Vince Lanci: The Treasury Is Failing You
Transcript — TFTC
Article: https://www.tftc.io/treasury-losing-reserve-asset-status-vince-lanci
Transcript page: https://www.tftc.io/treasury-losing-reserve-asset-status-vince-lanci-transcript
Published: 2026-08-05
Machine transcription, lightly cleaned; may contain errors.
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[0:01] Marty Bent: Vince, take two. Here we are, three days after the first attempt at recording this, but you had some power issues.

[0:07] Vince Lanci: Yes. Thank you, Marty. Take two. Take two indeed. yeah, so we had a couple blackouts in the area. One was from the storm and one was from before the storm.

[0:22] Marty Bent: Hey, early I I was texting you, early June blackouts. Not a good not a good not a good sign before summer even kicks off, but hopefully

[0:28] Vince Lanci: That's that's right. I think they're gonna put a data center in the Starbucks next door to me. No no that's bullshit, but that would be funny. Why not? Starbucks become a data center.

[0:33] Marty Bent: Legitimately or is that Everybody's become a data center. It's the add blockchain to your name and see your stock price rise. The but we're not here to talk about all that. We're here to talk about your new book, which is called As Good as Gold, The Return to Real Money. And you were really beginning to get going during the first first take of this episode on Friday, when we just started with the the concept of collateral versus currency. you believe the the system runs

[0:41] Vince Lanci: Yeah. You're it Yeah.

[1:09] Marty Bent: on collateral and not currency and how you have these different properties of money and you're explaining how gold was the store of value, medium exchange and unit of account for a long time, but they began to slowly but surely and methodically detach each each property from gold specifically, specifically medium of exchange and unit of account.

[1:30] Vince Lanci: That's right. The collateral approach. Yeah. why the collateral approach behind the book? Most books talk about money, they talk about currencies, they talk about central banks or interest rates. what I wanted to do was focus on the thing underneath all those, collateral. The thing that's underneath all those is trust. But absent the trust, you've got to go with collateral. So the insight that drove the book is that every monetary system in history ultimately depends on what society trusts enough to pledge against debt. And this is definitely in the Bitcoin camp. For centuries that asset was gold, right? So in the modern era it became US Treasury Securities.

[3:22] Vince Lanci: Before Brett and Woods, gold was all three. Money was all three. Store of value, medium of exchange, and unit of account. And then when Bretton Woods started, they went off the gold standard, even though that we all allegedly still had our gold. And the dollar became the medium of exchange. So the gold is still the store of value, right? They peeled off medium of exchange. And they peeled off unit of account. And then in 71, when Nixon blew up Bretton Woods, we went off for gold altogether. So if you look at the three definitions of money, and and and you have the you hear the debate, you hear the debate about the dollar is gonna be dethroned.

[5:30] Marty Bent: Yeah, and I I think I think this is being validated in real time too. And we were discussing this briefly on Friday, but I think we should expand on it. I mean the E C B came out and confirmed that gold has overtaking treasuries as the world's top reserve asset, is the top collateral asset with gold at twenty per s twenty seven percent of reserves and treasuries is twenty two percent. And I think

[5:52] Vince Lanci: It's funny it's funny how they do that. the E C B all of a sudden is telling us something that we've known for about a year now. but why are they doing that all of a sudden? I think the E C B is shitting themselves because they're worried about stablecoin dollars coming in. I I'm looking at it as an ulterior like a a Tom Duangle ulterior motive. Like they're talking the dollar down. That's what the E C B is doing. And they're telling the truth, but the fact that they're underlining it now, why would you underline it now? I mean

[6:10] Marty Bent: Mm-hmm. Well, I'm sure you've seen Christine Lagarde's comments on stable coins too. I think she and and Ursula Vanderlein, they they both come out and explicitly said US dollar stable coin expansion into markets outside the US is is bad for the Euro. And they've got this really big push to get the digital euro. They don't want a Euro stablecoin backed by some private issue or like tether. or circle, they want to get their digital euro to market, which will be a creation of the European Central Bank and I I assume the European Union or European Parliament as well.

[6:51] Vince Lanci: Right. Yeah. Yeah, I mean they are definitely shitting themselves for lack of a better word, because, you know, whether you think it's gonna work or not, it is a valid idea. If you if you give people a choice, and they have a wallet and in that wallet, that literal wallet, they have a stable coin or a euro, they might use the stable coin. Because I mean an example that I used with someone else was let's say you wanted to buy something in Europe and you were you were going into your wallet and you were going to use a digital euro. Well if you're using a digital euro and you wanted to buy something that might be questionable.

[8:17] Marty Bent: I I think they're scared shitless for a reason. And I think they need very fine control over everything happening within their monetary system because they're losing control of their their economies to a certain extent. I don't think they've innovated and obviously ESG mandates have really hollowed out the the strong energy base, which has hollowed out the manufacturing base, particularly in Germany. and they're looking at social and cohesion because of the

[8:45] Vince Lanci: yeah.

