¶ Intro / Opening
Music. An idea whose time has come cannot be destroyed by armies or governments.
¶ Welcome to the Free Thought Project Podcast
It's too pervasive, and we still have tools to spread the message. Music.
¶ Episode Highlights and Guest Introductions
Welcome to the Free Thought Project Podcast, a hub for free-thinking conversations about the promotion of liberty and the daunting task of government accountability. Here are your hosts, Jason Bassler and Matt Agarest.
Hello again free thinkers welcome back to the free thought project podcast my name is jason bassler and joining me is the free thought project editor-in-chief matt agaris so thanks for tuning in again today guys we are excited about our show with a returning guest and have a couple big announcements to get into but first i wanted to check in with Mr. Matt Agarest and see how his week's been and if he's ready to talk shop with one of our favorite gold gurus.
Hell yeah, man, especially with this crazy economic environment we were watching materialize right now with precious metals going through the roof and, you know, the stock market crashing. I'm very interested to get Tony's perspective on all this. Same. Yeah, very much the same. And it's been, geez, what, four months since we spoke to him last. And it's certainly flown by. A lot's changed since then.
But first of all, guys, I wanted to remind everyone to please check out last week's show with the viral video creator and TikTok star James Lee. It was a great discussion. It flowed really well. James had some very interesting points to make about the Epstein files fail and the nothing burger the Trump administration served up to us a couple weeks back. And we also got into the free speech conversation regarding the college protesters and the rights new cancel culture.
And we even had some time to get into the direction of social media in 2025. And if some social media influencers who've grown to prominence in a very short period of time, like Ian Carroll, are indeed controlled opposition. We did touch on a lot of current and relevant topics, so it's definitely worth the download. Check it out, Freethinkers. Also, we've got some big news I wanted to share with you guys.
I was super excited to send Matt a email I received yesterday from an assistant of journalist Matt Taibbi accepting our offer to come on this podcast. It should be a great conversation. We have a lot to talk about, obviously. And for those who don't know, Matt Taibbi actually interviewed me back in 2018 for Rolling Stone magazine after our pages were deleted by both Facebook and Twitter on the same day.
And ever since then Matt has been keeping in touch with me over the years and when he was given the Twitter files by Elon Musk in late 2022 he reached out to us to share that he had found some really interesting information relating to the takedown of our pages it definitely seemed really juicy so we're excited to get into all that with him and really so much more especially regarding the first amendment and free speech conversation that's
currently happening now obviously guys, I don't want you to miss that conversation. So like I always remind you, please take a moment to subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast player of choice, but also take a moment to rate and review it as well. It really helps us reach more people and grow. So yeah, please help us out with that Freethinkers. We do really appreciate it.
Okay, let's go ahead and get this show started. So today we have the pleasure of welcoming back a friend of the Free Thought Project, Mr. Tony Arterburn. Tony has quite an impressive resume. He served as a U.S. Army paratrooper and a military policeman. Before his military career, he was a competitive powerlifter who won titles at state, national, and world levels. He also ran as a Republican for the House of Representatives in the Texas 4th Congressional District in 2014.
But now he's the founder of wise wolf gold and wise wolf gold and crypto show where he educates clients about the significance of precious metals and i'm quite certain we'll be talking about that today so welcome back to the free thought project podcast tony how you doing today my friend. Doing well. I mentioned off air that I'm fighting some sort of gain of function or flu, whatever the hell it is. I don't get sick very often.
I can't even remember the last time I got sick, but I must have done something to wear myself down. So I'm coming to you from my cabin in the Ozarks. That's about 30 minutes from my gold and silver shop in Branson, Missouri. So beautiful day out, but I'm glad to be back on the show. It's a smart show and you guys have wonderful guests and it's an honor to be a part of that. Well, thank you for the kind words, Tony. And yeah, man, sorry to hear you're not feeling very well.
I know you mentioned that you didn't want to cancel on us and we do appreciate that.
¶ Discussion with Tony Arterburn Begins
We had a guest not show up a couple weeks ago and you know it does throw a curveball but by all means man if you're sick you're sick you know so but it's awesome that you joined us and we're happy to have you back on and we spoke to you i think i mentioned you know earlier in the.
Intro here we spoke to you a few months back in mid-november in a podcast entitled mastering money how to outsmart the fiat banking cartel and it was a wonderful conversation in case anybody wants to check that one out. But you're back now and gold has only increased in value since the last time we talked. And you're certainly one of the top gold guys. So we have a lot to talk about today regarding gold and crypto and the economy.
But recently, you had the opportunity to speak in Acapulco at the Anarchapulco conference.
¶ Anarchapulco Experience
I think it was last month, which is put on by our friend and former podcast guest, Jeff Berwick, which, by the way, guys was one of my favorite podcasts we recorded last year so it's definitely worth a listen but before we kind of get into all the you know inside baseball and inner workings of the economy i want to ask you you know how was your experience there you know being surrounded by a bunch of the crazy anarchists and you know did you enjoy anarcho-pulco experience.
