¶ Preview
Well , there's obviously some people in the government that don't like me , and I'm on their list . You know they're watching me carefully . They've already destroyed my bank , so that cost me a lot of money . Oil prices are already rising and we've depleted a good portion of our strategic petroleum reserves , slowing down the rise .
But now that leaves the US in a vulnerable position should there be a disruption of the oil supply , which could very easily be a consequence of an escalation of what's going on , you know , in the Middle East . Now , if you want the government to be able to interfere in the free market and micromanage the economy , then you don't want a gold standard .
But if you believe in capitalism and free market , then yeah , you should want a gold standard . Gold is the clear alternative to the US dollar , and it is superior to the dollar in every aspect . In fact , originally the dollar was defined as a weight of gold . That's what the dollar is supposed to be .
¶ What is the Root of the Financial Crisis?
What's up , people ? Before we get into this video , please make sure to subscribe , like and comment down below so we can get bigger , better guests for you every single week . Let's get straight into the video right now . All right , peter , let's get into this . Really appreciate this . Let's go right into the deep end .
Do you think we're heading towards one of the biggest global financial crises at the moment ?
Well , certainly you know . Financial crises are about debt . It's about having too much debt and where the debtors can't repay . Obviously , the world has never had as much debt as we have now . The reason that there's so much debt is because interest rates were kept so low for so long .
That made it possible for governments , businesses , households to leverage up to a degree that they never could have in the past , because the cost to service the debt was so low . In some cases it was negative . People were actually being paid to go into debt . People did , governments did .
We have this enormous amount of debt now , but the process of enabling all this debt was inflation . The central banks had to create significant inflation in order to artificially suppress interest rates and to make all that credit available to governments .
The immediate effect of all the inflation didn't necessarily show up in consumer prices , at least the way governments measured consumer prices . Even though they were creating inflation , they were able to pretend that there wasn't enough inflation because they said it wasn't quite 2% .
That was the justification to leave the monetary spigots open or , in fact , open them wider . They kept filling the pipeline with inflation .
Now all of that inflation has shown up in a very big way in consumer prices and it will continue to show up as we have years and years of inflation in the system , that is going to continue to push prices up at rates that are far higher than this 2% target level .
Now rates are going up and that exposes the debt problem , because now servicing the debt is a huge problem . In fact , I think a lot of the debtors are going to be in a position where they need to repay the debt and that's impossible . This is going to be a massive financial crisis . The US government , I think , is going to be at the epicenter of it .
For you . What I admire by your work for quite some time is that you've always been tracking this , Going back to 2005, . I've been watching your videos of you predicting 2008 crisis , the inflationary effect even from the pandemic , from lockdowns , and then moving into the next wave . How has it even been for you looking at those different periods and times ?
Because a lot of my audience are young guys I'm 27 , they're in that age , from 25 to 35 , but you've seen this and the US government repeat itself over and over again . What lessons have you learned from those experiences ?
Well , I've been learning about these problems for a long time , because the problems have been a long time in the making . It's not like we just all of a sudden have all this debt . We've been going down this path for a long time and just that nobody seemed to care . A lot of the predictions that I would make would take many , many years to unfold .
A lot of people just said , well , the predictions weren't accurate because it took too long . But you don't know how long something is going to take to fully play out . There are a lot of intervening factors that are impossible to forecast , especially when the powers that be have a tremendous incentive to postpone and delay the consequences .
But when they do that , they simply make it worse . It's not that my forecasts aren't coming true . They are , in fact , they're coming true worse than my original predictions because of the degree to which governments and central banks did succeed in delaying the consequences . So we're going to be experiencing this , but I don't know what I've learned from it is .
I guess you can't underestimate the ability to delay the inevitable , but the inevitable will happen . It's just a question of when and not a question of if .
¶ Controversy Surrounding Pacific Bank
For you it's the fact that you've already been through it , you've seen it , you've raised the alarm bells and what I thought was quite interesting is the fact that in those videos I've seen from you from 2015 , 2005 , 2006 , people were laughing at you in those instances and then come back three years later they're applauding , and it's very interesting .
Like the analysts , you know human psychology from that perspective , from 2020 , 2021 , first they laugh and then they follow it right . So like , how does that even make you feel from that perspective ? Because we can get into aspects of the bank and what's after happening in the bank , but it looks like people observe you from a fair make .
These criticisms and a lot of these things play out to be true .