[8:47] Marty Bent: migration crisis that is bubbling, particularly in the UK and all across Europe, really. And I I think they they see the social tensions rising and they really want to clamp down on speech and use of money as well.

[9:01] Vince Lanci: Yeah, I mean they have to close the doors and windows that they can while they keep everything under control. But it's all precipitated by them. During COVID during COVID they they let German manufacturing leave. They encouraged it to leave. They started preaching this WEF what's the word they used? Not net zero, something worse. Some well basically anti capitalism. I forget what it was.

[9:29] Marty Bent: Stakeholder capitalism.

[9:31] Vince Lanci: Yeah, exactly. and and and then they let all the immigrants in, which I I in I'm not saying that I agree with it. I don't agree with it. but I do understand what the motivation was. I just think it's a horrible motivation and I think they're just causing you know, they're gonna cause a culture clash. Which means Basically everything the government does is and I'm speaking, you know, as a libertarian in this in this matter, everything the government does is cause a problem and then they sell you the solution or or it gives them an excuse to have more of a power grab. We're gonna let a million immigrants in and then we're gonna take away free speech because we don't want the immigrants to be bothered. Meanwhile they're all running around with machete swords. I mean, I'm not like a militant on this stuff, but it's ridiculous. It's it's too much.

[10:18] Marty Bent: It's observable, I think is the most politically correct way to say it, right? Don't tell me not to believe my lion eyes. But bringing this back to collateral and really sort of tying the knot on this and and going back to what the ECB admitted that gold is has overtaken treasuries as collateral. And again, I think really driving on the juxtaposition of currency and collateral, 'cause what we're talking about US dollar dominance, but w what's really underlying that dominance is what people

[10:22] Vince Lanci: It's observable. Yeah. Treasuries. Right, right, right.

[10:48] Marty Bent: U use for collateral, which is treasuries, right? And so really trying to paint the picture of how the currency and the collateral in the existing incumbent fiat system work and how you imagine that transition continuing from here.

[11:01] Vince Lanci: Yeah, I I I that's you're going to the you're like you're like that's the next book, right? I mean, if if if let's say I have my way and everyone's gonna be using dollars, but no one's gonna be using treasuries or not using as many treasuries. what is gonna happen then? Well, what's gonna happen is that the collateral will be whatever you transfer into dollars. So I'm gonna have my stable coin, my stable coin dollar, and I'll have some of my portfolio in gold collateral, some of my portfolio in Bitcoin collateral, some of my portfolio in treasury collateral, and maybe that's what it is, but I don't it's just the end of treasury dominance.

[12:46] Marty Bent: Well, when you're describing in that way, I'm thinking of I mean, I'm thirty-five, just turned thirty-five. I've been hyper aware and following the developments in the global financial system since two thousand eight. went and studied economics at college, worked at a fund, obviously Bitcoin, a lot of the tangentics that that I follow are related to geopolitical and macroeconomic developments over the years. And I think particularly in the say in the Bitcoin space and the hard money space, in the more free market minded space, people have been screaming that you're gonna have this sovereign debt melt up, where you're gonna have this calamitous sort of blow up of sovereign debt markets and we're just gonna have a reset button. But I think what you're putting forth is it seems like they're prepping the the

[13:34] Vince Lanci: Okay.

[13:41] Marty Bent: transition to be more sort of structural, methodical, and less chaotic. Is that what you think's happening quietly behind the scenes with this collateral switch?

[13:49] Vince Lanci: Yeah, I think I think I think that's that's exactly it. I mean I I think they've seen how they screwed up before and they're gonna need to do a controlled takedown. We're doing a I I've used the analogy of an engine swap. Like the economy is a car driving down the road and they recognize that the current engine that they have isn't working anymore. And so they need to swap engines and put a new engine in. But meanwhile, they can't stop the car, so they're telling everybody everything is fine while they're tinkering under the hood, going at eighty miles an hour, trying to swap the engine.

[14:57] Marty Bent: That's that's Alex Jones propaganda. Your your s the UN wrote that paper, but we're not allowed to talk about what do they call it? The great the great replacement theory is what you're pushing right now, Vince.

[15:07] Vince Lanci: That's right. That's right. Yeah, I mean I I I I read the whole paper. It was it was it was interesting because they had a list of basically three things that they wanted to do, to deal with it. And the reason that they wanted the immigration or the great replacement was because they didn't have enough working people to carry the Ponzi scheme. And but meanwhile they're not encouraging anyone to have kids. So I So we're just importing immigrants, which, okay, fine. If they want to be there and they want to be there for the right reason, that's fine. But they didn't. They just want to be there to to to stir up some shit, it would seem.

