Chris Martenson: 15% Inflation Is Coming Back
Transcript — TFTC
Article: https://www.tftc.io/chris-martenson-15-percent-inflation-coming-back
Transcript page: https://www.tftc.io/chris-martenson-15-percent-inflation-coming-back-transcript
Published: 2026-08-05
Machine transcription, lightly cleaned; may contain errors.
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[0:00] Marty Bent: Chris Morinson, welcome, welcome to the show, sir. I'm very very excited for this conversation, been a fan for years.

[0:07] Chris Martenson: Thank you. And thank you for developing the show and inviting me on. I'm I'm thrilled to be here.

[0:12] Marty Bent: Like I was saying, I I it the my audience, myself, we have to give you a a massive thank you for hosting our crazy Uncle Dave's year in review for many years now. And it's it's one of my favorite times of the year is when Dave finally gets around to publishing his year in review and then having a conversation with him.

[0:30] Chris Martenson: Yeah. Yeah. It's always always a little bit of a mad how can you hear that? Unfortunately. The dog. Okay. yeah. It's such a fun thing with Dave because somewhere around November he says, I'm not doing it. And then somewhere around mid early December he's like, Okay, I'm doing it. And then the stuff flies in like last minute, hundreds of pages, and he's very, very meticulous. Like everything has to be referenced, footnoted, you know, everything. And it's always a mad scramble, but what a

[0:37] Marty Bent: It's fine. Yeah.

[0:59] Chris Martenson: What a joy to host that thing. It's one of my favorite I I just love reading it every year.

[1:04] Marty Bent: I do as well. It's take a day or two over Christmas break if he gets it out by then and and dive in. But we're we're here to speak with you, Chris. And I think it's a good time to speak with you considering everything that's going on in the Straight of Hermuz, I guess flip flopping, tacoing, ceasefire on, ceasefire off. what is going on? You wrote a piece, I believe, almost a month ago in May.

[1:12] Chris Martenson: Yeah.

[1:34] Marty Bent: Calling for oil above two hundred dollars, possibly much higher. are we on trajectory to hit that still, do you think? W how are you viewing everything that's going on in the Middle East right now?

[1:47] Chris Martenson: Well y y you have to take one of two positions here, right? One is this is just rank and competence, right? And you get these terrible outcomes. And the other is that this is part of a suite of things that that are being done to intentionally damage the United States. and I I'm leaning kind of eighty percent towards this is intentional because you know, if you flip a coin fifty times, it comes up heads every time. Gotta start thinking maybe it's not a fair coin, you know. so what's been happening is, you know, what we saw early on, like the straight of Hormuz gets closed.

[4:13] Chris Martenson: All this activity reassembled and brought it back up again. And so I I observed, okay, price setting is a thing, and obviously there's no regulatory oversight that's interested at the CFTC, SEC, and and you know, curbing that behavior. And I I think the the explanation for that's easy because when that behavior is reinforcing the official narrative, it it's it's it's okay. You know, that that's just part of the game. So I watched oil suddenly just start getting the same treatment really heavily, actually starting in Trump's first year in office, right? It just coasted down from about 75 all the way down into the high 50s, almost, almost ruler straight, Marty.

[6:38] Chris Martenson: Who gets it, who doesn't, and that's just a hot mess every time it's tried.

[6:42] Marty Bent: And you can't even get the tank bottom, right? 'Cause I think we learned this during the Biden administration, that due to the physics of these petroleum reserves, you need to have a certain amount of of oil in the salt caverns or else they become defunct.

[6:57] Chris Martenson: Yeah, for the SPR, it's there's a bunch of different salt caverns out there and ha ha well some of them, probably two thirds, are holding this medium sour grade, which is actually the stuff everybody wants. And the other one third is this late sweet, and nobody's really buying that. there's tons of that floating around. refineries don't need that. So actually we're what I'm tracking mostly is just the medium sour caverns and I I'm guessing I'm guessing they have about half left. of of their current balance. So at current rates, I would give that another 80 to 100 days. And then that's out. Right. And and for people listening who don't know what that means, the salt cavern is actually a physical hole in the ground.

[8:22] Marty Bent: And I mean bringing this back to like futures market, because I actually think it was on your site earlier this week and you were you were talking about overnight markets, particularly with silver. And if you're trading overnight, that's where you're gonna experience most of the gains versus during the day. So to your point of potential price manipulation while markets are open, and sort of tying that concept to oil markets. I I think you had Scott Besent and others in the administration come out. couple of months ago and say that they would do everything in their capacity to leverage futures markets to keep oil within a certain range. And do you think they're doing that?

[9:01] Chris Martenson: Yeah. I I was looking down because I I wanna I wanna build on that point because that to me this is just the most astonishing thing. Sort of sort of how did I come by my there's there's there's an invisible hand operating at night thesis. I come by it honestly. so this is a chart showing that if you had held silver from nineteen seventy, just during US open trading hours, right? Just during those few hours that were open, silver is apparently worth thirty four cents an ounce. If conversely you just held it from the moment New York markets closed, overnight, the rest of the world is doing whatever it does with silver, and then sold right before the open, silver would have been worth three hundred and ninety-six dollars an ounce.

[11:21] Marty Bent: Some manufactured volatility to scare people away from holding.

