, one of the things I was discussing with you, we talked for like two minutes off air before we started today and you know, I said foreign policy, that's interesting. But unless you can bring it back to how it's going to hit someone in the pocketbook, it's more like a big theory instead of something that's real. But it is real, isn't it?

It is so real. And let me give you an example of just how real it is. I mean, if you peel the onion back, the thing starts to look a little bit like the product of an insane asylum here. John Kerry arrives in Kiev the other day with all the problems in the Kiev in Ukraine, and he's waving around a taxpayer guarantee, effectively a check from the American people of a billion dollars to throw into the mix to help them out in whatever, for whatever purposes. Now wait a minute, wait a minute. The United States is virtually insolvent. We have, you know, $17 trillion plus invisible national debt, well over $100 trillion in hidden national debt. So for us to give a billion dollars away, we, where do we get it? Money, money being fungible effectively, we have to go out and borrow it. We don't have an excess, we don't have a reserve account, so we have to go out and borrow it. So when we borrow a billion dollars to give to Ukraine, where do we get it? Well, we borrow it from foreign lenders like. Well, let me surprise everybody. Like Russia. Do people know that Russia is a major creditor of the United States treasury just the same way that, say, China is? Yes, Russia is. So the little children, the little children of the future that are out on the playgrounds of the schools today having a good time are being loaded down with additional debt by the United States government, additional treasury debt that will burden them the rest their lives so that the established parties, the governing classes in America, can go deliver a billion dollar check. And by the way, they promised that Obama would have more money where that came from for Ukraine. So they give a billion dollars to Ukraine. But wait a minute, when the money shows up in Ukraine, what does Ukraine do with it? Well, the billion dollars, it doesn't go to the Ukrainian people. It doesn't make them richer. The billion dollars is used to pay Gazprom, which is the major Russian gas company, which is owed 2 billion by Ukraine. So wait a minute, let's think this thing through now step by step. The American people borrow money from places like Russia so we can give it to places like Ukraine so that they can pay back places like Russia. And the bankers that have provided loans to Ukraine, risky loans that they didn't have to worry about being defaulted upon by Ukraine, even though Ukraine has defaulted twice in the last 10 years, they didn't have to worry about those defaults because they know that they can get a better interest rate return than Americans can by investing in crazy places like Ukraine. And then if something goes wrong and the debts can't be repaid like the Greek debt, that somebody like the IMF or the United States government and the European Union will step in and make them whole. So this is a little bit of insanity, but if you peel the onion back another layer, you see that it's all the business of the banksters.

But you know, Charles, I really don't quite understand why you're complaining. Now this is a sarcastic.

I want you to know when I say this, I can tell when the.

Sound of your voice.

Yeah, okay, good. I just want to make sure you caught my tone here. I don't really understand why you're complaining, and here's why. Because isn't this just increasing the velocity of money?

Yeah. Well, there you go. That's good. We're going to increase our velocity of money right into national bankruptcy is what we're going to do. It's actually the biggest, it's the biggest wealth transfer scheme in the history of mankind.

Well, okay, so go into that a little bit more. So what, what specifically is the biggest wealth transfer scheme in the history of mankind? Central banking?

Well, sure, central banking and fiat money. So everybody that, you know, the central banks depreciate the value of the currency that people hold in their piggy banks, in their wallets, in their banks, that they get their retirement income paid in anything denominated in dollars. The central bank depreciates that by inflating the currency, by destroying the purchasing power of the dollar over time. So I guess to describe it in a different way is to say in America, the founders set up a perfectly reasonable system for the government to pay for things that it wants. And the system is, you know, appropriations money bills. You know, we have a Congress, we have a legislature, we have money bills. They have to originate Congress, the Constitution says money bills have to originate in the House, that is the people's representatives, the people closest to the people that are up for election every two years. So spending bills have to originate there, they come from there, and then they go through the process, and they, you know, have to be. They. They have to pass both bodies of the legislature, and then they go to the president, he has to sign, and then he executes them or carries out the intention of the legislature. But you have this huge, massive monetary operation that runs to trillions, nay, tens of trillions of dollars to pay for things, to buy things, to enable things, to transfer wealth, to benefit cronies that never sees the legislative process. It never sees a vote of appropriations. We spent 16. The Federal Reserve extended $16 trillion during the 2008-2009 meltdown. $16 trillion to foreign companies, domestic banks, foreign banks, foreign governments at the risk of the solvency or the value of the United States paper$16 trillion without so much as a sing.

