255. Paul Musson | Capital Offense: Why Some Benefit At Your Expense.

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In today's episode, we have the pleasure to interview Paul Mussin, author of Capital Offense: Why Some Benefit at Your Expense. Paul is a veteran investment expert and the founder of Paddington Capital Management. With over 30 years in the financial industry, most notably as the lead portfolio manager for the Ivy Funds at McKinsey Investments, he brings a deep insider understanding of how our economic system truly works. Through his blog, Political Economy, Paul breaks down complex economic issues into clear, actionable insights for everyday people. In this episode, you'll learn why inflation is a hidden form of wealth transfer, how central bank policies distort real value, and what every citizen needs to understand about the money system before it's too late. Paul also shares why he believes education, not conspiracy, is the key to systemic Now get ready to learn and enjoy this incredible conversation with Paul Mussin.

Paul, welcome to the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books podcast. I'm excited to chat with you today, and I'd like to kick things off by reading something from the introduction of your book.

Okay.

The title is The Road to Hell Is Paved with Good Intentions, and I'd like to read a couple of sentences here. You say, for many years, much of the value of your savings has been confiscated from you And the purchasing power of your income diminished without your knowledge or consent. And importantly, this has been deliberate because those responsible for the confiscation actually believed that longer term it would be for your own good. It's not. Tell us why you decided to make such a bold statement in the beginning of your book.

Yeah, now that I hear that, it is quite a bold statement.

Well said too.

Well, thank you. Yeah, you know, and I can't even remember what my feeling was when I wrote it. I don't think I wrote it as an attention grabber. Maybe I did, I don't know. But I have been angry for quite some time at what's been going on. And sort of viewing how the system has been working. And I was sort of in the trenches, if you will. I was a professional investor for my career. And it was just getting very, very frustrating watching how policymakers with good intentions but very short-term views Um, were not really rigging the system, but, um, putting in place policy that quite clearly was going to have longer-term consequences and shorter-term consequences. And, um, yeah, it just, you know, that's why I wrote the book. You know, I just want to let people know what's going on and, um, And by educating people, or informing people perhaps is a better word, that, you know, you can empower people and then the people can demand change. And it's because I know how hard people work for their capital, and I know a lot of entrepreneurs, I know a lot of proprietors, and Um, it's, it, it's not easy to make a go of it. And, and it's even worse when you have an entity like a central bank who is almost working at like cross purposes, um, and extracting capital from you because they think by doing so it's going to benefit you, like the benefits will trickle down. And they don't, and they won't. And, uh, yeah, I just— I guess I wanted people to know that. Maybe that's— maybe that's why I started with that, those lines.

Yeah. And you said something before we press record, which is that most people are smart. Most people, especially when they have their own money on the line, Yeah. They do want to know what's happening behind the scenes, but it seems like there's this general consensus that, ah, it's too big of a problem for me to solve, so why not? I don't really need to try, you know. I'll just let the government do what they do. I'll play the game like everybody else does, and I'll be okay. So is that the right approach to take? Is that the wrong approach to take? And if it's the wrong approach to take, why is it the wrong approach to take?

Well, it should be the right approach, right? That's the way it should be, where, you know, as I said before, life is tough. Like, you go to school, you work hard, you're raising a family, whatever. Um, that's a lot of work, and you don't want to have to worry about how the monetary system works, um, what GDP really means, how come Our national debt is going through the roof, and there's fiscal deficits. And how come wealth disparities keeps growing? And you don't want to have to worry about all that. You want to be able to trust your leaders that they're going to do the right thing on your behalf. And and I think most of them do, and I think most of them want to. And so it's not about. This is not about bad people in government who are out to get you. It's just about bad policy, because the bad policy is focused on short-term effects, like how do we get stock markets growing again? How do we get housing prices growing again? How do we get people spending again right now? Whether or not it's something that you want to do, you know, they they think it's good for the economy that you spend all your money. And so when when this happens, unfortunately, you do need to know what's going on because policymakers will only do the right thing when the population when the population demands it of them. And the population can only demand the right thing when they actually understand what's going on. And that's why I've written this book. Now, there's a saying I think I, I quote in the book that, you know, the people always get the government that they deserve. Hmm. But that's only true if the people understand what's happening and can vote accordingly. And right now People cannot demand the right action from the policy from the policymakers because they don't really understand what's happening, and and the policymakers want to do the right thing. Politicians want to do the right thing, but even most politicians, I would argue, don't really have a really good understanding of how an economy works, how monetary policy is impacting things for the for the worse. So, yeah. So.

