Tom Luongo discusses the Federal Reserve's stance on Bitcoin, Wall Street power plays, and global financial strategies, revealing deep-rooted geopolitical and economic tensions that influence global financial sovereignty.
The discussion with Tom Luongo spanned a range of topics, including Bitcoin's evolving relationship with the Federal Reserve, which now recognizes Bitcoin as a legitimate part of the financial system with potential as a collateralizable asset. The dialogue also covered Wall Street's intricate power dynamics, spotlighting the roles of entities like Blackrock and the ongoing tug-of-war between sovereigntists and globalists—highlighted by the Davos class's influence, with sovereigntists striving to maintain control over financial systems to oppose globalist policies.
Additionally, the episode delved into the monetary policies under Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, focusing on high interest rates and domestic financial management, alongside broader economic impacts like inflation and job trends. Discussions also touched on the international financial interplay between the U.S. and Japan, exploring how Japan's financial strategies could affect global markets and Bitcoin's role within these dynamics. Furthermore, the conversation contemplated Bitcoin's future amidst growing resistance to non-custodial usage and its implications for financial sovereignty
The conversation provided a nuanced understanding of the roles and strategies of key players in the financial system, including central banks, Wall Street institutions, and Jerome Powell. The potential implications for Bitcoin and the future of financial sovereignty were discussed with a sense of urgency and a desire for a balanced approach to navigating the ongoing shifts in power dynamics and monetary policy.
0:00 - Intro
0:14 - Larry Fink
5:41 - Sovereigntists vs Davos
13:24 - Sponsors 1
14:39 - Powell’s domestic concerns
18:02 - Bank of Japan
24:46 - Gold
29:23 - Tether
34:03 - Tom’s hivemind
35:54 - Sponsors 2
37:32 - KYC
43:54 - Yuval Harari clip
48:46 - The cracks are showing
57:55 - Sound money
1:05:53 - Oil
1:14:58 - Throw out the spreadsheet
1:21:05 - Israel parallels with Russia
1:28:50 - Recognizing manipulation
00:00:01:15 - 00:00:04:07
Marty
Yeah. The attack is here.
00:00:04:09 - 00:00:05:13
Tom
Cool.
00:00:05:15 - 00:00:07:24
Marty
You felt this was coming? Instinctually. Instinctually?
00:00:07:27 - 00:00:10:21
Tom
Oh, yeah. So I thought this was coming instinctually.
00:00:10:24 - 00:00:42:02
Tom
The situation with Bitcoin and ETFs and the approval and. And Gary Gensler finally having to relinquish. I felt he was, I think Canute standing against the tide. But the instinctual part here was that I really did. I really do think and I talked with Kate Long about this about a year and a half ago, and she just like, recoiled at horror at the concept that I think the Fed has decided that Bitcoin is part of the financial system and there's a good collateral, sizable asset, but they want to have control of how its collateral, how collateral is, I think so for market.
00:00:42:04 - 00:00:51:07
Tom
And it's just one aspect of of how to ensure that there's a, there's plenty of liquidity within the within the U.S. Treasury space as things.
00:00:51:07 - 00:00:51:17
Tom
Change.
00:00:51:23 - 00:00:52:19
Tom
Because the world is.
00:00:52:19 - 00:00:53:27
Tom
Clearly changing.
00:00:54:00 - 00:00:59:18
Tom
And they need all the they need all the help they can get. And so that's what I think.
00:00:59:21 - 00:01:27:07
Marty
Now and I said this on a few podcasts and wrote a few newsletters about it, but the haste with which the ETFs were approved and pushed through after a decade of really being stonewalled was a signal to me as well. Like, it looks like they're trying to get the chessboard set up to have this compliant Bitcoin ready to go so that they can get Larry Fink in place and in others that can accumulate large.
00:01:27:09 - 00:01:30:29
Tom
It could be, it could be. I guess it's funny about.
00:01:31:01 - 00:01:34:24
Tom
The way this this is ripe.
00:01:34:26 - 00:01:36:21
Tom
It could it could be, as you.
00:01:36:24 - 00:01:43:17
Tom
Just suggested, that it's all about giving Larry Fink access and then they're going to use it to control it and bubble on.
00:01:43:19 - 00:02:00:06
Tom
But it could also be that there are multiple factions out there. Like, I don't know that Fink is running any. I don't think Fink is running anything at this point. I'll be honest with you. I think Fink is running around trying to get back in the game and that Powell has.
00:02:00:06 - 00:02:02:05
Tom
Him by the short and curlies and five and a half.
00:02:02:05 - 00:02:07:11
Tom
Percent and, you know, if he's going to do anything, he's going to do what the Fed.
00:02:07:11 - 00:02:16:27
Tom
Wants him to do, not what now works for frickin Davos. He has for from the from the beginning, from the get go here. And I've always felt that.
00:02:16:27 - 00:02:42:09
Tom
So there's a part of me that says, okay, maybe, you know, Larry, look, we we can take you out because BlackRock is not all that I as a company, but the balance sheet the size of BlackRock relative to its power is very it's one of the that's one of the biggest leverage is you know in in in we they exist today.
00:02:42:09 - 00:02:44:12
Tom
They control $9 trillion worth of assets.
00:02:44:12 - 00:02:47:28
Tom
But there are assets like our going has.
00:02:47:28 - 00:02:50:25
Tom
What $3,440 billion on its balance sheet.
00:02:50:25 - 00:02:54:19
Tom
It's a very small company when you think about it from that perspective, what it actually.
00:02:54:19 - 00:02:56:04
Tom
Does or whatever.
00:02:56:06 - 00:02:58:11
Tom
It's actually, you know, it's that amount of equity.
00:02:58:11 - 00:02:59:29
Tom
It's only got like $30 billion.
00:02:59:29 - 00:03:08:01
Tom
Worth of equity, right? It's a lot of shareholder equity. So BlackRock can be taken out very easily if they want to take that.
00:03:08:03 - 00:03:25:14
Marty
Switching costs is relatively low for people putting their money in BlackRock to allocate it for them. We saw this last year with the Florida pensions, decided to take all their money out of BlackRock and put it other places because of the ESG.
00:03:25:16 - 00:03:28:19
Tom
Yeah, same thing with Texas and a couple other states is on the same thing. Right.
00:03:28:22 - 00:03:30:18
Tom
But why might but that's I mean those numbers.
00:03:30:18 - 00:04:00:26
Tom
Are are not those are more headline than they are actual real facts. I mean $10 billion to BlackRock is not a lot of money. Okay? They're not losing sleep over the fees that they're not generating over that $10 billion when they go and they generate their their income over $9 trillion. Right. So it's a rounding error, but it's an interesting rounding error because then it says it allows other people to go, oh, maybe I should draft off of this or change the change the way I the way I set myself up as well.
00:04:00:28 - 00:04:01:20
Tom
I think the more.
00:04:01:20 - 00:04:10:06
Tom
Interesting way to look at this is from the perspective of Wall Street itself and.
00:04:10:08 - 00:04:12:18
Tom
Who BlackRock works for.
00:04:12:18 - 00:04:13:17
Tom
Ultimately, who.
00:04:13:17 - 00:04:15:29
Tom
They're what they're pushing.
00:04:16:01 - 00:04:21:24
Tom
On with, their activist board members. Right.
00:04:21:24 - 00:04:23:13
Tom
Because they vote our proxy for.
00:04:23:13 - 00:04:24:27
Tom
Us on the all these boards.
00:04:24:29 - 00:04:27:01
Tom
So all of a sudden we don't.
00:04:27:01 - 00:04:30:20
Tom
Want DTI in ESG, but BlackRock is forcing, for example.
00:04:30:20 - 00:04:31:28
Tom
Say, Disney.
00:04:32:01 - 00:04:44:18
Tom
Just as a bad example or could be, you know, InBev or anybody else that we've, you know, been gaslit into into hating this week.
00:04:44:21 - 00:04:45:14
Tom
But that's far.
00:04:45:14 - 00:04:52:10
Tom
Outside the value of the size of the company that actually runs that actually operates those funds.
00:04:52:13 - 00:04:55:28
Tom
That companies very small. So I at some point if you have a whole bunch.
00:04:55:28 - 00:05:01:19
Tom
Of like American sovereignties on Wall Street, just turn around and go, you know what? Hey, Larry.
00:05:01:22 - 00:05:02:09
Tom
It's a nice book of.
00:05:02:09 - 00:05:11:08
Tom
Business you got there, but we can take it from you. Yeah. So you work for us now and this is what you're going to do. So.
00:05:11:11 - 00:05:14:10
Tom
Yeah, that's that. That to me is is as likely a.
00:05:14:10 - 00:05:21:04
Tom
Scenario, Marty, as any other scenario. I mean, you know, the evil mustache twirling Larry Fink is one version of that reality.
00:05:21:04 - 00:05:22:15
Tom
And then, you know, the other side of.
00:05:22:15 - 00:05:28:04
Tom
It is that Larry Fink now is just another guy who had to bend the knee and kiss the ring.
00:05:28:06 - 00:05:41:24
Marty
Yeah, that brings up a good question. In terms of the battle of the sovereignties versus the Davos class, where where are we in the state of the world as it pertains to that thesis today?
00:05:41:27 - 00:05:45:15
Tom
Well, I still think that that that thesis is operating.
00:05:45:18 - 00:06:15:19
Tom
I think we lost a couple of major battles in recent weeks. Knock argue over the Ukraine aid the pushing forward, the giving Biden the power to seize Russia's foreign exchange reserves. I wrote the article about that a couple of weeks last week. I think those are major losses. They they are very bad and they're clearly the kind of thing that we don't want to see actually, that bridge that we don't want that bridge crossed.
00:06:15:19 - 00:06:17:08
Tom
Right.
00:06:17:11 - 00:06:19:00
Tom
You know, we're we're not going to win every battle.
00:06:19:02 - 00:06:34:18
Tom
And so far, Powell has been able to hold out and keep rates of five and a half percent. He's had the cut cut back to $30 billion a month on the Treasury side, down from 95. But he did shrink the balance sheet by over $1,000,000,000,000. And he's been able to hold interest rates of five and a half percent.
00:06:34:20 - 00:06:54:05
Tom
Now, the numbers are beginning to show up in the economy now that he may have to cut interest rates. And I've been, you know, my base case at the beginning of the year that we would have around three and that the markets were terribly mispriced, factoring in seven. That's turned out to be the I think it's going to wind up being correct at a.
00:06:54:05 - 00:06:54:27
Tom
Month ago.
00:06:55:00 - 00:07:21:10
Tom
Before this you know, this this weekend of doom, where, you know, Donald Trump and Mike Johnson both basically basically had to bend over and, you know, kiss the ring because they were clearly got the speech from somebody. Now, I'm you know, before that I was thinking, hey, we might even just get out of this year without any rate cuts at all and then go into 2025 with a rate hike or two.
00:07:21:12 - 00:07:27:28
Tom
I'm not so convinced of that now. I think we're I think we're we're down to we're going to see two or three rate cuts this year.
00:07:28:00 - 00:07:29:17
Tom
And that's and I'll be honest with you, I.
00:07:29:17 - 00:07:33:17
Tom
Don't even think that that's that changes the thesis one one.
00:07:33:17 - 00:07:36:25
Tom
Iota, because the original argument.
00:07:36:25 - 00:07:56:06
Tom
That I was for, I was arguing I was fighting against was that the federal raised a one or 2% and everything will break. And then the Fed's got to go back to the zero bound and reinstitute QE and blah blah, blah. Dogs and cats living together because the system is broken. So that's nice. I think you're underestimating the resilience of the American commercial banking system.
00:07:56:09 - 00:08:04:29
Tom
And you can ask yourself, you know, when you look in the mirror, why do you believe that to be the case?
00:08:05:02 - 00:08:06:06
Tom
Now we're here.
00:08:06:07 - 00:08:10:01
Tom
Two and a half years into this or Yeah, over two and a half years. And so Powell raising interest.
00:08:10:01 - 00:08:12:26
Tom
Rates and he's going to have to cut a little bit.
00:08:12:28 - 00:08:14:02
Tom
You know, is going from.
00:08:14:02 - 00:08:15:03
Tom
0 to 5 and a half.
00:08:15:03 - 00:08:17:28
Tom
And then back to 4.75 over a three year period.
00:08:17:28 - 00:08:20:03
Tom
Is that really.
00:08:20:05 - 00:08:27:14
Tom
Up? Would you call a pivot or, you know, a Bernanke ask, you know, capitulation to the over to the offshore dollar markets?
00:08:27:17 - 00:08:38:12
Tom
I would say no. I would say if anything were Powell would be responding to finally is only domestic concerns right where in the past he would always.
00:08:38:12 - 00:09:00:05
Tom
Have to where someone would have to be at Bernanke or Yellen or Greenspan or Volcker, or they would have to respond to the Eurodollar markets. And I think the Sofr versus LIBOR thesis has been validated quite, quite well. I mean, it's a thesis or it's a theory. I hate to even call it a thesis. It's a theory.
00:09:00:05 - 00:09:02:12
Tom
And I think it's been.
00:09:02:14 - 00:09:10:03
Tom
You know, back tested to the point now where it's pretty good. I maybe stole I wind up winding, wind up being wrong in the long run.
00:09:10:03 - 00:09:12:01
Tom
But you can't, I think.
00:09:12:01 - 00:09:15:12
Tom
Argue with the intention of what Powell was attempting to do. Whether he'll.
00:09:15:19 - 00:09:18:08
Tom
Be ultimately successful or not.
00:09:18:10 - 00:09:20:16
Tom
Is still up in the air. Why?
00:09:20:21 - 00:09:40:28
Tom
Because, well, there are a lot of powerful forces arrayed against him. He's just one We watched Mike Johnson hold out for four months against the Ukraine aid and eventually he caved right. Is Powell backing up all back? I don't know. I don't know him that well. I don't know him personally. I didn't like hanging out with the guy.
00:09:40:28 - 00:09:41:25
Tom
And I have a drink I.
00:09:41:25 - 00:09:43:10
Tom
Haven't drank beers with with Jerome.
00:09:43:10 - 00:09:44:27
Tom
Powell. I don't know.
00:09:44:29 - 00:09:54:15
Marty
I'd like to it would be very that would be a fascinating conversation just to sit down with Jerome. Hey, how you doing? What's going on here? You must be under a lot of stress. But Mike Johnson.