Without so much as exposure to public debate.

And all of this, of course, is done at the expense of the American people. Because, look, the Fed doesn't create any wealth. The people listening to your show right now create wealth. A waitress that, you know, delivers a sandwich and pours coffee, that's creating wealth. Somebody puts tires on your car, that's creating wealth. Somebody grows food, that's creating wealth. Somebody delivers a package, that's creating wealth. All the things that people do are creating wealth. And they earn money. Nothing the Federal Reserve does creates wealth. They don't have any money. The only money they have is the money that they take from the people. Yet they do it by subterfuge. They do it rather than through legislative process. So at least we know how we're being fleeced. They just do it on the qt. It's not compatible with the nature of a free people.

So are you saying that because of all this silly spending? Silly is, you know, just my cute word for it. It's of course, aggravating as hell because of all this massively destructive spending that we in inflationary future. I mean, that's the only way out, right? Is to inflate our way out? Or do you have another theory?

No, it's clearly the only way out. It means the destruction of the currency. Somebody asked me one time how many paper currencies like ours have been destroyed over the course of history. And the answer to that is all of them. It hasn't quite happened yet, but that's ours. The trajectory of ours too. And so the people are impoverished in these things, people that save people that, that all the things that make capitalism work, all the savings and investing and prudence and so on, that makes capitalism work. It created the remarkable prosperity that America created to display to the world. All of those values are undermined in this process. And so it's true that the Fed has gotten away with increasing its balance sheet with made up money, but printing money from about $800 billion when the mortgage meltdown hit and the recession started, let's say 2000, but it was about $800 billion there. It was, it rolled along. If you looked at the chart, it's about 800 billion. 800 billion, 800 billion. Shazam. Straight up like a hockey stick. And it goes from 800 billion to 1.6 trillion and then Shazam. It doubles again from 1.6 trillion to 3.2 trillion and Shazam. Now it's over $4 trillion. This represents money that they just made up to buy things off of the hands of the banks, as we talked about earlier, or to buy the downgraded debt of the United States. Y enable the reckless spending of members of Congress who are there to do nothing more than to give things away. American pinata, to give things away to buy the votes of their constituents so that they could get reelected. So we've got, you know, the balance sheet of the Fed has grown by well over $3 trillion in a couple of years with money they just printed. And everybody says, well, what are the consequences of that? We don't see any consequences. The answer to that story is that the consequences aren't apparent yet because the money has yet to enter the commercial loaning activity of the banks. And when it does, then it starts getting multiplied many times over in the fractional reserve banking system. So to make all of this understandable in one little burrito, let me wrap the thought up. The Fed has printed a lot of money, but it's kind of like it's just been sitting there and it's been humming like a. I don't know, like a nuclear reactor, you know, that's just humming and it's wobbling and, you know, there's something there. And all a sudden it starts to leak this fissionable material. Well, that money is starting to leak out now into the commercial banking system. And we want a recovery. But a recovery means that the banks are going to begin making loans, and they make loans to businesses that hire people and so on and so forth. And those loans are what really not only injects that money into the currency and the circulating currency and monetary system of the country, but it's multiplied many times over by a process I'm sure you've discussed many times called fractional reserve lend.

And that's when our trouble the magic of money creation, fractional reserve lending.

And that process is starting right now. It's starting right now with 2014. The amount of commercial bank leasing and loaning activity is starting to turn up.

No question about it. So, Charles, the question is, is all this bad? I mean, logically, empirically, it would seem like it's bad. So the answer to my question about inflation. Yes, we've got inflation coming. Is that your answer?

Massive.

Okay. Massive inflation. Can you define massive? I mean, I know there's nobody knows. Of course you don't know nobody knows. It's all a prediction. But what do you think? I mean, just take a gander.

Well, it's destructive enough at 2% or 5% or 10%, but it really.