I feel like when this subject gets talked about on some of the major podcasts that I listen to, this— there's always this essence of like, well, you know what, maybe there's this global conspiracy of rich and powerful people who are actually pulling the strings behind the scenes. And you're not saying that that's not happening in the book, but you're also not saying that it's happening in the book. So what's your feeling when that subject gets brought up?

Yeah, it's, um, I absolutely do not believe that it is, that it's a global conspiracy to make rich people richer and poor people poorer. I, I really don't believe that. Um, but as you said, you know, there, there may be other conspiracies going on, or maybe there, maybe that is a conspiracy that is happening. I really don't know. I just don't think so. And, and I don't think you need to believe in a conspiracy to understand how this all went off the rails, like what the motivations were for policymakers in the past and today, um, to go down this path that leads to widening, uh, wealth disparity, unfairness, And one of the main issues today is that fixing it is not going to be easy. It's fixable, but not without considerable pain for a lot of people. And there's a saying that I— by Upton Sinclair, I think I quote this in my book as well— said, don't expect a person to understand something If their income depends on them not understanding it. So, you know, I talk to people a lot about this, and every now and then I'll talk to someone my age— I'm 63, I've benefited from all of this— that, you know, I can tell, I can see on their face they don't like what I'm saying. And they don't want to hear it. They don't want to know that a significant amount of their wealth has come at somebody else's expense, mainly younger people and newcomers to the country. And, um, like, we haven't done anything wrong, we haven't done anything illegal, we've played by all the rules, but it has come at their expense, and there's no ifs, ands, or buts about it. And, you know, we're— we can decide if we want to do something about it or not. I think we should. If we don't, um, it'll still end badly, but we may be able to push off the, uh, the really bad consequences for a number of years. But I think then the consequences would be significantly worse. than if we decided to deal with it now and in a much fairer way.

I have what might come across as a little bit of a tough question for you.

Okay.

When, when you mentioned the, the quote, when your income depends on you not understanding it, uh, I butchered that a little bit, but it reminds me of— we were talking about, uh, our European travel before we press record, and a number of years ago my wife and I visited the Colosseum in Rome, and we were getting a tour. And during the tour, they talked about how the Colosseum was— the games that were held at the Colosseum were free to attend for the general public. And the idea was that if you could distract the general public, it would allow the elites to operate behind the scenes and widen that gap, right? Continue to accumulate resources at the expense of everybody else. And it feels like today there's a similar version of that happening where the average person is so consumed with paying their bills and working their job and trying not to be consumed by the divisive nature of the news and the TV. And all of the companies like Netflix are engineered to steal your attention. Social media is becoming more addicting every day. And so how are you as an author And as a philosopher on this subject, how are you getting in front of everybody and getting them to care and getting them to pay attention so that they become well-informed and therefore can rise up and help make some of these decisions and changes?

Well, yeah, it's a long journey. And, you know, I've been doing it for many years. I was a portfolio manager. And my clients, um, were financial advisors up here in Canada. And so I would make presentations on all this stuff. I've been doing it for 15 years plus, talking about it, ranting and raving. And so I gained quite a reputation. And, um, and on my quarterly reports, I would write about it. And then in 2023, interesting, I decided to leave the investment industry because my passion for writing about this, uh, became something that was really just consuming me and the need to get the message out to people. Um, I wouldn't be able to do it as effectively if I was still working full-time, and so I started writing my book 6 years ago. And, uh, yeah, again, just with the idea of, of helping people understand what's going on. Then I started a blog in 2022. I just started sending it to my wife and my 3 daughters. They're in their late 20s, and, uh, it was just sort of summarizing what's going on in the world from an economic business perspective, but in very easy-to-understand terms and have some fun with it. And they liked it, so they started forwarding it to their friends, and my wife to her friends, and my business colleagues were on it. Now I got a, you know, an email list. I got people emailing me out of the blue. Someone's been forwarding this to me. Can you put me on your blog? And I like the fact that you don't talk down to me. I never really understood that. That's thank you, blah blah blah. That's that's what it's all about. It's so gratifying when smart people. when given the chance, can really understand what's going on and then, and then hopefully make a difference. And then it's one podcast at a time and it's another blog post at a time and, and just keep at it, you know? And, and it's fun.