It's kind of like the children's tale about Br'er Rabbit. Don't throw me in the briar patch, whatever you do. All those anarchists and libertarians, it's fun to be around them. And I spoke twice. I was able to be on a panel with Jeff Berwick. We actually had the last question of the entire event. They posed to both Jeff and I about holding gold and silver and what ratio to hold. So it was a fun conference. I got to meet a lot of interesting. That was my second trip down to Acapulco
for that event. And always great to be down there. Oh, no kidding. I didn't realize you'd spoken down there before. I went back in 2016, almost a decade ago now, and it was a really awesome experience. I had some great speakers at the time and met up with a lot of like-minded individuals, and there's just an energy, a vibe there. And I feel like you might get part of that at some of these freedom events, which are usually more geared towards the conservative audience, which I'm okay with.
But it's something about being around the like-minded libertarians and anarchists that, I don't know, something about it really does kind of reinvigorate your spirit and passion, I think, when it comes to this stuff. And I'm glad to hear that you had a good time down there. Yeah, Jeff's a good guy, and he's done a lot to support the Free Thought Project over the years.
¶ Shift Towards Sound Money
You know, we just, I mean, we'll go ahead and get into some of the other stuff here that we were talking about. We just wrote an article recently. In fact, it was by our writer and editor, Don Vyte Jr. In the beginning of March, kind of talking about how there are some big shifts and changes happening right now and how multiple states are actually moving to recognize gold and silver as legal currency.
I think all in all, it's about a dozen states that are pushing through this legislation to try to undermine the Federal Reserve's unconstitutional fiat money. And I'm sure our listeners are curious which states those are. So I'll go ahead and list them really quick. It's Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Wyoming.
So yeah that's you know that's pretty impressive and it does seem like there is you know some type of shift out of the age of fiat currency it could be finally coming to a close and you know this could be the beginning of a slow death perhaps all of our end the fed chants from over the decades are finally being taken seriously but don had a great point at the end of his article i'd like to share.
He said, with the death of the petrodollar looming, the threat of central bank digital currencies on the horizon, and the clever bait and switch that the Trump administration is currently playing on behalf of the deep state, seemingly opposed to the CBDCs while actually laying the groundwork for a public-private partnership, the time is now for Americans to get serious about reclaiming their financial independence.
So do you think that's kind of what we're currently witnessing with this shift, like the beginning of a major shift back towards sound money? Yeah, it's really the end of Gresham's law. If you look at something called Gresham's law is when bad money enters the system, then good money goes into hiding. And I was actually looking for, you know, the end game to that. I mean, they never really mentioned what happens at the end. Well, good money comes back into the system because bad money dies.
And we've been in this fiat experiment since August 15th, 1971, officially, with Richard Nixon taking us off the gold standard and closing the gold window. We had started debasing our currency long before that, really, and again, culminating and taking the silver out of our coinage after the deep state. murdered JFK.
¶ The End of Fiat Currency?
And so we had no more silver in our half dollars, quarters or dimes, or we didn't make a silver dollar anymore after 1964. So the world took notice. And then after 71, we've been in this fiat experiment. The rest of the world also followed us down the fiat rabbit hole. And unfortunately for the rest of the world, we're now at a currency crisis.
And that's where you get the term, the great reset and, you know, other, you know, financial simulations that have gone on, you know, the, the, the giant, you know, banking institutions have been running, governments have been running not only on the financial aspect, but national security and other things. So really we're, this is a pivotal point in history.
So much is happening. And, you know, At the core, though, is that I think the normalcy bias, and that's what I try to shake myself of, is like, well, this is the way that the world was, and so it'll be like that tomorrow because it's that way today.
And there's so much change going on. You really can't rely on that old paradigm because we're about to see not only governments, But institutions are going to start moving away from king dollar and and they are already with de-dollarization, but moving away from the entire financial system that's been set up and going towards something more akin to sound money holding value because you really that.
You're talking about all fiat currencies, which fiat is Latin for by decree, all fiat currencies go to zero. There's not one surviving paper currency that wasn't backed by anything that stood the test of time. So we're really just in a waiting game to see the end of this dollar experiment or the current form of the dollar, which you can see the writing on the wall everywhere. I mean, look at the gold hitting its all-time high like 30-some-odd times, maybe 40 times in the last year.
And I mentioned to my audience, I'm like from 2011 to 2020, there was no all-time high in gold. So I mean, gold hit like 1900 and some change. In 2011, the Fed came out, Ben Bernanke came out at that time and said, oh, well, you know, you don't need to worry. We're not going to do these type of quantitative easing and cash injections into these institutions anymore. It's just a one-time thing.
So he calmed the market down. Well, of course they did, you know, and the debasement of the currency is staggering post-2011. So 2020 gold went over $2,000 an ounce and then broke its all-time high. And then just hitting 2024, it's all the time, you know, so I'm sure it's hit another ATH in the last week.
And, you know, it's probably some short-term run-up, but the trend is showing you not necessarily that gold is going up in value, although it is, there's some stuff we can discuss about scarcity, but there's, it's not a picture of gold really going up in value, but we're watching the loss of purchasing power in the dollar, along with a lot of uncertainty in the markets that's causing a lot of other schisms and crazy devaluations across the board on these stocks and other things in other markets.
So really, it's an interesting time to be alive. It really is, man. And I like with this failing financial system, I believe that the only way that they can get themselves out of it or keep themselves in control is to usher in some new form of financial tyranny.