As it approaches double digits, and we've been at double digits many times in the lives of most baby boomers.

Yeah. I mean, in the 70s, we were.

In double digits four or five times. So when it starts to get to that level.

The problem is bad for any country, but it's much worse for the United States because we have persuaded the rest of the world to use our dollars. And when our dollars start losing value at that rate, the rest of the world will reject them. They will not finance our debt. In other words, why should they loan money to the United States government? When they loan a dollar, they know they're going to get paid back 90.

Cents in value because we inflate away the value of the debt, which is.

The exact strategy, which is the Exact strategy.

That's exactly the strategy I recommend that our investors use. They know this.

Yes.

Look, here's the problem. You're right about all of this. I mean, I agree. The only thing is though, we've been inflating the value of our debt away for a long time and they're still buying it. What's going on behind the scenes? What, what really makes you think that in the future our treasury auctions are suddenly going to be boycotted and nobody's going to buy them when they've been buying them all along? It's not like we weren't doing this 10 years ago. It's not like we weren't doing it 20, 30 years ago. It's not new. I mean, we've been doing this for decades.

Yes, you're right. We've been doing it for decades and there's never been a real viable alternative. But the problem is that at some point.

Wait, wait, wait. A viable alternative for other countries to invest in, Is that what you're saying?

Yeah, more or less. And I'm maybe not even clear about that. Let me put the dollar in different terms for your listeners to say that in the case of when you have European going through, Europe going through a crisis and the value of the dollar comes up and people start clamoring to buy more dollars and dollar dominated assets, dollar bonds and so on and so forth, it's, you know, I think of it like you take your employees, you have a company picnic and you go to the park and you play softball and have a big picnic and then all of a sudden it starts to sprinkle and everybody runs under the Ramada for cover for a few minutes and you get out of the rain and you keep, you know, you're still having a good time, you're still having hot dogs and stuff, but you're out of the rain. And if it continues to rain at some point, you know, people start suddenly starting to go home. The United States is like the Ramada and it's a good place for people to bail out of problems in foreign countries elsewhere in the world when there's a crisis and come to the United States where they know at least when push comes to shove that at least the money will be printed to pay back the money that they loaned.

The United States has always had the reputation, I mean, not always, but you know, as long as we can remember or care about, of being the Brinks truck of the world, the safe place to put your money because, you know, it's a stable government theoretically.

But that Ramada that I'm talking about is becoming a short term instrument rather than a long term. In other words, it's fine to get out of the sprinkle or the rain when you're at the ballpark, park, climb, you know, get under the COVID of the Ramada, but nobody wants to live there. Nobody wants to weather a hurricane in a place like that.

Okay, so where else are they going to go to weather it, though?

Bitcoin? Well, here. Here's the brilliance of markets. The brilliance of markets is that necessity is the mother of invention. And when people reach the point of being fleeced and they don't want to be fleeced any longer, they start developing alternatives, looking for alternatives, coming up with new novel things that cannot be imagined today, but will be. But you see this going to the.

World right now, Charles, I just want to understand something. So. And when you say fleeced, you're talking about the investors in US Treasuries being fleeced because the value of the debt that they're essentially buying from us, loaning us the money to finance our drunken sailor spending habits, they are fleeced through inflation because they get paid back in cheaper dollars. That's the fleecing you're talking about.

Right.

Okay.

And so far, they've been willing to get fleece because there's no other Ramada, as you put it. There's no other place to run. So, yeah, you're talking now. Go ahead now. That's where you left off.

Okay. Because we're seeing these alternatives begin to develop now before our very eyes. Like cryptocurrencies like me that watches this all the time. It seems to be happening at breakneck speed. But it's not just cryptocurrencies. It's the remarkable move we've had this millennium in the price of gold. It's these multilateral and bilateral relationships that are being created all over the world. You saw one the other day. It was kind of the outcropping of the sanctions we imposed on Russia, that Russia and Iran are firming up their trading relationship.