It's—

yeah, it's— I really enjoy it.

Yeah. And you're shining light on a very important part of our world.

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So you made it easy to understand, but you also said that you hate the term dumb it down. So talk to us, how do you communicate with simplicity but make sure that you're still driving through what you're trying to communicate? in its original, you know, integrity.

Yeah, so that's the tricky part, and I learned how to do that over my investment career. So when I started off making presentations to my clients, I'd be up on the stage and I'd just be using industry lingo, and my main goal back then was to try to impress people, try to sound smart rather than educate them. Because my thought was at the time, well, if they think I'm smart, they'll give me their money and I'll invest it for them. And then I started catching myself in white lies and not really lies, but I'd leave something out. If I knew the client didn't want to hear this, I wouldn't say it even though it was true. So, we're trying to get the sale rather than really empowering people, my clients, with all the information they needed to decide whether or not an investment in our funds was the right thing for their clients. Right. And so, then I'd see the same client the next year. I said, I'd do a presentation. But Paul, last year you said this. That sounds different from what you're saying now. I said, well, I can't really remember saying that last year, but I can imagine myself saying that. And so I said, that's it, I'm not doing that anymore. And I have to be honest that I changed not for the right reasons, I changed for the wrong reasons because I was just getting caught. I said, I'm just going to be brutally honest about what I do and whether or not I think the audience is going to like it or not. And then let them decide. And that's, you know, I forget who said it, but they said, if you always speak the truth, you never have to remember what you said. And, and it was amazing. Like, it was so liberating, and, uh, it was empowering, and it, it had almost the opposite effect that we attracted more assets. Now, it wasn't for everybody. But if what I'm doing is not right for you and your clients, that's a good outcome. Now you know not to invest with us because it's not appropriate for the risk profile of your clients or whatever. So we didn't get that sale. That's okay, right? We'll get these other ones. And so I learned over the years that helping people to really understand what I do resulted in really good outcomes. And then I wanted to get people to really understand what was going on in the world because I would read a headline in the paper and reading the article, I said, this is complete nonsense. And then I sort of go through with my clients, explain to them what was really going on, at least from my perspective. And And yeah, I guess, uh, yeah, I don't think anything to add.

Yeah, I love the, I love the radical transparency and honesty that you're communicating to us right now on the podcast, admitting that you were getting caught in those little white lies. And I've always thought about lying the same way. I love the quote that you shared. The way I've always thought about it is that life is, is complex enough when you're living in one version of reality, so trying to remember multiple versions of your reality is just That's simply too complex for my brain. And so easier just to tell the truth and move on. And you're right, you attract those that align with your value system and the way that you communicate, and you will repel those that don't. And it will make your life easier from a customer service and relationship perspective. Pivoting back to the book a little bit, you kick off the book saying that a large part of what's needed to fix the economy is for the general public to understand the concept of money, which ironically, not— it's not nearly as straightforward, I think, as most people think it is. Not only is it not taught in the public education system in the US or Canada, at least not in any legitimate way, but then like people's basic understanding of money is wrong. And so you go into the history of money. I found that fascinating. But let me ask you the question, a question that you tend to ask other people. What is Money.