¶ Financial Surveillance and CBDCs
Right. And, you know, for years, we've been talking about this and on the Free Thought Project, like this slow creep of financial surveillance. Right. And now we're and last year we saw the Biden administration and everybody got up in arms about that when they they required the IRS to or you had to report any kind of six hundred dollar transaction like Venmo or PayPal or any of that shit. You had to report that to the IRS. Right.
And I mean, I think even Trump came out and was like, this is ridiculous, you know, and then we come then he comes in and he bans CBDCs, which is amazing. But then you fast forward to this month and under the guise of the war on drugs and fighting cartels, no longer is that little $600 reporting requirement to the IRS. Now it's $200. And this is taking money out of an ATM. If you seriously, yeah, I mean, there's a war on not only cash, but individual sovereignty and privacy.
These trends still continue. They just take other forms. Right, right. I mean, and this is this is happening under Trump, right? Like the same Trump who banned CBDCs, man. Do you think that this is like a bait and switch where he like he gives like a symbolic win while quietly expanding the financial surveillance state? Or what? What's what's your thoughts on that, Tony? Yeah, unfortunately, I do. I mean, if I'm going to give an honest answer, I know it's kind of a joy killer.
I come in and talk about, well, here's some great things he's done. But also, you know, look at who his backers are. You know, you got the PayPal mafia and Peter Thiel and Elon Musk and all these people. I mean, these are these are technocrats. And they certainly believe in a digitized currency system and more centralized systems in general. And of course, it was Jared Kushner, his son-in-law originally, that worked on the CBDC project in the first Trump administration.
So, you know, it's kind of hard to I mean, yeah, you may not have something called CBDC, but it may be on the backs of stable coins or something else. I mean, when they you know, they just created the. Strategic Bitcoin reserve or Bitcoin stockpile or what it really, you know, this has been talked about since Nashville. So I was there in Nashville at the Bitcoin conference when Trump spoke. So this is something that's been going on a while, but they also mentioned other coins.
And I thought that's it. They even mentioned like Cardano, XRP. Ethereum and other things. And I go, what's interesting? Why would you need a stockpile of, you know, it's like having a stockpile of stocks Like that doesn't even, Bitcoin is very unique in its makeup and its founding and what it, the decentralized nature of it. These other coins, you know, they do have functions, but they're with a company. I mean, they all track back to a board of directors or, you know,
venture capital. You can see who they are. Bitcoin, you know, fortunately doesn't have that. That's one of the magical things about Bitcoin. It doesn't have that. It's a mystery, you know, which is good. That's the only way you really could do something decentralized like that. So I have to watch for the signs. And none of that's a fait accompli either. I mean, there's a lot of shift in consciousness about currency and about privacy and about the technocracy in general.
The last 10 years, I've seen just a lot of momentum on the side of people being a lot more awake in that realm. So it's not like just because they want something doesn't mean they'll get it. But you have to stay vigilant on this. And the Trump administration is only another four years or less. So it's not like it's forever. The establishment, the controllers, they want a CBDC. Davos wants a CBDC. World Economic Forum, the UN. I mean, they want central bank digital
currency, the Bank of International Settlements. They all want CBDC. And that's why none of that's off the table. It just may come in a different form. So, you know, that's something I tell my audience anytime I'm on a show is like, it's not over. We need to continue to be vigilant when it comes to those type of programs being implemented. And I mean, you can see like they Trump wants to take away the penny, which is interesting.
I mean, we don't make it out of copper anymore because last time we did that was 1982. But I find that I find any sort of scrapping of our coin and cash system to be a detriment. And I'm all about cash. I'm all about even if it's fiat cash. I mean, because it's outside of the system.
¶ The Nature of Currency and Money
Right. Great point. And yeah, I definitely want to get into more of the CBDC stable coin conversation as well, which I think you kind of touched on there for a second. But first, I wanted to just make clarification. I know it's easy, especially right now to kind of get pigeonholed as being blackpilled. Anybody critical or critiquing Trump could easily by the right wing kind of get classified as like being a doomer or blackpilled or something.
And I know we've talked about this before on this podcast, but. But, you know, the way we look at it, I don't want to speak for Matt, but the way I look at it is like, there's enough people already kind of cheerleading for Trump and the good things that are happening.
And I'm, you know, I'm going to be objective here. There are a couple of things that do seem promising, but, you know, that's always been kind of our MO here at the Free Thought Project is always to kind of critique anything that, you know, the powers that be are doing. And it doesn't matter if they're left or the right, like we're, that's kind of what we do. And I know you weren't suggesting anything other than that, Tony,
but like, that's just what we do here on the Free Thought Project. I think it's critical. I think it's important. As you said, we got to stay vigilant. But as we were just touching on, with the whole CBDC thing seemingly coming to an end because Trump signed the executive order banning the CBDCs, most of the supporters cheered again about that.
It seems like it is a step in the right direction, but there's also this theory that's been circulating in crypto circles that But that move was only a performance to kind of quell the outrage about CBDCs because the deep state is really focused on the promotion of the US-backed stablecoins that will essentially kind of take the place of the CBDC as the programmable money with surveillance and centralized
control and all the backdoor features that we've kind of condemned about CBDCs in the first place. So like where where do you sit with this tony like do you share the sentiment that these stable coins backed by fiat and issued by private entities is part of this kind of growing concern.