It's been. Let's see, Turkey's been trading gold for oil from Iran. And now Russia and oil have. Russia and Iran have created a non dollar denominated trading structure to settle deals instead of in dollars, the reserve of the world to settle deals in their own currencies. Russia and China are doing this. This stuff. The Gulf Cooperation Council is doing this. This is going on all over the world that people are arranging bilateral multinational deals to create trading structures that will insulate Them from the dollar. So you know what happening very fast.

Yeah, well, so, you know, my theory on that is it's kind of likely. And look, I'm not a parent, but I did have a parent, okay? So I understand the concept of here when you're doing something bad, maybe you're in high school and you go out drinking and of course you shouldn't be drinking in high school. And mom kind of knows about it, but she sort of looks the other way so as not to put maybe too much parental pressure on you. But you know, she's going to watch it and monitor it and if it gets to be a problem, she's going to come down on you like a ton of bricks. And so maybe this is just sort of, the US just sort of looks at this like, okay, we got our little rebellious teenagers and you know, they're doing. They got their little club going with a golf cooperation and you know, Iran and Russia. But if any of this stuff starts to really take hold, the US Is going to use its extremely huge advantage and it's unfair. It's a bully pulpit. No question of having the largest economy, having the largest military, most importantly, having the economic hitmen all over the world. And the US US is going to keep their. The dollar is probably the most valuable power the US exerts over the world. Having reserve currency status. I mean, we're not going to give that up. I mean, we're not going to just let that.

It's not for us to decide whether we give it up or not.

Are you sure about that?

Yeah, actually I'm quite sure because we're in the unfortunate situation of being dependent on the kindness of strangers. We have to have foreigners willing to buy our debt.

What I'm saying is they have to.

Be willing to buy our debt.

Hey, if you put a gun to somebody's head, they will do what you say. And that's what we do. And I think my theory is a lot of these wars are really fake. They're fake wars to exert power in other domains. And I don't understand it well enough. I've just had a bunch of people on my shows talking about it. It's something I've listened to and read about and learned. But I've heard the theory of about the only two countries that really don't participate in the global central banking cartel are Iran and North Korea. And that's why we hate them. Maybe you have some comment or you can educate me further on that. But these kinds of things, like the war isn't necessarily. We didn't go there for what the media told us. There were other things going on, like maybe pulling away from our reserve currency power.

Well, there are certainly a lot of components of that that figure in. In fact, you know, to get a war, you've got to get a coalition of a lot of different. I'm not talking about a coalition of the willing or coalition of other countries, but you have to get a lot of interest groups. In the United States, for example, to the. The war in Iraq was a good example. You had to have a lot of different interest groups. There were people that thought it would be good for the stock market. There were people that thought it would be good for the defense industry. There were people that thought it would be good for the Republicans in the midterm election. There were people that thought it would be good for banking. There were people that thought it would oil. There were people that thought it would be good for their geopolitical interests overseas. And all of these coalitions came together. They all thought it would be good for their own reasons. So, sure, when you get a war, there are reasons like that. And of course, maintaining the dollar standard is one of them. But if you look between, in my view, if you look between the pages of the government's behavior, we are a government that has been beyond our means and we are beginning to have to live beneath our means. And you see almost the capitulation of the federal government revealing how weak it is now, not only domestically and things like, oh, in things that it resisted with a fervor before about, you know, marijuana laws in the several states, medical marijuana and things. The standoff. The standoff. The range war standoff. The other day in.

I don't know where that even was. I can't remember.