[16:10] Marty Bent: Silicon Valley's working hard to extend lives. I mean, we're gonna all live to be a hundred and fifty, so it's just natural that you retire at seventy. It's

[16:16] Vince Lanci: That's right. That's right. I was thinking about that. then I think the the the the darker point is I guess well if you're in Canada they start selling suicide booths. So either

[16:28] Marty Bent: Did did you hear the story about the guy at Tim Hortons the other week? There was some guy Canadian sitting outside like a Tim Hortons and some like social worker noticed he was in in a bad mood. Apparently had irritable bowel syndrome and he talked he talked to this Canadian I guess social worker or or doctor connected to the state in the parking lot. And they decided then and there that he he was probably

[16:31] Vince Lanci: No.

[16:57] Marty Bent: probably time for him to participate in the maid program and and euthanize himself and did it like the next day.

[17:04] Vince Lanci: Wait, this is true?

[17:05] Marty Bent: Yes.

[17:07] Vince Lanci: A guy is sitting in a parking lot, gets approached by a state sponsored doctor, and offs himself within days. You gotta give me the link to that. That's crazy. I mean I mean, you know, for later. I'll send it to my subscribers just because it's just so bizarre I'd have to send it to them. And of course it's Tim Hortons, right? Which makes sense.

[17:22] Marty Bent: Let me see if I can pull it up real quick. Yeah. Yeah, right. but back to the reason we're talking here. How does the plumbing come into all this? Like repo markets, rehypothecation, you were making the analogy of the engine. The economy is this engine that's running and we have to change it on the go. Well, we're going eighty miles an hour and I feel like a lot of the critical parts that are necessary for that engine exist in the in these markets that are very opaque or maybe not opaque but very hard to understand for for the layman and what is their particular interaction and relationship to collateral and how does that evolve over time?

[18:06] Vince Lanci: Right, right, right. Right. Right, the repo markets, the rehypothecation. You know, the the short version is that most people think the global financial system runs on money, but my argument is actually runs on collateral. And the book traces how we got here, which is what you're talking about, right? We went from a world where gold was the ultimate settlement. asset to a world where treasury bonds became the backbone of global finance. I walk readers through the evolution of that system and explain concepts like repo markets, dollar recycling and rehypothecation in a way that non-specialists can understand. But the the second half of the book asked the question, what happens when confidence in that collateral begins to change.

[19:24] Marty Bent: Well and and this is something that we discussed I think when you first came on, 'cause I I caught had you on last fall to discuss the the gold on warrant at the Shanghai Gold Exchange. And that like we went walked through that and basically setting up all the gold vaults and the different countries across the f like Southeast Asia and parts of Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and now that you're explaining

[19:36] Vince Lanci: Right. Right.

[19:54] Marty Bent: That about the repo market, it seems like that's the parallel sort of repo infrastructure that's being set up.

[19:57] Vince Lanci: It it is the parallel. That's that's that's that's a that's a great connection to make. It is the parallel. The parallel is is that if you want to repo treasuries, you press a button and you can for those who don't understand what a repo is, repo is basically throwing your collateral into the pawn shop and then getting cash for it. So that's repurchasing. and then yeah, rehypothecation, which is everyone is familiar with in gold and and Bitcoin is getting familiar with now as well, with the manufacturing of futures to keep the price of an asset suppressed. but when you when you when you tie it to the vaults, I mean look One of the things that that the dollar has going for it that gold does not, at least not yet, not not legally, even though it is, is something called HQLA, which is high-quality liquid asset, which is a label, and that label says if something is liquid enough, we give it that label, and if it's that liquid, then it's also eligible for repo.

[22:02] Vince Lanci: And then they can borrow money against it, and they can build infrastructure and highways. I mean, that's kind of what's been going on in Africa, what Dorsey was trying to do with Bitcoin, you know, get people to use it as an infrastructure rebuilding tool in Africa. But the Middle East is doing that with gold now. So they're basically saying, they're basically saying to a country like Ghana, You've got a lot of gold, you don't have any roads or highways. If you put the gold in your vault and that vault's part of our network, then we'll let you borrow against it, repo against that gold to build highways. Now the trick of it is the Chinese love this because they're going to be hiring Chinese companies to rebuild the highways. So basically that's how China's manufacturing gets legs in the Belt and Road Initiative. That's pretty powerful stuff. That's the new the new plumbing.

[22:52] Marty Bent: It is. And do you think the US recognizes this and is trying to counteract it? I think Scott Besson actually it's probably probably good that your power went out on Friday because I I believe later that day Scott Bessant was on the hill and Tim Scott was asking him questions about the state of digital asset policy and Scott Bessant unprovoked said the Bitcoin strategic reserve act is very high priority. It's moving slowly, but they're trying to act methodical and make sure they get everything right and

[23:26] Vince Lanci: Yeah, I mean I think when it comes to Bitcoin itself, I think what I really think is in the future. In the future you're gonna have whatever currency you want to use yuan, yen, euros, dollars, and what backs that currency is gonna be What gives your currency its value. So I'm I'm not talking about a gold standard or anything like that or a Bitcoin standard. But I am saying that, you know, I if I have stable coins, Genius Act, and what's the what's the new name, the new act called? Clarity Act. The Clarity Act. Yeah, the banks are already rebelling against it. The banks are a little bit nervous about it now. So I I think I think Bessent is familiar with it. And I I think there's a clock.