Yeah. So, you know, money is not what makes the world go round. Money is very important. But what makes the world go round is the creation of capital. So, capital in the form of a good or a service. But we don't have a barter economy. So, let's say you make a suit I make a bike. You know, if there was no money, then we could exchange the bike for the suit, and we're both better off. And that exchange has not come at anybody else's expense, right? There was no suit in the economy. There was no bike. We both created that capital, and then we exchanged it with each other, right? That's the way capitalism is supposed to work, where whatever capital you have is supposed to be a reflection of the capital that you created. Not the capital that you took from somebody else. That's what's happening these days. So, if you got millions or billions of people around the world and they're all creating capital, then that's a really good thing. But you can't have direct exchange. You can't, you know, how many suits does it cost to go on an all-inclusive trip to Dominican Republic? You know, like—

Does that person even want all of those suits?

Exactly. And so, so when you make your suit, you're going to sell your suit for money. So you're, you're— so now you've got, let's say you, you make a suit, you sell it for $1,000. Now you use your $1,000 to go buy a bike. What gave you the wherewithal to go buy that bike was the fact that you made a suit, right? That, that's your means of payment when you're buying the bike. Your means of payment was the suit that you created, but it's not direct exchange. You sell it for money. So the money is the medium of exchange. So we use money to exchange the capital that we all create. That's what money does. And the money is never consumed. The capital is consumed, but the money is never consumed because when you use your $10,000 To buy my bike, I'm going to have your $10,000 and I might go— or $1,000— and I might go use it to buy something else, and somebody else keeps using that money. So the difference between— that's one of the differences between capital and money, is that money doesn't get consumed, capital does. But here's the other difference. So let's say you make 10 suits and you sell them for $1,000 each. They're nice suits. And now you've got $10,000 in your bank account. What that $10,000 represents is the 10 suits that you made. So effectively, you've got 10 suits of capital stored up in that $10,000. You don't want to spend it right away. You're saving it to go on a vacation at the end of the year. Now, let's say before you get a chance to spend your $10,000, the central bank doubles the money supply. When the central bank increases the money supply, they increase it out of thin air, right? So that new money, they didn't create any capital to obtain that new money. They just created it out of thin air.

Mm-hmm.

So it's got no capital stored up in it effectively. It only obtains capital by extracting capital from the rest of the money that's already in existence. So when they double the money supply, that new money takes 5 of the suits from your $10,000 and puts it into the newly printed money. So in your bank account, you still have $10,000, but instead of storing 10 suits, it's only storing 5. So now your $10,000 will only buy half as much as it would have before the central bank doubled the money supply. So that's the difference between money and capital.

So Paul, because we have a lot of business owners in the audience with us, the analogy that comes to mind when you give us this example is like a company getting diluted by issuing new stock. Would you agree that that's a fair assessment of what's happening with the money supply?

It's a good analogy.

Yep.

Yeah.

So if I own 10% of a business and then they come in and issue a whole bunch of new stock, well, maybe my 1,000 shares, I still have 1,000 shares, but now they're only worth 5% of the company because it doubled the total outstanding amount of stock. And that's happening without our permission, right? So my 10 suits are now only worth 5 suits, and I could do nothing about it.

No, exactly. You know, the, the only thing you can do about it and this is what they like, is you go out and you spend your money right away.

Yeah.

Before the central bank gets the chance to double the money supply. And you get extreme cases like in the hyperinflation in Germany in 1923, that the money supply was increasing so quickly and inflation was so high that people would be paid, I think, 3 times a day. Not weekly or monthly, 3 times a day. And as soon as they would get paid, they would give the money to someone in their family. That family member would run out and spend the money as quickly as they could, because if they waited even a few hours, it would be worth half as much or even worthless. Now, that's an extreme case. I don't think we're going there, but, but it helps.

Yeah. And on the opposite end of the spectrum, you talk about the Roman silver coin called the denarius.

Oh yeah.

And for 452 years, you know, it did lose value over time, but pretty slowly. I think it was, what, like 0.2% a year or something like that? I don't have it in front of me. Um, versus what's happening today in the economy.

Yeah, no, it's, um, you know, part of the problem now— there are a lot of benefits to government from inflation, which is why they keep telling you that inflation, a little bit of inflation, is a good thing.

What are some of the benefits?

