Usury is good, actually.

interest rates at ten percent annually. Now many of you already know, but I used to be a private mortgage lender, so this is right up my alley, and I figured, Hey, no one's going to defend the banks. How about I do it? How about I piss off everybody and explain to you why you're wrong? Well, where do I begin? First off, AOC and Anapolio and Luna are probably the

two most attractive congressional members. Despite the fact that AOC appears to be hitting the wall if you will, well, but the fact that it's them tag teaming and it's from its bipartisan should give you real cause for concern. Very attractive ladies are pushing this, especially when it's already something that's very palatable to people. It's actually palatable on both sides, which is even more concerning because economic understanding is becoming more and more rare. But they are trying

to pitch this concept. And the reason it's palatable is that on the left, they hate the banks, they hate capitalism, they love the government. Why would they not want price controls. They want price controls on rent and food and housing and everything else. Why would they not want price controls on credit cards? Of course they would, So that's not surprising.

What's more surprising is that the right wing is now on board with this, led by Donald Trump, who talked about this on the campaign trail, led by people like Tucker Carlson, which are increasingly popularizing the pushback against what they describe as usury. Now, usury is biblically speaking, and from a religious perspective, you can argue that perhaps this is and that you should ban usery and you should never lend money, and you should never expect interest if

you do lend money. Okay, if at your religious perspective, then I grant you that I can't argue against your religion. You're more than welcome to never lend and never borrow and charge interest or pay interest. I permit that from my vantage point, I as a free market capitalist, I believe that it ought to be legal, and then I believe that you you should have no say so as to whether or not I want to do that amongst

consenting adults. So that's my opening salvo here. Lots of key factors here, but one major one is that there's this misconception that the banks just rake in money because they've been increasing their credit card interest rates. Now you got to understand first and foremost, that banks take money from the Federal Reserve. They get lent money at the Fed Funds rate, which used to be about a quarter percent,

it's now up to four point two five percent. That means that they are paying more for the capital that they get from the Federal Reserve. Sometimes they also lend out just savings that they've received from depositors, but unfortunately, that's not really how the banking industry works these days. They actually borrow and then lend out, and then they

keep a bit of the spread. But if you're borrowing money at four point twenty five percent, well you've got to charge a heck of a lot more than that to make a profit, because when someone borrows money from you on a credit card, it's unsecured. Now, this is very important. This is kind of rudimentary for those that already understand this stuff, but it's important to explain every layer of this so you can understand why do they

charge so much in interest. If someone is looking to borrow money and they come to you and they say, hey, hey, Clint, I'd like to borrow ten grand I say to myself, all right, no, let's make it a thousand, just easy math. I say to myself, Okay, well, I don't know you from Adam. Let me run your credit Okay, your credit score is six p forty, you know, not very good. And you say, well, I want to borrow a thousand bucks from you, and I'll pay you back eleven hundred

at the end of the year. Now you might think to yourself, well, one hundred bucks for lending them a thousand, that's a decent return on investment. To get a one hundred bucks for that thousand that I delayed the use of for twelve months, I could. I don't need this thousand bucks right now. That's worth considering. But then you have to consider the fact that this is unsecured, and that this person already has a track record of not

paying back their loans based off their credit score. So then you have to consider is that hundred bucks in profit worth that risk, given that if they decide not to pay me back at all, I don't get the hundred bucks and I lose my thousand. Now that's a big risk that you're asking me to take on, isn't it. It is so they could just file bankruptcy and poof, my debt is gone. I'm no longer I'm never gonna be able to reclaim that money from them. It is

gone vanished. Big, big risk. So if you're gonna lend to you in an unsecured fashion where there's no collateral, there's no house that I can foreclose on to try and recoup my investment, you better make sure that this person is credit worthy. So what does it mean if I can only charge ten percent to them, I'm not gonna lend money to that guy because that hundred bucks

is not worth the risk of losing my thousand. Now, if I can charge that same guy three hundred bucks at the end of the year, I might then think to myself, I think he's getting his life back in order based off of his income. He just got a new job, I do think he's going to be able to pay me back, so I'm going to take that risk. I'm going to lend him the one thousand. Hopefully I'll get my thirteen hundred at the end of the year.