00:09:54:18 - 00:10:03:23
Tom
To that point. So what do. So what do you drink? I drink rye. What do you want? Double? What do you drink? Whiskey. You are your wine guy. What? What are you? Let's see the thing right? Yeah.
00:10:03:26 - 00:10:20:13
Marty
I mean, Mike Johnson came out and pretty much explicitly said he got the tap on the shoulder, and it was like, Yeah, we were in this meeting, we found out information that I didn't have before. Would you become privy to that information? Your mind changes and then and behold, a month later.
00:10:20:14 - 00:10:26:24
Tom
And I think I think I don't know if it was Mark Walker or somebody else.
00:10:26:27 - 00:10:36:11
Tom
Made the point. Somebody made the point. I can't remember who it is now. So please don't. If I get the reference wrong, you know, please forgive me. But it.
00:10:36:11 - 00:10:36:25
Tom
Was that.
00:10:36:25 - 00:10:46:07
Tom
No, it wasn't. Mark Walker was a it was one of my one of my patrons actually paying me on LinkedIn one day and said, hey, I, I think I have an I think I have an idea here, which is that.
00:10:46:09 - 00:10:47:25
Tom
That.
00:10:47:28 - 00:11:08:01
Tom
The reason the Ukraine aid had to go through was because the information that Johnson got was that we already sent we already stripped all of NATO's assets, air defense assets from Greece and Spain and other places. And this money is actually just going to replace what we've already sent. It has been blown up in Ukraine.
00:11:08:03 - 00:11:11:28
Tom
And if that was the case, that's a very compelling argument.
00:11:11:29 - 00:11:13:11
Tom
So why they had to do this?
00:11:13:14 - 00:11:15:27
Tom
And then if you take it one step.
00:11:15:27 - 00:11:17:22
Tom
Further and realize that it's.
00:11:17:24 - 00:11:20:21
Tom
That Trump was holding out against.
00:11:20:21 - 00:11:38:03
Tom
This, he held out against David Cameron, David Cameron went to to marry Lago to dress Trump down. And he had that big, you know, striding through the corridors of Naito like he's like he's actually a man with with a penis that moment. And then he goes to Trump. And Trump just looks at him and says, get, you.
00:11:38:03 - 00:11:43:29
Tom
Know, get the fuck out and no. And then two days later, the guy who's always able to.
00:11:43:29 - 00:12:00:21
Tom
Get Trump's they get Trump to move is Andre due to Andre. It's due to the president of Poland. He shows up a mario Lago and 24 hours later, Trump's like, okay, so, you.
00:12:00:21 - 00:12:03:22
Tom
Know, Trump's Russian foreign policy.
00:12:03:27 - 00:12:10:06
Tom
Was very rational up until the day he went to visit Poland. If you go all the way back to like 2017, right, Like right.
00:12:10:08 - 00:12:11:24
Tom
After his first meeting with Putin.
00:12:12:01 - 00:12:15:01
Tom
We all like watched body language videos over that.
00:12:15:01 - 00:12:19:09
Tom
They get along, did not get along. What's going on here. And then like a month later.
00:12:19:12 - 00:12:24:16
Tom
Trump goes to the Three Seas Summit, you know, for all the Visegrad and, you know.
00:12:24:16 - 00:12:25:16
Tom
Immediately.
00:12:25:16 - 00:12:33:07
Tom
Turns into rabid Mr. Neocon, you know, Eastern European policy. And I'm like, yeah, something's going on here.
00:12:33:07 - 00:12:35:13
Tom
So however, the Poles have.
00:12:35:15 - 00:12:55:23
Tom
Been able to convince him of what's happening here. And I, of course, look at Duda as a, a British asset. I always have it, you know, attracts yeah, you know, distracts me. So nothing has really changed. The people that Trump trusts.
00:12:55:25 - 00:12:57:19
Tom
Can move can move him.
00:12:57:19 - 00:13:02:02
Tom
Very easily because he's doesn't really believe in anything. No.
00:13:02:04 - 00:13:10:12
Marty
So he's a he's very easily manipulated. Yeah. Which is a shame.
00:13:10:19 - 00:13:13:26
Tom
And it brings us back. Sure.
00:13:13:28 - 00:13:37:03
Marty
I was going to say, bringing this back to Powell and him taking the position that I'm only going to react to domestic concerns. What do you think would be the catalyst for him? What what domestic concerns would be the catalyst? We had the Michigan consumer confidence survey come in this morning, ten points below expectations. Your head inflation expectations were above where they they expected.
00:13:37:03 - 00:13:42:09
Marty
Is it purely the job market inflation? Is he looking at commercial real estate? What do you think.
00:13:42:12 - 00:13:50:15
Tom
The job market is? Is is softening. Right. The the jobs report, the initial jobless claims the other day came in hot. Right.
00:13:50:15 - 00:13:55:16
Tom
And I mean, this is the kind of thing that, you know, I don't.
00:13:55:21 - 00:14:19:27
Tom
Follow it as closely as I probably should. I tend to trust certain people and certain commentators on this. And Daniel DiMartino Booth has been banging her shoe on the table, saying that, you know, the economy is weakening faster than, you know, the headline numbers are telling us. And I don't you know, I don't doubt Danielle's motives at all.
00:14:19:28 - 00:14:44:06
Tom
Right. I've spoken with Danielle. I like Danielle. I think she's I think she's an honest, you know, straight shooter. And so, you know, she calls it as she sees it and, yeah, I think Powell is in a really rough situation. I think the the economy is beginning to weaken in a structural way. But at the same time, we still have inflation coming back, roaring back because oil prices refused to back down.
00:14:44:09 - 00:15:02:03
Tom
And now we're getting a bounce in industrial metals and which is going to have commodity cost push inflationary effects throughout the entire economy. So we're in a stagflation area environment, which I think I called for originally, and I still think that's what we're going to wind up with. Hopefully the rain doesn't get too loud that it overwhelms the microphone.
00:15:02:11 - 00:15:27:02
Tom
That's why we're having a storm here in Florida this afternoon. We need the rain badly. So I can't really can't complain. But now you're hoping that it doesn't hit too early in the cycles. Powell can hold on to interest rates for as long as possible, but at the same time, if the economy really starts to go into the tank, Joe Biden is going to get reelected no.
00:15:27:02 - 00:15:28:06
Tom
Matter how many ways.
00:15:28:06 - 00:15:37:17
Tom
They try to prop up the idea that there's a you know, that Biden's on the right side of important issues like Palestine, Israel or whatever.
00:15:37:19 - 00:15:40:25
Tom
You know, it's that's not going to fly.
00:15:40:27 - 00:15:55:02
Tom
So I don't think Biden wins this election. If the economy really falls off a cliff in the next couple of months. Yeah, he was blindsided by Erin BURNETT of all people on CNN, on CNN.
00:15:55:02 - 00:15:56:10
Marty
You know.
00:15:56:12 - 00:16:01:11
Tom
Now, I mean, and that's you know, that's that's empty headed, Erin BURNETT.
00:16:01:14 - 00:16:06:09
Tom
You know, trying to make Joe Biden understand just how bad things are. And she.
00:16:06:11 - 00:16:06:23
Tom
Had to have.
00:16:06:23 - 00:16:08:09
Tom
Walked out of that interview on.
00:16:08:12 - 00:16:11:05
Tom
Oh, my God, he's gone.
00:16:11:07 - 00:16:16:02
Tom
Like, he has no idea what's going on. I honestly think Biden believes that the economy is doing well because.
00:16:16:02 - 00:16:18:13
Tom
That's what they tell him.
00:16:18:16 - 00:16:28:24
Marty
I mean, does he believe anything? Does he know? Is he right? Does he have the mental capacity to even understand, even if it was one way or the other? I don't think so.
00:16:28:26 - 00:16:31:22
Tom
I don't know. I don't either. Right. I don't. So.
00:16:31:24 - 00:16:32:18
Marty
Yeah.
00:16:32:21 - 00:16:36:05
Tom
The house goes with it. But as well as people tell him and he moves on.
00:16:36:08 - 00:16:57:22
Marty
Yeah. And so there's a bunch of variables in this whole equation and one of which it's been popping up more recently in recent weeks is Japan. Their inability to control the yield curve there and their lackluster interventions Last week, announcements of a swap line opening up between the U.S. and Japan dropped yesterday.
00:16:57:25 - 00:16:58:11
Tom
Yep.
00:16:58:14 - 00:17:10:10
Marty
Obviously no surprise there. The largest holder of U.S. treasuries in the world. How does this variable either throw a wrench in the plan or or help out?
00:17:10:13 - 00:17:12:04
Tom
I think the the I.
00:17:12:04 - 00:17:31:08
Tom
Think the announcement of the swap lines tells us everything we should have always known, which is that at the end of the day, the BOJ is still the Fed's wingman. Right. And that the battlelines are pretty clearly drawn, that it's the Fed and the BOJ on one side and the ECB and everybody in the ECB orbit on the other side.
00:17:31:10 - 00:18:02:12
Tom
So you've got the Swiss National Bank. I think the more interesting story is the Swiss National Bank last month cutting interest rates to radically weaken the Swiss franc, the pop the euro up as oil prices were breaking up. And then we had the Riksbank of Sweden cut interest rates yesterday. We had the Bank of England hold interest rates stable, but the pound is clearly rolling over, tried to hit a high of 1 to 8, which is insanely high, and now it's pushed back down below one four.
00:18:02:14 - 00:18:05:17
Tom
Everybody wants to focus on Japan's problems. But I.
00:18:05:17 - 00:18:06:04
Tom
Read something.
00:18:06:04 - 00:18:10:18
Tom
Really interesting this morning on Twitter just remind everybody.
00:18:10:20 - 00:18:19:18
Tom
That Japan can accept if they're buying their oil and they're in yen.
00:18:19:20 - 00:18:26:05
Tom
Right. Say from Russia, Do they really care about a.
00:18:26:05 - 00:18:33:14
Tom
Weekend like it's all domestic? You know, it's not going to it's not going to blow back on them in that respect.
00:18:33:14 - 00:18:34:03
Tom
Right.
00:18:34:06 - 00:18:36:28
Tom
So Japan will continue.
00:18:36:28 - 00:18:57:02
Tom
To intervene as they will. I was surprised, actually, with the price action in the end this week, I fully expected a bigger correction to the upside. I'd see the yen, we see the yen drop into the high one forties or even maybe even 145. That because we had a four day weekend in Japan, a lot of people could have been caught on the wrong side of the trade and a lot of margin calls.
00:18:57:04 - 00:19:02:19
Tom
Filtered through didn't happen. So we're.
00:19:02:19 - 00:19:07:02
Tom
Probably going to see another push towards 160 and one too, possibly even 160.
00:19:07:02 - 00:19:14:28
Tom
Five. But, you know, at some point the BOJ has got a lot of money.
00:19:15:00 - 00:19:32:16
Tom
To defend the yen, whether they need to. And I just as you started to bring this talking point up, I, I immediately ran over to check what the Japanese ten years doing this morning and it's at 90 basis points and it's creeping higher and which it should be and it should creep above it's going to creep above 1%.
00:19:32:19 - 00:19:37:23
Tom
But the Japanese because they're an insular market.
00:19:37:25 - 00:19:54:26
Tom
In that respect, once you once the carry trade goes away, the I'll be able to handle a weaker yen as long as they allow the yields to rise. So which is what they're doing, this is going to do it slowly. And yeah, the weather is actually picking up kind of interestingly. So we'll see how we'll.
00:19:54:26 - 00:19:55:25
Tom
See how long.
00:19:55:27 - 00:19:59:15
Tom
This conversation lasts. I may lose power. So.
00:19:59:18 - 00:20:14:12
Marty
Well, the it's not messing up the audio at all. So these we have that. Yeah. Because Japan has a pretty large basket of reserves that they can Yes. That they can put their hand into if they need to.
00:20:14:14 - 00:20:15:13
Tom
Yeah. They have a.
00:20:15:13 - 00:20:22:12
Tom
Huge reserves that they can, they can dip into and then of course they have the $1.1 trillion in treasuries and.
00:20:22:19 - 00:20:23:18
Tom
They have like four or.
00:20:23:18 - 00:20:37:22
Tom
$500 billion in just dollars, like they're just sitting around like they've got a lot of dollars and they can deploy them if they need to. This the Ministry of Finance has a lot of dollars. The Bank of Japan has a lot of dollars in the form of treasuries. They have a lot of they have a lot. And they can.
00:20:37:22 - 00:20:39:06
Tom
Spend. And they accumulated.
00:20:39:06 - 00:20:45:06
Tom
Those in order to spend them at the right moment when they decided to change policy. And I think that that's.
00:20:45:09 - 00:20:55:29
Tom
You know, this you know, we have it. I don't want to be I'm not trying to be cruel or mean or anything else here. I really am. Really not. I'm just a little.
00:20:55:29 - 00:20:58:13
Tom
Frustrated with.
00:20:58:15 - 00:21:00:05
Tom
The state of commentary.
00:21:00:10 - 00:21:04:27
Tom
Everybody wants a massive, dramatic thing to happen.
00:21:04:29 - 00:21:37:28
Tom
Right? Japan is doing this. This clearly means that we're at the edge of a of a cliff and bubble and everything is a cliff. Everything is in the end. The end of the world, Right? It's all it's all in our everything is an R.E.M. song at this point, right? And I'm like, maybe it's not. Maybe it's just indicative of a change and that, you know, you just don't realize that it's just going to take it's going to be a lot less interesting than you think it is.
00:21:38:01 - 00:21:44:09
Tom
And Japan's going to spend $1,000,000,000,000 and, you know, push themselves, you know, out of a lot of this mess. Are they going.
00:21:44:09 - 00:21:45:26
Tom
To get out of this with their you know.
00:21:45:26 - 00:21:55:01
Tom
Without getting their hair amongst. Course not. Are we going to get out of this? We're not getting our hair most, of course not. But the question is, who's going to get hit harder? And one of the ways.
00:21:55:01 - 00:21:57:10
Tom
I've tried to look at a lot of the things.
00:21:57:10 - 00:22:01:10
Tom
Happening is it's like a it's like the.