For them is that it, um, it, uh, it makes the debt obligations, um, a little bit more affordable. So it lowers the value of the debt that they're taking on. Um, that's probably the main benefit that they get. I don't know, maybe not. Um, the other one is that they get their hands on newly printed money. Um, and, um, you know, so if you look at quantitative easing, for instance, you know, the central bank after the crisis and after COVID But, you know, they printed trillions of dollars or created trillions of dollars, uh, out of thin air and bought government bonds. And, uh, indirectly, um, and then the government gets their hands on all this money and then they go out and spend it. And it's, uh, you know, it's good for, uh, for buying votes, you know, or keeps your electorate happy. Uh, you don't have to cut benefits and stuff like this, or you can give more benefits. And it encourages society to live beyond its means. And that's, you know, one of the issues. Nobody likes hearing someone like me saying that we're living beyond our means. They'd much rather hear politicians say, no, we can all afford it. Debts don't matter. Deficits don't matter. They do matter. And the consequences are always going to be there. You can put them off, and you can push them off onto another part of society, which is what we're doing. But the consequences—

Can you explain that? Yeah. Can you explain that a little bit?

Yeah, sure. I'll give you a specific example, which I talk about in the book. So in 1983, the president of France was François Mitterrand. He reduced the retirement age from 65 to 60. And, you know, if I had a say in the matter at the time, I would have said, no, this is not a good idea. Well, guess who's going to be popular and guess who's going to be not popular? I'm going to be not only not popular, I'm going to be deemed like a real jerk. Oh, you don't want people to retire earlier? Well, of course I do. As long as it doesn't come at somebody else's expense, right? So, uh, yeah, he looked like a political genius and an economic genius because he lowered the retirement age and nothing bad happened to the economy. But of course, the consequences are 15, 20, 25 years in the future where the next generation has to now pick up the tab for all those people who were retiring early and taking out of the system more than they were putting in. All right. And again, nothing bad about those people. They didn't think they were doing anything wrong. Why would they? Right? But it's, again, it's a lack of understanding about, you know, if you are benefiting, if you seem to be benefiting more than you're putting in, you know, human nature being what it is, we tend to put it down to our own brilliance or, yeah, maybe I do deserve that, you know. And, and the classic example is today is housing. And this is a big one. And, and it's a whole generation is being priced out of the housing market. It's really bad here in Canada and Australia, and it's getting quite bad in the US. And again, these were these good intentions gone awry where central banks at least thought that driving housing prices higher was good for the economy. And, you know, the reason for this is, as you remember, the housing boom back in the 2000s. Housing prices are going through the roof due to ultra-low interest rates. And people would then extract equity from their home and go and spend it, buy a new TV, buy an SUV, do an extension on their home. This is good for GDP. People are spending more money. And so policymakers like that. And Alan Greenspan used to, you know, look at each quarter how much homeowners were extracting from their homes for consumption. And You know, it was so reckless and irresponsible, in my opinion. You know, back in the day, the goal used to be to pay off your mortgage as quickly as you could, because then you pay much less interest expense at the bank over the life of the mortgage. And then you would have a mortgage burning party and all this kind of stuff. And, uh, well, policymakers decided, well, uh, we're going to try and get people to not pay down their mortgage and instead extract equity from their home and spend it. So in effect, what they were doing, they were— people were consuming their homes. And so, um, but they had to keep interest rates extremely low to keep housing prices growing higher and higher. But when you keep interest rates below what's the natural rate of interest— we can talk about that if you want— it's harmful to the economy. It results in lower productivity growth. It results in higher debt. And so policymakers, essentially, they sacrificed the economy or economic productivity and fairness on the altar of asset prices. And there's nothing wrong with asset prices growing like stocks or stock markets when they are a result of companies putting capital to productive use and creating more capital and getting more customers because they want to buy their products, which then allows those companies to hire even more employees and pay them better. And everybody is creating and benefiting from more capital profitability of the companies grow, and that pushes stock prices higher, and the stock markets grow. That's a really good wealth effect, right? That's the way it's supposed to be. And that's capitalism, right? Capitalism— you're only supposed to benefit if you have created capital that somebody else wanted to exchange with you through the medium of exchange called money. But if your house goes up in price What was your contribution to society? How much capital did you create with your house doubling in price? Zero. You didn't create any capital at all. Our house here in, in a suburb of Toronto, uh, is up 4 times, uh, from, from where we bought it in 2001, but we didn't make 4 times that contribution to society. There's no capital that we created to justify us getting 4 times on our home. It hasn't— it's the same economic good as it was back in '01. It hasn't expanded 4 times in size. It's not a productive asset. It's not producing 4 times as many cars or anything like this. So we only make 4 times because a younger couple or a newcomer to the country has to pay 4 times what we paid for the same good because— and it's a result of explicit central bank policy to drive housing prices higher. And so when you look down on society, or from a societal perspective, there's no creation of capital. There's simply a redistribution of capital from the next generation's bank account into our bank account. A redistribution of wealth, us benefiting at their expense.