Well , some people some people looked at those clips and credited me and rightfully so for having warned about these problems .
But the mainstream media , by and large , they quickly forgot about it Because I made a lot of other predictions that hadn't come true and so they kind of I don't know , moved past it , although those predictions did come true and are coming true , if they understood exactly what I was saying .
But I think , you know , I got a lot of credibility with certain people , but I don't think the overall mainstream media was able to give me the credit that I think I was due , not only for the forecasting of 2008 , but for forecasting a lot of things that have happened since 2008 that pretty much nobody expected .
But I not only expected it , I warned about it and it's happened . And there are a number of things that have yet to happen but are in the process of playing out that I've warned about for over a decade 100% .
I'd like to get into everything that's happened with your Pacific Bank . So read the papers . Went through a lot of the documents that you were sharing online . Went through them in very close detail , even what was happening with the Daily Wire .
Read a lot of those insights , so it was quite interesting when you were tweeting about the fact that your bank has been , they were putting in questions . So the quote that read is my bank was shut down because it was allegedly insolvent and they send a message to Puerto Rico that would not tolerate money laundering .
But in reality , my bank was likely the most solvent bank in Puerto Rico and did more to combat money laundering than any other Puerto Rican bank . How does that make you feel now , looking back at that and seeing what's after happening and the fact that you did take those precautionary measures .
Well , it's obviously very frustrating , and I'm a little bit limited in what I can discuss because we're now in the middle of discovery , and so there's a lot of information that I now have that I wish I could share , but I have to wait until everything is submitted into evidence and I have no idea how long that's going to take .
But it is very frustrating because we made a significant investment in compliance . I did , in the bank , millions of dollars spent on compliance . We turned down 75% of our account applicants . We closed the accounts along the way .
We removed from consideration a broad category of potential applicants that never even were able to apply , because we tried to limit the potential that somebody would use the account to try to avoid taxes or launder money .
In fact , during the account opening process , if anybody even mentioned to one of our onboarding specialists or one of our compliance people and , by the way , we had 65 people who worked at the bank 30 of them were in compliance that shows you how ridiculous it was . I had one person in marketing and 30 people in compliance .
So compliance was the single most important aspect of the bank . It was the biggest cost that the bank had , and if you tried to open up an account at the bank and you even suggested that a goal was to avoid taxes that would end the account opening process right there . I mean you couldn't even let somebody know that you know tax avoidance , not even evasion .
There's nothing wrong with .
Right . But if you even told somebody that you were trying to avoid taxes and that's why you wanted this account , I mean that was it . There was no account . So we were very , very strict and of course we got audited .
I didn't realize it was this group of five nations , the J5 , because when the government initially came to my bank and they came to my house , they lied to me about the purpose of the investigation . They told me that they were investigating customers of the bank , not the bank itself . In fact , I asked them are you investigating the bank ?
And they said no Right . So they lied to me because I later found out , like two and a half years later , that they were investigating the bank , that it was all BS , but during the course of the investigation they looked at thousands of accounts , thousands of accounts .
They wanted to look at all the accounts , but my lawyer at least got them to limited to a couple of thousand , which was still a lot . But it was a two-year process and they couldn't find any examples where the bank did anything wrong as far as facilitating money , a lot of tax evasion , in fact .
Not only did they not find that the bank did anything wrong , they have since opened up all kinds of investigations against the bank's customers and to my knowledge they haven't even found that any of our customers did anything wrong . But obviously that wouldn't have even involved the bank , right , because the bank would have had no knowledge of it .
So we did such a good job . Yet we were the target of this media campaign that was spearheaded by Australia , 60 Minutes the Age , but then involved the New York Times , where they accused me of using my bank to help criminals launder money and evade taxes , without having any evidence to suggest that that was true .
And then , once the government completed their investigation , they found no evidence . In fact , the only evidence they found was of a bank that went above and beyond .
¶ Understanding the Pacific Bank Allegations
All right people , we're just going to take one short little break for a little update about podcast university . So if you enjoy podcasts like this and you want to start your own podcast , head down to the links down below to podcast university . This is a learning platform that I've built to help people like you build , launch and scale your own podcast .
I wasted many years doing this , making it all up as I go , so I put everything together in a very seamless and easy to follow course for you guys to follow and just learn exactly how to do it .