[24:11] Marty Bent: Clarity Act.

[24:23] Vince Lanci: There's a clock on the dollar's dominance that's starting to run out. And they know that they need to use whatever tool they can get, whether that be Bitcoin, whether that be gold. I mean I don't think they want to use gold, but they have to use gold eventually. but if they can get stable coins and Bitcoin in the in the in the stable to get this going, then what they'll do is they'll they'll put dollars in everyone's hands in stablecoin fashion. And so that's gonna be good for Bitcoin eventually.

[24:57] Marty Bent: Yeah. Now as we're thinking about it's like how scarce are these at like how how big is this for the gold and in Bitcoin markets in terms of future price appreciation potential if we're knitting ones of this?

[25:09] Vince Lanci: Well, you know, I I don't have an answer for that, but I do know I mean we do know that we both know that Tether has been buying gold as well as Bitcoin now. And I can't think that they're doing it just because they're speculating. You know, and and I'm not sure that I don't they don't have the business yet, you know, for for for gold, stable coins, but they certainly have the gold now. So I mean there's they're buying as much as any central bank. What?

[25:29] Marty Bent: They have a gold stable coin. They have a gold stable coin.

[25:33] Vince Lanci: They do, but I mean they're not they're not de it's not all deployed. I'm just saying that they have all this gold and they're not buying it as a spec. So they're hedged, they're properly run. I mean that's what's gonna happen. I'm gonna be in Europe one day and I'm gonna buy a bottle of wine and I'm gonna pull out my wallet, and my wallet's gonna be US stablecoin. And I'll pay with a US stable coin and my stable coin will be my US dollar stable coin will be backed by whatever I ha I use for collateral. And that's it. Or maybe I'll use it in, you know, if you're in China, you'll be using, you know, Yuan.

[26:40] Marty Bent: Well, I mean this gets into I think a really important question. Is the plan that the powers that be have to re architect this collateral system on the go, is that overall beneficial for hum humans, for humanity, for let's just use the US perspective for US citizens, or is it going to lead to a finer ability to control prices and the financial system and Extend that to speech and people

[27:12] Vince Lanci: You talking about stable coins or central bank digital currencies, or both?

[27:15] Marty Bent: Stable co both stable coins. 'Cause I'm because I'm also thinking that's like there's three paths. C B D C central banks control it, you can get your allowance, can't buy meat, all that good stuff. Stable coins, privately issued, backed now by treasuries, but in your view in the future will be backed by a sort of portfolio of collateral, different collateral, Bitcoin, gold, treasuries, whatever it may be.

[27:26] Vince Lanci: Right.

[27:45] Marty Bent: more free market than central bank digital currencies. However, as we've seen in the Straight or Muse over the last month, like still centrally controlled. Yes, they run on peer-to-peer distributed blockchains. However, they are centrally issued by third party, in many cases tether. And if the US government comes to Tether and says, hey, we got word that this actor that we don't like has has a bunch of tether, we need you to hit the button to freeze.

[27:51] Vince Lanci: No. Right. yeah.

[28:14] Marty Bent: the tether in that account. So you still have the functionality of a C B D C with the stable coins. However it's just got a a friendlier free market, private market facade.

[28:23] Vince Lanci: There's there's the illusion of yeah, there's there's the there's the illusion of separation of church and state, you know? Like, JP Morgan isn't gonna do what the government wants. they're not gonna stop me from buying, you know, beer with my stable coin. And maybe the government's gonna say, Well, you're right, maybe we're not. So and JP Morgan won't stop us, but JP Morgan will raise the minimums.

[28:31] Marty Bent: Yes.

[28:49] Vince Lanci: JP Morgan, like there's gonna be there's the the the companies will comply with the state. I agree with you. It just won't be as ham fisted or ham handed or obvious. But if you're big enough and you're on their radar, they'll come and get you. We've already seen it, as you said.

[29:05] Marty Bent: Well, do you see a third path where you you lean into Bitcoin specifically, which can't be controlled, and you use it as a you use all aspects of the properties of money that we described earlier, the state store value, medium of exchange, unit of account, and where it becomes significantly harder.

[29:25] Vince Lanci: No, it's it's it's look, I mean, I'm a gold person and I and my education on Bitcoin, little of it that I own, tells me that, you know, if you look at money a certain way and you are willing to operate money a certain way, then Bitcoin's a better a better solution for all that. So that would be your third way. But what I what I'm woefully ignorant of is Or what I'm not ignorant of is how the government will control on ramps and off ramps and kind of capture that's what governments do, they just capture. So there's always gonna be the sovereign individual who gets to use Bitcoin outside of the system, but for most of humanity it's gonna be captured. So

[30:17] Marty Bent: Well it comes in like waves, right? Like sine waves. And that's what I'm trying to discern. Like are we getting like peak government capture? And does the power of the state collapse in and of itself via a sovereign debt crisis, via social uprising where people are upset with the Epstein class, they've had enough and they truly stand up to the federal government, which is taxing us at a rate of twelve like twenty five X more than

[30:20] Vince Lanci: Yeah.