00:22:01:10 - 00:22:02:28
Tom
Russian foreign exchange reserves thing is.
00:22:02:28 - 00:22:18:11
Tom
All a big central bank game of No, you go first. No, you go first. No, you drink. No, you drink. Right. I've been saying this, I've been making this joke now for about two weeks and I'm like, I really think it's the thing. Like every every time the EU thinks that they finally got the.
00:22:18:11 - 00:22:22:15
Tom
Americans, you know, backed into a corner, that they're going to we're going to seize Russia's foreign exchange.
00:22:22:15 - 00:22:36:26
Tom
Reserves. Then the very next day they come out and say, well, you know, we're really not going to do that because the risks are too high and then the Americans don't do the deal, don't do the deed. And then they're like, no, we really need to seize Russia's foreign exchange reserves. And they keep pushing the ball.
00:22:37:03 - 00:22:37:15
Tom
Closer.
00:22:37:15 - 00:22:39:28
Tom
To the alliance like the it's like Zeno's paradox.
00:22:39:28 - 00:22:46:28
Tom
About who's going to seize there. And we keep inching our way closer to the event horizon, but we never actually get there. All right.
00:22:47:01 - 00:23:04:00
Tom
But they shit and like they all know that whoever goes first loses. And so none of them want to go first. But everybody is trying to get the other guy to go first. Yeah. So and I think that's really the best way to.
00:23:04:02 - 00:23:13:25
Tom
Yeah, it's kind of yeah, we're approaching it. Asymptotically is one of my favorite words in the English language, right? It's so, you know.
00:23:13:25 - 00:23:17:06
Tom
You can tell how wet it is outside. I can't keep my scarlet.
00:23:17:09 - 00:23:17:26
Tom
That's really.
00:23:17:26 - 00:23:18:13
Tom
Neat.
00:23:18:16 - 00:23:37:16
Marty
So how's gold factoring in this stuff? So I sell some I think. Look around. They we're sharing charts. The divergence between central banks loading up with gold versus U.S. treasuries that they move in the background of people moving first.
00:23:37:18 - 00:23:39:18
Tom
Oh, yeah. The big the big move is.
00:23:39:18 - 00:23:48:03
Tom
That, you know, gold is now the gold is sorry central banks megawatt 15 to 20% on a annualized basis, depending on the year of.
00:23:48:03 - 00:23:49:12
Tom
Annual gold demand.
00:23:49:15 - 00:24:10:20
Tom
When 20 years ago they were net sellers. You know, we had the Washington agreement about how we're going to sell gold to suppress the price. Now we're now they're all buying gold as quickly as they can and surreptitiously as they can to not move price to get as much gold as they had the Chinese or clearly trying to be price setters in the gold market.
00:24:10:20 - 00:24:15:02
Tom
And they're using, I think, their bid underneath the price of gold.
00:24:15:04 - 00:24:15:14
Tom
As a.
00:24:15:14 - 00:24:25:27
Tom
Geostrategic weapon against you know, at the same time that, you know, Janet Yellen is trying to use continuing to use sanctions and tariffs and all the all the rest of it, the world is bifurcating.
00:24:25:27 - 00:24:27:05
Tom
It's moving into.
00:24:27:11 - 00:24:46:04
Tom
Spheres of influence. It's everything that Zoltan Posner wrote about a couple of years ago. It's everything that Vincent, you and I have been talking about on my podcast. When I asked actually, you know, publish another episode of it, I have a couple coming out next week. I've I've done I'm actually going to record next week.
00:24:46:06 - 00:24:49:19
Tom
But it's this we have to realize.
00:24:49:19 - 00:25:14:25
Tom
That the gold is going to stop moving around the world right now. If it does move around the world, it's going to be under very strict controls, circumstances where the governments will decide, yep, that 50 tons or that 100 tons can, you know, go and, you know, kind of go to India or wherever. But, you know, only through trusted intermediaries and all the rest of it.
00:25:14:28 - 00:25:18:04
Tom
Gold is clearly also the only.
00:25:18:04 - 00:25:21:00
Tom
Asset that the central banks are willing to use.
00:25:21:02 - 00:25:46:24
Tom
To fix their balance sheets. And I won't use Bitcoin yet. Maybe they will the next cycle around, but they're not using it this time. Like I said this to open the show. I think the win here for Bitcoiners is effectively realizing that tether and Bitcoin together represent a really nice marginal demand for U.S. Treasuries that the Fed can utilize.
00:25:46:24 - 00:25:48:15
Tom
To help collateralize the repo.
00:25:48:15 - 00:25:51:11
Tom
Markets.
00:25:51:13 - 00:26:10:05
Tom
And I think we should explore that as commentators and as, you know, forensic analysts on this, you know, forensic accountants on this. And I have a couple of patrons that have been doing this work for a while. And, you know, they seem to be convinced of it. I I'm willing to throw it out there into the public and just get people to on the ideas.
00:26:10:05 - 00:26:22:20
Tom
I don't I'm not married to these ideas. I'm my goal here is to seed interesting and novel ideas into the zeitgeist and then see what people come up with. But clearly from a central bank perspective.
00:26:22:23 - 00:26:24:22
Tom
They absolutely want.
00:26:24:22 - 00:26:39:05
Tom
To utilize gold as a means by which to to fix the their national finances. And the way you do that, of course, is you allow the price of gold to rise, but in a controlled manner. So $200.
00:26:39:05 - 00:26:40:20
Tom
Up and $100.
00:26:40:20 - 00:26:42:08
Tom
Down, $200.
00:26:42:08 - 00:26:43:28
Tom
Up and $100.
00:26:43:28 - 00:26:44:27
Tom
Down, 300.
00:26:44:27 - 00:26:50:18
Tom
Dollars up and $150 down. You know what I mean? Like it'll be a nice day. What they.
00:26:50:18 - 00:27:01:14
Tom
Want is a nice, controlled rise where the loss of confidence in the existing system is arrived at organically and not all at once, because all at.
00:27:01:14 - 00:27:04:13
Tom
Once is bad. All at once has.
00:27:04:13 - 00:27:10:16
Tom
Trillions of dollars in derivatives going blowing up overnight and margin calls, dogs and cats living together and Mad Max and all the rest.
00:27:10:16 - 00:27:15:26
Tom
Of it. And no one really wants that. So it's kind of a it's kind of a game of.
00:27:15:27 - 00:27:23:21
Tom
Not chicken, but of I guess the best way of describing it is to say it's like that line from Full.
00:27:23:21 - 00:27:25:09
Tom
Metal Jacket. It's all a big shit.
00:27:25:09 - 00:27:31:00
Tom
Sandwich and we all have to take a bite and we're going to do so a little bit at a time.
00:27:31:02 - 00:27:31:27
Marty
Yeah.
00:27:31:29 - 00:27:32:18
Tom
And eventually.
00:27:32:18 - 00:27:35:18
Tom
We'll get rid of it all and that's.
00:27:35:21 - 00:27:37:21
Tom
Fine. I think that's what everybody's hoping for.
00:27:37:22 - 00:27:40:21
Tom
There are certain people who just want a rational system.
00:27:40:24 - 00:27:46:10
Tom
And that's why we see the geopolitical events that we see. And I think those people are mostly centered in Europe.
00:27:46:13 - 00:27:53:22
Tom
Because they have no hope out of us. They have no way out of it. They don't have any either. They don't have enough collateral. They either have free natural resources.
00:27:53:24 - 00:27:55:15
Marty
Or productive economies.
00:27:55:17 - 00:27:58:18
Tom
Or productive economy. Exactly. Yeah.
00:27:58:20 - 00:28:38:21
Marty
Now bring it back to tether. I'm wholly bought in on that thesis. If you just look at what they've done over the last year alone, onboarded the FBI and the Secret Service, they just announced earlier this week that they have an official partnership with chain analysis to make sure that sanctioned individuals are sending and receiving tether. Yet Cantor Fitzgerald on CNBC a few months ago, maybe three or four months ago, basically saying that he loves the tethers his client and it seems like the U.S. interests are try to position tether as this okay product that they're comfortable with which is very interesting considering how tether started is essentially.
00:28:38:23 - 00:28:41:06
Tom
No no argument there. I'm not I'm not immune.
00:28:41:06 - 00:28:46:06
Tom
To the tether FUD and the story surrounding it, of course. But actually, if you really think about it.
00:28:46:08 - 00:28:47:26
Tom
Who better.
00:28:47:29 - 00:28:58:19
Tom
To get on to flip onto your side than the most corrupt of all the quote unquote stablecoins because you've got them by the short girlies and you can flip them easily and turn and turn them from a quote unquote enemy into an.
00:28:58:19 - 00:29:10:22
Tom
Asset. I mean, this is the way I, I mean, I'll you know, I put on my Emperor Palpatine hat when I do this kind of analysis, right? And I'm like, yeah, I would do that. Oh, no, you you work for me now?
00:29:10:24 - 00:29:11:15
Marty
Yeah.
00:29:11:18 - 00:29:23:28
Tom
They're probably not the bad boys of finance. You work for me, and we're going to. And you know what we're going to do for you? We're going to execute all the other crappy stablecoins that are out there. They're competing with you, and we're going to take them off the board, and you're going to be the only one left.
00:29:24:00 - 00:29:26:04
Tom
Yeah, but you work for us now.
00:29:26:06 - 00:29:44:02
Marty
You have all those Treasury yields in the Bitcoin. They're buying more than 8000 Bitcoin a quarter over the last three quarters at least. So if the U.S. interests wanted a Bitcoin accumulation strategy, it seems like they were able to co-opt tether. It seems like it's working pretty efficiently right now.
00:29:44:04 - 00:29:50:21
Tom
And it also creates it also offloads all of the Bitcoin.
00:29:50:23 - 00:29:52:19
Tom
Trading demand.
00:29:52:22 - 00:29:53:13
Tom
Onto.
00:29:53:14 - 00:29:56:02
Tom
A proxy for the dollar, but not the dollar.
00:29:56:02 - 00:29:59:10
Tom
Itself, which is very important.
00:29:59:17 - 00:30:13:26
Tom
For, you know, having a another subtle control mechanism for working, you know, for dealing with, you know, risks with the dollar write offs.
00:30:13:28 - 00:30:16:03
Marty
Another is up to the freeze of actual dollars.
00:30:16:03 - 00:30:21:14
Tom
So to plow right guys, because now Bitcoin is not trading its actual dollars.
00:30:21:17 - 00:30:25:22
Tom
Where people are buying Bitcoin with actual dollars or you know what they or they, you know, they're they.
00:30:25:22 - 00:30:28:21
Tom
Can trade amongst themselves and not to settle in dollars or something suddenly in.
00:30:28:21 - 00:30:31:14
Tom
Tether at the end of the day. Right. And so you leave.
00:30:31:14 - 00:30:39:23
Tom
That you leave most of the bitcoin trading settled against tether to keep it out of the dollar's sphere.
00:30:39:26 - 00:30:42:06
Tom
So that you can't use it as a run on.
00:30:42:09 - 00:30:43:18
Tom
Dollars.
00:30:43:20 - 00:30:45:25
Tom
And in the real world you leave.
00:30:45:25 - 00:30:52:06
Tom
It where it belongs and in this kind of offshoot market. And so but you also.
00:30:52:06 - 00:31:12:26
Tom
Have the ability to, you know, take tether out whenever you want. You if they decide to get uppity because all you got to do is, you know, withdraw their withdraw their collateral. So, yeah, just their collateral is mostly U.S. treasuries, a little bit of gold, a little bit of Bitcoin. Right. And I like dude, it's a it's a great way to to I.
00:31:12:27 - 00:31:14:16
Tom
Mean, what's tether's market cap.
00:31:14:16 - 00:31:15:00
Tom
Now It's has.
00:31:15:00 - 00:31:16:13
Tom
A breached $100 billion.
00:31:16:15 - 00:31:19:18
Marty
Yeah it's over 100 I think it's probably closer to 120 now.
00:31:19:21 - 00:31:28:27
Tom
Yeah. Oh wow. Because I haven't looked at it in weeks. I haven't looked at it in months for a couple of months now. I remember when when, when it was cresting 90 earlier in the year and I'm like.
00:31:29:00 - 00:31:30:12
Tom
If it's up to 120 billion.
00:31:30:12 - 00:31:45:19
Tom
Then this thesis is even more are more validated than it was when I was arguing, when it was like moving up $1,000,000,000 every couple of weeks last Q4 from like 85, 86 to 8000000090 billion or whatever. Now, if it's $120 billion, forget it.
00:31:45:27 - 00:31:51:21
Marty
It's clearly it's fact. Check that load and let's see, 110 Fahrenheit, 110 110.
00:31:51:24 - 00:31:54:20
Tom
So that's that's a lot. It means that tether's putting on about five.
00:31:54:20 - 00:32:02:13
Tom
Billion dollars a month regularly since last since the end of last year. Yeah. It's meh, right? Yeah. So tether.
00:32:02:13 - 00:32:04:13
Tom
Was traded, had tether's market cap was from 80.
00:32:04:13 - 00:32:07:13
Tom
5 to 90 billion at the end of last year. They were into.
00:32:07:13 - 00:32:13:14
Tom
May. So it's putting $5 billion a month. It's literally $5 billion a month in in Treasury demand.
00:32:13:16 - 00:32:16:06
Marty
Yeah. And what, what is not that's.
00:32:16:07 - 00:32:17:19
Tom
Not nothing.
00:32:17:21 - 00:32:26:19
Marty
Is it. Above 1% of overall like auction demand, ongoing auction amount. I'm not sure.
00:32:26:21 - 00:32:28:22
Tom
I don't know That's I don't know but it would.
00:32:28:22 - 00:32:29:25
Tom
Be but it.
00:32:29:26 - 00:32:40:18
Tom
That's a that's a really good point. I hadn't thought of. So I have to I have to look into that. But yeah, I mean, or reconsider it. But that's a really good point, Marty. Like doing interviews, you're like.
00:32:40:21 - 00:32:41:25
Tom
Of all the people in.
00:32:41:25 - 00:32:42:27
Tom
The Bitcoin space, you.
00:32:42:27 - 00:32:46:12
Tom
Don't understand all of this, all of these subtleties as well.