Maybe I will, maybe I won't. But if I do that enough times, maybe five people perform well one doesn't, then I still end up making some profit. That's the calculus that a bank has to make, and that was what my job was as a private money lender, was to make that calculus for my investors. It's not easy,

but that's what I got paid to do. The key to understand here is that banks with credit cards lose a lot of money because a lot of people do not pay their credit card loans and then they end up defaulting and filing bankruptcy and then the bank gets wiped out. So when they charge fifteen percent, you think to yourself, well that's way too high. But when you consider the fact that they're losing hundreds or millions of dollars in unsecured lines of credit that are defaulted upon,

well you have to make that up somewhere. So essentially they get subsidized, if you will, by the people that do perform on those loans at those higher interest rates. But the other side of this thing that nobody seems to consider, which is obviously true, is that you don't have to pay the bank any interest at all if you just pay your fucking your credit line off every month, which I've done for twenty years straight, which a lot

of people do. And as a consequence of that, not only do I not pay the bank any interest, but I also make like cash back rewards and you can get miles on different ones like for those that are responsible. Credit cards are a godsend. I've made an insane amount

of money by borrowing money via credit cards. For most people, that's a that's a huge asset to have, not to mention the security of being able to transact online and if there's fraud, getting chargebacks you know, covered, and things of that nature like these are all these are all benefits of this technology, and especially with the Internet being such a commonly used marketplace, it's really advantageous to have some light of credit and some big bank institution that

will deal with fraud and things of that nature for you. So I like having that option. So that's that's kind of from my vantage point that's why it's a benefit. A lot of people say, well, who cares about what? Yeah, sure you've handled it well, but what about the people that don't, Well, they shouldn't be borrowing. I mean, have we just abandoned personal responsibility entirely? Then some people will say, well, what about the people that are desperate and they borrowed

when they shouldn't have because they had no other choice? Okay, well what is the alternative? They say, Like, I've got some replies on this post I made this morning, and people are saying, well, what if like their father died and they have to bury them and they don't have the money to do so, so they go to a credit card company and then they put themselves into debt that they can't get out of. Well, that's sad, but at the end of the day, they still made that choice.

And the alternative is they don't have the money to bury their father. So is it more humane to tell them you're out of luck? You can't you can't get a credit card loan because you couldn't qualify because the cap is now ten percent, so the bank won't lend you any money at all. Is that is that a better outcome? Or is the better outcome. Okay, well they can borrow the money. Sure, they can't afford it to pay for the burial at the time they borrow the money,

hopefully they're able to pay it off. And if they aren't, I mean, worst case scenario, they file bankruptcy and they deal with seven years of bad credit. I mean, you have to decide here. This is not like, this is not choosing between good and bad. This is kind of dealing with the circumstances of everybody's lives. The other aspect of this that really bothered me is people were saying, well,

banks shouldn't be lending to people without good credit. It's like, okay, well, then how about the young They don't have any credit

at all. But if you're asking a banking institution to take on the risk of lending to a young person, given that their risk is significantly higher because young people in particular don't know how to use credit, because our public education doesn't give them any sort of schooling on hey, this is what you do, this is what you don't do, which is a true but at the end of the day, you still have access to the internet. You still could

have you could have self educated you could have. Your parents should have been teaching you this stuff, as mine did, thankfully. But regardless, if you cap it at ten percent, any banking institution would be out of their mind to lend money to an eighteen nineteen twenty year old, especially given that, like they just got a job. Maybe maybe they have a job. Most of them probably don't. Are you gonna lend them money? No, certainly not. Okay, Well they have

a job, but they have no credit history. This is a This is like, imagine that this is a real go getter. Some kid that's top of his class, gets a job right out of high school. He's making decent money, he wants to do XYZ. The bank looks and he says, you don't have any credit score. So sure, your income's decent, but it's still not the risk. It's still not worth

the risk to lend to someone at your age. So how do you how do you ever get your first step on the credit ladder by which you might build up that credit score to be able to borrow money for a mortgage to then invest in the real estate, to get your foot on that wrong of the ladder of the economic ladder. You're out of luck. Anapolion, a Luna and AOC said that we shouldn't be able to charge more than ten percent. Good luck bud. So that's

just one of the unintended consequences. Then there's also the unintended consequences of pulling out the last lifeline from those that are poor. If you are in a position where you just need a bridge, just a little stop gap. Not all poor people with bad credit are going to not pay off that loan. Like sure, many of them won't, and perhaps the bank shouldn't be lending money to them, and certainly they shouldn't be borrowing it if they if

they ultimately can't pay it back. But what about the poor people that will actually do the right thing and pay off that loan? Do you want them to just have that option ripped away from them? So then what do they turn to. Do you think that because you've kepped interest rates at ten percent, that there's going to be no lending op to people like that? Or do you think that sharks will circle? Do you think that