[30:45] Marty Bent: what the British Empire was taxing the the colonies at before they incited the the revolution and the like 'cause like if it if they do corral more power and like and like they already have a lot of power. It's like what is the what is the point of diminishing marginal returns on trying to acquire and exert that power and like when is it collapse in and of itself? Yeah.

[30:49] Vince Lanci: Right. Right. I see your point. I You're talking about the philosophy behind revolution. That's what you're talking about. So I have to go now. I don't want to get arrested. No, but that no, but I I've been reading about some of that from there's an old well I don't want to go down a rabbit hole, but let me just say what what what she said. Her name is Hannah Arendt. She said that she said that

[31:14] Marty Bent: Ha ha ha.

[31:32] Vince Lanci: With comments on power and violence, she made the comment that that governments when they lose the respect and the authority of their people, they will seek to overreach by squeezing too hard, and that's when you get your revolution. So when you said that, I'm like, it sounds like you're reading Hannah Arendt. she was well anyway, whoever she was, she was a philosopher. And and she was describing basically that the government and the people is always a battle between centralization on one hand and decentralization on the other. Or you can look at it as control by the state and libertarianism. So but that's the way it always goes.

[33:02] Marty Bent: Yes. Mm-hmm. E coin. E coin.

[33:26] Vince Lanci: I mean i it i it I believe that for evolution the evolution of money will have revolutions in it. And one of those revolutions will be a crisis like Mr. Robot, where people have to find something that's better. I mean better than gold. I mean and I say that because who's gonna be using gold who's gonna be using a gold stable coin to go buy a ham and cheese on rye? I mean that's just not happening, you know. So Bitcoin is well suited for that. The question is what causes mass adoption? And usually it's a crisis. We need a crisis for someone to say, shit, I gotta do something different. People don't change their habits unless they have to. So

[34:11] Marty Bent: No, no, I wanna be clear, I'm not calling for revolution. I'm just running through the the logical thought experiment of like the the the it it does make you wonder. Like you're looking at I mean you're looking out Western quote unquote democracies and seeing the the fists get get tighter around the people. I mean, I think it's more exacerbated in Europe now, particularly the UK, Ireland, parts of Germany.

[34:18] Vince Lanci: I don't think you are. Yeah.

[34:41] Marty Bent: particularly with anti immigrant sentiment really clamping down and that whole debacle or not not debacle tragedy in in England over the last few weeks where that that white kid was killed and the cops handcuffed him because his murderer claimed that the the kid was being racist to him and they let him die on the street and people are getting pissed off and y if you're tweeting about it the the UK law enforcement's gonna come knock on your door and give you a stern warning and eventually they'll they'll throw you in jail for a couple of months if you if you keep talking about it.

[35:14] Vince Lanci: What what did they think was gonna happen? I mean th I mean this is why I'm so scared of how stupid governments are, you know, to bring back the point of they'll overreach when they start to to lose the respect of the people around them. How how stupid do you have to be to not see that letting in millions of people is not gonna cause a culture clash and enforcing these rules and having morons enforce them, I I'm like beside myself with how how do they My my conclusion is either they're dumb and most of them are dumb, or the ones that aren't dumb, say I don't care. Just just hammer the square peg into the round hole until it fits. I don't care what you do to the edges of the br of the of the peg, it's gonna happen. So that's where you get your your V your your V for vendetta revolution.

[36:05] Marty Bent: Yeah. I mean then here in the States, I mean, we're not at that level. Anywhere near that level, I would say, yeah. And I think speech is still relatively free. But then you have like other aspects of it. Like we we have wartime footing, and yes, there is a war going on, but not like World War Two time footing where like the Trump administration is going out and buying large pieces of equity and critical businesses. So you have like this n quasi nationalization of some industries across the country too. And that that's a little creepy to me.

[36:30] Vince Lanci: Right. That's creepy. For me, that's creepy because in the beginning you're like, I'm long that stock, that's good. And after like six months, you're like, wait a minute. That's fucked up. You know, because then they can tell them what to do. they're they're rewarding a contract for them. Yay! And you're like, wait a minute. That's not good. That's not good for us. That's state controlled. You know, I had read something four years ago, actually taught my students this. And It it's playing out just as it was predicted back then. And it was the conversation was the world is going towards centralized authoritarian governments because they're losing control technologically of people.