00:32:46:12 - 00:32:54:05
Tom
As all the subtleties of Bitcoin. I really appreciate it. Just as an aside, I really appreciate what you do from that perspective. Every time I sit down to have a chat with you, I'm like.
00:32:54:09 - 00:32:55:05
Tom
I'm consistently.
00:32:55:05 - 00:32:57:24
Tom
Surprised. Well, and in a very good way.
00:32:57:24 - 00:33:14:24
Marty
So the feeling is mutual. I love our conversations. If anything, just to check my priors. I think the the thesis that you put out there, incredibly compelling. Interesting. You could see the it seems like a lot of them are playing out now.
00:33:14:27 - 00:33:21:09
Tom
It is interesting, isn't it? I look again and and I'm not and this is I, I make this point all the time.
00:33:21:09 - 00:33:44:04
Tom
I just want to make sure everybody's clear on this. I don't exist as a as an individual at this point. I'm the figurehead of a hive mind of that I've accumulated around me and these people who I just are so jazzed to talk about this stuff all day long that we just sit there and I have the skunkworks of of a of a discussion, private discussion forum that is just.
00:33:44:06 - 00:33:45:19
Tom
I mean, it's immense.
00:33:45:21 - 00:33:50:13
Tom
And I go in every day and I learn shit that I would never learn otherwise. And they bring the.
00:33:50:13 - 00:33:52:08
Tom
World to me and then ask me for my.
00:33:52:08 - 00:33:54:04
Tom
Opinion on it. I'm like.
00:33:54:07 - 00:33:55:06
Tom
Hold on. I mean, think.
00:33:55:06 - 00:33:57:28
Tom
About that for 20 minutes. You know what I mean? Before I can even answer.
00:33:58:00 - 00:34:18:07
Marty
So yeah, and your particular hive mind does a really good job of getting outside of your universe and educate, I think at least twice or three times a week. I have people in my mentions saying, Hey, you got to see what Tom said about this particular thing happened yesterday.
00:34:18:07 - 00:34:19:05
Tom
Yeah, well, funny that we.
00:34:19:05 - 00:34:29:08
Tom
Are having this conversation today because somebody pinged us yesterday and say, Hey, when are you guys going to talk again? And you reached out to me about an hour later and hey, how about tomorrow? I'm like, Yeah, okay, I've got time tomorrow. Let's do it.
00:34:29:11 - 00:34:54:24
Marty
So the so how do you think all this together? What do you think it means for like sovereign Bitcoin use? Like do you think there successfully able to co-opt tether embedded into the banking system, maybe an even tether maybe just using bitcoin? Do you think there's any possibility that they try to just completely KYC, AML, throw out self-custody and make it illegal.
00:34:54:27 - 00:34:58:06
Tom
To say, oh, they're going to try? You know, I think they're going to try. I don't know.
00:34:58:06 - 00:35:01:16
Marty
They are.
00:35:01:18 - 00:35:04:23
Tom
I don't know that they're going be able to. Yeah, I mean, I'm to.
00:35:04:23 - 00:35:06:15
Tom
Make sure that we're not cross quagmire.
00:35:06:16 - 00:35:07:25
Tom
I think they can.
00:35:07:27 - 00:35:13:13
Tom
I don't know if they will. I think Davos is trying to do like turn this into minority report with more Germans.
00:35:13:13 - 00:35:16:05
Tom
I'm not sure they're going to be able to like it's like all the stuff is.
00:35:16:05 - 00:35:21:04
Tom
Up in the air. So I think they hear what you think about this. Actually.
00:35:21:07 - 00:35:48:23
Marty
I think they're certainly going to try. I don't think they can successfully I do think they can deploy a chilling effect across the industry, which they've done to a certain extent over the last few weeks. But as the dust has settled after the DOJ actions and the responses motion to dismiss letters as it pertains to Self-custody and trying to use Bitcoin privately, it doesn't seem like it has much teeth behind it.
00:35:48:23 - 00:36:13:15
Marty
From what I can tell, particularly with the tornado cash case that's going on right now, they're literally trying to change the definition of what money transmission is on the go. Conversations I've had, at least with people that are connected in DC, I think it's going to be very hard to actually win a case on those merits. So that's promising.
00:36:13:15 - 00:36:16:07
Marty
And then I do want her to.
00:36:16:09 - 00:36:18:03
Tom
Do me a favor, go into a little bit more detail on that.
00:36:18:03 - 00:36:31:25
Tom
I actually want to because I'm not following this at all. I've got my head in the the geopolitical cloud. So this is something that I haven't been following at all other than what I see in the headlines, to be honest with you. So if you want, I don't even know what the hell tornado cash is, to be honest.
00:36:31:25 - 00:36:59:06
Marty
So Tornado Cash was a smart contract on a Etherium that allowed people to put Ethereum into the smart contract and get tornado cash out. And basically, the way I understand it, I'm not too well versed on the serious stuff, but the way I understand it is ability to attain privacy while using Ethereum you would put your theory into the smart contract and you'd be able to get money out the other end without a direct connection.
00:36:59:08 - 00:37:13:14
Marty
And it was a smart contract. This most important aspect of this particular case is that nobody actually controlled the funds or was in that company. The company created this smart contract, but once it went live, nobody actually controlled.
00:37:13:16 - 00:37:14:10
Tom
Who was.
00:37:14:12 - 00:37:36:16
Marty
Sending money to it and sending money out of it. The contract itself did, and the DOJ shut down and arrested the two co-founders of Tornado Cash, and they're in the process of getting to a case. The Tornado Cash team sent a motion to dismiss the case on the grounds that tornado, the two founders actually didn't control or custody of the funds.
00:37:36:16 - 00:37:56:24
Marty
It was in the smart contract. They couldn't determine who was able to send money in or send money out. The SMART contract handled that autonomous code, and the DOJ is arguing that. So the technically, the way it's set up, they weren't transferring money. The smart contract was they didn't have control of the smart contract once it went live.
00:37:56:26 - 00:38:08:18
Marty
Anybody can interact with it. The DOJ wrote a letter back to their motion to dismiss and basically said, no.
00:38:08:21 - 00:38:40:01
Marty
Anybody that creates these contracts is basically or wasn't even anybody who creates these contracts. These contracts are money service services, business businesses because they are facilitating the transfer of funds. And they said they use the analogy literally of a frying pan sitting on the stove. And it transfers heat to the food that you're cooking. And historically it's been very clear and FinCEN has actually written guidance letters in the past, I believe 2018 and 2019.
00:38:40:01 - 00:39:01:05
Marty
They wrote a few that clearly defined that a money service transmission business is an entity that actually custody is and controls the flow of funds, and they have to hit a button to send the funds out. And it seems like the DOJ is trying to basically change that definition.
00:39:01:07 - 00:39:03:17
Tom
And broaden that definition.
00:39:03:20 - 00:39:04:07
Tom
And.
00:39:04:09 - 00:39:06:18
Tom
Any kind of movement of money whatsoever.
00:39:06:20 - 00:39:24:27
Marty
Exactly. And so for like Bitcoin open source wallets that individuals can download and create private public keys and that they control the transfer of money, they're trying to say anybody that creates code that enables that is participating in money service businesses.
00:39:24:29 - 00:39:26:06
Tom
But that's nonsense.
00:39:26:08 - 00:39:37:08
Marty
Yeah, and to my point, everybody, it was very scary when initially happened a few weeks ago. But conversations over the last few weeks is like this really does a lot of legs to stay low.
00:39:37:10 - 00:40:00:23
Tom
Well, the funny part about it is that, you know, this is this is exactly the kind of thing that you would expect out of the Biden administration, because, you know, when you map them to who they actually I think who they actually work for, clearly they work for the group in Europe that wants to they want to control all that.
00:40:00:26 - 00:40:12:15
Tom
They want to have full control of the full control over money, in the full ability to decide where it went and decide where it can stop. And a smart contract like that gets around that completely.
00:40:12:18 - 00:40:12:29
Tom
Every time I.
00:40:12:29 - 00:40:31:02
Tom
Think about this, I just think back to, you know, Christine Lagarde saying that, you know, if we have any escape valve away from the outside of the financial system, people will use it. And she was said so with a look of horror on her face. I'm like, you know, Christine, that's exactly the world we are. So we want and you don't want us to have.
00:40:31:05 - 00:40:35:11
Tom
And, you know, that's a that's a you know.
00:40:35:11 - 00:40:43:09
Tom
So I'm not surprised that you see this attempted overreach from the Biden administration. And that makes perfect sense.
00:40:43:12 - 00:41:06:10
Marty
Yeah. And it seems like it's a desperate attempt to rush things through. As the writing seems pretty clear on the wall. They may be on the way out, but to the point that they're operating for the Davos class, the propaganda tactics at the Davos class is deploying right now. Very interesting. There actually was a video of Yuval Harari that came out this morning.
00:41:06:10 - 00:41:20:14
Marty
Look, you pull that up, it's 54 second video. And I think you need to hear this because the. Yes, the hypocrisy or the propaganda that they're trying to deploy right now from Davos is laughable.
00:41:20:16 - 00:41:44:11
Speaker 4
When I look at Bitcoin as an as as is as a store in I don't like it because this is a money built on this trust. The central idea of Bitcoin is basically electronic gold that we don't trust the banks, the government, so we don't want to give them the ability to create as much money as they like.
00:41:44:13 - 00:42:28:14
Speaker 4
So we create this bitcoin. It's a currency of this trust. I do think that the future belongs to electronic money, but what we've seen over the last centuries is that it's actually a good idea to give banks and governments the ability to create more and more money in order to build more trust within society. So I'm not sure what kind what money would look like in 20 years or 30 years, but I hope it will be a currency of greater trust and not a currency of distrust.
00:42:28:16 - 00:42:29:06
Tom
Myself, I mean.
00:42:29:12 - 00:42:35:00
Tom
Talk about a classic redefinition of.
00:42:35:00 - 00:42:45:29
Tom
What Bitcoin actually is. What am I saying all the time? Economies are really good at inversion of words because that's their entire that's their entire thing.
00:42:45:29 - 00:42:49:08
Tom
And that's exactly what he just did. Bitcoin is the ultimate trusted.
00:42:49:08 - 00:42:56:21
Tom
Money because it's money that's trusted because of what it and because of its, you know, its.
00:42:56:21 - 00:43:16:01
Tom
Bearer assets as a bearer asset. There's like gold, like he's putting the cart before the horse. He's saying, yeah, we don't trust governments anymore. Yeah, duh. That's the point. Holy. He's such, he's I every time I watch that guy speak.
00:43:16:04 - 00:43:17:06
Tom
It just makes me angry.
00:43:17:12 - 00:43:32:19
Marty
Oh, I don't know why they put him up as a front man. It gets any time he speaks, he's nihilistic and Malthusian, and I don't see how they could say ab test that or run like a hay.
00:43:32:21 - 00:43:39:04
Tom
Like you would think they would AB test that with somebody else, but they don't because they live in an echo chamber and we'll probably get a good.
00:43:39:07 - 00:43:53:04
Marty
Group of people together in a room to be like, Dude, for the commercials. Like, would you actually buy this product if you listen to it? Uh, what is it called? Focus Group. Focus Group Yeah, they should run a focus group on Yuval Harari. People would be like movies.
00:43:53:04 - 00:43:59:12
Tom
And they'd find out, well, no, that they would never do that. They just keep pushing the same people in front of us, because I you.
00:43:59:12 - 00:44:00:05
Tom
Know, these people.
00:44:00:05 - 00:44:10:01
Tom
Live in a very small echo chamber, you know, the joke I've run with for years is that it's so small it would rent for $400 a month on the Upper East Side. Right.
00:44:10:04 - 00:44:23:21
Tom
But, you know, it's it's it's a good line. I like using it. But this is the thing like they they they don't they don't realize how out of phase and how out of touch they are with with humanity.
00:44:23:23 - 00:44:25:00
Tom
Like.
00:44:25:02 - 00:44:50:04
Tom
Like he if he claims to be a historian, then he should understand that times of political unrest of all come because people because governments abuse their people. And the people decided to have their money go to ground. It's when governments respect the rights and the rights of people that the society can flourish.
00:44:50:04 - 00:44:54:10
Tom
And government is there to keep things from going off the rails.
00:44:54:12 - 00:44:56:24
Tom
If if government has a role to play.
00:44:56:26 - 00:45:20:02
Tom
And I'm arguing I'm not arguing my personal beliefs here, the government's able ever able to really do this. I'm not a conservative. I stole my libertarian in this respect. I just understand that at the end of the day, our goal in, you know, systems operations should always be to minimize tyranny and minimize overreach from one, you know, versus of one person versus another.
00:45:20:04 - 00:45:21:09
Tom
And not maximize.
00:45:21:09 - 00:45:32:12
Tom
It. And governments are really good at maximize the amount of damage that they do to people. And Harari is clearly in that camp that, you know, government that.
00:45:32:16 - 00:45:33:04
Tom
Humanity.
00:45:33:04 - 00:45:40:23
Tom
Can't govern itself without a very strong hand having complete control over everything. And that's where he is. And that's to him.
00:45:40:23 - 00:45:43:15
Tom
That's what trust looks like to him.
00:45:43:17 - 00:45:45:12
Tom
That's his definition of trust.
00:45:45:14 - 00:46:13:24
Marty
That's for me, the white pill, the silver lining of all this, whether it's the actions against non-custodial Bitcoin in recent weeks or them rolling out Harare to put something like so outrageous like that out to project strength when the government feels like they're in a position of weakness. And then you couple that with the growing disdain for the immigration policies that are happening both here in the United States and in Europe, like what's going on in Ireland, the Irish standing up for themselves.
00:46:13:26 - 00:46:33:08
Marty
And I think in Sweden people are finally like, you know, what the fuck's going on here? You see it in New York as well. They're really losing control of the narrative because everything so bluntly in your face. That's right. It's no longer like don't leave your lying eyes. It's like it's impossible not to see what's happening.
00:46:33:10 - 00:46:46:27
Tom
Yeah, no, I agree. I was funny. I was I chatted with Michael Leahy of the Irish Freedom Party the other day. I was on a podcast with him explaining to him what I think is going on in Europe. Right. My friend crypto Rich had us put us together on a podcast, and.
00:46:46:29 - 00:46:50:08
Marty
That's the episode that somebody taxes. I watch like 20 minutes of it.
