84. The Pirates of Manhattan: Barry James Dykes The Economic Warrior

You are listening to the Wealth Without Bay Street Podcast, a Canadian guide to building dependable wealth. Join your hosts Richard Canfield and Jason Lowe as they unlock the secrets to creating financial peace of mind in an uncertain world. Discover the strategies and mindsets to a financial future that you can bank on. We are ultra excited today to be joined by Barry Dyke who is a best selling author. He is going to tell us today where all the bodies are buried from financially speaking. And his latest book, Jason Just Held Up There Guaranteed a risk free guide to retirement that should sound appealing to any of our listeners. He's the founder of Castle Asset Management Group, written a number of books and one thing that we're so excited to talk to Barry about today is his research. This is a gentleman who has done more research on the financial system and the shenanigans that take place at the upper echelon of the financial marketplace in North America and beyond. And so he's going to be sharing some of that wisdom with us today if you really want to get a good glimpse into that. It's dovetailed in all of his books but for me personally, one of my favorites is The Pirates of Manhattan 2 the highway to serfdom. There is so much detail, charts, references, information about stuff that happened during the financial meltdown and the global crisis of 2008, 2009 and just the movement of capital at such a massive way. And so I think Barry, you'll share with us a little bit today how that capital has been flowing where we're at at this present level in 2021 and we'll be dig into some, maybe some, some, some good Canadian connections that you've already provided to us before we.

Hit the record button.

Sounds good guys. Well, great to see my friends from the Great White north, you know, good day, it's good to be with you, Barry.

Thank you Barry. We have to start with something that takes us back to the beginning in how we came to know you. And it was 2012, Birmingham, Alabama, the annual Infinite Banking think tank symposium. And when you were introduced for your talk, which your talk was amazing by the way, I don't know if we can link to it rich in the show notes, but that might be a possibility if we can get it uploaded. Amazing talk. And Nelson prefaced your talk, the late R. Nelson Nash, developer, pioneer, the process of becoming your own banker, the infinite banking concept. He said that once you really understand what's happening, you'll know exactly what to do. And he said, Barry, I need to encourage you to get a security detail. Because with the content that you put into this book and the truth, there's a pretty high probability that you're going to be assassinated or taken out. And people laughed and chuckled at it. But Nelson said, like, I'm serious, like, he, he is exposing the truth and people need to understand what's truly going on. And so that's a fond memory that Rich and I were talking about prior to welcoming you to our show today.

Not fond in the fact that it was potentially dangerous for you, but fond in the fact that we trust Nelson to know what's really going on. And he, he brought you and he wanted you to speak so desperately to share your message with our group.

Well, yeah. Well, thank you. And Nelson, God bless his soul, you know, he was just, he was a wonderful man in my life. And, you know, I'm a good Christian. I'm a Christian. I don't care who here is. You know, I like everybody. Black, white, yellow, red, Jewish, Muslim. I like them all. But the.

Yeah, I get a lot of strength in the Bible I have to read every day because when you understand what's going on, it's like, oh, my God, do I take my cyanide pill now or later? You know?

You know, don't take it on this show.

No, but, no. So that was really grateful. But Nelson, he was the, he was a wonderful piece a person in my life, and he was.

The consummate southern gentleman if there ever was one. And when, you know, anyone read my book, the Pirates, what I went through, he was very, very kind and he really helped me. And as a result, you know, I've sold my books, like in 23 countries now and 33,000 copies of the books, sometimes I sell them to Canada. But the postage, I'll have to come up with the ebook next time because the postage in Canada is ridiculous, you know, but no, so it's. So any event. So I've done the three books and, you know, and I, and, and what you see now, because capital flies really from border over to border. It doesn't matter whether it's in Canada or the US or it's mobile. It's mobile. And, and everyone's in everyone's backyard. And, and it's the finance series, whether it be Bay street or Wall street or the city of London, it's all the same.

Yeah.

And, and, and the problem is, is that I applaud what you guys are doing. The problem is, is that no one's telling really any many, many people the truth. Right.

Very right.

It just you know, and was it. Was it saying the Bible in Hosea, my people perish due to lack of knowledge?

Yep.

So when you understand what's going on, you. Well, you start looking at some conservative products and things like that. And you say she was. Life insurance and annuities, they're pretty darn good. And. But the whole thing, you're not going to hear this many of the media and, you know, so it's a. But I don't know if I also told you guys, but there's. I'm in. A documentary is going to be coming out this fall.

Did I tell you guys about this?

No, you didn't tell us, but I heard you talking about it on the Banking with Life podcast with James.

Yeah. So it's going to go to the Motion Picture Bureau.

September 23rd or something like that. I really don't know. And I really can't talk too much until the movie comes out. But then it's been released out of Utah online. But it's gonna. I'm being with some of the top economists in the country and actually one of Canada's finest guy by the name of Moshi Novilsky, I never heard of him. Out of Toronto, University of Toronto. He's a. He's a retirement scholar, internationally known and him. And let's see, there's a couple of guys, William Sharp and.

Robert Merton, who both got the Nobel Prize in economics and talking about using annuities, insurance things after. And also Olivia Mitchell of Wharton and a lot of other cool people. And Ted Bender, the guy who created the 401 in this country, which is in the U.S. which is now. What is RSP? What's the RS? What do you call it?

Yeah, RSP is the equivalent. Yeah. The Register Retirement Savings quote, unquote, savings gambling account.

They should have named it. Aptly, a creature of the tax code.

Yeah. So as you as, you know, the RSPs, 401ks, it's the same thing. And I remember when I was speaking in Las Vegas one time and there was a guy there from Belgium, you know, I was talking about this stuff, he says, oh, we have the same thing in Belgium, you know. So it's really what they're doing is essentially they're taking their other people's money, gambling with it and saying it's going to be a retirement plan. When a mutual fund, you know, a toaster, new toaster, get more guarantees than a mutual fund, you know. But that's.