[38:01] Marty Bent: Well, I mean, I think the AI race is accelerating its inclusion in American policy, right? 'Cause the the AI race has been deemed existential by the current administration. And I think like directionally, like it is correct. It's a big it's a big pie and there's very severe consequences for not winning the AI ba battle and it is existential. To an extent, but I think the free market, we should let the entrepreneurs go do it. The the government trying to put their hand on the the scale and really put money and get equity positions in these companies, and you can squint and see the regulatory moats beginning to be drafted and some dark rooms on the hill and license regimes coming. and

[38:54] Vince Lanci: Yeah.

[38:59] Marty Bent: I I think the AI race is an example of that authoritarianism beginning to creep in the US, from China, because China is the number one sort of competitor that we have in that specific race. And I think a lot of people in the US government and even in the tech sector have basically thrown their hands up and say, Hey, we have to be more like China to be China in this particular race.

[39:11] Vince Lanci: Right. Right, that started under Biden. I remember him saying something to that effect. He's like, you know, democracy, we've had it too easy, we need to we need to turn the aircraft in the water or something like that. Aircraft carrier in the water. But yeah, I get it. We're we're we're we're centralizing authority. to be able to compete with a central authority. So in a sense, democracy is messy and we can't afford to be messy right now. And so we're signing on for corporatism or fascism or whatever it is. But it's dangerous.

[39:55] Marty Bent: It's funny, I've been rereading Democracy the God That Failed and I think Hoppe made some really good poignant points in that book.

[40:03] Vince Lanci: I I didn't hear the last part you said, your voice is a little low.

[40:05] Marty Bent: I said I've been reading rereading Democracy, The God That Failed, and I think Hoppe has some really interesting points in that book and

[40:13] Vince Lanci: I never read that. What's a what's what's what's the central point?

[40:17] Marty Bent: it's essentially a thought experiment. He comp he's comparing democracies to monarchy, and he says it in the introduction. I don't think monarchy is the ideal form of government, but we're gonna walk through the thought thought experiment of comparing democracies to monarchies, and I'm gonna highlight why monarchies are superior. And the core thesis basically revolves around monarchs have an

[40:38] Vince Lanci: Right.

[40:44] Marty Bent: a a legitimate equity stake. Like they they're landowners, they own a lot of the productive capital within their domain, and they have a duty to their domain and monarchies, particularly hereditary monarchies, where you pass down through the family, you have the ability to think with a low time preference because your reputation and ultimately your head is dependent on you stewarding that capital and allocating it efficiently.

[40:52] Vince Lanci: Right.

[41:14] Marty Bent: To make sure that the people living within your domain are relatively well off and productive. Where the democracy, you don't have that ability because you have politicians cycling through every four, eight, whate however many years, and they don't have the same sort of dedication to the capital that they're stewarding. And that they can always hand the bag on to somebody else.

[41:41] Vince Lanci: Right, right. You can you can i in a democracy a politician only has to worry about the short term because the long term takes care of itself. The invisible hand will take care of it. Well it's not taking care of it anymore. We definitely have some problems that need to be addressed. That's interesting. So so the monarch the monarch has skin in the game. And so it's in his best interest to run it right. or the the the the despot or the or the dictator. And I don't mean that in a negative way. The person who's in charge. If there's some it's kind of like the the Batman movie. Here's an analogy for you. The Batman movie when they're sitting at the table, the Joker one, we're sitting at the table and and what's his name? The guy who ends up being Two Faced. He says Harvey Dent, he says

[42:36] Marty Bent: Harvey Demp.

[42:39] Vince Lanci: Well, back in Roman times when there was crisis, they would make someone a Caesar and that person would run the show until they got the crisis taken care of. And then they go into whole thing, well then either you live long enough to to be hated or or or or or or get killed by your people or something like that. But that's the idea. We need a we need a leader right now. The question is, you know, it's who's the leader?

[43:03] Marty Bent: We need a Cincinnati. Somebody who who will come from from the farmland, get everything in order, and then go back to his humble farm. your people are saying

[43:14] Vince Lanci: Right, right. That's your Caesar. Cincinnatus is your Caesar. That's right. That's right.

[43:18] Marty Bent: Yeah. the yeah, it is crazy times. And it it's just it's can be discombobulating at times. But I I I and be interested to get your thoughts on this. I know. you're a gold guy, but it that's the one thing that gives me confidence or maybe not confidence but relative calm. Is like I know what Bitcoin is, I know what I own, I know how n who can and cannot control who I know it cannot be controlled. rather trivially, and I think that sort of rule set and that anchor gives me a lot of peace of mind. Because like, okay, worse comes to worse, I can allocate in this asset that is out of the control of the central banks or the states, and I'm relatively inoculated. I think gold can't make as strong an argument for it, but it's pretty strong. if people need better collect

[44:13] Vince Lanci: Yeah, yeah, I I I I I understand. You know, if if if you if you believe, fully believe the premise that Bitcoin can't be co-opted, and from everything I've seen that's true, then eventually there'll be an opportunity for it and it will slip in and become money. Do I feel that way about gold? I largely feel that way about gold. my concern about something like gold is I think that it can be co-opted in a sense where it could be re the on-ramps and off-ramps can be restricted. You know, if I'm if I'm if I'm using a stable coin or I'm not gonna go again, I'm not gonna go to a deli and buy a ham and cheese on rye, you know, with with with a gram of gold.