That was extremely clear and well communicated and scary. You know, and it, and it makes total sense to me having read the book, but I think it'll make total sense to anybody in the audience that just listened to your explanation. And by the way, I'm in— I'm 31 years old. I'm of that generation that is being priced out of the housing market myself. And a lot— I mean, I own a home, thank God. And but a lot of my friends— and I have 3 younger brothers that are all slightly younger than I am in age— and although they're homeowners, like a lot of their friends, it's just, it's tough. People are renting longer, therefore There's a larger amount of time, there's opportunity cost every month that you spend on rent instead of investing into your own asset that, you know, to your point, is growing faster than it should be because it's not actually producing anything. And yeah, it's tough. And then you look on social media and everybody is constantly consuming content that makes them feel poor because they see the fraction of 1% of people their age The celebrities with the houses and the cars and consuming a lot. And it's just, it's, it's not only a tough situation financially for that generation that's being priced out of the housing market, but it's also tough for them mentally and emotionally, and they're more distracted. And it's a tough, tough time. I think to get ahead, and to your point, the way to get ahead is to become well-informed and to study and understand and then collectively use the voice to rise up and demand change, right? I mean, that's the— it's tough. A lot of people will have to sacrifice, to your point, but there is a positive outcome if your plan goes to, uh, if your plan follows through here.

Well, yeah, and You know, and the cost will fall more on my generation.

Yeah.

So explain to everybody what you mean by that.

Yeah. So our generation has the most to lose in terms of housing wealth and stock market wealth. Stocks are, you know, quite expensive. By historical standards because they have been supported by central banks for so many years, again distorting interest rates down below the natural rate of interest in order to drive asset prices higher, which harms the economy. Um, so stock markets would— if you had unhampered markets, interest rates not distorted by central banks but determined by market players with skin in the game, then you would have a much fairer valuation in stock markets. You'd have much better capital allocation. The price discovery mechanism of capital markets would be able— allowed to function more efficiently. Which would be very good for the economy, but it means the stock prices are probably coming down. It also means that housing prices are probably coming down because a lot of people are holding on to the high home prices, assuming that today's mortgage rates are high. They're not. Today's mortgage rates are actually a little bit lower than the 75-year average in the US in terms of 30-year fixed-rate mortgages. But we have become accustomed to ultra-low interest rates and mortgage rates because of this central bank policy of driving interest rates down to zero to drive asset prices higher. And So yeah, so with interest rates, once people, I think, believe that the central banks are not going to be there to bail them out, um, to drive stock market— continuously drive stock markets higher, to ensure house prices keep rising, then people will, um, then sort of a price discovery mechanism will happen in housing as well. And unfortunately, house prices will come down. And, you know, I've just got a chart here. Let's see if I can find it. There was somebody who put this chart together. It was looking at the ratio of average home price to average disposable income. And in Canada, for years, we were between 6 and 8 times. We're at 12 times now. So, you know, if we've got to go back to normal, that's quite a drop in terms of house price. Now—

Either that or everybody starts getting paid more.

Yeah, well, yeah, but it would be quite an increase.

It would be, yeah, like a 50% increase to get back to normal.

Yeah, exactly. So, Now, like, people like me, you know, we've made so much on our homes, I can afford a 50. In fact, I would like my home price to go back to where it was when we bought it, um, at least in inflation-adjusted terms. And, um, but not everybody can afford that. And one of the reasons is because policymakers have conditioned people to expect to make so much money on their home that they either saved less or not at all.