That, that is awesome and true.

It's also funny, I just threw away A toaster that stopped working. So that's, that is saying something right there.

And Barry, you say in your book Guaranteed Income which we are going to provide a link to. We want people to get their hands on a cop. We're going to source copies that we can fulfill orders from Our list audience.

FedEx Ground by the way is the best way to go ship to Canada. We can ship them up to you, whatever. That's what we do with my friend Bruce. Perfect.

And you say in there that bankers love guarantees of life insurance companies. Isn't that interesting?

Isn't that interesting? You know the, the banking industry wants you to give up the motion of your money so that they can gain it yet at the very same time espousing how much they love the guarantees associated with dividend paying participating whole life insurance contracts.

Yeah, they do and they, and they buy really big in a big, big way as you know. Let me pull up. But yeah, because, but that, that was the amazing thing. And you know I'm actually this will be part when I have this new book. I'm writing a new book, an update to Guaranteed income too which will be you know primarily about de. Risking people's money for retirement. Because the thing in guys in retirement all people really want is they want to have an income stream so they can you know, retire and enjoy their kids and their family, their grandchildren. They don't care about how much money watching the stock market watch these guys gamble in rooms with their money. Right. So the thing is people really want to have an income stream. And so but, but the whole thing, it's truer than ever. In fact.

I don't just Lloyd's do banking up there in Canada. They must do. Am I correct?

Oh yeah, yeah.

Lloyd's okay. Oh yeah. So let me just, I'll just kind of put the file so I can just give your, your listeners is kind of a taste some of the information that's going to come out.

And while you're doing that Barry, you know, maybe expand at the same time in terms of your research into bank owned life insurance and how the general public they're not told. The bankers don't want you to know this, they don't want you to understand this. They don't want to be in a position where they're you know, taking away liquidity. They're taking moving capital away from their system. If they're educating people on warehousing money inside of a life insurance company. So maybe expand a little bit on that.

Okay, let's go, let's Just go basic bank is structured, okay. Too much, there ain't no much difference. Okay. But if it's in Canada or the U.K. or the U.S. okay, okay. Now the thing is that the most important asset of any bank, whether it be in Canada or the U.S. or the U.K. or anywhere, is what is called tier one capital. That's the most important asset of the bank because from that tier one capital base, that's the money which they can lend out to the public. Now since September 2019, it's been kind of crazy. We've turned the world into a Frankenstein. But what has happened is that all banks are really, they generally have been regulated to lend against that Tier one capital. So in other words, they have a billion US or Canadian or a billion pound sterling or whatever. Essentially a bank has been limited to laying out nine times, 10 times that tier one capital. Now since about 2019 that all bets are off. Banks let other banks lend out anything. So there's really unlimited. But the thing is, is that the most important asset any bank is tier one capital. And generally that's consisted of things like gold, hard real estate.

Mortgages, high quality mortgages, treasury bills that very, very. And life insurance. So those are really kind of the, those are really kind of the only really kind of accredited.

They're given what's called a risk weighting. And actually life insurance is really one of the best risks in terms of stability. But you're not going to hear that, you're not going to hear that in the press. And you know, and the funny thing, and I talk about this, I've actually gone through this with National Public Radio which was the, the giant non profit radio in the US And I'll be putting this in the book. And then I went through this with CNBC which is, you know, and then I also went through this with Bloomberg. So this will be all actually in the movie people I will essentially be. We talk about my experience with Bloomberg, which is huge. I mean I think it's the biggest financial news network in the world now. Yeah, but yeah, so I essentially disclosed all this at Bloomberg about it a decade ago. Nothing ever came to came about it. So but my point is that so if you understand the structure of banks and you say why are they putting all this money there? No one puts a billion dollars here, a billion dollars there. I mean, but this is what's happening and so.

In any civilization, whether it be anywhere, is that really, it's really, really important where people save and invest their money.

Yeah.

And I think it's fiduciary you know, you know, I, I'm a registered investment advisor, so I have a legal obligation to look out for what's best for people. And I think from a moral perspective we do as well. But so when you understand life insurance, it's really kind of, it's a, it's a, it's a Swiss army of financial products, you know. You know, so you can do so much with it, but you're not going to hear that because they want you to gamble and speculate. Gamble and speculate. Whereas you may have some, some good companies left in Canada, there's some good ones left in the U.S. okay. But it's getting smaller and smaller. So. But the thing is that their whole attitude is like investment bankers or bankers, if they can't get 15% return on equity, they don't want anything to do with it.

Right.

Which is this. No one gets 15% continuously.

So a well run life company is generally happy. 5, 6, 7% Rate of return on equity. But that's out of fashion. It's old fashioned, but it works well.

Canada's largest mutual life carrier, without running an advertisement for any one particular life company, their return on policyholders. Equity has been double digits since Rich, since you and I have been policy owners with them and long before that. How's that possible?

I mean, you're not going to find mutual funds on the Tier 1 capital list of any commercial bank. Whether. And maybe it's different in the United States, I don't know. But large pensions are turning to life insurance companies to say, listen, we need your help. You're so stable, you've got this whole, you know, capital management process pinned down. We need your help.

Yeah. Matter of fact, I'll give you a great example of that. So let's. Bell Canada, right. They're still up there in Canada, right? Yep.

See, hang on, let me stop this one second for you guys. Kind of a doubting Thomas. So I give it, okay. Bell system, gigantic bones.

The AT&T of Quebec.

In March of 2015, you know what they bought? They bought a $5 billion annuity to take over their pension plan.

So Bell, which is, I don't know, it's a huge company, right.

They bought a $5 billion annuity to de risk their pension plan.