[45:43] Marty Bent: Yeah. How are they gonna try and control Bitcoin? I mean, you mentioned futures launching.

[45:50] Vince Lanci: Well, they're they're do they're doing that now. I mean, I don't think it's a high priority right now, but I think I think well with with gold when they when they created the futures market for gold, that tamped it down. And they created the futures market in two thousand seventeen for Bitcoin and that tamped it down. In fact it made it crash back then. that's I contend that that's what happened. and now they have it in an ETF and they love ETFs. And so yeah, you may think you own Bitcoin, but you own the wrapper that goes around the Bitcoin that BlackRock is rehypothecating with someone else.

[47:14] Marty Bent: Yeah. So what is the latest with gold markets? We're trading up four, three twenty five right now, down from about five p wicked up to five five. are we just in a consolidation? I mean the last time you came on, you were talking about silver, it was running too hot, it was crazy that we were hitting those levels. There was probably gonna be a co cool off and and that that did play out. And so what what is happening in the precious metals complex right now?

[47:31] Vince Lanci: Yeah. And now silver's cold. Yeah. Well, the gold market is everybody's talking about the gold market at the mainstream media level. Everyone's talking about the gold market as dollar diversification, central banks are buying. But that's known now. That's in the market. So we need another catalyst for gold to get a leg higher. And that catalyst will probably something that comes out of Bessent's mouth. Maybe a revaluation. I mean I'm not saying that's gonna happen, but people are starting to talk about it a lot more. Maybe a gold bond. That's being talked about again. but what's going on in the gold market right now is For two, two and a half years, we gold bugs had the luxury of a market that didn't care about the dollar, of a market that didn't care about rates, of a market that didn't care about anything except they wanted the gold.

[49:09] Marty Bent: When you say when you say fight inflation, you mean effectively fight inflation? That's what the market thinks.

[49:13] Vince Lanci: Well, not effectively. I mean I mean wave wave a magic wand at it by raising rates. I mean the last time the Fed fought inflation was in twenty twenty two. And give an example. I'll give an example that's parallel. We're talking about the the Middle East war, the Iran war, and we're talking about dollar strength undermining gold's viability. Well I'll I'll give you a story from twenty twenty-two. In twenty twenty-two the Ukraine war started and gold spiked near all-time highs. That was in February. Then in March, the Fed announced they were going to raise rates. And gold marched for six months, five months, April, May, June, July, August, September, red candles in a row.

[50:29] Marty Bent: Yeah, if you look at the latest PPI, that was well over expectations. That's usually a leading indicator. You look at oil, I mean, it's trading right below ninety right now. But I had Chris Martinson on last week and that was one of his one of his points was like the you can make the argument that that oil is relatively depressed because we're draining SPRs globally and once you can't drain those anymore, we're gonna feel the real

[50:36] Vince Lanci: yeah. Chris is great. yeah.

[50:59] Marty Bent: supply chain disruption shock which should set it higher. And he had a I think he had a deadline of like June fifteenth or July fifteenth, one of the two f the for a resolution in Iran. If you don't get a resolution by then, I think it's gonna get really bad.

[51:01] Vince Lanci: That's true. That's true. Well, you know, Chris is a great guy. I love I love I've spoken with him many times. One of the things about the SPR drainage is it's it's and and and this is not gonna take away from his point, is it's not really a drainage. They take it out in the front and then the oil company that gets the oil has to pay it back a year later. So all we're doing is kicking the can. We're printing oil. We're kicking the can down the road like we do with everything else. And so this will come back to bite us in the ass.

[53:02] Marty Bent: Mm-hmm.

[53:18] Vince Lanci: Like, there's no way they can control inflation without crushing the stock market, and they will not crush the stock market. So to Chris's point, yeah, oil's not going back down. If it's going down today, it's going up tomorrow. We've got the FIFA World Cup starting, and that's in mid-June. We've got this semi-quincentennial celebration. We're going to be pulling out all the stops and printing two hundred and fifty dollar bills. So this is this is not going to be This inflation is not controllable. I don't think it's controllable. The only thing that can control it is if everybody were to deploy AI overnight and get everyone fired so you have automated baristas.

[54:53] Marty Bent: Ha ha. Really? What kind of business was it? Yeah. Yeah. I can't find it. but I'm looking for the chart of inflation from I believe twenty twenty overlaid with the nineteen seventies echo inflation and we're tracking pretty tightly with that right now.