Regarding the public private partnerships that it could be you know undermining our financial freedoms i mean are they just as dangerous as like a you know cbdc from a central bank it does have that potential you know and it's it's a weapon that can be willed for for good or for evil, I think. And that's the technology in and of itself is just neutral. And I like some of the progress that's been made in that space. And I've been in Bitcoin since 2016, bought my first Bitcoin ATM.
I think Bitcoin was trading around $400 a coin or something like that. I didn't even know what I was doing. I thought, well, this is, you know, I instinctually knew, you know, I was 36. So I already knew enough history. And, you know, I ran for Congress wanting to audit and end the Fed long ago. So I was against fiat currency and the evils of that. But, you know, we've come a long way in the crypto space.
And I think that's why, you know, you can't rely on a politician or even a political movement to safeguard your liberty when it comes to this kind of stuff. And that's why I don't get into like a cult where it's like everything that a politician does is either bad or good. I just try to, you know, call balls and strikes. Like, hey, that's that's a good thing. Like, you know, Trump throwing Zelensky out of the White House, scripted or not, funny as hell. And I loved every minute of that.
You know, like I can watch that on loop, you know, because I've been talking about Zelensky for years and going, does anybody notice this guy's evil? You know what I mean? It's like, I can't believe he's just, you know, it's really a psychological test. Like, how do you see this man? You know, it's like what your politics are, where your spirit is, like whatever you see him as is a pretty good indicator of who you are. And so that's good. And, you know.
But it's crazy on the, like, I'm an economic nationalist. I believe in, because I have ample proof that economic nationalism works because the founding fathers set up this country to, you know, it eventually became the manufacturing marvel of mankind. We use tariffs strategically and we fought a little bit internally over those tariffs and other things like that. The South, especially wanting free trade in the North, being industrialized
and wanting those tariffs. But I see him using this weapon of the tariffs now, and it's hard to even understand what the strategy is. And it's causing the markets to whipsaw all over the place. It looks to me, and this is just speculation, but it looks to me like some sort of creative destruction.
You know because i mean i think trump ultimately wants a weaker dollar for trade for trade imbalances and other things and they're gonna they want the fed to lower rates and you know and that certainly there's a short-term boon for any time that happens you know jerome powell signals a rate cut then the market's flooded with liquidity and everybody's happy for a minute but that's still the fruit of a poisonous tree because it's fake money.
It's not stable and you just devalued the currency even further. So this game that we're playing right now, this massive uncertainty is really, really interesting to watch because I don't even know where it's going. I see what's happening to gold. Bitcoin's been bizarre as far as how it's priced. And of course, the stock market in general, just all over the place. So we're in some really uncharted waters. But I think that's just the point of history that we're in.
So much uncertainty. And, you know, I think the instability in the markets are bleeding into everything else. So I don't know, guys, it's interesting to watch.
¶ Economic Turmoil and Creative Destruction
And I'm, I'm certainly in the right business, I think at the right time to help people and, uh, yeah, I'm definitely in the right bit. Although I would say, I mean, if you, you know, business wise used to when gold would hit another, like it would start going up or hit a bull run. My phone would ring a lot for people to buy. I mean, cause that's generally what, you know, unfortunately people buy when something's going up instead of buying when it's, you know, a price correction or a sell-off.
And yeah, just a little bit of a lesson there, but it's okay. I'm still love to be that guy. Well, lately, as it's been hitting more and breaking 3,000, the buys slowed way down. But the price keeps going up. I mentioned this in Acapulco. Now, that doesn't make any sense. And I've got two locations. I'm a national dealer, and I talk to other dealers. They tell me basically the same thing. So what that means is that institutions and governments are buying.
And the people, well, in this country especially, they have to pay their bills and other things. So they're dumping their gold into the market. And somebody's buying or the price would go down. So the buys to the sell ratios are way off compared to where I have been in the past. So, you know, and I'm, I'm glad I've set myself up to be pretty nimble in these conditions. So I'm really happy with that. I mean, we, we're not overburdened with debt or we can move pretty fast.
And so I'm, you know, I'm not over, I don't have a giant stockpile that I have to sell off at a certain price or anything like that. So, It's just really, really uncertain times. And I know everybody's feeling that right now. It's hard to get a beat on where we're going. Yeah, certainly, man. And the point you made about this is creative destruction. I see no other end result. You cannot tax your way to prosperity. You can't win in a trade war. This all ends badly.
And then forcing the Federal Reserve's hands to cut interest rates. Back to the stablecoin thing, right? This this is that seems that they're going to try to, like, crash the economy and then bring in these stable coins as the answer and the savior as like the American savior dollar. And they've been passing legislation on it, too, like bipartisan legislation. We got Maxine Waters pushing for stable coins at the same time as like Bill Haggerty is doing the same thing. Right.
And they agreed that they want the U.S. to run stable coins. They just they disagree on where that control lies. Right. But in the regardless that the end result is a very CBDC like situation, almost de facto alternative to one. And it's going to be like just total control, just like the CBDC would have been, you know, that that's that's the question I had.
And like, I mean, just back to that, like this, this backdoor approach to you, I want you to pontificate a little bit like you did earlier about how, how you could see this unfolding if this were to be the case with what you had just said about this, you know, this controlled destruction, how do you see that playing out? I mean, I see it playing out right now in front of us with bipartisan legislation being pushed through to make this happen.