Matter of fact, there's another company which I got a kick out of this and you guys, only you guys will get a kick out of this one. And I thought of it because I did some. Just a little preparation for you.

Bank note. Oh yeah, this one I get A kick out of this one. A little company called Canada Banknote. Have you heard of them? They're the people who make the paper for all your currency.

Okay.

They bought a annuity in December of 2016 for $26 million to take over their pension plan.

So the whole thing is that the company that makes the paper for your currency bought an annuity to take over its pension plan.

That is super comical. The irony is unprecedented. But additionally, it's also like a takeaway that comes up for me is, look, the only place they can go get that annuity from is from an insurance company. And so the company that makes and prints our money is worried about their pension plan. So they're de risking it by getting the annuity so they can create income stability over a really long period of time to protect and preserve that pension so that they don't go bankrupt when they have to start making the payouts to the employees. Yet they had to go and put that money into an insurance company. Well, what is the insurance company going to do with that money, Barry?

Well, they have to invest it like everyone else. You know, they have to invest everyone else. They're just more conservative. They're not a swing for the fences. And they're highly regulated. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know the Canadian system as.

Well as I know the US but ultra highly regulated. Oh, yeah, whatever highly regulated is, ratchet it up more.

They have to. They have to maintain minimum continuing capital surplus reserves. They're regulated in terms of, I guess, instruments or categories that they can actually invest capital in.

Yeah. So probably some of the US look as the US they have some money in stock. There's very, very little.

So I assume the same thing. But that's the whole thing is that. And I'll talk to you people too about. Because in this book, one of the benefits I had is that I get to. Because of writing the book, you get to open up a lot of doors. And I was writing about this this morning, and there was a guy by the name of Jeremy Gold. He was very.

He was. And you'll get the book when I get it. But Jeremy Gould is a wonderful guy. He was. He was an actuary and.

He was a kind of. You get it, admitted to mit, Massachusetts Institute of Technology to get a degree in mathematics at age 16. So the guy was very bright. Okay. But he said, I don't like that. After three years he played pool, he drove across country. Just a real renegade type of guy. Make a long story short, he came in an actuary and he worked with Morgan Stanley, these giant investment banks. And I had conversation with him before he died. Unfortunately he died in 2018, but.

He agreed, he said that the best pension plans are run like life insurance companies. Shocking, shocking, you know, because life insurance company overestimates.

Overestimates their liabilities and underestimates the reserves. So it makes it very conservative. Hello. And so when you look at the best, you know who the best pension system in the world is? Guys.

You know, in the world ranking, well, actually Canada is better than the U.S. but in the top 20, where do you think Canada sits in terms of the World League Staples in terms of retirement plans?

I would say it's probably borderline in the, in around 10.

Yeah, Canada is better than the U.S. the States is around 18. All right, okay. We're next to Malaysia. You know, we're kind of like almost like a third world country at this point.

But the relative to retirement funding for retirement.

But the best system in the world are the Dutch.

That's interesting because they run a very low interest rate assumptions. They usually like 3 1/2% long term rate return, which is smart. And matter of fact. And I also have, you'll see the research coming out with the book is that I wrote to the pension authorities in Holland and they said, oh yeah, by the way, when you have a 401k or RSP or whatever you call them, okay, you have to convert it into an annuity. Hello.

It can actually produce the income that you want it to have and be there when you actually need it.

So that's actually a requirement. So, you know, because, you know, I'm not saying when you look at retirement plans or savings, where you got to look for preservation of capital first and foremost.

Yeah.

Would you agree? And matter of fact, the great Benjamin Graham, who was the patron saint of Warren Buffett, said the most important thing is to have preservation of principle.

If you don't have preservation of principle, the investments calls considered speculative.

Right.

But here we see in the US and Canada, the uk, everyone's throwing their money into the, into the Wall street or the Bay street or the City of London casino going, oh, I hope my money comes in on red or black. And that's what's happening. And you guys, I salute you guys, you're saying, hey, by the way, why don't you put your money in a safe place and it'll be there. And by the way, if you die, your family gets a whole bunch of more money and other things like that and, you know, how long you guys been in the business now?

13 years.

13 years. All right, so I've been.

And this is all we've ever done, really. We were not in the money business. We're not exposing clients money to unnecessary risk and to speculation and gambling and all of that nonsense that goes on out there in the world. We haven't had a client call US once in 13 years to say that they were pissed off that their cash values kept rising every day.

Not one. It's never happened.

We just channel, you know, Nelson's message to the best way that we can, the way that we think he wanted it. To the best of our ability. And we're just trying to show people what Nelson taught us.

Yep.

To the best of our ability.

And how. How you getting any traction up there? I mean, it's just. Oh, yeah, it's hard. Oh, yeah.

People want change. They. They want control. I think that we're. We're at the precipice of people awakening to the idea that they. They can and should have more control over their money. And they know, fundamentally, Nelson used to say, look, all you got to do is ask someone. Do you ever have the gut feeling there's something fundamentally wrong in the financial world that we live in? If the answer is yes, give me 20 bucks. Buy this book.

I never use that line. That's a great one. That's a great yes. So. So this is what you see is going on. And unfortunately, then you have all this new. Even more craziness now with. They have what is called SPACs. Have you heard of these things called special purpose acquisition companies? I saw the rage on Wall Street.

I love the acronyms. It's always these acronyms that create the downfall of the collapse.

Yeah. You know, and, yeah. And the, and the. When I hear these, these words that I always get when they say this time it's different. Like, then I want to run for the run, you know?

Yeah, run.

And that's what's happening again. And you know, and so what you're seeing is now it's a migration of money. You see, the Canadian, which is really kind of weird, is the, The. The state pension funds, the provincial.

Provincial.

Yeah, yeah. They're really getting involved in this private equity game in a big, big way.

Yeah.

And just look.

Look no further than Ohio National.