So if you want to bypass a lot of the mess with your podcast , check out the links down below the podcast university and we'll show you exactly how to launch and scale your own podcast , I mean if you look at what people have said about my bank people who have actually had accounts they said that they've never experienced compliance like that that they've been ,
you know , having bank accounts for 20 , 30 years .
They have accounts all over the world with some of the biggest banks and no bank did the kind of due diligence that my bank did , not only on the onboarding process , but every time you tried to use your account , every time you tried to make a transaction . We scrutinized those transactions to a greater degree than any bank in the world .
And people said that that was the case and a lot of people ended up closing their accounts because they were so frustrated by all that compliance .
A lot of people put up with it and they said it was a pain in the ass , but they put up with it because they liked the other things that the bank did , like it was fully reserved , 100% reserve bank , and we offered a lot of services that other banks didn't offer .
So people thought you know what they have , all this extra compliance , but it's worth it because you know it's a really , really good bank and so to have been accused like that and then ultimately shut down to send an example , right , the IRS agent that came to this press conference said that this is sending an example that Puerto Rico won't tolerate tax evasion
and money laundering . But my bank didn't facilitate that . Puerto Rico didn't find any evidence either , neither did the J5 . So how does shutting down the most compliant bank in the country prove , you know , send any kind of message ?
But of course , when they shut down my bank , the regulator said it had nothing to do with money laundered or tax evasion , it had nothing to do with this J5 , even though they had a whole press conference so that J5 could claim credit for the bank being shut down and pretend that it's failed investigation was a success .
But the reason that was given that the bank was shut down , the OSUV commissioner twice said the bank was insolvent . In fact , she said it was critically insolvent . Now , the bank wasn't insolvent at all , let alone critically . The bank had no loans and the bank had no debt right .
My bank didn't borrow any money from anybody and it didn't loan any money to anybody . So all the money that we had collected from customers was sitting there in cash and we had millions in cash more than we owed . Well , we only had like 67 million left .
But when the bad publicity came out in October of 2020 , that began kind of like a slow motion run on the bank . A lot of people started taking their money out of the bank .
They were afraid to have their money there and then a lot of our counterparties refused to do business with us , and so we couldn't provide the type of services that people wanted , and so we lost about . Let me just finish this . So the bank returned over $200 million to customer withdrawal , and that was about 75% of the bank's total deposits .
No other bank probably could have done that without going bankrupt , but since we didn't make any loans , every time a customer wanted their money back , we gave it to them no problem .
And on the day that the Puerto Rican regulators put my bank into receivership under the pretense that it was insolvent , on that day we could have sent every customer back every penny they had on deposit , and we could have paid all the past newer outstanding bills , because all we had was normal bills .
We didn't have any debt no , we didn't have any barred anybody , so the bank was totally solvent . Yet it was put into receivership under the care of a guy , a trustee , who had zero banking experience . The guy that was put in charge of my bank , had never worked in a bank , had no experience in banking .
And now it's been almost 16 months since they put my bank unnecessarily into receivership because it was supposedly insolvent even though it was completely solvent and over those 16 months they haven't returned one penny , so that there's like $67 million that has been trapped in my bank under the care of the Puerto Rican government for 16 months .
No one's gotten any money and I have no clarity as to when anyone's going to get anybody . So when I owned the bank , anybody who wanted money could get it . When the government took over the bank to protect the customers , no customer has gotten any money in 16 months .
And meanwhile , you know I had sold my bank to a publicly traded US company based out of Texas who was going to operate it . They were going to infuse it with millions and millions of dollars of additional capital . They were bringing highly experienced bankers to Puerto Rico to run it . They were going to expand it .
It was going to be a very good thing for the country . Yet for some reason the head of Puerto Rico said you know , we don't want that . We don't want this bank to be operated . We want
¶ What is the Role of The Government in Banking?
it shut down . We want it liquidated . It makes no sense . What regulator in the right mind would do that ? And , of course , in the process I lost the money that I was going to get . I mean , I was going to get about $25 billion from the buyer , who was going to pay me for my asset , which was worth a lot more than that , I think .
Before you know , it lost 75% of its customers and its reputation was destroyed by these false allegations . But I was able to salvage something . And then the Puerto Rican government said no , Peter , you can't have anything . You have to dismantle that asset . You have to lose every penny that you put in . I put in $10 million .
I put that in out of my own pocket as capital and I lost every penny of it . For what ? For what reason ? You know the government took it all away from me . I never had a trial and that I have a hearing . You know I didn't do anything wrong , but this is what happened .