[11:24] Chris Martenson: Yeah. And by the way, volatility in in their is code speak for sudden downward price spikes. Right, volatility is never upward pr you the VIX doesn't measure upward volatility, it only measures downward volatility. Yeah.

[11:38] Marty Bent: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, and I mean, and that now I'm having flashbacks to last year when silver and gold were running. You had the Thanksgiving, the day after Thanksgiving sort of comacs glitch where it seemed like if you had your tinfoil hat on that they were just hitting the circuit breakers. And I think the theory was that JP Morgan was trying to get on the right side of that trade. They were nut short silver and they were gonna get called out on their BS and I mean we ended the year with fireworks and precious metal markets, and it's that seems to have quelled for the first half of this year. you think they're trying to suppress it after after it was running?

[12:19] Chris Martenson: Yes. Yeah, yeah. They they are. And there's something else weird running here that I don't understand. because as of this morning I just checked again, China, Shanghai silver markets running about nine bucks hotter per ounce than the US market. It's been persistent for probably six months. That shouldn't exist. Like if if I had the capability, if I was a big enough player, I could just sidle to ComX, you know, take a million ounces out, put it on a plane. And make nine million bucks, right? Minus some trading fees and import costs and things like that. But still, it's free money. Arbitrage like that doesn't exist in an actual free market. So something else is operating here that I don't quite understand.

[12:59] Marty Bent: Yeah, I'm just looking at silver and gold now. Silver's at seventy five, down from one twenty, and gold at forty five hundred, obviously down from around like fifty four hundred. And it feels like they're consolidating. And that I mean, that's the big question with everything going on in the Middle East. I mean, bringing this back to Hermuz, I'm sure you saw it. Not only are people worried about whether or not the ceasefire actually happens and we get some sort of deal, a MOU, whatever it may be, but I think and I don't know. the extent of the validity of these claims, but now people are talking about this barnacle barnacle apocalypse that could that could actually basically severely perturb the the the ability for ships to move through through the strait because barnacles are just building up on on the propellers and you could have this sort of negative externality of sitting sitting in the strait for months that even if there is a a a peace agreement that that you can't move the oil through the street because the ships can't move because of the barnacle buildup.

[14:27] Chris Martenson: Yeah, and it's I mean it's truly a bizarre time, right? Because I've lived through multiple periods where, you know, 2008 oil went to hundred and fifty dollars a barrel, hundred and forty eight, right, in July of eight. And it did so because there was this persistent mil one million barrel per day shortfall back then. and and that terrified everybody, right? That that took about a year to really develop, but you know, it just that little that little bit. So oil is a highly inelastic commodity, meaning Tiny, tiny move on one end in supplier demand can actually have outsized impacts on price. And it always has.

[16:25] Chris Martenson: I think that everybody who's a professional beach ball holder cut their teeth on all these things like I don't know, the dot-bomb crisis, the great financial crisis, you know, long-term capital management. These are all like human contrived issues. And you can paper over them if you need if need be. And I think they think they can do that. Oil's different, right? Oil's a molecule. Energy is the master resource. You can't just paper this over. It's just, it's not possible. So I think we're getting set up for the biggest of all possible rug pulls. sudden re emergence of that beach ball and then we're gonna be facing actual rates of inflation that are gonna be I think really terrifying, both for the market masters who are the beach ball holder downers, but all also for the rest of us. It this could be a darker repeat of that double hump inflation of the seventies to nineteen eighty era.

[17:16] Marty Bent: No, I d I I forget who surfaced the chart, but that that echo inflation of the seventies resurfaced a couple of weeks ago and we're tracking pretty tightly to it, right now with the latest inflation prints. And that's the other thing, like CPI's notoriously under reporting actual real inflation and when you get into the knock on effects of the supply chain disruption. I mean, I had somebody who runs a fertilizer business on last week and he's saying that John Deere, which will typically extend financing to farmers in the US is is not because they're they're looking at fertilizer prices, looking at corn prices and saying corn prices aren't high enough, f fertilizer prices are too high.

[18:29] Chris Martenson: Well, this is this is such an important point because again, now corn, its price is also set in the futures market. And again, I believe that all the big giants, you know, conspire to keep the price of corn down because it it serves their interests, right? And and so the producers just get hammered all the time. I kind of hope that we get a producer rebellion, you know. What if all the silver miners got together and said, sorry, you know, quit your or or or only make direct deals, you know, with Chinese solar manufacturers or something like that. But corn today is trading at exactly the same price it did in 2008.

[19:43] Marty Bent: Mm-hmm.

[19:56] Chris Martenson: Who knew that we need farmers in business, not out of business, you know?

[20:02] Marty Bent: Yeah, I mean, and then in parallel to all this, you have the massive reindustrialization campaign, obviously the AI data center build out, and I think more and more people becoming quite aware that the the energy infrastructure, particularly the gridded infrastructure in this country, is not as robust as it may need to be if you're going to supply all that demand from from the hyperscaler build out. And it's It's very confounding to me. 'Cause as somebody like I use the AI tools and I love them. I I think they're extremely powerful. They've helped our business out. but there is like this this sort of existential fervor behind the AI race, that that we're speeding towards it and particularly on the infrastructure side, and it seems like that industry is getting priority over all others, at a time where attention may need to be elsewhere or may need to be divided evenly elsewhere, particularly when it comes to food and energy prices, like things we cannot neglect.