There you go.

Prime example.

Yeah. And so it's really kind of frightening. And the thing is that they made a really good purchase. They got the company really for nothing. They said like a half a billion Dollars, but they only put like $100 million down. But the reason why Ohio nationally got into trouble is because of their variable annuity block of business where they made guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefits on a, on a variable block of business. That's like trying to, you know, you know, pin the tail on a tornado. You ain't going to do that. And, but that's, you know, but so Ontario, I forget which one who bought a big. Ontario and the Casa de Pope. And in Quebec, you know, Ontario and.

Quebec, pension, basically like pension fund or. I don't know if it's the public. Was it the public service one or if it was a teacher's one or what have you.

Yeah, we have the big ones are the, you know, omers, Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System.

Then the Canadian Pension plan and then the CASA Depot. I think they're the three biggest. Okay. But they actually, they do a better job in the private equity business. But, you know, I district kind of and I thought of you guys that I said, here's some of the things. But they can go wrong too. And not like no one screws up like the Americans, but, you know, but you know, across borders. There's another one. Here's one. Onyx. You ever heard of a company called Onyx Corporation?

Oh, yeah, yeah. They just keep getting bigger. Yep.

Okay. It's a publicly traded private equity firm. This is the private equity model. Okay. And they bought a little company called Hawker Beechcraft. You probably don't know who that is, but it was the second largest business jet company in the world, leveraged by it in 2007. And they bought it with Goldman Sachs and they bought it with all this risky, what is called pick notes. A pick note is a acronym for payment income, which is essentially a bond which promises to pay nothing.

If you can put your head around that. But they bought this company in a leveraged buyout, very highly funded with debt, and they. And like two or three years later now, and then they put it into bankruptcy. And so this is, you know, Goldman Sachs and Onex, smartest guys in the room. Okay. Put the company into bankruptcy and then they dumped the pensions onto the.

Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, which is the kind of like the insurance plan for failed pensions in the US I don't know if you have anything like that in Canada. I think you guys are pretty more Canadian, a lot more prudent than the US System.

That's what we understand.

Yes.

Yeah. So that's. Yeah. So. But, but what you see is that most of these private equity firms get their Money from, actually from the large, you know, municipal and state and government pension plans.

You know, what's interesting, Barry, is that if you think of what some of these large corporations do. So one of the examples that came to mind that Rich and I were chatting about prior to the program was General Electric. So back in the days when Jack Welch was CEO of this organization and he was on his way out, Jeffrey Immelt was taking over, and the media started to rally around all the noise about the pension that Jack was going to receive, all the benefits that would continue for him for the remainder of his lifetime, understanding that it was a guaranteed payment to him for as long as he lived. And GE knew full well they were going to be fully reimbursed and then some through the use of life insurance. Life insurance. And so if the corporation creates that for C level executives, then the frontline worker has access to the very same tool to create the very same outcome. But the banks aren't going to espouse that. The mutual fund companies aren't going to tell you that. Of course they're not. And so that's what we're educating people on as it relates to that period of time in your life called retirement. What would you rather have? Would you rather be exposed to the risk of loss or the guarantees of gain? Take your pick.

Yeah. Matter of fact, there's a, there's two economists or behavioral scientists, diversity, Amos Tversky, whatever. The people would rather retain what they have than have a loss. Okay, but it's rammed down your throat. You got to put in the market and, you know, make this, this horse better come in, and that's just being rammed out. Now, I'm not against investments, guys. I love my Google, I love my iPhones. I love the technology you and I are on right now. I'm a capitalist, okay? But the thing is that. But we really shouldn't be risking, you know, you know, we should really have a. Be saving first.

Well, you have to understand it, because if you, you're not going to go to Las Vegas with the deed to your house, the note for your car, your whole registered retirement savings plan account balance, you're going to look inside your wallet and say, what am I comfortable losing? And if I gain a little bit, great. But when I get to Vegas, that's all I've got, is what's in the wallet. I'm not showing up with everything. And what people are doing in the general public today is they're buying into all of the noise and the nonsense that's going on out there. You need to expose your money to risk in order to grow it. Someone else is much better at managing this money than you ever will be. So just go ahead and hand it over to us so we can gain the motion of it. And if. And if we lose it all, we lose as a client. You lose. You lost all your money.

Yeah. It's always about gambling with other people's money. Right. And it's pretty easy to gamble when it's not your own money. You know, and governments do it all day long. And that's what RSPs, 401ks, same thing. Okay. There's absolutely no accountability whatsoever.

Well, one thing that Nelson said that rings for me to this conversation is that an investment is only, or should only be in something you know a great deal about. Right. Everything else. Everything else is speculation. So if you don't know anything about Google or crypto xyz, whatever it is, if you don't haven't taken the time to learn and educate, it's not your field, you don't know anything about it, then you. You won't recognize the opportunity when the opportunity arises. Whereas Nelson, he was trained as a forester. He understood timberland. He recognized a piece of land and what that piece of land could produce. And he recognized highest and best value. When could that piece of land be transitioned into something that could be a higher and better value for a future exit? He. He had that learned experience to be able to make those decisions because he knew a great deal about it. So investments were in things that he actually knew where he knew he could reasonably control to a high degree the outcome, even though there was risk versus. Oh, everyone on the water cooler says that this looks good. Let's go throw some money over there and bank on the future. Maybe it'll be there, maybe it won't be there. And people operate their financial life like an ostrich. They're just jamming their head in sand.

Yeah. And actually there's, you know, I'll get into some of the stuff.

Henry Bessembinder. Okay. He's an economist at the University of.