payday lenders will circle? Do you think that if the payday lenders also think that they're too high of a risk and they won't lend to them, or perhaps or unemployed, that they won't end up with gangsters lending them money. Well, you know, knee breaking type gangsters. Do you think that prohibition is suddenly gonna work. Sure, we've made drugs illegal, but now we've kept interest rates at ten percent, so no one will lend money above ten percent. So you're

just creating a black market for anything above ten percent inevitably. Like, this is just reality. You can you don't have to like it. I'm just telling you the truth about how it'll play out. So is that ideal? I would say definitely not. Like is dealing with a credit card company fun? Is dealing with bill collectors fun? Or yeah, debt collector's fun? No? But is it better than dealing with dudes with billy clubs coming for your kneecaps? Yeah, it's a lot better

than that. Can you file bankruptcy and get Vinnie to to forgive your loan? No you cannot. So things get worse, is what I'm saying. So this, the religious connotations or the religious protest stations to what I'm describing doesn't change the reality of the world. People that don't have money, that want to borrow money are gonna do it, and you can, you can cap the rates, you can forbid it entirely. It's not going to change that dynamic like

you can. Sure some people may end up not borrowing money because you've either capt or made it illegal to have a credit card at all some, but it's certainly not going to get rid of it entirely. The other aspects of this is that if you want to deal with or if you if you op pose debt for religious reasons, well then the first thing you ought to oppose is the Federal Reserve, I mean, the ultimate debtor

and the ultimate debt creator. So what really bothers me is that the Tucker Carlson's of the world will talk about usury, but they oftentimes will not talk about the Federal Reserve, which is a monoton of private entity which has a monopoly on the creation of currency. I mean, that is unbelievably evil. And then they create the currency and then they lend it out. Does that sound tollly

to you? Sounds extremely unholy. So if you're interested in getting rid of credit cards or capping credit card rates, the first thing you ought to be talking about is ending the Federal Reserve. And if you're not talking about that. Do not expect me to take you seriously when you talk about credit card rates and the predatory aspects of the banking institutions. Like, the banking institutions are not holy. I'm not saying that thod or that you ought to

love them. I'm just saying, compared to the central bankers, they are honorable. Yes, I'm saying that compared to the central compared to the Federal Reserve, the regular banks are honorable. Now areas of greatness with all of this, Like, I like credit unions better. I think that the local banking institutions, they have more concern for their customers, for the economy of their local area of the community. Just broadly, I think that they're better. You know, the multinationals, the JP

Morgan Chases and others like them. Bank of America's I'm not very fond of, and if you can avoid doing business with them by all means, do But that doesn't mean that they are even close to as evil as the Federal Reserve. Like doesn't get much worse. Now, there's some overlap because some of these guys will sit on the board of some of the local Fed boardrooms, But you get the point. Like, if you're not talking about ending the FED, just get the fuck out of my face.

With capping interest rates on credit cards, it's so missing the mark it's not even worth discussing anything with you further after that. So if you are one of those people will continue to discuss this. The other aspects of this that's really important is that if you are responsible enough to work, pay your taxes. I mean, I don't know if that classifies you as responsible, but if you're doing it the right way, right under the legal structure,

you're doing it the right way. You work, you save the money, you pay your taxes, you pay your rent, all that, you deal with inflation, you deal with everything else, and you manage to save up ten thousand bucks. At the end of the year, someone comes to you and they want to borrow that money, and you're like, I mean, this is what we do all the time. Like when you leave that money in your savings account and they pay you one percent interest or whatever, it is usually less.

That is usery. You are lending that money to that banking institution and they then lend it out at a higher rate. They collect the spread, but regardless, you are still participating in You So do you want to do away with that where there is no such thing as passive income based off of the delayed gratification and the work ethic and the willingness to save and be responsible. Do you deserve nothing for that? Because anybody arguing against usrey has to say, correct, you don't deserve shit. I

disagree with that. I think that it is actually really good and honorable, and it actually sends a great market signal to people to do exactly what I'm describing, because if you get to a point of say you've done that now for thirty years, and you've accumulated a million dollars and you're able to lend it out at four or five percent, you can get a CD from a

bank at that rate certificate of a deposit. Well, now you get to supplement your Social Security income with the passive income from that savings with that bank with the CD rate, so that a million dollars would mean that you're then pocketing forty or fifty thousand dollars annually. That's

approximately four thousand dollars a month. So you're bringing in say I don't know what it is, three thousand bucks or whatever it is with Social Security you then have the supplemental income from the million dollars that you're keeping in these CDs. That means that you're bringing in four thousand. That means that you're now in retirement. I'm speaking in modern numbers. You're bringing in seven thousand a month without working.