Yeah, but you're seeing this all over the place. You know, the reluctance of the United States to push its advantage because it knows it doesn't have what it had to back it up. I mean, we were talking about geopolitics. You have, you know, you have forces clamoring for us to do something in Ukraine. You have Senators McCain and Lindsey Graham, you know, that want us to start, you know, arming these people. You have people that. I think I said, I saw a guy at the American Enterprise Institute wants more permanent forces in Central Asia. Oh, my God, does he realize how big Central Asia is? I mean, you have all kinds of people who want to get it. At the same time, we have issued security guarantees around the world. Look, issuing guarantees is no cost for the politicians when they guarantee your mortgage, when they guarantee your education loan, it's, you know, they're heroes. They get applauded. Oh, you've made home affordable, you've made college affordable to my kids. We're going to reelect no cost when those loans are defaulted upon. There's a huge cost to the nation and to the people. As we experienced, for example, in the savings and loan crisis. There's a huge cost to people. By then, the politicians are gone. It's long since forgotten that they gave away these guarantees. Well, they do this in foreign affairs as well. They have given away guarantees all over the world that act as a tripwire to make sure that the United States is deeply involved in future conflagrations that have nothing to do with our interest to protecting the liberty and prosper of the American people. So while we're watching Ukraine, the current government of China is growing more and more belligerent, more and more outspoken about places like the Senkaku Islands. And just this past weekend, they were shaking their fist, warning Japan and the Philippines and others, you know, that any provocation is going to be met with, you know, severe force and so on. You know, when Deng Xiaoping, the great reformer of China, was running things, his advice was stay low in the geopolitics of the world, maintain a low profile and build our own prosperity. Transform China into a rich country. That advice now has gone out the window. Maybe they think they're rich enough, but it was their prevailing advice there for a long time. This current Premier Li is more militant than anything that we have seen there. So you see the United States making security guarantees all over the world, people clamoring for us to get involved in things everywhere, including treaties that date back to before the Cold War that obligate us to protect some rocky outcropping in the South China Sea with a couple of goats on it. So this is sort of thing that bankrupts the nation, and that's one of the reasons that we're indebted to the extent that we are. So at some point, once you become dependent on the kind of. Of others to fund your spending, you're no longer your own master.

Yep. Well, that is certainly a scary truth. No question about it. And my only claim with all of that, Charles, is that the US Finds itself in a unique position with its military power that can bully its way into forcing other countries to buy its debt and to do its bidding. It's not fair. It's not right. I'm just saying it is.

You know, Dr. Paul has a thought about this I think is actually very profound and that is that there's. That yes, we have been successful in doing a lot of things like that for a very long time and the consequences of that are that when we do have a problem there's going to be a lot of piling on. But you know, we've developed a great deal of enmity and there's a lot of resilience now for our having done that for a long time. And so when we are in a moment of peril we may find we.

Don'T have so many friends. You are exactly right, yeah, no question about it. Well, very interesting talk. So on your inflation thoughts there any double digits, maybe worse you think? And any time frame ideas?

Yeah, I think it's clear it certainly be double digits. And of course the future can't be told entirely because it depends on decisions that are yet to be made. I mean there will be decisions made as we move into the crisis, the cake is baked to the extent that we will have a crisis. I mean the money has already been spent, the debts are very real, the resources to pay them are not there. So somebody will eat those debts. And the most time honored way for governments is to try to deflate them or devalue them through inflation in one manner or another. So that's a very real prospect. And it's certainly double digits or no high barrel for the extent of the crisis that we've got in.

And double digits historically when you look at the entire world, I mean double digits are nothing. I had Martin Armstrong on the show the other day from Armstrong Economics, you may know of him and he said that his definition for hyperinflation is, get this, you're going to just, I hope you're sitting down. Is 400% per month more.

Well, let me give you a different one, let me get, let me give you a different one because you're, you're right there. You know, it's very subjective but the great economist Ludwig von Mises said well it, it results at some point in what he calls the crack up boom. And that's more descriptive than numerical. But the crack up boom is when suddenly a realization comes upon the, the people at seemingly at once. Like you've seen a flock of birds turn at once or if you've ever scuba dived around the tropical fish, you know, they, in one direction, suddenly they all turn simultaneously. He said it's a moment at which suddenly the consciousness is clear to everybody in the country that it's not just a question of Prices going up, but that the currency is losing value. And when that realization dawns on them, seemingly at some moment, it's what he calls the crack up boom. And people become desperate, desperate to exchange the currency for anything of value. What have you got? Oh, you've got a fax machine that doesn't work anymore. I'll take it. What have you, you got a hairbrush? I'll buy your hairbrush. I mean, literally anything to get rid, you know, get rid of the paper money that is losing value and turn it into something real, something tangible. That's so, to me, that's hyperinflation when you reach the crack up boom. And certainly if bad enough decisions are made in the future and we have a cast and crew of characters that are capable of making a lot more bad decisions.