Arizona. Whatever. It's. Picking stocks is like picking lottery tickets, you know. And actually, what I've also been incorporating, and I have two actual firms to back this up, is that if you look at large pools of money, and I have two actuarial firms that I looked at, look at essentially the pension plans in the United States, which essentially one of the large pools of retirement money there is, they pretty much mirror what is called 30 year treasury bills. So with all this crazy shenanigans and private equity and trading and all this stuff like that, people just have been better off buying long bonds when you look at the end of the day. But no, I agree with you saying you should really know as much as you possibly can.

I think back, and I agree with you too, Barry. I'm personally not opposed to investment in something, as Richard said, that you know a great deal about. And long before discovering and understanding this process of becoming your own banker, the infinite banking concept, and deciding, hey, this is going to be a lifetime pursuit. What I did in making investment decisions at a very young age was take a look in the pantry, the refrigerator and the medicine cabinet. And I asked myself, regardless of what's going on in any economy, are people going to stop eating cereal shaving, taking Tylenol when they have a headache, putting the band aid on when they get a scrape, scratch or cut? And those were the companies that I invested money in because I understood it a great deal because I was a buyer of the business as well as a consumer of the product of the business that I was buying. And that's what made sense to me personally. I've put no more money into any of those particular equities, but reinvested all the dividends and those amounts have blossomed and grown irrespective of stock price, volume, volatility, whether you own one share or 10,000. Your risk exposure is the same if all you're focused on is the price of the stock. But that's what worked well for me. But I'll tell you.

Rich can attest to this in our educating the Canadian marketplace about this process. It is really, really growing wings. We are through wealth without Bay street, through the banker's vault, through Ascended Financial, through all of the, the mediums that we're getting out there on social media, the YouTubes, the Facebooks, the tweeters, etc, we're getting this message out there and it's resonating.

Great. That's great. Yeah, because you know, you're not going to get it from the, you're not going to get it from the media and you're not going to get it from the governments, okay? Because they're all olden to the powers that be. So it really has to, it has to be grassroots.

And so I applaud you. So that's, you know, that's so God's given me. I'm a good researcher, okay. I'm just persistent, you know, and I just. Because when I was a kid, I used to try to figure, I used to take toys apart and I, and I would try to figure out how they put something I couldn't get putting back together. My parents would get really pissed off. Okay, but, but I learned a lot by taking things apart, you know, and then putting it back together. And so that's what I did with the banking system and.

These mutual funds and how these things work. And I said a lot of it's just a bloody scam.

Were you worried as your research expanded? Like what inspired you to write the book Pirates of Manhattan?

I had to reinvent myself. Anyone reads my book, I went through a very acrimonious divorce and you know, I have three wonderful kids, but I went through, I went, I went through a city. My life was a book of joke. I went from being a pretty successful guy, had a benefits business doing and pretty successful guy and to losing everything, you know, so it was just, it was a spiritual experience, let me put it that way. So I just, I just dislike guys. I hate economic, I hate bullies, you know, and so, and so I knew something about economic bullies and, and I also understood because I had sold pension plans, I had a pension administration business, I had a, I was doing, working with, with startups and a lot of these companies going public. So I, but I really wanted to understand how the whole system worked and I couldn't figure it out. So I had to reinvent myself. And you know, now I went through a lot kind of a hell and it was, but now I look at it as a blessing because it was kind of a. My MBA and PhD of hard knocks, you know, so, you know, so, so that's what motivated me. Yeah, I want to get out of my, my own proverbial poop, but I also really want to help others.

And Rich and I were curious, you know, when Pirates of Manhattan was released. And then of course Pirates Manhattan 2. And then now with the release of the update to your latest book. Has there ever been a time where you were concerned for your own personal safety with all of the truths that you exposed the masses to? And again, we're talking about these books. We're going to provide links so that our listeners can get their hands on these books. If you have not read Barry Dyke's books, you have an opportunity. But was there ever a point where you felt like, oh boy, if I keep going down this rabbit hole, I may not come out of it?

Yeah, actually this true story, and anyone knows, matter of fact, I had someone in my, my office this morning a Friend of mine and one of my fans and who's seen me and oh yeah, I've been audited by the, you know, because I have to open up my kimono and let everything. People know everything. When the first book came out, I had. At the time, it was one of the business people who.

Funded my research in the first book. Yeah. I was scared at the time. I had a shiny new BMW and I had two windshields busted out.

And.

Some auditors and things like that. So really kind of. Yeah. So. But. And again, I, you know, but you know, it's. To me it's a God thing, you know. And people said, well, you got to be brave. Well, my father was a, was a marine in World War II and he was in Guadalcanal, probably one of the.

Most violent battles ever known in mankind where, you know, 15,000 men got killed.

Yeah.

I said I'm not brave. These guys were brave.

Yeah.

You know, and so any event. So. Yeah, so. But that's, yeah. And, and I've actually spoken to police groups and the whole thing and they said I kind of came up in the radar because of the research. But everything is, you know, everything I'm putting in these books guys, I'm not, I'm not that smart. I'm just a good aggregator of data and backing it up. So everything I, I have and you notice in my books with bibliographies, everything, it's all been documented with public data.

Yeah.

And like 30, 30 pages of links and resources to all in Pirates of Manhattan too. Like the back of the book, like a chunk of the book is like normally there's like a glossary. Well, you've got like there's, here's all the references where I got all this information.

So yeah, like I'm just talking about like Onyx Onx and Goldman Sachs bankrupting Hawker Beechcraft. Okay. All manner public record guys. You know, and so it, so my point is that. So yeah. You have to be this way because otherwise you're just, you know, you know, you're setting yourself up and you know, and.

As.

But, but yeah, so. But it's been fun too because a lot of people open up your door and I get, I'm getting a lot of pretty well known people, economists and stuff like that because of this having some. Because.

So since, since the last financial crisis.

Yep.

Where.

Where are we headed?

Because the next one.

Yeah. At full speed.