That's enough that you might be able to live a comfortable lifestyle, a lifestyle that you had been accustomed to during your working years. Is that bad? Is that a bad thing that you've done that? I would argue absolutely not. You did the right thing for decades. Why should you not have the benefit of receiving a return on your hard work and your willingness to delay the use of that capital. I think that you ought to the other aspect of this that I don't understand, and maybe someone

can educate me. But people always argue, well, why do you have to get interest on this at all? Like, sure, there's honorable ways to make investments where you don't charge it's not usury. At least it's better than usury. Well consider this. So this is an example that people bring up. Sometimes they say, well, you can just buy a house with it. So you've saved up a million dollars. You buy a house with a million dollars and then you rent that house out and then the tenant pays you.

You can live off of the net profit from that investment. Then it's not usury. Right, Well, what's the fucking difference. I honestly don't see a difference at all, other than it's a real asset, like a real estate asset, versus a financial one. But it's the same concept. I delayed gratification. I bought this house. You want to use the house, but you don't have the money for it, So I'm lending you the house. That's what rent is. But apparently

that's permissible under a Christian framework, but usury isn't. So lending money via a house is. Okay, do you understand what I'm saying? Now, Maybe the Bible addresses this and I'm just ignorant to it, and that's a possibility. I'm not claiming to be an expert, but I really do think that it's like it's anger over the medium of exchange, which doesn't make any sense to me. The premise still applies. It's the same concept with any sort of investing. Really, like,

think of an investment, what are you doing. You've delayed, you've saved, and you've deployed, and that money is being held either in an asset or in someone else's hands, or in some business's hands. It's always the same concept. You delayed, you saved, you deployed, You get a return on that, or at least you hope. So I don't think there's anything morally wrong with that at all. So what happens with a society that's functioning in a healthy

investorment mindset? Well, then everybody that's listening right now, if you were to go out and you were to save a million dollars and to I'm not saying that's easy, but if you were to do so over your lifetime, well, that has created a society that is much lower time preference in that they are willing to delay the gratification of the future and save up year after year, live beneath their means, which is what is necessary for you to save, because if you live at your means, that

means you just deploy all of you spend all of the money that you make annually, so you've delayed gratification. What does that do to the culture. I think it's a much healthier framework because then it requires personal responsibility, It requires financial education and thoughtfulness as to how you go about things. Oftentimes it trickles into your day to day life when it comes to taking care of yourself physically.

I haven't I haven't seen studies on this, so I'm kind of guessing, but I would imagine that those that are really good with their keeping their financial house in order probably keep the rest of their life in order too, you know, from family structure, to owning a home, to keeping the home tidy, to keeping yourself in shape. Like these are the people that are thinking into the future.

Because if you're if you're the type of person that's thinking into the future, well, then you're probably going to want to take care of your financial conditions now because you don't want to suffer in the future. Well, the same premise would apply to these people. I would imagine more often than not that they go, well, I need to take care of my physically now because I don't want to deal with the health issues that come later.

It's the exact same premise. So I would assume that that same lesson applies, That same rule applies for the majority of people that keep their financial house in order. So I think that having that framework of benefiting from delayed gratification is ultimately better for the culture, for the entirety of the nation. And if you do away with that, if you forbid that, if you make it legal, well

then it takes that lesson away. What incentive do you have if you're not able to lend out that money or make a return on that money in your later years of life, when you are physically incapable of working as much as you did in your thirties, forties, fifties, Like, what lesson does that teach you? Is it to your benefit? I would argue it's not, and I would argue it's bad for civilization. So this is why I wanted to address this is because I realized this is becoming a

much more bipartisan push. As you see from this bill, as you see from the Tucker Carlson's and the Donald Trump's of the world. They're talking about these predatory lenders. Why would you charge fifteen percent? Why would you charge twenty percent? You have to, you have to to make a profit. This is another thing that people don't understand. The average rate of return for a banking institution based off of their assets is a smidge over one percent

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like an institution that's just crushing it. I mean, it's profitable, especially when you're talking about having trillions of dollars of assets because of depositors and loans and things like that like that, but that's still not a crazy amount of return perc like big fucking deal. So when you only have one percent or one point I think it's one point three to three over the last year, so one in the third percent return on total assets on hand, you only need to have a marginal loss on those

assets one point five percent, and you are gone. The institution's gone. All of the benefits that society gets from having a banking institution, which there are benefits. I've detailed some of them already. But if you get rid of those institutions entirely, okay, well, now you don't have a safe place to store your money. You don't have a place where you can easily return or get a return on your investment through CDs and just through a savings account like that. Is that is not ideal. That is

not ideal. Really, consider the consequences of this decision. So, going back to the original metaphor, it's one thousand dollars that you're going to lend to somebody. After if you are only able to lend them at a ten percent rate of return, you get one hundred bucks. At the end of the year, they can file bankruptcy. Here's the other part that we haven't talked about. What about the federal reserve? What about the inflation that you're dealing with.