And I was wondering if you think that theory could be possible or how do you see that playing out? On the creative destruction part of what the Trump administration needs to be doing.
¶ Global Financial Supremacy Struggles
Yeah, yeah. And how do you think that they'll roll out as they're going to use this creative destruction to roll out these, this CBDC alternative or stable coins? Or like, what do you think the next phase of this will be? Well, I think there's an underlying struggle with the global powers on currency right now. And we saw that. With the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, and then the massive sanctions that were placed on the ruble.
The ruble took a massive hit in the beginning of 2022 after the invasion. And then the Russian finance minister came out and said, oh, you know, we don't even take dollars anymore. We don't want them. They're candy wrappers. That's what he said. And that's in Russian, that's like a really derogatory trash kind of thing. It's like, well, they're candy wrappers to us.
And they went off and started trading petroleum straight up crude for gold and other things, direct deals with India to bypass sanctions and setting up cross-border payment systems and all that. So we saw the ruble bounce back. And then it's just as good or better than it was before the war. And it just continues. It took a hit and then it just kept on going. And it says, well, we're outside of the dollar system now.
Well, I think at that time, about 54% of the financial transactions in the world went on in dollars. Two years later, it's 44% and then declining. And that's a massive shift percentage-wise of the usage of the dollar. Another important aspect to look at is something that happened in 2021 with the Bank of International settlements, they took gold from a tier three asset commodity to a tier one asset, meaning it's like currency.
So after they did that, central banks put on their balance sheet, putting their gold on their balance sheet, it surpassed the euro. So now the dollar is still king dollar as far as central bank holdings of liquidity. But number two is gold. Used to be the euro and gold was way down on the list. So it has reset itself. And in my opinion, and I've been on other shows, gold is already the world's reserve currency again. And the only thing that's left to do is the crying. It's like the dollar...
The world's moving away from it so rapidly. And I think this is a national security issue. I think this is the simulations that they're running. So it's probably, there's an underlying asymmetrical war going on, currency, trade, financial, that are below the surface that you really don't see. I mean, it shows up in the weird whipsawing of tariffs and other things. It shows up in the market uncertainty, you can definitely see $3,030 gold is an indication that things aren't what they used to be.
When I got into the business, I think gold was $1,100 an ounce. We're not in the same country anymore. We're not in the same economic system anymore. I think a lot of the stuff that's going on may make no sense to us watching and going, why would you do this? But You have to factor in things like the Asian sphere, China, other financial global orders like the Bank of International Settlements and other things that BRICS, you know, Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and their influence.
There's just so much going on, and it's happening all at once. There's probably multiple factors contributing to this need to. I think at some level it's creative destruction and replacing the dollar, the current dollar system with something else. How that really unfolds, I'm unclear how they would do it. But that's really the rub, right?
If you're, you know, never let a good crisis go to waste, they will use, they will use a crisis and it will be something akin to, you know, the other, you know, they say, oh, that's somebody else did that to us. If you remember during the Biden administration, they said, oh, it's Putin's price hike, like Vladimir Putin was causing inflation.
I mean, that's pretty, I mean, if you thought, if you believe that, that's that, you know, if you really thought, well, it's Putin's causing these prices to go up. And I think most people have that deficit in understanding basic economics, and fortunately for the ruling class. But people like me go, oh, come on. It has nothing to do with anything. His country certainly didn't have inflation at the time. The ruble bounced back and was stronger.
So I think this is global. It's systemic. If you look at the amount of debt worldwide, it's like $350 trillion. They say that global assets worldwide are like $800 trillion. Who knows? I mean, you look at these blocks on the board of sovereign wealth funds and stocks and currencies and other things. I'm like, how much value is actually in those?
I mean, I'm very skeptical. When I see gold has like a $18 trillion market cap in a sea of hundreds of trillions of so-called value, this doesn't make any sense to me. Same thing with Bitcoin. Bitcoin's, I think, a $1.8 or so trillion market cap. Silver's at like $1.5, $1.6, somewhere in there. So it's like the tiny fraction of value that's housed in the actual monies or commodities where you have all this other stuff out there just floating.
So I think we're just inside of an economic experiment that is coming. The phase of that is coming to an end. We were the world's reserve currency from 1944 after the Breton Woods Conference in New Hampshire, and gold was $35 an ounce until 1971, and then it's just free-floating. I think by the end of the 70s, it was $800 an ounce. Well, gold really didn't go up, though. And that's the thing, is gold didn't go up, per se. It's the dollars losing purchasing power.
And we're long, far away from when I was born at the end of 1979. Like I said, gold was close to $800 an ounce. Silver was $50 an ounce. And of course, they came in and did a lot of financial wizardry and put a pin in that because they could. They could use currency creation and float and other things to get you to pay attention to.
Look how great the stock market is and it's morning in america and you know here's the movie wall street and all this stuff that was happening in the 80s and the debt of the u.s guys was one trillion dollars in 1980 or right about that so it took us from the founding of the country to 1980 to get to a trillion well now we do a trillion every 90 days, see how the acceleration happens and so debt is unsustainable and the worldwide economic system.
That's why they call it a great reset. I mean, they. You know, the institutions, governments, and there's just a lot of infighting going on for supremacy in the new economic world order. And we're still paying attention to the old paradigm. I think that's really what the issue is. Absolutely. Yeah. I say this often, but the America our parents grew up in is officially dead.