[21:07] Chris Martenson: Yeah. Yeah.

[21:17] Marty Bent: AI tools are incredibly productive or create efficiency gains for individuals and companies. Like it's all for naught if you don't have the energy base there to actually support the the growth that'll be necessary to make it more widespread.

[21:31] Chris Martenson: Yeah. Th there's a whole larger story to unpack around all that. And I'm I'm one of those people who tends to really so let's just take natural gas. This is how we're funding all of the energy requirements of the AI centers, right? So we're not building nuclear at this point, we're not really recommissioning coal fired plants, so it's gas, right? And that's great because you can drill wells and and it's fairly dispatchable kind of energy. But I'm sitting on the back end of this going, Well, wait a minute. Outside of the Permian Basin, every single other source of natural gas, out of the Bakken Basin, out of the Woodford, the Haynesville, the Marcellus, offshore, everywhere, they're all in decline.

[22:35] Marty Bent: Yeah.

[22:58] Chris Martenson: create the electricity and then to cool the the resulting heat. It's massive. Okay. And that's what we do with it. And so now there's this second order effect, which you hinted at. I'm gonna just call it out because it's important. We're gonna be spending trillions on this build out. Fine. Maybe it's really super productive. It's the other side of the coin. Well that's capital that's not going to something else, right? By definition. That capital went for that purpose, not for new high speed rails, not for reshoring manufacturing. You know, not for anything else. It went to that. And I don't know about you, but when I drive around my country, I I see that we have we have some self-investment that's been a little bit neglected for a while, you know.

[24:38] Marty Bent: I mean the theory that the theory that we get in public is that it's a national security issue and we need to beat China to the punch of getting to AGI. I'm skeptical of AGI in and of itself. Like I think these things are calculators. I'm not one of those guys who's like we're gonna get to the singularity and we're gonna have some transhumanist utopia that we all live in. I think that's actually very dystopian. I think they're just very good at predicting the next word probabilistically and can you can help you get a lot of work done. But I think when it's being positioned as we need to beat China to the punch of of basically having control of the most powerful artificial intelligence systems.

[27:04] Marty Bent: how easy it is to get to host them locally. I do have hope that we can leverage this technology in a way that individuals actually control the ultimate the the ultimate way in which w we leverage these tools and not the the hyperscalers and the governments.

[27:21] Chris Martenson: Mm-hmm. Yeah. We'll we're currently taking twenty years of my content and cramming it into an L L you know. And you know, and and then I think, well I'll finally have the search tool I've always wanted for my own content. You know. Should be great.

[27:28] Marty Bent: Okay. Yeah. I mean we've done that here. So then our we have an agent running and it's got every newsletter, every podcast we've ever recorded and we can quick search like, Hey, what do we like we're talking about energy and AI today. When have we talked about that over the last eight years and what have we said and within a minute it has everything?

[27:55] Chris Martenson: I'm jealous. I'm I'm still waiting. We're we're gonna get our soon, I hope. But yeah. So that that's a good use. And and I think for for most people, you know, maybe super advanced uses is different, but Deep Seek is pretty robust model, right? Quinn works pretty good. Like they they're they're pretty darn good, you know, I think for average people and using them for average productivity, you know, tools. I I there must be something they have behind the scenes that that they've seen has scared them. You know, it's a it's an idea I've had that they have different models that we haven't seen. And so they're like, they can see where this is going. Like we we're gonna need data centers so fast that, you know, nobody need like like they're just overwhelming communities with these things right now. And there's I've never seen a build out like this. Th this feels like a very public Manhattan project at this point.

[28:47] Marty Bent: it certainly is. And I mean, so I've been in the Bitcoin mining industry for almost a decade. So I saw that build out when China banned Bitcoin mining in twenty one. Obviously a lot of that migrated here to the United States. And I had an up close and personal sort of experience and view of of that build out. And I thought that was pretty awe inspiring at the time when we were spinning up a hundred megawatt. facilities, then 250, then 500, and then Riot announced their their gigawatt facility in Texas. It was like, my gosh, like this is insane. Because when you think about it, the the the largest data centers in the US weren't larger than like 25 megawatts a decade ago.

[30:37] Chris Martenson: And you know who's on it? China. Right. So in the last 10 years, they've installed as much electricity generation, actual generation, not nameplate capacity, but actual electrons flowing out the pipes. as as in 10 years as we have currently have, right? Like they just doubled. And so I think AI is fundamentally a story of energy. I think all of economy is fundamentally a story of energy. China's clearly dialed into that. They wrote this big, beautiful. It was like two years ago, they released it a a five-point strategic plan for how they're going to build out their energy infrastructure. And I almost cried because I'm like, that's what one looks like.

[32:37] Marty Bent: Well, if we were to make one, if we don't have one, what would your plan be?

[32:42] Chris Martenson: first off, I would just absolutely can all these L and G terminals. It makes zero thermodynamic sense to take a gas out of the ground, turn it back into a liquid, so that costs you X percent of the native energy in that, just doing that one process, right? And then you lose X percent motoring it somewhere else in the world. Also you can what sell it for currency units? Dude, we make those out of thin air. Like, why? I don't understand that. So nope. All of our all of our natural gas becomes just For Americans and future Americans too. We rip it out of the ground, we rip oil out of the ground so fast that we still have to flare the gas into the air.