Anybody that's been paying attention that doesn't pay attention to the corporate news on this, but just understands based off of actual price increases, what has the rate of inflation been over the past four or five years. Well, I would argue it's been way north of five percent annually, probably significantly higher than that, especially if you go to the grocery store. You'll agree with me. But just say

it's five percent. So that one hundred bucks of profit is now fifty because ten percent of a thousand is one hundred, five percent of that is fifty. One hundred minus fifty is fifty. So now you're expecting to only make fifty dollars on your thousand, and that's assuming that they don't default. Well, you'd be out of your fucking mind to lend one thousand bucks to some dude who already has demonstrated that his credit is not perfect to maybe maybe, if you're lucky, make fifty bucks at the

end of the year. So you're going to tell them to walk. So this is the structure. This is the society that you're now creating, where only the wealthy, only those with assets, are able to borrow. Can you understand why that's problematic, particularly in an inflationary environment where the only way that you actually survive it is to be able to deploy your capital into something hard, be it bitcoin or real estate, or gold or silver. But you

can't do that because you can't borrow. If you want to buy a house as a young person, good luck doing it without a loan, which, by the way, if you're going to maintain the principle that credit card rates are usury and therefore should be banned, well so are mortgages, So goodbye any sort of lending two purchase of home, which means you're going to have to Now, granted, this would destroy the market, and it would make housing be cut in probably at least a half, but still than

a starter homes two hundred grand because the market's been destroyed. How long do you think it'll take the average young person to accumulate two hundred grand. Two hundred grand in an economy that has been destroyed because you've totally uprooted it by getting rid of all lending, it ain't going to be easy. It's going to take you a fucking long time. It's going to take you a really long time to save up two hundred grand. And keeping in

mind that entire time you're going to be renting. You're going to be renting, so you're going to be paying thousands of dollars a month in rent. So it may take you thirty years, which is probably how long it would have taken you to pay off a thirty year mortgage. Look at that. There are there are trade offs here. Now. I am not advocating that you live above your you know, above your means. I'm not advocating that you take out as many loans as you can or anything like that.

I think that ultimately debt in the hands of most people is extraordinarily dangerous. But because I have faith in my audience, I will give you the advice that i'd give my son and it's the if you are responsible with debt, it is one of the best tools to get ahead you will ever encounter. It has been for me. When I was young, I would get these credit card offers where they would like they would it was insane.

They would literally give me free ten thousand dollars as long as I paid it back in a year with zero interest. And then I would deploy that money. I would invest that money. I would make six or seven or eight percent return on it, so I would get eight hundred bucks and then I would pay it off. And they did it because I was a young guy, and they thought I wouldn't be responsible with it and I wouldn't be able to pay it back, and then the interest rate would be you know, twelve point nine

to nine percent or whatever after that. But I would just pay it off and I'd be like, oh my god, I just made eight hundred bucks as a young person. How cool is this? You know, back in the nineties, that was a lot of money. Or yeah, early two thousands, whatever. I mean, that's just one small example when I was very young and very poor, and I would do that to try and supplement my income a little bit. I think it was a triple A card that they offered me.

That thanks Triple A. And then after that there was It was the real estate boom, and I had no interest in buying in five oh six because I recognized that the real estate market was way overvalued, and so throughout that period I was just saving and investing and trying to put together a down payment. By the time eight nine rolls around, suddenly I have an opportunity. But because I've been responsible, I've been borrowing money from credit cards and paying it off every month, never paid a

penny in interest. Well, through mortgages I have, but through credit cards I hadn't. And because of that, my credit was already eight hundred. When I was twenty five or whatever, I was able to qualify for a mortgage and buy a house. As a consequence of that, I was then able to buy at the bottom of the market historically,