¶ The Controlled Demolition of America
You know, I don't think there's any debate about that. And I know your friend, Charlie Robinson, our friend as well, and former podcast guests as well. Both Charlie and Jeff Berwick wrote a book called The Controlled Demolition of America. And that title has always stuck with me because I think it's particularly apt considering what's currently going on. You touched on inflation there. I definitely want to get into that.
But you also mentioned the below-the-surface asymmetrical warfare that's going on. And in all honesty, I don't have a great grasp on this whole tariff thing that Trump's really trying to pull right now. And I know he's been on an executive order bender the last couple months and it's implemented a lot of policies. Some he's previously hinted at, others kind of just out of left field.
But with the recent tariffs introduced by Trump, especially on steel and aluminum, there's been a lot of debate about their potential effects. I know we've already kind of touched on that a little bit here. But some people are saying these are going to lead to just higher manufacturing costs and ultimately kind of push inflation higher. But from your perspective, and maybe you could kind of drill down on this, like, how do you see the tariffs really impacting the broader economy?
Well, tariffs have always been used strategically, either at the beginning of the country, you know, Thomas Jefferson used tariffs so that no one would know the tax man. We charge foreign imports is how you funded the government. I mean, up until 1913, about 70% of federal revenue was from tariffs. And, And then late in the 19th century, it was used as protectionism.
And if you look at some of the old discussions during that time from economists, there was somebody that was very much in favor of free trade. And you should pull this quote up sometime. No tariffs at all, you know. And that was Karl Marx. Karl Marx loved that idea because he thought it would help hasten the revolution because the people would become poor. Companies would have economic Darwinism, you know, go to where it's cheaper
and export in and all the other things. So it would destabilize the system to do creative destruction on that side, you know, with the, and they certainly have done that. Free trade is, to quote Pat Buchanan, it's the Trojan horse of global government. Now, you can be theoretically like Adam Smith, you know, free trade among nations. And I like the, I like, you know, if I want to ship something from Texas to New York, I don't want a tariff in between that.
We should have free trade, especially when you're on economic parity. But it's really something that doesn't work when you have countries like China or Mexico or whatever that will, you know, lower environmental standards, labor standards. What do they have? Foxconn, they have nets out to catch people trying to just kill themselves for making the next iPhone or whatever.
You know, in America, we used to have, and I think we still have some of the, if not the best workers in the world, they just don't get a chance to work that often. And especially, you a living wage job that makes things. So that America has passed away. And you could bring back a system, but I don't see that in what Trump's doing. And that's just because I've spent years and years studying the history of tariffs and economic nationalism. I've always been fascinated with it.
I never thought I'd be at a point where, especially when I ran for Congress, I never thought that I would get to a point where I would see a president wielding them again. That's just crazy. I brought it up in a meeting with the Dallas Morning News, which is the paper of record, I guess, if you will, for Dallas. I was in a meeting with them and the other candidates. One of the other candidates was John Radcliffe. He's now head of the CIA.
Trump put him in charge of that. He actually won that seat. When I was in there, I talked about how Ronald Reagan had saved Harley-Davidson with a tariff. And they thought it was funny. You're like, that won't happen. And I said, well, Ronald Reagan, somebody came to him and said, we're about to lose Harley-Davidson because of these large Japanese imports, these bikes. And he put a 50% tariff on bigger Japanese bikes. The smaller ones were still free.
And so he saved Harley. I mean, that's undisputable. And so on a strategic level, it can work that way. But we're just all over the place. It's hard to determine. It can't be for revenue. In one day, you'll have Trump going from 50 to 25 to 15. This is so much. Markets hate uncertainty.
And there's probably a more, I mean, this is all theoretical, but there's a way to reset, our system for tariffs and make it very attractive for companies to build here and to make things here and to bring back jobs. You could do that, but I don't think that's what this is. Right.
Because I never hear any of that stuff. I never hear like, hey, we, even in the first Trump administration, you know, they were talking to, what was it, carrier air conditioners, like before they took office and they were like, you know, stay here. And they eventually, they did, they moved anyway, but that was just an, I was watching that real close and there was some talk about, we'll do this, this or this, you know, and this condition will bring in, you know, companies back to,
to build things here. I just don't see that. That's not on my newsfeed. I'm not seeing those kinds of press releases, but the tariffs are being thrown around. So you have to, you have to be skeptical of what that really means. And I think, you know, going back to talking about nonlinear warfare, like we're in a war worldwide for financial supremacy, for AI supremacy, you know, who will, and again.
The being the world's reserve currency allows us to make some really stupid decisions financially that we've made over the last 50 years. I mean, it has been, I mean, it's on purpose in my opinion, because you have to be, you can't be just dumb. What was it that James Forrestal told Joe McCarthy's if they were stupid, if they were just stupid, every once in a while they err in our favor, but they never do. So it's not just stupidity. I think it's on purpose. And so we've done so much damage.
We need the rest of the world to use the dollar and to use the U.S. system. Trump's even mentioned 100% tariffs on BRICS nations that don't want to use the dollar. I mean, you're just tripling down on why they left or want to leave the system in the first place. And everything financially comes back to one word, and that's trust. And if you don't have trust in the system, if it has too much uncertainty, then things like gold are going to reap the harvest.