You know , I think all of this was orchestrated so the media can pretend that I did something wrong and so the government could claim credit for something that they shouldn't get any credit for .
But I think the main reason that they went after me and went after my bank was because of my politics , because of my public criticism of the Fed , of central banking , of the IRS , of the Patriot Act and a lot of these anti-money-laundering laws that I abided by .
You see , I abided by all these laws , but I was very critical of the laws themselves because , having to abide by them , I knew how disruptive they were , how onerous they were , how anti-competitive they were . I mean , these were terrible rules and regulations that I was complying with and I thought that they should have been repealed .
But you know , the government , I guess , assumed that well , because I criticized the laws , I must break them . But no , you know , it was because I was following the laws that I knew how much damage they were doing firsthand .
You wouldn't be saying it right , that's the whole point If you were someone who was avoiding it .
You wouldn't be saying we should be reducing taxes or we should be getting public service work to privatize it and bring in privatization for certain sectors , right , that's not what you'd be abiding Well at the point I've made this point many times that if I really was going to break the law , the last thing I would want to do is call attention to myself by
criticizing the law . You know , like if you look at FTX right , if you look at what Bankman Fried was doing , he was breaking all sorts of laws but he was out there , you know , just like Bernie Madoff . Bernie Madoff was , you know , talking about abiding by the laws that he was breaking . He was a public advocate for these laws .
He was part of the regulatory apparatus , you know . He was , you know , highly regarded . So he was endearing himself just like a Bankman Fried . He was constantly virtue signaling . I mean , he loved government , the bigger the better .
I mean , Bankman Fried basically said he didn't even want to make any money , he didn't even like profits , he was running his business just as a humanitarian , like for the good of society .
I mean , meanwhile , he's stealing all this money , right , and he's out there virtue signaling about how he's this big altruist and it's a new form of capitalism where you don't try to enrich yourself , right . So you know .
And so the regulators didn't bother looking into what he was doing and as he was stealing all this money , right , but they spent all their time , right you know , investigating me .
And I was doing nothing wrong On that right . So it's a combination of factors and the Australian 960 minutes fed into it . It's like the fact that you're quite outspoken , you have a tribe , you have influence , you have a big following on Twitter , a lot of cult following . People do Follow your work very closely .
Put it that way , in what's happened since 2020 , has that scared you in any way or slowed you down in how you think or made you second guess what you post ? Because there's obviously some people looking at you , because you're highly influential . Some of your posts get 50,000 views four times a day , right ?
So how does that make you think through this process just going forward ? You know you as a CEO , as a founder , and doing many different things .
Well , there's obviously some people in the government that don't like me , you know , and I'm on their list . You know they're watching me carefully . They've already destroyed my bank , so that cost me a lot of money . I mean , they didn't charge me with a crime . Now I think they would have loved to have been able to charge me .
The problem was they found absolutely no evidence of any criminal behavior on the part of anybody that worked at my bank , let alone me . I didn't even work at the bank , I was just a passive shareholder . But none of the people that actually worked at the bank were found to have done anything wrong .
And so if none of the people that worked at the bank did anything wrong , then obviously I didn't do anything wrong either , but they still ended up shutting it down . So there was some punishment there , but I haven't experienced any other noticeable , you know , government involvement . I mean , I did get a pretty extensive audit by the security regulators .
You know , I guess I'm also in the brokerage business .
I wasn't really sure what made me so suspicious , but they decided to do a lengthy investigation and I had to , you know , comply with it because of the industry that I'm in , and it really bothered me that I , you know , did this because the US government would have had no legal authority to basically go on a fishing expedition .
But they wanted to look through all of my records , all of my bank records , everything I had to see if I did anything wrong , which would be a violation of the Fourth Amendment my Fourth Amendment , rights at the US government did it , but this organization did it and I kind of had to go along with it . But they didn't find anything either .
I mean , they went over all my finances with a microscope and they eventually ended their investigation and they found nothing . So I didn't know if that had anything to do with this stuff or if it was just a coincidence and unrelated . But you know I keep everything by the book .
You know I moved to Puerto Rico , so when you're in Puerto Rico the tax rates are extremely low anyway . So my personal taxes are all very , very clean . I mean , in fact , I would have no reason to try to cheat . I mean my tax rate is 4% .
I mean it's like you know , it's no big deal as long as you know , and you get that 4% as long as you play by the rules , which I do . I mean I live in Puerto Rico . I'm here 9 , 10 months a year . I mean this is where I live and so I definitely qualify for these benefits , you know , these tax breaks I do .