I mean close to the bottom in any period. It was remarkable because of the real estate market where I was at had been cut in half from you know, six seven, eight hundred thousand dollars homes to three four or five hundred. So I bought the biggest house I possibly could. As a consequence of that I made a couple hundred grand over a few years because I lived in it. It was tax free, like massive windfall, especially for a guy in his twenties. After that, I parlated

into getting more mortgages and buying more properties. Got a triplex, I got a nether rental property. All of that was based off of usury, based off of me being able to borrow. A couple of years after that, I sold those, made a couple more hundred grand. It was like, just

kept doing it now. I didn't go crazy like a lot of people would have been borrowing much more aggressively and buying far more houses, and I probably should have, but at the time, I didn't have a crystal ball that said, oh, this market's just going to keep going up for the next fifteen years. Like who knew that? Who knew? That's not normally how the economy works, just for the young people out there, Normally you have a

recession every seven to ten years. The fact that we haven't had a very vicious recession at this point is still stunning. I think there's one coming. I'll maybe explain that at the end of the episode, but basically what I'm saying is from there basically, within a decade of using debt intelligently and paying it off and being responsible with it, I benefited to the tunes of a million plus dollars probably, And had the Tucker Carlson's of the world had their way or the Aocs of the world

had their way, I would have never had that opportunity. Now, just to get back to my Austrian bonafides here, if not for the Federal Reserve, you wouldn't have such significant inflation. You wouldn't have housing going from four hundred thousand dollars to eight hundred thousand dollars and a decade as we have had, so I wouldn't have made so much money. So but understanding Austrian economics is why I played that game. Now,

I'm not saying that's good. I'm not saying that the Federal Reserve and the inflation that they create is good. I'm saying it's bad. But I'm just saying, if you take away my ability to borrow money to play that game, I would have been buried by it. And that is totally unfair to everybody else that's trying to beat the inflationary game. If you make it so that only they are able to borrow and print and do all of this garbage, but we aren't. How is that to our benefit?

My answer, it ain't quite the contrary. So you got to really think through these things, really, like if you want to ban them all, Okay, now we're talking. Now, I'm at least open to your idea. If you want to get rid of the Federal Reserve and get rid of fiat currency and go back to you some sort of hard money, I'm with you. At least I'll have a further conversation as to whether or not we should be able to lend in America at all. But if

you aren't talking about that, no, thanks, not interested. So I guess I'll end with this. I think that the economy is in a lot of trouble, and I don't think that capping interest rates on credit cards is ultimately the solution by any stretch of the imagination. I think it's a band aid on a bullet wound. Yes, we do need greater financial education. Yes we need to be raising our kids to understand this stuff intimately, like instinctually

they ought to feel this stuff. Despite a modicum of profanity in this episode, I hope that you'll share this with them so they can actually think these things through for themselves. Maybe have a conversation with them about how personal finance works, how debt works, how credit cards work,

how mortgages work. What is a debt that ultimately creates a return on investment versus a debt that is a drain on you, because credit cards are usually just a straight drain on you, whereas investments in real estate, if you're buying at a good time, can be a great return on investment and a great asset for you. But I'm not saying now, don't buy now. Actually don't buy now. So anyways, I hope that you guys will do that.

But the point I wanted to get to is that the Federal Reserve Board has come out saying that they expect there to be a negative print, which is a negative GDP print, in the first quarter of this year. I think there's a lot of reasons for these headwinds, as the Fed boards like to describe it, and I think there's some that are valid, and I'll just give you my full opinion on it. I think that the market is reacting. The market's been getting beat up lately.

The stock market, I think that a lot of it is based off of the fact that there's immense uncertainty with the tariff programs that Trump's rolling out. Now. I've been one of the few libertarians that's willing to give Trump some grace on this and say that I think that if you use tariff threats to get your neighbors to do your bidding when it comes to border security,

and they do, it's probably smart. If you use tariff threats against your neighbors or other foreign countries to get them to lower the tariffs that they have already placed on us, which we had not reciprocated, then that's good. That's a good thing for the economy. That opens up the free market more. Yes, I know it's using state violence to diminish state violence from the foreign governments. But regardless, if you do that successfully, I think it's in that

positive for the economy. In fact, I know it's in that positive. If our threats of tariffs get them to lower their tariffs, that is a benefit to humanity broadly, because that's a freer market. But when Trump is doing these tariff negotiations and these tariff threats, and it's twenty five percent, and if you match ours and it's fifty percent, and then if you match that, I'll pump into one hundred. Fuck you. Well, that gives a lot of uncertainty for