00:46:50:11 - 00:47:11:11
Tom
Yeah, it was, it was good. It was just me. It was me trying to that to, you know, go back to the primitives and try and explain a lot of what I'm saying to a man who doesn't really I'm who gets it. But doesn't have any of the plumbing. Right. So I did my best there to, to get it into, you know, put it in a good context for that kind of audience.
00:47:11:13 - 00:47:28:09
Tom
I'm not sure if I succeeded, but, you know, if you, you know, post comments and let me know what how a how I did write. But it's very interesting to see the massive protest against Sinn Fein in Dublin as fake, you know, fake populists. I think that's a.
00:47:28:09 - 00:47:29:17
Tom
Good it's a good sign.
00:47:29:20 - 00:47:33:07
Tom
Really, for the Irish. And now, I don't know.
00:47:33:09 - 00:47:37:21
Tom
It's it's it's happening all across the board, all across the West.
00:47:37:24 - 00:47:45:21
Tom
And in to your point, really are kind of holding on by the skin of their teeth.
00:47:45:23 - 00:47:48:08
Tom
Excuse me. And because of that.
00:47:48:10 - 00:47:54:05
Tom
They're clearly accelerating as the their program as much as possible to try and get as much of it.
00:47:54:08 - 00:47:57:10
Tom
Passed as possible.
00:47:57:12 - 00:48:05:25
Tom
In order to hope that they if they get enough of it done before all their agents are removed from power, i.e., in Europe.
00:48:05:28 - 00:48:07:09
Tom
I mean, they're.
00:48:07:11 - 00:48:08:24
Tom
And the United States, for.
00:48:08:24 - 00:48:11:03
Tom
Example, like how paranoid are.
00:48:11:03 - 00:48:13:15
Tom
They about the European parliamentary.
00:48:13:15 - 00:48:17:00
Tom
Elections next month? I didn't really have this on my radar.
00:48:17:00 - 00:48:19:09
Tom
Because they just don't they see the EU parliament as being even.
00:48:19:09 - 00:48:20:06
Tom
Interesting.
00:48:20:08 - 00:48:21:24
Tom
But there is.
00:48:21:24 - 00:48:29:02
Tom
A real potential that they would have a I wouldn't say a populist overthrow, but it could be in.
00:48:29:02 - 00:48:35:26
Tom
Such a way that the the president of the of the European Parliament isn't a committed.
00:48:35:26 - 00:48:37:25
Tom
Globalist.
00:48:37:27 - 00:48:47:13
Tom
In one of their their crowd and they'll have to actually fight to you know they, they'll have to get rid of Charles Michel or whoever's in that role right now and.
00:48:47:15 - 00:48:58:18
Tom
That would be odd for them. This would not be a good sign for them. They understand that their system is so brittle it can't have any overt.
00:48:58:21 - 00:49:30:11
Tom
Win that the opposite the populace can't have any any overt wins in any of any lasting effect. So even if you know, Viktor Orban, for example, in Hungary survives the election cycle, then they have to destroy Orban at every level when he's when he's going, he goes up against them. But interestingly enough, Hungary is going to be in charge of the European Council starting or the European presidency starting in July.
00:49:30:13 - 00:49:34:01
Tom
Right. Hungary takes over the European presidency in July, right after the election.
00:49:34:01 - 00:49:36:03
Tom
So I think there's something.
00:49:36:06 - 00:49:54:00
Tom
There I not to really like to dig deep into this and really think this one through. But there's something going on here. They're more worried in Europe than I've ever seen them, even after even post-Brexit, because I think they always said they always thought that even Brexit, they had that ringfence because they had their people in charge in Britain at the time.
00:49:54:00 - 00:50:16:13
Marty
So it may very well should be. And yet you're seeing signs with the Scottish Prime Minister step down every she soon act beginning to change his rhetoric that some concessions on the energy side of things and the crumbs promising to spin back up nuclear power plants. They're obviously buying Russian gas and oil despite sanctions.
00:50:16:15 - 00:50:34:17
Tom
Well and then to find out, like the report that the Green Party, the Green the member of the Green Party that was in charge of the report about why we needed why Germany needed to spend down the nuclear power plants, that all the data was faked. Did you see that report?
00:50:34:17 - 00:50:34:29
Tom
Yep.
00:50:34:29 - 00:50:35:10
Marty
Yep.
00:50:35:14 - 00:50:38:09
Tom
Yeah. Yeah. So it was really.
00:50:38:11 - 00:50:40:08
Tom
You know, when I see things like that.
00:50:40:10 - 00:50:42:06
Tom
Happen, like I asked myself.
00:50:42:09 - 00:50:45:23
Tom
Who let that out of the bag? Who let that cat.
00:50:45:26 - 00:50:50:24
Tom
You know, walk around and let everybody, you know, how did that glitch in the matrix occur? Right.
00:50:50:26 - 00:50:57:05
Tom
And you got to go. You have to always look at that as a kind of inferential as.
00:50:57:08 - 00:51:17:29
Tom
You know, evidence that there are countervailing forces pushing information into the zeitgeist, knowing it will get picked up by a very or now very organized, you know, counter media. And that would be and I would consider both of us as part of that counter media to then disseminated to as many people possible. Like if I know about this and.
00:51:17:29 - 00:51:43:00
Tom
You know about this, and we honestly operate in two almost completely different domains, I your yours is the bitcoin podcast. Mine is a mine is a geopolitics and financial plumbing or oil and gold service. That's what I do right? I mean, bitcoin's part of it, but it's not. But I'm Bitcoin adjacent. I'm not, right? So we operate in two different areas of the.
00:51:43:03 - 00:51:44:12
Tom
The political and financial.
00:51:44:12 - 00:51:52:14
Tom
Commentary space. And yet we both know about this very, very small little point and everybody goes, woohoo, what does that mean?
00:51:52:16 - 00:51:54:06
Marty
Yeah. So, you know.
00:51:54:09 - 00:51:55:28
Tom
Somebody clearly knows something. I think.
00:51:55:28 - 00:51:57:12
Tom
Somebody clearly understands that if.
00:51:57:12 - 00:51:58:12
Tom
We put the if they.
00:51:58:12 - 00:52:04:15
Tom
Let that out into the world, we'll take it, run with it and amplify it well beyond what anybody wanted.
00:52:04:17 - 00:52:25:00
Marty
Right. Well, and to that point, it seems like they're trying to really prevent people from speaking hate speech laws in Canada, UK, and that antisemitism bill passed here in the United States a couple of weeks ago where it's going through the House. I'm not sure if it was officially approved, but.
00:52:25:02 - 00:52:27:11
Tom
And I don't mean I don't think it's made yet.
00:52:27:13 - 00:52:28:12
Tom
Yeah. And yes, and.
00:52:28:16 - 00:52:41:23
Tom
And the point and the point of that was not really the anti-Semitism. It was the it was all the attendant secondary effects of the more general point of the thing that was the that was the the what was the important point there.
00:52:41:25 - 00:52:43:14
Marty
Right. Yeah. Tick tock, man.
00:52:43:16 - 00:52:44:21
Tom
Mm hmm.
00:52:44:23 - 00:52:57:29
Marty
Since we last spoke, I was thrown on the list by the Center for Countering Digital Hate for for speaking bad about climate change and saying, I'm not as worried about it as the mainstream. What happens to me?
00:52:58:01 - 00:53:01:22
Tom
How am I not on that list?
00:53:01:24 - 00:53:05:04
Marty
You're not trying hard enough on YouTube, and there's YouTube channels only.
00:53:05:07 - 00:53:20:28
Tom
Oh, okay. Because you know what's really funny is that I mean Dave Dave column. And the first time I ever had Dave on the podcast and I was like literally the first time Dave and I ever met other than like, Hey Dave, would you like to be on the podcast? Right? Was the only direct conversation he and I ever, which was in Twitter.
00:53:20:28 - 00:53:22:28
Tom
DM Where we organize the chat.
00:53:23:01 - 00:53:24:13
Tom
And he's like, Well, what do I want to talk about?
00:53:24:13 - 00:53:26:26
Tom
I said, Well, virtual crotchety chemist.
00:53:26:26 - 00:53:34:09
Tom
Let's talk about how climate change is dumb. And he's like, Excellent, sounds great. And then we went on, we went for an hour and a half just going over the data.
00:53:34:12 - 00:53:39:16
Tom
Like how bad the data is, just doing a data quality analysis and how, you know, just dumb. And the whole.
00:53:39:16 - 00:53:45:24
Tom
Thing is I'm like, how are we not on the, you know, how are we not on every list there is? Right. It's just funny.
00:53:46:01 - 00:53:54:27
Marty
I almost shout out to Tony Heller just doing hell of a job to really highlight the corruption of the data over time. He was on the.
00:53:55:03 - 00:53:59:02
Tom
Of them excellent it's it's good company to keep Marty.
00:53:59:04 - 00:54:16:20
Marty
Yeah no it is I mean just the Center for Countering Digital hate is laughable how weak they are. They have to spin up this NGO. What is like what the hell digital hate. And you're going to give a list to YouTube and say that you should censor these people because they have opinions about climate change.
00:54:16:24 - 00:54:18:21
Tom
It's really, really.
00:54:18:23 - 00:54:31:25
Tom
Funny is that I actually look at that as a very good thing because I look at how much money that to spend this, the spin up the NGO and then they have to staff it, then they have those and it's all money wasted, right? It's all really wasted money. And so they're spending.
00:54:31:27 - 00:54:34:24
Tom
It's like that. It's like the argument over when I think about.
00:54:34:24 - 00:54:45:11
Tom
Something like that, it's it reminds me of my arguments about the myth of policing. That policing as a as a tool is, is an intimidation tool where you arrest one person to.
00:54:45:11 - 00:54:46:11
Tom
Cow.
00:54:46:14 - 00:54:49:02
Tom
A thousand people and that but once.
00:54:49:02 - 00:54:49:22
Tom
You get to a point.
00:54:49:22 - 00:54:52:03
Tom
Where you have to have more cops and there are people.
00:54:52:06 - 00:54:54:10
Tom
Then the whole system collapses.
00:54:54:12 - 00:54:56:00
Tom
Right? Because you can't.
00:54:56:00 - 00:55:13:15
Tom
If you have too many enforcers, then you don't have enough money. You don't have a productive economy to support all the enforcers. And then the whole the checks stop and the whole thing just and then the whole thing really collapses. And so if they keep spending up all these NGOs, I'm like, Oh, good, keep spending George Soros this money, keep spending all these.
00:55:13:15 - 00:55:18:05
Tom
Eurodollars that that Jerome Powell was drying up at five and a half percent around the world, like.
00:55:18:05 - 00:55:19:20
Tom
Spend your money. Go ahead.
00:55:19:23 - 00:55:21:22
Tom
You're going to run out because there aren't because.
00:55:21:22 - 00:55:23:24
Tom
We ain't making more of them.
00:55:23:26 - 00:55:45:14
Tom
That's the key to understanding why Powell has done has been so monumental, is that he really has dried up so many of the of the the nefarious funding channels. There's still plenty of them out there. And the British crown still has unbelievable amounts of money in offshore tax havens and all the rest of it. But they're now spending seed corn.
00:55:45:17 - 00:55:46:21
Tom
They're not spending.
00:55:46:25 - 00:55:57:19
Tom
Leveraged up crappy, shitty euro dollars that they're that they're you know, they're not spending the interest on their on their crappy Euro dollars and the clothes and all this other you know crap.
00:55:57:21 - 00:55:59:02
Tom
They're not doing that anymore and then having to.
00:55:59:05 - 00:56:05:06
Tom
Actually spend M0, not M3, you know what I mean. Yeah. To maintain this. And that's a good sign.
00:56:05:08 - 00:56:13:06
Marty
Which acutely highlights why we need sound money back in the world. It's what enables them to do all this terrible shit. This is easy money, right?
00:56:13:07 - 00:56:16:07
Tom
And I don't care what that sound money looks like. I'm agnostic.
00:56:16:07 - 00:56:19:22
Tom
I'm agnostic whether it's going to be gold or Bitcoin or some version thereof.
00:56:19:25 - 00:56:22:29
Tom
I'm not, you know, I get I get I get a lot.
00:56:22:29 - 00:56:33:28
Tom
Of hate from the from the from the the Bitcoin evangelical is I guess like better than calling them the bitcoin maxis because then maybe there's a, there's a fundamental difference between those two, those two sets of people but like.
00:56:33:28 - 00:56:37:16
Tom
They don't I, I'm my critiques of.
00:56:37:16 - 00:56:42:21
Tom
Bitcoin are not you know kind of IQ 105 Midwest arguments about bitcoin.
00:56:42:21 - 00:56:49:27
Tom
They're very, very nuanced, specific, intellectually rigorous.
00:56:49:29 - 00:57:07:01
Tom
Arguments about Bitcoin that are based on the faith, the fundamental truth that no technology is the end all and be all of a particular thing because human beings are still and their needs are always evolving. Bitcoin may be the thing, the next thing.
00:57:07:04 - 00:57:24:19
Tom
But it won't be. It may or may not even be the last thing it could be. I sincerely doubt it, but it could be. And even if it doesn't, even if it isn't that if it is, the thing that drives a you know, helps drive a massive reorganization.
00:57:24:21 - 00:57:25:18
Tom
Of.
00:57:25:20 - 00:57:29:13
Tom
Global capital handling and back.
00:57:29:13 - 00:57:30:26
Tom
Towards decentralization and.
00:57:30:26 - 00:57:46:03
Tom
Property rights, then it doesn't have to do any more than that. It can just be one of the things, the tools in our toolbox to regain our sovereignty as people. And that's good. And isn't that good enough? That's a massive success. Exactly.
00:57:46:06 - 00:57:59:20
Marty
I mean, that was one of the core points at the end of the Bitcoin standard. Buy safe was the only thing that Bitcoin does is force central banks to bring sound money back to the world. It is a massive success.
00:57:59:22 - 00:58:06:28
Tom
Massive success. Let me put it to you this way. One of the things I mean, for example, Martin Armstrong has made the argument for a long, long time.
00:58:07:00 - 00:58:08:04
Tom
And again, I'm not endorsing Martin's.
00:58:08:04 - 00:58:11:00
Tom
Argument here, but I am going to I'm going to riff off of it. Okay.