All of the work I do is from Puerto Rico . I don't , I don't , and this is it . This is my home . Well , this is where I , this is where I work . But yeah , I mean I'm critical . I was very critical of the FINRA rules , the SEC rules .
I mean I've been advocating publicly for the abolishment of the SEC , for the abolishment of FINRA , yet I'm regulated by both these entities , but I've never really had any serious problems , other than the normal problems that you have in the industry , as a result of that criticism .
You know , and I tried to point out too , that , look , I can criticize rules and regulations and still abide by them , because I've been audited by FINRA and by the SEC for 30 years . And you know , I mean I still have all my licenses . I mean I haven't always found that I did anything wrong . I mean you're never perfect . I mean your firm gets audited .
They find a few things here and there that you didn't do exactly right , but none of it is intentional . I mean everybody gets a government audit and they end up oh , we found this , you know but , nothing out of the ordinary .
Yeah , I mean just normal stuff . That's the difference .
Yeah , yeah .
All right , guys . One short little update for Vox . I want to give a short little overview about my own company , my media company called Vox . So if you are a company or you are an enterprise looking to grow your brand and looking to grow your podcast , feel free to reach out to work with us at Vox .
What we do is a fully fledged end-to-end management of our podcast . We take care of the strategy , the consulting . We take care of the growth , the management . We take care of all the editing , all the boring stuff that you can focus on creating good podcast and create and growing your brand .
If you want to grow your podcast and get to new users , if you want to grow your business , generate more revenue and all that good stuff , check out the links down below to Vox . You can follow through to schedule a call with our team or else you can fill out the application form to see if you qualify to work with us . Thank you .
So what happens in those scenarios is the fact that someone , like the media , catches wind of it and then drags it through the mud and that's how you got to the scenario you're in . Right , it's like one thing to another .
¶ Media Conspiracies and Its Impact
Well , the thing that bothers me is this stuff was leaked to the media . The media got this information because of government leaks . The government handed the media confidential information pertaining to a grand jury investigation . This was a violation of law . What the government did was illegal and that is part of that Daily Wire article .
One of the things that he did is he wrote a letter to the IRS and said look , have you investigated this leak ? What have you done to try to find person who leaked this information and are you going to punish them ? Like , what are you doing Because you can't do this ? This is obstruction of justice , this is abuse of power . Yet nobody is investigating it .
And that's because I think it came from the top . I think it was the very top guy at the IRS , the number one criminal guy , jim Lee , who did all this , and obviously he's not going to investigate himself . But it is illegal and the reporters they hide behind their source .
So we can't tell you how we got this information , but I want to know how they got the information , because they got it illegally . Now , maybe they got it illegally from Australian government officials who got it legally from the US .
I mean , it's possible that the US government through this J5 , they got this information and they shared it with the Australian government and then it was the Australian government that illegally leaked it to the Australian media . But it's clear that it's the Australian media that got the information first . So how did they know ?
They knew the exact day that the IRS came to my house and they knew that the bank was the target of this investigation , when I didn't even know the bank was the target . I mean , I had no idea .
I mean , when the investigation started they told me I wasn't the target , but somehow they told 60 Minutes , australia reporters , the agent , that I was the target , that my bank was the target . So who told them ? You guess all this was illegal .
And to me and the Daily Wire article picked up on this it was pretty obvious because the main reporter is Charlie Grieve , who actually won an award for best young reporter of the year for doing this article , the article that has already been ruled to be defamatory . So it's supposedly excellent journalism to write a defamatory article .
I mean , if it's defamatory by definition , it's lousy journalism . Yet she won an award for excellence in journalism . But the day after this story came out , the Charlie Grieve on her Twitter account .
She had four different tweets about how we need to pass this new regulation in Australia to crack down on money laundering for accountants and lawyers and stuff like that , all based on the story about my bank . So they basically said hey , here's this bank , this dirty bank that was helping criminals and it was working with all these reputable Australian businesses .
This has proved that we need more regulation in Australia to prevent lawyers or accountants from working with shoddy companies like Euro-Pacific . When it turns out that there was nothing shoddy about my bank at all , we did everything by the book .
So the fact that companies were doing business with us did not mean that those companies were bad , because the bank wasn't bad , but they had a lie .