the for the stock market, for the business world. Like if you don't know what your input costs are going to be, if you don't know what the tariff that you're going to have to pay is, then you're not going to be interested in investing that doing that capex, that capital expenditure to grow a new plant or you know, invest in a new plant for automobiles or whatever. Like, you're not going to do it because you don't have clarity into the future. Like no one ever has clarity

in the future. But you can usually extrapolate things out based off of the current circumstances and say, I think that we have decent clarity for the next twelve months or or eighteen months or twenty four months. Therefore, this investment is going to take six months. I think that the rate of return we should see a return on that in eighteen months. I have good I have I'm comfortable enough with my clarity over the next eighteen months that we can make we can make that capital expenditure

with these tariffs. A lot of the business world is going to say, I don't have enough clarity at all. I have no fucking idea what I'm doing. This is the same decision I made when I shut down my mortgage company in twenty twenty, was that my clarity was evaporated the lockdowns. You had, a foreclosure eviction moratorium. I was like, I have no fucking idea, what's happening. This isn't even the country that I thought I lived in.

How could I possibly deploy capital in this environment? So what I'm saying is Trump's behavior is actually adding to that. It's making a lot of the CEOs, you know, just reconsider their business plans rightfully. So they would be irresponsible as a fiduciary to their shareholders if they didn't do that. So that's one aspect of it. Two, there's been a

lot of bullshit with this economy. I don't have to tell you guys that, but over the past your entire life, but very starkly so over the past, you know, presidency, it was just like all masks, it was like just all bullshit. You know, they're like, inflation is actually just two point seven percent, and you're like, then Why am I groceries fucking doubled? Huh? How'd that happen? So they

just lied. So a lot of this is like just coming back to reality because they want things to look good when there's their chosen persons in office, and they want things to look bad when the guy they don't like is in office. And I genuinely believe that's how it works. And I genuinely believe that the Fed Board is just saying Trump's in there. Fuck Trump. Now, the economy's garbage. Now, we expect GDP to be negative, and because the Federal Reserve has so much power, they can

actually make that happen. Like if they were to hike interest rates further when Trump is pleading for them to lower them, that would hurt the economy tremendously. I'm not arguing that they should or shouldn't, because I think that hiking the interest rates and having a deflationary period would actually be healthy for the economy long term. But that's not how they think about things. They just think about like political angles on this stuff. So that's another aspect.

There's also the risk of World War three. I don't need to explain that one to you guys, I talk about that every other episode, and I think that that has given significant concern to investors. Rightfully. So you also then have the potential of war with Iran, even if it's not World War three. They shut down the straight of hormones, A huge percentage of global oil supply goes through there. You have oil spiked one hundred and fifty two hundred dollars barrel. Suddenly the economy is in a

global depression. So any investments you're making today get cut in half like scary times. Right. So I'm not saying this is likely, by the way. I'd say it's a small chance, but it's still it's a chance, and it's a higher chance than it's been in a while. So these are all uncertainties, and this is all why I think that the economy is in a lot of danger. I haven't even mentioned yet the biggest reason that the economy is in danger, and that's thirty seven trillion in

national debt. The Congress. Trump and Congress right now are working on a continuing resolution to keep spending at the same levels as it was last year, the same levels that are approximately three trillion or so higher than they were in twenty nineteen three trillion trillion, crazy, insane. So yeah, we're spending too much. No one's serious about cutting spending at the federal level, aside from Doge and Elon. So

we're in a lot of trouble. And the debt situation is untenable and paying a trillion in interest annually is going to ultimately drive this country into bankruptcy. That's the reality, and no one's serious about fixing it, aside from the Libertarians. And we don't have any political power, so all we can do is bitch and moan and buy bitcoin, which I do. So that's the reason that I think that

the economy is in a lot of danger. And I mean there's other there's other you know, my new show I could get into, but I'll maybe I'll do it on the next episode. Drop drop in the chat, let me know any questions you have about why I'm nervous. There's also another big news story that came out, and this one, you know. I read an article about it,

I watched the YouTube video about it. It's fascinating. The FHA first time home buyer loan program under the Biden administration had a I think it was a twelve or thirteen percent default rate, which is extraordinarily high for any mortgage product. That is that is subprime, that is garbage,

that is seven oh eight collapse trash default rates. And what would have happened in a free market, in a normal market, would be that those people, those twelve to thirteen percent would have been foreclosed on and those houses would have been you know, reclaimed by the lender and then sold back into the market to reclaim their capital, or at least a fraction of it. Didn't happen. Biden administration has been paying those loans. That's something that you

should be aware of. And we're talking about hundreds of thousands of housing inventory that has been kept off the market because the Biden administration was paying their fucking mortgage to keep them from being foreclosed on. Now, allegedly that's going to end under Trump, and it ought to. As always, today's episode is brought to you by our friends over at MyPillow dot com. Use promo code lockdown. They've got