00:58:11:03 - 00:58:15:17
Tom
Which is the following. He said, look, you know, opinion is the original.
00:58:15:17 - 00:58:17:09
Tom
Conception of the Federal Reserve wasn't wrong.
00:58:17:13 - 00:58:23:12
Tom
It was there as a thing to provide elastic money and times liquidity for the banking system.
00:58:23:12 - 00:58:32:27
Tom
So that we didn't have a massive deflationary collapse that we that the Fed was there as the lender of last resort on a regional basis. The 12 member banks.
00:58:32:27 - 00:58:37:04
Tom
And a regional basis to keep the banking system solvent during.
00:58:37:04 - 00:58:42:03
Tom
Crisis periods because of the natural vagaries of the boom bust.
00:58:42:03 - 00:59:11:23
Tom
Cycle. If from that perspective alone, it's hard to argue with Marty. Okay, if we take the Fed as it exists today and we go from where we are today to back to that, that would be a massive win. It wouldn't be the win, right? But it would be a a great win in the battle. I'm not you know, again, this is not an endorsement of the Federal Reserve, but let's just play that out, wouldn't you?
00:59:11:25 - 00:59:14:21
Tom
It's like thinking to yourself, okay, if you are a hard.
00:59:14:21 - 00:59:16:26
Tom
Core Austrian sound money kind of guy.
00:59:16:28 - 00:59:22:28
Tom
And you were running the Federal Reserve right now, how would you operate monetary policy? Would you just be.
00:59:23:00 - 00:59:37:27
Tom
You know, would you just be like the guys who run for dogcatcher and in in BFE Texas and say, I'm running as dog catcher in BFE Texas? Do to to to destroy the to abdicate the job and take it off the books.
00:59:37:29 - 00:59:52:12
Tom
No, that would that would be unbelievably destructive, disruptive and destructive of the entire world because the world, sadly, you can argue sadly is you know but operates within this.
00:59:52:12 - 00:59:54:01
Tom
Paradigm, in this framework of.
00:59:54:01 - 01:00:18:10
Tom
Central banks. So I'm not saying that the the central banks are reform able, but if they need if they want to survive, they may have to go back to a much more humble role in the economy. And wouldn't that be a good thing? And if you were and if I were Fed chair, for example, I'm having a hard time believing that I wouldn't be running the Federal.
01:00:18:10 - 01:00:19:13
Tom
Reserve right now the.
01:00:19:13 - 01:00:21:20
Tom
Way Powell was setting up.
01:00:21:22 - 01:00:33:28
Tom
A, you know, a domestic debt indexing rate and setting up a a domestic banking system, that that.
01:00:34:00 - 01:00:36:00
Tom
That pushes us back.
01:00:36:00 - 01:00:45:14
Tom
Towards regional banking and that interest banking and old and classical, you know what classically what banks are supposed to do as opposed to the casino that they've been turned into.
01:00:45:17 - 01:00:49:16
Tom
You know, I that's what I would do. That would be my step one along in.
01:00:49:16 - 01:00:56:23
Tom
The way of getting rid of the Fed, for example. Right. But I have to by order of operations matters. I've always been so I've been said this for years. So that's.
01:00:56:25 - 01:00:59:17
Tom
This this is just again, it's not an endorsement.
01:00:59:17 - 01:01:01:16
Tom
Of the Fed as an institution.
01:01:01:16 - 01:01:04:08
Tom
It's just like, how do we go from where we are.
01:01:04:10 - 01:01:10:10
Tom
To where we want to go and what steps do we take along that path? And I thought about this a lot and, you.
01:01:10:10 - 01:01:22:10
Tom
Know, I thought about this a tremendous amount. And I'm like, yeah, that whole libertarian Hippocratic Oath thing is very important. Like do as little harm as possible while you're on or you're on fucking.
01:01:22:10 - 01:01:23:05
Tom
The world, basically.
01:01:23:05 - 01:01:44:18
Marty
Yeah. And that's, I mean, that path is a harrowing path with a bunch of needle threading. That's, I think that's the, the scary part is of course it, it's a virtuous goal and path to try to take. But has the Frankenstein that's been erected so fucked up that it's it's.
01:01:44:21 - 01:01:52:19
Tom
Like I don't have an answer for that I'm saying I just what I would try to do with the imperfect knowledge that I have in front of me and with the imperfect tools that I have.
01:01:52:25 - 01:01:55:29
Tom
If I were Fed chairman looking at my tools that were my toolbox.
01:01:56:02 - 01:01:56:22
Tom
I'm going, I don't know.
01:01:56:22 - 01:01:57:19
Tom
If I can I can.
01:01:57:19 - 01:02:06:16
Tom
Pull this off. Right. But I'm damn well going to try them. I'm going to fix what I can fix. And then hopefully, if I can get enough buy in.
01:02:06:16 - 01:02:07:19
Tom
From the rest of the world.
01:02:07:19 - 01:02:19:08
Tom
To work through the process constructively, we can get there. If we make that decision. If the people, however, who erected that system.
01:02:19:08 - 01:02:19:16
Tom
For.
01:02:19:16 - 01:02:41:01
Tom
Their own benefit refused to give up that power, which you have to expect that they won't willingly, then you have then does the world not kind of look like what we have today, right now? Yeah. And aren't in the middle of it. I could I can make that argument very, very, very compellingly. And you know, you can choose to say that I'm for it.
01:02:41:01 - 01:02:48:19
Tom
That's fine. I'm not. I'm okay with that. But I happen to think that that's where we are and there's not a lot of compelling.
01:02:48:19 - 01:02:51:28
Tom
Evidence to the to think it in those terms.
01:02:52:00 - 01:02:55:07
Tom
And maybe I'm not maybe I don't have the whole picture in my head. Maybe there is.
01:02:55:07 - 01:02:57:25
Tom
A different way of looking at it that I haven't.
01:02:57:25 - 01:02:58:14
Tom
Considered yet.
01:02:58:14 - 01:03:01:02
Tom
I'm happy to have somebody put that on the table for me, but I know.
01:03:01:05 - 01:03:04:15
Tom
Damn well any peak oil as the price.
01:03:04:16 - 01:03:05:23
Marty
For you go. Who regard you.
01:03:06:00 - 01:03:14:16
Tom
Reflect back with Steve San Angelo. He he he poked a fight. He should never get into it with me. He's done this two or three times and he shouldn't do it.
01:03:14:19 - 01:03:20:21
Marty
So just oils. They've been fear mongering about peak oil since the seventies.
01:03:20:23 - 01:03:22:10
Tom
Yeah, well, my, my my issue.
01:03:22:11 - 01:03:44:25
Tom
With what the air guys and I'll I'll, I'll, I'll make this and this is analogous to bitcoin because bitcoin is an energy based money, right. It's like gold is an energy based money now. Gold is just now congealed diesel fuel, right? I mean, at the end of the day or, you know, or human labor, you know, shovels and picks and shovels, whatever you want to call it.
01:03:45:02 - 01:03:50:14
Tom
I'm getting power from satellite, the satellite on StarLink. So if it's a little fuzzy right now, it's the.
01:03:50:14 - 01:03:51:28
Marty
Audio is fun videos all fuzzy.
01:03:51:28 - 01:03:55:10
Tom
But the audio the video is terrible, terrible on my end.
01:03:55:10 - 01:03:58:25
Tom
So but one of.
01:03:58:25 - 01:04:04:28
Tom
The things to discuss and I know I've just I think I discussed this with Dave Collum is as well at one point where we talk about peak.
01:04:04:28 - 01:04:08:13
Tom
Oil. It's like, look, they're focusing on the enthalpy.
01:04:08:13 - 01:04:12:04
Tom
Version of of part of the problem. You put.
01:04:12:06 - 01:04:12:25
Tom
Mechanical.
01:04:12:25 - 01:04:16:27
Tom
Work in to get mechanical work out.
01:04:16:29 - 01:04:18:26
Tom
Hold on for a second.
01:04:18:28 - 01:04:21:06
Marty
Hold it.
01:04:21:09 - 01:04:33:28
Tom
Okay. Like one of my dogs is, you know, letting me know that there are new people here working on my property and so but the Gibbs free energy equation has both an.
01:04:33:28 - 01:04:47:12
Tom
Enthalpy and an entropy component to it. And what that means is that just because we burn a lot of oil, goober, that's enough. Just because we burn a lot of oil.
01:04:47:14 - 01:04:49:29
Tom
Goobers are great dog by the way.
01:04:50:02 - 01:04:56:14
Tom
Just because we burn a lot of oil to run our economy doesn't mean that's all we use oil for.
01:04:56:16 - 01:04:59:20
Tom
There's a lot of oil is used in a lot of value added products up the.
01:04:59:20 - 01:05:02:01
Tom
Chain that drive a lot more profit.
01:05:02:01 - 01:05:10:15
Tom
Than just taking the oil out of the ground, cleaning it up, turning it, you know, fractionated it. Attorney of the diesel fuel JP for gasoline and all the rest of it.
01:05:10:15 - 01:05:11:01
Tom
There's all sorts.
01:05:11:01 - 01:05:12:12
Tom
Of things we do with oil.
01:05:12:14 - 01:05:18:06
Tom
And that that generates a tremendous amount of profit and that's on the entropy side of the equation.
01:05:18:09 - 01:05:19:14
Tom
Part of the equation.
01:05:19:16 - 01:05:26:22
Tom
And they ignore that because they want to ignore it. It's it's a willful.
01:05:26:24 - 01:05:32:26
Tom
Suspension of it's a this univariate analysis about what oil is and what it does.
01:05:32:29 - 01:05:34:20
Tom
As opposed to and it's the same thing I.
01:05:34:20 - 01:05:40:11
Tom
Have a problem with, again, with the Bitcoin fundamentalists who have the same argument about what Bitcoin can.
01:05:40:14 - 01:05:46:16
Tom
It has to do. It's the same kind of thing they're saying they don't have. We don't have the ability to.
01:05:46:16 - 01:05:48:26
Tom
Respond to incentives as people.
01:05:48:28 - 01:05:51:21
Tom
Come up with better technology, either to extract oil.
01:05:51:22 - 01:05:56:02
Tom
That's currently non-economic or come up with competing.
01:05:56:02 - 01:06:06:12
Tom
Technologies, energy technologies, thorium, molten salt, for example, or Gen three uranium or whatever, all these other things for.
01:06:06:12 - 01:06:11:02
Tom
Generating electricity and and mechanical advantage.
01:06:11:04 - 01:06:44:00
Tom
There's all sorts of other options here, right. And you can't just look at one aspect of a market. You have to look at the entire thing because if that were and that's where the price of oil inflation adjusted terms destroys the whole ERP argument. If you go back to the 1970s and you only look at the price of oil and you use the CPI and you go back to the early 1970s and you calculate the price of oil was in inflation adjusted dollars versus today, and it's like a 15% increase, maybe 20.
01:06:44:00 - 01:06:44:26
Tom
Percent, you know, at.
01:06:44:26 - 01:06:49:23
Tom
$85 or whatever it is. It's not enough for me to get upset about. Even if our.
01:06:49:28 - 01:06:53:06
Tom
RPI has dropped from 100 to 1 to 5 to 1 or whatever the hell it.
01:06:53:06 - 01:07:02:05
Tom
Is, it's dumb. There's so many other avenues here. And if anything that's stopping us from shifting more of oil demand away from burning oil.
01:07:02:11 - 01:07:03:18
Tom
To using it as a materials.
01:07:03:18 - 01:07:09:09
Tom
Precursor, it's only because governments are in the way stopping us from doing so.
01:07:09:11 - 01:07:10:19
Marty
Yep.
01:07:10:22 - 01:07:20:24
Tom
And we're not allowing the natural investment cycle of those barrels of oil into new technologies to give us new options as people.
01:07:20:26 - 01:07:22:23
Tom
Be it, you know, natural.
01:07:22:23 - 01:07:25:02
Tom
Gas and.
01:07:25:05 - 01:07:25:28
Tom
You know, hydrogen.
01:07:25:28 - 01:07:28:14
Tom
Fuel cells or thorium, molten salt.
01:07:28:14 - 01:07:32:26
Tom
Or, you know, gen three, gen four uranium 230.
01:07:32:26 - 01:07:42:06
Tom
Eight reactors or whatever, like there's all sorts of of of other technologies that are out there for, for energy. And I just I might you really think that it's this is the end of this is the end all and be.
01:07:42:06 - 01:07:48:02
Tom
All of of energy that work tomorrow we're going to go over a cliff and we're all going to go back to the Stone Age.
01:07:48:06 - 01:08:04:21
Tom
Mike Really, I don't We got Force X-Class CRM. CRM is just like pop off the and this might be the last interview you and I ever do, right? Right. That's a cliff you should be worried about. Let's begin. What's another cigar.
01:08:04:24 - 01:08:09:00
Marty
They should be hitting There should be hitting the earth like today and tomorrow, right?
01:08:09:02 - 01:08:12:21
Tom
Yeah. No, it's it's it's a big deal. So, you know, part of the other thing.
01:08:12:21 - 01:08:14:16
Tom
Is just to remind everybody, hey.
01:08:14:19 - 01:08:19:01
Tom
At the end of the day, let's have a nice, calm conversation about all these things because.
01:08:19:04 - 01:08:19:25
Tom
You know, we're all.
01:08:19:25 - 01:08:22:07
Tom
On edge and we're all anxious.
01:08:22:07 - 01:08:38:25
Tom
And and on edge because we can feel them trying to make us into World War Three. And there's all these things are happening, and then we're getting bombarded with X-Class, you know, x rays and high, high energy particles from the sun in ways that we've never been bombarded by before.
01:08:38:27 - 01:08:42:22
Tom
All these things have changed, and we have to realize that.
01:08:42:24 - 01:08:45:15
Tom
You know, we're not nearly as rational as we think we are.
01:08:45:18 - 01:08:47:14
Tom
We're just not we're kind of.
01:08:47:14 - 01:08:59:01
Tom
Irrational, ultimately, as people. So we should really just, you know, take a step back, be a little bit hubristic about what it is we think we know and just keep playing ideas out as best as we can.
01:08:59:07 - 01:09:02:07
Tom
And, you know, and don't pick fights.
01:09:02:10 - 01:09:06:01
Tom
With people that you know know more than you because it's never, never a good idea.