[35:09] Chris Martenson: ourselves, right? So we're critically short on I think 20 critical elements according to the USGS that like 100% dependent, like for almost 100% dependent for rare earths, titanium, all kinds of stuff. So part of that energy strategy is how do we how do we rebuild all of these components that we've we've built out here at this magic future point? Okay. That's what a an honest to God strategy would look like. We're slamming in L and G terminals so fast right now, as if that's the highest best use, that we're gonna double our LNG exports probably by twenty thirty three, from seventeen to about thirty-four, thirty-five billion cubic feet per day. And we currently only produce about a hundred and eight billion cubic feet per day. So the question is, where's all that coming from? And nobody can answer that right now. It's just gonna arise because it always does. it's a mystery.

[36:05] Marty Bent: What's the justification for that? Just the geopolitical aspect of creating dependent trade partners. And so that's just the cost of this strategy is yes, we it may be better used here on US soil, but we need some geopolitical leverage via these these energy trades.

[36:25] Chris Martenson: Well, I'm I'm a little mystified because, you know, a big part of that is sending it over to Europe, right? Last I checked Europeans don't even like us all that much, you know? So not really clear what the geopolitical strategy there is. and and you know, I could I could understand shipping it to Asia, to Japan, you know, Singapore, maybe China. I could understand that. But it it's not a it's not a we don't have that plan though that says

[36:34] Marty Bent: Huh.

[36:54] Chris Martenson: How much of this stuff do we have left and what does it look like when it when it when it you know in the future? Like what are we using it for? and if we really want to like like you know re if we want to compete at all with China. com, right? It's their, you know, Amazon, and just buy something you're familiar with, right? So, you know, I just buy like tools and building supplies and things like that. And Marty, I don't even know I couldn't even source the raw materials for the price of this thing that's been manufactured halfway around the world and shipped to me at a profit.

[38:11] Marty Bent: Holy shit.

[38:13] Chris Martenson: How does that so anyway? So you so you look at that, and and then I then I heard about the BYD plant where they're like, okay, we're gonna start manufacturing cars. They found a facility which was 50 square miles, you know. So yeah, that's that was the quoted thing. Seven sip so seven miles on a side gets you to 49. So just think of like a seven mile by seven mile block. And the point is like raw materials come in one end of this thing, and cars come out the other end of this thing. So their entire supply chain is seven miles long.

[38:23] Marty Bent: It's like the size of San Francisco, right?

[38:43] Chris Martenson: And internally consistent. Ours, because of NAFTA and geopolitical considerations, I think the transmissions are made in Windsor, Canada, but the truck bodies are made in Mexico and they're assembled in Detroit or whatever. We have like multi thousand mile long supply chains. We can't compete with them. So you know what the answer to that is? Yeah, we've just blocked import of BYD cars. Cause it's unfair.

[39:06] Marty Bent: Well that I mean that's a big question. I think everybody a lot of people that talk about we have people who will point out what's happening in China on the show and then I'll read some of the comments and people will quote tweet and say, Why are you having these China shills on? They're trying to sow discontent among the American populace and it's propaganda that's coming in here to to push the the communist talking points. But objectively, I I mean looking at

[39:26] Chris Martenson: Mm.

[39:36] Marty Bent: the the energy generation and the BYD plant and all these other things. Like it's like, hey, there's stuff is happening there and God, I've seen what you've done for others. I'd love that for myself. Like, how do we like there's a chasm like in my mind, who knows, maybe I'm incredibly naive idealist. It's like, why can't we both go after that stuff and sort of work cooperatively together, which brings up the the trip to China, which I thought was interesting last month, That signaled to me that the Trump administration, ever everybody more the mainstream media was saying, Look how strong we're we've got all our CEOs and our complete cabinet over there strong and strong strong force within China.

[40:57] Chris Martenson: No, I I agree and I I often get people sort of yelling at me about China, like you they just copy stuff, which is such a nineteen eighties talking point. You know, I I'm usually talking to somebody older than myself when you get that sort of refrain, 'cause I'm like, well, who did they co copy the circulating quantum satellite from? 'Cause we don't have one of those. Nobody does. Who did they copy like their manufacturing process efficiencies from? Because I saw this this other instructive video and it could be Chinese propaganda, but it looked kind of real. Where they showed a plant that was making missiles.

[43:13] Marty Bent: Mm-hmm. Yeah, we need the chips too. Can you send those? No, then you you factor in, you layer in the fact that it we are I think fully in the age of asymmetric drone warfare. And I'm sure you've seen the videos of the the drone light shows in China over the years. That's always been a a sort of light handed militar military flex in my mind. It's like, hey, we have all these drones over here. it'd be a shame if we use them in other capacities.

[43:39] Chris Martenson: Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep. And a twenty three year old kid's running off a laptop, all ten thousand of Yeah.

[43:49] Marty Bent: Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's are you are you hopeful that sanity will prevail or do you i here in the US? And cause it ca I mean I guess we can bring this back to like precious metals and monetary matters too. I think if inflation rips again, if you're looking at the dirty year tenure yield here in the United States, I mean that's I mean this is a Bitcoin podcast, and a lot of what we've discussed over the last nine years of running the show is hey looking at the national debt, looking at entitlements, looking at the trajectory and it's becoming clear that we are on this runaway debt train, driven by fiscal insanity that doesn't seem like it'll ever get fixed and What does that mean moving forward with I think post twenty twenty-two, I think that was like the massive inflection point with the the freezing of the treasury assets of Russia.