Ramming speed. You know, it's. And the funny thing, I was thinking about you guys in Canada because if you look at the, the debt levels now, which is really, it's really the world problem. It's not just us, not just Canada. It's not. But you Canadians are freaking crazy, man. You got more debt. I mean, I'll, I have a, like a client of mine, she's from Ontario and her mother has a house in Ontario. You can't get, you can't buy a house in Ontario enough like less than a million bucks or something like that. Yeah, because it's all about this printing of money. So it's, so it's always about the.

Debt and manipulation of the interest rates. You know, mortgage interest rate at 1.5%. Well, what, what does that cause for people to want to go buy houses? And it's just, it's just an inflationary time bomb.

Yes. So this is what we're seeing. And you know, so there's no question because.

I know the mortgage, I thought the US was really bad, but you Canadians were. So with the mortgage debt, okay, but we win and everything else, margin debt, lending on student loan debt, loans, credit, credit cards, all this stuff, it's just all time high. And matter of fact, the margin debt which is borrowing its securities portfolios is higher than it was in 1999, 2000 prior to the last dot com meltdown, which is another major. And it's exceeded what it was in 2007 and 2008. And credit cards, student loans, auto loans, you name it. So what you guys are doing are great too because you can give people hope and you can show them ways to like finance automobiles and things like that. Of that nature.

That's exactly right.

And on that note, all I'm curious about is, you know, we, we had bailouts that happened in 0809 situation. There was a huge shift in a movement in a lot of countries that have central banking systems to move to a bail in type of legislation situation. Now. I think there's a lot of misunderstanding around that. I'd love to get your perspective on it. Barry, you know, maybe to share with our listeners about the difference between bailouts versus bail ins.

Well, last time around, bail ins aren't baked into the system now by the way, guys. Now whether they implement it or not. But essentially bailouts is when all the banks collapsed in 2007, 2008, essentially the federal Reserve and Bank of Canada and Bank of England essentially created, printed up all this money and essentially bail them all out.

And as a matter of fact, basically.

A tax on the taxpayer to pay a pledge to pay the taxpayer over a really long Period of time in the future, at some future date.

So essentially we privatize the profits and we socialize the losses. So there was.

Privatize the profits, socialize the losses. Oh, that's so good.

So, so, so the thing is, is that. So, so that's what happened 2007 and 2008, and it's still going on today with the Federal Reserve. And you start looking at the bank of Canada and the bank of England and the Carney and all these guys, they're all from the Goldman Sachs, you know. But in any event, so. So when you see. It's all about the debt guys. So I think what you guys are doing, really a helpful message to the people is that you're helping people rebuild their balance sheets and get them really strong. And you, you're insulating them from the Bay Street, Wall Street City, London casino.

Yeah.

You know, that's precisely it.

You know, you're insulating. Yeah, and there's really no different, you know. You know, you know, they're all, it's all, it's all about gambling with other people's money. Toronto Stock Exchange, New York Stock Exchange. You know what I mean? London Truck Exchange, they're all the same.

Different nuances, but they're the same.

One quote that Nelson used to say, he says, you know, do you know what the difference is between Wall street in Vegas or. Or Bay street and Vegas? He would say, well, Bay Street's located in Toronto. Between. Other than that, there is no difference between.

Yeah, I remember him saying, no. Well, you ever had this other one. What's the difference between Wall street and Las Vegas?

One's a casino on an island in New York and the other one's a casino in the desert in Nevada.

That's it. That's it. That's the one. And you know Nelson. And again, you know, we, we owe an incredible debt of gratitude to Nelson, for.

Without him, we would not have met you. And so he was the catalyst to the development of so many relationships of people who really want to understand the truth and really want to understand what is going on out there. Because once you do, you'll know exactly what to do. And if you look forward, Barry, in terms of the research that you continue to do and what you're seeing, what insights can you share with our viewers and with our listeners?

Don't spend what you don't have. Simple, you know what I mean? To impress people you don't like, you know, Okay, a lot of it is kind of common sense.

Save before you invest, you know, if you have safety and you have safe money, it's like, I have a lot of money. My cash value, life insurance, a lot of money in the bank. I. If I find an opportunity, I can act on it. I don't need any bank or anything. When you have that, you know, guys, when you have that, that money in the bank, that access to capital, you can do whatever you want.

That's right.

The banks don't want that. They want you to go and borrow money at 15, 16%. I don't know what kind of credit do you have? The same type of credit card system in Canada as you do in the US Is. It's very, very predatory. What are the interest rates they charge in some of that stuff?

Typically around 19, 19, 20%.

Yeah, it's awful.

Yeah.

Okay. And, you know, and if you study all the religions that I have, you study Judaism, you study the Catholic Church, you study Christianity, or you study even Muslim Islam. Okay. All charging excessive interest, essentially. Morally wrong.

Yeah.

Okay. Now these banks are getting it for.

Nothing because they're using our money.

What?

Because they're using our money.

They use that money. They get. They're getting the money for nothing. And they're leveraging out 10 times minimally. Okay. And so they're getting all this money, interest income, and they're doing nothing for it. So. Yeah. Beating back to helping your people. Yeah. So people have to have a strong balance sheet. You know.

A lot of things. Common sense state, physically fit, you know, invest in yourself first. We're talking. Guys, we were talking about if you invest in something. No, you invest in yourself first.

You know, you know, spiritually, mentally.

Yeah.

Physically.

You know, and, you know, build a. How can I put it? A. A network of, you know, supporting spiritual people, you know, having good friends, because that's what you're going to rely on when times get tough and I get tough for everybody.

Yeah.

So, you know, a lot of stuff is common sense, you know, and, you know, and read some books and turn off the television, you know. You know, because.

It'S awful, you know.

Rich, what did Nelson refer to the TV as before he decided that he wasn't going to watch it anymore?

I can't remember what he think he.

Like it was something.

It was.