They had a lie about me , they had a lie about the bank to create this situation , and then they used this lie as a pretense to try to garner up support among the Australian public for this new regulations that they were trying to impose . So the whole thing was fake news .
It was like you have the government and the media illegally conspiring to push out fake news stories for the sole purpose of influencing the public and getting them to accept new rules and regulations that limit their freedoms and by scaring them into thinking there's this risk out there that doesn't exist .
So the public should be very upset that their elected officials and the media is behaving in this manner , because you can't trust either one . The entire situation is corrupt . When you have the media and the government working together like this , it's really a fascist situation that we're dealing with .
There's an excellent book by Robert Cialdini called Pre-Sawasian , and a big element in it is around what focal is causal . So if I tell you continuously that your bank is not compliant , not compliant , not compliant , at a certain point you will break . So the example they give is interrogations .
So if I was to interrogate you , the scenario that they actually gave was a son discovered a dead body which happened to be his mother , and after 16 hours of them breaking it down , he convinced it .
So basically , they take that theory and they apply it in media cases from the 60s , 70s , 80s , 90s and early 2000s , and from a series of conditioning of me telling you that you're not compliant , you're not compliant or it should be done this way , people will believe that assumption and that's the power of influence from Robert Cialdini wrote two different books ,
influence and Pre-Sawasian , around this pretense . So I just think it's very interesting to observe , whether it's 2020 , whether it's right now with inflation , or what's happening . Which I'd like to ask you next about Israel and Palestine how , if we make something focal , it can be causal and the knock-on effect from it .
So just shifting gears into that Israel-Palestine dynamics I know we only have about 20 minutes . What is your perspective on that at the moment
¶ Peter Schiff's Investment Advice
?
Well , I mean , it's a very unfortunate , tragic situation and unfortunately I don't see , you know , a way out of it that doesn't also involve a lot of risks and a lot of problems . But you know , that area of the world , you know , has been in turmoil for a long time .
I mean , recently it's been a little bit more peaceful and in fact there was the prospect of an agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel , and I speculated , as soon as this happened , that a motivating factor for it , and particularly for a Iranian involvement , was to try to derail that process . And that's what's happened .
The Saudis have had to call it off and you know , I think , that the markets are again underestimating this problem . This is a serious problem . That's not going away and it's just going to get worse as time goes by and it's possible that it becomes much bigger .
You know that more countries are involved , it becomes a bigger issue , more lives are lost and more money gets spent , and you know that's just another negative factor on top of a lot of other negative factors , including , you know , what's been going on for almost two years now in the Ukraine and with Russia .
So now this is just another war that's going on , and you know , as I titled one of my podcasts recently , the US can't even afford peace , let alone war .
We're broke , and this is just going to add to that , and especially if you think about oil , because oil prices are already rising and we've depleted a good portion of our strategic petroleum reserves , slowing down the rise .
But now that leaves the US in a vulnerable position should there be a disruption of the oil supply , which could very easily be a consequence of an escalation of what's going on , you know , in the Middle East now . So yeah , I mean it is a big problem , but it's not the only problem . I mean there's so many others .
Exactly so . There's obviously there's interest rates impact , there's inflation increase , there's crude oil impact and the increase from there . But to make this more actionable , like what ? How do you take this into advice ? So you're advising someone like myself who's 27 years old . You know a lot of people that listen to this are quite similar .
How do you action this when we have US in potential turmoil , financial markets in turmoil , stock price , equity markets and whatnot going through a lot of turmoil going forward ? How do you action that as a young person ?
Well , I mean , nothing that's happening is really , you know , altering my investment strategy , because it's all consistent with you know what I'm playing for .
All of these events just exacerbate the problems that I was concerned about anyway , and so this my solution has been to own non US assets , non-artidominant assets , inflation hedges , businesses that pay good dividends , that sell products and services that people need not that they just want and they buy with the money they have left over after they buy the things they
need . I wanna sell them the things that they need , because I don't think they'll have any money left over to buy the things that they want not for a while . So I wanna have good businesses . You know dividends , value
¶ What is The Gold Standard?
, inflation hedges , commodities , precious metals you know all sorts of resources that I think are gonna be more valuable as fiat currencies devalue because of inflation .
And that's basically where we are that the governments of the world and the US in particular , but not , you know , solely the US , but governments have borrowed a lot more money than they can realistically repay , and so , therefore , they're faced with two ways of defaulting , because that's basically what they have to do .