[45:13] Chris Martenson: That's it it it doesn't. I mean, listen, it it's got a lot of inertia, it's gonna take time to play out, but we're already seeing it play out. I was asked in an interview yesterday, somebody said, Well, you know, the dollar isn't doing that bad. I'm like, Well, that's because you look at the USD index and you're comparing it to other fiat currencies. but let's compare the dollar to gold. it's lost half its value in about four years. you know, and so on. And and so that's really gonna be the ultimate arbiter here is what is the dollar against gold? real things. And that's what's about to get exposed because of the closing of the straighter from Moose, which Marty, you know this, but everybody needs to keep this in mind because every day it's like, oil, oil, oil.

[47:39] Chris Martenson: 10, 20, 30s, all like heading upwards in yield. So that's that's pretty much baked in the cake at this point. My personal prediction is that we're gonna sort of get to tank bottoms and then oil's going to go to whatever it's gonna go to, much, much higher numbers. We're gonna call that inflation. And it's a little bit driven by the fact that we have tons of money circulating the system, explosive M2 growth worldwide, tons of margin debt, tons of bank lending, mostly for these AI centers. So there's Cash everywhere. That is going to provide some some inflationary pressure, but it's really it's going to be a supply shock too.

[48:33] Marty Bent: Yeah, that's the one I was using.

[48:35] Chris Martenson: Yeah, I first saw the first iteration of this with from Torsten Slock at Apollo. But let's use this one. And for everybody watching, the blue line is the 70s and up into 1980 peak, right? Green seems to just be like almost perfectly echoing. 78%. It's gonna go to six percent on the next couple of readings out, right? At it just probably unless something's broken with the PPI model. and I actually think my model the you know. I think we're gonna see fifteen to twenty percent inflation in about a year and a half to two years if we follow this. And it's gonna be a lot of money, right?

[49:54] Marty Bent: That would Well that that would make at thirty nine trillion. Yeah, that would make the interest expense what, like six six trillion a year. Or not not six, but like five. Four and a half, five a year. It's at what, one seven, one eight right now? It's about to surpass social security.

[50:14] Chris Martenson: Yeah, I think. Yeah. Yep. Thankfully we had Janet Yellen, the gnome genius, the garden gnome genius, putting all of our our treasuries into short duration. So we have these massive eight, nine, ten trillion dollar rolls every year now because we're all on the short end of the curve. As if that would always remain subdued. we should have should have as a nation. When when ten years were at point seven five percent, we should have l just slapped everything we could. gone Argentinian style, Austrian style, made hundred year bonds. I mean, just like pushed like that would have been smart. I again it just keeps coming up heads. Like, was she really that that dumb? You know?

[50:59] Marty Bent: Well, that that's another i sort of confusing thing is 'cause coming into the Trump administration, Scott Ascent and others were saying this was a terrible mistake. She shouldn't have been doing this, to your point. I think Trump explicitly said we should have been issuing ten years bonds when the yield was that low. I think he mentioned a hundred year bond too, maybe even a fifty. And then Besson got in and kept hammering the front end too. There's something structurally behind the scenes, I don't know exactly what that seems To make it so they they feel forced to do this. and obviously as long term yields go up and they're probably gonna favor it the the front end just to avoid locking in higher interest rates on long term debt.

[52:28] Chris Martenson: Mm-hmm.

[52:29] Marty Bent: And it's just laid bare right in front of us. And the public, myself included, makes an uproar like, hey, they're obviously who's overtly stealing our tax dollars. Let's do something about it. And you'll get like headlines in a week of a week of just pandering to to that sentiment and then nothing happens. We'll come out and say, Well, we actually can't fix this because reasons.

[52:55] Chris Martenson: Yeah. Yeah. I I confess I had some optimism in January of twenty twenty five, particularly when Elon rode in with the twenty something crowd and AI'd their way right through the bureaucracy of DC. Just like those all those people had those little like fiefdoms with their like MySQL databases of spending that were all like squirreled away that you could never you know forensically audit and AI just ripped it apart, right? You know, they smashed through USAID. And we were starting to get the data Republicans showing all the connections. And it was just this big sea of craft. I'm like, finally. And then next thing I know, Trump unceremoniously dumps Elon, proves that he will betray even somebody who is highly responsible for being a key supporter, financially and otherwise, in a critical moment to help him get elected, and and just spit him out and said, Nope, we're all done.

[54:03] Marty Bent: Yeah, even after Nick Shirley and yeah, the sort of man on the street investigative journalists highlight billions and billions of dollars worth of fraud in in one state alone and nothing. I mean well that's like if again trying to I try to wear many different lenses and one of the lenses talk to Tom Wongo a lot and he's I think he's big on like, hey, this isn't gonna happen overnight, it's gonna take time.

[54:10] Chris Martenson: One of the things.