Yeah, that was it. The idiot box, you know, get away from the idiot box and read.

And I remember when he would talk about. He was watching, like the TV when Nixon made his statement about that we're all Keynesians now when they took us off the gold standard. And he says he almost Threw his shoe or something right through the tv, which at that time would have been a very expensive thing to replace. But he says, you're not talking about me.

One thing that it's been sitting with me here. And I just wanted to circle back with it real quick, Barry, because it was something we talked about before we hit live on the Record. And we were talking about one of these other large Canadian private equity firms, very well known one, Brookfield, and there's a recent acquisition that they made. Again, this is like where we're seeing this private equity shifting into the acquisition of stability through other types of companies. Can you speak to that a little bit?

Well, yeah.

It'S the new Bay Street, Wall Street City, London play. And so they don't like it because when these private equity firms, they go up, they have to raise capital and they have to call in the interior teachers plan, the CASA Depot or whatever, or the State of New York or CalPERS, whatever. So they don't like. So they want to have what is called permanent cap, which money they can hold on to and lever the heck out of it. So there's no one better in the world really anywhere in the world that can essentially raise capital and retain capital like a life insurance company because of the, you know, the way the products are structured, meant to be long term investments, annuities, things like, you know, the surrender charges. So the money's really, so they, they get it. Okay. And, and so when they see it with a company like.

Let'S talk about Brookfield Asset Management, essentially bought American national last week, whatever, five for $5 billion. A very well run life company wasn't mutual, but they, I'd done business with them for years and. But they want to have access to the billions of billions of cash so they can gamble more with it. And if they screw up while they have then go back to the well. So they want to really kind of get into that space. And.

I think it's wrong because I don't know how the, I know how the system works in the us I know how it works in the uk. But.

When you buy a company, any type of company, all interest is deductible to the cup, to the corporate corporation. Right?

Yeah.

Is it, is that the way in Canada as well? I don't know if it's that way.

Basically, if you're, if you're using, you know, not to dispense.

So you guys buy him. So you guys have a building, you buy a building or you buy a company and you, you get a loan for that. Yeah.

As long as it's for the. For the purpose of generating a profit, then it's considered.

It has to. Yeah, it's got to be to generate a taxable gain or taxable income and then it's a legit legitimate deduction.

Okay. Identical to the US So the whole thing is that all this debt is, you know, it's being underwritten by the Canadian taxpayer in your situation. Yeah. Or the American taxpayer.

Okay. And I'll give you a great example. Cirque du Soleil.

You ever heard about that little company? Oh yeah, Quebec over there. Montreal. Yeah, that was. That was who now who? Yeah, Cirque du Soleil. That was a giant. That was a giant private equity deal led by Texas Pacific Group. And it was. It was kind of Casa de Po, I think was a member of that. And they over the level, the crap on it. And the pandemic came and they went into bankruptcy. Or they call it, what do they call it? Administrators Agreement in Canada. What do they call bankruptcy? It's the same Canadian. You know what administration is a bankruptcy.

Yep.

Yeah. It's all under the Canadian Bankruptcy and Insolvency act.

And Same thing.

Yeah, same thing. In the UK they call it administration. So.

The world renowned Cirque du Soleil, which is a pretty amazing company, the shows they did in sale, it was because it was so leveraged with debt, they went bankrupt.

Now I don't think they've ever really gone. Then we had Covid happen the whole thing. But that's one example of the dangers of too much debt.

It is interesting to see that you have these Canadian private equity firms, you have.

Acquisition of American entities.

Let's just pause for a moment and think about that. Why isn't it happening here in our own backyard?

It's the difference in our regulatory framework. And we talked about it before we hit the record button. Capital is mobile. Capital doesn't care.

He doesn't care.

It doesn't care what flag is on the flagpole. Capital goes where it's well treated, appreciated, and where there's the least amount of regulation and least amount of government interference. And that capital will move.

Yeah. Through the Cayman Islands, where it's also quite nice. Cayman Islands. An island man or Tortola or someplace like that.

So it's important to understand what's going on.

Yeah.

And the media is doing a great job of playing that distraction game where they keep the masses distracted from what's really, truly going on. And they paint the wealthy as villains. They paint the wealthy as bad people. And think of any movie, any film that you see where you're dealing with the ultra wealthy character in the film, they're always portrayed as the villain. And so the media's got the general public focused on all the noise and the nonsense that's going on and not focused on what's really going on. And your books describe perfectly why that is and what the intentions are behind that. And so what we're talking about, Ken, for our viewers and listeners, Barry Dyke's books, the Pirates of Manhattan, both the guaranteed income. These books are going to be available to you to purchase. We'll make those arrangements and provide links to Barry's content. You will want to explore the research that he's done much further so you can gain a deeper understanding of what's truly going on.

And Barry's own show at the Economic Warrior, which is on YouTube and on his website.

Yeah, go to people out there. Go to barryjames dyke.com and I haven't really done any. The economic worry show lately because I've been involved a couple projects and my daughter who's doing all my video work is. She's a surfer, you know, girl, so. But.

I love her and. But then I get involved in this documentary and a couple other things. So. But I will be getting back to that because then I'll be interviewing the economists who I'm in the movie with.

So.

Yeah, yeah. So it's great. Yeah. So when you understand what's going on, it's really. It's pretty much the, it's. Although you cross borders, it's really kind of the same. Yeah. You know, and you know, Canada, to its credit, you know, seems to be run a lot more efficiently than the U.S. but, and, but, you know, when I saw like the debt numbers of what homes are in Ontario, it's like.

It'S just stupid.

Vancouver as well as one of the Vancouver.

World. Yeah.

It's the government printing a bunch of money, monetizing debt and real asset prices go right up into orbit and.

Someone'S.

Got to reckon with that. And guess who it's going to be.