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be the case. But we don't live in a free market, and we're just I'm slowly acclimating to that reality and I absolutely despise it. But assuming Trump ends it, that means that we've got hundreds of thousands of housing units, if not up to a million, that will be foreclosed

and liquidated in the next year. And if that happens, that the addition of inventory can drive down prices, which are already fairly weak because interest rates have spiked tremendously over the past few years from I think the mortgage rate was three and a half percent on a thirty year all the way up to seven or six and a half or seven sometimes higher. So if you have foreclosures on top of the headwinds that interest rate policy has created, well now you're talking about a real decrease

in housing prices. Now, if you have that happen, then the banking institutions start start to take losses. If they take losses, then the stock market catches a cold. The stock market catches a cold, you end up in a significant recession, if not a depression. Now I'm not predicting that. I'm not saying it's probable or assured by any starch to the imagination, but it is a distinct possibility, and I because I care about you guys, I want you

to be aware that it is a possibility. And that's assuming that we don't end up in a war with Iran and oil prices spike, in which case the depression becomes really extreme. So that's, again, like I said earlier, not likely, but it's a possibility, something that should be you know, in the back of your mind as you evaluate things. These are risks that are present right now. So that's where we're at. I think that the economy is very, very weak. It has been weak for a

long time. You've got lots of young people that are working multiple jobs just to barely survive. Not not even young people, lots of old people do the same. And this economy has been junk for a while. And I think that it will be interesting to see how the deportations and the border issues and how that'll s if the labor market, It's going to be very interesting. There's so many variables, and you know, how much of this does Trump follow through with, how much of it does

he not? How much of will Congress actually back them up on. I don't know. These are all variables that are unclear at this point. So I'll keep giving you guys periodic you know, updates as I get additional clarity. But for now, I just wanted you to be aware. Instead of hating the banks, instead of hating credit card interest rates, how about you hate your own weakness. How about you stop being such a bitch. Sorry, I'm just trying to be provocative, but you know what I'm saying, like,

this is all within your skill set. You don't need to borrow money if you can't pay it back, you don't need to do that, and don't do it in fact, And if you don't do that, and you use credit wisely and you only use it when it's necessary or it benefits you, or it gives you an expectation that it should benefit you in terms of buying a home when the market is lower, then you have no reason to hate the banking institutions. They aren't your enemy. Your

own lack of self control is. Once you master that, you don't need to worry about what the banks are doing. And I think that's the more empowering way to view this entire topic and life in general, and hopefully that helps. By the way, I was in this DM conversation last night with Actually, I'm not gonna dox him. He's a guitarist for a very successful metal band, very very successful. I'm not talking about Phil Lebonti, who was a friend

of mine. But he reaches out and he's like, I was lamenting the fact that there's no new rock music and he's like, I don't know, dude, We're doing pretty well. And I start to watch these videos. I'm like, holy shit, this guy's got thirty something million views on their music video from six months ago. Anyways, shout out to that guy. I'm not going to doc him or let his personal

business be known. But he starts telling me that he's he never misses an episode of Literally Lockdown and Dave Smith and Tom Woods and a handful of others, and I was like, crazy, I constantly bitch about the culture war and how we don't engage in the arena, in the arena of art production, and how do you know, wake people's spirits up and basically sneakily get them to

understand our ideas. And I find out that one of the most successful metal bands in the world right now is filled to the brim with hardcore, roth barty and libertarians. I just wanted to leave you with a white pill. I think that's fucking tremendous and gave me a lot of reason for hope. And I can't wait to see what this band does in the future. But they are already crushing it and that's really awesome. So I invited

him on the show. If he wants to be public public about his politics, he's got an open invite to do so. I think you guys would really enjoy it. Like God, I wish I could just say what the band is. It's awesome. Anyways. Yeah, thanks for reaching out, man, and I hope you enjoy your tour and we'll talk

in a couple of months. For the rest of you, thank you guys for listening, thank you for tuning in, thank you for subscribing, thank you for liking, Thank you for commenting, and thank you for listening to me rant about why credit cards, interest rates, and banking is not your enemy. It can actually be your friend if you do it right. Love you guys, Peace, Welcome toune liberty lockdown pleas on your plock code. Your liberty ain't come. But yeah, it's a whols. Where did it come from?

And where did it go