[54:31] Marty Bent: Like you brought up USAID, like we got USAID out. that's doesn't seem to have come back. We're not gonna get everything all at once and holding on to hope that like maybe that's the case where it's like hey, we can only do s a little bit at a time, but it is hard to see it right in your face and then I mean th the the Medicaid fraud, the Somali daycare fraud is like that should be cut overnight, like stop feeding the money. Yeah.

[54:58] Chris Martenson: Instant. Instant. Yeah. Instant. I I think something like one in sixth hospice k what is it? In home care specialists works in LA County. Like it's an impossibility, right? You know, for Medicaid, you know. It that seems easy.

[55:17] Marty Bent: And that that one's I I forget who I Dr. Oz went and did that one. And that was like a Russian immigrant fraud. Like we're not we're not racist here. We're not against Somali specifically or whoever it may be. it just seems like there's very clear loopholes are being exploited. And that's the weird thing. You brought the deep state. There is there seems to be some sort of organized effort to make make it the Somalian and Russian immigrants aware, like, hey, these loop balls are here. Here's how you can claim to be a hospice care nurse and and just take millions of dollars from the US government.

[55:53] Chris Martenson: Yeah. Hey, if I could, Marty, I'd love to get your take on this because this is to me the most astonishing thing ever that came out of this was late January, early February twenty twenty five, right before Elon got shit canned. and I'm sure you're familiar with it, but you've heard this, right?

[56:11] Marty Bent: Nonpro.

[56:12] Chris Martenson: This is the th this is the most astonishing thing I've ever heard. So so he's Elon is on a interview on Ted Cruz's show with this other guy, I don't know. listen things you told me about. Okay. Right here. I mean they're not totally wrong, but they're probably off by five percent or ten percent in some cases. so I call a magic money computer any computer which can just make money out of thin air. Best magic money. So how does that work? It just issues payments. And you said there's something like eleven of these computers at Treasury that are that are sending out trillions in in payments?

[57:56] Marty Bent: Yeah. And he left with the black eye too. It's like, remember? Yeah. And

[57:59] Chris Martenson: Did he? did he join the club? no.

[58:06] Marty Bent: Well that's that's like the the cre like think I mean, we're getting the pure Wizard of Oz territory and think about just how fake reality is if they're able to do that. The misallocation of of money via the printing of it ex nihilo towards all these things that are I think against what most American citizens, what humans want at the end of the day. And so like that I I'd really be interested to get your perspective on I I mean deep stake deep state is a very broad topic. It has many meanings for many different people. But I I do think there is something here to this sort of entrenched sort of supra like unelected layer of the federal government that exists and historically has sort of just abused the system and done it through monetary means too.

[59:32] Chris Martenson: Yes, well, very important that we don't audit Fort Knox if if that story is right, you know. Somehow that's too hard. I don't know, counting bars. Well, difficult. well, so two things, right? So remember during the Iraq war, like there were all these pictures, like tankers filled with gold bars and smiling servicemen kind of holding up bars. I'm like, Well, where did it go? Right? Nobody can answer that question. Like, was it returned to the Iraqi treasury? Nobody will say. Like, just went missing. And then

[59:41] Marty Bent: Yeah.

[1:00:01] Chris Martenson: Hop, skip, and a jump. It was just last week we heard about this fake CIA agent. He was real CIA agent, but he had faked his resume. And they found $40 million in gold bars in his in his apartment or house. And and he said, the he had those were for he was paid in gold. Like those were for he's I think he said pay remittances or something. Like basically for hours work. The CIA pays people in gold?

[1:00:27] Marty Bent: You're making forty million dollars at a government job? The Well we talked about Right? Well th we talked about this last week on the weekly show that I do. Like how did how did the CIA not flag that this guy was lying about his military rent? Like, is there no sort of interdepartment information sharing between the the the military and the

[1:00:30] Chris Martenson: There's more to that story. That'll get buried, trust me. Mm-hmm.

[1:00:54] Marty Bent: The CIA. Like I find that hard to believe. Like the fact that the whole story stinks, in many different regards.

[1:00:59] Chris Martenson: somebody he submitted 40 million dollars of time payment stubs like what it's a lot of overtime you know i mean just like no something really stinks in that story but but gold is is central to it you know so so here here's here's my here's my wackadoodle you know hypothesis so i i track positive and negative space stuff so negative space in the story is that in 2003 the Federal Reserve stopped reporting MZM its largest money measure Right, money of zero maturity, because it was not cost effective to track it anymore. Like you guys print money out of thin air. What's cost effective? I'm I'm losing the plot.

[1:03:16] Marty Bent: Yeah. I mean, i i it wa I think it was I for I mean, and it's almost like it's in your face now, 'cause what was it like last year for some reason or another, like the Cayman Islands like was forced to report their treasury holdings and I mean it's not the government to the Cayman Islands holding the second amount of U I think I I forget if it's larger than Japan or just below it, but in the same ballpark as Japan, which is the largest holder of US Treasuries, and obviously these are all sort of came in funds that have exposure to treasuries and many people are believing that's sort of the a lot of that is hedge fund fronts for the CIA to to run slush funds down there.

[1:03:59] Chris Martenson: Well, th this was an astonishing thing to me because I just I just tracked this down the other day. So the the Board of Governors, Federal Reserve System, they have some paper. Paper comes out by Barth, Beltran, Khan, Perozek. Comes out in October of twenty twenty-five. And they said, we're kind of trying to square it up because you know the US tick report out of Treasury says the Cayman Islands have four hundred twenty-seven billion at the end of twenty twenty-five. But when we looked at their nine F their PF forms, it turned out they had one point eight trillion. It's like we missed one point four trillion.