01:09:06:01 - 01:09:07:19
Tom
Especially about.
01:09:07:21 - 01:09:18:22
Marty
The. Yeah. Imagine what would happen if the government wasn't subsidizing all this other energy exploration that's corrupting the the pricing mechanism for exploration.
01:09:18:25 - 01:09:25:11
Tom
And like all this oil that's out there that we could go grab, you know, in Canada or all the.
01:09:25:13 - 01:09:26:05
Tom
There's so much.
01:09:26:05 - 01:09:33:28
Tom
Oil out there, there's so much natural gas. I think this morning, I think on Twitter, somebody posted up a a list of the major.
01:09:33:28 - 01:09:34:13
Tom
Oil.
01:09:34:13 - 01:09:45:05
Tom
Discoveries in Africa over the last three years in response to this Twitter thread that we got into that I got into yesterday with the peak oil guys and I'm like, exactly.
01:09:45:08 - 01:09:46:22
Tom
Yeah, well, it's not high enough.
01:09:46:22 - 01:09:48:15
Tom
Recovery yet.
01:09:48:15 - 01:09:59:24
Tom
As if we need it to be, it will be or we will figure something else out and we'll fire up the nuclear reactors or we'll make new ones and we can do this. We can remove all the permitting.
01:09:59:26 - 01:10:00:15
Tom
Stuff that's in.
01:10:00:20 - 01:10:19:19
Tom
All the years, like ten years to build a new nuclear reactor in the United States. Is is a function of regulation and permitting and bureaucracy. It's not a measure. It's not a it's not a mechanism of it's not because we don't know how to build nuclear reactors. That's just dumb. But we can do this if we want to.
01:10:19:19 - 01:10:26:25
Tom
We're if we're if if if it's that acute, if the need is that acute, we will we as people can do it.
01:10:26:28 - 01:10:36:05
Tom
And we've proven in the past that we've done it. We've built this society to this point. We can continue going. And if you don't believe in the law of diminishing marginal utility.
01:10:36:08 - 01:10:36:26
Tom
Well, then you're a.
01:10:36:26 - 01:10:39:19
Tom
Malthusian and ultimately you're a communist.
01:10:39:21 - 01:10:55:10
Marty
You're evil. HARARI At the end of the day, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Factor in like Guyana, low hanging fruit. Just go in, get the communists out of Venezuela and clean up their right traction process. There's no way to sleep. Well, there's so many.
01:10:55:16 - 01:10:56:19
Tom
Like the Russians are pulling.
01:10:56:19 - 01:10:58:05
Tom
Oil out of the ground and, you know.
01:10:58:07 - 01:10:59:08
Tom
And yeah, even.
01:10:59:08 - 01:11:00:18
Tom
Steve this morning came out and said.
01:11:00:18 - 01:11:04:02
Tom
Well, if Russia was, you know, why aren't they drilling deep.
01:11:04:02 - 01:11:06:07
Tom
Wells anymore when they're drilling now, like 48%.
01:11:06:07 - 01:11:34:02
Tom
Of shallow wells because the shallow wells are cheap and they finally got access to the technology because we kept it from them for for 40 years, like we we, we hoarded our fracking technology as a strategic asset from the DOD and wouldn't export it for years decades and some of it leaked out you know and you know with the joint ventures that the Russian oil.
01:11:34:02 - 01:11:36:25
Tom
Companies have formed with like Shell and Gazprom and us.
01:11:36:28 - 01:11:52:28
Tom
And Exxon and others, they taught the Russians how to do this stuff and now they're doing it. Why? Because these wells are cheap to spin up, not because they're their only option. They're desperate. Like, yeah, I don't believe in false dichotomies.
01:11:53:00 - 01:12:04:24
Tom
Marty. You know that to me everything is a multivariate problem to be solved. And, you know, it's, you know, and anybody who tries to reduce everything to a single variable invariably, you know, they.
01:12:04:26 - 01:12:06:10
Tom
You get what you.
01:12:06:12 - 01:12:19:23
Tom
You know, you get what you measure if you only measure one variable. And then so and as as my partner, Dexter White, likes to say, you build a model in Excel and then you take it and you slide the model, the slider on the model all the way to the right and boom, you know, the world blows up.
01:12:19:25 - 01:12:30:21
Tom
Well, yeah, but that's not the way we operate. We respond to at every step along the way, and we alter our behavior as a measure of incentives. Of course, our incentives change at every price point.
01:12:30:23 - 01:12:40:05
Marty
Yeah, right. That's one thing I've learned working in the Bitcoin mining industry for six years is throw the Excel models out. Uh, nothing will ever map to them.
01:12:40:07 - 01:12:41:28
Tom
No, they don't. They don't work.
01:12:42:01 - 01:12:49:16
Tom
Like you have to like it. This is where someone like Martin Armstrong, whether you believe in Socrates.
01:12:49:16 - 01:12:51:18
Tom
Or you don't, is irrelevant.
01:12:51:20 - 01:13:08:11
Tom
Martin's overall thesis, his his thesis, his contribution to society, and it's a profound one, is that everything is cyclic. It is what Marty is talking about when he says things like that is literally the law of.
01:13:08:11 - 01:13:25:00
Tom
Diminishing marginal utility writ large. And what he's trying to do is, you know, build models that predict how we're going to respond to changing environments by looking at all these different variables at the same time. And then solving a whole bunch of differential equations.
01:13:25:02 - 01:13:50:22
Tom
It's an ambitious project on his part. I don't know if he's cracked the code or not. I don't even care. I just know that what he's people elementally in this in this case of everything is either you're either we live in an if not a B environment. If you're not a gold bug, then you'll have Bitcoin. If you're if you love Bitcoin, then you hate gold or we're going to all these if you you know, if you're if you don't side with Israel.
01:13:50:22 - 01:13:51:16
Tom
You'll love the Arabs.
01:13:51:16 - 01:13:59:17
Tom
If you're against if you're against government education, you hate children like all this bullshit, right? What Marty saying is now, it doesn't work that way.
01:13:59:17 - 01:14:03:12
Tom
Everything responds. Everything else and everything, you know.
01:14:03:13 - 01:14:05:25
Tom
And we respond to a complex.
01:14:05:27 - 01:14:09:11
Tom
System of incentives and. And feedback mechanisms.
01:14:09:13 - 01:14:14:21
Tom
And yes, all with imperfect knowledge. But that's the nature of the universe.
01:14:14:23 - 01:14:19:16
Tom
And, you know, you should you should always be humble in the face of your own ignorance.
01:14:19:18 - 01:14:21:14
Marty
That's a beautiful thing to.
01:14:21:17 - 01:14:22:28
Tom
Yeah, of course. Yes.
01:14:23:01 - 01:14:35:10
Marty
That's, uh. Yeah, completely Cosign that. Be humble. Ride the wave. Somebody surfs a lot. That's one thing you learn. Surfing is the ocean's not very predictable, but yeah.
01:14:35:13 - 01:14:38:11
Tom
I can only imagine. And I've never been on a surfboard in my life.
01:14:38:13 - 01:14:49:17
Tom
The fun I'm sure it is. I the only time I ever really worked my legs hard was when I was doing martial arts and. Yeah, yeah. Spar with people and.
01:14:49:19 - 01:14:51:28
Marty
Surfing on the shoulders. It's all shoulders.
01:14:52:00 - 01:14:54:11
Tom
Is it. And the, I guess the.
01:14:54:12 - 01:14:56:26
Marty
Cord and the shoulders.
01:14:56:29 - 01:15:04:21
Tom
Yeah. Neither of which I have ever had strong shoulders or strong core. So yeah, I would get off a surfboard and then I would drown and then.
01:15:04:24 - 01:15:09:23
Tom
And the board would be in the Bahamas and I would be able to stand on the shore.
01:15:09:26 - 01:15:11:25
Tom
Watch you, watch you surf and like.
01:15:12:02 - 01:15:12:27
Tom
And.
01:15:12:27 - 01:15:23:08
Tom
Kick the and and walk through the edge of the walk along the beach and work my work my calves out as I walk through the wet sand. That that would be enough for me smoking a cigar the entire time.
01:15:23:11 - 01:15:25:19
Marty
It's not it's not a bad way to spend your day on the beach. I'm not gonna.
01:15:25:21 - 01:15:26:16
Tom
Lie. Not really.
01:15:26:17 - 01:15:46:19
Marty
Yeah, I know. You just said we shouldn't focus on individual variables, but before we wrap up, that's one. There is one variable I'd like to touch on, and that is Jerome Powell. What is his future at the Federal Reserve? What are his potential futures at the Federal Reserve? You think they keep him around?
01:15:46:22 - 01:15:47:16
Tom
You know.
01:15:47:19 - 01:15:48:18
Tom
I think Powell.
01:15:48:18 - 01:16:17:05
Tom
Is I don't think he's going to go for another term. I think he's about 71 years old now. I think Danielle has made it you know, has intimated quite explicitly that he he signed up for the second term, even though he didn't need to. He's, I think, a man on a particular mission to reform the Fed at a particular a particular way to make it a domestically focused institution, knowing that the age of the dollar, global reserve currency is over and he's trying to set it up in such a way that the.
01:16:17:05 - 01:16:18:23
Tom
Impact of that.
01:16:18:26 - 01:16:21:06
Tom
Change on the United States is as minimal as.
01:16:21:06 - 01:16:27:16
Tom
Possible. And he's fighting a political class. And I would include Donald Trump, by the way.
01:16:27:19 - 01:16:35:12
Tom
Who don't believe in that, who don't agree with him and are fighting him all lock, stock and two smoking barrels.
01:16:35:12 - 01:16:40:19
Marty
Didn't Trump come out and say he wants to control interest rates? Now? Of course, you know, is that a rumor?
01:16:40:21 - 01:16:45:17
Tom
Trump is a Trump is a mercantilist. He believes in strong protection, tariffs in a weak currency.
01:16:45:19 - 01:16:50:03
Tom
He's a marty. I've been saying it for years. I like Trump, but he's.
01:16:50:03 - 01:17:01:06
Tom
Just a shitbag property developer from Queens. Yeah, like, you know, that's who he is at his core. And he was trained by mob bosses.
01:17:01:08 - 01:17:04:08
Tom
Roy Cohn and others to how it negotiate and how to.
01:17:04:08 - 01:17:19:03
Tom
Do the thing. And he would and what, what what scares me about Trump is that the wrong people will be he will be surrounded by the wrong people.
01:17:19:06 - 01:17:25:10
Tom
That will allow him again to.
01:17:25:13 - 01:17:28:25
Tom
To force the unwinding of everything.
01:17:28:25 - 01:18:00:12
Tom
That Powell has done. That is my biggest worry at this point. And the rumor that I saw the other day that he was going to choose Marco Rubio as his running mate should be the most chilling of news of the week, because what that saying is, oh, we're going to have our Reagan George Herbert Walker Bush moment where if Trump steps out of line, they'll just kill him and install little Marco who they fully control.
01:18:00:14 - 01:18:11:07
Tom
And that's not a good sign. I don't know how true that is. I just know it's a rumor.
01:18:11:10 - 01:18:27:22
Tom
I'm still hoping against all hope that he does the right thing and chooses Tulsi Gabbard because she fixes every one of his deficiencies as a as a human being and bridges the gap between the left and right on Israel. I think in a way that is reasonable.
01:18:27:25 - 01:18:29:16
Tom
Minus the histrionics of all the.
01:18:29:16 - 01:18:40:19
Tom
Libertarians who are screaming that, you know, she's bought the ridiculous, you know, Islamist evil Islamist caliphate argument. I don't.
01:18:40:22 - 01:18:41:19
Tom
I don't see.
01:18:41:20 - 01:18:43:21
Tom
Gabbard as That person. I think she's.
01:18:43:21 - 01:18:44:26
Tom
Right.
01:18:44:29 - 01:19:01:16
Tom
In that respect, that there's a sect of Islam that even Muslims are horrified by and would like to see go away. I think Hamas represents that and I don't see her as, you know, pro-Israel in this respect either. I think she looks at the entire thing and says it's all bad. We've created it.
01:19:01:16 - 01:19:09:16
Tom
And it needs to be dealt with. The other day, I think I think I think if you really were to press.
01:19:09:16 - 01:19:40:07
Tom
Gabbard on these points and I may have to sit down, read her book just to find out what she's actually saying on this on this point, maybe I actually will do that. But, you know, the other day I was doing a my my twice weekly podcast for my subscribers. And we've been talking this a lot. I just literally posted an article, the first half of an article that about all of the stuff about Israel, the protests and, you know, Title six of the Rights Act.
01:19:40:07 - 01:19:47:04
Tom
I published the first part of it today. I wrote a proto version of that article last week for my subscribers. So we've been discussing this in.
01:19:47:04 - 01:19:47:19
Tom
Very.
01:19:47:22 - 01:20:00:04
Tom
Controversial terms now for a little over a week. I was on time with Tommy Carrigan the other day trying to explain some of the stuff, and I'm working through these things. But the other day I was thinking about it and I said, you know.
01:20:00:06 - 01:20:02:08
Tom
In the midst of all of this stuff that's going on, Benjamin.
01:20:02:08 - 01:20:10:11
Tom
Netanyahu puts together publishes his plan for what to do in Gaza post Israel's wiping out of whether you believe.
01:20:10:11 - 01:20:14:16
Tom
That they can wipe out Hamas or not. That's not what this is about.
01:20:14:21 - 01:20:15:28
Tom
I'm not endorsing this plan.
01:20:15:28 - 01:20:26:13
Tom
I'm just saying Netanyahu has a plan for the future. And that plan for the future is to wipe out Hamas, get the Palestinians to submit, and then bring them into the fold and within.
01:20:26:13 - 01:20:33:02
Tom
A greater Israel so that everybody can. I don't I think it's a little weird.
01:20:33:09 - 01:20:34:28
Tom
Even my Israeli friends who.
01:20:34:28 - 01:20:37:25
Tom
Are like, you know, who are not pro not pro.
01:20:37:25 - 01:20:39:04
Tom
Netanyahu in any way are like.
01:20:39:09 - 01:20:40:02
Tom
This feels.