Main street, you know, and I'm curious.

About that because is that that ties into a little bit. We were talking about Gresham's Law prior to Henry as well. Do you want to maybe speak to our viewers?

Yeah, that's really, really important to, to, to understand. There was a British mathematician and economist and he worked the King of the Queen. I forget what it was, but anyhow, people can Google it. Sir Thomas Gresham, if You don't believe me? Please. You know, if you have a question, Google it. But essentially, Gresham posited the idea of what's called bad money pushes out good. Which means is that, you know, something that used to be, in other words, like we were talking about cereal boxes where you had a big box, now it's a much smaller box and they charge you the same amount of money. Or when money used to be backed by gold, now it's backed by nothing. You know, so essentially what we're seeing is more and more money is pushing out the good stuff. So when we print more and more money, which all these central banks are doing this, essentially it waters down the value of the currency. So I'll give you a great example. And this is kind of crazy how it is. I like Porsches, okay? Very nice cars, okay. This, you know.

I bought one, a very nice one. I used one 2013 last year.

Good amount of money. Let's just put it this way. It's gone up like $18,000, okay, in the past year, people. And actually the, the dealership is willing to buy it back. My point is, is that because we're having so much printing of money, the, the, the, the values are getting so inflated and a lot of the good stuff, if it has really, if it has real value, it, it's going to inflate. So, but my point is that, yeah, so in the U.S. you know, a dollar, a dollar used to be actually be backed by gold, now it's backed by nothing.

And so this is, so this is what you were seeing. And so the good stuff, like good whole life insurance companies, okay, which used to be. There used to be a ton of them in the US used to be 10 in Canada. I don't think there's any, any good ones left in the UK anymore. So the really good things are getting pushed out. So the real quality companies, you know, it's like a game of musical chairs. So there's fewer and fewer really good companies to do business with. And I know you guys do business with. And.

So you know what I'm talking about.

Yeah.

So good. Mutual company, which looks out for the policyholders first and foremost, is better than a stockholder company. End of story. We don't have to talk anymore.

Plain and simple.

Plain and simple, guy, you know, mutual company, you're part of the deal, okay? Your stock company, you're like, you're, you're, you're behind the shareholders.

It's the tale of two masters, and one's chasing quarterly share profits and the other one isn't.

And that's the really good thing with my insurance and with my clients. I don't want. People don't know what's going on every. They don't want to look at quarterly. No, but. So if you're with a good company, a good mutual company, they're the good stuff. Okay. Unfortunately, there's less and less of that. Right.

Yeah, that's very true. Barry, this was incredible.

We are just so delighted that you were generous with your time and with us here today. If you're okay with it, we'd love to have you back and.

Talk about.

The documentary after it airs.

October. Yeah.

You have a new book that you're working on. Working on also, is that correct?

Yeah. Guaranteed income, too. So I'll have to probably do an ebook because as I said, I don't wanna.

Because I don't want to be charging.

The prices. You guys. The Canadian. But I love Canada. Okay. Don't get me wrong. Okay? But the Canadian postal system, I don't know. Why is it so expensive now? I don't really privatize it or something.

No, no, it's. It's. Anything that comes across the border, it costs an arm and a leg. We buy tons of. We sell a lot of Nelson's books, and a lot come through our office. And it's like, yeah, not only do you have to pay for all that extra shipping and the currency exchange adjustment, which varies substantially from time to time, but then even three months later, there's another bill that shows up randomly from FedEx. It's like, you also got to add that into the. Then you got to rejig your pricing so that you can sell the book. To give someone a book that's at a reasonable price point where you're not. You're not taking the hit person. You know, you're not taking the hit as a business to be able to provide it as a, you know, as a service.

Yeah. So I'll probably do an E book because that's as well, which I really want to do because the Amazon and that's another story. But. But I just want to get the word out there because the problem with the Canada. I still like physical books myself, but the.

The, you know, if I, If I sell a $28 book, I throw in posters for free in the US immediate mail may take a week or two longer, but.

I ship same book. I ship it to Canada. I got to charge close to 50 bucks.

Because of the shipping costs to Canada.

Well, we'll work Something out so that we can get these into our bookstore and get them across the border and then be able to provide them at a reasonable price, because the knowledge in these books is priceless. And so, Barry, thank you again. Sincerely. Rich, you want to take us home?

Yeah, absolutely. Barry. You know, the last question we'd like to kind of, you know, maybe just hear from you is when you go. Go through the process of doing this research, creating all this knowledge, you may not think of yourself as a superhero, but when you're actively adding value to other people's lives and you're sharing this work and the message in your research, really a lifelong endeavor, ultimately, that you've put into this and you're exposing these truths for so many people, you show up as a hero. And so our question for you is, who would you like to be a hero to.

My kids? You know, I mean, it's really simple, you know, my friends, you know, I mean, I don't. It's. I don't have that, you know.

You know, when I meet my maker, I hope he says, well done, my good and faithful servant.

You know, really that simple? You know, I mean, it's just, you know, it's just.

Yeah, I don't, you know. You know, I know some celebrities and the whole thing, like, I don't have any envy towards them at all, you know, or.

But no, just. Just, you know, you know, now I was a good dad, a good father and a good son, you know, a good neighbor. That's. That's enough for me. Very well put.

Awesome.

Thank you again, Barry, sincerely, and for all of our viewers. If you just look right over here, you're going to see a recommended list of additional videos that we would encourage you to continue your journey of learning. Make sure to pop down into the show notes. You'll find links to purchase Barry's books to Barry's wonderful content and resources that he puts out for the world to consume as well. And we encourage you to continue to learn. There's no such thing as having arrived in knowledge. There's always something new to learn. So make the rest of your week great and we'll catch you on the next episode. Thanks so much, gentlemen. It was a real pleasure.

Thanks. God bless.

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