I mean , if you can't make pay your debts , then you're going to default on your debts . But default can take different forms . It could be an honest default , which I don't think is gonna be how they go , because the politicians are not honest , so why should they be honest about their default ?
And so , instead of just not paying , they will pay , but the money that they pay will be provided by the central bank , not through taxation , and therefore it's inflation .
And so what happens is the governments pay their debts with money that has a lot less value than it did when they borrowed it , and so the lender doesn't really get repaid , because they don't get their purchasing power back . They get their money back , but not their purchasing power . But it's the purchasing power . That's what's important .
It doesn't matter how much money you have . What matters is what you can buy with the money that you have , and if you can't buy very much , well then that's the same as a default .
So that's what's going on we're going to have a lot of inflation , and so you have to factor that in to your investments to try to mitigate your losses and maybe even profit from inflation . If you're properly positioned , you can't .
Talk to me about how we would move back to our gold standard or move more towards that approach , like what would be your strategy in terms of transitioning out of a dollar .
Well , you're talking about for governments to go back on a gold standard or for , maybe , individuals to try to do that on their own .
Well , I guess individual stages is your first step , right , or how , or is it possible to transition even on a government aspect .
Individuals yeah , individuals can just decide to save gold and silver as opposed to a fiat currency . And with the internet to the extent that the governments allow it , I mean , we could certainly adopt and engage in commerce in gold and silver again , and we could do it digitally .
We could tokenize gold and silver and that would make it even more efficient as a medium of exchange and unit of account . So with modern technology , a gold standard would work far better than it's worked in the past , and it worked great in the past , so it would work even better now .
But as far as governments , I mean , governments could easily , if they wanted to , return to honest money , sound money , and go back on a gold standard . The problem is , if they do that , then they have to be honest with the public again .
They have to bring their fiscal houses in order , they have to balance their budgets , they have to be fiscally responsible , and no government wants to do that . The governments want to , you know , pretend that they can provide something for nothing . That's how they get votes .
They buy the votes by telling people if you vote for me , I'm going to give you all this free stuff , and you can't do that under a gold standard because everything has to be paid for . Now it has to be paid for when you're not on a gold standard . They just pay for it through inflation .
But the public doesn't realize that inflation is a tax and in many cases they don't even realize how high that tax is , because you have a underlying price structure that is in decline . I mean , that is what capitalism does . Capitalism results in greater efficiencies and lower prices .
So let's say that , all else being equal , prices would have dropped by 5% in a given year and everybody would have had the benefit of being able to buy the things they need for less money , which means everybody could have more stuff because the price of everything came down .
Well , let's say the government creates a bunch of inflation that not only prevents prices from dropping 5% , but that causes them to go up 2% . Now you might think , oh , inflation is 2% . No , it's 7% . It's not just a 2% that prices went up , it's the 5% that they didn't go down .
And they should have gone down , but the inflation prevented it , and so that 7% is a huge loss to the public . That is a tax . That is how the government financed its deficits through inflation , and they stole your purchasing power by forcing prices to rise by 2% when , absent that inflation , they would have dropped by 5% .
¶ The New Age of Money
What about some of the limitations that are discussed around gold ? So moving back on to even a gold standard or just trusting gold in general ? You mentioned tokenization of gold there , which is really interesting . So it involves the transfer of wealth . It's more durable not more durable , sorry . It's more transferable a cost less to transfer it as well .
What about some other limitations and how would you kind of overcome them ?
Well , there really are no limitations . The gold standard works very well . The enemies of the gold standard , who want to promote big government and gold , stands in their way . They have concocted a bunch of BS reasons to try to claim that gold doesn't work . But it does work . The reasons are BS .
In fact , one of the things they say is yeah , well , if we're on a gold standard , it makes it harder for the central banks to stimulate the economy . Yes , exactly , we don't want central banks to stimulate the economy because they actually do damage . When they stimulate , they sedate the economy .
But yes , if you want the government to be able to interfere in the free market and micro manage the economy , then you don't want a gold standard . But if you believe in capitalism and free markets , then yeah , you should want a gold standard 100% .
I'd like to get your thoughts on like developing nations . So obviously a lot of these developing countries , like Sri Lanka , for instance , I think they had USD as their gold reserve or as their reserve currency , and if a USD is in decline and these countries hold USD , then obviously it's very net like negative .