And that's where people will run to. That's just history. And you can say things like Bitcoin, too, and that's got a much longer timeline for Bitcoin being something like that for people to store wealth in. But that's where people are going right now. There's just so much uncertainty because of these tariffs. And my reading of history doesn't show anything like this ever happening before. So hard to say what the actual motive is, but I don't think it's about bringing
jobs back. if I could be so bold. I second that sentiment, Tony. And this is why we like having you on, man. You're not only a gold guru, a gold expert, but you also have wisdom of history. You know a lot about history and you often bring that up as kind of examples relating to what's currently going on. So we certainly appreciate that. And I'm right there with you. Trump's so erratic with a lot of this stuff. And not to mention,
he's the art of the deal guy. You know, who knows how much of this is, yeah, some type of 5D chess or whatever his supporters like to say. But, you know, I think the part of it that bugs me is that, like, at the end of the day, like the people who kind of pick up the pieces and are negatively affected by some of these Trump games that Trump plays, you know, is the American people.
And, you know, the value of the dollar continues to go down, the tax rate continues to increase, whether it be, you know, something that's in front of us that we're actually acknowledging or even just, you know, having to supplement the prices for these tariffs and, you know, the price on the consumer. So, yeah, it's hard to tell really what's going on. That's why we have you on to kind of dissect these kinds of things.
And I would say the inflation conversation seems somewhat relevant as well because, you The Trump administration has kind of been bragging recently about its efforts to really bring down inflation. There's been a talk, you know, also about how effective some of these measures by the Trump administration really are. They're providing these stats saying that, you know, their gas prices are falling, lower costs for essential items like eggs.
And they're pointing to this as like a sign of progress. Now, for the record, here in Clownifornia, California, you know, gas is still over $5 in many places. Eggs are still expensive and in short supply. But like from your perspective, do you think that these claims kind of hold up? Like, do you think that, you know, Trump as is actually having some negative or excuse me, some type of positive push to lower inflation? Or is it more like we're, you know, still kind of largely suffering from the
economic devastation that COVID inflicted upon us? Because that's what it still feels like to me. Well, I think your feeling is 100% accurate. I mean, it's kind of like that quote from Friedrich Nietzsche about, you know, you've seen the lightning, but you haven't felt the thunder. I think that's, we still haven't really unpacked the damage and debasement that was done to the U.S. dollar in the last five or six years.
I mean, it is unprecedented. And by the way, it was unprecedented going into the first quarter of 2020 before COVID-1984 kicked off. I was covering this on my show. I'm like, the Federal Reserve, and this wasn't on major financial networks, they created $6 trillion in new currency to prop up the repo markets. That's like the overnight liquidity and clearing houses because there was so much liquidity that needed to be put into the system to prop up the markets.
So I covered that. That was crazy. They were doing like the GDP of major nations in one month, just in currency creation. And on the heels of that, you had the largest exodus of CEOs in history at the last quarter of 2019 and then 2020. So that debasement is, again, it's unprecedented. 80% of all the dollars ever made in the last five or six years from the founding of the country. So these are metrics that you're trying to wrap your head around.
A lot of times I think the economy is just psychological. I mean, you get that from FDR. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. And fun side note, he got that line from the guy who wrote Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill, if you really look into that speech. And that was about the psychology of people and banking. And that's the next day he had a banking holiday because the country wanted to get their cash out of the banks. And of course, then he did the gold.
It wasn't necessarily confiscation, but it might as well be called that, that executive order to turn your gold in. But really, I think all of this is psychological at some level when you're talking about, did we help inflation this early on? You really wouldn't see that. I think it's just maybe people having an easier time just because of the skids being greased to get energy to market or whatever else. I read a book from Trump years ago called Think Like a Champion.
I think it came out in like 2009. And I got it for Christmas one year. I sat down and read it. And if you open the book in the first chapter, and I know he didn't write it, but it's somebody, some ghost writer wrote this for him. But he was happy to see that oil was like at $40 a barrel or whatever at the time it was.
It was cheap and had come down from $100 or whatever it was that had driven that price of energy because that was about the tail end of the Great Recession and the housing market bubble, the big short, all that stuff that happened. Well, the reason that the gas prices were lower was because there was less demand because the economy wasn't as strong. So if you got lower gas prices this quick, I can only surmise that it's because demand isn't as strong.
And it's because, I mean, again, it's January 20th, he took office. Now, a lot of that's just really about how people's minds work. And there may be just a lot more confidence and. And I'm sure they've done some deals on energy. This may be what the deal in Yemen is about. Yemen is about another disastrous foreign policy thing that we're doing in the Middle East, but proxy wars for the House of Saad and the rest.
But something is happening on the energy front, but none of that has had that much time to kick in. So it's probably just less demand, folks. Yeah, that's certainly what it seems like. because you can look at the things that are in demand and they're skyrocketing. I think I paid $9 for some eggs last week for a dozen eggs. Wild. Hey, Freethinkers, this is Matt Agorist, and I'm going to take a quick pause to remind you of something really important.