Yeah, we definitely do. Well, they're all beholden to their constituents of dependent vote buyers basically is what the whole thing has become. This iron triangle. It's ridiculous, of course.

Yeah, it's pretty bad. And there are, I suppose, a few that know better, but they think that the most important objective is to get themselves reelected to retain their hold on power.

They're just greedy pigs.

And there are others that really don't know. They're really not that bright. You know, we had, I suppose you saw Congressman Jim Moran the other day complaining that Americans, American members of Congress are paid too little money. Said, you know, unbelievable.

The troops in the trenches make like 22,000 or something. Yeah. Absurd.

Yeah. And Congressman Paul said, you know, well, if he thinks paid too. If they think they're paid too little money, let them go out in the free market, see what they can earn.

Exactly.

The truth is that very few of them can do that well in the free market because they're not as bright. You know, my old friend was a libertarian, well, Republican, but a real libertarian congressman named Sam Steiger for many years. And Sam Steiger used, used to say, in fact, got himself in trouble with his colleagues when he said on national TV that most of these people that, that he serves with, you wouldn't hire them to push a wheelbarrow.

Oh, of course you wouldn't. Yeah, they're just, they're just lazy. They're just on the take and, you know, we should tell that poor Congress, look, with all your kickbacks and perks and illegal influence from the lobbyists and so forth, you really make about triple that, so you should be okay.

I think they do all right.

Yeah. Yeah, they sure do. Hey, one last thing I wanted to just ask you before you go, Charles and I appreciate you staying on a little longer, but you alluded to it earlier and we talked about cryptocurrencies, cyber currencies, bitcoin. What do you make of all these? Do you think these things are going to last or are these just a, you know, an interesting anomaly?

Well, I'm, I'm in favor of the experiment. I mean, I agree with the Nobel Prize winning economist Friedrich Hayek, who said that, you know, we should have competing currencies and let people separate the wheat from the chaff and decide which ones are of value and which ones they want to use. So I'm glad that this experiment is taking place. It is an experiment, and so I'm happy that people are experimenting, for example, with bitcoin with their money, not with mine. I don't under, I don't understand the architecture of it, but if it proves to last for a couple of thousand years like gold has, then it will capture my attention. In the meantime, a number of its proponents are making fewer and fewer claims for it, that it's a payment system. Well, if it's a payment system, I pay on my computer. I can pay with, I could pay with PayPal, I could pay with MasterCard and Visa. I've got a lot of other payment alternatives. So, you know, bitcoin is it. If that's all it is. It's not. It doesn't particularly interest me.

Yeah, that's just if it were money.

If it were money in a store of value and so on and so forth, that might be something else. But it'll take time to prove that. And in the meantime, I'm not sure what advantage that has over over gold because gold is. Gold insulates. To the extent you own physical gold, you're insulated from counterparty risk, we know, from the Mt. Gox experiment and for many others. You know that when you have exchanges that you have to deal with and they hold this and you hold that and you hope to redeem it here and there, there's a great deal of counterparty risk, the risk of fraud, embezzlement and so on and so forth. So I don't see what advantage it has really over gold for my needs now, you know, there are people listening to the show have different needs.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's got huge disadvantages over gold. At least gold, something real. All of these cryptocurrencies, including Kanye Coin. Let's not forget Kanye west has his own cryptocurrency too. Oh yeah, let's run out and Buy that.

I mean, do people really fall for this stupidity? It's like, you know, you know, I got a Nigerian deal for you, you know.

Yeah, sure. Somebody came up with. They started circulating the, the Ron Paul bitcoin. And I asked Dr. Paul, I said, what do you think they're honoring you by naming this coin in your name or they just exploited your name and hoping that they can lure people to trust you and what you've represented in due to using their coin? He says probably a little of both. As long as, you know, as long as they don't defraud anybody, buddy, and they operate, you know, honestly, then he wasn't gonna, you know, raise a problem about it.