[55:30] Vince Lanci: Yeah, yeah. It's in fact we're we're we're we're tracking I I think the last time I looked at it, depending on whose chart you're looking at, we're at nineteen seventy five. Which means we get another year of good stuff. And then inflation upticks and it's nineteen seventy seven to seventy nine. All over again. But that's it's a g it's a great chart. It's gonna be coming back and being very popular soon, I think.

[55:56] Marty Bent: Well, and it makes you wonder, like, how can we react to it? I mean, obviously you had Volcker in the seventies who was able to jack rates up to eighteen percent, but we can't stomach that with the interest expense. It's like what are we gonna do?

[56:10] Vince Lanci: I don't I don't know. may maybe maybe a war. Maybe we do have a kinetic, you know, world war type of situation where somebody just loses it and it happens. But if we we can't raise rates, I guess I guess maybe we deploy the robots, you know? Deploy the AI robots.

[56:28] Marty Bent: Yeah, I mean that's I think we're very much aligned on that thought. It's like the the the threading the needle comes in comes with many different variables that need to line up and one of them is a somewhat controlled productivity miracle via AI and the agentic digital workforce and then in the robotic physical workforce and if

[56:51] Vince Lanci: That's right. I mean we're not gonna do it. We're not gonna we don't want unemployment to go too high, so we're not gonna do it. Meanwhile in China, they're kicking our ass in robots. And AI, in my opinion, AI is more of a physical thing, than a than a large language model, learning language model. I think the robots, when the robots are deployed, that's like Europe is importing immigrants to solve their lack of work. China is building robots to solve their lack of work. Now I'm not pro China, I'm not bullish China, but their solution is to embrace the AI and I guess give everyone UBI over there. Our solution is gonna have to be the same thing. AI brings UBI. If you if you deploy AI, then you create UBI, which is basically inflation. So I don't know how we get around it.

[57:43] Marty Bent: Yeah, and y I mean you see I was actually talking about this on a show this morning, like the horseshoe theory playing out. You have Bernie Sanders calling for the US to get a fifty percent stake in the AI hyperscalers so that they can roll those revenues into the federal government and then Donald Trump saying something similar as well. Hm.

[58:02] Vince Lanci: yeah. Trump's a Democrat. He's an old actually he's not a Democrat. What he is is he's an old school corporatist. And old school corporatists are like like they hate government but when he wasn't president. They hate government but they're always looking to get a deal with the government. That's the old school corporatist. That's the Rockefeller, that's the That's the JP Morgan types. So I hate the government, I hate the government, and then they're always cutting a deal with the government. So now you got the the your horseshoe concept of Bernie Sanders and and and Donald Trump. Policy wise, they're the same person.

[58:43] Marty Bent: As it pertains to the book and the content of the book, what what should we tell the audience that we haven't covered already?

[58:51] Vince Lanci: well I think a lot of people want to know who the book is for 'cause it's not it's not a it's not a it's not a thick book. You can read it in one day, one sitting. the book is written for people who know something important is changing in the monetary system but can't quite explain what it is. So you don't need a finance degree. I explained repo markets, reserve assets, collateral chains in plain English. the goal is to help readers understand the plumbing that sits behind the headlines. I mean, look If there's one takeaway I want someone to get from this after they read that book is that money gets all the attention, but collateral does all the work. And that's it.

[59:30] Marty Bent: You don't hear people talking about collateral as much as they're talking about money, you know.

[59:33] Vince Lanci: Too many syllables. Because you don't carry you don't carry around the collateral of gold or treasury in your pocket. You carry around a dollar bill. Money is easier to say. Money has all the marketing.

[59:46] Marty Bent: It does. Money, cash rules everything around me. Cream. Dollar dollar bill, y'all. I'm not I'm not very brushed up on my Wu Tang clan, but the I th I think that's one thing that my Bitcoin journey fortunately has educated me about is collateral. in the system, how it works. And I I completely agree with you where

[59:53] Vince Lanci: That's right. Don't worry, it's not it's not lost on me.

[1:00:15] Marty Bent: Everybody's focused on currency.

[1:00:17] Vince Lanci: Well that's the the the charter situation. there there's I mean I don't want to go down a rabbit hole, but you know, I forget the guy's name. but when you look at banking from the way banking when the when you look at banking from the way bankers look at it, there really is no collateral. It's really a unit of account and medium of exchange. And the collateral is trust. So if you can remove the need for trust, you don't need a shiny metal object. You don't need a treasury. You have the unit of account become the store of value. And so that is the concept behind Bitcoin, where the network is the money. So I understand it.

[1:00:57] Marty Bent: Yeah. It's a beautiful thing. Vince, thank you for for your time. We'll link to the book in the show notes and I will make sure to find the the Tim Hortons man who was convinced to to euthanize himself so you can share with your readers 'cause I think it's important message to get out there. There's insanity everywhere.

[1:01:14] Vince Lanci: Thank you. Thank Thanks for having me on, Marty. Good to see you again.

[1:01:19] Marty Bent: Always a pleasure, sir. Peace and love, freaks. Tiki.