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Well, man, so I know we're reaching the end of the time here, and I want to thank you just for coming on again, and for coming on, especially as you are sick, man. That meant a lot to me and Jason, I know. It's been awesome again having you on, dude. Your depth of knowledge on history and economics, it's great, dude. I love how you break it down. It felt like I just got a history lesson and tariffs and everything else,
man. It's great. Seriously. There's a few people that can tie all that together and then back into the current status. So you had mentioned earlier that we're adding like a trillion dollars every 90 days to the national debt. And when you really do think about that, man, it's fucking staggering. It's almost incomprehensible number that paints like a really grim picture of where this is all headed.
I mean, you combine that with the tariff wars, the push for regulated stable coins, an ever expanding surveillance state, runaway inflation. And it's like, seriously, we're seems like we're accelerating toward like an unavoidable financial reckoning. And I don't want my kids to grow up in a world like that. Right.
¶ Strategies for Financial Resilience
I mean, that being said, man, I want to leave things like we always do on this podcast on a hopeful note and ask you like for your input on that, you know, like, how do we hedge against this? Like, how do we protect ourselves from what feels like a mathematical certainty of economic turmoil? And before, you know, like you can answer that, then I want you to make sure that we can please let everyone know where they can find you and how they can support you and anything else you have coming up.
Well, again, I appreciate you having me on. And I always like to leave something with a positive note. We're just witnessing change. Change doesn't have to be a catastrophic for the individual if you know how to protect yourself. And I think some of the best ways is, you know, to do your own research. You know, it's not just listening to people like me, but, you know, be comfortable in your own skill set and knowledge base to learn the difference
between currency and money. You know, when you do that, you know what money is. Money has to have intrinsic value in and of itself outside of the monetary system in some way. In my opinion, that's like gold and silver cover those bases of what money is. You could argue that Bitcoin doesn't because it represents energy. But knowing that difference and the sea of infinite, like you mentioned a trillion every 99 days or whatever it is, it's a sea of infinite.
You know, a thousand or excuse me, I get caught up in the numbers. If you do a trillion seconds ago, a trillion seconds in time is 32,000 years. You know, and a billion seconds is 32 years. So, you know, I can deal with that a billion seconds ago in my life, you know, it's 32 years ago. Well, you know, a thousand billion is a trillion. So it's 32,000 years. These are numbers that will never, will never be paying off the debt or anything.
By the way, that's a whole other conversation or a show, but it's not even real. It's just the fact the pressure put on us by an international banking cartel that's a privately owned consortium like the Federal Reserve. It's not federal. It's not a reserve. Your faith should be in yourself and, and, you know, your, your own ability to bank and other things yourself. And I think that's, it's a great opportunity to, to bet on you. And, you know, there'll be fortunes made in this time, by the way,
there'll be innovations. People will bring things to market. There'll be small businesses and other ways to help others. The entrepreneurial spirit still alive and well. The younger generation wants to make, I see a lot of Gen Zers and want to make something. I also see people that don't, but I follow a lot of those threads on Instagram and those kids are wanting to make something or do something. And I think that's fantastic.
There's a lot of innovations going on. The dangers will always be there. You're not going to have a world without danger. One of my favorite quotes is from Douglas MacArthur, one of the, probably the greatest generals since Alexander the Great. And he said, there is no safety on this earth. There's only opportunity. So really looking for a safe space or something to crawl in, it's never going to happen. I think that's philosophically, we'd just be looking for opportunity inside the crisis.
And when you do that, it'll change the paradigm. You'll start seeing some good things that'll happen. But we definitely are, without being an alarmist, we are watching the death of a current system. It's not going to be tomorrow, but it's happening. It's unfolding and really accelerating faster than I had thought too. So much to discuss. So I'll have to come back and talk to you more about, you know, as things unfold. Yeah, for sure, man. That was a great white pill. I love that,
dude. It is definitely change on the horizon. And as with all systems, the change is inevitable. And I think that, you know, like you said, I think if you have the right mindset and the right preparatory moves, then you can certainly have to live or make it through this one pretty good.
So do you want to do you want to plug anything or yeah i'd love to you can go to my website it's arterburn.gold that's my last name dot gold all my podcasts ways to contact me are up there we just launched wise wolf bitcoin as well if you're interested in buying buying or selling bitcoin you can go through us it's a white glove service we're the oldest bitcoin broker in north Texas. So that's cool. I started taking Bitcoin for gold and silver on my website and we charged no fee.
So we're the only broker in America, maybe the world that doesn't charge a fee for gold and silver. When you use Bitcoin, we treat it straight up like cash. And even like credit cards, we charge a fee or PayPal, we charge a fee, but we don't charge a fee with Bitcoin. and that's one of the innovations that we made. And I'll be getting you guys set up in the next week or so and we've been so far behind but I got you guys a domain.
And I'll have to go back and see what it is but I got you a domain for a landing page so you can share the links with my subscription service because that's one of the things that makes us different. We have a subscription service for precious metals beyond the fact that you can just buy from me or sell to me anytime. We have, you know, blanketed package deals from $50 all the way up to $5,000. And you can do it monthly. You can do it one time.
And just a diverse set of products and other things, that's connected to wisewolfgold.com. But again, I'll have you guys set up. You'll be one of our affiliates here in the next. As soon as I'm not being murdered by gain of function, I'll get it.
¶ Closing Remarks and Future Endeavors
Man really appreciate you coming on again especially fighting this gain-of-function, assassination attempt until next time man thank you thank you appreciate you guys. Music.