[1:04:56] Marty Bent: Yeah.

[1:04:59] Chris Martenson: implause like you said, it's in your face now that you have to accept these like, we just didn't know. One point four trillion extra.

[1:05:07] Marty Bent: Yeah. And it's like, the Pentagon failed another audit. Can you literally cannot audit what we're doing with all your tax dollars or the money that's just being printed. That's I mean do you I mean you you you mentioned like the the beach ball in regards to people basically calling BS on the fiat system and going towards harder currencies. that's why I got into Bitcoin. that's why I'm passionate about Bitcoin. Like I think they're is not only a sort of pressing need to to transition back to a sound money economy, but I think there's a moral obligation. I think the the ethics of money production by Holzman was very influential on my my my thinking on on just like the morality of of money printing and I I I do think there's an ethical dilemma that the whole world finds itself in now where we're living in immoral monetary systems and getting back to sound money is is an imperative if we want to have a true society.

[1:06:38] Chris Martenson: This is such an important point and it's it's kind of this is the genesis of where I got started. But I got started in all this, you know, way before Bitcoin was around. So I kind of dialed in on on gold or or anything. I didn't even care. Like it could have been sheepskins, just anything that humans couldn't print out of thin air. Because if I if I reach into your bank account and I steal three percent of that, you know, I've stolen. It's it's it's it's that's immoral, right? It's unethical. But that's what the Fed does, right? They print all this money and they steal from everybody who's who's got existing hard work, you know, money's supposed to be that store of value.

[1:08:36] Marty Bent: I completely agree. And now now I'm starting to get not angry. But just thinking about it, like they print I mean it's become a meme. I think shout out to President Naiebo Caitly for coming what was it, the CPAC a couple of years ago or and basically explaining like taxation's a humiliation ritual. 'Cause that's the other that's the other immoral thing is about hey, you guys can print all this money, you are printing all this money, but then you're turning around and slapping thirty to fifty percent tax rates on people.

[1:08:55] Chris Martenson: Yeah. That's what it is.

[1:09:06] Marty Bent: and you're taxing them on the way in, on the way out, every which way possible and you're compounding that immorality of debasement by basically stealing stealing the hard earned wage even more via taxation.

[1:09:27] Chris Martenson: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. No, indeed. and you know, again, early 2025, there were these little glimmers of hope, right? Where Trump actually said magic words to me, which is, you know, maybe we should explore getting rid of property taxes, which to me is the ultimate insult, right? So every so often somebody says, We should tax unrealized gains on stock portfolios and the whole world erupts in fervor, right? Like, my God, worst thing ever. What a terrible idea. And objectively it is a terrible idea. But that's what happens with houses.

[1:09:43] Marty Bent: Mm-hmm.

[1:09:57] Chris Martenson: Right? You know, you get taxed on the unrealized gains. The assessor comes around every so often and says, your house is worth more. You owe more, you know? It's the craziest thing. Why do I owe more on this thing that I have a house? It's a depreciating asset, trust me. You know?

[1:10:12] Marty Bent: Yeah. And I bought it. It should be mine. Why are you why are you taxing me incessantly? And and I mean that and this is another reason for a sound money economy too, I I believe, is I mean, people are using their houses as piggy banks and that is I think part of the reason we're seeing this sort of intergenerational struggle, and resentment from the younger generations towards the older is because they've been a combination of psyopt enforced via the the financial just the natural financial pressures of the system to use their their houses as piggy banks that the people who are coming up are finding it harder to to to buy a house because they don't have the cash to to purchase that piggy bank for lack of a better term.

[1:11:00] Chris Martenson: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, I'm I'm either a very late boomer or an early Xer, depending on who's setting the starting date. ideologically I I align more with with Gen X because, you know, just how I grew up. and and and all of that. But every time I I say, hey, the boomers as a class are leaving behind a much worse world than the one that they were granted, right? Every single time, Marty, I get all these angry boomers. And It's the s it's it's the same argument every time they go, nah, I'm not that way, or nuh, my mom and dad weren't like that. And it's it's like I said, the average height of people in LA is five foot eight, and somebody comes along and goes, nah, I know a guy who's six two.

[1:13:22] Chris Martenson: You either get sort of that violent uprising which can happen, but there's another form of violence too, which would be in China there was this little movement. I don't know how long it is, but people were overworked. And so they called it lying flat, meaning you just you just don't you just don't work anymore. You know, you just check out of the system. So we're seeing people check out of the system, right? You know, the the male participation rate in employment just plunging, right? There's guys who are just like, I'm out. I'm just I'm not doing this. And and when the males, the typical traditional providers and protectors are saying, I don't even want to play the game, right?

[1:14:20] Marty Bent: Yeah. The quiet quitting trend growing. Yeah, I mean you can say, I I'm a I'm smack dab in the middle of the millennial generation. Got a younger sister straddles millennial and Gen Z, and then some cousins that are Gen Z. And it is a I mean, I think it's objectively true that's there's a lot of h hopelessness within the younger generations. That's one thing. I try to do with this platform though. My audience, my demo's a bit older. We do have younger people listening, but not as many as as Gen X and and Boomers, funnily enough, that listen to this show. But anytime I get to talk to to a young person, it is what you just said, it's like opt out, but opt out in the right way.