01:20:40:02 - 01:21:07:03
Tom
Odd. And then I thought about it for a minute and it reminded me of what Putin did in Chechnya when he level Grozny. And again, I'm drawing a parallel here. I'm not in any way, shape or form condoning anything that's going on. Okay. I am drawing a parallel. In 2008, during the second Chechen war, when Putin went in and leveled Grozny.
01:21:07:06 - 01:21:12:04
Tom
And got the the separatists under the elder Kadyrov to.
01:21:12:04 - 01:21:42:04
Tom
Submit the terms of the surrender were that you surrender, you submit, you pledge loyalty to Russia, and we will rebuild Grozny better than it was. And we will all allow you to self-govern. And as long as you don't ever take up arms against Moscow ever again, we're cool. Govern yourselves however you want to enter. And today, Chechnya is in a much stronger position than it was before the wars.
01:21:42:07 - 01:21:52:08
Tom
Putin has been as good as his word the younger Kadyrov, Ramzan Kadyrov, as absolute governor. I dammit.
01:21:52:10 - 01:21:53:03
Tom
Sorry.
01:21:53:05 - 01:22:18:28
Tom
Of the elder. Kirov is now one of Putin's strongest allies within Russian politics. He was there at the you know, at Putin's inauguration and at the the the the May 9th celebration for the victory, their victory in World War Two and talked glowingly about how they're going to, you know, bring Ukraine under the fall back into the fold.
01:22:18:28 - 01:22:39:16
Tom
And now Putin is going to I mean, he has Putin has disarmed Chechnya in that way and it's working. And now he has some of the most staunchly loyal people on his side. Chechnya voted like 99% for Putin.
01:22:39:19 - 01:22:40:07
Tom
The other one.
01:22:40:07 - 01:23:12:24
Tom
Percent didn't show up. And remember, it was Kadyrov, Chechens who were the ones chomping at the bit to go into Mariupol and do the bug hunt to wipe out the Azoff battalion that was holed up in the hours of saw steel plant and 2022. Those guys couldn't wait to prove their loyalty to Putin. Now, I'm not saying that Netanyahu is going to create that same situation in Gaza with the Palestinians is not what I'm saying.
01:23:12:27 - 01:23:43:16
Tom
But it certainly seems like that's the plan he's putting forward. He putting forward here that there is there will be no two state solution. He's always been against that. I don't trust Netanyahu far as I can throw it, but I throw these ideas out there for you to chew on, not because I endorse them. Okay. These are you know, at some point something has to be done to deal with the animals and the crazies that we've created for cynical geopolitical reasons.
01:23:43:18 - 01:23:45:17
Tom
And they need to be dealt with.
01:23:45:19 - 01:23:46:23
Tom
Just like ISIS.
01:23:46:25 - 01:24:19:29
Tom
Just like al Qaeda and all of it. And, you know, I, I don't have a I don't have a good answer for this, but that may be one of them. Like, history is pretty clear that conflicts this always end bloody end. But they end. But if they're going to be bloody, then they need to be definitive. They can't be allowed to fester and the, the people who we're all fighting against want these conflicts to never be resolved because then they can be spun up at.
01:24:19:29 - 01:24:21:10
Tom
A moment's notice to.
01:24:21:10 - 01:24:22:08
Tom
Gaslight people.
01:24:22:13 - 01:24:39:21
Tom
Divide them, get them screaming at each other while they, you know, erect another part of their big technocratic, you know, awful system that they're that they have a plan for that they want to put in place. And I think.
01:24:39:23 - 01:24:40:12
Tom
We need to.
01:24:40:16 - 01:24:43:01
Tom
Remind ourselves that that there's always a bigger.
01:24:43:07 - 01:24:44:09
Tom
Everybody's a pawn.
01:24:44:15 - 01:24:51:04
Tom
Everybody's engaging in propaganda and everybody's a victim. Yeah. And that.
01:24:51:07 - 01:24:56:12
Tom
You know, and that's the thing that just, you know, and I find myself now caught in the middle between.
01:24:56:12 - 01:24:59:07
Tom
These two sides. I don't endorse Israel. I don't endorse.
01:24:59:07 - 01:25:14:08
Tom
Hamas. I endorse any of these for people. But I look at it and I say, oh, well, we got Jews that will have to be Arabs to the right. Here I am stuck in the middle with you or in Europe. I've got frogs that'll have to be limey. So the right here I am stuck in the middle with you.
01:25:14:11 - 01:25:36:18
Tom
I got you know what I mean? I've got, I've got. I've got Nazis to the left to me right brewskis to the right. Here I am stuck in the middle with you. It's the same is is what? This is what narcissistic abusers do. They between people and they get them again. They set them against each other while they get off on it and they use it to their advantage.
01:25:36:20 - 01:25:46:05
Tom
And we have hundreds of years of history showing us who those people are.
01:25:46:07 - 01:25:48:18
Tom
And they're really good.
01:25:48:20 - 01:26:16:18
Marty
Well, this makes me think like how much of a generational aspect comes into this. I'm 32, child of 911 wars in the Middle East, a great financial crisis, obviously 2020 COVID. And now you pair all that with the economic stress that everybody in my generation and the Generation cups coming up is feeling like, you know, how much of all this is now that we live in the information age.
01:26:16:18 - 01:26:39:27
Marty
We have shows like this and years again, white pill trying to focus on the white pills silver linings recently like I think there's a generational aspect where like people my age are like we're done with all of this. Like, you know, that you're trying to manipulate us and divide us. Not all of us, obviously, but I think a strong enough intolerant minority, at the very least, is being able to identify that everybody is being manipulated.
01:26:39:27 - 01:26:53:06
Marty
And again, it seems like their game just overplayed. You can sort of piece together the their way of operating their modus operandi and identify it as it's happening.
01:26:53:06 - 01:26:53:23
Tom
As.
01:26:53:25 - 01:27:04:10
Marty
We see it. It's kind of a wait for it. Now, election year, it's like protest. It's about bird flu and everybody's like, we're not falling for this again.
01:27:04:12 - 01:27:24:05
Tom
You know, you mentioned that you're 32 years old. I wish, I which, by the way, is phenomenal, by the way that you're in this during this state of awareness at that age, I didn't even start to become politically aware or even like try to dial in until I was 32. Okay. Like, I was like, nope, this is all just shit.
01:27:24:08 - 01:27:30:12
Tom
And and they all suck and that. And the 32 is when I took the world's smallest political quiz for the first time.
01:27:30:12 - 01:27:34:04
Tom
I went, Oh, I know what my problem is. I'm a libertarian.
01:27:34:06 - 01:27:37:06
Tom
I literally was like, overnight, like, Oh, that's what my problem was. I literally went.
01:27:37:06 - 01:27:49:25
Tom
Home. I said, Honey, I know what our problem is with politics. We're libertarians. And she went, Oh, okay, makes more sense now. And we were just completely out of phase with the world because we looked at it, We said, We can't change any of this.
01:27:49:27 - 01:27:52:00
Tom
And but then it's been a.
01:27:52:01 - 01:27:53:20
Tom
Long, slow hard.
01:27:53:20 - 01:28:22:13
Tom
Grind over. I'm 56 now, so 24 years of me piecing these things together and getting better at it over time. And, you know my instincts were that was all bullshit, but I didn't have any good context for it. I didn't study history. I say chemistry and literature right. And so over time, if I just had to become, you know, I just piece that all together slowly but surely, you know, through monetary theory and, you know, politics and this.
01:28:22:18 - 01:28:43:28
Tom
And then eventually that's where we are, where we are. And I wouldn't even be where I am right now if I didn't become and move into the public sphere to be able to sit down and have conversations like this with the world. Right. You know, I just remember being the guy shouting at my own, shouting at the walls in my house, everybody looking at me like I had four heads.
01:28:44:00 - 01:28:46:13
Tom
They were probably right, you know?
01:28:46:16 - 01:29:11:10
Marty
No, that's that's the thing. I think people really underestimate the power of these conversations and not only this conversation, but tens of thousands, millions of conversations happening, whether it's in a close patron discord server, slack of broader shows like this get released publicly. These conversations are happening. Everybody has that deep down intuition, like something's fucked up, they're fucking with us and.
01:29:11:13 - 01:29:12:19
Tom
They think about what to think.
01:29:12:19 - 01:29:21:10
Tom
About. The huge effect that Joe Rogan has had on the ability for people to just sit around and shoot the shit for 2 hours and have everybody go in rapt attention about anything.
01:29:21:12 - 01:29:23:08
Tom
And it's amazing.
01:29:23:11 - 01:29:34:02
Tom
It really does break through the whole tightly controlled, soundbite driven, You know what I like to call the old British media model of of of of of, of.
01:29:34:04 - 01:29:35:10
Tom
What's the word I'm looking for.
01:29:35:13 - 01:29:46:24
Tom
You're while propaganda is obvious but it's it's that you know it's a sensationalist nonsense and then spin the narrative and their narratives don't last 24 hours anymore.
01:29:46:26 - 01:30:04:25
Marty
No that's a government like Martin Armstrong's cyclical thesis like it feels like we are at the end of a cycle and turning into a new one. And yep, if you believe Neil Howells, what's he got for an attorney for turning in the fourth?
01:30:04:25 - 01:30:07:15
Tom
Turning Yeah it was like Neil how.
01:30:07:16 - 01:30:28:24
Tom
Strauss and how the IDF Martin Armstrong Armstrong says we're in the cycle of cycles that the end of a cycle of six cycles right? He has a whole thing that way. When you look at what's happening within the sun, you realize that there's also we're coming to the end of a whole bunch of different major solar cycles as well the Earth is doing in.
01:30:28:24 - 01:30:46:09
Tom
Relation to and blah, blah, blah. These, all these things are coming together and I don't again, I don't like the older I get, the more I'm like, yeah, you know, maybe astrology isn't whoa, you know, maybe this isn't, you know, like this, like as people I say this all the time and I know, I know.
01:30:46:12 - 01:30:50:23
Tom
We have to go soon because I got another show in a couple of minutes and I to, to, to recharge.
01:30:50:29 - 01:30:53:17
Tom
But all stories are.
01:30:53:24 - 01:31:01:06
Tom
Metaphorically true and all stories are false, right? All stories are not true. They're all just they're all.
01:31:01:06 - 01:31:02:09
Tom
Things that happened that.
01:31:02:10 - 01:31:06:04
Tom
Were then filtered through our consciousness and then we communicate to somebody else.
01:31:06:06 - 01:31:07:26
Tom
And that's what the story is. And the story.
01:31:07:26 - 01:31:09:20
Tom
Is your version of the truth.
01:31:09:22 - 01:31:16:08
Tom
But at the same time, all those and the stories maybe, you know, may not be literally true.
01:31:16:10 - 01:31:21:14
Tom
Like the story of Homer and, you know, of The Odyssey or the Iliad or the stories in.
01:31:21:14 - 01:31:36:10
Tom
The Bible or Star Wars or this or that, or any of these big friggin stories. But what they all are of metaphorically true in order to try and tell us what happened in the last crisis period and how we dealt with the last crisis in order.
01:31:36:10 - 01:31:42:13
Tom
To inform the next generation, you know, to how they're going to better be informed to handle.
01:31:42:13 - 01:31:45:28
Tom
The next crisis. That's what these stories are for.
01:31:46:00 - 01:31:48:08
Tom
And we have to you know, and.
01:31:48:12 - 01:31:53:07
Tom
The stories we're telling right now are the ones that we're working.
01:31:53:07 - 01:31:57:13
Tom
Through, the real issues that we're feeling, be it.
01:31:57:15 - 01:32:00:06
Tom
Intuitively or intellectually or a.
01:32:00:06 - 01:32:21:09
Tom
Mixture, hopefully a mixture of both. That's the real important point. So and I'm I'll be I'm on the side of Emma Gilchrist if you've not if you don't know who he is, the left brain right right brain guy, Dean Mighell, Chris is brilliant and he's firmly convinced that what we have now is a fight between models and reality, between the left brain and the right brain.
01:32:21:09 - 01:32:50:14
Tom
And we are a left brain dominated society that has lost its ability to to with the reality that the left brain builds models, the right brain sees reality. And the problem with the left brain is that it can the model can overcome, can overcome the reality and shout it down and then keep it suppressed. And in the world we've rebuilt for ourselves, we're reinforcing left brain model making on a daily basis social media.
01:32:50:16 - 01:33:07:03
Tom
Now, to a lesser extent, some of the even the conversations like this are contribute to this and why it's important that we be aware of those things so that we can try as best as possible to remain balanced between, you know, our intuition and our reason it's very important.
01:33:07:06 - 01:33:10:15
Marty
It's also described as the hyperreal. I forget by who.
01:33:10:17 - 01:33:17:03
Tom
But just as McGill says, like the map is not the world. No.
01:33:17:05 - 01:33:32:25
Tom
It's a model of the world. It's not the world. If you think that the map is the world, you're doing it wrong right there. I got ducks walking the backyard. That's the world. Yeah, that's the map. Doesn't show. The dog doesn't, you know, doesn't doesn't do the doesn't do the world justice.
01:33:32:28 - 01:33:40:16
Marty
Yeah. That's why I point out there. Go have some kids. Play with your kids. It's real. It's the most real thing to me.
01:33:40:16 - 01:33:43:19
Tom
Alice Yep. So.
01:33:43:21 - 01:33:49:00
Marty
Tom It's always pleasure. Thank you for doing this on such short notice. I needed this conversation and the week.
01:33:49:02 - 01:33:50:19
Tom
I'm happy to have.
01:33:50:19 - 01:33:53:08
Tom
Done it, and I'm glad you reached out and we'll do it again. And I.
01:33:53:08 - 01:33:57:14
Tom
And I did. And if it helped. Good. Great. That's all I can. That's all I can hope.
01:33:57:14 - 01:34:02:13
Tom
For, because I had a great time. Marty, Thank you for having me on. It was a I learned a lot. As always, I got a chance to go through all the stuff.
01:34:02:13 - 01:34:03:20
Tom
So it's great.
01:34:03:22 - 01:34:09:22
Marty
Well, the pleasure was all mine. As always, thank you for doing this. Yeah, we'll do it again soon.
01:34:09:24 - 01:34:13:02
Tom
Absolutely. Whenever you want. All right. Thank you, sir. Peace.
01:34:13:05 - 01:34:14:14
Marty
Peace. Nothing's okay.