I think that's for their gross domestic product as well as GNP as well . But how do you think about that from those countries' perspectives , especially whether they're based in Asia , central America , south America , africa ? How will they be able to survive over the longer term period ?
Well , I don't think that they should be using the USD . I think a lot of these countries should be adopting a gold standard . Well , gold , they should use gold and , yes , they could use a tokenized gold that they can have a digital currency that's backed by their gold reserves and just move in that direction .
I mean , gold is the clear alternative to the USD and it is superior to the USD in every aspect . Originally , the dollar was defined as a weight of gold . That's what the dollar is supposed to be .
It's supposed to be a specific weight of gold or silver , because we were actually on a bi-metallic system where both gold and silver were legally money in the United States and the dollar was defined by a weight of gold or a weight of silver . But now that we've moved away from those constitutional requirements , the dollar is nothing .
It's just defined as whatever somebody will give you for it . I mean , there is no real definition of a dollar anymore . It's just a piece of paper . Government creates it . It doesn't have any set value , like it did in the past when it was a weight of gold or a weight of silver . But gold and silver are much better money than just fiat . That's real money .
The Federal Reserve note is just fiat and it's not even a note because it doesn't pay anything .
Of course , before we finish up , I'd like to even ask you on central bank digital currencies , because of course , it's more like a trend . It's coming in , it's big in Europe , discussed , emerging from Europe . It's obviously discussed a lot in the US as well .
Is this just basically a disguise of what's happening in the US dollar versus looking at fixing the issue ?
Now , well , look , it's another way for the government to gain more power and more control over the economy and the people . Anyone who believes in individual liberties should be opposed to these central bank digital currencies , because it's a slippery slope camel's nose under the tent .
Maybe initially it will be voluntary , optional , like you could use paper currency or you can use the digital currency , but they may eventually phase out the paper and you have no choice but to transact in a way that the government can spy on you . And again , this is what the point that Australian reporters were trying to make .
Because I was against these privacy . I believe in privacy and I was against a lot of these laws . They're saying well , you see , you're trying to help criminals , I'm not . You're trying to protect law-abiding citizens from a criminal government . We don't want the government to be able to monitor every single thing we do .
It's not because what we're doing is illegal , it's because what the government may do with that information is illegal . You don't want the government knowing every single thing that you do , everything you buy , everybody you do business with . There's got to be some amount of privacy that people have from their government .
There's an old saying that when the government fears the people , you have freedom . When the people fear the government , you have tyranny . The government's not going to fear us if they know everything about us .
They're also not just about that power right ?
No , once they get power , once they usurp something , they never surrender it . We don't want to have the government to know every single thing that you do . That's too much power to have in a government . The government's power corrupts Absolute power corrupts absolutely People have to be afraid of .
Even today's government won't use this information for it nefarious purposes , which I would doubt , because I think they already would . You don't know how a future government is going to use this information . What tyrant might come to power in the future ? Then let's say the public does want to resist against the tyrannical government , a government that's abusing power .
How do we organize a resistance if everything we do is monitored by the government ? They can send the soldiers out to arrest you immediately . People think , well , the governments are always good . Well , no , they're not . There are corrupt governments . Corrupt governments don't necessarily start out corrupt . They become corrupt over time .
They also don't even realize that they're corrupt . That's the thing .
A lot of these states assume they're doing the best for their people .
That's what happens , right .
Yeah Well , the road to hell is paved with good intentions , Peter .
I want to say a massive thank you . I really appreciate your time . I feel like we could go for much longer . There's many different points we want to get into . Maybe in person next time in Puerto Rico will be great . But I want to say a massive thank you .
Yeah , you got to come down here . We've got good weather in Puerto Rico Good but in the meantime I'm doing my podcast . Your listeners can listen at shifradicom on my YouTube channel , of course , so work with me . Gold and silver prices . People should be buying gold and silver here . I think it's much too cheap right now .
People are underestimating the inflation threat . They have too much confidence in central banks , so they should be buying gold and silver Again . If you have a larger portfolio , you should be working with me at your Pacific Asset Management . I should be managing a portfolio to really mitigate and avoid the inflation tax . That is a tax that I can help you avoid .
Legally , that's the inflation tax , but you do that by getting out of dollars and other fiat currencies that are subject to that tax and owning the assets that provide the protection . We build portfolios and manage portfolios that will achieve those goals .
Of course , and I'll link all these down below as well . So I want to say a massive thank you , sir . I really appreciate your time . All right Take care . That was a great launch .