[1:15:29] Chris Martenson: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

[1:15:42] Marty Bent: on their own. It's like what what's that gonna look like and what can we do to make sure that it is a world of opportunity and relatively safe and and I think that's the big question that many people have right now is what are Gen Z and Gen Alpha gonna do? 'Cause they're gonna be forced to pick up the pieces. and I think not only what are they gonna do, but how quickly are they gonna be able to do it if they figure it out?

[1:16:06] Chris Martenson: They are. Yeah. I mean, it's it's very difficult to have give advice. I mean all my three kids are basically mid struggle with all of this, right? and and just tapping into what what they and all their friends are saying. They're like, Well, what what even is the point? Like, you know, so there's no company loyalty anymore. None of them believe that that social security which dips into their paychecks when they get paychecks, you know, none of that's gonna be there for them. They just they feel totally betrayed and abandoned by the system, right? Which which is not conducive. to things. And so, you know, my my warning to boomers is, do not even remotely assume that when push comes to shove, that you're going to have a lot of sympathy in the younger generations going, wow, well, let's, yeah, that's kind of a shame.

[1:17:45] Marty Bent: Yeah. So what's he talking about like a bail in to fund the infrastructure build up?

[1:17:50] Chris Martenson: No, he's like well, so right now, you know, the the free cash flows of all the AA companies are like negative now because they're just like taking every down ounce of earnings and now they're also starting to issue debt. So who's on the other side of that debt? I think the last figure I saw is 180 billion. That's issued. Somebody's on the backside of that. You know who's on the backside of that? Probably the bond funds, right? Which all these four O and Ks are rolling into as part of a sixty forty strategy. And now they're also starting to issue stock. So they're they're pushing both, you know.

[1:18:53] Marty Bent: Yeah. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see. I mean, th that Larry Fink, I think as somebody who I mean you mentioned flare gas earlier, that's how I got into Bitcoin mining. We we'd would go and take take gas that was being otherwise flared, run it through generator, produce electricity, mine Bitcoin with it. But at that era in twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, my biggest enemy was ESG, which Larry Fink was the the the main spokesperson for and I think that was a massive capital misallocation mishap and narrative mishap. And I think thank God we've we've gotten beyond that that nonsensical sort of view of the world and how corporations should be run and what they sh how they should be allocating capital and and hiring people.

[1:20:43] Chris Martenson: Actual stocks. Yeah. Yeah.

[1:20:58] Marty Bent: the the the money system forces you to weigh the opportunity costs of capital allocation and the market basically figures out like, okay, is this productive? If so, you'll be able to produce it and make a profit and reinvest those profits, expand operations. And the whole point of this ramble is like we can't even make these decisions because the money's completely broken.

[1:21:22] Chris Martenson: I I agree. I agree. It's a huge stumbling block. because it becomes about the money. And so financialization is making money with money, right? And almost every company's out there figured out that it's in a in an expansive monetary environment, it's just easier to make money with money than to do hard things like hire people and train them and manage inventories and take risks and all that stuff. That's terrible. but if you can just make money with money, you know, that's easy. And and you know, I've got these this whole giant set of Books by Will Durant, you know, inarguably the most complete and best historian ever.

[1:23:20] Marty Bent: And zero sum. they make great spreadsheets. Have you have you seen the spreadsheets? They're incredible spreadsheets. You should see the V lookups in those spreadsheets. They're pretty pr pretty miraculous. You talk to some Excel nerds, they'll say, Hey, this is this is actually pretty beautiful and productive what we've built here with this V lookup. Chris, I wanna be respectful of your time. I feel like we can go for hours. and I ha I have it on the calendar for ninety minutes and we're brushing up on that, but

[1:23:34] Chris Martenson: Beautiful. Got conditional formatting. It's amazing. Yeah.

[1:23:57] Marty Bent: This was incredible. Is there any parting thoughts for the audience based off of what we just discussed? Anything we missed? Anything you think people should be aware of before we wrap up here?

[1:24:09] Chris Martenson: Yeah, absolutely. So, first, I can't give specific investment advice ever because I have a registered investment advisory and that service at Peak Financial Investing just helps people get connected with portfolio managers who actually see the world this way. And it's a really important service. But what I wanna just direct people to, however you get there, I think the era of passive investing, which is really dominated, it's over, right? Just just throw money into an ETF, you know. And and just wait and magic happens. I think we're we're entering an age of of severe turbulence here. I think there's supply shocks. I think there's inflation. There's all kinds of things coming along where I think everybody would be well suited to have a very nimble, very targeted focus again.

[1:26:35] Chris Martenson: It already went poof. It's gone. I don't think it's coming back. So it's a whole new era. And that era is all about knowing where real value comes from and how to add to that. And and there. That's the best advice I have for people right now.

[1:26:51] Marty Bent: Great advice. Have will agency. Sound money. You can opt out. Chris, this has been a pleasure. Hopefully we can do this again at some point in the future.

[1:27:00] Chris Martenson: Absolutely. Pleasure's been mine, Marty.

[1:27:03] Marty Bent: Alright, peace and love freaks.