Yeah, yeah.

So they don't have any savings. And this is really bad for the economy because what drives an economy forward is not spending, it's saving and investment. And because people became reliant on their homes for their retirement, they saved less. So in society, there was less money being saved and invested. than there otherwise would have been. So there are more and more consequences to this. Now, for people such as yourself and younger people, you know, I mean, I don't know when you bought your home, but you probably don't have as much equity in your home as I do, simply because—

You're right about that.

You know, you haven't owned your home as long.

Yeah, I'll share, I'll share something interesting. I just— sorry, go ahead, make your point on that.

No, I'm just saying, so, you know, for younger people and particularly first home— first-time home buyers, that, you know, if there is— if we decide to abandon the old ways and, and take this new path forward, which I think would be a lot fairer, you know, for those particularly younger people who are really hurt by it, I think that the government in those cases should step in to help people out. Not people like me, right? We don't need it. But so it's not just about, well, let's just make sure house prices crash and blah, blah, blah. And no, there's, you know, going to be real consequences for— it's going to be harmful for some people. And we have to do our best to make sure that we can help those people out. Um, but I don't see any other way around it. Like, perpetuating the current system is only going to make things worse and make people increasingly angry. And you said earlier, you're on social media, you see rich people doing this, doing that, I can't get ahead. And I think it's all— this is the reason. Um, and but because people don't understand what's happening, then it's very easy just to— for Democrats to blame Republicans and Republicans to blame Democrats. And up here it's conservatives and liberals. So y'all blame them, and our leaders are more than willing to, you know, confirm that, that it's all their fault. It's not. It's not about politics. It's about central bank policy.

Yeah.

Yeah. I was thinking while you were talking about the home, you know, my wife and I have owned this for just under 3 years, and we were looking at the estimate for what it's worth. There's been a lot of building in our area recently and a couple of other big advancements in the town we live in. We looked and the estimate was up like 30% or something.

Wow.

It's been less than 3 years. That's ridiculous. But, but we— and my perspective has changed now a little bit. I would say a lot of it after reading your book, because, you know, we're taught and I think conditioned in the United States specifically to view ourselves as individuals. And oh, great, look at what I just accomplished. I didn't do anything. For that increase in value, and now I'm starting to think about okay. Let's say that we sell the house just for the sake of conversation. Like somebody else is now paying thirty percent more than they would have three years ago. That's ridiculous. Yeah, Paul. Great conversation today. We've got to wrap up. We're over our time. We'll probably have you on for another conversation at some point because there's so much more to unpack. But I'd like to compliment you. You are incredibly articulate. You're clear. Your metaphors and analogies are very easy to understand. The book is great. You have a very clear way of writing and communicating as well. And like you said, it's not that you're dumbing down the information, but you're taking time to refine it so that it can be easily understood. And there's a lot of value in, in, in doing that. So it feels like it took 6 years to write because it's so, it's so well said. And, uh, just thank you for the conversation today. For those in the audience that would like to subscribe to your blog or get a copy of the book, where should they go? What should they do?

Yeah, well, thanks. Thank you, Nick, for having me. It's been a great conversation. Um, yeah, so I have a website called paddingtoncapitalmgmt. MGMT is short for management. So paddingtoncapitalmgmt.com. And on there, I've got my blog. which anybody can read. And I've got some media stuff and I've got links to purchase the book. So the book can be bought on Amazon or Barnes& Noble in the US. In the UK, I think it's WHSmith and Amazon as well. And yeah, so there's all kinds of information on my website.

Okay, good. Yeah, we'll get that in the show notes below. Final question for you. Yeah, if Capital Offense was deleted, right, gone, blog gone, but you could leave the world with just one simple message from the book, what do you think that would be?

Well, my, uh, my sign-off on my blog is, be free and do no harm. And I think if more people followed that, really tried to ensure that they were not doing harm to others, even inadvertently, and just being free and doing the things that you love, I think the world would be a much better place.

Me too. Be free, do no harm.

That's it.

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