Yeah, no, I know, but, but I'll tell you something. The, the, the, the central banking cartels and the governments that are in cahoots with them, there's no way they're going to let any cryptocurrency or competing currency gain any real traction. And the stupid argument I hear from the. Instead of calling them gold bugs, I'm going to call them bitcoin bugs. From the Bitcoin bugs are. Well, the government can't control it. It's decentralized. No, they can control it. Listen, cocaine is decentralized and we're not allowed to trade in cocaine. Right. That's not a currency. I mean, it's just silly. This stuff is going to be a t attacked, it's going to be destroyed, it's going to be squashed by the powers that be on all for our own good, of course, because people will use it for illicit things like prostitution, drugs and terrorism. And then there will be scams and the government will make the case and then they will just come down on it and it'll.

Yeah, just. There'll be all the same things that there are with US Dollars.

But you know, I take, I mean, I take your point very seriously that, that, you know, they, they will not let it persist if it becomes a threat to the government's money monopoly. They simply will not.

Which is my argument about competing alternative currencies outside of the world reserve currency, the dollar. So that it's kind of like the same argument in a slightly different way.

They will certainly come down with both feet. They've already done that. I mean we have legal tender laws here in this country that make it. The courts won't enforce your contracts denominated in gold the same way they will one denominated in dollars. And they will charge you. And this is what they've done with bitcoins. Too, you know, you, you buy bitcoins. Well, whoever heard of taxing money? You know, you change your quarters for dollars or your dollars for dimes. They don't tax you, but you know, if you change your dollars for gold, they tax the transaction. If you change your or they want to when you take trade, trade your gold back for dollars. And the same with bitcoin, they want to treat it property the same in the same manner. So they have all of the apparatus of the tax structure to use in their benefit. But you know, when they get really desperate, the more they crack down, the more heavy handed they become. The more, the more severe the restrictions are, the penalties, the greater the police state grows to investigate your every financial transaction. Then you know that we're kind of in the end days because they grow very, very desperate when they're losing their grip on power.

That is true. That is true. And you know, we see police departments around the country arming themselves with insane military tools like who are they fighting? I mean, we've got sheriff departments with tanks. Why do they need tanks? I mean, you know, I need a cop to come over.

Jason in my county, in my county where I live, Maricopa County, Arizona, Phoenix, world's toughest sheriff, Sheriff Joe Arpaio I know, I live.

He used a tank to serve a warrant on somebody for cockfighting.

He used a tank. I mean, this is insanity.

It's insanity.

Yeah, it is. It really is. The, the America, the police state. Here we are. It's, that's, we got to do another show on that. Charles. Hey, but it's always good to have you back, my friend. Give out any websites you want people to know about. Tell them where they can find, find you talking with Ron Paul, whatever.

Sure. Well, by all means, the, the Ron Paul podcast is worth downloading and listening to. It's become enormously popular. We're really proud of it. And it covers the topics that in depth that you're interested in. Not only Dr. Paul on every issue, but also interesting people with unique insights and experiences. It's available at podcast1.com it's called Ron Paul and Charles Goyette the Weekly Podcast. Ron Paul and Charles Goyette the Weekly Podcast. It's available available at the podcast site podcastone.com or on my webpage@charlesgwayet.com and that's about it.

Charles I bet that show is going to continue to grow in popularity. And I'll tell you something that is so amazing is as much as the mainstream media tried to push Ron Paul out, not cover him and, you know, malign him. The people spoke and you can't, you cannot deny the man's population popularity. I mean, it is truly incredible. Even it is without the tools of the mainstream establishment.

It is really, really something that I, I, you know, and having worked with him, I just, I'm still amazed where I'm driving to be. We're having a recording session. I'm driving him back to the airport. Some guy pulls up in a car alongside of Sin, practically going berserk, rolling down his window, taking cell phone cameras because he just happened in traffic to see Ron sitting in. The driver in the passenger side of my seat card, he's waving and thumbs up. You know, I'm one of your supporters and stuff. And we see this everywhere and it's just especially among young people, you know, college age and older.

Yeah, it's really amazing. Well, Charles Goyette, keep getting the word out there and letting people know about this very, very important stuff.

Sounds good. I thank you, Jason, so much.

Have you listened to the Creating wealth series? I mean, from the beginning? If not, you can go ahead and get book one that shows 1 through 20 in digital download. These are advanced strategies for wealth creation. For more information, go to jason hartman.com.

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